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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Laddie, by Gene Stratton-Porter
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Laddie
+
+Author: Gene Stratton-Porter
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2008 [EBook #286]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADDIE ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+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 hummingbird stood on air
+before them.  A sort of golden throbbing filled the woods, and my heart
+began to leap, why, I don't know; but I'm sure Laddie's did too, for I
+looked at him and his eyes were shining as I never had seen them
+before, while his cheeks were a little red, and he was breathing like
+when you've been running; then suddenly his body grew tense against
+mine, and that meant she was coming.
+
+Like that first day, she came slowly through the woods, stopping here
+and there to touch the trunk of a tree, put back a branch, or bend over
+a flower face.  Brown as the wood floor was her dress, and cardinal
+flowers blazed on her breast, and the same colour showed on her cheeks
+and lips.  Her eyes were like Laddie's for brightness, and she was
+breathing the same way.  I thought sure there was going to be something
+to remember a lifetime--I was so excited I couldn't stand still.
+Before it could happen Laddie went and said it was a "beautiful day,"
+and she said "it didn't show in the woods, but the pastures needed
+rain."  Then she kissed me.  Well if I ever!  I sank on the throne and
+sat there.  They went on talking like that, until it was too dull to
+bear, so I slipped out and wandered away to see what I could find.
+When I grew tired and went back, Laddie was sitting on the Magic Carpet
+with his back against the beech, and the Princess was on the throne
+reading from a little book, reading such interesting things that I
+decided to listen.  After a while she came to this:
+
+  "Thou are mated with a clown,
+  And the grossness of his nature, will have weight to bear thee
+      down."
+
+Laddie threw back his head, and how he laughed!  The Princess put down
+the book and looked at him so surprised.
+
+"Are you reading that to me because you think it appropriate?" asked
+Laddie.
+
+"I am reading it because it is conceded to be one of the most beautiful
+poems ever written," said the Princess.
+
+"You knew when you began that you would come to those lines."
+
+"I never even thought of such a thing."
+
+"But you knew that is how your father would regard any relationship,
+friendly or deeper, with me!"
+
+"I cannot possibly be held responsible for what my father thinks."
+
+"It is natural that you should think alike."
+
+"Not necessarily!  You told me recently that you didn't agree with your
+father on many subjects."
+
+"Kindly answer me this," said Laddie:  "Do you feel that I'm a 'clown'
+because I'm not schooled to the point on all questions of good manners?
+Do you find me gross because I plow and sow?"
+
+"You surprise me," said the Princess.  "My consenting to know and to
+spend a friendly hour with you here is sufficient answer.  I have not
+found the slightest fault with your manners.  I have seen no suspicion
+of 'grossness' about you."
+
+"Will you tell me, frankly, exactly what you do think of me?"
+
+"Surely!  I think you are a clean, decent man, who occasionally kindly
+consents to put a touch of human interest into an hour, for a very
+lonely girl.  What has happened, Laddie?  This is not like you."
+
+Laddie sat straight and studied the beech branches.  Father said beech
+trees didn't amount to much; but I first learned all about them from
+that one, and what it taught me made me almost worship them always.
+There were the big trunk with great rough spreading roots, the bark in
+little ridges in places, smooth purple gray between, big lichens for
+ornament, the low flat branches, the waxy, wavy-edged leaves, with
+clear veins, and the delicious nuts in their little brown burrs.  The
+Princess and I both stared at the branches and waited while a little
+breath of air stirred the leaves, the sunshine flickered, and a cricket
+sang a sort of lonesome song.  Laddie leaned against the tree again,
+and he was thinking so hard, to look at him made me begin to repeat to
+myself the beech part of that beautiful churchyard poem our big folks
+recite:
+
+  "There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech,
+   That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
+   His listless length at noontide he would stretch,
+   And pore upon the brook that babbles by."
+
+
+Only he was studying so deeply you could almost feel what was in his
+mind, and it was not about the brook at all, even if one ran close.
+Soon he began talking.
+
+"Not so bad!" he said.  "You might think worse.  I admit the
+cleanliness, I strive for decency, I delight in being humanely
+interesting, even for an hour; you might think worse, much worse!  You
+might consider me a 'clown.'  'A country clod.'  Rather a lowdown,
+common thing, a 'clod,' don't you think?  And a 'clown'!  And 'gross'
+on top of that!"
+
+"What can you mean?" asked the Princess.
+
+"Since you don't seem to share the estimate of me, I believe I'll tell
+you," said Laddie.  "The other day I was driving from the gravel pit
+with a very heavy load.  The road was wide and level on either side.  A
+man came toward me on horseback.  Now the law of the road is to give
+half to a vehicle similar to the one you are driving, but to keep all
+of it when you are heavily loaded, if you are passing people afoot or
+horseback.  The man took half the road, and kept it until the nose of
+his horse touched one of the team I was driving.  I stopped and said:
+'Good morning, sir!  Do you wish to speak with me?'  He called angrily:
+'Get out of my way, you clod!'  'Sorry sir, but I can't,' I said.  'The
+law gives me this road when I am heavily loaded, and you are on foot or
+horseback.'"
+
+"What did he do?" asked the Princess.
+
+And from the way she looked I just knew she guessed the man was the
+same one I thought of.
+
+"He raised his whip to strike my horse," said Laddie.
+
+"Ah, surely!" said the Princess.  "Always an arm raised to strike.  And
+you, Man?  What did you do?" she cried eagerly.
+
+"I stood on my load, suddenly," said Laddie, "and I called: 'Hold one
+minute!'"
+
+"And he?" breathed the Princess.
+
+"Something made him pause with his arm still raised.  I said to him:
+'You must not strike my horse.  It never has been struck, and it can't
+defend itself.  If you want to come a few steps farther and tackle me,
+come ahead!  I can take it or return it, as I choose.'"
+
+"Go on!" said the Princess.
+
+"That's all," said Laddie, "or at least almost all."
+
+"Did he strike?"
+
+"He did not.  He stared at me a second, and then he rode around me; but
+he was making forceful remarks as he passed about 'country clods,' and
+there was an interesting one about a 'gross clown.'  What you read made
+me think of it, that is all."
+
+The Princess stared into the beech branches for a time and then she
+said:  "I will ask your pardon for him.  He always had a domineering
+temper, and trouble he had lately has almost driven him mad; he is
+scarcely responsible at times.  I hesitate about making him angry."
+
+"I think perhaps," said Laddie, "I would have done myself credit if I
+had recognized that, and given him the road, when he made a point of
+claiming it."
+
+"Indeed no!" cried the Princess.  "To be beaten at the game he started
+was exactly what he needed.  If you had turned from his way, he would
+have considered you a clod all his life.  Since you made him go around,
+it may possibly dawn on him that you are a man.  You did the very best
+thing."
+
+Then she began to laugh, and how she did laugh.
+
+"I would give my allowance for a quarter to have seen it," she cried.
+"I must hurry home and tell mother."
+
+"Does your mother know about me?" he demanded.  "Does she know that you
+come here?"
+
+The Princess arose and stood very tall and straight.
+
+"You may beg my pardon or cease to know me," she said.  "Whatever led
+you to suppose that I would know or meet you without my mother's
+knowledge?"
+
+Then she started toward the entrance.
+
+"One minute!" cried Laddie.
+
+A leap carried him to her side.  He caught her hands and held them
+tight, and looked straight into her eyes.  Then he kissed her hands
+over and over.  I thought from the look on her face he might have
+kissed her cheek if he had dared risk it; but he didn't seem to notice.
+Then she stooped and kissed me, and turned toward home, while Laddie
+and I crossed the woods to the west road, and went back past the
+schoolhouse.  I was so tired Laddie tied the strings together and hung
+my shoes across his shoulders and took me by the arm the last mile.
+
+All of them were at home when we got there, and Miss Amelia came to the
+gate to meet us.  She was mealy-mouthed and good as pie, not at all as
+I had supposed she would be.  I wonder what Laddie said to her.  But
+then he always could manage things for every one.  That set me to
+wondering if by any possible means he could fix them for himself.  I
+climbed to the catalpa to think, and the more I thought, the more I
+feared he couldn't; but still mother always says one never can tell
+until they try, and I knew he would try with every ounce of brain and
+muscle in him.  I sat there until the supper bell rang, and then I
+washed and reached the table last.  The very first thing, mother asked
+how I bruised my face, and before I could think what to tell her, Leon
+said just as careless like:  "Oh she must have run against something
+hard, playing tag at recess."  Laddie began talking about Peter coming
+that night, and every one forgot me, but pretty soon I slipped a glance
+at Miss Amelia, and saw that her face was redder than mine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The Wedding Gown
+
+  "The gay belles of fashion may boast of excelling
+    In waltz or cotillon, at whist or quadrille;
+  And seek admiration by vauntingly telling
+    Of drawing and painting, and musical skill;
+  But give me the fair one, in country or city,
+    Whose home and its duties are dear to her heart,
+  Who cheerfully warbles some rustical ditty,
+    While plying the needle with exquisite art:
+  The bright little needle, the swift-flying needle,
+    The needle directed by beauty and art."
+
+
+The next morning Miss Amelia finished the chapter--that made two for
+our family.  Father always read one before breakfast--no wonder I knew
+the Bible quite well--then we sang a song, and she made a stiff, little
+prayer.  I had my doubts about her prayers; she was on no such terms
+with the Lord as my father.  He got right at Him and talked like a
+doctor, and you felt he had some influence, and there was at least a
+possibility that he might get what he asked for; but Miss Amelia prayed
+as if the Lord were ten million miles away, and she would be surprised
+to pieces if she got anything she wanted.  When she asked the Almighty
+to make us good, obedient children, there was not a word she said that
+showed she trusted either the Lord or us, or thought there was anything
+between us and heaven that might make us good because we wanted to be.
+You couldn't keep your eyes from the big gad and ruler on her desk; she
+often fingered them as she prayed, and you knew from her stiff, little,
+sawed-out petition that her faith was in implements, and she'd hit you
+a crack the minute she was the least angry, same as she had me the day
+before.  I didn't feel any too good toward her, but when the blood of
+the Crusaders was in the veins, right must be done even if it took a
+struggle.  I had to live up to those little gold shells on the trinket.
+Father said they knew I was coming down the line, so they put on a bird
+for me; but I told him I would be worthy of the shells too.  This took
+about as hard a fight for me as any Crusade would for a big, trained
+soldier.  I had been wrong, Laddie had made me see that.  So I held up
+my hand, and Miss Amelia saw me as she picked up Ray's arithmetic.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+I held to the desk to brace myself, and tried twice before I could
+raise my voice so that she heard.
+
+"Please, Miss Amelia," I said, "I was wrong about the birds yesterday.
+Not that they don't fight--they do!  But I was wrong to contradict you
+before every one, and on your first day, and if you'll only excuse me,
+the next time you make a mistake, I'll tell you after school or at
+recess."
+
+The room was so still you could hear the others breathing.  Miss Amelia
+picked up the ruler and started toward me.  Possibly I raised my hands.
+That would be no Crusader way, but you might do it before you had time
+to think, when the ruler was big and your head was the only place that
+would be hit.  The last glimpse I had of her in the midst of all my
+trouble made me think of Sabethany Perkins.
+
+Sabethany died, and they buried her at the foot of the hill in our
+graveyard before I could remember.  But her people thought heaps of
+her, and spent much money on the biggest tombstone in the cemetery, and
+planted pinies and purple phlox on her, and went every Sunday to visit
+her.  When they moved away, they missed her so, they decided to come
+back and take her along.  The men were at work, and Leon and I went to
+see what was going on.  They told us, and said we had better go away,
+because possibly things might happen that children would sleep better
+not to see.  Strange how a thing like that makes you bound you will
+see.  We went and sat on the fence and waited.  Soon they reached
+Sabethany, but they could not seem to get her out.  They tried, and
+tried, and at last they sent for more men.  It took nine of them to
+bring her to the surface.  What little wood was left, they laid back to
+see what made her so fearfully heavy, and there she was turned to solid
+stone.  They couldn't chip a piece off her with the shovel.  Mother
+always said, "For goodness sake, don't let your mouth hang open," and
+as a rule we kept ours shut; but you should have seen Leon's when he
+saw Sabethany wouldn't chip off, and no doubt mine was as bad.
+
+"When Gabriel blows his trumpet, and the dead arise and come forth,
+what on earth will they do with Sabethany?" I gasped.  "Why, she
+couldn't fly to Heaven with wings a mile wide, and what use could they
+make of her if she got there?"
+
+"I can't see a thing she'd be good for except a hitching post," said
+Leon, "and I guess they don't let horses in.  Let's go home."
+
+He acted sick and I felt that way; so we went, but the last glimpse of
+Sabethany remained with me.
+
+As my head went down that day, I saw that Miss Amelia looked exactly
+like her.  You would have needed a pick-ax or a crowbar to flake off
+even a tiny speck of her.  When I had waited for my head to be cracked,
+until I had time to remember that a Crusader didn't dodge and hide, I
+looked up, and there she stood with the ruler lifted; but now she had
+turned just the shade of the wattles on our fightingest turkey gobbler.
+
+"Won't you please forgive me?"
+
+I never knew I had said it until I heard it, and then the only way to
+be sure was because no one else would have been likely to speak at that
+time.
+
+Miss Amelia's arm dropped and she glared at me.  I wondered whether I
+ever would understand grown people; I doubted if they understood
+themselves, for after turning to stone in a second--father said it had
+taken Sabethany seven years--and changing to gobbler red, Miss Amelia
+suddenly began to laugh.  To laugh, of all things!  And then, of
+course, every one else just yelled.  I was so mortified I dropped my
+head again and began to cry as I never would if she'd hit me.
+
+"Don't feel badly!" said Miss Amelia.  "Certainly, I'll forgive you.  I
+see you had no intention of giving offense, so none is taken.  Get out
+your book and study hard on another lesson."
+
+That was surprising.  I supposed I'd have to do the same one over, but
+I might take a new one.  I was either getting along fast, or Miss
+Amelia had her fill of birds.  I wiped my eyes as straight in front of
+me as I could slip up my handkerchief, and began studying the first
+lesson in my reader:  "Pretty bee, pray tell me why, thus from flower
+to flower you fly, culling sweets the livelong day, never leaving off
+to play?"  That was a poetry piece, and it was quite cheery, although
+it was all strung together like prose, but you couldn't fool me on
+poetry; I knew it every time.  As I studied I felt better, and when
+Miss Amelia came to hear me she was good as gold.  She asked if I liked
+honey, and I started to tell her about the queen bee, but she had no
+time to listen, so she said I should wait until after school.  Then we
+both forgot it, for when we reached home, the Princess' horse was
+hitched to our rack, and I fairly ran in, I was so anxious to know what
+was happening.
+
+I was just perfectly amazed at grown people!  After all the things our
+folks had said!  You'd have supposed that Laddie would have been locked
+in the barn; father reading the thirty second Psalm to the Princess,
+and mother on her knees asking God to open her eyes like Saul's when he
+tried to kick against the pricks, and make her to see, as he did, that
+God was not a myth, Well, there was no one in the sitting-room or the
+parlour, but there were voices farther on; so I slipped in.  I really
+had to slip, for there was no other place they could be except the
+parlour bedroom, and Sally's wedding things were locked up there, and
+we were not to see until everything was finished, like I told you.
+
+Well, this was what I saw: our bedroom had been a porch once, and when
+we had been crowded on account of all of us coming, father enclosed it
+and made a room.  But he never had taken out the window in the wall.
+So all I had to do when I wanted to know how fast the dresses were
+being made, was to shove up the window above my bed, push back the
+blind, and look in.  I didn't care what she had.  I just wanted to get
+ahead of her and see before she was ready, to pay her for beating me.
+I knew what she had, and I meant to tell her, and walk away with my
+nose in the air when she offered to show me; but this was different.  I
+was wild to see what was going on because the Princess was there.  The
+room was small, and the big cherry four-poster was very large, and all
+of them were talking, so no one paid the slightest attention to me.
+
+Mother sat in the big rocking chair, with Sally on one of its arms,
+leaning against her shoulder.  Shelley and May and the sewing woman
+were crowded between the wall and the footboard, and the others lined
+against the wall.  The bed was heaped in a tumble of everything a woman
+ever wore.  Seemed to me there was more stuff there than all the rest
+of us had, put together.  The working dresses and aprons had been made
+on the machine, but there were heaps and stacks of hand-made
+underclothes.  I could see the lovely chemise mother embroidered lying
+on top of a pile of bedding, and over and over Sally had said that
+every stitch in the wedding gown must be taken by hand.  The Princess
+stood beside the bed.  A funny little tight hat like a man's and a
+riding whip lay on a chair close by.  I couldn't see what she wore--her
+usual riding clothes probably--for she had a nip in each shoulder of a
+dress she was holding to her chin and looking down at.  After all, I
+hadn't seen everything!  Never before or since have I seen a lovelier
+dress than that.  It was what always had been wrapped in the sheet on
+the foot of the bed and I hadn't got a peep at it.  The pale green silk
+with tiny pink moss roses in it, that I had been thinking was the
+wedding dress, looked about right to wash the dishes in, compared with
+this.
+
+This was a wedding dress.  You didn't need any one to tell you.  The
+Princess had as much red as I ever had seen in her cheeks, her eyes
+were bright, and she was half-laughing and half-crying.
+
+"Oh you lucky, lucky girl!" she was saying.  "What a perfectly
+beautiful bride you will be!  Never have I seen a more wonderful dress!
+Where did you get the material?"
+
+Now we had been trained always to wait for mother to answer a visitor
+as she thought suitable, or at least to speak one at a time and not
+interrupt; but about six of those grown people told the Princess all at
+the same time how our oldest sister Elizabeth was married to a merchant
+who had a store at Westchester and how he got the dress in New York,
+and gave it to Sally for her wedding present, or she never could have
+had it.
+
+The Princess lifted it and set it down softly.  "Oh look!" she cried.
+"Look!  It will stand alone!"
+
+There it stood!  Silk stiff enough to stand by itself, made into a
+little round waist, cut with a round neck and sleeves elbow length and
+flowing almost to where Sally's knees would come.  It was a pale
+pearl-gray silk crossed in bars four inches square, made up of a dim
+yellow line almost as wide as a wheat straw, with a thread of black on
+each side of it, and all over, very wide apart, were little faint
+splashes of black as if they had been lightly painted on.  The skirt
+was so wide it almost filled the room.  Every inch of that dress was
+lined with soft, white silk.  There was exquisite lace made into a flat
+collar around the neck, and ruffled from sight up the inside of the
+wide sleeves.  That was the beginning.  The finish was something you
+never saw anything like before.  It was a trimming made of white and
+yellow beads.  There was a little heading of white beads sewed into a
+pattern, then a lacy fringe that was pale yellow beads, white inside,
+each an inch long, that dangled, and every bead ended with three tiny
+white ones.  That went around the neck, the outside of the sleeves, and
+in a pattern like a big letter V all the way around the skirt.  And
+there it stood--alone!
+
+The Princess, graceful as a bird and glowing like fire, danced around
+it, and touched it, and lifted the sleeves, and made the bead fringe
+swing, and laughed, and talked every second.  Sally, and mother, and
+all of them had smiled such wide smiles for so long, their faces looked
+almost as set as Sabethany's, but of course far different.  Being dead
+was one thing, getting ready for a wedding another.
+
+And it looked too as if God might be a myth, for all they cared, so
+long as the Princess could make the wedding dress stand alone, and talk
+a blue streak of things that pleased them.  It was not put on either,
+for there stood the dress, shimmering like the inside of a pearl-lined
+shell, white as a lily, and the tinkly gold fringe.  No one COULD have
+said enough about it, so no matter what the Princess said, it had to be
+all right.  She kept straight on showing all of them how lovely it was,
+exactly as if they hadn't seen it before, and she had to make them
+understand about it, as if she felt afraid they might have missed some
+elegant touch she had seen.
+
+"Do look how the lace falls when I raise this sleeve!  Oh how will you
+wear this and think of a man enough to say the right words in the right
+place?"
+
+Mother laughed, and so did all of them.
+
+"Do please show me the rest," begged the Princess.  "I know there are
+slippers and a bonnet!"
+
+Sally just oozed pride.  She untied the strings and pushed the
+prettiest striped bag from a lovely pink bandbox and took out a dear
+little gray bonnet with white ribbons, and the yellow bead fringe, and
+a bunch of white roses with a few green leaves.  These she touched
+softly, "I'm not quite sure about the leaves," she said.
+
+The Princess had the bonnet, turning and tilting it.
+
+"Perfect!" she cried.  "Quite perfect!  You need that touch of colour,
+and it blends with everything.  How I envy you!  Oh why doesn't some
+one ask me, so I can have things like these?  I think your brother is a
+genius.  I'm going to ride to Westchester tomorrow and give him an
+order to fill for me the next time he goes to the city.  No one shows
+me such fabrics when I go, and Aunt Beatrice sends nothing from London
+I like nearly so well.  Oh!  Oh!"
+
+She was on her knees now, lifting the skirt to set under little white
+satin slippers with gold buckles, and white bead buttons.  When she had
+them arranged to suit her, she sat on the floor and kept straight on
+saying the things my mother and sisters seemed crazy to hear.  When
+Sally showed her the long white silk mitts that went with the bonnet,
+the Princess cried:  "Oh do ride home with me and let me give you a
+handkerchief Aunt Beatrice sent me, to carry in your hand!"
+
+Then her face flushed and she added without giving Sally time to say
+what she would do:  "Or I can bring it the next time I come past.  It
+belongs with these things and I have no use for it.  May I?"
+
+"Please do!  I'll use it for the thing I borrow."
+
+"But I mean it to be a gift," said the Princess.  "It was made to go
+with these lace mitts and satin slippers.  You must take it!"
+
+"Thank you very much," said Sally.  "If you really want me to have it,
+of course I'd love to."
+
+"I'll bring it to-morrow," promised the Princess.  "And I wish you'd
+let me try a way I know to dress hair for a wedding.  Yours is so
+beautiful."
+
+"You're kind, I'm sure," said Sally.  "I had intended to wear it as I
+always do, so I would appear perfectly natural to the folks; but if you
+know a more becoming way, I could begin it now, and they would be
+familiar with it by that time."
+
+"I shan't touch it," said the Princess, studying Sally's face.  "Your
+idea is right.  You don't want to commence any new, unfamiliar style
+that would make you seem different, just at a time when every one
+should see how lovely you are, as you always have been.  But don't
+forget to wear something blue, and something borrowed for luck, and oh
+do please put on one of my garters!"
+
+"Well for mercy sake!" cried my mother.  "Why?"
+
+"So some one will propose to me before the year is out," laughed the
+Princess.  "I think it must be the most fun of all, to make beautiful
+things for your very own home, and lovely dresses, and be surrounded by
+friends all eager to help you, and to arrange a house and live with a
+man you love well enough to marry, and fix for little people who might
+come----"
+
+"You know perfectly there isn't a single man in the county who wouldn't
+propose to you, if you'd let him come within a mile of you," said
+Shelley.
+
+"When the right man comes I'll go half the mile to meet him? you may be
+sure of that; won't I, Mrs. Stanton?" the Princess turned to mother.
+
+"I have known girls who went even farther," said my mother rather dryly.
+
+"I draw the line at half," laughed the Princess.  "Now I must go; I
+have been so long my people will be wondering what I'm doing."
+
+Standing in the middle of the room she put on her hat, picked up her
+whip and gloves, and led the way to the hitching rack, while all of us
+followed.  At the gate stood Laddie as he had come from the field.  His
+old hat was on the back of his head, his face flushed, his collar
+loosened so that his strong white neck showed, and his sleeves were
+rolled to the elbow, as they had been all summer, and his arms were
+burned almost to blisters.  When he heard us coming he opened the gate,
+went to the rack, untied the Princess' horse and led it beside the
+mounting block.  As she came toward him, he took off his hat and
+pitched it over the fence on the grass.
+
+"Miss Pryor, allow me to make you acquainted with my son," said mother.
+
+I felt as if I would blow up.  I couldn't keep my eyes from turning
+toward the Princess.  Gee!  I could have saved my feelings.  She made
+mother the prettiest little courtsey I ever set eyes on, and then
+turned and made a deeper one to Laddie.
+
+"I met your son in one of the village stores some time ago," she said.
+"Back her one step farther, please!"
+
+Laddie backed the horse, and quicker than you could see how it was
+done, she flashed up the steps and sat the saddle; but as she leaned
+over the horse's neck to take the rein from Laddie, he got one level
+look straight in the eyes that I was sure none of the others saw,
+because they were not watching for it, and I was.  Laddie bowed from
+the waist, and put the reins in her fingers all in one movement.  He
+caught the glance she gave him too; I could almost feel it like a band
+passing between them.  Then she called a laughing good-bye to all of us
+at once, and showed us how to ride right, as she flashed toward the
+Little Hill.  That was riding, you may believe, and mother sighed as
+she watched her.
+
+"If I were a girl again," she said, "I would ride as well as that, or
+I'd never mount a horse."
+
+"She's been trained from her cradle, and her father deals in horses.
+Half the battle in riding is a thoroughbred," said Laddie.  "No such
+horse as that ever stepped these roads before."
+
+"And no such girl ever travelled them," said my mother, folding her
+hands one over the other on top of a post of the hitching rack.  "I
+must say I don't know how this is coming out, and it troubles me."
+
+"Why, what's up?" asked Laddie, covering her hands with his and looking
+her in the eyes.
+
+"Just this," said my mother.  "She's more beautiful of face and form
+than God ought to allow any woman to be, in mercy to the men who will
+be forced to meet her.  Her speech is highly cultured.  Her manners are
+perfect, and that is a big and unusual thing in a girl of her age.
+Every word she said, every move she made to-day, was exactly as I would
+have been proud to hear, and to see a daughter of mine speak and move.
+If I had only myself to consider, I would make her my friend, because
+I'm seasoned in the ways of the world, and she could influence me only
+as I chose to allow her.  With you youngsters it is different.  You'll
+find her captivating, and you may let her ways sway you without even
+knowing it.  All these outward things are not essential; they are
+pleasing, I grant, but they have nothing to do with the one big,
+elemental fact that a Godless life is not even half a life.  I never
+yet have known any man or woman who attempted it who did not waste
+life's grandest opportunities, and then come crawling and defeated to
+the foot of the cross in the end, asking God's mercy where none was
+deserved or earned.  It seems to me a craven way.  I know all about the
+forgiveness on the cross!  I know God is big enough and merciful enough
+to accept even death-bed repentance, but what is that to compare with
+laying out your course and running it a lifetime without swerving?  I
+detest and distrust this infidel business.  I want no child of mine
+under its influence, or in contact with it."
+
+"But when your time comes, if you said just those things to hers and
+won her, what a triumph, little mother!"
+
+"'If!'" answered mother.  "That's always the trouble!  One can't be
+sure!  'If' I knew I could accomplish that, I would get on my knees and
+wrestle with the Lord for the salvation of the soul of a girl like
+that, not to mention her poor, housebound mother, and that man with the
+unhappiest face I ever have seen, her father.  It's worth trying, but
+suppose I try and fail, and at the same time find that in bringing her
+among us she has influenced some of mine to the loss of their immortal
+souls then, what will I have done?"
+
+"Mother," said Laddie; "mother, have you such a poor opinion of the
+things you and father have taught us, and the lives you've lived before
+us, that you're really afraid of a slip of a girl, almost a stranger?"
+
+"The most attractive girl I ever have seen, and mighty willing to be no
+longer a stranger, Lad."
+
+"Well, I can't promise for the others," said Laddie, "but for myself I
+will give you my word of honour that I won't be influenced the breadth
+of one hair by her, in a doctrinal way."
+
+"Humph!" said my mother.  "And it is for you I fear.  If a young man is
+given the slightest encouragement by a girl like that, even his God
+can't always hold him; and you never have made a confession of faith,
+Laddie.  It is you she will be most likely to captivate."
+
+"If you think I have any chance, I'll go straight over and ask her
+father for her this very evening," said Laddie, and even mother
+laughed; then all of us started to the house, for it was almost supper
+time.  I got ready and thought I'd take one more peep at the dress
+before Sally pinned it in the sheet again, and when I went back, there
+all huddled in a bunch before it stood Miss Amelia, the tears running
+down her cheeks.
+
+"Did Sally say you might come here?" I asked.
+
+"No," said Miss Amelia, "but I've been so crazy to see I just slipped
+in to take a peep when I noticed the open door.  I'll go this minute.
+Please don't tell her."
+
+I didn't say what I would do, but I didn't intend to.
+
+"What are you crying about?" I inquired.
+
+"Ah, I too have known love," sobbed Miss Amelia.  "Once I made a
+wedding dress, and expected to be a happy bride."
+
+"Well, wasn't you?" I asked, and knew at once it was a silly question,
+for of course she would not be a miss, if she had not missed marrying.
+
+"He died!" sobbed Miss Amelia.
+
+If he could have seen her then, I believe he'd have been glad of it;
+but maybe he looked as bony and dejected as she did before he went; and
+he may have turned to stone afterward, as sometimes happens.  Right
+then I heard Sally coming, so I grabbed Miss Amelia and dragged her
+under the fourposter, where I always hid when caught doing something I
+shouldn't.  But Sally had so much stuff she couldn't keep all of it on
+the bed, and when she stooped and lifted the ruffle to shove a box
+under, she pushed it right against us, and knelt to look, and there we
+were.
+
+"Well upon my soul!" she cried, and sat flat on the floor, holding the
+ruffle, peering in.  "Miss Amelia!  And in tears!  Whatever is the
+trouble?"
+
+Miss Amelia's face was redder than any crying ever made it, and I saw
+she wanted to kill me for getting her into such a fix, and if she
+became too angry probably she'd take it out on me in school the next
+day, so I thought I'd better keep her at work shedding tears.
+
+"'HE DIED!'"  I told Sally as pathetically as ever I could.
+
+Sally dropped the ruffle instantly, but I saw her knees shake against
+the floor.  After a while she lifted the curtain and offered Miss
+Amelia her hand.
+
+"I was leaving my dress to show you before putting it away," she said.
+
+I didn't believe it; but that was what she said.  Maybe it was an
+impulse.  Mother always said Sally was a creature of impulse.  When she
+took off her flannel petticoat and gave it to poor little half-frozen
+Annie Hasty, that was a good impulse, but it sent Sally to bed for a
+week.  And when she threw a shovel of coals on Bill Ramsdell's dog,
+because Bill was a shiftless lout, and the dog was so starved it all
+the time came over and sucked our eggs, that was a bad impulse, because
+it didn't do Bill a particle of good, and it hurt the dog, which would
+have been glad to suck eggs at home, no doubt, if Bill hadn't been too
+worthless to keep hens.
+
+That was a good impulse she had then, for she asked Miss Amelia to help
+her straighten the room, and of course that meant to fold and put away
+wedding things.  Any woman would have been wild to do that.  Then she
+told Miss Amelia that she was going to ask father to dismiss school for
+half a day, and allow her to see the wedding, and she asked her if she
+would help serve the breakfast.
+
+Miss Amelia wiped her eyes, and soon laughed and was just beaming.  I
+would have been willing to bet my three cents for lead pencils the next
+time the huckster came, that Sally never thought of wanting her until
+that minute; and then she arranged for her to wait on table to keep her
+from trying to eat with the wedding party, because Miss Amelia had no
+pretty clothes for one thing, and for another, you shouldn't act as if
+you were hungry out in company, and she ate every meal as if she were
+breaking a forty days' fast.  I wondered what her folks cooked at home.
+
+After supper Peter came, and the instant I saw him I thought of
+something, and it was such a teasing thought I followed around and
+watched him harder every minute.  At last he noticed me, and put his
+arms around me.
+
+"Well, what is it, Little Sister?" he asked.
+
+I did wish he would quit that.  No one really had a right to call me
+that, except Laddie.  Maybe I had to put up with Peter doing it when I
+was his sister by law, but before, the old name the preacher baptized
+on me was good enough for Peter.  I was thinking about that so hard, I
+didn't answer, and he asked again.
+
+"I have seen Sally's wedding dress," I told him.
+
+"But that's no reason why you should stare at me."
+
+"That's just exactly the reason," I answered.  "I was trying to see
+what in the world there is about you to be worth a dress like that."
+
+Peter laughed and laughed.  At last he said that he was not really
+worth even a calico dress; and he was so little worthy of Sally that he
+would button her shoes, if she would let him.  He got that mixed.  The
+buttons were on her slippers: her shoes laced.  But it showed a humble
+spirit in Peter.  Not that I care for humble spirits.  I am sure the
+Crusaders didn't have them.  I don't believe Laddie would lace even the
+Princess' shoes, at least not to make a steady business of it.  But
+maybe Peter and Sally had an agreement to help each other.  She was
+always fixing his tie, and straightening his hair.  Maybe that was an
+impulse, though, and mother said Sally would get over being so
+impulsive when she cut her eye teeth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+When Sally Married Peter
+
+  "Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
+  Be it ever so humble there's no place like home!
+  A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
+  Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere."
+
+
+When they began arranging the house for the wedding, it could be seen
+that they had been expecting it, and getting ready for a long time.
+From all the closets, shelves and chests poured heaps of new things.
+First, the walls were cleaned and some of them freshly papered, then
+the windows were all washed long before regular housecleaning time, the
+floors were scrubbed and new carpet put down.  Mother had some window
+blinds that Winfield had brought her from New York in the spring, and
+she had laid them away; no one knew why, then.  We all knew now.  When
+mother was ready to put them up, father had a busy day and couldn't
+help her, and she was really provoked.  She almost cried about it, when
+Leon rode in bringing the mail, and said Hannah Dover had some exactly
+like ours at her windows, that her son had sent from Illinois.  Father
+felt badly enough then, for he always did everything he could to help
+mother to be first with everything; but so she wouldn't blame him, he
+said crosslike that if she had let him put them up when they came, as
+he wanted to, she'd have been six months ahead.
+
+When they finally got ready to hang the blinds no one knew how they
+went.  They were a beautiful shiny green, plain on one side, and on the
+other there was a silver border across the bottom and one pink rose as
+big as a pie plate.  Mother had neglected to ask Winfield on which side
+the rose belonged.  Father said from the way the roll ran, it went
+inside.  Mother said they were rolled that way to protect the roses,
+and that didn't prove anything.  Laddie said he would jump on a horse
+and ride round the section, and see how Hannah Dover had hers, and
+exactly opposite would be right.  Everyone laughed, but no one thought
+he meant it.  Mother had father hold one against the window, and she
+stepped outside to see if she could tell from there.  When she came in
+she said the flower looked mighty pretty, and she guessed that was the
+way, so father started hanging them.  He had only two up when Laddie
+came racing down the Big Hill bareback, calling for him to stop.
+
+"I tell you that's not right, mother!" he said as he hurried in.
+
+"But I went outside and father held one, and it looked real pretty,"
+said mother.
+
+"One!  Yes!" said Laddie.  "But have you stopped to consider how two
+rows across the house are going to look?  Nine big pink roses, with the
+sun shining on them!  Anything funnier than Dovers' front I never saw.
+And look here!"
+
+Laddie picked up a blind.  "See this plain back?  It's double coated
+like a glaze.  That is so the sun shining through glass won't fade it.
+The flowers would be gone in a week.  They belong inside, mother, sure
+as you live."
+
+"Then when the blinds are rolled to the middle sash in the daytime no
+one can see them," wailed mother, who was wild about pink roses.
+
+"But at night, when they are down, you can put the curtains back enough
+to let the roses show, and think how pretty they will look then."
+
+"Laddie is right!" said father, climbing on the barrel to take down the
+ones he had fixed.
+
+"What do you think, girls?" asked mother.
+
+"I think the Princess is coming down the Little Hill," said Shelley.
+"Hurry, father!  Take them down before she sees!  I'm sure they're
+wrong."
+
+Father got one all right, but tore the corner of the other.  Mother
+scolded him dreadfully cross, and he was so flustered he forgot about
+being on the barrel, so he stepped back the same as on the floor, and
+fell crashing.  He might have broken some of his bones, if Laddie
+hadn't seen and caught him.
+
+"If you are SURE the flowers go inside, fix one before she comes!"
+cried mother.
+
+Father stepped too close the edge of the chair, and by that time he
+didn't know how to hang anything, so Laddie climbed up and had one
+nailed before the Princess stopped.  She came to bring Sally the
+handkerchief, and it was the loveliest one any of us ever had seen.
+There was a little patch in the middle about four inches square, and
+around it a wide ruffle of dainty lace.  It was made to carry in a hand
+covered with white lace mitts, when you were wearing a wedding gown of
+silver silk, lined with white.  Of course it wouldn't have been the
+slightest use for a funeral or with a cold in your head.  And it had
+come from across the sea!  From the minute she took it by a pinch in
+the middle, Sally carried her head so much higher than she ever had
+before, that you could notice the difference.
+
+Laddie went straight on nailing up the blinds, and every one he fixed
+he let down full length so the Princess could see the roses were
+inside; he was so sure he was right.  After she had talked a few
+minutes she noticed the blinds going up.  Laddie, in a front window,
+waved to her from the barrel.  She laughed and answered with her whip,
+and then she laughed again.
+
+"Do you know," she said, "there is the funniest thing at Dovers'.  I
+rode past on the way to Groveville this morning and they have some
+blinds like those you are putting up."
+
+"Indeed?" inquired my mother.  "Winfield sent us these from New York in
+the spring, but I thought the hot summer sun would fade them, so I
+saved them until the fall cleaning.  The wedding coming on makes us a
+little early but----"
+
+"Well, they may not be exactly the same," said the Princess.  "I only
+saw from the highway."  She meant road; there were many things she said
+differently.  "Have yours big pink roses and silver scrolls inside?"
+
+"Yes," said mother.
+
+The Princess bubbled until it made you think one of those yellow oriole
+birds had perched on her saddle.  "That poor woman has gone and put
+hers up wrong side out.  The effect of all those big pink roses on her
+white house front is most amusing.  It looks as if the house were
+covered with a particularly gaudy piece of comfort calico.  Only fancy!"
+
+She laughed again and rode away.  Mother came in just gasping.
+
+"Well, for all His mercies, large and small, the Lord be praised!" she
+cried piously, as she dropped into the big rocking chair.  "THAT is
+what I consider escaping by the skin of your teeth!"
+
+Then father and Laddie laughed, and said they thought so too.  When the
+blinds were up, the outside looked well, and you should have seen the
+inside!  The woodwork was enamelled white, and the wall paper was
+striped in white and silver.  Every so far on the silver there was a
+little pink moss rose having green leaves.  The carpet was plum red and
+green in wide stripes, and the lace curtains were freshly washed,
+snowy, and touched the floor.  The big rocker, the straight-backed
+chairs, and the sofa were beautiful red mahogany wood, and the seats
+shining haircloth.  If no one happened to be looking, you could sit on
+a sofa arm, stick your feet out and shoot off like riding down a
+haystack; the landing was much better.  On the sofa you bounced two
+feet high the first time; one, the second; and a little way the third.
+On the haystack, maybe you hit a soft spot, and maybe you struck a
+rock.  Sometimes if you got smart, and tried a new place, and your feet
+caught in a tangle of weeds and stuck, you came up straight, pitched
+over, and landed on your head.  THEN if you struck a rock, you were
+still, quite a while.  I was once.  But you never dared let mother see
+you--on the sofa, I mean; she didn't care about the haystack.
+
+There were pictures in oval black frames having fancy edges, and a
+whatnot where all our Christmas and birthday gifts, almost too dainty
+to handle, were kept.  You fairly held your breath when you looked at
+the nest of spun green glass, with the white dove in it, that George
+Washington Mitchell gave to Shelley.  Of course a dove's nest was never
+deep, and round, and green, and the bird didn't have red eyes and a
+black bill.  I thought whoever could blow glass as beautifully as that,
+might just as easy have made it right while he was at it; but anyway,
+it was pretty.  There were pitchers, mugs, and vases, almost too
+delicate to touch, and the cloth-covered box with braids of hair coiled
+in wreaths from the heads of the little fever and whooping cough
+sisters.
+
+Laddie asked Sally if she and Peter were going to have the ceremony
+performed while they sat on the sofa.  Seemed the right place.  They
+had done all their courting there, even on hot summer days; but I
+supposed that was because Sally didn't want to be seen fixing Peter's
+tie until she was ready.  She made no bones about it then.  She fixed
+it whenever she pleased; likewise he held her hand.  Shelley said that
+was disgusting, and you wouldn't catch her.  Leon said he bet a dollar
+he would; and I said if he knew he'd get beaten as I did, I bet two
+dollars he wouldn't tell what he saw.  The mantel was white, with vases
+of the lovely grasses that grew beside the stream at the foot of the
+Big Hill.  Mother gathered the fanciest every fall, dried them, and
+dipped them in melted alum coloured with copperas, aniline, and indigo.
+Then she took bunches of the colours that went together best and made
+bouquets for the big vases.  They were pretty in the daytime, but at
+night you could watch them sparkle and shimmer forever.
+
+I always thought the sitting-room was nicer than the parlour.  The
+woodwork was white enamel there too, but the bureau and chairs were
+just cherry and not too precious to use.  They were every bit as
+pretty.  The mantel was much larger.  I could stand up in the
+fireplace, and it took two men to put on an everyday log, four the
+Christmas one.  On each side were the book shelves above, and the linen
+closets below.  The mantel set between these, and mother always used
+the biggest, most gorgeous bouquets there, because she had so much
+room.  The hearth was a slab of stone that came far into the room.  We
+could sit on it and crack nuts, roast apples, chestnuts, and warm our
+cider, then sweep all the muss we made into the fire.  The wall paper
+was white and pale pink in stripes, and on the pink were little handled
+baskets filled with tiny flowers of different colours.  We sewed the
+rags for the carpet ourselves, and it was the prettiest thing.  One
+stripe was wide, all gray, brown, and dull colours, and the other was
+pink.  There were green blinds and lace curtains here also, and nice
+braided rugs that all of us worked on of winter evenings.  Everything
+got spicker and spanner each day.
+
+Mother said there was no use in putting down a carpet in a dining-room
+where you constantly fed a host, and the boys didn't clean their feet
+as carefully as they should in winter; but there were useful rags where
+they belonged, and in our bedroom opening from it also.  The
+dining-room wall paper had a broad stripe of rich cream with pink
+cabbage roses scattered over it and a narrow pink stripe, while the
+woodwork was something perfectly marvellous.  I didn't know what kind
+of wood it was, but a man who could turn his hand to anything, painted
+it.  First, he put on a pale yellow coat and let it dry.  Then he added
+wood brown, and while it was wet, with a coarse toothed comb, a rag,
+and his fingers, he imitated the grain, the even wood, and knotholes of
+dressed lumber, until many a time I found myself staring steadily at a
+knot to see if a worm wouldn't really come working out.  You have to
+see a thing like that to understand how wonderful it is.  You couldn't
+see why they washed the bedding, and took the feathers from the pillows
+and steamed them in mosquito netting bags and dried them in the shade,
+when Sally's was to be a morning wedding, but they did.  I even had to
+take a bucket and gather from around the walls all the little heaps of
+rocks and shells that Uncle Abraham had sent mother from California,
+take them out and wash and wipe them, and stack them back, with the
+fanciest ones on top.  He sent her a ring made of gold he dug himself.
+She always kept the ring in a bottle in her bureau, and she meant to
+wear it at the wedding, with her new silk dress.  I had a new dress
+too.  I don't know how they got everything done.  All of them worked,
+until the last few days they were perfect cross patches.
+
+When they couldn't find another thing indoors to scour, they began on
+the yard, orchard, barn and road.  Mother even had Leon stack the wood
+pile straighter.  She said when corded wood leaned at an angle, it made
+people seem shiftless; and she never passed a place where it looked
+that way that her fingers didn't just itch to get at it.  He had to
+pull every ragweed on each side of the road as far as our land reached,
+and lay every rail straight in the fences.  Father had to take spikes
+and our biggest maul and go to the bridges at the foot of the Big and
+the Little Hill, and see that every plank was fast, so none of them
+would rattle when important guests drove across.  She said she just
+simply wouldn't have them in such a condition that Judge Pettis
+couldn't hear himself think when he crossed; for you could tell from
+his looks that it was very important that none of the things he thought
+should be lost.  There wasn't a single spot about the place inside or
+out that wasn't gone over; and to lots of it you never would have known
+anything had been done if you hadn't seen, because the place was always
+in proper shape anyway; but father said mother acted just like that,
+even when her sons were married at other people's houses; and if she
+kept on getting worse, every girl she married off, by the time she
+reached me, we'd all be scoured threadbare and she'd be on the verge of
+the grave.  May and I weeded the flowerbeds, picked all the ripe seed,
+and pulled up and burned all the stalks that were done blooming.
+Father and Laddie went over the garden carefully; they scraped the
+walks and even shook the palings to see if one were going to come loose
+right at the last minute, when every one would be so flustrated there
+would be no time to fix it.
+
+Then they began to talk about arrangements for the ceremony, whether we
+should have our regular minister, or Presiding Elder Lemon, and what
+people they were going to invite.  Just when we had planned to ask
+every one, have the wedding in the church, and the breakfast at the
+house, and all drive in a joyous procession to Groveville to give them
+a good send-off in walked Sally.  She had been visiting Peter's people,
+and we planned a lot while she was away.
+
+"What's going on here?" she asked, standing in the doorway, dangling
+her bonnet by the ties.
+
+She never looked prettier.  Her hair had blown out in little curls
+around her face from riding, her cheeks were so pink, and her eyes so
+bright.
+
+"We were talking about having the ceremony in the church, so every one
+can be comfortably seated, and see and hear well," answered mother.
+
+Sally straightened up and began jerking the roses on her bonnet far too
+roughly for artificial flowers.  Perhaps I surprised you with that
+artificial word, but I can spell and define it; it's easy divided into
+syllables.  Goodness knows, I have seen enough flowers made from the
+hair of the dead, wax, and paper, where you get the shape, but the
+colour never is right.  These of Sally's were much too bright, but they
+were better than the ones made at our house.  Hers were of cloth and
+bought at a store.  You couldn't tell why, but Sally jerked her roses;
+I wished she wouldn't, because I very well knew they would be used to
+trim my hat the next summer, and she said:  "Well, people don't have to
+be comfortable during a wedding ceremony; they can stand up if I can,
+and as for seeing and hearing, I'm asking a good many that I don't
+intend to have see or hear either one!"
+
+"My soul!" cried mother, and she dropped her hands and her mouth fell
+open, like she always told us we never should let ours, while she
+stared at Sally.
+
+"I don't care!" said Sally, straightening taller yet; her eyes began to
+shine and her lips to quiver, as if she would cry in a minute; "I don't
+care----!"
+
+"Which means, my child, that you DO care, very much," said father.
+"Suppose you cease such reckless talk, and explain to us exactly what
+it is that you do want."
+
+Sally gave her bonnet an awful jerk.  Those roses would look like sin
+before my turn to wear them came, and she said:  "Well then, I do care!
+I care with all my might!  The church is all right, of course; but I
+want to be married in my very own home!  Every one can think whatever
+they please about their home, and so can I, and what I think is, that
+this is the nicest and the prettiest place in all the world, and I
+belong here----"
+
+
+Father lifted his head, his face began to shine, and his eyes to grow
+teary; while mother started toward Sally.  She put out her hand and
+held mother from her at arm's length, and she turned and looked behind
+her through the sitting-room and parlour, and then at us, and she
+talked so fast you never could have understood what she said if you
+hadn't known all of it anyway, and thought exactly the same thing
+yourself.
+
+"I have just loved this house ever since it was built," she said, "and
+I've had as good times here as any girl ever had.  If any one thinks
+I'm so very anxious to leave it, and you, and mother, and all the
+others, why it's a big mistake.  Seems as if a girl is expected to
+marry and go to a home of her own; it's drummed into her and things
+fixed for her from the day of her birth; and of course I do like Peter,
+but no home in the world, not even the one he provides for me, will
+ever be any dearer to me than my own home; and as I've always lived in
+it, I want to be married in it, and I want to stay here until the very
+last second----"
+
+"You shall, my child, you shall!" sobbed mother.
+
+"And as for having a crowd of men that father is planning to ask,
+staring at me, because he changes harvest help and wood chopping with
+them, or being criticised and clawed over by some women simply because
+they'll be angry if they don't get the chance, I just won't--so there!
+Not if I have to stand the minister against the wall, and turn our
+backs to every one.  I think----"
+
+"That will do!" said father, wiping his eyes.  "That will do, Sally!
+Your mother and I have got a pretty clear understanding of how you
+feel, now.  Don't excite yourself!  Your wedding shan't be used to pay
+off our scores.  You may ask exactly whom you please, want, and feel
+quite comfortable to have around you----"
+
+Then Sally fell on mother's neck and every one cried a while; then we
+wiped up, Leon gave Sally his slate, and she came and sat beside the
+table and began to make out a list of those she really wanted to
+invite.  First she put down all of our family, even many away in Ohio,
+and all of Peter's, and then his friends, and hers.  Once in the list
+of girls she stopped and said:  "If I take that beautiful imported
+handkerchief from Pamela Pryor, I have just got to invite her."
+
+"And she will outdress and outshine you at your own wedding," put in
+Shelley.
+
+"Let her, if she can!" said Sally calmly.  "She'll have to hump herself
+if she beats that dress of mine; and as for looks, I know lots of
+people who think gray eyes, pink cheeks, and brown curls far daintier
+and prettier than red cheeks and black eyes and curls.  If she really
+is better looking than I am, it isn't her fault; God made her that way,
+and He wouldn't like us to punish her for it; and it would, because any
+one can see she wants to be friends; don't you think, mother?"--mother
+nodded--"and besides, I think she's better looking than I am, myself!"
+
+Sally said that, and wrote down the Princess' name in big letters, and
+no one cheeped.
+
+Then she began on our neighbourhood, thinking out loud and writing what
+she thought.  So all of us were as still, and held our breath in softly
+and waited, and Sally said slow and musing like, "Of course we couldn't
+have anything at THIS house without Sarah Hood.  She dressed most of us
+when we were born, nursed us when we were sick, helped with threshing,
+company, and parties, and she's just splendid anyway; we better ask all
+the Hoods"; so she wrote them down.  "And it will be lonely for Widow
+Willis and the girls to see every one else here--we must have them; and
+of course Deams--Amanda is always such splendid help; and the Widow
+Fall is so perfectly lovely, we want her for decorative purposes; and
+we could scarcely leave out Shaws; they always have all of us
+everything they do; and Dr. Fenner of course; and we'll want Flo and
+Agnes Kuntz to wait on table, so their folks might as well come too----"
+
+So she went on taking up each family we knew, and telling what they had
+done for us, or what we had done for them; and she found some good
+reason for inviting them, and pretty soon father settled back in his
+chair and never took his eyes from Sally's shining head as she bent
+over the slate, and then he began pulling his lower lip, like when it
+won't behave, and his eyes danced exactly as I've seen Leon's.  I never
+had noticed that before.
+
+Sally went straight on and at last she came to Freshetts.  "I am going
+to have all of them, too," she said.  "The children are good children,
+and it will help them along to see how things are done when they are
+right; and I don't care what any one says, I LIKE Mrs. Freshett.  I'll
+ask her to help work, and that will keep her from talking, and give the
+other women a chance to see that she's clean, and human, and would be a
+good neighbour if they'd be friendly.  If we ask her, then the others
+will."
+
+When she finished--as you live--there wasn't a soul she had left out
+except Bill Ramsdell, who starved his dog until it sucked our eggs, and
+Isaac Thomas, who was so lazy he wouldn't work enough to keep his wife
+and children dressed so they ever could go anywhere, but he always
+went, even with rags flying, and got his stomach full just by talking
+about how he loved the Lord.  To save me I couldn't see Isaac Thomas
+without beginning to myself:
+
+  "'Tis the voice of the sluggard; I hear him complain,
+  You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again.
+  I passed by his garden, I saw the wild brier,
+  The thorn, and the thistle, grow broader and higher;
+  The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags;
+  And his money he wastes, till he starves or he begs."
+
+
+That described Isaac to the last tatter, only he couldn't waste money;
+he never had any.  Once I asked father what he thought Isaac would do
+with it, if by some unforeseen working of Divine Providence, he got ten
+dollars.  Father said he could tell me exactly, because Isaac once sold
+some timber and had a hundred all at once.  He went straight to town
+and bought Mandy a red silk dress and a brass breastpin, when she had
+no shoes.  He got the children an organ, when they were hungry; and
+himself a plug hat.  Mandy and the children cried because he forgot
+candy and oranges until the last cent was gone.  Father said the only
+time Isaac ever worked since he knew him was when he saw how the hat
+looked with his rags.  He actually helped the men fell the trees until
+he got enough to buy a suit, the remains of which he still wore on
+Sunday.  I asked father why he didn't wear the hat too, and father said
+the loss of that hat was a blow, from which Isaac never had recovered.
+Once at camp-meeting he laid it aside to pray his longest, most
+impressive prayer, and an affectionate cow strayed up and licked the
+nap all off before Isaac finished, so he never could wear it again.
+
+Sally said:  "I'll be switched if I'll have that disgusting creature
+around stuffing himself on my wedding day; but if you're not in bed,
+when it's all over, mother, I do wish you'd send Mandy and the children
+a basket."
+
+Mother promised, and father sat and looked on and pulled his lower lip
+until his ears almost wiggled.  Then Sally said she wanted Laddie and
+Shelley to stand at the parlour door and keep it tight shut, and seat
+every one in the sitting-room except a special list she had made out to
+send in there.  She wanted all our family and Peter's, and only a few
+very close friends, but it was enough to fill the room.  She said when
+she and Peter came downstairs every one could see how they looked when
+they crossed the sitting-room, and for all the difference the door
+would make, it could be left open then; she would be walled in by
+people she wanted around her, and the others could have the fun of
+being there, seeing what they could, and getting all they wanted to
+eat.  Father and mother said that was all right, only to say nothing
+about the plan to shut the door; but when the time came just to close
+it and everything would be satisfactory.
+
+Then Sally took the slate upstairs to copy the list with ink, so every
+one went about something, while mother crossed to father and he took
+her on his lap, and they looked at each other the longest and the
+hardest, and neither of them said a word.  After a while they cried and
+laughed, and cried some more, and it was about as sensible as what a
+flock of geese say when they are let out of the barn and start for the
+meadow in the morning.  Then father, all laughy and criey, said:
+"Thank God!  Oh, thank God, the girl loves the home we have made for
+her!"
+
+Just said it over and over, and mother kept putting in:  "It pays,
+Paul!  It pays!"
+
+Next day Sally put on her riding habit and fixed herself as pretty as
+ever she could, and went around to have a last little visit with every
+one, and invited them herself, and then she wrote letters to people
+away.  Elizabeth and Lucy came home, and every one began to work.
+Father and mother went to the village in the carriage and brought home
+the bed full of things to eat, and all we had was added, and mother
+began to pack butter, and save eggs for cakes, and the day before, I
+thought there wouldn't be a chicken left on the place.  They killed and
+killed, and Sarah Hood, Amanda Deam, and Mrs. Freshett picked and
+picked.
+
+"I'll bet a dollar we get something this time besides ribs and neck,"
+said Leon.  "How do you suppose thigh and breast would taste?"
+
+"I was always crazy to try the tail," I said.
+
+"Much chance you got," sniggered Leon.  "'Member the time that father
+asked the Presiding Elder, 'Brother Lemon, what piece of the fowl do
+you prefer?' and he up and said: 'I'm partial to the rump, Brother
+Stanton.'  There sat father bound he wouldn't give him mother's piece,
+so he pretended he couldn't find it, and forked all over the platter
+and then gave him the ribs and the thigh.  Gee, how mother scolded him
+after the preacher had gone!  You notice father hasn't asked that
+since.  Now, he always says: 'Do you prefer light or dark meat?'  Much
+chance you have of ever tasting a tail, if father won't even give one
+to the Presiding Elder!"
+
+"But as many as they are killing----"
+
+"Oh THIS time," said Leon with a flourish, "this time we are going to
+have livers, and breast, and thighs, AND tails, if you are beholden to
+tail."
+
+"I'd like to know how we are?"
+
+"Well, since you have proved that you can keep your mouth shut, for a
+little while, anyway, I'm going to take you in on this," said Leon.
+"You keep your eyes on me.  When the wedding gets going good, you watch
+me, and slip out.  That's all!  I'll be fixed to do the rest.  But mind
+this, get out when I do."
+
+"All right," I promised.
+
+They must have wakened about four o'clock on the wedding day; it wasn't
+really light when I got up.  I had some breakfast in my night dress,
+and then I was all fixed up in my new clothes, and made to sit on a
+chair, and never move for fear I would soil my dress, for no one had
+time to do me over, and there was only one dress anyway.  There was so
+much to see you could keep interested just watching, and I was as
+anxious to look nice before the boys and girls, and the big people, as
+any one.
+
+Every mantel and table and bureau was covered with flowers, and you
+could have smelled the kitchen a mile away, I know.  The dining table
+was set for the wedding party, our father and mother, and Peter's, and
+the others had to wait.  You couldn't have laid the flat of your hand
+on that table anywhere, it was so covered with things to eat.  Miss
+Amelia, in a dress none of us ever had seen before, a real nice white
+dress, pranced around it and smirked at every one, and waved the
+peacock feather brush to keep the flies from the jelly, preserves, jam,
+butter, and things that were not cooked.
+
+For hours Mrs. Freshett had stood in the kitchen on one side of the
+stove frying chicken and heaping it in baking pans in the oven, and
+Amanda Deam on the other, frying ham, while Sarah Hood cooked other
+things, and made a wash boiler of coffee.  Everything was ready by the
+time it should have been.  I had watched them until I was tired, when
+Sally came through the room where I was, and she said I might come
+along upstairs and see her dressed.  When we reached the door I
+wondered where she would put me, but she pushed clothing together on a
+bed, and helped me up, and that was great fun.
+
+She had been bathed and had on her beautiful new linen underclothing
+that mother punched full of holes and embroidered in flowers and vines,
+and Shelley was brushing her hair when some one called out:  "The
+Princess is coming!"
+
+I jumped for the window, and all of them, even Sally, crowded behind.
+Well, talk about carriages!  No one ever had seen THAT one before.  It
+WAS a carriage.  And such horses!  The funny "'orse, 'ouse" man who
+made the Pryor garden was driving.  He stopped at the gate, got out and
+opened a door, and the Princess' father stepped down, tall and
+straight, all in shiny black.  He turned around and held out his hand,
+bowing double, and the Princess laid her hand in his and stepped out
+too.  He walked with her to the gate, made another bow, kissed her
+hand, and stepped back, and she came down the walk alone.  He got in
+the carriage, the man closed the door, and they drove away.
+
+Sally must have arranged before that the Princess was to come early,
+for she came straight upstairs.  She wore a soft white silk dress with
+big faded pink roses in it, and her hair was fastened at each ear with
+a bunch of little pink roses.  She was lovely, but she didn't "outdress
+or outshine" Sally one bit, and she never even glanced at the mirror to
+see how she looked; she began helping with Sally's hair, and to dress
+her.  When Bess Kuntz prinked so long she made every one disgusted, the
+Princess said:  "Oh save your trouble.  No one will look at you when
+there's a bride in the house."
+
+There was a roll almost as thick as your arm of garters that all the
+other girls wanted Sally to wear for them so they would get a chance to
+marry that year, and Agnes Kuntz's was so large it went twice around,
+and they just laughed about it.  They put a blue ribbon on Sally's
+stays for luck, and she borrowed Peter's sister Mary's comb to hold her
+back hair.  They had the most fun, and when she was all ready except
+her dress they went away, and Sally stood in the middle of the room
+trembling a little.  Outside you could hear carriage wheels rolling,
+the beat of horses' hoofs, and voices crying greetings.  "There was a
+sound of revelry," by day.  Mother came in hurriedly.  She wore her new
+brown silk, with a lace collar pinned at the throat with the pin that
+had a brown goldstone setting in it, and her precious ring was on her
+finger.  She was dainty and pretty enough to have been a bride herself.
+She turned Sally around slowly, touching her hair a little and her
+skirts; then she went to the closet, took out the wedding dress, put
+the skirt over Sally's head, and she came up through the whiteness,
+pink and glowing.  She slipped her arms into the sleeves, and mother
+fastened it, shook out the skirt, saw that the bead fringe hung right,
+and the lace collar lay flat, then she took Sally in her arms, held her
+tight and said: "God bless you, dear, and keep you always.  Amen."
+
+Then she stepped to the door, and Peter, all shining and new, came in.
+He hugged Sally and kissed her like it didn't make the least difference
+whether she had on calico or a wedding dress, and he just stared, and
+stared at her, and never said a word, so at last she asked:  "Well
+Peter, do you like my dress?"
+
+And the idiot said:  "Why Sally, I hadn't even seen it!"
+
+Then both of them laughed, and the Presiding Elder came.
+
+I never liked to look at him very well because something had happened,
+and he had only one eye.  I always wondered if he had "plucked it out"
+because it had "offended" him; but if you could forget his eye, and
+just listen to his voice, it was like the sweetest music.  He married
+those two people right there in the bedroom, all but about three words
+at the end.  I heard and saw every bit of it.  Then Sally said it was
+time for me to go to mother, but she followed me into the boys' room
+and shut the door.  Then she knelt in her beautiful silver dress, and
+put her arms around me and said:  "Honest, Little Sister, aren't you
+going to kiss me goodbye?"
+
+"Oh I can if you want me to," I said, but I didn't look at her; I
+looked out of the window.
+
+She laughed a breathless little catchy sort of laugh and said: "That's
+exactly what I do want."
+
+"You didn't even want me, to begin with," I reminded her.
+
+"There isn't a doubt but whoever told you that, could have been in
+better business," said Sally, angry-like.  "I was much younger then,
+and there were many things I didn't understand, and it wasn't you I
+didn't want; it was just no baby at all.  I wouldn't have wanted a boy,
+or any other girl a bit more.  I foolishly thought we had children
+enough in this house.  I see now very plainly that we didn't, for this
+family never could get along without you, and I'm sorry I ever thought
+so, and I'd give anything if I hadn't struck you and----"
+
+"Oh be still, and go on and get married!" I said.  I could just feel a
+regular beller coming in my throat.  "I was only fooling to pay you up.
+I meant all the time to kiss you good-bye when the others did.  I'll
+nearly die being lonesome when you're gone----"
+
+Then I ran for downstairs, and when I reached the door, where the steps
+went into the sitting-room, I stopped, scared at all the people.  It
+was like camp-meeting.  You could see the yard full through the
+windows.  Just as I was thinking I'd go back to the boys' room, and
+from there into the garret, and down the back stairway, Laddie went and
+saw me.  He came over, led me to the parlour door, put me inside, and
+there mother took my hand and held me tight, and I couldn't see Leon
+anywhere.
+
+I was caught, but they didn't have him.  Mother never hung on as she
+did that day.  I tried and tried to pull away, and she held tight.  It
+was only a minute until the door opened, people crowded back, and the
+Presiding Elder, followed by Sally and Peter, came into the room, and
+they began being married all over again.
+
+If it hadn't grown so solemn my mother sprung a tear, I never would
+have made it.  She just had to let me go to sop her face, because tears
+are salty, and they would turn her new brown silk front yellow.  The
+minute my hand was free, I slipped between the people and looked at the
+parlour door.  It was wedged full and more standing on chairs behind
+them.  No one could get out there.
+
+I thought I would fail Leon sure, and then I remembered the parlour
+bedroom.  I got through that door easy as anything, and it was no trick
+at all to slip behind the blind, raise the window, and drop into
+mother's room from the sill.  From there I reached the back dining-room
+door easy enough, went around to the kitchen, and called Leon softly.
+He opened the door at once and I slipped in.  He had just got there.
+We looked all around and couldn't see where to begin at first.  There
+was enough cooked food there to load two wagons.
+
+An old pillow-case that had dried sage in it was lying across a chair
+and Leon picked it up and poured the sage into the wood-box, and handed
+the case to me.  He went over and knelt before the oven, while I
+followed and held open the case.  Leon rolled his eyes to the ceiling
+and said so exactly like father when he is serving company that not one
+of us could have told the difference:  "Which part of the fowl do you
+prefer, Brother Lemon?"
+
+It was so funny it made me snigger, but I straightened up and answered
+as well as I could:  "I'm especially fond of the rump, Brother Stanton."
+
+Leon stirred the heap and piled four or five tails in the case.  I
+thought that was all I could manage before they would spoil, so I said:
+"Do you prefer light or dark meat, Sister Abigail?"
+
+"I wish to choose breast," said Leon, simpering just like that silly
+Abigail Webster.  He put in six breasts.  Then we found them hidden
+away back in the oven in a pie pan, for the bride's table, I bet, and
+we took two livers apiece; we didn't dare take more for fear they had
+been counted.  Then he threw in whatever he came to that was a first
+choice big piece, until I was really scared, and begged him to stop;
+but he repeated what the fox said in the story of the "Quarrelsome
+Cocks"--"Poco was very good, but I have not had enough yet," so he
+piled in pieces until I ran away with the pillow-case; then he slid in
+a whole plateful of bread, another of cake, and put the plates in a tub
+of dishes under the table.  Then we took some of everything that wasn't
+too runny.  Just then the silence broke in the front part of the house,
+and we scooted from the back door, closing it behind us, ran to the
+wood house and climbed the ladder to the loft over the front part.
+There we were safe as could be, we could see to the road, hear almost
+everything said in the kitchen, and "eat our bites in peace," like
+Peter Justice told the Presiding Elder at the church trial that he
+wanted his wife to, the time he slapped her.  Before very long, they
+began calling us, and called, and called.  We hadn't an idea what they
+wanted, so we ate away.  We heard them first while I was holding over a
+back to let Leon taste kidney, and it made him blink when he got it
+good.
+
+"Well my soul!" he said.  "No wonder father didn't want to feed that to
+another man when mother isn't very well, and likes it!  No wonder!"
+
+Then he gave me a big bite of breast.  It was sort of dry and
+tasteless; I didn't like it.
+
+"Why, I think neck or back beats that all to pieces!" I said in
+surprise.
+
+"Fact is, they do!" said Leon.  "I guess the people who 'wish to choose
+breast,' do it to get the biggest piece."
+
+I never had thought of it before, but of course that would be the
+reason.
+
+"Allow me, Sister Stanton," said Leon, holding out a piece of thigh.
+
+That was really chicken!  Then we went over the backs and picked out
+all the kidneys, and ate the little crusty places, and all the cake we
+could swallow; then Leon fixed up the bag the best he could, and set it
+inside an old cracked churn and put on the lid.
+
+He said that would do almost as well as the cellar, and the food would
+keep until to-morrow.  I wanted to slip down and put it in the
+Underground Station; but Leon said father must be spending a lot of
+money right now, and he might go there to get some, so that wouldn't be
+safe.  Then he cleaned my face, and I told him when he got his right,
+and we slipped from the back door, crossed the Lawton blackberry patch,
+and went to the house from the orchard.  Leon took an apple and broke
+it in two, and we went in eating as if we were starving.  When father
+asked us where in this world we had been, Leon told him we thought it
+would be so awful long before the fourth or fifth table, and we hadn't
+had much breakfast, and we were so hungry we went and hunted something
+to eat.
+
+"If you'd only held your horses a minute," said father; "they were
+calling you to take places at the bride's table."
+
+Well for land's sake!  Our mouths dropped open until it's a wonder the
+cake and chicken didn't show, and we never said a word.  There didn't
+seem to be anything to say, for Leon loved to be with grown folks, and
+to have eaten at the bride's table would have been the biggest thing
+that ever happened to me.  At last, when I could speak, I asked who had
+taken our places, and bless your heart if it wasn't that mealy-faced
+little sister of Peter's, and one of the aunts from Ohio.  They had
+finished, and Sally was upstairs putting on her travelling dress, while
+the guests were eating, when I heard Laddie ask the Princess to ride
+with him and Sally's other friends, who were going to escort her to the
+depot.
+
+"You'll want all your horses.  What could I ride?"
+
+"If I find you a good horse and saddle will you go?"
+
+"I will.  I think it would be fine sport."
+
+Laddie turned and went from sight that minute.  The Princess laughed
+and kept on making friends with every one, helping wait on people,
+thinking of nice things to do, and just as the carriage was at the gate
+for father and mother, and Sally and Peter, and every one else was
+untying their horses to ride in the procession to the village, from
+where I was standing on the mounting block I saw something coming down
+the Little Hill.  I took one look, ran to the Princess, and almost
+dragged her.
+
+Up raced Laddie, his face bright, his eyes snapping with fun.  He rode
+Flos, was leading the Princess' horse Maud, and carrying a big bundle
+under his arm.  He leaped from the saddle and fastened both horses.
+
+"Gracious Heaven!  What have you done?" gasped the Princess.
+
+"Brought your mount," said Laddie, quite as if he were used to going to
+Pryors' after the sausage grinder or the grain sacks.  But the Princess
+was pale and trembling.  She stepped so close she touched him, and he
+immediately got a little closer.  You couldn't get ahead of Laddie, and
+he didn't seem to care who saw, and neither did she.
+
+"Tell me exactly what occurred," she said, just as father does when he
+means to whale us completely.
+
+"I rapped at the front door," said Laddie.
+
+"And who opened it?" cried the Princess.
+
+"Your father!"
+
+"My father?"
+
+"Yes, your father!" said Laddie.  "And because I was in such a hurry, I
+didn't wait for him to speak.  I said:  'Good morning, Mr. Pryor.  I'm
+one of the Stanton boys, and I came for Miss Pryor's mount and habit.
+All the young people who are on horseback are going to ride an escort
+to the village, around my sister's bridal carriage, and Miss Pryor
+thinks she would enjoy going.  Please excuse such haste, but we only
+this minute made the plan, and the train won't wait.'"
+
+"And he?"
+
+"He said:  'Surely!  Hold one minute.'  I stood on the step and waited,
+and I could hear him give the order to some one to get your riding
+habit quickly, and then he blew a shrill whistle, and your horse was at
+the gate the fastest of anything I ever saw."
+
+"Did he do or say----"
+
+"Nothing about 'clods, and clowns, and grossness!'  Every other word he
+spoke was when I said, 'Thank you, and good morning,' and was turning
+away.  He asked:  'Did Miss Pryor say whether she preferred to ride
+home, or shall I escort her in the carriage?'"
+
+"'She did not,' I answered.  'The plan was so sudden she had no time to
+think that far.  But since she will have her horse and habit, why not
+allow my father to escort her?'  So you see, I'm going to take you
+home," exulted Laddie.
+
+"But you told him your FATHER," said the Princess.
+
+"And thereby created the urgent necessity," said Laddie with a
+flourish, "for speaking to him again, and telling him that my father
+had visitors from Ohio, and couldn't leave them.  We will get all the
+fun from the day that we can; but before dusk, too early for them to
+have any cause for cavil, 'the gross country clod' is going to take you
+home!"
+
+One at a time, Laddie pounded those last words into the hitching post,
+with his doubled fist.
+
+"Suppose he sets the dogs on you!  You know he keeps two dreadful ones."
+
+Laddie just roared.  He leaned closer.
+
+"Beaucheous Lady," he said, "I have fed those same dogs and rubbed
+their ears so many nights lately, he'll get the surprise of his life if
+he tries that."
+
+The Princess drew away and stared at Laddie the funniest.
+
+"On my life!" she said at last.  "Well for a country clod----!"
+
+Then she turned with the habit bundle, and ran into the house.  Father
+and mother came from the front door arm in arm and walked to the
+carriage, and Sally and Peter followed.  My, but they looked fine!  The
+Princess had gone to the garden and gathered flowers and lined all the
+children in rows down each side of the walk.  They were loaded with
+blooms to throw at Sally; but when she came out, in her beautiful gray
+poplin travelling dress, trimmed in brown ribbon, the same shade as her
+curls, her face all pink, her eyes shining, and the ties of her little
+brown bonnet waving to her waist, she was so perfectly beautiful, every
+single child watched her open mouthed, gripped its flowers, and forgot
+to throw them at all.
+
+And this you scarcely will believe after what she had said the day she
+made her list, and when all of us knew her heart was all torn up, Sally
+just swept along smiling at every one and calling "good-bye" to those
+who had no way to ride to the village, as if leaving didn't amount to
+much.  At the carriage, a little white, but still smiling, she turned
+and took one long look at everything, and then she got in and called
+for me, right out loud before every one, so I got to hold up my head as
+high as it would go, and step in too, and ride all the way to
+Groveville between her and Peter, and instead of holding his hand, she
+held mine, just gripped it tight.  She gripped so hard she squeezed all
+the soreness at her from my heart, and when she kissed me good-bye the
+very last of all, I whispered in her ear that I wouldn't ever be angry
+any more, and I wasn't, because after she had explained I saw how it
+had been.  It wasn't ME she didn't want; it was just no baby.
+
+After our carriage came Peter's people, then one father borrowed for
+the Ohio relatives, then the other children, and all the neighbours
+followed, and when we reached the high hill where you turn beside the
+woods, I saw father gather up the lines and brace himself, for Ned and
+Jo were what he called "mettlesome."  "Then came a burst of thunder
+sound," as it says in "Casablanca," and the horseback riders came
+sweeping around us, Laddie and the Princess leading.  These two rode
+ahead of us, and the others lined three deep on either side, and the
+next carriage dropped back and let them close in behind, so Sally and
+Peter were "in the midst thereof."  Instead of throwing old shoes, as
+always had been done, the Princess coaxed them to throw rice and roses,
+and every other flower pulled from the bouquets at home, and from the
+gardens we had passed.  Every one was out watching us go by, and when
+William Justus rode beside the fences crying, "Flowers for the bride!
+Give us flowers for the bride!" some of the women were so excited they
+pulled things up by the roots and gave him armloads, and he rode ahead
+and supplied Laddie and the Princess, and they kept scattering them in
+the road until every foot of the way to Groveville was covered with
+flowers, "the fair young flowers that lately sprang and stood."  He
+even made side-cuts into swampy places and gathered armloads of those
+perfectly lovely, fringy blue gentians, caught up, and filled the
+carriage and scattered them in a wicked way, because you should only
+take a few of those rare, late flowers that only grow from seed.
+
+Sally looked just as if she had come into her own and was made for it;
+I never did see her look so pretty, but Peter sweated and acted awful
+silly.  Father had a time with the team.  Ned and Jo became excited and
+just ranted.  They simply danced.  Laddie had braided their manes and
+tails, and they waved like silken floss in the sunshine, and the
+carriage was freshly washed and the patent leather and brass shone, and
+we rode flower-covered.  Ahead, Laddie and the Princess fairly tried
+themselves.  She hadn't put on her hat or habit after all.  When Laddie
+told her they were going to lead, she said:  "Very well!  Then I shall
+go as I am.  The dress makes no difference.  It's the first time I've
+had a chance to spoil one since I left England."
+
+When the other girls saw what she was going to do, nearly every one of
+them left off their hats and riding skirts.  Every family had saddle
+horses those days, and when the riders came racing up they looked like
+flying flowers, they were all laughing, bloom ladened, singing and
+calling jokes.  Ahead, Laddie and the Princess just plain showed off.
+Her horse came from England with them, and Laddie said it had Arab
+blood in it, like the one in the Fourth Reader poem, "Fret not to roam
+the desert now, With all thy winged speed," and the Princess loved her
+horse more than that man did his.  She said she'd starve before she'd
+sell it, and if her family were starving, she'd go to work and earn
+food for them, and keep her horse.  Laddie's was a Kentucky
+thoroughbred he'd saved money for years to buy; and he took a young one
+and trained it himself, almost like a circus horse.  Both of them COULD
+ride; so that day they did.  They ran those horses neck and neck, right
+up the hill approaching Groveville, until they were almost from sight,
+then they whirled and came sweeping back fast as the wind.  The
+Princess' eyes were like dead coals, and her black curls streamed, the
+thin silk dress wrapped tight around her and waved back like a gossamer
+web such as spiders spin in October.  Laddie's hair was blowing, his
+cheeks and eyes were bright, and with one eye on the Princess--she
+didn't need it--and one on the road, he cut curves, turned, wheeled,
+and raced, and as he rode, so did she.
+
+"Will they break their foolish necks?" wailed mother.
+
+"They are the handsomest couple I ever have seen in my life!" said
+father.
+
+"Yes, and you two watch out, or you'll strike trouble right there,"
+said Sally, leaning forward.
+
+I gave her an awful nudge.  It made me so happy I could have screamed
+to see them flying away together like that.
+
+"Well, if that girl represents trouble," said father, "God knows it
+never before came in such charming guise."
+
+"You can trust a man to forget his God and his immortal soul if a
+sufficiently beautiful woman comes along," said my mother dryly, and
+all of them laughed.
+
+She didn't mean that to be funny, though.  You could always tell by the
+set of her lips and the light in her eyes.
+
+Just this side of Groveville we passed a man on horseback.  He took off
+his hat and drew his horse to one side when Laddie and the Princess
+rode toward him.  He had a big roll of papers under his arm, to show
+that he had been for his mail.  But I knew, so did Laddie and the
+Princess, that he had been compelled to saddle and ride like mad, to
+reach town and come that far back in time to watch us pass; for it was
+the Princess' father, and WATCH was exactly what he was doing; he
+wanted to see for himself.  Laddie and the Princess rode straight at
+him, neck and neck, and then both of them made their horses drop on
+their knees and they waved a salute, and then they were up and away.
+Of course father and mother saw, so mother bowed, and father waved his
+whip as we passed.  He sat there like he'd turned the same on horseback
+as Sabethany had in her coffin; but he had to see almost a mile of us
+driving our best horses and carriages, wearing our wedding garments and
+fine raiment, and all that "cavalcade," father called it, of young,
+reckless riders.  You'd have thought if there were a hint of a smile in
+his whole being it would have shown when Sally leaned from the carriage
+to let him see that her face and clothes were as good as need be and
+smiled a lovely smile on him, and threw him a rose.  He did leave his
+hat off and bow low, and then Shelley, always the very dickens for
+daring, rode right up to him and laughed in his face, and she leaned
+and thrust a flower into his bony hands; you would have thought he
+would have been simply forced to smile then, but he looked far more as
+if he would tumble over and roll from the saddle.  My heart ached for a
+man in trouble like that.  I asked the Lord to preserve us from secrets
+we couldn't tell the neighbours!
+
+At the station there wasn't a thing those young people didn't do.
+
+They tied flowers and ribbons all over Sally's satchel and trunk.
+
+They sowed rice as if it were seeding time in a wheatfield.  They
+formed a circle around Sally and Peter and as mushy as ever they could
+they sang, "As sure as the grass grows around the stump, You are my
+darling sugar lump," while they danced.  They just smiled all the time
+no matter what was done to them.  Some of it made me angry, but I
+suppose to be pleasant was the right way.  Sally was strong on always
+doing the right thing, so she just laughed, and so did all of us.
+Going home it was wilder yet, for all of them raced and showed how they
+could ride.
+
+At the house people were hungry again, so the table was set and they
+ate up every scrap in sight, and Leon and I ate with them that time and
+saved ours.  Then one by one the carriages, spring wagons, and
+horseback riders went away, all the people saying Sally was the
+loveliest bride, and hers had been the prettiest wedding they'd ever
+seen, and the most good things to eat, and Laddie and the Princess went
+with them.  When the last one was gone, and only the relatives from
+Ohio were left, mother pitched on the bed, gripped her hands and cried
+as if she'd go to pieces, and father cried too, and all of us, even
+Mrs. Freshett, who stayed to wash up the dishes.  She was so tickled to
+be there, and see, and help, that mother had hard work to keep her from
+washing the linen that same night.  She did finish the last dish, scrub
+the kitchen floor, black the stove, and pack all the borrowed china in
+tubs, ready to be taken home, and things like that.  Mother said it was
+a burning shame for any neighbourhood to let a woman get so starved out
+and lonesome she'd act that way.  She said enough was enough, and when
+Mrs. Freshett had cooked all day, and washed dishes until the last
+skillet was in place, she had done as much as any neighbour ought to
+do, and the other things she went on and did were a rebuke to us.
+
+I felt sore, weepy, and tired out.  It made me sick to think of the
+sage bag in the cracked churn, so I climbed my very own catalpa tree in
+the corner, watched up the road for Laddie, and thought things over.
+If I ever get married I want a dress, and a wedding exactly like that,
+but I would like a man quite different from Peter; like Laddie would
+suit me better.  When he rode under the tree, I dropped from a limb
+into his arms, and went with him to the barn.  He asked me what was
+going on at the house, and I told him about Mrs. Freshett being a
+rebuke to us; and Laddie said she was, and he didn't believe one word
+against her.  When I told him mother was in bed crying like anything,
+he said:  "I knew that had to come when she kept up so bravely at the
+station.  Thank the Lord, she showed her breeding by holding in until
+she got where she had a right to cry if she pleased."
+
+Then I whispered for fear Leon might be around:  "Did he set the dogs
+on you?"
+
+"He did not," said Laddie, laughing softly.
+
+"Did he call you names again?"
+
+"He did!" said Laddie, "but I started it.  You see, when we got there,
+Thomas was raking the grass and he came to take the Princess' horse.
+Her father was reading on a bench under a tree.  I helped her down, and
+walked with her to the door and said good-bye, and thanked her for the
+pleasure she had added to the day for us, loudly enough that he could
+hear; then I went over to him and said:  'Good evening, Mr. Pryor.  If
+my father knew anything about it, he would very much regret that
+company from Ohio detained him and compelled me to escort your daughter
+home.  He would greatly have enjoyed the privilege, but I honestly
+believe that I appreciated it far more than he could.'"
+
+"Oh Laddie, what did he say?"
+
+"He arose and glared at me, and choked on it, and he tried several
+times, until I thought the clods were going to fly again, but at last
+he just spluttered:  'You blathering rascal, you!' That was such a
+compliment compared with what I thought he was going to say that I had
+to laugh.  He tried, but he couldn't keep from smiling himself, and
+then I said:  'Please think it over, Mr. Pryor, and if you find that
+Miss Pryor has had an agreeable, entertaining day, won't you give your
+consent for her to come among us again?  Won't you allow me to come
+here, if it can be arranged in such a way that I intrude on no one?'"
+
+"Oh Laddie!"
+
+"He exploded in a kind of a snarl that meant, I'll see you in the Bad
+Place first.  So I said to him:  'Thank you very much for to-day,
+anyway.  I'm sure Miss Pryor has enjoyed this day, and it has been the
+happiest of my life--one to be remembered always.  Of course I won't
+come here if I am unwelcome, but I am in honour bound to tell you that
+I intend to meet your daughter elsewhere, whenever I possibly can.  I
+thought it would be a better way for you to know and have us where you
+could see what was going on, if you chose, than for us to meet without
+your knowledge."
+
+"Oh Laddie," I wailed, "now you've gone and ruined everything!"
+
+"Not so bad as that, Little Sister," laughed Laddie.  "Not half so bad!
+He exploded in another growl, and he shook his walking stick at me, and
+he said--guess what he said."
+
+"That he would kill you," I panted, clinging to him.
+
+"Right!" said Laddie.  "You have it exactly.  He said:  'Young man,
+I'll brain you with my walking stick if ever I meet you anywhere with
+my daughter, when you have not come to her home and taken her with my
+permission.'"
+
+"What!" I stammered.  "What!  Oh Laddie, say it over!  Does it
+mean----?"
+
+"It means," said Laddie, squeezing me until I was near losing my
+breath, "it means, Little Sister, that I shall march to his door and
+ask him squarely, and if it is anywhere the Princess wants to go, I
+shall take her."
+
+"Like, 'See the conquering hero comes?'"
+
+"Exactly!" laughed Laddie.
+
+"What will mother say?"
+
+"She hasn't made up her mind yet," answered Laddie.
+
+"Do you mean----?" I gasped again.
+
+"Of course!" said Laddie.  "I wasn't going to let a girl get far ahead
+of me.  The minute I knew she had told her mother, I told mine the very
+first chance."
+
+"Mother knows that you feel about the Princess as father does about
+her?"
+
+"Mother knows," answered Laddie, "and so does father.  I told both of
+them."
+
+Both of them knew!  And it hadn't made enough difference that any one
+living right with them every day could have told it.  Time and work
+will be needed to understand grown people.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The Shropshire and the Crusader
+
+  "For, among the rich and gay,
+    Fine, and grand, and decked in laces,
+  None appear more glad then they,
+    With happier hearts, or happier faces."
+
+
+Every one told mother for a week before the wedding that she would be
+sick when it was over, and sure enough she was.  She had been on her
+feet too much, and had so many things to think about, and there had
+been such a dreadful amount of work for her and Candace, even after all
+the neighbours helped, that she was sick in bed and we couldn't find a
+thing she could eat, until she was almost wild with hunger and father
+seemed as if he couldn't possibly bear it a day longer.
+
+After Candace had tried everything she could think of, I went up and
+talked it over with Sarah Hood, and she came down, pretending she
+happened in, and she tried thickened milk, toast and mulled buttermilk;
+she kept trying for two days before she gave up.  Candace thought of
+new things, and Mrs. Freshett came and made all the sick dishes she
+knew, but mother couldn't even taste them; so we were pretty blue, and
+we nearly starved ourselves, for how could we sit and eat everything
+you could mention, and mother lying there, almost crying with hunger?
+
+Saturday morning I was hanging around her room hoping maybe she could
+think of some least little thing I could do for her, even if no more
+than to bring a glass of water, or a late rose to lay on her pillow; it
+would be better than not being able to do anything at all.  After a
+while she opened her eyes and looked at me, and I scarcely knew her.
+She smiled the bravest she could and said:  "Sorry for mother, dear?"
+
+I nodded.  I couldn't say much, and she tried harder than ever to be
+cheerful and asked:  "What are you planning to do to-day?"
+
+"If you can't think of one thing I can do for you, guess I'll go
+fishing," I said.
+
+Her eyes grew brighter and she seemed half interested.
+
+"Why, Little Sister," she said, "if you can catch some of those fish
+like you do sometimes, I believe I could eat one of them."
+
+I never had such a be-hanged time getting started.  I slipped from the
+room, and never told a soul even where I was going.  I fell over the
+shovel and couldn't find anything quick enough but my pocket to put the
+worms in, and I forgot my stringer.  At last, when I raced down the
+hill to the creek and climbed over the water of the deep place, on the
+roots of the Pete Billings yowling tree, I had only six worms, my apple
+sucker pole, my cotton cord line, and bent pin hook.  I put the first
+worm on carefully, and if ever I prayed!  Sometimes it was hard to
+understand about this praying business.  My mother was the best and
+most beautiful woman who ever lived.  She was clean, and good, and
+always helped "the poor and needy who cluster round your door," like it
+says in the poetry piece, and there never could have been a reason why
+God would want a woman to suffer herself, when she went flying on
+horseback even dark nights through rain or snow, to doctor other
+people's pain, and when she gave away things like she did--why, I've
+seen her take a big piece of meat from the barrel, and a sack of meal,
+and heaps of apples and potatoes to carry to Mandy Thomas--when she
+gave away food by the wagonload at a time, God couldn't have WANTED her
+to be hungry, and yet she WAS that very minute almost crying for food;
+and I prayed, oh how I did pray! and a sneaking old back-ended crayfish
+took my very first worm.  I just looked at the sky and said:  "Well,
+when it's for a sick woman, can't You do any better than that?"
+
+I suppose I shouldn't have said it, but if it had been your mother, how
+would you have felt?  I pinched the next worm in two, so if a crayfish
+took that, it wouldn't get but half.  I lay down across the roots and
+pulled my bonnet far over my face and tried to see to the bottom.  I
+read in school the other day:
+
+  "And by those little rings on the water I know
+   The fishes are merrily swimming below."
+
+
+There were no rings on the water, but after a while I saw some fish
+darting around, only they didn't seem to be hungry; for they would come
+right up and nibble a tiny bit at my worm, but they wouldn't swallow
+it.  Then one did, so I jerked with all my might, jerked so hard the
+fish and worm both flew off, and I had only the hook left.  I put on
+the other half and tried again.  I prayed straight along, but the tears
+would come that time, and the prayer was no powerful effort like
+Brother Hastings would have made; it was little torn up pieces mostly:
+"O Lord, please do make only one fish bite!"  At last one did bite
+good, so I swung carefully that time, and landed it on the grass, but
+it was so little and it hit a stone and was killed.  I had no stringer
+to put it back in the water to keep cool, and the sun was hot that day,
+like times in the fall.  Stretched on the roots, with it shining on my
+back, and striking the water and coming up from below, I dripped with
+heat and excitement.
+
+I threw that one away, put on another worm, and a big turtle took it,
+the hook, and broke my line, and almost pulled me in.  I wouldn't have
+let go if it had, for I just had to have a fish.  There was no help
+from the Lord in that, so I quit praying, only what I said when I
+didn't know it.  Father said man was born a praying animal, and no
+matter how wicked he was, if he had an accident, or saw he had just got
+to die, he cried aloud to the Lord for help and mercy before he knew
+what he was doing.
+
+I could hear the roosters in the barnyard, the turkey gobbler, and the
+old ganders screamed once in a while, and sometimes a bird sang a
+skimpy little fall song; nothing like spring, except the killdeers and
+larks; they were always good to hear--and then the dinner bell rang.  I
+wished I had been where I couldn't have heard that, because I didn't
+intend going home until I had a fish that would do for mother if I
+stayed until night.  If the best one in the family had to starve, we
+might as well all go together; but I wouldn't have known how hungry I
+was, if the bell hadn't rung and told me the others were eating.  So I
+bent another pin and tried again.  I lost the next worm without knowing
+how, and then I turned baby and cried right out loud.  I was so
+thirsty, the salty tears running down my cheeks tasted good, and doing
+something besides fishing sort of rested me; so I looked around and up
+at the sky, wiped my face on the skirt of my sunbonnet, and put on
+another worm.  I had only one more left, and I began to wonder if I
+could wade in and catch a fish by hand; I did teeny ones sometimes, but
+I knew the water there was far above my head, for I had measured it
+often with the pole; it wouldn't do to try that; instead of helping
+mother any, a funeral would kill her, too, so I fell back on the
+Crusaders, and tried again.
+
+Strange how thinking about them helped.  I pretended I was fighting my
+way to the Holy City, and this was the Jordan just where it met the
+sea, and I had to catch enough fish to last me during the pilgrimage
+west or I'd never reach Jerusalem to bring home a shell for the Stanton
+crest.  I pretended so hard, that I got braver and stronger, and asked
+the Lord more like there was some chance of being heard.  All at once
+there was a jerk that almost pulled me in, so I jerked too, and a big
+fish flew over my head and hit the bank behind me with a thump.  Of
+course by a big fish I don't mean a red horse so long as my arm, like
+the boys bring from the river; I mean the biggest fish I ever caught
+with a pin in our creek.  It looked like the whale that swallowed
+Jonah, as it went over my head.  I laid the pole across the roots,
+jumped up and turned, and I had to grab the stump to keep from falling
+in the water and dying.  There lay the fish, the biggest one I ever had
+seen, but it was flopping wildly, and it wasn't a foot from a hole in
+the grass where a muskrat had burrowed through.  If it gave one flop
+that way, it would slide down the hole straight back into the water;
+and between me and the fish stood our cross old Shropshire ram.  I
+always looked to see if the sheep were in the meadow before I went to
+the creek, but that morning I had been so crazy to get something for
+mother to eat, I never once thought of them--and there it stood!
+
+That ram hadn't been cross at first, and father said it never would be
+if treated right, and not teased, and if it were, there would be
+trouble for all of us.  I was having more than my share that minute,
+and it bothered me a lot almost every day.  I never dared enter a field
+any more if it were there, and now it was stamping up and down the
+bank, shaking its head, and trying to get me; with one flop the fish
+went ALMOST in the hole, and the next a little away from it.
+Everything put together, I thought I couldn't stand it.  I never wanted
+anything as I wanted that fish, and I never hated anything as I hated
+that sheep.  It wasn't the sheep's fault either; Leon teased it on
+purpose, just to see it chase Polly Martin; but that was more her
+doings than his.
+
+She was a widow and she crossed our front meadow going to her sister's.
+She had two boys big as Laddie, and three girls, and father said they
+lived like "the lilies of the field; they toiled not, neither did they
+spin."  They never looked really hungry or freezing, but they never
+plowed, or planted, they had no cattle or pigs or chickens, only a
+little corn for meal, and some cabbage, and wild things they shot for
+meat, and coons to trade the skins for more powder and lead--bet they
+ate the coons--never any new clothes, never clean, they or their house.
+Once when father and mother were driving past, they saw Polly at the
+well and they stopped for politeness sake to ask how she was, like they
+always did with every one.  Polly had a tin cup of water and was
+sopping at her neck with a carpet rag, and when mother asked, "How are
+you, Mrs. Martin?" she answered:  "Oh I ain't very well this spring; I
+gest I got the go-backs!"
+
+Mother said Polly looked as if she'd been born with the "go-backs," and
+had given them to all her children, her home, garden, fields, and even
+the FENCES.  We hadn't a particle of patience with such people.  When
+you are lazy like that it is very probable that you'll live to see the
+day when your children will peep through the fence cracks and cry for
+bread.  I have seen those Martin children come mighty near doing it
+when the rest of us opened our dinner baskets at school; and if mother
+hadn't always put in enough so that we could divide, I bet they would.
+If Polly Martin had walked up as if she were alive, and had been washed
+and neat, and going somewhere to do some one good, Leon never would
+have dreamed of such a thing as training the Shropshire to bunt her.
+She was so long and skinny, always wore a ragged shawl over her head, a
+floppy old dress that the wind whipped out behind, and when she came to
+the creek, she sat astride the foot log, and hunched along with her
+hands; that tickled the boys so, Leon began teasing the sheep on
+purpose to make it get her.  But inasmuch as she saw fit to go abroad
+looking so funny, that any one could see she'd be a perfect circus if
+she were chased, I didn't feel that it was Leon's fault.  If, like the
+little busy bee, she had "improved each shining hour," he never would
+have done it.  Seems to me, she brought the trouble on her own head.
+
+First, Leon ran at the Shropshire and then jumped aside; but soon it
+grew so strong and quick he couldn't manage that, so he put his hat on
+a stick and poked it back and forth through a fence crack, and that
+made the ram raving mad.  At last it would butt the fence until it
+would knock itself down, and if he dangled the hat again, get right up
+and do it over.  Father never caught Leon, so he couldn't understand
+what made the sheep so dreadfully cross, because he had thought it was
+quite peaceable when he bought it.  The first time it got after Polly,
+she threw her shawl over its head, pulled up her skirts, and Leon said
+she hit just eleven high places crossing an eighty-acre field; she came
+to the house crying, and father had to go after her shawl, and mother
+gave her a roll of butter and a cherry pie to comfort her.
+
+The Shropshire never really got Polly, but any one could easily see
+what it would do to me if I dared step around that stump, and it was
+dancing and panting to begin.  If whoever wrote that "Gentle Sheep,
+pray tell me why," piece ever had seen a sheep acting like that, it
+wouldn't have been in the books; at least I think it wouldn't, but one
+can't be sure.  He proved that he didn't know much about anything
+outdoors or he wouldn't have said that sheep were "eating grass and
+daisies white, from the morning till the night," when daisies are
+bitter as gall.
+
+Flop! went the fish, and its tail touched the edge of the hole.  Then I
+turned around and picked up the pole.  I put my sunbonnet over the big
+end of it, and poked it at the ram, and drew it back as Leon did his
+hat.  One more jump and mother's fish would be gone.  I stood on the
+roots and waved my bonnet.  The sheep lowered its head and came at it
+with a rush.  I drew back the pole, and the sheep's forefeet slid over
+the edge, and it braced and began to work to keep from going in.  The
+fish gave a big flop and went down the hole.  Then I turned Crusader
+and began to fight, and I didn't care if I were whipped black and blue,
+I meant to finish that old black-faced Shropshire.  I set the pole on
+the back of its neck and pushed with all my might, and I got it in,
+too.  My, but it made a splash!  It wasn't much good at swimming
+either, and it had no chance, for I stood on the roots and pushed it
+down, and hit it over the nose with all my might, and I didn't care how
+far it came on the cars, or how much money it cost, it never would
+chase me, and make me lose my fish again.
+
+I didn't hear him until he splashed under the roots and then I was so
+mad I didn't see that it was Laddie; I only knew that it was someone
+who was going to help out that miserable ram, so I struck with all my
+might, the sheep when I could hit it, if not, the man.
+
+"You little demon, stop!" cried Laddie.
+
+I got in a good one right on the ram's nose.  Then Laddie dropped the
+sheep and twisted the fish pole from my fingers, and I pushed him as
+hard as I could, but he was too strong.  He lifted the sheep, pulled it
+to the bank, and rolled it, worked its jaws, and squeezed water from
+it, and worked and worked.
+
+"I guess you've killed it!" he said at last.
+
+"Goody!" I shouted.  "Goody!  Oh but I am glad it's dead!"
+
+"What on earth has turned you to a fiend?" asked Laddie, beginning work
+on the sheep again.
+
+"That ram!" I said.  "Ever since Leon made it cross so it would chase
+Polly Martin, it's got me oftener than her.  I can't go anywhere for
+it, and to-day it made me lose a big fish, and mother is waiting.  She
+thought maybe she could eat some."
+
+Then I roared; bet I sounded like Bashan's bull.
+
+"Dear Lord!" said Laddie dropping the sheep and taking me in his wet
+arms.  "Tell me, Biddy!  Tell me how it is."
+
+Then I forgot I was a Crusader, and told him all about it as well as I
+could for choking, and when I finished he bathed my hot face, and
+helped me from the roots.  Then he went and looked down the hole I
+showed him and he cried out quicklike, and threw himself on the grass,
+and in a second up came the fish.  Some one had rolled a big stone in
+the hole, so the fish was all right, not even dead yet, and Laddie said
+it was the biggest one he ever had seen taken from the creek.  Then he
+said if I'd forgive him and all our family, for spoiling the kind of a
+life I had a perfect right to lead, and if I'd run to the house and get
+a big bottle from the medicine case quick, he would see to it that some
+place was fixed for that sheep where it would never bother me again.
+So I took the fish and ran as fast as I could, but I sent May back with
+the bottle, and did the scaling myself.  No one at our house could do
+it better, for Laddie taught me the right way long ago, when I was
+small, and I'd done it hundreds of times.
+
+Then I went to Candace and she put a little bit of butter and a speck
+of lard in a skillet, and cooked the fish brown.  She made a slice of
+toast and boiled a cup of water and carried it to the door; then she
+went in and set the table beside the bed, and I took in the tray, and
+didn't spill a drop.  Mother never said a word; she just reached out
+and broke off a tiny speck and nibbled it, and it stayed; she tried a
+little bigger piece, and another, and she said:  "Take out the bones,
+Candace!"  She ate every scrap of that fish like the hungriest
+traveller who ever came to our door, and the toast, and drank the hot
+water.  Then she went into a long sleep and all of us walked tiptoe,
+and when she waked up she was better, and in a few days she could sit
+in her chair again, and she began getting Shelley ready to go to music
+school.
+
+I have to tell you the rest, too.  Laddie made the ram come alive, and
+father sold it the next day for more than he paid for it.  He said he
+hoped I'd forgive him for not having seen how it had been bothering me,
+and that he never would have had it on the place a day if he'd known.
+The next time he went to town he bought me a truly little cane rod, a
+real fishing line, several hooks, and a red bobber too lovely to put
+into the water.  I thought I was a great person from the fuss all of
+them made over me, until I noticed Laddie shrug his shoulders, and
+reach back and rub one, and then I remembered.
+
+I went flying, and thank goodness! he held out his arms.
+
+"Oh Laddie!  I never did it!" I cried.  "I never, never did!  I
+couldn't!  Laddie, I love you best of any one; you know I do!"
+
+"Of course you didn't!" said Laddie.  "My Little Sister wasn't anywhere
+around when that happened.  That was a poor little girl I never saw
+before, and she was in such trouble she didn't know WHAT she was doing.
+And I hope I'll never see her again," he ended, twisting his shoulder.
+But he kissed me and made it all right, and really I didn't do that; I
+just simply couldn't have struck Laddie.
+
+Marrying off Sally was little worse than getting Shelley ready for
+school.  She had to have three suits of everything, and a new dress of
+each kind, and three hats; her trunk wouldn't hold all there was to put
+in it; and father said he never could pay the bills.  He had promised
+her to go, and he didn't know what in this world to do; because he
+never had borrowed money in his life, and he couldn't begin; for if he
+died suddenly, that would leave mother in debt, and they might take the
+land from her.  That meant he'd spent what he had in the bank on
+Sally's wedding, and all that was in the Underground Station, or maybe
+the Station money wasn't his.
+
+Just when he was awfully bothered, mother said to never mind, she
+believed she could fix it.  She sent all of us into the orchard to pick
+the fine apples that didn't keep well, and father made three trips to
+town to sell them.  She had big jars of lard she wouldn't need before
+butchering time came again, and she sold dried apples, peaches, and
+raspberries from last year.  She got lots of money for barrels of
+feathers she'd saved to improve her feather beds and pillows; she said
+she would see to that later.  Father was so tickled to get the money to
+help him out that he said he'd get her a pair of those wonderful new
+blue geese like Pryors had, that every one stopped to look at.  When
+there was not quite enough yet, from somewhere mother brought out money
+that she'd saved for a long time, from butter and eggs, and chickens,
+and turkeys, and fruit and lard, and things that belonged to her.
+Father hated to use it the worst way, but she said she'd saved it for
+an emergency, and now seemed to be the time.
+
+She said if the child really had talent, she should be about developing
+it, and while there would be many who would have far finer things than
+Shelley, still she meant her to have enough that she wouldn't be the
+worst looking one, and so ashamed she couldn't keep her mind on her
+work.  Father said, with her face it didn't make any difference what
+she wore, and mother said that was just like a man; it made all the
+difference in the world what a girl wore.  Father said maybe it did to
+the girl, and other women; what he meant was that it made none to a
+man.  Mother said the chief aim and end of a girl's life was not
+wrapped up in a man; and father said maybe not with some girls, but it
+would be with Shelley: she was too pretty to escape.  I do wonder if
+I'm going to be too pretty to escape, when I put on long dresses.
+Sometimes I look in the glass to see if it's coming, but I don't
+suppose it's any use.  Mother says you can't tell a thing at the
+growing age about how a girl is going to look at eighteen.
+
+When everything was almost ready, Leon came in one day and said:
+"Shelley, what about improving your hair?  Have you tried your wild
+grape sap yet?"
+
+Shelley said:  "Why, goodness me!  We've been so busy getting Sally
+married, and my clothes made, I forgot all about that.  Have you
+noticed the crock in passing?  Is there anything in it?"
+
+"It was about half full, once when I went by," said Leon. "I haven't
+seen it lately."
+
+"Do please be a dear and look, when you go after the cows this
+evening," said Shelley.  "If there's anything in it, bring it up."
+
+
+  "Do it yourself for want of me,
+   The boy replied quite manfully,"
+
+quoted Leon from "The Little Lord and the Farmer."  He was always
+teasing.
+
+"I think you're mean as dirt if you don t bring it," said Shelley.
+
+Leon grinned and you should have heard the nasty, teasing way he said
+more of that same piece:
+
+  "Anger and pride are both unwise,
+   Vinegar never catches flies----"
+
+
+I wondered she didn't slap him.  You could see she wanted to.  "I can
+get it myself," she said angrily.
