CHAPTER X
ROB AND NELLY GO INTO BUSINESS
They were indeed a long way from home; much farther than they dreamed. It was past four o'clock when they reached the house, and Mrs. March had begun to be a little anxious about them. She was much pleased when she saw the basket of trout.
"Oh, what a nice supper we will have!" she exclaimed.
Rob and Nelly looked at each other and at her.
"Oh, mamma!" Nelly began, but checked herself at once, and looked again at Rob.
"Why, what is the matter, children?" said Mrs. March.
"Nothing. You can have them if you want them," said Rob, rather forlornly.
"Why, child, what else did you get them for?" exclaimed their mother, who had forgotten all about Rob's plan of selling trout.
"To sell," said Rob. "There's as many as four pounds there, I guess: that's most two dollars; but you can have them. I don't care. I'll go get some more to-morrow, if my hand's well."
"Oh!" said Mrs. March, "I had forgotten about it. So you mean to be a little fish-merchant, do you?"
"Yes. Nelly's an egg-merchant, an egg and butter merchant; and I'm going to be a fish and fruit merchant; and we're going to take care of you and papa that way," said Rob, in an excited tone. "And I was going to begin to-morrow; but I can begin next day, just as well: let's have these for supper; they're splendid; we've cooked two already."
The tears came into Mrs. March's eyes.
"We'll ask papa, and see what he says," she said. "If we're really going to be merchants, we mustn't eat up all our goods: that's certain. But what fruits do you propose to deal in, Mr. March? Fruits seem to me rather scarce in this valley."
"Oh! strawberries, next month," said Rob; "and then raspberries, and then wild currants, and then wild grapes. There are lots and lots of them on the creek, you know. And we can get carried up to Mr. Pine's, and pick berries up above his ranch. He said we might have all we could pick."
When they asked Mr. March about the trout, he laughed, and said:—
"I think we must take a vote of all the partners. This family is a partnership now; the 'March firm' we must call ourselves; four partners, all working to make money for the firm: now let's vote. All that are in favor of eating the trout for supper, hold up their right hand."
Nobody's hand went up but Rob's.
"Three against you, Rob," said his father: "you'll have to go without your trout this time. It is voted by a majority of the firm that the trout be sold."
"I didn't want"—Rob began, but checked himself, and looked at his mother. She nodded and smiled, but said nothing. A little while afterward, when she found Rob alone, she put her arms around him, and kissed him, and said:—
"I understood about the trout, Rob. You thought I wanted some for my supper: didn't you?"
"Yes, mamma," said Rob: "that was it. I didn't care so much about them; but it seemed awful mean to keep you from having them. Nelly and I have each had one; they were splendid. Next time I'll just catch one basketful to sell, and one to eat."
The next day, Rob and Nelly set off together at six o'clock for Rosita: Rob with his trout, and Nelly with eggs and butter. They stopped a minute to speak to Lucinda and Billy, as they passed their house. Billy was not there. He had gone to work for Mr. Pine, Lucinda said, and would not be at home for a week.
"You like it: don't you, Nelly?" she said.
"Yes, indeed!" said Nelly: "I think it's fun. And the people are all so kind: that Swede woman kissed me because I look so much like her little girl. I am going there again to-day. They keep boarders, you know; and she wants eggs every time I come, she said. I thought perhaps they'd take Rob's trout too."
"Oh, no! they won't," said Lucinda. "Trout is too dear eatin' for such boarders 's they keep. You take the trout right up to Miss Clapp's. She'll take 'em all, an' as many more 's you can ketch."
By the middle of the afternoon, the children were at Lucinda's door again. They both ran in shouting:—
"Lucinda! Lucinda! we've sold every thing; and we've got five dollars and seventy-five cents! Now what do you say? Won't mamma be glad? Couldn't anybody get very rich this way, if they only kept on? Isn't it splendid?"
"You dear little innocent lambs," said Lucinda: "it's much you know about gettin' rich, or bein' poor."
