As it was, the dulness and monotony of the jingling of the cow-bell made even his stupid childish mind dismal.

All the pleasant exhilaration of youth seemed to have deserted the boy, and life to him became as inane and bovine as to the original ringer of that bell grazing all the season in her own shadow over the same pasture-ground.
And more than all, that twopence for which Ezra toiled so miserably was to go towards the weaving of a rag carpet which his mother was making, and for which she was saving every penny.

He could not lay it out in red-and-white sugar-sticks at the store.

He sat there all the week, and every time there was a whir of little brown wings and the darting flash of a red breast among the cherry branches he rang in frantic haste the old cow-bell.

All the solace he obtained was an occasional robin-pecked cherry which he found in the grass, and then Mr.Berry questioned him severely when he saw stains around his mouth and on his fingers.
He was on hand early in the morning on the day of the cherry picnic, trudging half awake, with the taste of breakfast in his mouth, through the acres of white dewy grass.