This very drive, now, for instance,—­although she and the cart and Barney went through the same routine every day, you would have thought it was a new treat for a special holiday, if you had seen the perfect abandon with which they all threw themselves into the fun of the thing.  Not only did the very heaps of ruby tomatoes, and corn in delicate green casings, tremble and shine as though they enjoyed the fresh light and dew, but the old donkey cocked his ears, and curved his scraggy neck, and tried to look as like a high-spirited charger as he could.  Then everybody along the road knew Lois, and she knew everybody, and there was a mutual liking and perpetual joking, not very refined, perhaps, but hearty and kind.  It was a new side of life for Margaret.  She had no time for thoughts of self-sacrifice, or chivalry, ancient or modern, watching it.  It was a very busy ride,—­something to do at every farmhouse:  a basket of eggs to be taken in, or some egg-plants, maybe, which Lois laid side by side, Margaret noticed,—­the pearly white balls close to the heap of royal purple.  No matter how small the basket was that she stopped for, it brought out two or three to put it in; for Lois and her cart were the event of the day for the lonely farm-houses.  The wife would come out, her face ablaze from the oven, with an anxious charge about that butter; the old man would hail her from the barn to know “ef she’d thought toh look in th’ mail yes’rday”; and one or the other was sure to add, “Jes’ time for breakfast, Lois.”  If she had no baskets to stop for, she had “a bit o’ business,” which turned out to be a paper she had brought for the grandfather, or some fresh mint for the baby, or “jes’ to inquire fur th’ fam’ly.”

As to the amount that cart carried, it was a perpetual mystery to Lois.  Every day since she and the cart went into partnership, she had gone into town with a dead certainty in the minds of lookers-on that it would break down in five minutes, and a triumphant faith in hers in its unlimited endurance.  “This cart’ll be right side up fur years to come,” she would assert, shaking her head.  “It’s got no more notion o’ givin’ up than me nor Barney,—­not a bit.”  Margaret had her doubts,—­and so would you, if you had heard how it creaked under the load,—­how they piled in great straw panniers of apples:  black apples with yellow hearts,—­scarlet veined, golden pippin apples, that held the warmth and light longest,—­russet apples with a hot blush on their rough brown skins,—­plums shining coldly in their delicate purple bloom,—­peaches with the crimson velvet of their cheeks aglow with the prisoned heat of a hundred summer days.