Little Jane.
I felt as though I was not at my own home, but intrudin on other people’s property, “trespassin,” as them court-house lawyers calls it. That “sheriff sale” in that paper had changed the looks of things.
I went over to the little white rose-bush—the bush my little Jane planted the day she was four years old—the one she had watched and called hers till she was taken from me two years arter.
I thought, as I stood there by that little bush, planted by her little hands, that I could nearly see her little form a squattin down and her little dimpled fingers pattin the dirt around the roots of that little bush. I remembered how she plucked the first rose and come a runnin to me with it, sayin:
“Mamma, mamma, my bush raised this. How pritty!”
“I could nearly see her little dimpled fingers pattin the airth around the roots of that little bush.”
I thought how, every spring, Jobe would pull the weeds and leaves from around it, and how a many a time I saw him wipin his eyes as he stood by our baby’s rose-bush. And as I was thinkin this I thought that before long somebody else would own this ground and that bush, and we could not take care of it any more for our little girl that is gone. I wondered if anybody would stand there arter we are turned out and weep for the child that planted it. I wondered why it was that the law could tear people away from everything they love. I wondered why there couldent be some way fixed to make it easier for people to git homes and pay for them. I wondered why interest was never less than six per cent., and sometimes more. I wondered why people who paid interest had sich a hard way of gittin along, while the people who got interest got along so easy.
“‘Mamma, ... how pritty!’”