She had considerable money in the bank, and could afford
to dress well. She wore also some white lace around her long neck, and
it was fastened with a handsome gold-and-jet brooch. She was knitting
some blue worsted, and she sat back in the front entry, out of the
draft. She considered herself rather delicate.
Mrs. Rose sat boldly out in the yard in the full range of the breeze,
sewing upon a blue-and-white gingham waist for her son Willy. She was a
large, pretty-faced woman in a stiffly starched purple muslin, which
spread widely around her.
"He's been gone 'most an hour," she went on; "I hope there's nothin'
happened."
"I wonder if there's snakes in that meadow?" ruminated Miss Elvira.
"I don't know; I'm gettin' ruther uneasy."
"I know one thing--I shouldn't let him go off so, without somebody older
with him, if he was my boy."
"Well, I don't know what I can do," returned Mrs. Rose, uneasily. "There
ain't anybody to go with him. I can't go diggin' sassafras-root, and you
can't, and his uncle Hiram's too busy, and grandfather is too stiff. And
he is so crazy to go after sassafras-root, it does seem a pity to tell
him he sha'n't. I never saw a child so possessed after the root and
sassafras-tea, as he is, in my life. I s'pose it's good for him. I hate
to deny him when he takes so much comfort goin'. There he is now!"
Little Willy Rose crossed the road, and toiled up the stone steps.
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