That Old-Time Child, Roberta | Page 2

up! I say. To-day's Monday, to-morrow's Tuesday, next day's
Wednesday, next day's Thursday, then comes Friday, and Saturday will
be here before you know it, and nothing done."
Roberta didn't belong to any "mite society" nor the "little busy bees,"
where city children are trained to think of and help the poor, and she
didn't wear the badge of the "Society for Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals," as many children do nowadays. Indeed I don't expect she
ever heard there was such a society. But she was instrumental
nevertheless in doing a great deal of real practical good. O, how her
eyes did flash when she saw animals mistreated. She made beds for the
cats and beds for the dogs; and when any of the milkers struck the cows
while they were milking them, if she was near about, she would say,
"Mamma says good milkers are always gentle with the cows, for they
won't give down their milk unless you treat them kindly. And anybody
can tell by the quantity of milk you get whether you are good to them
or not. If I was a cow I wouldn't give down my milk if you struck me
and hollered at me."
So she made the cruel milkers ashamed of themselves often. And she
practically established a foundling asylum for little motherless lambs
and calves; raised them herself on the bottle just like they were babies.

"O, you tootsey weetsy darlin'," I've heard her say to a bright-eyed,
gentle lamb, her especial delight. The little creature would run to her
and bleat by way of telling her it was hungry, and when she had fed it it
would rub its pretty head against her knee and look love at her, just as I
have seen babies look love at their mothers.
And, my! how she did fuss over the little negro children when they
were sick! It just kept her busy bringing them gourds of fresh water
from the spring and watching the well ones to see that they didn't
purloin the dainties she brought the sick. She actually learned how to
sew, making clothes for the pickaninnies.
And you just ought to have seen her when any of the fathers and
mothers whipped their children severely. She would fly down to the
cabin, tear the pickaninnies away and trot them up to the big house, and
pet them until they were willing to take another whipping to get the
good things she gave them.
"She's jes de very spi't ob her par," old Squire would say on those
occasions; "Dat's jest de way hees eyes useter flash out at Mis Betsy
when she cum 'twix' him an Mis July."
O, I wish I could make the little children who read this story see, as I
have seen it, the country place where Roberta Marsden was raised.
On either side fields of golden-tasseled corn, rustling in the breeze and
shimmering in the sunlight, many of the stalks so entwined with
morning-glories, pink, white, blue, and variegated, one could almost
believe fairies had been there and arrayed the yellow silken-haired corn
babies for some festival, so crowned and garlanded they were. In front
of the house were wooded slopes, where the birds sang their love songs
and chattered noisily in bird language all the day long. Those
woodlands might have been called a primeval forest, for the trees were
truly there in the earliest memory of the oldest living resident of the
county.
It used to puzzle me to understand how the birds knew when it was
time to wake up and begin their matin songs, for it was so like night

there. Roberta, who was an early riser and withal a child of poetic
imagination, used to say "that the fairies woke them up." She declared
she saw a little glittering thing, with wings and wand of silver, alight on
the tops of the trees and peep through at the Darbys and Joans of the
bird tribe. And she was sure it must have told them it was time to wake
up; for soon would begin a low twitter that swelled louder and louder,
as bird after bird joined in until every family of birds was represented.
From the back porch of the house could be seen a range of blue misty
hills, that Roberta called brides. They were often enveloped in white
filmy folds, like bridal veils, and one might catch glimpses of the river
from there also gliding along between banks of green.
A giant's great glittering eye she called that; the trees on the hills above
the giant's brows, and the ferns and grasses growing on either bank
were upper and lower lashes. With a little encouragement Roberta
would have been a genuine poet.
But Aunt Betsy took such