Part 9 (2/2)

Tom and Bella could scarcely believe their ears, but they felt very pleased, and thanked her very gratefully.

CHAPTER VII.

WHAT LAY BEYOND THE MILESTONE.

The next week the children went off far more heavily laden than they had been when they made their first venture. Bella had added a few bunches of herbs to her large supply of flowers, and a bunch or two from Margery's garden, and she had to carry both her baskets herself, for Tom's vegetables proved load enough for him. He had wanted to take some currants for Charlie, but his father would not allow that.

”They ain't good enough,” he said; ”it won't do for to begin offering poor stuff to your customers, or you'll lose those you've got and never get any more, and you'll have all your load to carry for nothing. You learn to grow better ones, Charlie, my boy, and then another year you'll be able to make something by them.”

Charlie's face fell, but he had not given the time or care to his garden that the others had, and he knew it, and that only made him more vexed.

Life was disappointing to Charlie just then. It seemed to him, and to Margery too, hard that they also could not go to Norton every Sat.u.r.day.

The ten-mile walk they forgot all about, they only thought of the pleasure of being in the midst of all the people and the bustle, and the shops and market-stalls, with their loads of fruit and sweets and buns. The great aim of Margery's life then was to grow big enough to carry in a basketful of flowers too, and sell them, and to possess a purse to put the money in, and a Savings Bank book, just as Bella had.

As the summer wore on and the days grew hotter and hotter, the eagerness of both died down a good deal. It was far more pleasant, they found, to stay at home and play in the cool lane or orchard, than to get up at four in the morning and tramp about all day long under the weight of heavy baskets. Some days they even found it too hot to walk with their father as far as the milestone.

Those were trying, tiring days for Tom and Bella, days that put their courage to the test, and made their perseverance waver more than once.

The walk in the morning was lovely still, but the standing about in the close, narrow streets, crowded with people and animals, without even a rest at the end of their five-mile walk, was so wearying that Bella often longed to sit down on the edge of the pavement to rest her aching feet.

Her cheeks would grow scarlet, and her head throb, and her eyes ache with the glare, and the heat and the weight of the baskets, but she could not do anything to get relief. She had to stand or walk about, trying to sell her flowers as quickly as possible. There was nothing else to be done.

The poor flowers suffered too, and hard work it was to keep them looking fresh.

Sometimes a farmer or carter would offer the two tired little market-gardeners a 'lift' on their homeward way, but this did not happen often, for, as a rule, they were all going in the opposite direction.

There were few besides Bella and Tom who left the town so early; and it would have been cooler and pleasanter for them if they had waited until the evening and the heat of the day was over, but they were always anxious to get home, and they really did not know where to go or what to do with themselves all the weary day until five or six o'clock.

That was a very long, hot summer. The flowers opened and faded quickly, in spite of the hours the whole family spent every evening watering them; and more than once, if it had not been for the fruit from the orchard and the vegetables, Bella and Tom would have had but a scanty supply to take to their customers. As it was, they could not carry enough to make very much profit, for fruit and vegetables are heavy, and to carry a load of them for miles is no joke.

Several times that summer, when she awoke after a hot, restless night to another stifling, scorching day, Bella felt inclined to s.h.i.+rk her business and remain at home. It would have been so jolly to have spent the day lazily in the shady orchard, instead of tramping those long, dusty miles.

Tom felt the heat less, and his energy helped to keep her up.

”We'll have a donkey before so very long,” he said cheerfully. ”If we can have a good sowing and planting this autumn, and good crops next spring, father and all of us, we'll have enough to carry in to make it worth while to hire Mrs. Wintle's donkey.”

So with the thought of all they were going to do in the future to buoy them up, off they would start again, hoping that before another Sat.u.r.day came the heat would have lessened, and some rain have fallen to refresh the land and lay the dust.

Yet, with all its weariness and hard work, that summer ever after stood out in Bella's memory as a very happy one; and the evenings after their return, and the Sundays, remained in her memory all her life through.

Even if Charlie and Margery did not come to meet them, their father was always there to carry their baskets home for them. And then there was the change into cool, comfortable old garments, and the nice tea, and the long rest in the orchard, or sitting about in the porch outside the door, while they talked over all that had happened during the day.

They all went to bed by daylight on those light nights, and Bella, as she stretched out her weary body restfully on her little white bed, could see through the open window the stars come up one by one in the deep blue-black sky.

She was always quite rested by the time Sunday came, and was up and out early for a look at her garden before getting ready for Sunday-School.

She loved the Sunday-School, and she loved her teacher, and the service after in the dear old creeper-covered church, where the leaves peeped in at the open windows, and the birds came in and flew about overhead, and all the people knew and greeted one another in a friendly spirit.

On Sundays, too, it was an understood thing that Bella should go to tea with Aunt Maggie, and this was to her, perhaps, one of the happiest hours of the whole week, for Aunt Maggie had a little harmonium, to the music of which they sang hymns. Sometimes, too, she told stories of the days when she was young, and of people and places she had seen--told them so interestingly, that to Bella the people and places seemed as real as though she had known them herself. They had long talks, too, about all that Bella was doing, and the things that puzzled her, and her plans for the present and the future.

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