+
+"What will you give me to bring it?" asked Leon, who never missed a
+chance to make a bargain.
+
+"My grateful thanks.  Are they not a proper reward?" asked Shelley.
+
+"Thanks your foot!" said Leon.  "Will you bring something pretty from
+Chicago for Susie Fall's Christmas present?"
+
+Every one laughed, but Leon never cared.  He liked Susie best of any of
+the girls, and he wanted every one to know it.  He went straight to her
+whenever he had a chance, and he'd already told her mother to keep all
+the other boys away, because he meant to marry her when he grew up, and
+Widow Fall said that was fair enough, and she'd save her for him.  So
+Shelley said she would get him something for Susie, and Leon brought
+the crock.  Shelley looked at it sort of dubious-like, tipped it, and
+stared at the dirt settled in the bottom, and then stuck in her finger
+and tasted it.  She looked at Leon with a queer grin and said: "Smarty,
+smarty, think you're smart!"  She threw the creek water into the swill
+bucket.  No one said a word, but Leon looked much sillier than she did.
+After he was gone I asked her if she would bring him a Christmas
+present for Susie NOW, and she said she ought to bring him a pretty
+glass bottle labelled perfume, with hartshorn in it, and she would, if
+she thought he'd smell it first.
+
+Shelley felt badly about leaving mother when she wasn't very well; but
+mother said it was all right, she had Candace to keep house and May and
+me, and father, and all of us to take care of her, and it would be best
+for Shelley to go now and work hard as she could, while she had the
+chance.  So one afternoon father took her trunk to the depot and bought
+the tickets and got the checks, and the next day Laddie drove to
+Groveville with father and Shelley, and she was gone.  Right at the
+last, she didn't seem to want to leave so badly, but all of them said
+she must.  Peter's cousin, who had gone last year, was to meet her, and
+have a room ready where she boarded if she could, and if she couldn't
+right away, then the first one who left, Shelley was to have the place,
+so they'd be together.
+
+There were eight of us left, counting Candace and Miss Amelia, and you
+wouldn't think a house with eight people living in it would be empty,
+but ours was.  Everything seemed to wilt.  The roses on the window
+blinds didn't look so bright as they had; mother said the only way she
+could get along was to keep right on working.  She helped Candace all
+she could, but she couldn't be on her feet very much, so she sat all
+day long and peeled peaches to dry, showed Candace how to jelly,
+preserve, and spice them, and peeled apples for butter and to dry,
+quantities more than we could use, but she said she always could sell
+such things, and with the bunch of us to educate yet, we'd need the
+money.
+
+When it grew cold enough to shut the doors, and have fire at night,
+first thing after supper all of us helped clear the table, then we took
+our slates and books and learned our lessons for the next day, and then
+father lined us against the wall, all in a row from Laddie down, and he
+pronounced words--easy ones that divided into syllables nicely, for me,
+harder for May, and so up until I might sit down.  For Laddie, May and
+Leon he used the geography, the Bible, Roland's history, the Christian
+Advocate, and the Agriculturist.  My, but he had them so they could
+spell!  After that, as memory tests, all of us recited our reading
+lesson for the next day, especially the poetry pieces.  I knew most of
+them, from hearing the big folks repeat them so often and practise the
+proper way to read them.  I could do "Rienzi's Address to the Romans,"
+"Casablanca," "Gray's Elegy," or "Mark Antony's Speech," but best of
+all, I liked "Lines to a Water-fowl."  When he was tired, if it were
+not bedtime yet, all of us, boys too, sewed rags for carpet and rugs.
+Laddie braided corn husks for the kitchen and outside door mats, and
+they were pretty, and "very useful too," like the dog that got his head
+patted in McGuffey's Second.
+
+Then they picked the apples.  These had to be picked by hand, wrapped
+in soft paper, packed in barrels, and shipped to Fort Wayne.  Where
+they couldn't reach by hand, they stood on barrels or ladders, and used
+a long handled picker, so as not to bruise the fruit.  Laddie helped
+with everything through the day, worked at his books at night, and
+whenever he stepped outside he looked in the direction of Pryors'.  He
+climbed to the topmost limbs of the trees with a big basket, picked it
+full and let it down with a long piece of clothesline.  I loved to be
+in the orchard when they were working; there were plenty of summer
+apples to eat yet; it was fun to watch the men, and sometimes I could
+be useful by handing baskets or heaping up apples to be buried for us.
+
+One night father read about a man who had been hanged for killing
+another man, and they cut him down too soon, so he came alive, and they
+had to hang him over; and father got all worked up about it.  He said
+the man had suffered death the first time to "all intents and
+purposes," so that fulfilled the requirements of the law, and they were
+wrong when they hanged him again.  Laddie said it was a piece of
+bungling sure enough, but the law said a man must be "hanged by his
+neck until he was dead," and if he weren't dead, why, it was plain he
+hadn't fulfilled the requirements of the law, so they were forced to
+hang him again.  Father said that law was wrong; the man never should
+have been hanged in the first place.  They talked and argued until we
+were all excited about it, and the next evening after school Leon and I
+were helping pick apples, and when father and Laddie went to the barn
+with a load we sat down to rest and we thought about what they said.
+
+"Gee, that was tough on the man!" said Leon, "but I guess the law is
+all right.  Of course he wouldn't want to die, and twice over at that,
+but I don't suppose the man he killed liked to die either.  I think if
+you take a life, it's all right to give your own to pay for it."
+
+"Leon," I said, "some time when you are fighting Absalom Saunders or
+Lou Wicks, just awful, if you hit them too hard on some tender spot and
+kill them, would you want to die to pay for it?"
+
+"I wouldn't want to, but I guess I'd have to," said Leon.  "That's the
+law, and it's as good a way to make it as any.  But I'm not going to
+kill any one.  I've studied my physiology hard to find all the spots
+that will kill.  I never hit them behind the ear, or in the pit of the
+stomach; I just black their eyes, bloody their snoots, and swat them on
+the chin to finish off with."
+
+"Well, suppose they don't study their physiologies like you do, and hit
+YOU in the wrong place, and kill you, would you want THEM hanged by the
+neck until they were dead, to pay for it?"
+
+"I don't think I'd want anything if I were dead," he said.  "I wonder
+how it feels to die.  Now THAT man knew.  I'd like to be hanged enough
+to find out how it goes, and then come back, and brag about it.  I
+don't think it hurts much; I believe I'll try it."
+
+So Leon took the rope Laddie lowered the baskets with, and threw it
+over a big limb.  Then he rolled up a barrel and stood on it and put my
+sunbonnet on with the crown over his face, for a black cap, and made
+the rope into a slip noose over his head, and told me to stand back by
+the apple tree and hold the rope tight, until he said he was hanged
+enough.  Then he stepped from the barrel.  It jerked me toward him
+about a yard, as he came down smash! on his feet.  I held with all my
+might, but he was too heavy--and falling that way.  So he went to
+trying to fix some other plan, and I told him the sensible thing to do
+would be for him to hang me, because he'd be strong enough to hold me
+and I could tell him how it felt just as well.  So we fixed me up like
+we had him, and when Leon got the rope stretched, he wrapped it twice
+around the apple tree so it wouldn't jerk him as it had me, and when he
+said "Ready," I stepped from the barrel.  The last thing I heard was
+Leon telling me to say when I was hanged enough.  I was so heavy, the
+rope stretched, and I went down until it almost tore off my head, and I
+couldn't get a single breath, so of course I didn't tell him, and I
+couldn't get on the barrel, and my tongue went out, and my chest
+swelled up, and my ears roared, and I kicked and struggled, and all the
+time I could hear Leon laughing, and shouting to keep it up, that I was
+dying fine; only he didn't know that I really was, and at last I didn't
+feel or know anything more.
+
+When I came to, I was lying on the grass, while father was pumping my
+arms, and Laddie was pouring creek water on my face from his hat, and
+Leon was running around in circles, clear crazy.  I heard father tell
+him he'd give him a scutching he'd remember to the day of his death;
+but inasmuch as I had told Leon to do it, I had to grab father and hold
+to him tight as I could, until I got breath enough to explain how it
+happened.  Even then I wasn't sure what he was going to do.
+
+After all that, when I tried to tell Leon how it felt, he just cried
+like a baby, and he wouldn't listen to a word, even when he'd wanted to
+know so badly.  He said if I hadn't come back, he'd have gone to the
+barn and used the swing rope on himself, so it was a good thing I did,
+for one funeral would have cost enough, when we needed money so badly,
+not to mention how mother would have felt to have two of us go at once,
+like she had before.  And anyway, it didn't amount to so awful much.
+It was pretty bad at first, but it didn't last long, and the next day
+my neck was only a little blue and stiff, and in three days it was all
+over, only a rough place where the rope grained the skin as I went
+down; but I never got to tell Leon how it felt; I just couldn't talk
+him into hearing, and it was quite interesting too; but still I easily
+saw why the man in the paper would object to dying twice, to pay for
+killing another man once.
+
+When the apples were picked and the cabbage, beets, turnips, and
+potatoes were buried, some corn dried in the garret for new meal,
+pumpkins put in the cellar, the field corn all husked, and the
+butchering done, father said the work was in such fine shape, with
+Laddie to help, and there was so much more corn than he needed for us,
+and the price was so high, and the turkeys did so well, and everything,
+that he could pay back what mother helped him, and have quite a sum
+over.
+
+It was Thanksgiving by that time, and all of Winfield's, Lucy's, Sally
+and Peter, and our boys came home.  We had a big time, all but Shelley;
+it was too expensive for her to come so far for one day, but mother
+sent her a box with a whole turkey for herself and her friends; and
+cake, popcorn, nuts, and just everything that wasn't too drippy.
+Shelley wrote such lovely letters that mother saved them and after we
+had eaten as much dinner as we could, she read them before we left the
+table.
+
+I had heard most of them, but I liked to listen again, because they
+sounded so happy.  You could hear Shelley laugh on every page.  She
+told about how Peter's cousin was waiting when the train stopped.  They
+couldn't room together right away, but they were going to the first
+chance they had.  Shelley felt badly because they were so far apart,
+but she was in a nice place, where she could go with other girls of the
+school until she learned the way.  She told about her room and the
+woman she boarded with and what she had to eat; she wrote mother not to
+worry about clothes, because most of the others were from the country,
+or small towns, and getting ready to teach, and lots of them didn't
+have NEARLY as many or as pretty dresses as she did.  She told about
+the big building, the classes, the professors, and of going to public
+recitals where some of the pupils who knew enough played; and she was
+working her fingers almost to the bone, so she could next year.  She
+told of people she met, and how one of the teachers took a number of
+girls in his class to see a great picture gallery.  She wrote pages
+about a young Chicago lawyer she met there, and only a few lines about
+the pictures, so father said as that was the best collection of art
+work in Chicago, it was easy enough to see that Shelley had been far
+more impressed with the man than she had been with the pictures.
+Mother said she didn't see how he could say a thing like that about the
+child.  Of course she couldn't tell in a letter about hundreds of
+pictures, but it was easy enough to tell all about a man.
+
+Father got sort of spunky at that, and he said it was mighty little
+that mattered most, that could be told about a Chicago lawyer; and
+mother had better caution Shelley to think more about her work, and
+write less of the man.  Mother said that would stop the child's
+confidences completely and she'd think all the time about the man, and
+never mention him again, so she wouldn't know what WAS going on.  She
+said she was glad Shelley had found pleasing, refined friends, and
+she'd encourage her all she could in cultivating them; but of course
+she'd caution her to be careful, and she'd tell her what the danger
+was, and after that Shelley wrote and wrote.  Mother didn't always read
+the letters to us, but she answered every one she got that same night.
+Sometimes she pushed the pen so she jabbed the paper, and often she
+smiled or laughed softly.
+
+I liked Thanksgiving.  We always had a house full of company, and they
+didn't stay until we were tired of them, as they did at Christmas, and
+there was as much to eat; the only difference was that there were no
+presents.  It wasn't nearly so much work to fix for one day as it was
+for a week; so it wasn't so hard on mother and Candace, and father
+didn't have to spend much money.  We were wearing all our clothes from
+last fall that we could, and our coats from last winter to help out,
+but we didn't care.  We had a lot of fun, and we wanted Sally and
+Shelley to have fine dresses, because they were in big cities where
+they needed them, and in due season, no doubt, we would have much more
+than they, because, as May figured it, there would be only a few of us
+by that time, so we could have more to spend.  That looked sensible,
+and I thought it would be that way, too.  We were talking it over
+coming from school one evening, and when we had settled it, we began to
+play "Dip and Fade."  That was a game we made up from being at church,
+and fall and spring were the only times we could play it, because then
+the rains filled all the ditches beside the road where the dirt was
+plowed up to make the bed higher, and we had to have the water to dip
+in and fade over.
+
+We played it like that, because it was as near as we could come to
+working out a song Isaac Thomas sang every time he got happy.  He had a
+lot of children at home, and more who had died, from being half-fed and
+frozen, mother thought; and he was always talking about meeting the
+"pore innocents" in Heaven, and singing that one song.  Every time he
+made exactly the same speech in meeting.  It began like reciting
+poetry, only it didn't rhyme, but it sort of cut off in lines, and
+Isaac waved back and forth on his feet, and half sung it, and the rags
+waved too, but you just couldn't feel any thrills of earnestness about
+what he said, because he needed washing, and to go to work and get him
+some clothes and food to fill out his frame.  He only looked funny, and
+made you want to laugh.  It took Emanuel Ripley to raise your hair.  I
+don't know why men like my father, and the minister, and John Dover
+stood it; they talked over asking Isaac to keep quiet numbers of times,
+but the minister said there were people like that in every church, they
+always came among the Lord's anointed, and it was better to pluck out
+your right eye than to offend one of them, and he was doubtful about
+doing it.  So we children all knew that the grown people scarcely could
+stand Isaac's speech, and prayer, and song, and that they were afraid
+to tell him plain out that he did more harm than good.  Every meeting
+about the third man up was Isaac, and we had to watch him wave, and
+rant, and go sing-songy:
+
+  "Oh brethering and sistering--ah,
+  It delights my heart--ah to gather with you,
+  In this holy house of worship--ah.
+  In his sacred word--ah,
+  The Lord--ah tells us,
+  That we are all his childring--ah.
+  And now, lemme exhort you to-night--ah,
+  As one that loves you--ah,
+  To choose that good part, that Mary chose--ah,
+  That the worrrr-uld kin neither give ner take away--ah."
+
+That went on until he was hoarse, then he prayed, and arose and sang
+his song.  Other men spoke where they stood.  Isaac always walked to
+the altar, faced the people, and he was tired out when he finished, but
+so proud of himself, so happy, and he felt so sure that his efforts
+were worth a warm bed, sausage, pancakes, maple syrup, and coffee for
+breakfast, that it was mighty seldom he failed to fool some one else
+into thinking so too, and if he could, he wouldn't have to walk four
+miles home on cold nights, with no overcoat.  In summer, mostly, they
+let him go.  Isaac always was fattest in winter, especially during
+revivals, but at any time mother said he looked like a sheep's carcass
+after the buzzards had picked it.  It could be seen that he was
+perfectly strong, and could have fed and clothed himself, and Mandy and
+the children, quite as well as our father did us, if he had wanted to
+work, for we had the biggest family of the neighbourhood.  So we
+children made fun of him and we had to hold our mouths shut when he got
+up all tired and teary-like, and began to quaver:
+
+    "Many dear childurn we know dew stan'
+    Un toon ther harps in the better lan',
+    Ther little hans frum each soundin' string,
+    Bring music sweet, wile the Anguls sing,
+    Bring music sweet, wile the Anguls sing,--
+
+      We shell meet them agin on that shore,
+      We shell meet them agin on that shore,
+      With fairer face, un angel grace,
+      Each loved un ull welcome us ther.
+
+    "They uster mourn when the childurn died,
+    Un said goo-bye at the river side,
+    They dipped ther feet in the glidin' stream,
+    Un faded away, like a loveli dream,
+    Un faded away like a loveli dream."
+
+
+Then the chorus again, and then Isaac dropped on the front seat
+exhausted, and stayed there until some good-hearted woman, mostly my
+mother, felt so sorry about his shiftlessness she asked him to go home
+with us and warmed and fed him, and put him in the traveller's bed to
+sleep.  The way we played it was this: we stood together at the edge of
+a roadside puddle and sang the first verse and the chorus exactly as
+Isaac did.  Then I sang the second verse, and May was one of the "many
+dear childurn," and as I came to the lines she dipped her feet in the
+"glidin' stream," and for "fading away," she jumped across.
+
+Now May was a careful little soul, and always watched what she was
+doing, so she walked up a short way, chose a good place, and when I
+sang the line, she was almost birdlike, she dipped and faded so
+gracefully.  Then we laughed like dunces, and then May began to sway
+and swing, and drone through her nose for me, and I was so excited I
+never looked.  I just dipped and faded on the spot.  I faded all right
+too, for I couldn't jump nearly across, and when I landed in pure clay
+that had been covered with water for three weeks, I went down to my
+knees in mud, to my waist in water, and lost my balance and fell
+backward.
+
+A man passing on horseback pried me out with a rail and helped me home.
+Of course he didn't know how I happened to fall in, and I was too
+chilled to talk.  I noticed May only said I fell, so I went to bed
+scorched inside with red pepper tea, and never told a word about
+dipping and fading.  Leon whispered and said he bet it was the last
+time I would play that, so as soon as my coat and dress were washed and
+dried, and I could go back to school, I did it again, just to show him
+I was no cowardy-calf; but I had learned from May to choose a puddle I
+could manage before I faded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"Even So"
+
+  "All things whatsoever ye would
+  That men should do to you,
+  Do ye even so to them."
+
+
+Our big girls and boys always made a dreadful fuss and said we would
+catch every disease you could mention, but mother and father were set
+about it, just like the big rocks in the hills.  They said they,
+themselves, once had been at the mercy of the people, and they knew how
+it felt.  Mother said when they were coming here in a wagon, and she
+had ridden until she had to walk to rest her feet, and held a big baby
+until her arms became so tired she drove while father took it, and when
+at last they saw a house and stopped, she said if the woman hadn't
+invited her in, and let her cook on the stove, given her milk and eggs,
+and furnished her a bed to sleep in once in a while, she couldn't have
+reached here at all; and she never had been refused once.  Then she
+always quoted:  "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to
+you, do ye EVEN SO to them."
+
+Father said there were men who made a business of splitting hairs, and
+of finding different meanings in almost everything in the Bible.  I
+would like to have seen any one split hairs about that, or it made to
+mean something else.  Of all the things in the Bible that you had to do
+because it said to, whether you liked it or not, that was the one you
+struck oftenest in life and it took the hardest pull to obey.  It was
+just the hatefulest text of any, and made you squirm most.  There was
+no possible way to get around it.  It meant, that if you liked a
+splinter new slate, and a sharp pencil all covered with gold paper, to
+make pictures and write your lessons, when Clarissa Polk sat next you
+and sang so low the teacher couldn't hear until she put herself to
+sleep on it, "I WISHT I had a slate!  I wisht I HAD a slate!  I wisht I
+had a SLATE!  Oh I WISHT I HAD A SLATE!"--it meant that you just had to
+wash up yours and stop making pictures yourself, and pass it over; you
+even had to smile when you offered it, if you did it right.  I seldom
+got through it as the Lord would, for any one who loaned Clarissa a
+slate knew that it would come back with greasy, sweaty finger marks on
+it you almost had to dig a hole to wash off, and your pencil would be
+wet.  And if there were the least flaw of crystal in the pencil, she
+found it, and bore down so hard that what she wrote never would come
+off.
+
+The Lord always seemed bigger and more majestic to me, than at any
+other time, when I remembered that He could have known all that, and
+yet smiled as He loaned Clarissa His slate.  And that old Bible thing
+meant, too, that if you would like it if you were travelling a long
+way, say to California to hunt gold, or even just to Indiana, to find a
+farm fit to live on--it meant that if you were tired, hungry, and sore,
+and would want to be taken in and fed and rested, you had to let in
+other people when they reached your house.  Father and mother had been
+through it themselves, and they must have been tired as could be,
+before they reached Sarah Hood's and she took them in, and rested and
+fed them, even when they were only a short way from the top of the
+Little Hill, where next morning they looked down and stopped the wagon,
+until they chose the place to build their house.  Sarah Hood came
+along, and helped mother all day, so by night she was settled in the
+old cabin that was on the land, and ready to go to work making money to
+build a new one, and then a big house, and fix the farm all beautiful
+like it was then.  They knew so well how it felt, that they kept one
+bed in the boys' room, and any man who came at dusk got his supper, to
+sleep there, and his breakfast, and there never was anything to pay.
+The girls always scolded dreadfully about the extra washing, but mother
+said she slept on sheets when she came out, and some one washed them.
+
+One time Sally said:  "Mother, have you ever figured out how many
+hundred sheets you've washed since, to pay for that?"
+
+Mother said:  "No, but I just hope it will make a stack high enough for
+me to climb from into Heaven."
+
+Sally said:  "The talk at the church always led me to think that you
+flew to Heaven."
+
+Mother answered:  "So I get there, I don't mind if I creep."
+
+Then Sally knew it was time to stop.  We always knew.  And we stopped,
+too!
+
+We had heard that "All things" quotation, until the first two words
+were as much as mother ever needed repeat of it any more, and we had
+cooked, washed for, and waited on people travelling, until Leon got so
+when he saw any one coming--of course we knew all the neighbours, and
+their horses and wagons and carriages--he always said:  "Here comes
+another 'Even So!'"  He said we had done "even so" to people until it
+was about our share, but mother said our share was going to last until
+the Lord said, "Well done, good and faithful servant," and took us
+home.  She had much more about the stranger at the gate and
+entertaining angels unawares; why, she knew every single thing in the
+Bible that meant it was her duty to feed and give a bed to any one, no
+matter how dirty or miserable looking he was!  So when Leon came in one
+evening at dusk and said, "There's another 'Even So' coming down the
+Little Hill!" all of us knew that we'd have company for the night, and
+we had.
+
+I didn't like that man, but some of the others seemed to find him
+amusing.  Maybe it was because I had nothing to do but sit and watch
+him, and so I saw more of him than the ones who came and went all the
+time.  As long as there was any one in the room, he complained
+dreadfully about his sore foot, and then cheered up and talked, and he
+could tell interesting things.  He was young, but he must have been
+most everywhere and seen everything.  He was very brave and could stand
+off three men who were going to take from him the money he was carrying
+to buy a piece of land in Illinois.  The minute the grown folks left
+the room to milk, do the night feeding, and begin supper, he twisted in
+his chair and looked at every door, and went and stood at the back
+dining-room window, where he could see the barn and what was out there,
+and coming back he took a peep into father's and mother's room, and
+although he limped dreadfully when he came, he walked like any one when
+he went over and picked up father's gun and looked to see if it were
+loaded, and seemed mighty glad when he found it wasn't.  Father said he
+could load in a flash when it was necessary, but he was dubious about a
+loaded gun in a house full of children.  Not one of us ever touched it,
+until the boys were big enough to have permission, like Laddie and Leon
+had.  He said a gun was such a great "moral persuader," that the sight
+of one was mostly all that was needed, and nobody could tell by looking
+at it whether it was loaded or not.  This man could, for he examined
+the lock and smiled in a pleased way over it, and he never limped a
+step going back to his chair.  He kept on complaining, until father
+told him before bedtime that he had better rest a day or two, and
+mother said that would be a good idea.
+
+He talked so much we couldn't do our lessons or spell very well, but it
+was Friday and we'd have another chance Saturday, so it didn't make so
+much difference.  Father said the traveller must be tired and sleepy
+and Leon should take a light and show him to bed.  He stayed so long
+father went to the foot of the stairway, and asked him why he didn't
+come down and he said he was in bed too.  The next morning he was
+sleepy at breakfast and Laddie said it was no wonder, because Leon and
+the traveller were talking when he went upstairs.  The man turned to
+father and said: "That's a mighty smart boy, Mr. Stanton."  Father
+frowned and said:  "Praise to the face is open disgrace.  I hope he
+will be smart enough not to disgrace us, anyway."
+
+The traveller said he was sure he would be, and we could see that he
+had taken a liking to Leon, for he went with him to the barn to help do
+the morning feeding.  They stayed so long mother sent me to call them,
+and when I got there, the man was telling Leon how foolish it was for
+boys to live on a farm; how they never would amount to anything unless
+they went to cities, and about all the fun there was there, and how
+nice it was to travel, even along the roads, because every one fed you,
+and gave you a good bed.  He forgot that walking had made his foot
+lame, and I couldn't see, to save me, why he was going to spend his
+money to buy a farm, if he thought a town the only place where it was
+fit to live.
+
+He stayed all Saturday, and father said Sunday was no suitable time to
+start on a journey again, and the man's foot was bad when father was
+around, so it would be better to wait until Monday.  The traveller
+tagged Leon and told him what a fine fellow he was, how smart he was,
+and to prove it, Leon boasted about everything he knew, and showed the
+man all over the farm.
+
+I even saw them pass the Station in the orchard, and heard Leon brag
+how father had been an agent for the Governor; but of course he didn't
+really show him the place, and probably it would have made no
+difference if he had, for all the money must have been spent on Sally's
+wedding.  Of course father might have put some there he had got since,
+or that money might never have been his at all, but it seemed as if it
+would be, because it was on his land.
+
+Sunday evening all of us attended church, but the traveller was too
+tired, so when Leon said he'd stay with him, father thought it was all
+right.  I could see no one wanted to leave the man alone in the house.
+He said they'd go to bed early, and we came in quite late.  The lamp
+was turned low, the door unlocked, and everything in place.  Laddie
+went to bed without a candle, and said he'd undress and slip in easy so
+as not to waken them.
+
+In the morning when he got up the traveller's bed hadn't been slept in,
+and neither had Leon's.  The gun was gone, and father stared at mother,
+and mother stared at Laddie, and he turned and ran straight toward the
+Station, and in a minute he was back, whiter than a plate.  He just
+said:  "All gone!"  Father and mother both sat down suddenly and hard.
+Then Laddie ran to the barn and came back and said none of the horses
+had been taken.  Soon they went into the parlour and shut the door, and
+when they came out father staggered and mother looked exactly like
+Sabethany.  Laddie ran to the barn, saddled Flos and rode away.  Father
+wanted to ring an alarm on the dinner bell, like he had a call arranged
+to get all the neighbours there quickly if we had sickness or trouble,
+and mother said:  "Paul, you shall not!  He's so young!  We've got to
+keep this as long as we can, and maybe the Lord will help us find him,
+and we can give him another chance."
+
+Father started to say something, and mother held up her hand and just
+said, "Paul!" and he sank back in the chair and kept still.  Mother
+always had spoken of him as "the Head of the Family," and here he
+wasn't at all!  He minded her quickly as I would.
+
+When Miss Amelia came downstairs they let her start to school and never
+told her a word, but mother said May and I were not to go.  So I
+slipped out and ran through the orchard to look at the Station, and
+sure enough! the stone was rolled back, the door open and the can lying
+on the floor.  I slid down and picked it up, and there was one sheet of
+paper money left in it stuck to the sides.  It was all plain as a
+pikestaff.  Leon must have thought the money had been spent, and showed
+the traveller the Station, just to brag, and he guessed there might be
+something there, and had gone while we were at church and taken it.  He
+had all night the start of us, and he might have a horse waiting
+somewhere, and be almost to Illinois by this time, and if the money
+belonged to father, there would be no Christmas; and if it happened to
+be the money the county gave him to pay the men who worked the roads
+every fall, and Miss Amelia, or collections from the church, he'd have
+to pay it back, even if it put him in debt; and if he died, they might
+take the land, like he said; and where on earth was Leon?  Knew what
+he'd done and hiding, I bet!  He needed the thrashing he would get that
+time, and I started out to hunt him and have it over with, so mother
+wouldn't be uneasy about him yet; and then I remembered Laddie had said
+Leon hadn't been in bed all night.  He was gone too!
+
+Maybe he wanted to try life in a city, where the traveller had said
+everything was so grand; but he must have known that he'd kill his
+mother if he went, and while he didn't kiss her so often, and talk so
+much as some of us, I never could see that he didn't run quite as fast
+to get her a chair or save her a step.  He was so slim and light he
+could race for the doctor faster than Laddie or father, either one.  Of
+course he loved his mother, just as all of us did; he never, never
+could go away and not let her know about it.  If he had gone, that
+watchful-eyed man, who was lame only part of the time, had taken the
+gun and made him go.  I thought I might as well save the money he'd
+overlooked, so I gripped it tight in my hand, and put it in my apron
+pocket, the same as I had Laddie's note to the Princess, and started to
+the barn, on the chance that Leon might be hiding.  I knew precious
+well I would, if I were in his place.  So I hunted the granaries, the
+haymow, the stalls, then I stood on the threshing floor and cried:
+"Leon!  If you're hiding come quick!  Mother will be sick with worrying
+and father will be so glad to see you, he won't do anything much.  Do
+please hurry!"
+
+Then I listened, and all I could hear was a rat gnawing at a corner of
+the granary under the hay.  Might as well have saved its teeth, it
+would strike a strip of tin when it got through, but of course it
+couldn't know that.  Then I went to every hole around the haystack,
+where the cattle had eaten; none were deep yet, like they would be
+later in the season, and all the way I begged of Leon to come out.
+Once a rooster screamed, flew in my face and scared me good, but no
+Leon; so I tried the corn crib, the implement shed, and the wood house,
+climbing the ladder with the money still gripped in one hand.  Then I
+slipped in the front door, up the stairs, and searched the garret, even
+away back where I didn't like to very well.  At last I went to the
+dining-room, and I don't think either father or mother had moved, while
+Sabethany turned to stone looked good compared with them.  Seemed as if
+it would have been better if they'd cried, or scolded, or anything but
+just sit there as they did, when you could see by their moving once in
+a while that they were alive.  In the kitchen Candace and May finished
+the morning work, and both of them cried steadily.  I slipped to May,
+"Whose money was it?" I whispered.  "Father's, or the county's, or the
+church's?"
+
+"All three," said May.
+
+"The traveller took it."
+
+"How would he find it?  None of us knew there was such a place before."
+
+"Laddie seemed to know!"
+
+"Oh Laddie!  Father trusts him about everything."
+
+"They don't think HE told?"
+
+"Of course not, silly.  It's Leon who is gone!"
+
+"Leon may have told about the Station!" I cried.  "He didn't touch the
+money.  He never touched it!"
+
+Then I went straight to father.  Keeping a secret was one thing; seeing
+the only father you had look like that, was another.  I held out the
+money.
+
+"There's one piece old Even So didn't get, anyway," I said.  "Found it
+on the floor of the Station, where it was stuck to the can.  And I
+thought Leon must be hiding for fear he'd be whipped for telling, but
+I've hunted where we usually hide, and promised him everything under
+the sun if he'd come out; but he didn't, so I guess that traveller man
+must have used the gun to make him go along."
+
+Father sat and stared at me.  He never offered to touch the money, not
+even when I held it against his hand.  So I saw that money wasn't the
+trouble, else he'd have looked quick enough to see how much I had.
+They were thinking about Leon being gone, at least father was.  Mother
+called me to her and asked:  "You knew about the Station?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"When?"
+
+"On the way back from taking Amanda Deam her ducks this summer."
+
+"Leon was with you?"
+
+"He found it."
+
+"What were you doing?"
+
+"Sitting on the fence eating apples.  We were wondering why that ravine
+place wasn't cleaned up, when everywhere else was, and then Leon said
+there might be a reason.  He told about having seen a black man, and
+that he was hidden some place, and we hunted there and found it.  We
+rolled back the stone, and opened the door, and Leon went in, and both
+of us saw a can full of money."
+
+"Go on."
+
+"We didn't touch it, mother!  Truly we didn't!  Leon said we'd found
+something not intended for children, and we'd be whipped sick if we
+ever went near or told, and we never did, not even once, unless Leon
+wanted to boast to the traveller man, but if he showed him the place,
+he thought sure the money had all been spent on the wedding and sending
+Shelley away."
+
+Father's arms shot out, and his head pitched on the table.  Mother got
+up and began to walk the floor, and never went near or even touched
+him.  I couldn't bear it.  I went and pulled his arm and put the bill
+under his hand.
+
+"Leon didn't take your money!  He didn't!  He didn't!  I just know he
+didn't!  He does tricks because they are so funny, or he thinks they'll
+be, but he doesn't steal!  He doesn't touch a single thing that is not
+his, only melons, or chicken out of the skillet, or bread from the
+cellar; but not money and things.  I take gizzards and bread myself,
+but I don't steal, and Leon or none of us do!  Oh father, we don't!
+Not one of us do!  Don't you remember about 'Thou shalt not,' and the
+Crusaders?  Leon's the best fighter of any of us.  I'm not sure that he
+couldn't even whip Laddie, if he got mad enough!  Maybe he can't whip
+the traveller if he has the gun, but, father, Leon simply couldn't take
+the money.  Laddie will stay home and work, and all of us.  We can help
+get it back.  We can sell a lot of things.  Laddie will sell Flos
+before he'll see you suffer so; and all of us will give up Christmas,
+and we'll work!  We'll work as hard as ever we can, and maybe you could
+spare the little piece Joe Risdell wants to build his cabin on.  We can
+manage about the money, father, indeed we can.  But you don't dare
+think Leon took it!  He never did!  Why, he's yours!  Yours and
+mother's!"
+
+Father lifted his head and reached out his arms.
+
+"You blessing!" he said.  "You blessing from the Lord!"
+
+Then he gave me a cold, stiff kiss on the forehead, went to mother,
+took her arm, and said:  "Come, mommy, let's go and tell the Lord about
+it, and then we'll try to make some plan.  Perhaps Laddie will be back
+with word soon."
+
+But he almost had to carry her.  Then we could hear him praying, and he
+was so anxious, and he made it so earnest it sounded exactly like the
+Lord was in our room and father was talking right to His face.  I tried
+to think, and this is what I thought: as father left the room, he
+looked exactly as I had seen Mr. Pryor more than once, and my mother
+had both hands gripped over her heart, and she said we must not let any
+one know.  Now if something could happen to us to make my father look
+like the Princess' and my mother hold her heart with both hands, and if
+no one were to know about it like they had said, how were we any
+different from Pryors?  We might be of the Lord's anointed, but we
+could get into the same kind of trouble the infidels could, and have
+secrets ourselves, or at least it seemed as if it might be very nearly
+the same, when it made father and mother look and act the way they did.
+I wondered if we'd have to leave our lovely, lovely home, cross a sea
+and be strangers in a strange land, as Laddie said; and if people would
+talk about us, and make us feel that being a stranger was the
+loneliest, hardest thing in all the world.  Well, if mysteries are like
+this, and we have to live with one days and years, the Lord have mercy
+on us!  Then I saw the money lying on the table, so I took it and put
+it in the Bible.  Then I went out and climbed the catalpa tree to watch
+for Laddie.
+
+Soon I saw a funny thing, such as I never before had seen.  Coming
+across the fields, straight toward our house, sailing over the fences
+like a bird, came the Princess on one of her horses.  Its legs
+stretched out so far its body almost touched the ground, and it lifted
+up and swept over the rails.  She took our meadow fence lengthwiselike,
+and at the hitching rack she threw the bridle over the post,
+dismounted, and then I saw she had been riding astride, like a man.  I
+ran before her and opened the sitting-room door, but no one was there,
+so I went on to the dining-room.  Father had come in, and mother was
+sitting in her chair.  Both of them looked at the Princess and never
+said a word.
+
+She stopped inside the dining-room door and spoke breathlessly, as if
+she as well as the horse had raced.
+
+"I hope I'm not intruding," she said, "but a man north of us told our
+Thomas in the village that robbers had taken quite a large sum of
+hidden money you held for the county, and church, and of your own, and
+your gun, and got away while you were at church last night.  Is it
+true?"
+
+"Practically," said my father.
+
+Then my mother motioned toward a chair.
+
+"You are kind to come," she said.  "Won't you be seated?"
+
+The Princess stepped to the chair, but she gripped the back in both
+hands and stood straight, breathing fast, her eyes shining with
+excitement, her lips and cheeks red, so lovely you just had to look,
+and look.
+
+"No," she said.  "I'll tell you why I came, and then if there is
+nothing I can do here, and no errand I can ride for you, I'll go.
+Mother has heart trouble, the worst in all the world, the kind no
+doctor can ever hope to cure, and sometimes, mostly at night, she is
+driven to have outside air.  Last night she was unusually ill, and I
+heard her leave the house, after I'd gone to my room.  I watched from
+my window and saw her take a seat on a bench under the nearest tree.  I
+was moving around and often I looked to see if she were still there.
+Then the dogs began to rave, and I hurried down.  They used to run
+free, but lately, on account of her going out, father has been forced
+to tie them at night.  They were straining at their chains, and barking
+dreadfully.  I met her at the door, but she would only say some one
+passed and gave her a fright.  When Thomas came in and told what he had
+heard, she said instantly that she had seen the man.
+
+"She said he was about the size of Thomas, that he came from your
+direction, that he ran when our dogs barked, but he kept beside the
+fences, and climbed over where there were trees.  He crossed our
+barnyard and went toward the northwest.  Mother saw him distinctly as
+he reached the road, and she said he was not a large man, he stooped
+when he ran, and she thought he moved like a slinking, city thief.  She
+is sure he's the man who took your money; she says he acted exactly as
+if he were trying to escape pursuit; but I was to be SURE to tell you
+that he didn't carry a gun.  If your gun is gone, there must have been
+two, and the other man took that and went a different way.  Did two men
+stop here?"
+
+"No," said father.  "Only one."
+
+The Princess looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"Do you think, Mr. Stanton," she said, "that the man who took the money
+would burden himself with a gun?  Isn't a rifle heavy for one in flight
+to carry?"
+
+"It is," said father.  "Your mother saw nothing of two men?"
+
+"Only one, and she knows he didn't carry a gun.  Except the man you
+took in, no stranger has been noticed around here lately?"
+
+"No one.  We are quite careful.  Even the gun was not loaded as it
+stood; whoever took it carried the ammunition also, but he couldn't
+fire until he loaded."
+
+Father turned to the corner where the gun always stood and then he
+stooped and picked up two little white squares from the floor.
+
+They were bits of unbleached muslin in which he wrapped the bullets he
+made.
+
+"The rifle was loaded before starting, and in a hurry," he said, as he
+held up the squares of muslin.  Then he scratched a match, bent, and
+ran it back and forth over the floor, and at one place there was a
+flash, and the flame went around in funny little fizzes as it caught a
+grain of powder here and there.  "You see the measure was overrun."
+
+"Wouldn't the man naturally think the gun was loaded, and take it as it
+stood?"
+
+"That would be a reasonable conclusion," said father.
+
+"But he looked!" I cried.  "That first night when you and the boys went
+to the barn, and the girls were getting supper, he looked at the gun,
+and he LIKED it when he saw it wasn't loaded.  He smiled.  And he
+didn't limp a mite when I was the only one in the room.  He and Leon
+knew it wasn't loaded, and I guess he didn't load it, for he liked
+having it empty so well."
+
+"Ummmm!" said father.  "What it would save in this world if a child
+only knew when to talk and when to keep still.  Little Sister, the next
+time you see a stranger examine my gun when I'm not in the room,
+suppose you take father out alone and whisper to him about it."
+
+"Yes, sir," I said.
+
+The way I wished I had told that at the right time made me dizzy, but
+then there were several good switchings I'd had for telling things,
+besides what Sally did to me about her and Peter.  I would have enjoyed
+knowing how one could be sure.  Hereafter, it will be all right about
+the gun, anyway.
+
+"Could I take my horse and carry a message anywhere for you?  Are both
+your sons riding to tell the neighbours?"
+
+Father hesitated, but it seemed as if he stopped to think, so I just
+told her:  "Laddie is riding.  Leon didn't take a horse."
+
+Father said there was nothing she could do, so she took my hand and we
+started for the gate.
+
+"I do hope they will find him, and get back the money, and give him
+what he deserves!" she cried.
+
+"Yes, father and mother are praying that they'll find him," I said.
+"It doesn't seem to make the least difference to them about the money.
+Father didn't even look at a big paper piece I found where it was
+hidden.  But they are anxious about the man.  Mother says he is so
+young, we just must find him, and keep this a secret, and give him
+another chance.  You won't tell, will you?"
+
+The Princess stood still on our walk, and then of all things!  if she
+didn't begin to go Sabethany-like.  The colour left her cheeks and lips
+and she shivered and shook and never said one word.  I caught her arm.
+"Say, what ails you?" I cried.  "You haven't gone and got heart trouble
+too, have you?"
+
+She stood there trembling, and then, wheeling suddenly, ran back into
+the house, and went to my mother.  On her knees, the Princess buried
+her face in mother's breast and said:  "Oh Mrs. Stanton!  Oh, if I only
+could help you!"
+
+She began to cry as if something inside her had broken, and she'd shake
+to pieces.
+
+Mother stared above her head at father, with her eyebrows raised high,
+and he waved his hand toward me.  Mother turned to me, but already she
+had put her arms around the Princess, and was trying to hold her
+together.
+
+"What did you tell her that made her come back?" she asked sternlike.
+
+"You forgot to explain that the man was so young, and you wanted to
+keep it a secret and give him another chance," I said.  "I just asked
+her not to tell."
+
+Mother looked at father and all the colour went from her face, and she
+began to shake.  He stared at her, then he opened her door and lifted
+the Princess with one arm, and mother with the other, and helped them
+into mother's room, stepped back and closed the door.  After a while it
+opened and they came out together, with both mother's arms around the
+Princess, and she had cried until she staggered.  Mother lifted her
+face and kissed her, when they reached the door and said:  "Tell your
+mother I understand enough to sympathize.  Carry her my love.  I do
+wish she would give herself the comfort of asking God to help her."
+
+"She does!  Oh, I'm sure she does!" said the Princess.  "It's father
+who has lost all judgment and reason."
+
+Father went with her to the gate, and this time she needed help to
+mount her horse, and she left it to choose its way and go where it
+pleased on the road.  When father came in he looked at mother, and she
+said:  "I haven't the details, but she understands too well.  The Pryor
+mystery isn't much of a mystery any more.  God help their poor souls,
+and save us from suffering like that!"
+
+She said so little and meant so much, I couldn't figure out exactly
+what she did mean, but father seemed to understand.
+
+"I've often wondered," he said, but he didn't say what he wondered, and
+he hurried to the barn and saddled our best horse and came in and began
+getting ready to ride, and we knew he would go northwest.  I went back
+to the catalpa tree and wondered myself; but it was too much for me to
+straighten out: just why my mother wanting to give the traveller man
+another chance would make the Princess feel like that.  If she had
+known my mother as I did, she'd have known that she ALWAYS wanted to
+give every man a second chance, no matter whether he was young or old.
+
+Then I saw Laddie coming down the Big Hill beside the church, but he
+was riding so fast I thought he wouldn't want to bother with me, so I
+slid from the tree, and ran to tell mother.  She went to the door and
+watched as he rode up, but you could see by his face he had not heard
+of them.
+
+"Nothing, but I have some men out.  I am going east now," he said.  "I
+wish, father, you would rub Flos down, blanket her, and if you can,
+walk her slowly an hour while she cools off.  I am afraid I've ruined
+her.  How much had you there?"
+
+"I haven't stopped to figure," said father.  "I think I'd better take
+the horse I have ready and go on one of the northwest roads.  The Pryor
+girl was here a few moments ago, and her mother saw a man cross their
+place about the right time last evening.  He ran and acted suspiciously
+when the dogs barked.  But he was alone and he didn't have a gun."
+
+"Was she sure?"
+
+"Positive."
+
+"Then it couldn't have been our man, but I'll ride in that direction
+and start a search.  They would keep to the woods, I think!  You'd
+better stay with mother.  I'll ask Jacob Hood to take your place."
+
+So Laddie rode away again without even going into the house, and mother
+said to father:  "What can he be saying to people, that the neighbours
+don't come?"
+
+Father answered:  "I don't know, but if any one can save the situation,
+Laddie will."
+
+Mother went to bed, while father sat beside her reading aloud little
+scraps from the Bible, and they took turns praying.  From the way they
+talked to the Lord, you could plainly see that they were reminding Him
+of all the promises He had made to take care of people, comfort those
+in trouble, and heal the broken-hearted.
+
+One thing was so curious, I asked May if she noticed, and she had.
+When they had made such a fuss about money only a short while before,
+and worked so hard to get our share together, and when they would have
+to pay back all that belonged to the county and church, neither of them
+ever even mentioned money then.  Every minute I expected father to ask
+where I'd put the piece I found, and when he opened right at it, in the
+Bible, he turned on past, exactly as if it were an obituary, or a piece
+of Sally's wedding dress, or baby hair from some of our heads.  He went
+on hunting places where the Lord said sure and strong that He'd help
+people who loved Him.  When either of them prayed, they asked the Lord
+to help those near them who were in trouble, as often and earnestly as
+they begged Him to help them.  There were no people near us who were in
+trouble that we knew of, excepting Pryors.  Hard as father and mother
+worked, you'd have thought the Lord wouldn't have minded if they asked
+only once to get the money back, or if they forgot the neighbours, but
+they did neither one.
+
+May said because they were big like that was why all of us loved them
+so.
+
+I would almost freeze in the catalpa, but as I could see far in all
+directions there, I went back, and watched the roads, and when I
+remembered what Laddie had said, I kept an eye on the fields too.  At
+almost dusk, and frozen so stiff I could scarcely hang to the limb, I
+heard the bulldogs at Pryors' begin to rave.  They kept on steadily,
+and I thought Gypsies must be passing.  Then from the woods came a
+queer party that started across the cornfield toward the Big Meadow in
+front of the house, and I thought they were hunters.  I stood in the
+tree and watched until they climbed the meadow fence, and by that time
+I could see plainly.
+
+The traveller man got over first, then Leon and the dogs, and then Mr.
+Pryor handed Leon the gun, leaped over, and took it.  I looked again,
+and then fell from the tree and almost bursted.  As soon as I could get
+up, and breathe, I ran to the front door, screaming:  "Father!  Father!
+Come open the Big Gate.  Leon's got him, but he's so tired Mr. Pryor is
+carrying the gun, and helping him walk!"
+
+Just like one, all of us ran; father crossed the road, and opened the
+gate.  The traveller man wouldn't look up, he just slouched along.  But
+Leon's chin was up and his head high.  He was scratched, torn, and
+dirty.  He was wheezing every breath most from his knees, and Mr. Pryor
+half carried him and the gun.  When they met us, Leon reached in his
+trousers pocket and drew out a big roll of money that he held toward
+father.  "My fault!" he gasped.  "But I got it back for you."
+
+Then he fell over and father caught him in his arms and carried him
+into the house, and laid him on the couch in the dining-room.
+
+Mr. Pryor got down and gathered up the money from the road.  He
+followed into the house and set the gun in the corner.
+
+"Don't be frightened," he said to mother.  "The boy has walked all
+night, and all day, with no sleep or food, and the gun was a heavy load
+for him.  I gathered from what he said, when the dogs let us know they
+were coming, that this hound took your money.  Your dog barked and
+awakened the boy and he loaded the gun and followed.  The fellow had a
+good start and he didn't get him until near daybreak.  It's been a
+stiff pull for the youngster and he seems to feel it was his fault that
+this cowardly cur you sheltered learned where you kept your money.  If
+that is true, I hope you won't be hard on him!"
+
+Father was unfastening Leon's neckband, mother was rubbing his hands,
+Candace was taking off his shoes, and May was spilling water father had
+called for, all over the carpet, she shook so.  When Leon drew a deep
+breath and his head rolled on the pillow, father looked at Mr. Pryor.
+I don't think he heard all of it, but he caught the last words.
+
+"'Hard on him!  Hard on him!'" he said, the tears rolling down his
+cheeks.  "'This my son, who was lost, is found!'"
+
+"Oh!" shouted Mr. Pryor, slamming the money on the table.  "Poor drivel
+to fit the circumstances.  If I stood in your boots, sir, I would rise
+up in the mighty strength of my pride and pull out foundation stones
+until I shook the nation!  I never envied mortal man as I envy you
+to-day!"
+
+Candace cried out:  "Oh look, his poor feet!  They are blistered and
+bleeding!"
+
+Mother moved down a little, gathered them in her arms, and began
+kissing them.  Father wet Leon's lips and arose.  He held out his hand,
+and Mr. Pryor took it.
+
+"I will pray God," he said, "that it may happen 'even so' to you."
+
+Leon opened his eyes and caught only the last words.
+
+"You had better look out for the 'Even So's,' father," he said.
+
+And father had to laugh, but Mr. Pryor went out, and slammed the door,
+until I looked to see if it had cracked from top to bottom; but we
+didn't care if it had, we were so happy over having Leon back.
+
+I went and picked up the money and carried it to father to put away,
+and that time he took it.  But even then he didn't stop to see if he
+had all of it.
+
+"You see!" I said, "I told you----"
+
+"You did indeed!" said father.  "And you almost saved our reason.
+There are times when things we have come to feel we can't live without,
+so press us, that money seems of the greatest importance.  This is our
+lesson.  Hereafter, I and all my family, who have been through this,
+will know that money is not even worth thinking about when the life and
+honour of one you love hangs in the balance.  When he can understand,
+your brother shall know of the wondrous faith his Little Sister had in
+him."
+
+"Maybe he won't like what you and mother thought.  Maybe we better not
+tell him.  I can keep secrets real well.  I have several big ones I've
+never told, and I didn't say a word about the Station when Leon said I
+shouldn't."
+
+"After this there will be no money kept on the place," said father.
+"It's saving time at too great cost.  All we have goes into the bank,
+and some of us will cheerfully ride for what we want, when we need it.
+As for not telling Leon, that is as your mother decides.  For myself, I
+believe I'd feel better to make a clean breast of it."
+
+Mother heard, for she sobbed as she bathed Leon's feet, and when his
+eyes came open so they'd stay a little while, he kept looking at her so
+funny, between sips of hot milk.
+
+"Don't CRY, mammy!" he said.  "I'M all right.  Sorry such a rumpus!
+Let him fool me.  Be smart as the next fellow, after this!  Know how
+glad you are to get the money!"
+
+Mother sat back on her heels and roared as I do when I step in a
+bumblebee's nest, and they get me.  Leon was growing better every
+minute, and he stared at her, and then his dealish, funny old grin
+began to twist his lips and he cried:  "Oh golly!  You thought _I_
+helped take it and went with him, didn't you?"
+
+"Oh my son, my son!" wailed mother until she made me think of Absalom
+under the oak.
+
+"Well, I be ding-busted!" said Leon, sort of slow and wondering-like,
+and father never opened his head to tell him that was no way to talk.
+
+Mother cried more than ever, and between sobs she tried to explain that
+I heard what the traveller man had said about how bad it was to live in
+the country; and how Leon was now at an age where she'd known boys to
+get wrong ideas, and how things looked, and in the middle of it he
+raised on his elbow and took her in his arms and said:  "Well of all
+the geese!  And I 'spose father was in it too!  But since it's the
+first time, and since it is you----!  Go to bed now, and let me
+sleep----  But see that you don't ever let this happen again."
+
+Then he kissed her over and over and clung to her tight and at last
+dropped back and groaned:
+
+  "My reputation, O my reputation!
+   I've lost my reputation!"
+
+
+She had to laugh while the tears were still running, and father and
+Laddie looked at each other and shouted.  I guess they thought Leon was
+about right after that.  Laddie went and bent over him and took his
+hand.
+
+"Don't be in quite such a hurry, old man," he said.  "Before you wink
+out I have got to tell you how proud I am of having a brother who is a
+real Crusader.  The Lord knows this took nerve!  You're great, boy,
+simply great!"
+
+Leon grabbed Laddie's hand with both of his and held tight and laughed.
+You could see the big tears squeeze out, although he fought to wink
+them back.  He held to Laddie and said low-like, only for him to hear:
+"It's all right if you stay by a while, old man."
+
+He began to talk slowly.
+
+"It was a long time before I caught up, and then I had to hide, and
+follow until day, and he wasn't so very easy to handle.  Once I thought
+he had me sure!  It was an awful load, but if it hadn't been for the
+good old gun, I'd never have got him.  When we mixed up, I had fine
+luck getting that chin punch on him; good thing I worked it out so
+slick on Absalom Saunders, and while old Even So was groggy I got the
+money away from him, took the gun, and stood back some distance, before
+he came out of it.  Once we had it settled who walked ahead, and who
+carried the money and gun, we got along better, but I had to keep an
+eye on him every minute.  To come through the woods was the shortest,
+but I'm tired out, and so is he.  Getting close I most felt sorry for
+him, he was so forlorn, and so scared about what would be done to him.
+He stopped and pulled out another roll, and offered me all of it, if
+I'd let him go.  I didn't know whether it was really his, or part of
+father's, so I told him he could just drop it until I found out.  Made
+him sweat blood, but I had the gun, and he had to mind.  I was master
+then.  So there may be more in the roll I gave father than Even So
+took.  Father can figure up and keep what belongs to him.  Even So had
+gone away past Flannigans' before I tackled him, and I was sleepy,
+cold, and hungry; you'd have thought there'd have been a man out
+hunting, or passing on the road, but not a soul did we see 'til
+Pryors'!  Say, the old man was bully!  He helped me so, I almost
+thought I belonged to him!  My! he's fine, when you know him!  After he
+came on the job, you bet old Even So walked up.  Say, where is he?
+Have you fed him?"
+
+Laddie looked at father, who was listening, and we all rushed to the
+door, but it must have been an hour, and Even So hadn't waited.  Father
+said it was a great pity, because a man like that shouldn't be left to
+prey on the community; but mother said she didn't want to be mixed up
+with a trial, or to be responsible for taking the liberty of a fellow
+creature, and father said that was exactly like a woman.  Leon went to
+sleep, but none of us thought of going to bed; we just stood around and
+looked at him, and smiled over him, and cried about him, until you
+would have thought he had been shipped to us in a glass case, and cost,
+maybe, a hundred dollars.
+
+Father got out his books and figured up his own and the road money, and
+Miss Amelia's, and the church's.  Laddie didn't want her around, so he
+stopped at the schoolhouse and told her to stay at Justices' that
+night, we'd need all our rooms; but she didn't like being sent away
+when there was such excitement, but every one minded Laddie when he
+said so for sure.
+
+When father had everything counted there was more than his, quite a lot
+of it, stolen from other people who sheltered the traveller no doubt,
+father said.  We thought he wouldn't be likely to come back for it, and
+father said he was at loss what to do with it, but Laddie said he
+wasn't--it was Leon's--he had earned it; so father said he would try to
+find out if anything else had been stolen, and he'd keep it a year, and
+then if no one claimed it, he would put it on interest until Leon
+decided what he wanted to do with it.
+
+When you watched Leon sleep you could tell a lot more about what had
+happened to him than he could.  He moaned, and muttered constantly, and
+panted, and felt around for the gun, and breathed like he was running
+again, and fought until Laddie had to hold him on the couch, and
+finally awakened him.  But it did no good; he went right off to sleep
+again, and it happened all over.  Then father began getting his
+Crusader blood up, although he always said he was a man of peace.  But
+it was a lucky thing Even So got away; for after father had watched
+Leon a while, he said if that man had been on the premises, his fingers
+itched so to get at him, he was positive he'd have vented a little
+righteous indignation on him that would have cost him within an inch of
+his life.  And he'd have done it too!  He was like that.  It took a
+lot, and it was slow coming, but when he became angry enough, and felt
+justified in it, why you'd be much safer to be some one else than the
+man who provoked him.
+
+After ten o'clock the dog barked, some one tapped, and father went; he
+always would open the door; you couldn't make him pretend he was
+asleep, or not at home when he was, and there stood Mr. Pryor.  He said
+they could see the lights and they were afraid the boy was ill, and
+could any of them help.  Father said there was nothing they could do;
+Leon was asleep.  Then Mr. Pryor said:  "If he is off sound, so it
+won't disturb him, I would like to see him again."
+
+Father told him Leon was restless, but so exhausted a railroad train
+wouldn't waken him, so Mr. Pryor came in and went to the couch.  He
+took off his hat, like you do beside a grave, while his face slowly
+grew whiter than his hair, and that would be snow-white; then he turned
+at last and stumbled toward the door.  Laddie held it for him, but he
+didn't seem to remember he was there.  He muttered over and over:
+"Why?  Why?  In the name of God, why?"  Laddie followed to the gate to
+help him on his horse, because he thought he was almost out of his
+head, but he had walked across the fields, so Laddie kept far behind
+and watched until he saw him go safely inside his own door.
+
+I think father and Laddie sat beside Leon all night.  The others went
+to sleep.  A little after daybreak, just as Laddie was starting to
+feed, there was an awful clamour, and here came a lot of neighbours
+with Even So.  Mr. Freshett had found him asleep in a cattle hole in
+the straw stack, and searched him, and he had more money, and that made
+Mr. Freshett sure; and as he was very strong, and had been for years a
+soldier, and really loved to fight, he marched poor Even So back to our
+house.  Every few rods they met more men out searching who came with
+them, until there were so many, our front yard and the road were
+crowded.  Of all the sights you ever saw, Even So looked the worst.
+You could see that he'd drop over at much more.  Those men kept crying
+they were going to hang him; but mother went out and talked to them,
+and said they mustn't kill a man for taking only money.  She told them
+how little it was worth compared with other things; she had Candace
+bring Even So a cup of hot coffee, lots of bread, and sausage from the
+skillet, and she said it was our money, and our lad, and we wanted
+nothing done about it.  The men didn't like it, but the traveller did.
+He grabbed and gobbled like a beast at the hot food and cried, and
+mother said she forgave him, and to let him go.
+
+Then Mr. Freshett looked awful disappointed, and he came up to father,
+with his back toward mother, and asked:  "That's your say too, Mr.
+Stanton?"  Father grinned sort of rueful-like, but he said to give Even
+So his money and let him go.  He told all about getting ours back, and
+having had him at the house once before.  He brought the money Leon
+took from him, but the men said no doubt he had stolen that, and Leon
+had earned it bringing him back, so the traveller shouldn't have it.
+They took him away on a horse and said they'd let him go, but that
+they'd escort him from the county.  Father told Mr. Freshett that he
+was a little suspicious of them, and he would hold him responsible for
+the man's life.  Mr. Freshett said that he'd give his word that the man
+would be safe; they only wanted to make sure he wouldn't come back, and
+that he'd be careful in the future how he abused hospitality, so they
+went, and all of us were glad of it.
+
+I don't know what Mr. Freshett calls safe, for they took Even So to
+Groveville and locked him up until night.  Then they led him to the
+railroad, and made him crawl back and forth through an old engine
+beside the track, until he was blacker than any negro ever born; and
+then they had him swallow a big dose of croton oil for his health.
+That was the only KIND thing they did, for afterward they started him
+down the track and told him to run, and all of them shot at his feet as
+he went.  Hannah Freshett told me at school the next day.  Her father
+said Even So just howled, and flew up in the air, and ducked, and
+dodged and ran like he'd never walked a step, or was a bit tired.  We
+made a game of it, and after that one of the boys was Even So, and the
+others were the mob, and the one who could howl nicest, jump highest,
+and go fastest, could be "It" oftenest.
+
+Leon grew all right faster than you would think.  He went to school day
+after next, and the boys were sick with envy.  They asked and asked,
+but Leon wouldn't tell much.  He didn't seem to like to talk about it,
+and he wouldn't play the game or even watch us.  He talked a blue
+streak about the money.  Father was going to write to every sheriff of
+the counties along the way the man said he had come, and if he could
+find no one before spring who had been robbed, he said Leon might do
+what he liked with the money.  I used to pretend it was coming to me,
+and each day I thought of a new way to spend it.  Leon was so sure he'd
+get it he marched right over and asked Mr. Pryor about a nice young
+thoroughbred horse, from his stables, and when he came back he could
+get a coltlike one so very cheap that father and Laddie looked at each
+other and gasped, and never said a word.  They figured up, and if Leon
+got the money, he could have the horse, and save some for college, and
+from the start he never changed a mite about those two things he wanted
+to do with it.  He had the horse picked out and went to the field to
+feed and pet it and make it gentle, so he could ride bareback, and
+mother said he would be almost sick if the owner of the money turned up.
+
+Pulling his boots one night, father said so too, and that the thoughts
+of it worried him.  He said Mr. Pryor had shaded his price so that if
+the money had to go, he would be tempted to see if we couldn't manage
+it ourselves.  I don't know how shading the price of a horse would make
+her feel better, but it did, and maybe Leon is going to get it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Laddie Takes the Plunge
+
+  "This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
+  The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms,
+  And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;
+  The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
+  And, when he thinks, good, easy man, full surely
+  His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
+  And then he falls, as I do."
+
+
+"Watch me take the plunge!" said Laddie.
+
+"'Mad frenzy fires him now,'" quoted Leon.
+
+It was Sunday after dinner.  We had been to church and Sunday-school in
+the forenoon, and we had a houseful of company for dinner.  All of them
+remained to spend the afternoon, because in our home it was perfectly
+lovely.  We had a big dinner with everything good to start on, and then
+we talked and visited and told all the news.  The women exchanged new
+recipes for cooking, advised each other about how to get more work done
+with less worry, to doctor their sick folks, and to make their dresses.
+At last, when every thing was talked over, and there began to be a
+quiet time, father would reach across the table, pick up a paper and
+read all the interesting things that had happened in the country during
+the past week; the jokes too, and they made people think of funny
+stories to tell, and we just laughed.  In the Agriculturist there were
+new ways to farm easier, to make land bear more crops; so he divided
+that with the neighbours, also how to make gardens, and prune trees.
+Before he finished, he always managed to work in a lot about being
+honest, kind, and loving God.
+
+He and mother felt so good over Leon, and by this time they were
+beginning to see that they were mighty glad about the money too.  It
+wouldn't have been so easy to work, and earn, and pay back all that for
+our school, roads, and the church; and every day you could see plainer
+how happy they felt that they didn't have to do it.  Because they were
+so glad about these things, they invited every one they met that day;
+but we knew Saturday mother felt that probably she would ask a crowd,
+from the chickens, pie, and cake she got ready.  When the reading part
+was over, and the women were beginning to look at the clock, and you
+knew they felt they should go home, and didn't want to, Laddie arose
+and said that, and Leon piped up like he always does and made every one
+laugh.  Of course they looked at Laddie, and no one knew what he meant,
+so all the women and a few of the men asked him.
+
+"Watch me, I said," laughed Laddie as he left the room.
+
+Soon Mrs. Dover, sitting beside the front window, cried:  "Here he is
+at the gate!"
+
+He was on his horse, but he hitched it and went around the house and up
+the back way.  Before long the stair door of the sitting-room opened,
+and there he stood.  We stared at him.  Of course he was bathed, and in
+clean clothing to start with, but he had washed and brushed some more,
+until he shone.  His cheeks were as smooth and as clear pink as any
+girl's, his eyes blue-gray and big, with long lashes and heavy brows.
+His hair was bright brown and wavy, and he was so big and broad.  He
+never had been sick a day in his life, and he didn't look as if he ever
+would be.
+
+And clothes DO make a difference.  He would have had exactly the same
+hair, face, and body, wearing a hickory shirt and denim trousers; but
+he wouldn't have looked as he did in the clothes he wore at college,
+when it was Sunday there, or he was invited to a party at the
+President's.  I don't see how any man could possibly be handsomer or
+look finer.  His shirt, collar, and cuffs were snow-white, like
+everything had to be before mother got through with it; his big loose
+tie almost reached his shoulders; and our men could do a thing no other
+man in the neighbourhood did: they could appear easier in the finest
+suit they could put on than in their working clothes.
+
+Mother used to say one thing she dreaded about Sunday was the evident
+tortures of the poor men squirming in boots she knew pinched them,
+coats too tight, and collars too high.  She said they acted like
+half-broken colts fretting over restriction.  Always she said to father
+and the boys when they went to buy their new clothes:  "Now, DON'T join
+the harness fighters!  Get your clothing big enough to set your bodies
+with comfort and ease."
+
+I suppose those other men would have looked like ours if their mothers
+had told them.  You can always see that a man needs a woman to help him
+out awful bad.
+
+Of course Laddie knew he was handsome; he had to know all of them were
+looking at him curiously, but he stood there buttoning his glove and
+laughing to himself until Sarah Hood asked:  "Now what are you up to?"
+
+He took a step toward her, ran one hand under her lanternjawed chin,
+pulled her head against his side and turned up her face.
+
+"Sarah," he said, "'member the day we spoiled the washing?"
+
+Every one laughed.  They had made jokes about it until our friends knew
+what they meant.
+
+"What are you going to spoil now?" asked Sarah.
+
+"The Egyptians!  The 'furriners.' I'm going right after them!"
+
+"Well, you could be in better business," said Sarah Hood sharply.
+
+Laddie laughed and squeezed her chin, and hugged her head against him.
+
+"Listen to that, now!" he cried.  "My best friend going back on me.
+Sarah, I thought you, of all people, would wish me luck."
+
+"I do!" she said instantly.  "And that's the very reason I don't want
+you mixed up with that mysterious, offish, stuck-up mess."
+
+"Bless your dear heart!" said Laddie, giving her a harder squeeze than
+ever.  "You got that all wrong, Sarah.  You'll live to see the day,
+very shortly, when you'll change every word of it."
+
+"I haven't done anything but get surer about it every day for two
+years, anyway," said Sarah Hood.
+
+"Exactly!" said Laddie, "but wait until I have taken the plunge!  Let
+me tell you how the Pryor family strikes me.  I think he is a
+high-tempered, domineering man, proud as Lucifer!  For some cause, just
+or not, he is ruining his life and that of his family because he so
+firmly believes it just; he is hiding here from his home country, his
+relatives, and friends.  I think she is, barring you and mother, the
+handsomest woman of her age I ever saw----"
+
+All of them laughed, because Sarah Hood was nearly as homely as a woman
+could grow, and maybe other people didn't find our mother so lovely as
+we thought her.  I once heard one of her best friends say she was
+"distinctly plain."  I didn't see how she could; but she said that.
+
+"--and the most pitiful," Laddie went on.  "Sarah, what do you suppose
+sends a frail little woman pacing the yard, and up and down the road,
+sometimes in storm and rain, gripping both hands over her heart?"
+
+"I suppose it's some shameful thing I don't want you mixed up with!"
+said Sarah Hood promptly, and people just shouted.
+
+"Sarah," said Laddie, "I've seen her closely, watched her move, and
+studied her expression.  There's not one grain of possibility that you,
+or mother, or Mrs. Fall, or any woman here, could be any closer
+connected with SHAME.  Shame there is," said Laddie, "and what a word!
+How it stings, burns, withers, and causes heart trouble and hiding; but
+shame in connection with that woman, more than shame thrust upon her,
+which might come to any of us, at any time, shame that is her error, in
+the life of a woman having a face like hers, Sarah, I am ashamed of
+you!  Your only excuse is that you haven't persisted as I have until
+you got to see for yourself."
+
+"I am not much on persistence in the face of a locked door, a cast-iron
+man with a big cane, and two raving bulldogs," said Mrs. Hood.  "Wait,
+young man!  Just wait until he sets them on you."
+
+Laddie's head went back and how he laughed.
+
+"Hist!  A word with you, Sarah!" he said.  "'Member I have a sort of
+knack with animals.  I never yet have failed with one I undertook to
+win.  Now those bulldogs of Pryors' are as mild as kittens with a man
+who knows the right word.  Reason I know, Sarah, I've said the word to
+them, separately and collectively, and it worked.  There is a contrast,
+Sarah, between what I say and do to those dogs, and the kicks and
+curses they get from their owner.  I'll wager you two to one that if
+you can get Mr. Pryor to go into a 'sic-ing' contest with me, I can
+have his own dogs at his throat, when he can't make them do more than
+to lick my hands."
+
+They laughed as if that were funny.
+
+"Well, I didn't know about this," said Sarah.  "How long have you lived
+at Pryors'?"
+
+You couldn't have heard what Laddie said if he'd spoken; so he waited
+until he could be heard, and it never worried him a speck.
+
+He only stood and laughed too; then, "Long enough," he said, "to know
+that all of us are making a big and cruel mistake in taking them at
+their word, and leaving them penned up there weltering in misery.  What
+we should do, is to go over there, one at a time, or in a body, and
+batter at the door of their hearts, until we break down the wall of
+pride they have built around them, ease their pain, and bring them with
+us socially, if they are going to live among us.  You people who talk
+loudly and often about loving God, and 'doing unto others,' should have
+gone long ago, for Jesus' sake; I'm going for the sake of a girl, with
+a face as sweet, and a heart as pure, as any accepted angel at the foot
+of the throne.  Mother, I want a cup of peach jelly, and some of that
+exceptionally fine cake you served at dinner, to take to our sick
+neighbour."
+
+Mother left the room.
+
+"Father, I want permission to cut and carry a generous chestnut branch,
+burred, and full fruited, to the young woman.  There is none save ours
+in this part of the country, and she may never have seen any, and be
+interested.  And I want that article about foot disease in horses, for
+Mr. Pryor.  I'll bring it back when he finishes."
+
+Father folded the paper and handed it to Laddie, who slipped it in his
+pocket.
+
+"Take the finest branch you can select," father said, and I almost fell
+over.
+
+He had carried those trees from Ohio, before I had been born, and
+mother said for years he wrapped them in her shawl in winter and held
+an umbrella over them in summer, and father always went red and grinned
+when she told it.  He was wild about trees, and bushes, so he made up
+his mind he'd have chestnuts.  He planted them one place, and if they
+didn't like it, he dug them up and set them another where he thought
+they could have what they needed and hadn't got the last place.
+Finally, he put them, on the fourth move, on a little sandy ridge
+across the road from the wood yard, and that was the spot.  They shot
+up, branched, spread, and one was a male and two were females, so the
+pollen flew, the burrs filled right, and we had a bag of chestnuts to
+send each child away from home, every Christmas.  The brown leaves and
+burrs were so lovely, mother cut one of the finest branches she could
+select and hung it above the steel engraving of "Lincoln Freeing the
+Slaves," in the boys' room, and nothing in the house was looked at
+oftener, or thought prettier.  That must have been what was in the back
+of Laddie's head when he wanted a branch for the Princess.
+
+Mother came in with the cake and jelly in a little fancy basket, and
+Laddie said:  "Thank you!  Now every one wish me luck!  I'm going to
+ride to Pryors', knock at the door, and present these offerings with my
+compliments.  If I'm invited in, I'm going to make the effort of my
+life at driving the entering wedge toward social intercourse between
+Pryors and their neighbours.  If I'm not, I'll be back in thirty
+minutes and tell you what happened to me.  If they refuse my gifts, you
+shall have the jelly, Sarah; I'll give Mrs. Fall the olive branch,
+bring back the paper, and eat the cake to console my wounded spirits."
+
+Of course every one laughed; they couldn't help it.  I watched father
+and he laughed hardest of the men, but mother was more stiff-lipped
+about it; she couldn't help a little, though.  And I noticed some of
+those women acted as if they had lost something.  Maybe it was a chance
+to gossip about Laddie, for he hadn't left them a thing to guess at,
+and mother says the reason gossip is so dreadful is because it is
+always GUESSWORK.  Well, that was all fair and plain.  He had told
+those people, our very best friends, what he thought about everything,
+the way they acted included.  He was carrying something to each member
+of the Pryor family, and he'd left a way to return joking and
+unashamed, if they wouldn't let him in.  He had fixed things so no one
+had anything to guess at, and it would look much worse for the Pryors
+than it would for him, if he did come back.
+
+I wondered if he had been born that smart, or if he learned it in
+college.  If he did, no wonder Leon was bound to go.  Come to think of
+it, though, mother said Laddie was always like that.  She said he never
+bit her when he nursed; he never mauled her as if she couldn't be hurt
+when he was little, he never tore his clothes and made extra work as he
+grew, and never in his life gave her an hour's uneasiness.  But I guess
+she couldn't have said that about uneasiness lately, for she couldn't
+keep from looking troubled as all of us followed to the gate to see him
+start.
+
+How they joked, and tried to tease him!  But they couldn't get a breath
+ahead.  He shot back answers as fast as they could ask questions, while
+he cut the branch and untied the horse.  He gave the limb and basket to
+mother to hold, kissed her good-bye, and me too, before he mounted.
+With my arms around his neck--I never missed a chance to try to squeeze
+into him how I loved him--I whispered:  "Laddie, is it a secret any
+more?"
+
+He threw back his head and laughed the happiest.
+
+"Not the ghost of a secret!" he said.  "But you let me do the talking,
+until I tell you."  Then he went on right out loud: "I'm riding up the
+road waving the banner of peace.  If I suffer repulse, the same thing
+has happened to better men before, so I'll get a different banner and
+try again."
+
+Laddie mounted, swept a circle in the road, dropped Flos on her knees
+in a bow, and waved the branch.  Leon began to sing at the top of his
+voice, "Nothing but leaves, nothing but leaves," while Laddie went
+flashing up the road.
+
+The women went back to the house; the men stood around the gate,
+watched him from sight, talked about his horse, how he rode, and made
+wagers that he'd get shut out, like every one did, but they said if
+that happened he wouldn't come back.  Father was annoyed.
+
+"You heard Laddie say he'd return immediately if they wouldn't let him
+in," he said.  "He's a man of his word.  He will either enter or come
+home at once."
+
+It was pitch dark and we had supper before some of them left; they
+never stayed so late.  After we came from church, father read the
+chapter and we were ready for bed; still Laddie hadn't come back.  And
+father liked it!  He just plain liked it!  He chuckled behind the
+Advocate until you could see it shake; but mother had very little to
+say, and her lips closed tight.
+
+At bedtime he said to mother:  "Well, they don't seem in a hurry about
+sending the boy back."
+
+"Did you really think he WOULD be sent back?" asked mother.
+
+"Not ordinarily," said father, "no!  If he had no brain, no wit, no
+culture, on an animal basis, a woman would look twice before she'd send
+him away; but with such fanatics as Pryors, one can't always tell what
+will happen."
+
+"In a case like this, one can be reasonably certain," said mother.
+
+"You don't know what social position they occupied at home.  Their
+earmarks are all good.  We've no such notions here as they have."
+
+"Thank God for so much, at any rate," said mother.  "How old England
+would rise up and exult if she had a man in line with Laddie's body,
+blood and brain, to set on her throne.  This talk about class and
+social position makes me sick.  Men are men, and Laddie is as much
+above the customary timber found in kings and princes, physically and
+mentally, as the sky is above the earth.  Talk me no talk about class!
+If I catch it coming from any of mine, save you, I will beat it out of
+them.  He has admitted he's in love with the girl; the real question
+is, whether she's fit to be his wife."
+
+"I should say she appears so," said father.
+
+"Drat appearances!" cried mother.  "When it's a question of lifetime
+misery, and the soul's salvation of my son, if things go wrong, I've no
+time for appearances.  I want to know!"
+
+He might have known he would make her angry when he laughed.  She
+punched the pillow, and wouldn't say another word; so I went to sleep,
+and didn't miss anything that time.
+
+Next morning at breakfast Laddie was beaming, and father hardly waited
+to ask the blessing before he inquired:  "Well, how did you make it,
+son?"
+
+Laddie laughed and answered:  "Altogether, it might have been much
+worse."
+
+That was all he would say until Miss Amelia started to school, then he
+took me on his lap and talked as he buttoned my coat.
+
+"Thomas met me at the gate," he said, "and held my horse while I went
+to the door.  One of their women opened it, and I inquired for Mr.
+Pryor.  She said he was in the field looking at the horses, so I asked
+for Miss Pryor.  She came in a minute, so I gave her the branch, told
+her about it, and offered the jelly and cake for her mother.  The
+Princess invited me to enter.  I told her I couldn't without her
+father's permission, so I went to the field to see him.  The dogs were
+with him and he had the surprise of his life when his man-eaters rolled
+at my feet, and licked my hands."
+
+"What did he say?" chuckled father.
+
+"Told Thomas they'd been overfed and didn't amount to a brass farthing;
+to take them to the woods and shoot them.  Thomas said he'd see to it
+the very first thing in the morning, and then Mr. Pryor told him he
+would shoot him if he did."
+
+"Charming man to work for," said mother.
+
+"Then I told him I'd been at the house to carry a little gift to his
+wife and daughter, and to inquire if I might visit an hour, and as he
+was not there, I had come to the field to ask him.  Then I looked him
+in the eye and said:  'May I?'
+
+"'I'll warrant the women asked you to come in,' he said.
+
+"'Miss Pryor was so kind,' I answered, 'but I enter no man's house
+without his permission.  May I talk with your daughter an hour, and
+your wife, if she cares to see me?'
+
+"'It makes no earthly difference to me,' he said, which was not
+gracious, but might have been worse, so I thanked him, and went back to
+the house.  When I knocked the second time, the Princess came, and I
+told her the word was that it made 'no difference to her father' if I
+came in, so she opened the door widely, took my hat and offered me a
+seat.  Then she went to the next room and said:  'Mother, father has
+given Mr. Stanton permission to pay us a call.  Do you feel able to
+meet him?'  She came at once, offering her hand and saying:  'I have
+already met Mr. Stanton so often, really, we should have the privilege
+of speaking.'"
+
+"What did she mean by that?" asked mother.
+
+"She meant that I have haunted the road passing their place for two
+years, and she'd seen me so frequently that she came to recognize me."
+
+"Umph!" said mother.
+
+"Laddie tell on!" I begged.
+
+"Well, I sharpened all the wits I had and went to work.  I never tried
+so hard in my life to be entertaining.  Of course I had to feel my way.
+I'd no idea what would interest a delicate, high-bred lady"--mother
+sniffed again--"so I had to search and probe, and go by guess until I
+saw a shade of interest, then I worked in more of the same.  It was
+easy enough to talk to the Princess--all young folks have a lot in
+common, we could get along on fifty topics; it was different with the
+housebound mother.  I did my best, and after a while Mr. Pryor came in.
+I asked him if any of his horses had been attacked with the trouble
+some of the neighbours were having, and told him what it was.  He had
+the grace to thank me.  He said he would tell Thomas not to tie his
+horse at the public hitching rack when he went to town, and once he got
+started, he was wild to talk with a man, and I'd no chance to say a
+word to the women.  He was interested in our colleges, state, and
+national laws, in land development, and everything that all live men
+are.  When a maid announced dinner I apologized for having stayed so
+long, and excused myself, because I had been so interested, but Mrs.
+Pryor merely said:  'I'm waiting to be offered your arm.'
+
+"Well, you should have seen me drop my hat and step up.  I did my best,
+and while I talked to him a little, I made it most to the women.  Any
+one could see they were starved for company, so I took the job of
+entertaining them.  I told some college jokes, funny things that had
+happened in the neighbourhood, and everything of interest I could think
+up.  I know we were at the table for two hours with things coming and
+going on silver platters."
+
+Mother sat straight suddenly.
+
+"Just what did they have to eat, and how did they serve it?" she asked.
+
+"Couldn't tell if I were to be shot for it, mummy," said Laddie.
+"Forgive me!  Next time I'll take notes for you.  This first plunge, I
+had to use all my brains, not to be a bore to them; and to handle food
+and cutlery as the women did.  It's quite a process, but as they were
+served first, I could do right by waiting.  I never was where things
+were done quite so elaborately before."
+
+"And they didn't know they would have company until you went to the
+table?"
+
+"Well, they must have thought likely, there was a place for me."
+
+"Umph!" said mother.  "Fine idea!  Then any one who drops in can be
+served, and see that they are not a mite of trouble.  Candace, always
+an extra place after this!"
+
+Father just shouted.
+
+"I thought you'd get something out of it!" he said.
+
+"Happy to have justified your faith!" replied mother calmly.  "Go on,
+son!"
+
+"That's all!" said Laddie.  "We left the table and talked an hour more.
+The women asked me to come again; he didn't say anything on that
+subject; but when he ordered my horse, he asked the Princess if she
+would enjoy a little exercise, and she said she would, so he told
+Thomas to bring their horses, and we rode around the section, the
+Princess and I ahead, Mr. Pryor following.  Where the road was good and
+the light fine enough that there was no danger of laming a horse, we
+dropped back, one on either side of him, so we could talk.  Mrs. Pryor
+ate the cake and said it was fine; and the 'conserve,' she called it,
+delicious as she ever had tasted.  She said all our fruits here had
+much more flavour than at home; she thought it was the dryer climate
+and more sunshine.  She sent her grateful thanks, and she wants your
+recipe before next preserving time."
+
+Mother just beamed.  My! but she did love to have the things she
+cooked, bragged on.
+
+"Possibly she'd like my strawberries?" she said.
+
+"There isn't a doubt about it," said Laddie.  "I've yet to see the
+first person who doesn't."
+
+"Is that all?" asked mother.
+
+"I can think of nothing more at this minute," answered Laddie.  "If
+anything comes to my mind later, I won't forget to tell you.  Oh yes,
+there was one thing:  You couldn't keep Mr. Pryor from talking about
+Leon.  He must have taken a great fancy to him.  He talked until he
+worried the Princess, and she tried to keep him away from the subject,
+but his mind seemed to run on it constantly.  When we were riding she
+talked quite as much as he, and it will hustle us to think what the
+little scamp did, any bigger than they do.  Of course, father, you
+understood the price Mr. Pryor made on one of his very finest colts was
+a joke.  There's a strain of Arab in the father--he showed me the
+record--and the mother is bluegrass.  There you get gentleness and
+endurance combined with speed and nerve.  I'd trade Flos for that colt
+as it stands to-day.  There's nothing better on earth in the way of
+horse.  His offer is practically giving it away.  I know, with the
+records to prove its pedigree, what that colt would bring him in any
+city market."
+
+"I don't like it," said mother.  "I want Leon to have a horse, but a
+boy in a first experience, and reckless as he is, doesn't need a horse
+like that, for one thing, and what is more important, I refuse to be
+put under any obligations to Pryors."
+
+"That's the reason Mr. Pryor asked anything at all for the horse.  It
+is my opinion that he would be greatly pleased to give it to Leon, if
+he could do what he liked."
+
+"Well, that's precisely the thing he can't do in this family," said
+mother sternly.
+
+"What do you think, father?" asked Laddie.
+
+"I think Amen! to that proposition," said father; "but I would have to
+take time to thresh it out completely.  It appeals to me that Leon is
+old enough to recognize the value of the animal; and that the care of
+it would develop and strengthen his character.  It would be a
+responsibility that would steady him.  You could teach him to tend and
+break it."
+
+"Break it!" cried Laddie.  "Break it!  Why father, he's riding it
+bareback all over the Pryor meadow now, and jumping it over logs.
+Whenever he leaves, it follows him to the fence, and the Princess says
+almost any hour of the day you look out you can see it pacing up and
+down watching this way and whinnying for him to come."
+
+"And your best judgment is----?"
+
+Laddie laughed as he tied my hood strings.  "Well I don't feel about
+the Pryors as the rest of you do," he said.  "If the money isn't
+claimed inside the time you specified, I would let Leon and Mr. Pryor
+make their own bargain.  The boy won't know for years that it is
+practically a gift, and it would please Mr. Pryor immensely.  Now run,
+or you'll be late!"
+
+I had to go, so I didn't know how they settled it, but if they wouldn't
+let Leon have that horse, it was downright mean.  What if we were under
+obligations to Mr. Pryor?  We were to Sarah Hood, and half the people
+we knew, and what was more, we LIKED to be.
+
+When I came from school that night father had been to town.  He had an
+ax and was opening a big crate, containing two of the largest, bluest
+geese you ever saw.  Laddie said being boxed that way and seeing them
+so close made them look so big; really, they were no finer than
+Pryors', where he had got the address of the place that sold them.
+Mother was so pleased.  She said she had needed a new strain, for a
+long time, to improve her feathers; now she would have pillows worth
+while, in a few years.  They put them in the barn where our geese
+stayed over night, and how they did scream.  That is, one of them did;
+the other acted queerly and father said to Laddie that he was afraid
+the trip was hard on it.  Laddie said it might have been hurt, and
+mother was worried too.  Before she had them an hour, she had sold all
+our ganders; spring had come, she had saved the blue goose eggs, set
+them under a hen, raised the goslings with the little chickens, never
+lost one, picked them and made a new pair of pillows too fine for any
+one less important than a bishop, or a judge, or Dr. Fenner to sleep
+on.  Then she began saving for a featherbed.  And still the goose
+didn't act as spry or feel as good as the gander.  He stuck up his
+head, screamed, spread his wings and waved them, and the butts looked
+so big and hard, I was not right certain whether it would be safe to
+tease him or not.
+
+The first person who came to see them was Sarah Hood, and she left with
+the promise of a pair as soon as mother could raise them.  Father said
+the only reason mother didn't divide her hair with Sarah Hood was
+because it was fast, and she couldn't.  Mother said gracious goodness!
+she'd be glad to get rid of some of it if she could, and of course
+Sarah should have first chance at it.  Hadn't she kept her over night
+so she could see her new home when she was rested, and didn't she come
+with her, and help her get settled, and had she ever failed when we had
+a baby, or sickness, or trouble, or thrashers, or a party?  Of course
+she'd gladly divide, even the hair of her head, with Sarah Hood.  And
+father said, "Yes, he guessed she would, and come to think of it, he'd
+just as soon spare Sarah part of his," and then they both laughed, when
+it was nothing so very funny that I could see.
+
+The next caller the geese had was Mrs. Freshett.  My! she thought they
+were big and fine.  Mother promised her a couple of eggs to set under a
+hen.  Father said she was gradually coming down the scale of her
+feelings, and before two weeks she'd give Isaac Thomas, at least, a
+quill for a pen.  Almost no one wrote with them any more, but often
+father made a few, and showed us how to use them.  He said they were
+gone with candles, sand boxes, and snuff.  Mother said she had no use
+for snuff, but candles were not gone, she'd make and use them to the
+day of her death, as they were the nicest light ever invented to carry
+from room to room, or when you only wanted to sit and think.  Father
+said there was really no good pen except the quill you sharpened
+yourself; and while he often used steel ones like we children had at
+school to write to the brothers and sisters away, and his family, he
+always kept a few choice quills in the till of his chest, and when he
+wrote a deed, or any valuable paper, where there was a deal with money,
+he used them.  He said it lent the dignity of a past day to an
+important occasion.
+
+After mother and Mrs. Freshett had talked over every single thing about
+the geese, and that they were like Pryors' had been settled, Mrs.
+Freshett said:  "Since he told about it before all of us, and started
+out the way he did, would it be amiss to ask how Laddie got on at
+Pryors'?"
+
+"Just the way I thought he would," said mother.  "He stayed until all
+of us were in bed, and I'd never have known when he came in, if it were
+not a habit of his always to come to my door to see if I'm sleeping.
+Sometimes I'm wakeful, and if he pommels my pillow good, brings me a
+drink, and rubs my head a few strokes with his strong, cool hands, I
+can settle down and have a good night's rest.  I was awake when he
+came, or I'd never have known.  It was almost midnight; but they sat
+two hours at the table, and then all of them rode."
+
+"Not the Missus?"
+
+"Oh no!  She's not strong enough.  She really has incurable heart
+trouble, the worst kind there is; her daughter told me so."
+
+"Then they better look out," said Mrs. Freshett.  "She is likely to
+keel over at a breath."
+
+"They must know it.  That's why she keeps so quiet."
+
+"And they had him to supper?"
+
+"It was a dinner served at night.  Yes.  He took Mrs. Pryor in on his
+arm, and it was like a grand party, just as they fixed for themselves,
+alone.  Waiters, and silver trays, and things carried in and out in
+courses."
+
+"My land!  Well, I s'pose he had enough schoolin' to get him through it
+all right!"
+
+My mother's face grew red.  She never left any one in doubt as to what
+she meant.  Father said that "was the Dutch of it."  And mother always
+answered that if any one living could put things plainer than the
+English, she would like to hear them do it.
+
+"He certainly had," said mother, "or they wouldn't have invited him to
+come again.  And all mine, Mrs. Freshett, knew how to sit properly at
+the table, and manage a knife, fork and napkin, before they ever took a
+meal away from home."
+
+"No 'fence," laughed Mrs. Freshett.  "I meant that maybe his years of
+college schoolin' had give him ways more like theirs than most of us
+have.  For all the money it takes to send a boy to college, he ought to
+get somethin' out of it more than jest fillin' his head with figgers,
+an' stars, an' oratin'; an' most always you can see that he does."
+
+"It is contact with cultivated people," said mother.  "You are always
+influenced by it, without knowing it often."
+
+"Maybe you are, bein' so fine yourself," said Mrs. Freshett.  "An' me
+too, I never get among my betters that I don't carry home a lot I put
+right into daily use, an' nobody knows it plainer.  I come here
+expectin' to learn things that help me, an' when I go home I know I
+have."
+
+"Why, thank you," said mother.  "I'm sure that is a very nice
+compliment, and I wish I really could feel that it is well deserved."
+
+"Oh I guess you do!" said Mrs. Freshett laughing.  "I often noticed you
+makin' a special effort to teach puddin' heads like me somethin', an' I
+always thank you for it.  There's a world in right teachin'.  I never
+had any.  So all I can pick up an' hammer into mine is a gain for me
+an' them.  If my Henry had lived, an' come out anything like that boy
+o' yourn an' the show he made last Sunday, I'd do well if I didn't
+swell up an' bust with pride.  An' the little tow-haired strip, takin'
+the gun an' startin' out alone after a robber, even if he wa'n't much
+of a man, that was downright spunky.  If my boys will come out anywhere
+near like yourn, I'll be glad."
+
+"I don't know how my boys will come out," said mother.  "But I work,
+pray, hope, and hang to them; that's all I know to do."
+
+"Well, if they don't come out right, they ought to be bumped!" said
+Mrs. Freshett.  "After all the chances they've had!  I don' know jest
+how Freshett was brung up, but I'd no chance at all.  My folks--well, I
+guess the less said--little pitchers, you know!  I can't see as I was
+to blame.  I was the youngest, an' I knew things was wrong.  I fought
+to go to school, an' pap let me enough that I saw how other people
+lived.  Come night I'd go to the garret, an' bar the trapdoor; but
+there would be times when I couldn't help seein' what was goin' on.
+How'd you like chances such as that for a girl of yourn?"
+
+"Dreadful!" said mother.  "Mrs. Freshett, please do be careful!"
+
+"Sure!" laughed Mrs. Freshett.  "I was jest goin' to tell you about me
+an' Josiah.  He come to our house one night, a stranger off the road.
+He said he was sick, an' tired, an' could he have a bed.  Mother said,
+'No, for him to move on.'  He tried an' he couldn't.  They was
+somethin' about him--well, you know how them things go!  I wa'n't only
+sixteen, but I felt so sorry for him, all fever burned and mumblin', I
+helped pap put him to bed, an' doctored him all I could.  Come mornin'
+he was a sick man.  Pap went for the county doctor, an' he took jest
+one look an' says: 'Small pox!  All of ye git!'
+
+"I was bound I wouldn't go, but pap made me, an' the doctor said he'd
+send a man who'd had it; so I started, but I felt so bad, come a chanct
+when they got to Groveville, I slipped out an' went back.  The man
+hadn't come, so I set to work the best I knowed.  'Fore long Josiah was
+a little better an' he asked who I was, an' where my folks went, an' I
+told him, an' he asked WHY I came back an' I didn't know what to say,
+so I jest hung my head an' couldn't face him.  After a while he says,
+'All right!  I guess I got this sized up.  If you'll stay an' nuss me
+through, I'll be well enough to pull you out, by the time you get it,
+an' soon as you're able we'll splice, if you say so.'
+
+"'Marry me, you mean?' says I.  They wa'n't ever any talk about
+marryin' at our house.  'Sure!' says he.  'You're a mighty likely
+lookin' girl!  I'll do fair by ye.'  An' he always has, too!  But I
+didn't feel right to let him go it blind, so I jest up and says.  'You
+wouldn't if you knowed my folks!'  'You look as decent as I do,' says
+he; 'I'll chance it!'  Then I tole him I was as good as I was born, an'
+he believed me, an' he always has, an' I was too!  So I nussed him, but
+I didn't make the job of it he did.  You 'member he is pitted
+considerable.  He was so strong I jest couldn't keep him from
+disfigerin' himself, but he tied me.  I begged to be loose, an' he
+wouldn't listen, so I got a clean face, only three little scars, an'
+they ain't deep to speak of.  He says he looks like a piece of side
+meat, but say! they ain't nothin' the matter with his looks to me!
+
+"The nuss man never did come, but the county doctor passed things in
+the winder, till I was over the worst, an' Josiah sent for a preacher
+an' he married us through the winder--I got the writin's to show, all
+framed an' proper.  Josiah said he'd see I got all they was in it long
+that line, anyway.  When I was well, hanged if he didn't perdooce a wad
+from his clothes before they burnt 'em, an' he got us new things to
+wear, an' a horse, an' wagon, an' we driv away here where we thought we
+could start right, an' after we had the land, an' built the cabin, an'
+jest as happy as heart could wish, long come a man I'd made mad once,
+an' he tole everythin' up and down.  Josiah was good about it.  He
+offered to sell the land, an' pull up an' go furder.  'What's the use?'
+says I.  'Hundreds know it.  We can't go so far it won't be like to
+follow us; le's stay here an' fight it.'  'All right,' says Josiah, but
+time an' ag'in he has offered to go, if I couldn't make it.  'Hang on a
+little longer,' says I, every time he knew I was snubbed an' slighted.
+I never tole what he didn't notice.  I tried church, when my children
+began to git a size I wanted 'em to have right teachin', an' you come
+an' welcomed me an' you been my friend, an' now the others is comin'
+over at last, an' visitin' me, an' they ain't a thing more I want in
+life."
+
+"I am so glad!" said mother.  "Oh my dear, I am so glad!"
+
+"Goin' right home an' tell that to Josiah," said Mrs. Freshett, jumping
+up laughing and crying like, "an' mebby I'll jest spread wings and fly!
+I never was so happy in all my life as I was Sunday, when you ast me
+before all of them, so cordial like, an' says I to Josiah, 'We'll go
+an' try it once,' an' we come an' nobody turned a cold shoulder on us,
+an' I wa'n't wearin' specks to see if they did, for I never knowed him
+so happy in all his days.  Orter heard him whistle goin' home, an' he's
+tryin' all them things he learned, on our place, an' you can see it
+looks a heap better a'ready, an' now he's talkin' about buildin' in the
+spring.  I knowed he had money, but he never mentioned buildin' before,
+an' I always thought it was bekase he 'sposed likely we'd have to move
+on, some time.  'Pears now as if we can settle, an' live like other
+folks, after all these years.  I knowed ye didn't want me to talk, but
+I had to tell you!  When you ast us to the weddin', and others began
+comin' round, says I to Josiah, 'Won't she be glad to know that my
+skirts is clear, an' I did as well as I could?'  An' he says, 'That she
+will!  An' more am I,' says he.  'I mighty proud of you,' says he.
+Proud!  Think of that!  Miss Stanton, I'd jest wade fire and blood for
+you!"
+
+"Oh my dear!" said mother.  "What a dreadful thing to say!"
+
+"Gimme the chanct, an' watch if I don't," said Mrs. Freshett.  "Now,
+Josiah is proud I stuck it out!  Now, I can have a house!  Now, my
+children can have all the show we can raise to give 'em!  I'm done
+cringin' an' dodgin'!  I've always done my best; henceforth I mean to
+hold up my head an' say so.  I sure can't be held for what was done
+'fore I was on earth, or since neither.  You've given me my show, I'm
+goin' to take it, but if you want to know what's in my heart about you,
+gimme any kind of a chanct to prove, an' see if I don't pony right up
+to it!"
+
+Mother laughed until the tears rolled, she couldn't help it.  She took
+Mrs. Freshett in her arms and hugged her tight, and kissed her mighty
+near like she does Sarah Hood.  Mrs. Freshett threw her arms around
+mother, and looked over her shoulder, and said to me, "Sis, when you
+grow up, always take a chanct on welcomin' the stranger, like your maw
+does, an' heaven's bound to be your home!  My, but your maw is a woman
+to be proud of!" she said, hugging mother and patting her on the back.
+
+"All of us are proud of her!" I boasted.
+
+"I doubt if you are proud enough!" cried Mrs. Freshett.  "I have my
+doubts!  I don't see how people livin' with her, an' seein' her every
+day, are in a shape to know jest what she can do for a person in the
+place I was in.  I have my doubts!"
+
+That night when I went home from school mother was worrying over the
+blue goose.  When we went to feed, she told Leon that she was afraid it
+was weak, and not getting enough to eat when it fed with the others.
+She said after the work was finished, to take it out alone, and give it
+all it would eat; so when the horses were tended, the cows milked,
+everything watered, and the barn ready to close for the night, Laddie
+took the milk to the house, while Leon and I caught the blue goose,
+carried her to the well, and began to shell corn.  She was starved to
+death, almost.  She ate a whole ear in no time and looked for more, so
+Leon sent me after another.  By the time that was most gone she began
+to eat slower, and stick her bill in the air to help the grains slip
+down, so I told Leon I thought she had enough.
+
+"No such thing!" said Leon.  "You distinctly heard mother tell me to
+give her 'all she would eat.'  She's eating, isn't she?  Go bring
+another ear!"
+
+So she was, but I was doubtful about more.
+
+Leon said I better mind or he would tell mother, so I got it.  She
+didn't begin on it with any enthusiasm.  She stuck her bill higher,
+stretched her neck longer, and she looked so funny when she did it,
+that we just shrieked.  Then Leon reached over, took her by the bill,
+and stripped her neck to help her swallow, and as soon as he let go,
+she began to eat again.
+
+"You see!" said Leon, "she's been starved.  She can't get enough.  I
+must help her!"
+
+So he did help her every little bit.  By that time we were interested
+in seeing how much she could hold; and she looked so funny that Leon
+sent me for more corn; but I told him I thought what she needed now was
+water, so we held her to the trough, and she tried to drink, but she
+couldn't swallow much.  We set her down beside the corn, and she went
+to eating again.
+
+"Go it, old mill-hopper!" cried Leon.
+
+Right then there was an awful commotion in the barn, and from the
+squealing we knew one of the horses was loose, and fighting the others.
+We ran to fix them, and had a time to get Jo back into his stall, and
+tied.  Before we had everything safe, the supper bell rang, and I bet
+Leon a penny I could reach the house while he shut the door and got
+there.  We forgot every single thing about the goose.
+
+At supper mother asked Leon if he fed the goose all she would eat, and
+I looked at him guilty-like, for I remembered we hadn't put her back.
+He frowned at me cross as a bear, and I knew that meant he had
+remembered, and would slip back and put her inside when he finished his
+supper, so I didn't say anything.
+
+"I didn't feed her ALL she would eat!" said Leon.  "If I had, she'd be
+at it yet.  She was starved sure enough!  You never saw anything like
+the corn she downed."
+
+"Well I declare!" said mother.  "Now after this, take her out alone,
+for a few days, and give her as much as she wants."
+
+"All right!" chuckled Leon, because it was a lot of fun to see her run
+her bill around, and gobble up the corn, and stick up her head.
+
+The next day was Saturday, so after breakfast I went with Leon to drive
+the sheep and geese to the creek to water; the trough was so high it
+was only for the horses and cattle; when we let out the geese, the blue
+one wasn't there.
+
+"Oh Leon, did you forget to come back and put her in?"
+
+"Yes I did!" he said.  "I meant to when I looked at you to keep still,
+and I started to do it, but Sammy Deam whistled, so I went down in the
+orchard to see what he wanted, and we got to planning how to get up a
+fox chase, and I stayed until father called for night, and then I ran
+and forgot all about the blame old goose."
+
+"Oh Leon!  Where is she?  What will mother say? 'Spose a fox got her!"
+
+"It wouldn't help me any if it had, after I was to blame for leaving
+her outside.  Blast a girl!  If you ever amounted to anything, you
+could have put her in while I fixed the horses.  At least you could
+have told me to."
+
+I stood there dumblike and stared at him.  He has got the awfulest way
+of telling the truth when he is scared or provoked.  Of course I should
+have thought of the goose when he was having such a hard fight with the
+horses.  If I'd been like he was, I'd have told him that he was older,
+mother told HIM to do it, and it wasn't my fault; but in my heart I
+knew he did have his hands full, and if you're your brother's keeper,
+you ought to HELP your brother remember.  So I stood gawking, while
+Leon slowly turned whiter and whiter.
+
+"We might as well see if we can find her," he said at last, so slow and
+hopeless like it made my heart ache.  So he started around the straw
+stack one way, and I the other, looking into all the holes, and before
+I had gone far I had a glimpse of her, and it scared me so I screamed,
+for her head was down, and she didn't look right.  Leon came running
+and pulled her out.  The swelled corn rolled in a little trail after
+her, and the pigs ran up and began to eat it.  Pigs are named righter
+than anything else I know.
+
+"Busted!" cried Leon in tones of awe; about the worst awe you ever
+heard, and the worst bust you ever saw.
+
+From bill to breast she was wide open, and the hominy spilling.  We
+just stood staring at her, and then Leon began to kick the pigs;
+because it would be no use to kick the goose; she would never know.
+Then he took her up, carried her into the barn, and put her on the
+floor where the other geese had stayed all night.  We stood and looked
+at her some more, as if looking and hoping would make her get up and be
+alive again.  But there's nothing in all this world so useless as
+wishing dead things would come alive; we had to do something.
+
+"What are you going to tell mother?"
+
+"Shut up!" said Leon.  "I'm trying to think."
+
+"I'll say it was as much my fault as yours.  I'll go with you.  I'll
+take half whatever they do to you."
+
+"Little fool!" said Leon.  "What good would that do me?"
+
+"Do you know what they cost?  Could you get another with some of your
+horse money?"
+
+I saw it coming and dodged again, before I remembered the Crusaders.
+
+"All right!" I said.  "If that's the way you are going to act, Smarty,
+I'll lay all the blame on you; I won't help you a bit, and I don't care
+if you are whipped until the blood runs."
+
+Then I went out of the barn and slammed the door.  For a minute I felt
+better; but it was a short time.  I SAID that to be mean, but I did
+care.  I cared dreadfully; I was partly to blame, and I knew it.
+Coming around the barn, I met Laddie, and he saw in a flash I was in
+trouble, so he stopped and asked:  "What now, Chicken?"
+
+"Come into the barn where no one will hear us," I said.
+
+So we went around the outside, entered at the door on the embankment,
+and he sat in the wheelbarrow on the threshing floor while I told him.
+I thought I felt badly enough, but after I saw Laddie, it grew worse,
+for I remembered we were short of money that fall, that the goose was a
+fine, expensive one, and how proud mother was of her, and how she'd be
+grieved, and that was trouble for sure.
+
+"Run along and play!" said Laddie, "and don't tell any one else if you
+can help it.  I'll hide the goose, and see if I can get another in time
+to take the place of this one, so mother won't be worried."
+
+I walked to the house slowly, but I was afraid to enter.  When you are
+all choked up, people are sure to see it, and ask fool questions.  So I
+went around to the gate and stood there looking up and down the road,
+and over the meadow toward the Big Woods; and all at once, in one of
+those high, regular bugle calls, like they mostly scream in spring, one
+of Pryors' ganders split the echoes for a mile; maybe farther.
+
+I was across the road and slinking down inside the meadow fence before
+I knew it.  There was no thought or plan.  I started for Pryors' and
+went straight ahead, only I kept out of line with our kitchen windows.
