She was on her knees in a moment and added the postscript.
"I can send the orange home to ma, and she can put the
skins in the chist to make the things smell nice, and
I'll git that windy open to-morrow."
Clasping her little purse in her hand, and with the orange
close beside her head, she lay down to sleep. The smell
of the orange made her forget the heavy air in the room.
"Anyway," she murmured contentedly, "the Lord is attendin'
to all that."
Pearl slept the heavy sleep of healthy childhood and woke
in the gray dawn before anyone else in the household was
stirring. She threw on some clothing and went down the
ladder into the kitchen. She started the fire, secured
the basin full of water and a piece of yellow soap and
came back to her room for her "oliver."
"I can't lave it all to the Lord to do," she said, as
she rubbed the soap on her little wash-rag. "It doesn't
do to impose on good nature."
When Tom, the only son of the Motherwells, came down to
light the fire, he found Pearl setting the table, the
kitchen swept and the kettle boiling.
Pearl looked at him with her friendly Irish smile, which
he returned awkwardly.
He was a tall, stoop-shouldered, rather good-looking lad
of twenty. He had heavy gray eyes, and a drooping mouth.
Tom had gone to school a few winters when there was not
much doing, but his father thought it was a great deal
better for a boy to learn to handle horses and "sample
wheat," and run a binder, than learn the "pack of nonsense
they got in school nowadays," and when the pretty little
teacher from the eastern township came to Southfield
school, Mrs.
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