Читать книгу The Story of Opal: The Journal of an Understanding Heart - Opal Stanley Whiteley - Страница 11

Table of Contents

To-day was a warm, hot day. It was warm in the morning and hot at noon. Before noon and after noon and after that, I carried water to the hired men in the field in a jug. I got the water out of the pump to put into the jug. I had to put water in the pump before any would come out. The men were glad to have that water in the jug.

While I was taking the water in the jug to the men in the field, from her sewing-basket Lars Porsena of Clusium took the mamma’s thimble, and she did n’t have it and she could n’t find it. She sent me to watch out for it in the house and in the yard and everywhere. I know how Lars Porsena of Clusium has a fondness for collecting things of bright colors, like unto my fondness for collecting rocks; so I ran to his hiding-place in the old oak tree. There I found the mamma’s thimble; but she said the pet crow’s having taken it was as though I had taken it, because he was my property; so I got a spanking with the hazel switches that grow near unto our back steps. Inside me I could n’t help feeling she ought to have given me thanks for finding the thimble.

Afterwards I made little vases out of clay. I put them in the oven to bake. The mamma found my vases of clay. She threw them out the window. When I went to pick them up, they were broken. I felt sad inside. I went to talk things over with my chum, Michael Angelo Sanzio Raphael. He is that most tall fir tree that grows just back of the barn. I scooted up the barn door. From there I climbed onto the lower part of the barn roof. I walked up a ways. Up there I took a long look at the world about. One gets such a good wide view of the world from a barn roof. After, I looked looks in four straight ways and four corner ways. I said a little prayer. I always say a little prayer before I jump off the barn into the arms of Michael Angelo Sanzio Raphael, because that jump is quite a long jump, and if I did not land in the arms of Michael Angelo Sanzio Raphael, I might get my leg or neck broken. That would mean I’d have to keep still a long time. Now I think that would be the most awful thing that could happen, for I do so love to be active. So I always say a little prayer and do that jump in a careful way. To-day, when I did jump, I did land right proper in that fir tree. It is such a comfort to nestle up to Michael Angelo Sanzio Raphael when one is in trouble. He is such a grand tree. He has an understanding soul.

After I talked with him and listened unto his voice, I slipped down out of his arms. I intended to slip into the barn corral, but I slid off the wrong limb in the wrong way. I landed in the pig-pen on top of Aphrodite, the mother-pig. She gave a peculiar grunt. It was not like those grunts she gives when she is comfortable.

I felt I ought to do something to make up to her for having come into her home out of the arms of Michael Angelo Sanzio Raphael instead of calling on her in the proper way. I decided a good way to make it up to her would be to pull down the rail fence in that place where the pig-pen is weak, and take her for a walk. I went to the wood-shed. I got a piece of clothes-line rope. While I was making a halter for the mother-pig, I took my Sunday-best hair-ribbon—the blue ribbon the Uncle Henry gave to me. I made a bow on that halter. I put the bow just over her ears. That gave her the proper look. When the mamma saw us go walking by, she took the bow from off the pig. She put that bow in the trunk; me she put under the bed.

By-and-by—some time long it was—she took me from under the bed and gave me a spanking. She did not have time to give me a spanking when she put me under the bed. She left me there until she did have time. After she did it she sent me to the ranch-house to get milk for the baby. I walked slow through the oak grove, looking for caterpillars. I found nine. Then I went to the pig-pen. The chore boy was fixing back the rails I had pulled down. His temper was quite warm. He was saying prayer words in a very quick way. I went not near unto him. I slipped around near Michael Angelo Sanzio Raphael. I peeked in between the fence-rails. Aphrodite was again in the pig-pen. She was snoozing, so I tiptoed over to the rain-barrel by the barn. I raised mosquitoes in the rain-barrel for my pet bats. Aristotle eats more mosquitoes than Plato and Pliny eat.

On my way to the house I met Clementine, the Plymouth Rock hen, with her family. She only has twelve baby chickens now. The grandpa say the other one she did have died of new monia because I gave it too many baths for its health. When I came to the house one of the cats, a black one, was sitting on the doorstep. I have not friendly feelings for that big black cat. Day before the day that was yesterday I saw him kill the mother hummingbird. He knocked her with his paw when she came to the nasturtiums. I did n’t even speak to him.

Just as I was going to knock on the back door for the milk, I heard a voice on the front porch. It was the voice of a person who has an understanding soul. I hurried around to the front porch. There was Sadie McKibben with a basket on her arm. She beamed a smile at me. I went over and nestled up against her blue gingham apron with cross stitches on it. The freckles on Sadie McKibben’s wrinkled face are as many as are the stars in the Milky Way, and she is awful old—going on forty. Her hands are all brown and cracked like the dried-up mud-puddles by the roadside in July, and she has an understanding soul. She always has bandages ready in her pantry when some of my pets get hurt. There are cookies in her cookie-jar when I don’t get home for meals, and she allows me to stake out earthworm claims in her back yard.