“God loves not only a cheerful giver, but a cheerful
worker as well.”
—Fletcher Reade.
That afternoon as Nettie was slowly rousing herself from her
afternoon nap in her chair, she heard a low, joyful exclamation under
her windows.
“Oh, lovely. Mrs. Evans, it’s like—a poem.”
Then a light flashed over the pale face, and Nettie lifted herself
forward to look, and to speak.
“O, Judith, I wanted you to see them. You do love pretty things so.”
Judith came through the shed, and up the narrow rag-carpeted stairs
to the open door of Nettie’s chamber.
“I wish you would write a poem for me.”
Nettie Evans was Judith’s “public,” and a most enthusiastic one; the
young author looked very grave one day when Nettie told her that she
liked her poems better than the ones she read to her from the
Longfellow book.
“I have brought a poem for you; no one has seen it yet; I’ve copied
it to send to my Cousin Don; you know he’s in Switzerland, climbing
mountains, and having splendid times. It happened one Thanksgiving—I
was here in the country, you remember, with my mother. I saw one rosy
apple left on the top of a tree, and I felt so sorry for it. One day
I thought of it again, and I wrote this.”
Judith drew her chair close to Nettie’s and took the folded sheet of
note paper from her pocket.
“Oh, I wish I could make poems and sew carpet rags,” moaned Nettie.
Judith dared not say she wished she might, she dared not pity her, or
look at her; she unfolded her poem and began to read:—