+I tramped through the slush, ice, and crossed fields where I was afraid
+of horses; but when I got to the top of the Pryor backyard fence, I
+stuck there, for the bulldogs were loose, and came raving at me.  I was
+going to be eaten alive, for I didn't know the word Laddie did; and
+those dogs climbed a fence like a person; I saw them the time Leon
+brought back Even So.  I was thinking what a pity it was, after every
+one had grown accustomed to me, and had begun loving me, that I should
+be wasted for dog feed, when Mr. Pryor came to the door, and called
+them; they didn't mind, so he came to the fence, and crossest you ever
+heard, every bit as bad as the dogs, he cried:  "Whose brat are you,
+and what are you doing here?"
+
+I meant to tell him; but you must have a minute after a thing like that.
+
+"God of my life!" he fairly frothed.  "What did anybody send a dumb
+child here for?"
+
+"Dumb child!"  I didn't care if Mr. Pryor did wear a Crown of Glory.
+It wasn't going to do him one particle of good, unless he was found in
+the way of the Lord.  "Dumb child!"  I was no more dumb than he was,
+until his bulldogs scared me so my heart got all tangled up with my
+stomach, my lungs, and my liver.  That made me mad, and there was
+nothing that would help me to loosen up and talk fast, like losing my
+temper.  I wondered what kind of a father he had.  If he'd been stood
+against the wall and made to recite, "Speak gently," as often as all of
+us, perhaps he'd have remembered the verse that says:
+
+  "Speak gently to the little child;
+    Its love be sure to gain;
+  Teach it in accents soft and mild;
+    It may not long remain."
+
+I should think not, if it had any chance at all to get away!  I was so
+angry by that time I meant to tell him what I thought.  Polite or not
+polite, I'd take a switching if I had to, but I wasn't going to stand
+that.
+
+"You haven't got any God in your life," I reminded him, "and no one
+sent me here.  I came to see the Princess, because I'm in awful trouble
+and I hoped maybe she could fix up a way to help me."
+
+"Ye Gods!" he cried.  He would stick to calling on God, whether he
+believed in Him or not.  "If it isn't Nimrod!  I didn't recognize you
+in all that bundling."
+
+Probably he didn't know it, but Nimrod was from the Bible too!  By
+bundling, he meant my hood and coat.  He helped me from the fence, sent
+the bulldogs rolling--sure enough he did kick them, and they didn't
+like it either--took my hand and led me straight into the house, and
+the Princess was there, and a woman who was her mother no doubt, and he
+said:  "Pamela, here is our little neighbour, and she says she's in
+trouble, and she thinks you may be of some assistance to her.  Of
+course you will be glad if you can."
+
+"Surely!" said the Princess, and she introduced me to her mother, so I
+bowed the best I knew, and took off my wet mitten, dirty with climbing
+fences, to shake hands with her.  She was so gracious and lovely I
+forgot what I went after.  The Princess brought a cloth and wiped the
+wet from my shoes and stockings, and asked me if I wouldn't like a cup
+of hot tea to keep me from taking a chill.
+
+"I've been much wetter than this," I told her, "and I never have taken
+a chill, and anyway my throat's too full of trouble to drink."
+
+"Why, you poor child!" said the Princess.  "Tell me quickly!  Is your
+mother ill again?"
+
+"Not now, but she's going to be as soon as she finds out," I said, and
+then I told them.
+
+They all listened without a sound until I got where Leon helped the
+goose eat, and from that on Mr. Pryor laughed until you could easily
+see that he had very little feeling for suffering humanity.  It was
+funny enough when we fed her, but now that she was bursted wide open
+there was nothing amusing about it; and to roar when a visitor plainly
+told you she was in awful trouble, didn't seem very good manners to me.
+The Princess and her mother never even smiled; and before I had told
+nearly all of it, Thomas was called to hitch the Princess' driving
+cart, and she took me to their barnyard to choose the goose that looked
+most like mother's, and all of them seemed like hers, so we took the
+first one Thomas could catch, put it into a bag in the back of the
+cart, and then we got in and started for our barn.  As we reached the
+road, I said to her:  "You'd better go past Dovers', for if we come
+down our Little Hill they will see us sure; it's baking day."
+
+"All right!" said the Princess, so we went the long way round the
+section, but goodness me! when she drove no way was far.
+
+When we were opposite our barn she stopped, hitched her horse to the
+fence, and we climbed over, and slipping behind the barn, carried the
+goose around to the pen and put it in with ours.  She said she wanted
+the broken one, because her father would enjoy seeing it.  I didn't see
+how he could!  We were ready to slip out, when our geese began to run
+at the new one, hiss and scream, and make such a racket that Laddie and
+Leon both caught us.  They looked at the goose, at me, the Princess,
+and each other, and neither said a word.  She looked back a little bit,
+and then she laughed as hard as she could.  Leon grew red, and he
+grinned ashamed-like, so she laughed worse than ever.  Laddie spoke to
+me:  "You went to Mr. Pryor's and asked for that goose?"
+
+"She did not!" said the Princess before I could answer.  "She never
+asked for anything.  She was making a friendly morning call and in the
+course of her visit she told about the pathetic end of the goose that
+was expected to lay the golden egg--I mean stuff the Bishop's
+pillow--and as we have a large flock of blue geese, father gave her
+one, and he had the best time he's had in years doing it.  I wouldn't
+have had him miss the fun he got from it for any money.  He laughed
+like home again.  Now I must slip away before any one sees me, and
+spoils our secret.  Leon, lad, you can go to the house and tell your
+little mother that the feeding stopped every pain her goose had, and
+hereafter it looks to you as if she'd be all right."
+
+"Miss Pryor," said Leon, "did you care about what I said at you in
+church that day?"
+
+"'Thou art all fair, my love.  There is no spot in thee.'  Well, it was
+a little pointed, but since you ask a plain question, I have survived
+it."
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," said Leon.  "Of course I never would, if I'd known
+you could be this nice."
+
+The Princess looked at Laddie and almost gasped, and then both of them
+laughed.  Leon saw that he had told her he was sorry he said she was
+"fair, and no spot in her."
+
+"Oh I don't mean that!" he said.  "What I do mean is that I thank you
+awful much for the goose, and helping me out like such a brick of a
+good fellow, and what I wish is, that I was as old as Laddie, and he'd
+hump himself if he got to be your beau."
+
+The Princess almost ran.  Laddie and I followed to the road, where he
+unhitched the horse and helped her in.  Then he stood stroking its
+neck, as he held the bridle.
+
+"I don't know what to say!" said Laddie.
+
+"In such case, I would counsel silence," advised the Princess.
+
+"I hope you understand how I thank you."
+
+"I fail to see what for.  Father gave the goose to Little Sister.  Her
+thanks and Leon's are more than enough for him.  We had great sport."
+
+"I insist on adding mine.  Deep and fervent!"
+
+"You take everything so serious.  Can't you see the fun of this?"
+
+"No," said Laddie.  "But if you can, I am glad, and I'm thankful for
+anything that gives me a glimpse of you."
+
+"Bye, Little Sister," said the Princess, and when she loosened the
+lines the mud flew a rod high.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Keeping Christmas Our Way
+
+  "I remember, I remember
+    How my childhood fleeted by,--
+  The mirth of its December,
+    And the warmth of its July."
+
+
+When dusk closed in it would be Christmas eve.  All day I had three
+points--a chair beside the kitchen table, a lookout melted through the
+frost on the front window, and the big sitting-room fireplace.
+
+All the perfumes of Araby floated from our kitchen that day.  There was
+that delicious smell of baking flour from big snowy loaves of bread,
+light biscuit, golden coffee cake, and cinnamon rolls dripping a waxy
+mixture of sugar, butter, and spice, much better than the finest
+butterscotch ever brought from the city.  There was the tempting odour
+of boiling ham and baking pies.  The air was filled with the smell of
+more herbs and spices than I knew the names of, that went into
+mincemeat, fruit cake, plum pudding, and pies.  There was a teasing
+fragrance in the spiced vinegar heating for pickles, a reminder of
+winesap and rambo in the boiling cider, while the newly opened bottles
+of grape juice filled the house with the tang of Concord and muscadine.
+It seemed to me I never got nicely fixed where I could take a sly dip
+in the cake dough or snipe a fat raisin from the mincemeat but Candace
+would say:  "Don't you suppose the backlog is halfway down the lane?"
+
+Then I hurried to the front window, where I could see through my melted
+outlook on the frosted pane, across the west eighty to the woods, where
+father and Laddie were getting out the Christmas backlog.  It was too
+bitterly cold to keep me there while they worked, but Laddie said that
+if I would watch, and come to meet them, he would take me up, and I
+might ride home among the Christmas greens on the log.
+
+So I flattened my nose against the pane and danced and fidgeted until
+those odours teased me back to the kitchen; and no more did I get
+nicely located beside a jar of pudding sauce than Candace would object
+to the place I had hung her stocking.  It was my task, my delightful
+all-day task, to hang the stockings.  Father had made me a peg for each
+one, and I had ten feet of mantel front along which to arrange them.
+But it was no small job to do this to every one's satisfaction.  No
+matter what happened to any one else, Candace had to be pleased: for
+did not she so manage that most fowls served on mother's table went
+gizzardless to the carving?  She knew and acknowledged the great
+importance of trying cookies, pies, and cake while they were hot.  She
+was forever overworked and tired, yet she always found time to make
+gingerbread women with currant buttons on their frocks, and pudgy
+doughnut men with clove eyes and cigars of cinnamon.  If my own
+stocking lay on the hearth, Candace's had to go in a place that
+satisfied her--that was one sure thing.  Besides, I had to make up to
+her for what Leon did, because she was crying into the corner of her
+apron about that.
+
+He slipped in and stole her stocking, hung it over the broomstick, and
+marched around the breakfast table singing to the tune of--
+
+  "Ha, ha, ha, who wouldn't go--
+    Up on the housetop click, click, click?
+  Down through the chimney,
+    With good Saint Nick----"
+
+words he made up himself.  He walked just fast enough that she couldn't
+catch him, and sang as he went:
+
+  "Ha, ha, ha, good Saint Nick,
+    Come and look at this stocking, quick!
+
+  If you undertake its length to fill,
+    You'll have to bust a ten-dollar bill.
+  Who does it belong to?  Candace Swartz.
+    Bring extra candy,--seven quarts----"
+
+
+She got so angry she just roared, so father made Leon stop it, but I
+couldn't help laughing myself.  Then we had to pet her all day, so
+she'd cheer up, and not salt the Christmas dinner with her tears.  I
+never saw such a monkey as Leon!  I trotted out to comfort her, and
+snipped bites, until I wore a triangle on the carpet between the
+kitchen and the mantel, the mantel and the window, and the window and
+the kitchen, while every hour things grew more exciting.
+
+There never had been such a flurry at our house since I could remember;
+for to-morrow would be Christmas and bring home all the children, and a
+house full of guests.  My big brother, Jerry, who was a lawyer in the
+city, was coming with his family, and so were Frank, Elizabeth, and
+Lucy with theirs, and of course Sally and Peter--I wondered if she
+would still be fixing his tie--and Shelley came yesterday, blushing
+like a rose, and she laughed if you pointed your finger at her.
+
+Something had happened to her in Chicago.  I wasn't so sure as I had
+been about a city being such a dreadful place of noise, bad air, and
+wicked people.  Nothing had hurt Shelley.  She had grown so much that
+you could see she was larger.  Her hair and face--all of Shelley just
+shone.  Her eyes danced, she talked and laughed all the time, and she
+hugged every one who passed her.  She never loved us so before.  Leon
+said she must have been homesick and coming back had given her a spell.
+I did hope it would be a bad one, and last forever.  I would have liked
+for all our family to have had a spell if it would have made them act
+and look like Shelley.  The Princess was not a speck lovelier, and she
+didn't act any nicer.
+
+If I could have painted, I'd have made a picture of Shelley with a
+circle of light above her head like the one of the boy Jesus where He
+talked with the wise men in the temple.  I asked father if he noticed
+how much prettier and nicer she was, and he said he did.  Then I asked
+him if he thought now, that a city was such a bad place to live in, and
+he said where she was had nothing to do with it, the same thing would
+happen here, or anywhere, when life's greatest experience came to a
+girl.  That was all he would say, but figuring it out was easy.  The
+greatest experience that happened to our girls was when they married,
+like Sally, so it meant that Shelley had gone and fallen in love with
+that lawyer man, and she liked sitting on the sofa with him, and no
+doubt she fixed his ties.  But if any one thought I would tell anything
+I saw when he came they were badly mistaken.
+
+All of us rushed around like we were crazy.  If father and mother
+hadn't held steady and kept us down, we might have raised the roof.  We
+were all so glad about getting Leon and the money back; mother hadn't
+been sick since the fish cured her; the new blue goose was so like the
+one that had burst, even father never noticed any difference; all the
+children were either home or coming, and after we had our gifts and the
+biggest dinner we ever had, Christmas night all of us would go to the
+schoolhouse to see our school try to spell down three others to whom
+they had sent saucy invitations to come and be beaten.
+
+Mother sat in the dining-room beside the kitchen door, so that she
+could watch the baking, brewing, pickling, and spicing.  It took four
+men to handle the backlog, which I noticed father pronounced every year
+"just a little the finest we ever had," and Laddie strung the house
+with bittersweet, evergreens, and the most beautiful sprays of myrtle
+that he raked from under the snow.  Father drove to town in the sleigh,
+and the list of things to be purchased mother gave him as a reminder
+was almost a yard long.
+
+The minute they finished the outdoor work Laddie and Leon began
+bringing in baskets of apples, golden bellflowers, green pippins, white
+winter pearmains, Rhode Island greenings, and striped rambos all
+covered with hoarfrost, yet not frozen, and so full of juice you had to
+bite into them carefully or they dripped and offended mother.  These
+they washed and carried to the cellar ready for use.
+
+Then they cracked big dishes of nuts; and popped corn that popped with
+the most resounding pops in all my experience--popped a tubful, and
+Laddie melted maple sugar and poured over it and made big balls of
+fluff and sweetness.  He took a pan and filled it with grains, selected
+one at a time, the very largest and whitest, and made an especial ball,
+in the middle of which he put a lovely pink candy heart on which was
+printed in red letters: "How can this heart be mine, yet yours, unless
+our hearts are one?"  He wouldn't let any of them see it except me, and
+he only let me because he knew I'd be delighted.
+
+It was almost dusk when father came through the kitchen loaded with
+bundles and found Candace and the girls still cooking.
+
+We were so excited we could scarcely be gathered around the supper
+table, and mother said we chattered until she couldn't hear herself
+think.  After a while Laddie laid down his fork and looked at our
+father.
+
+"Have you any objection to my using the sleigh to-morrow night?" he
+asked.
+
+Father looked at mother.
+
+"Had you planned to use it, mother?"
+
+Mother said:  "No.  If I go, I'll ride in the big sled with all of us.
+It is such a little way, and the roads are like glass."
+
+So father said politely, as he always spoke to us:  "Then it will give
+me great pleasure for you to take it, my son."
+
+That made Leon bang his fork loudly as he dared and squirm in his
+chair, for well he knew that if he had asked, the answer would have
+been different.  If Laddie took the sleigh he would harness carefully,
+drive fast, but reasonably, blanket his horse, come home at the right
+time, and put everything exactly where he found it.  But Leon would
+pitch the harness on some way, race every step, never think of his
+steaming horse, come home when there was no one so wild as he left to
+play pranks with, and scatter the harness everywhere.  He knew our
+father would love to trust him the same as he did Laddie.  He wouldn't
+always prove himself trustworthy, but he envied Laddie.
+
+"You think you'll take the Princess to the spelling bee, don't you?" he
+sneered.
+
+"I mean to ask her," replied Laddie.
+
+"Maybe you think she'll ride in our old homemade, hickory cheesebox,
+when she can sail all over the country like a bird in a velvet-lined
+cutter with a real buffalo robe."
+
+There was a quick catch in mother's breath and I felt her hand on my
+chair tremble.  Father's lips tightened and a frown settled on his
+face, while Laddie fairly jumped.  He went white to the lips, and one
+hand dropped on the table, palm up, the fingers closing and unclosing,
+while his eyes turned first to mother, and then to father, in dumb
+appeal.  We all knew that he was suffering.  No one spoke, and Leon
+having shot his arrow straight home, saw as people so often do in this
+world that the damage of unkind words could not easily be repaired; so
+he grew red in the face and squirmed uncomfortably.
+
+At last Laddie drew a deep, quivering breath.  "I never thought of
+that," he said.  "She has seemed happy to go with me several times when
+I asked her, but of course she might not care to ride in ours, when she
+has such a fine sleigh of her own."
+
+Father's voice fairly boomed down the length of the table.
+
+"Your mother always has found our sleigh suitable," he said.
+
+The fact was, father was rarely proud of it.  He had selected the
+hickory in our woods, cut it and hauled it to the mill, cured the
+lumber, and used all his spare time for two winters making it.  With
+the exception of having the runners turned at a factory and iron-bound
+at a smithy, he had completed it alone with great care, even to
+staining it a beautiful cherry colour, and fitting white sheepskins
+into the bed.  We had all watched him and been so proud of it, and now
+Leon was sneering at it.  He might just as well have undertaken to
+laugh at father's wedding suit or to make fun of "Clark's Commentaries."
+
+Laddie appealed to mother:  "Do you think I'd better not ask her?"
+
+He spoke with an effort.
+
+"Laddie, that is the first time I ever heard you propose to do any one
+an injustice," she said.
+
+"I don't see how," said Laddie.
+
+"It isn't giving the Princess any chance at all," replied mother
+"You've just said that she has seemed pleased to accompany you before,
+now you are proposing to cut her out of what promises to be the most
+delightful evening of the winter, without even giving her the chance to
+say whether she'd go with you or not.  Has she ever made you feel that
+anything you offered her or wanted to do for her was not good enough?"
+
+"Never!" exclaimed Laddie fervently.
+
+"Until she does, then, do you think it would be quite manly and
+honourable to make decisions for her?  You say you never thought of
+anything except a pleasant time with her; possibly she feels the same.
+Unless she changes, I would scarcely let a boy's foolish tongue disturb
+her pleasure.  Moreover, as to the matter of wealth, your father may be
+as rich as hers; but they have one, we have many.  If what we spend on
+all our brood could be confined to one child, we could easily duplicate
+all her luxuries, and I think she has the good sense to realize the
+fact as quickly as any one.  I've no doubt she would gladly exchange
+half she has for the companionship of a sister or a brother in her
+lonely life."
+
+Laddie turned to father, and father's smile was happy again.  Mother
+was little but she was mighty.  With only a few words she had made Leon
+feel how unkind and foolish he had been, quieted Laddie's alarm, and
+soothed the hurt father's pride had felt in that he had not been able
+to furnish her with so fine a turnout as Pryors had.
+
+Next morning when the excitement of gifts and greetings was over, and
+Laddie's morning work was all finished, he took a beautiful volume of
+poems and his popcorn ball and started across the fields due west; all
+of us knew that he was going to call on and offer them to the Princess,
+and ask to take her to the spelling bee.  I suppose Laddie thought he
+was taking that trip alone, but really he was surrounded.  I watched
+him from the window, and my heart went with him.  Presently father went
+and sat beside mother's chair, and stroking her hand, whispered softly:
+"Please don't worry, little mother.  It will be all right.  Your boy
+will come home happy."
+
+"I hope so," she answered, "but I can't help feeling dreadfully
+nervous.  If things go wrong with Laddie, it will spoil the day."
+
+"I have much faith in the Princess' good common sense," replied father,
+"and considering what it means to Laddie, it would hurt me sore to lose
+it."
+
+Mother sat still, but her lips moved so that I knew she was making soft
+little whispered prayers for her best loved son.  But Laddie, plowing
+through the drift, never dreamed that all of us were with him.  He was
+always better looking than any other man I ever had seen, but when, two
+hours later, he stamped into the kitchen he was so much handsomer than
+usual, that I knew from the flush on his cheek and the light in his
+eye, that the Princess had been kind, and by the package in his hand,
+that she had made him a present.  He really had two, a beautiful book
+and a necktie.  I wondered to my soul if she gave him that, so she
+could fix it!  I didn't believe she had begun on his ties at that time;
+but of course when he loved her as he did, he wished she would.
+
+It was the very jolliest Christmas we ever had, but the day seemed
+long.  When night came we were in a precious bustle.  The wagon bed on
+bobs, filled with hay and covers, drawn by Ned and Jo, was brought up
+for the family, and the sleigh made spick-and-span and drawn by
+Laddie's thoroughbred, stood beside it.  Laddie had filled the kitchen
+oven with bricks and hung up a comfort at four o'clock to keep the
+Princess warm.
+
+Because he had to drive out of the way to bring her, Laddie wanted to
+start early; and when he came down dressed in his college clothes, and
+looking the manliest of men, some of the folks thought it funny to see
+him carefully rake his hot bricks from the oven, and pin them in an old
+red breakfast shawl.  I thought it was fine, and I whispered to mother:
+"Do you suppose that if Laddie ever marries the Princess he will be
+good to her as he is to you?"
+
+Mother nodded with tear-dimmed eyes, but Shelley said:  "I'll wager a
+strong young girl like the Princess will laugh at you for babying over
+her."
+
+"Why?" inquired Laddie.  "It is a long drive and a bitter night, and if
+you fancy the Princess will laugh at anything I do, when I am doing the
+best I know for her comfort, you are mistaken.  At least, that is the
+impression she gave me this morning."
+
+I saw the swift glance mother shot at father, and father laid down his
+paper and said, while he pretended his glasses needed polishing:  "Now
+there is the right sort of a girl for you.  No foolishness about her,
+when she has every chance.  Hurrah for the Princess!"
+
+It was easy to see that she wasn't going to have nearly so hard a time
+changing father's opinion as she would mother's.  It was not nearly a
+year yet, and here he was changed already.  Laddie said good-bye to
+mother--he never forgot--gathered up his comfort and bricks, and
+started for Pryors' downright happy.  We went to the schoolhouse a
+little later, all of us scoured, curled, starched, and wearing our very
+best clothes.  My! but it was fine.  There were many lights in the room
+and it was hung with greens.  There was a crowd even though it was
+early.  On Miss Amelia's table was a volume of history that was the
+prize, and every one was looking and acting the very best he knew how,
+although there were cases where they didn't know so very much.
+
+Our Shelley was the handsomest girl there, until the Princess came, and
+then they both were.  Shelley wore one of her city frocks and a quilted
+red silk hood that was one of her Christmas gifts, and she looked just
+like a handsome doll.  She made every male creature in that room feel
+that she was pining for him alone.  May had a gay plaid frock and curls
+nearly a yard long, and so had I, but both our frocks and curls were
+homemade; mother would have them once in a while; father and I couldn't
+stop her.
+
+But there was not a soul there who didn't have some sort of gift to
+rejoice over, and laughter and shouts of "Merry Christmas!" filled the
+room.  It was growing late and there was some talk of choosers, when
+the door opened and in a rush of frosty air the Princess and Laddie
+entered.  Every one stopped short and stared.
+
+There was good reason.  The Princess looked as if she had accidentally
+stepped from a frame.  She was always lovely and beautifully dressed,
+but to-night she was prettier and finer than ever before.  You could
+fairly hear their teeth click as some of the most envious of those
+girls caught sight of her, for she was wearing a new hat!--a black
+velvet store hat, fitting closely over her crown, with a rim of twisted
+velvet, a scarlet bird's wing, and a big silver buckle.  Her dress was
+of scarlet cloth cut in forms, and it fitted as if she had been melted
+and poured into it.  It was edged around the throat, wrists, and skirt
+with narrow bands of fur, and she wore a loose, long, silk-lined coat
+of the same material, and worst of all, furs--furs such as we had heard
+wealthy and stylish city ladies were wearing.  A golden brown cape that
+reached to her elbows, with ends falling to the knees, finished in the
+tails of some animal, and for her hands a muff as big as a nail keg.
+
+Now, there was not a girl in that room, except the Princess, an she had
+those clothes, who wouldn't have flirted like a peacock, almost
+bursting with pride; but because the Princess had them, and they
+didn't, they sat stolid and sullen, and cast glances at each other as
+if they were saying:  "The stuck-up thing!" "Thinks she's smart, don't
+she?"
+
+Many of them should have gone to meet her and made her welcome, for she
+was not of our district and really their guest.  Shelley did go, but I
+noticed she didn't hurry.
+
+The choosers began at once, and Laddie was the first person called for
+our side, and the Princess for the visitors'.  Every one in the room
+was chosen on one side or the other; even my name was called, but I
+only sat still and shook my head, for I very well knew that no one
+except father would remember to pronounce easy ones for me, and besides
+I was so bitterly disappointed I could scarcely have stood up.  They
+had put me in a seat near the fire; the spellers lined either wall, and
+a goodly number that refused to spell occupied the middle seats.  I
+couldn't get a glimpse of Laddie or the home folks, or worst of all, of
+my idolized Princess.
+
+I never could bear to find a fault with Laddie, but I sadly reflected
+that he might as well have left me at home, if I were to be buried
+where I could neither hear nor see a thing.  I was just wishing it was
+summer so I could steal out to the cemetery, and have a good visit with
+the butterflies that always swarmed around Georgiana Jane Titcomb's
+grave at the corner of the church.  I never knew Georgiana Jane, but
+her people must have been very fond of her, for her grave was scarlet
+with geraniums, and pink with roses from earliest spring until frost,
+and the bright colours attracted swarms of butterflies.  I had learned
+that if I stuck a few blossoms in my hair, rubbed some sweet smelling
+ones over my hands, and knelt and kept so quiet that I fitted into the
+landscape, the butterflies would think me a flower too, and alight on
+my hair, dress, and my hands, even.  God never made anything more
+beautiful than those butterflies, with their wings of brightly painted
+velvet down, their bright eyes, their curious antennae, and their
+queer, tickly feet.  Laddie had promised me a book telling all about
+every kind there was, the first time he went to a city, so I was
+wishing I had it, and was among my pet beauties with it, when I
+discovered him bending over me.
+
+He took my arm, and marching back to his place, helped me to the deep
+window seat beside him, where with my head on a level, and within a
+foot of his, I could see everything in the whole room.  I don't know
+why I ever spent any time pining for the beauties of Georgiana Jane
+Titcomb's grave, even with its handsome headstone on which was carved a
+lamb standing on three feet and holding a banner over its shoulder with
+the fourth, and the geraniums, roses, and the weeping willow that grew
+over it, thrown in.  I might have trusted Laddie.  He never had
+forgotten me; until he did, I should have kept unwavering faith.
+
+Now, I had the best place of any one in the room, and I smoothed my new
+plaid frock and shook my handmade curls just as near like Shelley as
+ever I could.  But it seems that most of the ointment in this world has
+a fly in it, like in the Bible, for fine as my location was, I soon
+knew that I should ask Laddie to put me down, because the window behind
+me didn't fit its frame, and the night was bitter.  Before half an hour
+I was stiff with cold; but I doubt if I would have given up that
+location if I had known I would freeze, because this was the most fun I
+had ever seen.
+
+Miss Amelia began with McGuffey's spelling book, and whenever some poor
+unfortunate made a bad break the crowd roared with laughter.  Peter
+Justice stood up to spell and before three rounds he was nodding on his
+feet, so she pronounced "sleepy" to him.  Some one nudged Pete and he
+waked up and spelled it, s-l-e, sle, p-e, pe, and because he really was
+so sleepy it made every one laugh.  James Whittaker spelled compromise
+with a k, and Isaac Thomas spelled soap, s-o-a-p-e, and it was all the
+funnier that he couldn't spell it, for from his looks you could tell
+that he had no acquaintance with it in any shape.  Then Miss Amelia
+gave out "marriage" to the spooniest young man in the district, and
+"stepfather" to a man who was courting a widow with nine children; and
+"coquette" to our Shelley, who had been making sheep's eyes at Johnny
+Myers, so it took her by surprise and she joined the majority, which by
+that time occupied seats.
+
+There was much laughing and clapping of hands for a time, but when Miss
+Amelia had let them have their fun and thinned the lines to half a
+dozen on each side who could really spell, she began business, and
+pronounced the hardest words she could find in the book, and the
+spellers caught them up and rattled them off like machines.
+
+"Incompatibility," she gave out, and before the sound of her voice died
+away the Princess was spelling:  "I-n, in, c-o-m, com, in com, p-a-t,
+pat, incompat, i, incompati, b-i-l, bil, incompatibil, i,
+incompatibili, t-y, ty, incompatibility."
+
+Then Laddie spelled "incomprehensibility," and they finished up the
+"bilities" and the "alities" with a rush and changed McGuffey's for
+Webster, with five on Laddie's side and three on the Princess', and
+when they quit with it, the Princess was alone, and Laddie and our
+little May facing her.
+
+From that on you could call it real spelling.  They spelled from the
+grammars, hyperbole, synecdoche, and epizeuxis.  They spelled from the
+physiology, chlorophyll, coccyx, arytenoid, and the names of the bones
+and nerves, and all the hard words inside you.
+
+They tried the diseases and spelled jaundice, neurasthenia, and
+tongue-tied.  They tried all the occupations and professions, and went
+through the stores and spelled all sorts of hardware, china and dry
+goods.  Each side kept cheering its own and urging them to do their
+best, and every few minutes some man in the back of the house said
+something that was too funny.  When Miss Amelia pronounced "bombazine"
+to Laddie our side cried, "Careful, Laddie, careful! you're out of your
+element!"
+
+And when she gave "swivel-tree" to the Princess, her side whispered,
+"Go easy!  Do you know what it is?  Make her define it."
+
+They branched over the country.  May met her Jonah on the mountains.
+Katahdin was too much for her, and Laddie and the Princess were left to
+fight it out alone.  I didn't think Laddie liked it.  I'm sure he never
+expected it to turn out that way.  He must have been certain he could
+beat her, for after he finished English there were two or three other
+languages he knew, and every one in the district felt that he could
+win, and expected him to do it.  It was an awful place to put him in, I
+could see that.  He stood a little more erect than usual, with his eyes
+toward the Princess, and when his side kept crying, "Keep the prize,
+Laddie!  Hold up the glory of the district!" he ground out the words as
+if he had a spite at them for not being so hard that he would have an
+excuse for going down.
+
+The Princess was poised lightly on her feet, her thick curls, just
+touching her shoulders, shining in the light; her eyes like stars, her
+perfect, dark oval face flushed a rich red, and her deep bosom rising
+and falling with excitement.  Many times in later years I have tried to
+remember when the Princess was loveliest of all, and that night always
+stands first.
+
+I was thinking fast.  Laddie was a big man.  Men were strong on purpose
+so they could bear things.  He loved the Princess so, and he didn't
+know whether she loved him or not; and every marriageable man in three
+counties was just aching for the chance to court her, and I didn't feel
+that he dared risk hurting her feelings.
+
+Laddie said, to be the man who conquered the Princess and to whom she
+lifted her lips for a first kiss was worth life itself.  I made up my
+mind that night that he knew just exactly what he was talking about.  I
+thought so too.  And I seemed to understand why Laddie--Laddie in his
+youth, strength, and manly beauty, Laddie, who boasted that there was
+not a nerve in his body--trembled before the Princess.
+
+It looked as if she had set herself against him and was working for the
+honours, and if she wanted them, I didn't feel that he should chance
+beating her, and then, too, it was beginning to be plain that it was
+none too sure he could.  Laddie didn't seem to be the only one who had
+been well drilled in spelling.
+
+I held my jaws set a minute, so that I could speak without Laddie
+knowing how I was shivering, and then I whispered:  "Except her eyes
+are softer, she looks just like a cardinal."
+
+Laddie nodded emphatically and moving a step nearer laid his elbow
+across my knees.  Heavens, how they spelled!  They finished all the
+words I ever heard and spelled like lightning through a lot of others
+the meaning of which I couldn't imagine.  Father never gave them out at
+home.  They spelled epiphany, gaberdine, ichthyology, gewgaw,
+kaleidoscope, and troubadour.  Then Laddie spelled one word two
+different ways; and the Princess went him one better, for she spelled
+another three.
+
+They spelled from the Bible, Nebuchadnezzar, Potiphar, Peleg,
+Belshazzar, Abimelech, and a host of others I never heard the minister
+preach about.  Then they did the most dreadful thing of all.  "Broom,"
+pronounced the teacher, and I began mentally, b-r-o-o-m, but Laddie
+spelled "b-r-o-u-g-h-a-m," and I stared at him in a daze.  A second
+later Miss Amelia gave out "Beecham" to the Princess, and again I tried
+it, b-e-e-c-h, but the Princess was spelling "B-e-a-u-c-h-a-m-p," and I
+almost fell from the window.
+
+They kept that up until I was nearly crazy with nervousness; I forgot I
+was half frozen.  I pulled Laddie's sleeve and whispered in his ear:
+"Do you think she'll cry if you beat her?"
+
+I was half crying myself, the strain had been awful.  I was torn
+between these dearest loves of mine.
+
+"Seen me have any chance to beat her?" retorted Laddie.
+
+Miss Amelia seemed to have used most of her books, and at last picked
+up an old geography and began giving out points around the coast, while
+Laddie and the Princess took turns snatching the words from her mouth
+and spelling them.  Father often did that, so Laddie was safe there.
+They were just going it when Miss Amelia pronounced, "Terra del Fuego,"
+to the Princess.  "T-e-r-r-a, Terra, d-e-l, del, F-i-e-u-g-o," spelled
+the Princess, and sat down suddenly in the midst of a mighty groan from
+her side, swelled by a wail from one little home district deserter.
+
+"Next!" called Miss Amelia.
+
+"T-e-r-r-a, Terra, d-e-l, del, F-e-u-g-o," spelled Laddie.
+
+"Wrong!" wailed Miss Amelia, and our side breathed one big groan in
+concert, and I lifted up my voice in that also.  Then every one laughed
+and pretended they didn't care, and the Princess came over and shook
+hands with Laddie, and Laddie said to Miss Amelia:
+
+"Just let me take that book a minute until I see how the thing really
+does go."  It was well done and satisfied the crowd, which clapped and
+cheered; but as I had heard him spell it many, many times for father,
+he didn't fool me.
+
+Laddie and the Princess drew slips for the book and it fell to her.  He
+was so pleased he kissed me as he lifted me down and never noticed I
+was so stiff I could scarcely stand--and I did fall twice going to the
+sleigh.  My bed was warm and my room was warm, but I chilled the night
+through and until the next afternoon, when I grew so faint and sleepy I
+crept to Miss Amelia's desk, half dead with fright--it was my first
+trip to ask an excuse--and begged:  "Oh teacher, I'm so sick.  Please
+let me go home."
+
+I think one glance must have satisfied her that it was true, for she
+said very kindly that I might, and she would send Leon along to take
+care of me.  But my troubles were only half over when I had her
+consent.  It was very probable I would be called a baby and sent back
+when I reached home, so I refused company and started alone.  It seemed
+a mile past the cemetery.  I was so tired I stopped, and leaning
+against the fence, peeped through at the white stones and the whiter
+mounds they covered, and wondered how my mother would feel if she were
+compelled to lay me beside the two little whooping cough and fever
+sisters already sleeping there.  I decided that it would be so very
+dreadful, that the tears began to roll down my cheeks and freeze before
+they fell.
+
+Down the Big Hill slowly I went.  How bare it looked then!  Only
+leafless trees and dried seed pods rattling on the bushes, the sand
+frozen, and not a rush to be seen for the thick blanket of snow.  A few
+rods above the bridge was a footpath, smooth and well worn, that led
+down to the creek, beaten by the feet of children who raced it every
+day and took a running slide across the ice.  I struck into the path as
+always; but I was too stiff to run, for I tried.  I walked on the ice,
+and being almost worn out, sat on the bridge and fell to watching the
+water bubbling under the glassy crust.  I was so dull a horse's feet
+struck the bridge before I heard the bells--for I had bells in my ears
+that day--and when I looked up it was the Princess--the Princess in her
+red dress and furs, with a silk hood instead of her hat, her sleigh
+like a picture, with a buffalo robe, that it was whispered about the
+country, cost over a hundred dollars, and her thoroughbred mare Maud
+dancing and prancing.  "Bless me!  Is it you, Little Sister?" she
+asked.  "Shall I give you a ride home?"
+
+Before I could scarcely realize she was there, I was beside her and she
+was tucking the fine warm robe over me.  I lifted a pair of dull eyes
+to her face.
+
+"Oh Princess, I am so glad you came," I said.  "I don't think I could
+have gone another step if I had frozen on the bridge."
+
+The Princess bent to look in my face.  "Why, you poor child!" She
+exclaimed, "you're white as death!  Where are you ill?"
+
+I leaned on her shoulder, though ordinarily I would not have offered to
+touch her first, and murmured:  "I am not ill, outdoors, only dull,
+sleepy, and freezing with the cold."
+
+"It was that window!" she exclaimed.  "I thought of it, but I trusted
+Laddie."
+
+That roused me a little.
+
+"Oh Princess," I cried, "you mustn't blame Laddie!  I knew it was too
+cold, but I wouldn't tell him, because if he put me down I couldn't see
+you, and we thought, but for your eyes being softer, you looked just
+like a cardinal."
+
+The Princess hugged me close and laughed merrily.  "You darling!" she
+cried.
+
+Then she shook me up sharply:  "Don't you dare go to sleep!" she said.
+"I must take you home first."
+
+Once there she quieted my mother's alarm, put me to bed, drove three
+miles for Dr. Fenner and had me started nicely on the road to a month
+of lung fever, before she left.  In my delirium I spelled volumes; and
+the miracle of it was I never missed a word until I came to "Terra del
+Fuego," and there I covered my lips and stoutly insisted that it was
+the Princess' secret.
+
+To keep me from that danger sleep on the road, she shook me up and
+asked about the spelling bee.  I thought it was the grandest thing I
+had ever seen in my life, and I told her so.  She gathered me close and
+whispered:  "Tell me something, Little Sister, please."
+
+The minx!  She knew I thought that a far finer title than hers.
+
+"Would Laddie care?" I questioned.
+
+"Not in the least!"
+
+"Well then, I will."
+
+"Can Laddie spell 'Terra del Fuego?'" she whispered.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"I have heard him do it over and over for father."
+
+The Princess forgot I was so sick, forgot her horse, forgot everything.
+She threw her head back and her hands up, until her horse stopped in
+answer to the loosened line, and she laughed and laughed.  She laughed
+until peal on peal re-echoed from our Big Woods clear across the west
+eighty.  She laughed until her ringing notes set my slow pulses on
+fire, and started my numbed brain in one last effort.  I stood up and
+took her lovely face between my palms, turning it until I could see
+whether the thought that had come to me showed in her eyes, and it did.
+
+"Oh you darling, splendid Princess!" I cried.  "You missed it on
+purpose to let Laddie beat!  You can spell it too!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+The Horn of the Hunter
+
+  "The dusky night rides down the sky,
+    And ushers in the morn:
+  The hounds all join in glorious cry,
+    The huntsman winds his horn."
+
+
+Leon said our house reminded him of the mourners' bench before any one
+had "come through."  He said it was so deadly with Sally and Shelley
+away, that he had a big notion to marry Susie Fall and bring her over
+to liven things up a little.  Mother said she thought that would be a
+good idea, and Leon started in the direction of Falls', but he only
+went as far as Deams'.  When he came back he had a great story to tell
+about dogs chasing their sheep, and foxes taking their geese.  Father
+said sheep were only safe behind securely closed doors, especially in
+winter, and geese also.  Leon said every one hadn't as big a barn as
+ours, and father said there was nothing to prevent any man from
+building the sized barn he needed to shelter his creatures in safety
+and comfort, if he wanted to dig in and earn the money to put it up.
+There was no answer to that, and Mr. Leon didn't try to make any.
+Mostly, he said something to keep on talking, but sometimes he saw when
+he had better quit.
+
+I was having a good time, myself.  Of course when the fever was the
+worst, and when I never had been sick before, it was pretty bad, but as
+soon as I could breathe all right, there was no pain to speak of, and
+every one was so good to me.  I could have Bobby on the footboard of my
+bed as long as I wanted him, and he would crow whenever I told him to.
+I kept Grace Greenwood beside me, and spoiled her dress making her take
+some of each dose of medicine I did, but Shelley wrote that she was
+saving goods and she would make her another as soon as she came home.
+I made mother put red flannel on Grace's chest and around her neck,
+until I could hardly find her mouth when she had to take her medicine,
+but she swallowed it down all right, or she got her nose held, until
+she did.  She was not nearly so sick as I was, though.  We both grew
+better together, and, when Dr. Fenner brought me candy, she had her
+share.
+
+When I began to get well it was lovely.  Such toast, chicken broth, and
+squirrels, as mother always had.  I even got the chicken liver,
+oranges, and all of them gave me everything they had that I wanted--I
+must almost have died to make them act like that!
+
+Laddie and father would take me up wrapped in blankets and hold me to
+rest my back.  Father would rock me and sing about "Young Johnny," just
+as he had when I was little.  We always laughed at it, we knew it was a
+fool song, but we liked it.  The tune was smooth and sleepy-like and
+the words went:
+
+  "One day young Johnny, he did go,
+   Way down in the meadow for to mow.
+     Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+   He scarce had mowed twice round the field,
+   When a pesky sarpent bit him on the heel,
+     Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+   He threw the scythe upon the ground,
+   An' shut his eyes, and looked all round,
+     Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+   He took the sarpent in his hand,
+   And then ran home to Molly Bland,
+     Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+   O Molly dear, and don't you see,
+   This pesky sarpent that bit me?
+     Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+   O Johnny dear, why did you go,
+   Way down in the meadow fot to mow?
+     Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+   O Molly dear, I thought you knowed
+   'Twas daddy's grass, and it must be mowed,
+     Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-n an-incty, noddy O!
+
+   Now all young men a warning take,
+   And don't get bit by a rattlesnake.
+     Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!"
+
+
+All of them told me stories, read to me, and Frank, one of my big
+gone-away brothers, sent me the prettiest little book.  It had a green
+cover with gold on the back, and it was full of stories and poems, not
+so very hard, because I could read every one of them, with help on a
+few words.  The piece I liked best was poetry.  If it hadn't been for
+that, I'm afraid, I was having such a good time, I'd have lain there
+until I forgot how to walk, with all of them trying to see who could be
+nicest to me.  The ones who really could, were Laddie and the Princess,
+except mother.  Laddie lifted me most carefully, the Princess told the
+best stories, but after all, if the burning and choking grew so bad I
+could scarcely stand it, mother could lay her hand on my head and say,
+"Poor child," in a way that made me work to keep on breathing.  Maybe I
+only THOUGHT I loved Laddie best.  I guess if I had been forced to take
+my choice when I had the fever, I'd have stuck pretty tight to mother.
+Even Dr. Fenner said if I pulled through she'd have to make me.  I
+might have been lying there yet, if it hadn't been for the book Frank
+sent me, with the poetry piece in it.  It began:
+
+  "Somewhere on a sunny bank, buttercups are bright,
+  Somewhere 'mid the frozen grass, peeps the daisy white."
+
+
+I read that so often I could repeat it quite as well with the book shut
+as open, and every time I read it, I wanted outdoors worse.  In one
+place it ran:
+
+  "Welcome, yellow buttercups, welcome daisies white,
+  Ye are in my spirit visioned a delight.
+  Coming in the springtime of sunny hours to tell,
+  Speaking to our hearts of Him who doeth all things well."
+
+
+That piece helped me out of bed, and the blue gander screaming opened
+the door.  It was funny about it too.  I don't know WHY it worked on me
+that way; it just kept singing in my heart all day, and I could shut my
+eyes and go to sleep seeing buttercups in a gold sheet all over our Big
+Hill, although there never was a single one there; and meadows full of
+daisies, which were things father said were a pest he couldn't
+tolerate, because they spread so, and he grubbed up every one he found.
+Yet that piece filled our meadow until I imagined I could roll on
+daisies.  They might be a pest to farmers, but sheets of them were
+pretty good if you were burning with fever.  Between the buttercups and
+the daisies I left the bed with a light head and wobbly legs.
+
+Of course I wasn't an idiot.  I knew when I looked from our south
+window exactly what was to be seen.  The person who wrote that piece
+was the idiot.  It sang and sounded pretty, and it pulled you up and
+pushed you out, but really it was a fool thing, as I very well knew.  I
+couldn't imagine daisies peeping through frozen grass.  Any baby should
+have known they bloomed in July.  Skunk cabbage always came first, and
+hepatica.  If I had looked from any of our windows and seen daisies and
+buttercups in March, I'd have fallen over with the shock.  I knew there
+would be frozen brown earth, last year's dead leaves, caved-in apple
+and potato holes, the cabbage row almost gone, puddles of water and mud
+everywhere, and I would hear geese scream and hens sing.  And yet that
+poem kept pulling and pulling, and I was happy as a queen--I wondered
+if they were for sure; mother had doubts--the day I was wrapped in
+shawls and might sit an hour in the sun on the top board of the back
+fence, where I could see the barn, orchard, the creek and the meadow,
+as you never could in summer because of the leaves.  I wasn't looking
+for buttercups and daisies either.  I mighty well knew there wouldn't
+be any.
+
+But the sun was there.  A little taste of willow, oak and maple was in
+the air.  You could see the buds growing fat too, and you could smell
+them.  If you opened your eyes and looked in any direction you could
+see blue sky, big, ragged white clouds, bare trees, muddy earth with
+grassy patches, and white spots on the shady sides where unmelted snow
+made the icy feel in the air, even when the sun shone.  You couldn't
+hear yourself think for the clatter of the turkeys, ganders, roosters,
+hens, and everything that had a voice.  I was so crazy with it I could
+scarcely hang to the fence; I wanted to get down and scrape my wings
+like the gobbler, and scream louder than the gander, and crow oftener
+than the rooster.  There was everything all ice and mud.  They would
+have frozen, if they hadn't been put in a house at night, and starved,
+if they hadn't been fed; they were not at the place where they could
+hunt and scratch, and not pay any attention to feeding time, because of
+being so bursting full.  They had no nests and babies to rejoice over.
+But there they were!  And so was I!  Buttercups and daisies be-hanged!
+Ice and mud really!  But if you breathed that air, and shut your eyes,
+north, you could see blue flags, scarlet lilies, buttercups, cattails
+and redbirds sailing over them; east, there would be apple bloom and
+soft grass, cowslips, and bubbling water, robins, thrushes, and
+bluebirds; and south, waving corn with wild rose and alder borders, and
+sparrows, and larks on every fence rider.
+
+Right there I got that daisy thing figured out.  It wasn't that there
+were or ever would be daisies and buttercups among the frozen grass;
+but it was forever and always that when this FEEL came into the air,
+you knew they were COMING.  THAT was what ailed the gander and the
+gobbler.  They hadn't a thing to be thankful for yet, but something
+inside them was swelling and pushing because of what was coming.  I
+felt exactly as they did, because I wanted to act the same way, but I'd
+been sick enough to know that I'd better be thankful for the chance to
+sit on the fence, and think about buttercups and daisies.  Really, one
+old brown and purple skunk cabbage with a half-frozen bee buzzing over
+it, or a few forlorn little spring beauties, would have set me wild,
+and when a lark really did go over, away up high, and a dove began to
+coo in the orchard, if Laddie hadn't come for me, I would have fallen
+from the fence.
+
+I simply had to get well and quickly too, for the wonderful time was
+beginning.  It was all very well to lie in bed when there was nothing
+else to do, and every one would pet me and give me things; but here was
+maple syrup time right at the door, and the sugar camp most fun alive;
+here was all the neighbourhood crazy mad at the foxes, and planning a
+great chase covering a circuit of miles before the ground thawed; here
+was Easter and all the children coming, except Shelley--again, it would
+cost too much for only one day--and with everything beginning to hum, I
+found out there would be more amusement outdoors than inside.  That was
+how I came to study out the daisy piece.  There was nothing in the
+silly, untrue lines: the pull and tug was in what they made you think
+of.
+
+I was still so weak I had to take a nap every day, so I wasn't sleepy
+as early at night, and I heard father and mother talk over a lot of
+things before they went to bed.  After they mentioned it, I remembered
+that we hadn't received nearly so many letters from Shelley lately, and
+mother seldom found time to read them aloud during the day and forgot,
+or her eyes were tired, at night.
+
+"Are you worrying about Shelley?" asked father one night.
+
+"Yes, I am," answered mother.
+
+"What do you think is the trouble?"
+
+"I'm afraid things are not coming out with Mr. Paget as she hoped."
+
+"If they don't, she is going to be unhappy?"
+
+"That's putting it mildly."
+
+"Well, I was doubtful in the beginning."
+
+"Now hold on," said mother.  "So was I; but what are you going to do?
+I can't go through the world with my girls, and meet men for them.  I
+trained them just as carefully as possible before I started them out;
+that was all I could do.  Shelley knows when a man appears clean,
+decent and likable.  She knows when his calling is respectable.  She
+knows when his speech is proper, his manners correct, and his ways
+attractive.  She found this man all of these things, and she liked him
+accordingly.  At Christmas she told me about it freely."
+
+"Have you any idea how far the thing has gone?"
+
+"She said then that she had seen him twice a week for two months.  He
+seemed very fond of her.  He had told her he cared more for her than
+any girl he ever had met, and he had asked her to come here this summer
+and pay us a visit, so she wanted to know if he might."
+
+"Of course you told her yes."
+
+"Certainly I told her yes.  I wish now we'd saved money and you'd gone
+to visit her and met him when she first wrote of him.  You could have
+found out who and what he was, and with your experience you might have
+pointed out signs that would have helped her to see, before it was too
+late."
+
+"What do you think is the trouble?"
+
+"I wish I knew!  She simply is failing to mention him in her letters;
+all the joy of living has dropped from them, she merely writes about
+her work; and now she is beginning to complain of homesickness and to
+say that she doesn't know how to endure the city any longer.  There's
+something wrong."
+
+"Had I better go now?"
+
+"Too late!" said mother, and I could hear her throat go wrong and the
+choke come into her voice.  "She is deeply in love with him; he hasn't
+found in her what he desires; probably he is not coming any more; what
+could you do?"
+
+"I could go and see if there is anything I could do?"
+
+"She may not want you.  I'll write her to-morrow and suggest that you
+or Laddie pay her a visit and learn what she thinks."
+
+"All right," said father.
+
+He kissed her and went to sleep, but mother was awake yet, and she got
+up and stood looking down at the church and the two little white
+gravestones she could see from her window, until I thought she would
+freeze, and she did nearly, for her hands were cold and the tears
+falling when she examined my covers, and felt my face and hands before
+she went to bed.  My, but the mother of a family like ours is never
+short of a lot of things to think of!
+
+I had a new one myself.  Now what do you suppose there was about that
+man?
+
+Of course after having lived all her life with father and Laddie,
+Shelley would know how a man should look, and act to be right; and this
+one must have been right to make her bloom out in winter the way other
+things do in spring; and now what could be wrong?  Maybe city girls
+were prettier than Shelley.  But all women were made alike on the
+outside, and that was as far as you could see.  You couldn't find out
+whether they had pure blood, true hearts, or clean souls.  No girl
+could be so very much prettier than Shelley; they simply were not made
+that way.  She knew how to behave; she had it beaten into her, like all
+of us.  And she knew her books, what our schools could teach her, and
+Groveville, and Lucy, who had city chances for years, and there never
+was a day at our house when books and papers were not read and
+discussed, and your spelling was hammered into you standing in rows
+against the wall, and memory tests--what on earth could be the matter
+with Shelley that a man who could make her look and act as she did at
+Christmas, would now make her unhappy?  Sometimes I wanted to be grown
+up dreadfully, and again, times like that, I wished my bed could stay
+in mother's room, and I could creep behind father's paper and go to
+sleep between his coat and vest, and have him warm my feet in his hands
+forever.
+
+This world was too much for me.  I never worked and worried in all my
+life as I had over Laddie and the Princess, and Laddie said I, myself,
+never would know how I had helped him.  Of course nothing was settled;
+he had to try to make her love him by teaching her how lovable he was.
+We knew, because we always had known him, but she was a stranger and
+had to learn.  It was mighty fine for him that he could force his way
+past the dogs, Thomas, the other men, her half-crazy father, and
+through the locked door, and go there to try to make her see, on Sunday
+nights, and week days, every single chance he could invent, and he
+could think up more reasons for going to Pryors' than mother could for
+putting out an extra wash.
+
+Now just as I got settled a little about him, and we could see they
+really wanted him there, at least the Princess and her mother did, and
+Mr. Pryor must have been fairly decent or Laddie never would have gone;
+and the Princess came to our house to bring me things to eat, and ask
+how mother was, and once to learn how she embroidered Sally's wedding
+chemise, and social things like that; and when father acted as if he
+liked her so much he hadn't a word to say, and mother seemed to begin
+to feel as if Laddie and the Princess could be trusted to fix it up
+about God; and the old mystery didn't matter after all; why, here
+Shelley popped up with another mystery, and it belonged to us.  But
+whatever ailed that man I couldn't possibly think.  It had got to be
+him, for Shelley was so all right at Christmas, it made her look that
+pretty we hardly knew her.
+
+I was thinking about her until I scarcely could study my lessons, so I
+could recite to Laddie at night, and not fall so far behind at school.
+Miss Amelia offered to hear me, but I just begged Laddie, and father
+could see that he taught me fifty things in a lesson that you could
+tell to look at Miss Amelia, she never knew.  Why, he couldn't hear me
+read:
+
+  "We charged upon a flock of geese,
+    And put them all to flight
+  Except one sturdy gander
+    That thought to show us fight,"--
+
+without teaching me that the oldest picture in all the world was made
+of a row of geese, some of which were kinds we then had--the earth
+didn't seem so old when you thought of that--and how a flock of geese
+once wakened an army and saved a city, and how far wild geese could fly
+without alighting in migration, and everything you could think of about
+geese, only he didn't know why eating the same grass made feathers on
+geese and wool on sheep.  Anyway, Miss Amelia never told you a word but
+what was in the book, and how to read and spell it.  May said that
+father was very much disappointed in her, and he was never going to
+hire another teacher until he met and talked with her, no matter what
+kind of letters she could send.  He was not going to help her get a
+summer school, and O my soul!  I hope no one does, for if they do, I
+have to go, and I'd rather die than go to school in the summer.
+
+Leon came in about that time with more fox stories.  Been in Jacob
+Hood's chicken house and taken his best Dorking rooster, and father
+said it was time to do something.  He never said a word so long as they
+took Deams', except they should have barn room for their geese, but
+when anything was the matter at Hoods' father and mother started doing
+something the instant they heard of it.  So father and Laddie rode
+around the neighbourhood and talked it over, and the next night they
+had a meeting at our schoolhouse; men for miles came, and they planned
+a regular old-fashioned foxchase, and every one was wild about it.
+
+Laddie told it at Pryors' and the Princess wanted to go; she asked to
+go with him, and if you please, Mr. Pryor wanted to go too, and their
+Thomas.  They attended the meeting to tell how people chase foxes in
+England, where they seem to hunt them most of the time.  Father said:
+"Thank God for even a foxchase, if it will bring Mr. Pryor among his
+neighbours and help him to act sensibly."  They are going away fifteen
+miles or farther, and form a big circle of men from all directions,
+some walking in a line, and others riding to bring back any foxes that
+escape, and with dogs, and guns, they are going to rout out every one
+they can find, and kill them so they won't take the geese, little pigs,
+lambs, and Hoods' Dorking rooster.  Laddie had a horn that Mr. Pryor
+gave him when he told him this country was showing signs of becoming
+civilized at last; but Leon grinned and said he'd beat that.
+
+Then when you wanted him, he was in the wood house loft at work, but
+father said he couldn't get into mischief there.  He should have seen
+that churn when it was full of wedding breakfast!  We ate for a week
+afterward, until things were all moulded, and we didn't dare anymore.
+One night I begged so hard and promised so faithfully he trusted me; he
+did often, after I didn't tell about the Station; and I went to the
+loft with him, and watched him work an hour.  He had a hollow limb
+about six inches through and fourteen long.  He had cut and burned it
+to a mere shell, and then he had scraped it with glass inside and out,
+until it shone like polished horn.  He had shaved the wool from a piece
+of sheepskin, soaked, stretched, and dried it, and then fitted it over
+one end of the drumlike thing he had made, and tacked and bound it in a
+little groove at the edge.  He put the skin on damp so he could stretch
+it tight.  Then he punched a tiny hole in the middle, and pulled
+through it, down inside the drum, a sheepskin thong rolled in resin,
+with a knot big enough to hold it, and not tear the head.  Then he took
+it under his arm and we slipped across the orchard below the Station,
+and went into the hollow and tried it.
+
+It worked!  I almost fell dead with the first frightful sound.  It just
+bellowed and roared.  In only a little while he found different ways to
+make it sound by his manner of working the tongue.  A long, steady,
+even pull got that kind of a roar.  A short, quick one made it bark.  A
+pull half the length of the thong, a pause, and another pull, made it
+sound like a bark and a yelp.  To pull hard and quick, made it go
+louder, and soft and easy made it whine.  Before he had tried it ten
+minutes he could do fifty things with it that would almost scare the
+livers out of those nasty old foxes that were taking every one's geese,
+Dorking roosters, and even baby lambs and pigs.  Of course people
+couldn't stand that; something had to be done!
+
+Even in the Bible it says, "Beware of the little foxes that spoil the
+vines," and geese, especially blue ones, Dorking roosters, lambs, and
+pigs were much more valuable than mere vines; so Leon made that awful
+thing to scare the foxes from their holes that's in the Bible too,
+about the holes I mean, not the scaring.  I wanted Leon to slip to the
+back door and make the dumb-bell--that's what he called it; if I had
+been naming it I would have called it the thunder-bell--go; but he
+wouldn't.  He said he didn't propose to work as he had, and then have
+some one find out, and fix one like it.  He said he wouldn't let it
+make a sound until the night before the chase, and then he'd raise the
+dead.  I don't know about the dead; but it was true of the living.
+Father went a foot above his chair and cried: "Whoo-pee!"  All of us,
+even I, when I was waiting for it, screamed as if Paddy Ryan raved at
+the door.  Then Leon came in and showed us, and every one wanted to
+work the dumb-bell, even mother.  Leon marched around and showed off;
+he looked "See the conquering hero comes," all over.  I never felt
+worse about being made into a girl than I did that night.
+
+I couldn't sleep for excitement, and mother said I might as well, for
+it would be at least one o'clock before they would round-up in our
+meadow below the barn.  All the neighbours were to shut up their stock,
+tie their dogs, or lead them with chains, if they took them, so when
+the foxes were surrounded, they could catch them alive, and save their
+skins.  I wondered how some of those chasing people, even Laddie, Leon,
+and father--think of that!  father was going too--I wondered how they
+would have liked to have had something as much bigger than they were,
+as they were bigger than the foxes, chase them with awful noises, guns
+and dogs, and catch them alive--to save their skins.  No wonder I
+couldn't sleep!  I guess the foxes wouldn't either, if they had known
+what was coming.  Maybe hereafter the mean old things would eat rabbits
+and weasels, and leave the Dorking roosters alone.
+
+May, Candace, and Miss Amelia were going to Deams' to wait, and when
+the round-up formed a solid line, they planned to stand outside, and
+see the sport.  If they had been the foxes, maybe they wouldn't have
+thought it was so funny; but of course, people just couldn't have even
+their pigs and lambs taken.  We had to have wool to spin yarn for our
+stockings, weave our blankets and coverlids, and our Sunday winter
+dresses of white flannel with narrow black crossbars were from the
+backs of our own sheep, and we had to have ham to fry with eggs, and
+boil for Sunday night suppers, and bacon to cook the greens with--of
+course it was all right.
+
+Before it was near daylight I heard Laddie making the kitchen fire, so
+father got right up, Leon came down, and all of them went to the barn
+to do the feeding.  I wanted to get up too, but mother said I should
+stay in bed until the house was warm, because if I took more cold I'd
+be sick again.  At breakfast May asked father about when they should
+start for Deams' to be ahead of the chase, and he said by ten o'clock
+at least; because a fox driven mad by pursuit, dogs, and noise, was a
+very dangerous thing, and a bite might make hy----the same thing as a
+mad dog.  He said our back barn door opening from the threshing floor
+would afford a fine view of the meet, but Candace, May, and Miss Amelia
+wanted to be closer.  I might go with them if they would take good care
+of me, and they promised to; but when the time came to start, there was
+such a queer feeling inside me, I thought maybe it was more fever, and
+with mother would be the best place for me, so I said I wanted to watch
+from the barn.  Father thought that was a capital idea, because I would
+be on the east side, where there would be no sun and wind, and it would
+be perfectly safe; also, I really could see what was going on better
+from that height than on the ground.
+
+The sun was going to shine, but it hadn't peeped above Deams'
+strawstack when father on his best saddle horse, and Laddie on Flos,
+rode away, their eyes shining, their faces red, their blood pounding so
+it made their voices sound excited and different.  Leon was to go on
+foot.  Father said he would ride a horse to death.  He just grinned and
+never made a word of complaint.  Seemed funny for him.
+
+"I was over having a little confidential chat with my horse, last
+night," he said, "and next year we'll be in the chase, and we'll show
+you how to take fences, and cut curves; just you wait!"
+
+"Leon, DON'T build so on that horse," wailed mother.  "I'm sure that
+money was stolen like ours, and the owner will claim it! I feel it in
+my bones!"
+
+"Aw, shucks!" said Leon.  "That money is mine.  He won't either!"
+
+When they started, father took Leon behind him to ride as far as the
+county line.  He said he would go slowly, and it wouldn't hurt the
+horse, but Leon slipped off at Hoods', and said he'd go with their
+boys, so father let him, because light as Leon was, both of them were
+quite a load for one horse.  Laddie went to ride with the Princess.  We
+could see people moving around in Pryors' barnyard when our men
+started.  Candace washed, Miss Amelia wiped the dishes, May swept, and
+all of them made the beds, and then they went to Deams', while I stayed
+with mother.  When she thought it was time, she bundled me up warmly,
+and I went to the barn.  Father had the east doors standing open for
+me, so I could sit in the sun, hang my feet against the warm boards,
+and see every inch of our meadow where the meet was to be.  I was
+really too warm there, and had to take off the scarf, untie my hood,
+and unbutton my coat.
+
+It was a trifle muddy, but the frost had not left the ground yet, the
+sparrows were singing fit to burst, so were the hens.  I didn't care
+much for the music of the hen, but I could see she meant well.  She
+liked her nest quite as much as the red velvet bird with black wings,
+or the bubbly yellow one, and as for baby chickens, from the first peep
+they beat a little naked, blind, wobbly tree bird, so any hen had a
+right to sing for joy because she was going to be the mother of a large
+family of them.  A hen had something was going to be the mother of a
+large family of them.  A hen had something to sing about all right, and
+so had we, when we thought of poached eggs and fried chicken.  When I
+remembered them, I saw that it was no wonder the useful hen warbled so
+proudlike; but that was all nonsense, for I don't suppose a hen ever
+tasted poached eggs, and surely she wouldn't be happy over the prospect
+of being fried.  Maybe one reason she sang was because she didn't know
+what was coming; I hardly think she'd be so tuneful if she did.
+
+Sometimes the geese, shut in the barn, raised an awful clatter, and the
+horses and cattle complained about being kept from the sunshine and
+fresh air.  You couldn't blame them.  It was a lovely day, and the big
+upper door the pleasantest place.  I didn't care if the fox hunters
+never came, there was so much to see, hear, and smell.  Everything was
+busy making signs of spring, and one could become tired of ice and snow
+after a while, and so hungry for summer that those first days which
+were just hints of what was coming were almost better than the real
+thing when it arrived.  Bud perfume was stronger than last week, many
+doves and bluebirds were calling, and three days more of such sunshine
+would make cross-country riding too muddy to be pleasant.  I sat there
+thinking; grown people never know how much children do think, they have
+so much time, and so many bothersome things to study out.  I heard it
+behind me, a long, wailing, bellowing roar, and my hood raised right up
+with my hair.  I was in the middle of the threshing floor in a second,
+in another at the little west door, cut into the big one, opening it a
+tiny crack to take a peep, and see how close they were.
+
+I could see nothing, but I heard a roar of dreadful sound steadily
+closing in a circle around me.  No doubt the mean old foxes wished then
+they had let the Dorking roosters alone.  Closer it came and more
+dreadful.  Never again did I want to hear such sounds coming at me;
+even when I knew what was making them.  And then away off, beyond
+Pryors', and Hoods', and Dovers', I could see a line of tiny specks
+coming toward me, and racing flying things that must have been people
+on horses riding back and forth to give the foxes no chance to find a
+hiding place.  No chance!  Laddie and the Princess, Mr. Pryor and
+father, and all of them were after the bad old foxes; and they were
+going to get them; because they'd have no chance--Not with a solid line
+of men with raving dogs surrounding them, and people on horseback
+racing after them, no! the foxes would wish now that they had left the
+pigs and lambs alone.  In that awful roaring din, they would wish, Oh
+how they would wish, they were birds and could fly!  Fly back to their
+holes like the Bible said they had, where maybe they LIKED to live, and
+no doubt they had little foxes there, that would starve when their
+mammies were caught alive, to save their skins.
+
+To save their skins!  I could hear myself breathe, and feel my teeth
+click, and my knees knock together.  And then!  Oh dear!  There they
+came across our cornfield.  Two of them!  And they could fly, almost.
+At least you could scarcely see that they touched the ground.  The mean
+old things were paying up for the pigs and lambs now.  Through the
+fence, across the road, straight toward me they came.  Almost red
+backs, nearly white beneath, long flying tails, beautiful pointed ears,
+and long tongues, fire red, hanging from their open mouths; their sleek
+sides pulsing, and that awful din coming through the woods behind them.
+One second, the first paused to glance toward either side, and threw
+back its head to listen.  What it saw, and heard, showed it.  I guess
+then it was sorry it ever took people's ham, and their greens, and
+their blankets; and it could see and hear that it had no chance--to
+save its skin.
+
+"Oh Lord!  Dear Lord!  Help me!" I prayed.
+
+It had to be me, there was no one else.  I never had opened the big
+doors; I thought it took a man, but when I pushed with all my
+might--and maybe if the hairs of our heads were numbered, and the
+sparrows counted, there would be a little mercy for the foxes--I asked
+for help; maybe I got it.  The doors went back, and I climbed up the
+ladder to the haymow a few steps and clung there, praying with all my
+might:  "Make them come in!  Dear Lord, make them come in!  Give them a
+chance!  Help them to save their skins, O Lord!"
+
+With a whizz and a flash one went past me, skimmed the cider press, and
+rushed across the hay; then the other.  I fell to the floor and the
+next thing I knew the doors were shut, and I was back at my place.  I
+just went down in a heap and leaned against the wall and shook, and
+then I laughed and said:  "Thank you, Lord!  Thank you for helping with
+the door!  And the foxes!  The beautiful little red and white foxes!
+They've got their chance!  They'll save their skins!  They'll get back
+to their holes and their babies!  Praise the Lord!"
+
+I knew when I heard that come out, that it was exactly like my father
+said it when Amos Hurd was redeemed.  I never knew father to say it so
+impressively before, because Amos had been so bad, people really were
+afraid of him, and father said if once he got started right, he would
+go at it just as hard as he had gone at wrongdoing.  I suppose I
+shouldn't have said it about a fox, when there were the Dorkings, and
+ham, and white wool dresses, and all that, but honestly, I couldn't
+remember that I cared particularly whether Amos Hurd was redeemed or
+not; he was always lovely to children; while I never in all my life had
+wanted anything worse than I wanted those foxes to save their skins.  I
+could hear them pant like run out dogs; and I could hear myself, and I
+hadn't been driven from my home and babies, maybe--and chased miles and
+miles, either.
+
+Then I just shook.  They came pounding, roaring and braying right
+around the barn, and down the lane.  The little door flew open and a
+strange man stuck in his head.
+
+"Shut that door!" I screamed.  "You'll let them in on me, and they
+bite!  They're poison!  They'll kill me!"
+
+I hadn't even thought of it before.
+
+"See any foxes?" cried the man.
+
+"Two crossed our barnyard headed that way!" I cried back, pointing
+east.  "Shut the door!"
+
+The man closed it and ran calling as he went:  "It's all right!  They
+crossed the barnyard.  We've got them!"
+
+I began to dance and beat my hands, and then I stopped and held my
+breath.  They were passing, and the noise was dreadful.  They struck
+the sides of the barn, poked around the strawstack, and something made
+me look up, and at the edge of the hay stood a fox ready to spring.  If
+it did, it would go from the door, right into the midst thereof.
+Nothing but my red hood sailing straight at it, and a yell I have,
+drove it back.  No one hit the barn again, the line closed up, and went
+on at a run now, they were so anxious to meet and see what they had.
+Then came the beat of hoofs and I saw that all the riders had dropped
+back, and were behind the line of people on foot.  I watched Laddie as
+he flew past waving to me, and I grabbed my scarf to wave at him.  The
+Princess flashed by so swiftly I couldn't see how she looked, and then
+I heard a voice I knew cry:  "Ep!  Ep!  Over Lad!"  And I almost fell
+dead where I stood.  Mr. Pryor sailed right over the barnyard fence
+into the cornfield, ripping that dumb-bell as he went, and neck and
+neck, even with him, on one of his finest horses, was our Leon.  His
+feet were in the stirrups, he had the reins tight, he almost stood as
+he arose, his face was crimson, his head bare, his white hair flying,
+the grandest sight you ever saw.  At the top of my voice I screamed
+after them, "Ep!  Ep!  Over lad!" and then remembered and looked to see
+if I had to chase back the foxes, but they didn't mind only me, after
+what they had been through.  Then I sat down suddenly again.
+
+Well!  What would father think of that!  Leon kill a horse of ours
+indeed!  There he was on one of Mr. Pryor's, worth as much as six of
+father's no doubt, flying over fences, and the creek was coming, and
+the bank was steep behind the barn.  I was up again straining to see.
+
+"Ep!  Ep!  Over!" rang the cry.
+
+There they went!  Laddie and the Princess too.  I'll never spend
+another cent on paper dolls, candy, raisins, or oranges.  I'll give all
+I have to help Leon buy his horse; then I'm going to begin saving for
+mine.
+
+The line closed up, a solid wall of men with sticks, clubs and guns;
+the dogs ranged outside, and those on horseback stopped where they
+could see best; and inside, raced back and forth, and round and round,
+living creatures.  I couldn't count they moved so, but even at that
+distance I could see that some were poor little cotton tails.  The
+scared things!  A whack over the head, a backward toss, and the dogs
+were mouthing them.  The long tailed, sleek, gracefully moving ones,
+they were foxes, the foxes driven from their holes, and nothing on
+earth could save their skins for them now; those men meant to have them.
+
+I pulled the doors shut suddenly.  I was so sick I could scarcely
+stand.  I had to work, but at last I pushed the west doors open again.
+I don't think the Lord helped me any that time, for I knew what it
+took--before, they just went.  Or maybe He did help me quite as much,
+but I had harder work to do my share, because I felt so dizzy and ill.
+Anyway, they opened.  Then I climbed the upright ladder to the top
+beam, walked it to the granary, and there I danced, pounded and yelled
+so that the foxes jumped from the hay, leaped lightly to the threshing
+floor, and stood looking and listening.  I gave them time to hear where
+the dreadful racket was, and then I jumped to the hay and threw the
+pitchfork at them.  It came down smash! and both of them sprang from
+the door.  When I got down the ladder and where I could see, they were
+so rested they were hiking across the cornfield like they never had
+raced a step before; and as the clamour went up behind me, that
+probably meant the first fox had lost its beautiful red and white skin,
+they reached our woods in safety.  The doors went shut easier, and I
+started to the house crying like any blubbering baby; but when mother
+turned from the east window, and I noticed her face, I forgot the foxes.
+
+"You saw Leon!" I cried.
+
+"That I did!" she exulted, rocking on her toes the same as she does at
+the Meeting House when she is going to cry, "Glory!" any minute.  "That
+I did!  Ah! the brave little chap!  Ah! the fine fellow!"
+
+Her cheeks were the loveliest pink, and her eyes blazed.  I scarcely
+knew her.
+
+"What will father say?"
+
+"If his father isn't every particle as proud of him as I am this day,
+I've a big disappointment coming," she answered.  "If Mr. Pryor chose
+to let him take that fine horse, and taught him how to ride it, father
+should be glad."
+
+"If he'd gone into the creek, you wouldn't feel so fine."
+
+"Ah! but he didn't!  He didn't!  He stuck to the saddle and sailed over
+in one grand, long sweep!  It was fine!  I hope--to my soul, I hope his
+father saw it!"
+
+"He did!" I said.  "He did!  He was about halfway down the lane.  He
+was where he could see fine."
+
+"You didn't notice----?"
+
+"I was watching if Leon went under.  What if he had, mother?"
+
+"They'd have taken him out, and brought him to me, and I'd have worked
+with all the strength and skill God has given me, and if it were
+possible to us, he would be saved, and if it were not, it would be a
+proud moment for a woman to offer a boy like that to the God who gave
+him.  One would have nothing to be ashamed of!"
+
+"Could you do it, like you are now, and not cry, mother?" I asked
+wonderingly.
+
+"Patience no!" said she.  "Before long you will find out, child, that
+the fountain head of tears and laughter lies in the same spot, deep in
+a woman's heart.  Men were made for big things!  They must brave the
+wild animals, the Indians, fight the battles, ride the races, till the
+fields, build the homes.  In the making of a new country men must have
+the thing in their souls that carried Leon across the creek.  If he had
+checked that horse and gone to the ford, I would have fallen where I
+stood!"
+
+"Father crossed the ford!"
+
+"True!  But that's different.  He never had a chance at a horse like
+that!  He never had time for fancy practice, and his nose would have
+been between the pages of a book if he had.  But remember this!  Your
+father's hand has never faltered, and his aim has never failed.  All of
+us are here, safe and comfortable, through him.  It was your father who
+led us across the wilderness, and fended from us the wildcat, wolf, and
+Indian.  He built this house, cleared this land, and gave to all of us
+the thing we love.  Get this in your head straight.  Your father rode a
+plow horse; he never tried flourishes in riding; but no man can stick
+in the saddle longer, ride harder, and face any danger with calmer
+front.  If you think this is anything, you should have seen his face
+the day he stood between me and a band of Indians, we had every reason
+to think, I had angered to the fighting point."
+
+"Tell me!  Please tell me!" I begged.
+
+All of us had been brought up on that story, but we were crazy to hear
+it, and mother loved to tell it, so she dropped on a chair and began:
+
+"We were alone in a cabin in the backwoods of Ohio.  Elizabeth was only
+nine months old, and father always said a mite the prettiest of any
+baby we ever had.  Many of the others have looked quite as well to me,
+but she was the first, and he was so proud of her he always wanted me
+to wait in the wagon until he hitched the horses, so he would get to
+take and to carry her himself.  Well, she was in the cradle, cooing and
+laughing, and I had my work all done, and cabin shining.  I was heating
+a big poker red-hot, and burning holes into the four corners of a board
+so father could put legs in it to make me a bench.  A greasy old squaw
+came to the door with her papoose on her back.  She wanted to trade
+berries for bread.  There were berries everywhere for the picking; I
+had more dried than I could use in two years.  We planted only a little
+patch of wheat and father had to ride three days to carry to mill what
+he could take on a horse.  I baked in an outoven and when it was done,
+a loaf of white bread was by far the most precious thing we had to eat.
+Sometimes I was caught, and forced to let it go.  Often I baked during
+the night and hid the bread in the wheat at the barn.  There was none
+in the cabin that day and I said so.  She didn't believe me.  She set
+her papoose on the floor beside the fireplace, and went to the
+cupboard.  There wasn't a crumb there except cornbread, and she didn't
+want that.  She said:  'Brod!  Brod!'
+
+"She learned that from the Germans in the settlement.  I shook my head.
+Then she pulled out a big steel hunting knife, such as the whites
+traded to the Indians so they would have no trouble in scalping us
+neatly, and walked to the cradle.  She took that knife loosely between
+her thumb and second finger and holding it directly above my baby's
+face, she swung it lightly back and forth and demanded:  'Brod!  Brod!'
+
+"If the knife fell, it would go straight through my baby's head, and
+Elizabeth was reaching her little hands and laughing.  There was only
+one thing to do, and I did it.  I caught that red-hot poker from the
+fire, and stuck it so close her baby's face, that the papoose drew back
+and whimpered.  I scarcely saw how she snatched it up and left.  When
+your father came, I told him, and we didn't know what to do.  We knew
+she would come back and bring her band.  If we were not there, they
+would burn the cabin, ruin our crops, kill our stock, take everything
+we had, and we couldn't travel so far, or so fast, that on their ponies
+they couldn't overtake us.  We endangered any one with whom we sought
+refuge, so we gripped hands, knelt down and told the Lord all about it,
+and we felt the answer was to stay.  Father cleaned the gun, and hours
+and hours we waited.
+
+"About ten o'clock the next day they came, forty braves in war paint
+and feathers.  I counted until I was too sick to see, then I took the
+baby in my arms and climbed to the loft, with our big steel knife in
+one hand.  If your father fell, I was to use it, first on Elizabeth,
+then on myself.  The Indians stopped at the woodyard, and the chief of
+the band came to the door, alone.  Your father met him with his gun in
+reach, and for a whole eternity they stood searching each other's eyes.
+I was at the trapdoor where I could see both of them.
+
+"To the depths of my soul I enjoyed seeing Leon take the fence and
+creek: but what was that, child, to compare with the timber that stood
+your father like a stone wall between me and forty half-naked, paint
+besmeared, maddened Indians?  Don't let any showing the men of to-day
+can make set you to thinking that father isn't a king among men.  Not
+once, but again and again in earlier days, he fended danger from me
+like that.  I can shut my eyes and see his waving hair, his white brow,
+his steel blue eyes, his unfaltering hand.  I don't remember that I had
+time or even thought to pray.  I gripped the baby, and the knife, and
+waited for the thing I must do if an arrow or a shot sailed past the
+chief and felled father.  They stood second after second, like two
+wooden men, and then slowly and deliberately the chief lighted his big
+pipe, drew a few puffs and handed it to father.  He set down his gun,
+took the pipe and quite as slowly and deliberately he looked at the
+waiting band, at the chief, and then raised it to his lips.
+
+"'White squaw brave!  Heap much brave!' said the chief.
+
+"'In the strength of the Lord.  Amen!' said father.
+
+"Then he reached his hand and the chief took it, so I came down the
+ladder and stood beside father, as the Indians began to file in the
+front door and out the back.  As they passed, every man of them made
+the peace sign and piled in a heap, venison, fish, and game, while each
+squaw played with the baby and gave me a gift of beads, a metal
+trinket, or a blanket she had woven.  After that they came often, and
+brought gifts, and if prowling Gypsies were pilfering, I could look to
+see a big Indian loom up and seat himself at my fireside until any
+danger was past.  I really got so I liked and depended on them, and
+father left me in their care when he went to mill, and I was safe as
+with him.  You have heard the story over and over, but to-day is the
+time to impress on you that an exhibition like THIS is the veriest
+child's play compared with what I have seen your father do repeatedly!"
+
+"But it was you, the chief said was brave!"
+
+Mother laughed.
+
+"I had to be, baby," she said.  "Mother had no choice.  There's only
+one way to deal with an Indian.  I had lived among them all my life,
+and I knew what must be done."
+
+"I think both of you were brave," I said, "you, the bravest!"
+
+"Quite the contrary," laughed mother.  "I shall have to confess that
+what I did happened so quickly I'd no time to think.  I only realized
+the coal red iron was menacing the papoose when it drew back and
+whimpered.  Father had all night to face what was coming to him, and it
+was not one to one, but one to forty, with as many more squaws, as good
+fighters as the braves, to back them.  It was a terror but I never have
+been sorry we went through it together.  I have rested so securely in
+your father ever since."
+
+"And he is as safe in you," I insisted.
+
+"As you will," said mother.  "This world must have her women quite as
+much as her men.  It is shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart, business."
+
+The clamour in the meadow arose above our voices and brought us back to
+the foxes.
+
+"There goes another!" I said, the tears beginning to roll again.
+
+"It is heathenish business," said mother.  "I don't blame you!  If
+people were not too shiftless to care for their stuff, the foxes
+wouldn't take their chickens and geese.  They never get ours!"
+
+"Hoods aren't shiftless!" I sobbed.
+
+"There are always exceptions," said mother, "and they are the exception
+in this case."
+
+The door flew open and Leon ran in.  He was white with excitement, and
+trembling.
+
+"Mother, come and see me take a fence on Pryor's Rocket!" he cried.
+
+Mother had him in her arms.
+
+"You little whiffet!" she said.  "You little tow-haired whiffet!"
+
+Both of them were laughing and crying at the same time, and so was I.
+
+"I saw you take one fence and the creek, Weiscope!" she said, holding
+him tight, and stroking his hair.  "That will do for to-day.  Ride the
+horse home slowly, rub it down if they will allow you, and be sure to
+remember your manners when you leave.  To trust such a child as you
+with so valuable a horse, and for Mr. Pryor to personally ride with you
+and help you, I think that was a big thing for a man like him to do."
+
+"But, mother, he's been showing me for weeks, or I couldn't have done
+it to-day.  It was our secret to surprise you.  When I get my horse,
+I'll be able to ride a little, as well as Mr. Laddie."
+
+"Leon, don't," said mother, gripping him tighter.
+
+"You must bear in mind, word about that money may come any day."
+
+"Aw, it won't either," said Leon, pulling away.  "And say, mother, that
+dumb-bell was like country boys make in England.  He helped me hunt the
+wood and showed me, and I couldn't ride and manage it, so he had it all
+day, and you should have heard him make it rip.  Say, mother, take my
+word, he was some pumpkins in England.  I bet he ordered the Queen
+around, when he was there!"
+
+"No doubt!" laughed mother, kissing him and pushing him from the door.
+
+Some people are never satisfied.  After that splendid riding and the
+perfect day, father, Leon, and Laddie came home blaming every one, and
+finding fault, and trying to explain how it happened, that the people
+from the east side claimed two foxes, and there was only one left for
+the west side, when they had seen and knew they had driven three for
+miles.  They said they lost them in our Big Woods.
+
+I didn't care one speck.  I would as lief wear a calico dress, and let
+the little foxes have their mammies to feed them; and I was willing to
+bet all my money that we would have as much ham, and as many greens
+next summer as we ever had.  And if the foxes took Hoods' Dorkings
+again, let them build a coop with safe foundations.  The way was to use
+stone and heap up dirt around it in the fall, to be perfectly sure, and
+make it warmer.
+
+We took care of our chickens because we had to have them.  All the year
+we needed them, but most especially for Easter.  Mother said that was
+ordained chicken time.  Turkeys for Thanksgiving, sucking pigs for
+Christmas, chickens for Easter, goose, she couldn't abide.  She thought
+it was too strong.  She said the egg was a symbol of life; of
+awakening, of birth, and the chickens came from the eggs, first ones
+about Easter, so that proved it was chicken time.
+
+I am going to quit praying about little things I can manage myself.
+Father said no prayer would bring an answer unless you took hold and
+pulled with all your being for what you wanted.  I had been intending
+for days to ask the Lord to help me find where Leon hid his Easter
+eggs.  It had been the law at our house from the very first, that for
+the last month before Easter, aside from what mother had to have for
+the house, all of us might gather every egg we could find and keep them
+until Easter.  If we could locate the hiding place of any one else, we
+might take all theirs.  The day before Easter they were brought in,
+mother put aside what she required, and the one who had the most got to
+sell all of them and take the money.  Sometimes there were two washtubs
+full, and what they brought was worth having, for sure.  So we watched
+all year for safe places, and when the time came we almost ran after
+the hens with a basket.  Because Laddie and Leon were bigger they could
+outrun us, and lots of hens laid in the barn, so there the boys always
+had first chance.  Often during the month we would find and take each
+other's eggs a dozen times.
+
+We divided them, and hid part in different places, so that if either
+were found there would still be some left.
+
+Laddie had his in the hopper of the cider press right on the threshing
+floor, and as he was sure to get more than I had anyway, I usually put
+mine with his.  May had hers some place, and where Leon had his, none
+of us could find or imagine.  I almost lay awake of nights trying to
+think, and every time I thought of a new place, the next day I would
+look, and they wouldn't be there.  Three days before Easter, mother
+began to cook and get the big dinner ready, and she ran short of eggs.
+She told me to go to the barn and tell the boys that each of them must
+send her a dozen as quickly as they could.  Of course that was fair, if
+she made both give up the same number.  So I went to the barn.
+
+The lane was muddy, and as I had been sick, I wore my rubbers that
+spring.  I thought to keep out of the deep mud, where horses and cattle
+trampled, I'd go up the front embankment, and enter the little door.
+My feet made no sound, and it so happened that the door didn't either,
+and as I started to open it.  I saw Leon disappearing down the
+stairway, with a big sack on his back.  I thought it was corn for the
+horses, and followed him, but he went to the cow stable door and
+started toward the lane, and then I thought it was for the pigs, so I
+called Laddie and told him about the eggs.  He said he'd give me two
+dozen of his, and Leon could pay him back.  We went together to get
+them, and there was only one there.
+
+Wasn't that exactly like Leon?  Leave ONE for the nest egg!  If he were
+dying and saw a joke or a trick, he'd stop to play it before he
+finished, if he possibly could.  If he had no time at all, then he'd go
+with his eyes twinkling over the thoughts of the fun it would have been
+if he possibly could have managed it.  Of course when we saw that one
+lonely egg in the cider hopper, just exactly like the "Last Rose of
+Summer, left to pine on the stem," I thought of the sack Leon carried,
+and knew what had been in it.  We hurried out and tried to find him,
+but he was swallowed up.  You couldn't see him or hear a sound of him
+anywhere.
+
+Mother was as cross as she ever gets.  Right there she made a new rule,
+and it was that two dozen eggs must be brought to the house each day,
+whether any were hidden or not.  She had to stop baking until she got
+eggs.  She said a few times she had used a goose egg in custard.  I
+could fix that.  I knew where one of our gray geese had a nest, and if
+she'd cook any goose egg, it would be a gray one.  Of course I had
+sense enough not to take a blue one.  So I slipped from the east door,
+crossed the yard and orchard corner, climbed the fence and went down
+the lane.  There was the creek up and tearing.  It was half over the
+meadow, and the floodgate between the pasture and the lane rocked with
+the rush of water; still, I believed I could make it.  So I got on the
+fence and with my feet on the third rail, and holding by the top one, I
+walked sidewise, and so going reached the floodgate.  It was pretty
+wobbly, but I thought I could cross on the run.  I knew I could if I
+dared jump at the other end; but there the water was over the third
+rail, and that meant above my head.
+
+It was right at that time of spring when you felt so good you thought
+you could do most anything, except fly--I tried that once--so I went
+on.  The air was cold for all the sun shone, the smell of catkin
+pollen, bursting buds, and the odour of earth steaming in the sun, was
+in every breath; the blackbirds were calling, and the doves; the
+ganders looked longingly at the sky and screamed a call to every
+passing wild flock, and Deams' rooster wanted to fight all creation, if
+you judged by the boasting he was doing from their barnyard gate.  He
+made me think of eggs, so I set my jaws, looked straight ahead, and
+scooted across the floodgate to the post that held it and the rails of
+the meadow fence.  I made it too, and then the fence was easy, only I
+had to double quite short, because the water was over the third rail
+there, but at last it was all gone, and I went to the fence corner and
+there was the goose on the nest, laying an egg.  She had built on a
+little high place, among puddles, wild rose bushes, and thorns, and the
+old thing wouldn't get off.  She just sat there and stuck out her head
+and hissed and hissed.  I never noticed before that geese were so big
+and so aggravating.  I wasn't going to give up, after that floodgate,
+so I hunted a big stick, set it against her wing, pushed her off and
+grabbed three eggs and ran.  When I got to the fence, I was in a pickle
+for sure.  I didn't know what in the world to do with the eggs.
+
+At last I unbuttoned my coat, put them in my apron front, gathered it
+up, and holding it between my teeth, started back.  I had to double
+more than ever on account of the eggs, and when I reached the floodgate
+it rocked like a branch in the wind; but I had to get back, so I rested
+and listened to the larks a while.  That was a good plan.  They were
+calling for mates, and what they said was so perfectly lovely, you
+couldn't think of anything else; and the less you thought about how
+that gate rocked, and how deep and swift the water ran, the better for
+you.  At last one lark went almost from sight and he rang, twisted and
+trilled his call, until my heart swelled so big it hurt.  I crossed on
+the jump with no time to think at all.  That was a fine plan, for I
+made it, but I hit the post so hard I broke the middle egg.  I was
+going to throw it away, but there was so much starch in my apron it
+held like a dish, and it had been clean that morning, now the egg
+soiled it anyway, so I ran and got home all right.
+
+Mother was so pleased about the eggs she changed the apron and never
+said a word, except to brag on me.  She said she couldn't keep house
+without me, and I guess that was a fact.  I came in handy a lot of
+times.  But at dinner when she scolded the boys about the eggs, and
+told them I brought the goose eggs for her custard, else there would
+have been no pie, father broke loose, and I thought he was going to
+whip me sure.  He told mother all about the water and the gate, and how
+I had to cross, and he said, 'it was a dispensation of Providence that
+we didn't have a funeral instead of celebrating Easter,' so I said:
+
+"Well, if you think I came so near drowning myself, when you rejoice
+because Christ is risen from the dead, you can be glad I am too, and
+that will make it all the better."
+
+The boys laughed, but father said it was no laughing matter.  I think
+that speech saved me from going on the threshing floor, for he took me
+on his lap when I thought I'd have to go, and told me never, never to
+do anything like that again, and then he hugged me until I almost
+broke.  Gracious!  He should have seen us going to school some days.
+Why, we even walked the top rail when it was the only one above water,
+and we could cross the bridge if we wanted to.  At least when Laddie or
+Miss Amelia was not around, we did.
+
+Leon was so bursting full he scarcely could eat, and Laddie looked
+pretty glum when he had to admit he had no eggs; so Laddie had to hand
+over the whole two dozen.  Leon didn't mind that, but he said if he
+must, then all of us should stay in the dining-room until he brought
+them, because of course he couldn't walk straight and get them in broad
+daylight with us watching, and not show where they were.  Father said
+that was fair, so Leon went out and before so very long he came back
+with the eggs.
+
+I thought until my skull almost cracked, about where he COULD have
+gone, and I was almost to the place where the thing seemed serious
+enough that I'd ask the Lord to help me find Laddie's eggs, when mother
+sent me to the garret for red onion skins.  She had an hour to rest,
+and she was going to spend it fixing decorations for our eggs.  Of
+course there were always red and black aniline ones, and yellow and
+blue, but none of us ever like them half so well as those mother
+coloured, herself.
+
+She took the dark red skins and cut boys, girls, dogs, cats, stars,
+flowers, butterflies, fish, and everything imaginable, and wet the
+skins a little and laid them on very white eggs that had been soaked in
+alum water to cut the grease, and then wrapped light yellow skins over,
+and then darker ones, and at last layer after layer of cloth, and wet
+that, and roasted them an hour in hot ashes and then let them cool and
+dry, before unwrapping.  When she took them out, rubbed on a little
+grease and polished them--there they were!  They would have our names,
+flowers, birds, animals, all in pale yellow, deep rich brown, almost
+red, and perfectly beautiful colours, while you could hunt and hunt
+before you found everything on one egg.  And sometimes the onion skins
+slipped, and made things of themselves that she never put on.
+
+I was coming from the bin with an apron full of skins and I almost fell
+over.  I couldn't breathe for a long time.  I danced on my toes, and
+held my mouth to keep from screaming.  On the garret floor before me
+lay a little piece of wet mud, and the faintest outline of a boot, a
+boot about Leon's size.  That was all I needed to know.  As soon as I
+could hold steady, I took the skins to mother, slipped back and hunted
+good; and of course I had to find them--grainsacks half full of
+them--carried in the front door in the evening, and up the front
+stairs, where no one went until bedtime, unless there were company.
+Away back under the eaves, across the joists, behind the old clothing
+waiting to be ripped, coloured and torn for carpet rangs and rugs, Mr.
+Leon had almost every egg that had been laid on the place for a month.
+
+NOW he'd see what he'd get for taking Laddie's!
+
+Then I stopped short.  What I thought most made me sick, but I didn't
+propose to lie in bed again for a year at least, for it had its bad
+parts as well as its good; so I went straight and whispered to Laddie.
+He never looked pleased at all, so I knew I had been right.  He kissed
+me, and thanked me, and then said slowly:  "It's mighty good of you,
+Little Sister, but you see it wouldn't be FAIR.  He found mine himself,
+so he had a right to take them.  But I don't dare touch his, when you
+tell me where they are.  I never in a month of Sundays would have
+looked for them in the house.  I was going to search the wood house and
+smoke house this afternoon.  I can't take them.  But thank you just as
+much."
+
+Then I went to father and he laughed.  How he did laugh!
+
+"Laddie is right!" he said at last.  "He didn't find them, and he
+mustn't take them.  But you may!  They're yours!  That front door
+scheme of Leon's was fairly well, but it wasn't quite good enough.  If
+he'd cleaned his feet as he should, before he crossed mother's carpet
+and climbed the stairs, he'd have made it all right.  'His tracks
+betrayed him,' as tracks do all of us, if we are careless enough to
+leave any.  The eggs are yours, and to-night is the time to produce
+them.  Where do you want to hide them?"
+
+Well of all things! and after I had stumbled on them without pestering
+the Lord, either!  Just as slick as anything!  Mine!  I never ever
+thought of it.  But when I did think, I liked it.  The more I thought,
+the funnier it grew.
+
+"Under mother's bed," I whispered.  "But I never can get them.  They're
+in wheat sacks, and full so high, and they'll have to be handled like
+eggs."
+
+"I'll do the carrying," laughed father.  "Come show me!"
+
+So we took all those eggs, and put them under mother's bed.
+
+Of course she and Candace saw us, but they didn't hunt eggs and they'd
+never tell.  If ever I thought I'd burst wide open!  About dusk I saw
+Leon coming from the barn carrying his hat at his side--more eggs--so I
+ran like a streak and locked the front door, and then slipped back in
+the dining-room and almost screamed, when I could hear him trying it,
+and he couldn't get in.  After a while he came in, fussed around, and
+finally went into the sitting-room, and the key turned and he went
+upstairs.  I knew I wouldn't dare look at him when he came down, so I
+got a reader and began on a piece I just love:
+
+  "A nightingale made a mistake;
+    She sang a few notes out of tune:
+  Her heart was ready to break,
+    And she hid away from the moon."
+
+
+When I did get a peep, gracious but he was black!  Maybe it wasn't
+going to be so much fun after all.  But he had the money last year, and
+the year before, and if he'd cleaned his feet well--I was not hunting
+his eggs, when I found them.  "His tracks betrayed him," as father
+said.  I was thankful supper was ready just then, and while it was
+going on mother said:  "As soon as you finish, all bring in your eggs.
+I want to wrap the ones to colour to-night, and bury them in the
+fireplace so they will colour, dry, and be ready to open in the
+morning."
+
+No one said a word, but neither Laddie nor Leon looked very happy, and
+I took awful bites to keep my face straight.  When all of us finished
+May brought a lot from the bran barrel in the smoke house, but Laddie
+and Leon only sat there and looked silly; it really was funny.
+
+"I must have more eggs than this?" said mother.  "Where are they to
+come from?"
+
+Father nodded to me and I said:  "From under your bed!"
+
+"Oh, it was you!  And I never once caught you snooping!" cried Leon.
+
+"Easy son!" said father.  "That will do.  You lost through your own
+carelessness.  You left wet mud on the garret floor, and she saw it
+when mother sent her for the onion skins.  You robbed Laddie of his
+last egg this morning; be a good loser yourself!"
+
+"Well, anyway, you didn't get 'em," said Leon to Laddie.
+
+"And she only found them by accident!"
+
+Then we had a big time counting all those eggs, and such another heap
+as there was to sell, after mother filled baskets to cook with and
+colour.  When the table was cleared, Laddie and Leon made tallow
+pencils from a candle and wrote all sorts of things over eggs that had
+been prepared to colour.  Then mother boiled them in copperas water,
+and aniline, and all the dyes she had, and the boys polished them, and
+they stood in shining black, red, blue and yellow heaps.  The onion
+ones would be done in the morning.  Leon had a goose egg and mother let
+him keep it, so he wrote and wrote on it, until Laddie said it would be
+all writing, and no colour, and he boiled it in red, after mother
+finished, and polished it himself.  It came out real pretty with roses
+on it and lots of words he wouldn't let any of us read; but of course
+it was for Susie Fall.
+
+Next morning he slipped it to her at church.  When we got home, all of
+us were there except Shelley, and we had a big dinner and a fine time
+and Laddie stayed until after supper, before he went to Pryors'.
+
+"How is he making it?" asked Sally.
+
+"You could see she was making it all right; she never looked lovelier,
+and mother said Peter was letting her spend away too much money on her
+clothes.  She told him so, but Peter just laughed and said business was
+good, and he could afford it, and she was a fine advertisement for his
+store when she was dressed well."
+
+"All I know is," said mother, "that he goes there every whipstitch, and
+the women, at least, seem glad to have him.  He says Mr. Pryor treats
+him decently, and that is more than he does his own family and
+servants.  He and the girl and her mother are divided about something.
+She treats her father respectfully, but she's in sympathy with mother."
+
+"Laddie can't find out what the trouble is?"
+
+"I don't think that he tries."
+
+"Maybe he'd feel better not to know," said Peter.
+
+"Possibly!" said mother.
+
+"Nonsense!" said father.
+
+"You seem to be reconciled," said Elizabeth.
+
+"That girl would reconcile a man to anything," said father.
+
+"Not to the loss of his soul, I hope," said mother stiffly.
+
+"Souls are not so easy to lose," said father.  "Besides, I am counting
+on Laddie saving hers."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+The Garden of the Lord
+
+  "With what content and merriment,
+  Their days are spent, whose minds are bent
+  To follow the useful plow."
+
+
+That spring I decided if school didn't stop pretty soon, I'd run away
+again, and I didn't in the least care what they did to me.  A country
+road was all right and it was good enough, if it had been heaped up,
+leveled and plenty of gravel put on; and of course our road would be
+fine, because father was one of the commissioners, and as long as he
+filled that office, every road in the county would be just as fine as
+the law would allow him to make it.  I have even heard him tell mother
+that he "stretched it a leetle mite," when he was forced to by people
+who couldn't seem to be made to understand what was required to upbuild
+a nation.  He said our language was founded on the alphabet, and to
+master it you had to begin with "a".  And he said the nation was like
+that; it was based on townships, and when a township was clean, had
+good roads, bridges, schoolhouses, and churches, a county was in fine
+shape, and when each county was in order, the state was right, and when
+the state was prosperous, the nation could rejoice in its strength.
+
+He said Atlas in the geography book, carrying the world on his back,
+was only a symbol, but it was a good one.  He said when the county
+elected him to fill an important office, it used his shoulder as a prop
+for the nation, so it became his business to stand firmly, and use
+every ounce of strength and brains he had, first of all to make his own
+possessions a model, then his township, his county, and his state, and
+if every one worked together doing that, no nation on earth had our
+amount of territory and such fine weather, so none of them could beat
+us.
+
+Our road was like the barn floor, where you drove: on each side was a
+wide grassy strip, and not a weed the length of our land.  All the
+rails in the fences were laid straight, the gates were solid, sound,
+and swung firmly on their beams, our fence corners were full of alders,
+wild roses, sumac, blackberry vines, masses of wild flowers beneath
+them, and a bird for every bush.  Some of the neighbours thought that
+to drive two rails every so often, lay up the fences straight, and grub
+out the shrubs was the way, but father said they were vastly mistaken.
+He said that was such a shortsighted proceeding, he would be ashamed to
+indulge in it.  You did get more land, but if you left no place for the
+birds, the worms and insects devoured your crops, and you didn't raise
+half so much as if you furnished the birds shelter and food.  So he
+left mulberries in the fields and fence corners and wild cherries,
+raspberries, grapes, and every little scrub apple tree from seeds sown
+by Johnny Appleseed when he crossed our land.
+
+Mother said those apples were so hard a crane couldn't dent them, but
+she never watched the birds in winter when the snow was beginning to
+come and other things were covered up.  They swarmed over those trees
+until spring, for the tiny sour apples stuck just like oak leaves
+waiting for next year's crop to push them off.  She never noticed us,
+either.  After a few frosts, we could almost get tipsy on those apples;
+there was not a tree in our orchard that had the spicy, teasing tang of
+Johnny Appleseed's apples.  Then too, the limbs could be sawed off and
+rambo and maiden's-blush grafted on, if you wanted to; father did on
+some of them, so there would be good apples lying beside the road for
+passers-by, and they needn't steal to get them.  You could graft red
+haws on them too, and grow great big, little haw-apples, that were the
+prettiest things you ever saw, and the best to eat.  Father said if it
+didn't spoil the looks of the road, he wouldn't care how many of his
+neighbours straightened their fences.  If they did, the birds would
+come to him, and the more he had, the fewer bugs and worms he would be
+troubled with, so he would be sure of big crops, and sound fruit.  He
+said he would much rather have a few good apples picked by robins or
+jays, than untouched trees, loaded with wormy falling ones he could
+neither use nor sell.  He always patted my head and liked every line of
+it when I recited, sort of tearful-like and pathetic:
+
+  "Don't kill the birds! the happy birds,
+  That bless the field and grove;
+  So innocent to look upon,
+  They claim our warmest love."
+
+
+The roads crossing our land were all right, and most of the others near
+us; and a road is wonderful, if it is taking you to the woods or a
+creek or meadow; but when it is walking you straight to a stuffy little
+schoolhouse where you must stand up to see from a window, where a
+teacher is cross as fire, like Miss Amelia, and where you eternally
+HEAR things you can't see, there comes a time about the middle of April
+when you had quite as soon die as to go to school any longer; and what
+you learn there doesn't amount to a hill of beans compared with what
+you can find out for yourself outdoors.
+
+Schoolhouses are made wrong.  If they must be, they should be built in
+a woods pasture beside a stream, where you could wade, swim, and be
+comfortable in summer, and slide and skate in winter.  The windows
+should be cut to the floor, and stand wide open, so the birds and
+butterflies could pass through.  You ought to learn your geography by
+climbing a hill, walking through a valley, wading creeks, making
+islands in them, and promontories, capes, and peninsulas along the
+bank.  You should do your arithmetic sitting under trees adding
+hickory-nuts, subtracting walnuts, multiplying butternuts, and dividing
+hazelnuts.  You could use apples for fractions, and tin cups for liquid
+measure.  You could spell everything in sight and this would teach you
+the words that are really used in the world.  Every single one of us
+could spell incompatibility, but I never heard father, or the judge, or
+even the Bishop, put it in a speech.
+
+If you simply can't have school THAT way, then you should be shut in
+black cells, deep under the ground, where you couldn't see, or hear a
+sound, and then if they'd give you a book and candle and Miss Amelia,
+and her right-hand man, Mister Ruler, why you might learn something.
+This way, if you sat and watched the windows you could see a bird cross
+our woods pasture to the redbird swamp every few minutes; once in a
+while one of my big hawks took your breath as he swept, soared, sailed,
+and circled, watching the ground below for rabbits, snakes, or
+chickens.  The skinny old blue herons crossing from the Wabash to hunt
+frogs in the cowslip swale in our meadow, sailed so slow and so low,
+that you could see their sharp bills stuck out in front, their uneven,
+ragged looking feathers, and their long legs trailing out behind.  I
+bet if Polly Martin wore a blue calico dress so short her
+spindle-shanks showed, and flew across our farm, you couldn't tell her
+from a heron.
