Laddie
by Gene Stratton Porter
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

by Gene Stratton Porter

To
LEANDER ELLIOT STRATTON
"The Way to Be Happy Is to Be Good"

Contents

CHAPTER                                         
I.     Little Sister
II.    Our Angel Boy
III.   Mr. Pryor's Door
IV.    The Last Day in Eden
V.     The First Day of School
VI.    The Wedding Gown
VII.   When Sally Married Peter
VIII.  The Shropshire and the Crusader
IX.    "Even So"
X.     Laddie Takes the Plunge
XI.    Keeping Christmas Our Way
XII.   The Horn of the Hunter
XIII.  The Garden of the Lord
XIV.   The Crest of Eastbrooke
XV.    Laddie, the Princess, and the Pie
XVI.   The Homing Pigeon
XVII.  In Faith Believing
XVIII. The Pryor Mystery

LADDIE

CHARACTERS

LADDIE, Who Loved and Asked No Questions.
THE PRINCESS, From the House of Mystery.
LEON, Our Angel Child.
LITTLE SISTER, Who Tells What Happened.
MR. and MRS. STANTON, Who Faced Life Shoulder to Shoulder.
SALLY and PETER, Who Married Each Other.
ELIZABETH, SHELLEY, MAY and Other Stanton Children.
MR. and MRS. PRYOR, Father and Mother of the Princess.
ROBERT PAGET, a Chicago Lawyer.
MRS. FRESHETT, Who Offered Her Life for Her Friend.
CANDACE, the Cook.
MISS AMELIA, the School Mistress.
Interested Relatives, Friends, and Neighbours.

CHAPTER I

Little Sister

            "And could another child-world be my share,
             I'd be a Little Sister there."

Have I got a Little Sister anywhere in this house?" inquired
Laddie at the door, in his most coaxing voice.

"Yes sir," I answered, dropping the trousers I was making for
Hezekiah, my pet bluejay, and running as fast as I could. There
was no telling what minute May might take it into her head that
she was a little sister and reach him first. Maybe he wanted me
to do something for him, and I loved to wait on Laddie.

"Ask mother if you may go with me a while."

"Mother doesn't care where I am, if I come when the supper bell
rings."

"All right!" said Laddie.

He led the way around the house, sat on the front step and took
me between his knees.

"Oh, is it going to be a secret?" I cried.

Secrets with Laddie were the greatest joy in life. He was so big
and so handsome. He was so much nicer than any one else in our
family, or among our friends, that to share his secrets, run his
errands, and love him blindly was the greatest happiness.
Sometimes I disobeyed father and mother; I minded Laddie like his
right hand.

"The biggest secret yet," he said gravely.

"Tell quick!" I begged, holding my ear to his lips.

"Not so fast!" said Laddie. "Not so fast! I have doubts about
this. I don't know that I should send you. Possibly you can't
find the way. You may be afraid. Above all, there is never to
be a whisper. Not to any one! Do you understand?"

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Something serious," said Laddie. "You see, I expected to have
an hour or two for myself this afternoon, so I made an engagement
to spend the time with a Fairy Princess in our Big Woods. Father
and I broke the reaper taking it from the shed just now and you
know how he is about Fairies."

I did know how he was about Fairies. He hadn't a particle of
patience with them. A Princess would be the Queen's daughter.
My father's people were English, and I had heard enough talk to
understand that. I was almost wild with excitement.

"Tell me the secret, hurry!" I cried.

"It's just this," he said. "It took me a long time to coax the
Princess into our Big Woods. I had to fix a throne for her to
sit on; spread a Magic Carpet for her feet, and build a wall to
screen her. Now, what is she going to think if I'm not there to
welcome her when she comes? She promised to show me how to make
sunshine on dark days."

"Tell father and he can have Leon help him."

"But it is a secret with the Princess, and it's HERS as much as
mine. If I tell, she may not like it, and then she won't make me
her Prince and send me on her errands."

"Then you don't dare tell a breath," I said.

"Will you go in my place, and carry her a letter to explain why
I'm not coming, Little Sister?"

"Of course!" I said stoutly, and then my heart turned right over;
for I never had been in our Big Woods alone, and neither mother
nor father wanted me to go. Passing Gypsies sometimes laid down
the fence and went there to camp. Father thought all the wolves
and wildcats were gone, he hadn't seen any in years, but every
once in a while some one said they had, and he was not quite sure
yet. And that wasn't the beginning of it. Paddy Ryan had come
back from the war wrong in his head. He wore his old army
overcoat summer and winter, slept on the ground, and ate whatever
he could find. Once Laddie and Leon, hunting squirrels to make
broth for mother on one of her bad days, saw him in our Big Woods
and he was eating SNAKES. If I found Pat Ryan eating a snake, it

would frighten me so I would stand still and let him eat me, if
he wanted to, and perhaps he wasn't too crazy to see how plump I
was. I seemed to see swarthy, dark faces, big, sleek cats
dropping from limbs, and Paddy Ryan's matted gray hair, the
flying rags of the old blue coat, and a snake in his hands.
Laddie was slipping the letter into my apron pocket. My knees
threatened to let me down.

"Must I lift the leaves and hunt for her, or will she come to
me?" I wavered.

"That's the biggest secret of all," said Laddie. "Since the
Princess entered them, our woods are Enchanted, and there is no
telling what wonderful things may happen any minute. One of them
is this: whenever the Princess comes there, she grows in size
until she is as big as, say our Sally, and she fills all the
place with glory, until you are so blinded you scarcely can see
her face."

"What is she like, Laddie?" I questioned, so filled with awe and
interest, that fear was forgotten.

"She is taller than Sally," said Laddie. "Her face is oval, and
her cheeks are bright. Her eyes are big moonlit pools of
darkness, and silken curls fall over her shoulders. One hair is
strong enough for a lifeline that will draw a drowning man
ashore, or strangle an unhappy one. But you will not see her.
I'm purposely sending you early, so you can do what you are told
and come back to me before she even reaches the woods."

"What am I to do, Laddie?"

"You must put one hand in your apron pocket and take the letter
in it, and as long as you hold it tight, nothing in the world can
hurt you.  Go out our lane to the Big Woods, climb the gate and
walk straight back the wagon road to the water. When you reach
that, you must turn to your right and go toward Hoods' until you
come to the pawpaw thicket.  Go around that, look ahead, and
you'll see the biggest beech tree you ever saw. You know a
beech, don't you?"

"Of course I do," I said indignantly. "Father taught me beech
with the other trees."

"Well then," said Laddie, "straight before you will be a purple
beech, and under it is the throne of the Princess, the Magic
Carpet, and the walls I made. Among the beech roots there is a
stone hidden with moss. Roll the stone back and there will be a
piece of bark. Lift that, lay the letter in the box you'll find,
and scamper to me like flying. I'll be at the barn with father."

"Is that all?"

"Not quite," said Laddie. "It's possible that the Fairy Queen
may have set the Princess spinning silk for the caterpillars to
weave their little houses with this winter; and if she has, she
may have left a letter there to tell me. If there is one, put it
in your pocket, hold it close every step of the way, and you'll
be safe coming home as you were going. But you mustn't let a
soul see it; you must slip it into my pocket when I'm not
looking. If you let any one see, then the Magic will be spoiled,
and the Fairy won't come again."

"No one shall see," I promised.

"I knew you could be trusted," said Laddie, kissing and hugging
me hard. "Now go! If anything gets after you that such a big
girl as you really wouldn't be ashamed to be afraid of, climb on
a fence and call. I'll be listening, and I'll come flying. Now
I must hurry. Father will think it's going to take me the
remainder of the day to find the bolts he wants."

We went down the front walk between the rows of hollyhocks and
tasselled lady-slippers, out the gate, and followed the road.
Laddie held one of my hands tight, and in the other I gripped the
letter in my pocket. So long as Laddie could see me, and the
lane lay between open fields, I wasn't afraid. I was thinking so
deeply about our woods being Enchanted, and a tiny Fairy growing
big as our Sally, because she was in them, that I stepped out
bravely.

Every few days I followed the lane as far back as the Big Gate.
This stood where four fields cornered, and opened into the road
leading to the woods. Beyond it, I had walked on Sunday
afternoons with father while he taught me all the flowers, vines,
and bushes he knew, only he didn't know some of the prettiest
ones; I had to have books for them, and I was studying to learn
enough that I could find out. Or I had ridden on the wagon with
Laddie and Leon when they went to bring wood for the cookstove,
outoven, and big fireplace. But to walk! To go all alone! Not
that I didn't walk by myself over every other foot of the acres
and acres of beautiful land my father owned; but plowed fields,
grassy meadows, wood pasture, and the orchard were different. I
played in them without a thought of fear.

The only things to be careful about were a little, shiny, slender
snake, with a head as bright as mother's copper kettle, and a big
thick one with patterns on its back like those in Laddie's
geometry books, and a whole rattlebox on its tail; not to eat any
berry or fruit I didn't know without first asking father; and
always to be sure to measure how deep the water was before I
waded in alone.

But our Big Woods! Leon said the wildcats would get me there. I
sat in our catalpa and watched the Gypsies drive past every
summer. Mother hated them as hard as ever she could hate any
one, because once they had stolen some fine shirts, with linen
bosoms, that she had made by hand for father, and was bleaching
on the grass. If Gypsies should be in our west woods to-day and
steal me, she would hate them worse than ever; because my mother
loved me now, even if she didn't want me when I was born.

But you could excuse her for that. She had already bathed,
spanked, sewed for, and reared eleven babies so big and strong
not one of them ever even threatened to die. When you thought of
that, you could see she wouldn't be likely to implore the
Almighty to send her another, just to make her family even
numbers. I never felt much hurt at her, but some of the others I
never have forgiven and maybe I never will. As long as there had
been eleven babies, they should have been so accustomed to
children that they needn't all of them have objected to me, all
except Laddie, of course. That was the reason I loved him so and
tried to do every single thing he wanted me to, just the way he
liked it done. That was why I was facing the only spot on our
land where I was in the slightest afraid; because he asked me to.

If he had told me to dance a jig on the ridgepole of our barn, I
would have tried it.

So I clasped the note, set my teeth, and climbed over the gate.
I walked fast and kept my eyes straight before me. If I looked
on either side, sure as life I would see something I never had
before, and be down digging up a strange flower, chasing a
butterfly, or watching a bird. Besides, if I didn't look in the
fence corners that I passed, maybe I wouldn't see anything to
scare me. I was going along finely, and feeling better every
minute as I went down the bank of an old creek that had gone dry,
and started up the other side toward the sugar camp not far from
the Big Woods. The bed was full of weeds and as I passed
through, away! went Something among them.

Beside the camp shed there was corded wood, and the first thing I
knew, I was on top of it. The next, my hand was on the note in
my pocket. My heart jumped until I could see my apron move, and
my throat went all stiff and dry. I gripped the note and waited.

Father believed God would take care of him. I was only a little
girl and needed help much more than a man; maybe God would take
care of me. There was nothing wrong in carrying a letter to the
Fairy Princess. I thought perhaps it would help if I should
kneel on the top of the woodpile and ask God to not let anything
get me.

The more I thought about it, the less I felt like doing it,
though, because really you have no business to ask God to take
care of you, unless you KNOW you are doing right. This was
right, but in my heart I also knew that if Laddie had asked me, I
would be shivering on top of that cordwood on a hot August day,
when it was wrong. On the whole, I thought it would be more
honest to leave God out of it, and take the risk myself. That
made me think of the Crusaders, and the little gold trinket in
father's chest till. There were four shells on it and each one
stood for a trip on foot or horseback to the Holy City when you
had to fight almost every step of the way. Those shells meant
that my father's people had gone four times, so he said; that,
although it was away far back, still each of us had a tiny share
of the blood of the Crusaders in our veins, and that it would
make us brave and strong, and whenever we were afraid, if we
would think of them, we never could do a cowardly thing or let
any one else do one before us. He said any one with Crusader
blood had to be brave as Richard the Lion-hearted. Thinking
about that helped ever so much, so I gripped the note and turned
to take one last look at the house before I made a dash for the
gate that led into the Big Woods.

Beyond our land lay the farm of Jacob Hood, and Mrs. Hood always
teased me because Laddie had gone racing after her when I was
born. She was in the middle of Monday's washing, and the bluing
settled in the rinse water and stained her white clothes in
streaks it took months to bleach out. I always liked Sarah Hood
for coming and dressing me, though, because our Sally, who was
big enough to have done it, was upstairs crying and wouldn't come
down. I liked Laddie too, because he was the only one of our
family who went to my mother and kissed her, said he was glad,
and offered to help her. Maybe the reason he went was because he
had an awful scare, but anyway he WENT, and that was enough for
me.

You see it was this way: no one wanted me; as there had been
eleven of us, every one felt that was enough. May was six years
old and in school, and my mother thought there never would be any
more babies. She had given away the cradle and divided the baby
clothes among my big married sisters and brothers, and was having
a fine time and enjoying herself the most she ever had in her
life. The land was paid for long ago; the house she had planned,
builded as she wanted it; she had a big team of matched grays and
a carriage with side lamps and patent leather trimmings; and
sometimes there was money in the bank. I do not know that there
was very much, but any at all was a marvel, considering how many
of us there were to feed, clothe, and send to college. Mother
was forty-six and father was fifty; so they felt young enough yet
to have a fine time and enjoy life, and just when things were
going best, I announced that I was halfway over my journey to
earth.

You can't blame my mother so much. She must have been tired of
babies and disliked to go back and begin all over after resting
six years. And you mustn't be too hard on my father if he was
not just overjoyed. He felt sure the cook would leave, and she
did. He knew Sally would object to a baby, when she wanted to
begin having beaus, so he and mother talked it over and sent her
away for a long visit to Ohio with father's people, and never
told her. They intended to leave her there until I was over the
colic, at least. They knew the big married brothers and sisters
would object, and they did. They said it would be embarrassing
for their children to be the nieces and nephews of an aunt or
uncle younger than themselves. They said it so often and so
emphatically that father was provoked and mother cried. Shelley
didn't like it because she was going to school in Groveville,
where Lucy, one of our married sisters, lived, and she was afraid
I would make so much work she would have to give up her books and
friends and remain at home. There never was a baby born who was
any less wanted than I was. I knew as much about it as any one
else, because from the day I could understand, all of them,
father, mother, Shelley, Sarah Hood, every one who knew, took
turns telling me how badly I was not wanted, how much trouble I
made, and how Laddie was the only one who loved me at first.
Because of that I was on the cordwood trying to find courage to
go farther. Over and over Laddie had told me himself. He had
been to visit our big sister Elizabeth over Sunday and about
eight o'clock Monday morning he came riding down the road, and
saw the most dreadful thing. There was not a curl of smoke from
the chimneys, not a tablecloth or pillowslip on the line, not a
blind raised. Laddie said his heart went--just like mine did
when the Something jumped in the creek bed, no doubt. Then he
laid on the whip and rode.

He flung the rein over the hitching post, leaped the fence and
reached the back door. The young green girl, who was all father
could get when the cook left, was crying. So were Shelley and
little May, although she said afterward she had a boil on her
heel and there was no one to poultice it. Laddie leaned against
the door casing, and it is easy enough to understand what he
thought. He told me he had to try twice before he could speak,
and then he could only ask: "What's the matter?"

Probably May never thought she would have the chance, but the
others were so busy crying harder, now that they had an audience,
that she was first to tell him: "We have got a little sister."

"Great Day!" cried Laddie. "You made me think we had a funeral!
Where is mother, and where is my Little Sister?"

He went bolting right into mother's room and kissed her like the
gladdest boy alive; because he was only a boy then, and he told
her how happy he was that she was safe, and then he ASKED for me.

He said I was the only living creature in that house who was not
shedding tears, and I didn't begin for about six months
afterward. In fact, not until Shelley taught me by pinching me
if she had to rock the cradle; then I would cry so hard mother
would have to take me. He said he didn't believe I'd ever have
learned by myself.

He took a pillow from the bed, fixed it in the rocking chair and
laid me on it. When he found that father was hitching the horses
to send Leon for Doctor Fenner, Laddie rode back after Sarah Hood
and spoiled her washing. It may be that the interest he always
took in me had its beginning in all of them scaring him with
their weeping; even Sally, whom father had to telegraph to come
home, was upstairs crying, and she was almost a woman. It may be
that all the tears they shed over not wanting me so scared Laddie
that he went farther in his welcome than he ever would have
thought of going if he hadn't done it for joy when he learned his
mother was safe. I don't care about the reason. It is enough
for me that from the hour of my birth Laddie named me Little
Sister, seldom called me anything else, and cared for me all he
possibly could to rest mother. He took me to the fields with him
in the morning and brought me back on the horse before him at
noon. He could plow with me riding the horse, drive a reaper
with me on his knees, and hoe corn while I slept on his coat in a
fence corner. The winters he was away at college left me lonely,
and when he came back for a vacation I was too happy for words.
Maybe it was wrong to love him most. I knew my mother cared for
and wanted me now. And all my secrets were not with Laddie. I
had one with father that I was never to tell so long as he lived,
but it was about the one he loved best, next after mother.
Perhaps I should never tell it, but I wouldn't be surprised if
the family knew. I followed Laddie like a faithful dog, when I
was not gripping his waving hair and riding in triumph on his
shoulders. He never had to go so fast he couldn't take me on his
back. He never was in too big a hurry to be kind. He always had
patience to explain every shell, leaf, bird, and flower I asked
about. I was just as much his when pretty young girls were
around, and the house full of company, as when we were alone.
That was the reason I was shivering on the cordwood, gripping his
letter and thinking of all these things in order to force myself
to go farther.

I was excited about the Fairies too. I often had close chances
of seeing them, but I always just missed. Now here was Laddie
writing letters and expecting answers; our Big Woods Enchanted, a
Magic Carpet and the Queen's daughter becoming our size so she
could speak with him. No doubt the Queen had her grow big as
Shelley, when she sent her on an errand to tell Laddie about how
to make sunshine; because she was afraid if she went her real
size he would accidentally step on her, he was so dreadfully big.

Or maybe her voice was so fine he could not hear what she said.
He had told me I was to hurry, and I had gone as fast as I could
until Something jumped; since, I had been settled on that
cordwood like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. I had to get
down some time; I might as well start.

I gripped the letter, slid to the ground, and ran toward the big
gate straight before me. I climbed it, clutched the note again,
and ran blindly down the road through the forest toward the
creek. I could hurry there. On either side of it I could not
have run ten steps at a time. The big trees reached so high
above me it seemed as if they would push through the floor of
Heaven. I tried to shut my ears and run so fast I couldn't hear
a sound, and so going, I soon came to the creek bank. There I
turned to my right and went slower, watching for the pawpaw
thicket. On leaving the road I thought I would have to crawl
over logs and make my way; but there seemed to be kind of a path
not very plain, but travelled enough to follow. It led straight
to the thicket. At the edge I stopped to look for the beech. It
could be reached in one breathless dash, but there seemed to be a
green enclosure, so I walked around until I found an entrance.
Once there I was so amazed I stood and stared. I was half
indignant too.

Laddie hadn't done a thing but make an exact copy of my playhouse
under the biggest maiden's-blush in our orchard. He used the
immense beech for one corner, where I had the apple tree. His
Magic Carpet was woolly-dog moss, and all the magic about it, was
that on the damp woods floor, in the deep shade, the moss had
taken root and was growing as if it always had been there. He
had been able to cut and stick much larger willow sprouts for his
walls than I could, and in the wet black mould they didn't look
as if they ever had wilted. They were so fresh and green, no
doubt they had taken root and were growing. Where I had a low
bench under my tree, he had used a log; but he had hewed the top
flat, and made a moss cover. In each corner he had set a fern as
high as my head. On either side of the entrance he had planted a
cluster of cardinal flower that was in full bloom, and around the
walls in a few places thrifty bunches of Oswego tea and foxfire,
that I would have walked miles to secure for my wild garden under
the Bartlett pear tree. It was so beautiful it took my breath
away.

"If the Queen's daughter doesn't like this," I said softly,
"she'll have to go to Heaven before she finds anything better,
for there can't be another place on earth so pretty."

It was wonderful how the sound of my own voice gave me courage,
even if it did seem a little strange. So I hurried to the beech,
knelt and slipped the letter in the box, and put back the bark
and stone. Laddie had said that nothing could hurt me while I
had the letter, so my protection was gone as soon as it left my
hands.

There was nothing but my feet to save me now. I thanked goodness
I was a fine runner, and started for the pawpaw thicket. Once
there, I paused only one minute to see whether the way to the
stream was clear, and while standing tense and gazing, I heard
something. For an instant it was every bit as bad as at the dry
creek. Then I realized that this was a soft voice singing, and I
forgot everything else in a glow of delight. The Princess was
coming!

Never in all my life was I so surprised, and astonished, and
bewildered. She was even larger than our Sally; her dress was
pale green, like I thought a Fairy's should be; her eyes were
deep and dark as Laddie had said, her hair hung from a part in
the middle of her forehead over her shoulders, and if she had
been in the sun, it would have gleamed like a blackbird's wing.
She was just as Laddie said she would be; she was so much more
beautiful than you would suppose any woman could be, I stood
there dumbly staring. I wouldn't have asked for any one more
perfectly beautiful or more like Laddie had said the Princess
would be; but she was no more the daughter of the Fairy Queen
than I was. She was not any more of a Princess. If father ever
would tell all about the little bauble he kept in the till of his
big chest, maybe she was not as near! She was no one on earth
but one of those new English people who had moved on the land
that cornered with ours on the northwest. She had ridden over
the roads, and been at our meeting house. There could be no
mistake.

And neither father nor mother would want her on our place. They
didn't like her family at all. Mother called them the
neighbourhood mystery, and father spoke of them as the Infidels.
They had dropped from nowhere, mother said, bought that splendid
big farm, moved on and shut out every one. Before any one knew
people were shut out, mother, dressed in her finest, with Laddie
driving, went in the carriage, all shining, to make friends with
them. This very girl opened the door and said that her mother
was "indisposed," and could not see callers. "In-dis-posed!"
That's a good word that fills your mouth, but our mother didn't
like having it used to her. She said the "saucy chit" was
insulting. Then the man came, and he said he was very sorry, but
his wife would see no one. He did invite mother in, but she
wouldn't go. She told us she could see past him into the house
and there was such finery as never in all her days had she laid
eyes on. She said he was mannerly as could be, but he had the
coldest, severest face she ever saw.

They had two men and a woman servant, and no one could coax a
word from them, about why those people acted as they did. They
said 'orse, and 'ouse, and Hengland. They talked so funny you
couldn't have understood them anyway. They never plowed or put
in a crop. They made everything into a meadow and had more
horses, cattle, and sheep than a county fair, and everything you
ever knew with feathers, even peacocks. We could hear them
scream whenever it was going to rain. Father said they sounded
heathenish. I rather liked them. The man had stacks of money or
they couldn't have lived the way they did. He came to our house
twice on business: once to see about road laws, and again about
tax rates. Father was mightily pleased at first, because Mr.
Pryor seemed to have books, and to know everything, and father
thought it would be fine to be neighbours. But the minute Mr.
Pryor finished business he began to argue that every single thing
father and mother believed was wrong. He said right out in plain
English that God was a myth. Father told him pretty quickly that
no man could say that in his house; so he left suddenly and had
not been back since, and father didn't want him ever to come
again.

Then their neighbours often saw the woman around the house and
garden. She looked and acted quite as well as any one, so
probably she was not half so sick as my mother, who had nursed
three of us through typhoid fever, and then had it herself when
she was all tired out. She wouldn't let a soul know she had a
pain until she dropped over and couldn't take another step, and
father or Laddie carried her to bed. But she went everywhere,
saw all her friends, and did more good from her bed than any
other woman in our neighbourhood could on her feet. So we
thought mighty little of those Pryor people.

Every one said the girl was pretty. Then her clothes drove the
other women crazy. Some of our neighbourhood came from far down
east, like my mother. Our people back a little were from over
the sea, and they knew how things should be, to be right. Many
of the others were from Kentucky and Virginia, and they were well
dressed, proud, handsome women; none better looking anywhere.
They followed the fashions and spent much time and money on their
clothes. When it was Quarterly Meeting or the Bishop dedicated
the church or they went to town on court days, you should have
seen them--until Pryors came. Then something new happened, and
not a woman in our neighbourhood liked it. Pamela Pryor didn't
follow the fashions. She set them. If every other woman made
long tight sleeves to their wrists, she let hers flow to the
elbow and filled them with silk lining, ruffled with lace. If
they wore high neckbands, she had none, and used a flat lace
collar. If they cut their waists straight around and gathered
their skirts on six yards full, she ran hers down to a little
point front and back, that made her look slenderer, and put only
half as much goods in her skirt. Maybe Laddie rode as well as
she could; he couldn't manage a horse any better, and aside from
him there wasn't a man we knew who would have tried to ride some
of the animals she did.

If she ever worked a stroke, no one knew it. All day long she
sat in the parlour, the very best one, every day; or on benches
under the trees with embroidery frames or books, some of them
fearful, big, difficult looking ones, or rode over the country.
She rode in sunshine and she rode in storm, until you would think
she couldn't see her way through her tangled black hair. She
rode through snow and in pouring rain, when she could have stayed
out of it, if she had wanted to. She didn't seem to be afraid of
anything on earth or in Heaven. Every one thought she was like
her father and didn't believe there was any God; so when she came
among us at church or any public gathering, as she sometimes did,
people were in no hurry to be friendly, while she looked straight
ahead and never spoke until she was spoken to, and then she was
precise and cold, I tell you.

Men took off their hats, got out of the road when she came
pounding along, and stared after her like "be-addled mummies," my
mother said. But that was all she, or any one else, could say.
The young fellows were wild about her, and if they tried to sidle
up to her in the hope that they might lead her horse or get to
hold her foot when she mounted, they always saw when they reached
her, that she wasn't there.

But she was here! I had seen her only a few times, but this was
the Pryor girl, just as sure as I would have known if it had been
Sally. What dazed me was that she answered in every particular
the description Laddie had given me of the Queen's daughter. And
worst of all, from the day she first came among us, moving so
proud and cold, blabbing old Hannah Dover said she carried
herself like a Princess--as if Hannah Dover knew HOW a Princess
carried herself!--every living soul, my father even, had called
her the Princess. At first it was because she was like they
thought a Princess would be, but later they did it in meanness,
to make fun. After they knew her name, they were used to calling
her the Princess, so they kept it up, but some of them were
secretly proud of her; because she could look, and do, and be
what they would have given anything to, and knew they couldn't to
save them.

I was never in such a fix in all my life. She looked more as
Laddie had said the Princess would than you would have thought
any woman could, but she was Pamela Pryor, nevertheless. Every
one called her the Princess, but she couldn't make reality out of
that. She just couldn't be the Fairy Queen's daughter; so the
letter couldn't possibly be for her.

She had no business in our woods; you could see that they had
plenty of their own. She went straight to the door of the willow
room and walked in as if she belonged there. What if she found
the hollow and took Laddie's letter! Fast as I could slip over
the leaves, I went back. She was on the moss carpet, on her
knees, and the letter was in her fingers. It's a good thing to
have your manners soundly thrashed into you. You've got to be
scared stiff before you forget them. I wasn't so afraid of her
as I would have been if I had known she WAS the princess, and
have Laddies letter, she should not. What had the kind of girl
she was, from a home like hers, to teach any one from our house
about making sunshine? I was at the willow wall by that time
peering through, so I just parted it a little and said: "Please
put back that letter where you got it. It isn't for you."

She knelt on the mosses, the letter in her hand, and her face, as
she turned to me, was rather startled; but when she saw me she
laughed, and said in the sweetest voice I ever heard: "Are you
so very sure of that?"

"Well I ought to be," I said. "I put it there."

"Might I inquire for whom you put it there?"

"No ma'am! That's a secret."

You should have seen the light flame in her eyes, the red deepen
on her cheeks, and the little curl of laughter that curved her
lips.

"How interesting!" she cried. "I wonder now if you are not
Little Sister."

"I am to Laddie and our folks," I said. "You are a stranger."

All the dancing lights went from her face. She looked as if she
were going to cry unless she hurried up and swallowed it down
hard and fast.

"That is quite true," she said. "I am a stranger. Do you know
that being a stranger is the hardest thing that can happen to any
one in all this world?"

"Then why don't you open your doors, invite your neighbours in,
go to see them, and stop your father from saying such dreadful
things?"

"They are not my doors," she said, "and could you keep your
father from saying anything he chooses?"

I stood and blinked at her. Of course I wouldn't even dare try
that.

"I'm so sorry," was all I could think to say.

I couldn't ask her to come to our house. I knew no one wanted
her. But if I couldn't speak for the others, surely I might for
myself. I let go the willows and went to the door. The Princess
arose and sat on the seat Laddie had made for the Queen's
daughter. It was an awful pity to tell her she shouldn't sit
there, for I had my doubts if the real, true Princess would be
half as lovely when she came--if she ever did. Some way the
Princess, who was not a Princess, appeared so real, I couldn't
keep from becoming confused and forgetting that she was only just
Pamela Pryor. Already the lovely lights had gone from her face
until it made me so sad I wanted to cry, and I was no easy cry-
baby either. If I couldn't offer friendship for my family I
would for myself.

"You may call me Little Sister, if you like," I said. "I won't
be a stranger."

"Why how lovely!" cried the Princess.

You should have seen the dancing lights fly back to her eyes.
Probably you won't believe this, but the first thing I knew I was
beside her on the throne, her arm was around me, and it's the
gospel truth that she hugged me tight. I just had sense enough
to reach over and pick Laddie's letter from her fingers, and then
I was on her side. I don't know what she did to me, but all at
once I knew that she was dreadfully lonely; that she hated being
a stranger; that she was sorry enough to cry because their house
was one of mystery, and that she would open the door if she
could.

"I like you," I said, reaching up to touch her curls.

I never had seen her that I did not want to. They were like I
thought they would be. Father and Laddie and some of us had wavy
hair, but hers was crisp--and it clung to your fingers, and
wrapped around them and seemed to tug at your heart like it does
when a baby grips you. I drew away my hand, and the hair
stretched out until it was long as any of ours, and then curled
up again, and you could see that no tins had stabbed into her
head to make those curls. I began trying to single out one hair.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I want to know if only one hair is strong enough to draw a
drowning man from the water or strangle an unhappy one," I said.

"Believe me, no!" cried the Princess. "It would take all I have,
woven into a rope, to do that."

"Laddie knows curls that just one hair of them is strong enough,"
I boasted.

"I wonder now!" said the Princess. "I think he must have been
making poetry or telling Fairy tales."

"He was telling the truth," I assured her. "Father doesn't
believe in Fairies, and mother laughs, but Laddie and I know. Do
you believe in Fairies?"

"Of course I do!" she said.

"Then you know that this COULD be an Enchanted Wood?"

"I have found it so," said the Princess.

"And MAYBE this is a Magic Carpet?"

"It surely is a Magic Carpet."

"And you might be the daughter of the Queen? Your eyes are
`moonlit pools of darkness.'  If only your hair were stronger,
and you knew about making sunshine!"

"Maybe it is stronger than I think. It never has been tested.
Perhaps I do know about making sunshine. Possibly I am as true
as the wood and the carpet."

I drew away and stared at her. The longer I looked the more
uncertain I became. Maybe her mother was the Queen. Perhaps
that was the mystery. It might be the reason she didn't want the
people to see her. Maybe she was so busy making sunshine for the
Princess to bring to Laddie that she had no time to sew carpet
rags, and to go to quiltings, and funerals, and make visits. It
was hard to know what to think.

"I wish you'd tell me plain out if you are the Queen's daughter,"
I said. "It's most important. You can't have this letter unless
I KNOW. It's the very first time Laddie ever trusted me with a
letter, and I just can't give it to the wrong person."

"Then why don't you leave it where he told you?"

"But you have gone and found the place. You started to take it
once; you would again, soon as I left."

"Look me straight in the eyes, Little Sister," said the Princess
softly. "Am I like a person who would take anything that didn't
belong to her?"

"No!" I said instantly.

"How do you think I happened to come to this place?"

"Maybe our woods are prettier than yours."

"How do you think I knew where the letter was?"

I shook my head.

"If I show you some others exactly like the one you have there,
then will you believe that is for me?"

"Yes," I answered.

I believed it anyway. It just SEEMED so, the better you knew
her. The Princess slipped her hand among the folds of the
trailing pale green skirt, and from a hidden pocket drew other
letters exactly like the one I held. She opened one and ran her
finger along the top line and I read, "To the Princess," and then
she pointed to the ending and it was merely signed, "Laddie," but
all the words written between were his writing. Slowly I handed
her the letter.

"You don't want me to have it?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "I want you to have it if Laddie wrote it for
you--but mother and father won't, not at all."

"What makes you think so?" she asked gently.

"Don't you know what people say about you?"

"Some of it, perhaps."

"Well?"

"Do you think it is true?"

"Not that you're stuck up, and hateful and proud, not that you
don't want to be neighbourly with other people, no, I don't think
that. But your father said in our home that there was no God,
and you wouldn't let my mother in when she put on her best dress
and went in the carriage, and wanted to be friends. I have to
believe that."

"Yes, you can't help believing that," said the Princess.

"Then can't you see why you'll be likely to show Laddie the way
to find trouble, instead of sunshine?"

"I can see," said the Princess.

"Oh Princess, you won't do it, will you?" I cried.

"Don't you think such a big man as Laddie can take care of
himself?" she asked, and the dancing lights that had begun to
fade came back. "Over there," she pointed through our woods
toward the southwest, "lives a man you know. What do his
neighbours call him?"

"Stiff-necked Johnny," I answered promptly.

"And the man who lives next him?"

"Pinch-fist Williams."

Her finger veered to another neighbour's.

"The girls of that house?"

"Giggle-head Smithsons."

"What about the man who lives over there?"

"He beats his wife."

"And the house beyond?"

"Mother whispers about them. I don't know."

"And the woman on the hill?"

"She doesn't do anything but gussip and make every one trouble."

"Exactly!" said the Princess. "Yet most of these people come to
your house, and your family goes to theirs. Do you suppose
people they know nothing about are so much worse than these
others?"

"If your father will take it back about God, and your mother will
let people in--my mother and father both wanted to be friends,
you know."

"That I can't possibly do," she said, "but maybe I could change
their feelings toward me."

"Do it!" I cried. "Oh, I'd just love you to do it! I wish you
would come to our house and be friends. Sally is pretty as you
are, only a different way, and I know she'd like you, and so
would Shelley. If Laddie writes you letters and comes here about
sunshine, of course he'd be delighted if mother knew you; because
she loves him best of any of us. She depends on him most as much
as father."

"Then will you keep the secret until I have time to try--say
until this time next year?"

"I'll keep it just as long as Laddie wants me to."

"Good!" said the Princess. "No wonder Laddie thinks you the
finest Little Sister any one ever had."

"Does Laddie think that?" I asked

"He does indeed!" said the Princess.

"Then I'm not afraid to go home," I said. "And I'll bring his
letter the next time he can't come."

"Were you scared this time?"

I told her about that Something in the dry bed, the wolves,
wildcats, Paddy Ryan, and the Gypsies.

"You little goosie," said the Princess. "I am afraid that
brother Leon of yours is the biggest rogue loose in this part of
the country. Didn't it ever occur to you that people named Wolfe
live over there, and they call that crowd next us `wildcats,'
because they just went on some land and took it, and began living
there without any more permission than real wildcats ask to enter
the woods? Do you suppose I would be here, and everywhere else I
want to go, if there were any danger? Did anything really harm
you coming?"

"You're harmed when you're scared until you can't breathe," I
said. "Anyway, nothing could get me coming, because I held the
letter tight in my hand, like Laddie said. If you'd write me one
to take back, I'd be safe going home."

