They’ve picked my sisters and cousins,
But I was too little to see;
Now, they will be eaten at Christmas,
But nothing will happen to me.
The beets are pulled, and the parsnips
Are cosily left in the ground—
When the farmer counts up his produce,
No record of me will be found.
I was as pretty a blossom
As ever gave sweets to a bee;
But ’mong the good things for winter,
No one will be thankful for me.
There’s place for radish and carrot,
Though common as common can be,
And I wonder, wonder, wonder,
Why _I_ was left on the tree.
Oh, here comes poor little Sadie,
With her face all wet with tears;
A face so pale and hardened,
But not with the lapse of years.
Now, fly to my aid, dear cold wind,
And receive my last command,—
With a twist, and turn and flutter,
_Just drop me into her hand_.
In Nettie’s radiant face and tear-filled eyes Judith found the
appreciation for which her soul thirsted.
“That’s _lovely_,” exclaimed Nettie, “may I keep it and learn it?”
“Of course you may. I’ll copy it for you.”
“And I’ll say it in the night if I cannot go to sleep. How much I’ve
had in one day. The lilies and the red apple. Don’t you believe that
if you can’t go out and get things _they always come_?”
“But part of the fun is going out to get them,” said Judith, and
then, in quick penitence, “but it must be so lovely to have them come
to you.”
“Agnes Trembly came yesterday to make me a new blue wrapper; I like
to have her sew here with me. Her mother is blind and that is harder
than my lot. Agnes said she wished she was a queen. But I never
thought of that.”
“Now I’ll tell you a story. There is a little girl somewhere who _is_
a queen, and sometimes she has to sit in state and receive people,
and do other queenly things. One day when she was playing with her
dolls, what do you think she said?”
“What?” asked Nettie, her face beaming.
“_If you are naughty again, I will make you a queen._”
Nettie laughed to the story-teller’s content.
“Now, I’ll tell you a chicken story. This happened to me. Aunt Rody
often lets me help her feed the chickens. We had a brood of little
chickens, and all died but two of them; I don’t know why, I took good
care of them. One morning I found the mother dead. And what do you
think?—those two poor motherless little sisters cuddled under their
dead mother’s wing. I would like to write a poem about that, only it
breaks my heart, and I like to write about happy things. The next day
one of them died, and the left one hadn’t any chicken companion. And
then, what do you think? A hen mother who had only one chicken,
deserted that and went to roost; and this one little black chicken
tried to make friends with the sisterless little white chicken. It
was too pretty to watch them. The one whose mother deserted went into
her little coop and called and called to the other one; but the white
chicken didn’t understand at first; when she _did_ understand, the
black chicken made it so plain, and she ran to the coop, and the
little black chicken and the little white chicken cuddled together as
loving and happy as could be.”
“You can put that into a poem,” suggested Nettie, her eyes alight
with Judith’s presence and stories.
“Nettie,” said Judith, impulsively, “I love to have you to tell
things to.”