d don't get bit by a rattlesnake.
Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!"

All of them told me stories, read to me, and Frank, one of my big
gone-away brothers, sent me the prettiest little book. It had a green
cover with gold on the back, and it was full of stories and poems, not
so very hard, because I could read every one of them, with help on a
few words. The piece I liked best was poetry. If it hadn't been for
that, I'm afraid, I was having such a good time, I'd have lain there
until I forgot how to walk, with all of them trying to see who could be
nicest to me. The ones who really could, were Laddie and the Princess,
except mother. Laddie lifted me most carefully, the Princess told the
best stories, but after all, if the burning and choking grew so bad I
could scarcely stand it, mother could lay her hand on my head and say,
"Poor child," in a way that made me work to keep on breathing. Maybe I
only THOUGHT I loved Laddie best. I guess if I had been forced to take
my choice when I had the fever, I'd have stuck pretty tight to mother.
Even Dr. Fenner said if I pulled through she'd have to make me. I
might have been lying there yet, if it hadn't been for the book Frank
sent me, with the poetry piece in it. It began:

"Somewhere on a sunny bank, buttercups are bright,
Somewhere 'mid the frozen grass, peeps the daisy white."

I read that so often I could repeat it quite as well with the book shut
as open, and every time I read it, I wanted outdoors worse. In one
place it ran:

"Welcome, yellow buttercups, welcome daisies white,
Ye are in my spirit visioned a delight.
Coming in the springtime of sunny hours to tell,
Speaking to our hearts of Him who doeth all things well."

That piece helped me out of bed, and the blue gander screaming opened
the door. It was funny about it too. I don't know WHY it worked on me
that way; it just kept singing in my heart all day, and I could shut my
eyes and go to sleep seeing buttercups in a gold sheet all over our Big
Hill, although there never was a single one there; and meadows full of
daisies, which were things father said were a pest he couldn't
tolerate, because they spread so, and he grubbed up every one he found.
Yet that piece filled our meadow until I imagined I could roll on
daisies. They might be a pest to farmers, but sheets of them were
pretty good if you were burning with fever. Between the buttercups and
the daisies I lef