“Oh! there are such oceans of stones in Badgertown,” cried Polly, lifting her hands.
“O Polly!” exclaimed Ben; “oceans of stones?”
“Well, I mean such a very, very, great many,” said Polly, with the color flooding her face, “you can’t think, boys; and they bother the farmers dreadfully when they want to cut their grass; the poor cows have such hard work to get their noses in between them—the stones, I mean—in order to get anything to eat.”
“The farmers almost have to whittle off the cows’ noses for them to get a bite,” said Ben.
“And Joel and David would pick rocks for the farmers sometimes,” said Polly; “but that was nice, because”—
“Mean old work,” said Joel, stretching himself, “picking rocks. Didn’t our backs ache, Dave?”
Little David twisted uneasily in his chair, unwilling to say how very unpleasant he had found the task of picking rocks, and wishing that the question had not been asked.
“Well,” said Polly brightly, “it was nice when the boys brought home the fresh vegetables that the farmers would give them for picking those rocks. You ought to have seen Mamsie’s face then!”
Joel straightened up at that, and forgot all about his aching back, and little David was very glad he hadn’t been obliged to say anything. “So now you see,” ran on Polly, “how very glad Deacon Brown was to give Ben the big stone for our orchard table; so Ben tugged and tugged and”—