Jacob Abbott

“ At last the work was all done, the basket put away, and Lucy came and sat down by Miss Anne.
“Well, Lucy,” said Miss Anne, “you have been quite industrious and persevering.”
Lucy did not know exactly what Miss Anne meant by these words; but she knew by her countenance and her tone of voice, that it was something in her praise.
“But perhaps you do not know what I mean, exactly,” she added.
“No, not exactly,” said Lucy.
“Why, a girl is industrious when she keeps steadily at work all the time, until her work is done. ”

“ Lucy thought that new meant nice, and whole, and clean, like things when they are first bought at the toy-shop or bookstore.
Miss Anne laughed at this mistake; for she meant that they would be new to her; that is, that she would have forgotten pretty much how they looked, and that she would take a new and fresh interest in looking at them.
Lucy looked a little disappointed when Anne explained that this was her meaning; but she said that she would carry up some of the things to the garret, if she only had a box to put them in. ”

“ Lucy did not cry; though she found it very hard to refrain. Her father and mother, and Miss Anne and Royal, were all going, and she had to remain at home. They were going, too, in a kind of barouche; and when it drove up to the door, Lucy thought there would be plenty of room for her. She found it hard to submit; but submission was made somewhat easier by her mother’s not giving her any reasons. When a mother gives a girl reasons why she cannot have something which she is very strongly interested in, they seldom satisfy her, for she is not in a state of mind to consider them impartially. ”

“ Finding, however, that she could not get along fast enough with the umbrella, she dropped it upon the floor, and ran along without it, calling out,
“Royal! Royal! here; come here, and look at me.”
“Now I should like to know, Miss Lucy,” said Royal, as soon as she came in sight, “who authorized you to take off my cap?”
“I’m a traveller,” said Lucy.
“A traveller!” repeated Royal; “you look like a traveller.”
He pulled his cap off from Lucy’s head, and put it upon his own; and then held up a paper which he had in his hands, to her view. ”

“ Some children cry when they wake up and find themselves alone; some call out aloud for somebody to come; and others sing. Thus there are three ways; and the singing is the best of all the three;—except, indeed, for very little children, who are not old enough to sing or to call, and who, therefore, cannot do anything but cry.
They heard Lucy’s singing in the parlor, and Miss Anne came immediately to see her. ”

“ Real tea is not white, like water.”
“Water is not white,” said Miss Anne; “milk is white; water is very different in appearance from milk.”
“What color is water, then?” said Lucy.
“It is not of any color,” said Miss Anne. “It is what we call colorless. Now, you want to have something in your tea-pot which is colored a little, like tea,—not perfectly colorless, like water.”
Lucy said yes, that that was exactly what she wanted. So Miss Anne took her tea-pot up, and went into the closet with it, and presently came out with it again, and put it upon the table. ”

“ She was now sitting in her mother’s lap, who was rocking her in a rocking-chair.
“Yes,” said the doctor; for he overheard Lucy’s question, and thought that he would answer it himself. “Yes, ipecacuanha is a very good medicine,—an excellent medicine.”
As he said this, he looked around, rather slyly, at Miss Anne and Lucy’s father.
“Then I shall like to take it,” said Lucy.
“He means,” said her mother, “that it is a good medicine to cure the sickness with; the taste of it is not good. ”

“ Every lady has a great many beautiful things, put away, which she does not want to use herself, but she only wants to have them kept safely. Now, I should take such good care of all such things, that my mother would be very glad to have me keep them.”
“Did you do so, when you were a little girl?” said Lucy.
“No,” said Miss Anne; “I was just as careless and foolish as you are. When I was playing with anything, and was suddenly called away, I would throw it right down, wherever I happened to be, and leave it there. ”

“ Lucy looked through the bars of the hen-coop, at the hen and chickens, and was quite surprised that Royal could say that they were all the same thing.
“In a bargain, Lucy, I mean; in a bargain, I mean. If you make a bargain about hens, you mean all the chickens too.”
“I didn’t, I am sure,” said Lucy; “I never thought of such a thing as the chickens; and besides, you did not make me such a garden as you promised me.”
“Why, yes I did,” said Royal.
113 “No,” said Lucy, “you told me an equivocation.”
Royal laughed.
“You did, Royal; you know you did; and Miss Anne said so. ”

