Nine Years Old (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1872. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III. THE ONLY PLUM. At the bottom of our garden, close to the enclosure where I used to go and dig up the little potatoes, was a very old plum-tree. It was trained up against a south wall, so that the plums got a great deal of sunshine, and the more they got the richer and riper and sweeter they grew. Little girls ought to he like plums, and grow sweeter for the sunshine; but some that I know grow sourer, instead. The more other people do for them, the more selfish they become. Don't you be like that, for it isn't pretty at all. This was the only fruit-tree in the garden. The apples, pears, cherries, nuts, and damsons grew in the orchard on the other side of the wall, and the peaches, apricots, and nectarines were trained round the enclosure. I was never allowed to pluck them; indeed, when they were ripe, the gate of the enclosure was always kept shut, and I only used to go in with Papa and Mamma or Aunt Mary. But this plumtree was public property. We might any of us go and gather the plums. We did not even have to wait for them to fall off; we could go and pluck them for ourselves whenever we liked, after they were ripe. They were such beautiful plums, too; yellow, soft, juicy, and almost as large as a hen's egg. You may be sure we were very glad when the old tree had a great many on. The spring that I was nine years old, our plumtree was full, quite full, of blossom. When the blossoms began to fall, you might have thought there had been a fall of snow at that end of the garden, for the ground was white over with tiny little leaves. By and by, where the blossoms had dropped off, there came little green balls, no bigger at first than a pin's head, and then they got bigger and bigger until they were nearly as large as the sweet-pea seeds which I ha...