"I don't see why I always have to rock the baby!" he grumbled. "Alec wants me to stake Dora down by the brook and when am I going to get any time to help him if I have to keep June quiet?"
"Let me rock her," said Shirley. "I can rock just as nice—can't I, Rosemary?"
"Well, I think you could," admitted Rosemary, smiling. "You must touch the cradle very gently, you know, Shirley—don't rock June as though she were in a boat at sea."
She went in to the darkened room off the kitchen with Shirley and showed her how to sway the old-fashioned cradle with a soothing motion. When she came back to Louisa, Kenneth had disappeared and Sarah with him.
"I declare, sometimes I get so discouraged, I don't know what to do," confided Louisa, filling the heavy tea kettle at the sink and lifting it to the stove. "We do everything the wrong way and yet I don't see where we can take time to do them any better.
"For instance, there's June. I know she shouldn't be rocked to sleep—but the one day I tried to break her of the habit and make her go to sleep quietly by herself, I didn't get a thing done. The other children got into mischief, Alec was hurt trying to pitch hay and manage the team without help and, after all, June didn't learn a thing. She acted worse the next day, so I had to give it up and go back to the cradle rocking."
"I suppose it is hard because she is used to the cradle now," said Rosemary, busily clearing a place on the table for the clean dishes.
"Yes, that's the reason," agreed Louisa. "And we spend a lot of time staking Dora around in different places—she was in the front yard that day you came over with Richard. She was there because the front yard has the one decent piece of fencing left on the farm. She would give more milk if we could let her go free in the pasture—but Kenneth has to stake her with a staple and rope because the fences are so poor—where there are any—that the only way to keep her home is to tie her."
"You're tired," said Rosemary quickly. "You worked too hard yesterday, Louisa. I wish you'd go off somewhere—find a nice, cool place—and rest; I'll do these dishes."
Louisa did look tired. More than that, she looked discouraged. She had not taken pains to brush her hair as carefully as usual and it was "slicked back" in the tightest possible knot. Her dress was perfectly clean, but so faded and mended that it would have taken a merry-hearted girl to have been quite happy in it. Louisa was far from merry-hearted.