Laurel: Bride of Arkansas (American Mail-Order Bride 25) by Carra Copelin

plates. Between last night and this morning’s meals she could tell she was going to have to cook more food per sitting. She sincerely hoped Aunt Jennie had many recipes and instructions for cooking. Otherwise she was afraid her stay here would be short lived.
    When they’d packed up and left the house, she sat at the table among the dirty dishes and retrieved her glasses from her pocket. She was very fortunate they hadn’t broken when they flew from her hand earlier. Reading or sewing was next to impossible without them. She opened Aunt Jennie’s book and almost lost her nerve.
    The chapters ranged from setting up a new household, to cleaning the chimney, to preparing a chicken for the pot. Her eyes halted on that last section and she reread the words slowly. Kill . . . chicken . . . hold feet . . . neck firmly. Pull down on neck . . . twist . . . fast and hard. Neck will snap . . . Next was something about flapping wings. Oh, good Lord. Can I do this?
    She shuddered and flipped through a few more pages, and came across milking a cow, feeding chickens, and pigs. Thank goodness she hadn’t seen any pigs here. Now, back to the cow. She remembered hearing Cook say the cow had to be milked early. By the clock on the mantle over the fireplace, it was just seven. Time to get up and get started.
    She stacked the dishes for washing later, and went out the back door of the kitchen onto the screened-in back porch. A couple of wooden wash tubs hung on the wall to her left, along with a washboard and a dolly stick like the one she’d seen the washerwoman use to clean clothes. A shelf beside those held a bar of soap and a box of washing flakes. Outside in the yard, a short distance from the house, she saw a bench to set the washtubs on and two poles with a line strung between them to hang the wet clothes for drying.
    A basket with a handle sat on the floor by the porch entrance which she thought would make a good egg basket, so she grabbed it to tackle egg gathering first. As soon as she stepped out into the yard, several chickens came toward her. A few were a reddish-brown in color, but most were fluffy white. She put her hand down to pet one of them and found the feathers to be softer than she’d imagined.
    She’d had feather pillows and feather mattresses all her life, but this was the first time she’d ever felt them on an actual bird. She ran her hand down the back of the second bird, but the third one drew back and pecked her hand. The first two followed suit, and when she straightened to go into the coop, she noticed a half dozen or more had surrounded her. As she went through the door, two of them flew at her and landed on her head.
    “Shoo!” she squealed. “Get away from me!” Instinctively, she threw the basket over her head for protection, realizing too late it held dirt in the bottom. There wasn’t a lot, but enough to get in her hair and eyes. Blinking madly, her eyes teared, thankfully clearing away most of the grit.
    With blurred vision, she went about retrieving the eggs from the nesting boxes, and when she left the coop, the chickens followed her to the house, pecking at her skirts and flying at her. At that moment, she’d have had no trouble wringing any of their necks.
    After placing the eggs on the back porch, Laurel tackled milking the cow. She wasn’t sure how, but somehow she managed to avoid the hens on the way to the barn and she was grateful. Inside, near the stall where she’d found Griffin yesterday, stood the cow.
    She tried to remember Aunt Jennie’s instructions, precisely how to approach the animal. Be calm . . . speak softly, soothingly . . . and most importantly, have warm hands. A pail and a short stool sat to her right in a corner of the stall. She picked them up and sidled up beside the cow, who gave a woeful cry and stepped sideways with her hind feet bumping into Laurel. She went to pet the cow on the nose, to say something nice, and noticed the name “Bessie” carved into a