"La! I don't make but twelve dollars a month, besides my board. I have made a great many dresses evenings, and have stinted myself to finish this to-day. So I believe I can't go, any way. I should be terrible glad to."
"Oh, you are very excusable," answered Ann. "But let me ask if you take any time to read."
"No; not much. We can't afford to. Father owns the best farm in Burt; but we have always had to work hard, and always expect to. We generally read a chapter every day. We take turns about it. One of us reads while the other works."
"Yes; but lately we have only taken time to read a short psalm," said Emily, again laughing.
"Well, the Bible says, 'Let him that is without sin cast the first stone,' or I might be tempted to remind you that there is such a thing as laboring too much 'for the meat that perisheth.' Good morning, ladies."
Ann heard a loud, merry laugh from the next room, as she reached the door. It was Ellinora Frothingham's; no one could mistake, who had heard it once. It seemed the out-pouring of glee that could no longer be suppressed. Ellinor sat on the floor, just as she had thrown herself on her return from a walk. Her pretty little bonnet was lying on the floor on one side, and on the other a travelling bag, whose contents she had just poured into her lap. There were apples, pears, melons, a mock-orange, a pumpkin, squash, and a crooked cucumber. Ellinora sprang to her feet when Ann entered, and threw the contents of her lap on the floor with such violence, as to set them to rolling all about. Then she laughed and clapped her hands to see the squash chase the mock-orange under the bed, a great russet running so furiously after a little fellow of the Baldwin family, and finally pinning him in a corner. A pear started in the chase; but after taking a few turns, he sat himself down to shake his fat sides and enjoy the scene. Ellinora stepped back a few paces to elude the pursuit of the pumpkin, and then, with well-feigned terror, jumped into a chair. But the drollest personage of the group was the ugly cucumber. There he sat, Forminius-like, watching the mad freaks of his companions.
"Ha! see that cucumber?" exclaimed Ellinora, laughing heartily. "If he had hands, how he would raise them so! If he had eyes and mouth, how he would open them so!" suiting action to her words. "Look, Ann! look, Fanny! See if it does not look like the Clark girls, when one leaves any thing in the shape of dirt on their table or stand!"
Peace was at length restored among the inanimates.
"I came to invite you to walk; but I find I am too late," said Ann.
"Yes. Oh, how I wish you had been with us! You would have been so happy!" said Ellinora. "We started out very early—before sunrise—intending to take a brisk walk of a mile or two, and return in season for breakfast. We went over to Dracut, and met such adventures there and by the way, as will supply me with food for laughter years after I get married, and trouble comes. We came along where some oxen were standing, yoked, eating their breakfast while their owner was eating his. They were attached to a cart filled with pumpkins. I took some of the smallest, greenest ones, and stuck them fast on the tips of the oxen's horns. I was so interested in observing how the ceremony affected the Messrs. Oxen, that I did not laugh a bit until I had crowned all four of them. I looked up to Fanny, as I finished the work, and there she sat on a great rock, where she had thrown herself when she could no longer stand. Poor girl! tears were streaming down her cheeks. With one hand she was holding her lame side, and with the other filling her mouth with her pocket handkerchief, that the laugh need not run out, I suppose. Well, as soon as I looked at her, and at the oxen, I burst into a laugh that might have been heard miles, I fancy. Oh! I shall never forget how reprovingly those oxen looked at me. The poor creatures could not eat with such an unusual weight on their horns, so they pitched their heads higher than usual, and now and then gave them a graceful cant, then stood entirely motionless, as if attempting to conjecture what it all meant.