"Why, we are poor now; very, very poor: papa said so," interrupted Nelly. "That's the reason he lets us sell things."
"Oh, well! your pa don't know nothin' about bein' real poor," said Lucinda: "and I don't suppose he ever will; but it's a good thing you're a bringin' in somethin' this year. It's a dreadful year on everybody."
"Yes; papa said we were a real help," said Nelly: "he said so last night."
"Luce," exclaimed Rob, "what do you think Jan is going to make for us? He's taken the measure of us to-day; he showed us a picture of a man and a woman with them on. They're real nice to carry things with: you don't feel the weight a bit, he says. In his country, everybody wears them on their shoulders,—everybody that has any thing heavy to carry. They're something like our ox-yoke,—only with a straight piece, that comes out; and we can hang a basket on each end, and run along just as if we weren't carrying any thing. They're real nice folks, Jan and his wife. They're the nicest folks in Rosita."
"Oh! not so nice as Mrs. Clapp, Rob," said Nelly.
"Yes, they are too; lots nicer. They don't speak so fine and mincing: but I like them lots better; they're some fun. And Luce," he continued, "they've got a picture-book full of pictures of the way people dress in their country; and they let us look at it. It was splendid. And Ulrica she keeps taking hold of Nelly's hair, and lifting up the braids and looking at them, and talking to Jan in her own language."
"It makes her cry, though," said Nelly. "I wish she wouldn't."
"But what is this Jan is going to make you?" asked Lucinda: "a real yoke, such as I've seen the men wear to bring up two water-buckets to once? I don't believe your pa and ma'll let you wear it."
"Why not?" said Nelly: "does it look awful on your shoulders?"
"Well, you know how the ox-yoke looks on old Starbuckle and Jim," said Rob. "It's a good deal like that: I saw one in the picture-book."
"But we're not going to be yoked together," said Nelly. "It can't look like that."
"No, no," said Lucinda, "not a bit. They're real handy things. Lots o' the men have them, to carry water-buckets up the hill with in Rosita. They just make 'em out of a bent sapling, with two hooks at each end. You'll find them a heap o' help."
"Then I shall wear it, no matter how it looks," said Nelly, resolutely.
"We needn't wear them in the streets," said Rob: "we can take them off just outside the town, and hide them among the trees."
"Now, Rob," exclaimed Nelly, "I'd be ashamed to do that! That would look as if we were too proud to be seen in them. I shall wear mine into all the houses."
"Wait till you see how it feels, Nelly," said Lucinda. "Perhaps you won't like it so well's you think."
When Nelly and Rob told their father and mother about the shoulder-yokes that the Swede Jan was going to make for them, both Mr. and Mrs. March laughed heartily.
"Upon my word," said Mr. March, "you are going to look like little merchants in good earnest: aren't you?"
"Don't you suppose they will hurt your shoulders?" asked Mrs. March.
"Ulrica said they didn't," replied Nelly. "She said she had worn one a great deal. She puts a little cushion under the place where they come on your neck. She says we can carry twice as much on those as we can in our hands."
It was arranged now that Rob and Nelly should, for the present, go up to Rosita twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays. Mr. March reckoned that they would be able to spare butter and eggs enough to bring them five or six dollars each week. The money from the trout they did not allow themselves to count on, because it would be uncertain; but Rob made most magnificent calculations from it. "Four dollars a week, at least," he said; "and that will be one way to pay off those old grasshoppers. I'll make a good many of them work for us: see if I don't!"
The next time Rob and Nelly went to Rosita, when they bade their mother good-by, they said:—
"Be on the lookout for us, mamma, this afternoon. You'll see us coming down the road with our yokes on."
So Mrs. March began to watch, about three o'clock; and, sure enough, about four, there she saw them coming down the lane which led from the main road to their house. They were coming very fast, at a sort of hop-skip-and-jump pace, but keeping step with each other exactly. A sort of slender pole seemed to be growing out of each shoulder; from this hung slender rods, and on the end of each rod was fastened a basket or a pail, Rob's yoke had two pails; Nelly's had two baskets. As the children ran, they took hold of the rods with their hands, just above the baskets and pails. This steadied them, and also seemed to be a sort of support in walking. As soon as the children saw their mother, they quickened their steps, and came into the yard breathless.
