Aloud she said, quite calmly, very tenderly for her, poor soul:
"I wish you'd take that old book," it was the one Langley had given her; there was no name or date in it, "and read me some of those verses that sort of make you feel good, good and—sleepy."
"I just love this," Donelle said, quick to fall into Jo's mood:
The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To the frosty asters like smoke upon the hills.
"Why, you don't like the words? Your eyes are wet, Mamsey!"
"I'm tired, my eyes ache with the knitting and weaving. The winter always gets me." Jo was gathering up her work. "We must go to bed, child. I'm glad spring is coming and we can work in the open."
But Donelle was singing, to a tune of her own, other lines of the interrupted poem:
And my heart is like a rhyme
With the yellow and the purple keeping time.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PRIEST AND THE ROAD MENDER