"I see," said the Princess. "But I've no pencil, and no paper,
unless I use the back of one of Laddie's letters, and that
wouldn't be polite."

"You can make new fashions," I said, "but you don't know much
about the woods, do you? I could fix fifty ways to send a
message to Laddie."

"How would you?" asked the Princess.

Running to the pawpaw bushes I pulled some big tender leaves.
Then I took the bark from the box and laid a leaf on it.

"Press with one of your rings," I said, "and print what you want
to say. I write to the Fairies every day that way, only I use an
old knife handle."

She tried. She spoiled two or three by bearing down so hard she
cut the leaves. She didn't even know enough to write on the
frosty side, until she was told. But pretty soon she got along
so well she printed all over two big ones. Then I took a stick
and punched little holes and stuck a piece of foxfire bloom
through.

"What makes you do that?" she asked.

"That's the stamp," I explained.

"But it's my letter, and I didn't put it there."

"Has to be there or the Fairies won't like it," I said.

"Well then, let it go," said the Princess.

I put back the bark and replaced the stone, gathered up the
scattered leaves, and put the two with writing on between fresh
ones.

"Now I must run," I said, "or Laddie will think the Gypsies have
got me sure."

"I'll go with you past the dry creek," she offered.

"You better not," I said. "I'd love to have you, but it would be
best for you to change their opinion, before father or mother
sees you on their land."

"Perhaps it would," said the Princess. "I'll wait here until you
reach the fence and then you call and I'll know you are in the
open and feel comfortable."

"I am most all over being afraid now," I told her.

Just to show her, I walked to the creek, climbed the gate and
went down the lane. Almost to the road I began wondering what I
could do with the letter, when looking ahead I saw Laddie coming.

"I was just starting to find you. You've been an age, child," he
said.

I held up the letter.

"No one is looking," I said, "and this won't go in your pocket."

You should have seen his face.

"Where did you get it?" he asked.

I told him all about it. I told him everything--about the hair
that maybe was stronger than she thought, and that she was going
to change father's and mother's opinions, and that I put the red
flower on, but she left it; and when I was done Laddie almost
hugged the life out of me. I never did see him so happy.

"If you be very, very careful never to breathe a whisper, I'll
take you with me some day," he promised.

CHAPTER II

Our Angel Boy

            "I had a brother once--a gracious boy,
             Full of all gentleness, of calmest hope,
             Of sweet and quiet joy,--there was the look
             Of heaven upon his face."

It was supper time when we reached home, and Bobby was at the
front gate to meet me. He always hunted me all over the place
when the big bell in the yard rang at meal time, because if he
crowed nicely when he was told, he was allowed to stand on the
back of my chair and every little while I held up my plate and
shared bites with him. I have seen many white bantams, but never
another like Bobby. My big brothers bought him for me in Fort
Wayne, and sent him in a box, alone on the cars. Father and I
drove to Groveville to meet him. The minute father pried off the
lid, Bobby hopped on the edge of the box and crowed--the biggest
crow you ever heard from such a mite of a body; he wasn't in the
least afraid of us and we were pleased about it. You scarcely
could see his beady black eyes for his bushy topknot, his wing
tips touched the ground, his tail had two beautiful plumy
feathers much longer than the others, his feet were covered with
feathers, and his knee tufts dragged. He was the sauciest,
spunkiest little fellow, and white as muslin. We went to supper
together, but no one asked where I had been, and because I was so
bursting full of importance, I talked only to Bobby, in order to
be safe.

After supper I finished Hezekiah's trousers, and May cut his coat
for me. School would begin in September and our clothes were
being made, so I used the scraps to dress him. His suit was done
by the next forenoon, and father never laughed harder than when
Hezekiah hopped down the walk to meet him dressed in pink
trousers and coat. The coat had flowing sleeves like the
Princess wore, so Hezekiah could fly, and he seemed to like them.

His suit was such a success I began a sunbonnet, and when that
was tied on him, the folks almost had spasms. They said he
wouldn't like being dressed; that he would fly away to punish me,
but he did no such thing. He stayed around the house and was
tame as ever.

When I became tired sewing that afternoon, I went down the lane
leading to our meadow, where Leon was killing thistles with a
grubbing hoe. I thought he would be glad to see me, and he was.
Every one had been busy in the house, so I went to the cellar the
outside way and ate all I wanted from the cupboard. Then I
spread two big slices of bread the best I could with my fingers,
putting apple butter on one, and mashed potatoes on the other.
Leon leaned on the hoe and watched me coming. He was a hungry
boy, and lonesome too, but he couldn't be forced to say so.

"Laddie is at work in the barn," he said.

"I'm going to play in the creek," I answered.

Crossing our meadow there was a stream that had grassy banks, big
trees, willows, bushes and vines for shade, a solid pebbly bed;
it was all turns and bends so that the water hurried until it
bubbled and sang as it went; in it lived tiny fish coloured
brightly as flowers, beside it ran killdeer, plover and solemn
blue herons almost as tall as I was came from the river to fish;
for a place to play on an August afternoon, it couldn't be
beaten. The sheep had been put in the lower pasture; so the
cross old Shropshire ram was not there to bother us.

"Come to the shade," I said to Leon, and when we were comfortably
seated under a big maple weighted down with trailing grapevines,
I offered the bread. Leon took a piece in each hand and began to
eat as if he were starving. Laddie would have kissed me and
said: "What a fine treat! Thank you, Little Sister."

Leon was different. He ate so greedily you had to know he was
glad to get it, but he wouldn't say so, not if he never got any
more. When you knew him, you understood he wouldn't forget it,
and he'd be certain to do something nice for you before the day
was over to pay back. We sat there talking about everything we
saw, and at last Leon said with a grin: "Shelley isn't getting
much grape sap is she?"

"I didn't know she wanted grape sap."

"She read about it in a paper. It said to cut the vine of a wild
grape, catch the drippings and moisten your hair. This would
make it glossy and grow faster."

"What on earth does Shelley want with more hair than she has?"

"Oh, she has heard it bragged on so much she thinks people would
say more if she could improve it."

I looked and there was the vine, dry as could be, and a milk
crock beneath it.

"Didn't the silly know she had to cut the vine in the spring when
the sap was running?"

"Bear witness, O vine! that she did not," said Leon, "and speak,
ye voiceless pottery, and testify that she expected to find you
overflowing."

"Too bad that she's going to be disappointed."

"She isn't! She's going to find ample liquid to bathe her
streaming tresses. Keep quiet and watch me."

He picked up the crock, carried it to the creek and dipped it
full of water.

"That's too much," I objected. "She'll know she never got a
crock full from a dry vine."

"She'll think the vine bled itself dry for her sake."

"She isn't that silly."

"Well then, how silly is she?" asked Leon, spilling out half.
"About so?"

"Not so bad as that. Less yet!"

"Anything to please the ladies," said Leon, pouring out more.
Then we sat and giggled a while.

"What are you going to do now?" asked Leon.

"Play in the creek," I answered.

"All right! I'll work near you."

He rolled his trousers above his knees and took the hoe, but he
was in the water most of the time. We had to climb on the bank
when we came to the deep curve, under the stump of the old oak
that father cut because Pete Billings would climb it and yowl
like a wildcat on cold winter nights. Pete was wrong in his head
like Paddy Ryan, only worse. As we passed we heard the faintest
sounds, so we lay and looked, and there in the dark place under
the roots, where the water was deepest, huddled some of the
cunningest little downy wild ducks you ever saw. We looked at
each other and never said a word. Leon chased them out with the
hoe and they swam down stream faster than old ones. I stood in
the shallow water behind them and kept them from going back to
the deep place, while Leon worked to catch them. Every time he
got one he brought it to me, and I made a bag of my apron front
to put them in. The supper bell rang before we caught all of
them. We were dripping wet with creek water and perspiration,
but we had the ducks, every one of them, and proudly started
home. I'll wager Leon was sorry he didn't wear aprons so he
could carry them. He did keep the last one in his hands, and
held its little fluffy body against his cheeks every few minutes.

"Couldn't anything be prettier than a young duck."

"Except a little guinea," I said.

"That's so!" said Leon. "They are most as pretty as quail. I
guess all young things that have down are about as cunning as
they can be. I don't believe I know which I like best, myself."

"Baby killdeers."

"I mean tame. Things we raise."

"I'll take guineas."

"I'll say white turkeys. They seem so innocent. Nothing of ours
is pretty as these."

"But these are wild."

"So they are," said Leon. "Twelve of them. Won't mother be
pleased?"

She was not in the least. She said we were a sight to behold;
that she was ashamed to be the mother of two children who didn't
know tame ducks from wild ones. She remembered instantly that
Amanda Deam had set a speckled Dorking hen on Mallard duck
eggs, where she got the eggs, and what she paid for them. She
said the ducks had found the creek that flowed beside Deams'
barnyard before it entered our land, and they had swum away from
the hen, and both the hen and Amanda would be frantic. She put
the ducks into a basket and said to take them back soon as ever
we got our suppers, and we must hurry because we had to bathe and
learn our texts for Sunday-school in the morning.

We went through the orchard, down the hill and across the meadow
until we came to the creek. By that time we were tired of the
basket. It was one father had woven himself of shaved and soaked
hickory strips, and it was heavy. The sight of water suggested
the proper place for ducks, anyway. We talked it over and
decided that they would be much more comfortable swimming than in
the basket, and it was more fun to wade than to walk, so we went
above the deep place, I stood in the creek to keep them from
going down, and Leon poured them on the water. Pigs couldn't
have acted more contrary. Those ducks LIKED us. They wouldn't
go to Deams'. They just fought to swim back to us. Anyway, we
had the worst time you ever saw. Leon cut long switches to herd
them with, and both of us waded and tried to drive them, but they
would dart under embankments and roots, and dive and hide.

Before we reached the Deams' I wished that we had carried them as
mother told us, for we had lost three, and if we stopped to hunt
them, more would hide. By the time we drove them under the
floodgate crossing the creek between our land and the Deams' four
were gone. Leon left me on the gate with both switches to keep
them from going back and he ran to call Mrs. Deam. She had red
hair and a hot temper, and we were not very anxious to see her,
but we had to do it. While Leon was gone I was thinking pretty
fast and I knew exactly how things would happen. First time
mother saw Mrs. Deam she would ask her if the ducks were all
right, and she would tell that four were gone. Mother would ask
how many she had, and she would say twelve, then mother would
remember that she started us with twelve in the basket--Oh what's
the use! Something had to be done. It had to be done quickly
too, for I could hear Amanda Deam, her boy Sammy and Leon coming
across the barnyard. I looked around in despair, but when things
are the very worst, there is almost always some way out.

On the dry straw worked between and pushing against the panels of
the floodgate, not far from me, I saw a big black water snake. I
took one good look at it: no coppery head, no geometry patterns,
no rattlebox, so I knew it wasn't poisonous and wouldn't bite
until it was hurt, and if it did, all you had to do was to suck
the place, and it wouldn't amount to more than two little pricks
as if pins had stuck you; but a big snake was a good excuse. I
rolled from the floodgate among the ducks, and cried, "Snake!"
They scattered everywhere. The snake lazily uncoiled and slid
across the straw so slowly that--thank goodness! Amanda Deam got
a fair look at it. She immediately began to jump up and down and
scream. Leon grabbed a stick and came running to the water. I
cried so he had to help me out first.

"Don't let her count them!" I whispered.

Leon gave me one swift look and all the mischief in his blue eyes
peeped out. He was the funniest boy you ever knew, anyway.
Mostly he looked scowly and abused. He had a grievance against
everybody and everything. He said none of us liked him, and we
imposed on him. Father said that if he tanned Leon's jacket for
anything, and set him down to think it over, he would pout a
while, then he would look thoughtful, suddenly his face would
light up and he would go away sparkling; and you could depend
upon it he would do the same thing over, or something worse,
inside an hour. When he wanted to, he could smile the most
winning smile, and he could coax you into anything. Mother said
she dreaded to have to borrow a dime from him, if a peddler
caught her without change, because she knew she'd be kept paying
it back for the next six months. Right now he was the busiest
kind of a boy.

"Where is it? Let me get a good lick at it! Don't scare the
ducks!" he would cry, and chase them from one bank to the other,
while Amanda danced and fought imaginary snakes. For a woman who
had seen as many as she must have in her life, it was too funny.
I don't think I could laugh harder, or Leon and Sammy. We
enjoyed ourselves so much that at last she began to be angry.
She quit dancing, and commenced hunting ducks, for sure. She
held her skirts high, poked along the banks, jumped the creek and
didn't always get clear across. Her hair shook down, she lost a
sidecomb, and she couldn't find half the ducks.

"You younguns pack right out of here," she said. "Me and Sammy
can get them better ourselves, and if we don't find all of them,
we'll know where they are."

"We haven't got any of your ducks," I said angrily, but Leon
smiled his most angelic smile, and it seemed as if he were going
to cry.

"Of course, if you want to accuse mother of stealing your ducks,
you can," he said plaintively, "but I should think you'd be
ashamed to do it, after all the trouble we took to catch them
before they swam to the river, where you never would have found
one of them. Come on, Little Sister, let's go home."

He started and I followed. As soon as we got around the bend we
sat on the bank, hung our feet in the water, leaned against each
other and laughed. We just laughed ourselves almost sick. When
Amanda's face got fire red, and her hair came down, and she
jumped and didn't go quite over, she looked a perfect fright.

"Will she ever find all of them?" I asked at last.

"Of course," said Leon. "She will comb the grass and strain the
water until she gets every one."

"Hoo-hoo!"

I looked at Leon. He was so intently watching an old turkey
buzzard hanging in the air, he never heard the call that meant it
was time for us to be home and cleaning up for Sunday. It was
difficult to hurry, for after we had been soaped and scoured, we
had to sit on the back steps and commit to memory verses from the
Bible. At last we waded toward home. Two of the ducks we had
lost swam before us all the way, so we knew they were alive, and
all they needed was finding.

"If she hadn't accused mother of stealing her old ducks, I'd
catch those and carry them back to her," said Leon. "But since
she thinks we are so mean, I'll just let her and little Sammy
find them."

Then we heard their voices as they came down the creek, so Leon
reached me his hand and we scampered across the water and meadow,
never stopping until we sat on the top rail of our back orchard
fence. There we heard another call, but that was only two. We
sat there, rested and looked at the green apples above our heads,
wishing they were ripe, and talking about the ducks. We could
see Mrs. Deam and Sammy coming down the creek, one on each side.
We slid from the fence and ran into a queer hollow that was cut
into the hill between the never-fail and the Baldwin apple trees.

That hollow was overgrown with weeds, and full of trimmings from
trees, stumps, everything that no one wanted any place else in
the orchard. It was the only unkept spot on our land, and I
always wondered why father didn't clean it out and make it look
respectable. I said so to Leon as we crouched there watching
down the hill where Mrs. Deam and Sammy hunted ducks with not
such very grand success. They seemed to have so many they
couldn't decide whether to go back or go on, so they must have
found most of them.

"You know I've always had my suspicions about this place," said
Leon. "There is somewhere on our land that people can be hidden
for a long time. I can remember well enough before the war ever
so long, and while it was going worst, we would find the wagon
covered with more mud in the morning than had been on it at
night; and the horses would be splashed and tired. Once I was
awake in the night and heard voices. It made me want a drink, so
I went downstairs for it, and ran right into the biggest,
blackest man who ever grew. If father and mother hadn't been
there I'd have been scared into fits. Next morning he was gone
and there wasn't a whisper. Father said I'd had bad dreams.
That night the horses made another mysterious trip. Now where
did they keep the black man all that day?"

"What did they have a black man for?"

"They were helping him run away from slavery to be free in
Canada. It was all right. I'd have done the same thing. They
helped a lot. Father was a friend of the Governor. There were
letters from him, and there was some good reason why father
stayed at home, when he was crazy about the war. I think this
farm was what they called an Underground Station. What I want to
know is where the station was."

"Maybe it's here. Let's hunt," I said. "If the black men were
here some time, they would have to be fed, and this is not far
from the house."

So we took long sticks and began poking into the weeds. Then we
moved the brush, and sure as you live, we found an old door with
a big stone against it. I looked at Leon and he looked at me.

"Hoo-hoo!" came mother's voice, and that was the third call.

"Hum! Must be for us," said Leon. "We better go as soon as we
get a little dryer."

He slid down the bank on one side, and I on the other, and we
pushed at the stone. I thought we never would get it rolled away
so we could open the door a crack, but when we did what we saw
was most surprising. There was a little room, dreadfully small.
but a room. There was straw scattered over the floor, very deep
on one side, where an old blanket showed that it had been a bed.
Across the end there was a shelf. On it was a candlestick, with
a half-burned candle in it, a pie pan with some mouldy crumbs,
crusts, bones in it, and a tin can. Leon picked up the can and
looked in. I could see too.

It had been used for water or coffee, as the plate had for food,
once, but now it was stuffed full of money. I saw Leon pull some
out and then shove it back, and he came to the door white as
could be, shut it behind him and began to push at the stone.
When we got it in place we put the brush over it, and fixed
everything like it had been.

At last Leon said: "That's the time we got into something not
intended for us, and if father finds it out, we are in for a good
thrashing. Are you just a blubbering baby, or are you big enough
to keep still?"

"I am old enough that I could have gone to school two years ago,
and I won't tell!" I said stoutly.

"All right! Come on then," said Leon. "I don't know but mother
has been calling us."

We started up the orchard path at the fourth call.

"Hoo-hoo!" answered Leon in a sick little voice to make it sound
far away. Must have made mother think we were on Deams' hill.
Then we went on side by side.

"Say Leon, you found the Station, didn't you?"

"Don't talk about it!" snapped Leon.

I changed the subject

"Whose money do you suppose that is?"

"Oh crackey! You can depend on a girl to see everything,"
groaned Leon. "Do you think you'll be able to stand the
switching that job will bring you, without getting sick in bed?"

Now I never had been sick in bed, and from what I had seen of
other people who were, I never wanted to be. The idea of being
switched until it made me sick was too much for me. I shut my
mouth tight and I never opened it about the Station place. As we
reached the maiden's-blush apple tree came another call, and it
sounded pretty cross, I can tell you. Leon reached his hand.

"Now, it's time to run. Let me do the talking."

We were out of breath when we reached the back door. There stood
the tub on the kitchen floor, the boiler on the stove, soap,
towels, and clean clothing on chairs. Leon had his turn at
having his ears washed first, because he could bathe himself
while mother did my hair.

"Was Mrs. Deam glad to get her ducks back?" she asked as she
fine-combed Leon.

"Aw, you never can tell whether she's glad about anything or
not," growled Leon. "You'd have thought from the way she acted,
that we'd been trying to steal her ducks. She said if she missed
any she'd know where to find them."

"Well as I live!" cried mother. "Why I wouldn't have believed
that of Amanda Deam. You told her you thought they were wild, of
course."

"I didn't have a chance to tell her anything. The minute the
ducks struck the water they started right back down stream, and
there was a big snake, and we had an awful time. We got wet
trying to head them back, and then we didn't find all of them."

"They are like little eels. You should have helped Amanda."

"Well, you called so cross we thought you would come after us, so
we had to run."

"One never knows," sighed mother. "I thought you were loitering.

Of course if I had known you were having trouble with the ducks!
I think you had better go back and help them."

"Didn't I do enough to take them home? Can't Sammy Deam catch
ducks as fast as I can?"

"I suppose so," said mother. "And I must get your bathing out of
the way of supper. You use the tub while I do Little Sister's
hair."

I almost hated Sunday, because of what had to be done to my hair
on Saturday, to get ready for it. All week it hung in two long
braids that were brushed and arranged each morning. But on
Saturday it had to be combed with a fine comb, oiled and rolled
around strips of tin until Sunday morning. Mother did everything
thoroughly. She raked that fine comb over our scalps until she
almost raised the blood. She hadn't time to fool with tangles,
and we had so much hair she didn't know what to do with all of
it, anyway. When she was busy talking she reached around too far
and combed across our foreheads or raked the tip of an ear.

But on Sunday morning we forgot all that, when we walked down the
aisle with shining curls hanging below our waists. Mother was
using the fine comb, when she looked up, and there stood Mrs.
Freshett. We could see at a glance that she was out of breath.

"Have I beat them?" she cried.

"Whom are you trying to beat?" asked mother as she told May to
set a chair for Mrs. Freshett and bring her a drink.

"The grave-kiver men," she said. "I wanted to get to you first."

"Well, you have," said mother. "Rest a while and then tell me."

But Mrs. Freshett was so excited she couldn't rest.

"I thought they were coming straight on down," she said, "but
they must have turned off at the cross roads. I want to do
what's right by my children here or there," panted Mrs. Freshett,
"and these men seemed to think the contrivance they was sellin'
perfectly grand, an' like to be an aid to the soul's salvation.
Nice as it seemed, an' convincin' as they talked, I couldn't get
the consent of my mind to order, until I knowed if you was goin'
to kiver your dead with the contraption. None of the rest of the
neighbours seem over friendly to me, an' I've told Josiah many's
the time, that I didn't care a rap if they wa'n't, so long as I
had you. Says I, `Josiah, to my way of thinkin', she is top
crust in this neighbourhood, and I'm on the safe side apin' her
ways clost as possible.'"

"I'll gladly help you all I can," said my mother.

"Thanky!" said Mrs. Freshett. "I knowed you would. Josiah he
says to me, `Don't you be apin' nobody.'  `Josiah,' says I, `it
takes a pretty smart woman in this world to realize what she
doesn't know. Now I know what I know, well enough, but all I
know is like to keep me an' my children in a log cabin an' on log
cabin ways to the end of our time. You ain't even got the
remains of the cabin you started in for a cow shed.'  Says I,
`Josiah, Miss Stanton knows how to get out of a cabin an' into a
grand big palace, fit fur a queen woman. She's a ridin' in a
shinin' kerridge, 'stid of a spring wagon. She goes abroad
dressed so's you men all stand starin' like cabbage heads. All
hern go to church, an' Sunday-school, an' college, an' come out
on the top of the heap. She does jest what I'd like to if I
knowed how. An' she ain't come-uppety one morsel.'  If I was to
strike acrost fields to them stuck-up Pryors, I'd get the door
slammed in my face if 'twas the missus, a sneer if 'twas the man,
an' at best a nod cold as an iceberg if 'twas the girl. Them as
want to call her kind `Princess,' and encourage her in being more
stuck up 'an she was born to be, can, but to my mind a Princess
is a person who thinks of some one besides herself once in a
while."

"I don't find the Pryors easy to become acquainted with," said
mother. "I have never met the woman; I know the man very
slightly; he has been here on business once or twice, but the
girl seems as if she would be nice, if one knew her."

"Well, I wouldn't have s'posed she was your kind," said Mrs.
Freshett. "If she is, I won't open my head against her any more.

Anyway, it was the grave-kivers I come about."

"Just what is it, Mrs. Freshett?" asked mother.

"It's two men sellin' a patent iron kiver for to protect the
graves of your dead from the sun an' the rain."

"Who wants the graves of their dead protected from the sun and
the rain?" demanded my mother sharply.

"I said to Josiah, `I don't know how she'll feel about it, but I
can't do more than ask.'"

"Do they carry a sample? What is it like?"

"Jest the len'th an' width of a grave. They got from baby to
six-footer sizes. They are cast iron like the bottom of a cook
stove on the under side, but atop they are polished so they shine
somethin' beautiful. You can get them in a solid piece, or with
a hole in the centre about the size of a milk crock to set
flowers through. They come ten to the grave, an' they are mighty
stylish lookin' things. I have been savin' all I could skimp
from butter, an' eggs, to get Samantha a organ; but says I to
her: `You are gettin' all I can do for you every day; there lays
your poor brother 'at ain't had a finger lifted for him since he
was took so sudden he was gone before I knowed he was goin'.'  I
never can get over Henry bein' took the way he was, so I says:
`If this would be a nice thing to have for Henry's grave, and the
neighbours are goin' to have them for theirn, looks to me like
some of the organ money will have to go, an' we'll make it up
later.'  I don't 'low for Henry to be slighted bekase he rid
himself to death trying to make a president out of his pa's
gin'ral."

"You never told me how you lost your son," said mother, feeling
so badly she wiped one of my eyes full of oil.

"Law now, didn't I?" inquired Mrs. Freshett. "Well mebby that is
bekase I ain't had a chance to tell you much of anythin', your
bein' always so busy like, an' me not wantin' to wear out my
welcome. It was like this: All endurin' the war Henry an' me
did the best we could without pa at home, but by the time it was
over, Henry was most a man. Seemed as if when he got home, his
pa was all tired out and glad to set down an' rest, but Henry was
afire to be up an' goin'. His pa filled him so full o' Grant, it
was runnin' out of his ears. Come the second run the Gin'ral
made, peered like Henry set out to 'lect him all by hisself. He
wore every horse on the place out, ridin' to rallies. Sometimes
he was gone three days at a stretch. He'd git one place an' hear
of a rally on ten miles or so furder, an' blest if he didn't ride
plum acrost the state 'fore he got through with one trip. He set
out in July, and he rid right straight through to November, nigh
onto every day of his life. He got white, an' thin, an' narvous,
from loss of sleep an' lack of food, an' his pa got restless,
said Henry was takin' the 'lection more serious 'an he ever took
the war. Last few days before votin' was cold an' raw an' Henry
rid constant. 'Lection day he couldn't vote, for he lacked a
year of bein' o' age, an' he rid in with a hard chill, an' white
as a ghost, an' he says: `Ma,' says he, `I've 'lected Grant, but
I'm all tuckered out. Put me to bed an' kiver me warm.'"

I forgot the sting in my eyes watching Mrs. Freshett. She was
the largest woman I knew, and strong as most men. Her hair was
black and glisteny, her eyes black, her cheeks red, her skin a
clear, even dark tint. She was handsome, she was honest, and she
was in earnest over everything. There was something about her,
or her family, that had to be told in whispers, and some of the
neighbours would have nothing to do with her. But mother said
Mrs. Freshett was doing the very best she knew, and for the sake
of that, and of her children, anyone who wouldn't help her was
not a Christian, and not to be a Christian was the very worst
thing that could happen to you. I stared at her steadily. She
talked straight along, so rapidly you scarcely could keep up with
the words; you couldn't if you wanted to think about them any
between. There was not a quiver in her voice, but from her eyes
there rolled, steadily, the biggest, roundest tears I ever saw.
They ran down her cheeks, formed a stream in the first groove of
her double chin, overflowed it, and dripped drop, drop, a drop at
a time, on the breast of her stiffly starched calico dress, and
from there shot to her knees.

"'Twa'n't no time at all 'til he was chokin' an' burnin' red with
fever, an' his pa and me, stout as we be, couldn't hold him down
nor keep him kivered. He was speechifyin' to beat anythin' you
ever heard. His pa said he was repeatin' what he'd heard said by
every big stump speaker from Greeley to Logan. When he got so
hoarse we couldn't tell what he said any more, he jest mouthed
it, an' at last he dropped back and laid like he was pinned to
the sheets, an' I thought he was restin', but 'twa'n't an hour
'til he was gone."

Suddenly Mrs. Freshett lifted her apron, covered her face and
sobbed until her broad shoulders shook.

"Oh you poor soul!" said my mother. "I'm so sorry for you!"

"I never knowed he was a-goin' until he was gone," she said. "He
was the only one of mine I ever lost, an' I thought it would jest
lay me out. I couldn't 'a' stood it at all if I hadn't 'a'
knowed he was saved. I well know my Henry went straight to
Heaven. Why Miss Stanton, he riz right up in bed at the last,
and clear and strong he jest yelled it: `Hurrah fur Grant!'"

My mother's fingers tightened in my hair until I thought she
would pull out a lot, and I could feel her knees stiffen. Leon
just whooped. Mother sprang up and ran to the door.

"Leon!" she cried. Then there was a slam. "What in the world is
the matter?" she asked.

"Stepped out of the tub right on the soap, and it threw me down,"
explained Leon.

"For mercy sake, be careful!" said my mother, and shut the door.

It wasn't a minute before the knob turned and it opened again a
little.

I never saw mother's face look so queer, but at last she said
softly: "You were thinking of the grave cover for him?"

"Yes, but I wanted to ask you before I bound myself. I heard you
lost two when the scarlet fever was ragin' an' I'm goin' to do
jest what you do. If you have kivers, I will. If you don't like
them when you see how bright and shiny they are, I won't get any
either."

"I can tell you without seeing them, Mrs. Freshett," said my
mother, wrapping a strand of hair around the tin so tight I
slipped up my fingers to feel whether my neck wasn't like a buck-
eye hull looks, and it was. "I don't want any cover for the
graves of my dead but grass and flowers, and sky and clouds. I
like the rain to fall on them, and the sun to shine, so that the
grass and flowers will grow. If you are satisfied that the soul
of Henry is safe in Heaven, that is all that is necessary.
Laying a slab of iron on top of earth six feet above his body
will make no difference to him. If he is singing with the
angels, by all means save your money for the organ."

"I don't know about the singin', but I'd stake my last red cent
he's still hollerin' fur Grant. I was kind o' took with the
idea; the things was so shiny and scilloped at the edges, peered
like it was payin' considerable respect to the dead to kiver them
that-a-way."

"What good would it do?" asked mother. "The sun shining on the
iron would make it so hot it would burn any flower you tried to
plant in the opening; the water couldn't reach the roots, and all
that fell on the slab would run off and make it that much wetter
at the edges. The iron would soon rust and grow dreadfully ugly
lying under winter snow. There is nothing at all in it, save a
method to work on the feelings of the living, and get them to pay
their money for something that wouldn't affect their dead a
particle."

"'Twould be a poor idea for me," said Mrs. Freshett. "I said to
the men that I wanted to honour Henry all I could, but with my
bulk, I'd hev all I could do, come Jedgment Day, to bust my box,
an' heave up the clods, without havin' to hist up a piece of iron
an' klim from under it."

Mother stiffened and Leon slipped again. He could have more
accidents than any boy I ever knew. But it was only a few
minutes until he came to mother and gave her a Bible to mark the
verses he had to learn to recite at Sunday-school next day.
Mother couldn't take the time when she had company, so she asked
if he weren't big enough to pick out ten proper verses and learn
them by himself, and he said of course he was. He took his Bible
and he and May and I sat on the back steps and studied our
verses. He and May were so big they had ten; but I had only two,
and mine were not very long. Leon giggled half the time he was
studying. I haven't found anything so very funny in the Bible.
Every few minutes he would whisper to himself: "THAT'S A GOOD
ONE!"

He took the book and heard May do hers until she had them
perfectly, then he went and sat on the back fence with his book
and studied as I never before had seen him. Mrs. Freshett stayed
so long mother had no time to hear him, but he told her he had
them all learned so he could repeat them without a mistake.

Next morning mother was busy, so she had no time then. Father,
Shelley, and I rode on the front seat, mother, May, and Sally on
the back, while the boys started early and walked.

When we reached the top of the hill, the road was lined with
carriages, wagons, spring wagons, and saddle horses. Father
found a place for our team and we went down the walk between the
hitching rack and the cemetery fence. Mother opened the gate and
knelt beside two small graves covered with grass, shaded by
yellow rose bushes, and marked with little white stones. She
laid some flowers on each and wiped the dust from the carved
letters with her handkerchief. The little sisters who had
scarlet fever and whooping cough lay there. Mother was still a
minute and then she said softly: "`The Lord has given and the
Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.'"

She was very pale when she came to us, but her eyes were bright
and she smiled as she put her arms around as many of us as she
could reach.

"What a beautiful horse!" said Sally. "Look at that saddle and
bridle! The Pryor girl is here."

"Why should she come?" asked Shelley.

"To show her fine clothes and queen it over us!"

"Children, children!" said mother. "`Judge not!'  This is a
house of worship. The Lord may be drawing her in His own way.
It is for us to help Him by being kind and making her welcome."

At the church door we parted and sat with our teachers, but for
the first time as I went down the aisle I was not thinking of my
linen dress, my patent leather slippers, and my pretty curls. It
suddenly seemed cheap to me to twist my hair when it was straight
as a shingle, and cut my head on tin. If the Lord had wanted me
to have curls, my hair would have been like Sally's. Seemed to
me hers tried to see into what big soft curls it could roll. May
said ours was so straight it bent back the other way. Anyway, I
made up my mind to talk it over with father and always wear
braids after that, if I could get him to coax mother to let me.

Our church was quite new and it was beautiful. All the casings
were oiled wood, and the walls had just a little yellow in the
last skin coating used to make them smooth, so they were a creamy
colour, and the blinds were yellow. The windows were wide open
and the wind drifted through, while the birds sang as much as
they ever do in August, among the trees and bushes of the
cemetery. Every one had planted so many flowers of all kinds on
the graves you could scent sweet odours. Often a big, black-
striped, brown butterfly came sailing in through one of the
windows, followed the draft across the room, and out of another.
I was thinking something funny: it was about what the Princess
had said of other people, and whether hers were worse. I looked
at my father sitting in calm dignity in his Sunday suit and
thought him quite as fine and handsome as mother did. Every
Sabbath he wore the same suit, he sat in the same spot, he
worshipped the Lord in his calm, earnest way. The ministers
changed, but father was as much a part of the service as the
Bible on the desk or the communion table. I wondered if people
said things about him, and if they did, what they were. I never
had heard. Twisting in my seat, one by one I studied the faces
on the men's side, and then the women. It was a mighty good-
looking crowd. Some had finer clothes than others--that is
always the way--but as a rule every one was clean, neat, and good
to see. From some you scarcely could turn away. There was Widow
Fall. She was French, from Virginia, and she talked like little
tinkly notes of music. I just loved to hear her, and she walked
like high-up royalty. Her dress was always black, with white
bands at the neck and sleeves, black rustly silk, and her eyes
and hair were like the dress. There was a little red on her
cheeks and lips, and her face was always grave until she saw you
directly before her, and then she smiled the sweetest smile.

Maybe Sarah Hood was not pretty, but there was something about
her lean face and shining eyes that made you look twice before
you were sure of it, and by that time you had got so used to her,
you liked her better as she was, and wouldn't have changed her
for anything. Mrs. Fritz had a pretty face and dresses and
manners, and so did Hannah Dover, only she talked too much. So I
studied them and remembered what the Princess had said, and I
wondered if she heard some one say that Peter Justice beat his
wife, or if she showed it in her face and manner. She reminded
me of a scared cowslip that had been cut and laid in the sun an
hour. I don't know as that expresses it. Perhaps a flower
couldn't look scared, but it could be wilted and faded. I
wondered if she ever had bright hair, laughing eyes, and red in
her lips and cheeks. She must have been pretty if she had.

At last I reached my mother. There was nothing scared or faded
about her, and she was dreadfully sick too, once in a while since
she had the fever. She was a little bit of a woman, coloured
like a wild rose petal, face and body--a piece of pink porcelain
Dutch, father said. She had brown eyes, hair like silk, and she
always had three best dresses. There was one of alpaca or
woollen, of black, gray or brown, and two silks. Always there
was a fine rustly black one with a bonnet and mantle to match,
and then a softer, finer one of either gold brown, like her hair,
or dainty gray, like a dove's wing. When these grew too old for
fine use, she wore them to Sunday-school and had a fresh one for
best. There was a new gray in her closet at home, so she put on
the old brown to-day, and she was lovely in it.