"Oh, they are splendid!"
"Why, they're just as light as any thing!"
"They don't hurt your neck a bit!"
"See the nice baskets Ulrica gave us! Jan made them himself out of willows," shouted they, both talking at once, and each out of breath. Then Nelly slipped off her yoke, and, before her mother knew what she was about, had tried to put it on her shoulders; but her mother was too tall: Nelly could not reach up.
"Oh! do try it on, mamma," she said: "just to see how nice it is."
Mrs. March tried; but the yoke had been carefully adjusted to Nelly's slender little figure, and Mrs. March could not put it on.
"Well, if you only could, mamma, you'd see how easy it is," said Nelly, slipping it on her shoulders again, and racing down to the gate to meet her father, who was just coming in.
Mr. March stopped short, and stared at Nelly for a minute.
"Why, Nell," he said, "I did not know what you were. I thought you were some new kind of animal, with horns growing out lengthwise from your shoulders."
"So we are! so we are!" shouted Rob, running up so fast that the pails on the rods of his yoke swung back and forth high up in the air. "We are the four-armed boy and girl of Rosita. They'll want us for a show. Four arms on a boy are as wonderful as two heads on a calf."
How Mr. March did laugh! The children's fun was contagious. He seized Rob's yoke, and tried to put it on his own shoulders; but it was as much too small for him as Nelly's had been for her mother. Then he sat down on the fence, and examined the yokes carefully. They were beautifully made out of very slender young aspen-trees, which could be easily bent into place. The wood was almost white, and shone like satin: Jan had rubbed it so long.
"He says when the white gets dirty he will paint them for us," said Nelly: "all bright colors, as they have them in Sweden. But while they keep clean they are prettier white."
Ulrica had put a soft cushion of red cloth at the place where the yoke rested on the neck behind; also, on each rod just where the hands grasped them. Mrs. March examined them carefully.
"This is beautiful cloth," she said: "I wonder where the woman got it."
"Oh! she has a big roll of it in a chest," said Nelly. "I saw it; and a big piece of beautiful blue, too. It was made in Sweden, she says; and she has a queer gown, which was her little girl's that is dead, all made of this red and blue cloth, with—oh!—millions of little silver buttons sewed on it, all down the front. She wanted me to try it on; but I did not like to. It was too small, too: not too short; I think it would have come down to my feet. Do little girls in Sweden wear long gowns, like grown-up ladies, mamma?"
"I don't know, dear," said Mrs. March.
"She has some of the little girl's hair in the same chest; and she took it out and held it close to mine."
"Yes," said Rob: "I didn't want her to. How did we know she was clean?"
"Oh, for shame, Rob!" cried Nelly: "they're all as clean as pins; you know they are. But I didn't like her to do it, because it made her cry."
After supper they had a great time deciding where to keep the yokes. Rob wanted them hung up on the wall.
"They look just as pretty as the antlers old Mr. Pine has upon the wall in his house," said Rob; "and we can't ever have any antlers, unless we shoot a deer ourselves. Mr. Pine said a man offered him fifty dollars for them; but he wouldn't take it. I think our yokes look just about as pretty."
"Oh, Rob!" exclaimed Nelly, "how can you talk so? They are not pretty a bit; and you know it!"
"I don't either!" said Rob: "I do think they're pretty; honest, I do."
While they spoke, Mrs. March was hanging one of the yokes on the wall, by a bit of bright red tape, tied in the middle. She hung it quite low, between the door and the south window. Then she hung Nelly's sun-bonnet on the nail above it, and Nelly's little red shawl over one end of the yoke.
"There," she said, "you are right, Rob. It makes quite a pretty hat-rack."
"So it does," said Mr. March. "Now we'll put the other one up the other side the door; and that shall be Rob's, to hang his coat and jacket on."
