“Of course I can and will, Mrs. Susan Warner, if you will promise me one thing.” The girl gazed down into the smiling face of the old woman. “I have my suspicions that you’re trying to get rid of me so that you may iron the lavender dress. Is that the truth?”
“Maybe ’tis,” was the smilingly given confession, “but if you’ll let me iron that one while you’re gone, you can do Grandpa’s best shirt when you come back.”
Filling a quart pail with the lemonade, Jenny snatched her garden hat from its nail by the door and skipped away, although she had to walk more carefully when the ploughed ground was reached. “It makes me think of Robert Burns, and how, in far-away Scotland, his plough turned over the home nest of a poor little old field mouse,” she thought. “Oh, how glad, glad I am that Miss Dearborn is teaching me to love poetry. I can just see that tender-hearted young poet leaning over, ever so sorry because he had destroyed the little creature’s home and telling it not to be frightened.
“‘Wee, sleekit, cowrin’, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou needna start awa’ sae hasty
Wi’ bick’ring brattle.
I wad be laith to rin and chase thee
Wi’ murd’ring prattle.’”
“Jenny gal, what air yo’ sayin’, talkin’ to yourself that a-way?” The girl suddenly looked up, realizing that she had neared the high hedge that separated the farm from the mansion-like home and its grounds. Laughing happily, she replied: “What you’d call up to my old tricks, Granddad, reciting poetry that Miss Dearborn has had me learn. See, here is a pail brimming full of cool lemonade, if it hasn’t warmed while I crossed the field. I’m sure you must be as thirsty as Grandma and Dobbin and I were.” For answer the old man pushed his wide brimmed straw hat to the back of his head, lifted the pail to his lips and drank it all without stopping. Then said gratefully: “I reckon I kin keep on now fer a spell longer. I was most petered out an’ I do want to finish this field afore I quit.”