Читать книгу From the Land of the Snow-Pearls: Tales from Puget Sound онлайн

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“Yes, Pet,” said the girl gently. There was a bitter pity for the child in her heart.

“To think o’ ridin’ in the Libraty Car!” continued Esther, struggling with the shoe strings. “Course they’ll let me, Paw knows the store-keeper, and Mr. Hoover kin tell ’em who I am. An’ the horses, an’ the ribbons, an’ the music—an’ all the little girls my age! Sister, it’s awful never to have any little girls to play with! I guess maw don’t know how I’ve wanted ’em, or she’d of took me to town sometimes. I ain’t never been anywheres—except to Mis’ Bunnels’s fun’ral, when the minister prayed so long,” she added, with a pious after-thought.

It was a happy child that was lifted to the back of the most trustworthy of the plow-horses to be escorted to the celebration by “Mr. Hoover,” the hired man. The face under the cheap straw hat, with its wreath of pink and green artificial flowers, was almost pathetically radiant. To that poor little heart so hungry for pleasure, there could be no bliss so supreme as a ride in the village “Libraty Car”—to be one of the states, preferably “Oregon!” To hear the music and hold a flag, and sit close to little girls of her own age who would smile kindly at her and, perhaps, even ask her name shyly, and take her home with them to see their dolls.