"My jacket isn't pretty, though, like Nell's shawl," said Rob, wistfully. "Why don't men wear red jackets in this country? In that book of Jan's ever so many of the men have red jackets on, with silver buttons; and they're splendid. Jan has one too in the chest; but he doesn't wear it here, because it would make the folks laugh, he says: it is so different from other clothes here. He put it on for us while Ulrica was showing Nelly the little girl's gown. It did look queer; it came down most to his knees, and had great flaps on the side, and big silver buttons on the front, as big as dollars. But it was splendid: a great deal handsomer than the uniform the Mayfield guards wore."
When Billy came home from Mr. Pike's, Lucinda told him about the yokes which Jan had made for the children to wear, to carry their baskets and pails on. Billy listened with a disturbed face.
"Miss March'll never let 'em wear 'em: will she?"
"I donno," said Lucinda: "Miss March's got heaps of sense; an' the children was jest tickled to death with them. They come racin' down the hill with 'em on, 's proud as militia-men on trainin'-day. But how 'twill be about wearin' 'em round town I donno."
"It'll never do in the world," said Billy. "The boys 'll all follow 'em, and hoot and halloo; and Rob 'll be fightin' right an' left, the fust thing you know. It's a bad business, bad business. I donno what put it into that pesky Swede's head, anyhow."
"Oh! jest to help the children," said Lucinda. "From what the children say, Jan an' his wife both seem to have kind o' adopted 'em. You know how she takes on over Nelly, 'cause she looks so like her own little gal."
"I know it," said Billy. "Blamed if I don't wish I hadn't taken 'em there. You'll see they can't wear the things in Rosita."
This time Billy was right. He had been mistaken in thinking that the miners would treat Nelly roughly; but he was right now about the boys. The next time Nelly and Rob went up to Rosita, they entered the town a little before nine o'clock: it was just the time when all the children were on their way to school. As soon as Rob and Nelly appeared with their little yokes on their shoulders, and a basket and pail swinging from each rod, the boys on the street set up a loud shout, and all rushed towards them.
"Hullo, bub! what kind o' harness 've you got on?"
"Did your pa cut down his ox-yoke to fit ye?"
"Oh, my! look at the gal wearin' one too," they cried; and some of the rudest of the boys pressed up close, and tried to take off the covers of the baskets and pails. In less than a second, Rob had slipped his yoke off his shoulders, and thrown it on the ground, baskets and all; and sprung in front of Nelly, doubling up his fists, and pushing the boys back, crying:—
"You let us alone, now: you'd better!"
"Hush! hush! Rob," said Nelly, who was quite white with terror. "Come right into this store: the gentleman that keeps the store won't let them touch us."
And Nelly slipped into the store, and as quick as lightning took off her yoke and put it on the floor; and, saying to the astonished storekeeper, "Please let my things stay there a minute; the boys are tormenting my brother," she ran back into the centre of the crowd, snatched up both Rob's baskets of trout, and, pushing Rob before her, came back into the store. The crowd of boys followed on, and were coming up the store steps; but the storekeeper ordered them back.
"Go away!" he said: "you ought to be ashamed of yourselves, tormenting these children so. I'd like to thrash every one of you! Go away!"
The boys shrank away, ashamed; and the storekeeper went up to Nelly, who was sitting down on a nail-keg, trembling with excitement.
"What is this thing, anyhow?" said he, taking up the yoke. "Oh, I see,—to carry your pails on."
"Yes, sir," said Nelly; "and it's a great help. We have to walk so far the baskets feel real heavy before we get here. Jan, the Swede man, made them for us. It is too bad the boys won't let us wear them."
"Are you Mr. March's little girl?" said the shopkeeper.
"Yes," said Nelly; "and that's my brother," pointing to Rob, who was still standing on the steps, shaking his fists at the retreating boys and calling after them.