+
+There were so many songs you couldn't decide which was which to save
+you; it was just a pouring jumble of robins, larks, doves, blackbirds,
+sparrows, everything that came that early; the red and the yellow birds
+had not come yet, or the catbirds or thrushes.  You could hear the
+thumping wings of the roosters in Sills' barnyard nearest the
+schoolhouse, and couldn't tell which was whipping, so you had to sit
+there and wonder; and worst of all you must stand Miss Amelia calmly
+telling you to pay attention to your books or you would be kept in, and
+all the time you were forced to bear torments, while you watched her
+walk from window to window to see every speck of the fight.  One day
+they had thumped and fought for half an hour; she had looked from every
+window in the room, and at last there was an awful whacking, and then
+silence.  It grew so exciting I raised my hand, and almost before she
+nodded permission, "Which whipped?" I asked.
+
+Miss Amelia turned red as a beet.  Gee, but she was mad!
+
+"I did!" she said.  "Or at least I will.  You may remain for it after
+school is dismissed."
+
+Now if you are going to be switched, they never do it until they are
+just so angry anyway, and then they always make it as hard as they dare
+not to stripe you, so it isn't much difference HOW provoked they are,
+it will be the same old thrashing, and it's sure to sting for an hour
+at least, so you might as well be beaten for a little more as hardly
+anything at all.  At that instant from the fence not far from my window
+came a triumphant crow that fairly ripped across the room.
+
+"Oh, it was the Dorking!" I said.  "No wonder you followed clear around
+the room to see him thrash a Shanghai three times his size!  I bet a
+dollar it was great!"
+
+Usually, I wouldn't have put up more than five cents, but at that time
+I had over six dollars from my Easter eggs, and no girl of my age at
+our school ever had half that much.  Miss Amelia started toward me, and
+I braced my feet so she'd get a good jolt herself, when she went to
+shake me; she never struck us over the head since Laddie talked to her
+that first day; but John Hood's foot was in the aisle.  I thought maybe
+I'd have him for my beau when we grew up, because I bet he knew she was
+coming, and stuck out his foot on purpose; anyway, she pitched, and had
+to catch a desk to keep off the floor, and that made her so mad at him,
+that she forgot me, while he got his scolding; so when my turn came at
+last, she had cooled down enough that she only marched past to her
+desk, saying I was to remain after school.  I had to be careful after
+that to be mighty good to May and Leon.
+
+When school was out they sat on the steps before the door and waited.
+Miss Amelia fussed around and there they sat.  Then her face grew more
+gobblerish than usual, and she went out and told them to go home.
+Plain as anything I heard May say It:  "She's been awful sick, you
+know, and mother wouldn't allow it."  And then Leon piped up:  "You DID
+watch the roosters, all the time they fought, and of course all of us
+wanted to see just as badly as you did."
+
+She told them if they didn't go right home she'd bring them back and
+whip them too; so they had to start, and leave me to my sad fate.  I
+was afraid they had made it sadder, instead of helping me; she was so
+provoked when she came in she was crying, and over nothing but the
+plain truth too; if we had storied on her, she'd have had some cause to
+beller.  She arranged her table, cleaned the board, emptied the water
+bucket, and closed the windows.  Then she told me I was a rude,
+untrained child.  I was rude, I suppose, but goodness knows, I wasn't
+untrained; that was hard on father and mother; I had a big notion to
+tell them; and then, she never whipped me at all.  She said if I wanted
+her to love me, I mustn't be a saucy, impudent girl, and I should go
+straight home and think it over.
+
+I went, but I was so dazed at her thinking I wanted her to love me,
+that I hardly heard May and Leon calling; when I did I went to the
+cemetery fence and there they lay in the long grass waiting.
+
+"If you cried, we were coming back and pitch into her," said Leon.
+
+There was a pointer.  Next time, first cut she gave me, I decided to
+scream bloody murder.  But that would be no Crusader way.  There was
+one thing though.  No Crusader ever sat and heard a perfectly lovely
+fight going on, and never even wondered which whipped.
+
+May and Leon stepped one on each side, took a hand, and we ran like
+Indians, and slid down the hill between the bushes, climbed the fence,
+crossed the pasture back of the church, and went to the creek.  There
+we sat on a log, I told them, and we just laughed.  I didn't know what
+I could do to pay them, for they saved me sure as fate that time.
+
+I wished we lived in the woods the way it was when father and mother
+were married and moved to Ohio.  The nearest neighbours were nine
+miles, and there wasn't a dollar for school funds, so of course the
+children didn't have to go, and what their fathers and mothers taught
+them was all they knew.  That would not have helped me much though, for
+we never had one single teacher who knew anything to compare with what
+father and mother did, and we never had one who was forever reading
+books, papers, and learning more things that help, to teach other
+people.  I wished father had time to take our school.  It would have
+been some fun to go to him, because I just knew he would use the woods
+for the room, and teach us things it would do some good to know about.
+
+I began debating whether it was a big enough thing to bother the Lord
+with: this being penned up in the schoolhouse droning over spelling and
+numbers, when you could smell tree bloom, flower bloom, dozens of birds
+were nesting, and everything was beginning to hum with life.  I
+couldn't think for that piece about "Spring" going over in my head:
+
+  "I am coming, I am coming:
+    Hark! the little bee is humming:
+  See! the lark is soaring high,
+    In the bright and sunny sky;
+  All the birds are on the wing:
+    Little maiden, now is spring."
+
+
+I made up my mind that it was of enough importance to call for the
+biggest prayer I could think of and that I would go up in the barn to
+the top window, stand on a beam, and turn my face to the east, where
+Jesus used to be, and I'd wrestle with the Lord for freedom, as Jacob
+wrestled with the Angel on the banks of the Jabbok in the land of
+Ammon.  I was just getting up steam to pray as hard as ever I could;
+for days I'd been thinking of it, and I was nearly to the point where
+one more killdeer crying across the sky would have sent me headlong
+from the schoolhouse anywhere that my feet were on earth, and the air
+didn't smell of fried potatoes, kraut, sweat, and dogs, like it did
+whenever you sat beside Clarissa Polk.  When I went to supper one
+night; father had been to Groveville, and he was busy over his papers.
+After he finished the blessing, he seemed worried, at last he said the
+funds were all out, and the county would make no appropriation so
+school would have to close next week.
+
+Well that beats me!  I had faith in that prayer I was going to make,
+and here the very thing I intended to ask for happened before I prayed.
+I decided I would save the prayer until the next time I couldn't stand
+anything another minute, and then I would try it with all my might, and
+see if it really did any good.  After supper I went out the back door,
+spread my arms wide, and ran down the orchard to the fence in great
+bounds, the fastest I ever went in my life.  I climbed my pulpit in the
+corner and tried to see how much air my lungs would hold without
+bursting, while I waved my arms and shouted at the top of my voice:
+"Praise ye the Lord!  Praised be His holy name!"
+
+"Ker-awk!" cried an old blue heron among the cowslips below me.  I had
+almost scared it to death, and it arose on flapping wings and paid me
+back by frightening me so I screamed as I dodged its shadow.
+
+"What is all this?" asked father behind me.
+
+"Come up and take a seat, and I'll try to tell you," I said.
+
+So he stepped on my pulpit and sat on the top rail, while I stood
+between his knees, put my arms around his neck, took off his hat and
+loosened his hair so the wind could wave it, and make his head feel
+cool and good.  His hair curled a little and it was black and fine.
+His cheeks were pink and his eyes the brightest blue, with long lashes,
+and heavier brows than any other man I ever have seen.  He was the best
+looking--always so clean and fresh, and you never had to be afraid of
+him, unless you had been a bad, sinful child.  If you were all right,
+you would walk into his arms, play with his hair, kiss him all you
+pleased, and there wasn't a thing on earth you couldn't tell him,
+excepting a secret you had promised to keep.
+
+So I explained all this, and more too.  About how I wanted to hunt for
+the flowers, to see which bloomed first, and watch in what order the
+birds came, and now it was a splendid time to locate nests, because
+there were no leaves, so I could see easily, and how glad mother would
+be to know where the blue goose nested, and her white turkey hen;
+because she wanted her geese all blue, and the turkeys all white, as
+fast as she could manage.
+
+Every little thing that troubled me or that I wanted, I told him.
+
+He sat there and he couldn't have listened with more interest or been
+quieter if I had been a bishop, which is the biggest thing that ever
+happened at our house; his name was Ninde and he came from Chicago to
+dedicate our church when it was new.  So father listened and thought
+and held his arms around me, and--
+
+"And you think the Lord was at the bottom of the thing that makes you
+happy?"
+
+"Well, you always go to Him about what concerns you, and you say,
+'Praise the Lord,' when things go to please you."
+
+"I do indeed!" said father.  "But I had thought of this running short
+of school funds as a calamity.  If I had been praying about it, I would
+have asked Him to show me a way to raise money to continue until middle
+May at least."
+
+"Oh father!"
+
+I just crumpled up in his arms and began to cry; to save me I couldn't
+help it.  He held me tight.  At last he said:  "I think you are a
+little overstrained this spring.  Maybe you were sicker than we knew,
+or are growing too fast.  Don't worry any more about school.  Possibly
+father can fix it."
+
+Next morning when I wakened, my everyday clothes lay across the foot of
+the bed, so I called mother and asked if I should put them on; she took
+me in her arms, and said father thought I had better be in the open,
+and I needn't go to school any more that spring.  I told her I thought
+I could bear it a few more days, now it was going to be over so soon;
+but she said I might stay at home, father and Laddie would hear me at
+night, and I could take my books anywhere I pleased and study when I
+chose, if I had my spelling and reading learned at evening.  NOW, say
+the Lord doesn't help those who call on Him in faith believing!
+
+Think of being allowed to learn your lessons on the top of the granary,
+where you could look out of a window above the treetops, lie in the
+cool wind, and watch swallows and martins.  Think of studying in the
+pulpit when the creek ran high, and the wild birds sang so sweetly you
+seemed to hear them for the first time in all your life, and hens,
+guineas, and turkeys made prime music in the orchard.  You could see
+the buds swell, and the little blue flags push through the grass, where
+Mrs. Mayer had her flowerbed, and the cowslips greening under the water
+of the swale at the foot of the hill, while there might be a Fairy
+under any leaf.  I was so full, so swelled up and excited, that when I
+got ready to pick up a book, I could learn a lesson in a few minutes,
+tell all about it, spell every word, and read it back, front, and
+sideways.  I never learned lessons so quick and so easy in all my life;
+father, Laddie, and every one of them had to say so.  One night, father
+said to Laddie:  "This child is furnishing evidence that our school
+system is wrong, and our methods of teaching far from right."
+
+"Or is it merely proof that she is different," said Laddie, "and you
+can't run her through the same groove you could the rest of us?"
+
+"A little of both," said father, "but most that the system is wrong.
+We are not going at children in a way to gain and hold their interest,
+and make them love their work.  There must be a better way of teaching,
+and we should find different teachers.  You'll have to try the school
+next year yourself, Laddie."
+
+"I have a little plan about a piece of land I am hoping to take before
+then," answered Laddie.  "It's time for me to try my wings at making a
+living, and land is my choice.  I have fully decided.  I stick to the
+soil!"
+
+"Amen!" cried father.  "You please me mightily.  I hate to see sons of
+mine thriving on law, literally making their living out of the fruit of
+other men's discord.  I dislike seeing them sharpen their wits in
+trade, buying at the lowest limit, extorting the highest.  I don't want
+their horizons limited by city blocks, their feet on pavements,
+everything under the sun in their heads that concerns a scheme to make
+money; not room for an hour's thought or study in a whole day, about
+the really vital things of life.  After all, land and its products are
+the basis of everything; the city couldn't exist a day unless we feed
+and clothe it.  In the things that I consider important, you are a king
+among men, with your feet on soil you own."
+
+"So I figure it," said Laddie.
+
+"And you are the best educated man I have reared," said father.  "Take
+this other thought with you: on land, the failure of the bank does not
+break you.  The fire another man's carelessness starts, does not wipe
+out your business or home.  You are not in easy reach of contagion.
+Any time you want to branch out, your mother and I will stand back of
+you."
+
+"Thank you!" said Laddie.  "You backed none of the others.  They would
+resent it.  I'll make the best start I can myself, and as they did,
+stand alone."
+
+Father looked at him and smiled slowly.
+
+"You are right, as always," he said.  "I hadn't thought so far.  It
+would make trouble.  At any rate, let me inspect and help you select
+your land."
+
+"That of course!" said Laddie.
+
+I suspect it's not a very nice thing for me to tell, but all of us were
+tickled silly the day Miss Amelia packed her trunk and left for sure.
+Mother said she never tried harder in all her days, but Miss Amelia was
+the most distinctly unlovable person she ever had met.  She sympathized
+with us so, she never said a word when Leon sang:
+
+  "Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
+    Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,
+  Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms,
+    Like fairy-gifts fading away,
+  Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art,
+    Let thy loveliness fade as it will,
+  And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
+    Would entwine itself verdantly still--"
+
+while Miss Amelia drove from sight up the Groveville road.
+
+As he sang Leon stretched out his arms after her vanishing form.  "I
+hope," he said, "that you caught that touching reference to 'the dear
+ruin,' and could anything be expressed more beautifully and poetically
+than that 'verdantly still?'"
+
+I feel sorry for a snake.  I like hoptoads, owls, and shitepokes.  I
+envy a buzzard the way it can fly, and polecats are beautiful; but I
+never could get up any sort of feeling at all for Miss Amelia, whether
+she was birdlike or her true self.  So no one was any gladder than I
+when she was gone.
+
+After that, spring came pushing until you felt shoved.  Our family
+needed me then.  If they never had known it before, they found out
+there was none too many of us.  Every day I had to watch the blue
+goose, and bring in her egg before it was chilled, carrying it
+carefully so it would not be jarred.  I had to hunt the turkey nests
+and gather their eggs so they would be right for setting.  There had to
+be straw carried from the stack for new nests, eggs marked, and hens
+set by the dozen.  Garden time came, so leaves had to be raked from the
+beds and from the dooryard.  No one was busier than I; but every little
+while I ran away, and spent some time all by myself in the pulpit,
+under the hawk oak, or on the roof.
+
+Coming from church that Sunday, when we reached the top of the Big
+Hill, mother touched father's arm.  "Stop a minute," she said, and he
+checked the horses, while we sat there and wondered why, as she looked
+and looked all over the farm, then, "Now drive to the top of the Little
+Hill and turn, and stop exactly on the place from which we first viewed
+this land together," she said.  "You know the spot, don't you?"
+
+"You may well believe I know it," said father.  "I can hit it to the
+inch.  You see, children," he went on, "your mother and I arranged
+before the words were said over us"--he always put it that way--I never
+in my life heard him say, "when we were married"; he read so many books
+he talked exactly like a book--"that we would be partners in
+everything, as long as we lived.  When we decided the Ohio land was not
+quite what we wanted, she sent me farther west to prospect, while she
+stayed at home and kept the baby.  When I reached this land, found it
+for sale, and within my means, I bought it, and started home happy.
+Before I'd gone a mile, I turned to look back, and saw that it was
+hilly, mostly woods, and there was no computing the amount of work it
+would require to make it what I could see in it; so I began to think
+maybe she wouldn't like it, and to wish I had brought her, before I
+closed the deal.  By the time I returned home, packed up, and travelled
+this far on the way back with her, there was considerable tension in my
+feelings--considerable tension," repeated father as he turned the
+horses and began driving carefully, measuring the distance from Hoods'
+and the bridge.  At last he stopped, backed a step, and said:  "There,
+mommy, did I hit the spot?"
+
+"You did!" said mother, stepping from the carriage and walking up
+beside him.  She raised one hand and laid it on the lamp near him.  He
+shifted the lines, picked up her hand, and held it tight.  Mother stood
+there looking, just silently looking.  May jabbed me in the side,
+leaned over and whispered:
+
+  "Could we but stand where Moses stood,
+    And view the landscape o'er,
+  Not our Little Creek, nor dinner getting cold,
+    Could fright us from that shore."
+
+
+I couldn't help giggling, but I knew that was no proper time, so I hid
+my head in her lap and smothered the sound the best I could; but they
+were so busy soft-soddering each other they didn't pay a bit of
+attention to us.
+
+It was May now, all the leaves were fresh and dustless, everything that
+flowered at that time was weighted with bloom, bees hummed past,
+butterflies sailed through the carriage, while birds at the tops of
+their voices, all of them, every kind there was, sang fit to split;
+friendly, unafraid bluebirds darted around us, and talked a blue streak
+from every fence rider.  Made you almost crazy to know what they said.
+The Little Creek flowed at our feet across the road, through the
+blue-flag swamp, where the red and the yellow birds lived.  You could
+see the sun flash on the water where it emptied into the stream that
+crossed Deams', and flowed through our pasture; and away beyond the Big
+Hill arose, with the new church on top, the graveyard around it, the
+Big Creek flashing at its base.  In the valley between lay our fields,
+meadows, the big red barn, the white house with the yard filled with
+trees and flowering shrubs, beyond it the garden, all made up, neat and
+growing; and back of it the orchard in full bloom.
+
+Mother looked and looked.  Suddenly she raised her face to father.
+"Paul," she said, "that first day, did you ever dream it could be made
+to look like this?"
+
+"No!" said father.  "I never did!  I saw houses, barns, and cleared
+fields; I hoped for comfort and prosperity, but I didn't know any place
+could grow to be so beautiful, and there is something about it, even on
+a rainy November day, there is something that catches me in the breast,
+on the top of either of these hills, until it almost stifles me.  What
+is it, Ruth?"
+
+"The Home Feeling!" said mother.  "It is in my heart so big this
+morning I am filled with worship.  Just filled with the spirit of
+worship."
+
+She was rocking on her toes like she does when she becomes too happy at
+the Meeting House to be quiet any longer, and cries, "Glory!" right out
+loud.  She pointed to the orchard, an immense orchard of big apple
+trees in full bloom, with two rows of peach trees around the sides.  It
+looked like a great, soft, pinkish white blanket, with a deep pink
+border, spread lightly on the green earth.
+
+"We planted that way because we thought it was best; how could we know
+how it would look in bloom time?  It seems as if you came to these
+hilltops and figured on the picture you would make before you cleared,
+or fenced a field."
+
+"That's exactly what I did," said father.  "Many's the hour, all told,
+that I have stopped my horse on one of these hilltops and studied how
+to make the place beautiful, as well as productive.  That was a task
+you set me, my girl.  You always considered BEAUTY as well as USE about
+the house and garden, and wherever you worked.  I had to hold my part
+in line."
+
+"You have made it all a garden," said mother.  "You have made it a
+garden growing under the smile of the Master; a very garden of the
+Lord, father."
+
+Father drew up her hand and held it tight against his heart.
+
+"Your praise is sweet, my girl, sweet!" he said.  "I have tried, God
+knows I have tried, to make it first comfortable, then beautiful, for
+all of us.  To the depths of my soul I thank Him for this hour.  I am
+glad, Oh I am so glad you like your home, Ruth!  I couldn't endure it
+if you complained, found fault and wished you lived elsewhere."
+
+"Why, father!" said my mother in the most surprised voice.  "Why,
+father, it would kill me to leave here.  This is ours.  We have made it
+by and through the strength of the Lord and our love for each other.
+All my days I want to live here, and when I die, I want to lie beside
+my blessed babies and you, Paul, down by the church we gave the land
+for, and worked so hard to build.  I love it, Oh I love it!  See how
+clean and white the dark evergreens make the house look!  See how the
+big chestnuts fit in and point out the yellow road.  I wish we had a
+row the length of it!"
+
+"They wouldn't grow," said father.  "You mind the time I had finding
+the place those wanted to set their feet?"
+
+"I do indeed!" said mother, drawing her hand and his with it where she
+could rub her cheek against it.  "Now we'll go home and have our dinner
+and a good rest.  I'm a happy woman this day, father, a happy, happy
+woman.  If only one thing didn't worry me----"
+
+"Must there always be a 'fly in the ointment,' mother?"
+
+She looked at him with a smile that was like a hug and kiss, and she
+said:  "I have found it so, father, and I have been happy in spite of
+it.  Where one has such wide interests, at some point there is always a
+pull, but in His own day, in His own way, the Lord is going to make
+everything right."
+
+"'Thy faith hath made thee whole,'" quoted father.
+
+Then she stepped into the carriage, and he waited a second, quite long
+enough to let her see that he was perfectly willing to sit there all
+day if she wanted him to, and then he slowly and carefully drove home,
+as he always did when she was in the carriage.  Times when he had us
+children out alone, he went until you couldn't see the spokes in the
+wheels.  He just loved to "speed up" once in a while on a piece of fine
+road to let us know how going fast felt.
+
+Mother sat there trembling a little, smiling, misty-eyed.  I was
+thinking, for I knew what the "fly in the ointment" was.  She had a
+letter from Shelley yesterday, and she said there wasn't a reason on
+earth why father or Laddie should spend money to come to Chicago, she
+would soon be home, she was counting the hours, and she never wanted to
+leave again.  In the start she didn't want to go at all, unless she
+could stay three years, at the very least.  Of course it was that
+dreadful man, who had made her so beautiful and happy, and then taken
+away all the joy; how COULD a man do it?  It was the hardest thing to
+understand.
+
+Next morning mother was feeling fine, the world was lovely, Miss Amelia
+was gone, May was home to help, so she began housecleaning by washing
+all the curtains.  She had been in the kitchen to show Candace how.  I
+had all my work done, and was making friends with a robin brooding in
+my very own catalpa tree, when Mr. Pryor rode up, tied his horse, and
+started toward the gate.  I knew he and father had quarrelled; that is,
+father had told him he couldn't say "God was a myth" in this house, and
+he'd gone home mad as hops; so I knew it would be something mighty
+important that was bringing him back.  I slid from the tree, ran and
+opened the gate, and led the way up the walk.  I opened the front door
+and asked him in, and then I did the wrong thing.  I should have taken
+his hat, told him to be seated, and said I would see if I could find
+father; I knew what to do, and how to do it, but because of that about
+God, I was so excited I made a mistake.  I never took his hat, or
+offered him a chair; I just bolted into the dining-room, looking for
+father or mother, and left the door wide open, so he thought that
+wasn't the place to sit, because I didn't give him a chair, and he
+followed me.  The instant I saw mother's face, I knew what I had done.
+The dining-room was no place for particular company like him, and
+bringing him in that way didn't give her time to smooth her hair, pull
+shut her dress band at the neck, put on her collar, and shiny goldstone
+pin, her white apron, and rub her little flannel rag, with rice flour
+on it, on her nose to take away the shine.  I had made a mess of it.
+
+There she came right in the door, just as she was from the tub.  Her
+hair was damp and crinkled around her face, her neckband had been close
+in stooping, so she had unfastened it, and tucked it back in a little
+V-shaped place to give her room and air.  Her cheeks were pink, her
+eyes bright, her lips red as a girl's, and her neck was soft and white.
+The V-shaped place showed a little spot like baby skin, right where her
+neck went into her chest.  Sure as father kissed her lips, he always
+tipped back her head, bent lower and kissed that spot too.  I had seen
+hundreds of them go there, and I had tried it myself, lots of times,
+and it WAS the sweetest place.  Seeing what I had done, I stopped
+breathless.  You have to beat most everything you teach a child right
+into it properly to keep it from making such a botch of things as that.
+I hardly dared to peep at mother, but when I did, she took my breath
+worse than the mistake I had made.
+
+Caught, she stood her ground.  She never paused a second.  Straight to
+him she went, holding out her hand, and I could see that it was red and
+warm from pressing the lace in the hot suds.  A something flashed over
+her, that made her more beautiful than she was in her silk dress going
+to town to help Lucy give a party, and her voice was sweet as the
+bubbling warbler on the garden fence when he was trying to coax a mate
+into the privet bush to nest.
+
+Mother asked him to be seated, so he took one of the chairs nearest
+him, and sat holding his hat in one hand, his whip in the other.
+Mother drew a chair beside the dining table, dropped her hands on each
+other, and looking in his eyes, she smiled at him.  I tell the same
+thing over about people's looks, but I haven't told of this smile of
+mother's; because I never saw exactly how it was, or what it would do
+to people, until that morning.  Then as I watched her--for how she felt
+decided what would happen to me, after Mr. Pryor was gone I saw
+something I never had noticed until that minute.  She could laugh all
+over her face, before her lips parted until her teeth showed.  She was
+doing it now.  With a wide smile running from cheek to cheek, pushing
+up a big dimple at each end, her lips barely touching, her eyes
+dancing, she sat looking at him.
+
+"This IS the most blessed season for warming up the heart," she said.
+"If you want the half of my kingdom, ask quickly.  I'm in the mood to
+bestow it."
+
+How she laughed!  He just had to loosen up a little, and smile back,
+even though it looked pretty stiff.
+
+"Well, I'll not tax you so far," he said.  "I only want Mr. Stanton."
+
+"But he is the whole of the kingdom, and the King to boot!" she
+laughed, dimpled, and flamed redder.
+
+Mr. Pryor stared at her wonderingly.  You could even see the wonder,
+like it was something you could take hold of.  I suppose he wondered
+what could make a woman so happy, like that.
+
+"Lucky man!" he said.  "All of us are not so fortunate."
+
+"Then it must be you don't covet the place or the title," said mother
+more soberly.  "Any woman will crown the man she marries, if he will
+allow her.  Paul went farther.  He compelled it."
+
+"I wonder how!" said Mr. Pryor, his eyes steadily watching mother's
+face.
+
+"By never failing in a million little things, that taken as a whole,
+make up one mighty big thing, on which he stands like the Rock of Ages."
+
+"Yet they tell me that you are the mother of twelve children," he said,
+as if he marvelled at something.
+
+"Yes!" cried mother, and the word broke right through a bubbling laugh.
+"Am I not fortunate above most women?  We had the grief to lose two
+little daughters at the ages of eight and nine, all the others I have,
+and I rejoice in them."
+
+She reached out, laid a hand on me, drew me to her, and lightly touched
+my arm, sending my spirits sky-high.  She wasn't going to do a thing to
+me, not even scold!  Mr. Pryor stared at her like Jacob Hood does at
+Laddie when he begins rolling Greek before him, so I guess what mother
+said must have been Greek to Mr. Pryor.
+
+"I came to see Mr. Stanton," he said suddenly, and crosslike as if he
+didn't believe a word she said, and had decided she was too foolish to
+bother with any longer; but he kept on staring.  He couldn't quit that,
+no matter how cross he was.  The funniest thing came into my mind.  I
+wondered what on earth he'd have done if she'd gone over, sat on his
+lap, put her arms around his neck, took his face between her hands and
+kissed his forehead, eyes, lips, and tousled his hair, like she does
+father and our boys.  I'll bet all I got, he'd have turned to stonier
+stone than Sabethany.  You could see that no one ever served HIM like
+that in all his old, cold, hard, cross, mysterious, shut-in life.  I
+was crazy to ask, "Say, did anybody ever kiss you?" but I had such a
+close escape bringing him in wrong, I thought it would be wise not to
+take any risks so soon after.  It was enough to stand beside mother,
+and hear every word they said.  What was more, she wanted me, because
+she kept her hand on mine, or touched my apron every little while.
+
+"I'm so sorry!" she said.  "He was called to town on business.  The
+County Commissioners are sitting to-day."
+
+"They are deciding about the Groveville bridge, and pike?"
+
+"Yes.  He is working so hard for them."
+
+"The devil you say!  I beg pardon!  But it was about that I came.  I'm
+three miles from there, and I'm taxed over sixty pounds for it."
+
+"But you cross the bridge every time you go to town, and travel the
+road.  Groveville is quite a resort on account of the water and lovely
+country.  Paul is very anxious to have the work completed before the
+summer boarders come from surrounding cities.  We are even farther from
+it than you; but it will cost us as much."
+
+"Are you insane?" cried Mr. Pryor, not at all politely; but you could
+see that mother was bound she wouldn't become provoked about anything,
+for she never stopped a steady beam on him.  "Spend all that money for
+strangers to lazy around on a few weeks and then go!"
+
+"But a good bridge and fine road will add to their pleasure, and when
+they leave, the improvements remain.  They will benefit us and our
+children through all the years to come."
+
+"Talk about 'the land of the free'!" cried Mr. Pryor.  "This is a
+tax-ridden nation.  It's a beastly outrage!  Ever since I came, it's
+been nothing but notice of one assessment after another.  I won't pay
+it!  I won't endure it.  I'll move!"
+
+Mother let go of me, gripped her hands pretty tight together on the
+table, and she began to talk.
+
+"As for freedom--no man ever was, or is, or will be free," she said,
+quite as forcibly as he could speak.  "You probably knew when you came
+here that you would find a land tax-ridden from a great civil war of
+years' duration, and from newness of vast territory to be opened up and
+improved.  You certainly studied the situation."
+
+"'Studied the situation'!"  His whip beat across his knee.  "'Studied
+the situation'!  My leaving England was--er--the result of intolerable
+conditions there--in the nature of flight from things not to be
+endured.  I had only a vague idea of the States."
+
+"If England is intolerable, and the United States an outrage, I don't
+know where in this world you'll go," said mother softly.
+
+Mr. Pryor stared at her sharply.
+
+"Madame is pleased to be facetious," he said sneeringly.
+
+Mother's hands parted, and one of them stretched across the table
+toward him.
+
+"Forgive me!" she cried.  "That was unkind.  I know you are in dreadful
+trouble.  I'd give--I'd almost give this right hand to comfort you.
+I'd do nearly anything to make you feel that you need bear no burden
+alone; that we'd love to help support you."
+
+"I believe you would," he said slowly, his eyes watching her again.  "I
+believe you would.  I wonder why!"
+
+"All men are brothers, in the broader sense," said mother, "and if
+you'll forgive me, your face bears marks of suffering almost amounting
+to torture."
+
+She stretched out the other hand.
+
+"You couldn't possibly let us help you?"
+
+Slowly he shook his head.
+
+"Think again!" urged mother.  "A trouble shared is half over to start
+with.  You lay a part of it on your neighbours, and your neighbours in
+this case would be glad, glad indeed, to see you care-free and happy as
+all men should be."
+
+"We'll not discuss it," he said.  "You can't possibly imagine the root
+of my trouble."
+
+"I shan't try!" said mother.  "But let me tell you this:  I don't care
+if you have betrayed your country, blasphemed your God, or killed your
+own child!  So long, as you're a living man, daily a picture of
+suffering before me, you're a burden on my heart.  You're a load on my
+shoulders, without your consent.  I have implored God, I shall never
+cease to implore Him, until your brow clears, your head is lifted, and
+your heart is at rest.  You can't prevent me!  This hour I shall go to
+my closet and beg Him to have mercy on your poor soul, and when His
+time comes, He will.  You can't help yourself, or you would have done
+so, long ago.  You must accept aid!  This must end, or there will be
+tragedy in your house."
+
+"Madame, there has been!" said Mr. Pryor, shaking as he sat.
+
+"I recognize that," said mother.  "The question is whether what has
+passed is not enough."
+
+"You simply cannot understand!" he said.
+
+"Mr. Pryor," she said, "you're in the position of a man doubly bereft.
+You are without a country, and without a God.  Your face tells every
+passer-by how you are enjoying that kind of life.  Forgive me, if I
+speak plainly.  I admire some things about you so much, I am venturing
+positive unkindness to try to make you see that in shutting out your
+neighbours you will surely make them think more, and worse things, than
+are true.  I haven't a doubt in my mind but that your trouble is not
+one half so dreadful as you imagine while brooding over it.  We will
+pass that.  Let me tell you how we feel about this road matter.  You
+see we did our courting in Pennsylvania, married and tried Ohio, and
+then came on here.  We took this land when it was mostly woods.  I
+could point you to the exact spot where we stopped; we visited it
+yesterday, looked down the hill and selected the place where we would
+set this house, when we could afford to build it.  We moved into the
+cabin that was on the land first, later built a larger one, and finally
+this home as we had planned it.  Every fruit tree, bush, vine, and
+flower we planted.  Here our children have been born, lived, loved, and
+left us; some for the graveyard down yonder, some for homes of their
+own.  Always we have planned and striven to transform this into the
+dearest, the most beautiful spot on earth.  In making our home the best
+we can, in improving our township, county, and state, we are doing our
+share toward upbuilding this nation."
+
+She began at the a b c's, and gave it to him straight: the whole thing,
+just as we saw it; and he listened, as if he were a prisoner, and she a
+judge telling him what he must do to gain his freedom.  She put in the
+birds to keep away the worms, the trees to break the wind, the creeks
+to save the moisture.  She whanged him, and she banged him, up one
+side, and down the other.  She didn't stop to be mincy.  She shot
+things at him like a man talking to another man who had plenty of sense
+but not a particle of reason.  She gave him the reason.  She told him
+exactly why, and how, and where, and also just WHAT he must do to feel
+RIGHT toward his neighbours, his family, and his God.  No preacher ever
+talked half so well.  Yea verily, she was as interesting as the Bishop
+himself, and far pleasanter to look at.  When she ran short of breath,
+and out of words, she reached both hands toward him again.
+
+"OH DO PLEASE THINK OF THESE THINGS!" she begged.  "Do try to believe
+that I am a sensible person, and know what I am talking about."
+
+"Madame," said Mr. Pryor, "there's no doubt in my mind but you are the
+most wonderful woman I ever have met.  Surely I believe you!  Surely I
+know your plan of life is the true, the only right way.  It is one
+degree added to my humiliation that the ban I am under keeps me from
+friendly intercourse with so great a lady."
+
+"'Lady'?" said my mother, her eyes widening.  "'Lady'?  Now it is you
+who are amused."
+
+"I don't understand!" he said.  "Certainly you are a lady, a very great
+lady."
+
+"Goodness, gracious me!" cried my mother, laughing until her dimples
+would have held water.  "That's the first time in all my life I was
+ever accused of such a thing."
+
+"Again, I do not comprehend," said Mr. Pryor, as if vexed about all he
+would endure.
+
+Mother laughed on, and as she did so she drew back her hands and
+studied them.  Then she looked at him again, one pink dimple flashing
+here and there, all over her face.
+
+"Well, to begin at the root of the matter," she said, "that is an
+enormous big word that you are using lightly.  Any one in petticoats is
+not a lady--by no means!  A lady must be born of unsullied blood for at
+least three generations, on each side of her house.  Think for a minute
+about where you are going to fulfil that condition.  Then she must be
+gentle by nature, and rearing.  She must know all there is to learn
+from books, have wide experience to cover all emergencies, she must be
+steeped in social graces, and diplomatic by nature.  She must rise
+unruffled to any emergency, never wound, never offend, always help and
+heal, she must be perfect in deportment, virtue, wifehood and
+motherhood.  She must be graceful, pleasing and beautiful.  She must
+have much leisure to perfect herself in learning, graces and arts----"
+
+"Madame, you draw an impossible picture!" cried Mr. Pryor.
+
+"I draw the picture of the only woman on earth truly entitled to be
+called a lady.  You use a good word lightly.  I have told you what it
+takes to make a lady--now look at me!"
+
+How she laughed! Mr. Pryor looked, but he didn't laugh.
+
+"More than ever you convince me that you are a lady, indeed," he said.
+
+Mother wiped her eyes.
+
+"My dear man!" she cried, "I'm the daughter of a Dutch miller, who
+lived on a Pennsylvania mountain stream.  There never was a school
+anywhere near us, and father and mother only taught us to work.  Paul
+Stanton took a grist there, and saw me.  He married me, and brought me
+here.  He taught me to read and write.  I learned my lessons with my
+elder children.  He has always kept school in our house, every night of
+his life.  Our children supposed it was for them; I knew it was quite
+as much for me.  While I sat at knitting or sewing, I spelled over the
+words he gave out.  I know nothing of my ancestors, save that they came
+from the lowlands of Holland, down where there were cities, schools,
+and business.  They were well educated, but they would not take the
+trouble to teach their children.  As I have spoken to you, my husband
+taught me.  All I know I learn from him, from what he reads aloud, and
+places he takes me.  I exist in a twenty-mile radius, but through him,
+I know all lands, principalities and kingdoms, peoples and customs.  I
+need never be ashamed to go, or afraid to speak, anywhere."
+
+"Indeed not!" cried Mr. Pryor.
+
+"But when you think on the essentials of a real lady--and then picture
+me patching, with a First Reader propped before me; facing Indians,
+Gypsies, wild animals--and they used to be bad enough--why, I mind one
+time in Ohio when our first baby was only able to stand beside a chair,
+and through the rough puncheon floor a copperhead stuck up its gleam of
+bronzy gold, and shot its darting tongue within a foot of her bare leg.
+By all accounts, a lady would have reached for her smelling salts and
+gracefully fainted away; in fact, a lady never would have been in such
+a place at all.  It was my job to throw the first thing I could lay my
+hands on so straight and true that I would break that snake's neck, and
+send its deadly fangs away from my baby.  I did it with Paul's plane,
+and neatly too!  Then I had to put the baby on the bed and tear up
+every piece of the floor to see that the snake had not a mate in hiding
+there, for copperheads at that season were going pairs.  Once I was
+driven to face a big squaw, and threatened the life of her baby with a
+red-hot poker while she menaced mine with a hunting knife.  There is
+not one cold, rough, hard experience of pioneer life that I have not
+endured.  Shoulder to shoulder, and heart to heart, I've stood beside
+my man, and done what had to be done, to build this home, rear our
+children, save our property.  Many's the night I have shivered in a
+barn doctoring sick cattle and horses we could ill afford to lose.
+Time and again I have hung on and brought things out alive, after the
+men gave up and quit.  A lady?  How funny!"
+
+"The amusement is all on your part, Madame."
+
+"So it seems!" said mother.  "But you see, I know so well how
+ridiculous it is.  When I think of the life a woman must lead in order
+to be truly a lady, when I review the life I have been forced to live
+to do my share in making this home, and rearing these children, the
+contrast is too great.  I thank God for any part I have been able to
+take.  Had I life to live over, I see now where I could do more; but
+neighbour, believe me, my highest aspiration is to be a clean, thrifty
+housekeeper, a bountiful cook, a faithful wife, a sympathetic mother.
+That is life work for any woman, and to be a good woman is the greatest
+thing on earth.  Never mind about the ladies; if you can honestly say
+of me, she is a good woman, you have paid me the highest possible
+tribute."
+
+"I have nothing to change, in the face of your argument," said Mr.
+Pryor.  "Our loved Queen on her throne is no finer lady."
+
+That time mother didn't laugh.  She looked straight at him a minute and
+then she said:  "Well, for an Englishman, as I know them, you have said
+the last word.  Higher praise there is none.  But believe me, I make no
+such claim.  To be a good wife and mother is the end toward which I
+aspire.  To hold the respect and love of my husband is the greatest
+object of my life."
+
+"Then you have succeeded.  You stand a monument to wifehood; your
+children prove your idea of motherhood," said Mr. Pryor.  "How in this
+world have you managed it?  The members of your family whom I have seen
+are fine, interesting men and women, educated above the average.  It is
+not idle curiosity.  I am deeply interested in knowing how such an end
+came to be accomplished here on this farm.  I wish you would tell me
+just how you have gone about schooling your children."
+
+"By educating ourselves before their coming, and with them afterward.
+Self-control, study, work, joy of life, satisfaction with what we have
+had, never-ending strife to go higher, and to do better--Dr. Fenner
+laughs when I talk of these things.  He says he can take a little naked
+Hottentot from the jungle, and educate it to the same degree that I can
+one of mine.  I don't know; but if these things do not help before
+birth, at least they do not hinder; and afterward, you are in the
+groove in which you want your children to run.  With all our twelve
+there never has been one who at nine months of age did not stop crying
+if its father lifted his finger, or tapped his foot and told it to.
+From the start we have rigorously guarded our speech and actions before
+them.  From the first tiny baby my husband has taught all of them to
+read, write and cipher some, before they went to school at all.  He is
+always watching, observing, studying: the earth, the stars, growing
+things; he never comes to a meal but he has seen something that he has
+or will study out for all of us.  There never has been one day in our
+home on which he did not read a new interesting article from book or
+paper; work out a big problem, or discuss some phase of politics,
+religion, or war.  Sometimes there has been a little of all of it in
+one day, always reading, spelling, and memory exercises at night.  He
+has a sister who twice in her life has repeated the Bible as a test
+before a committee.  He, himself, can go through the New Testament and
+all of the Old save the books of the generations.  He always says he
+considers it a waste of gray matter to learn them.  He has been a
+schoolmaster, his home his schoolroom, his children, wife and helpers
+his pupils; the common things of life as he meets them every day, the
+books from which we learn.
+
+"I was ignorant at first of bookish subjects, but in his atmosphere, if
+one were no student, and didn't even try to keep up, or forge ahead,
+they would absorb much through association.  Almost always he has been
+on the school board and selected the teachers; we have made a point of
+keeping them here, at great inconvenience to ourselves, in order to
+know as much of them as possible, and to help and guide them in their
+work.  When the children could learn no more here, for most of them we
+have managed the high school of Groveville, especially after our
+daughter moved there, and for each of them we have added at least two
+years of college, music school, or whatever the peculiar bent of the
+child seemed to demand.
+
+"Before any daughter has left our home for one of her own, she has been
+taught all I know of cleanliness about a house, cookery, sewing,
+tending the sick, bathing and dressing the new born.  She has to bake
+bread, pie, cake, and cook any meat or vegetable we have.  She has had
+her bolt of muslin to make as she chose for her bedding, and linen for
+her underclothing.  The quilts she pieced and the blankets she wove
+have been hers.  All of them have been as well provided for as we could
+afford.  They can knit, darn, patch, tuck, hem, and embroider, set a
+hen and plant a garden.  I go on a vacation and leave each of them to
+keep house for her father a month, before she enters a home of her own.
+They are strong, healthy girls; I hope all of them are making a good
+showing at being useful women, and I know they are happy, so far at
+least."
+
+"Wonderful!" said Mr. Pryor.
+
+"Father takes the boys in hand and they must graduate in a straight
+furrow, an even fence, planting and tending crops, trimming and
+grafting trees, caring for stock, and handling plane, auger and chisel.
+Each one must select his wood, cure, fashion, and fit his own ax with a
+handle, grind and swing it properly, as well as cradle, scythe and
+sickle.  They must be able to select good seed grain, boil sap, and
+cure meat.  They must know animals, their diseases and treatment, and
+when they have mastered all he can teach them, and done each thing
+properly, they may go for their term at college, and make their choice
+of a profession.  As yet I'm sorry to say but one of them has come back
+to the land."
+
+"You mean Laddie?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He has decided to be a farmer?"
+
+"He is determined to make the soil yield his living."
+
+"I am sorry--sorry indeed to hear it," said Mr. Pryor.  "He has brain
+and education to make a brilliant figure at law or statesmanship; he
+would do well in trade."
+
+"What makes you think he would not do well on land?"
+
+"Wasted!" cried Mr. Pryor.  "He would be wasted!"
+
+"Hold a bit!" said mother, her face flushing as it did when she was
+very provoked.  "My husband is, and always has been, on land.  He is
+far from being wasted.  He is a power in this community.  He has sons
+in cities in law and in trade.  Not one of them has the friends, and
+the influence on his time, that his father has.  Any day he says the
+word, he can stand in legislative halls, and take any part he chooses
+in politics.  He prefers his home and family, and the work he does
+here, but let me tell you, no son of his ever had his influence or
+opportunity, or ever will have."
+
+"All this is news to me," said Mr. Pryor.
+
+"You didn't expect us to come over, force our way in and tell you?"
+
+It was his turn to blush and he did.
+
+"Laddie has been at our house often," he said.  "He might have
+mentioned----"
+
+Mother laughed.  She was the gayest that morning.
+
+"He 'might,' but he never would.  Neither would I if you hadn't seemed
+to think that the men who do the things Mr. Stanton REFUSES to do are
+the ones worth while."
+
+"He could accomplish much in legislative halls."
+
+"He figures in the large.  He thinks that to be a commissioner, travel
+his county and make all of it the best possible, to stand in primaries
+and choose only worthy men for all offices, is doing a much bigger work
+than to take one place for himself, and strive only for that.  Besides,
+he really loves his land, his house, and family.  He says no man has a
+right to bring twelve children into the world and not see personally to
+rearing and educating them.  He thinks the farm and the children too
+much for me, and he's sure he is doing the biggest thing for the
+community at large, to go on as he does."
+
+"Perhaps so," said Mr. Pryor slowly.  "He should know best.  Perhaps he
+is."
+
+"I make no doubt!" said mother, lifting her head proudly.  "And as
+Laddie feels and has fitted himself, I look to see him go head and
+shoulders above any other son I have.  Trade is not the only way to
+accumulate.  Law is not the only path to the legislature.  Comfort,
+independence, and freedom, such as we know here, is not found in any
+city I ever have visited.  We think we have the best of life, and we
+are content on land.  We have not accumulated much money; we have spent
+thousands; we have had a big family for which to provide, and on
+account of the newness of the country, taxes always have been heavy.
+But we make no complaint.  We are satisfied.  We could have branched
+off into fifty different things after we had a fair start here.  We
+didn't, because we preferred life as we worked it out for ourselves.
+Paul says when he leaves the city, and his horses' hoofs strike the
+road between our fields, he always lifts his head higher, squares his
+shoulders, and feels a man among men.  To own land, and to love it, is
+a wonderful thing, Mr. Pryor."
+
+She made me think of something.  Ever since I had added to my quill and
+arrow money, the great big lot at Easter, father had shared his chest
+till with me.  The chest stood in our room, and in it lay his wedding
+suit, his every Sunday clothes, his best hat with a red silk
+handkerchief in the crown, a bundle of precious newspapers he was
+saving on account of rare things in them he wanted for reference, and
+in the till was the wallet of ready money he kept in the house for
+unexpected expense, his deeds, insurance papers, all his particular
+private papers, the bunches of lead pencils, slate pencils, and the box
+of pens from which he supplied us for school.  Since I had grown so
+rich, he had gone partners with me, and I might lift the lid, open the
+till and take out my little purse that May bought from the huckster for
+my last birthday.  I wasn't to touch a thing, save my own, and I never
+did; but I knew precious well what was there.
+
+If Mr. Pryor thought my father didn't amount to much because he lived
+on land; if it made him think more of him, to know that he could be in
+the legislature if he chose, maybe he'd think still more----
+
+I lifted the papers, picked it up carefully, and slipping back quietly,
+I laid it on Mr. Pryor's knee.  He picked it up and held it a minute,
+until he finished what he was saying to mother, and then he looked at
+it.  Then he looked long and hard.  Then he straightened up and looked
+again.
+
+"God bless my soul!" he cried.
+
+You see when he was so astonished he didn't know what he was saying, he
+called on God, just as father says every one does.  I took a side look
+at mother.  Her face was a little extra flushed, but she was still
+smiling; so I knew she wasn't angry with me, though of course she
+wouldn't have shown the thing herself.  She and father never did,
+except as each of us grew big enough to be taught about the Crusaders.
+Father said he didn't care the snap of his finger about it, except as
+it stood for hardihood and bravery.  But Mr. Pryor cared!  He cared
+more than he could say.  He stared, and stared, and over and over he
+wonderingly repeated:
+
+"God bless my soul!"
+
+"Where did you get the crest of the Earl of Eastbrooke, the master of
+Stanton house?" he demanded.  "Stanton house!" he repeated.  "Why--why,
+the name!  It's scarcely possible, but----"
+
+"But there it is!" laughed mother.  "A mere bauble for show and
+amounting to nothing on earth save as it stands a mark for brave men
+who have striven to conquer."
+
+"Surgere tento!" read Mr. Pryor, from the little shield.  "Four shells!
+Madame, I know men who would give their lives to own this, and to have
+been born with the right to wear it.  It came to your husband in
+straight line?"
+
+"Yes," said mother, "but generations back.  He never wore it.  He never
+would.  He only saves it for the children."
+
+"It goes to your eldest son?"
+
+"By rights, I suppose it should," said mother.  "But father mentioned
+it the other night.  He said none of his boys had gone as he tried to
+influence them, unless Laddie does now in choosing land for his future,
+and if he does, his father is inclined to leave it to him, and I agree.
+At our death it goes to Laddie I am quite sure."
+
+"Well, I hope--I hope," said Mr. Pryor, "that the young man has the wit
+to understand what this would mean to him in England."
+
+"His wit is just about level with his father's," said mother.  "He
+never has been in England, and most probably he never will be.  I don't
+think it means a rap more to Laddie than it does to my husband.  Laddie
+is so busy developing the manhood born in him, he has no time to chase
+the rainbow of reflected glory, and no belief in its stability if he
+walked in its light.  The child of my family to whom that trinket
+really means something is Little Sister, here.  When Leon came in with
+the thief, I thought he should have it; but after all, she is the
+staunchest little Crusader I have."
+
+Mr. Pryor looked me over with much interest.
+
+"Yes, yes!  No doubt!" he said.  "But the male line!  This priceless
+treasure should descend to one of the male line!  To one whose name
+will remain Stanton!  To Laddie would be best, no doubt!  No doubt at
+all!"
+
+"We will think about it," said mother serenely as Mr. Pryor arose to go.
+
+He apologized for staying so long, and mother said it hadn't been long,
+and asked him the nicest ever to come again.  She walked in the
+sunlight with him and pointed out the chestnuts.  She asked what he
+thought of a line of trees to shade the road, and they discussed
+whether the pleasure they would give in summer would pay for the
+dampness they would hold in winter.  They wandered around the yard and
+into the garden.  She sent me to bring a knife, trowel, and paper, so
+when he started for home, he was carrying a load of cuttings, and roots
+to plant.
+
+When father came from town that evening, at the first sight of him, she
+went straight into his arms, her face beaming; she had been like a sun
+all that day.  Some of it must have been joy carried over from
+yesterday.
+
+"Praise God, the wedge is in!" she cried.
+
+Father held her tight, stroked her hair, and began smiling without
+having the least idea why, but he very well knew that whatever pleased
+her like that was going to be good news for him also.
+
+"What has happened, mother?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Pryor came over about the road and bridge tax, and oh Paul!  I've
+said every word to him I've been bursting to say from the very start.
+Every single word, Paul!"
+
+"How did he take it?"
+
+"Time will tell.  Anyway, he heard it, all of it, and he went back
+carrying a load of things to plant.  Only think of that!  Once he
+begins planting, and watching things grow, the home feeling is bound to
+come.  I tell you, Paul, the wedge is in!  Oh I'm so happy!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+The Crest of Eastbrooke
+
+  "Sow;--and look onward, upward,
+    Where the starry light appears,--
+  Where, in spite of coward's doubting,
+    Or your own heart's trembling fears,
+  You shall reap in joy the harvest
+    You have sown to-day in tears."
+
+
+"Any objections to my beginning to break ground on the west eighty
+to-day?" asked Laddie of father at breakfast Monday morning.
+
+"I had thought we would commence on the east forty, when planning the
+work."
+
+"So had I," said Laddie.  "But since I thought that, a very particular
+reason has developed for my beginning to plow the west eighty at once,
+and there is a charming little ditty I feel strongly impelled to
+whistle every step of the way."
+
+Father looked at him sharply, and so, I think, did all of us.  And
+because we loved him deeply, we saw that his face was a trifle pale for
+him; his clear eyes troubled, in spite of his laughing way.  He knew we
+were studying him too, but he wouldn't have said anything that would
+make us look and question if he had minded our doing it.  That was
+exactly like Laddie.  He meant it when he said he hated a secret.  He
+said there was no place on earth for a man to look for sympathy and
+love if he couldn't find it in his own family; and he never had been so
+happy since I had been big enough to notice his moods as he had been
+since all of us knew about the Princess.  He didn't wait for father to
+ask why he'd changed his mind about the place to begin.
+
+"You see," he said, "a very charming friend of mine expressed herself
+strongly last night about the degrading influence of farming,
+especially that branch of agriculture which evolves itself in a furrow;
+hence it is my none too happy work to plow the west eighty where she
+can't look our way without seeing me; and I have got to whistle my
+favourite 'toon' where she must stop her ears if she doesn't hear; and
+then it will be my painful task, I fear, to endeavour to convince her
+that I am still clean, decent, and not degraded."
+
+"Oh Laddie!" cried mother.
+
+"Abominable foolishness!" roared father like he does roar once in about
+two years.
+
+"Isn't it now?" asked Laddie sweetly.  "I don't know what has got into
+her head.  She has seen me plowing fifty times since their land has
+joined ours, and she never objected before."
+
+"I can tell you blessed well!" said mother.  "She didn't care two hoots
+how much my son plowed, but it makes a difference when it comes to her
+lover."
+
+"Maw, you speak amazing reckless," said Laddie, "if I thought there was
+anything in THAT feature of the case, I'd attempt a Highland fling on
+the ridgepole of our barn."
+
+"Be serious!" said father sternly.  "This is no laughing matter."
+
+"That's precisely why I am laughing," said Laddie.  "Would it help me
+any to sit down and weep?  I trow not!  I have thought most of the
+silent watches--by the way they are far from silent in May--and as I
+read my title clear, it's my job to plow the west eighty immejit."
+
+Father tried to look stern, but he just had to laugh.
+
+"All right then, plow it!" he said.
+
+"What did she say?" asked mother.
+
+"Phew!" Laddie threw up both hands.  "She must have been bottled some
+time on the subject.  The ferment was a spill of considerable
+magnitude.  The flood rather overwhelmed me, because it was so
+unexpected.  I had been taking for granted that she accepted my
+circumstances and surroundings as she did me.  But no, kind friends,
+far otherwise!  She said last night, in the clearest English I ever
+heard spoken impromptu, that I was a man suitable for her friend, but I
+would have to change my occupation before I could be received on more
+than a friendly footing."
+
+"'On more than a friendly footing'?" repeated mother.
+
+"You have her exact words," said Laddie.  "Kindly pass the ham."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"Nothing!  I am going to plow the answer.  Please don't object to my
+beginning this morning."
+
+"You try yourself all winter to get as far as you have, and then upset
+the bowl like this?" cried mother.
+
+"Softly, mummy, softly!" said Laddie.  "What am I to do?  I've
+definitely decided on my work.  I see land and life, as you and father
+taught me, in range and in perspective far more than you've got from
+it.  You had a first hand wrestle.  The land I covet has been greatly
+improved already.  I can do what I choose with it, making no more
+strenuous effort than plowing; and I am proud to say that I LOVE to
+plow.  I like my feet in the soil.  I want my head in the spring air.
+I can become almost tipsy on the odours that fill my nostrils.  Music
+evolved by the Almighty is plenty good enough for me.  I'm proud of a
+spanking big team, under the control of a touch or a word.  I enjoy
+farming, and I am going to be a farmer.  Plowing is one of the most
+pleasing parts of the job.  Sowing the seed beats it a little, from an
+artistic standpoint, either is preferable to haying, threshing, or corn
+cutting: all are parts of my work, so I'm going to begin.  Mother, I
+hope you don't mind if I take your grays.  I'll be very careful; but
+the picture I present to my girl to-day is going to go hard with her at
+best, so I'd like to make it level best."
+
+He arose, went around and knelt beside mother.  He took her, chair and
+all, in his arms:
+
+  "Best of mothers! on my breast
+  Lean thy head, and sink to rest."
+
+
+She quoted.  Mother laughed.
+
+"Mammy," he asked bending toward her, "am I clean?"
+
+"You goose!" she said, putting her arms around him and holding him
+tight.
+
+"Gander love," said Laddie, turning up his face for a kiss.  "Honest
+mother, you have been through nigh unto forty years of it, tell me, can
+a man be a farmer and keep neat enough not to be repulsive to a refined
+woman?"
+
+"Your father is the answer," said mother.  "All of you know how
+perfectly repulsive he is and always has been to me."
+
+"'Repulsive,"' said father.  "That's an ugly word!"
+
+"There are a whole lot of unpleasant things that peep around corners
+occasionally," said Laddie.  "But whoever of you dear people it was
+that showed Mr. Pryor the Crest of Eastbrooke, brought out this
+particular dragon for me to slay."
+
+"Tut, tut!  Now what does that mean?" said father.  "Have we had a
+little exhibition of that especial brand of pride that goes before a
+fall?"
+
+"We have! and I take the tumble," said Laddie.  "Watch me start!  'Jack
+fell down and broke his crown.'  Question--will 'Jill come tumbling
+after?'"
+
+My heart stopped and I was shaking in my bare feet, because I wore no
+shoes to shake in.  Oh my soul!  No matter how Laddie jested I knew he
+was almost killed; the harder he made fun, the worse he was hurt.  I
+opened my mouth to say I did it, I had to, but Leon began to talk.
+
+"Well, I think she's smart!" he cried.  "If she was going to give you
+the mitten, why didn't she do it long ago?"
+
+"She had to find out first whether there were a possibility of her
+wanting to keep it," said Laddie.
+
+"You're sure you are all signed, sealed, and delivered on this plowing
+business, are you?" asked Leon.
+
+"Dead sure!" said Laddie.
+
+"All right, if you like it!" said Leon.  "None for me after college!
+But say, you can be a farmer and not plow, you know.  You go trim the
+trees, and work at cleaner, more gentlemanly jobs.  I'll plow that
+field.  I'd just as soon as not.  I plowed last year and you said I did
+well, didn't you, father?"
+
+"Yes, on the potato patch," said father.  "A cornfield is a different
+thing.  I fear you are too light."
+
+"Oh but that was a year ago!" cried Leon.
+
+He pushed back his chair and went to father.
+
+"Just feel my biceps now!  Most like steel!" he boasted.  "A fellow can
+grow a lot in a year, and all the riding I've been doing, and all the
+exercise I've had.  Cert' I can plow that meadow."
+
+"You're all right, shaver," said Laddie.  "I'll not forget your offer;
+but in this case it wouldn't help.  Either the Princess takes her
+medicine or I take mine.  I'm going to live on land: I'm going to plow
+in plain sight of the Pryor house this week, if I have to hire to Jacob
+Hood to get the chance.  May I plow, and may I take the grays, father?"
+
+"Yes!" said father roundly.
+
+"Then here goes!" said Laddie.  "You needn't fret, mother.  I'll not
+overheat them.  I must give a concert simultaneous with this plowing
+performance, and I'm particular about the music, so I can't go too
+fast.  Also, I'll wrap the harness."
+
+"Goodness knows I'm not thinking about the horses," said mother.
+
+"No, but if they turned up next Sunday, wind-broken, and with nice
+large patches of hair rubbed from their sides, you would be!  If you
+were me, would you whistle, or vocalize to start on?"
+
+Mother burst right out crying and laid her face all tear-wet against
+him.  Laddie kissed her, and wiped away the tears, teased her, and soon
+as he could he bolted from the east door; but I was closest, so I saw
+plainly that his eyes were wet too.  My soul and body!  AND I HAD DONE
+IT!  I might as well get it over.
+
+"I showed Mr. Pryor the trinket," I said.
+
+"How did you come to do that?" asked father sternly.
+
+"When he was talking with mother.  He told her Laddie would be 'wasted'
+farming----"
+
+"Wasted?"
+
+"That's what he said.  Mother told him you had always farmed and you
+were a 'power in this community.'  She told him about what you did,
+because you wanted to, and what you COULD do if you chose, about
+holding office, you know, and that seemed to make him think heaps more
+of you, so I thought it would be a good thing for him to know about the
+Crusaders too, and I ran and got the crest.  I THOUGHT it would
+help----"
+
+"And so it will," said mother.  "They constantly make the best showing
+they can, we might as well, too.  The trouble is they got more than
+they expected.  They thought they could look down on us, and patronize
+us, if they came near at all; when they found we were quite as well
+educated as they, had as much land, could hold prominent offices if we
+chose, and had the right to that bauble, they veered to the other
+extreme.  Now they seem to demand that we quit work----"
+
+"Move to the city, 'sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,'" suggested
+father.
+
+"Exactly!" said mother.  "They'll have to find out we are running our
+own business; but I'm sorry it fell to Laddie to show them.  You could
+have done it better.  It will come out all right.  The Princess is not
+going to lose a man like Laddie on account of how he makes his money."
+
+"Don't be too confident," said father.  "With people of their stripe,
+how much money a man can earn, and at what occupation, constitute the
+whole of life."
+
+She wasn't too confident.  Yesterday she had been so happy she almost
+flew.  To-day she kept things going, and sang a lot, but nearly every
+time you looked at her you could see her lips draw tight, a frown cross
+her forehead, and her head shake.  Pretty soon we heard a racket on the
+road, so we went out.  There was Laddie with the matched team of
+carriage horses and a plow.  Now, in dreadfully busy times, father let
+Ned and Jo work a little, but not very much.  They were not plow
+horses; they were roadsters.  They liked to prance, and bow their necks
+and dance to the carriage.  It shamed them to be hitched to a plow.
+They drooped their heads and slunk along like dogs caught sucking eggs.
+But they were a sight on the landscape.  They were lean and slender and
+yet round too, matched dapple gray on flank and side, with long
+snow-white manes and tails.  No wonder mother didn't want them to work.
+Laddie had reached through the garden fence and hooked a bunch of red
+tulips and yellow daffodils.  The red was at Jo's ear, and the yellow
+at Ned's, and they did look fine.  So did he!  Big, strong, clean, a
+red flower in his floppy straw hat band; and after he drove through the
+gate, he began a shrill, fifelike whistle you could have heard a half
+mile:
+
+  "See the merry farmer boy, tramp the meadows through,
+  Swing his hoe in careless joy, while dashing off the dew.
+  Bobolink in maple high, trills a note of glee,
+  Farmer boy in gay reply now whistles cheerily."
+
+
+The chorus was all whistle, and it was written for folks who could.  It
+went up until it almost split the echoes, and Laddie could easily sail
+a measure above the notes.  He did it too.  As for me, I kept from
+sight.  For a week Laddie whistled and plowed.  He wore that tune
+threadbare, and got an almost continuous pucker on his lips.  Leon said
+if he didn't stop whistling, and sing more, the girls would think he
+was doing a prunes and prisms stunt.  So after that he sang the words,
+and whistled the chorus.  But he made no excuse to go, and he didn't
+go, to Pryors'.  When Sunday came, he went to Westchester to see
+Elizabeth, and stayed until Monday morning.  Not once that week did the
+Princess ride past our house, or her father either.  By noon Monday
+Laddie was back in the field, and I had all I could bear.  He was
+neither whistling nor singing so much now, because he was away at the
+south end, where he couldn't be seen or heard at Pryors'.  He almost
+scoured the skin from him, and he wore his gloves more carefully than
+usual.  If he soiled his clothing in the least, and it looked as if he
+would make more than his share of work, he washed the extra pieces at
+night.
+
+Tuesday morning I hurried with all my might, and then I ran to the
+field where he was.  I climbed on the fence, sat there until he came
+up, and then I gave him some cookies.  He stopped the horses, climbed
+beside me and ate them.  Then he put his arms around me and hugged me
+tight.
+
+"Laddie, do you know I did it?" I wailed.
+
+"Did you now?" said Laddie.  "No, I didn't know for sure, but I had
+suspicions.  You always have had such a fondness for that particular
+piece of tinware."
+
+"But Laddie, it means so much!"
+
+"Doesn't it?" said Laddie.  "A few days ago no one could have convinced
+me that it meant anything at all to me, or ever could.  Just look at me
+now!"
+
+"Don't joke, Laddie!  Something must be done."
+
+"Well, ain't I doing it?" asked Laddie.  "Look at all these acres and
+acres of Jim-dandy plowing!"
+
+"Don't!" I begged.  "Why don't you go over there?"
+
+"No use, Chicken," said Laddie.  "You see her exact stipulation was
+that I must CHANGE MY OCCUPATION before I came again."
+
+"What does she want you to do?"
+
+"Law, I think.  Unfortunately, I showed her a letter from Jerry asking
+me to enter his office this fall."
+
+"Hadn't you better do it, Laddie?"
+
+"How would you like to be shut in little, stuffy rooms, and set to
+droning over books and papers every hour of the day, all your life, and
+to spend the best of your brain and bodily strength straightening out
+other men's quarrels?"
+
+"Oh Laddie, you just couldn't!" I cried.
+
+"Precisely!" said Laddie.  "I just couldn't, and I just won't!"
+
+"What can you do?"
+
+"I might compromise on stock," he said.  "I could follow the same
+occupation as her father, and with better success.  Neither he nor his
+men get the best results from horses.  They don't understand them,
+especially the breeds they are attempting to handle.  Most Arab
+horsemen are tent dwellers.  They travel from one oasis to another with
+their stock.  At night their herds are gathered around them as
+children.  As children they love them, pet them, feed them.  Each is
+named for a divinity, a planet or a famous ruler, and the understanding
+between master and beast is perfect.  Honestly, Little Sister, I think
+you have got to believe in the God of Israel, in order to say the right
+word to an Arabian horse; and I know you must believe in the God of
+love.  A beast of that breed, jerked, kicked, and scolded is a fine
+horse ruined.  If I owned half the stock Mr. Pryor has over there, I
+could put it in such shape for market that I could get twice from it
+what his men will."
+
+"Are Thomas and James rough with the horses?"
+
+"'Like master, like man,'" quoted Laddie.  "They are!  They are foolish
+with the Kentucky strain, and fools with the Arab; and yet, that
+combination beats the world.  But I must get on with the P.C. job."
+
+He slid from the fence, took a drink from his water jug, and pulled a
+handful of grass for each horse.  As he stood feeding them, I almost
+fell from the top rail.
+
+"Laddie!" I whispered.  "Look!  Mr. Pryor is halfway across the field
+on Ranger."
+
+"So?" said Laddie.  "Now I wonder----"
+
+"Shall I go?"
+
+"No indeed!" said Laddie.  "Stay right where you are.  It can't be
+anything of much importance."
+
+At first it didn't seem to be.  They talked about the weather, the
+soil, the team.  Laddie scooped a handful of black earth, and holding
+it out, told Mr. Pryor all about how good it was, and why, and he
+seemed interested.  Then they talked about everything; until if he had
+been Jacob Hood, he would have gone away.  But just at the time when I
+expected him to start, he looked at Laddie straight and hard.
+
+"I missed you Sabbath evening," he said.
+
+Then I looked at him.  He had changed, some way.  He seemed more human,
+more like our folks, less cold and stern.
+
+"I sincerely hope it was unanimous," said Laddie.
+
+Mr. Pryor had to laugh.
+
+"It was a majority, at any rate."
+
+Laddie stared dazed.  You see that was kind of a joke.  An easy one,
+because I caught it; but we were not accustomed to expecting a jest
+from Mr. Pryor.  Not one of us dreamed there was a joke between his hat
+crown and his boot soles.  Then Laddie laughed; but he sobered quickly.
+
+"I'm mighty sorry if Mrs. Pryor missed me," he said.  "I thought of
+her.  I have grown to be her devoted slave, and I hoped she liked me."
+
+"You put it mildly," said Mr. Pryor.  "Since you didn't come when she
+expected you, we've had the worst time with her that we have had since
+we reached this da--ah--er--um--this country."
+
+"Could you make any suggestion?" asked Laddie.
+
+"I could!  I would suggest that you act like the sensible fellow I know
+you to be, and come as usual, at your accustomed times."
+
+"But I'm forbidden, man!" cried Laddie.
+
+Ugh!  Such awful things as Mr. Pryor said.
+
+"Forbidden!" he cried.  "Is a man's roof his own, or is it not?  While
+I live, I propose to be the head of my family.  I invite you!  I ask
+you!  Mrs. Pryor and I want you!  What more is necessary?"
+
+"TWO things," said Laddie, just as serenely.  "That Miss Pryor wants
+me, and that I want to come."
+
+"D'ye mean to tell me that you DON'T want to come, eh?  After the fight
+you put up to force your way in!"
+
+Laddie studied the sky, a whimsy smile on his lips.
+
+"Now wasn't that a good fight?" he inquired.  "I'm mighty proud of it!
+But not now, or ever, do I wish to enter your house again, if Miss
+Pryor doesn't want, and welcome me."
+
+Then he went over, took Mr. Pryor's horse by the head, and began
+working with its bridle.  It didn't set right some way, and Mr. Pryor
+had jerked, spurred, and mauled, until there was a big space tramped to
+mortar.  Laddie slid his fingers beneath the leather, eased it a
+little, and ran his hands over the fretful creature's head.  It just
+stopped, stood still, pushed its nose under his arm, and pressed
+against his side.  Mr. Pryor arose in one stirrup, swung around and
+alighted.  He looped an arm through the bridle rein, and with both
+hands gripped his whipstock.
+
+"How the devil do you do it?" he asked, as if he were provoked.
+
+"First, the bridle was uncomfortable; next, you surely know, Mr. Pryor,
+that a man can transfer his mental state to his mount."
+
+Laddie pointed to the churned up earth.
+
+"THAT represents your mental state; THIS"--he slid his hand down the
+neck of the horse--"portrays mine."
+
+Mr. Pryor's face reddened, but Laddie was laughing so heartily he
+joined in sort of sickly-like.
+
+"Oh I doubt if you are so damnably calm!" he cried.
+
+"I'm CALM enough, so far as that goes," said Laddie.  "I'm not denying
+that I've got about all the heartache I can conveniently carry."
+
+"Do you mind telling me how far this affair has gone?"
+
+"Wouldn't a right-minded man give the woman in the case the first
+chance to answer that question?  I greatly prefer that you ask Miss
+Pryor."
+
+If ever I felt sorry for any one, I did then for Mr. Pryor.  He stood
+there gripping the whip with both hands and he looked exactly as if the
+May wind might break him into a thousand tiny pieces, and every one of
+them would be glass.
+
+"Um--er----" he said at last.  "You're right, of course, but
+unfortunately, Pamela and her mother did not agree with my motives, or
+my course in coming to this country; and while there is no outward
+demonstration er--um--other than Mrs. Pryor's seclusion; yet,
+er--um!--I am forced to the belief that I'm NOT in their confidence."
+
+"I see!" said Laddie.  "And of course you love your daughter as any man
+would love so beautiful a child, and when she is all he has----"  I
+thought the break was coming right there, but Mr. Pryor clenched his
+whip and put it off; still, any one watching with half an eye could see
+that it was only put off, and not for long at that,--"It has been my
+idea, Mr. Pryor, that the proper course for me was to see if I could
+earn any standing with your daughter.  If I could, and she gave me
+permission, then I intended coming to you the instant I knew how she
+felt.  But in such a case as this, I don't think I shall find the
+slightest hesitation in telling you anything you want to know, that I
+am able."
+
+"You don't know how you stand with her?"
+
+Laddie took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair.  His feet
+were planted widely apart, and his face was sober enough for any
+funeral now.  At last he spoke.
+
+"I've been trying to figure that out," he said slowly.  "I believe the
+situation is as open to you as it is to me.  She was a desperately
+lonely, homesick girl, when she caught my eye and heart; and I placed
+myself on her horizon.  In her case the women were slow in offering
+friendship, because, on account of Mrs. Pryor's seclusion, none was
+felt to be wanted; then Miss Pryor was different in dress and manner.
+I found a way to let her see that I wanted to be friends, and she
+accepted my friendship, and at the same time allowed it go only so far.
+On a few rare occasions, I've met her alone, and we've talked out
+various phases of life together; but most of our intercourse has taken
+place in your home, and in your presence.  You probably have seen her
+meet and entertain her friends frequently.  I should think you would be
+more nearly able to gauge my standing with her than I am."
+
+"You haven't told her that you love her?"
+
+"Haven't I though?" cried Laddie.  "Man alive!  What do you think I'm
+made of?  Putty?  Told her?  I've told her a thousand times.  I've said
+it, and sung it and whistled it, and looked it, and lived it.  I've
+written it, and ridden it, and this week I've plowed it!  Your daughter
+knows as she knows nothing else, in all this world, that she has only
+to give me one glance, one word, one gesture of invitation, to find me
+before her six feet of the worst demoralized beefsteak a woman ever
+undertook to handle.  Told her?  Ye Gods!  I should say I've told her!"
+
+If any of Pryors had been outdoors they certainly could have heard Mr.
+Pryor.  How he laughed!  He shook until he tottered.  Laddie took his
+arm and led him to the fence.  He lifted a broad top rail, pushed it
+between two others across a corner and made a nice comfortable seat for
+him.  After a while Mr. Pryor wiped his eyes.  Laddie stood watching
+him with a slow grin on his face.
+
+"And she hasn't given the signal you are waiting for?" he asked at last.
+
+Laddie slowly shook his head.
+
+"Nary the ghost of a signal!" he said.  "Now we come to Sunday before
+last.  I only intimated, vaguely, that a hint of where I stood would be
+a comfort--and played Jonah.  The whale swallowed me at a gulp, and for
+all my inches, never batted an eye.  You see, a few days before I
+showed her a letter from my brother Jerry, because I thought it might
+interest her.  There was something in it to which I had paid little or
+no attention, about my going to the city and beginning work in his law
+office; to cap that, evidently you had mentioned before her our prize
+piece of family tinware.  There was a culmination like a thunder clap
+in a January sky.  She said everything that was on her mind about a man
+of my size and ability doing the work I am, and then she said I must
+change my occupation before I came again."
+
+"And for answer you've split the echoes with some shrill, abominable
+air, and plowed, before her very eyes, for a week!"
+
+Then Laddie laughed.
+
+"Do you know," he said; "that's a good one on me!  It never occurred to
+me that she would not be familiar with that air, and understand its
+application.  Do you mean to crush me further by telling me that all my
+perfectly lovely vocalizing and whistling was lost?"
+
+"It was a dem irritating, challenging sort of thing," said Mr. Pryor.
+"I listened to it by the hour, myself, trying to make out exactly what
+it did mean.  It seemed to combine defiance with pleading, and through
+and over all ran a note of glee that was really quite charming."
+
+"You have quoted a part of it, literally," said Laddie.  "'A note of
+glee'--the cry of a glad heart, at peace with all the world, busy with
+congenial work."
+
+"I shouldn't have thought you'd have been so particularly joyful."
+
+"Oh, the joy was in the music," said Laddie.  "That was a whistle to
+keep up my courage.  The joy was in the song, not in me!  Last week was
+black enough for me to satisfy the most exacting pessimist."
+
+"I wish you might have seen the figure you cut!  That fine team, flower
+bedecked, and the continuous concert!"
+
+"But I did!" cried Laddie.  "We have mirrors.  That song can't be
+beaten.  I know this team is all right, and I'm not dwarfed or
+disfigured.  That was the pageant of summer passing in review.  It
+represented the tilling of the soil; the sowing of seed, garnering to
+come later.  You buy corn and wheat, don't you?  They are vastly
+necessary.  Much more so than the settling of quarrels that never
+should have taken place.  Do you think your daughter found the
+spectacle at all moving?"
+
+"Damn you, sir, what I should do, is to lay this whip across your
+shoulders!" cried Mr. Pryor.
+
+But if you will believe it, he was laughing again.
+
+"I prefer that you don't," said Laddie, "or on Ranger either.  See how
+he likes being gentled."
+
+Then he straightened and drew a deep breath.
+
+"Mr. Pryor," he said, "as man to man, I have got this to say to
+you--and you may use your own discretion about repeating it to your
+daughter:  I can offer her six feet of as sound manhood as you can find
+on God's footstool.  I never in my whole life have had enough impure
+blood in my body to make even one tiny eruption on my skin.  I never
+have been ill a day in my life.  I never have touched a woman save as I
+lifted and cared for my mother, and hers, or my sisters.  As to my
+family and education she can judge for herself.  I offer her the first
+and only love of my heart.  She objects to farming, because she says it
+is dirty, offensive work.  There are parts of it that are dirty.  Thank
+God, it only soils the body, and that can be washed.  To delve and to
+dive into, and to study and to brood over the bigger half of the law
+business of any city is to steep your brain in, and smirch your soul
+with, such dirt as I would die before I'd make an occupation of
+touching.  Will you kindly tell her that word for word, and that I
+asked you to?"
+
+Mr. Pryor was standing before I saw him rise.  He said those awful
+words again, but between them he cried:  "You're right!  It's the
+truth! It's the eternal truth!"
+
+"It IS the truth," said Laddie.  "I've only to visit the offices, and
+examine the business of those of my family living by law, to KNOW that
+it's the truth.  Of course there's another side!  There are times when
+there are great opportunities to do good; I recognize that.  To some
+these may seem to overbalance that to which I object.  If they do, all
+right.  I am merely deciding for myself.  Once and for all, for me it
+is land.  It is born in me to love it, to handle it easily, to get the
+best results from stock.  I am going to take the Merriweather place
+adjoining ours on the west, and yours on the south.  I intend to lease
+it for ten years, with purchase privilege at the end, so that if I make
+of it what I plan, my work will not be lost to me.  I had thought to
+fix up the place and begin farming.  If Miss Pryor has any use whatever
+for me, and prefers stock, that is all right with me.  I'll go into the
+same business she finds suitable for you.  I can start in a small way
+and develop.  I can afford a maid for her from the beginning, but I
+couldn't clothe her as she has been accustomed to being dressed, for
+some time.  I would do my best, however.  I know what store my mother
+sets by being well gowned.  And as a husband, I can offer your daughter
+as loving consideration as woman ever received at the hands of man.
+Provided by some miracle I could win her consent, would you even
+consider me, and such an arrangement?"
+
+"Frankly sir," said Mr. Pryor, "I have reached the place where I would
+be----" whenever you come to a long black line like that, it means that
+he just roared a lot of words father never said, and never will--"glad
+to!  To tell the truth, the thing you choose to jestingly refer to as
+'tinware'--I hope later to convince of the indelicacy of such
+allusion--would place you in England on a social level above any we
+ever occupied, or could hope to.  Your education equals ours.  You are
+a physical specimen to be reckoned with, and I believe what you say of
+yourself.  There's something so clean and manly about you, it amounts
+to confirmation.  A woman should set her own valuation on that; and the
+height of it should correspond with her knowledge of the world."
+
+"Thank you!" said Laddie.  "You are more than kind! more than generous!"
+
+"As to the arrangements you could make for Pamela," said Mr. Pryor,
+"she's all we have.  Everything goes to her, ultimately.  She has her
+stipulated allowance now; whether in my house or yours, it would go
+with her.  Surely you wouldn't be so callous as to object to our giving
+her anything that would please us!"
+
+"Why should I?" asked Laddie.  "That's only natural on your part.  Your
+child is your child; no matter where or what it is, you expect to
+exercise a certain amount of loving care over it.  My father and mother
+constantly send things to their children absent from home, and they
+take much pleasure in doing it.  That is between you and your daughter,
+of course.  I shouldn't think of interfering.  But in the meantime,
+unless Miss Pryor has been converted to the beauties of plowing through
+my continuous performance of over a week, I stand now exactly where I
+did before, so far as she is concerned.  If you and Mrs. Pryor have no
+objection to me, if you feel that you could think of me, or find for me
+any least part of a son's place in your hearts, I believe I should know
+how to appreciate it, and how to go to work to make myself worthy of
+it."
+
+Mr. Pryor sat down so suddenly, the rail almost broke.  I thought the
+truth was, that he had heart trouble, himself.  He stopped up, choked
+on things, flopped around, and turned so white.  I suppose he thought
+it was womanish, and a sign of weakness, and so he didn't tell, but I
+bet anything that he had it--bad!
+
+"I'll try to make the little fool see!" he said.
+
+"Gently, gently!  You won't help me any in that mood," said Laddie.
+"The chances are that Miss Pryor repeated what she heard from you long
+ago, and what she knows you think and feel, unless you've changed
+recently."
+
+"That's the amount of it!" cried Mr. Pryor.  "All my life I've had a
+lot of beastly notions in my head about rank, and class, and here they
+don't amount to a damn!  There's no place for them.  Things are
+different.  Your mother, a grand, good woman, opened my eyes to many
+things recently, and I get her viewpoint--clearly, and I agree with
+her, and with you, sir!--I agree with you!"
+
+"I am more than glad," said Laddie.  "You certainly make a friend at
+court.  Thank you very much!"
+
+"And you will come----?"
+
+"The instant Miss Pryor gives me the slightest sign that I am wanted,
+and will be welcomed by her, I'll come like a Dakota blizzard!  Flos
+can hump herself on time for once."
+
+"But you won't come until she does?"
+
+"Man alive!  I can't!" cried Laddie.  "Your daughter said positively
+exactly what she meant.  It was unexpected and it hit me so hard I
+didn't try to argue.  I simply took her at her word, her very explicit
+word."
+
+"Fool!" cried Mr. Pryor.  "The last thing on earth any woman ever wants
+or expects is for a man to take her at her word."
+
+"What?" cried Laddie.
+
+"She had what she said in her mind of course, but what she wanted was
+to be argued out of it!  She wanted to be convinced!"
+
+"I think not!  She was entirely too convincing herself," said Laddie.
+"It's my guess that she has thought matters over, and that her mind is
+made up; but I would take it as a mighty big favour if you would put
+that little piece of special pleading squarely up to her.  Will you?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Pryor, "I will.  I'll keep cool and do my best, but I
+am so unfortunate in my temper.  I could manage slaves better than
+women.  This time I'll be calm, and reason things out with her, or I'll
+blow out my brains."
+
+"Don't you dare!" laughed Laddie.  "You and I are going to get much
+pleasure, comfort and profit from this world, now that we have come to
+an understanding."
+
+Mr. Pryor arose and held out his hand.  Laddie grasped it tight, and
+they stood there looking straight at each other, while a lark on the
+fence post close by cried, "Spring o' ye-ar!" at them, over and over,
+but they never paid the least attention.
+
+"You see," said Mr. Pryor, "I've been thinking things over deeply,
+deeply! ever since talking with your mother.  I've cut myself off from
+going back to England, by sacrificing much of my property in hasty
+departure, if by any possibility I should ever want to return, and
+there is none, not the slightest!  There's no danger of any one
+crossing the sea, and penetrating to this particular spot so far
+inland; we won't be molested!  And lately--lately, despite the rawness,
+and the newness, there is something about the land that takes hold,
+after all.  I should dislike leaving now!  I found in watching some
+roots your mother gave me, that I wanted them to grow, that I very much
+hoped they would develop, and beautify our place with flowers, as yours
+is.  I find myself watching them, watching them daily, and oftener, and
+there seems to be a sort of home feeling creeping around my heart.  I
+wish Pamela would listen to reason!  I wish she would marry you soon!
+I wish there would be little children.  Nothing else on earth would
+come so close to comforting my wife, and me also.  Nothing!  Go ahead,
+lad, plow away!  I'll put your special pleading up to the girl."
+
+He clasped Laddie's hand, mounted and rode back to the gate he had
+entered when he came.  Laddie sat on the rail, so I climbed down beside
+him.  He put his arm around me.
+
+"Do I feel any better?" he asked dubiously.
+
+"Of course you do!" I said stoutly.  "You feel whole heaps, and stacks,
+and piles better.  You haven't got him to fight any more, or Mrs.
+Pryor.  It's now only to convince the Princess about how it's all right
+to plow."
+
+"Small matter, that!" said Laddie.  "And easy!  Just as simple and
+easy!"
+
+"Have you asked the Fairies to help you?"
+
+"Aye, aye, sir," said Laddie.  "Also the winds, the flowers, the birds
+and the bees!  I have asked everything on earth to help me except you,
+Little Sister.  I wonder if I have been making a mistake there?"
+
+"Are you mad at me, Laddie?"
+
+"'Cause for why?"
+
+"About the old crest thing!"
+
+"Forget it!" laughed Laddie.  "I have.  And anyway, in the long run, I
+must be honest enough to admit that it may have helped.  It seems to
+have had its influence with Mr. Pryor, no doubt it worked the same on
+Mrs. Pryor, and it may be that it was because she had so much more to
+bank on than she ever expected, that the Princess felt emboldened to
+make her demand.  It may be, you can't tell!  Anyway, it's very evident
+that it did no real harm.  And forget my jesting, Chicken.  A man can't
+always cry because there are tears in his heart.  I think quite as much
+of that crest as you do.  In the sum of human events, it is a big
+thing.  No one admires a Crusader more than I.  No one likes a good
+fight better.  No Crusader ever put up a stiffer battle than I have in
+the past week while working in these fields.  Every inch of them is
+battlefield, every furrow a separate conflict.  Gaze upon the scene of
+my Waterloo!  When June covers it with green, it will wave over the
+resting place of my slain heart!"
+
+"Oh Laddie!" I sobbed.  "There you go again!  How can you?"
+
+"Whoo-pee!" cried Laddie.  "That's the question!  How can I?  Got to,
+Little Sister!  There's no other way."
+
+"No," I was forced to admit, "there isn't.  What are we going to do
+now?"
+
+"Life-saver, we'll now go to dinner," said Laddie.  "Nothing except the
+partnership implied in 'we' sustains me now.  YOU'LL FIND A WAY TO HELP
+ME OUT, WON'T YOU, LITTLE SISTER?"
+
+"OF COURSE I WILL!" I promised, without ever stopping a minute to think
+what kind of a job that was going to be.
+
+Did you ever wish with all your might that something would happen, and
+wait for it, expect it, and long for it, and nothing did, until it grew
+so bad, it seemed as if you had to go on another minute you couldn't
+bear it?  Now I thought when Mr. Pryor talked to her, maybe she'd send
+for Laddie that very same night; but send nothing!  She didn't even
+ride on our road any more.  Of course her father had made a botch of
+it!  Bet I could have told her Laddie's message straighter than he did.
+I could think it over, and see exactly how he'd do.  He'd talk nicely
+about one minute, and the first word she said, that he didn't like,
+he'd be ranting, and using unsuitable words.  Just as like as not he
+told her that he'd lay his whip across her shoulders, like he had
+Laddie.  Any one could see that as long as she was his daughter, she
+might be slightly handy with whips herself; at least she wouldn't be
+likely to stand still and tell him to go ahead and beat her.
+
+Sunday Laddie went to Lucy's.  He said he was having a family reunion
+on the installment plan.  Of course we laughed, but none of us missed
+the long look he sent toward Pryors' as he mounted to start in the
+opposite direction.
+
+Everything went on.  I didn't see how it could, but it did.  It even
+got worse, for another letter came from Shelley that made matters
+concerning her no brighter, and while none of us talked about Laddie,
+all of us knew mighty well how we felt; and what was much worse, how he
+felt.  Father and mother had quit worrying about God; especially
+father.  He seemed to think that God and Laddie could be trusted to
+take care of the Princess, and I don't know exactly what mother
+thought.  No doubt she saw she couldn't help herself, and so she
+decided it was useless to struggle.
+
+The plowing on the west side was almost finished, and some of the seed
+was in.  Laddie went straight ahead flower-trimmed and whistling until
+his face must have ached as badly as his heart.  In spite of how hard
+he tried to laugh, and keep going, all of us could see that he fairly
+had to stick up his head and stretch his neck like the blue goose, to
+make the bites go down.  And you couldn't help seeing the roundness and
+the colour go from his face, a little more every day.  My! but being in
+love, when you couldn't have the one you loved, was the worst of all.
+I wore myself almost as thin as Laddie, hunting a Fairy to ask if she'd
+help me to make the Princess let Laddie go on and plow, when he was so
+crazy about it.  I prayed beside my bed every night, until the Lord
+must have grown so tired He quit listening to me, for I talked right up
+as impressively as I knew how, and it didn't do the least bit of good.
+I hadn't tried the one big prayer toward the east yet; but I was just
+about to the place where I intended to do it soon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Laddie, the Princess, and the Pie
+
+  "O whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad."
+
+
+Candace was baking the very first batch of rhubarb pies for the season
+and the odour was so tempting I couldn't keep away from the kitchen
+door.  Now Candace was a splendid cook about chicken gizzards--the
+liver was always mother's--doughnuts and tarts, but I never really did
+believe she would cut into a fresh rhubarb pie, even for me.  As I
+reached for the generous big piece I thought of Laddie poor Laddie,
+plowing away at his Crusader fight, and not a hint of victory.  No one
+in the family liked rhubarb pie better than he did.  I knew there was
+no use to ask for a plate.
+
+"Wait--oh wait!" I cried.
+
+I ran to the woodshed, pulled a shining new shingle from a bale stacked
+there, and held it for Candace.  Then I slipped around the house
+softly.  I didn't want to run any one's errands that morning.  I laid
+the pie on the horseblock and climbed the catalpa carefully, so as not
+to frighten my robins.  They were part father's too, because robins
+were his favourite birds; he said their song through and after rain was
+the sweetest music on earth, and mostly he was right; so they were not
+all my robins, but they were most mine after him; and I owned the tree.
+I hunted the biggest leaf I could see, and wiped it clean on my apron,
+although it was early for much dust.  It covered the pie nicely,
+because it was the proper shape, and I held the stem with one hand to
+keep it in place.
+
+
+If I had made that morning myself I couldn't have done better.  It was
+sunny, spring air, but it was that cool, spicy kind that keeps you
+stopping every few minutes to see just how full you can suck your lungs
+without bursting.  It seemed to wash right through and through and make
+you all over.  The longer you breathed it the clearer your head became,
+and the better you felt, until you would be possessed to try and see if
+you really couldn't fly.  I tried that last summer, and knocked myself
+into jelly.  You'd think once would have been enough, but there I was
+going down the road with Laddie's pie, and wanting with all my heart to
+try again.
+
+Sometimes I raced, but I was a little afraid the pie would shoot from
+the shingle and it was like pulling eye teeth to go fast that morning.
+I loved the soft warm dust, that was working up on the road.  Spat!
+Spat!  I brought down my bare feet, already scratched and turning
+brown, and laughed to myself at the velvety feel of it.  There were
+little puddles yet, where May and I had "dipped and faded" last fall,
+and it was fun to wade them.  The roadsides were covered with meadow
+grass and clover that had slipped through the fence.  On slender green
+blades, in spot after spot, twinkled the delicate bloom of blue-eyed
+grass.  Never in all this world was our Big Creek lovelier.  It went
+slipping, and whispering, and lipping, and lapping over the stones,
+tugging at the rushes and grasses as it washed their feet; everything
+beside it was in masses of bloom, a blackbird was gleaming and preening
+on every stone, as it plumed after its bath.  Oh there's no use to
+try--it was just SPRING when it couldn't possibly be any better.
+
+But even spring couldn't hold me very long that morning, for you see my
+heart was almost sick about Laddie; and if he couldn't have the girl he
+wanted, at least I could do my best to comfort him with the pie.  I was
+going along being very careful the more I thought about how he would
+like it, so I was not watching the road so far ahead as I usually did.
+I always kept a lookout for Paddy Ryan, Gypsies, or Whitmore's bull.
+When I came to an unusually level place, and took a long glance ahead,
+my heart turned right over and stopped still, and I looked long enough
+to be sure, and then right out loud some one said, "I'll DO something!"
+and as usual, I was the only one there.
+
+For days I'd been in a ferment, like the vinegar barrel when the cider
+boils, or the yeast jar when it sets too close to the stove.  To have
+Laddie and the Princess separated was dreadful, and knowing him as I
+did, I knew he never really would get over it.  I had tried to help
+once, and what I had done started things going wrong; no wonder I was
+slow about deciding what to try next.  That I was going to do
+something, I made up my mind the instant Laddie said he was not mad at
+me; that I was his partner, and asked me to help; but exactly WHAT
+would do any good, took careful thought.
+
+Here was my chance coming right at me.  She was far up the road, riding
+Maud like racing.  I began to breathe after a while, like you always
+do, no matter how you are worked up, and with my brain whirling, I went
+slowly toward her.  How would I manage to stop her?  Or what could I
+say that would help Laddie?  I was shaking, and that's the truth; but
+through and over it all, I was watching her too.  I only wish you might
+have seen her that morning.  Of course the morning was part of it.  A
+morning like that would make a fence post better looking.  Half a mile
+away you could see she was tipsy with spring as I was, or the song
+sparrows, or the crazy babbling old bobolinks on the stakes and riders.
+She made such a bright splash against the pink fence row, with her dark
+hair, flushed cheeks, and red lips, she took my breath.  Father said
+she was the loveliest girl in three counties, and Laddie stretched that
+to the whole world.  As she came closer, smash!  through me went the
+thought that she looked precisely as Shelley had at Christmas time; and
+Shelley had been that way because she was in love with the Paget man.
+Now if the Princess was gleaming and flashing like that, for the same
+reason, there wasn't any one for her to love so far as I knew, except
+Laddie.
+
+Then smash! came another thought.  She HAD to love him!  She couldn't
+help herself.  She had all winter, all last summer, and no one but
+themselves knew how long before that, and where was there any other man
+like Laddie?  Of course she loved him!  Who so deserving of love?  Who
+else had his dancing eyes of deep tender blue, cheeks so pink, teeth so
+white, such waving chestnut hair, and his height and breadth?  There
+was no other man who could ride, swim, leap, and wrestle as he could.
+None who could sing the notes, do the queer sums with letters having
+little figures at the corners in the college books, read Latin as fast
+as English, and even the Greek Bible.  Of course she loved him!  Every
+one did!  Others might plod and meander, Laddie walked the tired, old
+road that went out of sight over the hill, with as prideful a step as
+any king; his laugh was as merry as the song of the gladdest thrush,
+while his touch was so gentle that when mother was in dreadful pain I
+sometimes thought she would a little rather have him hold her than
+father.
+
+Now, he was in this fearful trouble, the colour was going from his
+face, his laugh was a little strained, and the heartache almost more
+than he could endure--and there she came!  I stepped squarely in the
+middle of the road so she would have to stop or ride over me, and when
+she was close, I stood quite still.  I was watching with my eyes,
+heart, and brain, and I couldn't see that she was provoked, as she drew
+rein and cried:  "Good morning, Little Queer Person!"
+
+I had supposed she would say Little Sister, she had for ages, just like
+Laddie, but she must have thought it was queer for me to stop her that
+way, so she changed.  I was in for it.  I had her now, so I smiled the
+very sweetest smile that I could think up in such a hurry, and said,
+"Good morning," the very politest I ever did in all my life.  Then I
+didn't know what to do next, but she helped me out.
+
+"What have you there?" she asked.
+
+"It's a piece of the very first rhubarb pie for this spring, and I'm
+carrying it to Laddie," I said, as I lifted the catalpa leaf and let
+her peep, just to show her how pie looked when it was right.  I bet she
+never saw a nicer piece.
+
+The Princess slid her hand down Maud's neck to quiet her prancing, and
+leaned in the saddle, her face full of interest.  I couldn't see a
+trace of anything to discourage me; her being on our road again looked
+favourable.  She seemed to think quite as much of that pie as I did.
+She was the finest little thoroughbred.  She understood so well, I was
+sorry I couldn't give it to her.  It made her mouth water all right,
+for she drew a deep breath that sort of quivered; but it was no use,
+she didn't get that pie.
+
+"I think it looks delicious," she said.  "Are you carrying it for
+Candace?"
+
+"No!  She gave it to me.  It's my very own."
+
+"And you're doing without it yourself to carry it to Laddie, I'll be
+bound!" cried the Princess.
+
+"I'd much rather," I said.
+
+"Do you love Laddie so dearly?" she asked.
+
+My heart was full of him right then; I forgot all about when I had the
+fever, and as I never had been taught to lie, I told her what I thought
+was the truth, and I guess it WAS:  "Best of any one in all this world!"
+
+The Princess looked across the field, where she must have seen him
+finishing the plowing, and thought that over, and I waited, sure in my
+mind, for some reason, that she would not go for a little while longer.
+
+"I have been wanting to see you," she said at last.  "In fact I think I
+came this way hoping I'd meet you.  Do you know the words to a tune
+that goes like this?"
+
+Then she began to whistle "The Merry Farmer Boy." I wish you might have
+heard the flourishes she put to it.
+
+"Of course I do," I answered.  "All of us were brought up on it."
+
+"Well, I have some slight curiosity to learn what they are," she said.
+"Would you kindly repeat them for me?"
+
+"Yes," I said.  "This is the first verse:
+
+  "'See the merry farmer boy tramp the meadows through,
+  Swing his hoe in careless joy while dashing off the dew.
+  Bobolink in maple high----'
+
+"Of course you can see for yourself that they're not.  There isn't a
+single one of them higher than a fence post.  The person who wrote the
+piece had to put it that way so high would rhyme with reply, which is
+coming in the next line."
+
+"I see!" said the Princess.
+
+  "'Bobolink in maple high, trills a note of glee
+  Farmer boy a gay reply now whistles cheerily.'
+
+
+"Then you whistle the chorus like you did it."
+
+"You do indeed!" said the Princess.  "Proceed!"
+
+  "'Then the farmer boy at noon, rests beneath the shade,
+  Listening to the ceaseless tune that's thrilling through the glade.
+  Long and loud the harvest fly winds his bugle round,
+  Long, and loud, and shrill, and high, he whistles back the sound.'"
+
+
+"He does!  He does indeed!  I haven't a doubt about that!" cried the
+Princess.  "'Long, and loud, and shrill, and high,' he whistles over
+and over the sound, until it becomes maddening.  Is that all of that
+melodious, entrancing production?"
+
+"No, evening comes yet.  The last verse goes this way:
+
+  "'When the busy day's employ, ends at dewy eve,
+  Then the happy farmer boy, doth haste his work to leave,
+  Trudging down the quiet lane, climbing o'er the hill,
+  Whistling back the changeless wail, of plaintive whip-poor-will,'--
+
+and then you do the chorus again, and if you know how well enough you
+whistle in, 'whip-poor-will,' 'til the birds will answer you.  Laddie
+often makes them."
+
+"My life!" cried the Princess.  "Was that he doing those bird cries?
+Why, I hunted, and hunted, and so did father.  We'd never seen a
+whip-poor-will.  Just fancy us!"
+
+"If you'd only looked at Laddie," I said.
+
+"My patience!" cried the Princess.  "Looked at him!  There was no place
+to look without seeing him.  And that ear-splitting thing will ring in
+my head forever, I know."
+
+"Did he whistle it too high to suit you, Princess?"
+
+"He was perfectly welcome to whistle as he chose," she said, "and also
+to plow with the carriage horses, and to bedeck them and himself with
+the modest, shrinking red tulip and yellow daffodil."
+
+Now any one knows that tulips and daffodils are NOT modest and
+shrinking.  If any flowers just blaze and scream colour clear across a
+garden, they do.  She was provoked, you could see that.
+
+"Well, he only did it to please you," I said.  "He didn't care anything
+about it.  He never plowed that way before.  But you said he mustn't
+plow at all, and he just had to plow, there was no escaping that, so he
+made it as fine and happy as possible to show you how nicely it could
+be done."
+
+"Greatly obliged, I'm sure!" cried the Princess.  "He showed me!  He
+certainly did!  And so he feels that there's 'no escaping' plowing,
+does he?"
+
+Then I knew where I was.  I'd have given every cent of mine in father's
+chest till, if mother had been in my place.  Once, for a second, I
+thought I'd ask the Princess to go with me to the house, and let mother
+tell her how it was; but if she wouldn't go, and rode away, I felt I
+couldn't endure it, and anyway, she had said she was looking for me; so
+I gripped the shingle, dug in my toes and went at her just as nearly
+like mother talked to her father as I could remember, and I'd been put
+through memory tests, and descriptive tests, nearly every night of my
+life, so I had most of it as straight as a string.
+
+"Well, you see, he CAN'T escape it," I said.  "He'd do anything in all
+this world for you that he possibly could; but there are some things no
+man CAN do."
+
+"I didn't suppose there was anything you thought Laddie couldn't do,"
+she said.
+
+"A little time back, I didn't," I answered.  "But since he took the
+carriage horses, trimmed up in flowers, and sang and whistled so
+bravely, day after day, when his heart was full of tears, why I learned
+that there was something he just COULDN'T DO; NOT TO SAVE HIS LIFE, OR
+HIS LOVE, OR EVEN TO SAVE YOU."
+
+"And of course you don't mind telling me what that is?" coaxed the
+Princess in her most wheedling tones.
+
+"Not at all!  He told our family, and I heard him tell your father.
+The thing he can't do, not even to win you, is to be shut up in a
+little office, in a city, where things roar, and smell, and nothing is
+like this----"
+
+I pointed out the orchard, hill, and meadow, so she looked where I
+showed her--looked a long time.
+
+"No, a city wouldn't be like this," she said slowly.
+
+"And that isn't even the beginning," I said.  "Maybe he could bear
+that, men have been put in prison and lived through years and years of
+it, perhaps Laddie could too; I doubt it! but anyway the worst of it is
+that he just couldn't, not even to save you, spend all the rest of his
+life trying to settle other people's old fusses.  He despises a fuss.
+Not one of us ever in our lives have been able to make him quarrel,
+even one word.  He simply won't.  And if he possibly could be made to
+by any one on earth, Leon would have done it long ago, for he can start
+a fuss with the side of a barn.  But he can't make Laddie fuss, and
+nobody can.  He NEVER would at school, or anywhere.  Once in a while if
+a man gets so overbearing that Laddie simply can't stand it, he says:
+'Now, you'll take your medicine!'  Then he pulls off his coat, and
+carefully, choosing the right spots, he just pounds the breath out of
+that man, but he never stops smiling, and when he helps him up he
+always says:  'Sorry! hope you'll excuse me, but you WOULD have it.'
+That's what he said about you, that you had to take your medicine----"
+
+I made a mistake there.  That made her too mad for any use.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "I do? I'll jolly well show the gentleman!"
+
+"Oh, you needn't take the trouble," I cried.  "He's showing you!"
+
+She just blazed like she'd break into flame.  Any one could fuss with
+her all right; but that was the last thing on earth I wanted to do.
+
+"You see he already knows about you," I explained as fast as I could
+talk, for I was getting into an awful mess.  "You see he knows that you
+want him to be a lawyer, and that he must quit plowing before he can be
+more than friends with you.  That's what he's plowing for!  If it
+wasn't for that, probably he wouldn't; be plowing at all.  He asked
+father to let him, and he borrowed mother's horses, and he hooked the
+flowers through the fence.  Every night when he comes home, he kneels
+beside mother and asks her if he is 'repulsive,' and she takes him in
+her arms and the tears roll down her cheeks and she says:  'Father has
+farmed all his life, and you know how repulsive he is.'"
+
+I ventured an upward peep.  I was doing better.  Her temper seemed to
+be cooling, but her face was a jumble.  I couldn't find any one thing
+on it that would help me, so I just stumbled ahead guessing at what to
+say.
+
+"He didn't WANT to do it.  He perfectly HATED it.  Those fields were
+his Waterloo.  Every furrow was a FIGHT, but he was FORCED to show you."
+
+"Exactly WHAT was he trying to show me?"
+
+"I can think of three things he told me," I answered.  "That plowing
+could be so managed as not to disfigure the landscape----"
+
+"The dunce!" she said.
+
+"That he could plow or do dirtier work, and not be repulsive----"
+
+"The idiot!" she said.
+
+"That if he came over there, and plowed right under your nose, when
+you'd told him he mustn't, or he couldn't be more than friends; and
+when you knew that he'd much rather die and be laid beside the little
+sisters up there in the cemetery than to NOT be more than friends, why,
+you'd see, if he did THAT, he couldn't help it, that he just MUST.
+That he was FORCED----"
+
+"The soldier!" she said.
+
+"Oh Princess, he didn't want to!" I cried.  "He tells me secrets he
+doesn't any one else, unless you.  He told me how he hated it; but he
+just had to do it."
+
+"Do you know WHY?"
