The breakfast never tasted so delicious. They had worked hard enough to give them a good relish for Lucy’s brown bread and fish-balls, and toast and eggs.
CHAPTER V. MRS. BETH AND HER CAT
MRS. BETH was drinking coffee from a tin kettle, as Gill drove up to a side door in the market. She sat in her stall with her bonnet on her head, and her spectacles upon her nose, and her fat face as gleeful and jolly as one need wish to see. It was a pleasure to look at the woman; she put every body in a good humor by her own cheerfulness.
The stall was in the middle of the market-place, and was about twelve feet square,—perhaps not quite so large. There was a sort of table or platform, covered with crisp, yellow-green lettuce, and cresses, and spinach, and young beets with the tops for greens; and below this platform, running around on the outside of the stall excepting at the entrance or gateway, was a bench with baskets of vegetables; beans, peas, summer squashes, etc., etc. Up above were bars with hooks, and suspended from the hooks were red peppers, and garlic, and herbs, (or “medicine” as Mrs. Beth called it). At the gateway was a post with a broken lantern on the top. All around were other stalls with produce, and their salesmen or saleswomen, but nowhere was there a neater place, or a more attractive face, than by the old broken lamp that served as a beacon. Many a time it had lured Gill in the dimness of some cloudy morning; and yet he thought there was little need to light the lantern, so long as the beaming face of the woman was there. He wondered how it was that such multitudes of people hide their sunlight which is radiantly beautiful when it shines clearly through honest and earnest eyes.
He and Mrs. Beth were such fast friends! She watched for the head with the yellow hair, which the Reed children thought a halo; and she felt better all day after it had appeared to her; for Gill always left some Word of blessing that she could think of, and so break the weariness of sitting there hour after hour. She scarcely waited for him to jump from his cart, before she was at the door to lend a hand to the baskets.
“It is all bespoken, every thing that you bring,” she said to the Scotchman. “I could sell bushels on bushels more, if you had the produce. You see it makes all the difference in the world when the vegetables are picked fresh in the morning. They’re worth almost double then.”
“And I’m worth almost double for getting up to pick them,” said Gill. “When I lie in bed longer than I ought, I feel wilted, as the vegetables look when they’ve been long pulled. I remember when I was a little fellow, and my father used to take me out of bed, and set me upon my feet by the window, to hear the June birds sing; and, pretty soon, my eyes would fly open of themselves before sunrise, and I would tumble out of my nest, and run to listen to the early concert. It all comes back to me now, as I stand among the vines—the old home by the river, and the woodbine climbing up to my chamber, and the sweet sounds coming in, and my father and my mother talking to each other as they were dressing. I wouldn’t lose my morning hour for any thing.”
“Isn’t it queer to think of ourselves as little children?” said the old woman. “I often see a little girl, with a yellow frock and a blue apron on, and a great black cat in her arms, as she plays among the hay in the barn. You wouldn’t believe that this old gray Eliza Beth is she; but so it is, and there’s the black cat’s granddaughter at your feet.”