Page:Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903).djvu/70

52 axe. On the one occasion when she essayed the part of the tree's romantic protector, she represented herself as feeling "so awful foolish" that she refused to undertake it again, much to the secret delight of Rebecca, who found the woodman's role much too tame for her vaulting ambition. She reveled in the impassioned appeal of the poet, and implored the ruthless woodman to be as brutal as possible with the axe, so that she might properly put greater spirit into her lines. One morning, feeling more frisky than usual, she fell upon her knees and wept in the woodman's petticoat. Curiously enough, her sense of proportion rejected this as soon as it was done.

"That was n't right, it was silly, Emma Jane; but I 'll tell you where it might come in—in Give me Three Grains of Corn. You be the mother, and I 'll be the famishing Irish child. For pity's sake put the axe down; you are not the woodman any longer!"

"What 'll I do with my hands, then?" asked Emma Jane.

"Whatever you like," Rebecca answered wearily; "you're just a mother—that's all. What does your mother do with her hands? Now here goes!