+
+"Of course!  It's the way he's MADE!  Father is like that!  He has
+chances to live in cities, make big business deals, and go to the
+legislature at Indianapolis; I've seen his letters from his friend
+Oliver P. Morton, our Governor, you know; they're in his chest till
+now; but father can't do it, because he is made so he stays at home and
+works for us, and this farm, and township, and county where he belongs.
+He says if all men will do that the millennium will come to-morrow.  I
+'spose you know what the millennium is?"
+
+"I do!" said the Princess.  "But I don't know what your father and his
+friend Oliver P. Morton have to do with Laddie."
+
+"Why, everything on earth!  Laddie is father's son, you see, and he is
+made like father.  None of our other boys is.  Not one of them loves
+land.  Leon is going away as quick as ever he finishes college; but the
+more you educate Laddie, the better he likes to make things grow, the
+more he loves to make the world beautiful, to be kind to every one, to
+gentle animals--why, the biggest fight he ever had, the man he whipped
+'til he most couldn't bring him back again, was one who kicked his
+horse in the stomach.  Gee, I thought he'd killed him!  Laddie did too
+for a while, but he only said the man deserved it."
+
+"And so he did!" cried the Princess angrily.  "How beastly!"
+
+"That's one reason Laddie sticks so close to land.  He says he doesn't
+meet nearly so many two-legged beasts in the country.  Almost every
+time he goes to town he either gets into a fight or he sees something
+that makes him fighting mad.  Princess, you think this beautiful, don't
+you?"
+
+I just pointed anywhere.  All the world was in it that morning.  You
+couldn't look right or left and not see lovely places, hear music, and
+smell flowers.
+
+"Yes!  It is altogether wonderful!" she said.
+
+"Would you like to live among this all your life, and have your plans
+made to fix you a place even nicer, and then be forced to leave it and
+go to a little room in the city, and make all the money you earned off
+of how much other men fight over business, and land and such perfectly
+awful things, that they always have to be whispered when Jerry tells
+about them?  Would you?"
+
+"You little dunce!" she cried.
+
+"I know I'm a fool.  I know I'm not telling you a single thing I
+should!  Maybe I'm hurting Laddie far more than I'm helping him, and if
+I am, I wish I would die before I see him; but oh!  Princess, I'm
+trying with all my might to make you understand how he feels.  He WANTS
+to do every least thing you'd like him to.  He will, almost any thing
+else in the world, he would this--he would in a minute, but he just
+CAN'T.  All of us know he can't!  If you'd lived with him since he was
+little and always had known him, you wouldn't ask him to; you wouldn't
+want him to!  You don't know what you're doing!  Mother says you don't!
+You'll kill him if you send him to the city to live, you just will!
+You are doing it now!  He's getting thinner and whiter every day.
+Don't!  Oh please don't do it!"
+
+The Princess was looking at the world.  She was gazing at it so
+dazed-like she seemed to be surprised at what she saw.  She acted as if
+she'd never really seen it before.  She looked and she looked.  She
+even turned her horse a full circle to see all of it, and she went
+around slowly.  I stepped from one foot to the other and sweat; but I
+kept quiet and let her look.  At last when she came around, she glanced
+down at me, and she was all melted, and lovely as any one you ever saw,
+exactly like Shelley at Christmas, and she said:  "I don't think I ever
+saw the world before.  I don't know that I'm so crazy about a city
+myself, and I perfectly hate lawyers.  Come to thing of it, a lawyer
+helped work ruin in our family, and I never have believed, I never will
+believe----"
+
+She stopped talking and began looking again.  I gave her all the time
+she needed.  I was just straining to be wise, for mother says it takes
+the very wisest person there is to know when to talk, and when to keep
+still.  As I figured it, now was the time not to say another word until
+she made up her mind about what I had told her already.  If Pryors
+didn't know what we thought of them by that time, it wasn't mother's
+fault or mine.  As she studied things over she kept on looking.  What
+she saw seemed to be doing her a world of good.  Her face showed it
+every second plainer and plainer.  Pretty soon it began to look like
+she was going to come through as Amos Hurd did when he was redeemed.
+Then, before my very eyes, it happened!  I don't know how I ever held
+on to the pie or kept from shouting, "Praise the Lord!" as father does
+at the Meeting House when he is happiest.  Then she leaned toward me
+all wavery, and shining eyed, and bloomful, and said:  "Did you ever
+hurt Laddie's feelings, and make him angry and sad?"
+
+"I'm sure I never did," I answered.
+
+"But suppose you had!  What would you do?"
+
+"Do?  Why, I'd go to him on the run, and I'd tell him I never intended
+to hurt his feelings, and how sorry I was, and I'd give him the very
+best kiss I could."
+
+The Princess stroked Maud's neck a long time and thought while she
+studied our farm, theirs beyond it, and at the last, the far field
+where Laddie was plowing.  She thought, and thought, and afraid to
+cheep, I stood gripping the shingle and waited.  Finally she said:
+"The last time Laddie was at our house, I said to him those things he
+repeated to you.  He went away at once, hurt and disappointed.  Now, if
+you like, along with your precious pie, you may carry him this message
+from me.  You may tell him that I said I am sorry!"
+
+I could have cried "Glory!" and danced and shouted there in the road,
+but I didn't.  It was no time to lose my head.  That was all so fine
+and splendid, as far as it went, but it didn't quite cover the case.  I
+never could have done it for myself; but for Laddie I would venture
+anything, so I looked her in the eyes, straight as a dart, and said:
+"He'd want the kiss too, Princess!"
+
+You could see her stiffen in the saddle and her fingers grip the reins,
+but I kept on staring right into her eyes.
+
+"I could come up, you know," I offered.
+
+A dull red flamed in her cheeks and her lips closed tight.  One second
+she sat very still, then a dancing light leaped sparkling into her
+eyes; a flock of dimples chased each other around her lips like
+swallows circling their homing place at twilight.
+
+"What about that wonderful pie?" she asked me.
+
+I ran to the nearest fence corner, and laid the shingle on the gnarled
+roots of a Johnny Appleseed apple tree.  Then I set one foot on the
+arch of the Princess' instep and held up my hands.  One second I
+thought she would not lift me, the next I was on her level and her lips
+met mine in a touch like velvet woven from threads of flame.  Then with
+a turn of her stout little wrist, she dropped me, and a streak went up
+our road.  Nothing so amazing and so important ever had happened to me.
+It was an occasion that demanded something unusual.  To cry, "Praise
+the Lord!" was only to repeat an hourly phrase at our house; this
+demanded something out of the ordinary, so I said just exactly as
+father did the day the brown mare balked with the last load of seed
+clover, when a big storm was breaking--"Jupiter Ammon!"
+
+When I had calmed down so I could, I climbed the fence, and reached
+through a crack for the pie.  As I followed the cool, damp furrow, and
+Laddie's whistle, clear as the lark's above the wheat, thrilled me, I
+was almost insane with joy.  Just joy!  Pure joy!  Oh what a good world
+it was!--most of the time!  Most of the time!  Of course, there WERE
+Paget men in it.  But anyway, THIS couldn't be beaten.  I had a message
+for Laddie from the Princess that would send him to the seventh heaven,
+wherever that was; no one at our house spent any time thinking farther
+than the first one.  I had her kiss, that I didn't know what would do
+to him, and I also had a big piece of juicy rhubarb pie not yet
+entirely cold.  If that didn't wipe out the trouble I had made showing
+the old crest thing, nothing ever could.  I knew even then, that men
+were pretty hard to satisfy, but I was quite certain that Laddie would
+be satisfied that morning.  As I hurried along I wondered whether it
+would be better to give him my gift first, or the Princess'.  I decided
+that joy would keep, while the pie was cold enough, with all the time I
+had stopped; and if I told him about her first, maybe he wouldn't touch
+it at all, and it wasn't so easy as it looked to carry it to him and
+never even once stick in my finger for the tiniest lick--joy would
+keep; but I was going to feed him; so with shining face, I offered the
+pie and stood back to see just how happy I could get.
+
+"Mother send it?" asked Laddie.
+
+People were curious that morning, as if I had a habit of stealing pie.
+I only took pieces of cut ones from the cellar when mother didn't care.
+So I explained again that Candace gave it to me, and I was free to
+bring it.
+
+"Oh I see!" said Laddie.
+
+After nearly two weeks of work, the grays had sobered down enough to
+stand without tying; so he wound the lines around the plow handle, sat
+on the beam, and laid aside his hat, having a fresh flower in the band.
+Once he started a thing, he just simply wouldn't give up.  He
+unbuttoned his neckband until I could see his throat where it was white
+like a woman's, took out his knife and ate that pie.  Of course we knew
+better than to use a knife at the table, but there was no other way in
+the field.  He ate that pie, slowly and deliberately, and between bites
+he talked.  I watched him with a wide grin, wondering what in this
+world he WOULD say, in a minute.  I don't think I ever had quite such a
+good time in all my life before, and I never expect to again.  He was
+saying:  "Talk about nectar and ambrosia!  Talk about the feasts of
+Lucullus!  Talk about food for the Gods!"
+
+I put on his hat, sat on the ground in front of him, and was the
+happiest girl in the world, of that I am quite sure.  When the last
+morsel was finished, Laddie looked at me steadily.
+
+"I wonder," he said, "I wonder if there's another man in the world who
+is blest with quite such a loving, unselfish little sister as mine?"
+Then he answered himself:  "No!  By all the Gods, ant half-Gods, I
+swear it--No!"
+
+It was grand as a Fourth of July oration or the most exciting part when
+the Bishop dedicated our church.  I couldn't hold in another second, I
+could hear my heart beat.
+
+"Oh Laddie!" I shouted, jumping up, "that pie is only the beginning of
+the good things I have brought you.  I have a message, and a gift
+besides, Laddie!"
+
+"A message and a gift?" Laddie repeated.  "What!  More?"
+
+"Truly I have a message and a gift for you," I cried, "and Laddie--they
+are from the Princess!"
+
+His eyes raised to mine now, and slowly he turned Sabethany-like.
+
+"From the Princess!" he exclaimed.  "A message and a gift for me,
+Little Sister?  You never would let Leon put you up to serve me a
+trick?"
+
+That hurt.  He should have KNOWN I wouldn't, and besides, "Leon feels
+just as badly about this as any of us," I said.  "Have you forgotten he
+offered to plow, and let you do the clean, easy work?"
+
+"Forgive me!  I'm overanxious," said Laddie, his arms reaching for me.
+"Go on and tell carefully, and if you truly love me, don't make a
+mistake!"
+
+Crowding close, my arms around his neck, his crisp hair against my
+lips, I whispered my story softly, for this was such a fine and
+splendid secret, that not even the shining blackbirds, and the pert
+robins in the furrows were going to get to hear a word of it.  Before I
+had finished Laddie was breathing as Flos does when he races her the
+limit.  He sat motionless for a long time, while over his face slowly
+crept a beauty that surpassed that of Apollo in his Greek book.
+
+"And her gift?"
+
+It was only a breath.
+
+"She helped me up, and she sent you this," I answered.
+
+Then I set my lips on his, and held them there a second, trying my
+level best to give him her very kiss, but of course I could only try.
+
+"Oh, Laddie," I cried.  "Her eyes were like when stars shine down in
+our well!  Her cheeks were like mother's damask roses!  She smelled
+like flowers, and when her lips touched mine little stickers went all
+over me!"
+
+Then Laddie's arms closed around me and I thought sure every bone in my
+body was going to be broken; when he finished there wasn't a trace of
+that kiss left for me.  Remembering it would be all I'd ever have.  It
+made me see what would have happened to the Princess if she had been
+there; and it was an awful pity for her to miss it, because he'd sober
+down a lot before he reached her, but I was sure as shooting that he
+wouldn't be so crazy as to kiss her hands again.  Peter wasn't a
+patching to him!
+
+That night Laddie rode to Pryors'.  When he brought Flos to the gate
+you could see the shadow of your face on her shining flank; her mane
+and tail were like ravelled silk, her hoofs bright as polished horn,
+and her muzzle was clean as a ribbon.  I broke one of those rank green
+sprouts from the snowball bush and brushed away the flies, so she
+wouldn't fret, stamp, and throw dust on herself.  Then Laddie came,
+fresh from a tubbing, starched linen, dressed in his new riding suit,
+and wearing top hat and gauntlets.  He looked the very handsomest I
+ever had seen him; and at the same time, he seemed trembling with
+tenderness, and bursting with power.  Goodness sake!  I bet the
+Princess took one good look and "came down" like Davy Crockett's coon.
+Mother was on his arm and she walked clear to the gate with him.
+
+"LADDIE, ARE YOU SURE ENOUGH TO GO?" I heard her ask him whisper-like.
+
+"SURE AS DEATH!" Laddie answered.
+
+Mother looked, and she had to see how it was with him; no doubt she saw
+more than I did from having been through it herself, so she smiled kind
+of a half-sad, half-glad smile.  Then she turned to her damask rose
+bush, the one Lucy brought her from the city, and that she was so
+precious about, that none of us dared touch it, and she searched all
+over it and carefully selected the most perfect rose.  When she
+borrowed Laddie's knife and cut the stem as long as my arm, I knew
+exactly how great and solemn the occasion was; for always before about
+six inches had been her limit.  She held it toward him, smiling bravely
+and beautifully, but the tears were running straight down her cheeks.
+
+"Take it to her," she said.  "I think, my son, it is very like."
+
+Laddie took her in his arms and wiped away the tears; he told her
+everything would come out all right about God, and the mystery, even.
+Then he picked me clear off the ground, and he tried to see how near he
+could come to cracking every bone in my body without really doing it,
+and he kissed me over and over.  It hadn't been so easy, but I guess
+you'll admit that paid.  Then he rode away with the damask rose waving
+over his heart.  Mother and I stood beside the hitching rack and looked
+after him, with our arms tight around each other while we tried to see
+which one could bawl the hardest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+The Homing Pigeon
+
+  "A millstone and the human heart,
+  Are ever driven round,
+  And if they've nothing else to grind,
+  They must themselves be ground."
+
+
+It seemed to me that my mother was the person who really could have
+been excused for having heart trouble.  The more I watched her, the
+more I wondered that she didn't.  There was her own life, the one she
+and father led, where everything went exactly as she wanted it to; and
+if there had been only themselves to think of, no people on earth could
+have lived happier, unless the pain she sometimes suffered made them
+trouble, and I don't think it would, for neither of them were to blame
+for that.  They couldn't help it.  They just had it to stand, and fight
+the stiffest they could to cure it, and mother always said she was
+better; every single time any one asked, she was better.  I hoped soon
+it would all be gone.  Then they could have been happy for sure, if
+some of us hadn't popped up and kept them in hot water all the time.
+
+I can't tell you about Laddie when he came back from Pryors'.  He tore
+down the house, then tore it up, and then threw around the pieces, and
+none of us cared.  Every one was just laughing, shouting, and every bit
+as pleased as he was, while I was the Queen Bee.  Laddie said so,
+himself, and if he didn't know, no one did.  Pryors had been lovely to
+him.  When mother asked him how he made it, he answered:  "I rode over,
+picked up the Princess and helped myself.  After I finished, I
+remembered the little unnecessary formality of asking her to marry me;
+and she said right out loud that she WOULD.  When I had time for them,
+I reached Father and Mother Pryor, and maybe it doesn't show, but
+somewhere on my person I carry their blessing, genially and heartily
+given, I am proud to state.  Now, I'm only needing yours, to make me a
+king among men."
+
+They gave it quite as willingly, I am sure, although you could see
+mother scringe when Laddie said "Father and Mother Pryor."  I knew why.
+She adored Laddie, like the Bible says you must adore the Almighty.
+From a tiny baby Laddie had taken care of her.  He used to go back,
+take her hand, and try to help her over rough places while he still
+wore dresses.  Straight on, he had been like that; always seeing when
+there was too much work and trying to shield her; always knowing when a
+pain was coming and fighting to head it off; always remembering the
+things the others forgot, going to her last at night, and his face
+against hers on her pillow the first in the morning, to learn how she
+was before he left the house.  If you were the mother of a man like
+that, how would you like to hear him call some one else mother, and
+have the word slip from his tongue so slick you could see he didn't
+even realize that he had used it?  The answer would be, if you were
+honest, that you wouldn't have liked it any more than she did.  She
+knew he had to go.  She wanted him to be happy.  She was as sure of the
+man he was going to be as she was sure of the mercy of God.  That is
+the strongest way I know to tell it.  She was unshakably sure of the
+mercy of God, but I wasn't.  There were times when it seemed as if He
+couldn't hear the most powerful prayer you could pray, and when instead
+of mercy, you seemed to get the last torment that could be piled on.
+Take right now.  Laddie was happy, and all of us were, in a way; and in
+another we were almost stiff with misery.
+
+I dreaded his leaving us so, I would slip to the hawk oak and cry
+myself sick, more than once; whether any of the others were that big
+babies I don't know; but anyway, THEY were not his Little Sister.  I
+was.  I always had been.  I always would be, for that matter; but there
+was going to be a mighty big difference.  I had the poor comfort that
+I'd done the thing myself.  Maybe if it hadn't been for stopping the
+Princess when I took him that pie, they never would have made up, and
+she might have gone across the sea and stayed there.  Maybe she'd go
+yet, as mysteriously as she had come, and take him along.  Sometimes I
+almost wished I hadn't tried to help him; but of course I didn't
+really.  Then, too, I had sense enough to know that loving each other
+as they did, they wouldn't live on that close together for years and
+years, and not find a way to make up for themselves, like they had at
+the start.
+
+I liked Laddie saying I had made his happiness for him; but I wasn't
+such a fool that I didn't know he could have made it for himself just
+as well, and no doubt better.  So everything was all right with Laddie;
+and what happened to us, the day he rode away for the last time, when
+he went to stay--what happened to us, then, was our affair.  We had to
+take it, but every one of us dreaded it, while mother didn't know how
+to bear it, and neither did I.  Once I said to her:  "Mother, when
+Laddie goes we'll just have to make it up to each other the best we
+can, won't we?"
+
+"Oh my soul, child!" she cried, staring at me so surprised-like.  "Why,
+how unspeakably selfish I have been!  No little lost sheep ever ran
+this farm so desolate as you will be without your brother.  Forgive me
+baby, and come here!"
+
+Gee, but we did cry it out together!  The God she believed in has wiped
+away her tears long ago; this minute I can scarcely see the paper for
+mine.  If you could call anything happiness, that was mixed with
+feeling like that, why, then, we were happy about Laddie.  But from
+things I heard father and mother say, I knew they could have borne his
+going away, and felt a trifle better than they did.  I was quite sure
+they had stopped thinking that he was going to lose his soul, but they
+couldn't help feeling so long as that old mystery hung over Pryors that
+he might get into trouble through it.  Father said if it hadn't been
+for Mr. Pryor's stubborn and perverted notions about God, he would like
+the man immensely, and love to be friends; and if Laddie married into
+the family we would have to be as friendly as we could anyway.  He said
+he had such a high opinion of Mr. Pryor's integrity that he didn't
+believe he'd encourage Laddie to enter his family if it would involve
+the boy in serious trouble.  Mother didn't know.  Anyway, the thing was
+done, and by fall, no doubt, Laddie would leave us.
+
+Just when we were trying to keep a stiff upper lip before him, and
+whistling as hard as ever he had, to brace our courage, a letter came
+for mother from the head of the music school Shelley attended, saying
+she was no longer fit for work, so she was being sent home at once, and
+they would advise us to consult a specialist immediately.  Mother sat
+and stared at father, and father went to hitch the horses to drive to
+Groveville.
+
+There's only one other day of my life that stands out as clearly as
+that.  The house was clean as we could make it.  I finished feeding
+early, and had most of the time to myself.  I went down to the Big
+Hill, and followed the top of it to our woods.  Then I turned around,
+and started toward the road, just idling.  If I saw a lovely spot I sat
+down and watched all around me to see if a Fairy really would go
+slipping past, or lie asleep under a leaf.  I peeked and peered softly,
+going from spot to spot, watching everything.  Sometimes I hung over
+the water, and studied tiny little fish with red, yellow, and blue on
+them, bright as flowers.  The dragonflies would alight right on me, and
+some wore bright blue markings and some blood red.  There was a blue
+beetle, a beautiful green fly, and how the blue wasps did flip, flirt
+and glint in the light.  So did the blackbirds and the redwings.  That
+embankment was left especially to shade the water, and to feed the
+birds.  Every foot of it was covered with alders, wild cherry,
+hazelbush, mulberries, everything having a berry or nut.  There were
+several scrub apple trees, many red haws, the wild strawberries spread
+in big beds in places, and some of them were colouring.
+
+Wild flowers grew everywhere, great beds were blue with calamus, and
+the birds flocked in companies to drive away the water blacksnakes that
+often found nests, and liked eggs and bird babies.  When I came to the
+road at last, the sun was around so the big oak on the top of the hill
+threw its shadow across the bridge, and I lay along one edge and
+watched the creek bottom, or else I sat up so the water flowed over my
+feet, and looked at the embankment and the sky.  In a way, it was the
+most peculiar day of my life.  I had plenty to think of, but I never
+thought at all.  I only lived.  I sat watching the world go past
+through a sort of golden haze the sun made.  When a pair of kingbirds
+and three crows chased one of my hawks pell-mell across the sky, I
+looked on and didn't give a cent what happened.  When a big blacksnake
+darted its head through sweet grass and cattails, and caught a frog
+that had climbed on a mossy stone in the shade to dine on flies, I let
+it go.  Any other time I would have hunted a stick and made the snake
+let loose.  To-day I just sat there and let things happen as they did.
+
+At last I wandered up the road, climbed the back garden fence, and sat
+on the board at the edge of a flowerbed, and to-day, I could tell to
+the last butterfly about that garden: what was in bloom, how far things
+had grown, and what happened.  Bobby flew under the Bartlett pear tree
+and crowed for me, but I never called him.  I sat there and lived on,
+and mostly watched the bees tumble over the bluebells.  They were
+almost ready to be cut to put in the buttered tumblers for perfume,
+like mother made for us.  Then I went into the house and looked at
+Grace Greenwood, but I didn't take her along.  Mother came past and
+gave me a piece of stiff yellow brocaded silk as lovely as I ever had
+seen, enough for a dress skirt; and a hand-embroidered chemise sleeve
+that only needed a band and a button to make a petticoat for a Queen
+doll, but I laid them away and wandered into the orchard.
+
+I dragged my bare feet through the warm grass, and finally sat under
+the beet red peach tree.  If ever I seemed sort of lost and sorry for
+myself, that was a good place to go; it was so easy to feel abused
+there because you didn't dare touch those peaches.  Fluffy baby
+chickens were running around, but I didn't care; there was more than a
+bird for every tree, bluebirds especially; they just loved us and came
+early and stayed late, and grew so friendly they nested all over the
+wood house, smoke house, and any place we fixed for them, and in every
+hollow apple limb.  Bobby came again, but I didn't pay any attention to
+him.
+
+Then I heard the carriage cross the bridge.  I knew when it was father,
+every single time his team touched the first plank.  So I ran like an
+Indian, and shinned up a cedar tree, scratching myself until I bled.
+Away up I stood on a limb, held to the tree and waited.  Father drove
+to the gate, and mother came out, with May, Candace, and Leon
+following.  When Shelley touched the ground and straightened, any other
+tree except a spruce having limbs to hold me up, I would have fallen
+from it.  She looked exactly as if she had turned to tombstone with
+eyes and hair alive.  She stopped a second to brush a little kiss
+across mother's lips, to the others she said without even glancing at
+them:  "Oh do let me lie down a minute!  The motion of that train made
+me sick."
+
+Well, I should say it did!  I quit living, and began thinking in a
+hooray, and so did every one else at our house.  Once I had been sick
+and queened it over them for a while, now all of us strained ourselves
+trying to wait on Shelley; but she wouldn't have it.  She only said she
+was tired to death, to let her rest, and she turned her face to the
+wall and lay there.  Once she said she never wanted to see a city again
+so long as she lived.  When mother told her about Laddie and the
+Princess to try to interest her, she never said a word; I doubted if
+she even listened.  Father and mother looked at each other, when they
+thought no one would see, and their eyes sent big, anxious questions
+flashing back and forth.  I made up my mind I'd keep awake that night
+and hear what they said, if I had to take pins to bed with me and stick
+myself.
+
+Once mother said to Shelley that she was going to send for Dr. Fenner,
+and she answered:  "All right, if you need him.  Don't you dare for me!
+I'll not see him.  All I want is a little peace and rest."
+
+The idea!  Not one of us ever had spoken to mother like that before in
+all our born days.  I held my breath to see what she would do, but she
+didn't seem to have heard it, or to notice how rude it had been.  Well,
+THAT told about as plain as anything what we had on our hands.  I
+wandered around and NOW there was no trouble about thinking things.
+They came in such a jumble I could get no sense from them; but one big
+black thought came over, and over, and over, and wouldn't be put away.
+It just stood, stayed, forced you, and made you look it in the face.
+If Shelley weren't stopped quickly she was going up on the hill with
+the little fever and whooping cough sisters.  There it was!  You could
+try to think other things, to play, to work, to talk it down in the
+pulpit, to sing it out in a tree, to slide down the haystack away from
+it--there it stayed!  And every glimpse you had of Shelley made it
+surer.
+
+There was no trouble about keeping awake that night; I couldn't sleep.
+I stood at the window and looked down the Big Hill through the soft
+white moonlight, and thought about it, and then I thought of mother.  I
+guess NOW you see what kind of things mothers have to face.  All day
+she had gone around doing her work, every few minutes suggesting some
+new thing for one of us to try, or trying it herself; all day she had
+talked and laughed, and when Sarah Hood came she told her she thought
+Shelley must be bilious, that she had travelled all night and was
+sleeping: but she would be up the first place she went, and then they
+talked all over creation and Mrs. Hood went home and never remembered
+that she hadn't seen Shelley.  She worked Mrs. Freshett off the same
+way, but you could see she was almost too tired to do it, so by night
+she was nearly as white as Shelley, yet keeping things going.  When the
+house was still, she came into the room, and stood at the window as I
+had, until father entered, then she turned, and I could see they were
+staring at each other in the moonlight, as they had all day.
+
+"She's sick?" asked father, at last.
+
+"Heartsick!" said mother bitterly.
+
+"We'd better have Doc come?"
+
+"She says she isn't sick, and she won't see him."
+
+"She will if I put my foot down."
+
+"Best not, Paul!  She'll feel better soon.  She's so young!  She must
+get over it."
+
+They were silent for a long time and then father asked in a harsh
+whisper:  "Ruth, can she possibly have brought us to shame?"
+
+"God forbid!" cried mother.  "Let us pray."
+
+Then those two people knelt on each side of that bed, and I could hear
+half the words they muttered, until I was wild enough to scream.  I
+wished with all my heart that I hadn't listened.  I had always known it
+was no nice way.  I must have gone to sleep after a while, but when I
+woke up I was still thinking about it, and to save me, I couldn't quit.
+All day, wherever I went, that question of father's kept going over in
+my head.  I thought about it until I was almost crazy, and I just
+couldn't see where anything about shame came in.
+
+She was only mistaken.  She THOUGHT he loved her, and he didn't.  She
+never could have been so bloomy, so filled with song, laughter, and
+lovely like she was, if she hadn't truly believed with all her heart
+that he loved her.  Of course it would almost finish her to give him
+up, when she felt like that; and maybe she did wrong to let herself
+care so much, before she was sure about him; but that would only be
+foolish, there wouldn't be even a shadow of shame about it.  Besides,
+Laddie had done exactly the same thing.  He loved the Princess until it
+nearly killed him when he thought he had to give her up, and he loved
+her as hard as ever he could, when he hadn't an idea whether she would
+love him back, even a tiny speck; and the person who wasn't foolish,
+and never would be, was Laddie.
+
+The more I thought, the worse I got worked up, and I couldn't see how
+Shelley was to blame for anything at all.  Love just came to her, like
+it came to Laddie.  She would hardly have knelt down and beseeched the
+Lord to make her fall in love with a man she scarcely knew, and when
+she couldn't be sure what he was going to do about it--not the Lord,
+the man, I mean.  You could see for yourself she wouldn't do that.  I
+finished my work, and then I tried to do things for her, and she
+wouldn't let me.  Mother told me to ask her to make Grace Greenwood the
+dress she had promised when I was so sick; so I took the Scotch plaid
+to her and reminded her, and she pushed me away and said:  "Some time!"
+
+I even got Grace, and showed Shelley the spills on her dress, and how
+badly she needed a new one, but she never looked, she said: "Oh bother!
+My head aches.  Do let me be!"
+
+Mother was listening.  I could see her standing outside the door.
+
+She motioned to me to come away, so I went to her and she was white as
+Shelley.  She was sick too, she couldn't say a word for a minute, but
+after a while she kissed me, I could feel the quivers in her lips, and
+she said stifflike:  "Never mind, she'll be better soon, then she will!
+Run play now!"
+
+Sometimes I wandered around looking at things and living dully.  I
+didn't try to study out anything, but I must have watched closer than I
+knew, for every single thing I saw then, over that whole farm, I can
+shut my eyes and see to-day; everything, from the old hawk tilting his
+tail to steer him in soaring, to a snake catching field mice in the
+grass, lichens on the fence, flowers, butterflies, every single thing.
+Mostly I sat to watch something that promised to become interesting,
+and before I knew it, I was back on the shame question.  That's the
+most dreadful word in the dictionary.  There's something about it that
+makes your face burn, only to have it in your mind.
+
+Laddie said he never had met any man who knew the origin of more words
+than father.  He could even tell every clip what nationality a man was
+from his name.  Hundreds of time I have heard him say to stranger
+people, "From your name you'd be of Scotch extraction," or Irish, or
+whatever it was, and every time the person he was talking with would
+say, "Yes."  Some day away out in the field, alone, I thought I would
+ask him what people first used the word "shame," and just exactly what
+it did mean, and what the things were that you could do that would make
+the people who loved you until they would die for you, ashamed of you.
+
+Thinking about that and planning out what it was that I wanted to know,
+gave me another idea.  Why not ask her?  She was the only one who knew
+what she had done away there in the city, alone among strangers; I
+wasn't sure whether all the music a girl could learn was worth letting
+her take the chances she would have to in a big city.  From the way
+Laddie and father hated them, they were a poor place for men, and they
+must have been much worse for girls.  Shelley knew, why not ask HER?
+Maybe I could coax her to tell me, and it would make my life much
+easier to know; and only think what was going on in father's and
+mother's heads and hearts, when I felt that way, and didn't even know
+what there was to be ashamed about.  She wouldn't any more than slap
+me; and sick as she was, I made up my mind not to get angry at her, or
+ever to tell, if she did.  I'd rather have her hit me when she was so
+sick than to have Sally beat me until she couldn't strike another lick,
+just because she was angry.  But I forgave her that, and I was never
+going to think of it again--only I did.
+
+Mother kept sending Leon to the post-office, and she met him at the
+gate half the time herself and fairly snatched the letters from his
+hands.  Hum!  She couldn't pull the wool over my eyes.  I knew she
+hoped somehow, some way, there would be a big fat one with Paget, Legal
+Adviser, or whatever a Chicago lawyer puts on his envelopes.  Jerry's
+just say:  "Attorney at Law."
+
+No letter ever came that had Paget in the corner, or anything happened
+that did Shelley any good.  Far otherwise!  Just before supper Leon
+came from Groveville one evening, and all of us could see at a glance
+that he had been crying like a baby.  He had wiped up, and was trying
+to hold in, but he was killed, next.  I nearly said, "Well, for
+heaven's sake, another!" when I saw him.  He slammed down a big, long
+envelope, having printing on it, before father, and glared at it as if
+he wanted to tear it to smithereens, and he said:  "If you want to know
+why it looks like that, I buried it under a stone once; but I had to go
+back, and then I threw it as far as I could send it, into Ditton's
+gully, but after a while I hunted it up again!"
+
+Then he keeled over on the couch mother keeps for her in the
+dining-room, and sobbed until he looked like he'd come apart.
+
+Of course all of us knew exactly what that letter was from the way he
+acted.  Mother had told him, time and again, not to set his heart so;
+father had, too and Laddie, and every one of us, but that little
+half-Arab, half-Kentucky mare was the worst temptation a man who loved
+horses could possibly have; and while father and mother stopped at good
+work horses, and matched roadsters for the carriage, they managed to
+prize and tend them so that every one of us had been born horse-crazy,
+and we had been allowed to ride, care for, and taught to love horses
+all our lives.  Treat a horse ugly, and we'd have gone on the thrashing
+floor ourselves.
+
+Father laid the letter face down, his hand on it, and shook his head.
+"This is too bad!" he said.  "It's a burning shame, but the money, the
+exact amount, was taken from a farmer in Medina County, Ohio, by a
+traveller he sheltered a few days, because he complained of a bad foot.
+The description of the man who robbed us is perfect.  The money was
+from the sale of some prize cattle.  It will have to be returned."
+
+"Just let me see the letter a minute," said Laddie.
+
+He read it over thoughtfully.  He was long enough about it to have gone
+over it three times; then he looked at Leon, and his forehead creased
+in a deep frown.  The tears slid down mother's cheeks, but she didn't
+know it, or else she'd have wiped them away.  She was never mussy about
+the least little thing.
+
+"Father!" she said.  "Father----!"
+
+That was as far as she could go.
+
+"The man must have his money," said father, "but we'll look into
+this----"
+
+He pushed back the plates and tablecloth, and cleared his end of the
+table.  Mother never budged to stack the plates, or straighten the
+cloth so it wouldn't be wrinkled.  Then father brought his big account
+book from the black walnut chest in our room, some little books, and
+papers, sharpened a pencil and began going up and down the columns and
+picking out figures here and there that he set on a piece of paper.  I
+never had seen him look either old or tired before; but he did then.
+Mother noticed it too, for her lips tightened, she lifted her head,
+wiped her eyes, and pretended that she felt better.  Laddie said
+something about doing the feeding, and slipped out.  Just then Shelley
+came into the room, stopped, and looked questioningly at us.  Her eyes
+opened wide, and she stared hard at Leon.
+
+"Why what ails him?" she asked mother.
+
+"You remember what I wrote you about a man who robbed us, and the money
+Leon was to have, provided no owner was found in a reasonable time; and
+the horse the boy had planned to buy, and how he had been going to
+Pryors'--Oh, I think he's slipped over there once a day, and often
+three times, all this spring!  Mr. Pryor encouraged him, let him take
+his older horses to practise on, even went out and taught him
+cross-country riding himself----"
+
+"I remember!" said Shelley.
+
+Leon sobbed out loud.  Shelley crossed the room swiftly, dropped beside
+him and whispered something in his ear.  Quick as a shot his arm
+reached out and went around her.  She hid her head deep in the pillow
+beside him, and they went to pieces together.  Clear to pieces!  Pretty
+soon father had to take off his glasses and wipe them so he could see
+the figures.  Mother took one long look at him, a short one at Leon and
+Shelley, then she arose, her voice as even and smooth, and she said:
+"While you figure, father, I'll see about supper.  I have tried to plan
+an extra good one this evening."
+
+She left the room.  NOW, I guess you know about all I can tell you of
+mother!  I can't see that there's a thing left.  That was the kind of
+soldier she was.  Talk about Crusaders, and a good fight!  All the
+blood of battle in our family wasn't on father's side, not by any
+means!  The Dutch could fight too!
+
+Father's pencil scraped a little, a bee that had slipped in buzzed over
+the apple butter, while the clock ticked as if it used a hammer.  It
+was so loud one wanted to pitch it from the window.  May and I sat
+still as mice when the cat is near.  Candace couldn't keep away from
+the kitchen door to save her, and where mother went I hadn't an idea,
+but she wasn't getting an extra good supper.  Shelley and Leon were
+quieter now.  May nudged me, and I saw that his arm around her was
+gripping her tight, while her hand on his head was patting him and
+fingering his hair.
+
+Ca-lumph!  Ca-lumph! came the funniest sound right on the stone walk
+leading to the east door, then a shrill whicker that made father drop
+his pencil.  Leon was on his feet, Shelley beside him, while at the
+door stood Laddie grinning as if his face would split, and with her
+forefeet on the step and her nose in the room, stood the prettiest, the
+very prettiest horse I ever saw.  She was sticking her nose toward
+Leon, whinnying softly, as she lifted one foot, and if Laddie hadn't
+backed her, she would have walked right into the dining-room.
+
+"Come on, Weiscope, she's yours!" said Laddie.  "Take her to the barn,
+and put her in one of the cow stalls, until we fix a place for her."
+
+Leon crossed the room, but he never touched the horse.  He threw his
+arms around Laddie's neck.
+
+"Son!  Son!  Haven't you let your feelings run away with you?  What
+does this mean?" asked father sternly.
+
+"There's nothing remarkable in a big six-footer like me buying a
+horse," said Laddie.  "I expect to purchase a number soon, and without
+a cent to pay, in the bargain.  I contracted to give five hundred
+dollars for this mare.  She is worth more; but that should be
+satisfactory all around.  I am going to earn it by putting five of Mr.
+Pryor's fancy, pedigreed horses in shape for market, taking them
+personally, and selling them to men fit to own and handle real horses.
+I get one hundred each, and my expenses for the job.  I'll have as much
+fun doing it as I ever had at anything.  It suits me far better than
+plowing, even."
+
+Mother entered the room at a sweep, and pushed Leon aside.
+
+"Oh you man of my heart!" she cried.  "You man after my own heart!"
+
+Laddie bent and kissed her, holding her tight as he looked over her
+head at father.
+
+"It's all right, of course?" he said.
+
+"I never have known of anything quite so altogether right," said
+father.  "Thank you, lad, and God bless you!"
+
+He took Laddie's hand, and almost lifted him from the floor, then he
+wiped his glasses, gathered up his books with a big, deep breath of
+relief, and went into his room.  If the others had looked to see why he
+was gone so long, they would have seen him on his knees beside his bed
+thanking God, as usual.  Leon couldn't have come closer than when he
+said, "The same yesterday, to-day, and forever," about father.
+
+Leon had his arms around the neck of his horse now, and he was kissing
+her, patting her, and explaining to Shelley just why no other horse was
+like her.  He was pouring out a jumble all about the oasis of the
+desert, the tent dwellers, quoting lines from "The Arab to His Horse,"
+bluegrass, and gentleness combined with spirit, while Shelley had its
+head between her hands, stroking it and saying, "Yes," to every word
+Leon told her.  Then he said: "Just hop on her back from that top step
+and ride her to the barn, if you want to see the motion she has."
+
+Shelley said:  "Has a woman ever been on her back?  Won't she shy at my
+skirts?"
+
+"No," explained Leon.  "I've been training her with a horse blanket
+pinned around me, so Susie could ride her!  She'll be all right."
+
+So Shelley mounted, and the horse turned her head, and tried to rub
+against her, as she walked away, tame as a sheep.  I wondered if she
+could be too gentle.  If she went "like the wind," as Leon said, it
+didn't show then.  I was almost crazy to go along, and maybe Leon would
+let me ride a little while; but I had a question that it would help me
+to know the answer and I wanted to ask father before I forgot; so I
+waited until he came out.  When he sat down, smiled at me and said,
+"Well, is the girl happy for brother?"  I knew it was a good time, and
+I could ask anything I chose, so I sat on his knee and said:  "Father,
+when you pray for anything that it's all perfectly right for you to
+have, does God come down from heaven and do it Himself, or does He send
+a man like Laddie to do it for him?"
+
+Father hugged me tight, smiling the happiest.
+
+"Why, you have the whole thing right there in a nutshell, Little
+Sister," he said.  "You see it's like this: the Book tells us most
+distinctly that 'God is love.'  Now it was love that sent Laddie to
+bind himself for a long, tedious job, to give Leon his horse, wasn't
+it?"
+
+"Of course!" I said.  "He wouldn't have been likely to do it if he
+hated him.  It was love, of course!"
+
+"Then it was God," said father, "because 'God is love.'  They are one
+and the same thing."
+
+Then he kissed me, and THAT was settled.  So I wondered when you longed
+for anything so hard you really felt it was worth bothering God about,
+whether the quickest way to get it was to ask Him for it, or to try to
+put a lot of love into the heart of some person who could do what you
+wanted.  I decided it all went back to God though, for most of the time
+probably we wouldn't know who the right one was to try to awaken love
+in.  I was mighty sure none of us ever dreamed Laddie could walk over
+to Pryors', and come back with that horse, in a way perfectly
+satisfactory to every one, slick as an eel.
+
+You should have seen Leon following around after Laddie, trying to do
+things for him, taking on his work to give him more time with the
+horses, getting up early to finish his own stunts, so he could go over
+to Pryors' and help.  Mother said it had done more to make a man of him
+than anything that ever happened.  It helped Shelley, too.  Something
+seemed to break in her, when she cried so with Leon, because he was in
+trouble.  Then he was so crazy to show off his horse he had Shelley
+ride up and down the lane, while he ran along and led, so she got a lot
+of exercise, and it made her good and hungry.  If you don't think by
+this time that my mother was the beatenest woman alive, I'll prove it
+to you.  When the supper bell rang there was strawberry preserves
+instead of the apple butter, biscuit, fried chicken, and mashed
+potatoes.
+
+She must have slapped those chickens into the skillet before they knew
+their heads were off.  When Shelley came to the table, for the first
+time since she'd been home, had pink in her cheeks, and talked some,
+and ate too, mother forgot her own supper.  She fumbled over her plate,
+but scarcely touched even the livers, and those delicious little
+kidneys in the tailpiece like Leon and I had at Sally's wedding.  When
+we finished, and it was time for her to give the signal to arise, no
+one had asked to be excused, she said:  "Let us have a word with the
+Most High."  Then she bowed her head, so all of us did too.  "O Lord,
+we praise Thee for all Thy tender mercies, and all Thy loving kindness.
+Amen!"
+
+Of course father always asked the blessing to begin with, and mostly it
+was the same one, and that was all at meal time, but this was a little
+extra that mother couldn't even wait until night to tell the Almighty,
+she was so pleased with Him.  Maybe I haven't told everything about
+her, after all.  Father must have thought that was lovely of her; he
+surely felt as happy as she did, to see Shelley better, for he hugged
+and kissed her over and over, finishing at her neck like he always did,
+and then I be hanged, if he didn't hug and kiss every last one of
+us--tight, even the boys.  Shelley he held long and close, and patted
+her a little when he let her go.  It made me wonder if the rest of us
+didn't get ours, so he'd have a chance at her without her noticing it.
+One thing was perfectly clear.  If shame came to us, they were going to
+love her, and stick tight to her right straight through it.
+
+Now that everything was cleared up so, Shelley seemed a little more
+like herself every day, although it was bad enough yet; I thought I
+might as well hurry up the end a little, and stop the trouble
+completely, so I began watching for a chance to ask her.  But I wanted
+to get her away off alone, so no one would see if she slapped me.  I
+didn't know how long I'd have to wait.  I tried coaxing her to the
+orchard to see a bluebird's nest, but she asked if bluebirds were
+building any different that year, and I had to admit they were not.
+Then I tried the blue-eyed Mary bed, but she said she supposed it was
+still under the cling peach tree, and the flower, two white petals up,
+two blue down, and so it was.  Just as I was beginning to think I'd
+have to take that to the Lord in prayer, I got my chance by accident.
+
+May and Candace were forever going snake hunting.  You would think any
+one with common sense would leave them alone and be glad of the chance,
+but no indeed!  They went nearly every day as soon as the noon work was
+finished, and stayed until time to get supper.  They did have heaps of
+fun and wild excitement.  May was gentle, and tender with everything
+else on earth; so I 'spose she had a right to bruise the serpent with
+her heel--really she used sticks and stones--if she wanted to.  I asked
+her how she COULD, and she said there was a place in the Bible that
+told how a snake coaxed Eve to eat an apple, that the Lord had told her
+she mustn't touch; and so she got us into most of the trouble there was
+in the world.  May said it was all the fault of the SNAKE to begin
+with, and she meant to pay up every one she could find, because she had
+none of the apple, and lots of the trouble.  Candace cried so much
+because Frederick Swartz had been laid in the tomb, that mother was
+pleased to have her cheer up, even enough to go snake hunting.
+
+That afternoon Mehitabel Heasty had come to visit May, so she went
+along, and I followed.  They poked around the driftwood at the
+floodgate behind the barn, and were giving up the place.  Candace had
+crossed the creek and was coming back, and May had started, when she
+saw a tiny little one and chased it.  We didn't know then that it was a
+good thing to have snakes to eat moles, field mice, and other pests
+that bother your crops; the Bible had no mercy on them at all, so we
+were not saving our snakes; and anyway we had more than we needed,
+while some of them were too big to be safe to keep, and a few poison as
+could be.  May began to bruise the serpent, when out of the driftwood
+where they hadn't found anything came its mammy, a great big
+blacksnake, maddest you ever saw, with its pappy right after her, mad
+as ever too.  Candace screamed at May to look behind her, but May was
+busy with the snake and didn't look quick enough, so the old mammy
+struck right in her back.  She just caught in the hem of May's skirt,
+and her teeth stuck in the goods--you know how a snake's teeth turn
+back--so she couldn't let go.  May took one look and raced down the
+bank to the crossing, through the water, and toward us, with the snake
+dragging and twisting, and trying her best to get away.  May was
+screaming at every jump for Candace, and Mehitabel was flying up and
+down crying:  "Oh there's snakes in my shoes!  There's snakes in my
+shoes!"
+
+That was a fair sample of how much sense a Heasty ever had.  It took
+all Mehitabel's shoes could do to hold her feet, for after one went
+barefoot all week, and never put on shoes except on Sunday or for a
+visit, the feet became so spread out, shoes had all they could do to
+manage them, and then mostly they pinched until they made one squirm.
+But she jumped and said that, while May ran and screamed, and Candace
+gripped her big hickory stick and told May to stand still.  Then she
+bruised that serpent with her whole foot, for she stood on it, and
+swatted it until she broke its neck.  Then she turned ready for the
+other one, but when it saw what happened to its mate, it decided to go
+back.  Even snakes, it doesn't seem right to break up families like
+that; so by the time Candace got the mammy killed, loose from May's
+hem, and stretched out with the back up, so she wouldn't make it rain,
+when Candace wasn't sure that father wanted rain, I had enough.  I went
+down the creek until I was below the orchard, then I crossed, passed
+the cowslip bed, climbed the hill and fence, and stopped to think what
+I would do first; and there only a few feet away was Shelley.  She was
+sitting in the shade, her knees drawn up, her hands clasped around
+them, staring straight before her across the meadow at nothing in
+particular, that I could see.  She jumped as if I had been a snake when
+she saw me, then she said, "Oh, is it you?" like she was half glad of
+it.  My chance had come.
+
+I went to her, sat close beside her and tried snuggling up a little.
+It worked.  She put her arm around me, drew me tight, rubbed her cheek
+against my head and we sat there.  I was wondering how in the world I
+could ask her, and not get slapped.  I was growing most too big for
+that slapping business, anyway.  We sat there; I was looking across the
+meadow as she did, only I was watching everything that went on, so when
+I saw a grosbeak fly from the wild grape where Shelley had put the
+crock for sap, it made me think of her hair.  She used to like to have
+me play with it so well, she'd give me pennies if I did.  I got up, and
+began pulling out her pins carefully.  I knew I was getting a start
+because right away she put up her hand to help me.
+
+"I can get them," I said just as flannel-mouthed as ever I could, like
+all of us talked to her now, so I got every one and never pulled a
+mite.  When I reached over her shoulder to drop them in her lap, being
+so close I kissed her cheek.  Then I shook down her hair, spread it
+out, lifted it, parted it, and held up strands to let the air on her
+scalp.  She shivered and said: "Mercy child, how good that does feel!
+My head has ached lately until it's a wonder there's a hair left on it."
+
+So I was pleasing her.  I never did handle hair so carefully.  I tried
+every single thing it feels good to you to have done with your hair,
+rubbed her head gently, and to cheer her up I told her about May and
+the snake, and what fool Mehitabel had said, and she couldn't help
+laughing; so I had her feeling about as good as she could, for the way
+she actually felt, but still I didn't really get ahead.  Come right to
+the place to do it, that was no very easy question to ask a person,
+when you wouldn't hurt their feelings for anything; I was beginning to
+wonder if I would lose my chance, when all at once a way I could manage
+popped into my mind.
+
+"Shelley," I said, "they told you about Laddie and the Princess, didn't
+they?"
+
+I knew they had, but I had to make a beginning some way.
+
+"Yes," she said.  "I'm glad of it!  I think she's pretty as a picture,
+and nice as she looks.  Laddie may have to hump himself to support her,
+but if he can't get her as fine clothes as she has, her folks can help
+him.  They seem to have plenty, and she's their only child."
+
+"They're going to.  I heard Mr. Pryor ask Laddie if he'd be so unkind
+as to object to them having the pleasure of giving her things."
+
+"Well, the greenhorn didn't say he would!"
+
+"No.  He didn't want to put his nose to the grindstone quite that
+close.  He said it was between them."
+
+"I should think so!"
+
+"Shelley, there's a question I've been wanting to ask some one for
+quite a while."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Why, this!  You know, Laddie was in love with the Princess, like you
+are when you want to marry folks, for a long, long time, before he
+could be sure whether she loved him back."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, now, 'spose she never had loved him, would he have had anything
+to be ashamed of?"
+
+"I can't see that he would.  Some one must start a courtship, or there
+would be no marrying, and it's conceded to be the place of the man.
+No.  He might be disappointed, or dreadfully hurt, but there would be
+no shame about it."
+
+"Well, then, suppose she loved him, and wanted to marry him, and he
+hadn't loved her, or wanted her, would SHE have had anything to be
+ashamed of?"
+
+"I don't think so!  If she was attracted by him, and thought she would
+like him, she would have a right to go to a certain extent, to find out
+if he cared for her, and if he didn't, why, she'd just have to give him
+up.  But any sensible girl waits for a man to make the advances, and
+plenty of them, before she allows herself even to dream of loving him,
+or at least, I would."
+
+Now I was getting somewhere!
+
+"Of course you would!" I said.  "That would be the WAY mother would,
+wouldn't it?"
+
+"Surely!"
+
+"If that Paget man you used to write about had seemed to be just what
+you liked, you'd have waited to know if he wanted you, before you loved
+him, wouldn't you?"
+
+"I certainly would!" answered Shelley.  "Or at least, I'd have waited
+until I THOUGHT sure as death, I knew.  It seems that sometimes you can
+be fooled about those things."
+
+"But if you thought sure you knew, and then found out you had been
+mistaken, you wouldn't have anything to be ASHAMED of, would you?"
+
+"Not-on-your-life-I-wouldn't!" cried Shelley, hammering each word into
+her right knee with her doubled fist.  "What are you driving at,
+Blatherskite?  What have you got into your head?"
+
+"Oh just studying about things," I said, which was exactly the truth.
+"Sally getting married last fall, and Laddie going to this, just
+started me to wondering."
+
+Fooled her, too!
+
+"Oh well, there's no harm done," she said.  "The sooner you get these
+matters straightened out, the better able you will be to take care of
+yourself.  If you ever go to a city, you'll find out that a girl needs
+considerable care taken of her."
+
+"You could look out for yourself, Shelley?"
+
+"Well, I don't know as I made such a glorious fist of it," she said,
+"but at least, as you say, I've nothing to be ashamed of!"
+
+I almost hugged her head off.
+
+"Of course you haven't!" I cried.  "Of course you wouldn't have!"
+
+I just kissed her over and over for joy; I was so glad my heart hurt
+for father and mother.  Shame had not come to them!
+
+"Now, I guess I'll run to the house and get a comb," I told her.
+
+"Go on," said Shelley.  "I know you are tired."
+
+"I'm not in the least," I said.  "Don't you remember I always use a
+comb when I fuss with your hair?"
+
+"It is better," said Shelley.  "Go get one."
+
+As I got up to start I took a last look at her, and there was something
+in her face that I couldn't bear.  I knelt beside her, and put both
+arms around her neck.
+
+"Shelley, it's a secret," I said in a breathless half whisper.  "It's a
+great, big secret, but I'm going to tell you.  Twice now I've had a
+powerful prayer all ready to try.  It's the kind where you go to the
+barn, all alone, stand on that top beam below the highest window and
+look toward the east.  You keep perfectly still, and just think with
+all your might, and you look away over where Jesus used to be, and when
+the right feeling comes, you pray that prayer as if He stood before
+you, and it will come true.  I KNOW it will come true.  The reason I
+know is because twice now I've been almost ready to try it, and what I
+intended to ask for happened before I had time; so I've saved that
+prayer; but Shelley, shall I pray it about the Paget man, for you?"
+
+She gripped me, and she shook until she was all twisted up; you could
+hear her teeth click, she chilled so.  The tears just gushed, and she
+pulled me up close and whispered right in my ear:
+
+"Yes!"
+
+It was only pretend about the comb; what I really wanted was to get to
+father and mother quick.  I knew he was at the barn and he was going to
+be too happy for words in a minute.  But as I went up the lane, I
+wasn't sure whether I'd rather pray about that Paget man or bruise him
+with my heel like a serpent.  The only way I could fix it was to
+remember if Shelley loved him so, he must be mighty nice.  Father was
+in the wagon shovelling corn from it to a platform where it would be
+handy to feed the pigs, so I ran and called him, and put one foot on a
+hub and raised my hands.  He pulled me up and when he saw how important
+it was, he sat on the edge of the bed, so I told him:  "Father, you
+haven't got a thing in the world to be ashamed of about Shelley."
+
+"Praise the Lord!" said father like I knew he would, but you should
+have seen his face.  "Tell me about it!"
+
+I told him and he said:  "Well, I don't know but this is the gladdest
+hour of my life.  Go straight and repeat to your mother exactly what
+you've said to me.  Take her away all alone, and then forget about it,
+you little blessing."
+
+"Father, have you got too many children?"
+
+"No!" he said.  "I wish I had a dozen more, if they'd be like you."
+
+When I went up the lane I was so puffed up with importance I felt too
+dignified to run.  I strutted like our biggest turkey gobbler.  The
+only reason you couldn't hear my wings scrape, was because through
+mistake they grew on the turkey.  If I'd had them, I would have dragged
+them sure, and cried "Ge-hobble-hobble!" at every step.
+
+I took mother away alone and told her, and she asked many more
+questions than father, but she was even gladder than he.  She almost
+hugged the breath out of me.  Sometimes I get things RIGHT, anyway!
+Then I took the comb and ran back to Shelley.
+
+"I thought you'd forgotten me," she said.
+
+She had wiped up and was looking better.  If ever I combed carefully I
+did then.  Just when I had all the tangles out, there came mother.  She
+had not walked that far in a long time.  I thought maybe she could
+comfort Shelley, so I laid the comb in her lap and went to see how the
+snake hunters were coming on.  It must be all right, when the Bible
+says so, but the African Jungle will do for me, and a popgun is not
+going to scatter families.  I never felt so strongly about breaking
+home ties in my life as I did then.  There was nothing worse.  It was
+not where I wanted to be, so I thought I'd go back to the barn, and
+hang around father, hoping maybe he'd brag on me some more.  Going up
+the lane I saw a wagon passing with the biggest box I ever had seen,
+and I ran to the gate to watch where it went.  It stopped at our house
+and Frank came toward me as I hurried up the road.
+
+"Where are the folks?" he asked, without paying the least attention to
+my asking him over and over what was in the box.
+
+"May and Candace are killing every snake in the driftwood behind the
+barn, Shelley and mother are down in the orchard, and father and the
+boys are hauling corn."
+
+"Go tell the boys to come quickly and keep quiet," he said.  "But don't
+let any one else know I'm here."
+
+That was so exciting I almost fell over my feet running, and all three
+of them came quite as fast.  I stood back and watched, and I just
+danced a steady hop from one foot to the other while those men got the
+big box off the wagon and opened it.  On the side I spelled Piano, so
+of course it was for Shelley.  It was so heavy it took all six of them,
+father and the three boys, the driver and another very stylish looking
+man to carry it.  They put it in the parlour, screwed a leg on each
+corner, and a queer harp in the middle, then they lifted it up and set
+it on its feet, under the whatnot, and it seemed as if it filled half
+the room.  Then Frank spread a beauteous wine coloured cover all
+embroidered in pink roses with green leaves over it, and the stylish
+man opened a lid, sat down and spread out his hands.  Frank said:
+"Soft pedal!  Mighty soft!"  So he smothered it down, and tried only
+enough to find that it had not been hurt coming, and then he went away
+on the wagon.  Father and the boys gathered up every scrap, swept the
+walk, and put all the things they had used back where they got them,
+like we always did.
+
+Then Frank took a card from his pocket and tied it to the music rack,
+and it read:  "For Shelley, from her brothers in fact, and in law."  To
+a corner of the cover he pinned another card that read:  "From Peter."
+
+"What is that?" asked father.
+
+"That's from Peter," said Frank.  "Peter is great on finishing touches.
+He had to outdo the rest of us that much or bust.  Fact is, none of us
+thought of a cover except him."
+
+"How about this?" asked father, staring at it as if it were an animal
+that would bite.
+
+"Well," said Frank, "it was apparent that practising her fingers to the
+bone wouldn't do Shelley much good unless she could keep it up in
+summer, and you and mother always have done so much for the rest of us,
+and now mother isn't so strong and the expenses go on the same with
+these youngsters; we know you were figuring on it, but we beat you.
+Put yours in the bank, and try the feel of a surplus once more.
+Haven't had much lately, have you, father?"
+
+"Well, not to speak of," said father.
+
+"Now let's shut everything up, ring the bell to call them, and get
+Shelley in here and surprise her."
+
+"She's not very well," said father.  "Mother thinks she worked too
+hard."
+
+"She's all right now, father," I said.  "She is getting pink again and
+rounder, and this will fix her grand."
+
+Wouldn't it though!  There wasn't one anywhere, short of the city.
+Even the Princess had none.  Father hunted up a song book, opened it
+and set it on the rack.  Then all of us went out.
+
+"We'll write to the boys, mother and I, and Shelley also," said father.
+"I can't express myself just now.  This is a fine thing for all of you
+to do."
+
+Frank seemed to think so too, and looked rather puffed up, until Leon
+began telling about his horse.  When Frank found out that Laddie, who
+had not yet branched out for himself, had given Leon much more than any
+one of them had Shelley, he looked a little disappointed.  He explained
+how the piano cost eight hundred dollars, but by paying cash all at
+once, the man took seven hundred and fifty, so it only cost them one
+hundred and fifty a piece, and none of them felt it at all.
+
+"Sometimes the clouds loom up pretty black, and mother and I scarcely
+know how to go on, save for the help of the Lord, but we certainly are
+blest with good children, children we can be proud of.  Your mother
+will like that instrument as well as Shelley, son," said father.
+
+Frank went out and rang the bell, tolled it, and made a big noise like
+he always did when he came unexpectedly, and then sat on the back fence
+until he saw them coming, and went to meet them.  He walked between
+mother and Shelley, with an arm around each one.  If he thought Shelley
+looked badly, he didn't mention it.  What he did say was that he was
+starved, and to fly around and get supper.  I thought I'd burst.  They
+began to cook, and the boys went to feed and see Leon's horse, and then
+we had supper.  I just sat and stared at Frank and grinned.  I couldn't
+eat.
+
+"Do finish your supper," said mother.  "I never saw anything take your
+appetite like seeing your brother.  You'll be wanting a piece before
+bedtime."
+
+I didn't say a word, because I was afraid to, but I kept looking at
+Leon and he smiled back, and we had great fun.  Secrets are lovely.
+Mother couldn't have eaten a bite if she'd known about that great
+shining thing, all full of wonderful sound, standing in our parlour.
+When the last slow person had finished, father said:  "Shelley, won't
+you step into the front room and bring me that book I borrowed from
+Frank on 'Taxation.' I want to talk over a few points."
+
+All of us heard her little breathless cry, and mother said, "There!" as
+if she'd been listening for something, and she beat all of us to the
+door.  Then she cried out too, and such a time as we did have.  At last
+after all of us had grown sensible enough to behave, Shelley sat on the
+stool, spread her fingers over the keys and played at the place father
+had selected, and all of us sang as hard as we could:  "Be it ever so
+humble, There's no place like home;" and there WAS no place like ours,
+of THAT I'm quite sure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+In Faith Believing
+
+  "Nor could the bright green world around
+     A joy to her impart,
+  For still she missed the eyes that made
+     The summer of her heart."
+
+
+Soon as she had the piano, Shelley needed only the Paget man to make
+her happy as a girl could be; and having faith in that prayer, I
+decided to try it right away.  So I got Laddie to promise surely that
+he'd wake me when he got up the next morning.
+
+I laid my clothes out all ready; he merely touched my foot, and I came
+to, slipped out with him, and he helped me dress.  We went to the barn
+when the morning was all gray.
+
+"What the dickens have you got in your head now, Chicken?" he asked.
+"Is it business with the Fairies?"
+
+"No, this is with the Most High," I said solemnly, like father.  "Go
+away and leave me alone."
+
+"Well of all the queer chickens!" he said, but he kissed me and went.
+
+I climbed the stairs to the threshing floor, then the ladder to the
+mow, walked a beam to the wall, there followed one to the east end, and
+another to the little, high-up ventilator window.  There I stood
+looking at the top of the world.  A gray mist was rising like steam
+from the earth, there was a curious colour in the east, stripes of
+orange and flames of red, where the sun was coming.  I folded my hands
+on the sill, faced the sky, and stood staring.  Just stood, and stood,
+never moving a muscle.  By and by I began to think how much we loved
+Shelley, how happy she had been at Christmas the way she was now, and
+how much all of us would give in money, or time, or love, to make her
+sparkling, bubbling, happy again; so I thought and thought, gazing at
+the sky, which every second became a grander sight.  Little cold chills
+began going up my back, and soon I was talking to the Lord exactly as
+if He stood before me on the reddest ray that topped our apple trees.
+
+I don't know all I said.  That's funny, for I usually remember to the
+last word; but this time it was so important, I wanted it so badly, and
+I was so in earnest that words poured in a stream.  I began by
+reminding Him that He knew everything, and so He'd understand if what I
+asked was for the best.  Then I told Him how it looked to us, who knew
+only a part; and then I went at Him and implored and beseeched, if it
+would be best for Shelley, and would make her happy, to send her the
+Paget man, and to be quick about it.  When I had said the last word
+that came to me, and begged all I thought becoming--I don't think with
+His face, that Jesus wants us to grovel to Him, at least He looks too
+dignified to do it Himself--I just stood there, still staring.
+
+I didn't expect to see a burning bush, or a pillar of fire, or a cloud
+of flame, or even to hear a small, still voice; but I watched, so I
+wouldn't miss it if there should be anything different in that sunrise
+from any other I ever had seen, and there was not.  Not one thing!  It
+was so beautiful, and I was so in earnest my heart hurt; but that was
+like any other sunrise on a fine July morning.  There wasn't the least
+sign that Jesus had heard me, and would send the man; yet before I knew
+it, I was amazed to find the feeling creeping over me that he was
+coming.  If I had held the letter in my hand saying he would arrive on
+the noon train, I couldn't have grown surer.  Why, I even looked down
+the first time I moved, to see if I had it; but I was certain anyway.
+So I looked steadily toward the east once more and said, "Thank you,
+with all my heart, Lord Jesus," then I slowly made my way down and back
+to the house.
+
+Shelley was at the orchard gate, waiting; so I knew they had missed me,
+and Laddie had told them where I was and not to call.  She had the
+strangest look on her face, as she asked:  "Where have you been?"
+
+I looked straight and hard at her and said, "It's all right, Shelley.
+He's going to come soon"; but I didn't think it was a thing to mouth
+over, so I twisted away from her, and ran to the kitchen to see if
+breakfast had all been eaten.  I left Shelley standing there with her
+eyes wide, also her mouth.  She looked about as intelligent as
+Mehitabel Heasty, and it wouldn't have surprised me if she had begun to
+jump up and down and say there were snakes in HER shoes.  No doubt you
+have heard of people having been knocked silly; I knew she was, and so
+she had a perfect right to look that way, until she could remember what
+she was doing, and come back to herself.  Maybe it took her longer,
+because mother wasn't there, to remind her about her mouth, and I
+didn't propose to mention it.
+
+At breakfast, mother said father was going to drive Frank home in the
+carriage, and if I would like, I might go along.  I would have to sit
+on the back seat alone, going; but coming home I could ride beside and
+visit with father.  I loved that, for you could see more from the front
+seat, and father would stop to explain every single thing.  He always
+gave me the money and let me pay the toll.  He would get me a drink at
+the spring, let me wade a few minutes at Enyard's riffles, where their
+creek, with the loveliest gravel bed, ran beside the road; and he
+always raced like wildfire at the narrows, where for a mile the
+railroad ran along the turnpike.
+
+We took Frank to his office, stopped a little while to visit Lucy, and
+give her the butter and cream mother sent, went to the store to see
+Peter, and then to the post-office.  From there we could see that the
+veranda of the hotel across the street was filled with gayly dressed
+people, and father said that the summer boarders from big cities around
+must be pouring in fast.  When he came out with the mail he said he
+better ask if the landlord did not want some of mother's corn and milk
+fed spring chickens, because last year he had paid her more than the
+grocer.  So he drove across the street, stopped at the curb, and left
+me to hold the team.
+
+Maybe you think I wasn't proud!  I've told you about Ned and Jo, with
+their sharp ears, dappled sides, and silky tails, and the carriage
+almost new, with leather seats, patent leather trimmings, and side
+lamps, so shiny you could see yourself in the brass.  We never drove
+into the barn with one speck of mud or dust on it.  That was how
+particular mother was.
+
+I watched the team carefully; I had to if I didn't want my neck broken;
+but I also kept an eye on that veranda.  You could see at a glance that
+those were stylish women.  Now my mother liked to be in fashion as well
+as any one could; so I knew she'd be mightily pleased if I could tell
+her a new place to set her comb, a different way to fasten her collar,
+or about an unusual pattern for a frock.
+
+I got my drink at the spring, father offered to stop at the riffle, but
+I was enjoying the ride so much, and I could always wade at home,
+although our creek was not so beautiful as Enyard's, but for common
+wading it would do; we went through the narrows, like two shakes of a
+sheep's tail, then we settled down to a slow trot, and were having the
+loveliest visit possible, when in the bundle on my lap, I saw the end
+of something that interested me.  Mr. Agnew always made our mail into a
+roll with the Advocate and the Agriculturist on the outside, and
+because every one was so anxious about their letters, and some of them
+meant so much, I felt grown and important while holding the package.
+
+I was gripping it tight when I noticed the end of one letter much wider
+and fatter than any I ever had seen, so when father was not looking I
+began pushing it a little at one end, and pulling it at the other, to
+work it up, until I could read the address.  I got it out so far I
+thought every minute he'd notice, and tell me not to do that, but I
+could only see Stanton.  All of us were Stanton, so it might be for me,
+for that matter.  Jerry might be sending me pictures, or a book, he did
+sometimes, but there was an exciting thing about it.  Besides being
+fatter than it looked right at the end, it was plastered with
+stamps--lots of them, enough to have brought it clear around the world.
+I pushed that end back, pulled out the other, and took one good look.
+I almost fell from the carriage.  I grabbed father's arm and cried:
+"Stop!  Stop this team quick.  Stop them and see if I can read."
+
+"Are you crazy, child?" asked father, but he checked the horses.
+
+"No, but you are going to be in a minute," I said.  "Look at that!"
+
+I yanked the letter from the bundle, and held it over.  I THOUGHT I
+could read, but I was too scared to be sure.  I thought it said in big,
+strong, upstanding letters, Miss Shelley Stanton, Groveville, Indiana.
+And in the upper corner, Blackburn, Yeats and PAGET, Counsellors of
+Law, 37 to 39 State St., Chicago.  I put my finger on the Paget, and
+looked into father's face.  I was no fool after all.  He was not a bit
+surer that HE could read than I was, from the dazed way he stared.
+
+"You see!" I said.
+
+"It says Paget!" he said, like he would come nearer believing; it if he
+heard himself pronounce the word.
+
+"I THOUGHT it said 'Paget,'" I gasped, "but I wanted to know if you
+thought so too."
+
+"Yes, it's Paget plain enough," said father, but he acted like there
+was every possibility that it might change to Jones any minute.  "It
+says 'Paget,' plain as print."
+
+"Father!" I cried, clutching his arm, "father, see how fat it is!
+There must be pages and pages!  Father, it wouldn't take all that to
+tell her he didn't like her, and he never wanted to see her again.
+Would it, father?"
+
+"It doesn't seem probable," said father.
+
+"Father don't you think it means there's been some big mistake, and it
+takes so much to tell how it can be fixed?"
+
+"It seems reasonable."
+
+I gripped him tighter, and maybe shook him a little.
+
+"Father!" I cried.  "Father, doesn't it just look HURRY, all over?
+Can't you speed up a little?  They have all day to cool off.  Oh
+father, won't you speed a little?"
+
+"That I will!" said father.  "Get a tight hold, and pray God it is good
+word we carry."
+
+"But I prayed the one big prayer to get this," I said.  "It wouldn't be
+sent if it wasn't good.  The thing to do now is to thank the Lord for
+'all his loving kindnesses,' like mother said."
+
+"Drive father!  Make them go!"
+
+At first he only touched them up; I couldn't see that we were getting
+home so fast; but in a minute a cornfield passed like a streak, a piece
+of woods flew by a dark blur, a bridge never had time to rattle, and we
+began to rock from side to side a little.  Then I gripped the top
+supports with one hand, the mail with the other, and hung on for dear
+life.  I took one good look at father.
+
+His feet were on the brace, his face was clear, even white, his eyes
+steely, and he never moved a muscle.  When Jo thought it was funny,
+that he was loose in the pasture, and kicked up a little behind, father
+gave him a sharp cut with the whip and said: "Steady boy!  Get along
+there!"
+
+Sometimes he said, "Aye, aye!  Easy!" but he never stopped a mite.  We
+whizzed past the church and cemetery, and scarcely touched the Big
+Hill.  People ran to their doors, even to the yards, and I was sure
+they thought we were having a runaway, but we were not.  Father began
+to stop at the lane gate, he pulled all the way past the garden, and it
+was as much as he could do to get them slowed down so that I could jump
+out by the time we reached the hitching rack.  He tied them, and
+followed me into the house instead of going to the barn.  I ran ahead
+calling: "Shelley!  Where is Shelley?"
+
+"What in this world has happened, child?" asked mother, catching my arm.
+
+"Her letter has come!  Her Paget letter!  The one you looked for until
+you gave up.  It's come at last!  Oh, where is she?"
+
+"Be calmer, child, you'll frighten her," said mother.
+
+May snatched the letter from my fingers and began to read all that was
+on it aloud.  I burst out crying.
+
+"Make her give that back!" I sobbed to father.  "It's mine!  I found
+it.  Father, make her let me take it!"
+
+"Give it to her!" said father.  "I rather feel that it is her right to
+deliver it."
+
+May passed it back, but she looked so disappointed, that by how she
+felt I knew how much I wanted to take it myself; so I reached my hand
+to her and said:  "You can come along!  We'll both take it!  Oh where
+is she?"
+
+"She went down in the orchard," said mother.  "I think probably she's
+gone back where she was the other day."
+
+Gee, but we ran!  And there she was!  As we came up, she heard us and
+turned.
+
+"Shelley!" I cried.  "Here's your letter!  Everything is all right!
+He's coming, Shelley!  Look quick, and see when!  Mother will want to
+begin baking right away!"
+
+Shelley looked at me, and said coolly:  "Paddy Ryan!  What's the
+matter?"
+
+"Your letter!" I cried, shoving it right against her hands.  "Your
+letter from Robert!  From the Paget man, you know!  I told you he was
+coming!  Hurry, and see when!"
+
+She took it, and sat there staring at it, so much like father, that it
+made me think of him, so I saw that she was going to have to come
+around to it as we did, and that one couldn't hurry her.  She just had
+to take her time to sense it.
+
+"Shall I open it for you?" I asked, merely to make her see that it was
+time she was doing it herself.
+
+Blest if she didn't reach it toward me!--sort of woodenlike.  I stuck
+my finger under the flap, gave it a rip across and emptied what was
+inside into her lap.  Bet there were six or seven letters in queer
+yellow envelopes I never before had seen any like, and on them was the
+name, Robert Paget, while in one corner it said, "Returned Dead
+Letter"; also there was a loose folded white sheet.  She sat staring at
+the heap, touching one, another, and repeating "Robert Paget?" as she
+picked each up in turn.
+
+"What do you suppose it means?" she asked May.  May examined them.
+
+"You must read the loose sheet," she advised.  "No doubt that will
+explain."
+
+But Shelley never touched it.  She handled those letters and stared at
+them.  Father and mother came through the orchard and stood together
+behind us, so father knelt down at last, reached across Shelley's
+shoulder, picked one up and looked at it.
+
+"Have you good word, dear?" asked mother of Shelley.
+
+"Why, I don't understand at all," said Shelley.  "Just look at all
+these queer letters, addressed to Mr. Paget.  Why should they be sent
+to me?  I mustn't open them.  They're not mine.  There must be some
+mistake."
+
+"These are DEAD LETTERS," said father.  "They've been written to you,
+couldn't be delivered, and so were sent to the Dead Letter Office at
+Washington, which returned them to the writer, and unopened he has
+forwarded them once more to you.  You've heard of dead letters, haven't
+you?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Shelley.  "I don't remember just now; but there
+couldn't be a better name.  They've come mighty near killing me."
+
+"If you'd only read that note!" urged May, putting it right into her
+fingers.
+
+Shelley still sat there.
+
+"I'm afraid of it," she said exactly like I'd have spoken if there had
+been a big rattlesnake coming right at me, when I'd nothing at hand to
+bruise it.
+
+Laddie and Leon came from the barn.  They had heard me calling, seen
+May and me run, and then father and mother coming down, so they walked
+over.
+
+"What's up?" asked Leon.  "Has Uncle Levi's will been discovered, and
+does mother get his Mexican mines?"
+
+"What have you got, Shelley?" asked Laddie, kneeling beside her, and
+picking up one of the yellow letters.
+
+"I hardly know," said Shelley.
+
+"I brought her a big letter with all those little ones and a note in
+it, and they are from the Paget man," I explained to him.  "But she
+won't even read the note, and see what he writes.  She says she's
+afraid."
+
+"Poor child!  No wonder!" said Laddie, sitting beside her and putting
+his arm around her.  "Suppose I read it for you.  May I?"
+
+"Yes," said Shelley.  "You read it.  Read it out loud.  I don't care."
+
+She leaned against him, while he unfolded the white sheet.
+
+"Umph!" he said.  "This DOES look bad for you.  It begins:  'My own
+darling Girl.'"
+
+"Let me see!" cried Shelley, suddenly straightening, and reaching her
+hand.
+
+Laddie held the page toward her, but she only looked, she didn't offer
+to touch it.
+
+"'My own darling Girl:'" repeated Laddie tenderly, making it mean just
+all he possibly could, because he felt so dreadfully sorry for
+her--"'On my return to Chicago, from the trip to England I have so
+often told you I intended to make some time soon----'"
+
+"Did he?" asked mother.
+
+"Yes," answered Shelley.  "He couldn't talk about much else.  It was
+his first case.  It was for a friend of his who had been robbed of
+everything in the world; honour, relatives, home, and money.  If Robert
+won it, he got all that back for his friend and enough for
+himself--that he could--a home of his own, you know!  Read on, Laddie!"
+
+"'I was horrified to find on my desk every letter I had written you
+during my absence returned to me from the Dead Letter Office, as you
+see.'"
+
+"Good gracious!" cried mother, picking up one and clutching it tight as
+if she meant to see that it didn't get away again.
+
+"Go on!" cried Shelley.
+
+"'I am enclosing some of them as they came back to me, in proof of my
+statement.  I drove at once to your boarding place and found you had
+not been there for weeks, and your landlady was distinctly crabbed.
+Then I went to the college, only to find that you had fallen ill and
+gone to your home.  That threw me into torments, and all that keeps me
+from taking the first train is the thought that perhaps you refused to
+accept these letters, for some reason.  Shelley, you did not, did you?
+There is some mistake somewhere, is there not----'"
+
+"One would be led to think so," said father sternly.  "Seems as if he
+might have managed some way----"
+
+"Don't you blame him!" cried Shelley.  "Can't you see it's all my
+fault?  He'd been coming regularly, and the other girls envied me; then
+he just disappeared, and there was no word or anything, and they
+laughed and whispered until I couldn't endure it; so I moved in with
+Peter's cousin, as I wrote you; but that left Mrs. Fleet with an empty
+room in the middle of the term, and it made her hopping mad.  I bet
+anything she wouldn't give the postman my new address, to pay me back.
+I left it, of course.  But if I'd been half a woman, and had the
+confidence I should have had in myself and in him----  Oh how I've
+suffered, and punished all of you----!"
+
+"Never you mind about that," said mother, stroking Shelley's hair.
+"Likely there isn't much in Chicago to give a girl who never had been
+away from her family before, 'confidence' in herself or any one else.
+As for him--just disappearing like that, without a word or even a
+line----  Go on Laddie!"
+
+"'Surely, you knew that I was only waiting the outcome of this trip to
+tell you how dearly I love you.  Surely, you encouraged me in thinking
+you cared for me a little, Shelley.  Only a little will do to begin
+with----'"
+
+"You see, I DID have something to go on!" cried Shelley, wiping her
+eyes and straightening up.
+
+"'No doubt you misunderstood and resented my going without coming to
+explain, and bid you good-bye in person, but Shelley, _I_ SIMPLY DARED
+NOT.  You see, it was this way:  I got a cable about the case I was
+always talking of, and the only man who could give the testimony I MUST
+HAVE was dying!'"
+
+"For land's sake!  The poor boy!" cried mother, patting Shelley's
+shoulder.
+
+"'An hour's delay might mean the loss of everything in the world to me,
+even you.  For if I lost any time, and the man escaped me, there was no
+hope of winning my case, and everything, even you, as I said before,
+depended on him----'"
+
+"Good Lord!  I mean land!" cried Leon.
+
+"'If I could catch the train in an hour, I could take a boat at New
+York, and go straight through with no loss of time.  So I wrote you a
+note that probably said more than I would have ventured in person, and
+paid a boy to deliver it.'"
+
+"Kept the money and tore up the note, I bet!" said May.
+
+"'I wrote on the train, but found after sailing that I had rushed so I
+had failed to post it in New York.  I kept on writing every day on the
+boat, and mailed you six at Liverpool.  All the time I have written
+frequently; there are many more here that this envelope will not hold,
+that I shall save until I hear from you.'"
+
+"Well, well!" said father.
+
+"'Shelley, I beat death, reached my man, got the testimony I had to
+have, and won my case.'"
+
+"Glory!" cried mother.  "Praise the Lord!"
+
+"'Then I scoured England, and part of the continent, hunting some
+interested parties; and when I was so long finding them, and still no
+word came from you, I decided to come back and get you, if you would
+come with me, and go on with the work together.'"
+
+"Listen to that!  More weddings!" cried Leon.  He dropped on his knees
+before Shelley.  "Will you marry me, my pretty maid?" he begged.
+
+"Young man, if you cut any capers right now, I'll cuff your ears!"
+cried father.  "This is no proper time for your foolishness!"
+
+"'Shelley, I beg that you will believe me, and if you care for me in
+the very least, telegraph if I may come.  Quick!  I'm half insane to
+see you.  I have many things to tell you, first of all how dear you are
+to me.  Please telegraph.  Robert.'"
+
+"Saddle a horse, Leon!" father cried as he unstrapped his wallet.
+
+"Laddie, take down her message."
+
+"Can you put it into ten words?" asked Laddie.
+
+"Mother, what would you say?" questioned Shelley.
+
+Leon held up his fingers and curled down one with each word.  "Say,
+'Dear Robert.  Well and happy.  Come when you get ready.'"
+
+"But then I won't know when he's coming," objected Shelley.  "You don't
+need to," said Leon.  "You can take it for granted from that epistolary
+effusion that he won't let the grass grow under his feet while coming
+here.  That's a bully message!  It sounds as if you weren't crazy over
+him, and it's a big compliment to mother.  Looks as if she didn't have
+to know when people are coming--like she's ready all the time."
+
+"Write it out and let me see," said Shelley.
+
+So Laddie wrote it, and she looked at it a long time, it seemed to me,
+at last she said:  "I don't like that 'get.'  It doesn't sound right.
+Wouldn't 'are' be better?"
+
+"Come when you are ready," repeated Laddie.  "Yes, that's better.
+'Get' sounds rather saucy."
+
+"Why not put it, 'Come when you choose?'" suggested mother.  "That will
+leave a word to spare, so it won't look as if you had counted them and
+used exactly ten on purpose, and it doesn't sound as if you expected
+him to make long preparations, like the other.  That will leave it with
+him to start whenever he likes."
+
+"Yes! yes!" cried Shelley.  "That's much better!  Say, 'Come when you
+choose!'"
+
+"Right!" said Laddie as he wrote it.  "Now I'll take this!"
+
+"Oh no you won't!" cried Leon.  "Father told me to saddle my horse.
+She's got enough speed in her to beat yours a mile.  I take that!
+Didn't you say for me to saddle, father?"
+
+"Such important business, I think I better," said Laddie, and Leon
+began to cry.
+
+"I think you should both go," said Shelley.  "It is so important, and
+if one goes to make a mistake, maybe the other will notice it."
+
+"Yes, that's the best way," said mother.
+
+"Yes, both go," said father.
+
+It was like one streak when they went up the Big Hill.  Father shook
+his head.  "Poor judgment--that," he said.  "Never run a horse up hill!"
+
+"But they're in such a hurry," Shelley reminded him.
+
+"So they are," said father.  "In this case I might have broken the rule
+myself.  Now come all of you, and let the child get at her mail."
+
+"But I want you to stay," said Shelley.  "I'm so addle-pated this
+morning.  I need my family to help me."
+
+"Of course you do, child," said mother.  "Families were made to cling
+together, and stand by each other in every circumstance of life--joy or
+sorrow.  Of course you need your family."
+
+May began sorting the letters by dates so Shelley could start on the
+one that had been written first.  Father ran his knife across the top
+of each, and cut all the envelopes, and Shelley took out the first and
+read it; that was the train one.  In it he told her about sending the
+boy with the note again, and explained more about how it was so very
+important for him to hurry, because the only man who could help him was
+so sick.  We talked it over, and all of us thought the boy had kept the
+money and torn up the note.  Father said the way would have been to
+send the note and pay the boy when he came back; but Shelley said Mr.
+Paget would have been gone before the boy got back, so father saw that
+wouldn't have been the way, in such a case.
+
+Next she read one written on the boat.  He told more about sending the
+boy; how he loved her, what it would mean to both of them if he got the
+evidence he wanted and won his first case; and how much it would bring
+his friend.  The next one told it all over again, and more.  In that he
+wrote a little about the ocean, the people on board the ship, and he
+gave Shelley the name of the place where he was going and begged her to
+write to him.  He told her if the ship he was on passed another, they
+were going to stop and send back the mail.  He begged her to write
+often, and to say she forgave him for starting away without seeing her,
+as he had been forced to.
+
+The next one was the same thing over, only a little more yet.  In the
+last he had reached England, the important man was still living, but he
+was almost gone, and Mr. Paget took two good witnesses, all the
+evidence he had, and went to see him; and the man saw it was no use, so
+he made a statement, and Robert had it all written out, signed and
+witnessed.  For the real straight sense there was in that letter, I
+could have done as well myself.
+
+It was a wild jumble, because Robert was so crazy over having the
+evidence that would win his case; and he told Shelley that now he was
+perfectly free to love her all she would allow him.  He said he had to
+stay a while longer to find his friend's people so they would get back
+their share of the money, but it was not going to be easy to locate
+them.  You wouldn't think the world so big, but maybe it seemed smaller
+to me because as far as I could see from the top of our house, was all
+I knew about it.  After Shelley had read the letters, and the note
+again, father heaved a big sigh that seemed to come clear from his boot
+soles and he said:  "Well Shelley, it looks to me as if you had found a
+MAN.  Seems to me that's a mighty important case for a young lawyer to
+be trusted with, in a first effort."
+
+"Yes, but it was for Robert's best friend, and only think, he has won!"
+
+"I don't see how he could have done better if he'd been old as
+Methuselah, and wise as Solomon," boasted mother.
+
+"But he hasn't found the people who must have back their money," said
+May.  "He will have to go to England again.  And he wants to take you,
+Shelley.  My!  You'll get to sail on a big steamer, cross the Atlantic
+Ocean, and see London.  Maybe you'll even get a peep at the Queen!"
+
+Shelley was busy making a little heap of her letters; when the top one
+slid off I reached over and put it back for her.  She looked straight
+at me, and smiled the most wonderful and the most beautiful smile I
+ever saw on any one's face, so I said to her: "You see! I TOLD you he
+was coming!"
+
+"I can't understand it!" said Shelley.
+
+"YOU KNOW I told you."
+
+"Of course I do!  But what made you think so?"
+
+"That was the answer.  Just that he was coming."
+
+"What are you two talking about?" asked mother.
+
+Shelley looked at me, and waited for me to tell mother as much as I
+wanted to, of what had happened.  But I didn't think things like that
+were to be talked about before every one, so I just said:
+
+"Oh nothing!  Only, I told Shelley this very morning that the Paget man
+was coming soon, and that everything was going to be all right."
+
+"You did?  Well of all the world!  I can't see why."
+
+"Oh something told me! I just FELT that way."
+
+"More of that Fairy nonsense?" asked father sharply.
+
+"No.  I didn't get that from the Fairies."
+
+"Well, never mind!" said Shelley, rising, because she saw that I had
+told all I wanted to.  "Little Sister DID tell me this morning that he
+was coming, that everything would be made right, and it's the queerest
+thing, but instantly I believed her.  Didn't I sing all morning,
+mother?  The first note since Robert didn't come when I expected him in
+Chicago, weeks ago."
+
+"Yes," said mother.  "That's a wonderfully strange thing.  I can't see
+what made you think so."
+
+"Anyway, I did!" I said.  "Now let's go have dinner.  I'm starving."
+
+I caught May's hand, and ran to get away from them.  Father and mother
+walked one on each side of Shelley, while with both hands she held her
+letters before her.  When we reached the house we just talked about
+them all the time.  Pretty soon the boys were back, and then they told
+about sending the telegram.  Leon vowed he gave the operator a dime
+extra to start that message with a shove, so it would go faster.
+
+"It will go all right," said Laddie, "and how it will go won't be a
+circumstance to the way he'll come.  If there's anything we ought to
+do, before he gets here, we should hustle.  Chicago isn't a thousand
+miles away.  That message can reach him by two o'clock, it's probable
+he has got ready while he was waiting, so he will start on the first
+train our way.  He could reach Groveville on the ten, to-morrow.  We
+better meet it."
+
+"Yes, we'll meet it," said mother.  "Is the carriage perfectly clean?"
+
+Father said:  "It must be gone over.  Our general manager here ordered
+me to speed up, and we drove a little coming from town."
+
+Mother went to planning what else should be done.
+
+"Don't do anything!" cried Shelley.  "The house is all right.  There's
+no need to work and worry into a sweat.  He won't notice or care how
+things look."
+
+"I miss my guess if he doesn't notice and care very much indeed," said
+mother emphatically.  "Men are not blind.  No one need think they don't
+see when things are not as they should be, just because they're not
+cattish enough to let you know it, like a woman always does.  Shelley,
+wouldn't you like to ride over and spend the afternoon with the
+Princess?"
+
+"Nope!" said Shelley.  "It's her turn to come to see me.  Besides, you
+don't get me out of the way like that.  I know what you'll do here, and
+I intend to help."
+
+"Do you need one of the boys at the house?" asked father, and if you'll
+believe it, both of them wanted to stay.
+
+Father said he must have one to help wash the carriage and do a little
+fixing around the barn; so he took Leon, but he didn't like to go.  He
+said:  "I don't see what all this fuss is about, anyway.  Probably
+he'll be another Peter."
+
+Shelley looked at him:  "Oh Mr. Paget isn't nearly so large as Peter,"
+she said, "and his hair is whiter than yours, while his eyes are not so
+blue."
+
+"Saints preserve us!" cried Leon.  "Come on, father, let's only dust
+the carriage!  He's not worth washing it for."
+
+"Is he like that?" asked mother anxiously.
+
+"Wait and see!" said Shelley.  "Looks don't make a man.  He has proved
+what he can do."
+
+Then all of us went to work.  Before night we were hunting over the
+yard, and beside the road, to see if we could find anything to pick up.
+Six chickens were in the cellar, father was to bring meat and a long
+list of groceries from town in the morning.  He was to start early, get
+them before train time, put them under the back seat, and take them out
+after he drove into the lane, when he came back.  That made a little
+more trouble for father, but there was not the slightest necessity for
+making Mr. Paget feel that he had ridden in a delivery wagon.
+
+Next morning I wakened laughing softly, because some one was fussing
+with my hair, patting my face, and kissing me, so I put up my arms and
+pulled that loving person down on my pillow, and gave back little
+half-asleep kisses, and slept on; but it was Shelley, and she gently
+shook me and began repeating that fool old thing I have been waked up
+with half the mornings of my life:
+
+  "Get up, Little Sister, the morning is bright,
+  The birds are all singing to welcome the light,
+  Get up; for when all things are merry and glad,
+  Good children should never be lazy and sad;
+  For God gives us daylight, dear sister, that we
+  May rejoice like the lark and work like the bee."
+
+
+Usually I'd have gone on sleeping, but Shelley was so sweet and lovely,
+and she kissed me so hard, that I remembered it was going to be a most
+exciting day, so I came to quick as snap and jumped right up, for I
+didn't want to miss a single thing that might happen.
+
+The carriage was shining when it came to the gate, so was father.
+
+I thought there was going to be a vacant seat beside him, and I asked
+if I might go along.  He said:  "Yes, if mother says so." He always
+would stick that in.  So I ran to ask her, and she didn't care, if
+Shelley made no objections.  I was just starting to find her, when here
+she came, all shining too, but Laddie was with her.  I hadn't known
+that he was going, and I was so disappointed I couldn't help crying.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Shelley.
+
+"Father and mother both said I might go, if you didn't care."
+
+"Why, I'm dreadfully sorry," said Shelley, "but I have several things I
+want Laddie to do for me."
+
+Laddie stooped down to kiss me good-bye and he said:  "Don't cry,
+Little Sister.  The way to be happy is to be good."
+
+Then they drove to Groveville, and we had to wait.  But there was so
+much to do, it made us fly to get all of it finished.  So mother sent
+Leon after Mrs. Freshett to help in the kitchen, while Candace wore her
+white dress, and waited on the table.  Mother cut flowers for the
+dining table, and all through the house.  She left the blinds down to
+keep the rooms cool, chilled buttermilk to drink, and if she didn't
+think of every single, least little thing, I couldn't see what it was.
+Then all of us put on our best dresses.  Mother looked as glad and
+sweet as any girl, when she sat to rest a little while.  I didn't dare
+climb the catalpa in my white dress, so I watched from the horse block,
+and when I saw the grays come over the top of the hill, I ran to tell.
+As mother went to the gate, she told May and me to walk behind, to stay
+back until we were spoken to, and then to keep our heads level, and
+remember our manners.  I don't know where Leon went.  He said he lost
+all interest when he found there was to be another weak-eyed towhead in
+the family, and I guess he was in earnest about it, because he wasn't
+even curious enough to be at the gate when Mr. Paget came.
+
+Father stopped with a flourish, Laddie hurried around and helped
+Shelley, and then Mr. Paget stepped down.  Goodness, gracious, sakes
+alive!  Little?  Towhead?  He was taller than Laddie.  His hair was
+most as black as ink, and wavy.  His eyes were big and dark; he was
+broad and strong and there was the cleanest, freshest look about him.
+He put his arm spang around Shelley, right there in the road, and
+mother said:  "Hold there!  Not so fast, young man!  I haven't given my
+consent to that."
+
+He laughed, and he said:  "Yes, but you'ah going to!"  And he put his
+other arm around mother, so May and I crowded up, and we had a family
+reunion right between the day lilies and the snowball bush.  We went
+into the house, and he LIKED us, his room, and everything went exactly
+right.  He was crazy about the cold buttermilk, and while he was
+drinking it Leon walked into the dining-room, because he thought of
+course Mr. Paget and Shelley would be on the davenport in the parlour.
+When he saw Robert he said lowlike to Shelley:  "Didn't Mr. Paget come?
+Who's that?"
+
+Shelley looked so funny for a minute, then she remembered what she had
+told him and she just laughed as she said:  "Mr. Paget, this is my
+brother."
+
+Robert went to shake hands, and Leon said right to his teeth: "Well a
+divil of a towhead you are!"
+
+"Towhead?" said Robert, bewildered-like.
+
+"Shelley said you were a little bit of a man, with watery blue eyes,
+and whiter hair than mine."
+
+"Oh I say!" cried Robert.  "She must have been stringin' you!"
+
+Leon just whooped; because while Mr. Paget didn't talk like the 'orse,
+'ouse people, he made you think of them in the way he said things, and
+the sound of his voice.  Then we had dinner, and I don't remember that
+we ever had quite such a feast before.  Mother had put on every single
+flourish she knew.  She used her very best dishes, and linen, and no
+cook anywhere could beat Candace alone; now she had Mrs. Freshett to
+help her, and mother also.  If she tried to show Mr. Paget, she did it!
+No visitor was there except him, but we must have been at the table two
+hours talking, and eating from one dish after another.  Candace LIKED
+to wear her white dress, and carry things around, and they certainly
+were good.
+
+And talk!  Father, Laddie, and Robert talked over all creation.  Every
+once in a while when mother saw an opening, she put in her paddle, and
+no one could be quicker, when she watched sharp and was trying to make
+a good impression.  Shelley was very quiet; she scarcely spoke or
+touched that delicious food.  Once the Paget man turned to her, looking
+at her so fondlike, as he picked up one of her sauce dishes and her
+spoon and wanted to feed her.  And he said:  "Heah child, eat your
+dinnah!  You have nawthing to be fussed ovah!  I mean to propose to
+you, and your parents befowr night.  That is what I am heah for."
+
+Every one laughed so, Shelley never got the bite; but after that she
+perked up more and ate a little by herself.
+
+At last father couldn't stand it any longer, so he began asking Robert
+about his trip to England, and the case he had won.  When the table was
+cleared for dessert, Mr. Paget asked mother to have Candace to bring
+his satchel.  He opened it and spread papers all over, so that father
+and Laddie could see the evidence, while he told them how it was.
+
+It seemed there was a law in England, all of us knew about it, because
+father often had explained it.  This law said that a man who had lots
+of money and land must leave almost all of it to his eldest son; and
+the younger ones must go into law, the army, be clergymen, or enter
+trade and earn a living, while the eldest kept up the home place.  Then
+he left it to his eldest son, and his other boys had to work for a
+living.  It kept the big estates together; but my! it was hard on the
+younger sons, and no one seemed even to think about the daughters.  I
+never heard them mentioned.
+
+Now there was a very rich man; he had only two sons, and each of them
+married, and had one son.  The younger son died, and sent his boy for
+his elder brother to take care of.  He pretended to be good, but for
+sure, he was bad as ever he could be.  He knew that if his cousin were
+out of the way, all that land and money would be his when his uncle
+died.  So he went to work and he tried for years, and a lawyer man who
+had no conscience at all, helped him.  At last when they had done
+everything they could think of, they took a lot of money and put it in
+the pocket of the son they wanted to ruin; then when his father missed
+the money, and the house was filled with policemen, detectives, and
+neighbours, the bad man said he'd feel more comfortable to have the
+family searched too, merely as a formality, so he stepped out and was
+gone over, and when the son's turn came, there was the money on him!
+That made him a public disgrace to his family, and a criminal who
+couldn't inherit the estate, and his father went raving mad and tried
+to kill him, so he had to run away.  At first he didn't care what he
+did, so he came over here.  Robert said that man was his best friend,
+and as men went, he was a decent fellow, so he cheered him up all he
+could, and went to work with all his might to prove he was innocent,
+and to get back his family, and his money for him.
+
+When Robert had enough evidence that he was almost ready to start to
+England, his man got a cable from an old friend of his father's, who
+always had believed in him, and it said that the bad man was dying--to
+come quick.  So Robert went all of a sudden, like the Dead Letters told
+about.  Now, he described how he reached there, took the old friend of
+the father of his friend with him, and other witnesses, and all the
+evidence he had, and went to see the sick man.  When Robert showed him
+what he could prove, the bad man said it was no use, he had to die in a
+few days, so he might as well go with a clean conscience, and he told
+about everything he had done.  Robert had it all written out, signed
+and sworn to.  He told about all of it, and then he said to father:
+"Have I made it clear to you?"
+
+Leon was so excited he forgot all the manners he ever had, for he
+popped up before father could open his head, and cried: "Clear as mud!
+I got that son business so plain in my mind, I'd know the party of the
+first part, from the party of the second part, if I met him promenading
+on the Stone Wall of China!"
+
+Father and Laddie knew so much law they asked dozens of questions; but
+that Robert man wasn't a smidgin behind, for every clip he had the
+answer ready, and then he could go on and tell much more than he had
+been asked.  He said as a Case, it was a pretty thing to work on; but
+it was much more than a case to him, because he always had known that
+his friend was not guilty; that he was separated from his family,
+suffering terribly under the disgrace, and they must be also.  He had
+worked for life for his friend, because the whole thing meant so much
+to both of them.  He said he must go back soon and finish up a little
+more that he should have done while he was there, if it hadn't been
+that he received no word from Shelley.
+
+"When I didn't heah from heh for so long, and wrote so many letters,
+and had no reply, I thought possibly some gay 'young Lochinvah had come
+out from the west,' and taken my sweet 'eart," he said, "and while I
+had my armour on, I made up my mind that I'd give him a fight too.  I
+didn't propose to lose Shelley, if it were in my powah to win heh.  I
+hadn't been able to say to heh exactly what I desiahed, on account of
+getting a start alone in this country; but if I won this case, I would
+have ample means.  When I secuahed the requiahed evidence, I couldn't
+wait to finish, so I came straight ovah, to make sure of heh."
+
+He arose and handed the satchel to father.
+
+"I notice you have a very good looking gun convenient," he said.
+"Would you put these papahs where you consider them safe until I'm
+ready to return?  Our home, our living, and the honah of a man are
+there, and we are mighty particular about that bag, are we not,
+Shelley?"
+
+"Well I should think we are!" cried Shelley.  "For goodness sake,
+father, hang to it!  Is the man still living?  Could you get that
+evidence over again?"
+
+"He was alive when I left, but the doctors said ten days would be his
+limit, so he may be gone befowr this."
+
+Father picked up the satchel, set it on his knees, and stroked it as if
+it were alive.
+
+"Well!  Well!" he said.  "Now would any one think such a little thing
+could contain so much?"
+
+Shelley leaned toward Robert.
+
+"Your friend!" she cried, "Your friend!  What DID he say to you?  What
+did he DO?"
+
+"Well, for a time he was wildly happy ovah having the stain removed
+from his honah, and knowing that he would have his family and faw'tn
+back; but there is an extremely sad feature to his case that is not yet
+settled, so he must keep his head level until we work that out.  Now
+about that hoss you wanted to show me----" he turned to Leon.
+
+Mother gave the signal, and we left the table.  Father carried the
+satchel to his chest, made room for it, locked it in and put the key in
+his pocket.  Then our men started to the barn to show the Arab-Kentucky
+horse.  Mr. Paget went to Shelley and took her in his arms exactly like
+Peter did Sally before the parlour door that time when I got into
+trouble, and he looked at mother and laughed as he said:  "I hope you
+will excuse me, but I've been having a very nawsty, anxious time, and I
+cawn't conform to the rules for a few days, until I become accustomed
+to the fawct that Shelley is not lost to me.  It was beastly when I
+reached Chicago, had back all my letters, and found she had gone home
+ill.  I've much suffering to recompense.  I'll atone for a small
+portion immediately."
+
+He lifted Shelley right off the floor--that's how big and strong he
+was--he hugged her tight, and kissed her forehead, cheeks, and eyes.
+
+"When I've gone through the fahmality of asking your parents for you,
+and they have said a gracious 'yes,' I'll put the fust one on your
+lips," he said, setting her down carefully.  "In the meantime, you be
+fixing your mouth to say, 'yes,' also, when I propose to you, because
+it's coming befowr you sleep."
+
+Shelley was like a peach blossom.  She reached up and touched his
+cheek, while she looked at mother all smiling, and sparkling, as she
+said:  "You see!"
+
+Mother smiled back.
+
+"I do, indeed!" she answered.
+
+Leon pulled Mr. Paget's sleeve.
+
+"Aw quit lally-gaggin' and come see a real horse," he said.
+
+Robert put his other arm around Leon, drew him to his side and hugged
+him as if he were a girl.  "I'm so glad Shelley has a lawge family," he
+said.  "Big families are jolly.  I'm so proud of all the brothers I'm
+going to have.  I was the only boy at home."
+
+"You haven't told us about your family," said mother.
+
+"No," said Robert, "but I intend to.  I have a family!  One of the
+finest on uth.  We'll talk about them after this hoss is inspected."
+
+He let Shelley go and walked away, his arm still around Leon.  Shelley
+ran to mother and both of them sobbed out loud.
+
+"NOW YOU SEE HOW IT WAS!" she said.
+
+"You poor child!" cried mother.  "Indeed I DO see how it was.  You've
+been a brave girl.  A good, brave girl!  Father and I are mighty proud
+of you!"
+
+"Oh mother!  I thought you were ashamed of me!" sobbed Shelley.
+
+"Oh my child!" said mother quavery-like.  "Oh my child!  You surely see
+that none of us could understand, as we do now."
+
+She patted Shelley, and told her to run upstairs and lie down for a
+while, because she was afraid she would be sick.
+
+"We mustn't have a pale, tired girl right now," said mother.
+
+"Well!" said Shelley, but she just stood there holding mother.
+
+"Well?" said mother gripping her.
+
+"You see!" said Shelley.
+
+"Child," said mother, "I DO see!  I see six feet of as handsome manhood
+as I ever have seen anywhere.  His manner is perfect, and I find his
+speech most attractive.  I am delighted with him.  I do see indeed!
+Your father is quite as proud and pleased as I am.  Now go to bed."
+
+Shelley held up her lips, and then went.  I ran to the barn, where the
+men were standing in the shade, while Leon led his horse up and down
+before them, told about its pedigree, its record, how he came to have
+it.  The Paget man stood there looking and listening gravely, as he
+studied the horse.  At last he went over her, and gee! but he knew
+horse!  Then Laddie brought out Flos and they talked all about her, and
+then went into the barn.  Father opened the east doors to show how much
+land he had, which were his lines; and while the world didn't look
+quite so pretty as it had in May, still it was good enough.  Then they
+went into the orchard, sat under the trees and began talking about
+business conditions.  That was so dry I went back to the house.  And
+maybe I didn't strike something interesting there!
+
+As I came up the orchard path to a back yard gate, I saw a carriage at
+the hitching rack in front of the house, so I took a peep and almost
+fell over.  It was the one the Princess had come to Sally's wedding in;
+so I knew she was in the house visiting Shelley.  I went to the parlour
+and there I had another shock; for lo and behold! in our big rocking
+chair, and looking as well as any one, so far as you could see--of
+course you can't see heart trouble, though--sat Mrs. Pryor.  The
+Princess and mother were there, all of them talking, laughing and
+having the best time, while on the davenport enjoying himself as much
+as any one, was Mr. Pryor.  They talked about everything, and it was
+easy to see that the Pryor door was OPEN so far as we were concerned,
+anyway.  Mrs. Pryor was just as nice and friendly as she could be, and
+so was he.  Shelley sat beside him, and he pinched her cheek and said:
+"Something seems to make you especially brilliant today, young woman!"
