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Show 28 so clean and neat and tidy. How happily we looked it over peeping into every nook and corner. During the previous days my trunks and limited belongings had been transferred from the President's beautiful residence... Thus we began life with many hopes and joys and blessings. However we soon came to know that the stern realities of life must come.'7 Those "stern realities" began to come almost immediately. One day in early summer, just weeks after the wedding, Milford "rushed home from the store" with news that he was called into a military unit to be sent to Southern Utah to help quell Indian uprisings, and that he must leave the very next morning. Ellis found a way to occupy her spare time while he was away. Mother Shipp, having once heard Ellis express a wish to make a rag carpet for her bare floor, arranged that a whole wagon load of old clothes be sent to her daughter-in-law. Delighted, Ellis found these clean, worn articles of clothing not only an opportunity to utilize a skill learned from her mother, but a "wonderful source of entertainment in cutting off the buttons, hooks and eyes, trimmings, ribbons and laces, to work into dainty cushions and little knick-knacks to give a desired character to our home." She then separated all of the white pieces and took them to a dyer who turned them into bright colors. Her fingers flew from morning to night while making the carpet. She sometimes feared that Milford might return before she could complete her surprise project. Yet, she found time to go to Pleasant Grove for a visit with her Hawley grandparents; and there she spent the last few weeks of summer taking care of fruit from the orchard her father had given |
