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THE OLD MARKET-CART.
By Mrs. F. B. SMITH,
AUTHOR OF “FANFAN STORIES,” etc.
Boston:
G. T. Day Co.
1870
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THE OLD MARKET-CART.
CHAPTER I. GILL.
|IT stood with its thills upon the low stone wall that separated the
barn-yard from the house-yard. There were wedges behind the wheels
to keep the cart from rolling back, for it was little Sally Reed’s
baby-house just now. She had brought an armful of hay from the barn
and spread it upon the floor of her little oblong room, and had put the
three-legged milking-stool in one corner, and there she sat nursing her
great rag-baby. She felt very grand indeed, up there,--the mistress of
a house in the air, and the mother of so precious a child as her
black-eyed, black-haired Jessie. How she loved that little bundle of
rags, which seemed to her warm heart a living thing and beautiful! and
how she loved the old cart, and enjoyed the hours when it was resting!
Whatever has done good service, is entitled to rest, and the old
market-cart was no idler. Its strong wheels had often been in
swift motion, and many a bundle had it borne safely to the desired
destination.
Gill looked upon it with a sort of affection. He was Mr. Reed’s farmer,
a Scotchman by birth, and a good-natured, honest, kind-hearted man. His
figure was tall and lank and awkward; but such a genial face shone out
from under bushy, yellow locks, that little Benjamin and Sally Reed
thought him almost handsome. His hair seemed to them quite like the
glory which artists put around the heads of their saints, and they never
dreamed of criticising Gill’s aspect. To them he was simply
“Our Gill;” and when children say this, their heart is in the
expression. The Scotchman had been with Mr. Reed ever since Ben and
Sally were born, and their world would have been very strange and
imperfect without him. Their father was away at business all day in
the city, three miles distant, and Gill managed the land--only twelve
acres--and made it bring forth enough for family use, and a surplus for
the market. He was such a good steward that he took the same interest
in the place as if it were his own; and he would have cut off his right
hand rather than have proved unworthy of the trust reposed in him.
Gill was in the field hoeing, while Sally occupied the cart; and Ben sat
upon a large rock that was in a corner of the barn-yard and served as
a salt-lick for the cattle,--a lump of the white substance being kept
there for the animals to go to at pleasure. The boy was shaping a handle
for his hammer, and was talking with Sally about the virtues of his
two-bladed jack-knife, which he was trying for the first time. The
barn-door was open, and they could see Dobbin standing in his stall
eating, preparatory to a trot to town. Dobbin was a plump creature, with
a shaggy mane and tail, and long ears that made people say, “He is the
son of a jack-ass;” but that is no disgrace to a horse. When it is said
of a lad who is vicious and stubborn, and does not try to overcome an
obstinate temper, which is partly inherited from a wicked father, it
is a term of reproach or contempt. Dobbin deserved only praise. Good,
patient, hardworking Dobbin! Always ready to come and go at Gill’s
call,--to take a brisk pace toward the market-place with the heaped-up
vegetables behind him; or to carry the bags of grain to the mill; or to
hold Ben and Sally on his back, and give them a jaunt up and down the
road while the Scotchman was getting the evening mash ready for the
animal’s supper. Dobbin also earned his rest, as well as the old cart.
Little Sally hushed her baby to sleep, and laid it down upon the sweet
hay. I can not say that dolly had done any work that would merit her
repose; but then little babies are only meant to eat and sleep, and
gather strength for labor by and by. The toil comes surely enough to
most of them in after life. I’m not saying this with any feeling of
regret. Oh, no; for “Work is worship,” if it is the work that God
designs for us to do, and there is the sweetest pleasure in such
worship. The most miserable people I have ever known are those who have
nothing to do.
Sally felt that she must find something to occupy her, the moment she
had finished her task of hushing the baby. So, while it lay sleeping,
she clambered over the edge of the cart, and ran to the kitchen door. A
chair was turned down across the sill, and Gill’s little child of nine
months old was sitting upon the floor on the other side.
“Mind Jack,” said Lucy, as Sally stepped over, pretty near the little
hand that was grasping at the patch of sunlight before him. “I put up
the chair to keep him from creeping out; he’s getting a pert little
fellow.”
“Give me a doughnut, please, Lucy,” said Sally. “I’m so hungry!”
Lucy was Gill’s wife, who did all the house-work, and the little Jack
made a foreign soil like home to the emigrants, who were content to stay
under the sky which had first smiled upon their bonnie laddie.
Sally took the nice brown ball from the good housewife, and stepped over
the chair again. She gave two or three peeps through the slats, to make
Jack crow, and then away she went to find Gill.
The baby pursed up its tiny mouth to cry, as he lost sight of her. He
loved Sally so dearly!
“Never mind, little man,” said the mother, leaving her “biggin,” as she
called the oat-meal porridge-cup which she was washing, and lifting the
child to her shoulder, from whence he could see the little girl’s pink
frock in the field, not far away.
Gill was bending to his labor, but now and then he stood erect and
looked toward the farm-house, to catch a glimpse of Lucy and the “little
man,” to sweeten toil. It makes work so light when one does it for those
whom he loves.
“Why do you hoe so often, Gill?” asked Sally. “Won’t the things grow
without?”
“Oh, yes, but other things will grow--weeds and things that are not
wanted. You see this, don’t you?” pulling up a dockweed, and showing its
long tap-roots. “Well, if I didn’t watch and pull, watch and pull all
the time, I should have it thick enough pretty soon.”
“Isn’t it good for anything?” asked Sally, noticing its lance-like
leaves, “I think this is what Lucy picks sometimes for spinach.”
“Yes, some people like it,” said Gill; “and the doctors have dockroot
ointment, and dockroot powder, and dockroot liquid. They know what ‘tis
good for, I suppose; but I can’t have it spreading every where among my
crops. Then there’s this ragweed; if I let it alone, it will choke out
every thing else. To be sure, the birds like the seed, but I have other
mouths than theirs to fill.”
“And here’s a mullein, Gill, shall I pull it up?”
“I think your little hands would find it tough work; let me manage it.”
“It seems a pity to pull it up, and throw it away to wilt. What a long,
hairy stalk it has, and what pretty yellow flowers, and how woolly the
leaves feel,--just like flannel!”
“You can boil them in lard and make an ointment of them, to soften
and soothe with. And you can steep the young leaves in water for cough
mixtures.”
“You know a great deal about plants, don’t you, Gill?”
“That’s pretty much all I do know. I live among them, and I study them
in the books, and out of the books. I like to study them; there’s no
better learning than to look into the things that God has made.”
“What’s this?” asked Sally, pulling up a slender green stem, with long
“spider legs” branching out from point to point of the stalk, until it
looked like a miniature pine tree.
“That is what they call the field horsetail,” said Gill, “but a prettier
name is low pine, or pine-weed, as some say. There’s another kind with
a long stem of a light-brown color, with a darker-colored sheath at each
joint, and, at the top of the stem, a head shaped like a pine cone. You
find it on low, damp ground, and among the meadow grass. People fancy
that it hurts horses, but Dobbin has eaten quantities of it with the
hay, and isn’t any the worse.”
“I hope nothing will ever hurt Dobbin,” said Sally.
“Here’s my enemy, I meet it on every hand,” said Gill, twisting up a
tuft of foxtail grass.
Sally admired the hairy brush at the top of the stem. “It does look like
a fox’s tail,” she said.