"He'd better let 'em alone," said the shopkeeper. "The more notice ye take of 'em, the more they'll pester ye. But I reckon ye can't wear the yokes any more; I wouldn't if I was you. You tell your father that Mr. Martin told ye to leave 'em off. Ye can leave 'em here, if ye're a mind to. Some time when your father's a drivin' in he can stop and get 'em."
"Yes," said Nelly: "I hadn't any thought of wearing them again. All I wanted was to get in here and be safe, so they shouldn't break my eggs: I've got four dozen eggs in one pail. I think it is real cruel in the boys to plague us so." And Nelly began to cry.
"There, there, don't ye cry about it; 'tain't any use. Here's a stick of candy for ye," said the kind-hearted Mr. Martin. "The Rosita boys are a terrible rough set."
"We might take care not to get into town till after they're in school," said Nelly, taking the candy and breaking it in two, and handing half of it to Rob. "Thank you for the candy, sir. I'm sorry I cried: I guess it was because I was so frightened. Oh! there's Ulrica now!" And she ran to the door, and called, "Ulrica! Ulrica!"
Ulrica came running as fast as possible, soon as she heard Nelly's voice. She looked surprised enough when she saw the two yokes lying on the floor, and Nelly's face all wet with tears, and Rob's deep-red with anger. When Nelly told her what the matter was, she said some very loud words in Swedish, which I am much afraid were oaths. Then she turned to Mr. Martin, and said:—
"Now, is not that shame—that two children like this will not be to be let alone in these the streets? I carry the yokes myself. Come to mine house."
So saying, Ulrica lifted both the yokes up on her strong shoulders, and, taking Nelly's biggest pail in one hand, strode away with long steps.
"Come on mit me," she said; "come straight. I like to see the boy that shall dare you touch." And as she passed the boys, who had gathered sullenly in a little knot on the sidewalk, she shook her head at them, and began to say something to them in her broken English; but, finding the English come too slow, she broke into Swedish, and talked louder and faster. But the boys only laughed at her, and cried:—
"Go it, old Swedy!"
"Oh, Ulrica, don't let's speak to them," whispered Nelly. "Be quiet, Rob!" And she dragged Rob along with a firm hand.
"Now I goes mit you to the houses mineself," said Ulrica. "It shall be no more that the good-for-nothings have room that to you they one word speak."
So Ulrica put on her best gown, and a clean white handkerchief over her head, and her Sunday shoes, which had soles almost two inches thick; then she took one of the baskets and one of the pails, and, giving the others to Nelly and Rob, she set off with them to walk up to Mrs. Clapp's, where the butter and trout were to be left. Mrs. Clapp was astonished to see Ulrica with the children. Ulrica tried to tell her the story of the yokes; but Mrs. Clapp could not understand Ulrica's English, and Nelly had to finish the story.
"It was too bad," said Mrs. Clapp: "but my advice to you is, to give up the yokes. It would never be quite safe for you to wear them here: the boys in this town are a pretty lawless set."
"Oh, no, ma'am!" replied Nelly, "I haven't the least idea of wearing them again. It would be very silly. But it is a dreadful pity: they did help so much, and Jan took so much trouble to make them for us."
Rob hardly spoke. He was boiling over with rage and mortification.
"I say, Nell," he began, as soon as they got outside Mrs. Clapp's gate: "you might have let me thrash that boy that spoke last, the one that called out at you. I'll die if I don't do something to him. And I'm going to wear my yoke: so there! They may's well get used to it. I'll never give up this way!"
"You'll have to, Rob," answered Nelly. "I hate it as much as you do; but there's no use going against boys,—that is, such boys as these. The Mayfield boys 'd never do so. They'd run and stare, perhaps: I expected any boys would stare at our yokes; but they'd never hoot and halloo, and scare you so. We'll have to give the yokes up, Rob."
"I won't," said Rob. "I'm going to wear mine home, and ask papa. I know he'll say not to give up."
"No, he won't, Rob," persisted Nelly. "I shall tell him what the kind shopkeeper said, and Mrs. Clapp too. You might know better yourself than to go against them all. They know better than we do."
