He said for me to stick to the swamp and be brave, and my hour would come, and it has! I know most of them are all right, and oh, I do need the money!" "Could you tell me ?" asked the Bird Woman softly.
"You see the swamp and all the fields around it are so full," explained Elnora.

"Every day I felt smaller and smaller, and I wanted to know more and more, and pretty soon I grew desperate, just as Freckles did.

But I am better off than he was, for I have his books, and I have a mother; even if she doesn't care for me as other girls' mothers do for them, it's better than no one." The Bird Woman's glance fell, for the girl was not conscious of how much she was revealing.

Her eyes were fixed on a black pitcher filled with goldenrod in the centre of the table and she was saying what she thought.
"As long as I could go to the Brushwood school I was happy, but I couldn't go further just when things were the most interesting, so I was determined I'd come to high school and mother wouldn't consent.

You see there's plenty of land, but father was drowned when I was a baby, and mother and I can't make money as men do.