(A call to dinner.)
BEAUTIFUL APPLES.
After dinner mother washes the dishes and makes all the arrangements she can for an early breakfast. She thinks I am another “Harriet Beecher Stowe,” so she is perfectly willing to do the work in the evening and let me write. Oh, the unselfishness of mothers. I do my share, of course, mornings, and at noon, but evenings I only make the beds in both wagons.
We have white sheets and pillow-cases, with a pair of blankets, and light comforts on both beds, just the same as at home, and they do not soil any more or any quicker, as we have them carefully protected from dust.
I had been writing a little while after dinner, when Frank stepped up with a basket of beautiful red-cheeked apples in his hand, not a wilted one among them.
“Where shall I put them?”
“Oh, Frank, how lovely they are. Where did you get them? Thank you so much; they are not all for me?”—as he emptied the last one into the pan. “Are all the others supplied? This seems more than my share.”
“Yes; they are for you, we bought the farmer’s entire stock; the others are supplied, or will be without you giving them yours.”
He had just gone, when Sim Buford came and threw half a dozen especially beautiful ones into my lap.
“Thank you, Sim, but I am bountifully supplied, don’t you see?”