It's Sunday, aint it, ma?"

"Why, yes, so it is! Wal! Now Sadie, you jump up an' dress quick's y'
can, an' Bob an' Sile, you run down an' bring s'm water," she
commanded, in nervous haste beginning to dress. In the middle of the
room there was scarce space to stand beneath the rafters.

When Sim came in for his breakfast he found it on the table but his
wife was absent.

"Where's y'r ma?" he asked with a little less of the growl in his
voice.

"She's upstairs with Pet."

The man ate his breakfast in dead silence, till at last Bob ventured
to say,

"What makes ma ac' so?"

"Shut up!" was the brutal reply. The children began to take sides with
the mother--all but the oldest girl who was ten years old. To her the
father turned now for certain things to be done, treating her in his
rough fashion as a housekeeper, and the girl felt flattered and docile
accordingly.

They were pitiably clad; like most farm-children, indeed, they could
hardly be said to be clad at all. Sadie had on but two garments, a
sort of undershirt of cotton and a faded calico dress, out of which
her bare, yellow little legs protruded, lamentably dirty and covered
with scratches.

The boys also had two garments, a hickory shirt and a pair of pants
like their father's, made out of brown denims by the mother's
never-resting hands,--hands that in sleep still sewed, and skimmed,
and baked, and churned. The boys had gone to bed without washing their
feet, which now looked like toads, calloused, brown, and chapped.

Part of this the mother saw with her dull eyes as she came down, after
seeing the departure of Sim up the road with the cows. It was a
beautiful Sunday morning, and the woman might have sung like a bird if
men were only as kind to her as Nature. But she looked dully on the
seas of ripe grasses, tangled and flashing with dew, out of which the
bobolinks and larks sprang. The glorious winds brought her no melody,
no perfume, no respite from toil and care.

She thought of the children she saw in the town. Children of the
merchant and banker, clean as little dolls, the boys in knickerbocker
suits, the girls in dainty white dresses, and a bitterness sprang into
her heart. She soon put the dishes away, but felt too tired and
listless to do more.

"Taw-bay-wies! Pet want ta-aw-bay-wies!" cried the little one, tugging
at her dress.

Listlessly, mechanically she took him in her arms, and went out into
the garden which was fragrant and sweet