“I am not fond of exercise before breakfast, but I grew so interested in the little water-carrier that one morning I dressed myself very early and went out, meeting her, as I expected, swinging her empty pail and repeating something to herself as if she were learning a lesson. She was larger when I stood on her level than when I saw her from the window, and sufficiently strong not to have minded carrying two or three pails of water—but eleven!
“‘It is hard work for you,’ I said, sympathetically, after wishing her good-morning. ‘O, my, no,’ she said, brightly; ‘jest suppose I had the empty pails to carry down and the full ones to fetch up!’
“I admired her happy philosophy and asked which of the houses she carried her pails of water to, and was surprised enough when she told me it was to all of them. I learned later that the well at the hotel was the only one in the vicinity, and, the supply of rain-water being inadequate, the people in the four little homes I could catch glimpses of through the trees were willing to give a cent for each pail of water brought to them!
“At mountain hotels fruit on the breakfast-table is not usual; so the boarders were very glad to engage wild raspberries from the same girl, who gathered them, with the help of three little brothers, after she had finished her water-carrying.
“I used to walk on the piazza with Ethel every morning while Candace was eating her breakfast, and sometimes still longer, when the grass seemed too damp for more distant rambling, and as we turned the corner and walked down the end of the dining-room we could see through the windows of the kitchen beyond it great baskets of dirty dishes carried in and emptied upon a table and piled up ready for washing. At a sink close by a fat woman was perpetually washing dishes, which she handed as fast as rinsed to two girls who wiped and piled them upon another table. The dish-washing and wiping always seemed very attractive to Ethel, and she made every excuse to stay longest on that part of the piazza. At last from frequent observation of the process and the workers I began to discover that my little water-carrier was one of the dish-wipers.
“I made arrangements when we first went to the hotel for hiring a strong wagon and a very steady old horse, and Ethel and I went every fair day for a long, lovely drive among the beautiful mountains. One day our trustworthy horse was attacked with a kind of rheumatic lameness which his owner admitted he was liable to have occasionally, but which would not last long. We waited patiently through several rainy and cloudy days, but when one came that seemed more perfect than any other day could be I felt as if I could wait no longer, and consulted the landlord about hiring another horse. I think, to exonerate that very cautious and conservative man, I must confess that I was a little self-willed, and engaged a coltish creature that he absolutely condemned. But I have driven nearly every day for so many years that I had perhaps too great an estimate of my own powers.
“We started on our drive, picking out the least precipitous roads, where all nearly approached the perpendicular for at least some portion of their way, and so far from seeming coltish our slow-moving horse might have been a grandfather.”
There was a prevailing opinion at Coventry school that Mrs. Abbott was rather fond of telling a story, and knew how to tell it well. Perhaps it was the strong interest she herself felt in every thing she said to her girls, or perhaps it was the great love they felt for her that made them now listen so intently that if the celebrated pin that is always mentioned in connection with attentive audiences had dropped it might have made quite a clatter, and yet certainly there was nothing very exciting about what she had said so far, as Kate Ashley found when she tried to put it into her inevitable diary.
“Elfie was in high spirits,” pursued Mrs. Abbott, “and laughed and sang as we drove along the shady roads, that were almost cold, the shade was so dense.
“We were within a mile or two of home when we came to a little log hut we had often seen before, but could rarely pass without stopping, because we knew it was the place to buy the most delicious maple-sugar that could be found in that region. The lame old woman sitting in the door rose up and came to the carriage, helping out Elfie, who had twelve cents, the price of a pound cake of sugar, clutched in her hand.