“We shall have to move,” said Sally to her infant, as if it quite understood all “Gill will be here after this house in a minute, and I must look up another home. You needn’t cry, dearie, I know the prettiest little cottage by a brook, and I think we can get it. We’ll try, at any rate.‘Tisn’t pleasant to move; I should like one house always, but your grandmamma says people used to live in tents, and wander about a good deal oftener than you and I have had to.”
Sally’s cottage was the corn-crib, and the brook was the trough outside the door, where the cattle drank.
The water came from a spring, and was always fresh, and bubbling over with a sort of musical sound. The little girl loved to hear it. She called it her piano, and sang songs to its accompaniment as she rocked her baby, or held her quietly upon her lap.
When Gill came to harness Dobbin, she sat in the door of her cottage and called to him.
“We’re living over here now, Gill,” said she. “We shall want that house again, when you can spare it. This is very well, but we like that a great deal better. You and Ben must come and visit us here, and tell Lucy, if you please, to bring little Jack over. The baby and I are lonesome in our new house.”
Ben laughed. “How funny little girls are!” he said. “Sally acts as if her play were real life. I do believe she would cry her eyes out, if any thing should happen to that doll of hers.”
“I know somebody that makes as great a fuss over a whistle, or a kite, as any little girl over a rag-baby,” said Gill.
Ben perched himself upon the great rock in the corner of the barn-yard, and pulled a piece of willow from his pocket.
“I should not have thought of it, but for you, Gill,” he said. “I can make a very nice whistle indeed, now,—almost like a flute.”
The bell rang to call them to prayers. “I am late for market this morning,” said Gill; “but I shall reach town before nine o’clock. I shall be glad when the fall vegetables are ready, and I can take them a little more leisurely, and not be afraid of their wilting.”