Usually the minister didn't come for church services until
Sunday-school was half over, so the superintendent read a
chapter, Daddy Debs prayed, and all of us stood up and sang:
"Ring Out the Joy Bells."  Then the superintendent read the
lesson over as impressively as he could. The secretary made his
report, we sang another song, gathered the pennies, and each
teacher took a class and talked over the lesson a few minutes.
Then we repeated the verses we had committed to memory to our
teachers; the member of each class who had learned the nicest
texts, and knew them best, was selected to recite before the
school. Beginning with the littlest people, we came to the big
folks. Each one recited two texts until they reached the class
above mine. We walked to the front, stood inside the altar, made
a little bow, and the superintendent kept score. I could see
that mother appeared worried when Leon's name was called for his
class, for she hadn't heard him, and she was afraid he would
forget.

Among the funny things about Leon was this: while you had to
drive other boys of his age to recite, you almost had to hold him
to keep him from it. Father said he was born for a politician or
a preacher, if he would be good, and grow into the right kind of
a man to do such responsible work.

"I forgot several last Sabbath, so I have thirteen to-day," he
said politely.

Of course no one expected anything like that. You never knew
what might happen when Leon did anything. He must have been
about sixteen. He was a slender lad, having almost sandy hair,
like his English grandfather. He wore a white ruffled shirt with
a broad collar, and cuffs turning back over his black jacket, and
his trousers fitted his slight legs closely. The wind whipped
his soft black tie a little and ruffled the light hair where it
was longest and wavy above his forehead. Such a perfect picture
of innocence you never saw. There was one part of him that
couldn't be described any better than the way Mr. Rienzi told
about his brother in his "Address to the Romans," in McGuffey's
Sixth. "The look of heaven on his face" stayed most of the time;
again, there was a dealish twinkle that sparkled and flashed
while he was thinking up something mischievous to do. When he
was fighting angry, and going to thrash Absalom Saunders or die
trying, he was plain white and his eyes were like steel. Mother
called him "Weiscope," half the time. I can only spell the way
that sounds, but it means "white-head," and she always used that
name when she loved him most. "The look of heaven" was strong on
his face now.

"One," said the recording secretary.

"Jesus wept," answered Leon promptly.

There was not a sound in the church. You could almost hear the
butterflies pass. Father looked down and laid his lower lip in
folds with his fingers, like he did sometimes when it wouldn't
behave to suit him.

"Two," said the secretary after just a breath of pause.

Leon looked over the congregation easily and then fastened his
eyes on Abram Saunders, the father of Absalom, and said
reprovingly: "Give not sleep to thine eyes nor slumber to thine
eyelids."

Abram straightened up suddenly and blinked in astonishment, while
father held fast to his lip.

"Three," called the secretary hurriedly.

Leon shifted his gaze to Betsy Alton, who hadn't spoken to her
next door neighbour in five years.

"Hatred stirreth up strife," he told her softly, "but love
covereth all sins."

Things were so quiet it seemed as if the air would snap.

"Four."

The mild blue eyes travelled back to the men's side and settled
on Isaac Thomas, a man too lazy to plow and sow land his father
had left him. They were not so mild, and the voice was touched
with command: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways
and be wise."

Still that silence.

"Five," said the secretary hurriedly, as if he wished it were
over. Back came the eyes to the women's side and past all
question looked straight at Hannah Dover.

"As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman
without discretion."

"Six," said the secretary and looked appealingly at father, whose
face was filled with dismay.

Again Leon's eyes crossed the aisle and he looked directly at the
man whom everybody in the community called "Stiff-necked Johnny."

I think he was rather proud of it, he worked so hard to keep them
doing it.

"Lift not up your horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck,"
Leon commanded him.

Toward the door some one tittered.

"Seven," called the secretary hastily.

Leon glanced around the room.

"But how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell
together in unity," he announced in delighted tones as if he had
found it out by himself.

"Eight," called the secretary with something like a breath of
relief.

Our angel boy never had looked so angelic, and he was beaming on
the Princess.

"Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee," he told
her.

Laddie would thrash him for that.

Instantly after, "Nine," he recited straight at Laddie: "I made
a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?"

More than one giggled that time.

"Ten!" came almost sharply.

Leon looked scared for the first time. He actually seemed to
shiver. Maybe he realized at last that it was a pretty serious
thing he was doing. When he spoke he said these words in the
most surprised voice you ever heard: "I was almost in all evil
in the midst of the congregation and assembly."

"Eleven."

Perhaps these words are in the Bible. They are not there to read
the way Leon repeated them, for he put a short pause after the
first name, and he glanced toward our father: "Jesus Christ, the
SAME, yesterday, and to-day, and forever!"

Sure as you live my mother's shoulders shook.

"Twelve."

Suddenly Leon seemed to be forsaken. He surely shrank in size
and appeared abused.

"When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take
me up," he announced, and looked as happy over the ending as he
had seemed forlorn at the beginning.

"Thirteen."

"The Lord is on my side; I will not fear; what can man do unto
me?" inquired Leon of every one in the church. Then he soberly
made a bow and walked to his seat.

Father's voice broke that silence. "Let us kneel in prayer," he
said.

He took a step forward, knelt, laid his hands on the altar,
closed his eyes and turned his face upward.

"Our Heavenly Father, we come before Thee in a trying situation,"
he said. "Thy word of truth has been spoken to us by a
thoughtless boy, whether in a spirit of helpfulness or of jest,
Thou knowest. Since we are reasoning creatures, it little
matters in what form Thy truth comes to us; the essential thing
is that we soften our hearts for its entrance, and grow in grace
by its application. Tears of compassion such as our dear Saviour
wept are in our eyes this morning as we plead with Thee to help
us to apply these words to the betterment of this community."

Then father began to pray. If the Lord had been standing six
feet in front of him, and his life had depended on what he said,
he could have prayed no harder. Goodness knows how fathers
remember. He began at "Jesus wept" and told about this sinful
world and why He wept over it; then one at a time he took those
other twelve verses and hammered them down where they belonged
much harder than Leon ever could by merely looking at people.
After that he prayed all around each one so fervently that those
who had been hit the very worst cried aloud and said: "Amen!"
You wouldn't think any one could do a thing like that; but I
heard and saw my father do it.

When he arose the tears were running down his cheeks, and before
him stood Leon. He was white as could be, but he spoke out
loudly and clearly.

"Please forgive me, sir; I didn't intend to hurt your feelings.
Please every one forgive me. I didn't mean to offend any one.
It happened through hunting short verses. All the short ones
seemed to be like that, and they made me think----"

He got no farther. Father must have been afraid of what he might
say next. He threw his arms around Leon's shoulders, drew him to
the seat, and with the tears still rolling, he laughed as happily
as you ever heard, and he cried: "`Sweeping through the Gates!'
All join in!"

You never heard such singing in your life. That was another
wonderful thing. My father didn't know the notes. He couldn't
sing; he said so himself. Neither could half the people there,
yet all of them were singing at the tops of their voices, and I
don't believe the angels in Heaven could make grander music. My
father was leading:

"These, these are they, who in the conflict dire----"

You could tell Emanuel Ripley had been in the war from the way he
roared:

"Boldly have stood amidst the hottest fire----"

The Widow Fall soared above all of them on the next line; her man
was there, and maybe she was lonely and would have been glad to
go to him:

"Jesus now says, `Come up higher----'"

Then my little mother:

"Washed in the blood of the Lamb----"

Like thunder all of them rolled into the chorus:

"Sweepin, through the gates to the New Jerusalem----"

You wouldn't have been left out of that company for anything in
all this world, and nothing else ever could make you want to go
so badly as to hear every one sing, straight from the heart, a
grand old song like that. It is no right way to have to sit and
keep still, and pay other people money to sing about Heaven to
you. No matter if you can't sing by note, if your heart and soul
are full, until they are running over, so that you are forced to
sing as those people did, whether you can or not, you are sure to
be straight on the way to the Gates.

Before three lines were finished my father was keeping time like
a choirmaster, his face all beaming with shining light; mother
was rocking on her toes like a wood robin on a twig at twilight,
and at the end of the chorus she cried "Glory!" right out loud,
and turned and started down the aisle, shaking hands with every
one, singing as she went. When she reached Betsy Alton she held
her hand and led her down the aisle straight toward Rachel Brown.

When Rachel saw them coming she hurried to meet them, and they
shook hands and were glad to make up as any two people you ever
saw. It must have been perfectly dreadful to see a woman every
day for five years, and not to give her a pie, when you felt sure
yours were better than she could make, or loan her a new pattern,
or tell her first who had a baby, or was married, or dead, or
anything like that. It was no wonder they felt glad. Mother
came on, and as she passed me the verses were all finished and
every one began talking and moving. Johnny Dover forgot his neck
and shook hands too, and father pronounced the benediction. He
always had to when the minister wasn't there, because he was
ordained himself, and you didn't dare pronounce the benediction
unless you were.

Every one began talking again, and wondering if the minister
wouldn't come soon, and some one went out to see. There was
mother standing only a few feet from the Princess, and I thought
of something. I had seen it done often enough, but I never had
tried it myself, yet I wanted to so badly, there was no time to
think how scared I would be. I took mother's hand and led her a
few steps farther and said: "Mother, this is my friend, Pamela
Pryor."

I believe I did it fairly well. Mother must have been surprised,
but she put out her hand.

"I didn't know Miss Pryor and you were acquainted."

"It's only been a little while," I told her. "I met her when I
was on some business with the Fairies. They know everything and
they told me her father was busy"--I thought she wouldn't want me
to tell that he was plain CROSS, where every one could hear, so I
said "busy" for politeness--"and her mother not very strong, and
that she was a good girl, and dreadfully lonesome. Can't you do
something, mother?"

"Well, I should think so!" said mother, for her heart was soft as
rose leaves. Maybe you won't believe this, but it's quite true.
My mother took the Princess' arm and led her to Sally and
Shelley, and introduced her to all the girls. By the time the
minister came and mother went back to her seat, she had forgotten
all about the "indisposed" word she disliked, and as you live!
she invited the Princess to go home with us to dinner. She stood
tall and straight, her eyes very bright, and her cheeks a little
redder than usual, as she shook hands and said a few pleasant
words that were like from a book, they fitted and were so right.
When mother asked her to dinner she said: "Thank you kindly. I
should be glad to go, but my people expect me at home and they
would be uneasy. Perhaps you would allow me to ride over some
week day and become acquainted?"

Mother said she would be happy to have her, and Shelley said so
too, but Sally was none too cordial. She had dark curls and pink
cheeks herself, and every one had said she was the prettiest girl
in the county before Shelley began to blossom out and show what
she was going to be. Sally never minded that, but when the
Princess came she was a little taller, and her hair was a trifle
longer, and heavier, and blacker, and her eyes were a little
larger and darker, and where Sally had pink skin and red lips,
the Princess was dark as olive, and her lips and cheeks were like
red velvet. Anyway, the Princess had said she would come over;
mother and Shelley had been decent to her, and Sally hadn't been
exactly insulting. It would be a little more than you could
expect for her to be wild about the Princess. I believe she was
pleased over having been invited to dinner, and as she was a
stranger she couldn't know that mother had what we called the
"invitation habit."

I have seen her ask from fifteen to twenty in one trip down the
aisle on Sunday morning. She wanted them to come too; the more
who came, the better she liked it. If the hitching rack and
barnyard were full on Sunday she just beamed. If the sermon
pleased her, she invited more. That morning she was feeling so
good she asked seventeen; and as she only had dressed six
chickens--third table, backs and ham, for me as usual; but when
the prospects were as now, I always managed to coax a few
gizzards from Candace; she didn't dare give me livers--they were
counted. Almost everyone in the church was the happiest that
morning they had been in years. When the preacher came, he
breathed it from the air, and it worked on him so he preached the
best sermon he ever had, and never knew that Leon made him do it.

Maybe after all it's a good thing to tell people about their
meanness and give them a stirring up once in a while.

CHAPTER III

Mr. Pryor's Door

            "Grief will be joy if on its edge
             Fall soft that holiest ray,
             Joy will be grief if no faint pledge
             Be there of heavenly day."

Have Sally and Peter said anything about getting married yet?"
asked my big sister Lucy of mother. Lucy was home on a visit.
She was bathing her baby and mother was sewing.

"Not a word!"

"Are they engaged?"

"Sally hasn't mentioned it."

"Well, can't you find out?"

"How could I?" asked mother.

"Why, watch them a little and see how they act when they are
together. If he kisses her when he leaves, of course they are
engaged."

"It would be best to wait until Sally tells me," laughed mother.

I heard this from the back steps. Neither mother nor Lucy knew I
was there. I went in to see if they would let me take the baby.
Of course they wouldn't! Mother took it herself. She was
rocking, and softly singing my Dutch song that I loved best; I
can't spell it, but it sounds like this:

            "Trus, trus, trill;
             Der power rid der fill,
             Fill sphring aveck,
             Plodschlicter power in der dreck."

Once I asked mother to sing it in English, and she couldn't
because it didn't rhyme that way and the words wouldn't fit the
notes; it was just, "Trot, trot, trot, a boy rode a colt. The
colt sprang aside; down went the boy in the dirt."

"Aw, don't sing my song to that little red, pug-nosed bald-head!"
I said.

Really, it was a very nice baby; I only said that because I
wanted to hold it, and mother wouldn't give it up. I tried to
coax May to the dam snake hunting, but she couldn't go, so I had
to amuse myself. I had a doll, but I never played with it except
when I was dressed up on Sunday. Anyway, what's the use of a
doll when there's a live baby in the house? I didn't care much
for my playhouse since I had seen one so much finer that Laddie
had made for the Princess. Of course I knew moss wouldn't take
root in our orchard as it did in the woods, neither would willow
cuttings or the red flowers. Finally, I decided to go hunting.
I went into the garden and gathered every ripe touch-me-not pod I
could find, and all the portulaca. Then I stripped the tiger
lilies of each little black ball at the bases of the leaves, and
took all the four o'clock seed there was. Then I got my biggest
alder popgun and started up the road toward Sarah Hood's.

I was going along singing a little verse; it wasn't Dutch either;
the old baby could have that if it wanted it. Soon as I got from
sight of the house I made a powderhorn of a curled leaf, loaded
my gun with portulaca powder, rammed in a tiger lily bullet, laid
the weapon across my shoulder, and stepped high and lightly as
Laddie does when he's in the Big Woods hunting for squirrel. It
must have been my own singing--I am rather good at hearing
things, but I never noticed a sound that time, until a voice like
a rusty saw said: "Good morning, Nimrod!"

I sprang from the soft dust and landed among the dog fennel of a
fence corner, in a flying leap. Then I looked. It was the
Princess' father, tall, and gray, and grim, riding a big black
horse that seemed as if it had been curried with the fine comb
and brushed with the grease rag.

"Good morning!" I said when I could speak.

"Am I correct in the surmise that you are on the chase with a
popgun?" he asked politely.

"Yes sir," I answered, getting my breath the best I could.

It came easier after I noticed he didn't seem to be angry about
anything.

"Where is your hunting ground, and what game are you after?" he
asked gravely.

"You can see the great African jungle over there. I am going to
hunt for lions and tigers."

You always must answer politely any one who speaks to you; and
you get soundly thrashed, at least at our house, if you don't be
politest of all to an older person especially with white hair.
Father is extremely particular about white hair. It is a "crown
of glory," when it is found in the way of the Lord. Mahlon Pryor
had enough crown of glory for three men, but maybe his wasn't
exactly glory, because he wasn't in the way of the Lord. He was
in a way of his own. He must have had much confidence in
himself. At our house we would rather trust in the Lord. I only
told him about the lions and tigers because he asked me, and that
was the way I played. But you should have heard him laugh. You
wouldn't have supposed to see him that he could.

"Umph!" he said at last. "I am a little curious about your
ammunition. Just how to you bring down your prey?"

"I use portulaca powder and tiger lily bullets on the tigers, and
four o'clocks on the lions," I said.

You could have heard him a mile, dried up as he was.

"I used to wear a red coat and ride to the hounds fox hunting,"
he said. "It's great sport. Won't you take me with you to the
jungle?"

I didn't want him in the least, but if any one older asks right
out to go with you, what can you do? I am going to tell several
things you won't believe, and this is one of them: He got off
his horse, tied it to the fence, and climbed over after me. He
went on asking questions and of course I had to tell him. Most
of what he wanted to know, his people should have taught him
before he was ten years old, but father says they do things
differently in England.

"There doesn't seem to be many trees in the jungle."

"Well, there's one, and it's about the most important on our
land," I told him. "Father wouldn't cut it down for a farm. You
see that little dark bag nearly as big as your fist, swinging out
there on that limb? Well, every spring one of these birds,
yellow as orange peel, with velvet black wings, weaves a nest
like that, and over on that big branch, high up, one just as
bright red as the other is yellow, and the same black wings,
builds a cradle for his babies. Father says a red bird and a
yellow one keeping house in the same tree is the biggest thing
that ever happened in our family. They come every year and that
is their tree. I believe father would shoot any one who drove
them away."

"Your father is a gunner also?" he asked, and I thought he was
laughing to himself.

"He's enough of a gunner to bring mother in a wagon from
Pennsylvania all the way here, and he kept wolves, bears,
Indians, and Gypsies from her, and shot things for food. Yes
sir, my father can shoot if he wants to, better than any of our
family except Laddie."

"And does Laddie shoot well?"

"Laddie does everything well," I answered proudly. "He won't try
to do anything at all, until he practises so he can do it well."

"Score one for Laddie," he said in a queer voice.

"Are you in a hurry about the lions and tigers?"

"Not at all," he answered.

"Well, here I always stop and let Governor Oglesby go swimming,"
I said.

Mr. Mahlon Pryor sat on the bank of our Little Creek, took off
his hat and shook back his hair as if the wind felt good on his
forehead. I fished Dick Oglesby from the ammunition in my apron
pocket, and held him toward the cross old man, and he wasn't
cross at all. It's funny how you come to get such wrong ideas
about people.

"My big married sister who lives in Westchester sent him to me
last Christmas," I explained. "I have another doll, great big,
with a Scotch plaid dress made from pieces of mine, but I only
play with her on Sunday when I dare not do much else. I like
Dick the best because he fits my apron pocket. Father wanted me
to change his name and call him Oliver P. Morton, after a friend
of his, but I told him this doll had to be called by the name he
came with, and if he wanted me to have one named for his friend,
to get it, and I'd play with it."

"What did he do?"

"He didn't want one named Morton that much."

Mr. Pryor took Dick Oglesby in his fingers and looked at his
curly black hair and blue eyes, his chubby outstretched arms,
like a baby when it wants you to take it, and his plump little
feet and the white shirt with red stripes all a piece of him as
he was made, and said: "The honourable governor of our sister
state seems a little weighty; I am at a loss to understand how he
swims."

"It's a new way," I said. "He just stands still and the water
swims around him. It's very easy for him."

Then I carried Dick to the water, waded in and stood him against
a stone. Something funny happened instantly. It always did. I
found it out one day when I got some apple butter on the governor
giving him a bite of my bread, and put him in the wash bowl to
soak. He was two and a half inches tall; but the minute you
stood him in water he went down to about half that height and
spread out to twice his size around. You should have heard Mr.
Pryor.

"If you will lie on the bank and watch you'll have more to laugh
at than that," I promised.

He lay down and never paid the least attention to his clothes.
Pretty soon a little chub fish came swimming around to make
friends with Governor Oglesby, and then a shiner and some more
chub. They nibbled at his hands and toes, and then went flashing
away, and from under the stone came backing a big crayfish and
seized the governor by the leg and started dragging him, so I had
to jump in and stop it. I took a shot at the crayfish with the
tiger ammunition and then loaded for lions.

We went on until the marsh became a thicket of cattails,
bulrushes, willow bushes, and blue flags; then I found a path
where the lions left the jungle, hid Mr. Pryor and told him he
must be very still or they wouldn't come. At last I heard one.
I touched Mr. Pryor's sleeve to warn him to keep his eyes on the
trail. Pretty soon the lion came in sight. Really it was only a
little gray rabbit hopping along, but when it was opposite us, I
pinged it in the side, it jumped up and turned a somersault with
surprise, and squealed a funny little squeal,--well, I wondered
if Mr. Pryor's people didn't hear him, and think he had gone
crazy as Paddy Ryan. I never did hear any one laugh so. I
thought if he enjoyed it like that, I'd let him shoot one. I do
May sometimes; so we went to another place I knew where there was
a tiger's den, and I loaded with tiger lily bullets, gave him the
gun and showed him where to aim. After we had waited a long time
out came a muskrat, and started for the river. I looked to see
why Mr. Pryor didn't shoot, and there he was gazing at it as if a
snake had charmed him; his hands shaking a little, his cheeks
almost red, his eyes very bright.

"Shoot!" I whispered. "It won't stay all day!"

He forgot how to push the ramrod like I showed him, so he reached
out and tried to hit it with the gun.

"Don't do that!" I said.

"But it's getting away! It's getting away!" he cried.

"Well, what if it is?" I asked, half provoked. "Do you suppose I
really would hurt a poor little muskrat? Maybe it has six hungry
babies in its home."

"Oh THAT way," he said, but he kept looking at it, so he made me
think if I hadn't been there, he would have thrown a stone or hit
it with a stick. It is perfectly wonderful about how some men
can't get along without killing things, such little bits of
helpless creatures too. I thought he'd better be got from the
jungle, so I invited him to see the place at the foot of the hill
below our orchard where some men thought they had discovered gold
before the war. They had been to California in '49, and although
they didn't come home with millions, or anything else except sick
and tired, they thought they had learned enough about gold to
know it when they saw it.

I told him about it and he was interested and anxious to see the
place. If there had been a shovel, I am quite sure he would have
gone to digging. He kept poking around with his boot toe, and he
said maybe the yokels didn't look good.

He said our meadow was a beautiful place, and when he praised the
creek I told him about the wild ducks, and he laughed again. He
didn't seem to be the same man when we went back to the road. I
pulled some sweet marsh grass and gave his horse bites, so Mr.
Pryor asked if I liked animals. I said I loved horses, Laddie's
best of all. He asked about it and I told him.

"Hasn't your father but one thoroughbred?"

"Father hasn't any," I said. "Flos really belongs to Laddie, and
we are mighty glad he has her."

"You should have one soon, yourself," he said.

"Well, if the rest of them will hurry up and marry off, so the
expenses won't be so heavy, maybe I can."

"How many of you are there?" he asked.

"Only twelve," I said.

He looked down the road at our house.

"Do you mean to tell me you have twelve children there?" he
inquired.

"Oh no!" I answered. "Some of the big boys have gone into
business in the cities around, and some of the girls are married.

Mother says she has only to show her girls in the cities to have
them snapped up like hot cakes."

"I fancy that is the truth," he said. "I've passed the one who
rides the little black pony and she is a picture. A fine,
healthy, sensible-appearing young woman!"

"I don't think she's as pretty as your girl," I said.

"Perhaps I don't either," he replied, smiling at me.

Then he mounted his horse.

"I don't remember that I ever have passed that house," he said,
"without hearing some one singing. Does it go on all the time?"

"Yes, unless mother is sick."

"And what is it all about?"

"Oh just joy! Gladness that we are alive, that we have things to
do that we like, and praising the Lord."

"Umph!" said Mr. Pryor.

"It's just letting out what our hearts are full of," I told him.
"Don't you know that song:

            "`Tis the old time religion
              And you cannot keep it still?'"

He shook his head.

"It's an awful nice song," I explained. "After it sings about
all the other things religion is good for, there is one line that
says: `IT'S GOOD FOR THOSE IN TROUBLE.'"

I looked at him straight and hard, but he only turned white and
seemed sick.

"So?" said Mr. Pryor. "Well, thank you for the most interesting
morning I've had this side England. I should be delighted if you
would come and hunt lions in my woods with me some time."

"Oh, do you open the door to children?"

"Certainly we open the door to children," he said, and as I live,
he looked so sad I couldn't help thinking he was sorry to close
it against any one. A mystery is the dreadfulest thing.

"Then if children don't matter, maybe I can come lion-hunting
some time with the Princess, after she has made the visit at our
house she said she would."

"Indeed! I hadn't been informed that my daughter contemplated
visiting your house," he said. "When was it arranged?"

"My mother invited her last Sunday."

I didn't like the way he said: "O-o-o-h!"  Some way it seemed
insulting to my mother.

"She did it to please me," I said. "There was a Fairy Princess
told me the other day that your girl felt like a stranger, and
that to be a stranger was the hardest thing in all the world.
She sat a little way from the others, and she looked so lonely.
I pulled my mother's sleeve and led her to your girl and made
them shake hands, and then mother HAD to ask her to come to
dinner with us. She always invites every one she meets coming
down the aisle; she couldn't help asking your girl, too. She
said she was expected at home, but she'd come some day and get
acquainted. She needn't if you object. My mother only asked her
because she thought she was lonely, and maybe she wanted to
come."

He sat there staring straight ahead and he seemed to grow whiter,
and older, and colder every minute.

"Possibly she is lonely," he said at last. "This isn't much like
the life she left. Perhaps she does feel herself a stranger. It
was very kind of your mother to invite her. If she wants to
come, I shall make no objections."

"No, but my father will," I said.

He straightened up as if something had hit him.
"Why will he object?"

"On account of what you said about God at our house," I told him.
"And then, too, father's people were from England, and he says
real Englishmen have their doors wide open, and welcome people
who offer friendliness."

Mr. Pryor hit his horse an awful blow. It reared and went racing
up the road until I thought it was running away. I could see I
had made him angry enough to burst. Mother always tells me not
to repeat things; but I'm not smart enough to know what to say,
so I don't see what is left but to tell what mother, or father,
or Laddie says when grown people ask me questions.

I went home, but every one was too busy even to look at me, so I
took Bobby under my arm, hunted father, and told him all about
the morning. I wondered what he would think. I never found out.

He wouldn't say anything, so Bobby and I went across the lane,
and climbed the gate into the orchard to see if Hezekiah were
there and wanted to fight. He hadn't time to fight Bobby because
he was busy chasing every wild jay from our orchard. By the time
he got that done, he was tired, so he came hopping along on
branches above us as Bobby and I went down the west fence beside
the lane.

If I had been compelled to choose the side of our orchard I liked
best, I don't know which I would have selected. The west side--
that is, the one behind the dooryard--was running over with
interesting things. Two gates opened into it, one from near each
corner of the yard. Between these there was quite a wide level
space, where mother fed the big chickens and kept the hens in
coops with little ones. She had to have them close enough that
the big hawks were afraid to come to earth, or they would take
more chickens than they could pay for, by cleaning rabbits,
snakes, and mice from the fields. Then came a double row of
prize peach trees; rare fruit that mother canned to take to
county fairs. One bore big, white freestones, and around the
seed they were pink as a rose. One was a white cling, and one
was yellow. There was a yellow freestone as big as a young sun,
and as golden, and the queerest of all was a cling purple as a
beet.

Sometimes father read about the hairs of the head being numbered,
because we were so precious in the sight of the Almighty. Mother
was just as particular with her purple tree; every peach on it
was counted, and if we found one on the ground, we had to carry
it to her, because it MIGHT be sound enough to can or spice for a
fair, or she had promised the seed to some one halfway across the
state. At each end of the peach row was an enormous big pear
tree; not far from one the chicken house stood on the path to the
barn, and beside the other the smoke house with the dog kennel a
yard away. Father said there was a distinct relationship between
a smoke house and a dog kennel, and bulldogs were best. Just at
present we were out of bulldogs, but Jones, Jenkins and Co. could
make as much noise as any dog you ever heard. On the left grew
the plum trees all the way to the south fence, and I think there
was one of every kind in the fruit catalogues. Father spent
hours pruning, grafting, and fertilizing them. He said they
required twice as much work as peaches.

Around the other sides of the orchard were two rows of peach
trees of every variety; but one cling on the north was just a
little the best of any, and we might eat all we wanted from any
tree we liked, after father tested them and said: "Peaches are
ripe!"  In the middle were the apple; selected trees, planted,
trimmed, and cultivated like human beings. The apples were so
big and fine they were picked by hand, wrapped in paper, packed
in barrels, and all we could not use at home went to J. B. White
in Fort Wayne for the biggest fruit house in the state. My! but
father was proud! He always packed especially fine ones for Mr.
White's family. He said he liked him, because he was a real
sandy Scotchman, who knew when an apple was right, and wasn't
afraid to say so.

On the south side of the orchard there was the earliest June
apple tree. The apples were small, bright red with yellow
stripes, crisp, juicy and sweet enough to be just right. The
tree was very large, and so heavy it leaned far to the northeast.

This sounds like make-believe, but it's gospel truth. Almost two
feet from the ground there was a big round growth, the size of a
hash bowl. The tree must have been hurt when very small and the
place enlarged with the trunk. Now it made a grand step. If you
understood that no one could keep from running the last few rods
from the tree, then figured on the help to be had from this step,
you could see how we went up it like squirrels. All the bark on
the south side was worn away and the trunk was smooth and shiny.
The birds loved to nest among the branches, and under the peach
tree in the fence corner opposite was a big bed of my mother's
favourite wild flowers, blue-eyed Marys. They had dainty stems
from six to eight inches high and delicate heads of bloom made up
of little flowers, two petals up, blue, two turning down, white.
Perhaps you don't know about anything prettier than that. There
were maiden-hair ferns among them too! and the biggest lichens
you ever saw on the fence, while in the hollow of a rotten rail a
little chippy bird always built a hair nest. She got the hairs
at our barn, for most of them were gray from our carriage horses,
Ned and Jo. All down that side of the orchard the fence corners
were filled with long grass and wild flowers, a few alder bushes
left to furnish berries for the birds, and wild roses for us, to
keep their beauty impressed on us, father said.

The east end ran along the brow of a hill so steep we coasted
down it on the big meat board all winter. The board was six
inches thick, two and a half feet wide, and six long. Father
said slipping over ice and snow gave it the good scouring it
needed, and it was thick enough to last all our lives, so we
might play with it as we pleased. At least seven of us could go
skimming down that hill and halfway across the meadow on it. In
the very place we slid across, in summer lay the cowslip bed.
The world is full of beautiful spots, but I doubt if any of them
ever were prettier than that. Father called it swale. We didn't
sink deep, but all summer there was water standing there. The
grass was long and very sweet, there were ferns and a few calamus
flowers, and there must have been an acre of cowslips--cowslips
with big-veined, heartshaped, green leaves, and large pale gold
flowers. I used to sit on the top rail of that orchard fence and
look down at them, and try to figure out what God was thinking
when He created them, and I wished that I might have been where I
could watch His face as He worked.

Halfway across the east side was a gully where Leon and I found
the Underground Station, and from any place along the north you
looked, you saw the Little Creek and the marsh. At the same time
the cowslips were most golden, the marsh was blue with flags,
pink with smart weed, white and yellow with dodder, yellow with
marsh buttercups having ragged frosty leaves, while the yellow
and the red birds flashed above it, the red crying, "Chip,"
"Chip," in short, sharp notes, the yellow spilling music all over
the marsh while on wing.

It would take a whole book to describe the butterflies; once in a
while you scared up a big, wonderful moth, large as a sparrow;
and the orchard was alive with doves, thrushes, catbirds,
bluebirds, vireos, and orioles. When you climbed the fence, or a
tree, and kept quiet, and heard the music and studied the
pictures, it made you feel as if you had to put it into words. I
often had meeting all by myself, unless Bobby and Hezekiah were
along, and I tried to tell God what I thought about things.
Probably He was so busy making more birds and flowers for other
worlds, He never heard me; but I didn't say anything
disrespectful at all, so it made no difference if He did listen.
It just seemed as if I must tell what I thought, and I felt
better, not so full and restless after I had finished.

All of us were alike about that. At that minute I knew mother
was humming, as she did a dozen times a day:

            "I think when I read that sweet story of old,
                 When Jesus was here among men
             How He called little children as lambs to His fold,
                 I should like to have been with Him then."

Lucy would be rocking her baby and singing, "Hush, my dear, lie
still and slumber."  Candace's favourite she made up about her
man who had been killed in the war, when they had been married
only six weeks, which hadn't given her time to grow tired of him
if he hadn't been "all her fancy painted."  She arranged the
words like "Ben Battle was a soldier bold," and she sang them to
suit herself, and cried every single minute:

            "They wrapped him in his uniform,
                 They laid him in the tomb,
             My aching heart I thought 'twould break,
                 But such was my sad doom."

Candace just loved that song. She sang it all the time. Leon
said our pie always tasted salty from her tears, and he'd take a
bite and smile at her sweetly and say: "How UNIFORM you get your
pie, Candace!"

May's favourite was "Joy Bells."  Father would be whispering over
to himself the speech he was preparing to make at the next
prayer-meeting. We never could learn his speeches, because he
read and studied so much it kept his head so full, he made a new
one every time. You could hear Laddie's deep bass booming the
"Bedouin Love Song" for a mile; this minute it came rolling
across the corn:

            "Open the door of thy heart,
                 And open thy chamber door,
         And my kisses shall teach thy lips
                 The love that shall fade no more
                     Till the sun grows cold,
                     And the Stars are old,
                     And the leaves of the Judgment
                             Book unfold!"

I don't know how the Princess stood it. If he had been singing
that song where I could hear it and I had known it was about me,
as she must have known he meant her, I couldn't have kept my arms
from around his neck. Over in the barn Leon was singing:

            "A life on the ocean wave,
             A home on the rolling deep,
             Where codfish waggle their tails
             'Mid tadpoles two feet deep."

The minute he finished, he would begin reciting "Marco Bozzaris,"
and you could be sure that he would reach the last line only to
commence on the speech of "Logan, Chief of the Mingoes," or any
one of the fifty others. He could make your hair stand a little
straighter than any one else; the best teachers we ever had, or
even Laddie, couldn't make you shivery and creepy as he could.
Because all of us kept going like that every day, people couldn't
pass without hearing, so THAT was what Mr. Pryor meant.

I had a pulpit in the southeast corner of the orchard. I liked
that place best of all because from it you could see two sides at
once. The very first little, old log cabin that had been on our
land, the one my father and mother moved into, had stood in that
corner. It was all gone now; but a flowerbed of tiny, purple
iris, not so tall as the grass, spread there, and some striped
grass in the shadiest places, and among the flowers a lark
brooded every spring. In the fence corner mother's big white
turkey hen always nested. To protect her from rain and too hot
sun, father had slipped some boards between the rails about three
feet from the ground. After the turkey left, that was my pulpit.

I stood there and used the top of the fence for my railing.

The little flags and all the orchard and birds were behind me; on
one hand was the broad, grassy meadow with the creek running so
swiftly, I could hear it, and the breath of the cowslips came up
the hill. Straight in front was the lane running down from the
barn, crossing the creek and spreading into the woods pasture,
where the water ran wider and yet swifter, big forest trees grew,
and bushes of berries, pawpaws, willow, everything ever found in
an Indiana thicket; grass under foot, and many wild flowers and
ferns wherever the cattle and horses didn't trample them, and
bigger, wilder birds, many having names I didn't know. On the
left, across the lane, was a large cornfield, with trees here and
there, and down the valley I could see the Big Creek coming from
the west, the Big Hill with the church on top, and always the
white gravestones around it. Always too there was the sky
overhead, often with clouds banked until you felt if you only
could reach them, you could climb straight to the gates that
father was so fond of singing about sweeping through. Mostly
there was a big hawk or a turkey buzzard hanging among them, just
to show us that we were not so much, and that we couldn't shoot
them, unless they chose to come down and give us a chance.

I set Bobby and Hezekiah on the fence and stood between them.
"We will open service this morning by singing the thirty-fifth
hymn," I said. "Sister Dover, will you pitch the tune?"

Then I made my voice high and squeally like hers and sang:

            "Come ye that love the Lord,
             And let your joys be known,
             Join in a song of sweet accord,
             And thus surround the throne."

I sang all of it and then said: "Brother Hastings, will you lead
us in prayer?"

