Every day since she and the cart went into partnership, she had gone
into town with a dead certainty in the minds of lookers-on that it
would break down in five minutes, and a triumphant faith in hers in its
unlimited endurance. "This cart'll be right side up fur years to come,"
she would assert, shaking her head. "It's got no more notion o' givin'
up than me nor Barney,--not a bit." Margaret had her doubts,--and so
would you, if you had heard how it creaked under the load,--how they
piled in great straw panniers of apples: black apples with yellow
hearts,--scarlet veined, golden pippin apples, that held the warmth and
light longest,--russet apples with a hot blush on their rough brown
skins,--plums shining coldly in their delicate purple bloom,--peaches
with the crimson velvet of their cheeks aglow with the prisoned heat of
a hundred summer days.
I wish with all my heart some artist would paint me Lois and her cart!
Mr. Kitts, the artist in the city then, used to see it going past his
room out by the coal-pits every day, and thought about it seriously. But
he had his grand battle-piece on hand then,--and after that he went the
way of all geniuses, and died down into colorer for a photographer. He
met them, that day, out by the stone quarry, and touched his hat as he
returned Lois's "Good-morning," and took a couple of great papaws from
her.
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