|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
 |
||||
|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
|
|
||||
|
arms were around her, his tears falling on her face, and she awoke! It was no dream. The daylight had long faded; her child lay calmly sleeping by her side; a candle was burning dimly on the stand, and her husband was sobbing by her pil- low. The next morning was a cheerful one at the Quaker house. “Mother” was up betimes, and surrounded by busy girls and boys, whom we had scarce time to in- troduce to our readers yesterday, and who all moved obediently to Rachel’s gentle “The had better,” or more gentle “Hadn’t thee better?” in the work of getting breakfast; for a breakfast in the luxurious valleys of Indiana is a thing compli- cated and multiform, and, like picking up the rose-leaves and trimming the bushes in Paradise, asking other hands than those of the original mother. While, therefore, John ran to the spring for fresh water, and Simeon the second sifted meal for corn-cakes, and Mary ground coffee, Rachel moved gently and quietly about, making biscuits, cutting up chicken, and diffusing a sort of sunny radiance over the whole proceeding generally. If there was any danger of friction or collision from the ill-regulated zeal of so many young operators, her gentle “Come! come!” or “I wouldn’t, now,” was quite sufficient to allay the difficulty. Bards have written of the cestus of Venus that turned the heads of all the world in successive generations. We had rather, for our part, have the cestus of Rachel Halliday, that kept heads from being turned, and made everything go on harmoniously. We think it is more suited to our mod- ern days, decidedly. |
