CHAPTER X EARLY MORNING ON DEVERING FARM
What a good sleep I had! Then—slowly, slowly I lifted my head, as I thought, from the warm pillow of my mother's side, but alas! it was only the warm pillow of my wheat straw.
I heaved a pony sigh, and staggered to my feet.
"My land! what a morning,
My land! what a morning!"
a young darky groom that I used to have down South would sing when he was passing his nice black paws over my skin after breakfast.
Then his master, who was a poet, would come and glance in the stable door and say, "Lift up your eyes, boys—there's gold in the sky," and the colored boys would look and wonder and wish the gold would roll down and then their master would laugh in his pleasant Southern way, and say, "Now it's on the water—now it's on the land. Watch it, boys."
The sunlight this morning was certainly a pure gold, but a cool calm northern gold. The lake was exquisite and I noted something that had not struck me the evening before. Nearly all the wooded points running out into the lake had wonderful silver birches on their tips. Their trunks were white and glistening and they stood like beautiful white ladies in front of the close masses of sturdy dark tree boles of the elms behind them. They certainly were the beauties of this northern wildwood.
The dainty little breezes rippling the surface of the lake reminded me that I was thirsty and Mr. Talker, who was passing by with a covered milk pail in each hand, said, "Go down to the lake, boy. You are the only quadruped without running water in your stall."