"
At noon we had a tedious interval of waiting at a dreary station. We sat
for two hours on a narrow platform, which the sun had scorched till it
smelt of heat. The oldest boy--the little lover--held the youngest child,
and talked to her, while the tired mother closed her eyes and rested. Now
and then he looked over at her, and then back at the baby; and at last he
said confidentially to me (for we had become fast friends by this time),
"Isn't it funny, to think that I was ever so small as this baby? And papa
says that then mamma was almost a little girl herself."
The two other children were toiling up and down the banks of the
railroad-track, picking ox-eye daisies, buttercups, and sorrel. They
worked like beavers, and soon the bunches were almost too big for their
little hands. Then they came running to give them to their mother. "Oh
dear," thought I, "how that poor, tired woman will hate to open her eyes!
and she never can take those great bunches of common, fading flowers, in
addition to all her bundles and bags.
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