Ella had a toy piano kept as an ornament. Marian's piano was a chair, her stool was a box and her sheet music, an almanac: but in her soul was joy.
"What can you do with such a child?" demanded Aunt Amelia.
"Let her alone," counseled Uncle George.
CHAPTER VI
THAT YELLOW CUCUMBER
One summer day the St. Claires were the guests of a farmer who lived a few miles from town. Ella stayed in the house with her mother and the farmer's wife, but Marian saw the farm; the cows and the sheep and the fields of grain. She asked more questions that day than the hired man ever answered at one time in his life before, and when night came he and Marian were tired.
"She knows as much about farming as I do," the man said with a laugh as he put the sleepy child on the back seat of the carriage when the family were ready to go home.