joy of living:--
"Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World,
With the wonderful water round you curled,
And the wonderful grass upon your breast,
World, you are beautifully drest!"
Dull Emma Jane had never seemed to Rebecca so near, so dear, so tried
and true; and Rebecca, to Emma Jane's faithful heart, had never been so
brilliant, so bewildering, so fascinating, as in this visit together,
with its intimacy, its freedom, and the added delights of an exciting
business enterprise.
A gorgeous leaf blew into the wagon.
"Does color make you sort of dizzy?" asked Rebecca.
"No," answered Emma Jane after a long pause; "no, it don't; not a mite."
"Perhaps dizzy isn't just the right word, but it's nearest. I'd like to
eat color, and drink it, and sleep in it. If you could be a tree, which
one would you choose?"
Emma Jane had enjoyed considerable experience of this kind, and Rebecca
had succeeded in unstopping her ears, ungluing her eyes, and loosening
her tongue, so that she could "play the game" after a fashion.
"I'd rather be an apple-tree in blossom,--that one that blooms pink, by
our pig-pen."
Rebecca laughed. There was always something unexpected in Emma Jane's
replies. "I'd choose to be that scarlet maple just on the edge of the
pond there,"--and she pointed with the whip. "Then I could see so much
more than your pink apple-tree by the pig-pen. I could look at all the
rest of the woods, see my scarlet dress in my beautiful looking-glass,
and watch all the yellow and brown trees growing upside down in the
water. When I'm old enough to earn money, I'm going to have a dress
like this leaf, all ruby color--thin, you know, with a sweeping train
and ruffly, curly edges; then I think I'll have a brown sash like the
trunk of the tree, and where could I be green? Do they have green
petticoats, I wonder? I'd like a green petticoat coming out now and
then underneath to show what my leaves were like before I was a scarlet
maple."
"I think it would be awful homely," said Emma Jane. "I'm going to have
a white satin with a pink sash, pink stockings, bronze slippers, and a
spangled fan."
XIV
MR. ALADDIN
A single hour's experience of the vicissitudes incident to a business
career clouded the children's spirits just the least bit. They did not
accompany each other to the doors of their chosen victims, feeling sure
that together they could not approach the subject seriously; but they
parted at the gat
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