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Phillips, David Graham

"Susan Lenox"

She got up and dressed, and leaned from the window,
watching the two-horse reaper in the wheat fields across the
hollow of the pasture, and listening to its faint musical whirr.
The cows which had just been milked were moving sedately through
the gate into the pasture, where the bull, under a tree, was
placidly awaiting them. A boy, in huge straw hat and a blue
cotton shirt and linsey woolsey trousers rolled high upon his
brown bare legs, was escorting the herd.
Her aunt in fresh, blue, checked calico came in. "Wouldn't you
like some breakfast?" said she. And Susan read in her manner
that the men were out of the way.
"No, I don't feel hungry," Susan replied.
She thought this was true; but when she was at the table she ate
almost as heartily as she had the night before. As Susan ate she
gazed out into the back yard of the house, where chickens of all
sizes, colors and ages were peering and picking about. Through
the fence of the kitchen garden she saw Lew, the farm hand,
digging potatoes. There were ripening beans on tall poles, and
in the farther part the forming heads of cabbages, the sprouting
melon vines, the beautiful fresh green of the just springing
garden corn. The window through which she was looking was framed
in morning glories and hollyhocks, and over by the garden gate
were on the one side a clump of elders, on the other the hardy
graceful stalks of gaudily spreading sunflowers.


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