Page:The New-Year's Bargain (1884).djvu/198

 "Well, I always visit this frontier as I go my yearly rounds; and it was there that I made acquaintance with Mrs. Fiske's little children.

"Four boys and girls there were, the eldest seven, the youngest not quite three; and none of them had ever seen other children except themselves. Their Mother was a sad, hard-worked woman; their Father, a rough, kind-hearted fellow, too busy to notice the little ones much, except now and then on a Sunday evening. So the children were left entirely to each other for amusement; and they seemed to find plenty of it, for a more merry, contented group I never saw. The rude hut in which they lived was beautiful in their eyes; and the forest, with its birds, berries, squirrels, and flowers, like a delightful playfellow.

"The cabin was off the road for wagon trains: none ever came there. But now and then men on horseback, two or three together, would stop and ask for a meal or a night's lodging. These were never refused in that hospitable wilderness.