Then I knelt down, and prayed Brother Hastings' prayer. I could
have repeated any one of a dozen of the prayers the men of our
church prayed, but I liked Brother Hastings' best, because it had
the biggest words in it. I loved words that filled your mouth,
and sounded as if you were used to books. It began sort of sing-
songy and measured in stops, like a poetry piece:

        "Our Heavenly Father: We come before Thee this morning,
         Humble worms of the dust, imploring thy blessing.
         We beseech Thee to forgive our transgressions,
         Heal our backsliding, and love us freely."

Sometimes from there on it changed a little, but it always began
and ended exactly the same way. Father said Brother Hastings was
powerful in prayer, but he did wish he'd leave out the "worms of
the dust."  He said we were not "worms of the dust"; we were
reasoning, progressive, inventive men and women. He said a worm
would never be anything except a worm, but we could study and
improve ourselves, help others, make great machines, paint
pictures, write books, and go to an extent that must almost amaze
the Almighty Himself. He said that if Brother Hastings had done
more plowing in his time, and had a little closer acquaintance
with worms, he wouldn't be so ready to call himself and every one
else a worm. Now if you are talking about cutworms or fishworms,
father is right. But there is that place where--"Charles his
heel had raised, upon the humble worm to tread," and the worm
lifted up its voice and spake thus to Charles:

            "I know I'm now among the things
                 Uncomely to your sight,
             But, by and by, on splendid wings,
                 You'll see me high and bright."

Now I'll bet a cent THAT is the kind of worm Brother Hastings
said we were. I must speak to father about it. I don't want him
to be mistaken; and I really think he is about worms. Of course
he knows the kind that have wings and fly. Brother Hastings
mixed him up by saying "worms of the dust" when he should have
said worms of the leaves. Those that go into little round cases
in earth or spin cocoons on trees always live on leaves, and many
of them rear the head, having large horns, and wave it in a
manner far from humble. So father and Brother Hastings were both
partly right, and partly wrong.

When the prayer came to a close, where every one always said
"Amen," I punched Bobby and whispered, "Crow, Bobby, crow!" and
he stood up and brought it out strong, like he always did when I
told him. I had to stop the service to feed him a little wheat,
to pay him for crowing; but as no one was there except us, that
didn't matter. Then Hezekiah crowded over for some, so I had to
pretend I was Mrs. Daniels feeding her children caraway cake,
like she always did in meeting. If I had been the mother of
children who couldn't have gone without things to eat in church
I'd have kept them at home. Mrs. Daniels always had the carpet
greasy with cake crumbs wherever she sat, and mother didn't think
the Lord liked a dirty church any more than we would have wanted
a mussy house. When I had Bobby and Hezekiah settled I took my
text from my head, because I didn't know the meeting feeling was
coming on me when I started, and I had brought no Bible along.

"Blessed are all men, but most blessed are they who hold their
tempers."  I had to stroke Bobby a little and pat Hezekiah once
in a while, to keep them from flying down and fighting, but
mostly I could give my attention to my sermon.

"We have only to look around us this morning to see that all men
are blessed," I said. "The sky is big enough to cover every one.

If the sun gets too hot, there are trees for shade or the clouds
come up for a while. If the earth becomes too dry, it always
rains before it is everlastingly too late. There are birds
enough to sing for every one, butterflies enough to go around,
and so many flowers we can't always keep the cattle and horses
from tramping down and even devouring beautiful ones, like Daniel
thought the lions would devour him--but they didn't. Wouldn't it
be a good idea, O Lord, for You to shut the cows' mouths and save
the cowslips also; they may not be worth as much as a man, but
they are lots better looking, and they make fine greens. It
doesn't seem right for cows to eat flowers; but maybe it is as
right for them as it is for us. The best way would be for our
cattle to do like that piece about the cow in the meadow exactly
the same as ours:

            "`And through it ran a little brook,
                 Where oft the cows would drink,
             And then lie down among the flowers,
                 That grew upon the brink.'

"You notice, O Lord, the cows did not eat the flowers in this
instance; they merely rested among them, and goodness knows,
that's enough for any cow. They had better done like the next
verse, where it says:
            "`They like to lie beneath the trees,
                 All shaded by the boughs,
             Whene'er the noontide heat came on:
                 Sure, they were happy cows!'

"Now, O Lord, this plainly teaches that if cows are happy, men
should be much more so, for like the cows, they have all Thou
canst do for them, and all they can do for themselves, besides.
So every man is blessed, because Thy bounty has provided all
these things for him, without money and without price. If some
men are not so blessed as others, it is their own fault, and not
Yours. You made the earth, and all that is therein, and You made
the men. Of course You had to make men different, so each woman
can tell which one belongs to her; but I believe it would have
been a good idea while You were at it, if You would have made all
of them enough alike that they would all work. Perhaps it isn't
polite of me to ask more of You than You saw fit to do; and then,
again, it may be that there are some things impossible, even to
You. If there is anything at all, seems as if making Isaac
Thomas work would be it. Father says that man would rather
starve and see his wife and children hungry than to take off his
coat, roll up his sleeves, and plow corn; so it was good enough
for him when Leon said, `Go to the ant, thou sluggard,' right at
him. So, of course, Isaac is not so blessed as some men, because
he won't work, and thus he never knows whether he's going to have
a big dinner on Sunday, until after some one asks him, because he
looks so empty. Mother thinks it isn't fair to feed Isaac and
send him home with his stomach full, while Mandy and the babies
are sick and hungry. But Isaac is some blessed, because he has
religion and gets real happy, and sings, and shouts, and he's
going to Heaven when he dies. He must wish he'd go soon,
especially in winter.

"There are men who do not have even this blessing, and to make
things worse, O Lord, they get mad as fire and hit their
horses, and look like all possessed. The words of my text this
morning apply especially to a man who has all the blessings Thou
hast showered and flowered upon men who work, or whose people
worked and left them so much money they don't need to, and yet a
sadder face I never saw, or a crosser one. He looks like he was
going to hit people, and he does hit his horse an awful crack.
It's no way to hit a horse, not even if it balks, because it
can't hit back, and it's a cowardly thing to do. If you rub
their ears and talk to them, they come quicker, O our Heavenly
Father, and if you hit them just because you are mad, it's a
bigger sin yet.

"No man is nearly so blessed as he might be who goes around
looking killed with grief when he should cheer up, no matter what
ails him; and who shuts up his door and says his wife is sick
when she isn't, and who scowls at every one, when he can be real
pleasant if he likes, as some in Divine Presence can testify. So
we are going to beseech Thee, O Lord, to lay Thy mighty hand upon
the man who got mad this beautiful morning and make him feel Thy
might, until he will know for himself and not another, that You
are not a myth. Teach him to have a pleasant countenance, an
open door, and to hold his temper. Help him to come over to our
house and be friendly with all his neighbours, and get all the
blessings You have provided for every one; but please don't make
him have any more trouble than he has now, for if You do, You'll
surely kill him. Have patience with him, and have mercy on him,
O Lord! Let us pray."

That time I prayed myself. I looked into the sky just as
straight and as far as I could see, and if I had any influence at
all, I used it then. Right out loud, I just begged the Lord to
get after Mr. Pryor and make him behave like other people, and
let the Princess come to our house, and for him to come too;
because I liked him heaps when he was lion hunting, and I wanted
to go with him again the worst way. I had seen him sail right
over the fences on his big black horse, and when he did it in
England, wearing a red coat, and the dogs flew over thick around
him, it must have looked grand, but it was mighty hard on the
fox. I do hope it got away. Anyway, I prayed as hard as I
could, and every time I said the strongest thing I knew, I
punched Bobby to crow, and he never came out stronger. Then I
was Sister Dover and started: "Oh come let us gather at the
fountain, the fountain that never goes dry."

Just as I was going to pronounce the benediction like father, I
heard something, so I looked around, and there went he and Dr.
Fenner. They were going toward the house, and yet, they hadn't
passed me. I was not scared, because I knew no one was sick.
Dr. Fenner always stopped when he passed, if he had a minute, and
if he hadn't, mother sent some one to the gate with buttermilk
and slices of bread and butter, and jelly an inch thick. When a
meal was almost cooked she heaped some on a plate and he ate as
he drove and left the plate next time he passed. Often he was so
dead tired, he was asleep in his buggy, and his old gray horse
always stopped at our gate.

I ended with "Amen," because I wanted to know if they had been
listening; so I climbed the fence, ran down the lane behind the
bushes, and hid a minute. Sure enough they had! I suppose I had
been so in earnest I hadn't heard a sound, but it's a wonder
Hezekiah hadn't told me. He was always seeing something to make
danger signals about. He never let me run on a snake, or a hawk
get one of the chickens, or Paddy Ryan come too close. I only
wanted to know if they had gone and listened, and then I intended
to run straight back to Bobby and Hezekiah; but they stopped
under the greening apple tree, and what they said was so
interesting I waited longer than I should, because it's about the
worst thing you can do to listen when older people don't know.
They were talking about me.

"I can't account for her," said father.

"I can!" said Dr. Fenner. "She is the only child I ever have had
in my practice who managed to reach earth as all children should.
During the impressionable stage, no one expected her, so there
was no time spent in worrying, fretting, and discontent. I don't
mean that these things were customary with Ruth. No woman ever
accepted motherhood in a more beautiful spirit; but if she would
have protested at any time, it would have been then. Instead,
she lived happily, naturally, and enjoyed herself as she never
had before. She was in the fields, the woods, and the garden
constantly, which accounts for this child's outdoor tendencies.
Then you must remember that both of you were at top notch
intellectually, and physically, fully matured. She had the
benefit of ripened minds, and at a time when every faculty
recently had been stirred by the excitement and suffering of the
war. Oh, you can account for her easily enough, but I don't know
what on earth you are going to do with her. You'll have to go
careful, Paul. I warn you she will not be like the others."

"We realize that. Mother says she doubts if she can ever teach
her to sew and become a housewife."

"She isn't cut out for a seamstress or a housewife, Paul. Tell
Ruth not to try to force those things on her. Turn her loose out
of doors; give her good books, and leave her alone. You won't be
disappointed in the woman who evolves."

Right there I realized what I was doing, and I turned and ran for
the pulpit with all my might. I could always repeat things, but
I couldn't see much sense to the first part of that; the last was
as plain as the nose on your face. Dr. Fenner said they mustn't
force me to sew, and do housework; and mother didn't mind the
Almighty any better than she did the doctor. There was nothing
in this world I disliked so much as being kept indoors, and made
to hem cap and apron strings so particularly that I had to count
the number of threads between every stitch, and in each stitch,
so that I got all of them just exactly even. I liked carpet rags
a little better, because I didn't have to be so particular about
stitches, and I always picked out all the bright, pretty colours.

Mother said she could follow my work all over the floor by the
bright spots. Perhaps if I were not to be kept in the house I
wouldn't have to sew any more. That made me so happy I wondered
if I couldn't stretch out my arms and wave them and fly. I sat
on the pulpit wishing I had feathers. It made me pretty blue to
have to stay on the ground all the time, when I wanted to be
sailing up among the clouds with the turkey buzzards. It called
to my mind that place in McGuffey's Fifth where it says:

            "Sweet bird, thy bower is ever green,
             Thy sky is ever clear;
             Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
             No winter in thy year."

Of course, I never heard a turkey buzzard sing. Laddie said they
couldn't; but that didn't prove it. He said half the members of
our church couldn't sing, but they DID; and when all of them were
going at the tops of their voices, it was just grand. So maybe
the turkey buzzard could sing if it wanted to; seemed as if it
should, if Isaac Thomas could; and anyway, it was the next verse
I was thinking most about:

            "Oh, could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
             We'd make with joyful wing,
             Our annual visit o'er the globe,
             Companions of the spring."

That was so exciting I thought I'd just try it, so I stood on the
top rail, spread my arms, waved them, and started. I was bumped
in fifty places when I rolled into the cowslip bed at the foot of
the steep hill, for stones stuck out all over the side of it, and
I felt pretty mean as I climbed back to the pulpit.

The only consolation I had was what Dr. Fenner had said. That
would be the greatest possible help in managing father or mother.

I was undecided about whether I would go to school, or not. Must
be perfectly dreadful to dress like for church, and sit still in
a stuffy little room, and do your "abs," and "bes," and "bis,"
and "bos," all day long. I could spell quite well without
looking at a schoolhouse, and read too. I was wondering if I
ever would go at all, when I thought of something else. Dr.
Fenner had said to give me plenty of good books. I was wild for
some that were already promised me. Well, what would they amount
to if I couldn't understand them when I got them? THAT seemed to
make it sure I would be compelled to go to school until I learned
enough to understand what the books contained about birds,
flowers, and moths, anyway; and perhaps there would be some
having Fairies in them. Of course those would be interesting.

I never hated doing anything so badly, in all my life, but I
could see, with no one to tell me, that I had put it off as long
as I dared. I would just have to start school when Leon and May
went in September. Tilly Baher, who lived across the swamp near
Sarah Hood, had gone two winters already, and she was only a year
older, and not half my size. I stood on the pulpit and looked a
long time in every direction, into the sky the longest of all.
It was settled. I must go; I might as well start and have it
over. I couldn't look anywhere, right there at home, and not see
more things I didn't know about than I did. When mother showed
me in the city, I wouldn't be snapped up like hot cakes; I'd be a
blockhead no one would have. It made me so vexed to think I had
to go, I set Hezekiah on my shoulder, took Bobby under my arm,
and went to the house. On the way, I made up my mind that I
would ask again, very politely, to hold the little baby, and if
the rest of them went and pigged it up straight along, I'd pinch
it, if I got a chance.

CHAPTER IV

The Last Day in Eden

            "'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
              And coming events cast their shadows before."

Of course the baby was asleep and couldn't be touched; but there
was some excitement, anyway. Father had come from town with a
letter from the new school teacher, that said she would expect
him to meet her at the station next Saturday. Mother thought she
might as well get the room ready and let her stay at our house,
because we were most convenient, and it would be the best place
for her. She said that every time, and the teacher always stayed
with us. Really it was because father and mother wanted the
teacher where they could know as much as possible about what was
going on. Sally didn't like having her at all; she said with the
wedding coming, the teacher would be a nuisance. Shelley had
finished our school, and the Groveville high school, and instead
of attending college she was going to Chicago to study music.
She was so anxious over her dresses and getting started, she
didn't seem to think much about what was going to happen to us at
home; so she didn't care if Miss Amelia stayed at our house. May
said it would be best to have the teacher with us, because she
could help us with our lessons at home, and we could get ahead of
the others. May already had decided that she would be at the
head of her class when she finished school, and every time you
wanted her and couldn't find her, if you would look across the
foot of mother's bed, May would be there with a spelling book.
Once she had spelled down our school, when Laddie was not there.

Father had met Peter Dover in town, and he had said that he was
coming to see Sally, because he had something of especial
importance to tell her.

"Did he say what it was?" asked Sally.

"Only what I have told you," replied father.

Sally wanted to take the broom and sweep the parlour.

"It's clean as a ribbon," said mother.

"If you go in there, you'll wake the baby," said Lucy.

"Will it kill it if I do?" asked Sally.

"No, but it will make it cross as fire, so it will cry all the
time Peter is here," said Lucy.

"I'll be surprised if it doesn't scream every minute anyway,"
said Sally.

"I hope it will," said Lucy. "That will make Peter think a while
before he comes so often."

That made Sally so angry she couldn't speak, so she went out and
began killing chickens. I helped her catch them. They were so
used to me they would come right to my feet when I shelled corn.

"I'm going to kill three," said Sally. "I'm going to be sure we
have enough, but don't you tell until their heads are off."

While she was working on them mother came out and asked how many
she had, so Sally said three. Mother counted us and said that
wasn't enough; there would have to be four at least.

After she was gone Sally looked at me and said: "Well, for
land's sake!"

It was so funny she had to laugh, and by the time I caught the
fourth one, and began helping pick them, she was over being
provoked and we had lots of fun.

The minute I saw Peter Dover he made me think of something. I
rode his horse to the barn with Leon leading it. There we saw
Laddie.

"Guess what!" I cried.

"Never could!" laughed Laddie, giving Peter Dover's horse a slap
as it passed him on the way to a stall.

"Four chickens, ham, biscuit, and cake!" I announced.

"Is it a barbecue?" asked Laddie.

"No, the extra one is for the baby," said Leon. "Squally little
runt, I call it."

"It's a nice baby!" said Laddie.

"What do you know about it?" demanded Leon.

"Well, considering that I started with you, and have brought up
two others since, I am schooled in all there is to know," said
Laddie.

"Guess what else!" I cried.

"More?" said Laddie. "Out with it! Don't kill me with
suspense."

"Father is going to town Saturday to meet the new teacher and she
will stay at our house as usual."

Leon yelled and fell back in a manger, while Laddie held harness
oil to his nose.

"More!" cried Leon, grabbing the bottle.

"Are you sure?" asked Laddie of me earnestly.

"It's decided. Mother said so," I told him.

"Name of a black cat, why?" demanded Laddie.

"Mother said we were most convenient for the teacher."

"Aren't there enough of us?" asked Leon, straightening up
sniffing harness oil as if his life depended on it.

"Any unprejudiced person would probably say so to look in," said
Laddie.

"I'll bet she'll be sixty and a cat," said Leon. "Won't I have
fun with her?"

"Maybe so, maybe not!" said Laddie. "You can't always tell, for
sure. Remember your Alamo! You were going to have fun with the
teacher last year, but she had it with you."

Leon threw the oil bottle at him. Laddie caught it and set it on
the shelf.

"I don't understand," said Leon.

"I do," said Laddie dryly. "THIS is one reason."  He hit Peter
Dover's horse another slap.

"Maybe yes," said Leon.

"Shelley to music school, two."

"Yes," said Leon. "Peter Dovers are the greatest expense, and
Peter won't happen but once. Shelley will have at least two
years in school before it is her turn, and you come next,
anyway."

"Shut up!" cried Laddie.

"Thanky! Your orders shall be obeyed gladly."

He laid down the pitchfork, went outside, closed the door, and
latched it. Laddie called to him, but he ran to the house. When
Laddie and I finished our work, and his, and wanted to go, we had
to climb the stairs and leave through the front door on the
embankment.

"The monkey!" said Laddie, but he didn't get mad; he just
laughed.

The minute I stepped into the house and saw the parlour door
closed, I thought of that "something" again. I walked past it,
but couldn't hear anything. Of course mother wanted to know; and
she would be very thankful to me if I could tell her. I went out
the front door, and thought deeply on the situation. The windows
were wide open, but I was far below them and I could only hear a
sort of murmur. Why can't people speak up loud and plain,
anyway? Of course they would sit on the big haircloth sofa.
Didn't Leon call it the "sparking bench"? The hemlock tree would
be best. I climbed quieter than a cat, for they break bark and
make an awful scratching with their claws sometimes; my bare feet
were soundless. Up and up I went, slowly, for it was dreadfully
rough. They were not on the sofa. I could see plainly through
the needles. Then I saw the spruce would have been better, for
they were standing in front of the parlour door and Peter had one
hand on the knob. His other arm was around my sister Sally.
Breathlessly I leaned as far as I could, and watched.

"Father said he'd give me the money to buy a half interest, and
furnish a house nicely, if you said `yes,' Sally," said Peter.

Sally leaned back all pinksome and blushful, and while she
laughed at him she

            "Carelessly tossed off a curl
             That played on her delicate brow."

exactly like Mary Dow in McGuffey's Third.

"Well, what did I SAY?" she asked.

"Come to think of it, you didn't say anything."

Sally's face was all afire with dancing lights, and she laughed
the gayest little laugh.

"Are you so very sure of that, Peter?" she said.

"I'm not sure of anything," said Peter, "except that I am so
happy I could fly."

"Try it, fool!" I said to myself, deep in my throat.

Sally laughed again, and Peter took his other hand from the door
and put that arm around Sally too, and he drew her to him and
kissed her, the longest, hardest kiss I ever saw. I let go and
rolled, tumbled, slid, and scratched down the hemlock tree,
dropped from the last branch to the ground, and scampered around
the house. I reached the dining-room door when every one was
gathering for supper.

"Mother!" I cried. "Mother! Yes! They're engaged! He's
kissing her, mother! Yes, Lucy, they're engaged!"

I rushed in to tell all of them what they would be glad to know,
and if there didn't stand Peter and Sally! How they ever got
through that door, and across the sitting-room before me, I don't
understand. Sally made a dive at me, and I was so astonished I
forgot to run, so she caught me. She started for the wood house
with me, and mother followed. Sally turned at the door and she
was the whitest of anything you ever saw.

"This is my affair," she said. "I'll attend to this young lady."

"Very well," said mother, and as I live she turned and left me to
my sad fate, as it says in a story book we have. I wish when
people are going to punish me, they'd take a switch and strike
respectably, like mother does. This thing of having some one get
all over me, and not having an idea where I'm going to be hit, is
the worst punishment that I ever had. I'd been down the hill and
up the hemlock that day, anyway. I'd always been told Sally
didn't want me. She PROVED it right then. Finally she quit,
because she was too tired to strike again, so I crept among the
shavings on the work bench and went to sleep. I THOUGHT they
would like to know, and that I was going to please them.

Anyway, they found out, for by the time Sally got back Peter had
told them about the store, and the furnished house, and asked
father for Sally right before all of them, which father said was
pretty brave; but Peter knew it was all right or he couldn't have
come like he'd been doing.

After that, you couldn't hear anything at our house but wedding.
Sally's share of linen and bedding was all finished long ago.
Father took her to Fort Wayne on the cars to buy her wedding,
travelling, and working dresses, and her hat, cloak, and linen,
like you have when you marry.

It was strange that Sally didn't want mother to go, but she said
the trip would tire her too much. Mother said it was because
Sally could coax more dresses from father. Anyway, mother told
him to set a limit and stick to it. She said she knew he hadn't
done it as she got the first glimpse of Sally's face when they
came back, but the child looked so beautiful and happy she hadn't
the heart to spoil her pleasure.

The next day a sewing woman came; and all of them were shut up in
the sitting-room, while the sewing machine just whizzed on the
working dresses. Sally said the wedding dress had to be made by
hand. She kept the room locked, and every new thing that they
made was laid away on the bed in the parlour bedroom, and none of
us had a peep until everything was finished. It was awfully
exciting, but I wouldn't pretend I cared, because I was huffy at
her. I told her I wouldn't kiss her goodbye, and I'd be GLAD
when she was gone.

Sally said the school-ma'am simply had to go to Winters', or some
place else, but mother said possibly a stranger would have some
ideas, and know some new styles, so Sally then thought maybe they
had better try it a few days, and she could have her place and be
company when she and Shelley left. Shelley was rather silent and
blue, and before long I found her crying, because mother had told
her she couldn't start for Chicago until after the wedding, and
that would make her miss six weeks at the start.

Next day word was sent around that school was to begin the coming
Monday; so Saturday afternoon the people who had children large
enough to go sent the biggest of them to clean the schoolhouse.
May, Leon, and I went to do our share. Just when there were
about a bushel of nut shells, and withered apple cores, and inky
paper on the floor, the blackboard half cleaned, and ashes
trailed deep between the stove and the window Billy Wilson was
throwing them from, some one shouted: "There comes Mr. Stanton
with Her."

All of us dropped everything and ran to the south windows. I
tell you I was proud of our big white team as it came prancing
down the hill, and the gleaming patent leather trimmings, and the
brass side lamps shining in the sun. Father sat very straight,
driving rather fast, as if he would as lief get it over with, and
instead of riding on the back seat, where mother always sat, the
teacher was in front beside him, and she seemed to be talking
constantly. We looked at each other and groaned when father
stopped at the hitching post and got out. If we had tried to see
what a dreadful muss we could make, things could have looked no
worse. I think father told her to wait in the carriage, but we
heard her cry: "Oh Mr. Stanton, let me see the dear children I'm
to teach, and where I'm to work."

Hopped is the word. She hopped from the carriage and came
hopping after father. She was as tall as a clothes prop and
scarcely as fat. There were gray hairs coming on her temples.
Her face was sallow and wrinkled, and she had faded, pale-blue
eyes. Her dress was like my mother had worn several years
before, in style, and of stiff gray stuff. She made me feel that
no one wanted her at home, and probably that was the reason she
had come so far away.

Every one stood dumb. Mother always went to meet people and May
was old enough to know it. She went, but she looked exactly as
she does when the wafer bursts and the quinine gets in her mouth,
and she doesn't dare spit it out, because it costs five dollars a
bottle, and it's going to do her good. Father introduced May and
some of the older children, and May helped him with the others,
and then he told us to "dig in and work like troopers," and he
would take Miss Pollard on home.

"Oh do let me remain and help the dear children!" she cried.

"We can finish!" we answered in full chorus.

"How lovely of you!" she chirped.

Chirp makes you think of a bird; and in speech and manner Miss
Amelia Pollard was the most birdlike of any human being I ever
have seen. She hopped from the step to the walk, turned to us,
her head on one side, playfulness in the air around her, and
shook her finger at us.

"Be extremely particular that you leave things immaculate at the
consummation of your labour," she said. "`Remember that
cleanliness is next to Godliness!'"

"Two terms of that!" gasped Leon, sinking on the stove hearth.
"Behold Job mourning as close the ashes as he can."

Billy Wilson had the top lid off, so he reached down and got a
big handful of ashes and sifted them over Leon. But it's no fun
to do anything like that to him; he only sank in a more dejected
heap, and moaned: "Send for Bildad and Zophar to comfort me, and
more ashes, please."

"Why does the little feathered dear touch earth at all? Why
doesn't she fly?" demanded Silas Shaw.

"I'm going to get a hundred wads ready for Monday," said Jimmy
Hood. "We can shoot them when we please."

"Bet ten cents you can't hit her," said Billy Wilson. "There
ain't enough of her for a decent mark."

"Let's quit and go home," proposed Leon. "This will look worse
than it does now by Monday night."

Then every one began talking at once. Suddenly May seized the
poker and began pounding on the top of the stove for order.

"We must clean this up," she said. "We might as well finish.
Maybe you'll shoot wads and do what you please, and maybe you
won't. Her eyes went around like a cat that smells mice. If she
can spell the language she uses, she is the best we've ever had."

That made us blink, and I never forgot it. Many times afterward
while listening to people talk, I wondered if they could spell
the words they used.

"Well, come on, then!" said Leon. He seized the broom and handed
it to Billy Wilson, quoting as he did so, "Work, work, my boy, be
not afraid"; and he told Silas Shaw as he gave him the mop, to
"Look labour boldly in the face!" but he never did a thing
himself, except to keep every one laughing.

So we cleaned up as well as we could, and Leon strutted like
Bobby, because he locked the door and carried the key. When we
reached home I was sorry I hadn't gone with father, so I could
have seen mother, Sally, Candace, and Laddie when first they met
the new teacher. The shock showed yet! Miss Amelia had taken
off her smothery woollen dress and put on a black calico, but it
wasn't any more cheerful. She didn't know what to do, and you
could see plainly that no one knew what to do with her, so they
united in sending me to show her the place. I asked her what she
would like most to see, and she said everything was so charming
she couldn't decide. I thought if she had no more choice than
that, one place would do as well as another, so I started for the
orchard. Quick as we got there, I knew what to do. I led her
straight to our best cling peach tree, told her to climb on the
fence so she could reach easily, and eat all she chose. We
didn't dare shake the tree, because the pigs ran on the other
side of the fence, and they chanked up every peach that fell
there. Those peaches were too good to feed even father's finest
Berkshires.

By the time Miss Amelia had eaten nine or ten, she was so happy
to think she was there, she quit tilting her head and using big
words. Of course she couldn't know how I loved to hear them, and
maybe she thought I wouldn't know what they meant, and that they
would be wasted on me. If she had understood how much spelling
and defining I'd heard in my life, I guess she might have talked
up as big as she could, and still I'd have got most of it. When
she reached the place where she ate more slowly, she began to
talk. She must have asked me most a hundred questions. What all
our names were, how old we were, if our girls had lots of beaus,
and if there were many men in the neighbourhood, and dozens of
things my mother never asked any one. She always inquired if
people were well, if their crops were growing, how much fruit
they had, and how near their quilts were finished.

I told her all about Sally and the wedding, because no one cared
who knew it, after I had been pounded to mince-meat for telling.
She asked if Shelley had any beaus, and I said there wasn't any
one who came like Peter, but every man in the neighbourhood
wanted to be her beau. Then she asked about Laddie, and I was
taking no risks, so I said: "I only see him at home. I don't
know where he goes when he's away. You'll have to ask him."

"Oh, I never would dare," she said. "But he must. He is so
handsome! The girls would just compel him to go to see them."

"Not if he didn't want to go," I said.

"You must never, never tell him I said so, but I do think he is
the handsomest man I ever saw."

"So do I," I said, "and it wouldn't make any difference if I told
him."

"Then do you mean you're going to tell him my foolish remark?"
she giggled.

"No use," I said. "He knows it now. Every time he parts his
hair he sees how good looking he is. He doesn't care. He says
the only thing that counts with a man is to be big, strong,
manly, and well educated."

"Is he well educated?"

"Yes, I think so, as far as he's gone," I answered. "Of course
he will go on being educated every day of his life, same as
father. He says it is all rot about `finishing' your education.
You never do. You learn more important things each day, and by
the time you are old enough to die, you have almost enough sense
to know how to live comfortably. Pity, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Miss Amelia, "it's an awful pity, but it's the truth.

Is your mother being educated too?"

"Whole family," I said. "We learn all the time, mother most of
any, because father always looks out for her. You see, it takes
so much of her time to manage the house, and sew, and knit, and
darn, that she can't study so much as the others; so father reads
all the books to her, and tells her about everything he finds
out, and so do all of us. Just ask her if you think she doesn't
know things."

"I wouldn't know what to ask," said Miss Amelia.

"Ask how long it took to make this world, who invented printing,
where English was first spoken, why Greeley changed his politics,
how to make bluebell perfumery, cut out a dress, or cure a baby
of worms. Just ask her!"

Miss Amelia threw a peach stone through a fence crack and hit a
pig. It was a pretty neat shot.

"I don't need ask any of that," she said scornfully. "I know all
of it now."

"All right! What is best for worms?" I asked.

"Jayne's vermifuge," said Miss Amelia.

"Wrong!" I cried. "That's a patent medicine. Tea made from male
fern root is best, because there's no morphine in it!"

The supper bell rang and I was glad of it. Peaches are not very
filling after all, for I couldn't see but that Miss Amelia ate as
much as any of us. For a few minutes every one was slow in
speaking, then mother asked about cleaning the schoolhouse,
Laddie had something to explain to father about corn mould, Sally
and the dressmaker talked about pipings--not a bird--a new way to
fold goods to make trimmings, and soon everything was going on
the same as if the new teacher were not there. I noticed that
she kept her head straight, and was not nearly so glib-tongued
and birdlike before mother and Sally as she had been at the
schoolhouse. Maybe that was why father told mother that night
that the new teacher would bear acquaintance.

Sunday was like every other Sabbath, except that I felt so sad
all day I could have cried, but I was not going to do it. Seemed
as if I never could put on shoes, and so many clothes Monday
morning, quite like church, and be shut in a room for hours, to
try to learn what was in books, when the world was running over
with things to find out where you could have your feet in water,
leaves in your hair, and little living creatures in your hands.
In the afternoon Miss Amelia asked Laddie to take her for a walk
to see the creek, and the barn, and he couldn't escape.

I suppose our barn was exactly like hundreds of others. It was
built against an embankment so that on one side you could drive
right on the threshing floor with big loads of grain. On the
sunny side in the lower part were the sheep pens, cattle stalls,
and horse mangers. It was always half bursting with overflowing
grain bins and haylofts in the fall; the swallows twittered under
the roof until time to go south for winter, as they sailed from
the ventilators to their nests plastered against the rafters or
eaves. The big swinging doors front and back could be opened to
let the wind blow through in a strong draft. From the east doors
you could see for miles across the country.

I said our barn was like others, but it was not. There was not
another like it in the whole world. Father, the boys, and the
hired men always kept it cleaned and in proper shape every day.
The upper floor was as neat as some women's houses. It was
swept, the sun shone in, the winds drifted through, the odours of
drying hay and grain were heavy, and from the top of the natural
little hill against which it stood you could see for miles in all
directions.

The barn was our great playhouse on Sundays. It was clean there,
we were where we could be called when wanted, and we liked to
climb the ladders to the top of the haymows, walk the beams to
the granaries, and jump to the hay. One day May came down on a
snake that had been brought in with a load. I can hear her yell
now, and it made her so frantic she's been killing them ever
since. It was only a harmless little garter snake, but she was
so surprised.

Miss Amelia held her head very much on one side all the time she
walked with Laddie, and she was so birdlike Leon slipped him a
brick and told him to have her hold it to keep her down. Seemed
as if she might fly any minute. She thought our barn was the
nicest she ever had seen and the cleanest. When Laddie opened
the doors on the east side, and she could see the big, red,
yellow, and green apples thick as leaves on the trees in the
orchard, the lane, the woods pasture, and the meadow with
scattering trees, two running springs, and the meeting of the
creeks, she said it was the loveliest sight she ever saw--I mean
beheld. Laddie liked that, so he told her about the beautiful
town, and the lake, and the Wabash River, that our creek emptied
into, and how people came from other states and big cities and
stayed all summer to fish, row, swim, and have good times.

She asked him to take her to the meadow, but he excused himself,
because he had an engagement. So she stood in the door, and
watched him saddle Flos and start to the house to dress in his
riding clothes. After that she didn't care a thing about the
meadow, so we went back.

Our house looked as if we had a party. We were all dressed in our
best, and every one was out in the yard, garden, or orchard.
Peter and Sally were under the big pearmain apple tree at the
foot of the orchard, Shelley and a half dozen beaus were
everywhere. May had her spelling book in one hand and was in my
big catalpa talking to Billy Stevens, who was going to be her
beau as soon as mother said she was old enough. Father was
reading a wonderful new book to mother and some of the
neighbours. Leon was perfectly happy because no one wanted him,
so he could tease all of them by saying things they didn't like
to hear. When Laddie came out and mounted, Leon asked him where
he was going, and Laddie said he hadn't fully decided: he might
ride to Elizabeth's, and not come back until Monday morning.

"You think you're pretty slick," said Leon. "But if we could see
north to the cross road we could watch you turn west, and go past
Pryors to show yourself off, or try to find the Princess on the
road walking or riding. I know something I'm saving to tell next
time you get smart, Mr. Laddie."

Laddie seemed annoyed and no one was quicker to see it than Leon.

Instantly he jumped on the horse block, pulled down his face long
as he could, stretched his hands toward Laddie, and making his
voice all wavery and tremulous, he began reciting from "Lochiel's
Warning," in tones of agonizing pleading:

            "Laddie, Laddie, beware of the day!
             For, dark and despairing, my sight, I may seal,
             But man cannot cover what God would reveal;
             'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
             And coming events cast their shadows before."

That scared me. I begged Leon to tell, but he wouldn't say a
word more. He went and talked to Miss Amelia as friendly as you
please, and asked her to take a walk in the orchard and get some
peaches, and she went flying. He got her all she could carry and
guided her to Peter and Sally, introduced her to Peter, and then
slipped away and left her. Then he and Sally couldn't talk about
their wedding, and Peter couldn't squeeze her hand, and she
couldn't fix his tie, and it was awful. Shelley and her boys
almost laughed themselves sick over it, and then she cried, "To
the rescue!" and started, so they followed. They captured Miss
Amelia and brought her back, and left her with father and the
wonderful book, but I'm sure she liked the orchard better.

