“It was an early spring. The trees were bursting into leaf, the grass was green, the beautiful yellow Easter flowers in the front yard were in bloom. Best of all, the hens had never been known to lay so many eggs before.
“It seemed that every one of us wanted something that the egg money would buy. Truman was going away to school, and he wanted books. Belle was going to be married, and she wanted all the money she could get for pretty clothes. Stanley wanted a new saddle for his courting colt. When the boys turned eighteen, Father gave each one of them a colt to tame and break and have for his own, and they were called the courting colts. I wanted the egg money for a lovely wax doll like one I had seen in a store in Clayville, and if Charlie got it he meant to spend it for a gun. Aggie wanted to buy a pair of long lace mitts to wear to Belle’s wedding. So we all hunted and hunted, each one thinking of what he would buy with the money.
“Once for three days I didn’t have an egg. Then I found a great basketful that was so heavy I could hardly carry it to a new hiding place, and the next day it was gone. So it went on till Easter.
“Charlie and I were up bright and early on Easter morning—not as early as on Christmas, of course. As we all brought in our eggs Father counted them. The kitchen floor was covered with baskets and buckets and boxes of eggs. You never saw so many eggs. Charlie had the most, and he was as happy as happy could be.
“While Mother and the girls finished getting breakfast, Charlie and I hunted for the colored eggs. Under beds, behind doors, in the cupboards, all over the house we hunted.
“‘Here they are!’ shouted Charlie from the spare chamber. And there they were behind the bureau—red eggs, blue eggs, green eggs, big sugar eggs, and eggs with pretty pictures pasted on them and tied with gay ribbons. And there were white eggs that looked just like common hen’s eggs, but when you broke a tiny bit of the shell and put your tongue to it, my, oh my! but that maple sugar was delicious!
“After breakfast there was a rush to get the work done and get ready for meeting. Dear knows how many people would come home to dinner with us. Mother always asked everyone home to dinner.
“We were nearly ready. Mother had picked the lovely, yellow Easter flowers and was wrapping the stems in wet paper to keep them from wilting till we got to the church—she meant to put them in a vase on the pulpit stand—when Father came in and said that the widow Spear’s new house had burned down in the night. There was something the matter with the chimney, no one knew just what.
“Mr. Abraham Harvey had told Father. The Spear family had taken refuge in a little old house that they had lived in before they built the new house. But of course they had nothing to keep house with, and Mr. Harvey was going around in a big wagon collecting things. There were some pieces of old furniture in the wagon, and several bundles of bedclothes and a box of dishes.