+
+Shelley flushed redder, laughed, and glanced at mother, so she said:
+"Shelley is having a plain old-fashioned case of beau.  She met a young
+man in Chicago last fall and he's here now to ask our consent.  All of
+us are quite charmed with him.  That's why she's so happy."
+
+Then the Princess sprang up and kissed Shelley, so did Mrs. Pryor,
+while such a chatter you never heard.  No one could repeat what they
+said, for as many as three talked at the same time.
+
+"Oh do let's have a double wedding!" cried the Princess when the
+excitement was over a little.  "I think it would be great fun; do
+let's!  When are you planning for?"
+
+"Nothing is settled yet," said Shelley.  "We've had no time to talk!"
+
+"Mercy!" cried the Princess.  "Go make your arrangements quickly!
+Hurry up, then come over, and we'll plan for the same time.  It will be
+splendid!  Don't you think that would be fine, Mrs. Stanton?"
+
+"I can't see any objections to it," said mother.
+
+"Where is your young man?  I'm crazy to see him," cried the Princess.
+"If you have gone and found a better looking one than mine, I'll never
+speak to you again."
+
+"She hasn't!" cried Mrs. Pryor calmly, like that settled it.  I like
+her.  "They're not made!"
+
+"I am not so sure of that," said Shelley proudly.  "Mother, isn't my
+man quite as good looking, and as nice in every way, as Laddie?"
+
+"Fully as handsome, and so far as can be seen in such a short time,
+quite as fine," said mother.
+
+I was perfectly amazed at her; as if any man could be!
+
+"I don't believe it, I won't stand it, and I shan't go home until I
+have seen for myself!" cried the Princess, laughing, and yet it sounded
+as if she were half-provoked, and I knew I was.  The Paget man was all
+right, but I wasn't going to lose my head over him.  Laddie was the
+finest, of course!
+
+"Well, he's somewhere on the place with our men, this minute," said
+Shelley, "but you stay for supper, and meet him."
+
+"When you haven't your arrangements made yet!  You surely are
+unselfish!  Of course I won't do that, but I'd love to have one little
+peep, then you bring him and come over to-morrow, so all of us can
+become acquainted, and indeed, I'm really in earnest about a double
+wedding."
+
+"Go see where the men are," said Shelley to me.
+
+I went to the back door, and their heads were bobbing far down in the
+orchard.
+
+"They're under the greening apple tree," I reported.
+
+"If you will excuse us," said Shelley to Mr. and Mrs. Pryor, "we'll
+walk down a few minutes and prove that I'm right."
+
+"Don't stay," said Mrs. Pryor.  "This trip is so unusual for me that
+I'm quite tired.  For a first venture, in such a long time, I think
+I've done well.  But now I'm beginning to feel I should go home."
+
+"Go straight along," said the Princess.  "I'll walk across the fields,
+or Thomas can come back after me."
+
+So Mr. and Mrs. Pryor went away, while the Princess, Shelley, May, and
+I walked through the orchard toward the men.  They were standing on the
+top of the hill looking over the meadow, and talking with such interest
+they didn't hear us or turn until Shelley said:  "Mr. Paget, I want to
+present you to Laddie's betrothed--Miss Pamela Pryor."
+
+He swung around, finishing what he was saying as he turned, the
+Princess took a swift step toward him, then, at the same time, both of
+them changed to solid tombstone, and stood staring, and so did all of
+us, while no one made a sound.  At last the Paget man drew a deep,
+quivery breath and sort of shook himself as he gazed at her.
+
+"Why, Pam!" he cried.  "Darling Pam, cawn it possibly be you?"
+
+If you ever heard the scream of a rabbit when the knives of a reaper
+cut it to death, why that's exactly the way she cried out.
+
+She covered her eyes with her hands.  He drew back and smiled, the red
+rushed into his face, and he began to be alive again.  Laddie went to
+the Princess and took her hands.
+
+"What does this mean?" he begged.
+
+She pulled away from him, and went to the Paget man slowly, her big
+eyes wild and strained.
+
+"Robert!" she cried.  "Robert! how did you get here?  Were you hunting
+us?"
+
+"All ovah England, yes," he said.  "Not heah!  I came heah to see
+Shelley.  But you?  How do you happen to be in this country?"
+
+"We've lived on adjoining land for two years!"
+
+"You moved heah!  To escape the pity of our friends?"
+
+"Father moved!  Mother and I had no means, and no refuge.  We were
+forced.  We never believed it!  Oh Robert, we never--not for a minute!
+Oh Robert, say you never did it!"
+
+"Try our chawming cousin Emmet your next guess!"
+
+"That devil!  Oh that devil!"
+
+She cried out that hurt way again, so he took her tight in his arms;
+but sure as ever Laddie was my brother, he was hers, so that was all
+right.  When they were together you wondered why in this world you
+hadn't thought of it the instant you saw him alone.  They were like as
+two peas.  They talked exactly the same, only he sounded much more so,
+probably from having just been in England for weeks, while in two years
+she had grown a little as we were.  We gazed at them, open-mouthed,
+like as not, and no one said a word.
+
+At last Mr. Paget looked over the Princess' shoulder at father and
+said:  "I can explain this, Mr. Stanton, in a very few wuds.  I am my
+friend.  The case was my own.  The evidence I secuahed was for myself.
+This is my only sisteh.  Heh people are mine----"
+
+"The relationship is apparent," said father.  "There is a striking
+likeness between you and your sister, and I can discern traces of your
+parents in your face, speech and manner."
+
+"If you know my father," said Robert, "then you undehstand what
+happened to me when I was found with his money on my pehson, in the
+presence of our best friends and the police.  He went raving insane on
+the instant, and he would have killed me if he hadn't been prevented;
+he tried to; has he changed any since, Pam?"
+
+The Princess was clinging to him with both hands, staring at him,
+wonder, joy, and fear all on her lovely face.
+
+"Worse!" she cried.  "He's much worse!  The longer he broods, the more
+mother grieves, the bitterer he becomes.  Mr. Stanton, he is always
+armed.  He'll shoot on sight.  Oh what shall we do?"
+
+"Miss Pamela," said Leon, "did your man Thomas know your brother in
+England?"
+
+"All his life."
+
+"Well, then, we'd better be doing something quick.  He tied the horses
+and was walking up and down the road while he waited, and he saw us
+plainly when we crossed the wood yard a while ago.  He followed us and
+stared so, I couldn't help noticing him."
+
+"Jove!" cried Robert.  "I must have seen him in the village this
+morning.  A man reminded me of him, then I remembered how like people
+of his type are, and concluded I was mistaken.  Mr. Stanton, you have
+agreed that the evidence I hold is sufficient.  Pam cawn tell you that
+while I don't deny being full of tricks as a boy, they weh not dirty,
+not low, and while father always taking Emmet's paht against me drove
+me to recklessness sometimes, I nevah did anything underhand or
+disgraceful.  She knows what provocation I had, and exactly what
+happened.  Let heh tell you!"
+
+"I don't feel that I require any further information," said father.
+"You see, I happen to be fairly well acquainted with Mr. Pryor."
+
+"Pryor?"
+
+"He made us use that name here," explained the Princess.
+
+"WELL, HIS NAME IS PAGET!" said Robert angrily.
+
+Laddie told me long ago he didn't believe it was Pryor.
+
+"Then, if you are acquainted with my father, what would you counsel?
+Unless I'm prepahed to furnish the central figyah of interest in a
+funeral, I dare not meet him, until he has seen this evidence, had time
+to digest it, and calm himself."
+
+Shelley caught him by the arm.  No wonder!  She hadn't been proposed
+to, or even had a kiss on her lips.  She pulled him.
+
+"You come straight to the house," she said.  "Thomas may tell your
+father he thought he saw you."
+
+That was about as serious as anything could be, but nothing ever
+stopped Leon.  He sidled away from father, repeating in a low voice:
+
+  "'For sore dismayed, through storm and shade
+    His child he did discover;
+  One lovely hand she stretched for aid,
+    And one was round her lover--'"
+
+
+Shelley just looked daggers at him, but she was too anxious to waste
+any time.
+
+"Would Thomas tell your father?" she asked the Princess.
+
+"The instant he saw him alone, yes.  He wouldn't before mother."
+
+"Hold one minute!" cried father.  "We must think of our mother, just a
+little.  Shelley, you and the girls run up and explain how this is.
+Better all of you go to the house, except Mr. Paget.  He'll be safe
+here as anywhere.  Mr. Pryor will stop there, if he comes.  So it would
+be best for you to keep out of sight, Robert, until I have had a little
+talk with him."
+
+"I'll stay here," I offered.  "We'll talk until you get Mr. Pryor
+cooled off.  He can be awful ragesome when he's excited, and it doesn't
+take much to start him."
+
+"You're right about that!" agreed Robert.
+
+So we sat under the greening and were having a fine visit while the
+others went to break the news gently to mother that the Pryor mystery
+had gone up higher than Gilderoy's kite.  My! but she'd be glad!  It
+would save her many a powerful prayer.  I was telling Robert all about
+the time his father visited us, and what my mother said to him, and he
+said:  "She'd be the one to talk with him now.  Possibly he'd listen to
+her, until he got it through his head that his own son is not a common
+thief."
+
+"Maybe he'll have to be held, like taking quinine, and made to listen,"
+I said.
+
+"That would be easy, if he were not a walking ahsenal," said Robert.
+"You have small chance to reason with a half-crazy man while he is
+handling a pistol."
+
+He meant revolver.
+
+"But he'll shoot!" I cried.  "The Princess said he'd shoot!"
+
+"So he will!" said Robert.  "Shoot first, then find out how things are,
+and kill himself and every one else with remorse, afterward.  He is
+made that way."
+
+"Then he doesn't dare see you until he finds out how mistaken he has
+been," I said, for I was growing to like Robert better every minute
+longer I knew him.  Besides, there was the Princess, looking like him
+as possible, and loving him of course, like I did Laddie, maybe.  And
+if anything could cure Mrs. Pryor's heart trouble, having her son back
+would, because that was what made it in the first place, and even
+before them, there was Shelley to be thought of, and cared for.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+The Pryor Mystery
+
+  "And now old Dodson, turning pale,
+  Yields to his fate--so ends my tale."
+
+
+It didn't take me long to see why Shelley liked Robert Paget.  He was
+one of the very most likeable persons I ever had seen.  We were sitting
+under the apple tree, growing better friends every minute, when we
+heard a smash, so we looked up, and it was the sound made by Ranger as
+Mr. Pryor landed from taking our meadow fence.  He had ridden through
+the pasture, and was coming down the creek bank.  He was a spectacle to
+behold.  A mile away you could see that Thomas had told him he had seen
+Robert, and where he was.  Father had been mistaken in thinking Mr.
+Pryor would go to the house.  He had lost his hat, his white hair was
+flying, his horse was in a lather, and he seemed to be talking to
+himself.  Robert took one good look.  "Ye Gods!" he cried.  "There he
+comes now, a chattering madman!"
+
+"The Station," I panted.  "Up that ravine!  Roll back the stone and
+pull the door shut after you.  Quick!"
+
+He never could have been inside, before Mr. Pryor's horse was raving
+along the embankment beside the fence.
+
+"Where is he?" he cried.  "Thomas saw him here!"
+
+I didn't think his horse could take the fence at the top of the hill,
+but it looked as if he intended trying to make it, and I had to stop
+him if I could.
+
+"Saw who?" I asked with clicking teeth.
+
+"A tall, slender man, with a handsome face, and the heart of a devil."
+
+"Yes, there was a man here like that in the face.  I didn't see his
+heart," I said.
+
+"Which way?" raved Mr. Pryor.  "Which way?  Is he at your house?"
+
+Then I saw that he had the reins in his left hand, and a big revolver
+in his right.  So there was no mistake about whether he'd really shoot.
+But that gun provoked me.  People have no business to be careless with
+those things.  They're dangerous!
+
+"He didn't do what you think he did," I cried, "and he can prove he
+didn't, if you'll stop cavorting, and listen to reason."
+
+Mr. Pryor leaned over the fence, dark purple like a beet now.
+
+"You tell me where he is, or I'll choke it out of you," he said.
+
+I guess he meant it.  I took one long look at his lean, clawlike
+fingers, and put both hands around my neck.
+
+"He knew Thomas saw him.  He went that way," I said, waving off toward
+the north.
+
+"Hah! striking for petticoats, as usual!" he cried, and away he went in
+the direction of his house.  Then I flew for the Station.
+
+"Come from there, quick!" I cried.  "I've sent him back to his house,
+but when he finds you're not there, he will come here again.  Hurry,
+and I'll put you in the woodshed loft.  He'd never think of looking
+there."
+
+He came out and we started toward the house, going pretty fast.  Almost
+to the back gate we met Shelley.
+
+"Does mother know?" I asked.
+
+"I just told her," she said.
+
+"Father," I cried, going in the back dining-room door.  "Mr. Pryor was
+down in the meadow on Ranger.  Thomas did see Robert, and his father is
+hunting him with a gun.  We saw him coming, so I hid Robert in the
+Station and sent Mr. Pryor back home--I guess I told him a lie, father,
+or at least part of one, I said he went 'that way,' and he did, but not
+so far as I made his father think; so he started back home, but when he
+gets there and doesn't find Robert he'll come here again, madder than
+ever.  Oh father, he'll come again, and he's crazy, father!  Clear,
+raving crazy!  I know he'll come again!"
+
+"Yes," said father calmly.  "I think it very probable that he will come
+again."
+
+Then he started around shutting and latching windows, closing and
+locking the doors, and he carefully loaded his gun, and leaned it
+against the front casing.  Then he put on his glasses, and began
+examining the papers they had brought out again.  Robert stood beside
+him, and explained and showed him.
+
+"You see with me out of the way, the English law would give everything
+to my cousin," he said, and he explained it all over again.
+
+"And to think how he always posed for a perfect saint!" cried the
+Princess.  "Oh I hope the devil knows how to make him pay for what all
+of us have suffered!"
+
+"Child!  Child!" cried mother.
+
+"I can't help it!" said the Princess.  "Let me tell you, Mr. Stanton."
+
+Then SHE told everything all over again, but it was even more
+interesting than the way Robert explained it, because what she said was
+about how it had been with her and her mother.
+
+"It made father what he is," she said.  "He would have killed Robert,
+if our friends hadn't helped him away.  He will now, if he isn't
+stopped.  I tell you he will!  He sold everything he could legally
+control, for what any one chose to give him, and fled here stricken in
+pride, heartbroken, insane with anger, the creature you know.  In a
+minute he'll be back again.  Oh what are we going to do?"
+
+Father was laying out the papers that he wanted to use very carefully.
+
+"These constitute all the proof any court would require," he said to
+Robert.  "If he returns, all of you keep from sight.  This is my house;
+I'll manage who comes here, in my own way."
+
+"But you must be allowed to take no risk!" cried Robert.  "I cawn't
+consent to youah facing danger for me."
+
+"There will be no risk," said father.  "There is no reason why he
+should want to injure me.  As the master of this house, I am accustomed
+to being obeyed.  If he comes, step into the parlour there, until I
+call you."
+
+He was busy with the papers when he saw Mr. Pryor coming.  I wondered
+if he would jump the yard fence and ride down mother's flowers, but he
+left his horse at the hitching rack, and pounded on the front door.
+
+"Did any of you notice whether he was displaying a revolver?" asked
+father.
+
+"Yes father!  Yes!" I cried.  "And he's shaking so I'm afraid he'll
+make it go, when he doesn't intend to."
+
+Father picked up and levelled his rifle on the front door.
+
+"Leon," he said, "you're pretty agile.  Open this door, keep yourself
+behind it, and step around in the parlour.  The rest of you get out,
+and stay out of range."
+
+Those nearest hurried into the parlour.  Candace, May, and I crouched
+in the front stairway, but things were so exciting we just had to keep
+the door open a tiny crack so we could see plain as anything.  There
+had been nothing for Mrs. Freshett to do all afternoon, so she had gone
+over to visit an hour with Amanda Deam.  Now Mr. Pryor probably thought
+father would meet him with the Bible in his hand, and read a passage
+about loving your neighbour as yourself.  I'll bet anything you can
+mention that he never expected to find himself looking straight down
+the barrel of a shining big rifle when that door swung open.  It
+surprised him so, he staggered, and his arm wavered.  If he had shot
+and hit anything then, it would have been an accident.
+
+"Got you over the heart," said father, in precisely the same voice he
+always said, "This is a fine day we are having."  "Now why are you
+coming here in such a shape?"  This was a little cross.  "I'm not the
+man to cringe before you!"  This was quite boastful.  "You'll get
+bullet for bullet, if you attempt to invade my house with a gun."  This
+pinged as if father shot words instead of bullets.
+
+"I want my daughter to come home," said Mr. Pryor.  "And if you're
+sheltering the thief she is trying to hide, yield him up, if you would
+save yourself."
+
+"Well, I'm not anxious about dying, with the family I have on my hands,
+neighbour," said father, his rifle holding without a waver, "but unless
+you put away that weapon, and listen to reason, you cannot enter my
+house.  Calm yourself, man, and hear what there is to be said!  Examine
+the proof, that is here waiting to be offered to you."
+
+"Once and but once, send them out, or I'll enter over you!" cried Mr.
+Pryor.
+
+"Sorry," said father, "but if only a muscle of your trigger finger
+moves, you fall before I do.  I've the best range, and the most
+suitable implement for the work."
+
+"Implement for the work!"  Well, what do you think of father?  Any one
+who could not see, to have heard him, would have thought he was talking
+about a hoe.  We saw a shadow before we knew what made it; then, a
+little at a time, wonderingly, her jolly face a bewildered daze, her
+mouth slowly opening, Mrs. Freshett, half-bent and peering, stooped
+under Mr. Pryor's arm and looked in our door.  She had come back to
+help get supper, and because the kitchen was locked, she had gone
+around the house to see if she could get in at the front.  What she saw
+closed her mouth, and straightened her back.
+
+"WHY, YOU TWO OLD FOOLS!" she cried.  "IF YE AIN'T DRAWED A BEAD ON
+EACH OTHER!"
+
+None of us saw her do it.  We only knew after it was over what must
+have happened.  She had said she'd risk her life for mother.
+
+She never stopped an instant when her chance came.  She must have
+turned, and thrown her big body against Mr. Pryor.  He was tired, old,
+and shaking with anger.  They went down together, she gripping his
+right wrist with both hands, and she was strong as most men.  Father
+set the gun beside the door, and bent over them.  A minute more and he
+handed the revolver to Leon, and helped Mrs. Freshett to her feet.  Mr.
+Pryor lay all twisted on the walk, his face was working, and what he
+said was a stiff jabber no one could understand.  He had broken into
+the pieces we often feared he would.
+
+Robert and Laddie came running to help father carry him in, and lay him
+on the couch.
+
+"I hope, Miss Stanton," said Mrs. Freshett, "that I wa'n't too rough
+with him.  He was so shaky-like, I was 'feered that thing would go off
+without his really makin' it, and of course I couldn't see none of
+yourn threatened with a deadly weepon, 'thout buttin' in and doin' the
+best I could."
+
+Mother put her arms around her as far as they would reach.  She would
+have had to take her a side at a time to really hug all of her, and she
+said:  "Mrs. Freshett, you are an instrument in the hands of the Lord
+this day.  Undoubtedly you have kept us from a fearful tragedy;
+possibly you have saved my husband for me.  None of us ever can thank
+you enough."
+
+"Loosen his collar and give him air," said Mrs. Freshett pushing mother
+away.  "I think likely he has bust a blood vessel."
+
+Father sent Leon flying to bring Dr. Fenner.  Laddie took the carriage
+and he and Robert went after Mrs. Pryor, while father, mother, Mrs.
+Freshett, the Princess, May, and I, every last one, worked over Mr.
+Pryor.  We poured hot stuff down his throat, put warm things around
+him, and rubbed him until the sweat ran on us, trying to get his
+knotted muscles straightened out.  When Dr. Fenner came he said we were
+doing all he could; MAYBE Mr. Pryor would come to and be all right, and
+maybe his left side would be helpless forever; it was a stroke.  Seemed
+to me having Mrs. Freshett come against you like that, could be called
+a good deal more than a stroke, but I couldn't think of the right word
+then.  And after all, perhaps stroke was enough.  He couldn't have been
+much worse off if the barn had fallen on him.  I didn't think there was
+quite so much of Mrs. Freshett; but then she was scared, and angry; and
+he was about ready to burst, all by himself, if no one had touched him.
+He had much better have stayed at home and listened to what was to be
+said, reasonably, like father would; and then if he really had to
+shoot, he would have been in some kind of condition to take aim.
+
+After a long hard fight we got him limber, straightened out, and warm,
+it didn't rip so when he breathed, then they put him in the parlour on
+the big davenport.  Leon said if the sparkin' bench didn't bring him
+to, nothing would.  Laddie sat beside him and mother kept peeping.  She
+wouldn't let Dr. Fenner go, because she said Mr. Pryor just must come
+out of it right, and have a few years of peace and happiness.
+
+Mrs. Pryor came back with Laddie and Robert.  He carried her in, put
+her in the big rocking chair again, and he sat beside her, stroking and
+kissing her, while she held him with both hands.  You could see NOW why
+his mother couldn't sleep, walked the road, and held her hands over her
+heart.  She was a brave woman, and she had done well to keep alive and
+going in any shape at all.  You see we knew.  There had been only the
+few hours when it seemed possible that one of our boys had taken
+father's money and was gone.  I well remembered what happened to our
+mother then.  And if she had been disgraced before every one, dragged
+from her home away across a big sea to live among strangers, and not
+known where her boy was for years, I'm not a bit sure that she'd have
+done better than Mrs. Pryor.  Yes, she would too; come to think it
+out--she'd have kept on believing the Lord had something to do with it,
+and that He'd fix it some way; and I know she and father would have
+held hands no matter what happened or where they went.
+
+I guess the biggest thing the matter with Pryors was that they didn't
+know how to go about loving each other right; maybe it was because they
+didn't love God, so they couldn't know exactly what PROPER LOVE was;
+because God is love, like father said.
+
+Mrs. Pryor didn't want to see Mr. Pryor--I can't get used to calling
+them Paget--and she didn't ask anything about him.  I guess she was
+pretty mad at him.  She never had liked the Emmet cousin, and she'd had
+nothing but trouble with him all the time he had been in her family,
+and then that awful disgrace, that she always THOUGHT was all him, but
+she couldn't prove it, and she had no money.
+
+That's a very bad thing.  A woman should always have some money.  She
+works as hard as any one, and usually she has more that worries her, so
+it's only fair for her to have part of what the work and worry bring.
+Mother always has money.  Why, she has so much, she can help father out
+when he is pushed with bills, as she did last fall, to start Shelley to
+music school.  It's no way to be forced to live with a man, just to get
+a home, food, and clothing.  I don't believe mother ever would do it in
+all this world.  But then mother has worked all her life, and so if
+father doesn't do as she wants him to, she'd know exactly how to go
+about taking care of herself.
+
+After all Mrs. Pryor didn't need to sit back on her dignity and look so
+abused.  He couldn't knock her down, and drag her clear here.  Why
+didn't she say right out, in the beginning, that her son COULDN'T be a
+thief, that she knew it, and she'd stay at home and wait for him to
+come back?  She could have put a piece in the paper saying she knew her
+boy was all right, and for him to come back, so they could go to work
+and PROVE it.  I bet if she'd had one tenth of the ginger mother has,
+she'd have stopped the whole fuss in the start.  I looked at her almost
+steadily, trying to figure out just what mother would have done in her
+place.  Maybe I'm mistaken about exactly how she would have set to
+work, but this I KNOW: she'd have stuck to the Lord; she'd have loved
+father, so dearly, he just COULDN'T have wanted her to do things that
+hurt her until it gave her heart trouble; and she never, never would
+have given up one of us, and sat holding her heart for months, refusing
+to see or to speak to any one, while she waited for some one else to do
+something.  Mother never waits.  She always thinks a minute, if she's
+in doubt she asks father; if he can't decide, both of them ask God; and
+then you ought to see things begin to fly.
+
+The more I watched Mrs. Pryor, the more I began to think she was a
+lady; and just about when I was sure that was what ailed her, I heard
+father say:  "Perhaps the lady would like a cup of tea."  I had a big
+notion to tell her to come on, and I would show her where the cannister
+was, but I thought I better not.  I wanted to, though.  She'd have felt
+much better if she had got up and worked like the rest of us.  With all
+the excitement, and everything happening at once, you'd have thought
+mother would be flat on her back, but flat nothing!  Everything was
+picked up and slid back, fast as it was torn down; she found time to
+flannel her nose and brush her hair, her collar was straight, and the
+goldstone pin shone in the light, while her starched white apron
+fluttered as she went through the doors.  She said a few words to
+Candace and Mrs. Freshett, May took out a linen cloth and began to set
+places for all the grown people, so I knew there'd be strawberry
+preserves and fried ham, but in all that, would you ever have thought
+that she'd find a second to make biscuit, and tea cakes herself?  Plain
+as preaching I heard her say to Mrs. Freshett:  "I do hope and pray
+that Mr. Pryor will come out of it right, so we can take him home, and
+teach him to behave himself; but if he's gone this minute, I intend to
+have another decent meal for Shelley to offer her young man; and I
+don't care if I show Mrs. Pryor that we're not hungry over here, if we
+do lack servants to carry in food on silver platters."
+
+"That I jest would!" said Mrs. Freshett.  "Even if he turns up his
+toes, 'tain't YOUR funeral, thank the Lord! an' looky here, I'd jest as
+soon set things in a bake pan an' pass 'em for you, myself.  I'll do
+it, if you say the word."
+
+Mother bit her lip, and fought her face to keep it straight, as she
+said confidential-like:  "No, I'm not going to toady to her.  I only
+want her to see that a meal really consists of food after all; I don't
+mind putting my best foot foremost, but I won't ape her."
+
+"Huccome they to fuss like this, peaceable as Mr. Stanton be, an'
+what's Shelley's beau to them?"
+
+"I should think you could tell by looking at Pryors," said mother.
+"He's their mystery, and also their son.  Shelley met him in Chicago,
+he came here to see her, and ran right into them.  I'll tell you about
+it before you go.  Now, I must keep these applications hot, for I've
+set my head on pulling Mr. Pryor out so that he can speak, and have a
+few decent years of life yet."
+
+"But why did the old devil--EX-cuse me, I mean the old GENTLEMAN, want
+to shoot your man?"
+
+"He didn't!  I'll tell you all about it after they're gone."
+
+"I bet you don't get shet of them the night," said Mrs. Freshett.
+
+"All right!" said mother.  "Whatever Dr. Fenner thinks.  I won't have
+Mr. Pryor moved until it can't hurt him, if he stays a week.  I blame
+her quite as much as I do him; from what I know.  If a woman is going
+to live with a man, there are times when she's got to put her foot
+down--flat--most unmercifully flat!"
+
+"Ain't she though!" said Mrs. Freshett; then she and mother just
+laughed.
+
+There!  What did I tell you?  I feel as good as if father had patted me
+on the head and bragged on me a lot.  I THOUGHT mother wouldn't think
+that Mr. Pryor was ALL to blame, and she didn't.  I figured that out by
+myself, too.
+
+Every minute Mr. Pryor grew better.  He breathed easier, and mother
+tilted on her toes and waved her hands, when he moved his feet, threw
+back his head, lifted his hand to it, and acted like he was almost over
+it, and still in shape to manage himself.  She hurried to tell Mrs.
+Pryor, and I know mother didn't like it when she never even said she
+was glad, or went to see for herself.
+
+Laddie and the Princess watched him, while every one else went to
+supper.  Laddie picked up Mrs. Pryor's chair, carried her to the
+dining-room, and set her in my place beside father.  He placed Dr.
+Fenner next her, and left Robert to sit with Shelley.  I don't think
+Mrs. Pryor quite liked that, but no one asked her.
+
+I watched and listened until everything seemed to be going right there,
+and then I slipped into the parlour, where Laddie and the Princess were
+caring for Mr. Pryor.  With one hand Laddie held hers, the other
+grasped Mr. Pryor's wrist.  Laddie never took his eyes from that white,
+drawn face, except to smile at her, and squeeze her hand every little
+while.  At last Mr. Pryor turned over and sighed, pretty soon he opened
+his eyes, and looked at Laddie, then at the Princess, and it was
+nothing new to see them, so he smiled and dozed again.  After a while
+he opened them wider, then he saw the piano--that was an eye-opener for
+any one--and the strange room, so he asked, most as plain as he ever
+talked, why he was at our house again, and then he began to remember.
+He struggled to sit up and the colour came into his face.  So Laddie
+let go the Princess, and held him down while he said:  "Mr. Pryor,
+answer me this.  Do you want to spend the remainder of your life in an
+invalid's chair, or would you like to walk abroad and sit a horse
+again?"
+
+He glared at Laddie, but he heard how things were plainly enough.
+
+Laddie held him, while he explained what a fight we had to unlock his
+muscles, and start him going again, and how, if we hadn't loved him,
+and wanted him so, and had left him untouched until the Doctor came,
+very likely he'd have been paralyzed all the rest of his life, if he
+hadn't died; and he said he wished he HAD, and he didn't THANK any one
+for saving him.
+
+"Oh yes you do!" said Laddie, the same as he'd have talked to Leon.
+"You can't stuff me on that, and you needn't try.  Being dead is a
+cold, clammy proposition, that all of us put off as long as we can.
+You know you want to see Pamela in her own home.  You know you are
+interested in how I come out with those horses.  You know you want the
+little people you spoke of, around you.  You know the pain and suspense
+you have borne have almost driven you insane, and it was because you
+cared so deeply.  Now lie still, and keep quiet!  All of us are tired
+and there's no sense in making us go through this again, besides the
+risk of crippling yourself that you run.  Right here in this house are
+the papers to prove that your nephew took your money, and hid it in
+your son's clothing, as he already had done a hundred lesser things,
+before, purposely to estrange you.  Hold steady!  You must hear this!
+The sooner you know it, the better you'll feel.  You remember, don't
+you, that before your nephew entered your home, you idolized your son.
+You thought the things he did were amusing.  A boy is a boy, and if
+he's alive, he's very apt to be lively.  Mother could tell you a few
+pranks that Leon has put us through; but they're only a boy's
+foolishness, they are not unusual or unforgivable.  I've gone over the
+evidence your son brings, with extreme care, so has father.  Both of us
+are quite familiar with common law.  He has every proof you can
+possibly desire.  You can't get around it, even if your heart wasn't
+worn out with rebellion, and you were not crazy to have the loving
+sympathy of your family again."
+
+"I don't believe a word of it!"
+
+"You have got to!  I tell you it is PROOF, man!  The documents are in
+this house now."
+
+"He forged them, or stole them, as he took the money!"
+
+Laddie just laughed.
+
+"How you do long, and fight, to be convinced!" he said.  "I don't blame
+you!  When anything means this much, of course you must be sure.  But
+you'll know your nephew's signature; also your lawyer's.  You'll know
+letters from old friends who are above question.  Sandy McSheel has
+written you that he was with Robert through all of it, and he gives you
+his word that everything is all right.  You will believe him, won't
+you?"
+
+Big tears began to squeeze from under Mr. Pryor's lids, until Laddie
+and the Princess each tried to see how much of him they could hold to
+keep him together-like.
+
+"Tell me!" he said at last, so they took turns explaining everything
+plain as day, and soon he listened without being held.
+
+When they had told him everything they could think of, he asked: "Did
+Robert kill Emmet?"
+
+"I am very happy to be able to tell you that he did not.  It would have
+been painful, and not helped a bad matter a particle.  Your nephew had
+dissipated until he was only a skeleton just breathing his last.  It's
+probable that his fear of death helped your son out, so that he got the
+evidence he wanted easier than he hoped to in the beginning.  I don't
+mean that he is dead now; but he is passing slowly, and loathsomely.
+Robert thinks word that he has gone will come any hour.  Think how
+pleasant it will be to have your son!  Think how happy your home will
+be now!  Think how you will love to see Sandy, and all your old
+friends!  Think how glad you'll be to go home, and take charge of your
+estate!"
+
+"Think!" cried Mr. Pryor, pushing Laddie away and sitting up: "Think
+how I shall enjoy wringing the last drop of blood from that craven's
+body with these old hands!"
+
+What a sight he did look to be sure!  Sick, half-crazy, on the very
+verge of the grave himself, and wanting to kill a poor man already
+dying.  Aren't some people too curious?
+
+Laddie carefully laid him down, straightened him out and held him
+again.  Mother always said he was "patient as Job," and that day it
+proved to be a good thing.
+
+"You're determined to keep yourself well supplied with trouble,"
+laughed Laddie.  I don't believe any one else would have dared.  "Now
+to an unbiased observer, it would seem that you'd be ready to let well
+enough alone.  You have your son back, you have him fully exonerated,
+you have much of your property, you are now ready for freedom, life,
+and love, with the best of us; you have also two weddings on your hands
+in the near future.  Why in the name of sense are you anxious for more?"
+
+"I should have thought that Sandy McSheel, if he's a real friend of
+mine----"
+
+"Sandy tells you all about it in the letter he has sent.  He went with
+Robert fully intending to do that very thing for you, but the poor
+creature was too loathsome.  The sight of him made Sandy sick.  He
+writes you that when he saw the horrible spectacle, all he could think
+of was to secure the evidence needed and get away."
+
+Suddenly the Princess arose and knelt beside the davenport.  She put
+her arms around her father's neck and drew his wrinkled, white old face
+up against her lovely one.
+
+"Daddy!  Dear old Daddy!" she cried.  "I've had such a hard spot in my
+heart against you for so long.  Oh do let's forget everything, and
+begin all over again; begin away back where we were before Emmet ever
+came.  Oh Daddy, do let's forget, and begin all over new, like other
+people!"
+
+He held her tight a minute, then his lips began whispering against her
+ear.  Finally he said:  "Take yourselves off, and send Robert here.  I
+want my son.  Oh I want my boy!"
+
+It was a long time before Robert came from the parlour; when he did, it
+was only to get his mother and take her back with him; then it was a
+still longer time before the door opened; but when it did, it was
+perfectly sure that they were all friends again.  Then Leon went to
+tell Thomas, and he came with the big carriage.
+
+White and shaking, Mr. Pryor was lifted into it and they went home
+together, taking Shelley with them to stay that night; so no doubt she
+was proposed to and got her kiss before she slept.
+
+That fall there were two weddings at our church at the same time.
+
+Sally's had been fine; but it wasn't worth mentioning beside Laddie and
+the Princess, and Robert and Shelley.  You should have seen my mother!
+She rocked like a kingbird on the top twig of the winesap, which was
+the tallest tree in our orchard, and for once there wasn't a single fly
+in her ointment, not one, she said so herself, and so did father.  As
+we watched the big ve-hi-ackle, as Leon called it, creep slowly down
+the Little Hill, it made me think of that pathetic poem, "The Three
+Warnings," in McGuffey's Sixth.  I guess I gave Mr. Pryor the first,
+that time he got so angry he hit his horse until it almost ran away.
+Mother delivered the second when she curry-combed him about the taxes,
+and Mrs. Freshett finished the job.  The last two lines read as if they
+had been especially written about him:
+
+  "And now old Dodson, turning pale,
+  Yields to his fate--so ends my tale."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Laddie, by Gene Stratton-Porter
+
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\ No newline at end of file
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+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<HTML>
+<HEAD>
+
+<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=utf-8">
+
+<TITLE>
+Laddie
+</TITLE>
+
+<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
+BODY { color: Black;
+       background: White;
+       margin-right: 5%;
+       margin-left: 10%;
+       font-size: medium;
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+
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+
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+         text-indent: -5% ;
+         margin-left: 5% ;
+         margin-right: 0% }
+
+P.intro {font-size: medium ;
+         text-indent: -5% ;
+         margin-left: 5% ;
+         margin-right: 0% }
+
+P.dedication {text-indent: 0%;
+              margin-left: 15%;
+              text-align: justify }
+
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+             text-indent: 0% ;
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+</HEAD>
+
+<BODY>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Laddie, by Gene Stratton-Porter
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Laddie
+
+Author: Gene Stratton-Porter
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2008 [EBook #286]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADDIE ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+LADDIE
+</H1>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+A TRUE BLUE STORY
+</H2>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+by
+</H3>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+GENE STRATTON-PORTER
+</H2>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+To
+<BR>
+LEANDER ELLIOT STRATTON
+<BR>
+"The Way to Be Happy Is to Be Good"
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+Contents
+</H2>
+
+<BR>
+
+<TABLE ALIGN="center" WIDTH="80%">
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">CHAPTER</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">&nbsp;</TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">I.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap01">Little Sister</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">II.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap02">Our Angel Boy</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">III.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap03">Mr. Pryor's Door</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap04">The Last Day in Eden</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">V.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap05">The First Day of School</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap06">The Wedding Gown</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap07">When Sally Married Peter</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap08">The Shropshire and the Crusader</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap09">"Even So"</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">X.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap10">Laddie Takes the Plunge</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap11">Keeping Christmas Our Way</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap12">The Horn of the Hunter</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap13">The Garden of the Lord</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap14">The Crest of Eastbrooke</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap15">Laddie, the Princess, and the Pie</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap16">The Homing Pigeon</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap17">In Faith Believing</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap18">The Pryor Mystery</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+</TABLE>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+LADDIE
+</H1>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHARACTERS
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+LADDIE, Who Loved and Asked No Questions.<BR>
+THE PRINCESS, From the House of Mystery.<BR>
+LEON, Our Angel Child.<BR>
+LITTLE SISTER, Who Tells What Happened.<BR>
+MR. and MRS. STANTON, Who Faced Life Shoulder to Shoulder.<BR>
+SALLY and PETER, Who Married Each Other.<BR>
+ELIZABETH, SHELLEY, MAY and Other Stanton Children.<BR>
+MR. and MRS. PRYOR, Father and Mother of the Princess.<BR>
+ROBERT PAGET, a Chicago Lawyer.<BR>
+MRS. FRESHETT, Who Offered Her Life for Her Friend.<BR>
+CANDACE, the Cook.<BR>
+MISS AMELIA, the School Mistress.<BR>
+Interested Relatives, Friends, and Neighbours.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap01"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER I
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Little Sister
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"And could another child-world be my share,<BR>
+I'd be a Little Sister there."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Have I got a Little Sister anywhere in this house?" inquired Laddie at
+the door, in his most coaxing voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ask mother if you may go with me a while."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother doesn't care where I am, if I come when the supper bell rings."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right!" said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He led the way around the house, sat on the front step and took me
+between his knees.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, is it going to be a secret?" I cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The biggest secret yet," he said gravely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell quick!" I begged, holding my ear to his lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the matter?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me the secret, hurry!" I cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell father and he can have Leon help him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you don't dare tell a breath," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you go in my place, and carry her a letter to explain why I'm not
+coming, Little Sister?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Must I lift the leaves and hunt for her, or will she come to me?" I
+wavered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is she like, Laddie?" I questioned, so filled with awe and
+interest, that fear was forgotten.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What am I to do, Laddie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course I do," I said indignantly.  "Father taught me beech with the
+other trees."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is that all?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No one shall see," I promised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If he had told me to dance a jig on the ridgepole of our barn, I would
+have tried it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;just like mine did when the Something jumped in the
+creek bed, no doubt.  Then he laid on the whip and rode.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Great Day!" cried Laddie.  "You made me think we had a funeral!  Where
+is mother, and where is my Little Sister?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;as if Hannah
+Dover knew HOW a Princess carried herself!&mdash;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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well I ought to be," I said.  "I put it there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Might I inquire for whom you put it there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No ma'am!  That's a secret."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How interesting!" she cried.  "I wonder now if you are not Little
+Sister."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am to Laddie and our folks," I said.  "You are a stranger."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are not my doors," she said, "and could you keep your father from
+saying anything he chooses?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I stood and blinked at her.  Of course I wouldn't even dare try that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm so sorry," was all I could think to say.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You may call me Little Sister, if you like," I said.  "I won't be a
+stranger."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why how lovely!" cried the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I like you," I said, reaching up to touch her curls.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you doing?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Believe me, no!" cried the Princess.  "It would take all I have, woven
+into a rope, to do that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Laddie knows curls that just one hair of them is strong enough," I
+boasted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder now!" said the Princess.  "I think he must have been making
+poetry or telling Fairy tales."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course I do!" she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you know that this COULD be an Enchanted Wood?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have found it so," said the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And MAYBE this is a Magic Carpet?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It surely is a Magic Carpet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then why don't you leave it where he told you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you have gone and found the place.  You started to take it once;
+you would again, soon as I left."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!" I said instantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How do you think I happened to come to this place?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe our woods are prettier than yours."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How do you think I knew where the letter was?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I shook my head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I show you some others exactly like the one you have there, then
+will you believe that is for me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," I answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't want me to have it?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," I said.  "I want you to have it if Laddie wrote it for you&mdash;but
+mother and father won't, not at all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What makes you think so?" she asked gently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you know what people say about you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Some of it, perhaps."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you think it is true?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, you can't help believing that," said the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then can't you see why you'll be likely to show Laddie the way to find
+trouble, instead of sunshine?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can see," said the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh Princess, you won't do it, will you?" I cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stiff-necked Johnny," I answered promptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the man who lives next him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pinch-fist Williams."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her finger veered to another neighbour's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The girls of that house?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Giggle-head Smithsons."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What about the man who lives over there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He beats his wife."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the house beyond?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother whispers about them.  I don't know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the woman on the hill?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She doesn't do anything but gussip and make every one trouble."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If your father will take it back about God, and your mother will let
+people in&mdash;my mother and father both wanted to be friends, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That I can't possibly do," she said, "but maybe I could change their
+feelings toward me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then will you keep the secret until I have time to try&mdash;say until this
+time next year?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll keep it just as long as Laddie wants me to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good!" said the Princess.  "No wonder Laddie thinks you the finest
+Little Sister any one ever had."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Does Laddie think that?" I asked
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He does indeed!" said the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I'm not afraid to go home," I said.  "And I'll bring his letter
+the next time he can't come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Were you scared this time?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I told her about that Something in the dry bed, the wolves, wildcats,
+Paddy Ryan, and the Gypsies.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How would you?" asked the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What makes you do that?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's the stamp," I explained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But it's my letter, and I didn't put it there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Has to be there or the Fairies won't like it," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well then, let it go," said the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I put back the bark and replaced the stone, gathered up the scattered
+leaves, and put the two with writing on between fresh ones.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now I must run," I said, "or Laddie will think the Gypsies have got me
+sure."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll go with you past the dry creek," she offered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am most all over being afraid now," I told her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was just starting to find you.  You've been an age, child," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I held up the letter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No one is looking," I said, "and this won't go in your pocket."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+You should have seen his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where did you get it?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I told him all about it.  I told him everything&mdash;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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you be very, very careful never to breathe a whisper, I'll take you
+with me some day," he promised.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER II
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Our Angel Boy
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"I had a brother once&mdash;a gracious boy,<BR>
+Full of all gentleness, of calmest hope,<BR>
+Of sweet and quiet joy,&mdash;there was the look<BR>
+Of heaven upon his face."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Laddie is at work in the barn," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm going to play in the creek," I answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't know she wanted grape sap."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What on earth does Shelley want with more hair than she has?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, she has heard it bragged on so much she thinks people would say
+more if she could improve it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked and there was the vine, dry as could be, and a milk crock
+beneath it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Didn't the silly know she had to cut the vine in the spring when the
+sap was running?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bear witness, O vine! that she did not," said Leon, "and speak, ye
+voiceless pottery, and testify that she expected to find you
+overflowing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Too bad that she's going to be disappointed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She isn't!  She's going to find ample liquid to bathe her streaming
+tresses.  Keep quiet and watch me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He picked up the crock, carried it to the creek and dipped it full of
+water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's too much," I objected.  "She'll know she never got a crock full
+from a dry vine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She'll think the vine bled itself dry for her sake."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She isn't that silly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well then, how silly is she?" asked Leon, spilling out half.  "About
+so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not so bad as that.  Less yet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Anything to please the ladies," said Leon, pouring out more.  Then we
+sat and giggled a while.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you going to do now?" asked Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Play in the creek," I answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right!  I'll work near you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Couldn't anything be prettier than a young duck."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Except a little guinea," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Baby killdeers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean tame.  Things we raise."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll take guineas."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll say white turkeys.  They seem so innocent.  Nothing of ours is
+pretty as these."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But these are wild."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So they are," said Leon.  "Twelve of them.  Won't mother be pleased?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't let her count them!" I whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will she ever find all of them?" I asked at last.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," said Leon.  "She will comb the grass and strain the water
+until she gets every one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hoo-hoo!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did they have a black man for?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hoo-hoo!" came mother's voice, and that was the third call.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hum!  Must be for us," said Leon.  "We better go as soon as we get a
+little dryer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am old enough that I could have gone to school two years ago, and I
+won't tell!" I said stoutly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right!  Come on then," said Leon.  "I don't know but mother has
+been calling us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We started up the orchard path at the fourth call.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Say Leon, you found the Station, didn't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't talk about it!" snapped Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I changed the subject
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whose money do you suppose that is?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, it's time to run.  Let me do the talking."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was Mrs. Deam glad to get her ducks back?" she asked as she
+fine-combed Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are like little eels.  You should have helped Amanda."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you called so cross we thought you would come after us, so we
+had to run."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Didn't I do enough to take them home?  Can't Sammy Deam catch ducks as
+fast as I can?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have I beat them?" she cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whom are you trying to beat?" asked mother as she told May to set a
+chair for Mrs. Freshett and bring her a drink.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The grave-kiver men," she said.  "I wanted to get to you first."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you have," said mother.  "Rest a while and then tell me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Mrs. Freshett was so excited she couldn't rest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll gladly help you all I can," said my mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just what is it, Mrs. Freshett?" asked mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's two men sellin' a patent iron kiver for to protect the graves of
+your dead from the sun an' the rain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who wants the graves of their dead protected from the sun and the
+rain?" demanded my mother sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I said to Josiah, 'I don't know how she'll feel about it, but I can't
+do more than ask.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do they carry a sample?  What is it like?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You never told me how you lost your son," said mother, feeling so
+badly she wiped one of my eyes full of oil.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly Mrs. Freshett lifted her apron, covered her face and sobbed
+until her broad shoulders shook.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh you poor soul!" said my mother.  "I'm so sorry for you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leon!" she cried.  Then there was a slam.  "What in the world is the
+matter?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stepped out of the tub right on the soap, and it threw me down,"
+explained Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For mercy sake, be careful!" said my mother, and shut the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It wasn't a minute before the knob turned and it opened again a little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I never saw mother's face look so queer, but at last she said softly:
+"You were thinking of the grave cover for him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a beautiful horse!" said Sally.  "Look at that saddle and bridle!
+The Pryor girl is here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why should she come?" asked Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To show her fine clothes and queen it over us!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;that is always the way&mdash;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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I forgot several last Sabbath, so I have thirteen to-day," he said
+politely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One," said the recording secretary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jesus wept," answered Leon promptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Two," said the secretary after just a breath of pause.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Abram straightened up suddenly and blinked in astonishment, while
+father held fast to his lip.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Three," called the secretary hurriedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon shifted his gaze to Betsy Alton, who hadn't spoken to her next
+door neighbour in five years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hatred stirreth up strife," he told her softly, "but love covereth all
+sins."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Things were so quiet it seemed as if the air would snap.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Four."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Still that silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman without
+discretion."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Six," said the secretary and looked appealingly at father, whose face
+was filled with dismay.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again Leon's eyes crossed the aisle and he looked directly at the man
+whom everybody in the community called "Stiff-necked Johnny."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I think he was rather proud of it, he worked so hard to keep them doing
+it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lift not up your horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck," Leon
+commanded him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Toward the door some one tittered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Seven," called the secretary hastily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon glanced around the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eight," called the secretary with something like a breath of relief.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Our angel boy never had looked so angelic, and he was beaming on the
+Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee," he told her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie would thrash him for that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Instantly after, "Nine," he recited straight at Laddie:  "I made a
+covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+More than one giggled that time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ten!" came almost sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eleven."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sure as you live my mother's shoulders shook.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Twelve."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly Leon seemed to be forsaken.  He surely shrank in size and
+appeared abused.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thirteen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father's voice broke that silence.  "Let us kneel in prayer," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took a step forward, knelt, laid his hands on the altar, closed his
+eyes and turned his face upward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"These, these are they, who in the conflict dire&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+You could tell Emanuel Ripley had been in the war from the way he
+roared:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Boldly have stood amidst the hottest fire&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Jesus now says, 'Come up higher&mdash;&mdash;'"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Then my little mother:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Washed in the blood of the Lamb&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Like thunder all of them rolled into the chorus:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Sweepin, through the gates to the New Jerusalem&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I believe I did it fairly well.  Mother must have been surprised, but
+she put out her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't know Miss Pryor and you were acquainted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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"&mdash;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&mdash;"and her mother not very strong, and that she was a good
+girl, and dreadfully lonesome.  Can't you do something, mother?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Maybe after all it's a good thing to tell people about their meanness
+and give them a stirring up once in a while.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER III
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Mr. Pryor's Door
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Grief will be joy if on its edge<BR>
+Fall soft that holiest ray,<BR>
+Joy will be grief if no faint pledge<BR>
+Be there of heavenly day."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not a word!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are they engaged?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sally hasn't mentioned it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, can't you find out?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How could I?" asked mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It would be best to wait until Sally tells me," laughed mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Trus, trus, trill;<BR>
+Der power rid der fill,<BR>
+Fill sphring aveck,<BR>
+Plodschlicter power in der dreck."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aw, don't sing my song to that little red, pug-nosed bald-head!" I
+said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;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!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good morning!" I said when I could speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Am I correct in the surmise that you are on the chase with a popgun?"
+he asked politely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes sir," I answered, getting my breath the best I could.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It came easier after I noticed he didn't seem to be angry about
+anything.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is your hunting ground, and what game are you after?" he asked
+gravely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can see the great African jungle over there.  I am going to hunt
+for lions and tigers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Umph!" he said at last.  "I am a little curious about your ammunition.
+Just how to you bring down your prey?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I use portulaca powder and tiger lily bullets on the tigers, and four
+o'clocks on the lions," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+You could have heard him a mile, dried up as he was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There doesn't seem to be many trees in the jungle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your father is a gunner also?" he asked, and I thought he was laughing
+to himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And does Laddie shoot well?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Score one for Laddie," he said in a queer voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you in a hurry about the lions and tigers?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not at all," he answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, here I always stop and let Governor Oglesby go swimming," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did he do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He didn't want one named Morton that much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a new way," I said.  "He just stands still and the water swims
+around him.  It's very easy for him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you will lie on the bank and watch you'll have more to laugh at
+than that," I promised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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,&mdash;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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shoot!" I whispered.  "It won't stay all day!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He forgot how to push the ramrod like I showed him, so he reached out
+and tried to hit it with the gun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't do that!" I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But it's getting away!  It's getting away!" he cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hasn't your father but one thoroughbred?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father hasn't any," I said.  "Flos really belongs to Laddie, and we
+are mighty glad he has her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You should have one soon, yourself," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, if the rest of them will hurry up and marry off, so the expenses
+won't be so heavy, maybe I can."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How many of you are there?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only twelve," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked down the road at our house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you mean to tell me you have twelve children there?" he inquired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think she's as pretty as your girl," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps I don't either," he replied, smiling at me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he mounted his horse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, unless mother is sick."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what is it all about?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh just joy!  Gladness that we are alive, that we have things to do
+that we like, and praising the Lord."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Umph!" said Mr. Pryor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's just letting out what our hearts are full of," I told him.
+"Don't you know that song:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Tis the old time religion<BR>
+And you cannot keep it still?'"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shook his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked at him straight and hard, but he only turned white and seemed
+sick.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, do you open the door to children?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed!  I hadn't been informed that my daughter contemplated visiting
+your house," he said.  "When was it arranged?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My mother invited her last Sunday."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I didn't like the way he said:  "O-o-o-h!"  Some way it seemed
+insulting to my mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sat there staring straight ahead and he seemed to grow whiter, and
+older, and colder every minute.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, but my father will," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He straightened up as if something had hit him.  "Why will he object?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;that is, the
+one behind the dooryard&mdash;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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All of us were alike about that.  At that minute I knew mother was
+humming, as she did a dozen times a day:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"I think when I read that sweet story of old,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">When Jesus was here among men</SPAN><BR>
+How He called little children as lambs to His fold,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">I should like to have been with Him then."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"They wrapped him in his uniform,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">They laid him in the tomb,</SPAN><BR>
+My aching heart I thought 'twould break,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">But such was my sad doom."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Open the door of thy heart,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And open thy chamber door,</SPAN><BR>
+And my kisses shall teach thy lips<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">The love that shall fade no more</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2.5em">Till the sun grows cold,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2.5em">And the Stars are old,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2.5em">And the leaves of the Judgment</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 3.5em">Book unfold!"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"A life on the ocean wave,<BR>
+A home on the rolling deep,<BR>
+Where codfish waggle their tails<BR>
+'Mid tadpoles two feet deep."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I stood there and used the top of the fence for my railing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I made my voice high and squeally like hers and sang:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Come ye that love the Lord,<BR>
+And let your joys be known,<BR>
+Join in a song of sweet accord,<BR>
+And thus surround the throne."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+I sang all of it and then said:  "Brother Hastings, will you lead us in
+prayer?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Our Heavenly Father:  We come before Thee this morning,<BR>
+Humble worms of the dust, imploring thy blessing.<BR>
+We beseech Thee to forgive our transgressions,<BR>
+Heal our backsliding, and love us freely."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;"Charles
+his heel had raised, upon the humble worm to tread," and the worm
+lifted up its voice and spake thus to Charles:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"I know I'm now among the things<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Uncomely to your sight,</SPAN><BR>
+But, by and by, on splendid wings,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">You'll see me high and bright."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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&mdash;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:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"'And through it ran a little brook,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Where oft the cows would drink,</SPAN><BR>
+And then lie down among the flowers,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">That grew upon the brink.'</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"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:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"'They like to lie beneath the trees,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">All shaded by the boughs,</SPAN><BR>
+Whene'er the noontide heat came on:<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Sure, they were happy cows!'</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't account for her," said father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We realize that.  Mother says she doubts if she can ever teach her to
+sew and become a housewife."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Sweet bird, thy bower is ever green,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">Thy sky is ever clear;</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">No winter in thy year."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Oh, could I fly, I'd fly with thee!<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">We'd make with joyful wing,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">Our annual visit o'er the globe,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">Companions of the spring."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The only consolation I had was what Dr. Fenner had said.  That would be
+the greatest possible help in managing father or mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IV
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+The Last Day in Eden
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,<BR>
+And coming events cast their shadows before."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he say what it was?" asked Sally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only what I have told you," replied father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sally wanted to take the broom and sweep the parlour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's clean as a ribbon," said mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you go in there, you'll wake the baby," said Lucy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will it kill it if I do?" asked Sally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, but it will make it cross as fire, so it will cry all the time
+Peter is here," said Lucy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll be surprised if it doesn't scream every minute anyway," said
+Sally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope it will," said Lucy.  "That will make Peter think a while
+before he comes so often."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After she was gone Sally looked at me and said:  "Well, for land's
+sake!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guess what!" I cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never could!" laughed Laddie, giving Peter Dover's horse a slap as it
+passed him on the way to a stall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Four chickens, ham, biscuit, and cake!" I announced.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it a barbecue?" asked Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, the extra one is for the baby," said Leon.  "Squally little runt,
+I call it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a nice baby!" said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you know about it?" demanded Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guess what else!" I cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"More?" said Laddie.  "Out with it!  Don't kill me with suspense."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father is going to town Saturday to meet the new teacher and she will
+stay at our house as usual."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon yelled and fell back in a manger, while Laddie held harness oil to
+his nose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"More!" cried Leon, grabbing the bottle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you sure?" asked Laddie of me earnestly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's decided.  Mother said so," I told him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Name of a black cat, why?" demanded Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother said we were most convenient for the teacher."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aren't there enough of us?" asked Leon, straightening up sniffing
+harness oil as if his life depended on it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Any unprejudiced person would probably say so to look in," said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll bet she'll be sixty and a cat," said Leon.  "Won't I have fun
+with her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon threw the oil bottle at him.  Laddie caught it and set it on the
+shelf.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't understand," said Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do," said Laddie dryly.  "THIS is one reason."  He hit Peter Dover's
+horse another slap.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe yes," said Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shelley to music school, two."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shut up!" cried Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thanky!  Your orders shall be obeyed gladly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The monkey!" said Laddie, but he didn't get mad; he just laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sally leaned back all pinksome and blushful, and while she laughed at
+him she
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Carelessly tossed off a curl<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">That played on her delicate brow."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+exactly like Mary Dow in McGuffey's Third.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, what did I SAY?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come to think of it, you didn't say anything."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sally's face was all afire with dancing lights, and she laughed the
+gayest little laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you so very sure of that, Peter?" she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not sure of anything," said Peter, "except that I am so happy I
+could fly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Try it, fool!" I said to myself, deep in my throat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother!" I cried.  "Mother!  Yes!  They're engaged!  He's kissing her,
+mother!  Yes, Lucy, they're engaged!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is my affair," she said.  "I'll attend to this young lady."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh do let me remain and help the dear children!" she cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We can finish!" we answered in full chorus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How lovely of you!" she chirped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be extremely particular that you leave things immaculate at the
+consummation of your labour," she said.  "'Remember that cleanliness is
+next to Godliness!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Two terms of that!" gasped Leon, sinking on the stove hearth.  "Behold
+Job mourning as close the ashes as he can."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why does the little feathered dear touch earth at all?  Why doesn't
+she fly?" demanded Silas Shaw.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm going to get a hundred wads ready for Monday," said Jimmy Hood.
+"We can shoot them when we please."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bet ten cents you can't hit her," said Billy Wilson.  "There ain't
+enough of her for a decent mark."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let's quit and go home," proposed Leon.  "This will look worse than it
+does now by Monday night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then every one began talking at once.  Suddenly May seized the poker
+and began pounding on the top of the stove for order.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not if he didn't want to go," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must never, never tell him I said so, but I do think he is the
+handsomest man I ever saw."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So do I," I said, "and it wouldn't make any difference if I told him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then do you mean you're going to tell him my foolish remark?" she
+giggled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is he well educated?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Miss Amelia, "it's an awful pity, but it's the truth.  Is
+your mother being educated too?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wouldn't know what to ask," said Miss Amelia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Amelia threw a peach stone through a fence crack and hit a pig.
+It was a pretty neat shot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't need ask any of that," she said scornfully.  "I know all of it
+now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right!  What is best for worms?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jayne's vermifuge," said Miss Amelia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wrong!" I cried.  "That's a patent medicine.  Tea made from male fern
+root is best, because there's no morphine in it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;not a bird&mdash;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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie seemed annoyed and no one was quicker to see it than Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Laddie, Laddie, beware of the day!<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">For, dark and despairing, my sight, I may seal,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">But man cannot cover what God would reveal;</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">And coming events cast their shadows before."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"A song to the oak, the brave old oak,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">Who hath ruled in the greenwood long;</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">Here's health and renown to his broad green crown,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">And his fifty arms so strong."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;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:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"When a playful brook, you gambolled,"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+(Mostly that gambolled word is said about lambs)
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">"And the sunshine o'er you smiled,</SPAN><BR>
+On your banks did children loiter,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Looking for the spring flowers wild?"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Getting good, ain't you?" he asked.  "What do you want?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing!" I said.  "I just heard you coming and I thought I'd help
+you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where were you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Playing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't look as if you'd been having much fun."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't expect ever to have any, after I begin school."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Think I don't know it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon stopped and looked at me sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll help you nights, if you want me to," he offered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can I ever learn?" I asked, almost ready to cry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Men are such a comfort.  I pressed closer for more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you suppose I will?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'll find out I'll learn things if I try," I boasted.  "And you will
+find out I don't tell secrets either."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've been waiting for you to pipe up about&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I haven't piped, have I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not going to either."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I almost believe you.  A girl you could trust would be a funny thing
+to see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me what you know about Laddie, and see if I'm funny."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'd telltale sure as life!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, if you know it, he knows it anyway."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He doesn't know WHAT I know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Say, looky here," said Leon, turning on me sharply, "is all this
+sudden consideration for mother or are you legging for Laddie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For both," I answered stoutly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mostly for Laddie, just the same.  You can't fool me, missy.  I won't
+tell you one word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You needn't!" I answered, "I don't care!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's a game more than one can play at," said Leon.  "Go ahead!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap05"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER V
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+The First Day of School
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Birds in their little nests agree.<BR>
+And why can't we?"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Quickly speed your steps to school<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">And there mind your teacher's rule."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;in their
+little nests&mdash;agreeee.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;be kind, loving, and considerate of each
+other.  Let us all remember always this wonderful truth:  'Birrrrds&mdash;in
+their little nests&mdash;agreeeee!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ho but they don't!" I cried.  "They fight like anything!  Every day
+they make the feathers fly!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take your seat!" she cried.  "You are a rude, untrained child!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They do fight!" I insisted, as I held my head high and walked to my
+desk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you going to do?" I asked.  "I must wear them.  All the girls
+do.  Only the boys are barefoot."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are excused," answered Laddie.  "Three-fourths of the day is
+enough to begin on.  Miss Amelia says you may come with me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where are you going?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie was stripping off my stockings as he looked into my eyes, and
+smiled a peculiar little smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh Laddie!" I cried.  "Will you take me?  Honest!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laughed again and then he rubbed my feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor abused feet," he said.  "Sometimes I wish shoes had never been
+invented."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They feel pretty good when there's ice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So they do!" said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How are the others getting along?" asked Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good!" cried Laddie.  "I didn't suppose the boy thought that far."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you never can tell by looking at him, how far Leon is thinking," I
+said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's so, too," said Laddie.  "Are your feet comfortable now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, but Laddie, isn't my face marked?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What will the Princess think?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That you fell, perhaps," said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do the tears show?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not at all.  We washed them all away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did I do wrong, Laddie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I think you did."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But it wasn't true, what she said."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's not the point."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't notice how she looked, but from the way she hit me, you could
+tell she felt bad enough."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She surely did," said Laddie, kissing my cheek softly.  "Poor little
+woman!  What a world of things you have to learn!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shouldn't I have told her how mistaken she was?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Must I ask her pardon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I hugged Laddie tight and thought fast&mdash;there was no need to think long
+to see how it was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right!" said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Like,&mdash;'A youth who bore mid snow and ice, A banner with a strange
+device,'" I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That would be 'a banner with a strange device,'" laughest Laddie.
+"But, yes&mdash;something like!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you told the Princess?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have!" Laddie fairly shouted it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Docs SHE like secrets?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No more than I do!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then why&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would it trouble them for her to know you, Laddie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So long as they don't and won't become acquainted with me, or any one,
+of course it would."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can't you force them to know you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But hasn't she, Laddie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean the Princess' family would think you're not good enough to be
+her Knight?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Precisely!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you going to do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That I must find out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Me too," said Laddie.  "But look here, Little Sister, right in my
+face.  Will you ever forget the Princess?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then how can you ask me to?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't mean forget her, exactly.  I meant not come here and do
+things that will make every one unhappy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," I said.  "No, you can't, Laddie.  But can you ever make her love
+you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't help bothering my head, Laddie.  Can't you make her understand
+that God is not a myth?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm none too sure what I believe myself," said Laddie.  "Not that
+there is no God&mdash;I don't mean that&mdash;but I surely don't believe all
+father's teachings."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you believe God, do other little things matter, Laddie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right!  Here we are!" said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He parted the willows and we stepped on the Magic Carpet, and that
+minute the Magic worked.  I forgot every awful, solemn, troublous thing
+we had been talking about, and looked around while Laddie knelt and
+hunted for a letter, and there was none.  That meant the Princess was
+coming, so we sat on the throne to wait.  We hadn't remembered to bathe
+my cheek, we had been so busy when we passed the water, and I doubt if
+we were thinking much then.  We just waited.  The willow walls waved
+gently, the moss carpet was spotted with little gold patches of
+sunlight, in the shade a few of the red flowers still bloomed, and big,
+lazy bumblebees hummed around them, or a hummingbird stood on air
+before them.  A sort of golden throbbing filled the woods, and my heart
+began to leap, why, I don't know; but I'm sure Laddie's did too, for I
+looked at him and his eyes were shining as I never had seen them
+before, while his cheeks were a little red, and he was breathing like
+when you've been running; then suddenly his body grew tense against
+mine, and that meant she was coming.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Like that first day, she came slowly through the woods, stopping here
+and there to touch the trunk of a tree, put back a branch, or bend over
+a flower face.  Brown as the wood floor was her dress, and cardinal
+flowers blazed on her breast, and the same colour showed on her cheeks
+and lips.  Her eyes were like Laddie's for brightness, and she was
+breathing the same way.  I thought sure there was going to be something
+to remember a lifetime&mdash;I was so excited I couldn't stand still.
+Before it could happen Laddie went and said it was a "beautiful day,"
+and she said "it didn't show in the woods, but the pastures needed
+rain."  Then she kissed me.  Well if I ever!  I sank on the throne and
+sat there.  They went on talking like that, until it was too dull to
+bear, so I slipped out and wandered away to see what I could find.
+When I grew tired and went back, Laddie was sitting on the Magic Carpet
+with his back against the beech, and the Princess was on the throne
+reading from a little book, reading such interesting things that I
+decided to listen.  After a while she came to this:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Thou are mated with a clown,<BR>
+And the grossness of his nature, will have weight to bear thee<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">down."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="nondent">
+Laddie threw back his head, and how he laughed!  The Princess put down
+the book and looked at him so surprised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you reading that to me because you think it appropriate?" asked
+Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am reading it because it is conceded to be one of the most beautiful
+poems ever written," said the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You knew when you began that you would come to those lines."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never even thought of such a thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you knew that is how your father would regard any relationship,
+friendly or deeper, with me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I cannot possibly be held responsible for what my father thinks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is natural that you should think alike."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not necessarily!  You told me recently that you didn't agree with your
+father on many subjects."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kindly answer me this," said Laddie:  "Do you feel that I'm a 'clown'
+because I'm not schooled to the point on all questions of good manners?
+Do you find me gross because I plow and sow?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You surprise me," said the Princess.  "My consenting to know and to
+spend a friendly hour with you here is sufficient answer.  I have not
+found the slightest fault with your manners.  I have seen no suspicion
+of 'grossness' about you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you tell me, frankly, exactly what you do think of me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Surely!  I think you are a clean, decent man, who occasionally kindly
+consents to put a touch of human interest into an hour, for a very
+lonely girl.  What has happened, Laddie?  This is not like you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie sat straight and studied the beech branches.  Father said beech
+trees didn't amount to much; but I first learned all about them from
+that one, and what it taught me made me almost worship them always.
+There were the big trunk with great rough spreading roots, the bark in
+little ridges in places, smooth purple gray between, big lichens for
+ornament, the low flat branches, the waxy, wavy-edged leaves, with
+clear veins, and the delicious nuts in their little brown burrs.  The
+Princess and I both stared at the branches and waited while a little
+breath of air stirred the leaves, the sunshine flickered, and a cricket
+sang a sort of lonesome song.  Laddie leaned against the tree again,
+and he was thinking so hard, to look at him made me begin to repeat to
+myself the beech part of that beautiful churchyard poem our big folks
+recite:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">His listless length at noontide he would stretch,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">And pore upon the brook that babbles by."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Only he was studying so deeply you could almost feel what was in his
+mind, and it was not about the brook at all, even if one ran close.
+Soon he began talking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not so bad!" he said.  "You might think worse.  I admit the
+cleanliness, I strive for decency, I delight in being humanely
+interesting, even for an hour; you might think worse, much worse!  You
+might consider me a 'clown.'  'A country clod.'  Rather a lowdown,
+common thing, a 'clod,' don't you think?  And a 'clown'!  And 'gross'
+on top of that!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What can you mean?" asked the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Since you don't seem to share the estimate of me, I believe I'll tell
+you," said Laddie.  "The other day I was driving from the gravel pit
+with a very heavy load.  The road was wide and level on either side.  A
+man came toward me on horseback.  Now the law of the road is to give
+half to a vehicle similar to the one you are driving, but to keep all
+of it when you are heavily loaded, if you are passing people afoot or
+horseback.  The man took half the road, and kept it until the nose of
+his horse touched one of the team I was driving.  I stopped and said:
+'Good morning, sir!  Do you wish to speak with me?'  He called angrily:
+'Get out of my way, you clod!'  'Sorry sir, but I can't,' I said.  'The
+law gives me this road when I am heavily loaded, and you are on foot or
+horseback.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did he do?" asked the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And from the way she looked I just knew she guessed the man was the
+same one I thought of.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He raised his whip to strike my horse," said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, surely!" said the Princess.  "Always an arm raised to strike.  And
+you, Man?  What did you do?" she cried eagerly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I stood on my load, suddenly," said Laddie, "and I called: 'Hold one
+minute!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And he?" breathed the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Something made him pause with his arm still raised.  I said to him:
+'You must not strike my horse.  It never has been struck, and it can't
+defend itself.  If you want to come a few steps farther and tackle me,
+come ahead!  I can take it or return it, as I choose.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on!" said the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all," said Laddie, "or at least almost all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he strike?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He did not.  He stared at me a second, and then he rode around me; but
+he was making forceful remarks as he passed about 'country clods,' and
+there was an interesting one about a 'gross clown.'  What you read made
+me think of it, that is all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess stared into the beech branches for a time and then she
+said:  "I will ask your pardon for him.  He always had a domineering
+temper, and trouble he had lately has almost driven him mad; he is
+scarcely responsible at times.  I hesitate about making him angry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think perhaps," said Laddie, "I would have done myself credit if I
+had recognized that, and given him the road, when he made a point of
+claiming it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed no!" cried the Princess.  "To be beaten at the game he started
+was exactly what he needed.  If you had turned from his way, he would
+have considered you a clod all his life.  Since you made him go around,
+it may possibly dawn on him that you are a man.  You did the very best
+thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then she began to laugh, and how she did laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I would give my allowance for a quarter to have seen it," she cried.
+"I must hurry home and tell mother."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Does your mother know about me?" he demanded.  "Does she know that you
+come here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess arose and stood very tall and straight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You may beg my pardon or cease to know me," she said.  "Whatever led
+you to suppose that I would know or meet you without my mother's
+knowledge?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then she started toward the entrance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One minute!" cried Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A leap carried him to her side.  He caught her hands and held them
+tight, and looked straight into her eyes.  Then he kissed her hands
+over and over.  I thought from the look on her face he might have
+kissed her cheek if he had dared risk it; but he didn't seem to notice.
+Then she stooped and kissed me, and turned toward home, while Laddie
+and I crossed the woods to the west road, and went back past the
+schoolhouse.  I was so tired Laddie tied the strings together and hung
+my shoes across his shoulders and took me by the arm the last mile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All of them were at home when we got there, and Miss Amelia came to the
+gate to meet us.  She was mealy-mouthed and good as pie, not at all as
+I had supposed she would be.  I wonder what Laddie said to her.  But
+then he always could manage things for every one.  That set me to
+wondering if by any possible means he could fix them for himself.  I
+climbed to the catalpa to think, and the more I thought, the more I
+feared he couldn't; but still mother always says one never can tell
+until they try, and I knew he would try with every ounce of brain and
+muscle in him.  I sat there until the supper bell rang, and then I
+washed and reached the table last.  The very first thing, mother asked
+how I bruised my face, and before I could think what to tell her, Leon
+said just as careless like:  "Oh she must have run against something
+hard, playing tag at recess."  Laddie began talking about Peter coming
+that night, and every one forgot me, but pretty soon I slipped a glance
+at Miss Amelia, and saw that her face was redder than mine.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap06"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VI
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+The Wedding Gown
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"The gay belles of fashion may boast of excelling<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">In waltz or cotillon, at whist or quadrille;</SPAN><BR>
+And seek admiration by vauntingly telling<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Of drawing and painting, and musical skill;</SPAN><BR>
+But give me the fair one, in country or city,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Whose home and its duties are dear to her heart,</SPAN><BR>
+Who cheerfully warbles some rustical ditty,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">While plying the needle with exquisite art:</SPAN><BR>
+The bright little needle, the swift-flying needle,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">The needle directed by beauty and art."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The next morning Miss Amelia finished the chapter&mdash;that made two for
+our family.  Father always read one before breakfast&mdash;no wonder I knew
+the Bible quite well&mdash;then we sang a song, and she made a stiff, little
+prayer.  I had my doubts about her prayers; she was on no such terms
+with the Lord as my father.  He got right at Him and talked like a
+doctor, and you felt he had some influence, and there was at least a
+possibility that he might get what he asked for; but Miss Amelia prayed
+as if the Lord were ten million miles away, and she would be surprised
+to pieces if she got anything she wanted.  When she asked the Almighty
+to make us good, obedient children, there was not a word she said that
+showed she trusted either the Lord or us, or thought there was anything
+between us and heaven that might make us good because we wanted to be.
+You couldn't keep your eyes from the big gad and ruler on her desk; she
+often fingered them as she prayed, and you knew from her stiff, little,
+sawed-out petition that her faith was in implements, and she'd hit you
+a crack the minute she was the least angry, same as she had me the day
+before.  I didn't feel any too good toward her, but when the blood of
+the Crusaders was in the veins, right must be done even if it took a
+struggle.  I had to live up to those little gold shells on the trinket.
+Father said they knew I was coming down the line, so they put on a bird
+for me; but I told him I would be worthy of the shells too.  This took
+about as hard a fight for me as any Crusade would for a big, trained
+soldier.  I had been wrong, Laddie had made me see that.  So I held up
+my hand, and Miss Amelia saw me as she picked up Ray's arithmetic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I held to the desk to brace myself, and tried twice before I could
+raise my voice so that she heard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Please, Miss Amelia," I said, "I was wrong about the birds yesterday.
+Not that they don't fight&mdash;they do!  But I was wrong to contradict you
+before every one, and on your first day, and if you'll only excuse me,
+the next time you make a mistake, I'll tell you after school or at
+recess."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The room was so still you could hear the others breathing.  Miss Amelia
+picked up the ruler and started toward me.  Possibly I raised my hands.
+That would be no Crusader way, but you might do it before you had time
+to think, when the ruler was big and your head was the only place that
+would be hit.  The last glimpse I had of her in the midst of all my
+trouble made me think of Sabethany Perkins.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sabethany died, and they buried her at the foot of the hill in our
+graveyard before I could remember.  But her people thought heaps of
+her, and spent much money on the biggest tombstone in the cemetery, and
+planted pinies and purple phlox on her, and went every Sunday to visit
+her.  When they moved away, they missed her so, they decided to come
+back and take her along.  The men were at work, and Leon and I went to
+see what was going on.  They told us, and said we had better go away,
+because possibly things might happen that children would sleep better
+not to see.  Strange how a thing like that makes you bound you will
+see.  We went and sat on the fence and waited.  Soon they reached
+Sabethany, but they could not seem to get her out.  They tried, and
+tried, and at last they sent for more men.  It took nine of them to
+bring her to the surface.  What little wood was left, they laid back to
+see what made her so fearfully heavy, and there she was turned to solid
+stone.  They couldn't chip a piece off her with the shovel.  Mother
+always said, "For goodness sake, don't let your mouth hang open," and
+as a rule we kept ours shut; but you should have seen Leon's when he
+saw Sabethany wouldn't chip off, and no doubt mine was as bad.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When Gabriel blows his trumpet, and the dead arise and come forth,
+what on earth will they do with Sabethany?" I gasped.  "Why, she
+couldn't fly to Heaven with wings a mile wide, and what use could they
+make of her if she got there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't see a thing she'd be good for except a hitching post," said
+Leon, "and I guess they don't let horses in.  Let's go home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He acted sick and I felt that way; so we went, but the last glimpse of
+Sabethany remained with me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As my head went down that day, I saw that Miss Amelia looked exactly
+like her.  You would have needed a pick-ax or a crowbar to flake off
+even a tiny speck of her.  When I had waited for my head to be cracked,
+until I had time to remember that a Crusader didn't dodge and hide, I
+looked up, and there she stood with the ruler lifted; but now she had
+turned just the shade of the wattles on our fightingest turkey gobbler.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Won't you please forgive me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I never knew I had said it until I heard it, and then the only way to
+be sure was because no one else would have been likely to speak at that
+time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Amelia's arm dropped and she glared at me.  I wondered whether I
+ever would understand grown people; I doubted if they understood
+themselves, for after turning to stone in a second&mdash;father said it had
+taken Sabethany seven years&mdash;and changing to gobbler red, Miss Amelia
+suddenly began to laugh.  To laugh, of all things!  And then, of
+course, every one else just yelled.  I was so mortified I dropped my
+head again and began to cry as I never would if she'd hit me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't feel badly!" said Miss Amelia.  "Certainly, I'll forgive you.  I
+see you had no intention of giving offense, so none is taken.  Get out
+your book and study hard on another lesson."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was surprising.  I supposed I'd have to do the same one over, but
+I might take a new one.  I was either getting along fast, or Miss
+Amelia had her fill of birds.  I wiped my eyes as straight in front of
+me as I could slip up my handkerchief, and began studying the first
+lesson in my reader:  "Pretty bee, pray tell me why, thus from flower
+to flower you fly, culling sweets the livelong day, never leaving off
+to play?"  That was a poetry piece, and it was quite cheery, although
+it was all strung together like prose, but you couldn't fool me on
+poetry; I knew it every time.  As I studied I felt better, and when
+Miss Amelia came to hear me she was good as gold.  She asked if I liked
+honey, and I started to tell her about the queen bee, but she had no
+time to listen, so she said I should wait until after school.  Then we
+both forgot it, for when we reached home, the Princess' horse was
+hitched to our rack, and I fairly ran in, I was so anxious to know what
+was happening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was just perfectly amazed at grown people!  After all the things our
+folks had said!  You'd have supposed that Laddie would have been locked
+in the barn; father reading the thirty second Psalm to the Princess,
+and mother on her knees asking God to open her eyes like Saul's when he
+tried to kick against the pricks, and make her to see, as he did, that
+God was not a myth, Well, there was no one in the sitting-room or the
+parlour, but there were voices farther on; so I slipped in.  I really
+had to slip, for there was no other place they could be except the
+parlour bedroom, and Sally's wedding things were locked up there, and
+we were not to see until everything was finished, like I told you.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, this was what I saw: our bedroom had been a porch once, and when
+we had been crowded on account of all of us coming, father enclosed it
+and made a room.  But he never had taken out the window in the wall.
+So all I had to do when I wanted to know how fast the dresses were
+being made, was to shove up the window above my bed, push back the
+blind, and look in.  I didn't care what she had.  I just wanted to get
+ahead of her and see before she was ready, to pay her for beating me.
+I knew what she had, and I meant to tell her, and walk away with my
+nose in the air when she offered to show me; but this was different.  I
+was wild to see what was going on because the Princess was there.  The
+room was small, and the big cherry four-poster was very large, and all
+of them were talking, so no one paid the slightest attention to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother sat in the big rocking chair, with Sally on one of its arms,
+leaning against her shoulder.  Shelley and May and the sewing woman
+were crowded between the wall and the footboard, and the others lined
+against the wall.  The bed was heaped in a tumble of everything a woman
+ever wore.  Seemed to me there was more stuff there than all the rest
+of us had, put together.  The working dresses and aprons had been made
+on the machine, but there were heaps and stacks of hand-made
+underclothes.  I could see the lovely chemise mother embroidered lying
+on top of a pile of bedding, and over and over Sally had said that
+every stitch in the wedding gown must be taken by hand.  The Princess
+stood beside the bed.  A funny little tight hat like a man's and a
+riding whip lay on a chair close by.  I couldn't see what she wore&mdash;her
+usual riding clothes probably&mdash;for she had a nip in each shoulder of a
+dress she was holding to her chin and looking down at.  After all, I
+hadn't seen everything!  Never before or since have I seen a lovelier
+dress than that.  It was what always had been wrapped in the sheet on
+the foot of the bed and I hadn't got a peep at it.  The pale green silk
+with tiny pink moss roses in it, that I had been thinking was the
+wedding dress, looked about right to wash the dishes in, compared with
+this.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was a wedding dress.  You didn't need any one to tell you.  The
+Princess had as much red as I ever had seen in her cheeks, her eyes
+were bright, and she was half-laughing and half-crying.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh you lucky, lucky girl!" she was saying.  "What a perfectly
+beautiful bride you will be!  Never have I seen a more wonderful dress!
+Where did you get the material?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now we had been trained always to wait for mother to answer a visitor
+as she thought suitable, or at least to speak one at a time and not
+interrupt; but about six of those grown people told the Princess all at
+the same time how our oldest sister Elizabeth was married to a merchant
+who had a store at Westchester and how he got the dress in New York,
+and gave it to Sally for her wedding present, or she never could have
+had it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess lifted it and set it down softly.  "Oh look!" she cried.
+"Look!  It will stand alone!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There it stood!  Silk stiff enough to stand by itself, made into a
+little round waist, cut with a round neck and sleeves elbow length and
+flowing almost to where Sally's knees would come.  It was a pale
+pearl-gray silk crossed in bars four inches square, made up of a dim
+yellow line almost as wide as a wheat straw, with a thread of black on
+each side of it, and all over, very wide apart, were little faint
+splashes of black as if they had been lightly painted on.  The skirt
+was so wide it almost filled the room.  Every inch of that dress was
+lined with soft, white silk.  There was exquisite lace made into a flat
+collar around the neck, and ruffled from sight up the inside of the
+wide sleeves.  That was the beginning.  The finish was something you
+never saw anything like before.  It was a trimming made of white and
+yellow beads.  There was a little heading of white beads sewed into a
+pattern, then a lacy fringe that was pale yellow beads, white inside,
+each an inch long, that dangled, and every bead ended with three tiny
+white ones.  That went around the neck, the outside of the sleeves, and
+in a pattern like a big letter V all the way around the skirt.  And
+there it stood&mdash;alone!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess, graceful as a bird and glowing like fire, danced around
+it, and touched it, and lifted the sleeves, and made the bead fringe
+swing, and laughed, and talked every second.  Sally, and mother, and
+all of them had smiled such wide smiles for so long, their faces looked
+almost as set as Sabethany's, but of course far different.  Being dead
+was one thing, getting ready for a wedding another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And it looked too as if God might be a myth, for all they cared, so
+long as the Princess could make the wedding dress stand alone, and talk
+a blue streak of things that pleased them.  It was not put on either,
+for there stood the dress, shimmering like the inside of a pearl-lined
+shell, white as a lily, and the tinkly gold fringe.  No one COULD have
+said enough about it, so no matter what the Princess said, it had to be
+all right.  She kept straight on showing all of them how lovely it was,
+exactly as if they hadn't seen it before, and she had to make them
+understand about it, as if she felt afraid they might have missed some
+elegant touch she had seen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do look how the lace falls when I raise this sleeve!  Oh how will you
+wear this and think of a man enough to say the right words in the right
+place?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother laughed, and so did all of them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do please show me the rest," begged the Princess.  "I know there are
+slippers and a bonnet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sally just oozed pride.  She untied the strings and pushed the
+prettiest striped bag from a lovely pink bandbox and took out a dear
+little gray bonnet with white ribbons, and the yellow bead fringe, and
+a bunch of white roses with a few green leaves.  These she touched
+softly, "I'm not quite sure about the leaves," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess had the bonnet, turning and tilting it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perfect!" she cried.  "Quite perfect!  You need that touch of colour,
+and it blends with everything.  How I envy you!  Oh why doesn't some
+one ask me, so I can have things like these?  I think your brother is a
+genius.  I'm going to ride to Westchester tomorrow and give him an
+order to fill for me the next time he goes to the city.  No one shows
+me such fabrics when I go, and Aunt Beatrice sends nothing from London
+I like nearly so well.  Oh!  Oh!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was on her knees now, lifting the skirt to set under little white
+satin slippers with gold buckles, and white bead buttons.  When she had
+them arranged to suit her, she sat on the floor and kept straight on
+saying the things my mother and sisters seemed crazy to hear.  When
+Sally showed her the long white silk mitts that went with the bonnet,
+the Princess cried:  "Oh do ride home with me and let me give you a
+handkerchief Aunt Beatrice sent me, to carry in your hand!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then her face flushed and she added without giving Sally time to say
+what she would do:  "Or I can bring it the next time I come past.  It
+belongs with these things and I have no use for it.  May I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Please do!  I'll use it for the thing I borrow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I mean it to be a gift," said the Princess.  "It was made to go
+with these lace mitts and satin slippers.  You must take it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you very much," said Sally.  "If you really want me to have it,
+of course I'd love to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll bring it to-morrow," promised the Princess.  "And I wish you'd
+let me try a way I know to dress hair for a wedding.  Yours is so
+beautiful."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're kind, I'm sure," said Sally.  "I had intended to wear it as I
+always do, so I would appear perfectly natural to the folks; but if you
+know a more becoming way, I could begin it now, and they would be
+familiar with it by that time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shan't touch it," said the Princess, studying Sally's face.  "Your
+idea is right.  You don't want to commence any new, unfamiliar style
+that would make you seem different, just at a time when every one
+should see how lovely you are, as you always have been.  But don't
+forget to wear something blue, and something borrowed for luck, and oh
+do please put on one of my garters!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well for mercy sake!" cried my mother.  "Why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So some one will propose to me before the year is out," laughed the
+Princess.  "I think it must be the most fun of all, to make beautiful
+things for your very own home, and lovely dresses, and be surrounded by
+friends all eager to help you, and to arrange a house and live with a
+man you love well enough to marry, and fix for little people who might
+come&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know perfectly there isn't a single man in the county who wouldn't
+propose to you, if you'd let him come within a mile of you," said
+Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When the right man comes I'll go half the mile to meet him? you may be
+sure of that; won't I, Mrs. Stanton?" the Princess turned to mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have known girls who went even farther," said my mother rather dryly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I draw the line at half," laughed the Princess.  "Now I must go; I
+have been so long my people will be wondering what I'm doing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Standing in the middle of the room she put on her hat, picked up her
+whip and gloves, and led the way to the hitching rack, while all of us
+followed.  At the gate stood Laddie as he had come from the field.  His
+old hat was on the back of his head, his face flushed, his collar
+loosened so that his strong white neck showed, and his sleeves were
+rolled to the elbow, as they had been all summer, and his arms were
+burned almost to blisters.  When he heard us coming he opened the gate,
+went to the rack, untied the Princess' horse and led it beside the
+mounting block.  As she came toward him, he took off his hat and
+pitched it over the fence on the grass.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Pryor, allow me to make you acquainted with my son," said mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I felt as if I would blow up.  I couldn't keep my eyes from turning
+toward the Princess.  Gee!  I could have saved my feelings.  She made
+mother the prettiest little courtsey I ever set eyes on, and then
+turned and made a deeper one to Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I met your son in one of the village stores some time ago," she said.
+"Back her one step farther, please!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie backed the horse, and quicker than you could see how it was
+done, she flashed up the steps and sat the saddle; but as she leaned
+over the horse's neck to take the rein from Laddie, he got one level
+look straight in the eyes that I was sure none of the others saw,
+because they were not watching for it, and I was.  Laddie bowed from
+the waist, and put the reins in her fingers all in one movement.  He
+caught the glance she gave him too; I could almost feel it like a band
+passing between them.  Then she called a laughing good-bye to all of us
+at once, and showed us how to ride right, as she flashed toward the
+Little Hill.  That was riding, you may believe, and mother sighed as
+she watched her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I were a girl again," she said, "I would ride as well as that, or
+I'd never mount a horse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's been trained from her cradle, and her father deals in horses.
+Half the battle in riding is a thoroughbred," said Laddie.  "No such
+horse as that ever stepped these roads before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And no such girl ever travelled them," said my mother, folding her
+hands one over the other on top of a post of the hitching rack.  "I
+must say I don't know how this is coming out, and it troubles me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, what's up?" asked Laddie, covering her hands with his and looking
+her in the eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just this," said my mother.  "She's more beautiful of face and form
+than God ought to allow any woman to be, in mercy to the men who will
+be forced to meet her.  Her speech is highly cultured.  Her manners are
+perfect, and that is a big and unusual thing in a girl of her age.
+Every word she said, every move she made to-day, was exactly as I would
+have been proud to hear, and to see a daughter of mine speak and move.
+If I had only myself to consider, I would make her my friend, because
+I'm seasoned in the ways of the world, and she could influence me only
+as I chose to allow her.  With you youngsters it is different.  You'll
+find her captivating, and you may let her ways sway you without even
+knowing it.  All these outward things are not essential; they are
+pleasing, I grant, but they have nothing to do with the one big,
+elemental fact that a Godless life is not even half a life.  I never
+yet have known any man or woman who attempted it who did not waste
+life's grandest opportunities, and then come crawling and defeated to
+the foot of the cross in the end, asking God's mercy where none was
+deserved or earned.  It seems to me a craven way.  I know all about the
+forgiveness on the cross!  I know God is big enough and merciful enough
+to accept even death-bed repentance, but what is that to compare with
+laying out your course and running it a lifetime without swerving?  I
+detest and distrust this infidel business.  I want no child of mine
+under its influence, or in contact with it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But when your time comes, if you said just those things to hers and
+won her, what a triumph, little mother!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'If!'" answered mother.  "That's always the trouble!  One can't be
+sure!  'If' I knew I could accomplish that, I would get on my knees and
+wrestle with the Lord for the salvation of the soul of a girl like
+that, not to mention her poor, housebound mother, and that man with the
+unhappiest face I ever have seen, her father.  It's worth trying, but
+suppose I try and fail, and at the same time find that in bringing her
+among us she has influenced some of mine to the loss of their immortal
+souls then, what will I have done?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother," said Laddie; "mother, have you such a poor opinion of the
+things you and father have taught us, and the lives you've lived before
+us, that you're really afraid of a slip of a girl, almost a stranger?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The most attractive girl I ever have seen, and mighty willing to be no
+longer a stranger, Lad."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I can't promise for the others," said Laddie, "but for myself I
+will give you my word of honour that I won't be influenced the breadth
+of one hair by her, in a doctrinal way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Humph!" said my mother.  "And it is for you I fear.  If a young man is
+given the slightest encouragement by a girl like that, even his God
+can't always hold him; and you never have made a confession of faith,
+Laddie.  It is you she will be most likely to captivate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you think I have any chance, I'll go straight over and ask her
+father for her this very evening," said Laddie, and even mother
+laughed; then all of us started to the house, for it was almost supper
+time.  I got ready and thought I'd take one more peep at the dress
+before Sally pinned it in the sheet again, and when I went back, there
+all huddled in a bunch before it stood Miss Amelia, the tears running
+down her cheeks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did Sally say you might come here?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Miss Amelia, "but I've been so crazy to see I just slipped
+in to take a peep when I noticed the open door.  I'll go this minute.
+Please don't tell her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I didn't say what I would do, but I didn't intend to.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you crying about?" I inquired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, I too have known love," sobbed Miss Amelia.  "Once I made a
+wedding dress, and expected to be a happy bride."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, wasn't you?" I asked, and knew at once it was a silly question,
+for of course she would not be a miss, if she had not missed marrying.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He died!" sobbed Miss Amelia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If he could have seen her then, I believe he'd have been glad of it;
+but maybe he looked as bony and dejected as she did before he went; and
+he may have turned to stone afterward, as sometimes happens.  Right
+then I heard Sally coming, so I grabbed Miss Amelia and dragged her
+under the fourposter, where I always hid when caught doing something I
+shouldn't.  But Sally had so much stuff she couldn't keep all of it on
+the bed, and when she stooped and lifted the ruffle to shove a box
+under, she pushed it right against us, and knelt to look, and there we
+were.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well upon my soul!" she cried, and sat flat on the floor, holding the
+ruffle, peering in.  "Miss Amelia!  And in tears!  Whatever is the
+trouble?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Amelia's face was redder than any crying ever made it, and I saw
+she wanted to kill me for getting her into such a fix, and if she
+became too angry probably she'd take it out on me in school the next
+day, so I thought I'd better keep her at work shedding tears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'HE DIED!'"  I told Sally as pathetically as ever I could.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sally dropped the ruffle instantly, but I saw her knees shake against
+the floor.  After a while she lifted the curtain and offered Miss
+Amelia her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was leaving my dress to show you before putting it away," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I didn't believe it; but that was what she said.  Maybe it was an
+impulse.  Mother always said Sally was a creature of impulse.  When she
+took off her flannel petticoat and gave it to poor little half-frozen
+Annie Hasty, that was a good impulse, but it sent Sally to bed for a
+week.  And when she threw a shovel of coals on Bill Ramsdell's dog,
+because Bill was a shiftless lout, and the dog was so starved it all
+the time came over and sucked our eggs, that was a bad impulse, because
+it didn't do Bill a particle of good, and it hurt the dog, which would
+have been glad to suck eggs at home, no doubt, if Bill hadn't been too
+worthless to keep hens.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was a good impulse she had then, for she asked Miss Amelia to help
+her straighten the room, and of course that meant to fold and put away
+wedding things.  Any woman would have been wild to do that.  Then she
+told Miss Amelia that she was going to ask father to dismiss school for
+half a day, and allow her to see the wedding, and she asked her if she
+would help serve the breakfast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Amelia wiped her eyes, and soon laughed and was just beaming.  I
+would have been willing to bet my three cents for lead pencils the next
+time the huckster came, that Sally never thought of wanting her until
+that minute; and then she arranged for her to wait on table to keep her
+from trying to eat with the wedding party, because Miss Amelia had no
+pretty clothes for one thing, and for another, you shouldn't act as if
+you were hungry out in company, and she ate every meal as if she were
+breaking a forty days' fast.  I wondered what her folks cooked at home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After supper Peter came, and the instant I saw him I thought of
+something, and it was such a teasing thought I followed around and
+watched him harder every minute.  At last he noticed me, and put his
+arms around me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, what is it, Little Sister?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I did wish he would quit that.  No one really had a right to call me
+that, except Laddie.  Maybe I had to put up with Peter doing it when I
+was his sister by law, but before, the old name the preacher baptized
+on me was good enough for Peter.  I was thinking about that so hard, I
+didn't answer, and he asked again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have seen Sally's wedding dress," I told him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But that's no reason why you should stare at me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's just exactly the reason," I answered.  "I was trying to see
+what in the world there is about you to be worth a dress like that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peter laughed and laughed.  At last he said that he was not really
+worth even a calico dress; and he was so little worthy of Sally that he
+would button her shoes, if she would let him.  He got that mixed.  The
+buttons were on her slippers: her shoes laced.  But it showed a humble
+spirit in Peter.  Not that I care for humble spirits.  I am sure the
+Crusaders didn't have them.  I don't believe Laddie would lace even the
+Princess' shoes, at least not to make a steady business of it.  But
+maybe Peter and Sally had an agreement to help each other.  She was
+always fixing his tie, and straightening his hair.  Maybe that was an
+impulse, though, and mother said Sally would get over being so
+impulsive when she cut her eye teeth.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap07"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VII
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+When Sally Married Peter
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,<BR>
+Be it ever so humble there's no place like home!<BR>
+A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,<BR>
+Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+When they began arranging the house for the wedding, it could be seen
+that they had been expecting it, and getting ready for a long time.
+From all the closets, shelves and chests poured heaps of new things.
+First, the walls were cleaned and some of them freshly papered, then
+the windows were all washed long before regular housecleaning time, the
+floors were scrubbed and new carpet put down.  Mother had some window
+blinds that Winfield had brought her from New York in the spring, and
+she had laid them away; no one knew why, then.  We all knew now.  When
+mother was ready to put them up, father had a busy day and couldn't
+help her, and she was really provoked.  She almost cried about it, when
+Leon rode in bringing the mail, and said Hannah Dover had some exactly
+like ours at her windows, that her son had sent from Illinois.  Father
+felt badly enough then, for he always did everything he could to help
+mother to be first with everything; but so she wouldn't blame him, he
+said crosslike that if she had let him put them up when they came, as
+he wanted to, she'd have been six months ahead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When they finally got ready to hang the blinds no one knew how they
+went.  They were a beautiful shiny green, plain on one side, and on the
+other there was a silver border across the bottom and one pink rose as
+big as a pie plate.  Mother had neglected to ask Winfield on which side
+the rose belonged.  Father said from the way the roll ran, it went
+inside.  Mother said they were rolled that way to protect the roses,
+and that didn't prove anything.  Laddie said he would jump on a horse
+and ride round the section, and see how Hannah Dover had hers, and
+exactly opposite would be right.  Everyone laughed, but no one thought
+he meant it.  Mother had father hold one against the window, and she
+stepped outside to see if she could tell from there.  When she came in
+she said the flower looked mighty pretty, and she guessed that was the
+way, so father started hanging them.  He had only two up when Laddie
+came racing down the Big Hill bareback, calling for him to stop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I tell you that's not right, mother!" he said as he hurried in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I went outside and father held one, and it looked real pretty,"
+said mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One!  Yes!" said Laddie.  "But have you stopped to consider how two
+rows across the house are going to look?  Nine big pink roses, with the
+sun shining on them!  Anything funnier than Dovers' front I never saw.
+And look here!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie picked up a blind.  "See this plain back?  It's double coated
+like a glaze.  That is so the sun shining through glass won't fade it.
+The flowers would be gone in a week.  They belong inside, mother, sure
+as you live."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then when the blinds are rolled to the middle sash in the daytime no
+one can see them," wailed mother, who was wild about pink roses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But at night, when they are down, you can put the curtains back enough
+to let the roses show, and think how pretty they will look then."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Laddie is right!" said father, climbing on the barrel to take down the
+ones he had fixed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you think, girls?" asked mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think the Princess is coming down the Little Hill," said Shelley.
+"Hurry, father!  Take them down before she sees!  I'm sure they're
+wrong."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father got one all right, but tore the corner of the other.  Mother
+scolded him dreadfully cross, and he was so flustered he forgot about
+being on the barrel, so he stepped back the same as on the floor, and
+fell crashing.  He might have broken some of his bones, if Laddie
+hadn't seen and caught him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you are SURE the flowers go inside, fix one before she comes!"
+cried mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father stepped too close the edge of the chair, and by that time he
+didn't know how to hang anything, so Laddie climbed up and had one
+nailed before the Princess stopped.  She came to bring Sally the
+handkerchief, and it was the loveliest one any of us ever had seen.
+There was a little patch in the middle about four inches square, and
+around it a wide ruffle of dainty lace.  It was made to carry in a hand
+covered with white lace mitts, when you were wearing a wedding gown of
+silver silk, lined with white.  Of course it wouldn't have been the
+slightest use for a funeral or with a cold in your head.  And it had
+come from across the sea!  From the minute she took it by a pinch in
+the middle, Sally carried her head so much higher than she ever had
+before, that you could notice the difference.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie went straight on nailing up the blinds, and every one he fixed
+he let down full length so the Princess could see the roses were
+inside; he was so sure he was right.  After she had talked a few
+minutes she noticed the blinds going up.  Laddie, in a front window,
+waved to her from the barrel.  She laughed and answered with her whip,
+and then she laughed again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know," she said, "there is the funniest thing at Dovers'.  I
+rode past on the way to Groveville this morning and they have some
+blinds like those you are putting up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed?" inquired my mother.  "Winfield sent us these from New York in
+the spring, but I thought the hot summer sun would fade them, so I
+saved them until the fall cleaning.  The wedding coming on makes us a
+little early but&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, they may not be exactly the same," said the Princess.  "I only
+saw from the highway."  She meant road; there were many things she said
+differently.  "Have yours big pink roses and silver scrolls inside?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess bubbled until it made you think one of those yellow oriole
+birds had perched on her saddle.  "That poor woman has gone and put
+hers up wrong side out.  The effect of all those big pink roses on her
+white house front is most amusing.  It looks as if the house were
+covered with a particularly gaudy piece of comfort calico.  Only fancy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laughed again and rode away.  Mother came in just gasping.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, for all His mercies, large and small, the Lord be praised!" she
+cried piously, as she dropped into the big rocking chair.  "THAT is
+what I consider escaping by the skin of your teeth!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then father and Laddie laughed, and said they thought so too.  When the
+blinds were up, the outside looked well, and you should have seen the
+inside!  The woodwork was enamelled white, and the wall paper was
+striped in white and silver.  Every so far on the silver there was a
+little pink moss rose having green leaves.  The carpet was plum red and
+green in wide stripes, and the lace curtains were freshly washed,
+snowy, and touched the floor.  The big rocker, the straight-backed
+chairs, and the sofa were beautiful red mahogany wood, and the seats
+shining haircloth.  If no one happened to be looking, you could sit on
+a sofa arm, stick your feet out and shoot off like riding down a
+haystack; the landing was much better.  On the sofa you bounced two
+feet high the first time; one, the second; and a little way the third.
+On the haystack, maybe you hit a soft spot, and maybe you struck a
+rock.  Sometimes if you got smart, and tried a new place, and your feet
+caught in a tangle of weeds and stuck, you came up straight, pitched
+over, and landed on your head.  THEN if you struck a rock, you were
+still, quite a while.  I was once.  But you never dared let mother see
+you&mdash;on the sofa, I mean; she didn't care about the haystack.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were pictures in oval black frames having fancy edges, and a
+whatnot where all our Christmas and birthday gifts, almost too dainty
+to handle, were kept.  You fairly held your breath when you looked at
+the nest of spun green glass, with the white dove in it, that George
+Washington Mitchell gave to Shelley.  Of course a dove's nest was never
+deep, and round, and green, and the bird didn't have red eyes and a
+black bill.  I thought whoever could blow glass as beautifully as that,
+might just as easy have made it right while he was at it; but anyway,
+it was pretty.  There were pitchers, mugs, and vases, almost too
+delicate to touch, and the cloth-covered box with braids of hair coiled
+in wreaths from the heads of the little fever and whooping cough
+sisters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie asked Sally if she and Peter were going to have the ceremony
+performed while they sat on the sofa.  Seemed the right place.  They
+had done all their courting there, even on hot summer days; but I
+supposed that was because Sally didn't want to be seen fixing Peter's
+tie until she was ready.  She made no bones about it then.  She fixed
+it whenever she pleased; likewise he held her hand.  Shelley said that
+was disgusting, and you wouldn't catch her.  Leon said he bet a dollar
+he would; and I said if he knew he'd get beaten as I did, I bet two
+dollars he wouldn't tell what he saw.  The mantel was white, with vases
+of the lovely grasses that grew beside the stream at the foot of the
+Big Hill.  Mother gathered the fanciest every fall, dried them, and
+dipped them in melted alum coloured with copperas, aniline, and indigo.
