Part 1 (2/2)
Bunny lay in her lap, and Hester was in the middle of a story, when she stopped to listen to the wagon grinding down-hill.
”So the little chicken said, 'Peep! Peep!' and started off to see what the big yellow fox was like,” she went on. ”That was a silly thing for her to do, wasn't it, Bunny? because foxes aren't a bit nice to chickens. But the little chicken didn't know any better, and she wouldn't listen to the old hens when they told her how foolish she was.
That was wrong, because it's naughty to dis--dis--apute your elders, mother says; children that do are almost always sorry afterward.
”Well, she hadn't gone far before she heard a rustle in the bushes on one side. She thought it was the fox, and then she _did_ feel frightened, you'd better believe, and all the things she meant to say to him went straight out of her head. But it wasn't the fox that time; it was a teeny-weeny little striped squirrel, and he just said, 'It's a sightly day, isn't it?' and, without waiting for an answer, ran up a tree. So the chicken didn't mind _him_ a bit.
”Then, by and by, when she had gone a long way farther off from home, she heard another rustle. It was just like--Oh, what's that, Bunny?”
Hester stopped short, and I am sorry to say that Bunny never heard the end of the chicken story, for the rustle resolved itself into--what do you think?
It was a fox! A real fox!
There he stood on the hillside, gazing straight at Hester, with his yellow brush waving behind him, and his eyes looking as sharp as the row of gleaming teeth beneath them. Foxes were rare animals in the Beulah region. Hester had never seen one before; but she had seen the picture of a fox in one of Roger's books, so she knew what it was.
The fox stared at her, and she stared back at the fox. Then her heart melted with fear, like the heart of the little chicken, and she jumped to her feet, forgetting Bunny, who fell from her lap, and rolled un.o.bserved over the edge of the cliff. The sudden movement startled the fox, and he disappeared into the bushes with a wave of his yellow brush; just how or where he went, Hester could not have told.
”How sorry Roger will be that he wasn't here to see him!” was her first thought. Her second was for Bunny. She turned, and stooped to pick up the doll--and lo! Bunny was not there.
High and low she searched, beneath gra.s.s tangles, under ”juniper saucers,” among the stems of the thickly ma.s.sed blueberries and hardhacks, but nowhere was Bunny to be seen. She peered over the ledge, but nothing met her eyes below but a thick growth of blackish, stunted evergreens. This place ”down below” had been a sort of terror to Hester's imagination always, as an entirely unknown and unexplored region; but in the cause of the beloved Bunny she was prepared to risk anything, and she bravely made ready to plunge into the depths.
It was not so easy to plunge, however. The cliff was ten or twelve feet in height where she stood, and ran for a considerable distance to right and left without getting lower. This way and that she quested, and at last found a crevice where it was possible to scramble down,--a steep little crevice, full of blackberry briers, which scratched her face and tore her frock. When at last she gained the lower bank, this further difficulty presented itself: she could not tell where she was. The evergreen thicket nearly met over her head, the branches got into her eyes, and buffeted and bewildered her. She could not make out the place where she had been sitting, and no signs of Bunny could be found. At last, breathless with exertion, tired, hot, and hopeless, she made her way out of the thicket, and went, crying, home to her mother.
She was still crying, and refusing to be comforted, when Roger came in from milking. He was sorry for Hester, but not so sorry as he would have been had his mind not been full of troubles of his own. He tried to console her with a vague promise of helping her to look for Bunny ”some day when there wasn't so much to do.” But this was cold comfort, and, in the end, Hester went to bed heartbroken, to sob herself to sleep.
”Mother,” said Roger, after she had gone, ”Jim Boies is going to his uncle's, in New Ipswich, in September, to do ch.o.r.es and help round a little, and to go all winter to the academy.”
The New Ipswich Academy was quite a famous school then, and to go there was a great chance for a studious boy.
”That's a bit of good luck for Jim.”
”Yes; first-rate.”
”Not quite so first-rate for you.”
”No” (gloomily). ”I shall miss Jim. He's always been my best friend among the boys. But what makes me mad is that he doesn't care a bit about going. Mother, why doesn't good luck ever come to us Gales?”
”It was good luck for me when you came, Roger. I don't know how I should get along without you.”
”I'd be worth a great deal more to you if I could get a chance at any sort of schooling. Doesn't it seem hard, Mother? There's Squire Dennis and Farmer At.w.a.ter, and half a dozen others in this towns.h.i.+p, who are all ready to send their boys to college, and the boys don't want to go!
Bob Dennis says that he'd far rather do teaming in the summer, and take the girls up to singing practice at the church, than go to all the Harvards and Yales in the world; and I, who'd give my head, almost, to go to college, can't! It doesn't seem half right, Mother.”
”No, Roger, it doesn't; not a quarter. There are a good many things that don't seem right in this world, but I don't know who's to mend 'em. I can't. The only way is to dig along hard and do what's to be done as well as you can, whatever it is, and make the best of your 'musts.'
There's always a 'must.' I suppose rich people have them as well as poor ones.”
”Rich people's boys can go to college.”
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