In the Face of Danger by Joan Lowery Nixon

fireplace, swinging it over the fire to heat up. “It’s perfectly clear why she couldn’t find a husband in Boston and had to come west to marry Farley.”
    “Poor Mr. Haskill,” Megan said. She peeked through the window and watched Mrs. Haskill struggle with her skirts as she climbed to the seat of the wagon.
    “Poor Mr. Haskill should have had his head examined before marrying that woman!” With a clatter Emma slammed a stack of tin plates onto the table.
    “She tries to be very grand,” Megan said, “and she thinks that Mr. Haskill’s house is like yours. I wonder what she’ll do when she finds that she’ll be living underground.”
    Megan and Emma looked at each other with such mischief that they burst into laughter. At that moment Ben came into the house. He stared at them in amazement, which made them laugh all the harder.
    “There must be something here I don’t understand,” he said, which caused Emma to whoop.
    She leaned against the table, wiping her eyes with the hem of her apron. “Ada Haskill—” she began, but couldn’t stop laughing.
    Ben rubbed his chin again and turned to Megan. “I didn’t see anything about the woman that would cause the two of you so much merriment. Was it her hat?”
    This set off another outburst, until finally Emma was able to say, “It’s the idea of a woman like that having to live in a dugout.”
    Ben didn’t smile. He shook his head and said seriously, “Emma, we must set a good example for Megan. It’s not right to laugh at someone’s misfortune. We began our work here by living in a dugout, and you know the many hardships it caused you.”
    Emma wiped her eyes again and glanced at Megan, whose stomach ached from laughing so hard. “Ben is right,” Emma said. “This should be a happy day for Farley, and I’m afraid it’s going to be unhappy for both himself and Ada. I shouldn’t have laughed.”
    “I’m sorry, too,” Megan said to Ben.
    “Oh, Ben,” Emma said, “it wasn’t what it seemed. The laughter helped us to keep from being angry.”
    “Angry? Just because the woman seemed somewhat … reserved?”
    Emma told him all that Mrs. Haskill had said. For a moment the room was silent. Then Ben slammed a fist on the nearby table so hard that the lamp wobbled, and Megan reached to catch it before it fell. He turned and stomped out of the house, banging the door behind him.
    “Don’t look so worried,” Emma reassured Megan. “Ben will work off his anger. Before long he’ll begin to feel sorry for her. Then he’ll try to think of how to make her feel welcome and accepted, so that she’ll see how wrong she was and change her ways. By the time he comes todinner he’ll be himself again.” She smiled. “He’s a good man, Megan.”
    Emma was right. By the time Megan had finished feeding the pups, Ben had come back. He sat down at the table and beamed at the steaming bowls of chicken and vegetables. When he bowed his head to say grace, he added an extra prayer for the well-being of Farley and Ada Haskill, then cheerfully set to filling the plates and passing them to Emma and Megan.
    “Farley said that with the election just a few days away, feelings are high in St. Joe. There’s talk of war if Lincoln is elected.”
    “Will you vote?” Megan asked him.
    “I wish I could, but people in the territories don’t have the vote,” he answered. “Our elected representative to Congress can debate any issue, but even he doesn’t have the right to vote on it.”
    They began to talk about Abraham Lincoln, who had come through eastern Kansas the year before on a speaking tour. Their words became a comfortable hum as Megan’s thoughts drifted away. She thought again of Mrs. Haskill and pictured the woman’s disapproving face. She’d try to feel sorry for her, as Ma had said, but Mrs. Haskill’s words had hurt, and it was hard to feel anything but upset and angry. Suddenly, achingly, Megan was lonely for her mother.
    It was evening, the