It's Thursday.
Then Pa took his fiddle, and he played and sang to Ma in the firelight. Ma rocked and Baby Carrie went to sleep, and Mary and Laura sat on their bench and were happy. The very next day, without saying where he was going, Pa rode away on Patty. Ma wondered and wondered where he had gone. And when Pa came back he was balancing a watermelon in front of him on the saddle. He could hardly carry it into the house. He let it fall on the floor, and dropped down beside it. He said he had thought he would never get it here and it must weigh forty pounds, and he was as weak as water. He asked Ma to hand him the butcher knife. Ma said that he mustn’t do that because Mrs. Scott said... Pa laughed his big, pealing laugh again. He said that was not reasonable and this was a good melon. He asked why it should have fever ‘n’ ague. He said that everyone knew that fever ‘n’ ague came from breathing the night air. Ma said that this watermelon had grown in the night air. Pa said it was nonsense. He asked Ma to give him the butcher knife and he would eat this melon if he knew it would give him chills and fever. Ma said she did believe he would, handing him the knife. It went into the melon with a luscious sound. The green rind split open, and there was the bright red inside, flecked with black seeds. The red heart actually looked frosty. Nothing had ever been so tempting as that watermelon, on that hot day. Ma would not taste it. She would not let Laura and Mary eat one bite. But Pa ate slice after slice after slice, until at last he sighed and said the cow could have the rest of it. Next day he had a little chill and a little fever. Ma blamed the watermelon. So they did not know what could have caused their fever ‘n’ ague. No one knew, in those days, that fever ‘n’ ague was malaria, and that some mosquitoes give it to people when they bite them.