“ Royal and Lucy could look through the open-work of the basket, and see him.
But Miss Anne, though pleased with the chicken, was very sorry to find that Royal had so monopolizing a spirit. A monopolizing spirit is an eager desire to get for ourselves, alone, that which others ought to have a share of. Royal wanted to own the hen and chickens himself, and to exclude, or shut out, Lucy from all share of them.119 He wished to monopolize them. Too eager a desire to get what others have, is sometimes called covetousness. ”

“ Anne. “Suppose a boy should be sent into the pasture to find the cow, and should look about a little while, and then come home and say that he could not find her, when he had only looked over a very small part of the pasture. He would not be persevering. Perhaps there was a brook, and some woods that he ought to go through and look beyond; but he gave up, we will suppose, and thought he would not go over the brook, but would rather come home and say that he could not find the cow. Now, a boy, in such a case, would not be persevering.”
28 “I should have liked to go over the brook,” said Lucy. ”

“ Lucy did not understand what Joanna meant by taking the risk, but she understood that the decision was in her favor, and she ran off out of the kitchen in great glee. Royal followed her more slowly.
“Well, Lucy,” said he, “I’ll make you a garden. I’d as lief make it as not.”
He accordingly worked very industriously upon the garden for more than an hour. He dug up all the ground with his hoe, and then raked it over carefully. Then he marked out an alley through the middle of it, for Lucy to walk in, when she was watering her flowers. ”

“ Presently she turned around again, and said,
“Well, Miss Anne, which would you do?”
“I have told you that I should carry her up stairs; but I’ll tell you what you can do. You can play that she has gone away on a visit; and so let her stay up garret a few days, and then, if you find you cannot do without her, you can make believe that you must send for her to come home.”
“So I can,” said Lucy; “that will be a good plan.”
Lucy went immediately to the treasury, and took old Margaret out, and everything that belonged to her. This almost made a basket full, and she carried it off up stairs. ”

“ After a time, you see, I let my hen sit, and hatch some chickens.”
“Sit?” said Lucy.
“Yes; you see, after hens have laid a good many eggs, they sit upon them, to keep them warm, for two or three weeks; and, while they keep them warm, a little chicken begins to grow in every egg, and at length, after they grow strong enough, they break through the eggs and come out. So I got eleven chickens from my hen, after a time.” ”

“ The ferry-man generally lives in a house very near the bank of the river; and if any body wants to go across the river, they call at his house for him, and he takes them across in his boat. Then they pay him some money.”
“But suppose they are on the other side,” said Lucy.
“Then,” said Miss Anne, “they have to call or blow a trumpet. Sometimes they have a trumpet for people to blow when they want the ferry-man to come for them. But sometimes, where there are a great many travellers on the road that leads to the ferry, the boats are coming and going all the time ”

“ Midnight looks just like any other part of the night.”
“Royal wanted to see it,” said Lucy, “and I should like to, too, if you would be willing to carry me.”
When a child is so patient and gentle, it is very difficult indeed to refuse them any request that they make; and Miss Anne immediately began to draw up the blanket over Lucy’s feet, preparing to go. She did not wish to have her put her feet to the floor, for fear that she might take more cold. So she carried her along to the window, although she was pretty heavy for Miss Anne to carry. Miss Anne was not very strong. ”

“ Perhaps he kept looking about all the time, while he was in the pasture; and went into all the little groves and valleys where the cow might be hid: and so he was industrious while he was looking for the cow, but he did not persevere.
“And so you see, Lucy,” continued Miss Anne, “a person might persevere without being industrious. For once there was a girl named Julia. She had a flower-garden. She went out one morning to weed it. She pulled up some of the weeds, and then she went off to see a butterfly; and after a time she came back, and worked a little longer. ”

“ Lucy remained some time watching the turtle. He lay quite still, with his head partly out of the water. The sun shone upon the place, and perhaps that was the reason why he remained so still; for turtles are said to like to bask in the beams of the sun.
41 After a time, Royal came to the place with an armful of stakes, about three feet long. He threw them down upon the bank, and then began to look around for a suitable place to build his pen. He chose, at last, a place in the water, near the shore. ”