+Then she took bunches of the colours that went together best and made
+bouquets for the big vases.  They were pretty in the daytime, but at
+night you could watch them sparkle and shimmer forever.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I always thought the sitting-room was nicer than the parlour.  The
+woodwork was white enamel there too, but the bureau and chairs were
+just cherry and not too precious to use.  They were every bit as
+pretty.  The mantel was much larger.  I could stand up in the
+fireplace, and it took two men to put on an everyday log, four the
+Christmas one.  On each side were the book shelves above, and the linen
+closets below.  The mantel set between these, and mother always used
+the biggest, most gorgeous bouquets there, because she had so much
+room.  The hearth was a slab of stone that came far into the room.  We
+could sit on it and crack nuts, roast apples, chestnuts, and warm our
+cider, then sweep all the muss we made into the fire.  The wall paper
+was white and pale pink in stripes, and on the pink were little handled
+baskets filled with tiny flowers of different colours.  We sewed the
+rags for the carpet ourselves, and it was the prettiest thing.  One
+stripe was wide, all gray, brown, and dull colours, and the other was
+pink.  There were green blinds and lace curtains here also, and nice
+braided rugs that all of us worked on of winter evenings.  Everything
+got spicker and spanner each day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother said there was no use in putting down a carpet in a dining-room
+where you constantly fed a host, and the boys didn't clean their feet
+as carefully as they should in winter; but there were useful rags where
+they belonged, and in our bedroom opening from it also.  The
+dining-room wall paper had a broad stripe of rich cream with pink
+cabbage roses scattered over it and a narrow pink stripe, while the
+woodwork was something perfectly marvellous.  I didn't know what kind
+of wood it was, but a man who could turn his hand to anything, painted
+it.  First, he put on a pale yellow coat and let it dry.  Then he added
+wood brown, and while it was wet, with a coarse toothed comb, a rag,
+and his fingers, he imitated the grain, the even wood, and knotholes of
+dressed lumber, until many a time I found myself staring steadily at a
+knot to see if a worm wouldn't really come working out.  You have to
+see a thing like that to understand how wonderful it is.  You couldn't
+see why they washed the bedding, and took the feathers from the pillows
+and steamed them in mosquito netting bags and dried them in the shade,
+when Sally's was to be a morning wedding, but they did.  I even had to
+take a bucket and gather from around the walls all the little heaps of
+rocks and shells that Uncle Abraham had sent mother from California,
+take them out and wash and wipe them, and stack them back, with the
+fanciest ones on top.  He sent her a ring made of gold he dug himself.
+She always kept the ring in a bottle in her bureau, and she meant to
+wear it at the wedding, with her new silk dress.  I had a new dress
+too.  I don't know how they got everything done.  All of them worked,
+until the last few days they were perfect cross patches.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When they couldn't find another thing indoors to scour, they began on
+the yard, orchard, barn and road.  Mother even had Leon stack the wood
+pile straighter.  She said when corded wood leaned at an angle, it made
+people seem shiftless; and she never passed a place where it looked
+that way that her fingers didn't just itch to get at it.  He had to
+pull every ragweed on each side of the road as far as our land reached,
+and lay every rail straight in the fences.  Father had to take spikes
+and our biggest maul and go to the bridges at the foot of the Big and
+the Little Hill, and see that every plank was fast, so none of them
+would rattle when important guests drove across.  She said she just
+simply wouldn't have them in such a condition that Judge Pettis
+couldn't hear himself think when he crossed; for you could tell from
+his looks that it was very important that none of the things he thought
+should be lost.  There wasn't a single spot about the place inside or
+out that wasn't gone over; and to lots of it you never would have known
+anything had been done if you hadn't seen, because the place was always
+in proper shape anyway; but father said mother acted just like that,
+even when her sons were married at other people's houses; and if she
+kept on getting worse, every girl she married off, by the time she
+reached me, we'd all be scoured threadbare and she'd be on the verge of
+the grave.  May and I weeded the flowerbeds, picked all the ripe seed,
+and pulled up and burned all the stalks that were done blooming.
+Father and Laddie went over the garden carefully; they scraped the
+walks and even shook the palings to see if one were going to come loose
+right at the last minute, when every one would be so flustrated there
+would be no time to fix it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then they began to talk about arrangements for the ceremony, whether we
+should have our regular minister, or Presiding Elder Lemon, and what
+people they were going to invite.  Just when we had planned to ask
+every one, have the wedding in the church, and the breakfast at the
+house, and all drive in a joyous procession to Groveville to give them
+a good send-off in walked Sally.  She had been visiting Peter's people,
+and we planned a lot while she was away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's going on here?" she asked, standing in the doorway, dangling
+her bonnet by the ties.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She never looked prettier.  Her hair had blown out in little curls
+around her face from riding, her cheeks were so pink, and her eyes so
+bright.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We were talking about having the ceremony in the church, so every one
+can be comfortably seated, and see and hear well," answered mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sally straightened up and began jerking the roses on her bonnet far too
+roughly for artificial flowers.  Perhaps I surprised you with that
+artificial word, but I can spell and define it; it's easy divided into
+syllables.  Goodness knows, I have seen enough flowers made from the
+hair of the dead, wax, and paper, where you get the shape, but the
+colour never is right.  These of Sally's were much too bright, but they
+were better than the ones made at our house.  Hers were of cloth and
+bought at a store.  You couldn't tell why, but Sally jerked her roses;
+I wished she wouldn't, because I very well knew they would be used to
+trim my hat the next summer, and she said:  "Well, people don't have to
+be comfortable during a wedding ceremony; they can stand up if I can,
+and as for seeing and hearing, I'm asking a good many that I don't
+intend to have see or hear either one!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My soul!" cried mother, and she dropped her hands and her mouth fell
+open, like she always told us we never should let ours, while she
+stared at Sally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't care!" said Sally, straightening taller yet; her eyes began to
+shine and her lips to quiver, as if she would cry in a minute; "I don't
+care&mdash;&mdash;!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Which means, my child, that you DO care, very much," said father.
+"Suppose you cease such reckless talk, and explain to us exactly what
+it is that you do want."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sally gave her bonnet an awful jerk.  Those roses would look like sin
+before my turn to wear them came, and she said:  "Well then, I do care!
+I care with all my might!  The church is all right, of course; but I
+want to be married in my very own home!  Every one can think whatever
+they please about their home, and so can I, and what I think is, that
+this is the nicest and the prettiest place in all the world, and I
+belong here&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father lifted his head, his face began to shine, and his eyes to grow
+teary; while mother started toward Sally.  She put out her hand and
+held mother from her at arm's length, and she turned and looked behind
+her through the sitting-room and parlour, and then at us, and she
+talked so fast you never could have understood what she said if you
+hadn't known all of it anyway, and thought exactly the same thing
+yourself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have just loved this house ever since it was built," she said, "and
+I've had as good times here as any girl ever had.  If any one thinks
+I'm so very anxious to leave it, and you, and mother, and all the
+others, why it's a big mistake.  Seems as if a girl is expected to
+marry and go to a home of her own; it's drummed into her and things
+fixed for her from the day of her birth; and of course I do like Peter,
+but no home in the world, not even the one he provides for me, will
+ever be any dearer to me than my own home; and as I've always lived in
+it, I want to be married in it, and I want to stay here until the very
+last second&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You shall, my child, you shall!" sobbed mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And as for having a crowd of men that father is planning to ask,
+staring at me, because he changes harvest help and wood chopping with
+them, or being criticised and clawed over by some women simply because
+they'll be angry if they don't get the chance, I just won't&mdash;so there!
+Not if I have to stand the minister against the wall, and turn our
+backs to every one.  I think&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That will do!" said father, wiping his eyes.  "That will do, Sally!
+Your mother and I have got a pretty clear understanding of how you
+feel, now.  Don't excite yourself!  Your wedding shan't be used to pay
+off our scores.  You may ask exactly whom you please, want, and feel
+quite comfortable to have around you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Sally fell on mother's neck and every one cried a while; then we
+wiped up, Leon gave Sally his slate, and she came and sat beside the
+table and began to make out a list of those she really wanted to
+invite.  First she put down all of our family, even many away in Ohio,
+and all of Peter's, and then his friends, and hers.  Once in the list
+of girls she stopped and said:  "If I take that beautiful imported
+handkerchief from Pamela Pryor, I have just got to invite her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And she will outdress and outshine you at your own wedding," put in
+Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let her, if she can!" said Sally calmly.  "She'll have to hump herself
+if she beats that dress of mine; and as for looks, I know lots of
+people who think gray eyes, pink cheeks, and brown curls far daintier
+and prettier than red cheeks and black eyes and curls.  If she really
+is better looking than I am, it isn't her fault; God made her that way,
+and He wouldn't like us to punish her for it; and it would, because any
+one can see she wants to be friends; don't you think, mother?"&mdash;mother
+nodded&mdash;"and besides, I think she's better looking than I am, myself!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sally said that, and wrote down the Princess' name in big letters, and
+no one cheeped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then she began on our neighbourhood, thinking out loud and writing what
+she thought.  So all of us were as still, and held our breath in softly
+and waited, and Sally said slow and musing like, "Of course we couldn't
+have anything at THIS house without Sarah Hood.  She dressed most of us
+when we were born, nursed us when we were sick, helped with threshing,
+company, and parties, and she's just splendid anyway; we better ask all
+the Hoods"; so she wrote them down.  "And it will be lonely for Widow
+Willis and the girls to see every one else here&mdash;we must have them; and
+of course Deams&mdash;Amanda is always such splendid help; and the Widow
+Fall is so perfectly lovely, we want her for decorative purposes; and
+we could scarcely leave out Shaws; they always have all of us
+everything they do; and Dr. Fenner of course; and we'll want Flo and
+Agnes Kuntz to wait on table, so their folks might as well come too&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So she went on taking up each family we knew, and telling what they had
+done for us, or what we had done for them; and she found some good
+reason for inviting them, and pretty soon father settled back in his
+chair and never took his eyes from Sally's shining head as she bent
+over the slate, and then he began pulling his lower lip, like when it
+won't behave, and his eyes danced exactly as I've seen Leon's.  I never
+had noticed that before.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sally went straight on and at last she came to Freshetts.  "I am going
+to have all of them, too," she said.  "The children are good children,
+and it will help them along to see how things are done when they are
+right; and I don't care what any one says, I LIKE Mrs. Freshett.  I'll
+ask her to help work, and that will keep her from talking, and give the
+other women a chance to see that she's clean, and human, and would be a
+good neighbour if they'd be friendly.  If we ask her, then the others
+will."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When she finished&mdash;as you live&mdash;there wasn't a soul she had left out
+except Bill Ramsdell, who starved his dog until it sucked our eggs, and
+Isaac Thomas, who was so lazy he wouldn't work enough to keep his wife
+and children dressed so they ever could go anywhere, but he always
+went, even with rags flying, and got his stomach full just by talking
+about how he loved the Lord.  To save me I couldn't see Isaac Thomas
+without beginning to myself:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"'Tis the voice of the sluggard; I hear him complain,<BR>
+You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again.<BR>
+I passed by his garden, I saw the wild brier,<BR>
+The thorn, and the thistle, grow broader and higher;<BR>
+The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags;<BR>
+And his money he wastes, till he starves or he begs."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+That described Isaac to the last tatter, only he couldn't waste money;
+he never had any.  Once I asked father what he thought Isaac would do
+with it, if by some unforeseen working of Divine Providence, he got ten
+dollars.  Father said he could tell me exactly, because Isaac once sold
+some timber and had a hundred all at once.  He went straight to town
+and bought Mandy a red silk dress and a brass breastpin, when she had
+no shoes.  He got the children an organ, when they were hungry; and
+himself a plug hat.  Mandy and the children cried because he forgot
+candy and oranges until the last cent was gone.  Father said the only
+time Isaac ever worked since he knew him was when he saw how the hat
+looked with his rags.  He actually helped the men fell the trees until
+he got enough to buy a suit, the remains of which he still wore on
+Sunday.  I asked father why he didn't wear the hat too, and father said
+the loss of that hat was a blow, from which Isaac never had recovered.
+Once at camp-meeting he laid it aside to pray his longest, most
+impressive prayer, and an affectionate cow strayed up and licked the
+nap all off before Isaac finished, so he never could wear it again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sally said:  "I'll be switched if I'll have that disgusting creature
+around stuffing himself on my wedding day; but if you're not in bed,
+when it's all over, mother, I do wish you'd send Mandy and the children
+a basket."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother promised, and father sat and looked on and pulled his lower lip
+until his ears almost wiggled.  Then Sally said she wanted Laddie and
+Shelley to stand at the parlour door and keep it tight shut, and seat
+every one in the sitting-room except a special list she had made out to
+send in there.  She wanted all our family and Peter's, and only a few
+very close friends, but it was enough to fill the room.  She said when
+she and Peter came downstairs every one could see how they looked when
+they crossed the sitting-room, and for all the difference the door
+would make, it could be left open then; she would be walled in by
+people she wanted around her, and the others could have the fun of
+being there, seeing what they could, and getting all they wanted to
+eat.  Father and mother said that was all right, only to say nothing
+about the plan to shut the door; but when the time came just to close
+it and everything would be satisfactory.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Sally took the slate upstairs to copy the list with ink, so every
+one went about something, while mother crossed to father and he took
+her on his lap, and they looked at each other the longest and the
+hardest, and neither of them said a word.  After a while they cried and
+laughed, and cried some more, and it was about as sensible as what a
+flock of geese say when they are let out of the barn and start for the
+meadow in the morning.  Then father, all laughy and criey, said:
+"Thank God!  Oh, thank God, the girl loves the home we have made for
+her!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Just said it over and over, and mother kept putting in:  "It pays,
+Paul!  It pays!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Next day Sally put on her riding habit and fixed herself as pretty as
+ever she could, and went around to have a last little visit with every
+one, and invited them herself, and then she wrote letters to people
+away.  Elizabeth and Lucy came home, and every one began to work.
+Father and mother went to the village in the carriage and brought home
+the bed full of things to eat, and all we had was added, and mother
+began to pack butter, and save eggs for cakes, and the day before, I
+thought there wouldn't be a chicken left on the place.  They killed and
+killed, and Sarah Hood, Amanda Deam, and Mrs. Freshett picked and
+picked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll bet a dollar we get something this time besides ribs and neck,"
+said Leon.  "How do you suppose thigh and breast would taste?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was always crazy to try the tail," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Much chance you got," sniggered Leon.  "'Member the time that father
+asked the Presiding Elder, 'Brother Lemon, what piece of the fowl do
+you prefer?' and he up and said: 'I'm partial to the rump, Brother
+Stanton.'  There sat father bound he wouldn't give him mother's piece,
+so he pretended he couldn't find it, and forked all over the platter
+and then gave him the ribs and the thigh.  Gee, how mother scolded him
+after the preacher had gone!  You notice father hasn't asked that
+since.  Now, he always says: 'Do you prefer light or dark meat?'  Much
+chance you have of ever tasting a tail, if father won't even give one
+to the Presiding Elder!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But as many as they are killing&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh THIS time," said Leon with a flourish, "this time we are going to
+have livers, and breast, and thighs, AND tails, if you are beholden to
+tail."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd like to know how we are?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, since you have proved that you can keep your mouth shut, for a
+little while, anyway, I'm going to take you in on this," said Leon.
+"You keep your eyes on me.  When the wedding gets going good, you watch
+me, and slip out.  That's all!  I'll be fixed to do the rest.  But mind
+this, get out when I do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," I promised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They must have wakened about four o'clock on the wedding day; it wasn't
+really light when I got up.  I had some breakfast in my night dress,
+and then I was all fixed up in my new clothes, and made to sit on a
+chair, and never move for fear I would soil my dress, for no one had
+time to do me over, and there was only one dress anyway.  There was so
+much to see you could keep interested just watching, and I was as
+anxious to look nice before the boys and girls, and the big people, as
+any one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Every mantel and table and bureau was covered with flowers, and you
+could have smelled the kitchen a mile away, I know.  The dining table
+was set for the wedding party, our father and mother, and Peter's, and
+the others had to wait.  You couldn't have laid the flat of your hand
+on that table anywhere, it was so covered with things to eat.  Miss
+Amelia, in a dress none of us ever had seen before, a real nice white
+dress, pranced around it and smirked at every one, and waved the
+peacock feather brush to keep the flies from the jelly, preserves, jam,
+butter, and things that were not cooked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For hours Mrs. Freshett had stood in the kitchen on one side of the
+stove frying chicken and heaping it in baking pans in the oven, and
+Amanda Deam on the other, frying ham, while Sarah Hood cooked other
+things, and made a wash boiler of coffee.  Everything was ready by the
+time it should have been.  I had watched them until I was tired, when
+Sally came through the room where I was, and she said I might come
+along upstairs and see her dressed.  When we reached the door I
+wondered where she would put me, but she pushed clothing together on a
+bed, and helped me up, and that was great fun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had been bathed and had on her beautiful new linen underclothing
+that mother punched full of holes and embroidered in flowers and vines,
+and Shelley was brushing her hair when some one called out:  "The
+Princess is coming!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I jumped for the window, and all of them, even Sally, crowded behind.
+Well, talk about carriages!  No one ever had seen THAT one before.  It
+WAS a carriage.  And such horses!  The funny "'orse, 'ouse" man who
+made the Pryor garden was driving.  He stopped at the gate, got out and
+opened a door, and the Princess' father stepped down, tall and
+straight, all in shiny black.  He turned around and held out his hand,
+bowing double, and the Princess laid her hand in his and stepped out
+too.  He walked with her to the gate, made another bow, kissed her
+hand, and stepped back, and she came down the walk alone.  He got in
+the carriage, the man closed the door, and they drove away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sally must have arranged before that the Princess was to come early,
+for she came straight upstairs.  She wore a soft white silk dress with
+big faded pink roses in it, and her hair was fastened at each ear with
+a bunch of little pink roses.  She was lovely, but she didn't "outdress
+or outshine" Sally one bit, and she never even glanced at the mirror to
+see how she looked; she began helping with Sally's hair, and to dress
+her.  When Bess Kuntz prinked so long she made every one disgusted, the
+Princess said:  "Oh save your trouble.  No one will look at you when
+there's a bride in the house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a roll almost as thick as your arm of garters that all the
+other girls wanted Sally to wear for them so they would get a chance to
+marry that year, and Agnes Kuntz's was so large it went twice around,
+and they just laughed about it.  They put a blue ribbon on Sally's
+stays for luck, and she borrowed Peter's sister Mary's comb to hold her
+back hair.  They had the most fun, and when she was all ready except
+her dress they went away, and Sally stood in the middle of the room
+trembling a little.  Outside you could hear carriage wheels rolling,
+the beat of horses' hoofs, and voices crying greetings.  "There was a
+sound of revelry," by day.  Mother came in hurriedly.  She wore her new
+brown silk, with a lace collar pinned at the throat with the pin that
+had a brown goldstone setting in it, and her precious ring was on her
+finger.  She was dainty and pretty enough to have been a bride herself.
+She turned Sally around slowly, touching her hair a little and her
+skirts; then she went to the closet, took out the wedding dress, put
+the skirt over Sally's head, and she came up through the whiteness,
+pink and glowing.  She slipped her arms into the sleeves, and mother
+fastened it, shook out the skirt, saw that the bead fringe hung right,
+and the lace collar lay flat, then she took Sally in her arms, held her
+tight and said: "God bless you, dear, and keep you always.  Amen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then she stepped to the door, and Peter, all shining and new, came in.
+He hugged Sally and kissed her like it didn't make the least difference
+whether she had on calico or a wedding dress, and he just stared, and
+stared at her, and never said a word, so at last she asked:  "Well
+Peter, do you like my dress?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And the idiot said:  "Why Sally, I hadn't even seen it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then both of them laughed, and the Presiding Elder came.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I never liked to look at him very well because something had happened,
+and he had only one eye.  I always wondered if he had "plucked it out"
+because it had "offended" him; but if you could forget his eye, and
+just listen to his voice, it was like the sweetest music.  He married
+those two people right there in the bedroom, all but about three words
+at the end.  I heard and saw every bit of it.  Then Sally said it was
+time for me to go to mother, but she followed me into the boys' room
+and shut the door.  Then she knelt in her beautiful silver dress, and
+put her arms around me and said:  "Honest, Little Sister, aren't you
+going to kiss me goodbye?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh I can if you want me to," I said, but I didn't look at her; I
+looked out of the window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laughed a breathless little catchy sort of laugh and said: "That's
+exactly what I do want."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You didn't even want me, to begin with," I reminded her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There isn't a doubt but whoever told you that, could have been in
+better business," said Sally, angry-like.  "I was much younger then,
+and there were many things I didn't understand, and it wasn't you I
+didn't want; it was just no baby at all.  I wouldn't have wanted a boy,
+or any other girl a bit more.  I foolishly thought we had children
+enough in this house.  I see now very plainly that we didn't, for this
+family never could get along without you, and I'm sorry I ever thought
+so, and I'd give anything if I hadn't struck you and&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh be still, and go on and get married!" I said.  I could just feel a
+regular beller coming in my throat.  "I was only fooling to pay you up.
+I meant all the time to kiss you good-bye when the others did.  I'll
+nearly die being lonesome when you're gone&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I ran for downstairs, and when I reached the door, where the steps
+went into the sitting-room, I stopped, scared at all the people.  It
+was like camp-meeting.  You could see the yard full through the
+windows.  Just as I was thinking I'd go back to the boys' room, and
+from there into the garret, and down the back stairway, Laddie went and
+saw me.  He came over, led me to the parlour door, put me inside, and
+there mother took my hand and held me tight, and I couldn't see Leon
+anywhere.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was caught, but they didn't have him.  Mother never hung on as she
+did that day.  I tried and tried to pull away, and she held tight.  It
+was only a minute until the door opened, people crowded back, and the
+Presiding Elder, followed by Sally and Peter, came into the room, and
+they began being married all over again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If it hadn't grown so solemn my mother sprung a tear, I never would
+have made it.  She just had to let me go to sop her face, because tears
+are salty, and they would turn her new brown silk front yellow.  The
+minute my hand was free, I slipped between the people and looked at the
+parlour door.  It was wedged full and more standing on chairs behind
+them.  No one could get out there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I thought I would fail Leon sure, and then I remembered the parlour
+bedroom.  I got through that door easy as anything, and it was no trick
+at all to slip behind the blind, raise the window, and drop into
+mother's room from the sill.  From there I reached the back dining-room
+door easy enough, went around to the kitchen, and called Leon softly.
+He opened the door at once and I slipped in.  He had just got there.
+We looked all around and couldn't see where to begin at first.  There
+was enough cooked food there to load two wagons.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An old pillow-case that had dried sage in it was lying across a chair
+and Leon picked it up and poured the sage into the wood-box, and handed
+the case to me.  He went over and knelt before the oven, while I
+followed and held open the case.  Leon rolled his eyes to the ceiling
+and said so exactly like father when he is serving company that not one
+of us could have told the difference:  "Which part of the fowl do you
+prefer, Brother Lemon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was so funny it made me snigger, but I straightened up and answered
+as well as I could:  "I'm especially fond of the rump, Brother Stanton."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon stirred the heap and piled four or five tails in the case.  I
+thought that was all I could manage before they would spoil, so I said:
+"Do you prefer light or dark meat, Sister Abigail?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish to choose breast," said Leon, simpering just like that silly
+Abigail Webster.  He put in six breasts.  Then we found them hidden
+away back in the oven in a pie pan, for the bride's table, I bet, and
+we took two livers apiece; we didn't dare take more for fear they had
+been counted.  Then he threw in whatever he came to that was a first
+choice big piece, until I was really scared, and begged him to stop;
+but he repeated what the fox said in the story of the "Quarrelsome
+Cocks"&mdash;"Poco was very good, but I have not had enough yet," so he
+piled in pieces until I ran away with the pillow-case; then he slid in
+a whole plateful of bread, another of cake, and put the plates in a tub
+of dishes under the table.  Then we took some of everything that wasn't
+too runny.  Just then the silence broke in the front part of the house,
+and we scooted from the back door, closing it behind us, ran to the
+wood house and climbed the ladder to the loft over the front part.
+There we were safe as could be, we could see to the road, hear almost
+everything said in the kitchen, and "eat our bites in peace," like
+Peter Justice told the Presiding Elder at the church trial that he
+wanted his wife to, the time he slapped her.  Before very long, they
+began calling us, and called, and called.  We hadn't an idea what they
+wanted, so we ate away.  We heard them first while I was holding over a
+back to let Leon taste kidney, and it made him blink when he got it
+good.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well my soul!" he said.  "No wonder father didn't want to feed that to
+another man when mother isn't very well, and likes it!  No wonder!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he gave me a big bite of breast.  It was sort of dry and
+tasteless; I didn't like it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, I think neck or back beats that all to pieces!" I said in
+surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fact is, they do!" said Leon.  "I guess the people who 'wish to choose
+breast,' do it to get the biggest piece."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I never had thought of it before, but of course that would be the
+reason.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Allow me, Sister Stanton," said Leon, holding out a piece of thigh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was really chicken!  Then we went over the backs and picked out
+all the kidneys, and ate the little crusty places, and all the cake we
+could swallow; then Leon fixed up the bag the best he could, and set it
+inside an old cracked churn and put on the lid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He said that would do almost as well as the cellar, and the food would
+keep until to-morrow.  I wanted to slip down and put it in the
+Underground Station; but Leon said father must be spending a lot of
+money right now, and he might go there to get some, so that wouldn't be
+safe.  Then he cleaned my face, and I told him when he got his right,
+and we slipped from the back door, crossed the Lawton blackberry patch,
+and went to the house from the orchard.  Leon took an apple and broke
+it in two, and we went in eating as if we were starving.  When father
+asked us where in this world we had been, Leon told him we thought it
+would be so awful long before the fourth or fifth table, and we hadn't
+had much breakfast, and we were so hungry we went and hunted something
+to eat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you'd only held your horses a minute," said father; "they were
+calling you to take places at the bride's table."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well for land's sake!  Our mouths dropped open until it's a wonder the
+cake and chicken didn't show, and we never said a word.  There didn't
+seem to be anything to say, for Leon loved to be with grown folks, and
+to have eaten at the bride's table would have been the biggest thing
+that ever happened to me.  At last, when I could speak, I asked who had
+taken our places, and bless your heart if it wasn't that mealy-faced
+little sister of Peter's, and one of the aunts from Ohio.  They had
+finished, and Sally was upstairs putting on her travelling dress, while
+the guests were eating, when I heard Laddie ask the Princess to ride
+with him and Sally's other friends, who were going to escort her to the
+depot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'll want all your horses.  What could I ride?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I find you a good horse and saddle will you go?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will.  I think it would be fine sport."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie turned and went from sight that minute.  The Princess laughed
+and kept on making friends with every one, helping wait on people,
+thinking of nice things to do, and just as the carriage was at the gate
+for father and mother, and Sally and Peter, and every one else was
+untying their horses to ride in the procession to the village, from
+where I was standing on the mounting block I saw something coming down
+the Little Hill.  I took one look, ran to the Princess, and almost
+dragged her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Up raced Laddie, his face bright, his eyes snapping with fun.  He rode
+Flos, was leading the Princess' horse Maud, and carrying a big bundle
+under his arm.  He leaped from the saddle and fastened both horses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gracious Heaven!  What have you done?" gasped the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Brought your mount," said Laddie, quite as if he were used to going to
+Pryors' after the sausage grinder or the grain sacks.  But the Princess
+was pale and trembling.  She stepped so close she touched him, and he
+immediately got a little closer.  You couldn't get ahead of Laddie, and
+he didn't seem to care who saw, and neither did she.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me exactly what occurred," she said, just as father does when he
+means to whale us completely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I rapped at the front door," said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And who opened it?" cried the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your father!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My father?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, your father!" said Laddie.  "And because I was in such a hurry, I
+didn't wait for him to speak.  I said:  'Good morning, Mr. Pryor.  I'm
+one of the Stanton boys, and I came for Miss Pryor's mount and habit.
+All the young people who are on horseback are going to ride an escort
+to the village, around my sister's bridal carriage, and Miss Pryor
+thinks she would enjoy going.  Please excuse such haste, but we only
+this minute made the plan, and the train won't wait.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He said:  'Surely!  Hold one minute.'  I stood on the step and waited,
+and I could hear him give the order to some one to get your riding
+habit quickly, and then he blew a shrill whistle, and your horse was at
+the gate the fastest of anything I ever saw."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he do or say&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing about 'clods, and clowns, and grossness!'  Every other word he
+spoke was when I said, 'Thank you, and good morning,' and was turning
+away.  He asked:  'Did Miss Pryor say whether she preferred to ride
+home, or shall I escort her in the carriage?'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'She did not,' I answered.  'The plan was so sudden she had no time to
+think that far.  But since she will have her horse and habit, why not
+allow my father to escort her?'  So you see, I'm going to take you
+home," exulted Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you told him your FATHER," said the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And thereby created the urgent necessity," said Laddie with a
+flourish, "for speaking to him again, and telling him that my father
+had visitors from Ohio, and couldn't leave them.  We will get all the
+fun from the day that we can; but before dusk, too early for them to
+have any cause for cavil, 'the gross country clod' is going to take you
+home!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One at a time, Laddie pounded those last words into the hitching post,
+with his doubled fist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Suppose he sets the dogs on you!  You know he keeps two dreadful ones."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie just roared.  He leaned closer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Beaucheous Lady," he said, "I have fed those same dogs and rubbed
+their ears so many nights lately, he'll get the surprise of his life if
+he tries that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess drew away and stared at Laddie the funniest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On my life!" she said at last.  "Well for a country clod&mdash;&mdash;!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then she turned with the habit bundle, and ran into the house.  Father
+and mother came from the front door arm in arm and walked to the
+carriage, and Sally and Peter followed.  My, but they looked fine!  The
+Princess had gone to the garden and gathered flowers and lined all the
+children in rows down each side of the walk.  They were loaded with
+blooms to throw at Sally; but when she came out, in her beautiful gray
+poplin travelling dress, trimmed in brown ribbon, the same shade as her
+curls, her face all pink, her eyes shining, and the ties of her little
+brown bonnet waving to her waist, she was so perfectly beautiful, every
+single child watched her open mouthed, gripped its flowers, and forgot
+to throw them at all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And this you scarcely will believe after what she had said the day she
+made her list, and when all of us knew her heart was all torn up, Sally
+just swept along smiling at every one and calling "good-bye" to those
+who had no way to ride to the village, as if leaving didn't amount to
+much.  At the carriage, a little white, but still smiling, she turned
+and took one long look at everything, and then she got in and called
+for me, right out loud before every one, so I got to hold up my head as
+high as it would go, and step in too, and ride all the way to
+Groveville between her and Peter, and instead of holding his hand, she
+held mine, just gripped it tight.  She gripped so hard she squeezed all
+the soreness at her from my heart, and when she kissed me good-bye the
+very last of all, I whispered in her ear that I wouldn't ever be angry
+any more, and I wasn't, because after she had explained I saw how it
+had been.  It wasn't ME she didn't want; it was just no baby.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After our carriage came Peter's people, then one father borrowed for
+the Ohio relatives, then the other children, and all the neighbours
+followed, and when we reached the high hill where you turn beside the
+woods, I saw father gather up the lines and brace himself, for Ned and
+Jo were what he called "mettlesome."  "Then came a burst of thunder
+sound," as it says in "Casablanca," and the horseback riders came
+sweeping around us, Laddie and the Princess leading.  These two rode
+ahead of us, and the others lined three deep on either side, and the
+next carriage dropped back and let them close in behind, so Sally and
+Peter were "in the midst thereof."  Instead of throwing old shoes, as
+always had been done, the Princess coaxed them to throw rice and roses,
+and every other flower pulled from the bouquets at home, and from the
+gardens we had passed.  Every one was out watching us go by, and when
+William Justus rode beside the fences crying, "Flowers for the bride!
+Give us flowers for the bride!" some of the women were so excited they
+pulled things up by the roots and gave him armloads, and he rode ahead
+and supplied Laddie and the Princess, and they kept scattering them in
+the road until every foot of the way to Groveville was covered with
+flowers, "the fair young flowers that lately sprang and stood."  He
+even made side-cuts into swampy places and gathered armloads of those
+perfectly lovely, fringy blue gentians, caught up, and filled the
+carriage and scattered them in a wicked way, because you should only
+take a few of those rare, late flowers that only grow from seed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sally looked just as if she had come into her own and was made for it;
+I never did see her look so pretty, but Peter sweated and acted awful
+silly.  Father had a time with the team.  Ned and Jo became excited and
+just ranted.  They simply danced.  Laddie had braided their manes and
+tails, and they waved like silken floss in the sunshine, and the
+carriage was freshly washed and the patent leather and brass shone, and
+we rode flower-covered.  Ahead, Laddie and the Princess fairly tried
+themselves.  She hadn't put on her hat or habit after all.  When Laddie
+told her they were going to lead, she said:  "Very well!  Then I shall
+go as I am.  The dress makes no difference.  It's the first time I've
+had a chance to spoil one since I left England."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the other girls saw what she was going to do, nearly every one of
+them left off their hats and riding skirts.  Every family had saddle
+horses those days, and when the riders came racing up they looked like
+flying flowers, they were all laughing, bloom ladened, singing and
+calling jokes.  Ahead, Laddie and the Princess just plain showed off.
+Her horse came from England with them, and Laddie said it had Arab
+blood in it, like the one in the Fourth Reader poem, "Fret not to roam
+the desert now, With all thy winged speed," and the Princess loved her
+horse more than that man did his.  She said she'd starve before she'd
+sell it, and if her family were starving, she'd go to work and earn
+food for them, and keep her horse.  Laddie's was a Kentucky
+thoroughbred he'd saved money for years to buy; and he took a young one
+and trained it himself, almost like a circus horse.  Both of them COULD
+ride; so that day they did.  They ran those horses neck and neck, right
+up the hill approaching Groveville, until they were almost from sight,
+then they whirled and came sweeping back fast as the wind.  The
+Princess' eyes were like dead coals, and her black curls streamed, the
+thin silk dress wrapped tight around her and waved back like a gossamer
+web such as spiders spin in October.  Laddie's hair was blowing, his
+cheeks and eyes were bright, and with one eye on the Princess&mdash;she
+didn't need it&mdash;and one on the road, he cut curves, turned, wheeled,
+and raced, and as he rode, so did she.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will they break their foolish necks?" wailed mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are the handsomest couple I ever have seen in my life!" said
+father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, and you two watch out, or you'll strike trouble right there,"
+said Sally, leaning forward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I gave her an awful nudge.  It made me so happy I could have screamed
+to see them flying away together like that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, if that girl represents trouble," said father, "God knows it
+never before came in such charming guise."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can trust a man to forget his God and his immortal soul if a
+sufficiently beautiful woman comes along," said my mother dryly, and
+all of them laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She didn't mean that to be funny, though.  You could always tell by the
+set of her lips and the light in her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Just this side of Groveville we passed a man on horseback.  He took off
+his hat and drew his horse to one side when Laddie and the Princess
+rode toward him.  He had a big roll of papers under his arm, to show
+that he had been for his mail.  But I knew, so did Laddie and the
+Princess, that he had been compelled to saddle and ride like mad, to
+reach town and come that far back in time to watch us pass; for it was
+the Princess' father, and WATCH was exactly what he was doing; he
+wanted to see for himself.  Laddie and the Princess rode straight at
+him, neck and neck, and then both of them made their horses drop on
+their knees and they waved a salute, and then they were up and away.
+Of course father and mother saw, so mother bowed, and father waved his
+whip as we passed.  He sat there like he'd turned the same on horseback
+as Sabethany had in her coffin; but he had to see almost a mile of us
+driving our best horses and carriages, wearing our wedding garments and
+fine raiment, and all that "cavalcade," father called it, of young,
+reckless riders.  You'd have thought if there were a hint of a smile in
+his whole being it would have shown when Sally leaned from the carriage
+to let him see that her face and clothes were as good as need be and
+smiled a lovely smile on him, and threw him a rose.  He did leave his
+hat off and bow low, and then Shelley, always the very dickens for
+daring, rode right up to him and laughed in his face, and she leaned
+and thrust a flower into his bony hands; you would have thought he
+would have been simply forced to smile then, but he looked far more as
+if he would tumble over and roll from the saddle.  My heart ached for a
+man in trouble like that.  I asked the Lord to preserve us from secrets
+we couldn't tell the neighbours!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the station there wasn't a thing those young people didn't do.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They tied flowers and ribbons all over Sally's satchel and trunk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They sowed rice as if it were seeding time in a wheatfield.  They
+formed a circle around Sally and Peter and as mushy as ever they could
+they sang, "As sure as the grass grows around the stump, You are my
+darling sugar lump," while they danced.  They just smiled all the time
+no matter what was done to them.  Some of it made me angry, but I
+suppose to be pleasant was the right way.  Sally was strong on always
+doing the right thing, so she just laughed, and so did all of us.
+Going home it was wilder yet, for all of them raced and showed how they
+could ride.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the house people were hungry again, so the table was set and they
+ate up every scrap in sight, and Leon and I ate with them that time and
+saved ours.  Then one by one the carriages, spring wagons, and
+horseback riders went away, all the people saying Sally was the
+loveliest bride, and hers had been the prettiest wedding they'd ever
+seen, and the most good things to eat, and Laddie and the Princess went
+with them.  When the last one was gone, and only the relatives from
+Ohio were left, mother pitched on the bed, gripped her hands and cried
+as if she'd go to pieces, and father cried too, and all of us, even
+Mrs. Freshett, who stayed to wash up the dishes.  She was so tickled to
+be there, and see, and help, that mother had hard work to keep her from
+washing the linen that same night.  She did finish the last dish, scrub
+the kitchen floor, black the stove, and pack all the borrowed china in
+tubs, ready to be taken home, and things like that.  Mother said it was
+a burning shame for any neighbourhood to let a woman get so starved out
+and lonesome she'd act that way.  She said enough was enough, and when
+Mrs. Freshett had cooked all day, and washed dishes until the last
+skillet was in place, she had done as much as any neighbour ought to
+do, and the other things she went on and did were a rebuke to us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I felt sore, weepy, and tired out.  It made me sick to think of the
+sage bag in the cracked churn, so I climbed my very own catalpa tree in
+the corner, watched up the road for Laddie, and thought things over.
+If I ever get married I want a dress, and a wedding exactly like that,
+but I would like a man quite different from Peter; like Laddie would
+suit me better.  When he rode under the tree, I dropped from a limb
+into his arms, and went with him to the barn.  He asked me what was
+going on at the house, and I told him about Mrs. Freshett being a
+rebuke to us; and Laddie said she was, and he didn't believe one word
+against her.  When I told him mother was in bed crying like anything,
+he said:  "I knew that had to come when she kept up so bravely at the
+station.  Thank the Lord, she showed her breeding by holding in until
+she got where she had a right to cry if she pleased."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I whispered for fear Leon might be around:  "Did he set the dogs
+on you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He did not," said Laddie, laughing softly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he call you names again?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He did!" said Laddie, "but I started it.  You see, when we got there,
+Thomas was raking the grass and he came to take the Princess' horse.
+Her father was reading on a bench under a tree.  I helped her down, and
+walked with her to the door and said good-bye, and thanked her for the
+pleasure she had added to the day for us, loudly enough that he could
+hear; then I went over to him and said:  'Good evening, Mr. Pryor.  If
+my father knew anything about it, he would very much regret that
+company from Ohio detained him and compelled me to escort your daughter
+home.  He would greatly have enjoyed the privilege, but I honestly
+believe that I appreciated it far more than he could.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh Laddie, what did he say?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He arose and glared at me, and choked on it, and he tried several
+times, until I thought the clods were going to fly again, but at last
+he just spluttered:  'You blathering rascal, you!' That was such a
+compliment compared with what I thought he was going to say that I had
+to laugh.  He tried, but he couldn't keep from smiling himself, and
+then I said:  'Please think it over, Mr. Pryor, and if you find that
+Miss Pryor has had an agreeable, entertaining day, won't you give your
+consent for her to come among us again?  Won't you allow me to come
+here, if it can be arranged in such a way that I intrude on no one?'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh Laddie!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He exploded in a kind of a snarl that meant, I'll see you in the Bad
+Place first.  So I said to him:  'Thank you very much for to-day,
+anyway.  I'm sure Miss Pryor has enjoyed this day, and it has been the
+happiest of my life&mdash;one to be remembered always.  Of course I won't
+come here if I am unwelcome, but I am in honour bound to tell you that
+I intend to meet your daughter elsewhere, whenever I possibly can.  I
+thought it would be a better way for you to know and have us where you
+could see what was going on, if you chose, than for us to meet without
+your knowledge."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh Laddie," I wailed, "now you've gone and ruined everything!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not so bad as that, Little Sister," laughed Laddie.  "Not half so bad!
+He exploded in another growl, and he shook his walking stick at me, and
+he said&mdash;guess what he said."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That he would kill you," I panted, clinging to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right!" said Laddie.  "You have it exactly.  He said:  'Young man,
+I'll brain you with my walking stick if ever I meet you anywhere with
+my daughter, when you have not come to her home and taken her with my
+permission.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!" I stammered.  "What!  Oh Laddie, say it over!  Does it
+mean&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It means," said Laddie, squeezing me until I was near losing my
+breath, "it means, Little Sister, that I shall march to his door and
+ask him squarely, and if it is anywhere the Princess wants to go, I
+shall take her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Like, 'See the conquering hero comes?'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly!" laughed Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What will mother say?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She hasn't made up her mind yet," answered Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you mean&mdash;&mdash;?" I gasped again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course!" said Laddie.  "I wasn't going to let a girl get far ahead
+of me.  The minute I knew she had told her mother, I told mine the very
+first chance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother knows that you feel about the Princess as father does about
+her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother knows," answered Laddie, "and so does father.  I told both of
+them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Both of them knew!  And it hadn't made enough difference that any one
+living right with them every day could have told it.  Time and work
+will be needed to understand grown people.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap08"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VIII
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+The Shropshire and the Crusader
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"For, among the rich and gay,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Fine, and grand, and decked in laces,</SPAN><BR>
+None appear more glad then they,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">With happier hearts, or happier faces."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Every one told mother for a week before the wedding that she would be
+sick when it was over, and sure enough she was.  She had been on her
+feet too much, and had so many things to think about, and there had
+been such a dreadful amount of work for her and Candace, even after all
+the neighbours helped, that she was sick in bed and we couldn't find a
+thing she could eat, until she was almost wild with hunger and father
+seemed as if he couldn't possibly bear it a day longer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After Candace had tried everything she could think of, I went up and
+talked it over with Sarah Hood, and she came down, pretending she
+happened in, and she tried thickened milk, toast and mulled buttermilk;
+she kept trying for two days before she gave up.  Candace thought of
+new things, and Mrs. Freshett came and made all the sick dishes she
+knew, but mother couldn't even taste them; so we were pretty blue, and
+we nearly starved ourselves, for how could we sit and eat everything
+you could mention, and mother lying there, almost crying with hunger?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Saturday morning I was hanging around her room hoping maybe she could
+think of some least little thing I could do for her, even if no more
+than to bring a glass of water, or a late rose to lay on her pillow; it
+would be better than not being able to do anything at all.  After a
+while she opened her eyes and looked at me, and I scarcely knew her.
+She smiled the bravest she could and said:  "Sorry for mother, dear?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I nodded.  I couldn't say much, and she tried harder than ever to be
+cheerful and asked:  "What are you planning to do to-day?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you can't think of one thing I can do for you, guess I'll go
+fishing," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her eyes grew brighter and she seemed half interested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Little Sister," she said, "if you can catch some of those fish
+like you do sometimes, I believe I could eat one of them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I never had such a be-hanged time getting started.  I slipped from the
+room, and never told a soul even where I was going.  I fell over the
+shovel and couldn't find anything quick enough but my pocket to put the
+worms in, and I forgot my stringer.  At last, when I raced down the
+hill to the creek and climbed over the water of the deep place, on the
+roots of the Pete Billings yowling tree, I had only six worms, my apple
+sucker pole, my cotton cord line, and bent pin hook.  I put the first
+worm on carefully, and if ever I prayed!  Sometimes it was hard to
+understand about this praying business.  My mother was the best and
+most beautiful woman who ever lived.  She was clean, and good, and
+always helped "the poor and needy who cluster round your door," like it
+says in the poetry piece, and there never could have been a reason why
+God would want a woman to suffer herself, when she went flying on
+horseback even dark nights through rain or snow, to doctor other
+people's pain, and when she gave away things like she did&mdash;why, I've
+seen her take a big piece of meat from the barrel, and a sack of meal,
+and heaps of apples and potatoes to carry to Mandy Thomas&mdash;when she
+gave away food by the wagonload at a time, God couldn't have WANTED her
+to be hungry, and yet she WAS that very minute almost crying for food;
+and I prayed, oh how I did pray! and a sneaking old back-ended crayfish
+took my very first worm.  I just looked at the sky and said:  "Well,
+when it's for a sick woman, can't You do any better than that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I suppose I shouldn't have said it, but if it had been your mother, how
+would you have felt?  I pinched the next worm in two, so if a crayfish
+took that, it wouldn't get but half.  I lay down across the roots and
+pulled my bonnet far over my face and tried to see to the bottom.  I
+read in school the other day:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"And by those little rings on the water I know<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">The fishes are merrily swimming below."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+There were no rings on the water, but after a while I saw some fish
+darting around, only they didn't seem to be hungry; for they would come
+right up and nibble a tiny bit at my worm, but they wouldn't swallow
+it.  Then one did, so I jerked with all my might, jerked so hard the
+fish and worm both flew off, and I had only the hook left.  I put on
+the other half and tried again.  I prayed straight along, but the tears
+would come that time, and the prayer was no powerful effort like
+Brother Hastings would have made; it was little torn up pieces mostly:
+"O Lord, please do make only one fish bite!"  At last one did bite
+good, so I swung carefully that time, and landed it on the grass, but
+it was so little and it hit a stone and was killed.  I had no stringer
+to put it back in the water to keep cool, and the sun was hot that day,
+like times in the fall.  Stretched on the roots, with it shining on my
+back, and striking the water and coming up from below, I dripped with
+heat and excitement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I threw that one away, put on another worm, and a big turtle took it,
+the hook, and broke my line, and almost pulled me in.  I wouldn't have
+let go if it had, for I just had to have a fish.  There was no help
+from the Lord in that, so I quit praying, only what I said when I
+didn't know it.  Father said man was born a praying animal, and no
+matter how wicked he was, if he had an accident, or saw he had just got
+to die, he cried aloud to the Lord for help and mercy before he knew
+what he was doing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I could hear the roosters in the barnyard, the turkey gobbler, and the
+old ganders screamed once in a while, and sometimes a bird sang a
+skimpy little fall song; nothing like spring, except the killdeers and
+larks; they were always good to hear&mdash;and then the dinner bell rang.  I
+wished I had been where I couldn't have heard that, because I didn't
+intend going home until I had a fish that would do for mother if I
+stayed until night.  If the best one in the family had to starve, we
+might as well all go together; but I wouldn't have known how hungry I
+was, if the bell hadn't rung and told me the others were eating.  So I
+bent another pin and tried again.  I lost the next worm without knowing
+how, and then I turned baby and cried right out loud.  I was so
+thirsty, the salty tears running down my cheeks tasted good, and doing
+something besides fishing sort of rested me; so I looked around and up
+at the sky, wiped my face on the skirt of my sunbonnet, and put on
+another worm.  I had only one more left, and I began to wonder if I
+could wade in and catch a fish by hand; I did teeny ones sometimes, but
+I knew the water there was far above my head, for I had measured it
+often with the pole; it wouldn't do to try that; instead of helping
+mother any, a funeral would kill her, too, so I fell back on the
+Crusaders, and tried again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Strange how thinking about them helped.  I pretended I was fighting my
+way to the Holy City, and this was the Jordan just where it met the
+sea, and I had to catch enough fish to last me during the pilgrimage
+west or I'd never reach Jerusalem to bring home a shell for the Stanton
+crest.  I pretended so hard, that I got braver and stronger, and asked
+the Lord more like there was some chance of being heard.  All at once
+there was a jerk that almost pulled me in, so I jerked too, and a big
+fish flew over my head and hit the bank behind me with a thump.  Of
+course by a big fish I don't mean a red horse so long as my arm, like
+the boys bring from the river; I mean the biggest fish I ever caught
+with a pin in our creek.  It looked like the whale that swallowed
+Jonah, as it went over my head.  I laid the pole across the roots,
+jumped up and turned, and I had to grab the stump to keep from falling
+in the water and dying.  There lay the fish, the biggest one I ever had
+seen, but it was flopping wildly, and it wasn't a foot from a hole in
+the grass where a muskrat had burrowed through.  If it gave one flop
+that way, it would slide down the hole straight back into the water;
+and between me and the fish stood our cross old Shropshire ram.  I
+always looked to see if the sheep were in the meadow before I went to
+the creek, but that morning I had been so crazy to get something for
+mother to eat, I never once thought of them&mdash;and there it stood!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That ram hadn't been cross at first, and father said it never would be
+if treated right, and not teased, and if it were, there would be
+trouble for all of us.  I was having more than my share that minute,
+and it bothered me a lot almost every day.  I never dared enter a field
+any more if it were there, and now it was stamping up and down the
+bank, shaking its head, and trying to get me; with one flop the fish
+went ALMOST in the hole, and the next a little away from it.
+Everything put together, I thought I couldn't stand it.  I never wanted
+anything as I wanted that fish, and I never hated anything as I hated
+that sheep.  It wasn't the sheep's fault either; Leon teased it on
+purpose, just to see it chase Polly Martin; but that was more her
+doings than his.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was a widow and she crossed our front meadow going to her sister's.
+She had two boys big as Laddie, and three girls, and father said they
+lived like "the lilies of the field; they toiled not, neither did they
+spin."  They never looked really hungry or freezing, but they never
+plowed, or planted, they had no cattle or pigs or chickens, only a
+little corn for meal, and some cabbage, and wild things they shot for
+meat, and coons to trade the skins for more powder and lead&mdash;bet they
+ate the coons&mdash;never any new clothes, never clean, they or their house.
+Once when father and mother were driving past, they saw Polly at the
+well and they stopped for politeness sake to ask how she was, like they
+always did with every one.  Polly had a tin cup of water and was
+sopping at her neck with a carpet rag, and when mother asked, "How are
+you, Mrs. Martin?" she answered:  "Oh I ain't very well this spring; I
+gest I got the go-backs!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother said Polly looked as if she'd been born with the "go-backs," and
+had given them to all her children, her home, garden, fields, and even
+the FENCES.  We hadn't a particle of patience with such people.  When
+you are lazy like that it is very probable that you'll live to see the
+day when your children will peep through the fence cracks and cry for
+bread.  I have seen those Martin children come mighty near doing it
+when the rest of us opened our dinner baskets at school; and if mother
+hadn't always put in enough so that we could divide, I bet they would.
+If Polly Martin had walked up as if she were alive, and had been washed
+and neat, and going somewhere to do some one good, Leon never would
+have dreamed of such a thing as training the Shropshire to bunt her.
+She was so long and skinny, always wore a ragged shawl over her head, a
+floppy old dress that the wind whipped out behind, and when she came to
+the creek, she sat astride the foot log, and hunched along with her
+hands; that tickled the boys so, Leon began teasing the sheep on
+purpose to make it get her.  But inasmuch as she saw fit to go abroad
+looking so funny, that any one could see she'd be a perfect circus if
+she were chased, I didn't feel that it was Leon's fault.  If, like the
+little busy bee, she had "improved each shining hour," he never would
+have done it.  Seems to me, she brought the trouble on her own head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+First, Leon ran at the Shropshire and then jumped aside; but soon it
+grew so strong and quick he couldn't manage that, so he put his hat on
+a stick and poked it back and forth through a fence crack, and that
+made the ram raving mad.  At last it would butt the fence until it
+would knock itself down, and if he dangled the hat again, get right up
+and do it over.  Father never caught Leon, so he couldn't understand
+what made the sheep so dreadfully cross, because he had thought it was
+quite peaceable when he bought it.  The first time it got after Polly,
+she threw her shawl over its head, pulled up her skirts, and Leon said
+she hit just eleven high places crossing an eighty-acre field; she came
+to the house crying, and father had to go after her shawl, and mother
+gave her a roll of butter and a cherry pie to comfort her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Shropshire never really got Polly, but any one could easily see
+what it would do to me if I dared step around that stump, and it was
+dancing and panting to begin.  If whoever wrote that "Gentle Sheep,
+pray tell me why," piece ever had seen a sheep acting like that, it
+wouldn't have been in the books; at least I think it wouldn't, but one
+can't be sure.  He proved that he didn't know much about anything
+outdoors or he wouldn't have said that sheep were "eating grass and
+daisies white, from the morning till the night," when daisies are
+bitter as gall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Flop! went the fish, and its tail touched the edge of the hole.  Then I
+turned around and picked up the pole.  I put my sunbonnet over the big
+end of it, and poked it at the ram, and drew it back as Leon did his
+hat.  One more jump and mother's fish would be gone.  I stood on the
+roots and waved my bonnet.  The sheep lowered its head and came at it
+with a rush.  I drew back the pole, and the sheep's forefeet slid over
+the edge, and it braced and began to work to keep from going in.  The
+fish gave a big flop and went down the hole.  Then I turned Crusader
+and began to fight, and I didn't care if I were whipped black and blue,
+I meant to finish that old black-faced Shropshire.  I set the pole on
+the back of its neck and pushed with all my might, and I got it in,
+too.  My, but it made a splash!  It wasn't much good at swimming
+either, and it had no chance, for I stood on the roots and pushed it
+down, and hit it over the nose with all my might, and I didn't care how
+far it came on the cars, or how much money it cost, it never would
+chase me, and make me lose my fish again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I didn't hear him until he splashed under the roots and then I was so
+mad I didn't see that it was Laddie; I only knew that it was someone
+who was going to help out that miserable ram, so I struck with all my
+might, the sheep when I could hit it, if not, the man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You little demon, stop!" cried Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I got in a good one right on the ram's nose.  Then Laddie dropped the
+sheep and twisted the fish pole from my fingers, and I pushed him as
+hard as I could, but he was too strong.  He lifted the sheep, pulled it
+to the bank, and rolled it, worked its jaws, and squeezed water from
+it, and worked and worked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I guess you've killed it!" he said at last.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Goody!" I shouted.  "Goody!  Oh but I am glad it's dead!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What on earth has turned you to a fiend?" asked Laddie, beginning work
+on the sheep again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That ram!" I said.  "Ever since Leon made it cross so it would chase
+Polly Martin, it's got me oftener than her.  I can't go anywhere for
+it, and to-day it made me lose a big fish, and mother is waiting.  She
+thought maybe she could eat some."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I roared; bet I sounded like Bashan's bull.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear Lord!" said Laddie dropping the sheep and taking me in his wet
+arms.  "Tell me, Biddy!  Tell me how it is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I forgot I was a Crusader, and told him all about it as well as I
+could for choking, and when I finished he bathed my hot face, and
+helped me from the roots.  Then he went and looked down the hole I
+showed him and he cried out quicklike, and threw himself on the grass,
+and in a second up came the fish.  Some one had rolled a big stone in
+the hole, so the fish was all right, not even dead yet, and Laddie said
+it was the biggest one he ever had seen taken from the creek.  Then he
+said if I'd forgive him and all our family, for spoiling the kind of a
+life I had a perfect right to lead, and if I'd run to the house and get
+a big bottle from the medicine case quick, he would see to it that some
+place was fixed for that sheep where it would never bother me again.
+So I took the fish and ran as fast as I could, but I sent May back with
+the bottle, and did the scaling myself.  No one at our house could do
+it better, for Laddie taught me the right way long ago, when I was
+small, and I'd done it hundreds of times.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I went to Candace and she put a little bit of butter and a speck
+of lard in a skillet, and cooked the fish brown.  She made a slice of
+toast and boiled a cup of water and carried it to the door; then she
+went in and set the table beside the bed, and I took in the tray, and
+didn't spill a drop.  Mother never said a word; she just reached out
+and broke off a tiny speck and nibbled it, and it stayed; she tried a
+little bigger piece, and another, and she said:  "Take out the bones,
+Candace!"  She ate every scrap of that fish like the hungriest
+traveller who ever came to our door, and the toast, and drank the hot
+water.  Then she went into a long sleep and all of us walked tiptoe,
+and when she waked up she was better, and in a few days she could sit
+in her chair again, and she began getting Shelley ready to go to music
+school.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I have to tell you the rest, too.  Laddie made the ram come alive, and
+father sold it the next day for more than he paid for it.  He said he
+hoped I'd forgive him for not having seen how it had been bothering me,
+and that he never would have had it on the place a day if he'd known.
+The next time he went to town he bought me a truly little cane rod, a
+real fishing line, several hooks, and a red bobber too lovely to put
+into the water.  I thought I was a great person from the fuss all of
+them made over me, until I noticed Laddie shrug his shoulders, and
+reach back and rub one, and then I remembered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went flying, and thank goodness! he held out his arms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh Laddie!  I never did it!" I cried.  "I never, never did!  I
+couldn't!  Laddie, I love you best of any one; you know I do!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course you didn't!" said Laddie.  "My Little Sister wasn't anywhere
+around when that happened.  That was a poor little girl I never saw
+before, and she was in such trouble she didn't know WHAT she was doing.
+And I hope I'll never see her again," he ended, twisting his shoulder.
+But he kissed me and made it all right, and really I didn't do that; I
+just simply couldn't have struck Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marrying off Sally was little worse than getting Shelley ready for
+school.  She had to have three suits of everything, and a new dress of
+each kind, and three hats; her trunk wouldn't hold all there was to put
+in it; and father said he never could pay the bills.  He had promised
+her to go, and he didn't know what in this world to do; because he
+never had borrowed money in his life, and he couldn't begin; for if he
+died suddenly, that would leave mother in debt, and they might take the
+land from her.  That meant he'd spent what he had in the bank on
+Sally's wedding, and all that was in the Underground Station, or maybe
+the Station money wasn't his.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Just when he was awfully bothered, mother said to never mind, she
+believed she could fix it.  She sent all of us into the orchard to pick
+the fine apples that didn't keep well, and father made three trips to
+town to sell them.  She had big jars of lard she wouldn't need before
+butchering time came again, and she sold dried apples, peaches, and
+raspberries from last year.  She got lots of money for barrels of
+feathers she'd saved to improve her feather beds and pillows; she said
+she would see to that later.  Father was so tickled to get the money to
+help him out that he said he'd get her a pair of those wonderful new
+blue geese like Pryors had, that every one stopped to look at.  When
+there was not quite enough yet, from somewhere mother brought out money
+that she'd saved for a long time, from butter and eggs, and chickens,
+and turkeys, and fruit and lard, and things that belonged to her.
+Father hated to use it the worst way, but she said she'd saved it for
+an emergency, and now seemed to be the time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She said if the child really had talent, she should be about developing
+it, and while there would be many who would have far finer things than
+Shelley, still she meant her to have enough that she wouldn't be the
+worst looking one, and so ashamed she couldn't keep her mind on her
+work.  Father said, with her face it didn't make any difference what
+she wore, and mother said that was just like a man; it made all the
+difference in the world what a girl wore.  Father said maybe it did to
+the girl, and other women; what he meant was that it made none to a
+man.  Mother said the chief aim and end of a girl's life was not
+wrapped up in a man; and father said maybe not with some girls, but it
+would be with Shelley: she was too pretty to escape.  I do wonder if
+I'm going to be too pretty to escape, when I put on long dresses.
+Sometimes I look in the glass to see if it's coming, but I don't
+suppose it's any use.  Mother says you can't tell a thing at the
+growing age about how a girl is going to look at eighteen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When everything was almost ready, Leon came in one day and said:
+"Shelley, what about improving your hair?  Have you tried your wild
+grape sap yet?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shelley said:  "Why, goodness me!  We've been so busy getting Sally
+married, and my clothes made, I forgot all about that.  Have you
+noticed the crock in passing?  Is there anything in it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was about half full, once when I went by," said Leon. "I haven't
+seen it lately."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do please be a dear and look, when you go after the cows this
+evening," said Shelley.  "If there's anything in it, bring it up."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Do it yourself for want of me,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">The boy replied quite manfully,"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+quoted Leon from "The Little Lord and the Farmer."  He was always
+teasing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think you're mean as dirt if you don t bring it," said Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon grinned and you should have heard the nasty, teasing way he said
+more of that same piece:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Anger and pride are both unwise,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">Vinegar never catches flies&mdash;&mdash;"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+I wondered she didn't slap him.  You could see she wanted to.  "I can
+get it myself," she said angrily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What will you give me to bring it?" asked Leon, who never missed a
+chance to make a bargain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My grateful thanks.  Are they not a proper reward?" asked Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thanks your foot!" said Leon.  "Will you bring something pretty from
+Chicago for Susie Fall's Christmas present?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Every one laughed, but Leon never cared.  He liked Susie best of any of
+the girls, and he wanted every one to know it.  He went straight to her
+whenever he had a chance, and he'd already told her mother to keep all
+the other boys away, because he meant to marry her when he grew up, and
+Widow Fall said that was fair enough, and she'd save her for him.  So
+Shelley said she would get him something for Susie, and Leon brought
+the crock.  Shelley looked at it sort of dubious-like, tipped it, and
+stared at the dirt settled in the bottom, and then stuck in her finger
+and tasted it.  She looked at Leon with a queer grin and said: "Smarty,
+smarty, think you're smart!"  She threw the creek water into the swill
+bucket.  No one said a word, but Leon looked much sillier than she did.
+After he was gone I asked her if she would bring him a Christmas
+present for Susie NOW, and she said she ought to bring him a pretty
+glass bottle labelled perfume, with hartshorn in it, and she would, if
+she thought he'd smell it first.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shelley felt badly about leaving mother when she wasn't very well; but
+mother said it was all right, she had Candace to keep house and May and
+me, and father, and all of us to take care of her, and it would be best
+for Shelley to go now and work hard as she could, while she had the
+chance.  So one afternoon father took her trunk to the depot and bought
+the tickets and got the checks, and the next day Laddie drove to
+Groveville with father and Shelley, and she was gone.  Right at the
+last, she didn't seem to want to leave so badly, but all of them said
+she must.  Peter's cousin, who had gone last year, was to meet her, and
+have a room ready where she boarded if she could, and if she couldn't
+right away, then the first one who left, Shelley was to have the place,
+so they'd be together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were eight of us left, counting Candace and Miss Amelia, and you
+wouldn't think a house with eight people living in it would be empty,
+but ours was.  Everything seemed to wilt.  The roses on the window
+blinds didn't look so bright as they had; mother said the only way she
+could get along was to keep right on working.  She helped Candace all
+she could, but she couldn't be on her feet very much, so she sat all
+day long and peeled peaches to dry, showed Candace how to jelly,
+preserve, and spice them, and peeled apples for butter and to dry,
+quantities more than we could use, but she said she always could sell
+such things, and with the bunch of us to educate yet, we'd need the
+money.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When it grew cold enough to shut the doors, and have fire at night,
+first thing after supper all of us helped clear the table, then we took
+our slates and books and learned our lessons for the next day, and then
+father lined us against the wall, all in a row from Laddie down, and he
+pronounced words&mdash;easy ones that divided into syllables nicely, for me,
+harder for May, and so up until I might sit down.  For Laddie, May and
+Leon he used the geography, the Bible, Roland's history, the Christian
+Advocate, and the Agriculturist.  My, but he had them so they could
+spell!  After that, as memory tests, all of us recited our reading
+lesson for the next day, especially the poetry pieces.  I knew most of
+them, from hearing the big folks repeat them so often and practise the
+proper way to read them.  I could do "Rienzi's Address to the Romans,"
+"Casablanca," "Gray's Elegy," or "Mark Antony's Speech," but best of
+all, I liked "Lines to a Water-fowl."  When he was tired, if it were
+not bedtime yet, all of us, boys too, sewed rags for carpet and rugs.
+Laddie braided corn husks for the kitchen and outside door mats, and
+they were pretty, and "very useful too," like the dog that got his head
+patted in McGuffey's Second.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then they picked the apples.  These had to be picked by hand, wrapped
+in soft paper, packed in barrels, and shipped to Fort Wayne.  Where
+they couldn't reach by hand, they stood on barrels or ladders, and used
+a long handled picker, so as not to bruise the fruit.  Laddie helped
+with everything through the day, worked at his books at night, and
+whenever he stepped outside he looked in the direction of Pryors'.  He
+climbed to the topmost limbs of the trees with a big basket, picked it
+full and let it down with a long piece of clothesline.  I loved to be
+in the orchard when they were working; there were plenty of summer
+apples to eat yet; it was fun to watch the men, and sometimes I could
+be useful by handing baskets or heaping up apples to be buried for us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One night father read about a man who had been hanged for killing
+another man, and they cut him down too soon, so he came alive, and they
+had to hang him over; and father got all worked up about it.  He said
+the man had suffered death the first time to "all intents and
+purposes," so that fulfilled the requirements of the law, and they were
+wrong when they hanged him again.  Laddie said it was a piece of
+bungling sure enough, but the law said a man must be "hanged by his
+neck until he was dead," and if he weren't dead, why, it was plain he
+hadn't fulfilled the requirements of the law, so they were forced to
+hang him again.  Father said that law was wrong; the man never should
+have been hanged in the first place.  They talked and argued until we
+were all excited about it, and the next evening after school Leon and I
+were helping pick apples, and when father and Laddie went to the barn
+with a load we sat down to rest and we thought about what they said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gee, that was tough on the man!" said Leon, "but I guess the law is
+all right.  Of course he wouldn't want to die, and twice over at that,
+but I don't suppose the man he killed liked to die either.  I think if
+you take a life, it's all right to give your own to pay for it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leon," I said, "some time when you are fighting Absalom Saunders or
+Lou Wicks, just awful, if you hit them too hard on some tender spot and
+kill them, would you want to die to pay for it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wouldn't want to, but I guess I'd have to," said Leon.  "That's the
+law, and it's as good a way to make it as any.  But I'm not going to
+kill any one.  I've studied my physiology hard to find all the spots
+that will kill.  I never hit them behind the ear, or in the pit of the
+stomach; I just black their eyes, bloody their snoots, and swat them on
+the chin to finish off with."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, suppose they don't study their physiologies like you do, and hit
+YOU in the wrong place, and kill you, would you want THEM hanged by the
+neck until they were dead, to pay for it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think I'd want anything if I were dead," he said.  "I wonder
+how it feels to die.  Now THAT man knew.  I'd like to be hanged enough
+to find out how it goes, and then come back, and brag about it.  I
+don't think it hurts much; I believe I'll try it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Leon took the rope Laddie lowered the baskets with, and threw it
+over a big limb.  Then he rolled up a barrel and stood on it and put my
+sunbonnet on with the crown over his face, for a black cap, and made
+the rope into a slip noose over his head, and told me to stand back by
+the apple tree and hold the rope tight, until he said he was hanged
+enough.  Then he stepped from the barrel.  It jerked me toward him
+about a yard, as he came down smash! on his feet.  I held with all my
+might, but he was too heavy&mdash;and falling that way.  So he went to
+trying to fix some other plan, and I told him the sensible thing to do
+would be for him to hang me, because he'd be strong enough to hold me
+and I could tell him how it felt just as well.  So we fixed me up like
+we had him, and when Leon got the rope stretched, he wrapped it twice
+around the apple tree so it wouldn't jerk him as it had me, and when he
+said "Ready," I stepped from the barrel.  The last thing I heard was
+Leon telling me to say when I was hanged enough.  I was so heavy, the
+rope stretched, and I went down until it almost tore off my head, and I
+couldn't get a single breath, so of course I didn't tell him, and I
+couldn't get on the barrel, and my tongue went out, and my chest
+swelled up, and my ears roared, and I kicked and struggled, and all the
+time I could hear Leon laughing, and shouting to keep it up, that I was
+dying fine; only he didn't know that I really was, and at last I didn't
+feel or know anything more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When I came to, I was lying on the grass, while father was pumping my
+arms, and Laddie was pouring creek water on my face from his hat, and
+Leon was running around in circles, clear crazy.  I heard father tell
+him he'd give him a scutching he'd remember to the day of his death;
+but inasmuch as I had told Leon to do it, I had to grab father and hold
+to him tight as I could, until I got breath enough to explain how it
+happened.  Even then I wasn't sure what he was going to do.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After all that, when I tried to tell Leon how it felt, he just cried
+like a baby, and he wouldn't listen to a word, even when he'd wanted to
+know so badly.  He said if I hadn't come back, he'd have gone to the
+barn and used the swing rope on himself, so it was a good thing I did,
+for one funeral would have cost enough, when we needed money so badly,
+not to mention how mother would have felt to have two of us go at once,
+like she had before.  And anyway, it didn't amount to so awful much.
+It was pretty bad at first, but it didn't last long, and the next day
+my neck was only a little blue and stiff, and in three days it was all
+over, only a rough place where the rope grained the skin as I went
+down; but I never got to tell Leon how it felt; I just couldn't talk
+him into hearing, and it was quite interesting too; but still I easily
+saw why the man in the paper would object to dying twice, to pay for
+killing another man once.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the apples were picked and the cabbage, beets, turnips, and
+potatoes were buried, some corn dried in the garret for new meal,
+pumpkins put in the cellar, the field corn all husked, and the
+butchering done, father said the work was in such fine shape, with
+Laddie to help, and there was so much more corn than he needed for us,
+and the price was so high, and the turkeys did so well, and everything,
+that he could pay back what mother helped him, and have quite a sum
+over.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Thanksgiving by that time, and all of Winfield's, Lucy's, Sally
+and Peter, and our boys came home.  We had a big time, all but Shelley;
+it was too expensive for her to come so far for one day, but mother
+sent her a box with a whole turkey for herself and her friends; and
+cake, popcorn, nuts, and just everything that wasn't too drippy.
+Shelley wrote such lovely letters that mother saved them and after we
+had eaten as much dinner as we could, she read them before we left the
+table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had heard most of them, but I liked to listen again, because they
+sounded so happy.  You could hear Shelley laugh on every page.  She
+told about how Peter's cousin was waiting when the train stopped.  They
+couldn't room together right away, but they were going to the first
+chance they had.  Shelley felt badly because they were so far apart,
+but she was in a nice place, where she could go with other girls of the
+school until she learned the way.  She told about her room and the
+woman she boarded with and what she had to eat; she wrote mother not to
+worry about clothes, because most of the others were from the country,
+or small towns, and getting ready to teach, and lots of them didn't
+have NEARLY as many or as pretty dresses as she did.  She told about
+the big building, the classes, the professors, and of going to public
+recitals where some of the pupils who knew enough played; and she was
+working her fingers almost to the bone, so she could next year.  She
+told of people she met, and how one of the teachers took a number of
+girls in his class to see a great picture gallery.  She wrote pages
+about a young Chicago lawyer she met there, and only a few lines about
+the pictures, so father said as that was the best collection of art
+work in Chicago, it was easy enough to see that Shelley had been far
+more impressed with the man than she had been with the pictures.
+Mother said she didn't see how he could say a thing like that about the
+child.  Of course she couldn't tell in a letter about hundreds of
+pictures, but it was easy enough to tell all about a man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father got sort of spunky at that, and he said it was mighty little
+that mattered most, that could be told about a Chicago lawyer; and
+mother had better caution Shelley to think more about her work, and
+write less of the man.  Mother said that would stop the child's
+confidences completely and she'd think all the time about the man, and
+never mention him again, so she wouldn't know what WAS going on.  She
+said she was glad Shelley had found pleasing, refined friends, and
+she'd encourage her all she could in cultivating them; but of course
+she'd caution her to be careful, and she'd tell her what the danger
+was, and after that Shelley wrote and wrote.  Mother didn't always read
+the letters to us, but she answered every one she got that same night.
+Sometimes she pushed the pen so she jabbed the paper, and often she
+smiled or laughed softly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I liked Thanksgiving.  We always had a house full of company, and they
+didn't stay until we were tired of them, as they did at Christmas, and
+there was as much to eat; the only difference was that there were no
+presents.  It wasn't nearly so much work to fix for one day as it was
+for a week; so it wasn't so hard on mother and Candace, and father
+didn't have to spend much money.  We were wearing all our clothes from
+last fall that we could, and our coats from last winter to help out,
+but we didn't care.  We had a lot of fun, and we wanted Sally and
+Shelley to have fine dresses, because they were in big cities where
+they needed them, and in due season, no doubt, we would have much more
+than they, because, as May figured it, there would be only a few of us
+by that time, so we could have more to spend.  That looked sensible,
+and I thought it would be that way, too.  We were talking it over
+coming from school one evening, and when we had settled it, we began to
+play "Dip and Fade."  That was a game we made up from being at church,
+and fall and spring were the only times we could play it, because then
+the rains filled all the ditches beside the road where the dirt was
+plowed up to make the bed higher, and we had to have the water to dip
+in and fade over.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We played it like that, because it was as near as we could come to
+working out a song Isaac Thomas sang every time he got happy.  He had a
+lot of children at home, and more who had died, from being half-fed and
+frozen, mother thought; and he was always talking about meeting the
+"pore innocents" in Heaven, and singing that one song.  Every time he
+made exactly the same speech in meeting.  It began like reciting
+poetry, only it didn't rhyme, but it sort of cut off in lines, and
+Isaac waved back and forth on his feet, and half sung it, and the rags
+waved too, but you just couldn't feel any thrills of earnestness about
+what he said, because he needed washing, and to go to work and get him
+some clothes and food to fill out his frame.  He only looked funny, and
+made you want to laugh.  It took Emanuel Ripley to raise your hair.  I
+don't know why men like my father, and the minister, and John Dover
+stood it; they talked over asking Isaac to keep quiet numbers of times,
+but the minister said there were people like that in every church, they
+always came among the Lord's anointed, and it was better to pluck out
+your right eye than to offend one of them, and he was doubtful about
+doing it.  So we children all knew that the grown people scarcely could
+stand Isaac's speech, and prayer, and song, and that they were afraid
+to tell him plain out that he did more harm than good.  Every meeting
+about the third man up was Isaac, and we had to watch him wave, and
+rant, and go sing-songy:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Oh brethering and sistering&mdash;ah,<BR>
+It delights my heart&mdash;ah to gather with you,<BR>
+In this holy house of worship&mdash;ah.<BR>
+In his sacred word&mdash;ah,<BR>
+The Lord&mdash;ah tells us,<BR>
+That we are all his childring&mdash;ah.<BR>
+And now, lemme exhort you to-night&mdash;ah,<BR>
+As one that loves you&mdash;ah,<BR>
+To choose that good part, that Mary chose&mdash;ah,<BR>
+That the worrrr-uld kin neither give ner take away&mdash;ah."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+That went on until he was hoarse, then he prayed, and arose and sang
+his song.  Other men spoke where they stood.  Isaac always walked to
+the altar, faced the people, and he was tired out when he finished, but
+so proud of himself, so happy, and he felt so sure that his efforts
+were worth a warm bed, sausage, pancakes, maple syrup, and coffee for
+breakfast, that it was mighty seldom he failed to fool some one else
+into thinking so too, and if he could, he wouldn't have to walk four
+miles home on cold nights, with no overcoat.  In summer, mostly, they
+let him go.  Isaac always was fattest in winter, especially during
+revivals, but at any time mother said he looked like a sheep's carcass
+after the buzzards had picked it.  It could be seen that he was
+perfectly strong, and could have fed and clothed himself, and Mandy and
+the children, quite as well as our father did us, if he had wanted to
+work, for we had the biggest family of the neighbourhood.  So we
+children made fun of him and we had to hold our mouths shut when he got
+up all tired and teary-like, and began to quaver:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">"Many dear childurn we know dew stan'</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Un toon ther harps in the better lan',</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Ther little hans frum each soundin' string,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Bring music sweet, wile the Anguls sing,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Bring music sweet, wile the Anguls sing,&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">We shell meet them agin on that shore,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">We shell meet them agin on that shore,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">With fairer face, un angel grace,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Each loved un ull welcome us ther.</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">"They uster mourn when the childurn died,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Un said goo-bye at the river side,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">They dipped ther feet in the glidin' stream,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Un faded away, like a loveli dream,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Un faded away like a loveli dream."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Then the chorus again, and then Isaac dropped on the front seat
+exhausted, and stayed there until some good-hearted woman, mostly my
+mother, felt so sorry about his shiftlessness she asked him to go home
+with us and warmed and fed him, and put him in the traveller's bed to
+sleep.  The way we played it was this: we stood together at the edge of
+a roadside puddle and sang the first verse and the chorus exactly as
+Isaac did.  Then I sang the second verse, and May was one of the "many
+dear childurn," and as I came to the lines she dipped her feet in the
+"glidin' stream," and for "fading away," she jumped across.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now May was a careful little soul, and always watched what she was
+doing, so she walked up a short way, chose a good place, and when I
+sang the line, she was almost birdlike, she dipped and faded so
+gracefully.  Then we laughed like dunces, and then May began to sway
+and swing, and drone through her nose for me, and I was so excited I
+never looked.  I just dipped and faded on the spot.  I faded all right
+too, for I couldn't jump nearly across, and when I landed in pure clay
+that had been covered with water for three weeks, I went down to my
+knees in mud, to my waist in water, and lost my balance and fell
+backward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A man passing on horseback pried me out with a rail and helped me home.
+Of course he didn't know how I happened to fall in, and I was too
+chilled to talk.  I noticed May only said I fell, so I went to bed
+scorched inside with red pepper tea, and never told a word about
+dipping and fading.  Leon whispered and said he bet it was the last
+time I would play that, so as soon as my coat and dress were washed and
+dried, and I could go back to school, I did it again, just to show him
+I was no cowardy-calf; but I had learned from May to choose a puddle I
+could manage before I faded.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap09"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IX
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+"Even So"
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"All things whatsoever ye would<BR>
+That men should do to you,<BR>
+Do ye even so to them."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Our big girls and boys always made a dreadful fuss and said we would
+catch every disease you could mention, but mother and father were set
+about it, just like the big rocks in the hills.  They said they,
+themselves, once had been at the mercy of the people, and they knew how
+it felt.  Mother said when they were coming here in a wagon, and she
+had ridden until she had to walk to rest her feet, and held a big baby
+until her arms became so tired she drove while father took it, and when
+at last they saw a house and stopped, she said if the woman hadn't
+invited her in, and let her cook on the stove, given her milk and eggs,
+and furnished her a bed to sleep in once in a while, she couldn't have
+reached here at all; and she never had been refused once.  Then she
+always quoted:  "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to
+you, do ye EVEN SO to them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father said there were men who made a business of splitting hairs, and
+of finding different meanings in almost everything in the Bible.  I
+would like to have seen any one split hairs about that, or it made to
+mean something else.  Of all the things in the Bible that you had to do
+because it said to, whether you liked it or not, that was the one you
+struck oftenest in life and it took the hardest pull to obey.  It was
+just the hatefulest text of any, and made you squirm most.  There was
+no possible way to get around it.  It meant, that if you liked a
+splinter new slate, and a sharp pencil all covered with gold paper, to
+make pictures and write your lessons, when Clarissa Polk sat next you
+and sang so low the teacher couldn't hear until she put herself to
+sleep on it, "I WISHT I had a slate!  I wisht I HAD a slate!  I wisht I
+had a SLATE!  Oh I WISHT I HAD A SLATE!"&mdash;it meant that you just had to
+wash up yours and stop making pictures yourself, and pass it over; you
+even had to smile when you offered it, if you did it right.  I seldom
+got through it as the Lord would, for any one who loaned Clarissa a
+slate knew that it would come back with greasy, sweaty finger marks on
+it you almost had to dig a hole to wash off, and your pencil would be
+wet.  And if there were the least flaw of crystal in the pencil, she
+found it, and bore down so hard that what she wrote never would come
+off.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Lord always seemed bigger and more majestic to me, than at any
+other time, when I remembered that He could have known all that, and
+yet smiled as He loaned Clarissa His slate.  And that old Bible thing
+meant, too, that if you would like it if you were travelling a long
+way, say to California to hunt gold, or even just to Indiana, to find a
+farm fit to live on&mdash;it meant that if you were tired, hungry, and sore,
+and would want to be taken in and fed and rested, you had to let in
+other people when they reached your house.  Father and mother had been
+through it themselves, and they must have been tired as could be,
+before they reached Sarah Hood's and she took them in, and rested and
+fed them, even when they were only a short way from the top of the
+Little Hill, where next morning they looked down and stopped the wagon,
+until they chose the place to build their house.  Sarah Hood came
+along, and helped mother all day, so by night she was settled in the
+old cabin that was on the land, and ready to go to work making money to
+build a new one, and then a big house, and fix the farm all beautiful
+like it was then.  They knew so well how it felt, that they kept one
+bed in the boys' room, and any man who came at dusk got his supper, to
+sleep there, and his breakfast, and there never was anything to pay.
+The girls always scolded dreadfully about the extra washing, but mother
+said she slept on sheets when she came out, and some one washed them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One time Sally said:  "Mother, have you ever figured out how many
+hundred sheets you've washed since, to pay for that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother said:  "No, but I just hope it will make a stack high enough for
+me to climb from into Heaven."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sally said:  "The talk at the church always led me to think that you
+flew to Heaven."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother answered:  "So I get there, I don't mind if I creep."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Sally knew it was time to stop.  We always knew.  And we stopped,
+too!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We had heard that "All things" quotation, until the first two words
+were as much as mother ever needed repeat of it any more, and we had
+cooked, washed for, and waited on people travelling, until Leon got so
+when he saw any one coming&mdash;of course we knew all the neighbours, and
+their horses and wagons and carriages&mdash;he always said:  "Here comes
+another 'Even So!'"  He said we had done "even so" to people until it
+was about our share, but mother said our share was going to last until
+the Lord said, "Well done, good and faithful servant," and took us
+home.  She had much more about the stranger at the gate and
+entertaining angels unawares; why, she knew every single thing in the
+Bible that meant it was her duty to feed and give a bed to any one, no
+matter how dirty or miserable looking he was!  So when Leon came in one
+evening at dusk and said, "There's another 'Even So' coming down the
+Little Hill!" all of us knew that we'd have company for the night, and
+we had.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I didn't like that man, but some of the others seemed to find him
+amusing.  Maybe it was because I had nothing to do but sit and watch
+him, and so I saw more of him than the ones who came and went all the
+time.  As long as there was any one in the room, he complained
+dreadfully about his sore foot, and then cheered up and talked, and he
+could tell interesting things.  He was young, but he must have been
+most everywhere and seen everything.  He was very brave and could stand
+off three men who were going to take from him the money he was carrying
+to buy a piece of land in Illinois.  The minute the grown folks left
+the room to milk, do the night feeding, and begin supper, he twisted in
+his chair and looked at every door, and went and stood at the back
+dining-room window, where he could see the barn and what was out there,
+and coming back he took a peep into father's and mother's room, and
+although he limped dreadfully when he came, he walked like any one when
+he went over and picked up father's gun and looked to see if it were
+loaded, and seemed mighty glad when he found it wasn't.  Father said he
+could load in a flash when it was necessary, but he was dubious about a
+loaded gun in a house full of children.  Not one of us ever touched it,
+until the boys were big enough to have permission, like Laddie and Leon
+had.  He said a gun was such a great "moral persuader," that the sight
+of one was mostly all that was needed, and nobody could tell by looking
+at it whether it was loaded or not.  This man could, for he examined
+the lock and smiled in a pleased way over it, and he never limped a
+step going back to his chair.  He kept on complaining, until father
+told him before bedtime that he had better rest a day or two, and
+mother said that would be a good idea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He talked so much we couldn't do our lessons or spell very well, but it
+was Friday and we'd have another chance Saturday, so it didn't make so
+much difference.  Father said the traveller must be tired and sleepy
+and Leon should take a light and show him to bed.  He stayed so long
+father went to the foot of the stairway, and asked him why he didn't
+come down and he said he was in bed too.  The next morning he was
+sleepy at breakfast and Laddie said it was no wonder, because Leon and
+the traveller were talking when he went upstairs.  The man turned to
+father and said: "That's a mighty smart boy, Mr. Stanton."  Father
+frowned and said:  "Praise to the face is open disgrace.  I hope he
+will be smart enough not to disgrace us, anyway."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The traveller said he was sure he would be, and we could see that he
+had taken a liking to Leon, for he went with him to the barn to help do
+the morning feeding.  They stayed so long mother sent me to call them,
+and when I got there, the man was telling Leon how foolish it was for
+boys to live on a farm; how they never would amount to anything unless
+they went to cities, and about all the fun there was there, and how
+nice it was to travel, even along the roads, because every one fed you,
+and gave you a good bed.  He forgot that walking had made his foot
+lame, and I couldn't see, to save me, why he was going to spend his
+money to buy a farm, if he thought a town the only place where it was
+fit to live.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stayed all Saturday, and father said Sunday was no suitable time to
+start on a journey again, and the man's foot was bad when father was
+around, so it would be better to wait until Monday.  The traveller
+tagged Leon and told him what a fine fellow he was, how smart he was,
+and to prove it, Leon boasted about everything he knew, and showed the
+man all over the farm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I even saw them pass the Station in the orchard, and heard Leon brag
+how father had been an agent for the Governor; but of course he didn't
+really show him the place, and probably it would have made no
+difference if he had, for all the money must have been spent on Sally's
+wedding.  Of course father might have put some there he had got since,
+or that money might never have been his at all, but it seemed as if it
+would be, because it was on his land.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sunday evening all of us attended church, but the traveller was too
+tired, so when Leon said he'd stay with him, father thought it was all
+right.  I could see no one wanted to leave the man alone in the house.
+He said they'd go to bed early, and we came in quite late.  The lamp
+was turned low, the door unlocked, and everything in place.  Laddie
+went to bed without a candle, and said he'd undress and slip in easy so
+as not to waken them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the morning when he got up the traveller's bed hadn't been slept in,
+and neither had Leon's.  The gun was gone, and father stared at mother,
+and mother stared at Laddie, and he turned and ran straight toward the
+Station, and in a minute he was back, whiter than a plate.  He just
+said:  "All gone!"  Father and mother both sat down suddenly and hard.
+Then Laddie ran to the barn and came back and said none of the horses
+had been taken.  Soon they went into the parlour and shut the door, and
+when they came out father staggered and mother looked exactly like
+Sabethany.  Laddie ran to the barn, saddled Flos and rode away.  Father
+wanted to ring an alarm on the dinner bell, like he had a call arranged
+to get all the neighbours there quickly if we had sickness or trouble,
+and mother said:  "Paul, you shall not!  He's so young!  We've got to
+keep this as long as we can, and maybe the Lord will help us find him,
+and we can give him another chance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father started to say something, and mother held up her hand and just
+said, "Paul!" and he sank back in the chair and kept still.  Mother
+always had spoken of him as "the Head of the Family," and here he
+wasn't at all!  He minded her quickly as I would.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Miss Amelia came downstairs they let her start to school and never
+told her a word, but mother said May and I were not to go.  So I
+slipped out and ran through the orchard to look at the Station, and
+sure enough! the stone was rolled back, the door open and the can lying
+on the floor.  I slid down and picked it up, and there was one sheet of
+paper money left in it stuck to the sides.  It was all plain as a
+pikestaff.  Leon must have thought the money had been spent, and showed
+the traveller the Station, just to brag, and he guessed there might be
+something there, and had gone while we were at church and taken it.  He
+had all night the start of us, and he might have a horse waiting
+somewhere, and be almost to Illinois by this time, and if the money
+belonged to father, there would be no Christmas; and if it happened to
+be the money the county gave him to pay the men who worked the roads
+every fall, and Miss Amelia, or collections from the church, he'd have
+to pay it back, even if it put him in debt; and if he died, they might
+take the land, like he said; and where on earth was Leon?  Knew what
+he'd done and hiding, I bet!  He needed the thrashing he would get that
+time, and I started out to hunt him and have it over with, so mother
+wouldn't be uneasy about him yet; and then I remembered Laddie had said
+Leon hadn't been in bed all night.  He was gone too!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Maybe he wanted to try life in a city, where the traveller had said
+everything was so grand; but he must have known that he'd kill his
+mother if he went, and while he didn't kiss her so often, and talk so
+much as some of us, I never could see that he didn't run quite as fast
+to get her a chair or save her a step.  He was so slim and light he
+could race for the doctor faster than Laddie or father, either one.  Of
+course he loved his mother, just as all of us did; he never, never
+could go away and not let her know about it.  If he had gone, that
+watchful-eyed man, who was lame only part of the time, had taken the
+gun and made him go.  I thought I might as well save the money he'd
+overlooked, so I gripped it tight in my hand, and put it in my apron
+pocket, the same as I had Laddie's note to the Princess, and started to
+the barn, on the chance that Leon might be hiding.  I knew precious
+well I would, if I were in his place.  So I hunted the granaries, the
+haymow, the stalls, then I stood on the threshing floor and cried:
+"Leon!  If you're hiding come quick!  Mother will be sick with worrying
+and father will be so glad to see you, he won't do anything much.  Do
+please hurry!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I listened, and all I could hear was a rat gnawing at a corner of
+the granary under the hay.  Might as well have saved its teeth, it
+would strike a strip of tin when it got through, but of course it
+couldn't know that.  Then I went to every hole around the haystack,
+where the cattle had eaten; none were deep yet, like they would be
+later in the season, and all the way I begged of Leon to come out.
+Once a rooster screamed, flew in my face and scared me good, but no
+Leon; so I tried the corn crib, the implement shed, and the wood house,
+climbing the ladder with the money still gripped in one hand.  Then I
+slipped in the front door, up the stairs, and searched the garret, even
+away back where I didn't like to very well.  At last I went to the
+dining-room, and I don't think either father or mother had moved, while
+Sabethany turned to stone looked good compared with them.  Seemed as if
+it would have been better if they'd cried, or scolded, or anything but
+just sit there as they did, when you could see by their moving once in
+a while that they were alive.  In the kitchen Candace and May finished
+the morning work, and both of them cried steadily.  I slipped to May,
+"Whose money was it?" I whispered.  "Father's, or the county's, or the
+church's?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All three," said May.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The traveller took it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How would he find it?  None of us knew there was such a place before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Laddie seemed to know!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh Laddie!  Father trusts him about everything."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They don't think HE told?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course not, silly.  It's Leon who is gone!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leon may have told about the Station!" I cried.  "He didn't touch the
+money.  He never touched it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I went straight to father.  Keeping a secret was one thing; seeing
+the only father you had look like that, was another.  I held out the
+money.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's one piece old Even So didn't get, anyway," I said.  "Found it
+on the floor of the Station, where it was stuck to the can.  And I
+thought Leon must be hiding for fear he'd be whipped for telling, but
+I've hunted where we usually hide, and promised him everything under
+the sun if he'd come out; but he didn't, so I guess that traveller man
+must have used the gun to make him go along."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father sat and stared at me.  He never offered to touch the money, not
+even when I held it against his hand.  So I saw that money wasn't the
+trouble, else he'd have looked quick enough to see how much I had.
+They were thinking about Leon being gone, at least father was.  Mother
+called me to her and asked:  "You knew about the Station?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On the way back from taking Amanda Deam her ducks this summer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leon was with you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He found it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What were you doing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sitting on the fence eating apples.  We were wondering why that ravine
+place wasn't cleaned up, when everywhere else was, and then Leon said
+there might be a reason.  He told about having seen a black man, and
+that he was hidden some place, and we hunted there and found it.  We
+rolled back the stone, and opened the door, and Leon went in, and both
+of us saw a can full of money."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We didn't touch it, mother!  Truly we didn't!  Leon said we'd found
+something not intended for children, and we'd be whipped sick if we
+ever went near or told, and we never did, not even once, unless Leon
+wanted to boast to the traveller man, but if he showed him the place,
+he thought sure the money had all been spent on the wedding and sending
+Shelley away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father's arms shot out, and his head pitched on the table.  Mother got
+up and began to walk the floor, and never went near or even touched
+him.  I couldn't bear it.  I went and pulled his arm and put the bill
+under his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leon didn't take your money!  He didn't!  He didn't!  I just know he
+didn't!  He does tricks because they are so funny, or he thinks they'll
+be, but he doesn't steal!  He doesn't touch a single thing that is not
+his, only melons, or chicken out of the skillet, or bread from the
+cellar; but not money and things.  I take gizzards and bread myself,
+but I don't steal, and Leon or none of us do!  Oh father, we don't!
+Not one of us do!  Don't you remember about 'Thou shalt not,' and the
+Crusaders?  Leon's the best fighter of any of us.  I'm not sure that he
+couldn't even whip Laddie, if he got mad enough!  Maybe he can't whip
+the traveller if he has the gun, but, father, Leon simply couldn't take
+the money.  Laddie will stay home and work, and all of us.  We can help
+get it back.  We can sell a lot of things.  Laddie will sell Flos
+before he'll see you suffer so; and all of us will give up Christmas,
+and we'll work!  We'll work as hard as ever we can, and maybe you could
+spare the little piece Joe Risdell wants to build his cabin on.  We can
+manage about the money, father, indeed we can.  But you don't dare
+think Leon took it!  He never did!  Why, he's yours!  Yours and
+mother's!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father lifted his head and reached out his arms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You blessing!" he said.  "You blessing from the Lord!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he gave me a cold, stiff kiss on the forehead, went to mother,
+took her arm, and said:  "Come, mommy, let's go and tell the Lord about
+it, and then we'll try to make some plan.  Perhaps Laddie will be back
+with word soon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he almost had to carry her.  Then we could hear him praying, and he
+was so anxious, and he made it so earnest it sounded exactly like the
+Lord was in our room and father was talking right to His face.  I tried
+to think, and this is what I thought: as father left the room, he
+looked exactly as I had seen Mr. Pryor more than once, and my mother
+had both hands gripped over her heart, and she said we must not let any
+one know.  Now if something could happen to us to make my father look
+like the Princess' and my mother hold her heart with both hands, and if
+no one were to know about it like they had said, how were we any
+different from Pryors?  We might be of the Lord's anointed, but we
+could get into the same kind of trouble the infidels could, and have
+secrets ourselves, or at least it seemed as if it might be very nearly
+the same, when it made father and mother look and act the way they did.
+I wondered if we'd have to leave our lovely, lovely home, cross a sea
+and be strangers in a strange land, as Laddie said; and if people would
+talk about us, and make us feel that being a stranger was the
+loneliest, hardest thing in all the world.  Well, if mysteries are like
+this, and we have to live with one days and years, the Lord have mercy
+on us!  Then I saw the money lying on the table, so I took it and put
+it in the Bible.  Then I went out and climbed the catalpa tree to watch
+for Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Soon I saw a funny thing, such as I never before had seen.  Coming
+across the fields, straight toward our house, sailing over the fences
+like a bird, came the Princess on one of her horses.  Its legs
+stretched out so far its body almost touched the ground, and it lifted
+up and swept over the rails.  She took our meadow fence lengthwiselike,
+and at the hitching rack she threw the bridle over the post,
+dismounted, and then I saw she had been riding astride, like a man.  I
+ran before her and opened the sitting-room door, but no one was there,
+so I went on to the dining-room.  Father had come in, and mother was
+sitting in her chair.  Both of them looked at the Princess and never
+said a word.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stopped inside the dining-room door and spoke breathlessly, as if
+she as well as the horse had raced.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope I'm not intruding," she said, "but a man north of us told our
+Thomas in the village that robbers had taken quite a large sum of
+hidden money you held for the county, and church, and of your own, and
+your gun, and got away while you were at church last night.  Is it
+true?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Practically," said my father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then my mother motioned toward a chair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are kind to come," she said.  "Won't you be seated?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess stepped to the chair, but she gripped the back in both
+hands and stood straight, breathing fast, her eyes shining with
+excitement, her lips and cheeks red, so lovely you just had to look,
+and look.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," she said.  "I'll tell you why I came, and then if there is
+nothing I can do here, and no errand I can ride for you, I'll go.
+Mother has heart trouble, the worst in all the world, the kind no
+doctor can ever hope to cure, and sometimes, mostly at night, she is
+driven to have outside air.  Last night she was unusually ill, and I
+heard her leave the house, after I'd gone to my room.  I watched from
+my window and saw her take a seat on a bench under the nearest tree.  I
+was moving around and often I looked to see if she were still there.
+Then the dogs began to rave, and I hurried down.  They used to run
+free, but lately, on account of her going out, father has been forced
+to tie them at night.  They were straining at their chains, and barking
+dreadfully.  I met her at the door, but she would only say some one
+passed and gave her a fright.  When Thomas came in and told what he had
+heard, she said instantly that she had seen the man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She said he was about the size of Thomas, that he came from your
+direction, that he ran when our dogs barked, but he kept beside the
+fences, and climbed over where there were trees.  He crossed our
+barnyard and went toward the northwest.  Mother saw him distinctly as
+he reached the road, and she said he was not a large man, he stooped
+when he ran, and she thought he moved like a slinking, city thief.  She
+is sure he's the man who took your money; she says he acted exactly as
+if he were trying to escape pursuit; but I was to be SURE to tell you
+that he didn't carry a gun.  If your gun is gone, there must have been
+two, and the other man took that and went a different way.  Did two men
+stop here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said father.  "Only one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess looked at him thoughtfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you think, Mr. Stanton," she said, "that the man who took the money
+would burden himself with a gun?  Isn't a rifle heavy for one in flight
+to carry?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is," said father.  "Your mother saw nothing of two men?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only one, and she knows he didn't carry a gun.  Except the man you
+took in, no stranger has been noticed around here lately?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No one.  We are quite careful.  Even the gun was not loaded as it
+stood; whoever took it carried the ammunition also, but he couldn't
+fire until he loaded."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father turned to the corner where the gun always stood and then he
+stooped and picked up two little white squares from the floor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were bits of unbleached muslin in which he wrapped the bullets he
+made.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The rifle was loaded before starting, and in a hurry," he said, as he
+held up the squares of muslin.  Then he scratched a match, bent, and
+ran it back and forth over the floor, and at one place there was a
+flash, and the flame went around in funny little fizzes as it caught a
+grain of powder here and there.  "You see the measure was overrun."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wouldn't the man naturally think the gun was loaded, and take it as it
+stood?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That would be a reasonable conclusion," said father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But he looked!" I cried.  "That first night when you and the boys went
+to the barn, and the girls were getting supper, he looked at the gun,
+and he LIKED it when he saw it wasn't loaded.  He smiled.  And he
+didn't limp a mite when I was the only one in the room.  He and Leon
+knew it wasn't loaded, and I guess he didn't load it, for he liked
+having it empty so well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ummmm!" said father.  "What it would save in this world if a child
+only knew when to talk and when to keep still.  Little Sister, the next
+time you see a stranger examine my gun when I'm not in the room,
+suppose you take father out alone and whisper to him about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The way I wished I had told that at the right time made me dizzy, but
+then there were several good switchings I'd had for telling things,
+besides what Sally did to me about her and Peter.  I would have enjoyed
+knowing how one could be sure.  Hereafter, it will be all right about
+the gun, anyway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Could I take my horse and carry a message anywhere for you?  Are both
+your sons riding to tell the neighbours?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father hesitated, but it seemed as if he stopped to think, so I just
+told her:  "Laddie is riding.  Leon didn't take a horse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father said there was nothing she could do, so she took my hand and we
+started for the gate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do hope they will find him, and get back the money, and give him
+what he deserves!" she cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, father and mother are praying that they'll find him," I said.
+"It doesn't seem to make the least difference to them about the money.
+Father didn't even look at a big paper piece I found where it was
+hidden.  But they are anxious about the man.  Mother says he is so
+young, we just must find him, and keep this a secret, and give him
+another chance.  You won't tell, will you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess stood still on our walk, and then of all things!  if she
+didn't begin to go Sabethany-like.  The colour left her cheeks and lips
+and she shivered and shook and never said one word.  I caught her arm.
+"Say, what ails you?" I cried.  "You haven't gone and got heart trouble
+too, have you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stood there trembling, and then, wheeling suddenly, ran back into
+the house, and went to my mother.  On her knees, the Princess buried
+her face in mother's breast and said:  "Oh Mrs. Stanton!  Oh, if I only
+could help you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She began to cry as if something inside her had broken, and she'd shake
+to pieces.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother stared above her head at father, with her eyebrows raised high,
+and he waved his hand toward me.  Mother turned to me, but already she
+had put her arms around the Princess, and was trying to hold her
+together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did you tell her that made her come back?" she asked sternlike.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You forgot to explain that the man was so young, and you wanted to
+keep it a secret and give him another chance," I said.  "I just asked
+her not to tell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother looked at father and all the colour went from her face, and she
+began to shake.  He stared at her, then he opened her door and lifted
+the Princess with one arm, and mother with the other, and helped them
+into mother's room, stepped back and closed the door.  After a while it
+opened and they came out together, with both mother's arms around the
+Princess, and she had cried until she staggered.  Mother lifted her
+face and kissed her, when they reached the door and said:  "Tell your
+mother I understand enough to sympathize.  Carry her my love.  I do
+wish she would give herself the comfort of asking God to help her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She does!  Oh, I'm sure she does!" said the Princess.  "It's father
+who has lost all judgment and reason."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father went with her to the gate, and this time she needed help to
+mount her horse, and she left it to choose its way and go where it
+pleased on the road.  When father came in he looked at mother, and she
+said:  "I haven't the details, but she understands too well.  The Pryor
+mystery isn't much of a mystery any more.  God help their poor souls,
+and save us from suffering like that!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She said so little and meant so much, I couldn't figure out exactly
+what she did mean, but father seemed to understand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've often wondered," he said, but he didn't say what he wondered, and
+he hurried to the barn and saddled our best horse and came in and began
+getting ready to ride, and we knew he would go northwest.  I went back
+to the catalpa tree and wondered myself; but it was too much for me to
+straighten out: just why my mother wanting to give the traveller man
+another chance would make the Princess feel like that.  If she had
+known my mother as I did, she'd have known that she ALWAYS wanted to
+give every man a second chance, no matter whether he was young or old.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I saw Laddie coming down the Big Hill beside the church, but he
+was riding so fast I thought he wouldn't want to bother with me, so I
+slid from the tree, and ran to tell mother.  She went to the door and
+watched as he rode up, but you could see by his face he had not heard
+of them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing, but I have some men out.  I am going east now," he said.  "I
+wish, father, you would rub Flos down, blanket her, and if you can,
+walk her slowly an hour while she cools off.  I am afraid I've ruined
+her.  How much had you there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I haven't stopped to figure," said father.  "I think I'd better take
+the horse I have ready and go on one of the northwest roads.  The Pryor
+girl was here a few moments ago, and her mother saw a man cross their
+place about the right time last evening.  He ran and acted suspiciously
+when the dogs barked.  But he was alone and he didn't have a gun."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was she sure?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Positive."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then it couldn't have been our man, but I'll ride in that direction
+and start a search.  They would keep to the woods, I think!  You'd
+better stay with mother.  I'll ask Jacob Hood to take your place."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Laddie rode away again without even going into the house, and mother
+said to father:  "What can he be saying to people, that the neighbours
+don't come?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father answered:  "I don't know, but if any one can save the situation,
+Laddie will."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother went to bed, while father sat beside her reading aloud little
+scraps from the Bible, and they took turns praying.  From the way they
+talked to the Lord, you could plainly see that they were reminding Him
+of all the promises He had made to take care of people, comfort those
+in trouble, and heal the broken-hearted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One thing was so curious, I asked May if she noticed, and she had.
