[Illustration: “Now, Joe, drop Doodles,” said Aunt Affy, “and follow me up these kitchen stairs.”]
“Where is _he_?” asked Joe, lifting his shaggy head.
They all laughed, and laughing, also, Joe followed the plump, sweet-faced lady up the kitchen stairs.
“He might have made the earth bring forth Enough for great and small, The oak tree and the cedar tree, And not a flower at all.”
Nettie Evans sat in her invalid chair leaning forward with her chin on the window-sill looking down into her father’s untidy back yard.
The only pleasant thing in it was a lilac bush that was a marvel of beauty when it was in bloom, but that had faded many weary days ago, leaving ugly brown bunches where the lilacs had been; there were two well-worn paths, one leading to the kitchen door, and the other to the well, and nothing besides, excepting weeds with a background of apple orchard. If Nettie had raised her eyes she would have seen woods, and hills and fields of grain, a bit of road, a wooden bridge, and a deep blue sky full of puffy, white clouds, but she would not raise her eyes; when her back ached as it did to-day she never saw anything but the weeds in the yard, especially those tall rag-weeds growing close around the well. Her father had promised to “clear up” the yard after planting, but planting had come and gone, and he was still too busy.
“Oh, if I were only able to pull weeds,” she sighed.
It was a very gentle sigh, she was not strong enough to sigh heavily. Three years ago she could shout and run, to-day she could not move her feet, and there were many days during the year when she must lie still in bed.
In winter, she had a south room, at the front of house, where she saw the rising and the setting sun, and had a good view of all the people who passed back and forth from the village; in summer, she had this cool north room that looked out on the back yard.
The back yard was full of interest to her—when she could forget the weeds. Twenty times a day her mother came to the kitchen door to look up at her, and tell her how the work was going on; she knew what was cooking by the odors that came up to her and what all the noises meant, from the click of the egg-beater to the thud of the churn-dasher, and she saw old Mrs. Finch when she came to borrow baking powder, and the pedlars, and book-agents, and apple-tree men; but best of all she liked to watch for her father to come in to dinner and supper.