“ She confides in me, and not in you. She is afraid you will find some ingenious48 escape or other from fulfilling it. Wit gives anybody a present advantage, but honesty gives a lasting power; so that the influence I have over Lucy, by always being honest with her, is worth a great deal more than all you can accomplish with your contrivances. So I think you had better keep your wits and your contrivances for turtles, and always be honest with men.
Royal. Men! Lucy isn’t a man.
Miss Anne. I mean mankind—men, women, and children.
Royal. Well, about my turtle, Miss Anne. ”

“ They have large, flat-bottomed boats for the carriages and carts, and small, narrow boats for men, when they want to go alone.”
While this conversation had been going on, Miss Anne and Lucy had walked along to some distance beyond the bridge. They took a road which led to an old, deserted farm-house, and some other buildings around it, all in a state of ruin and decay. The man who owned it had built himself a new house, when he found that this was getting too old to be comfortable to live in. ”

“ What is a coop?”
“O, a small house for hens to live in. My brother made me a coop. He made it immediately after the hen had hatched her chickens. I will tell you how he made it. He drove stakes down all around the stump, and then put some short boards over the top, so as to cover it over. My hen staid there until her chickens got pretty well grown, and then we let her run about the yard.”
87 “That is pretty much the way that Royal made his turtle-pen,” said Lucy; “but I should rather have a hen-coop, because of the chickens.” ”

“ If a little girl, who is out of humor, complains and cries, we say she is fretful or cross; but if she goes away pouting and still, but yet plainly out of humor, they sometimes say she is sulky. A good many of your playthings are bulky; but I don’t think23 any of them are sulky, unless it be old Margaret. Does she ever get out of humor?”
“Sometimes,” said Lucy, “and then I shut her up in a corner. Would you carry old Margaret up garret?”
“Why, she takes up a good deal of room, does not she?” said Miss Anne. ”

“ Why, a target is a mark to shoot at, with my bow and arrow. They almost always have Indians for targets.”
Lucy told him that she did not believe his target would stand up long enough to be shot at; but Royal said, in reply, that he was going to paste him upon a shingle, and then he could prop the shingle up so that he could shoot at it. And he asked Lucy if she would go and borrow Miss Anne’s gum arabic bottle, while he went and got the shingle. ”

“ You see, when they cut down trees, they leave the stumps in the ground; and pretty soon they begin to rot; and they rot more and more, until, at last, they tumble all to pieces; and then they pile up the pieces in heaps, and burn them. Then the ground is all smooth and clear. So I used to build fires in the stumps as long as they lasted. One day my hen laid her eggs in a stump.”
“Your hen?” said Lucy; “did you have a hen?”
“Yes,” replied Joanna; “when I was a little85 older than you are, my father gave me a little yellow chicken, that was peeping, with the rest, about the yard. ”

“ There, he has got it, and is pulling it in.”
“I am glad George got him a pole,” said Miss Anne.
“So am I,” said Royal.
“And so am I,” said Lucy.
“It seems George is happier himself, if Johnny has something to make him happy too; but the other boy isn’t.”
“How do you know that he isn’t?” asked Lucy.
“Why, he did not want George to stop. He had got a pole himself, and he did not care any thing about Johnny’s having one.”
127 “Yes,” said Royal, “so I think.”
“Some children,” said Miss Anne, “when they have anything that they like, always want their brothers and sisters to have something too ”

“ They also placed another roller a little way before the box. Royal then went behind the box, and with his bar of wood for a lever, he pried the box along; and he found it moved very easily upon the rollers.
Lucy wanted a lever too,—and she went and got one; and then they could both pry the box along, one at each corner, behind. They had to stop occasionally to adjust the rollers, when they worked out of place; but, by patience and perseverance, they gradually moved the box along until they came to the gate leading into the inner yard, where the place for the coop had been chosen. ”

“ Royal has got more than I.”
Miss Anne merely said, “Has he?” and then the conversation dropped. She had just taken her seat at her work table, and began to be busy.
“I wish I knew of some way that I could earn money,” said Lucy. “Do you know of any way, Miss Anne?”
“What did you say?” asked Miss Anne.
“Don’t you know of some way that I could earn money?”
“Why, I don’t know; earning money is rather hard work, as I’ve heard people say. I believe young ladies generally earn money by teaching.”
“Well,” said Lucy, “if I could only get any scholars.”
“Why, you must be your own scholar ”