"I don't care," said Rob. "It's none of their business. I shall wear my yoke if I've a mind to. At any rate, I'll wear it once more, just to show them."
"Papa won't let you," said Nelly, quietly, with a tone so earnest and full of certainty that it made Rob afraid she might be right.
When Mrs. March saw the children coming home without their yokes, she wondered what could have happened. But almost before she had opened her lips to ask, Rob and Nelly both began to tell the story of their adventures.
"Gently! gently! one at a time," cried Mrs. March; but it was impossible for the children to obey her, they were both so excited. At last Mrs. March said:—
"Rob, let Nelly speak first: ladies before gentlemen, always." And the impatient Rob reluctantly kept silent while Nelly told the tale.
Mrs. March's face grew sad as the story went on. It was a terrible thing to her to think of her little daughter attacked in the street in that way by rude boys.
"Now, oughtn't I to have thrashed them, mamma?" cried Rob, encouraged by the indignation in his mother's face: "oughtn't I to? But Nell she just pulled me into the store by main force; and I felt so mean. I felt as if I looked just like Trotter when he puts his tail between his legs and runs away from a big dog. I don't care: I'll thrash that ugly black-eyed boy yet,—the one that spoke to Nelly; sha'n't I, mamma? Wouldn't you? I know you would! And mayn't I wear the yoke again, just to show them I ain't afraid?"
"Keep cool, Rob," said Mrs. March; "keep cool!"
"I can't keep cool, mamma," said Rob, almost crying; "and you couldn't, either,—you know you couldn't!"
"Perhaps not, dear; but I'd try," replied his mother. "Nothing else does any good ever."
"Well, mayn't I wear the yoke, anyhow?" said Rob. "I won't go into Rosita ever again unless I can!"
"Rob," said his mother, earnestly, "if you were going across a field where there was a bull, you wouldn't wear a red cloak: would you? It would be very silly, wouldn't it?"
"Yes," said Rob, slowly and very reluctantly. He saw what his mother meant.
"That's just what I said," interrupted Nelly: "I said it would be very silly to wear them any more. The boys would never let us alone if we did."
"Nelly is right," said Mrs. March: "it would be just as silly to carry a piece of red cloth and flourish it in the eyes of the bull, when you know that the sight of red cloth always makes bulls angry."
"I don't care if it does make them all set on me," said Rob: "after I've thrashed them once, they'll let me alone. Anyhow, I won't go unless I can wear it; I know that much: I'd feel like a sneak."
"Of course you'll do as you like about that, my dear boy," replied Mrs. March: "you never need go up to Rosita, if you would rather not. You know it was all your own plan, yours and Nelly's, going up there to sell things. Your papa and I would never have thought of it."
"Well," said Rob, half crying, "but there's all the money I make: we'd lose all that, if I don't go. Nell couldn't carry the trout besides all the butter and eggs."
"I know it," replied his mother; "but that isn't any reason for your doing what you feel would make you seem like a sneak. We wouldn't have you feel like that for any thing."
Poor Rob was very unhappy. He didn't see any way out of his dilemma. He wished he hadn't said he would not go up into Rosita without his yoke.
"Anyhow, I'll ask papa," he said.
"Yes," replied his mother, "of course you will talk it all over with him; and perhaps you'll feel differently about it after that. Let it all go now, and try to forget it."
"I'm not going to think any more about it," said Nelly. "I don't care for those boys: they're too rude for any thing. I sha'n't ever look at one of them; but you wouldn't catch me wearing that yoke again, I tell you!"
"That's because you're a girl," said Rob. "If you were a boy, you'd feel just exactly as I do. Oh, goodness! don't I wish you had been a boy, Nell? If you had, we two together could thrash that whole crowd quicker'n wink!"
"I shouldn't fight, if I were a boy," said Nelly: "I think it is beneath a boy to fight. It's just like dogs and cats: they fight with their teeth and claws; and boys fight with their fists."
"Teeth, too," said Rob, grimly.
"Do they?" cried Nelly, in a tone of horror. "Do they really? Oh, Rob! did you ever bite a boy?"
