carry enough to make very
much profit, for fruit and vegetables are heavy, and to carry a load of
them for miles is no joke.

Several times that summer, when she awoke after a hot, restless night to
another stifling, scorching day, Bella felt inclined to shirk her business
and remain at home. It would have been so jolly to have spent the day
lazily in the shady orchard, instead of tramping those long, dusty miles.
Tom felt the heat less, and his energy helped to keep her up.

"We'll have a donkey before so very long," he said cheerfully. "If we can
have a good sowing and planting this autumn, and good crops next spring,
father and all of us, we'll have enough to carry in to make it worth while
to hire Mrs. Wintle's donkey."

So with the thought of all they were going to do in the future to buoy
them up, off they would start again, hoping that before another Saturday
came the heat would have lessened, and some rain have fallen to refresh
the land and lay the dust.

Yet, with all its weariness and hard work, that summer ever after stood
out in Bella's memory as a very happy one; and the evenings after their
return, and the Sundays, remained in her memory all her life through.

Even if Charlie and Margery did not come to meet them, their father was
always there to carry their baskets home for them. And then there was the
change into cool, comfortable old garments, and the nice tea, and the long
rest in the orchard, or sitting about in the porch outside the door,
while they talked over all that had happened during the day.

They all went to bed by daylight on those light nights, and Bella, as she
stretched out her weary body restfully on her little white bed, could see
through the open window the stars come up one by one in the deep
blue-black sky.

She was always quite rested by the time Sunday came, and was up and out
early for a look at her garden before getting ready for Sunday-School.
She loved the Sunday-School, and she loved her teacher, and the service
after in the dear old creeper-covered church, where the leaves peeped in
at the open windows, and the birds came in and flew about overhead, and
all the people knew and greeted one another in a friendly spirit.

On Sundays, too, it was an understood thing that Bella should go to tea
with Aunt Maggie, and this was to her, perhaps, one of the happiest hours
of the whole week, for Aunt Maggie had a little harmonium, to the music of
which they sang hymns. Some