`` Just think , '' said Frances , `` if we had n't asked her here today she might never have found her brother ! It 's all Mother 's doing , bless her ! Things do happen like a storybook sometimes , do n't they , Al ? A Correspondence and A Climax At sunset Sidney hurried to her room to take off the soiled and faded cotton dress she had worn while milking . She had milked eight cows and pumped water for the milk-cans afterward in the fag-end of a hot summer day . She did that every night , but tonight she had hurried more than usual because she wanted to get her letter written before the early farm bedtime . She had been thinking it out while she milked the cows in the stuffy little pen behind the barn . This monthly letter was the only pleasure and stimulant in her life . Existence would have been , so Sidney thought , a dreary , unbearable blank without it . She cast aside her milking-dress with a thrill of distaste that tingled to her rosy fingertips . As she slipped into her blue-print afternoon dress her aunt called to her from below . Sidney ran out to the dark little entry and leaned over the stair railing . Below in the kitchen there was a hubbub of laughing , crying , quarrelling children , and a reek of bad tobacco smoke drifted up to the girl 's disgusted nostrils . Aunt Jane was standing at the foot of the stairs with a lamp in one hand and a year-old baby clinging to the other . She was a big shapeless woman with a round good-natured face -- cheerful and vulgar as a sunflower was Aunt Jane at all times and occasions . `` I want to run over and see how Mrs. Brixby is this evening , Siddy , and you must take care of the baby till I get back . '' Sidney sighed and went downstairs for the baby . It never would have occurred to her to protest or be petulant about it . She had all her aunt 's sweetness of disposition , if she resembled her in nothing else . She had not grumbled because she had to rise at four that morning , get breakfast , milk the cows , bake bread , prepare seven children for school , get dinner , preserve twenty quarts of strawberries , get tea , and milk the cows again .
All her days were alike as far as hard work and dullness XXXXX , but she accepted them cheerfully and uncomplainingly .
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