"Not many times," said Rob; "but sometimes you have to."
"Well, I'm glad I'm not a boy," said Nelly: "that's all I've got to say. The idea of biting!"
To Mrs. March's great surprise, she found, when she talked the affair over with her husband, that he was inclined to sympathize with Rob's feeling.
"I don't like to have the boy give it up," said Mr. March. "You don't know boys as well as I do, Sarah. They'll taunt him every time he goes through the street. I half wish Nelly hadn't hindered him from giving one of them a good, sound thrashing. He could do it."
"Why, Robert!" exclaimed Mrs. March-"you don't mean to tell me that you would be willing to have your son engage in a street fight?"
"Well, no," laughed Mr. March: "not exactly that; but there might be circumstances under which I should knock a man down: if he insulted you, for instance; and there might come times in a boy's life when I should think it praiseworthy in him to give another boy a thrashing, and I think this was one of them."
"Well, for mercy's sake, don't tell Rob so," said Mrs. March: "he's hot-headed enough now; and, if he had a free permission beforehand from you to knock boys down, I don't know where he'd stop."
While Mr. and Mrs. March were talking, Billy came in. He had heard the story of the morning's adventures from a teamster who had been on the street when it happened; and Billy had walked all the way in from Pine's ranch, to—as he said in his clumsy, affectionate way—"see ef I couldn't talk the youngsters out of their notion about them yokes."
"'Tain't no use," he said: "an' ye won't find a man on the street but'll tell ye the same thing. 'Tain't no use flyin' in the face o' natur' with boys; and the Rosita boys, I will say for 'em, is the worst I ever did see. Their fathers is away from hum all the time, and wimmen hain't much hold on boys after they get to be long from twelve an' up'ards; an' the schools in Rosita ain't no great things, either. 'S soon's I heard about them yokes, I told Luce the children couldn't never wear 'em: the boys 'n the street'd plague their lives out on 'em. I don't know as I blame 'em so much, either,—though they might be decent enough to let a little gal alone; but them yokes is awful cur'us-lookin' things. I never see a man a haulin' water with 'em, without laughin': they make a man look like a doubled-up kind o' critter, with more arms 'n he's any right to. You can't deny yourself, sir, thet they're queer-lookin'. Why, I've seen horses scare at 'em lots o' times."
Billy's conversation produced a strong impression on Mr. March's mind. Almost as reluctantly as Rob himself, he admitted that it was the part of wisdom to give up the yokes.
"It's no giving up for Nelly," said Mrs. March: "she said herself that nothing would induce her to wear it in again."
"And I think Rob would better not go in for a little while, till the boys have forgotten it," said Mrs. March.
"And not at all, unless he himself proposes it," added Mr. March. "I have never wholly liked the plan, much as we have been helped by the money."
"I've got an idee in my head," said Billy, "thet I think'll help 'em more 'n the yokes,—a sight more. I mean to make 'em a little light wagon. Don't tell 'em any thing about it, because it'll take me some little time yet. I've got to stay up to Pine's a week longer; an' I can't work on't there. But I'll have it ready in two weeks or three to the farthest."
"Thank you, Billy," said Mr. March: "that is very kind of you. And a wagon will be much better than the yokes were: it will save them fatigue almost as much, and not attract any attention at all. You were very good to think of it."
"Nothin' good about me," said Billy, gruffly: "never was. But I do think a heap o' your youngsters, specially Nelly, Mr. March. It seems to me the Lord don't often send just sech a gal's Nelly is."
"I think so too, Billy," replied Mr. March. "I have never seen a child like Nelly. I'm afraid sometimes we shall spoil her."
"No danger! no danger!" said Billy: "she ain't the kind that spoils."
"Now, you be sure an' not let on about the wagon: won't you, sir," he added, looking back over his shoulder, as he walked away fast on his great long legs, which looked almost like stilts, they were so long.
"Oh, yes! you may trust me, Billy," called Mr. March. "I won't tell. Good-by!"