The Mornin'-Glory Girl

								

of bread. His youthful soul was in revolt at such servitude. He had no
sympathy to squander on the children of Israel in bondage vile. Making
bricks for Pharoah was infantile amusement compared to his labor.
“The Lord loveth a cheerful liver, Moses,” said his mother
encouragingly, as she saw the growing acidity of the boy’s
countenance. Mrs. Wopp had never forgotten a certain missionary
service, during which she had studied a text in gold lettering of old
English type on the wall. The uncertain light of stained glass falling
on the last word had made it difficult to read. But at last realizing
that a sound liver and cheerfulness are closely associated, she had
seen no incongruity in her translation of the text.
“All this turnin’ is good for the liver too you know,” she continued,
as her son’s vinegary expression remained unaltered.
“Yeh,” scoffed Moses, “this here turnin’ machines every Monday makes
me sick. I aint got no liver left to be cheerful.”
Mrs. Wopp was much too energetically engaged to enter into fuller
argument. She busied herself preparing the tubs for rinsing, singing
in a high tremolo, “Shall we gather at the river?”
“Now Moses,” she called at the end of the third verse, “git the water
for the rinsin’.” The clanking lessened and slowly died down to a
complaining rumble. It might have been some monster suffering from
indigestion.
Mrs. Wopp’s eagle eye, again rested on the lowering face of her
offspring.
“Moses iny boy, yer bile must be riz; this very night you git a dose
of physic.” Moses lower lip dropped lower and lower.
“Take care ole boy, you’ll trip on yer lip in another minute.”
Moses, his feelings by this time wrought to a state of down-right
rebellion, grasped a pail in either hand and sought the peaceful
atmosphere of the river.
When Betty returned from school in the afternoon, she beheld snowy
billowing apparel on the clothes-line. Mrs. Wopp, being very thrifty
in the matter of using up flour and sugar sacks for underwear, had a
motley collection of garments suspended by wooden pegs. A night-shirt
of Mr. Wopp’s bore the inscription “Three Roses” dimly outlined in
pink, while on the southern portion of a pair of more intimate
garments could be discerned, fading into palest blue. “Great Western
Mills.” The wind was causing a riotous time among the cheerful array
of reconstructed sacks, and as Betty ran down the path singing “Twenty
froggies went to school,” a sugar sack sleeve of Moses’ shirt embraced
a flour sack bosom of his father’s undergarment; and “Pure Cane Sugar“
saluted “Ogiveme’s Mills.” Betty cheerfully performed her task of
bringing in the clothes saturated with wind and sunshine. She thought
the sweetest smell in the world next to morning-glories and
nasturtiums was the smell of clean clothes fresh from the line.
“They smell like the sunbeams was sprinklin’ them with scent,” she