She dusted their own bedrooms, too, and helped to make the beds, and did lots of other little duties; and at Christmas, to her great delight, Miss Charlotte had given her the much-longed-for sleeves and aprons.
Angela had become, meantime, almost sole mistress of the hens and the eggs. She had begun by just collecting the eggs, and washing and marking them, and she did her work so well that no one else ever thought of troubling about them; and before very long, to her enormous pride, she was given the task of packing them for market. And oh! the joy of it! the pleasure she took in laying the rich brown and creamy-white eggs in cosy nests in the sweet-smelling hay; her pride in their appearance! The only flaw in her happiness was the fact that she could not carry the basket and dispose of the contents herself to the customers. She pictured herself turning back the snow-white cloth from the top of the basket, and counting out her beloved treasures one by one.
After that she began to feed the fowls, and keep account of the corn that was used, and the number of eggs that were laid. Anna consulted her quite gravely about the house scraps.
Perhaps, though, the very happiest day of all her life, at any rate the proudest, was that on which Fluffikins laid her first egg. Angela, when she saw it and the little hen strutting up and down before the nest in which it lay, stood in a kind of speechless ecstasy, much as a young author when his first work has been accepted, or an artist before his first completed picture. Then she held out her arms to the proud Fluffikins, who mounted to her shoulder, clucking happily; and, rubbing their cheeks against one another, they gazed ecstatically at the precious egg.
"Oh, Fluff, I am so sorry to take it from you," she cried, "but I must show it to Cousin Charlotte. Fluff, you darling, do go on and lay lots more. I want one every day, then you shall sit on some, and hatch out some dear little baby chicks of your very own; and you shall live with me till you are an old, old bird, Fluffikins darling, and no one shall dare to—to—" she hesitated to name the dreadful word 'kill,'—"shall interfere with you. You are what they call the 'founder' of my fortune, you precious bird."
She did not take the egg in to show to Miss Charlotte after all. She thought of another plan. She took it in and showed it to Anna, and to the girls, who gazed at it and marvelled at its beauty, but Miss Charlotte was not to see it until it appeared on her plate at tea, with an inscription on it to say whose it was.
It hurt Angela very much to deprive poor Fluffikins of her treasure, but, while she was not looking, she slipped another new, warm egg in the nest in its place, and hoped the dear bird would not see through the fraud; and Miss Charlotte did deserve the honour, after all her goodness to Fluff and her mistress; in fact they were pledged to it.
Cousin Charlotte could not suppress a slight start of surprise when she saw the black-speckled thing in the egg-cup on her plate; but she was as pleased as the girls could wish when she read, 'My and Fluff's first egg for you,' and assured them, as she ate it under their united gaze, that she had never in her life tasted a better one.
Poppy had constituted herself every one's hand-maiden and handy-maiden. If she were allowed to have a duster and dust-brush and help Esther, her cup of joy was full, but she was just as pleased to run to the post, or to the shops, or to help Ephraim gather windfalls in the orchard, dig potatoes, or assist Anna in any way she was allowed to. And now that her parsley bed was really in full growth, in spite of its troubled beginning, she was very full of happy importance. To be asked if she could spare a pennyworth of parsley filled her with pleasure for days.
"I never saw anything like it," she would say seriously, shaking her little purse the while. "It only cost me a penny, and I've made fourpence by it already. I wonder every one doesn't grow parsley."