“Why, yes, you can dish up your oatmeal,” calmly cracking a second egg. “’T won’t do a mite of harm to have two. Maybe you’re hungrier than you think. Now Harriet, the water, and we’re all ready. I’ll help you finish those peas while she eats.”
The woman and the girl shelled peas, their fat fingers fairly flying through the pods, while Elliott devoured both eggs and a bowl of oatmeal and a pitcher of cream and a dish of blueberries and wondered how they could make their fingers move so fast.
“Practice,” said Mrs. Gordon in answer to the girl’s query. “You do a thing over and over enough times and you get so you can’t help doing it fast, if you’ve got any gumption at all. The quarts of peas I’ve shelled in my life time would feed an army, I guess.”
“Don’t you ever get tired?”
“Tired of shelling peas? Land no, I like it! I can sit in here and look at you, or out on the back piazza and watch the mountains, or on the front step and see folks drive by, and I’ve always got my thoughts.” A shadow crossed the placid face. “My thoughts work better when my fingers are busy. I’d hate to just sit and hold my hands. Ted dared me once to try it for an hour. That was the longest hour I ever spent.”
Mrs. Gordon had risen to peer through the window after a rapidly receding wagon.
“There!” she said. “There goes that woman from Bayfield I want to sell some of my bees to. She’s going down to Blisses’ and I’d better walk right over and talk to her, as the telephone won’t work. I ’most think one hive is going to swarm this morning, but I guess I’ll have time to get back before they come out. 184 Hello, Johnny, how do you do to-day?”
“All right,” lisped the small solemn-eyed urchin who had strayed in from the kitchen and now stood in the door hitching at a diminutive pair of trousers and eying Elliott absorbedly. “Gone!” he announced suddenly; coming out of his scrutiny.
“What, your button?” Harriet pulled him up to her. “I’ll sew it on in a jiffy. Don’t worry about the bees, Mother. I can manage them, if they decide to swarm before you get back, and while you’re at the Blisses’ just telephone central our phone’s out of order—and oh, please tell Mrs. Cameron we’re keeping Elliott till afternoon.”