Benjamin, on
this spring day, was visiting some of his friends further down the
valley; so that when Alice came forth to play "Jack Stones" alone,
no one was in sight, though her next neighbor lived hardly two
hundred yards away.
I wish you could have seen her as she looked on that summer afternoon.
She had been helping, so far as she was able, her mother in the
house, until the parent told her to go outdoors and amuse herself.
She was chubby, plump, healthy, with round pink cheeks, yellow hair
tied in a coil at the back of her head, and her big eyes were as
blue, and clear, and bright as they could be.
She wore a brown homespun dress--that is to say, the materials
had been woven by the deft fingers of her mother, with the aid of
the old spinning wheel, which in those days formed a part of every
household. The dark stockings were knitted by the same busy fingers,
with the help of the flashing needles; and the shoes, put together
by Peleg Quintin, the humpbacked shoemaker, were heavy and coarse,
and did not fit any too well.
The few simple articles of underwear were all homemade, clean,
and comfortable, and the same could be said of the clothing of the
brother and of the mother herself.
Alice came running out of the open front door, bounding off the big
flat stone which served as a step with a single leap, and, running
to a spot of green grass a few yards away, where there was not a
bit of dirt or a speck of dust, she sat down and began the game of
which I told you at the opening of this story.
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