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Laddie: A True Blue Story

by Gene Stratton-Porter · English · Gutenberg #286 · 839,171 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Laddie: A True Blue Story

Author: Gene Stratton-Porter


        
Release date: June 1, 1995 [eBook #286]
                Most recently updated: March 17, 2023

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/286


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADDIE: A TRUE BLUE STORY ***













LADDIE

A TRUE BLUE STORY


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 hummingb

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