"Oh, I guess not," rejoined the man, lifting his foot, and giving a
curiously resigned sigh as he sent an apprehensive glance into the
girl's face.
"Dear, dear! isn't he funny?" murmured the girl, bending low and giving
a gentle poke with the pencil in her hand. "Only fancy," she added,
straightening herself, "only fancy if we had so many feet. Just picture
the size of our shoe bill!" And she laughed and turned away.
"Well, by gum!" ejaculated the man, looking after her. Then he fell to
work, and his whistle, as he worked, carried something of the song of a
bird set free from a cage.
A week passed.
The days were spent by Alma in roaming the woods and fields, pencil and
paper in hand; they were spent by her mother in the hot kitchen over a
hotter stove. To Alma's protests and pleadings Mrs. Kelsey was deaf.
Alma's place was not there, her work was not housework, declared Alma's
mother.
On Mrs. Kelsey the strain was beginning to tell. It was not the work
alone--though that was no light matter, owing to her anxiety that Alma's
pleasure and comfort should find nothing wanting--it was more than the
work.
Every night at six the anxious little woman, flushed from biscuit-baking
and chicken-broiling and almost sick with fatigue, got out the black
silk gown and the white lace collar and put them on with trembling
hands.
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