That night Mrs. Reist followed Amanda up the stairs to the child's
bedroom. They made a pretty picture as they stood there, the mother
with her plain Mennonite garb, her sweet face encircled by a white cap,
and the little red-haired child, eager, active, her dark eyes glimpsing
dreams as they focused on the distant castles in Spain which were a
part of her legitimate heritage of childhood. The room was like a
Nutting picture, with its rag carpet, old-fashioned, low cherry bed,
covered with a pink and white calico patchwork quilt, its low cherry
bureau, its rush-bottom chairs, its big walnut chest covered with a
hand-woven coverlet gay with red roses and blue tulips. An old-
fashioned room and an old-fashioned mother and daughter--the elder had
seen life, knew its glories and its dangers, had tasted its sweetness
and drained its cups of sorrow, but the child--in her eyes was still
the star-dust of the "trailing clouds of glory."
"Mom," she asked suddenly as her mother unbraided the red hair and
brushed it, "do you like Lyman Mertzheimer?"
"Why--yes---" Mrs. Reist hesitated.
"Ach, I don't mean that way, Mom," the child said wisely. "You always
say abody must like everybody, but I mean like him for real, like him
so you want to be near him. He's good lookin'. At school he's about the
best lookin' boy there. The big girls say he's a regular Dunnis,
whatever that is. But I think sometimes he ain't so pretty under the
looks, the way he acts and all, Mom."
"I know what you mean, Amanda. Your pop used to say still that people
are like apples, some can fool you good. Remember some we peeled
to-night were specked and showed it on the outside, but some were
red and pretty and when you cut in them--"
"They were full of worms or rotten!"
"Yes. It's the hearts of people that makes them beautiful."
"I see, Mom, and I'll mind to remember that. I'm gettin' to know a lot
o' things now, Mom, ain't? I like when you tell me things my pop said.
I'm glad I was big enough to remember him. I know yet what nice eyes he
had, like they was always smilin' at you. I wish he wouldn't died, but
I'm glad he's not dead for always. People don't stay dead like peepies
or birds, do they?"
"No, they'll live again some day." The mother's voice was low, but a
divine trust shone in her eyes. "Life would be nothing if it could end
for us like it does for the birds."
"Millie says the souls of people can't die. That it's with people just
like it's with the apple trees. In winter they look dead and like all
they're good for was to chop down and burn, then in spring they get
green and the flowers come on them and they're alive, and we know
they're alive. I'm glad people are like that, ain't you?"