sing
sun flamed against the eastern windows, an ambitious young rooster,
perched on the cultivator outside, gave such a loud, croupy call to the
farm-yard that he awakened the little girl. She, in turn, awakened her
mother. So it was in good time that the family, after eating a quick
breakfast and hitching the gray colts to the newly painted wagon,
climbed in and started off.

The little girl, sitting on the front seat between her mother and the
eldest brother, her christening robe and the kid shoes wrapped up
carefully and clasped in her arms, swelled with importance as the colts,
resplendent in their new harness, trotted briskly down the rows of ash
saplings in front of the house and turned the corner into the main road.
Speechless and happy, she sat with her lips pressed tightly together
beneath the big sunbonnet that hid the rag-wound corkscrews on her sore
little head; and when the team crossed the Vermilion and passed the sod
shanty on the bluffs, she did not even turn her eyes from the long,
straight road that stretched westward to glance at the Swede boy who
had come out to see her go by.

But before the ride was half over she grew very tired. So, after she had
sleepily dropped the shoes and the robe into the hay in the wagon-box
several times, she munched a cooky, drank some buttermilk, and was
lifted to the hind seat, where the biggest brother held her in his arms.
When she next opened her eyes, the team was standing in front of
Officers' Row, and the colonel and his wife were beside the wagon
helping her mother down.

As soon as dinner was over, the little girl was carried off to be
dressed, though she wanted to stay in the parlor and play with the
colonel's son; and when she was ready for the baptism, the big brothers
came in to see her as she stood proudly upon the snowy counterpane of
the wide feather-bed, the embroidered robe sticking out saucily over her
stiff petticoats and upheld by two sturdy, white-stockinged legs. On her
shining curls perched a big white satin bow, while incasing each foot,
and completing the whole, was a dainty, soft kid shoe.

"My, you're a blossom!" gasped the biggest brother, walking around and
around her; "an' not any of your skimpy flowers, neither; just a
whacking big white rose with a yellow center!"

The white rose made no reply, for she had upset on the fat feathers in
trying to walk, had broken the string that held the pillow-shams, and
had mussed her stiff petals.