I took Grace Greenwood under my arm, Hezekiah on my shoulder, and
with Bobby at my heels went away. I didn't want my hair pulled,
or to be teased that day. There was such a hardness around my
heart, and such a lump in my throat, that I didn't care what
happened to me one minute, and the next I knew I'd slap any one
who teased me, if I were sent to bed for it. As I went down the
lane Peter called to me to come and see him, but I knew exactly
how he looked, and didn't propose to make up. There was not any
sense in Sally clawing me all over, when I only tried to help
mother and Lucy find out what they wanted to know so badly. I
went down the hill, crossed the creek on the stepping-stones, and
followed the cowpath into the woods pasture. It ran beside the
creek bank through the spice thicket and blackberry patches,
under pawpaw groves, and beneath giant oaks and elms. Just where
the creek turned at the open pasture, below the church and
cemetery, right at the deep bend, stood the biggest white oak
father owned. It was about a tree exactly like this that an
Englishman wrote a beautiful poem in McGuffey's Sixth, that
begins:

            "A song to the oak, the brave old oak,
             Who hath ruled in the greenwood long;
             Here's health and renown to his broad green crown,
             And his fifty arms so strong."

I knew it was the same, because I counted the arms time and
again, and there were exactly fifty. There was a pawpaw and
spice hedge around three sides of this one, and water on the
other. Wild grapes climbed from the bushes to the lower branches
and trailed back to earth again. Here, I had two secrets I
didn't propose to tell. One was that in the crotch of some
tiptop branches the biggest chicken hawks you ever saw had their
nest, and if they took too many chickens father said they'd have
to be frightened a little with a gun. I can't begin to tell how
I loved those hawks. They did the one thing I wanted to most,
and never could. When I saw them serenely soar above the lowest
of the soft fleecy September clouds, I was wild with envy. I
would have gone without chicken myself rather than have seen one
of those splendid big brown birds dropped from the skies. I was
so careful to shield them, that I selected this for my especial
retreat when I wanted most to be alone, and I carefully gathered
up any offal from the nest that might point out their location,
and threw it into the water where it ran the swiftest.

I parted the vines and crept where the roots of the big oak
stretched like bony fingers over the water, that was slowly
eating under it and baring its roots. I sat on them above the
water and thought. I had decided the day before about my going
to school, and the day before that, and many, many times before
that, and here I was having to settle it all over again. Doubled
on the sak roots, a troubled little soul, I settled it once more.

No books or teachers were needed to tell me about flowing water
and fish, how hawks raised their broods and kept house, about the
softly cooing doves of the spice thickets, the cuckoos slipping
snakelike in and out of the wild crab-apple bushes, or the brown
thrush's weird call from the thorn bush. I knew what they said
and did, but their names, where they came from, where they went
when the wind blew and the snow fell--how was I going to find out
that? Worse yet were the flowers, butterflies, and moths; they
were mysteries past learning alone, and while the names I made up
for them were pretty and suitable, I knew in all reason they
wouldn't be the same in the books. I had to go, but no one will
ever know what it cost. When the supper bell rang, I sat still.
I'd have to wait until at least two tables had been served,
anyway, so I sat there and nursed my misery, looked and listened,
and by and by I felt better. I couldn't see or hear a thing that
was standing still. Father said even the rocks grew larger year
by year. The trees were getting bigger, the birds were busy, and
the creek was in a dreadful hurry to reach the river. It was
like that poetry piece that says:

            "When a playful brook, you gambolled,"

(Mostly that gambolled word is said about lambs)

                "And the sunshine o'er you smiled,
            On your banks did children loiter,
                 Looking for the spring flowers wild?"

The creek was more in earnest and working harder at pushing
steadily ahead without ever stopping than anything else; and like
the poetry piece again, it really did "seem to smile upon us as
it quickly passed us by."  I had to quit playing, and go to work
some time; it made me sorry to think how behind I was, because I
had not started two years before, when I should. But that
couldn't be helped now. All there was left was to go this time,
for sure. I got up heavily and slowly as an old person, and then
slipped out and ran down the path to the meadow, because I could
hear Leon whistle as he came to bring the cows.

By fast running I could start them home for him: Rose, Brindle,
Bess, and Pidy, Sukey and Muley; they had eaten all day, but they
still snatched bites as they went toward the gate. I wanted to
surprise Leon and I did.

"Getting good, ain't you?" he asked. "What do you want?"

"Nothing!" I said. "I just heard you coming and I thought I'd
help you."

"Where were you?"

"Playing."

"You don't look as if you'd been having much fun."

"I don't expect ever to have any, after I begin school."

"Oh!" said Leon. "It is kind of tough the first day or two, but
you'll soon get over it. You should have behaved yourself, and
gone when they started you two years ago."

"Think I don't know it?"

Leon stopped and looked at me sharply.

"I'll help you nights, if you want me to," he offered.

"Can I ever learn?" I asked, almost ready to cry.

"Of course you can," said Leon. "You're smart as the others, I
suppose. The sevens and nines of the multiplication table are
the stickers, but you ought to do them if other girls can. You
needn't feel bad because you are behind a little to start on; you
are just that much better prepared to work, and you can soon
overtake them. You know a lot none of the rest of us do, and
some day it will come your turn to show off. Cheer up, you'll be
all right."

Men are such a comfort. I pressed closer for more.

"Do you suppose I will?" I asked.

"Of course," said Leon. "Any minute the woods, or birds, or
flowers are mentioned your time will come; and all of us will
hear you read and help nights. I'd just as soon as not."

That was the most surprising thing. He never offered to help me
before. He never acted as if he cared what became of me. Maybe
it was because Laddie always had taken such good care of me, Leon
had no chance. He seemed willing enough now. I looked at him
closely.

"You'll find out I'll learn things if I try," I boasted. "And
you will find out I don't tell secrets either."

"I've been waiting for you to pipe up about----"

"Well, I haven't piped, have I?"

"Not yet."

"I am not going to either."

"I almost believe you. A girl you could trust would be a funny
thing to see."

"Tell me what you know about Laddie, and see if I'm funny."

"You'd telltale sure as life!"

"Well, if you know it, he knows it anyway."

"He doesn't know WHAT I know."

"Well, be careful and don't worry mother. You know how she is
since the fever, and father says all of us must think of her. If
it's anything that would bother her, don't tell before her."

"Say, looky here," said Leon, turning on me sharply, "is all this
sudden consideration for mother or are you legging for Laddie?"

"For both," I answered stoutly.

"Mostly for Laddie, just the same. You can't fool me, missy. I
won't tell you one word."

"You needn't!" I answered, "I don't care!"

"Yes you do," he said. "You'd give anything to find out what I
know, and then run to Laddie with it, but you can't fool me. I'm
too smart for you."

"All right," I said. "You go and tell anything on Laddie, and
I'll watch you, and first trick I catch you at, I'll do some
telling myself, Smarty."

"That's a game more than one can play at," said Leon. "Go
ahead!"

CHAPTER V

The First Day of School

                "Birds in their little nests agree.
                 And why can't we?"

B-i-r-d-s, birds, i-n, in, t-h-e-i-r, their, l-i-t-t-l-e, little,
n-e-s-t-s, nests, a-g-r-e-e, agree."

My feet burned in my new shoes, but most of my body was chilling
as I stood beside Miss Amelia on the platform, before the whole
school, and followed the point of her pencil, while, a letter at
a time, I spelled aloud my first sentence. Nothing ever had
happened to me as bad as that. I was not used to so much
clothing. It was like taking a colt from the woods pasture and
putting it into harness for the first time. That lovely
September morning I followed Leon and May down the dusty road, my
heart sick with dread.

May was so much smaller that I could have picked her up and
carried her. She was a gentle, loving little thing, until some
one went too far, and then they got what they deserved, all at
once and right away.

Many of the pupils were waiting before the church. Leon climbed
the steps, made a deep bow, waved toward the school building
across the way, and what he intended to say was, "Still sits the
schoolhouse by the road," but he was a little excited and the s's
doubled his tongue, so that we heard: "Shill stits the
schoolhouse by the road."  We just yelled and I forgot a little
about myself.

When Miss Amelia came to the door and rang the bell, May must
have remembered something of how her first day felt, for as we
reached the steps she waited for me, took me in with her, and
found me a seat. If she had not, I'm quite sure I'd have run
away and fought until they left me in freedom, as I had two years
before. All forenoon I had shivered in my seat, while classes
were arranged, and the elder pupils were started on their work;
then Miss Amelia called me to her on the platform and tried to
find out how much schooling I had. I was ashamed that I knew so
little, but there was no sense in her making me spell after a
pencil, like a baby. I'd never seen the book she picked up. I
could read the line she pointed to, and I told her so, but she
said to spell the words; so I thought she had to be obeyed, for
one poetry piece I know says:

            "Quickly speed your steps to school
             And there mind your teacher's rule."

I can see Miss Amelia to-day. Her pale face was lined deeper
than ever, her drab hair was dragged back tighter. She wore a
black calico dress with white huckleberries, and a white calico
apron figured in large black apples, each having a stem and two
leaves. In dress she was a fruitful person. She had been a
surprise to all of us. Chipper as a sparrow, she had hopped, and
chattered, and darted here and there, until the hour of opening.
Then in the stress of arranging classes and getting started, all
her birdlike ways slipped from her. Stern and bony she stood
before us, and with a cold light in her pale eyes, she began
business in a manner that made Johnny Hood forget all about his
paper wads, and Leon commenced studying like a good boy, and
never even tried to have fun with her. Every one was so
surprised you could notice it, except May, and she looked, "I
told you so!" even in the back. She had a way of doing that very
thing as I never saw any one else. From the set of her head, how
she carried her shoulders, the stiffness of her spine, and her
manner of walking, if you knew her well, you could tell what she
thought, the same as if you saw her face.

I followed that pencil point and in a husky voice repeated the
letters. I could see Tillie Baher laughing at me from behind her
geography, and every one else had stopped what they were doing to
watch and listen, so I forgot to be thankful that I even knew my
a b c's. I spelled through the sentence, pronounced the words
and repeated them without much thought as to the meaning; at that
moment it didn't occur to me that she had chosen the lesson
because father had told her how I made friends with the birds.
The night before he had been putting me through memory tests, and
I had recited poem after poem, even long ones in the Sixth
Reader, and never made one mistake when the piece was about
birds. At our house, we heard next day's lessons for all ages
gone over every night so often, that we couldn't help knowing
them by heart, if we had any brains at all, and I just loved to
get the big folk's readers and learn the bird pieces. Father had
been telling her about it, so for that reason she thought she
would start me on the birds, but I'm sure she made me spell after
a pencil point, like a baby, on purpose to shame me, because I
was two years behind the others who were near my age. As I
repeated the line Miss Amelia thought she saw her chance. She
sprang to her feet, tripped a few steps toward the centre of the
platform, and cried: "Classes, attention! Our Youngest Pupil
has just completed her first sentence. This sentence contains a
Thought. It is a wonderfully beautiful Thought. A Thought that
suggests a great moral lesson for each of us. `Birrrds--in their
little nests--agreeee.'"

Never have I heard cooing sweetness to equal the melting tones in
which Miss Amelia drawled those words. Then she continued, after
a good long pause in order to give us time to allow the "Thought"
to sink in: "There is a lesson in this for all of us. We are
here in our schoolroom, like little birds in their nest. Now how
charming it would be if all of us would follow the example of the
birds, and at our work, and in our play, agreeee--be kind,
loving, and considerate of each other. Let us all remember
always this wonderful truth: `Birrrrds--in their little nests--
agreeeee!'"

In three steps I laid hold of her apron. Only last night Leon
had said it would come, yet whoever would have thought that I'd
get a chance like this, so soon.

"Ho but they don't!" I cried. "They fight like anything! Every
day they make the feathers fly!"

In a backward stroke Miss Amelia's fingers, big and bony, struck
my cheek a blow that nearly upset me. A red wave crossed her
face, and her eyes snapped. I never had been so surprised in all
my life. I was only going to tell her the truth. What she had
said was altogether false. Ever since I could remember I had
watched courting male birds fight all over the farm. After a
couple had paired, and were nest building, the father always
drove every other bird from his location. In building I had seen
him pecked for trying to place a twig. I had seen that happen
again for merely offering food to the mother, if she didn't
happen to be hungry, or for trying to make love to her when she
was brooding. If a young bird failed to get the bite it wanted,
it sometimes grabbed one of its nestmates by the bill, or the eye
even, and tried to swallow it whole. Always the oldest and
strongest climbed on top of the youngest and fooled his mammy
into feeding him most by having his head highest, his mouth
widest, and begging loudest. There could be no mistake. I was
so amazed I forgot the blow, as I stared at the fool woman.

"I don't see why you slap me!" I cried. "It's the truth! Lots
of times old birds pull out bunches of feathers fighting, and
young ones in the nests bite each other until they squeal."

Miss Amelia caught my shoulders and shook me as hard as she
could; and she proved to be stronger than you ever would have
thought to look at her.

"Take your seat!" she cried. "You are a rude, untrained child!"

"They do fight!" I insisted, as I held my head high and walked to
my desk.

Leon laughed out loud, and that made everyone else. Miss Amelia
had so much to do for a few minutes that she forgot me, and I
know now why Leon started it, at least partly. He said afterward
it was the funniest sight he ever saw. My cheek smarted and
burned. I could scarcely keep from feeling to learn whether it
were swelling, but I wouldn't have shed a tear or raised my hand
for anything you could offer.

Recess was coming and I didn't know what to do. If I went to the
playground, all of them would tease me; and if I sat at my desk
Miss Amelia would have another chance at me. That was too much
to risk, so I followed the others outdoors, and oh joy! there
came Laddie down the road. He set me on one of the posts of the
hitching rack before the church, and with my arms around his
neck, I sobbed out the whole story.

"She didn't understand," said Laddie quietly. "You stay here
until I come back. I'll go explain to her about the birds.
Perhaps she hasn't watched them as closely as you have."

Recess was over before he returned. He had wet his handkerchief
at the water bucket, and now he bathed my face and eyes,
straightened my hair with his pocket comb, and began unlacing my
shoes.

"What are you going to do?" I asked. "I must wear them. All the
girls do. Only the boys are barefoot."

"You are excused," answered Laddie. "Three-fourths of the day is
enough to begin on. Miss Amelia says you may come with me."

"Where are you going?"

Laddie was stripping off my stockings as he looked into my eyes,
and smiled a peculiar little smile.

"Oh Laddie!" I cried. "Will you take me? Honest!"

He laughed again and then he rubbed my feet.

"Poor abused feet," he said. "Sometimes I wish shoes had never
been invented."

"They feel pretty good when there's ice."

"So they do!" said Laddie.

He swung me to the ground, and we crossed the road, climbed the
fence, and in a minute our redbird swamp shut the schoolhouse and
cross old Miss Amelia from sight. Then we turned and started
straight toward our Big Woods. I could scarcely keep on the
ground.

"How are the others getting along?" asked Laddie.

"She's cross as two sticks," I told him. "Johnny Hood hasn't
shot one paper wad, and Leon hadn't done a thing until he laughed
about the birds, and I guess he did that to make her forget me."

"Good!" cried Laddie. "I didn't suppose the boy thought that
far."

"Oh, you never can tell by looking at him, how far Leon is
thinking," I said.

"That's so, too," said Laddie. "Are your feet comfortable now?"

"Yes, but Laddie, isn't my face marked?"

"I'm afraid it is a little," said Laddie. "We'll bathe it again
at the creek. We must get it fixed so mother won't notice."

"What will the Princess think?"

"That you fell, perhaps," said Laddie.

"Do the tears show?"

"Not at all. We washed them all away."

"Did I do wrong, Laddie?"

"Yes, I think you did."

"But it wasn't true, what she said."

"That's not the point."

We had reached the fence of the Big Woods. He lifted me to the
top rail and explained, while I combed his waving hair with my
fingers.

"She didn't strike you because what you said was not so, for it
was. She knew instantly you were right, if she knows anything at
all about outdoors. This is what made her angry: it is her first
day. She wanted to make a good impression on her pupils, to
arouse their interest, and awaken their respect. When you spoke,
all of them knew you were right, and she was wrong; that made her
ridiculous. Can't you see how it made her look and feel?"

"I didn't notice how she looked, but from the way she hit me, you
could tell she felt bad enough."

"She surely did," said Laddie, kissing my cheek softly. "Poor
little woman! What a world of things you have to learn!"

"Shouldn't I have told her how mistaken she was?"

"If you had gone to her alone, at recess or noon, or to-night,
probably she would have thanked you. Then she could have
corrected herself at some convenient time and kept her dignity."

"Must I ask her pardon?"

"What you should do, is to put yourself in Miss Amelia's place
and try to understand how she felt. Then if you think you
wouldn't have liked any one to do to you what you did to her,
you'll know."

I hugged Laddie tight and thought fast--there was no need to
think long to see how it was.

"I got to tell her I was wrong," I said. "Now let's go to the
Enchanted Wood and see if we can find the Queen's daughter."

"All right!" said Laddie.

He leaped the fence, swung me over, and started toward the pawpaw
thicket. He didn't do much going around. He crashed through and
over; and soon he began whistling the loveliest little dancy
tune. It made your head whirl, and your toes tingle, and you
knew it was singing that way in his heart, and he was just
letting out the music. That was why it made you want to dance
and whirl; it was so alive. But that wasn't the way in an
Enchanted Wood. I pulled his hand.

"Laddie!" I cautioned, "keep in the path! You'll step on the
Fairies and crush a whole band with one foot. No wonder the
Queen makes her daughter grow big when she sends her to you. If
you make so much noise, some one will hear you, then this won't
be a secret any more."

Laddie laughed, but he stepped carefully in the path after that,
and he said: "There are times, Little Sister, when I don't care
whether this secret is secret another minute or not. Secrets
don't agree with me. I'm too big, and broad, and too much of a
man, to go creeping through the woods with a secret. I prefer to
print it on a banner and ride up the road waving it."

"Like,--`A youth who bore mid snow and ice, A banner with a
strange device,'" I said.

"That would be `a banner with a strange device,'" laughest
Laddie. "But, yes--something like!"

"Have you told the Princess?"

"I have!" Laddie fairly shouted it.

"Docs SHE like secrets?"

"No more than I do!"

"Then why----?"

"There you go!" said Laddie. "Zeus, but the woman is beginning
to measle out all over you! You know as well as any one that
there's something wrong at her house. I don't know what it is; I
can't even make a sensible guess as yet, but it's worse than the
neighbours think. It's a thing that has driven a family from
their home country, under a name that I have doubts about being
theirs, and sent them across an ocean, `strangers in a strange
land,' as it says in the Bible. It's something that keeps a
cultured gentleman and scholar raging up and down the roads and
over the country like a madman. It shuts a white-faced, lovely,
little woman from her neighbours, but I have passed her walking
the road at night with both hands pressed against her heart.
Sometimes it tries the Princess past endurance and control; and
it has her so worn and tired struggling with it that she is
willing to carry another secret, rather than try to find strength
to do anything that would make more trouble for her father and
mother."

"Would it trouble them for her to know you, Laddie?"

"So long as they don't and won't become acquainted with me, or
any one, of course it would."

"Can't you force them to know you?"

"That I can!" said Laddie. "But you see, I only met the Princess
a short time ago, and there would be no use in raising trouble,
unless she will make me her Knight!"

"But hasn't she, Laddie?"

"Not in the very littlest least," said Laddie. "For all I know,
she is merely using me to help pass a lonely hour. You see,
people reared in England have ideas of class, that two or three
generations spent here wash out. The Princess and her family are
of the unwashed British. Father's people have been here long
enough to judge a man on his own merits."

"You mean the Princess' family would think you're not good enough
to be her Knight?"

"Exactly!"

"And we know that our family thinks they are infidels, and wicked
people; and that if she would have you, mother would be sick in
bed over it. Oh Laddie!"

"Precisely!"

"What are you going to do?"

"That I must find out."

"When it will make so much trouble, why not forget her, and go on
like you did before she came? Then, all of us were happy. Now,
it makes me shiver to think what will happen."

"Me too," said Laddie. "But look here, Little Sister, right in
my face. Will you ever forget the Princess?"

"Never!"

"Then how can you ask me to?"

"I didn't mean forget her, exactly. I meant not come here and do
things that will make every one unhappy."

"One minute, Chick-a-Biddy," said Laddie. Sometimes he called me
that, when he loved me the very most of all. I don't believe any
one except me ever heard him do it. "Let me ask you this: does
our father love our mother?"

"Love her?" I cried. "Why he just loves her to death! He turns
so white, and he suffers so, when her pain is the worst. Love
her? And she him? Why, don't you remember the other day when he
tipped her head against him and kissed her throat as he left the
table; that he asked her if she `loved him yet,' and she said
right before all of us, `Why Paul, I love you, until I scarcely
can keep my fingers off you!'  Laddie, is it like that with you
and the Princess?"

"It is with me," said Laddie. "Not with the Princess! Now, can
I forget her? Can I keep away from even the chance to pass her
on the road?"

"No," I said. "No, you can't, Laddie. But can you ever make her
love you?"

"It takes time to find that out," said Laddie. "I have got to
try; so you be a woman and keep my secret a little while longer,
until I find a way out, but don't bother your head about it!"

"I can't help bothering my head, Laddie. Can't you make her
understand that God is not a myth?"

"I'm none too sure what I believe myself," said Laddie. "Not
that there is no God--I don't mean that--but I surely don't
believe all father's teachings."

"If you believe God, do other little things matter, Laddie?"

"I think not," said Laddie, "else Heaven would be all Methodists.

As for the Princess, all she has heard in her life has been
against there being a God. Now, she is learning something on the
other side. After a while she can judge for herself. It is for
us, who profess to be a Christian family, to prove to her why we
believe in God, and what He does for us."

"Well, she would think He could do a good deal, if she knew how
mother hated asking her to come to our house; and yet she did it,
beautifully too, just to give her a chance to see that very
thing. But I almost made her do it. I don't believe she ever
would alone, Laddie, or at least not for a long time yet."

"I saw that, and understood it perfectly," said Laddie. "Thank
you, Little Sister."  He picked me up and hugged me tight. "If I
could only make you see!"

"But Laddie, I do! I'm not a baby! I know how people love and
make homes for themselves, like Sally and Peter are going to. If
it is with you about the Princess as it is with father and
mother, why I do know."

"All right! Here we are!" said Laddie.

He parted the willows and we stepped on the Magic Carpet, and
that minute the Magic worked. I forgot every awful, solemn,
troublous thing we had been talking about, and looked around
while Laddie knelt and hunted for a letter, and there was none.
That meant the Princess was coming, so we sat on the throne to
wait. We hadn't remembered to bathe my cheek, we had been so
busy when we passed the water, and I doubt if we were thinking
much then. We just waited. The willow walls waved gently, the
moss carpet was spotted with little gold patches of sunlight, in
the shade a few of the red flowers still bloomed, and big, lazy
bumblebees hummed around them, or a hummingbird stood on air
before them. A sort of golden throbbing filled the woods, and my
heart began to leap, why, I don't know; but I'm sure Laddie's did
too, for I looked at him and his eyes were shining as I never had
seen them before, while his cheeks were a little red, and he was
breathing like when you've been running; then suddenly his body
grew tense against mine, and that meant she was coming.

Like that first day, she came slowly through the woods, stopping
here and there to touch the trunk of a tree, put back a branch,
or bend over a flower face. Brown as the wood floor was her
dress, and cardinal flowers blazed on her breast, and the same
colour showed on her cheeks and lips. Her eyes were like
Laddie's for brightness, and she was breathing the same way. I
thought sure there was going to be something to remember a
lifetime--I was so excited I couldn't stand still. Before it
could happen Laddie went and said it was a "beautiful day," and
she said "it didn't show in the woods, but the pastures needed
rain."  Then she kissed me. Well if I ever! I sank on the
throne and sat there. They went on talking like that, until it
was too dull to bear, so I slipped out and wandered away to see
what I could find. When I grew tired and went back, Laddie was
sitting on the Magic Carpet with his back against the beech, and
the Princess was on the throne reading from a little book,
reading such interesting things that I decided to listen. After
a while she came to this:

        "Thou are mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature, will have weight to bear thee
down."

Laddie threw back his head, and how he laughed! The Princess put
down the book and looked at him so surprised.

"Are you reading that to me because you think it appropriate?"
asked Laddie.

"I am reading it because it is conceded to be one of the most
beautiful poems ever written," said the Princess.

"You knew when you began that you would come to those lines."

"I never even thought of such a thing."

"But you knew that is how your father would regard any
relationship, friendly or deeper, with me!"

"I cannot possibly be held responsible for what my father
thinks."

"It is natural that you should think alike."

"Not necessarily! You told me recently that you didn't agree
with your father on many subjects."

"Kindly answer me this," said Laddie: "Do you feel that I'm a
`clown' because I'm not schooled to the point on all questions of
good manners? Do you find me gross because I plow and sow?"

"You surprise me," said the Princess. "My consenting to know and
to spend a friendly hour with you here is sufficient answer. I
have not found the slightest fault with your manners. I have
seen no suspicion of `grossness' about you."

"Will you tell me, frankly, exactly what you do think of me?"

"Surely! I think you are a clean, decent man, who occasionally
kindly consents to put a touch of human interest into an hour,
for a very lonely girl. What has happened, Laddie? This is not
like you."

Laddie sat straight and studied the beech branches. Father said
beech trees didn't amount to much; but I first learned all about
them from that one, and what it taught me made me almost worship
them always. There were the big trunk with great rough spreading
roots, the bark in little ridges in places, smooth purple gray
between, big lichens for ornament, the low flat branches, the
waxy, wavy-edged leaves, with clear veins, and the delicious nuts
in their little brown burrs. The Princess and I both stared at
the branches and waited while a little breath of air stirred the
leaves, the sunshine flickered, and a cricket sang a sort of
lonesome song. Laddie leaned against the tree again, and he was
thinking so hard, to look at him made me begin to repeat to
myself the beech part of that beautiful churchyard poem our big
folks recite:

            "There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech,
             That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
             His listless length at noontide he would stretch,
             And pore upon the brook that babbles by."

Only he was studying so deeply you could almost feel what was in
his mind, and it was not about the brook at all, even if one ran
close. Soon he began talking.

"Not so bad!" he said. "You might think worse. I admit the
cleanliness, I strive for decency, I delight in being humanely
interesting, even for an hour; you might think worse, much worse!

You might consider me a `clown.'  `A country clod.'  Rather a
lowdown, common thing, a `clod,' don't you think? And a `clown'!

And `gross' on top of that!"

"What can you mean?" asked the Princess.

"Since you don't seem to share the estimate of me, I believe I'll
tell you," said Laddie. "The other day I was driving from the
gravel pit with a very heavy load. The road was wide and level
on either side. A man came toward me on horseback. Now the law
of the road is to give half to a vehicle similar to the one you
are driving, but to keep all of it when you are heavily loaded,
if you are passing people afoot or horseback. The man took half
the road, and kept it until the nose of his horse touched one of
the team I was driving. I stopped and said: `Good morning, sir!

Do you wish to speak with me?'  He called angrily: `Get out of
my way, you clod!'  `Sorry sir, but I can't,' I said. `The law
gives me this road when I am heavily loaded, and you are on foot
or horseback.'"

"What did he do?" asked the Princess.

And from the way she looked I just knew she guessed the man was
the same one I thought of.

"He raised his whip to strike my horse," said Laddie.

"Ah, surely!" said the Princess. "Always an arm raised to
strike. And you, Man? What did you do?" she cried eagerly.

"I stood on my load, suddenly," said Laddie, "and I called:
`Hold one minute!'"

"And he?" breathed the Princess.

"Something made him pause with his arm still raised. I said to
him: `You must not strike my horse. It never has been struck,
and it can't defend itself. If you want to come a few steps
farther and tackle me, come ahead! I can take it or return it,
as I choose.'"

"Go on!" said the Princess.

"That's all," said Laddie, "or at least almost all."

"Did he strike?"

"He did not. He stared at me a second, and then he rode around
me; but he was making forceful remarks as he passed about
`country clods,' and there was an interesting one about a `gross
clown.'  What you read made me think of it, that is all."

The Princess stared into the beech branches for a time and then
she said: "I will ask your pardon for him. He always had a
domineering temper, and trouble he had lately has almost driven
him mad; he is scarcely responsible at times. I hesitate about
making him angry."

"I think perhaps," said Laddie, "I would have done myself credit
if I had recognized that, and given him the road, when he made a
point of claiming it."

"Indeed no!" cried the Princess. "To be beaten at the game he
started was exactly what he needed. If you had turned from his
way, he would have considered you a clod all his life. Since you
made him go around, it may possibly dawn on him that you are a
man. You did the very best thing."

Then she began to laugh, and how she did laugh.

"I would give my allowance for a quarter to have seen it," she
cried. "I must hurry home and tell mother."

"Does your mother know about me?" he demanded. "Does she know
that you come here?"

The Princess arose and stood very tall and straight.

"You may beg my pardon or cease to know me," she said. "Whatever
led you to suppose that I would know or meet you without my
mother's knowledge?"

Then she started toward the entrance.

"One minute!" cried Laddie.

A leap carried him to her side. He caught her hands and held
them tight, and looked straight into her eyes. Then he kissed
her hands over and over. I thought from the look on her face he
might have kissed her cheek if he had dared risk it; but he
didn't seem to notice. Then she stooped and kissed me, and
turned toward home, while Laddie and I crossed the woods to the
west road, and went back past the schoolhouse. I was so tired
Laddie tied the strings together and hung my shoes across his
shoulders and took me by the arm the last mile.

All of them were at home when we got there, and Miss Amelia came
to the gate to meet us. She was mealy-mouthed and good as pie,
not at all as I had supposed she would be. I wonder what Laddie
said to her. But then he always could manage things for every
one. That set me to wondering if by any possible means he could
fix them for himself. I climbed to the catalpa to think, and the
more I thought, the more I feared he couldn't; but still mother
always says one never can tell until they try, and I knew he
would try with every ounce of brain and muscle in him. I sat
there until the supper bell rang, and then I washed and reached
the table last. The very first thing, mother asked how I bruised
my face, and before I could think what to tell her, Leon said
just as careless like: "Oh she must have run against something
hard, playing tag at recess."  Laddie began talking about Peter
coming that night, and every one forgot me, but pretty soon I
slipped a glance at Miss Amelia, and saw that her face was redder
than mine.

CHAPTER VI

The Wedding Gown

        "The gay belles of fashion may boast of excelling
            In waltz or cotillon, at whist or quadrille;
         And seek admiration by vauntingly telling
            Of drawing and painting, and musical skill;
         But give me the fair one, in country or city,
            Whose home and its duties are dear to her heart,
         Who cheerfully warbles some rustical ditty,
            While plying the needle with exquisite art:
         The bright little needle, the swift-flying needle,
            The needle directed by beauty and art."

The next morning Miss Amelia finished the chapter--that made two
for our family. Father always read one before breakfast--no
wonder I knew the Bible quite well--then we sang a song, and she
made a stiff, little prayer. I had my doubts about her prayers;
she was on no such terms with the Lord as my father. He got
right at Him and talked like a doctor, and you felt he had some
influence, and there was at least a possibility that he might get
what he asked for; but Miss Amelia prayed as if the Lord were ten
million miles away, and she would be surprised to pieces if she
got anything she wanted. When she asked the Almighty to make us
good, obedient children, there was not a word she said that
showed she trusted either the Lord or us, or thought there was
anything between us and heaven that might make us good because we
wanted to be. You couldn't keep your eyes from the big gad and
ruler on her desk; she often fingered them as she prayed, and you
knew from her stiff, little, sawed-out petition that her faith
was in implements, and she'd hit you a crack the minute she was
the least angry, same as she had me the day before. I didn't
feel any too good toward her, but when the blood of the Crusaders
was in the veins, right must be done even if it took a struggle.
I had to live up to those little gold shells on the trinket.
Father said they knew I was coming down the line, so they put on
a bird for me; but I told him I would be worthy of the shells
too. This took about as hard a fight for me as any Crusade would
for a big, trained soldier. I had been wrong, Laddie had made me
see that. So I held up my hand, and Miss Amelia saw me as she
picked up Ray's arithmetic.

"What is it?"

I held to the desk to brace myself, and tried twice before I
could raise my voice so that she heard.

"Please, Miss Amelia," I said, "I was wrong about the birds
yesterday. Not that they don't fight--they do! But I was wrong
to contradict you before every one, and on your first day, and if
you'll only excuse me, the next time you make a mistake, I'll
tell you after school or at recess."

The room was so still you could hear the others breathing. Miss
Amelia picked up the ruler and started toward me. Possibly I
raised my hands. That would be no Crusader way, but you might do
it before you had time to think, when the ruler was big and your
head was the only place that would be hit. The last glimpse I
had of her in the midst of all my trouble made me think of
Sabethany Perkins.

Sabethany died, and they buried her at the foot of the hill in
our graveyard before I could remember. But her people thought
heaps of her, and spent much money on the biggest tombstone in
the cemetery, and planted pinies and purple phlox on her, and
went every Sunday to visit her. When they moved away, they
missed her so, they decided to come back and take her along. The
men were at work, and Leon and I went to see what was going on.
They told us, and said we had better go away, because possibly
things might happen that children would sleep better not to see.
Strange how a thing like that makes you bound you will see. We
went and sat on the fence and waited. Soon they reached
Sabethany, but they could not seem to get her out. They tried,
and tried, and at last they sent for more men. It took nine of
them to bring her to the surface. What little wood was left,
they laid back to see what made her so fearfully heavy, and there
she was turned to solid stone. They couldn't chip a piece off
her with the shovel. Mother always said, "For goodness sake,
don't let your mouth hang open," and as a rule we kept ours shut;
but you should have seen Leon's when he saw Sabethany wouldn't
chip off, and no doubt mine was as bad.

"When Gabriel blows his trumpet, and the dead arise and come
forth, what on earth will they do with Sabethany?" I gasped.
"Why, she couldn't fly to Heaven with wings a mile wide, and what
use could they make of her if she got there?"

"I can't see a thing she'd be good for except a hitching post,"
said Leon, "and I guess they don't let horses in. Let's go
home."

He acted sick and I felt that way; so we went, but the last
glimpse of Sabethany remained with me.

As my head went down that day, I saw that Miss Amelia looked
exactly like her. You would have needed a pick-ax or a crowbar
to flake off even a tiny speck of her. When I had waited for my
head to be cracked, until I had time to remember that a Crusader
didn't dodge and hide, I looked up, and there she stood with the
ruler lifted; but now she had turned just the shade of the
wattles on our fightingest turkey gobbler.

"Won't you please forgive me?"

I never knew I had said it until I heard it, and then the only
way to be sure was because no one else would have been likely to
speak at that time.

Miss Amelia's arm dropped and she glared at me. I wondered
whether I ever would understand grown people; I doubted if they
understood themselves, for after turning to stone in a second--
father said it had taken Sabethany seven years--and changing to
gobbler red, Miss Amelia suddenly began to laugh. To laugh, of
all things! And then, of course, every one else just yelled. I
was so mortified I dropped my head again and began to cry as I
never would if she'd hit me.

"Don't feel badly!" said Miss Amelia. "Certainly, I'll forgive
you. I see you had no intention of giving offense, so none is
taken. Get out your book and study hard on another lesson."

That was surprising. I supposed I'd have to do the same one
over, but I might take a new one. I was either getting along
fast, or Miss Amelia had her fill of birds. I wiped my eyes as
straight in front of me as I could slip up my handkerchief, and
began studying the first lesson in my reader: "Pretty bee, pray
tell me why, thus from flower to flower you fly, culling sweets
the livelong day, never leaving off to play?"  That was a poetry
piece, and it was quite cheery, although it was all strung
together like prose, but you couldn't fool me on poetry; I knew
it every time. As I studied I felt better, and when Miss Amelia
came to hear me she was good as gold. She asked if I liked
honey, and I started to tell her about the queen bee, but she had
no time to listen, so she said I should wait until after school.
Then we both forgot it, for when we reached home, the Princess'
horse was hitched to our rack, and I fairly ran in, I was so
anxious to know what was happening.

