"
[Illustration: "THE RAIN WAS COMING DOWN HARD"]
I listened with great attention, for I saw that she was anxious to
free herself of the imputation of being inhospitable, and although the
heavy rain and my rapid pace made it sometimes difficult to catch her
words, I lost very little of her story.
"You see," said she, "my father is very fond of gardening, and he
takes great pride in his vegetables, especially the early ones. He has
peas this year ahead of everybody else in the neighborhood, and it was
only day before yesterday that he took me out to look at them. He has
been watching them ever since they first came up out of the ground,
and when he showed me the nice big pods and told me they would be
ready to pick in a day or two, he looked so proud and happy that you
might have thought his peas were little living people. I truly believe
that even at prayer-time he could not help thinking how good those
peas would taste.
"But this morning when he came in from the garden and told mother that
he was going to pick our first peas, so as to have them perfectly
fresh for dinner, she said that he would better not pick them to-day,
because the vegetable man had been along just after breakfast, and he
had had such nice green peas that she had bought some, and therefore
he had better keep his peas for some other day.
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