MIKA001.TXT

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 Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies,
with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was
the farmer's wife. Their house was small, for the lumber
to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There
were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room;
and this room contained rusty looking cooking stove, a
cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs,
and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one
corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There
was no garret at all, and no cellar-except small hole, dug
in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family
could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose,
mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was
reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from
which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole.
 When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she
could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every
side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat
country that reached the edge of the sky in all
directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray
mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the
grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of
the long blades until they were the same gray color to be
seen elsewhere. Once the house had been painted, but the
sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and
now the house was as dull and gray as everything else.
 When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty
wife. The sun and wind had changed her, too. They had
taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a sober
gray; they had taken the red from her cheeks and lips, and
they were gray also. She was thin and gaunt, and never
smiled now. When Dorothy, who was an orphan, first came to
her, Aunt Em had been so startled by the child's laughter
that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart
whenever Dorothy's merry voice reached her ears; and she
still looked at the little girl with wonder that she could
find anything to laugh at.