She put one arm under the child affectionately and fell asleep again. The little girl lay motionless, waiting. There was a large cherry tree outside, close to the tiny window above her bed, and she could hear the soft turning of the leaves, one against the other, and the fluttering of the robins that were already stealing the cherries. Innocent thieves that they were, they continually betrayed themselves by their shrill cries of triumph.
Not far from the tiny log-cabin the river went singing by on its way through the green valley; hearing it, Esther thought of the soft glooms under the noble balm trees, where the grouse drummed and butterflies drifted in long level flight. Esther always breathed softly while she watched the butterflies—she had a kind of reverence for them—and she thought there could be nothing sweeter, even in heaven, than the scents that the wind shook out of the balms.
She lay patiently waiting with wide eyes until the round clock in the kitchen told her that another hour had gone by. “Sister,” she said then, “oh, it must be time to get up! I just can’t wait any longer.”
The older girl, with a sleepy but sympathetic smile, slipped out of bed and commenced dressing. The child sprang after her. “Sister,” she cried, running to the splint-bottomed chair on which lay the cheap but exquisitely white undergarments. “I can’t hardly wait. Ain’t it good of Mr. Hoover to take me to town? Oh, I feel as if I had hearts all over me, an’ every one of ’em beating so!”
“Don’t be so excited, Pet.” The older sister smiled gently at the child. “Things never are quite as nice as you expect them to be,” she added, with that wisdom that comes so soon to starved country hearts.
“Well, this can’t help bein’ nice,” said the child, with a beautiful faith. She sat on the strip of rag carpeting that partially covered the rough floor, and drew on her stockings and her copper-toed shoes. “Oh, sister, my fingers shake so I can’t get the strings through the eyelets! Do you think Mr. Hoover might oversleep hisself? It can’t help bein’ nice—nicer’n I expect. Of course,” she added, with a momentary regret, “I wish I had some other dress besides that buff calico, but I ain’t, an’ so—it’s reel pretty, anyways, sister, ain’t it?”
“Yes, Pet,” said the girl gently. There was a bitter pity for the child in her heart.
“To think o’ ridin’ in the Libraty Car!” continued Esther, struggling with the shoe strings. “Course they’ll let me, Paw knows the store-keeper, and Mr. Hoover kin tell ’em who I am. An’ the horses, an’ the ribbons, an’ the music—an’ all the little girls my age! Sister, it’s awful never to have any little girls to play with! I guess maw don’t know how I’ve wanted ’em, or she’d of took me to town sometimes. I ain’t never been anywheres—except to Mis’ Bunnels’s fun’ral, when the minister prayed so long,” she added, with a pious after-thought.
It was a happy child that was lifted to the back of the most trustworthy of the plow-horses to be escorted to the celebration by “Mr. Hoover,” the hired man. The face under the cheap straw hat, with its wreath of pink and green artificial flowers, was almost pathetically radiant. To that poor little heart so hungry for pleasure, there could be no bliss so supreme as a ride in the village “Libraty Car”—to be one of the states, preferably “Oregon!” To hear the music and hold a flag, and sit close to little girls of her own age who would smile kindly at her and, perhaps, even ask her name shyly, and take her home with them to see their dolls.
“Oh,” she cried, grasping the reins in her thin hands, “I’m all of a tremble! Just like maw on wash days! Only I ain’t tired—I’m just glad.”