Another of those dim recollections was pressing her face against
the window-panes when the first snow began to fall on the scraggy
cedars in the yard; and as she began to sing softly to herself one
of the ancient ditties of the children of the poor, "Old Woman,
picking Geese," she would dream of the magical flowers which they
told her bloomed all winter in a glass house at the Merediths'
while there was ice on the pines outside. Big red roses and
icicles separated only by a thin glass--she could hardly believe
it; and she would cast her eye toward their own garden where a few
black withered stalks marked the early death-beds of the pinks and
jonquils.
But even in those young years Pansy had little time to look out of
windows and to dream of anything. She must help, she must work;
for she was the oldest of five children, and the others followed so
closely that they pushed her out of her garments. A hardy,
self-helpful child life, bravened by necessities, never undermined
by luxuries. For very dolls Pansy used small dried gourds, taking
the big round end of the gourd for the head of the doll and all the
rest of the gourd for all the rest of the body.
One morning when she was fourteen, the other children were clinging
with tears to her in a poor, darkened room--she to be little mother
to them henceforth: they never clung in vain.
That same autumn when woods were turning red and wild grapes
turning black and corn turning yellow, a cherished rockaway drawn
by a venerated horse, that tried to stop for conversation on the
highroad whenever he passed a neighbor's vehicle, rattled out on
the turnpike with five children in it and headed for town: Pansy
driving, taking herself and the rest to the public school.
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