I was just perfectly amazed at grown people! After all the
things our folks had said! You'd have supposed that Laddie would
have been locked in the barn; father reading the thirty second
Psalm to the Princess, and mother on her knees asking God to open
her eyes like Saul's when he tried to kick against the pricks,
and make her to see, as he did, that God was not a myth, Well,
there was no one in the sitting-room or the parlour, but there
were voices farther on; so I slipped in. I really had to slip,
for there was no other place they could be except the parlour
bedroom, and Sally's wedding things were locked up there, and we
were not to see until everything was finished, like I told you.

Well, this was what I saw: our bedroom had been a porch once, and
when we had been crowded on account of all of us coming, father
enclosed it and made a room. But he never had taken out the
window in the wall. So all I had to do when I wanted to know how
fast the dresses were being made, was to shove up the window
above my bed, push back the blind, and look in. I didn't care
what she had. I just wanted to get ahead of her and see before
she was ready, to pay her for beating me. I knew what she had,
and I meant to tell her, and walk away with my nose in the air
when she offered to show me; but this was different. I was wild
to see what was going on because the Princess was there. The
room was small, and the big cherry four-poster was very large,
and all of them were talking, so no one paid the slightest
attention to me.

Mother sat in the big rocking chair, with Sally on one of its
arms, leaning against her shoulder. Shelley and May and the
sewing woman were crowded between the wall and the footboard, and
the others lined against the wall. The bed was heaped in a
tumble of everything a woman ever wore. Seemed to me there was
more stuff there than all the rest of us had, put together. The
working dresses and aprons had been made on the machine, but
there were heaps and stacks of hand-made underclothes. I could
see the lovely chemise mother embroidered lying on top of a pile
of bedding, and over and over Sally had said that every stitch in
the wedding gown must be taken by hand. The Princess stood
beside the bed. A funny little tight hat like a man's and a
riding whip lay on a chair close by. I couldn't see what she
wore--her usual riding clothes probably--for she had a nip in
each shoulder of a dress she was holding to her chin and looking
down at. After all, I hadn't seen everything! Never before or
since have I seen a lovelier dress than that. It was what always
had been wrapped in the sheet on the foot of the bed and I hadn't
got a peep at it. The pale green silk with tiny pink moss roses
in it, that I had been thinking was the wedding dress, looked
about right to wash the dishes in, compared with this.

This was a wedding dress. You didn't need any one to tell you.
The Princess had as much red as I ever had seen in her cheeks,
her eyes were bright, and she was half-laughing and half-crying.

"Oh you lucky, lucky girl!" she was saying. "What a perfectly
beautiful bride you will be! Never have I seen a more wonderful
dress! Where did you get the material?"

Now we had been trained always to wait for mother to answer a
visitor as she thought suitable, or at least to speak one at a
time and not interrupt; but about six of those grown people told
the Princess all at the same time how our oldest sister Elizabeth
was married to a merchant who had a store at Westchester and how
he got the dress in New York, and gave it to Sally for her
wedding present, or she never could have had it.

The Princess lifted it and set it down softly. "Oh look!" she
cried. "Look! It will stand alone!"

There it stood! Silk stiff enough to stand by itself, made into
a little round waist, cut with a round neck and sleeves elbow
length and flowing almost to where Sally's knees would come. It
was a pale pearl-gray silk crossed in bars four inches square,
made up of a dim yellow line almost as wide as a wheat straw,
with a thread of black on each side of it, and all over, very
wide apart, were little faint splashes of black as if they had
been lightly painted on. The skirt was so wide it almost filled
the room. Every inch of that dress was lined with soft, white
silk. There was exquisite lace made into a flat collar around
the neck, and ruffled from sight up the inside of the wide
sleeves. That was the beginning. The finish was something you
never saw anything like before. It was a trimming made of white
and yellow beads. There was a little heading of white beads
sewed into a pattern, then a lacy fringe that was pale yellow
beads, white inside, each an inch long, that dangled, and every
bead ended with three tiny white ones. That went around the
neck, the outside of the sleeves, and in a pattern like a big
letter V all the way around the skirt. And there it stood--
alone!

The Princess, graceful as a bird and glowing like fire, danced
around it, and touched it, and lifted the sleeves, and made the
bead fringe swing, and laughed, and talked every second. Sally,
and mother, and all of them had smiled such wide smiles for so
long, their faces looked almost as set as Sabethany's, but of
course far different. Being dead was one thing, getting ready
for a wedding another.

And it looked too as if God might be a myth, for all they cared,
so long as the Princess could make the wedding dress stand alone,
and talk a blue streak of things that pleased them. It was not
put on either, for there stood the dress, shimmering like the
inside of a pearl-lined shell, white as a lily, and the tinkly
gold fringe. No one COULD have said enough about it, so no
matter what the Princess said, it had to be all right. She kept
straight on showing all of them how lovely it was, exactly as if
they hadn't seen it before, and she had to make them understand
about it, as if she felt afraid they might have missed some
elegant touch she had seen.

"Do look how the lace falls when I raise this sleeve! Oh how
will you wear this and think of a man enough to say the right
words in the right place?"

Mother laughed, and so did all of them.

"Do please show me the rest," begged the Princess. "I know there
are slippers and a bonnet!"

Sally just oozed pride. She untied the strings and pushed the
prettiest striped bag from a lovely pink bandbox and took out a
dear little gray bonnet with white ribbons, and the yellow bead
fringe, and a bunch of white roses with a few green leaves.
These she touched softly, "I'm not quite sure about the leaves,"
she said.

The Princess had the bonnet, turning and tilting it.

"Perfect!" she cried. "Quite perfect! You need that touch of
colour, and it blends with everything. How I envy you! Oh why
doesn't some one ask me, so I can have things like these? I
think your brother is a genius. I'm going to ride to Westchester
tomorrow and give him an order to fill for me the next time he
goes to the city. No one shows me such fabrics when I go, and
Aunt Beatrice sends nothing from London I like nearly so well.
Oh! Oh!"

She was on her knees now, lifting the skirt to set under little
white satin slippers with gold buckles, and white bead buttons.
When she had them arranged to suit her, she sat on the floor and
kept straight on saying the things my mother and sisters seemed
crazy to hear. When Sally showed her the long white silk mitts
that went with the bonnet, the Princess cried: "Oh do ride home
with me and let me give you a handkerchief Aunt Beatrice sent me,
to carry in your hand!"

Then her face flushed and she added without giving Sally time to
say what she would do: "Or I can bring it the next time I come
past. It belongs with these things and I have no use for it.
May I?"

"Please do! I'll use it for the thing I borrow."

"But I mean it to be a gift," said the Princess. "It was made to
go with these lace mitts and satin slippers. You must take it!"

"Thank you very much," said Sally. "If you really want me to
have it, of course I'd love to."

"I'll bring it to-morrow," promised the Princess. "And I wish
you'd let me try a way I know to dress hair for a wedding. Yours
is so beautiful."

"You're kind, I'm sure," said Sally. "I had intended to wear it
as I always do, so I would appear perfectly natural to the folks;
but if you know a more becoming way, I could begin it now, and
they would be familiar with it by that time."

"I shan't touch it," said the Princess, studying Sally's face.
"Your idea is right. You don't want to commence any new,
unfamiliar style that would make you seem different, just at a
time when every one should see how lovely you are, as you always
have been. But don't forget to wear something blue, and
something borrowed for luck, and oh do please put on one of my
garters!"

"Well for mercy sake!" cried my mother. "Why?"

"So some one will propose to me before the year is out," laughed
the Princess. "I think it must be the most fun of all, to make
beautiful things for your very own home, and lovely dresses, and
be surrounded by friends all eager to help you, and to arrange a
house and live with a man you love well enough to marry, and fix
for little people who might come----"

"You know perfectly there isn't a single man in the county who
wouldn't propose to you, if you'd let him come within a mile of
you," said Shelley.

"When the right man comes I'll go half the mile to meet him? you
may be sure of that; won't I, Mrs. Stanton?" the Princess turned
to mother.

"I have known girls who went even farther," said my mother rather
dryly.

"I draw the line at half," laughed the Princess. "Now I must go;
I have been so long my people will be wondering what I'm doing."

Standing in the middle of the room she put on her hat, picked up
her whip and gloves, and led the way to the hitching rack, while
all of us followed. At the gate stood Laddie as he had come from
the field. His old hat was on the back of his head, his face
flushed, his collar loosened so that his strong white neck
showed, and his sleeves were rolled to the elbow, as they had
been all summer, and his arms were burned almost to blisters.
When he heard us coming he opened the gate, went to the rack,
untied the Princess' horse and led it beside the mounting block.
As she came toward him, he took off his hat and pitched it over
the fence on the grass.

"Miss Pryor, allow me to make you acquainted with my son," said
mother.

I felt as if I would blow up. I couldn't keep my eyes from
turning toward the Princess. Gee! I could have saved my
feelings. She made mother the prettiest little courtsey I ever
set eyes on, and then turned and made a deeper one to Laddie.

"I met your son in one of the village stores some time ago," she
said. "Back her one step farther, please!"

Laddie backed the horse, and quicker than you could see how it
was done, she flashed up the steps and sat the saddle; but as she
leaned over the horse's neck to take the rein from Laddie, he got
one level look straight in the eyes that I was sure none of the
others saw, because they were not watching for it, and I was.
Laddie bowed from the waist, and put the reins in her fingers all
in one movement. He caught the glance she gave him too; I could
almost feel it like a band passing between them. Then she called
a laughing good-bye to all of us at once, and showed us how to
ride right, as she flashed toward the Little Hill. That was
riding, you may believe, and mother sighed as she watched her.

"If I were a girl again," she said, "I would ride as well as
that, or I'd never mount a horse."

"She's been trained from her cradle, and her father deals in
horses. Half the battle in riding is a thoroughbred," said
Laddie. "No such horse as that ever stepped these roads before."

"And no such girl ever travelled them," said my mother, folding
her hands one over the other on top of a post of the hitching
rack. "I must say I don't know how this is coming out, and it
troubles me."

"Why, what's up?" asked Laddie, covering her hands with his and
looking her in the eyes.

"Just this," said my mother. "She's more beautiful of face and
form than God ought to allow any woman to be, in mercy to the men
who will be forced to meet her. Her speech is highly cultured.
Her manners are perfect, and that is a big and unusual thing in a
girl of her age. Every word she said, every move she made to-
day, was exactly as I would have been proud to hear, and to see a
daughter of mine speak and move. If I had only myself to
consider, I would make her my friend, because I'm seasoned in the
ways of the world, and she could influence me only as I chose to
allow her. With you youngsters it is different. You'll find her
captivating, and you may let her ways sway you without even
knowing it. All these outward things are not essential; they are
pleasing, I grant, but they have nothing to do with the one big,
elemental fact that a Godless life is not even half a life. I
never yet have known any man or woman who attempted it who did
not waste life's grandest opportunities, and then come crawling
and defeated to the foot of the cross in the end, asking God's
mercy where none was deserved or earned. It seems to me a craven
way. I know all about the forgiveness on the cross! I know God
is big enough and merciful enough to accept even death-bed
repentance, but what is that to compare with laying out your
course and running it a lifetime without swerving? I detest and
distrust this infidel business. I want no child of mine under
its influence, or in contact with it."

"But when your time comes, if you said just those things to hers
and won her, what a triumph, little mother!"

"`If!'" answered mother. "That's always the trouble! One can't
be sure! `If' I knew I could accomplish that, I would get on my
knees and wrestle with the Lord for the salvation of the soul of
a girl like that, not to mention her poor, housebound mother, and
that man with the unhappiest face I ever have seen, her father.
It's worth trying, but suppose I try and fail, and at the same
time find that in bringing her among us she has influenced some
of mine to the loss of their immortal souls then, what will I
have done?"

"Mother," said Laddie; "mother, have you such a poor opinion of
the things you and father have taught us, and the lives you've
lived before us, that you're really afraid of a slip of a girl,
almost a stranger?"

"The most attractive girl I ever have seen, and mighty willing to
be no longer a stranger, Lad."

"Well, I can't promise for the others," said Laddie, "but for
myself I will give you my word of honour that I won't be
influenced the breadth of one hair by her, in a doctrinal way."

"Humph!" said my mother. "And it is for you I fear. If a young
man is given the slightest encouragement by a girl like that,
even his God can't always hold him; and you never have made a
confession of faith, Laddie. It is you she will be most likely
to captivate."

"If you think I have any chance, I'll go straight over and ask
her father for her this very evening," said Laddie, and even
mother laughed; then all of us started to the house, for it was
almost supper time. I got ready and thought I'd take one more
peep at the dress before Sally pinned it in the sheet again, and
when I went back, there all huddled in a bunch before it stood
Miss Amelia, the tears running down her cheeks.

"Did Sally say you might come here?" I asked.

"No," said Miss Amelia, "but I've been so crazy to see I just
slipped in to take a peep when I noticed the open door. I'll go
this minute. Please don't tell her."

I didn't say what I would do, but I didn't intend to.

"What are you crying about?" I inquired.

"Ah, I too have known love," sobbed Miss Amelia. "Once I made a
wedding dress, and expected to be a happy bride."

"Well, wasn't you?" I asked, and knew at once it was a silly
question, for of course she would not be a miss, if she had not
missed marrying.

"He died!" sobbed Miss Amelia.

If he could have seen her then, I believe he'd have been glad of
it; but maybe he looked as bony and dejected as she did before he
went; and he may have turned to stone afterward, as sometimes
happens. Right then I heard Sally coming, so I grabbed Miss
Amelia and dragged her under the fourposter, where I always hid
when caught doing something I shouldn't. But Sally had so much
stuff she couldn't keep all of it on the bed, and when she
stooped and lifted the ruffle to shove a box under, she pushed it
right against us, and knelt to look, and there we were.

"Well upon my soul!" she cried, and sat flat on the floor,
holding the ruffle, peering in. "Miss Amelia! And in tears!
Whatever is the trouble?"

Miss Amelia's face was redder than any crying ever made it, and I
saw she wanted to kill me for getting her into such a fix, and if
she became too angry probably she'd take it out on me in school
the next day, so I thought I'd better keep her at work shedding
tears.

"`HE DIED!'"  I told Sally as pathetically as ever I could.

Sally dropped the ruffle instantly, but I saw her knees shake
against the floor. After a while she lifted the curtain and
offered Miss Amelia her hand.

"I was leaving my dress to show you before putting it away," she
said.

I didn't believe it; but that was what she said. Maybe it was an
impulse. Mother always said Sally was a creature of impulse.
When she took off her flannel petticoat and gave it to poor
little half-frozen Annie Hasty, that was a good impulse, but it
sent Sally to bed for a week. And when she threw a shovel of
coals on Bill Ramsdell's dog, because Bill was a shiftless lout,
and the dog was so starved it all the time came over and sucked
our eggs, that was a bad impulse, because it didn't do Bill a
particle of good, and it hurt the dog, which would have been glad
to suck eggs at home, no doubt, if Bill hadn't been too worthless
to keep hens.

That was a good impulse she had then, for she asked Miss Amelia
to help her straighten the room, and of course that meant to fold
and put away wedding things. Any woman would have been wild to
do that. Then she told Miss Amelia that she was going to ask
father to dismiss school for half a day, and allow her to see the
wedding, and she asked her if she would help serve the breakfast.

Miss Amelia wiped her eyes, and soon laughed and was just
beaming. I would have been willing to bet my three cents for
lead pencils the next time the huckster came, that Sally never
thought of wanting her until that minute; and then she arranged
for her to wait on table to keep her from trying to eat with the
wedding party, because Miss Amelia had no pretty clothes for one
thing, and for another, you shouldn't act as if you were hungry
out in company, and she ate every meal as if she were breaking a
forty days' fast. I wondered what her folks cooked at home.

After supper Peter came, and the instant I saw him I thought of
something, and it was such a teasing thought I followed around
and watched him harder every minute . At last he noticed me, and
put his arms around me.

"Well, what is it, Little Sister?" he asked.

I did wish he would quit that. No one really had a right to call
me that, except Laddie. Maybe I had to put up with Peter doing
it when I was his sister by law, but before, the old name the
preacher baptized on me was good enough for Peter. I was
thinking about that so hard, I didn't answer, and he asked again.

"I have seen Sally's wedding dress," I told him.

"But that's no reason why you should stare at me."

"That's just exactly the reason," I answered. "I was trying to
see what in the world there is about you to be worth a dress like
that."

Peter laughed and laughed. At last he said that he was not
really worth even a calico dress; and he was so little worthy of
Sally that he would button her shoes, if she would let him. He
got that mixed. The buttons were on her slippers: her shoes
laced. But it showed a humble spirit in Peter. Not that I care
for humble spirits. I am sure the Crusaders didn't have them. I
don't believe Laddie would lace even the Princess' shoes, at
least not to make a steady business of it. But maybe Peter and
Sally had an agreement to help each other. She was always fixing
his tie, and straightening his hair. Maybe that was an impulse,
though, and mother said Sally would get over being so impulsive
when she cut her eye teeth.

CHAPTER VII

When Sally Married Peter

"Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble there's no place like home!
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere."

When they began arranging the house for the wedding, it could be
seen that they had been expecting it, and getting ready for a
long time. From all the closets, shelves and chests poured heaps
of new things. First, the walls were cleaned and some of them
freshly papered, then the windows were all washed long before
regular housecleaning time, the floors were scrubbed and new
carpet put down. Mother had some window blinds that Winfield had
brought her from New York in the spring, and she had laid them
away; no one knew why, then. We all knew now. When mother was
ready to put them up, father had a busy day and couldn't help
her, and she was really provoked. She almost cried about it,
when Leon rode in bringing the mail, and said Hannah Dover had
some exactly like ours at her windows, that her son had sent from
Illinois. Father felt badly enough then, for he always did
everything he could to help mother to be first with everything;
but so she wouldn't blame him, he said crosslike that if she had
let him put them up when they came, as he wanted to, she'd have
been six months ahead.

When they finally got ready to hang the blinds no one knew how
they went. They were a beautiful shiny green, plain on one side,
and on the other there was a silver border across the bottom and
one pink rose as big as a pie plate. Mother had neglected to ask
Winfield on which side the rose belonged. Father said from the
way the roll ran, it went inside. Mother said they were rolled
that way to protect the roses, and that didn't prove anything.
Laddie said he would jump on a horse and ride round the section,
and see how Hannah Dover had hers, and exactly opposite would be
right. Everyone laughed, but no one thought he meant it. Mother
had father hold one against the window, and she stepped outside
to see if she could tell from there. When she came in she said
the flower looked mighty pretty, and she guessed that was the
way, so father started hanging them. He had only two up when
Laddie came racing down the Big Hill bareback, calling for him to
stop.

"I tell you that's not right, mother!" he said as he hurried in.

"But I went outside and father held one, and it looked real
pretty," said mother.

"One! Yes!" said Laddie. "But have you stopped to consider how
two rows across the house are going to look? Nine big pink
roses, with the sun shining on them! Anything funnier than
Dovers' front I never saw. And look here!"

Laddie picked up a blind. "See this plain back? It's double
coated like a glaze. That is so the sun shining through glass
won't fade it. The flowers would be gone in a week. They belong
inside, mother, sure as you live."

"Then when the blinds are rolled to the middle sash in the
daytime no one can see them," wailed mother, who was wild about
pink roses.

"But at night, when they are down, you can put the curtains back
enough to let the roses show, and think how pretty they will look
then."

"Laddie is right!" said father, climbing on the barrel to take
down the ones he had fixed.

"What do you think, girls?" asked mother.

"I think the Princess is coming down the Little Hill," said
Shelley. "Hurry, father! Take them down before she sees! I'm
sure they're wrong."

Father got one all right, but tore the corner of the other.
Mother scolded him dreadfully cross, and he was so flustered he
forgot about being on the barrel, so he stepped back the same as
on the floor, and fell crashing. He might have broken some of
his bones, if Laddie hadn't seen and caught him.

"If you are SURE the flowers go inside, fix one before she
comes!" cried mother.

Father stepped too close the edge of the chair, and by that time
he didn't know how to hang anything, so Laddie climbed up and had
one nailed before the Princess stopped. She came to bring Sally
the handkerchief, and it was the loveliest one any of us ever had
seen. There was a little patch in the middle about four inches
square, and around it a wide ruffle of dainty lace. It was made
to carry in a hand covered with white lace mitts, when you were
wearing a wedding gown of silver silk, lined with white. Of
course it wouldn't have been the slightest use for a funeral or
with a cold in your head. And it had come from across the sea!
From the minute she took it by a pinch in the middle, Sally
carried her head so much higher than she ever had before, that
you could notice the difference.

Laddie went straight on nailing up the blinds, and every one he
fixed he let down full length so the Princess could see the roses
were inside; he was so sure he was right. After she had talked a
few minutes she noticed the blinds going up. Laddie, in a front
window, waved to her from the barrel. She laughed and answered
with her whip, and then she laughed again.

"Do you know," she said, "there is the funniest thing at Dovers'.
I rode past on the way to Groveville this morning and they have
some blinds like those you are putting up."

"Indeed?" inquired my mother. "Winfield sent us these from New
York in the spring, but I thought the hot summer sun would fade
them, so I saved them until the fall cleaning. The wedding
coming on makes us a little early but----"

"Well, they may not be exactly the same," said the Princess. "I
only saw from the highway."  She meant road; there were many
things she said differently. "Have yours big pink roses and
silver scrolls inside?"

"Yes," said mother.

The Princess bubbled until it made you think one of those yellow
oriole birds had perched on her saddle. "That poor woman has
gone and put hers up wrong side out. The effect of all those big
pink roses on her white house front is most amusing. It looks as
if the house were covered with a particularly gaudy piece of
comfort calico. Only fancy!"

She laughed again and rode away. Mother came in just gasping.

"Well, for all His mercies, large and small, the Lord be
praised!" she cried piously, as she dropped into the big rocking
chair. "THAT is what I consider escaping by the skin of your
teeth!"

Then father and Laddie laughed, and said they thought so too.
When the blinds were up, the outside looked well, and you should
have seen the inside! The woodwork was enamelled white, and the
wall paper was striped in white and silver. Every so far on the
silver there was a little pink moss rose having green leaves.
The carpet was plum red and green in wide stripes, and the lace
curtains were freshly washed, snowy, and touched the floor. The
big rocker, the straight-backed chairs, and the sofa were
beautiful red mahogany wood, and the seats shining haircloth. If
no one happened to be looking, you could sit on a sofa arm, stick
your feet out and shoot off like riding down a haystack; the
landing was much better. On the sofa you bounced two feet high
the first time; one, the second; and a little way the third. On
the haystack, maybe you hit a soft spot, and maybe you struck a
rock. Sometimes if you got smart, and tried a new place, and
your feet caught in a tangle of weeds and stuck, you came up
straight, pitched over, and landed on your head. THEN if you
struck a rock, you were still, quite a while. I was once. But
you never dared let mother see you--on the sofa, I mean; she
didn't care about the haystack.

There were pictures in oval black frames having fancy edges, and
a whatnot where all our Christmas and birthday gifts, almost too
dainty to handle, were kept. You fairly held your breath when
you looked at the nest of spun green glass, with the white dove
in it, that George Washington Mitchell gave to Shelley. Of
course a dove's nest was never deep, and round, and green, and
the bird didn't have red eyes and a black bill. I thought
whoever could blow glass as beautifully as that, might just as
easy have made it right while he was at it; but anyway, it was
pretty. There were pitchers, mugs, and vases, almost too
delicate to touch, and the cloth-covered box with braids of hair
coiled in wreaths from the heads of the little fever and whooping
cough sisters.

Laddie asked Sally if she and Peter were going to have the
ceremony performed while they sat on the sofa. Seemed the right
place. They had done all their courting there, even on hot
summer days; but I supposed that was because Sally didn't want to
be seen fixing Peter's tie until she was ready. She made no
bones about it then. She fixed it whenever she pleased; likewise
he held her hand. Shelley said that was disgusting, and you
wouldn't catch her. Leon said he bet a dollar he would; and I
said if he knew he'd get beaten as I did, I bet two dollars he
wouldn't tell what he saw. The mantel was white, with vases of
the lovely grasses that grew beside the stream at the foot of the
Big Hill. Mother gathered the fanciest every fall, dried them,
and dipped them in melted alum coloured with copperas, aniline,
and indigo. Then she took bunches of the colours that went
together best and made bouquets for the big vases. They were
pretty in the daytime, but at night you could watch them sparkle
and shimmer forever.

I always thought the sitting-room was nicer than the parlour.
The woodwork was white enamel there too, but the bureau and
chairs were just cherry and not too precious to use. They were
every bit as pretty. The mantel was much larger. I could stand
up in the fireplace, and it took two men to put on an everyday
log, four the Christmas one. On each side were the book shelves
above, and the linen closets below. The mantel set between
these, and mother always used the biggest, most gorgeous bouquets
there, because she had so much room. The hearth was a slab of
stone that came far into the room. We could sit on it and crack
nuts, roast apples, chestnuts, and warm our cider, then sweep all
the muss we made into the fire. The wall paper was white and
pale pink in stripes, and on the pink were little handled baskets
filled with tiny flowers of different colours. We sewed the rags
for the carpet ourselves, and it was the prettiest thing. One
stripe was wide, all gray, brown, and dull colours, and the other
was pink. There were green blinds and lace curtains here also,
and nice braided rugs that all of us worked on of winter
evenings. Everything got spicker and spanner each day.

Mother said there was no use in putting down a carpet in a
dining-room where you constantly fed a host, and the boys didn't
clean their feet as carefully as they should in winter; but there
were useful rags where they belonged, and in our bedroom opening
from it also. The dining-room wall paper had a broad stripe of
rich cream with pink cabbage roses scattered over it and a narrow
pink stripe, while the woodwork was something perfectly
marvellous. I didn't know what kind of wood it was, but a man
who could turn his hand to anything, painted it. First, he put
on a pale yellow coat and let it dry. Then he added wood brown,
and while it was wet, with a coarse toothed comb, a rag, and his
fingers, he imitated the grain, the even wood, and knotholes of
dressed lumber, until many a time I found myself staring steadily
at a knot to see if a worm wouldn't really come working out. You
have to see a thing like that to understand how wonderful it is.
You couldn't see why they washed the bedding, and took the
feathers from the pillows and steamed them in mosquito netting
bags and dried them in the shade, when Sally's was to be a
morning wedding, but they did. I even had to take a bucket and
gather from around the walls all the little heaps of rocks and
shells that Uncle Abraham had sent mother from California, take
them out and wash and wipe them, and stack them back, with the
fanciest ones on top. He sent her a ring made of gold he dug
himself. She always kept the ring in a bottle in her bureau, and
she meant to wear it at the wedding, with her new silk dress. I
had a new dress too. I don't know how they got everything done.
All of them worked, until the last few days they were perfect
cross patches.

When they couldn't find another thing indoors to scour, they
began on the yard, orchard, barn and road. Mother even had Leon
stack the wood pile straighter. She said when corded wood leaned
at an angle, it made people seem shiftless; and she never passed
a place where it looked that way that her fingers didn't just
itch to get at it. He had to pull every ragweed on each side of
the road as far as our land reached, and lay every rail straight
in the fences. Father had to take spikes and our biggest maul
and go to the bridges at the foot of the Big and the Little Hill,
and see that every plank was fast, so none of them would rattle
when important guests drove across. She said she just simply
wouldn't have them in such a condition that Judge Pettis couldn't
hear himself think when he crossed; for you could tell from his
looks that it was very important that none of the things he
thought should be lost. There wasn't a single spot about the
place inside or out that wasn't gone over; and to lots of it you
never would have known anything had been done if you hadn't seen,
because the place was always in proper shape anyway; but father
said mother acted just like that, even when her sons were married
at other people's houses; and if she kept on getting worse, every
girl she married off, by the time she reached me, we'd all be
scoured threadbare and she'd be on the verge of the grave. May
and I weeded the flowerbeds, picked all the ripe seed, and pulled
up and burned all the stalks that were done blooming. Father and
Laddie went over the garden carefully; they scraped the walks and
even shook the palings to see if one were going to come loose
right at the last minute, when every one would be so flustrated
there would be no time to fix it.

Then they began to talk about arrangements for the ceremony,
whether we should have our regular minister, or Presiding Elder
Lemon, and what people they were going to invite. Just when we
had planned to ask every one, have the wedding in the church, and
the breakfast at the house, and all drive in a joyous procession
to Groveville to give them a good send-off in walked Sally. She
had been visiting Peter's people, and we planned a lot while she
was away.

"What's going on here?" she asked, standing in the doorway,
dangling her bonnet by the ties.

She never looked prettier. Her hair had blown out in little
curls around her face from riding, her cheeks were so pink, and
her eyes so bright.

"We were talking about having the ceremony in the church, so
every one can be comfortably seated, and see and hear well,"
answered mother.

Sally straightened up and began jerking the roses on her bonnet
far too roughly for artificial flowers. Perhaps I surprised you
with that artificial word, but I can spell and define it; it's
easy divided into syllables. Goodness knows, I have seen enough
flowers made from the hair of the dead, wax, and paper, where you
get the shape, but the colour never is right. These of Sally's
were much too bright, but they were better than the ones made at
our house. Hers were of cloth and bought at a store. You
couldn't tell why, but Sally jerked her roses; I wished she
wouldn't, because I very well knew they would be used to trim my
hat the next summer, and she said: "Well, people don't have to
be comfortable during a wedding ceremony; they can stand up if I
can, and as for seeing and hearing, I'm asking a good many that I
don't intend to have see or hear either one!"

"My soul!" cried mother, and she dropped her hands and her mouth
fell open, like she always told us we never should let ours,
while she stared at Sally.

"I don't care!" said Sally, straightening taller yet; her eyes
began to shine and her lips to quiver, as if she would cry in a
minute; "I don't care----!"

"Which means, my child, that you DO care, very much," said
father. "Suppose you cease such reckless talk, and explain to us
exactly what it is that you do want."

Sally gave her bonnet an awful jerk. Those roses would look like
sin before my turn to wear them came, and she said: "Well then,
I do care! I care with all my might! The church is all right,
of course; but I want to be married in my very own home! Every
one can think whatever they please about their home, and so can
I, and what I think is, that this is the nicest and the prettiest
place in all the world, and I belong here----"

Father lifted his head, his face began to shine, and his eyes to
grow teary; while mother started toward Sally. She put out her
hand and held mother from her at arm's length, and she turned and
looked behind her through the sitting-room and parlour, and then
at us, and she talked so fast you never could have understood
what she said if you hadn't known all of it anyway, and thought
exactly the same thing yourself.

"I have just loved this house ever since it was built," she said,
"and I've had as good times here as any girl ever had. If any
one thinks I'm so very anxious to leave it, and you, and mother,
and all the others, why it's a big mistake. Seems as if a girl
is expected to marry and go to a home of her own; it's drummed
into her and things fixed for her from the day of her birth; and
of course I do like Peter, but no home in the world, not even the
one he provides for me, will ever be any dearer to me than my own
home; and as I've always lived in it, I want to be married in it,
and I want to stay here until the very last second----"

"You shall, my child, you shall!" sobbed mother.

"And as for having a crowd of men that father is planning to ask,
staring at me, because he changes harvest help and wood chopping
with them, or being criticised and clawed over by some women
simply because they'll be angry if they don't get the chance, I
just won't--so there! Not if I have to stand the minister
against the wall, and turn our backs to every one. I think----"

"That will do!" said father, wiping his eyes. "That will do,
Sally! Your mother and I have got a pretty clear understanding
of how you feel, now. Don't excite yourself! Your wedding
shan't be used to pay off our scores. You may ask exactly whom
you please, want, and feel quite comfortable to have around
you----"

Then Sally fell on mother's neck and every one cried a while;
then we wiped up, Leon gave Sally his slate, and she came and sat
beside the table and began to make out a list of those she really
wanted to invite. First she put down all of our family, even
many away in Ohio, and all of Peter's, and then his friends, and
hers. Once in the list of girls she stopped and said: "If I
take that beautiful imported handkerchief from Pamela Pryor, I
have just got to invite her "

"And she will outdress and outshine you at your own wedding," put
in Shelley.

"Let her, if she can!" said Sally calmly. "She'll have to hump
herself if she beats that dress of mine; and as for looks, I know
lots of people who think gray eyes, pink cheeks, and brown curls
far daintier and prettier than red cheeks and black eyes and
curls. If she really is better looking than I am, it isn't her
fault; God made her that way, and He wouldn't like us to punish
her for it; and it would, because any one can see she wants to be
friends; don't you think, mother?"--mother nodded--"and besides,
I think she's better looking than I am, myself!"

Sally said that, and wrote down the Princess' name in big
letters, and no one cheeped.

Then she began on our neighbourhood, thinking out loud and
writing what she thought. So all of us were as still, and held
our breath in softly and waited, and Sally said slow and musing
like, "Of course we couldn't have anything at THIS house without
Sarah Hood. She dressed most of us when we were born, nursed us
when we were sick, helped with threshing, company, and parties,
and she's just splendid anyway; we better ask all the Hoods"; so
she wrote them down. "And it will be lonely for Widow Willis and
the girls to see every one else here--we must have them; and of
course Deams--Amanda is always such splendid help; and the Widow
Fall is so perfectly lovely, we want her for decorative purposes;
and we could scarcely leave out Shaws; they always have all of us
everything they do; and Dr. Fenner of course; and we'll want Flo
and Agnes Kuntz to wait on table, so their folks might as well
come too----"

So she went on taking up each family we knew, and telling what
they had done for us, or what we had done for them; and she found
some good reason for inviting them, and pretty soon father
settled back in his chair and never took his eyes from Sally's
shining head as she bent over the slate, and then he began
pulling his lower lip, like when it won't behave, and his eyes
danced exactly as I've seen Leon's. I never had noticed that
before.

Sally went straight on and at last she came to Freshetts. "I am
going to have all of them, too," she said. "The children are
good children, and it will help them along to see how things are
done when they are right; and I don't care what any one says, I
LIKE Mrs. Freshett. I'll ask her to help work, and that will
keep her from talking, and give the other women a chance to see
that she's clean, and human, and would be a good neighbour if
they'd be friendly. If we ask her, then the others will."

When she finished--as you live--there wasn't a soul she had left
out except Bill Ramsdell, who starved his dog until it sucked our
eggs, and Isaac Thomas, who was so lazy he wouldn't work enough
to keep his wife and children dressed so they ever could go
anywhere, but he always went, even with rags flying, and got his
stomach full just by talking about how he loved the Lord. To
save me I couldn't see Isaac Thomas without beginning to myself:

        "'Tis the voice of the sluggard; I hear him complain,
         You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again.
         I passed by his garden, I saw the wild brier,
         The thorn, and the thistle, grow broader and higher;
         The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags;
         And his money he wastes, till he starves or he begs."

That described Isaac to the last tatter, only he couldn't waste
money; he never had any. Once I asked father what he thought
Isaac would do with it, if by some unforeseen working of Divine
Providence, he got ten dollars. Father said he could tell me
exactly, because Isaac once sold some timber and had a hundred
all at once. He went straight to town and bought Mandy a red
silk dress and a brass breastpin, when she had no shoes. He got
the children an organ, when they were hungry; and himself a plug
hat. Mandy and the children cried because he forgot candy and
oranges until the last cent was gone. Father said the only time
Isaac ever worked since he knew him was when he saw how the hat
looked with his rags. He actually helped the men fell the trees
until he got enough to buy a suit, the remains of which he still
wore on Sunday. I asked father why he didn't wear the hat too,
and father said the loss of that hat was a blow, from which Isaac
never had recovered. Once at camp-meeting he laid it aside to
pray his longest, most impressive prayer, and an affectionate cow
strayed up and licked the nap all off before Isaac finished, so
he never could wear it again.

