Then you must remember that both of you were at top notch intellectually,and physically,fully matured.She had the benefit of ripened minds,and at a time when every faculty recently had been stirred by the excitement and suffering of the war.Oh,you can account for her easily enough,but I don't know what on earth you are going to do with her.You'll have to go careful,Paul.I warn you she will not be like the others.""We realize that.Mother says she doubts if she can ever teach her to sew and become a housewife.""She isn't cut out for a seamstress or a housewife,Paul.Tell Ruth not to try to force those things on her.Turn her loose out of doors;give her good books,and leave her alone.You won't be disappointed in the woman who evolves."Right there I realized what I was doing,and I turned and ran for the pulpit with all my might.I could always repeat things,but I couldn't see much sense to the first part of that;the last was as plain as the nose on your face.Dr.Fenner said they mustn't force me to sew,and do housework;and mother didn't mind the Almighty any better than she did the doctor.There was nothing in this world I disliked so much as being kept indoors,and made to hem cap and apron strings so particularly that I had to count the number of threads between every stitch,and in each stitch,so that I got all of them just exactly even.I liked carpet rags a little better,because I didn't have to be so particular about stitches,and I always picked out all the bright,pretty colours.
Mother said she could follow my work all over the floor by the bright spots.Perhaps if I were not to be kept in the house I wouldn't have to sew any more.That made me so happy I wondered if I couldn't stretch out my arms and wave them and fly.I sat on the pulpit wishing I had feathers.It made me pretty blue to have to stay on the ground all the time,when I wanted to be sailing up among the clouds with the turkey buzzards.It called to my mind that place in McGuffey's Fifth where it says:
"Sweet bird,thy bower is ever green,Thy sky is ever clear;Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,No winter in thy year."Of course,I never heard a turkey buzzard sing.Laddie said they couldn't;but that didn't prove it.He said half the members of our church couldn't sing,but they DID;and when all of them were going at the tops of their voices,it was just grand.So maybe the turkey buzzard could sing if it wanted to;seemed as if it should,if Isaac Thomas could;and anyway,it was the next verse I was thinking most about:
"Oh,could I fly,I'd fly with thee!
We'd make with joyful wing,Our annual visit o'er the globe,Companions of the spring."That was so exciting I thought I'd just try it,so I stood on the top rail,spread my arms,waved them,and started.I was bumped in fifty places when I rolled into the cowslip bed at the foot of the steep hill,for stones stuck out all over the side of it,and I felt pretty mean as I climbed back to the pulpit.
The only consolation I had was what Dr.Fenner had said.That would be the greatest possible help in managing father or mother.
I was undecided about whether I would go to school,or not.Must be perfectly dreadful to dress like for church,and sit still in a stuffy little room,and do your "abs,"and "bes,"and "bis,"and "bos,"all day long.I could spell quite well without looking at a schoolhouse,and read too.I was wondering if I ever would go at all,when I thought of something else.Dr.
Fenner had said to give me plenty of good books.I was wild for some that were already promised me.Well,what would they amount to if I couldn't understand them when I got them?THAT seemed to make it sure I would be compelled to go to school until I learned enough to understand what the books contained about birds,flowers,and moths,anyway;and perhaps there would be some having Fairies in them.Of course those would be interesting.
I never hated doing anything so badly,in all my life,but I could see,with no one to tell me,that I had put it off as long as I dared.I would just have to start school when Leon and May went in September.Tilly Baher,who lived across the swamp near Sarah Hood,had gone two winters already,and she was only a year older,and not half my size.I stood on the pulpit and looked a long time in every direction,into the sky the longest of all.
It was settled.I must go;I might as well start and have it over.I couldn't look anywhere,right there at home,and not see more things I didn't know about than I did.When mother showed me in the city,I wouldn't be snapped up like hot cakes;I'd be a blockhead no one would have.It made me so vexed to think I had to go,I set Hezekiah on my shoulder,took Bobby under my arm,and went to the house.On the way,I made up my mind that I would ask again,very politely,to hold the little baby,and if the rest of them went and pigged it up straight along,I'd pinch it,if I got a chance.
