CHAPTER XII. WORKING THE FARM. HE robins were back in their old haunts THE again. They had built their nests in the tall elms in front of the house, and in the old apple-tree whose gnarled and twisted branches rested against Becky's chamber window. The young corn had sprouted, the grass was an emerald green. Spring had come, with its immortal youth, its flood of sunshine, its quickening pulses. All nature was astir. Becky felt it in her inmost soul, as she stood at the garden gate in the early gray of the morning, with the twitter of the birds filling the air around her. On the ground at her feet was a basket, filled with bunches of radishes, and long speckled stalks of rhubarb, and heads of young lettuce drenched with dew. She had an expectant air, as if waiting for somebody. Occasionally she glanced with pride at the well-filled basket before her, for here were displayed the first fruits of her toil. Farmer Yates was to take them to market for her. She was listening now for the rumble of his wagon. Becky's hard labor and exposure to the wind and sun, even for so short a time, had begun to tell upon her. Her face was tanned and freckled, and her hands never a lilywhite were now grown coarse and frightfully rough, and just at present (from recent gathering of her vegetable treasures) were streaked and daubed with garden mould. Her dress (my girl readers mustn't be shocked) consisted of jacket and pants. The pants were tucked into a pair of stout cowhide boots. The adoption of this costume, for her working-dress, was a mark of good sense; for what would have been more ridiculous than petticoats and white stockings out in the fields amongst the dirt? The garments were some of Solomon's cast-off ones, and were not the best of fits, since he was short and fat, and Becky tall and lean. However, that did not much matter. "Becky Down in boy's clothes-I never!" said everybody, with an exclamation point, in the first of it; and the idea that the Down blood was tainted with craziness grew stronger for a while than ever. But Mr. Yates's steady patronage routed this notion, and Becky's own perseverance and dauntless energy forced folks finally into regarding her as "a natural curiosity," a "rara avis" (look in your dictionaries), a "white crow," or any other thing that is marvellous. Somehow, the story of her babyish oddities leaked out, and she was dubbed forthwith by the name her father had, in sport, given her that of "Upside Down." Even Mr. Yates relished the joke, and adopted the name. As to Becky herself, she was too full of her great idea of carrying on the farm, and too much engrossed in her work, to care what folks did call her. |