Sally said: "I'll be switched if I'll have that disgusting
creature around stuffing himself on my wedding day; but if you're
not in bed, when it's all over, mother, I do wish you'd send
Mandy and the children a basket."

Mother promised, and father sat and looked on and pulled his
lower lip until his ears almost wiggled. Then Sally said she
wanted Laddie and Shelley to stand at the parlour door and keep
it tight shut, and seat every one in the sitting-room except a
special list she had made out to send in there. She wanted all
our family and Peter's, and only a few very close friends, but it
was enough to fill the room. She said when she and Peter came
downstairs every one could see how they looked when they crossed
the sitting-room, and for all the difference the door would make,
it could be left open then; she would be walled in by people she
wanted around her, and the others could have the fun of being
there, seeing what they could, and getting all they wanted to
eat. Father and mother said that was all right, only to say
nothing about the plan to shut the door; but when the time came
just to close it and everything would be satisfactory.

Then Sally took the slate upstairs to copy the list with ink, so
every one went about something, while mother crossed to father
and he took her on his lap, and they looked at each other the
longest and the hardest, and neither of them said a word. After
a while they cried and laughed, and cried some more, and it was
about as sensible as what a flock of geese say when they are let
out of the barn and start for the meadow in the morning. Then
father, all laughy and criey, said: "Thank God! Oh, thank God,
the girl loves the home we have made for her!"

Just said it over and over, and mother kept putting in: "It
pays, Paul! It pays!"

Next day Sally put on her riding habit and fixed herself as
pretty as ever she could, and went around to have a last little
visit with every one, and invited them herself, and then she
wrote letters to people away. Elizabeth and Lucy came home, and
every one began to work. Father and mother went to the village
in the carriage and brought home the bed full of things to eat,
and all we had was added, and mother began to pack butter, and
save eggs for cakes, and the day before, I thought there wouldn't
be a chicken left on the place. They killed and killed, and
Sarah Hood, Amanda Deam, and Mrs. Freshett picked and picked.

"I'll bet a dollar we get something this time besides ribs and
neck," said Leon. "How do you suppose thigh and breast would
taste?"

"I was always crazy to try the tail," I said.

"Much chance you got," sniggered Leon. "'Member the time that
father asked the Presiding Elder, `Brother Lemon, what piece of
the fowl do you prefer?' and he up and said: `I'm partial to the
rump, Brother Stanton.'  There sat father bound he wouldn't give
him mother's piece, so he pretended he couldn't find it, and
forked all over the platter and then gave him the ribs and the
thigh. Gee, how mother scolded him after the preacher had gone!
You notice father hasn't asked that since. Now, he always says:
`Do you prefer light or dark meat?'  Much chance you have of ever
tasting a tail, if father won't even give one to the Presiding
Elder!"

"But as many as they are killing----"

"Oh THIS time," said Leon with a flourish, "this time we are
going to have livers, and breast, and thighs, AND tails, if you
are beholden to tail."

"I'd like to know how we are?"

"Well, since you have proved that you can keep your mouth shut,
for a little while, anyway, I'm going to take you in on this,"
said Leon. "You keep your eyes on me. When the wedding gets
going good, you watch me, and slip out. That's all! I'll be
fixed to do the rest. But mind this, get out when I do."

"All right," I promised.

They must have wakened about four o'clock on the wedding day; it
wasn't really light when I got up. I had some breakfast in my
night dress, and then I was all fixed up in my new clothes, and
made to sit on a chair, and never move for fear I would soil my
dress, for no one had time to do me over, and there was only one
dress anyway. There was so much to see you could keep interested
just watching, and I was as anxious to look nice before the boys
and girls, and the big people, as any one.

Every mantel and table and bureau was covered with flowers, and
you could have smelled the kitchen a mile away, I know. The
dining table was set for the wedding party, our father and
mother, and Peter's, and the others had to wait. You couldn't
have laid the flat of your hand on that table anywhere, it was so
covered with things to eat. Miss Amelia, in a dress none of us
ever had seen before, a real nice white dress, pranced around it
and smirked at every one, and waved the peacock feather brush to
keep the flies from the jelly, preserves, jam, butter, and things
that were not cooked.

For hours Mrs. Freshett had stood in the kitchen on one side of
the stove frying chicken and heaping it in baking pans in the
oven, and Amanda Deam on the other, frying ham, while Sarah Hood
cooked other things, and made a wash boiler of coffee.
Everything was ready by the time it should have been. I had
watched them until I was tired, when Sally came through the room
where I was, and she said I might come along upstairs and see her
dressed. When we reached the door I wondered where she would put
me, but she pushed clothing together on a bed, and helped me up,
and that was great fun.

She had been bathed and had on her beautiful new linen
underclothing that mother punched full of holes and embroidered
in flowers and vines, and Shelley was brushing her hair when some
one called out: "The Princess is coming!"

I jumped for the window, and all of them, even Sally, crowded
behind. Well, talk about carriages! No one ever had seen THAT
one before. It WAS a carriage. And such horses! The funny
"'orse, 'ouse" man who made the Pryor garden was driving. He
stopped at the gate, got out and opened a door, and the Princess'
father stepped down, tall and straight, all in shiny black. He
turned around and held out his hand, bowing double, and the
Princess laid her hand in his and stepped out too. He walked
with her to the gate, made another bow, kissed her hand, and
stepped back, and she came down the walk alone. He got in the
carriage, the man closed the door, and they drove away.

Sally must have arranged before that the Princess was to come
early, for she came straight upstairs. She wore a soft white
silk dress with big faded pink roses in it, and her hair was
fastened at each ear with a bunch of little pink roses. She was
lovely, but she didn't "outdress or outshine" Sally one bit, and
she never even glanced at the mirror to see how she looked; she
began helping with Sally's hair, and to dress her. When Bess
Kuntz prinked so long she made every one disgusted, the Princess
said: "Oh save your trouble. No one will look at you when
there's a bride in the house."

There was a roll almost as thick as your arm of garters that all
the other girls wanted Sally to wear for them so they would get a
chance to marry that year, and Agnes Kuntz's was so large it went
twice around, and they just laughed about it. They put a blue
ribbon on Sally's stays for luck, and she borrowed Peter's sister
Mary's comb to hold her back hair. They had the most fun, and
when she was all ready except her dress they went away, and Sally
stood in the middle of the room trembling a little. Outside you
could hear carriage wheels rolling, the beat of horses' hoofs,
and voices crying greetings. "There was a sound of revelry," by
day. Mother came in hurriedly. She wore her new brown silk,
with a lace collar pinned at the throat with the pin that had a
brown goldstone setting in it, and her precious ring was on her
finger. She was dainty and pretty enough to have been a bride
herself. She turned Sally around slowly, touching her hair a
little and her skirts; then she went to the closet, took out the
wedding dress, put the skirt over Sally's head, and she came up
through the whiteness, pink and glowing. She slipped her arms
into the sleeves, and mother fastened it, shook out the skirt,
saw that the bead fringe hung right, and the lace collar lay
flat, then she took Sally in her arms, held her tight and said:
"God bless you, dear, and keep you always. Amen."

Then she stepped to the door, and Peter, all shining and new,
came in. He hugged Sally and kissed her like it didn't make the
least difference whether she had on calico or a wedding dress,
and he just stared, and stared at her, and never said a word, so
at last she asked: "Well Peter, do you like my dress?"

And the idiot said: "Why Sally, I hadn't even seen it!"

Then both of them laughed, and the Presiding Elder came.

I never liked to look at him very well because something had
happened, and he had only one eye. I always wondered if he had
"plucked it out" because it had "offended" him; but if you could
forget his eye, and just listen to his voice, it was like the
sweetest music. He married those two people right there in the
bedroom, all but about three words at the end. I heard and saw
every bit of it. Then Sally said it was time for me to go to
mother, but she followed me into the boys' room and shut the
door. Then she knelt in her beautiful silver dress, and put her
arms around me and said: "Honest, Little Sister, aren't you
going to kiss me goodbye?"

"Oh I can if you want me to," I said, but I didn't look at her; I
looked out of the window.

She laughed a breathless little catchy sort of laugh and said:
"That's exactly what I do want."

"You didn't even want me, to begin with," I reminded her.

"There isn't a doubt but whoever told you that, could have been
in better business," said Sally, angry-like. "I was much younger
then, and there were many things I didn't understand, and it
wasn't you I didn't want; it was just no baby at all. I wouldn't
have wanted a boy, or any other girl a bit more. I foolishly
thought we had children enough in this house. I see now very
plainly that we didn't, for this family never could get along
without you, and I'm sorry I ever thought so, and I'd give
anything if I hadn't struck you and----"

"Oh be still, and go on and get married!" I said. I could just
feel a regular beller coming in my throat. "I was only fooling
to pay you up. I meant all the time to kiss you good-bye when
the others did. I'll nearly die being lonesome when you're
gone----"

Then I ran for downstairs, and when I reached the door, where the
steps went into the sitting-room, I stopped, scared at all the
people. It was like camp-meeting. You could see the yard full
through the windows. Just as I was thinking I'd go back to the
boys' room, and from there into the garret, and down the back
stairway, Laddie went and saw me. He came over, led me to the
parlour door, put me inside, and there mother took my hand and
held me tight, and I couldn't see Leon anywhere.

I was caught, but they didn't have him. Mother never hung on as
she did that day. I tried and tried to pull away, and she held
tight. It was only a minute until the door opened, people
crowded back, and the Presiding Elder, followed by Sally and
Peter, came into the room, and they began being married all over
again.

If it hadn't grown so solemn my mother sprung a tear, I never
would have made it. She just had to let me go to sop her face,
because tears are salty, and they would turn her new brown silk
front yellow. The minute my hand was free, I slipped between the
people and looked at the parlour door. It was wedged full and
more standing on chairs behind them. No one could get out there.

I thought I would fail Leon sure, and then I remembered the
parlour bedroom. I got through that door easy as anything, and
it was no trick at all to slip behind the blind, raise the
window, and drop into mother's room from the sill. From there I
reached the back dining-room door easy enough, went around to the
kitchen, and called Leon softly. He opened the door at once and
I slipped in. He had just got there. We looked all around and
couldn't see where to begin at first. There was enough cooked
food there to load two wagons.

An old pillow-case that had dried sage in it was lying across a
chair and Leon picked it up and poured the sage into the wood-
box, and handed the case to me. He went over and knelt before
the oven, while I followed and held open the case. Leon rolled
his eyes to the ceiling and said so exactly like father when he
is serving company that not one of us could have told the
difference: "Which part of the fowl do you prefer, Brother
Lemon?"

It was so funny it made me snigger, but I straightened up and
answered as well as I could: "I'm especially fond of the rump,
Brother Stanton."

Leon stirred the heap and piled four or five tails in the case.
I thought that was all I could manage before they would spoil, so
I said: "Do you prefer light or dark meat, Sister Abigail?"

"I wish to choose breast," said Leon, simpering just like that
silly Abigail Webster. He put in six breasts. Then we found
them hidden away back in the oven in a pie pan, for the bride's
table, I bet, and we took two livers apiece; we didn't dare take
more for fear they had been counted. Then he threw in whatever
he came to that was a first choice big piece, until I was really
scared, and begged him to stop; but he repeated what the fox said
in the story of the "Quarrelsome Cocks"--"Poco was very good, but
I have not had enough yet," so he piled in pieces until I ran
away with the pillow-case; then he slid in a whole plateful of
bread, another of cake, and put the plates in a tub of dishes
under the table. Then we took some of everything that wasn't too
runny. Just then the silence broke in the front part of the
house, and we scooted from the back door, closing it behind us,
ran to the wood house and climbed the ladder to the loft over the
front part. There we were safe as could be, we could see to the
road, hear almost everything said in the kitchen, and "eat our
bites in peace," like Peter Justice told the Presiding Elder at
the church trial that he wanted his wife to, the time he slapped
her. Before very long, they began calling us, and called, and
called. We hadn't an idea what they wanted, so we ate away. We
heard them first while I was holding over a back to let Leon
taste kidney, and it made him blink when he got it good.

"Well my soul!" he said. "No wonder father didn't want to feed
that to another man when mother isn't very well, and likes it!
No wonder!"

Then he gave me a big bite of breast. It was sort of dry and
tasteless; I didn't like it.

"Why, I think neck or back beats that all to pieces!" I said in
surprise.

"Fact is, they do!" said Leon. "I guess the people who `wish to
choose breast,' do it to get the biggest piece."

I never had thought of it before, but of course that would be the
reason.

"Allow me, Sister Stanton," said Leon, holding out a piece of
thigh.

That was really chicken! Then we went over the backs and picked
out all the kidneys, and ate the little crusty places, and all
the cake we could swallow; then Leon fixed up the bag the best he
could, and set it inside an old cracked churn and put on the lid.

He said that would do almost as well as the cellar, and the food
would keep until to-morrow. I wanted to slip down and put it in
the Underground Station; but Leon said father must be spending a
lot of money right now, and he might go there to get some, so
that wouldn't be safe. Then he cleaned my face, and I told him
when he got his right, and we slipped from the back door, crossed
the Lawton blackberry patch, and went to the house from the
orchard. Leon took an apple and broke it in two, and we went in
eating as if we were starving. When father asked us where in
this world we had been, Leon told him we thought it would be so
awful long before the fourth or fifth table, and we hadn't had
much breakfast, and we were so hungry we went and hunted
something to eat.

"If you'd only held your horses a minute," said father; "they
were calling you to take places at the bride's table."

Well for land's sake! Our mouths dropped open until it's a
wonder the cake and chicken didn't show, and we never said a
word. There didn't seem to be anything to say, for Leon loved to
be with grown folks, and to have eaten at the bride's table would
have been the biggest thing that ever happened to me. At last,
when I could speak, I asked who had taken our places, and bless
your heart if it wasn't that mealy-faced little sister of
Peter's, and one of the aunts from Ohio. They had finished, and
Sally was upstairs putting on her travelling dress, while the
guests were eating, when I heard Laddie ask the Princess to ride
with him and Sally's other friends, who were going to escort her
to the depot.

"You'll want all your horses. What could I ride?"

"If I find you a good horse and saddle will you go?"

"I will. I think it would be fine sport."

Laddie turned and went from sight that minute. The Princess
laughed and kept on making friends with every one, helping wait
on people, thinking of nice things to do, and just as the
carriage was at the gate for father and mother, and Sally and
Peter, and every one else was untying their horses to ride in the
procession to the village, from where I was standing on the
mounting block I saw something coming down the Little Hill. I
took one look, ran to the Princess, and almost dragged her.

Up raced Laddie, his face bright, his eyes snapping with fun. He
rode Flos, was leading the Princess' horse Maud, and carrying a
big bundle under his arm. He leaped from the saddle and fastened
both horses.

"Gracious Heaven! What have you done?" gasped the Princess.

"Brought your mount," said Laddie, quite as if he were used to
going to Pryors' after the sausage grinder or the grain sacks.
But the Princess was pale and trembling. She stepped so close
she touched him, and he immediately got a little closer. You
couldn't get ahead of Laddie, and he didn't seem to care who saw,
and neither did she.

"Tell me exactly what occurred," she said, just as father does
when he means to whale us completely.

"I rapped at the front door," said Laddie.

"And who opened it?" cried the Princess.

"Your father!"

"My father?"

"Yes, your father!" said Laddie. "And because I was in such a
hurry, I didn't wait for him to speak. I said: `Good morning,
Mr. Pryor. I'm one of the Stanton boys, and I came for Miss
Pryor's mount and habit. All the young people who are on
horseback are going to ride an escort to the village, around my
sister's bridal carriage, and Miss Pryor thinks she would enjoy
going. Please excuse such haste, but we only this minute made
the plan, and the train won't wait.'"

"And he?"

"He said: `Surely! Hold one minute.'  I stood on the step and
waited, and I could hear him give the order to some one to get
your riding habit quickly, and then he blew a shrill whistle, and
your horse was at the gate the fastest of anything I ever saw."

"Did he do or say----"

"Nothing about `clods, and clowns, and grossness!'  Every other
word he spoke was when I said, `Thank you, and good morning,' and
was turning away. He asked: `Did Miss Pryor say whether she
preferred to ride home, or shall I escort her in the carriage?'"

"`She did not,' I answered. `The plan was so sudden she had no
time to think that far. But since she will have her horse and
habit, why not allow my father to escort her?'  So you see, I'm
going to take you home," exulted Laddie.

"But you told him your FATHER," said the Princess.

"And thereby created the urgent necessity," said Laddie with a
flourish, "for speaking to him again, and telling him that my
father had visitors from Ohio, and couldn't leave them. We will
get all the fun from the day that we can; but before dusk, too
early for them to have any cause for cavil, `the gross country
clod' is going to take you home!"

One at a time, Laddie pounded those last words into the hitching
post, with his doubled fist.

"Suppose he sets the dogs on you! You know he keeps two dreadful
ones."

Laddie just roared. He leaned closer.

"Beaucheous Lady," he said, "I have fed those same dogs and
rubbed their ears so many nights lately, he'll get the surprise
of his life if he tries that."

The Princess drew away and stared at Laddie the funniest.

"On my life!" she said at last. "Well for a country clod----!"

Then she turned with the habit bundle, and ran into the house.
Father and mother came from the front door arm in arm and walked
to the carriage, and Sally and Peter followed. My, but they
looked fine! The Princess had gone to the garden and gathered
flowers and lined all the children in rows down each side of the
walk. They were loaded with blooms to throw at Sally; but when
she came out, in her beautiful gray poplin travelling dress,
trimmed in brown ribbon, the same shade as her curls, her face
all pink, her eyes shining, and the ties of her little brown
bonnet waving to her waist, she was so perfectly beautiful, every
single child watched her open mouthed, gripped its flowers, and
forgot to throw them at all.

And this you scarcely will believe after what she had said the
day she made her list, and when all of us knew her heart was all
torn up, Sally just swept along smiling at every one and calling
"good-bye" to those who had no way to ride to the village, as if
leaving didn't amount to much. At the carriage, a little white,
but still smiling, she turned and took one long look at
everything, and then she got in and called for me, right out loud
before every one, so I got to hold up my head as high as it would
go, and step in too, and ride all the way to Groveville between
her and Peter, and instead of holding his hand, she held mine,
just gripped it tight. She gripped so hard she squeezed all the
soreness at her from my heart, and when she kissed me good-bye
the very last of all, I whispered in her ear that I wouldn't ever
be angry any more, and I wasn't, because after she had explained
I saw how it had been. It wasn't ME she didn't want; it was just
no baby.

After our carriage came Peter's people, then one father borrowed
for the Ohio relatives, then the other children, and all the
neighbours followed, and when we reached the high hill where you
turn beside the woods, I saw father gather up the lines and brace
himself, for Ned and Jo were what he called "mettlesome."  "Then
came a burst of thunder sound," as it says in "Casablanca," and
the horseback riders came sweeping around us, Laddie and the
Princess leading. These two rode ahead of us, and the others
lined three deep on either side, and the next carriage dropped
back and let them close in behind, so Sally and Peter were "in
the midst thereof."  Instead of throwing old shoes, as always had
been done, the Princess coaxed them to throw rice and roses, and
every other flower pulled from the bouquets at home, and from the
gardens we had passed. Every one was out watching us go by, and
when William Justus rode beside the fences crying, "Flowers for
the bride! Give us flowers for the bride!" some of the women
were so excited they pulled things up by the roots and gave him
armloads, and he rode ahead and supplied Laddie and the Princess,
and they kept scattering them in the road until every foot of the
way to Groveville was covered with flowers, "the fair young
flowers that lately sprang and stood."  He even made side-cuts
into swampy places and gathered armloads of those perfectly
lovely, fringy blue gentians, caught up, and filled the carriage
and scattered them in a wicked way, because you should only take
a few of those rare, late flowers that only grow from seed.

Sally looked just as if she had come into her own and was made
for it; I never did see her look so pretty, but Peter sweated and
acted awful silly. Father had a time with the team. Ned and Jo
became excited and just ranted. They simply danced. Laddie had
braided their manes and tails, and they waved like silken floss
in the sunshine, and the carriage was freshly washed and the
patent leather and brass shone, and we rode flower-covered.
Ahead, Laddie and the Princess fairly tried themselves. She
hadn't put on her hat or habit after all. When Laddie told her
they were going to lead, she said: "Very well! Then I shall go
as I am. The dress makes no difference. It's the first time
I've had a chance to spoil one since I left England."

When the other girls saw what she was going to do, nearly every
one of them left off their hats and riding skirts. Every family
had saddle horses those days, and when the riders came racing up
they looked like flying flowers, they were all laughing, bloom
ladened, singing and calling jokes. Ahead, Laddie and the
Princess just plain showed off. Her horse came from England with
them, and Laddie said it had Arab blood in it, like the one in
the Fourth Reader poem, "Fret not to roam the desert now, With
all thy winged speed," and the Princess loved her horse more than
that man did his. She said she'd starve before she'd sell it,
and if her family were starving, she'd go to work and earn food
for them, and keep her horse. Laddie's was a Kentucky
thoroughbred he'd saved money for years to buy; and he took a
young one and trained it himself, almost like a circus horse.
Both of them COULD ride; so that day they did. They ran those
horses neck and neck, right up the hill approaching Groveville,
until they were almost from sight, then they whirled and came
sweeping back fast as the wind. The Princess' eyes were like
dead coals, and her black curls streamed, the thin silk dress
wrapped tight around her and waved back like a gossamer web such
as spiders spin in October. Laddie's hair was blowing, his
cheeks and eyes were bright, and with one eye on the Princess--
she didn't need it--and one on the road, he cut curves, turned,
wheeled, and raced, and as he rode, so did she.

"Will they break their foolish necks?" wailed mother.

"They are the handsomest couple I ever have seen in my life!"
said father.

"Yes, and you two watch out, or you'll strike trouble right
there," said Sally, leaning forward.

I gave her an awful nudge. It made me so happy I could have
screamed to see them flying away together like that.

"Well, if that girl represents trouble," said father, "God knows
it never before came in such charming guise."

"You can trust a man to forget his God and his immortal soul if a
sufficiently beautiful woman comes along," said my mother dryly,
and all of them laughed.

She didn't mean that to be funny, though. You could always tell
by the set of her lips and the light in her eyes.

Just this side of Groveville we passed a man on horseback. He
took off his hat and drew his horse to one side when Laddie and
the Princess rode toward him. He had a big roll of papers under
his arm, to show that he had been for his mail. But I knew, so
did Laddie and the Princess, that he had been compelled to saddle
and ride like mad, to reach town and come that far back in time
to watch us pass; for it was the Princess' father, and WATCH was
exactly what he was doing; he wanted to see for himself. Laddie
and the Princess rode straight at him, neck and neck, and then
both of them made their horses drop on their knees and they waved
a salute, and then they were up and away. Of course father and
mother saw, so mother bowed, and father waved his whip as we
passed. He sat there like he'd turned the same on horseback as
Sabethany had in her coffin; but he had to see almost a mile of
us driving our best horses and carriages, wearing our wedding
garments and fine raiment, and all that "cavalcade," father
called it, of young, reckless riders. You'd have thought if
there were a hint of a smile in his whole being it would have
shown when Sally leaned from the carriage to let him see that her
face and clothes were as good as need be and smiled a lovely
smile on him, and threw him a rose. He did leave his hat off and
bow low, and then Shelley, always the very dickens for daring,
rode right up to him and laughed in his face, and she leaned and
thrust a flower into his bony hands; you would have thought he
would have been simply forced to smile then, but he looked far
more as if he would tumble over and roll from the saddle. My
heart ached for a man in trouble like that. I asked the Lord to
preserve us from secrets we couldn't tell the neighbours!

At the station there wasn't a thing those young people didn't do.

They tied flowers and ribbons all over Sally's satchel and trunk.

They sowed rice as if it were seeding time in a wheatfield. They
formed a circle around Sally and Peter and as mushy as ever they
could they sang, "As sure as the grass grows around the stump,
You are my darling sugar lump," while they danced. They just
smiled all the time no matter what was done to them. Some of it
made me angry, but I suppose to be pleasant was the right way.
Sally was strong on always doing the right thing, so she just
laughed, and so did all of us. Going home it was wilder yet, for
all of them raced and showed how they could ride.

At the house people were hungry again, so the table was set and
they ate up every scrap in sight, and Leon and I ate with them
that time and saved ours. Then one by one the carriages, spring
wagons, and horseback riders went away, all the people saying
Sally was the loveliest bride, and hers had been the prettiest
wedding they'd ever seen, and the most good things to eat, and
Laddie and the Princess went with them. When the last one was
gone, and only the relatives from Ohio were left, mother pitched
on the bed, gripped her hands and cried as if she'd go to pieces,
and father cried too, and all of us, even Mrs. Freshett, who
stayed to wash up the dishes. She was so tickled to be there,
and see, and help, that mother had hard work to keep her from
washing the linen that same night. She did finish the last dish,
scrub the kitchen floor, black the stove, and pack all the
borrowed china in tubs, ready to be taken home, and things like
that. Mother said it was a burning shame for any neighbourhood
to let a woman get so starved out and lonesome she'd act that
way. She said enough was enough, and when Mrs. Freshett had
cooked all day, and washed dishes until the last skillet was in
place, she had done as much as any neighbour ought to do, and the
other things she went on and did were a rebuke to us.

I felt sore, weepy, and tired out. It made me sick to think of
the sage bag in the cracked churn, so I climbed my very own
catalpa tree in the corner, watched up the road for Laddie, and
thought things over. If I ever get married I want a dress, and a
wedding exactly like that, but I would like a man quite different
from Peter; like Laddie would suit me better. When he rode under
the tree, I dropped from a limb into his arms, and went with him
to the barn. He asked me what was going on at the house, and I
told him about Mrs. Freshett being a rebuke to us; and Laddie
said she was, and he didn't believe one word against her. When I
told him mother was in bed crying like anything, he said: "I
knew that had to come when she kept up so bravely at the station.

Thank the Lord, she showed her breeding by holding in until she
got where she had a right to cry if she pleased."

Then I whispered for fear Leon might be around: "Did he set the
dogs on you?"

"He did not," said Laddie, laughing softly.

"Did he call you names again?"

"He did!" said Laddie, "but I started it. You see, when we got
there, Thomas was raking the grass and he came to take the
Princess' horse. Her father was reading on a bench under a tree.

I helped her down, and walked with her to the door and said good-
bye, and thanked her for the pleasure she had added to the day
for us, loudly enough that he could hear; then I went over to him
and said: `Good evening, Mr. Pryor. If my father knew anything
about it, he would very much regret that company from Ohio
detained him and compelled me to escort your daughter home. He
would greatly have enjoyed the privilege, but I honestly believe
that I appreciated it far more than he could.'"

"Oh Laddie, what did he say?"

"He arose and glared at me, and choked on it, and he tried
several times, until I thought the clods were going to fly again,
but at last he just spluttered: `You blathering rascal, you!'
That was such a compliment compared with what I thought he was
going to say that I had to laugh. He tried, but he couldn't keep
from smiling himself, and then I said: `Please think it over,
Mr. Pryor, and if you find that Miss Pryor has had an agreeable,
entertaining day, won't you give your consent for her to come
among us again? Won't you allow me to come here, if it can be
arranged in such a way that I intrude on no one?'"

"Oh Laddie!"

"He exploded in a kind of a snarl that meant, I'll see you in the
Bad Place first. So I said to him: `Thank you very much for to-
day, anyway. I'm sure Miss Pryor has enjoyed this day, and it
has been the happiest of my life--one to be remembered always.
Of course I won't come here if I am unwelcome, but I am in honour
bound to tell you that I intend to meet your daughter elsewhere,
whenever I possibly can. I thought it would be a better way for
you to know and have us where you could see what was going on, if
you chose, than for us to meet without your knowledge."

"Oh Laddie," I wailed, "now you've gone and ruined everything!"

"Not so bad as that, Little Sister," laughed Laddie. "Not half
so bad! He exploded in another growl, and he shook his walking
stick at me, and he said--guess what he said."

"That he would kill you," I panted, clinging to him.

"Right!" said Laddie. "You have it exactly. He said: `Young
man, I'll brain you with my walking stick if ever I meet you
anywhere with my daughter, when you have not come to her home and
taken her with my permission.'"

"What!" I stammered. "What! Oh Laddie, say it over! Does it
mean----?"

"It means," said Laddie, squeezing me until I was near losing my
breath, "it means, Little Sister, that I shall march to his door
and ask him squarely, and if it is anywhere the Princess wants to
go, I shall take her."

"Like, `See the conquering hero comes?'"

"Exactly!" laughed Laddie.

"What will mother say?"

"She hasn't made up her mind yet," answered Laddie.

"Do you mean----?" I gasped again.

"Of course!" said Laddie. "I wasn't going to let a girl get far
ahead of me. The minute I knew she had told her mother, I told
mine the very first chance."

"Mother knows that you feel about the Princess as father does
about her?"

"Mother knows," answered Laddie, "and so does father. I told
both of them."

Both of them knew! And it hadn't made enough difference that any
one living right with them every day could have told it. Time
and work will be needed to understand grown people.

CHAPTER VIII

The Shropshire and the Crusader

        "For, among the rich and gay,
            Fine, and grand, and decked in laces,
         None appear more glad then they,
            With happier hearts, or happier faces."

Every one told mother for a week before the wedding that she
would be sick when it was over, and sure enough she was. She had
been on her feet too much, and had so many things to think about,
and there had been such a dreadful amount of work for her and
Candace, even after all the neighbours helped, that she was sick
in bed and we couldn't find a thing she could eat, until she was
almost wild with hunger and father seemed as if he couldn't
possibly bear it a day longer.

After Candace had tried everything she could think of, I went up
and talked it over with Sarah Hood, and she came down, pretending
she happened in, and she tried thickened milk, toast and mulled
buttermilk; she kept trying for two days before she gave up.
Candace thought of new things, and Mrs. Freshett came and made
all the sick dishes she knew, but mother couldn't even taste
them; so we were pretty blue, and we nearly starved ourselves,
for how could we sit and eat everything you could mention, and
mother lying there, almost crying with hunger?

Saturday morning I was hanging around her room hoping maybe she
could think of some least little thing I could do for her, even
if no more than to bring a glass of water, or a late rose to lay
on her pillow; it would be better than not being able to do
anything at all. After a while she opened her eyes and looked at
me, and I scarcely knew her. She smiled the bravest she could
and said: "Sorry for mother, dear?"

I nodded. I couldn't say much, and she tried harder than ever to
be cheerful and asked: "What are you planning to do to-day?"

"If you can't think of one thing I can do for you, guess I'll go
fishing," I said.

Her eyes grew brighter and she seemed half interested.

"Why, Little Sister," she said, "if you can catch some of those
fish like you do sometimes, I believe I could eat one of them."

I never had such a be-hanged time getting started. I slipped
from the room, and never told a soul even where I was going. I
fell over the shovel and couldn't find anything quick enough but
my pocket to put the worms in, and I forgot my stringer. At
last, when I raced down the hill to the creek and climbed over
the water of the deep place, on the roots of the Pete Billings
yowling tree, I had only six worms, my apple sucker pole, my
cotton cord line, and bent pin hook. I put the first worm on
carefully, and if ever I prayed! Sometimes it was hard to
understand about this praying business. My mother was the best
and most beautiful woman who ever lived. She was clean, and
good, and always helped "the poor and needy who cluster round
your door," like it says in the poetry piece, and there never
could have been a reason why God would want a woman to suffer
herself, when she went flying on horseback even dark nights
through rain or snow, to doctor other people's pain, and when she
gave away things like she did--why, I've seen her take a big
piece of meat from the barrel, and a sack of meal, and heaps of
apples and potatoes to carry to Mandy Thomas--when she gave away
food by the wagonload at a time, God couldn't have WANTED her to
be hungry, and yet she WAS that very minute almost crying for
food; and I prayed, oh how I did pray! and a sneaking old back-
ended crayfish took my very first worm. I just looked at the sky
and said: "Well, when it's for a sick woman, can't You do any
better than that?"

I suppose I shouldn't have said it, but if it had been your
mother, how would you have felt? I pinched the next worm in two,
so if a crayfish took that, it wouldn't get but half. I lay down
across the roots and pulled my bonnet far over my face and tried
to see to the bottom. I read in school the other day:

            "And by those little rings on the water I know
             The fishes are merrily swimming below."

There were no rings on the water, but after a while I saw some
fish darting around, only they didn't seem to be hungry; for they
would come right up and nibble a tiny bit at my worm, but they
wouldn't swallow it. Then one did, so I jerked with all my
might, jerked so hard the fish and worm both flew off, and I had
only the hook left. I put on the other half and tried again. I
prayed straight along, but the tears would come that time, and
the prayer was no powerful effort like Brother Hastings would
have made; it was little torn up pieces mostly: "O Lord, please
do make only one fish bite!"  At last one did bite good, so I
swung carefully that time, and landed it on the grass, but it was
so little and it hit a stone and was killed. I had no stringer
to put it back in the water to keep cool, and the sun was hot
that day, like times in the fall. Stretched on the roots, with
it shining on my back, and striking the water and coming up from
below, I dripped with heat and excitement.

I threw that one away, put on another worm, and a big turtle took
it, the hook, and broke my line, and almost pulled me in. I
wouldn't have let go if it had, for I just had to have a fish.
There was no help from the Lord in that, so I quit praying, only
what I said when I didn't know it. Father said man was born a
praying animal, and no matter how wicked he was, if he had an
accident, or saw he had just got to die, he cried aloud to the
Lord for help and mercy before he knew what he was doing.

I could hear the roosters in the barnyard, the turkey gobbler,
and the old ganders screamed once in a while, and sometimes a
bird sang a skimpy little fall song; nothing like spring, except
the killdeers and larks; they were always good to hear--and then
the dinner bell rang. I wished I had been where I couldn't have
heard that, because I didn't intend going home until I had a fish
that would do for mother if I stayed until night. If the best
one in the family had to starve, we might as well all go
together; but I wouldn't have known how hungry I was, if the bell
hadn't rung and told me the others were eating. So I bent
another pin and tried again. I lost the next worm without
knowing how, and then I turned baby and cried right out loud. I
was so thirsty, the salty tears running down my cheeks tasted
good, and doing something besides fishing sort of rested me; so I
looked around and up at the sky, wiped my face on the skirt of my
sunbonnet, and put on another worm. I had only one more left,
and I began to wonder if I could wade in and catch a fish by
hand; I did teeny ones sometimes, but I knew the water there was
far above my head, for I had measured it often with the pole; it
wouldn't do to try that; instead of helping mother any, a funeral
would kill her, too, so I fell back on the Crusaders, and tried
again.

Strange how thinking about them helped. I pretended I was
fighting my way to the Holy City, and this was the Jordan just
where it met the sea, and I had to catch enough fish to last me
during the pilgrimage west or I'd never reach Jerusalem to bring
home a shell for the Stanton crest. I pretended so hard, that I
got braver and stronger, and asked the Lord more like there was
some chance of being heard. All at once there was a jerk that
almost pulled me in, so I jerked too, and a big fish flew over my
head and hit the bank behind me with a thump. Of course by a big
fish I don't mean a red horse so long as my arm, like the boys
bring from the river; I mean the biggest fish I ever caught with
a pin in our creek. It looked like the whale that swallowed
Jonah, as it went over my head. I laid the pole across the
roots, jumped up and turned, and I had to grab the stump to keep
from falling in the water and dying. There lay the fish, the
biggest one I ever had seen, but it was flopping wildly, and it
wasn't a foot from a hole in the grass where a muskrat had
burrowed through. If it gave one flop that way, it would slide
down the hole straight back into the water; and between me and
the fish stood our cross old Shropshire ram. I always looked to
see if the sheep were in the meadow before I went to the creek,
but that morning I had been so crazy to get something for mother
to eat, I never once thought of them--and there it stood!

That ram hadn't been cross at first, and father said it never
would be if treated right, and not teased, and if it were, there
would be trouble for all of us. I was having more than my share
that minute, and it bothered me a lot almost every day. I never
dared enter a field any more if it were there, and now it was
stamping up and down the bank, shaking its head, and trying to
get me; with one flop the fish went ALMOST in the hole, and the
next a little away from it. Everything put together, I thought I
couldn't stand it. I never wanted anything as I wanted that
fish, and I never hated anything as I hated that sheep. It
wasn't the sheep's fault either; Leon teased it on purpose, just
to see it chase Polly Martin; but that was more her doings than
his.

She was a widow and she crossed our front meadow going to her
sister's. She had two boys big as Laddie, and three girls, and
father said they lived like "the lilies of the field; they toiled
not, neither did they spin."  They never looked really hungry or
freezing, but they never plowed, or planted, they had no cattle
or pigs or chickens, only a little corn for meal, and some
cabbage, and wild things they shot for meat, and coons to trade
the skins for more powder and lead--bet they ate the coons--never
any new clothes, never clean, they or their house. Once when
father and mother were driving past, they saw Polly at the well
and they stopped for politeness sake to ask how she was, like
they always did with every one. Polly had a tin cup of water and
was sopping at her neck with a carpet rag, and when mother asked,
"How are you, Mrs. Martin?" she answered: "Oh I ain't very well
this spring; I gest I got the go-backs!"

Mother said Polly looked as if she'd been born with the "go-
backs," and had given them to all her children, her home, garden,
fields, and even the FENCES. We hadn't a particle of patience
with such people. When you are lazy like that it is very
probable that you'll live to see the day when your children will
peep through the fence cracks and cry for bread. I have seen
those Martin children come mighty near doing it when the rest of
us opened our dinner baskets at school; and if mother hadn't
always put in enough so that we could divide, I bet they would.
If Polly Martin had walked up as if she were alive, and had been
washed and neat, and going somewhere to do some one good, Leon
never would have dreamed of such a thing as training the
Shropshire to bunt her. She was so long and skinny, always wore
a ragged shawl over her head, a floppy old dress that the wind
whipped out behind, and when she came to the creek, she sat
astride the foot log, and hunched along with her hands; that
tickled the boys so, Leon began teasing the sheep on purpose to
make it get her. But inasmuch as she saw fit to go abroad
looking so funny, that any one could see she'd be a perfect
circus if she were chased, I didn't feel that it was Leon's
fault. If, like the little busy bee, she had "improved each
shining hour," he never would have done it. Seems to me, she
brought the trouble on her own head.

First, Leon ran at the Shropshire and then jumped aside; but soon
it grew so strong and quick he couldn't manage that, so he put
his hat on a stick and poked it back and forth through a fence
crack, and that made the ram raving mad. At last it would butt
the fence until it would knock itself down, and if he dangled the
hat again, get right up and do it over. Father never caught
Leon, so he couldn't understand what made the sheep so dreadfully
cross, because he had thought it was quite peaceable when he
bought it. The first time it got after Polly, she threw her
shawl over its head, pulled up her skirts, and Leon said she hit
just eleven high places crossing an eighty-acre field; she came
to the house crying, and father had to go after her shawl, and
mother gave her a roll of butter and a cherry pie to comfort her.

The Shropshire never really got Polly, but any one could easily
see what it would do to me if I dared step around that stump, and
it was dancing and panting to begin. If whoever wrote that
"Gentle Sheep, pray tell me why," piece ever had seen a sheep
acting like that, it wouldn't have been in the books; at least I
think it wouldn't, but one can't be sure. He proved that he
didn't know much about anything outdoors or he wouldn't have said
that sheep were "eating grass and daisies white, from the morning
till the night," when daisies are bitter as gall.

Flop! went the fish, and its tail touched the edge of the hole.
Then I turned around and picked up the pole. I put my sunbonnet
over the big end of it, and poked it at the ram, and drew it back
as Leon did his hat. One more jump and mother's fish would be
gone. I stood on the roots and waved my bonnet. The sheep
lowered its head and came at it with a rush. I drew back the
pole, and the sheep's forefeet slid over the edge, and it braced
and began to work to keep from going in. The fish gave a big
flop and went down the hole. Then I turned Crusader and began to
fight, and I didn't care if I were whipped black and blue, I
meant to finish that old black-faced Shropshire. I set the pole
on the back of its neck and pushed with all my might, and I got
it in, too. My, but it made a splash! It wasn't much good at
swimming either, and it had no chance, for I stood on the roots
and pushed it down, and hit it over the nose with all my might,
and I didn't care how far it came on the cars, or how much money
it cost, it never would chase me, and make me lose my fish again.

I didn't hear him until he splashed under the roots and then I
was so mad I didn't see that it was Laddie; I only knew that it
was someone who was going to help out that miserable ram, so I
struck with all my might, the sheep when I could hit it, if not,
the man.

"You little demon, stop!" cried Laddie.

I got in a good one right on the ram's nose. Then Laddie dropped
the sheep and twisted the fish pole from my fingers, and I pushed
him as hard as I could, but he was too strong. He lifted the
sheep, pulled it to the bank, and rolled it, worked its jaws, and
squeezed water from it, and worked and worked.

"I guess you've killed it!" he said at last.

"Goody!" I shouted. "Goody! Oh but I am glad it's dead!"

"What on earth has turned you to a fiend?" asked Laddie,
beginning work on the sheep again.

"That ram!" I said. "Ever since Leon made it cross so it would
chase Polly Martin, it's got me oftener than her. I can't go
anywhere for it, and to-day it made me lose a big fish, and
mother is waiting. She thought maybe she could eat some."

Then I roared; bet I sounded like Bashan's bull.

"Dear Lord!" said Laddie dropping the sheep and taking me in his
wet arms. "Tell me, Biddy! Tell me how it is."

Then I forgot I was a Crusader, and told him all about it as well
as I could for choking, and when I finished he bathed my hot
face, and helped me from the roots. Then he went and looked down
the hole I showed him and he cried out quicklike, and threw
himself on the grass, and in a second up came the fish. Some one
had rolled a big stone in the hole, so the fish was all right,
not even dead yet, and Laddie said it was the biggest one he ever
had seen taken from the creek. Then he said if I'd forgive him
and all our family, for spoiling the kind of a life I had a
perfect right to lead, and if I'd run to the house and get a big
bottle from the medicine case quick, he would see to it that some
place was fixed for that sheep where it would never bother me
again. So I took the fish and ran as fast as I could, but I sent
May back with the bottle, and did the scaling myself. No one at
our house could do it better, for Laddie taught me the right way
long ago, when I was small, and I'd done it hundreds of times.

Then I went to Candace and she put a little bit of butter and a
speck of lard in a skillet, and cooked the fish brown. She made
a slice of toast and boiled a cup of water and carried it to the
door; then she went in and set the table beside the bed, and I
took in the tray, and didn't spill a drop. Mother never said a
word; she just reached out and broke off a tiny speck and nibbled
it, and it stayed; she tried a little bigger piece, and another,
and she said: "Take out the bones, Candace!"  She ate every
scrap of that fish like the hungriest traveller who ever came to
our door, and the toast, and drank the hot water. Then she went
into a long sleep and all of us walked tiptoe, and when she waked
up she was better, and in a few days she could sit in her chair
again, and she began getting Shelley ready to go to music school.

I have to tell you the rest, too. Laddie made the ram come
alive, and father sold it the next day for more than he paid for
it. He said he hoped I'd forgive him for not having seen how it
had been bothering me, and that he never would have had it on the
place a day if he'd known. The next time he went to town he
bought me a truly little cane rod, a real fishing line, several
hooks, and a red bobber too lovely to put into the water. I
thought I was a great person from the fuss all of them made over
me, until I noticed Laddie shrug his shoulders, and reach back
and rub one, and then I remembered.

I went flying, and thank goodness! he held out his arms.

"Oh Laddie! I never did it!" I cried. "I never, never did! I
couldn't! Laddie, I love you best of any one; you know I do!"

"Of course you didn't!" said Laddie. "My Little Sister wasn't
anywhere around when that happened. That was a poor little girl
I never saw before, and she was in such trouble she didn't know
WHAT she was doing. And I hope I'll never see her again," he
ended, twisting his shoulder. But he kissed me and made it all
right, and really I didn't do that; I just simply couldn't have
struck Laddie.

Marrying off Sally was little worse than getting Shelley ready
for school. She had to have three suits of everything, and a new
dress of each kind, and three hats; her trunk wouldn't hold all
there was to put in it; and father said he never could pay the
bills. He had promised her to go, and he didn't know what in
this world to do; because he never had borrowed money in his
life, and he couldn't begin; for if he died suddenly, that would
leave mother in debt, and they might take the land from her.
That meant he'd spent what he had in the bank on Sally's wedding,
and all that was in the Underground Station, or maybe the Station
money wasn't his.

Just when he was awfully bothered, mother said to never mind, she
believed she could fix it. She sent all of us into the orchard
to pick the fine apples that didn't keep well, and father made
three trips to town to sell them. She had big jars of lard she
wouldn't need before butchering time came again, and she sold
dried apples, peaches, and raspberries from last year. She got
lots of money for barrels of feathers she'd saved to improve her
feather beds and pillows; she said she would see to that later.
Father was so tickled to get the money to help him out that he
said he'd get her a pair of those wonderful new blue geese like
Pryors had, that every one stopped to look at. When there was
not quite enough yet, from somewhere mother brought out money
that she'd saved for a long time, from butter and eggs, and
chickens, and turkeys, and fruit and lard, and things that
belonged to her. Father hated to use it the worst way, but she
said she'd saved it for an emergency, and now seemed to be the
time.

She said if the child really had talent, she should be about
developing it, and while there would be many who would have far
finer things than Shelley, still she meant her to have enough
that she wouldn't be the worst looking one, and so ashamed she
couldn't keep her mind on her work. Father said, with her face
it didn't make any difference what she wore, and mother said that
was just like a man; it made all the difference in the world what
a girl wore. Father said maybe it did to the girl, and other
women; what he meant was that it made none to a man. Mother said
the chief aim and end of a girl's life was not wrapped up in a
man; and father said maybe not with some girls, but it would be
with Shelley: she was too pretty to escape. I do wonder if I'm
going to be too pretty to escape, when I put on long dresses.
Sometimes I look in the glass to see if it's coming, but I don't
suppose it's any use. Mother says you can't tell a thing at the
growing age about how a girl is going to look at eighteen.

When everything was almost ready, Leon came in one day and said:
"Shelley, what about improving your hair? Have you tried your
wild grape sap yet?"

Shelley said: "Why, goodness me! We've been so busy getting
Sally married, and my clothes made, I forgot all about that.
Have you noticed the crock in passing? Is there anything in it?"

"It was about half full, once when I went by," said Leon. "I
haven't seen it lately."

"Do please be a dear and look, when you go after the cows this
evening," said Shelley. "If there's anything in it, bring it
up."

            "Do it yourself for want of me,
             The boy replied quite manfully,"

quoted Leon from "The Little Lord and the Farmer."  He was always
teasing.

"I think you're mean as dirt if you don t bring it," said
Shelley.

Leon grinned and you should have heard the nasty, teasing way he
said more of that same piece:

            "Anger and pride are both unwise,
             Vinegar never catches flies----"

I wondered she didn't slap him. You could see she wanted to. "I
can get it myself," she said angrily.

"What will you give me to bring it?" asked Leon, who never missed
a chance to make a bargain.

"My grateful thanks. Are they not a proper reward?" asked
Shelley.

"Thanks your foot!" said Leon. "Will you bring something pretty
from Chicago for Susie Fall's Christmas present?"

Every one laughed, but Leon never cared. He liked Susie best of
any of the girls, and he wanted every one to know it. He went
straight to her whenever he had a chance, and he'd already told
her mother to keep all the other boys away, because he meant to
marry her when he grew up, and Widow Fall said that was fair
enough, and she'd save her for him. So Shelley said she would
get him something for Susie, and Leon brought the crock. Shelley
looked at it sort of dubious-like, tipped it, and stared at the
dirt settled in the bottom, and then stuck in her finger and
tasted it. She looked at Leon with a queer grin and said:
"Smarty, smarty, think you're smart!"  She threw the creek water
into the swill bucket. No one said a word, but Leon looked much
sillier than she did. After he was gone I asked her if she would
bring him a Christmas present for Susie NOW, and she said she
ought to bring him a pretty glass bottle labelled perfume, with
hartshorn in it, and she would, if she thought he'd smell it
first.

Shelley felt badly about leaving mother when she wasn't very
well; but mother said it was all right, she had Candace to keep
house and May and me, and father, and all of us to take care of
her, and it would be best for Shelley to go now and work hard as
she could, while she had the chance. So one afternoon father
took her trunk to the depot and bought the tickets and got the
checks, and the next day Laddie drove to Groveville with father
and Shelley, and she was gone. Right at the last, she didn't
seem to want to leave so badly, but all of them said she must.
Peter's cousin, who had gone last year, was to meet her, and have
a room ready where she boarded if she could, and if she couldn't
right away, then the first one who left, Shelley was to have the
place, so they'd be together.

There were eight of us left, counting Candace and Miss Amelia,
and you wouldn't think a house with eight people living in it
would be empty, but ours was. Everything seemed to wilt. The
roses on the window blinds didn't look so bright as they had;
mother said the only way she could get along was to keep right on
working. She helped Candace all she could, but she couldn't be
on her feet very much, so she sat all day long and peeled peaches
to dry, showed Candace how to jelly, preserve, and spice them,
and peeled apples for butter and to dry, quantities more than we
could use, but she said she always could sell such things, and
with the bunch of us to educate yet, we'd need the money.

When it grew cold enough to shut the doors, and have fire at
night, first thing after supper all of us helped clear the table,
then we took our slates and books and learned our lessons for the
next day, and then father lined us against the wall, all in a row
from Laddie down, and he pronounced words--easy ones that divided
into syllables nicely, for me, harder for May, and so up until I
might sit down. For Laddie, May and Leon he used the geography,
the Bible, Roland's history, the Christian Advocate, and the
Agriculturist. My, but he had them so they could spell! After
that, as memory tests, all of us recited our reading lesson for
the next day, especially the poetry pieces. I knew most of them,
from hearing the big folks repeat them so often and practise the
proper way to read them. I could do "Rienzi's Address to the
Romans," "Casablanca," "Gray's Elegy," or "Mark Antony's Speech,"
but best of all, I liked "Lines to a Water-fowl."  When he was
tired, if it were not bedtime yet, all of us, boys too, sewed
rags for carpet and rugs. Laddie braided corn husks for the
kitchen and outside door mats, and they were pretty, and "very
useful too," like the dog that got his head patted in McGuffey's
Second.

Then they picked the apples. These had to be picked by hand,
wrapped in soft paper, packed in barrels, and shipped to Fort
Wayne. Where they couldn't reach by hand, they stood on barrels
or ladders, and used a long handled picker, so as not to bruise
the fruit. Laddie helped with everything through the day, worked
at his books at night, and whenever he stepped outside he looked
in the direction of Pryors'. He climbed to the topmost limbs of
the trees with a big basket, picked it full and let it down with
a long piece of clothesline. I loved to be in the orchard when
they were working; there were plenty of summer apples to eat yet;
it was fun to watch the men, and sometimes I could be useful by
handing baskets or heaping up apples to be buried for us.

One night father read about a man who had been hanged for killing
another man, and they cut him down too soon, so he came alive,
and they had to hang him over; and father got all worked up about
it. He said the man had suffered death the first time to "all
intents and purposes," so that fulfilled the requirements of the
law, and they were wrong when they hanged him again. Laddie said
it was a piece of bungling sure enough, but the law said a man
must be "hanged by his neck until he was dead," and if he weren't
dead, why, it was plain he hadn't fulfilled the requirements of
the law, so they were forced to hang him again. Father said that
law was wrong; the man never should have been hanged in the first
place. They talked and argued until we were all excited about
it, and the next evening after school Leon and I were helping
pick apples, and when father and Laddie went to the barn with a
load we sat down to rest and we thought about what they said.

"Gee, that was tough on the man!" said Leon, "but I guess the law
is all right. Of course he wouldn't want to die, and twice over
at that, but I don't suppose the man he killed liked to die
either. I think if you take a life, it's all right to give your
own to pay for it."

"Leon," I said, "some time when you are fighting Absalom Saunders
or Lou Wicks, just awful, if you hit them too hard on some tender
spot and kill them, would you want to die to pay for it?"

"I wouldn't want to, but I guess I'd have to," said Leon.
"That's the law, and it's as good a way to make it as any. But
I'm not going to kill any one. I've studied my physiology hard
to find all the spots that will kill. I never hit them behind
the ear, or in the pit of the stomach; I just black their eyes,
bloody their snoots, and swat them on the chin to finish off
with."

"Well, suppose they don't study their physiologies like you do,
and hit YOU in the wrong place, and kill you, would you want THEM
hanged by the neck until they were dead, to pay for it?"

"I don't think I'd want anything if I were dead," he said. "I
wonder how it feels to die. Now THAT man knew. I'd like to be
hanged enough to find out how it goes, and then come back, and
brag about it. I don't think it hurts much; I believe I'll try
it."

So Leon took the rope Laddie lowered the baskets with, and threw
it over a big limb. Then he rolled up a barrel and stood on it
and put my sunbonnet on with the crown over his face, for a black
cap, and made the rope into a slip noose over his head, and told
me to stand back by the apple tree and hold the rope tight, until
he said he was hanged enough. Then he stepped from the barrel.
It jerked me toward him about a yard, as he came down smash! on
his feet. I held with all my might, but he was too heavy--and
falling that way. So he went to trying to fix some other plan,
and I told him the sensible thing to do would be for him to hang
me, because he'd be strong enough to hold me and I could tell him
how it felt just as well. So we fixed me up like we had him, and
when Leon got the rope stretched, he wrapped it twice around the
apple tree so it wouldn't jerk him as it had me, and when he said
"Ready," I stepped from the barrel. The last thing I heard was
Leon telling me to say when I was hanged enough. I was so heavy,
the rope stretched, and I went down until it almost tore off my
head, and I couldn't get a single breath, so of course I didn't
tell him, and I couldn't get on the barrel, and my tongue went
out, and my chest swelled up, and my ears roared, and I kicked
and struggled, and all the time I could hear Leon laughing, and
shouting to keep it up, that I was dying fine; only he didn't
know that I really was, and at last I didn't feel or know
anything more.

When I came to, I was lying on the grass, while father was
pumping my arms, and Laddie was pouring creek water on my face
from his hat, and Leon was running around in circles, clear
crazy. I heard father tell him he'd give him a scutching he'd
remember to the day of his death; but inasmuch as I had told Leon
to do it, I had to grab father and hold to him tight as I could,
until I got breath enough to explain how it happened. Even then
I wasn't sure what he was going to do.

After all that, when I tried to tell Leon how it felt, he just
cried like a baby, and he wouldn't listen to a word, even when
he'd wanted to know so badly. He said if I hadn't come back,
he'd have gone to the barn and used the swing rope on himself, so
it was a good thing I did, for one funeral would have cost
enough, when we needed money so badly, not to mention how mother
would have felt to have two of us go at once, like she had
before. And anyway, it didn't amount to so awful much. It was
pretty bad at first, but it didn't last long, and the next day my
neck was only a little blue and stiff, and in three days it was
all over, only a rough place where the rope grained the skin as I
went down; but I never got to tell Leon how it felt; I just
couldn't talk him into hearing, and it was quite interesting too;
but still I easily saw why the man in the paper would object to
dying twice, to pay for killing another man once.

When the apples were picked and the cabbage, beets, turnips, and
potatoes were buried, some corn dried in the garret for new meal,
pumpkins put in the cellar, the field corn all husked, and the
butchering done, father said the work was in such fine shape,
with Laddie to help, and there was so much more corn than he
needed for us, and the price was so high, and the turkeys did so
well, and everything, that he could pay back what mother helped
him, and have quite a sum over.

It was Thanksgiving by that time, and all of Winfield's, Lucy's,
Sally and Peter, and our boys came home. We had a big time, all
but Shelley; it was too expensive for her to come so far for one
day, but mother sent her a box with a whole turkey for herself
and her friends; and cake, popcorn, nuts, and just everything
that wasn't too drippy. Shelley wrote such lovely letters that
mother saved them and after we had eaten as much dinner as we
could, she read them before we left the table.

I had heard most of them, but I liked to listen again, because
they sounded so happy. You could hear Shelley laugh on every
page. She told about how Peter's cousin was waiting when the
train stopped. They couldn't room together right away, but they
were going to the first chance they had. Shelley felt badly
because they were so far apart, but she was in a nice place,
where she could go with other girls of the school until she
learned the way. She told about her room and the woman she
boarded with and what she had to eat; she wrote mother not to
worry about clothes, because most of the others were from the
country, or small towns, and getting ready to teach, and lots of
them didn't have NEARLY as many or as pretty dresses as she did.
She told about the big building, the classes, the professors, and
of going to public recitals where some of the pupils who knew
enough played; and she was working her fingers almost to the
bone, so she could next year. She told of people she met, and
how one of the teachers took a number of girls in his class to
see a great picture gallery. She wrote pages about a young
Chicago lawyer she met there, and only a few lines about the
pictures, so father said as that was the best collection of art
work in Chicago, it was easy enough to see that Shelley had been
far more impressed with the man than she had been with the
pictures. Mother said she didn't see how he could say a thing
like that about the child. Of course she couldn't tell in a
letter about hundreds of pictures, but it was easy enough to tell
all about a man.

Father got sort of spunky at that, and he said it was mighty
little that mattered most, that could be told about a Chicago
lawyer; and mother had better caution Shelley to think more about
her work, and write less of the man. Mother said that would stop
the child's confidences completely and she'd think all the time
about the man, and never mention him again, so she wouldn't know
what WAS going on. She said she was glad Shelley had found
pleasing, refined friends, and she'd encourage her all she could
in cultivating them; but of course she'd caution her to be
careful, and she'd tell her what the danger was, and after that
Shelley wrote and wrote. Mother didn't always read the letters
to us, but she answered every one she got that same night.
Sometimes she pushed the pen so she jabbed the paper, and often
she smiled or laughed softly.

I liked Thanksgiving. We always had a house full of company, and
they didn't stay until we were tired of them, as they did at
Christmas, and there was as much to eat; the only difference was
that there were no presents. It wasn't nearly so much work to
fix for one day as it was for a week; so it wasn't so hard on
mother and Candace, and father didn't have to spend much money.
We were wearing all our clothes from last fall that we could, and
our coats from last winter to help out, but we didn't care. We
had a lot of fun, and we wanted Sally and Shelley to have fine
dresses, because they were in big cities where they needed them,
and in due season, no doubt, we would have much more than they,
because, as May figured it, there would be only a few of us by
that time, so we could have more to spend. That looked sensible,
and I thought it would be that way, too. We were talking it over
coming from school one evening, and when we had settled it, we
began to play "Dip and Fade."  That was a game we made up from
being at church, and fall and spring were the only times we could
play it, because then the rains filled all the ditches beside the
road where the dirt was plowed up to make the bed higher, and we
had to have the water to dip in and fade over.

We played it like that, because it was as near as we could come
to working out a song Isaac Thomas sang every time he got happy.
He had a lot of children at home, and more who had died, from
being half-fed and frozen, mother thought; and he was always
talking about meeting the "pore innocents" in Heaven, and singing
that one song. Every time he made exactly the same speech in
meeting. It began like reciting poetry, only it didn't rhyme,
but it sort of cut off in lines, and Isaac waved back and forth
on his feet, and half sung it, and the rags waved too, but you
just couldn't feel any thrills of earnestness about what he said,
because he needed washing, and to go to work and get him some
clothes and food to fill out his frame. He only looked funny,
and made you want to laugh. It took Emanuel Ripley to raise your
hair. I don't know why men like my father, and the minister, and
John Dover stood it; they talked over asking Isaac to keep quiet
numbers of times, but the minister said there were people like
that in every church, they always came among the Lord's anointed,
and it was better to pluck out your right eye than to offend one
of them, and he was doubtful about doing it. So we children all
knew that the grown people scarcely could stand Isaac's speech,
and prayer, and song, and that they were afraid to tell him plain
out that he did more harm than good. Every meeting about the
third man up was Isaac, and we had to watch him wave, and rant,
and go sing-songy:

        "Oh brethering and sistering--ah,
         It delights my heart--ah to gather with you,
         In this holy house of worship--ah.
         In his sacred word--ah,
         The Lord--ah tells us,
         That we are all his childring--ah.
         And now, lemme exhort you to-night--ah,
         As one that loves you--ah,
         To choose that good part, that Mary chose--ah,
         That the worrrr-uld kin neither give ner take away--ah."

That went on until he was hoarse, then he prayed, and arose and
sang his song. Other men spoke where they stood. Isaac always
walked to the altar, faced the people, and he was tired out when
he finished, but so proud of himself, so happy, and he felt so
sure that his efforts were worth a warm bed, sausage, pancakes,
maple syrup, and coffee for breakfast, that it was mighty seldom
he failed to fool some one else into thinking so too, and if he
could, he wouldn't have to walk four miles home on cold nights,
with no overcoat. In summer, mostly, they let him go. Isaac
always was fattest in winter, especially during revivals, but at
any time mother said he looked like a sheep's carcass after the
buzzards had picked it. It could be seen that he was perfectly
strong, and could have fed and clothed himself, and Mandy and the
children, quite as well as our father did us, if he had wanted to
work, for we had the biggest family of the neighbourhood. So we
children made fun of him and we had to hold our mouths shut when
he got up all tired and teary-like, and began to quaver:

        "Many dear childurn we know dew stan'
         Un toon ther harps in the better lan',
         Ther little hans frum each soundin' string,
         Bring music sweet, wile the Anguls sing,
         Bring music sweet, wile the Anguls sing,--
                 We shell meet them agin on that shore,
                 We shell meet them agin on that shore,
                 With fairer face, un angel grace,
                 Each loved un ull welcome us ther.

        "They uster mourn when the childurn died,
         Un said goo-bye at the river side,
         They dipped ther feet in the glidin' stream,
         Un faded away, like a loveli dream,
         Un faded away like a loveli dream."

Then the chorus again, and then Isaac dropped on the front seat
exhausted, and stayed there until some good-hearted woman, mostly
my mother, felt so sorry about his shiftlessness she asked him to
go home with us and warmed and fed him, and put him in the
traveller's bed to sleep. The way we played it was this: we
stood together at the edge of a roadside puddle and sang the
first verse and the chorus exactly as Isaac did. Then I sang the
second verse, and May was one of the "many dear childurn," and as
I came to the lines she dipped her feet in the "glidin' stream,"
and for "fading away," she jumped across.

Now May was a careful little soul, and always watched what she
was doing, so she walked up a short way, chose a good place, and
when I sang the line, she was almost birdlike, she dipped and
faded so gracefully. Then we laughed like dunces, and then May
began to sway and swing, and drone through her nose for me, and I
was so excited I never looked. I just dipped and faded on the
spot. I faded all right too, for I couldn't jump nearly across,
and when I landed in pure clay that had been covered with water
for three weeks, I went down to my knees in mud, to my waist in
water, and lost my balance and fell backward.

A man passing on horseback pried me out with a rail and helped me
home. Of course he didn't know how I happened to fall in, and I
was too chilled to talk. I noticed May only said I fell, so I
went to bed scorched inside with red pepper tea, and never told a
word about dipping and fading. Leon whispered and said he bet it
was the last time I would play that, so as soon as my coat and
dress were washed and dried, and I could go back to school, I did
it again, just to show him I was no cowardy-calf; but I had
learned from May to choose a puddle I could manage before I
faded.

CHAPTER IX

"Even So"

            "All things whatsoever ye would
             That men should do to you,
             Do ye even so to them."

Our big girls and boys always made a dreadful fuss and said we
would catch every disease you could mention, but mother and
father were set about it, just like the big rocks in the hills.
They said they, themselves, once had been at the mercy of the
people, and they knew how it felt. Mother said when they were
coming here in a wagon, and she had ridden until she had to walk
to rest her feet, and held a big baby until her arms became so
tired she drove while father took it, and when at last they saw a
house and stopped, she said if the woman hadn't invited her in,
and let her cook on the stove, given her milk and eggs, and
furnished her a bed to sleep in once in a while, she couldn't
have reached here at all; and she never had been refused once.
Then she always quoted: "All things whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you, do ye EVEN SO to them."

Father said there were men who made a business of splitting
hairs, and of finding different meanings in almost everything in
the Bible. I would like to have seen any one split hairs about
that, or it made to mean something else. Of all the things in
the Bible that you had to do because it said to, whether you
liked it or not, that was the one you struck oftenest in life and
it took the hardest pull to obey. It was just the hatefulest
text of any, and made you squirm most. There was no possible way
to get around it. It meant, that if you liked a splinter new
slate, and a sharp pencil all covered with gold paper, to make
pictures and write your lessons, when Clarissa Polk sat next you
and sang so low the teacher couldn't hear until she put herself
to sleep on it, "I WISHT I had a slate! I wisht I HAD a slate!
I wisht I had a SLATE! Oh I WISHT I HAD A SLATE!"--it meant that
you just had to wash up yours and stop making pictures yourself,
and pass it over; you even had to smile when you offered it, if
you did it right. I seldom got through it as the Lord would, for
any one who loaned Clarissa a slate knew that it would come back
with greasy, sweaty finger marks on it you almost had to dig a
hole to wash off, and your pencil would be wet. And if there
were the least flaw of crystal in the pencil, she found it, and
bore down so hard that what she wrote never would come off.

The Lord always seemed bigger and more majestic to me, than at
any other time, when I remembered that He could have known all
that, and yet smiled as He loaned Clarissa His slate. And that
old Bible thing meant, too, that if you would like it if you were
travelling a long way, say to California to hunt gold, or even
just to Indiana, to find a farm fit to live on--it meant that if
you were tired, hungry, and sore, and would want to be taken in
and fed and rested, you had to let in other people when they
reached your house. Father and mother had been through it
themselves, and they must have been tired as could be, before
they reached Sarah Hood's and she took them in, and rested and
fed them, even when they were only a short way from the top of
the Little Hill, where next morning they looked down and stopped
the wagon, until they chose the place to build their house.
Sarah Hood came along, and helped mother all day, so by night she
was settled in the old cabin that was on the land, and ready to
go to work making money to build a new one, and then a big house,
and fix the farm all beautiful like it was then. They knew so
well how it felt, that they kept one bed in the boys' room, and
any man who came at dusk got his supper, to sleep there, and his
breakfast, and there never was anything to pay. The girls always
scolded dreadfully about the extra washing, but mother said she
slept on sheets when she came out, and some one washed them.

One time Sally said: "Mother, have you ever figured out how many
hundred sheets you've washed since, to pay for that?"

Mother said: "No, but I just hope it will make a stack high
enough for me to climb from into Heaven."

Sally said: "The talk at the church always led me to think that
you flew to Heaven."

Mother answered: "So I get there, I don't mind if I creep."

Then Sally knew it was time to stop. We always knew. And we
stopped, too!

We had heard that "All things" quotation, until the first two
words were as much as mother ever needed repeat of it any more,
and we had cooked, washed for, and waited on people travelling,
until Leon got so when he saw any one coming--of course we knew
all the neighbours, and their horses and wagons and carriages--he
always said: "Here comes another `Even So!'"  He said we had
done "even so" to people until it was about our share, but mother
said our share was going to last until the Lord said, "Well done,
good and faithful servant," and took us home. She had much more
about the stranger at the gate and entertaining angels unawares;
why, she knew every single thing in the Bible that meant it was
her duty to feed and give a bed to any one, no matter how dirty
or miserable looking he was! So when Leon came in one evening at
dusk and said, "There's another `Even So' coming down the Little
Hill!" all of us knew that we'd have company for the night, and
we had.

I didn't like that man, but some of the others seemed to find him
amusing. Maybe it was because I had nothing to do but sit and
watch him, and so I saw more of him than the ones who came and
went all the time. As long as there was any one in the room, he
complained dreadfully about his sore foot, and then cheered up
and talked, and he could tell interesting things. He was young,
but he must have been most everywhere and seen everything. He
was very brave and could stand off three men who were going to
take from him the money he was carrying to buy a piece of land in
Illinois. The minute the grown folks left the room to milk, do
the night feeding, and begin supper, he twisted in his chair and
looked at every door, and went and stood at the back dining-room
window, where he could see the barn and what was out there, and
coming back he took a peep into father's and mother's room, and
although he limped dreadfully when he came, he walked like any
one when he went over and picked up father's gun and looked to
see if it were loaded, and seemed mighty glad when he found it
wasn't. Father said he could load in a flash when it was
necessary, but he was dubious about a loaded gun in a house full
of children. Not one of us ever touched it, until the boys were
big enough to have permission, like Laddie and Leon had. He said
a gun was such a great "moral persuader," that the sight of one
was mostly all that was needed, and nobody could tell by looking
at it whether it was loaded or not. This man could, for he
examined the lock and smiled in a pleased way over it, and he
never limped a step going back to his chair. He kept on
complaining, until father told him before bedtime that he had
better rest a day or two, and mother said that would be a good
idea.

He talked so much we couldn't do our lessons or spell very well,
but it was Friday and we'd have another chance Saturday, so it
didn't make so much difference. Father said the traveller must
be tired and sleepy and Leon should take a light and show him to
bed. He stayed so long father went to the foot of the stairway,
and asked him why he didn't come down and he said he was in bed
too. The next morning he was sleepy at breakfast and Laddie said
it was no wonder, because Leon and the traveller were talking
when he went upstairs. The man turned to father and said:
"That's a mighty smart boy, Mr. Stanton."  Father frowned and
said: "Praise to the face is open disgrace. I hope he will be
smart enough not to disgrace us, anyway."

The traveller said he was sure he would be, and we could see that
he had taken a liking to Leon, for he went with him to the barn
to help do the morning feeding. They stayed so long mother sent
me to call them, and when I got there, the man was telling Leon
how foolish it was for boys to live on a farm; how they never
would amount to anything unless they went to cities, and about
all the fun there was there, and how nice it was to travel,
even along the roads, because every one fed you, and gave you a
good bed. He forgot that walking had made his foot lame, and I
couldn't see, to save me, why he was going to spend his money to
buy a farm, if he thought a town the only place where it was fit
to live.

He stayed all Saturday, and father said Sunday was no suitable
time to start on a journey again, and the man's foot was bad when
father was around, so it would be better to wait until Monday.
The traveller tagged Leon and told him what a fine fellow he was,
how smart he was, and to prove it, Leon boasted about everything
he knew, and showed the man all over the farm.

I even saw them pass the Station in the orchard, and heard Leon
brag how father had been an agent for the Governor; but of course
he didn't really show him the place, and probably it would have
made no difference if he had, for all the money must have been
spent on Sally's wedding. Of course father might have put some
there he had got since, or that money might never have been his
at all, but it seemed as if it would be, because it was on his
land.

Sunday evening all of us attended church, but the traveller was
too tired, so when Leon said he'd stay with him, father thought
it was all right. I could see no one wanted to leave the man
alone in the house. He said they'd go to bed early, and we came<