+When they had made such a fuss about money only a short while before,
+and worked so hard to get our share together, and when they would have
+to pay back all that belonged to the county and church, neither of them
+ever even mentioned money then.  Every minute I expected father to ask
+where I'd put the piece I found, and when he opened right at it, in the
+Bible, he turned on past, exactly as if it were an obituary, or a piece
+of Sally's wedding dress, or baby hair from some of our heads.  He went
+on hunting places where the Lord said sure and strong that He'd help
+people who loved Him.  When either of them prayed, they asked the Lord
+to help those near them who were in trouble, as often and earnestly as
+they begged Him to help them.  There were no people near us who were in
+trouble that we knew of, excepting Pryors.  Hard as father and mother
+worked, you'd have thought the Lord wouldn't have minded if they asked
+only once to get the money back, or if they forgot the neighbours, but
+they did neither one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+May said because they were big like that was why all of us loved them
+so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I would almost freeze in the catalpa, but as I could see far in all
+directions there, I went back, and watched the roads, and when I
+remembered what Laddie had said, I kept an eye on the fields too.  At
+almost dusk, and frozen so stiff I could scarcely hang to the limb, I
+heard the bulldogs at Pryors' begin to rave.  They kept on steadily,
+and I thought Gypsies must be passing.  Then from the woods came a
+queer party that started across the cornfield toward the Big Meadow in
+front of the house, and I thought they were hunters.  I stood in the
+tree and watched until they climbed the meadow fence, and by that time
+I could see plainly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The traveller man got over first, then Leon and the dogs, and then Mr.
+Pryor handed Leon the gun, leaped over, and took it.  I looked again,
+and then fell from the tree and almost bursted.  As soon as I could get
+up, and breathe, I ran to the front door, screaming:  "Father!  Father!
+Come open the Big Gate.  Leon's got him, but he's so tired Mr. Pryor is
+carrying the gun, and helping him walk!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Just like one, all of us ran; father crossed the road, and opened the
+gate.  The traveller man wouldn't look up, he just slouched along.  But
+Leon's chin was up and his head high.  He was scratched, torn, and
+dirty.  He was wheezing every breath most from his knees, and Mr. Pryor
+half carried him and the gun.  When they met us, Leon reached in his
+trousers pocket and drew out a big roll of money that he held toward
+father.  "My fault!" he gasped.  "But I got it back for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he fell over and father caught him in his arms and carried him
+into the house, and laid him on the couch in the dining-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Pryor got down and gathered up the money from the road.  He
+followed into the house and set the gun in the corner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't be frightened," he said to mother.  "The boy has walked all
+night, and all day, with no sleep or food, and the gun was a heavy load
+for him.  I gathered from what he said, when the dogs let us know they
+were coming, that this hound took your money.  Your dog barked and
+awakened the boy and he loaded the gun and followed.  The fellow had a
+good start and he didn't get him until near daybreak.  It's been a
+stiff pull for the youngster and he seems to feel it was his fault that
+this cowardly cur you sheltered learned where you kept your money.  If
+that is true, I hope you won't be hard on him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father was unfastening Leon's neckband, mother was rubbing his hands,
+Candace was taking off his shoes, and May was spilling water father had
+called for, all over the carpet, she shook so.  When Leon drew a deep
+breath and his head rolled on the pillow, father looked at Mr. Pryor.
+I don't think he heard all of it, but he caught the last words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Hard on him!  Hard on him!'" he said, the tears rolling down his
+cheeks.  "'This my son, who was lost, is found!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!" shouted Mr. Pryor, slamming the money on the table.  "Poor drivel
+to fit the circumstances.  If I stood in your boots, sir, I would rise
+up in the mighty strength of my pride and pull out foundation stones
+until I shook the nation!  I never envied mortal man as I envy you
+to-day!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Candace cried out:  "Oh look, his poor feet!  They are blistered and
+bleeding!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother moved down a little, gathered them in her arms, and began
+kissing them.  Father wet Leon's lips and arose.  He held out his hand,
+and Mr. Pryor took it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will pray God," he said, "that it may happen 'even so' to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon opened his eyes and caught only the last words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You had better look out for the 'Even So's,' father," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And father had to laugh, but Mr. Pryor went out, and slammed the door,
+until I looked to see if it had cracked from top to bottom; but we
+didn't care if it had, we were so happy over having Leon back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went and picked up the money and carried it to father to put away,
+and that time he took it.  But even then he didn't stop to see if he
+had all of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see!" I said, "I told you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You did indeed!" said father.  "And you almost saved our reason.
+There are times when things we have come to feel we can't live without,
+so press us, that money seems of the greatest importance.  This is our
+lesson.  Hereafter, I and all my family, who have been through this,
+will know that money is not even worth thinking about when the life and
+honour of one you love hangs in the balance.  When he can understand,
+your brother shall know of the wondrous faith his Little Sister had in
+him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe he won't like what you and mother thought.  Maybe we better not
+tell him.  I can keep secrets real well.  I have several big ones I've
+never told, and I didn't say a word about the Station when Leon said I
+shouldn't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After this there will be no money kept on the place," said father.
+"It's saving time at too great cost.  All we have goes into the bank,
+and some of us will cheerfully ride for what we want, when we need it.
+As for not telling Leon, that is as your mother decides.  For myself, I
+believe I'd feel better to make a clean breast of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother heard, for she sobbed as she bathed Leon's feet, and when his
+eyes came open so they'd stay a little while, he kept looking at her so
+funny, between sips of hot milk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't CRY, mammy!" he said.  "I'M all right.  Sorry such a rumpus!
+Let him fool me.  Be smart as the next fellow, after this!  Know how
+glad you are to get the money!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother sat back on her heels and roared as I do when I step in a
+bumblebee's nest, and they get me.  Leon was growing better every
+minute, and he stared at her, and then his dealish, funny old grin
+began to twist his lips and he cried:  "Oh golly!  You thought <I>I</I>
+helped take it and went with him, didn't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh my son, my son!" wailed mother until she made me think of Absalom
+under the oak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I be ding-busted!" said Leon, sort of slow and wondering-like,
+and father never opened his head to tell him that was no way to talk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother cried more than ever, and between sobs she tried to explain that
+I heard what the traveller man had said about how bad it was to live in
+the country; and how Leon was now at an age where she'd known boys to
+get wrong ideas, and how things looked, and in the middle of it he
+raised on his elbow and took her in his arms and said:  "Well of all
+the geese!  And I 'spose father was in it too!  But since it's the
+first time, and since it is you&mdash;&mdash;!  Go to bed now, and let me
+sleep&mdash;&mdash;  But see that you don't ever let this happen again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he kissed her over and over and clung to her tight and at last
+dropped back and groaned:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"My reputation, O my reputation!<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">I've lost my reputation!"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+She had to laugh while the tears were still running, and father and
+Laddie looked at each other and shouted.  I guess they thought Leon was
+about right after that.  Laddie went and bent over him and took his
+hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't be in quite such a hurry, old man," he said.  "Before you wink
+out I have got to tell you how proud I am of having a brother who is a
+real Crusader.  The Lord knows this took nerve!  You're great, boy,
+simply great!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon grabbed Laddie's hand with both of his and held tight and laughed.
+You could see the big tears squeeze out, although he fought to wink
+them back.  He held to Laddie and said low-like, only for him to hear:
+"It's all right if you stay by a while, old man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He began to talk slowly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was a long time before I caught up, and then I had to hide, and
+follow until day, and he wasn't so very easy to handle.  Once I thought
+he had me sure!  It was an awful load, but if it hadn't been for the
+good old gun, I'd never have got him.  When we mixed up, I had fine
+luck getting that chin punch on him; good thing I worked it out so
+slick on Absalom Saunders, and while old Even So was groggy I got the
+money away from him, took the gun, and stood back some distance, before
+he came out of it.  Once we had it settled who walked ahead, and who
+carried the money and gun, we got along better, but I had to keep an
+eye on him every minute.  To come through the woods was the shortest,
+but I'm tired out, and so is he.  Getting close I most felt sorry for
+him, he was so forlorn, and so scared about what would be done to him.
+He stopped and pulled out another roll, and offered me all of it, if
+I'd let him go.  I didn't know whether it was really his, or part of
+father's, so I told him he could just drop it until I found out.  Made
+him sweat blood, but I had the gun, and he had to mind.  I was master
+then.  So there may be more in the roll I gave father than Even So
+took.  Father can figure up and keep what belongs to him.  Even So had
+gone away past Flannigans' before I tackled him, and I was sleepy,
+cold, and hungry; you'd have thought there'd have been a man out
+hunting, or passing on the road, but not a soul did we see 'til
+Pryors'!  Say, the old man was bully!  He helped me so, I almost
+thought I belonged to him!  My! he's fine, when you know him!  After he
+came on the job, you bet old Even So walked up.  Say, where is he?
+Have you fed him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie looked at father, who was listening, and we all rushed to the
+door, but it must have been an hour, and Even So hadn't waited.  Father
+said it was a great pity, because a man like that shouldn't be left to
+prey on the community; but mother said she didn't want to be mixed up
+with a trial, or to be responsible for taking the liberty of a fellow
+creature, and father said that was exactly like a woman.  Leon went to
+sleep, but none of us thought of going to bed; we just stood around and
+looked at him, and smiled over him, and cried about him, until you
+would have thought he had been shipped to us in a glass case, and cost,
+maybe, a hundred dollars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father got out his books and figured up his own and the road money, and
+Miss Amelia's, and the church's.  Laddie didn't want her around, so he
+stopped at the schoolhouse and told her to stay at Justices' that
+night, we'd need all our rooms; but she didn't like being sent away
+when there was such excitement, but every one minded Laddie when he
+said so for sure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When father had everything counted there was more than his, quite a lot
+of it, stolen from other people who sheltered the traveller no doubt,
+father said.  We thought he wouldn't be likely to come back for it, and
+father said he was at loss what to do with it, but Laddie said he
+wasn't&mdash;it was Leon's&mdash;he had earned it; so father said he would try to
+find out if anything else had been stolen, and he'd keep it a year, and
+then if no one claimed it, he would put it on interest until Leon
+decided what he wanted to do with it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When you watched Leon sleep you could tell a lot more about what had
+happened to him than he could.  He moaned, and muttered constantly, and
+panted, and felt around for the gun, and breathed like he was running
+again, and fought until Laddie had to hold him on the couch, and
+finally awakened him.  But it did no good; he went right off to sleep
+again, and it happened all over.  Then father began getting his
+Crusader blood up, although he always said he was a man of peace.  But
+it was a lucky thing Even So got away; for after father had watched
+Leon a while, he said if that man had been on the premises, his fingers
+itched so to get at him, he was positive he'd have vented a little
+righteous indignation on him that would have cost him within an inch of
+his life.  And he'd have done it too!  He was like that.  It took a
+lot, and it was slow coming, but when he became angry enough, and felt
+justified in it, why you'd be much safer to be some one else than the
+man who provoked him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After ten o'clock the dog barked, some one tapped, and father went; he
+always would open the door; you couldn't make him pretend he was
+asleep, or not at home when he was, and there stood Mr. Pryor.  He said
+they could see the lights and they were afraid the boy was ill, and
+could any of them help.  Father said there was nothing they could do;
+Leon was asleep.  Then Mr. Pryor said:  "If he is off sound, so it
+won't disturb him, I would like to see him again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father told him Leon was restless, but so exhausted a railroad train
+wouldn't waken him, so Mr. Pryor came in and went to the couch.  He
+took off his hat, like you do beside a grave, while his face slowly
+grew whiter than his hair, and that would be snow-white; then he turned
+at last and stumbled toward the door.  Laddie held it for him, but he
+didn't seem to remember he was there.  He muttered over and over:
+"Why?  Why?  In the name of God, why?"  Laddie followed to the gate to
+help him on his horse, because he thought he was almost out of his
+head, but he had walked across the fields, so Laddie kept far behind
+and watched until he saw him go safely inside his own door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I think father and Laddie sat beside Leon all night.  The others went
+to sleep.  A little after daybreak, just as Laddie was starting to
+feed, there was an awful clamour, and here came a lot of neighbours
+with Even So.  Mr. Freshett had found him asleep in a cattle hole in
+the straw stack, and searched him, and he had more money, and that made
+Mr. Freshett sure; and as he was very strong, and had been for years a
+soldier, and really loved to fight, he marched poor Even So back to our
+house.  Every few rods they met more men out searching who came with
+them, until there were so many, our front yard and the road were
+crowded.  Of all the sights you ever saw, Even So looked the worst.
+You could see that he'd drop over at much more.  Those men kept crying
+they were going to hang him; but mother went out and talked to them,
+and said they mustn't kill a man for taking only money.  She told them
+how little it was worth compared with other things; she had Candace
+bring Even So a cup of hot coffee, lots of bread, and sausage from the
+skillet, and she said it was our money, and our lad, and we wanted
+nothing done about it.  The men didn't like it, but the traveller did.
+He grabbed and gobbled like a beast at the hot food and cried, and
+mother said she forgave him, and to let him go.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Mr. Freshett looked awful disappointed, and he came up to father,
+with his back toward mother, and asked:  "That's your say too, Mr.
+Stanton?"  Father grinned sort of rueful-like, but he said to give Even
+So his money and let him go.  He told all about getting ours back, and
+having had him at the house once before.  He brought the money Leon
+took from him, but the men said no doubt he had stolen that, and Leon
+had earned it bringing him back, so the traveller shouldn't have it.
+They took him away on a horse and said they'd let him go, but that
+they'd escort him from the county.  Father told Mr. Freshett that he
+was a little suspicious of them, and he would hold him responsible for
+the man's life.  Mr. Freshett said that he'd give his word that the man
+would be safe; they only wanted to make sure he wouldn't come back, and
+that he'd be careful in the future how he abused hospitality, so they
+went, and all of us were glad of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I don't know what Mr. Freshett calls safe, for they took Even So to
+Groveville and locked him up until night.  Then they led him to the
+railroad, and made him crawl back and forth through an old engine
+beside the track, until he was blacker than any negro ever born; and
+then they had him swallow a big dose of croton oil for his health.
+That was the only KIND thing they did, for afterward they started him
+down the track and told him to run, and all of them shot at his feet as
+he went.  Hannah Freshett told me at school the next day.  Her father
+said Even So just howled, and flew up in the air, and ducked, and
+dodged and ran like he'd never walked a step, or was a bit tired.  We
+made a game of it, and after that one of the boys was Even So, and the
+others were the mob, and the one who could howl nicest, jump highest,
+and go fastest, could be "It" oftenest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon grew all right faster than you would think.  He went to school day
+after next, and the boys were sick with envy.  They asked and asked,
+but Leon wouldn't tell much.  He didn't seem to like to talk about it,
+and he wouldn't play the game or even watch us.  He talked a blue
+streak about the money.  Father was going to write to every sheriff of
+the counties along the way the man said he had come, and if he could
+find no one before spring who had been robbed, he said Leon might do
+what he liked with the money.  I used to pretend it was coming to me,
+and each day I thought of a new way to spend it.  Leon was so sure he'd
+get it he marched right over and asked Mr. Pryor about a nice young
+thoroughbred horse, from his stables, and when he came back he could
+get a coltlike one so very cheap that father and Laddie looked at each
+other and gasped, and never said a word.  They figured up, and if Leon
+got the money, he could have the horse, and save some for college, and
+from the start he never changed a mite about those two things he wanted
+to do with it.  He had the horse picked out and went to the field to
+feed and pet it and make it gentle, so he could ride bareback, and
+mother said he would be almost sick if the owner of the money turned up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Pulling his boots one night, father said so too, and that the thoughts
+of it worried him.  He said Mr. Pryor had shaded his price so that if
+the money had to go, he would be tempted to see if we couldn't manage
+it ourselves.  I don't know how shading the price of a horse would make
+her feel better, but it did, and maybe Leon is going to get it.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap10"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER X
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Laddie Takes the Plunge
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth<BR>
+The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms,<BR>
+And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;<BR>
+The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,<BR>
+And, when he thinks, good, easy man, full surely<BR>
+His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,<BR>
+And then he falls, as I do."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Watch me take the plunge!" said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Mad frenzy fires him now,'" quoted Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Sunday after dinner.  We had been to church and Sunday-school in
+the forenoon, and we had a houseful of company for dinner.  All of them
+remained to spend the afternoon, because in our home it was perfectly
+lovely.  We had a big dinner with everything good to start on, and then
+we talked and visited and told all the news.  The women exchanged new
+recipes for cooking, advised each other about how to get more work done
+with less worry, to doctor their sick folks, and to make their dresses.
+At last, when every thing was talked over, and there began to be a
+quiet time, father would reach across the table, pick up a paper and
+read all the interesting things that had happened in the country during
+the past week; the jokes too, and they made people think of funny
+stories to tell, and we just laughed.  In the Agriculturist there were
+new ways to farm easier, to make land bear more crops; so he divided
+that with the neighbours, also how to make gardens, and prune trees.
+Before he finished, he always managed to work in a lot about being
+honest, kind, and loving God.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He and mother felt so good over Leon, and by this time they were
+beginning to see that they were mighty glad about the money too.  It
+wouldn't have been so easy to work, and earn, and pay back all that for
+our school, roads, and the church; and every day you could see plainer
+how happy they felt that they didn't have to do it.  Because they were
+so glad about these things, they invited every one they met that day;
+but we knew Saturday mother felt that probably she would ask a crowd,
+from the chickens, pie, and cake she got ready.  When the reading part
+was over, and the women were beginning to look at the clock, and you
+knew they felt they should go home, and didn't want to, Laddie arose
+and said that, and Leon piped up like he always does and made every one
+laugh.  Of course they looked at Laddie, and no one knew what he meant,
+so all the women and a few of the men asked him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Watch me, I said," laughed Laddie as he left the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Soon Mrs. Dover, sitting beside the front window, cried:  "Here he is
+at the gate!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was on his horse, but he hitched it and went around the house and up
+the back way.  Before long the stair door of the sitting-room opened,
+and there he stood.  We stared at him.  Of course he was bathed, and in
+clean clothing to start with, but he had washed and brushed some more,
+until he shone.  His cheeks were as smooth and as clear pink as any
+girl's, his eyes blue-gray and big, with long lashes and heavy brows.
+His hair was bright brown and wavy, and he was so big and broad.  He
+never had been sick a day in his life, and he didn't look as if he ever
+would be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And clothes DO make a difference.  He would have had exactly the same
+hair, face, and body, wearing a hickory shirt and denim trousers; but
+he wouldn't have looked as he did in the clothes he wore at college,
+when it was Sunday there, or he was invited to a party at the
+President's.  I don't see how any man could possibly be handsomer or
+look finer.  His shirt, collar, and cuffs were snow-white, like
+everything had to be before mother got through with it; his big loose
+tie almost reached his shoulders; and our men could do a thing no other
+man in the neighbourhood did: they could appear easier in the finest
+suit they could put on than in their working clothes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother used to say one thing she dreaded about Sunday was the evident
+tortures of the poor men squirming in boots she knew pinched them,
+coats too tight, and collars too high.  She said they acted like
+half-broken colts fretting over restriction.  Always she said to father
+and the boys when they went to buy their new clothes:  "Now, DON'T join
+the harness fighters!  Get your clothing big enough to set your bodies
+with comfort and ease."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I suppose those other men would have looked like ours if their mothers
+had told them.  You can always see that a man needs a woman to help him
+out awful bad.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course Laddie knew he was handsome; he had to know all of them were
+looking at him curiously, but he stood there buttoning his glove and
+laughing to himself until Sarah Hood asked:  "Now what are you up to?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took a step toward her, ran one hand under her lanternjawed chin,
+pulled her head against his side and turned up her face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sarah," he said, "'member the day we spoiled the washing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Every one laughed.  They had made jokes about it until our friends knew
+what they meant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you going to spoil now?" asked Sarah.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Egyptians!  The 'furriners.' I'm going right after them!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you could be in better business," said Sarah Hood sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie laughed and squeezed her chin, and hugged her head against him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen to that, now!" he cried.  "My best friend going back on me.
+Sarah, I thought you, of all people, would wish me luck."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do!" she said instantly.  "And that's the very reason I don't want
+you mixed up with that mysterious, offish, stuck-up mess."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bless your dear heart!" said Laddie, giving her a harder squeeze than
+ever.  "You got that all wrong, Sarah.  You'll live to see the day,
+very shortly, when you'll change every word of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I haven't done anything but get surer about it every day for two
+years, anyway," said Sarah Hood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly!" said Laddie, "but wait until I have taken the plunge!  Let
+me tell you how the Pryor family strikes me.  I think he is a
+high-tempered, domineering man, proud as Lucifer!  For some cause, just
+or not, he is ruining his life and that of his family because he so
+firmly believes it just; he is hiding here from his home country, his
+relatives, and friends.  I think she is, barring you and mother, the
+handsomest woman of her age I ever saw&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All of them laughed, because Sarah Hood was nearly as homely as a woman
+could grow, and maybe other people didn't find our mother so lovely as
+we thought her.  I once heard one of her best friends say she was
+"distinctly plain."  I didn't see how she could; but she said that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"&mdash;and the most pitiful," Laddie went on.  "Sarah, what do you suppose
+sends a frail little woman pacing the yard, and up and down the road,
+sometimes in storm and rain, gripping both hands over her heart?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose it's some shameful thing I don't want you mixed up with!"
+said Sarah Hood promptly, and people just shouted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sarah," said Laddie, "I've seen her closely, watched her move, and
+studied her expression.  There's not one grain of possibility that you,
+or mother, or Mrs. Fall, or any woman here, could be any closer
+connected with SHAME.  Shame there is," said Laddie, "and what a word!
+How it stings, burns, withers, and causes heart trouble and hiding; but
+shame in connection with that woman, more than shame thrust upon her,
+which might come to any of us, at any time, shame that is her error, in
+the life of a woman having a face like hers, Sarah, I am ashamed of
+you!  Your only excuse is that you haven't persisted as I have until
+you got to see for yourself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not much on persistence in the face of a locked door, a cast-iron
+man with a big cane, and two raving bulldogs," said Mrs. Hood.  "Wait,
+young man!  Just wait until he sets them on you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie's head went back and how he laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hist!  A word with you, Sarah!" he said.  "'Member I have a sort of
+knack with animals.  I never yet have failed with one I undertook to
+win.  Now those bulldogs of Pryors' are as mild as kittens with a man
+who knows the right word.  Reason I know, Sarah, I've said the word to
+them, separately and collectively, and it worked.  There is a contrast,
+Sarah, between what I say and do to those dogs, and the kicks and
+curses they get from their owner.  I'll wager you two to one that if
+you can get Mr. Pryor to go into a 'sic-ing' contest with me, I can
+have his own dogs at his throat, when he can't make them do more than
+to lick my hands."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They laughed as if that were funny.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I didn't know about this," said Sarah.  "How long have you lived
+at Pryors'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+You couldn't have heard what Laddie said if he'd spoken; so he waited
+until he could be heard, and it never worried him a speck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He only stood and laughed too; then, "Long enough," he said, "to know
+that all of us are making a big and cruel mistake in taking them at
+their word, and leaving them penned up there weltering in misery.  What
+we should do, is to go over there, one at a time, or in a body, and
+batter at the door of their hearts, until we break down the wall of
+pride they have built around them, ease their pain, and bring them with
+us socially, if they are going to live among us.  You people who talk
+loudly and often about loving God, and 'doing unto others,' should have
+gone long ago, for Jesus' sake; I'm going for the sake of a girl, with
+a face as sweet, and a heart as pure, as any accepted angel at the foot
+of the throne.  Mother, I want a cup of peach jelly, and some of that
+exceptionally fine cake you served at dinner, to take to our sick
+neighbour."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother left the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father, I want permission to cut and carry a generous chestnut branch,
+burred, and full fruited, to the young woman.  There is none save ours
+in this part of the country, and she may never have seen any, and be
+interested.  And I want that article about foot disease in horses, for
+Mr. Pryor.  I'll bring it back when he finishes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father folded the paper and handed it to Laddie, who slipped it in his
+pocket.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take the finest branch you can select," father said, and I almost fell
+over.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had carried those trees from Ohio, before I had been born, and
+mother said for years he wrapped them in her shawl in winter and held
+an umbrella over them in summer, and father always went red and grinned
+when she told it.  He was wild about trees, and bushes, so he made up
+his mind he'd have chestnuts.  He planted them one place, and if they
+didn't like it, he dug them up and set them another where he thought
+they could have what they needed and hadn't got the last place.
+Finally, he put them, on the fourth move, on a little sandy ridge
+across the road from the wood yard, and that was the spot.  They shot
+up, branched, spread, and one was a male and two were females, so the
+pollen flew, the burrs filled right, and we had a bag of chestnuts to
+send each child away from home, every Christmas.  The brown leaves and
+burrs were so lovely, mother cut one of the finest branches she could
+select and hung it above the steel engraving of "Lincoln Freeing the
+Slaves," in the boys' room, and nothing in the house was looked at
+oftener, or thought prettier.  That must have been what was in the back
+of Laddie's head when he wanted a branch for the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother came in with the cake and jelly in a little fancy basket, and
+Laddie said:  "Thank you!  Now every one wish me luck!  I'm going to
+ride to Pryors', knock at the door, and present these offerings with my
+compliments.  If I'm invited in, I'm going to make the effort of my
+life at driving the entering wedge toward social intercourse between
+Pryors and their neighbours.  If I'm not, I'll be back in thirty
+minutes and tell you what happened to me.  If they refuse my gifts, you
+shall have the jelly, Sarah; I'll give Mrs. Fall the olive branch,
+bring back the paper, and eat the cake to console my wounded spirits."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course every one laughed; they couldn't help it.  I watched father
+and he laughed hardest of the men, but mother was more stiff-lipped
+about it; she couldn't help a little, though.  And I noticed some of
+those women acted as if they had lost something.  Maybe it was a chance
+to gossip about Laddie, for he hadn't left them a thing to guess at,
+and mother says the reason gossip is so dreadful is because it is
+always GUESSWORK.  Well, that was all fair and plain.  He had told
+those people, our very best friends, what he thought about everything,
+the way they acted included.  He was carrying something to each member
+of the Pryor family, and he'd left a way to return joking and
+unashamed, if they wouldn't let him in.  He had fixed things so no one
+had anything to guess at, and it would look much worse for the Pryors
+than it would for him, if he did come back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I wondered if he had been born that smart, or if he learned it in
+college.  If he did, no wonder Leon was bound to go.  Come to think of
+it, though, mother said Laddie was always like that.  She said he never
+bit her when he nursed; he never mauled her as if she couldn't be hurt
+when he was little, he never tore his clothes and made extra work as he
+grew, and never in his life gave her an hour's uneasiness.  But I guess
+she couldn't have said that about uneasiness lately, for she couldn't
+keep from looking troubled as all of us followed to the gate to see him
+start.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How they joked, and tried to tease him!  But they couldn't get a breath
+ahead.  He shot back answers as fast as they could ask questions, while
+he cut the branch and untied the horse.  He gave the limb and basket to
+mother to hold, kissed her good-bye, and me too, before he mounted.
+With my arms around his neck&mdash;I never missed a chance to try to squeeze
+into him how I loved him&mdash;I whispered:  "Laddie, is it a secret any
+more?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He threw back his head and laughed the happiest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not the ghost of a secret!" he said.  "But you let me do the talking,
+until I tell you."  Then he went on right out loud: "I'm riding up the
+road waving the banner of peace.  If I suffer repulse, the same thing
+has happened to better men before, so I'll get a different banner and
+try again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie mounted, swept a circle in the road, dropped Flos on her knees
+in a bow, and waved the branch.  Leon began to sing at the top of his
+voice, "Nothing but leaves, nothing but leaves," while Laddie went
+flashing up the road.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The women went back to the house; the men stood around the gate,
+watched him from sight, talked about his horse, how he rode, and made
+wagers that he'd get shut out, like every one did, but they said if
+that happened he wouldn't come back.  Father was annoyed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You heard Laddie say he'd return immediately if they wouldn't let him
+in," he said.  "He's a man of his word.  He will either enter or come
+home at once."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was pitch dark and we had supper before some of them left; they
+never stayed so late.  After we came from church, father read the
+chapter and we were ready for bed; still Laddie hadn't come back.  And
+father liked it!  He just plain liked it!  He chuckled behind the
+Advocate until you could see it shake; but mother had very little to
+say, and her lips closed tight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At bedtime he said to mother:  "Well, they don't seem in a hurry about
+sending the boy back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you really think he WOULD be sent back?" asked mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not ordinarily," said father, "no!  If he had no brain, no wit, no
+culture, on an animal basis, a woman would look twice before she'd send
+him away; but with such fanatics as Pryors, one can't always tell what
+will happen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In a case like this, one can be reasonably certain," said mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't know what social position they occupied at home.  Their
+earmarks are all good.  We've no such notions here as they have."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank God for so much, at any rate," said mother.  "How old England
+would rise up and exult if she had a man in line with Laddie's body,
+blood and brain, to set on her throne.  This talk about class and
+social position makes me sick.  Men are men, and Laddie is as much
+above the customary timber found in kings and princes, physically and
+mentally, as the sky is above the earth.  Talk me no talk about class!
+If I catch it coming from any of mine, save you, I will beat it out of
+them.  He has admitted he's in love with the girl; the real question
+is, whether she's fit to be his wife."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should say she appears so," said father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Drat appearances!" cried mother.  "When it's a question of lifetime
+misery, and the soul's salvation of my son, if things go wrong, I've no
+time for appearances.  I want to know!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He might have known he would make her angry when he laughed.  She
+punched the pillow, and wouldn't say another word; so I went to sleep,
+and didn't miss anything that time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Next morning at breakfast Laddie was beaming, and father hardly waited
+to ask the blessing before he inquired:  "Well, how did you make it,
+son?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie laughed and answered:  "Altogether, it might have been much
+worse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was all he would say until Miss Amelia started to school, then he
+took me on his lap and talked as he buttoned my coat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thomas met me at the gate," he said, "and held my horse while I went
+to the door.  One of their women opened it, and I inquired for Mr.
+Pryor.  She said he was in the field looking at the horses, so I asked
+for Miss Pryor.  She came in a minute, so I gave her the branch, told
+her about it, and offered the jelly and cake for her mother.  The
+Princess invited me to enter.  I told her I couldn't without her
+father's permission, so I went to the field to see him.  The dogs were
+with him and he had the surprise of his life when his man-eaters rolled
+at my feet, and licked my hands."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did he say?" chuckled father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Told Thomas they'd been overfed and didn't amount to a brass farthing;
+to take them to the woods and shoot them.  Thomas said he'd see to it
+the very first thing in the morning, and then Mr. Pryor told him he
+would shoot him if he did."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Charming man to work for," said mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I told him I'd been at the house to carry a little gift to his
+wife and daughter, and to inquire if I might visit an hour, and as he
+was not there, I had come to the field to ask him.  Then I looked him
+in the eye and said:  'May I?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I'll warrant the women asked you to come in,' he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Miss Pryor was so kind,' I answered, 'but I enter no man's house
+without his permission.  May I talk with your daughter an hour, and
+your wife, if she cares to see me?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It makes no earthly difference to me,' he said, which was not
+gracious, but might have been worse, so I thanked him, and went back to
+the house.  When I knocked the second time, the Princess came, and I
+told her the word was that it made 'no difference to her father' if I
+came in, so she opened the door widely, took my hat and offered me a
+seat.  Then she went to the next room and said:  'Mother, father has
+given Mr. Stanton permission to pay us a call.  Do you feel able to
+meet him?'  She came at once, offering her hand and saying:  'I have
+already met Mr. Stanton so often, really, we should have the privilege
+of speaking.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did she mean by that?" asked mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She meant that I have haunted the road passing their place for two
+years, and she'd seen me so frequently that she came to recognize me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Umph!" said mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Laddie tell on!" I begged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I sharpened all the wits I had and went to work.  I never tried
+so hard in my life to be entertaining.  Of course I had to feel my way.
+I'd no idea what would interest a delicate, high-bred lady"&mdash;mother
+sniffed again&mdash;"so I had to search and probe, and go by guess until I
+saw a shade of interest, then I worked in more of the same.  It was
+easy enough to talk to the Princess&mdash;all young folks have a lot in
+common, we could get along on fifty topics; it was different with the
+housebound mother.  I did my best, and after a while Mr. Pryor came in.
+I asked him if any of his horses had been attacked with the trouble
+some of the neighbours were having, and told him what it was.  He had
+the grace to thank me.  He said he would tell Thomas not to tie his
+horse at the public hitching rack when he went to town, and once he got
+started, he was wild to talk with a man, and I'd no chance to say a
+word to the women.  He was interested in our colleges, state, and
+national laws, in land development, and everything that all live men
+are.  When a maid announced dinner I apologized for having stayed so
+long, and excused myself, because I had been so interested, but Mrs.
+Pryor merely said:  'I'm waiting to be offered your arm.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you should have seen me drop my hat and step up.  I did my best,
+and while I talked to him a little, I made it most to the women.  Any
+one could see they were starved for company, so I took the job of
+entertaining them.  I told some college jokes, funny things that had
+happened in the neighbourhood, and everything of interest I could think
+up.  I know we were at the table for two hours with things coming and
+going on silver platters."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother sat straight suddenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just what did they have to eat, and how did they serve it?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Couldn't tell if I were to be shot for it, mummy," said Laddie.
+"Forgive me!  Next time I'll take notes for you.  This first plunge, I
+had to use all my brains, not to be a bore to them; and to handle food
+and cutlery as the women did.  It's quite a process, but as they were
+served first, I could do right by waiting.  I never was where things
+were done quite so elaborately before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And they didn't know they would have company until you went to the
+table?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, they must have thought likely, there was a place for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Umph!" said mother.  "Fine idea!  Then any one who drops in can be
+served, and see that they are not a mite of trouble.  Candace, always
+an extra place after this!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father just shouted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought you'd get something out of it!" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Happy to have justified your faith!" replied mother calmly.  "Go on,
+son!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all!" said Laddie.  "We left the table and talked an hour more.
+The women asked me to come again; he didn't say anything on that
+subject; but when he ordered my horse, he asked the Princess if she
+would enjoy a little exercise, and she said she would, so he told
+Thomas to bring their horses, and we rode around the section, the
+Princess and I ahead, Mr. Pryor following.  Where the road was good and
+the light fine enough that there was no danger of laming a horse, we
+dropped back, one on either side of him, so we could talk.  Mrs. Pryor
+ate the cake and said it was fine; and the 'conserve,' she called it,
+delicious as she ever had tasted.  She said all our fruits here had
+much more flavour than at home; she thought it was the dryer climate
+and more sunshine.  She sent her grateful thanks, and she wants your
+recipe before next preserving time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother just beamed.  My! but she did love to have the things she
+cooked, bragged on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Possibly she'd like my strawberries?" she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There isn't a doubt about it," said Laddie.  "I've yet to see the
+first person who doesn't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is that all?" asked mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can think of nothing more at this minute," answered Laddie.  "If
+anything comes to my mind later, I won't forget to tell you.  Oh yes,
+there was one thing:  You couldn't keep Mr. Pryor from talking about
+Leon.  He must have taken a great fancy to him.  He talked until he
+worried the Princess, and she tried to keep him away from the subject,
+but his mind seemed to run on it constantly.  When we were riding she
+talked quite as much as he, and it will hustle us to think what the
+little scamp did, any bigger than they do.  Of course, father, you
+understood the price Mr. Pryor made on one of his very finest colts was
+a joke.  There's a strain of Arab in the father&mdash;he showed me the
+record&mdash;and the mother is bluegrass.  There you get gentleness and
+endurance combined with speed and nerve.  I'd trade Flos for that colt
+as it stands to-day.  There's nothing better on earth in the way of
+horse.  His offer is practically giving it away.  I know, with the
+records to prove its pedigree, what that colt would bring him in any
+city market."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't like it," said mother.  "I want Leon to have a horse, but a
+boy in a first experience, and reckless as he is, doesn't need a horse
+like that, for one thing, and what is more important, I refuse to be
+put under any obligations to Pryors."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's the reason Mr. Pryor asked anything at all for the horse.  It
+is my opinion that he would be greatly pleased to give it to Leon, if
+he could do what he liked."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, that's precisely the thing he can't do in this family," said
+mother sternly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you think, father?" asked Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think Amen! to that proposition," said father; "but I would have to
+take time to thresh it out completely.  It appeals to me that Leon is
+old enough to recognize the value of the animal; and that the care of
+it would develop and strengthen his character.  It would be a
+responsibility that would steady him.  You could teach him to tend and
+break it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Break it!" cried Laddie.  "Break it!  Why father, he's riding it
+bareback all over the Pryor meadow now, and jumping it over logs.
+Whenever he leaves, it follows him to the fence, and the Princess says
+almost any hour of the day you look out you can see it pacing up and
+down watching this way and whinnying for him to come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And your best judgment is&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie laughed as he tied my hood strings.  "Well I don't feel about
+the Pryors as the rest of you do," he said.  "If the money isn't
+claimed inside the time you specified, I would let Leon and Mr. Pryor
+make their own bargain.  The boy won't know for years that it is
+practically a gift, and it would please Mr. Pryor immensely.  Now run,
+or you'll be late!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had to go, so I didn't know how they settled it, but if they wouldn't
+let Leon have that horse, it was downright mean.  What if we were under
+obligations to Mr. Pryor?  We were to Sarah Hood, and half the people
+we knew, and what was more, we LIKED to be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When I came from school that night father had been to town.  He had an
+ax and was opening a big crate, containing two of the largest, bluest
+geese you ever saw.  Laddie said being boxed that way and seeing them
+so close made them look so big; really, they were no finer than
+Pryors', where he had got the address of the place that sold them.
+Mother was so pleased.  She said she had needed a new strain, for a
+long time, to improve her feathers; now she would have pillows worth
+while, in a few years.  They put them in the barn where our geese
+stayed over night, and how they did scream.  That is, one of them did;
+the other acted queerly and father said to Laddie that he was afraid
+the trip was hard on it.  Laddie said it might have been hurt, and
+mother was worried too.  Before she had them an hour, she had sold all
+our ganders; spring had come, she had saved the blue goose eggs, set
+them under a hen, raised the goslings with the little chickens, never
+lost one, picked them and made a new pair of pillows too fine for any
+one less important than a bishop, or a judge, or Dr. Fenner to sleep
+on.  Then she began saving for a featherbed.  And still the goose
+didn't act as spry or feel as good as the gander.  He stuck up his
+head, screamed, spread his wings and waved them, and the butts looked
+so big and hard, I was not right certain whether it would be safe to
+tease him or not.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The first person who came to see them was Sarah Hood, and she left with
+the promise of a pair as soon as mother could raise them.  Father said
+the only reason mother didn't divide her hair with Sarah Hood was
+because it was fast, and she couldn't.  Mother said gracious goodness!
+she'd be glad to get rid of some of it if she could, and of course
+Sarah should have first chance at it.  Hadn't she kept her over night
+so she could see her new home when she was rested, and didn't she come
+with her, and help her get settled, and had she ever failed when we had
+a baby, or sickness, or trouble, or thrashers, or a party?  Of course
+she'd gladly divide, even the hair of her head, with Sarah Hood.  And
+father said, "Yes, he guessed she would, and come to think of it, he'd
+just as soon spare Sarah part of his," and then they both laughed, when
+it was nothing so very funny that I could see.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next caller the geese had was Mrs. Freshett.  My! she thought they
+were big and fine.  Mother promised her a couple of eggs to set under a
+hen.  Father said she was gradually coming down the scale of her
+feelings, and before two weeks she'd give Isaac Thomas, at least, a
+quill for a pen.  Almost no one wrote with them any more, but often
+father made a few, and showed us how to use them.  He said they were
+gone with candles, sand boxes, and snuff.  Mother said she had no use
+for snuff, but candles were not gone, she'd make and use them to the
+day of her death, as they were the nicest light ever invented to carry
+from room to room, or when you only wanted to sit and think.  Father
+said there was really no good pen except the quill you sharpened
+yourself; and while he often used steel ones like we children had at
+school to write to the brothers and sisters away, and his family, he
+always kept a few choice quills in the till of his chest, and when he
+wrote a deed, or any valuable paper, where there was a deal with money,
+he used them.  He said it lent the dignity of a past day to an
+important occasion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After mother and Mrs. Freshett had talked over every single thing about
+the geese, and that they were like Pryors' had been settled, Mrs.
+Freshett said:  "Since he told about it before all of us, and started
+out the way he did, would it be amiss to ask how Laddie got on at
+Pryors'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just the way I thought he would," said mother.  "He stayed until all
+of us were in bed, and I'd never have known when he came in, if it were
+not a habit of his always to come to my door to see if I'm sleeping.
+Sometimes I'm wakeful, and if he pommels my pillow good, brings me a
+drink, and rubs my head a few strokes with his strong, cool hands, I
+can settle down and have a good night's rest.  I was awake when he
+came, or I'd never have known.  It was almost midnight; but they sat
+two hours at the table, and then all of them rode."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not the Missus?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh no!  She's not strong enough.  She really has incurable heart
+trouble, the worst kind there is; her daughter told me so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then they better look out," said Mrs. Freshett.  "She is likely to
+keel over at a breath."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They must know it.  That's why she keeps so quiet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And they had him to supper?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was a dinner served at night.  Yes.  He took Mrs. Pryor in on his
+arm, and it was like a grand party, just as they fixed for themselves,
+alone.  Waiters, and silver trays, and things carried in and out in
+courses."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My land!  Well, I s'pose he had enough schoolin' to get him through it
+all right!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My mother's face grew red.  She never left any one in doubt as to what
+she meant.  Father said that "was the Dutch of it."  And mother always
+answered that if any one living could put things plainer than the
+English, she would like to hear them do it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He certainly had," said mother, "or they wouldn't have invited him to
+come again.  And all mine, Mrs. Freshett, knew how to sit properly at
+the table, and manage a knife, fork and napkin, before they ever took a
+meal away from home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No 'fence," laughed Mrs. Freshett.  "I meant that maybe his years of
+college schoolin' had give him ways more like theirs than most of us
+have.  For all the money it takes to send a boy to college, he ought to
+get somethin' out of it more than jest fillin' his head with figgers,
+an' stars, an' oratin'; an' most always you can see that he does."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is contact with cultivated people," said mother.  "You are always
+influenced by it, without knowing it often."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe you are, bein' so fine yourself," said Mrs. Freshett.  "An' me
+too, I never get among my betters that I don't carry home a lot I put
+right into daily use, an' nobody knows it plainer.  I come here
+expectin' to learn things that help me, an' when I go home I know I
+have."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, thank you," said mother.  "I'm sure that is a very nice
+compliment, and I wish I really could feel that it is well deserved."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh I guess you do!" said Mrs. Freshett laughing.  "I often noticed you
+makin' a special effort to teach puddin' heads like me somethin', an' I
+always thank you for it.  There's a world in right teachin'.  I never
+had any.  So all I can pick up an' hammer into mine is a gain for me
+an' them.  If my Henry had lived, an' come out anything like that boy
+o' yourn an' the show he made last Sunday, I'd do well if I didn't
+swell up an' bust with pride.  An' the little tow-haired strip, takin'
+the gun an' startin' out alone after a robber, even if he wa'n't much
+of a man, that was downright spunky.  If my boys will come out anywhere
+near like yourn, I'll be glad."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know how my boys will come out," said mother.  "But I work,
+pray, hope, and hang to them; that's all I know to do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, if they don't come out right, they ought to be bumped!" said
+Mrs. Freshett.  "After all the chances they've had!  I don' know jest
+how Freshett was brung up, but I'd no chance at all.  My folks&mdash;well, I
+guess the less said&mdash;little pitchers, you know!  I can't see as I was
+to blame.  I was the youngest, an' I knew things was wrong.  I fought
+to go to school, an' pap let me enough that I saw how other people
+lived.  Come night I'd go to the garret, an' bar the trapdoor; but
+there would be times when I couldn't help seein' what was goin' on.
+How'd you like chances such as that for a girl of yourn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dreadful!" said mother.  "Mrs. Freshett, please do be careful!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure!" laughed Mrs. Freshett.  "I was jest goin' to tell you about me
+an' Josiah.  He come to our house one night, a stranger off the road.
+He said he was sick, an' tired, an' could he have a bed.  Mother said,
+'No, for him to move on.'  He tried an' he couldn't.  They was
+somethin' about him&mdash;well, you know how them things go!  I wa'n't only
+sixteen, but I felt so sorry for him, all fever burned and mumblin', I
+helped pap put him to bed, an' doctored him all I could.  Come mornin'
+he was a sick man.  Pap went for the county doctor, an' he took jest
+one look an' says: 'Small pox!  All of ye git!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was bound I wouldn't go, but pap made me, an' the doctor said he'd
+send a man who'd had it; so I started, but I felt so bad, come a chanct
+when they got to Groveville, I slipped out an' went back.  The man
+hadn't come, so I set to work the best I knowed.  'Fore long Josiah was
+a little better an' he asked who I was, an' where my folks went, an' I
+told him, an' he asked WHY I came back an' I didn't know what to say,
+so I jest hung my head an' couldn't face him.  After a while he says,
+'All right!  I guess I got this sized up.  If you'll stay an' nuss me
+through, I'll be well enough to pull you out, by the time you get it,
+an' soon as you're able we'll splice, if you say so.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Marry me, you mean?' says I.  They wa'n't ever any talk about
+marryin' at our house.  'Sure!' says he.  'You're a mighty likely
+lookin' girl!  I'll do fair by ye.'  An' he always has, too!  But I
+didn't feel right to let him go it blind, so I jest up and says.  'You
+wouldn't if you knowed my folks!'  'You look as decent as I do,' says
+he; 'I'll chance it!'  Then I tole him I was as good as I was born, an'
+he believed me, an' he always has, an' I was too!  So I nussed him, but
+I didn't make the job of it he did.  You 'member he is pitted
+considerable.  He was so strong I jest couldn't keep him from
+disfigerin' himself, but he tied me.  I begged to be loose, an' he
+wouldn't listen, so I got a clean face, only three little scars, an'
+they ain't deep to speak of.  He says he looks like a piece of side
+meat, but say! they ain't nothin' the matter with his looks to me!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The nuss man never did come, but the county doctor passed things in
+the winder, till I was over the worst, an' Josiah sent for a preacher
+an' he married us through the winder&mdash;I got the writin's to show, all
+framed an' proper.  Josiah said he'd see I got all they was in it long
+that line, anyway.  When I was well, hanged if he didn't perdooce a wad
+from his clothes before they burnt 'em, an' he got us new things to
+wear, an' a horse, an' wagon, an' we driv away here where we thought we
+could start right, an' after we had the land, an' built the cabin, an'
+jest as happy as heart could wish, long come a man I'd made mad once,
+an' he tole everythin' up and down.  Josiah was good about it.  He
+offered to sell the land, an' pull up an' go furder.  'What's the use?'
+says I.  'Hundreds know it.  We can't go so far it won't be like to
+follow us; le's stay here an' fight it.'  'All right,' says Josiah, but
+time an' ag'in he has offered to go, if I couldn't make it.  'Hang on a
+little longer,' says I, every time he knew I was snubbed an' slighted.
+I never tole what he didn't notice.  I tried church, when my children
+began to git a size I wanted 'em to have right teachin', an' you come
+an' welcomed me an' you been my friend, an' now the others is comin'
+over at last, an' visitin' me, an' they ain't a thing more I want in
+life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am so glad!" said mother.  "Oh my dear, I am so glad!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Goin' right home an' tell that to Josiah," said Mrs. Freshett, jumping
+up laughing and crying like, "an' mebby I'll jest spread wings and fly!
+I never was so happy in all my life as I was Sunday, when you ast me
+before all of them, so cordial like, an' says I to Josiah, 'We'll go
+an' try it once,' an' we come an' nobody turned a cold shoulder on us,
+an' I wa'n't wearin' specks to see if they did, for I never knowed him
+so happy in all his days.  Orter heard him whistle goin' home, an' he's
+tryin' all them things he learned, on our place, an' you can see it
+looks a heap better a'ready, an' now he's talkin' about buildin' in the
+spring.  I knowed he had money, but he never mentioned buildin' before,
+an' I always thought it was bekase he 'sposed likely we'd have to move
+on, some time.  'Pears now as if we can settle, an' live like other
+folks, after all these years.  I knowed ye didn't want me to talk, but
+I had to tell you!  When you ast us to the weddin', and others began
+comin' round, says I to Josiah, 'Won't she be glad to know that my
+skirts is clear, an' I did as well as I could?'  An' he says, 'That she
+will!  An' more am I,' says he.  'I mighty proud of you,' says he.
+Proud!  Think of that!  Miss Stanton, I'd jest wade fire and blood for
+you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh my dear!" said mother.  "What a dreadful thing to say!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gimme the chanct, an' watch if I don't," said Mrs. Freshett.  "Now,
+Josiah is proud I stuck it out!  Now, I can have a house!  Now, my
+children can have all the show we can raise to give 'em!  I'm done
+cringin' an' dodgin'!  I've always done my best; henceforth I mean to
+hold up my head an' say so.  I sure can't be held for what was done
+'fore I was on earth, or since neither.  You've given me my show, I'm
+goin' to take it, but if you want to know what's in my heart about you,
+gimme any kind of a chanct to prove, an' see if I don't pony right up
+to it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother laughed until the tears rolled, she couldn't help it.  She took
+Mrs. Freshett in her arms and hugged her tight, and kissed her mighty
+near like she does Sarah Hood.  Mrs. Freshett threw her arms around
+mother, and looked over her shoulder, and said to me, "Sis, when you
+grow up, always take a chanct on welcomin' the stranger, like your maw
+does, an' heaven's bound to be your home!  My, but your maw is a woman
+to be proud of!" she said, hugging mother and patting her on the back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All of us are proud of her!" I boasted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I doubt if you are proud enough!" cried Mrs. Freshett.  "I have my
+doubts!  I don't see how people livin' with her, an' seein' her every
+day, are in a shape to know jest what she can do for a person in the
+place I was in.  I have my doubts!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That night when I went home from school mother was worrying over the
+blue goose.  When we went to feed, she told Leon that she was afraid it
+was weak, and not getting enough to eat when it fed with the others.
+She said after the work was finished, to take it out alone, and give it
+all it would eat; so when the horses were tended, the cows milked,
+everything watered, and the barn ready to close for the night, Laddie
+took the milk to the house, while Leon and I caught the blue goose,
+carried her to the well, and began to shell corn.  She was starved to
+death, almost.  She ate a whole ear in no time and looked for more, so
+Leon sent me after another.  By the time that was most gone she began
+to eat slower, and stick her bill in the air to help the grains slip
+down, so I told Leon I thought she had enough.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No such thing!" said Leon.  "You distinctly heard mother tell me to
+give her 'all she would eat.'  She's eating, isn't she?  Go bring
+another ear!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So she was, but I was doubtful about more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon said I better mind or he would tell mother, so I got it.  She
+didn't begin on it with any enthusiasm.  She stuck her bill higher,
+stretched her neck longer, and she looked so funny when she did it,
+that we just shrieked.  Then Leon reached over, took her by the bill,
+and stripped her neck to help her swallow, and as soon as he let go,
+she began to eat again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see!" said Leon, "she's been starved.  She can't get enough.  I
+must help her!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So he did help her every little bit.  By that time we were interested
+in seeing how much she could hold; and she looked so funny that Leon
+sent me for more corn; but I told him I thought what she needed now was
+water, so we held her to the trough, and she tried to drink, but she
+couldn't swallow much.  We set her down beside the corn, and she went
+to eating again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go it, old mill-hopper!" cried Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Right then there was an awful commotion in the barn, and from the
+squealing we knew one of the horses was loose, and fighting the others.
+We ran to fix them, and had a time to get Jo back into his stall, and
+tied.  Before we had everything safe, the supper bell rang, and I bet
+Leon a penny I could reach the house while he shut the door and got
+there.  We forgot every single thing about the goose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At supper mother asked Leon if he fed the goose all she would eat, and
+I looked at him guilty-like, for I remembered we hadn't put her back.
+He frowned at me cross as a bear, and I knew that meant he had
+remembered, and would slip back and put her inside when he finished his
+supper, so I didn't say anything.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't feed her ALL she would eat!" said Leon.  "If I had, she'd be
+at it yet.  She was starved sure enough!  You never saw anything like
+the corn she downed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well I declare!" said mother.  "Now after this, take her out alone,
+for a few days, and give her as much as she wants."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right!" chuckled Leon, because it was a lot of fun to see her run
+her bill around, and gobble up the corn, and stick up her head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next day was Saturday, so after breakfast I went with Leon to drive
+the sheep and geese to the creek to water; the trough was so high it
+was only for the horses and cattle; when we let out the geese, the blue
+one wasn't there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh Leon, did you forget to come back and put her in?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes I did!" he said.  "I meant to when I looked at you to keep still,
+and I started to do it, but Sammy Deam whistled, so I went down in the
+orchard to see what he wanted, and we got to planning how to get up a
+fox chase, and I stayed until father called for night, and then I ran
+and forgot all about the blame old goose."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh Leon!  Where is she?  What will mother say? 'Spose a fox got her!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It wouldn't help me any if it had, after I was to blame for leaving
+her outside.  Blast a girl!  If you ever amounted to anything, you
+could have put her in while I fixed the horses.  At least you could
+have told me to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I stood there dumblike and stared at him.  He has got the awfulest way
+of telling the truth when he is scared or provoked.  Of course I should
+have thought of the goose when he was having such a hard fight with the
+horses.  If I'd been like he was, I'd have told him that he was older,
+mother told HIM to do it, and it wasn't my fault; but in my heart I
+knew he did have his hands full, and if you're your brother's keeper,
+you ought to HELP your brother remember.  So I stood gawking, while
+Leon slowly turned whiter and whiter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We might as well see if we can find her," he said at last, so slow and
+hopeless like it made my heart ache.  So he started around the straw
+stack one way, and I the other, looking into all the holes, and before
+I had gone far I had a glimpse of her, and it scared me so I screamed,
+for her head was down, and she didn't look right.  Leon came running
+and pulled her out.  The swelled corn rolled in a little trail after
+her, and the pigs ran up and began to eat it.  Pigs are named righter
+than anything else I know.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Busted!" cried Leon in tones of awe; about the worst awe you ever
+heard, and the worst bust you ever saw.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From bill to breast she was wide open, and the hominy spilling.  We
+just stood staring at her, and then Leon began to kick the pigs;
+because it would be no use to kick the goose; she would never know.
+Then he took her up, carried her into the barn, and put her on the
+floor where the other geese had stayed all night.  We stood and looked
+at her some more, as if looking and hoping would make her get up and be
+alive again.  But there's nothing in all this world so useless as
+wishing dead things would come alive; we had to do something.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you going to tell mother?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shut up!" said Leon.  "I'm trying to think."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll say it was as much my fault as yours.  I'll go with you.  I'll
+take half whatever they do to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Little fool!" said Leon.  "What good would that do me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know what they cost?  Could you get another with some of your
+horse money?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I saw it coming and dodged again, before I remembered the Crusaders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right!" I said.  "If that's the way you are going to act, Smarty,
+I'll lay all the blame on you; I won't help you a bit, and I don't care
+if you are whipped until the blood runs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I went out of the barn and slammed the door.  For a minute I felt
+better; but it was a short time.  I SAID that to be mean, but I did
+care.  I cared dreadfully; I was partly to blame, and I knew it.
+Coming around the barn, I met Laddie, and he saw in a flash I was in
+trouble, so he stopped and asked:  "What now, Chicken?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come into the barn where no one will hear us," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So we went around the outside, entered at the door on the embankment,
+and he sat in the wheelbarrow on the threshing floor while I told him.
+I thought I felt badly enough, but after I saw Laddie, it grew worse,
+for I remembered we were short of money that fall, that the goose was a
+fine, expensive one, and how proud mother was of her, and how she'd be
+grieved, and that was trouble for sure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Run along and play!" said Laddie, "and don't tell any one else if you
+can help it.  I'll hide the goose, and see if I can get another in time
+to take the place of this one, so mother won't be worried."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I walked to the house slowly, but I was afraid to enter.  When you are
+all choked up, people are sure to see it, and ask fool questions.  So I
+went around to the gate and stood there looking up and down the road,
+and over the meadow toward the Big Woods; and all at once, in one of
+those high, regular bugle calls, like they mostly scream in spring, one
+of Pryors' ganders split the echoes for a mile; maybe farther.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was across the road and slinking down inside the meadow fence before
+I knew it.  There was no thought or plan.  I started for Pryors' and
+went straight ahead, only I kept out of line with our kitchen windows.
+I tramped through the slush, ice, and crossed fields where I was afraid
+of horses; but when I got to the top of the Pryor backyard fence, I
+stuck there, for the bulldogs were loose, and came raving at me.  I was
+going to be eaten alive, for I didn't know the word Laddie did; and
+those dogs climbed a fence like a person; I saw them the time Leon
+brought back Even So.  I was thinking what a pity it was, after every
+one had grown accustomed to me, and had begun loving me, that I should
+be wasted for dog feed, when Mr. Pryor came to the door, and called
+them; they didn't mind, so he came to the fence, and crossest you ever
+heard, every bit as bad as the dogs, he cried:  "Whose brat are you,
+and what are you doing here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I meant to tell him; but you must have a minute after a thing like that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God of my life!" he fairly frothed.  "What did anybody send a dumb
+child here for?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dumb child!"  I didn't care if Mr. Pryor did wear a Crown of Glory.
+It wasn't going to do him one particle of good, unless he was found in
+the way of the Lord.  "Dumb child!"  I was no more dumb than he was,
+until his bulldogs scared me so my heart got all tangled up with my
+stomach, my lungs, and my liver.  That made me mad, and there was
+nothing that would help me to loosen up and talk fast, like losing my
+temper.  I wondered what kind of a father he had.  If he'd been stood
+against the wall and made to recite, "Speak gently," as often as all of
+us, perhaps he'd have remembered the verse that says:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Speak gently to the little child;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Its love be sure to gain;</SPAN><BR>
+Teach it in accents soft and mild;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">It may not long remain."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+I should think not, if it had any chance at all to get away!  I was so
+angry by that time I meant to tell him what I thought.  Polite or not
+polite, I'd take a switching if I had to, but I wasn't going to stand
+that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You haven't got any God in your life," I reminded him, "and no one
+sent me here.  I came to see the Princess, because I'm in awful trouble
+and I hoped maybe she could fix up a way to help me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye Gods!" he cried.  He would stick to calling on God, whether he
+believed in Him or not.  "If it isn't Nimrod!  I didn't recognize you
+in all that bundling."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Probably he didn't know it, but Nimrod was from the Bible too!  By
+bundling, he meant my hood and coat.  He helped me from the fence, sent
+the bulldogs rolling&mdash;sure enough he did kick them, and they didn't
+like it either&mdash;took my hand and led me straight into the house, and
+the Princess was there, and a woman who was her mother no doubt, and he
+said:  "Pamela, here is our little neighbour, and she says she's in
+trouble, and she thinks you may be of some assistance to her.  Of
+course you will be glad if you can."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Surely!" said the Princess, and she introduced me to her mother, so I
+bowed the best I knew, and took off my wet mitten, dirty with climbing
+fences, to shake hands with her.  She was so gracious and lovely I
+forgot what I went after.  The Princess brought a cloth and wiped the
+wet from my shoes and stockings, and asked me if I wouldn't like a cup
+of hot tea to keep me from taking a chill.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've been much wetter than this," I told her, "and I never have taken
+a chill, and anyway my throat's too full of trouble to drink."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, you poor child!" said the Princess.  "Tell me quickly!  Is your
+mother ill again?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not now, but she's going to be as soon as she finds out," I said, and
+then I told them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They all listened without a sound until I got where Leon helped the
+goose eat, and from that on Mr. Pryor laughed until you could easily
+see that he had very little feeling for suffering humanity.  It was
+funny enough when we fed her, but now that she was bursted wide open
+there was nothing amusing about it; and to roar when a visitor plainly
+told you she was in awful trouble, didn't seem very good manners to me.
+The Princess and her mother never even smiled; and before I had told
+nearly all of it, Thomas was called to hitch the Princess' driving
+cart, and she took me to their barnyard to choose the goose that looked
+most like mother's, and all of them seemed like hers, so we took the
+first one Thomas could catch, put it into a bag in the back of the
+cart, and then we got in and started for our barn.  As we reached the
+road, I said to her:  "You'd better go past Dovers', for if we come
+down our Little Hill they will see us sure; it's baking day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right!" said the Princess, so we went the long way round the
+section, but goodness me! when she drove no way was far.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When we were opposite our barn she stopped, hitched her horse to the
+fence, and we climbed over, and slipping behind the barn, carried the
+goose around to the pen and put it in with ours.  She said she wanted
+the broken one, because her father would enjoy seeing it.  I didn't see
+how he could!  We were ready to slip out, when our geese began to run
+at the new one, hiss and scream, and make such a racket that Laddie and
+Leon both caught us.  They looked at the goose, at me, the Princess,
+and each other, and neither said a word.  She looked back a little bit,
+and then she laughed as hard as she could.  Leon grew red, and he
+grinned ashamed-like, so she laughed worse than ever.  Laddie spoke to
+me:  "You went to Mr. Pryor's and asked for that goose?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She did not!" said the Princess before I could answer.  "She never
+asked for anything.  She was making a friendly morning call and in the
+course of her visit she told about the pathetic end of the goose that
+was expected to lay the golden egg&mdash;I mean stuff the Bishop's
+pillow&mdash;and as we have a large flock of blue geese, father gave her
+one, and he had the best time he's had in years doing it.  I wouldn't
+have had him miss the fun he got from it for any money.  He laughed
+like home again.  Now I must slip away before any one sees me, and
+spoils our secret.  Leon, lad, you can go to the house and tell your
+little mother that the feeding stopped every pain her goose had, and
+hereafter it looks to you as if she'd be all right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Pryor," said Leon, "did you care about what I said at you in
+church that day?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Thou art all fair, my love.  There is no spot in thee.'  Well, it was
+a little pointed, but since you ask a plain question, I have survived
+it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm awfully sorry," said Leon.  "Of course I never would, if I'd known
+you could be this nice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess looked at Laddie and almost gasped, and then both of them
+laughed.  Leon saw that he had told her he was sorry he said she was
+"fair, and no spot in her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh I don't mean that!" he said.  "What I do mean is that I thank you
+awful much for the goose, and helping me out like such a brick of a
+good fellow, and what I wish is, that I was as old as Laddie, and he'd
+hump himself if he got to be your beau."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess almost ran.  Laddie and I followed to the road, where he
+unhitched the horse and helped her in.  Then he stood stroking its
+neck, as he held the bridle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know what to say!" said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In such case, I would counsel silence," advised the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope you understand how I thank you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I fail to see what for.  Father gave the goose to Little Sister.  Her
+thanks and Leon's are more than enough for him.  We had great sport."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I insist on adding mine.  Deep and fervent!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You take everything so serious.  Can't you see the fun of this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Laddie.  "But if you can, I am glad, and I'm thankful for
+anything that gives me a glimpse of you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bye, Little Sister," said the Princess, and when she loosened the
+lines the mud flew a rod high.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap11"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XI
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Keeping Christmas Our Way
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"I remember, I remember<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">How my childhood fleeted by,&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+The mirth of its December,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And the warmth of its July."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+When dusk closed in it would be Christmas eve.  All day I had three
+points&mdash;a chair beside the kitchen table, a lookout melted through the
+frost on the front window, and the big sitting-room fireplace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All the perfumes of Araby floated from our kitchen that day.  There was
+that delicious smell of baking flour from big snowy loaves of bread,
+light biscuit, golden coffee cake, and cinnamon rolls dripping a waxy
+mixture of sugar, butter, and spice, much better than the finest
+butterscotch ever brought from the city.  There was the tempting odour
+of boiling ham and baking pies.  The air was filled with the smell of
+more herbs and spices than I knew the names of, that went into
+mincemeat, fruit cake, plum pudding, and pies.  There was a teasing
+fragrance in the spiced vinegar heating for pickles, a reminder of
+winesap and rambo in the boiling cider, while the newly opened bottles
+of grape juice filled the house with the tang of Concord and muscadine.
+It seemed to me I never got nicely fixed where I could take a sly dip
+in the cake dough or snipe a fat raisin from the mincemeat but Candace
+would say:  "Don't you suppose the backlog is halfway down the lane?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I hurried to the front window, where I could see through my melted
+outlook on the frosted pane, across the west eighty to the woods, where
+father and Laddie were getting out the Christmas backlog.  It was too
+bitterly cold to keep me there while they worked, but Laddie said that
+if I would watch, and come to meet them, he would take me up, and I
+might ride home among the Christmas greens on the log.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So I flattened my nose against the pane and danced and fidgeted until
+those odours teased me back to the kitchen; and no more did I get
+nicely located beside a jar of pudding sauce than Candace would object
+to the place I had hung her stocking.  It was my task, my delightful
+all-day task, to hang the stockings.  Father had made me a peg for each
+one, and I had ten feet of mantel front along which to arrange them.
+But it was no small job to do this to every one's satisfaction.  No
+matter what happened to any one else, Candace had to be pleased: for
+did not she so manage that most fowls served on mother's table went
+gizzardless to the carving?  She knew and acknowledged the great
+importance of trying cookies, pies, and cake while they were hot.  She
+was forever overworked and tired, yet she always found time to make
+gingerbread women with currant buttons on their frocks, and pudgy
+doughnut men with clove eyes and cigars of cinnamon.  If my own
+stocking lay on the hearth, Candace's had to go in a place that
+satisfied her&mdash;that was one sure thing.  Besides, I had to make up to
+her for what Leon did, because she was crying into the corner of her
+apron about that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He slipped in and stole her stocking, hung it over the broomstick, and
+marched around the breakfast table singing to the tune of&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Ha, ha, ha, who wouldn't go&mdash;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Up on the housetop click, click, click?</SPAN><BR>
+Down through the chimney,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">With good Saint Nick&mdash;&mdash;"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+words he made up himself.  He walked just fast enough that she couldn't
+catch him, and sang as he went:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Ha, ha, ha, good Saint Nick,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Come and look at this stocking, quick!</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+If you undertake its length to fill,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">You'll have to bust a ten-dollar bill.</SPAN><BR>
+Who does it belong to?  Candace Swartz.<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Bring extra candy,&mdash;seven quarts&mdash;&mdash;"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+She got so angry she just roared, so father made Leon stop it, but I
+couldn't help laughing myself.  Then we had to pet her all day, so
+she'd cheer up, and not salt the Christmas dinner with her tears.  I
+never saw such a monkey as Leon!  I trotted out to comfort her, and
+snipped bites, until I wore a triangle on the carpet between the
+kitchen and the mantel, the mantel and the window, and the window and
+the kitchen, while every hour things grew more exciting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There never had been such a flurry at our house since I could remember;
+for to-morrow would be Christmas and bring home all the children, and a
+house full of guests.  My big brother, Jerry, who was a lawyer in the
+city, was coming with his family, and so were Frank, Elizabeth, and
+Lucy with theirs, and of course Sally and Peter&mdash;I wondered if she
+would still be fixing his tie&mdash;and Shelley came yesterday, blushing
+like a rose, and she laughed if you pointed your finger at her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something had happened to her in Chicago.  I wasn't so sure as I had
+been about a city being such a dreadful place of noise, bad air, and
+wicked people.  Nothing had hurt Shelley.  She had grown so much that
+you could see she was larger.  Her hair and face&mdash;all of Shelley just
+shone.  Her eyes danced, she talked and laughed all the time, and she
+hugged every one who passed her.  She never loved us so before.  Leon
+said she must have been homesick and coming back had given her a spell.
+I did hope it would be a bad one, and last forever.  I would have liked
+for all our family to have had a spell if it would have made them act
+and look like Shelley.  The Princess was not a speck lovelier, and she
+didn't act any nicer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If I could have painted, I'd have made a picture of Shelley with a
+circle of light above her head like the one of the boy Jesus where He
+talked with the wise men in the temple.  I asked father if he noticed
+how much prettier and nicer she was, and he said he did.  Then I asked
+him if he thought now, that a city was such a bad place to live in, and
+he said where she was had nothing to do with it, the same thing would
+happen here, or anywhere, when life's greatest experience came to a
+girl.  That was all he would say, but figuring it out was easy.  The
+greatest experience that happened to our girls was when they married,
+like Sally, so it meant that Shelley had gone and fallen in love with
+that lawyer man, and she liked sitting on the sofa with him, and no
+doubt she fixed his ties.  But if any one thought I would tell anything
+I saw when he came they were badly mistaken.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All of us rushed around like we were crazy.  If father and mother
+hadn't held steady and kept us down, we might have raised the roof.  We
+were all so glad about getting Leon and the money back; mother hadn't
+been sick since the fish cured her; the new blue goose was so like the
+one that had burst, even father never noticed any difference; all the
+children were either home or coming, and after we had our gifts and the
+biggest dinner we ever had, Christmas night all of us would go to the
+schoolhouse to see our school try to spell down three others to whom
+they had sent saucy invitations to come and be beaten.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother sat in the dining-room beside the kitchen door, so that she
+could watch the baking, brewing, pickling, and spicing.  It took four
+men to handle the backlog, which I noticed father pronounced every year
+"just a little the finest we ever had," and Laddie strung the house
+with bittersweet, evergreens, and the most beautiful sprays of myrtle
+that he raked from under the snow.  Father drove to town in the sleigh,
+and the list of things to be purchased mother gave him as a reminder
+was almost a yard long.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The minute they finished the outdoor work Laddie and Leon began
+bringing in baskets of apples, golden bellflowers, green pippins, white
+winter pearmains, Rhode Island greenings, and striped rambos all
+covered with hoarfrost, yet not frozen, and so full of juice you had to
+bite into them carefully or they dripped and offended mother.  These
+they washed and carried to the cellar ready for use.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then they cracked big dishes of nuts; and popped corn that popped with
+the most resounding pops in all my experience&mdash;popped a tubful, and
+Laddie melted maple sugar and poured over it and made big balls of
+fluff and sweetness.  He took a pan and filled it with grains, selected
+one at a time, the very largest and whitest, and made an especial ball,
+in the middle of which he put a lovely pink candy heart on which was
+printed in red letters: "How can this heart be mine, yet yours, unless
+our hearts are one?"  He wouldn't let any of them see it except me, and
+he only let me because he knew I'd be delighted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was almost dusk when father came through the kitchen loaded with
+bundles and found Candace and the girls still cooking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We were so excited we could scarcely be gathered around the supper
+table, and mother said we chattered until she couldn't hear herself
+think.  After a while Laddie laid down his fork and looked at our
+father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you any objection to my using the sleigh to-morrow night?" he
+asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father looked at mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Had you planned to use it, mother?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother said:  "No.  If I go, I'll ride in the big sled with all of us.
+It is such a little way, and the roads are like glass."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So father said politely, as he always spoke to us:  "Then it will give
+me great pleasure for you to take it, my son."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That made Leon bang his fork loudly as he dared and squirm in his
+chair, for well he knew that if he had asked, the answer would have
+been different.  If Laddie took the sleigh he would harness carefully,
+drive fast, but reasonably, blanket his horse, come home at the right
+time, and put everything exactly where he found it.  But Leon would
+pitch the harness on some way, race every step, never think of his
+steaming horse, come home when there was no one so wild as he left to
+play pranks with, and scatter the harness everywhere.  He knew our
+father would love to trust him the same as he did Laddie.  He wouldn't
+always prove himself trustworthy, but he envied Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You think you'll take the Princess to the spelling bee, don't you?" he
+sneered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean to ask her," replied Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe you think she'll ride in our old homemade, hickory cheesebox,
+when she can sail all over the country like a bird in a velvet-lined
+cutter with a real buffalo robe."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a quick catch in mother's breath and I felt her hand on my
+chair tremble.  Father's lips tightened and a frown settled on his
+face, while Laddie fairly jumped.  He went white to the lips, and one
+hand dropped on the table, palm up, the fingers closing and unclosing,
+while his eyes turned first to mother, and then to father, in dumb
+appeal.  We all knew that he was suffering.  No one spoke, and Leon
+having shot his arrow straight home, saw as people so often do in this
+world that the damage of unkind words could not easily be repaired; so
+he grew red in the face and squirmed uncomfortably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last Laddie drew a deep, quivering breath.  "I never thought of
+that," he said.  "She has seemed happy to go with me several times when
+I asked her, but of course she might not care to ride in ours, when she
+has such a fine sleigh of her own."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father's voice fairly boomed down the length of the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your mother always has found our sleigh suitable," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fact was, father was rarely proud of it.  He had selected the
+hickory in our woods, cut it and hauled it to the mill, cured the
+lumber, and used all his spare time for two winters making it.  With
+the exception of having the runners turned at a factory and iron-bound
+at a smithy, he had completed it alone with great care, even to
+staining it a beautiful cherry colour, and fitting white sheepskins
+into the bed.  We had all watched him and been so proud of it, and now
+Leon was sneering at it.  He might just as well have undertaken to
+laugh at father's wedding suit or to make fun of "Clark's Commentaries."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie appealed to mother:  "Do you think I'd better not ask her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He spoke with an effort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Laddie, that is the first time I ever heard you propose to do any one
+an injustice," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't see how," said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It isn't giving the Princess any chance at all," replied mother
+"You've just said that she has seemed pleased to accompany you before,
+now you are proposing to cut her out of what promises to be the most
+delightful evening of the winter, without even giving her the chance to
+say whether she'd go with you or not.  Has she ever made you feel that
+anything you offered her or wanted to do for her was not good enough?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never!" exclaimed Laddie fervently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Until she does, then, do you think it would be quite manly and
+honourable to make decisions for her?  You say you never thought of
+anything except a pleasant time with her; possibly she feels the same.
+Unless she changes, I would scarcely let a boy's foolish tongue disturb
+her pleasure.  Moreover, as to the matter of wealth, your father may be
+as rich as hers; but they have one, we have many.  If what we spend on
+all our brood could be confined to one child, we could easily duplicate
+all her luxuries, and I think she has the good sense to realize the
+fact as quickly as any one.  I've no doubt she would gladly exchange
+half she has for the companionship of a sister or a brother in her
+lonely life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie turned to father, and father's smile was happy again.  Mother
+was little but she was mighty.  With only a few words she had made Leon
+feel how unkind and foolish he had been, quieted Laddie's alarm, and
+soothed the hurt father's pride had felt in that he had not been able
+to furnish her with so fine a turnout as Pryors had.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Next morning when the excitement of gifts and greetings was over, and
+Laddie's morning work was all finished, he took a beautiful volume of
+poems and his popcorn ball and started across the fields due west; all
+of us knew that he was going to call on and offer them to the Princess,
+and ask to take her to the spelling bee.  I suppose Laddie thought he
+was taking that trip alone, but really he was surrounded.  I watched
+him from the window, and my heart went with him.  Presently father went
+and sat beside mother's chair, and stroking her hand, whispered softly:
+"Please don't worry, little mother.  It will be all right.  Your boy
+will come home happy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope so," she answered, "but I can't help feeling dreadfully
+nervous.  If things go wrong with Laddie, it will spoil the day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have much faith in the Princess' good common sense," replied father,
+"and considering what it means to Laddie, it would hurt me sore to lose
+it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother sat still, but her lips moved so that I knew she was making soft
+little whispered prayers for her best loved son.  But Laddie, plowing
+through the drift, never dreamed that all of us were with him.  He was
+always better looking than any other man I ever had seen, but when, two
+hours later, he stamped into the kitchen he was so much handsomer than
+usual, that I knew from the flush on his cheek and the light in his
+eye, that the Princess had been kind, and by the package in his hand,
+that she had made him a present.  He really had two, a beautiful book
+and a necktie.  I wondered to my soul if she gave him that, so she
+could fix it!  I didn't believe she had begun on his ties at that time;
+but of course when he loved her as he did, he wished she would.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the very jolliest Christmas we ever had, but the day seemed
+long.  When night came we were in a precious bustle.  The wagon bed on
+bobs, filled with hay and covers, drawn by Ned and Jo, was brought up
+for the family, and the sleigh made spick-and-span and drawn by
+Laddie's thoroughbred, stood beside it.  Laddie had filled the kitchen
+oven with bricks and hung up a comfort at four o'clock to keep the
+Princess warm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Because he had to drive out of the way to bring her, Laddie wanted to
+start early; and when he came down dressed in his college clothes, and
+looking the manliest of men, some of the folks thought it funny to see
+him carefully rake his hot bricks from the oven, and pin them in an old
+red breakfast shawl.  I thought it was fine, and I whispered to mother:
+"Do you suppose that if Laddie ever marries the Princess he will be
+good to her as he is to you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother nodded with tear-dimmed eyes, but Shelley said:  "I'll wager a
+strong young girl like the Princess will laugh at you for babying over
+her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?" inquired Laddie.  "It is a long drive and a bitter night, and if
+you fancy the Princess will laugh at anything I do, when I am doing the
+best I know for her comfort, you are mistaken.  At least, that is the
+impression she gave me this morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I saw the swift glance mother shot at father, and father laid down his
+paper and said, while he pretended his glasses needed polishing:  "Now
+there is the right sort of a girl for you.  No foolishness about her,
+when she has every chance.  Hurrah for the Princess!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was easy to see that she wasn't going to have nearly so hard a time
+changing father's opinion as she would mother's.  It was not nearly a
+year yet, and here he was changed already.  Laddie said good-bye to
+mother&mdash;he never forgot&mdash;gathered up his comfort and bricks, and
+started for Pryors' downright happy.  We went to the schoolhouse a
+little later, all of us scoured, curled, starched, and wearing our very
+best clothes.  My! but it was fine.  There were many lights in the room
+and it was hung with greens.  There was a crowd even though it was
+early.  On Miss Amelia's table was a volume of history that was the
+prize, and every one was looking and acting the very best he knew how,
+although there were cases where they didn't know so very much.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Our Shelley was the handsomest girl there, until the Princess came, and
+then they both were.  Shelley wore one of her city frocks and a quilted
+red silk hood that was one of her Christmas gifts, and she looked just
+like a handsome doll.  She made every male creature in that room feel
+that she was pining for him alone.  May had a gay plaid frock and curls
+nearly a yard long, and so had I, but both our frocks and curls were
+homemade; mother would have them once in a while; father and I couldn't
+stop her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But there was not a soul there who didn't have some sort of gift to
+rejoice over, and laughter and shouts of "Merry Christmas!" filled the
+room.  It was growing late and there was some talk of choosers, when
+the door opened and in a rush of frosty air the Princess and Laddie
+entered.  Every one stopped short and stared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was good reason.  The Princess looked as if she had accidentally
+stepped from a frame.  She was always lovely and beautifully dressed,
+but to-night she was prettier and finer than ever before.  You could
+fairly hear their teeth click as some of the most envious of those
+girls caught sight of her, for she was wearing a new hat!&mdash;a black
+velvet store hat, fitting closely over her crown, with a rim of twisted
+velvet, a scarlet bird's wing, and a big silver buckle.  Her dress was
+of scarlet cloth cut in forms, and it fitted as if she had been melted
+and poured into it.  It was edged around the throat, wrists, and skirt
+with narrow bands of fur, and she wore a loose, long, silk-lined coat
+of the same material, and worst of all, furs&mdash;furs such as we had heard
+wealthy and stylish city ladies were wearing.  A golden brown cape that
+reached to her elbows, with ends falling to the knees, finished in the
+tails of some animal, and for her hands a muff as big as a nail keg.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, there was not a girl in that room, except the Princess, an she had
+those clothes, who wouldn't have flirted like a peacock, almost
+bursting with pride; but because the Princess had them, and they
+didn't, they sat stolid and sullen, and cast glances at each other as
+if they were saying:  "The stuck-up thing!" "Thinks she's smart, don't
+she?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Many of them should have gone to meet her and made her welcome, for she
+was not of our district and really their guest.  Shelley did go, but I
+noticed she didn't hurry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The choosers began at once, and Laddie was the first person called for
+our side, and the Princess for the visitors'.  Every one in the room
+was chosen on one side or the other; even my name was called, but I
+only sat still and shook my head, for I very well knew that no one
+except father would remember to pronounce easy ones for me, and besides
+I was so bitterly disappointed I could scarcely have stood up.  They
+had put me in a seat near the fire; the spellers lined either wall, and
+a goodly number that refused to spell occupied the middle seats.  I
+couldn't get a glimpse of Laddie or the home folks, or worst of all, of
+my idolized Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I never could bear to find a fault with Laddie, but I sadly reflected
+that he might as well have left me at home, if I were to be buried
+where I could neither hear nor see a thing.  I was just wishing it was
+summer so I could steal out to the cemetery, and have a good visit with
+the butterflies that always swarmed around Georgiana Jane Titcomb's
+grave at the corner of the church.  I never knew Georgiana Jane, but
+her people must have been very fond of her, for her grave was scarlet
+with geraniums, and pink with roses from earliest spring until frost,
+and the bright colours attracted swarms of butterflies.  I had learned
+that if I stuck a few blossoms in my hair, rubbed some sweet smelling
+ones over my hands, and knelt and kept so quiet that I fitted into the
+landscape, the butterflies would think me a flower too, and alight on
+my hair, dress, and my hands, even.  God never made anything more
+beautiful than those butterflies, with their wings of brightly painted
+velvet down, their bright eyes, their curious antennae, and their
+queer, tickly feet.  Laddie had promised me a book telling all about
+every kind there was, the first time he went to a city, so I was
+wishing I had it, and was among my pet beauties with it, when I
+discovered him bending over me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took my arm, and marching back to his place, helped me to the deep
+window seat beside him, where with my head on a level, and within a
+foot of his, I could see everything in the whole room.  I don't know
+why I ever spent any time pining for the beauties of Georgiana Jane
+Titcomb's grave, even with its handsome headstone on which was carved a
+lamb standing on three feet and holding a banner over its shoulder with
+the fourth, and the geraniums, roses, and the weeping willow that grew
+over it, thrown in.  I might have trusted Laddie.  He never had
+forgotten me; until he did, I should have kept unwavering faith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, I had the best place of any one in the room, and I smoothed my new
+plaid frock and shook my handmade curls just as near like Shelley as
+ever I could.  But it seems that most of the ointment in this world has
+a fly in it, like in the Bible, for fine as my location was, I soon
+knew that I should ask Laddie to put me down, because the window behind
+me didn't fit its frame, and the night was bitter.  Before half an hour
+I was stiff with cold; but I doubt if I would have given up that
+location if I had known I would freeze, because this was the most fun I
+had ever seen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Amelia began with McGuffey's spelling book, and whenever some poor
+unfortunate made a bad break the crowd roared with laughter.  Peter
+Justice stood up to spell and before three rounds he was nodding on his
+feet, so she pronounced "sleepy" to him.  Some one nudged Pete and he
+waked up and spelled it, s-l-e, sle, p-e, pe, and because he really was
+so sleepy it made every one laugh.  James Whittaker spelled compromise
+with a k, and Isaac Thomas spelled soap, s-o-a-p-e, and it was all the
+funnier that he couldn't spell it, for from his looks you could tell
+that he had no acquaintance with it in any shape.  Then Miss Amelia
+gave out "marriage" to the spooniest young man in the district, and
+"stepfather" to a man who was courting a widow with nine children; and
+"coquette" to our Shelley, who had been making sheep's eyes at Johnny
+Myers, so it took her by surprise and she joined the majority, which by
+that time occupied seats.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was much laughing and clapping of hands for a time, but when Miss
+Amelia had let them have their fun and thinned the lines to half a
+dozen on each side who could really spell, she began business, and
+pronounced the hardest words she could find in the book, and the
+spellers caught them up and rattled them off like machines.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Incompatibility," she gave out, and before the sound of her voice died
+away the Princess was spelling:  "I-n, in, c-o-m, com, in com, p-a-t,
+pat, incompat, i, incompati, b-i-l, bil, incompatibil, i,
+incompatibili, t-y, ty, incompatibility."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Laddie spelled "incomprehensibility," and they finished up the
+"bilities" and the "alities" with a rush and changed McGuffey's for
+Webster, with five on Laddie's side and three on the Princess', and
+when they quit with it, the Princess was alone, and Laddie and our
+little May facing her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From that on you could call it real spelling.  They spelled from the
+grammars, hyperbole, synecdoche, and epizeuxis.  They spelled from the
+physiology, chlorophyll, coccyx, arytenoid, and the names of the bones
+and nerves, and all the hard words inside you.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They tried the diseases and spelled jaundice, neurasthenia, and
+tongue-tied.  They tried all the occupations and professions, and went
+through the stores and spelled all sorts of hardware, china and dry
+goods.  Each side kept cheering its own and urging them to do their
+best, and every few minutes some man in the back of the house said
+something that was too funny.  When Miss Amelia pronounced "bombazine"
+to Laddie our side cried, "Careful, Laddie, careful! you're out of your
+element!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And when she gave "swivel-tree" to the Princess, her side whispered,
+"Go easy!  Do you know what it is?  Make her define it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They branched over the country.  May met her Jonah on the mountains.
+Katahdin was too much for her, and Laddie and the Princess were left to
+fight it out alone.  I didn't think Laddie liked it.  I'm sure he never
+expected it to turn out that way.  He must have been certain he could
+beat her, for after he finished English there were two or three other
+languages he knew, and every one in the district felt that he could
+win, and expected him to do it.  It was an awful place to put him in, I
+could see that.  He stood a little more erect than usual, with his eyes
+toward the Princess, and when his side kept crying, "Keep the prize,
+Laddie!  Hold up the glory of the district!" he ground out the words as
+if he had a spite at them for not being so hard that he would have an
+excuse for going down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess was poised lightly on her feet, her thick curls, just
+touching her shoulders, shining in the light; her eyes like stars, her
+perfect, dark oval face flushed a rich red, and her deep bosom rising
+and falling with excitement.  Many times in later years I have tried to
+remember when the Princess was loveliest of all, and that night always
+stands first.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was thinking fast.  Laddie was a big man.  Men were strong on purpose
+so they could bear things.  He loved the Princess so, and he didn't
+know whether she loved him or not; and every marriageable man in three
+counties was just aching for the chance to court her, and I didn't feel
+that he dared risk hurting her feelings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie said, to be the man who conquered the Princess and to whom she
+lifted her lips for a first kiss was worth life itself.  I made up my
+mind that night that he knew just exactly what he was talking about.  I
+thought so too.  And I seemed to understand why Laddie&mdash;Laddie in his
+youth, strength, and manly beauty, Laddie, who boasted that there was
+not a nerve in his body&mdash;trembled before the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It looked as if she had set herself against him and was working for the
+honours, and if she wanted them, I didn't feel that he should chance
+beating her, and then, too, it was beginning to be plain that it was
+none too sure he could.  Laddie didn't seem to be the only one who had
+been well drilled in spelling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I held my jaws set a minute, so that I could speak without Laddie
+knowing how I was shivering, and then I whispered:  "Except her eyes
+are softer, she looks just like a cardinal."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie nodded emphatically and moving a step nearer laid his elbow
+across my knees.  Heavens, how they spelled!  They finished all the
+words I ever heard and spelled like lightning through a lot of others
+the meaning of which I couldn't imagine.  Father never gave them out at
+home.  They spelled epiphany, gaberdine, ichthyology, gewgaw,
+kaleidoscope, and troubadour.  Then Laddie spelled one word two
+different ways; and the Princess went him one better, for she spelled
+another three.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They spelled from the Bible, Nebuchadnezzar, Potiphar, Peleg,
+Belshazzar, Abimelech, and a host of others I never heard the minister
+preach about.  Then they did the most dreadful thing of all.  "Broom,"
+pronounced the teacher, and I began mentally, b-r-o-o-m, but Laddie
+spelled "b-r-o-u-g-h-a-m," and I stared at him in a daze.  A second
+later Miss Amelia gave out "Beecham" to the Princess, and again I tried
+it, b-e-e-c-h, but the Princess was spelling "B-e-a-u-c-h-a-m-p," and I
+almost fell from the window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They kept that up until I was nearly crazy with nervousness; I forgot I
+was half frozen.  I pulled Laddie's sleeve and whispered in his ear:
+"Do you think she'll cry if you beat her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was half crying myself, the strain had been awful.  I was torn
+between these dearest loves of mine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Seen me have any chance to beat her?" retorted Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Amelia seemed to have used most of her books, and at last picked
+up an old geography and began giving out points around the coast, while
+Laddie and the Princess took turns snatching the words from her mouth
+and spelling them.  Father often did that, so Laddie was safe there.
+They were just going it when Miss Amelia pronounced, "Terra del Fuego,"
+to the Princess.  "T-e-r-r-a, Terra, d-e-l, del, F-i-e-u-g-o," spelled
+the Princess, and sat down suddenly in the midst of a mighty groan from
+her side, swelled by a wail from one little home district deserter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Next!" called Miss Amelia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"T-e-r-r-a, Terra, d-e-l, del, F-e-u-g-o," spelled Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wrong!" wailed Miss Amelia, and our side breathed one big groan in
+concert, and I lifted up my voice in that also.  Then every one laughed
+and pretended they didn't care, and the Princess came over and shook
+hands with Laddie, and Laddie said to Miss Amelia:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just let me take that book a minute until I see how the thing really
+does go."  It was well done and satisfied the crowd, which clapped and
+cheered; but as I had heard him spell it many, many times for father,
+he didn't fool me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie and the Princess drew slips for the book and it fell to her.  He
+was so pleased he kissed me as he lifted me down and never noticed I
+was so stiff I could scarcely stand&mdash;and I did fall twice going to the
+sleigh.  My bed was warm and my room was warm, but I chilled the night
+through and until the next afternoon, when I grew so faint and sleepy I
+crept to Miss Amelia's desk, half dead with fright&mdash;it was my first
+trip to ask an excuse&mdash;and begged:  "Oh teacher, I'm so sick.  Please
+let me go home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I think one glance must have satisfied her that it was true, for she
+said very kindly that I might, and she would send Leon along to take
+care of me.  But my troubles were only half over when I had her
+consent.  It was very probable I would be called a baby and sent back
+when I reached home, so I refused company and started alone.  It seemed
+a mile past the cemetery.  I was so tired I stopped, and leaning
+against the fence, peeped through at the white stones and the whiter
+mounds they covered, and wondered how my mother would feel if she were
+compelled to lay me beside the two little whooping cough and fever
+sisters already sleeping there.  I decided that it would be so very
+dreadful, that the tears began to roll down my cheeks and freeze before
+they fell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Down the Big Hill slowly I went.  How bare it looked then!  Only
+leafless trees and dried seed pods rattling on the bushes, the sand
+frozen, and not a rush to be seen for the thick blanket of snow.  A few
+rods above the bridge was a footpath, smooth and well worn, that led
+down to the creek, beaten by the feet of children who raced it every
+day and took a running slide across the ice.  I struck into the path as
+always; but I was too stiff to run, for I tried.  I walked on the ice,
+and being almost worn out, sat on the bridge and fell to watching the
+water bubbling under the glassy crust.  I was so dull a horse's feet
+struck the bridge before I heard the bells&mdash;for I had bells in my ears
+that day&mdash;and when I looked up it was the Princess&mdash;the Princess in her
+red dress and furs, with a silk hood instead of her hat, her sleigh
+like a picture, with a buffalo robe, that it was whispered about the
+country, cost over a hundred dollars, and her thoroughbred mare Maud
+dancing and prancing.  "Bless me!  Is it you, Little Sister?" she
+asked.  "Shall I give you a ride home?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before I could scarcely realize she was there, I was beside her and she
+was tucking the fine warm robe over me.  I lifted a pair of dull eyes
+to her face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh Princess, I am so glad you came," I said.  "I don't think I could
+have gone another step if I had frozen on the bridge."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess bent to look in my face.  "Why, you poor child!" She
+exclaimed, "you're white as death!  Where are you ill?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I leaned on her shoulder, though ordinarily I would not have offered to
+touch her first, and murmured:  "I am not ill, outdoors, only dull,
+sleepy, and freezing with the cold."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was that window!" she exclaimed.  "I thought of it, but I trusted
+Laddie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That roused me a little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh Princess," I cried, "you mustn't blame Laddie!  I knew it was too
+cold, but I wouldn't tell him, because if he put me down I couldn't see
+you, and we thought, but for your eyes being softer, you looked just
+like a cardinal."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess hugged me close and laughed merrily.  "You darling!" she
+cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then she shook me up sharply:  "Don't you dare go to sleep!" she said.
+"I must take you home first."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Once there she quieted my mother's alarm, put me to bed, drove three
+miles for Dr. Fenner and had me started nicely on the road to a month
+of lung fever, before she left.  In my delirium I spelled volumes; and
+the miracle of it was I never missed a word until I came to "Terra del
+Fuego," and there I covered my lips and stoutly insisted that it was
+the Princess' secret.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To keep me from that danger sleep on the road, she shook me up and
+asked about the spelling bee.  I thought it was the grandest thing I
+had ever seen in my life, and I told her so.  She gathered me close and
+whispered:  "Tell me something, Little Sister, please."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The minx!  She knew I thought that a far finer title than hers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would Laddie care?" I questioned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not in the least!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well then, I will."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can Laddie spell 'Terra del Fuego?'" she whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you sure?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have heard him do it over and over for father."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess forgot I was so sick, forgot her horse, forgot everything.
+She threw her head back and her hands up, until her horse stopped in
+answer to the loosened line, and she laughed and laughed.  She laughed
+until peal on peal re-echoed from our Big Woods clear across the west
+eighty.  She laughed until her ringing notes set my slow pulses on
+fire, and started my numbed brain in one last effort.  I stood up and
+took her lovely face between my palms, turning it until I could see
+whether the thought that had come to me showed in her eyes, and it did.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh you darling, splendid Princess!" I cried.  "You missed it on
+purpose to let Laddie beat!  You can spell it too!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap12"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XII
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+The Horn of the Hunter
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"The dusky night rides down the sky,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And ushers in the morn:</SPAN><BR>
+The hounds all join in glorious cry,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">The huntsman winds his horn."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Leon said our house reminded him of the mourners' bench before any one
+had "come through."  He said it was so deadly with Sally and Shelley
+away, that he had a big notion to marry Susie Fall and bring her over
+to liven things up a little.  Mother said she thought that would be a
+good idea, and Leon started in the direction of Falls', but he only
+went as far as Deams'.  When he came back he had a great story to tell
+about dogs chasing their sheep, and foxes taking their geese.  Father
+said sheep were only safe behind securely closed doors, especially in
+winter, and geese also.  Leon said every one hadn't as big a barn as
+ours, and father said there was nothing to prevent any man from
+building the sized barn he needed to shelter his creatures in safety
+and comfort, if he wanted to dig in and earn the money to put it up.
+There was no answer to that, and Mr. Leon didn't try to make any.
+Mostly, he said something to keep on talking, but sometimes he saw when
+he had better quit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was having a good time, myself.  Of course when the fever was the
+worst, and when I never had been sick before, it was pretty bad, but as
+soon as I could breathe all right, there was no pain to speak of, and
+every one was so good to me.  I could have Bobby on the footboard of my
+bed as long as I wanted him, and he would crow whenever I told him to.
+I kept Grace Greenwood beside me, and spoiled her dress making her take
+some of each dose of medicine I did, but Shelley wrote that she was
+saving goods and she would make her another as soon as she came home.
+I made mother put red flannel on Grace's chest and around her neck,
+until I could hardly find her mouth when she had to take her medicine,
+but she swallowed it down all right, or she got her nose held, until
+she did.  She was not nearly so sick as I was, though.  We both grew
+better together, and, when Dr. Fenner brought me candy, she had her
+share.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When I began to get well it was lovely.  Such toast, chicken broth, and
+squirrels, as mother always had.  I even got the chicken liver,
+oranges, and all of them gave me everything they had that I wanted&mdash;I
+must almost have died to make them act like that!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie and father would take me up wrapped in blankets and hold me to
+rest my back.  Father would rock me and sing about "Young Johnny," just
+as he had when I was little.  We always laughed at it, we knew it was a
+fool song, but we liked it.  The tune was smooth and sleepy-like and
+the words went:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"One day young Johnny, he did go,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">Way down in the meadow for to mow.</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1.5em">Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">He scarce had mowed twice round the field,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">When a pesky sarpent bit him on the heel,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1.5em">Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">He threw the scythe upon the ground,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">An' shut his eyes, and looked all round,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1.5em">Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">He took the sarpent in his hand,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">And then ran home to Molly Bland,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1.5em">Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">O Molly dear, and don't you see,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">This pesky sarpent that bit me?</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1.5em">Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">O Johnny dear, why did you go,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">Way down in the meadow fot to mow?</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1.5em">Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">O Molly dear, I thought you knowed</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">'Twas daddy's grass, and it must be mowed,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1.5em">Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-n an-incty, noddy O!</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">Now all young men a warning take,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 0.5em">And don't get bit by a rattlesnake.</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1.5em">Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+All of them told me stories, read to me, and Frank, one of my big
+gone-away brothers, sent me the prettiest little book.  It had a green
+cover with gold on the back, and it was full of stories and poems, not
+so very hard, because I could read every one of them, with help on a
+few words.  The piece I liked best was poetry.  If it hadn't been for
+that, I'm afraid, I was having such a good time, I'd have lain there
+until I forgot how to walk, with all of them trying to see who could be
+nicest to me.  The ones who really could, were Laddie and the Princess,
+except mother.  Laddie lifted me most carefully, the Princess told the
+best stories, but after all, if the burning and choking grew so bad I
+could scarcely stand it, mother could lay her hand on my head and say,
+"Poor child," in a way that made me work to keep on breathing.  Maybe I
+only THOUGHT I loved Laddie best.  I guess if I had been forced to take
+my choice when I had the fever, I'd have stuck pretty tight to mother.
+Even Dr. Fenner said if I pulled through she'd have to make me.  I
+might have been lying there yet, if it hadn't been for the book Frank
+sent me, with the poetry piece in it.  It began:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Somewhere on a sunny bank, buttercups are bright,<BR>
+Somewhere 'mid the frozen grass, peeps the daisy white."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+I read that so often I could repeat it quite as well with the book shut
+as open, and every time I read it, I wanted outdoors worse.  In one
+place it ran:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Welcome, yellow buttercups, welcome daisies white,<BR>
+Ye are in my spirit visioned a delight.<BR>
+Coming in the springtime of sunny hours to tell,<BR>
+Speaking to our hearts of Him who doeth all things well."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+That piece helped me out of bed, and the blue gander screaming opened
+the door.  It was funny about it too.  I don't know WHY it worked on me
+that way; it just kept singing in my heart all day, and I could shut my
+eyes and go to sleep seeing buttercups in a gold sheet all over our Big
+Hill, although there never was a single one there; and meadows full of
+daisies, which were things father said were a pest he couldn't
+tolerate, because they spread so, and he grubbed up every one he found.
+Yet that piece filled our meadow until I imagined I could roll on
+daisies.  They might be a pest to farmers, but sheets of them were
+pretty good if you were burning with fever.  Between the buttercups and
+the daisies I left the bed with a light head and wobbly legs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course I wasn't an idiot.  I knew when I looked from our south
+window exactly what was to be seen.  The person who wrote that piece
+was the idiot.  It sang and sounded pretty, and it pulled you up and
+pushed you out, but really it was a fool thing, as I very well knew.  I
+couldn't imagine daisies peeping through frozen grass.  Any baby should
+have known they bloomed in July.  Skunk cabbage always came first, and
+hepatica.  If I had looked from any of our windows and seen daisies and
+buttercups in March, I'd have fallen over with the shock.  I knew there
+would be frozen brown earth, last year's dead leaves, caved-in apple
+and potato holes, the cabbage row almost gone, puddles of water and mud
+everywhere, and I would hear geese scream and hens sing.  And yet that
+poem kept pulling and pulling, and I was happy as a queen&mdash;I wondered
+if they were for sure; mother had doubts&mdash;the day I was wrapped in
+shawls and might sit an hour in the sun on the top board of the back
+fence, where I could see the barn, orchard, the creek and the meadow,
+as you never could in summer because of the leaves.  I wasn't looking
+for buttercups and daisies either.  I mighty well knew there wouldn't
+be any.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the sun was there.  A little taste of willow, oak and maple was in
+the air.  You could see the buds growing fat too, and you could smell
+them.  If you opened your eyes and looked in any direction you could
+see blue sky, big, ragged white clouds, bare trees, muddy earth with
+grassy patches, and white spots on the shady sides where unmelted snow
+made the icy feel in the air, even when the sun shone.  You couldn't
+hear yourself think for the clatter of the turkeys, ganders, roosters,
+hens, and everything that had a voice.  I was so crazy with it I could
+scarcely hang to the fence; I wanted to get down and scrape my wings
+like the gobbler, and scream louder than the gander, and crow oftener
+than the rooster.  There was everything all ice and mud.  They would
+have frozen, if they hadn't been put in a house at night, and starved,
+if they hadn't been fed; they were not at the place where they could
+hunt and scratch, and not pay any attention to feeding time, because of
+being so bursting full.  They had no nests and babies to rejoice over.
+But there they were!  And so was I!  Buttercups and daisies be-hanged!
+Ice and mud really!  But if you breathed that air, and shut your eyes,
+north, you could see blue flags, scarlet lilies, buttercups, cattails
+and redbirds sailing over them; east, there would be apple bloom and
+soft grass, cowslips, and bubbling water, robins, thrushes, and
+bluebirds; and south, waving corn with wild rose and alder borders, and
+sparrows, and larks on every fence rider.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Right there I got that daisy thing figured out.  It wasn't that there
+were or ever would be daisies and buttercups among the frozen grass;
+but it was forever and always that when this FEEL came into the air,
+you knew they were COMING.  THAT was what ailed the gander and the
+gobbler.  They hadn't a thing to be thankful for yet, but something
+inside them was swelling and pushing because of what was coming.  I
+felt exactly as they did, because I wanted to act the same way, but I'd
+been sick enough to know that I'd better be thankful for the chance to
+sit on the fence, and think about buttercups and daisies.  Really, one
+old brown and purple skunk cabbage with a half-frozen bee buzzing over
+it, or a few forlorn little spring beauties, would have set me wild,
+and when a lark really did go over, away up high, and a dove began to
+coo in the orchard, if Laddie hadn't come for me, I would have fallen
+from the fence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I simply had to get well and quickly too, for the wonderful time was
+beginning.  It was all very well to lie in bed when there was nothing
+else to do, and every one would pet me and give me things; but here was
+maple syrup time right at the door, and the sugar camp most fun alive;
+here was all the neighbourhood crazy mad at the foxes, and planning a
+great chase covering a circuit of miles before the ground thawed; here
+was Easter and all the children coming, except Shelley&mdash;again, it would
+cost too much for only one day&mdash;and with everything beginning to hum, I
+found out there would be more amusement outdoors than inside.  That was
+how I came to study out the daisy piece.  There was nothing in the
+silly, untrue lines: the pull and tug was in what they made you think
+of.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was still so weak I had to take a nap every day, so I wasn't sleepy
+as early at night, and I heard father and mother talk over a lot of
+things before they went to bed.  After they mentioned it, I remembered
+that we hadn't received nearly so many letters from Shelley lately, and
+mother seldom found time to read them aloud during the day and forgot,
+or her eyes were tired, at night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you worrying about Shelley?" asked father one night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I am," answered mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you think is the trouble?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm afraid things are not coming out with Mr. Paget as she hoped."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If they don't, she is going to be unhappy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's putting it mildly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I was doubtful in the beginning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now hold on," said mother.  "So was I; but what are you going to do?
+I can't go through the world with my girls, and meet men for them.  I
+trained them just as carefully as possible before I started them out;
+that was all I could do.  Shelley knows when a man appears clean,
+decent and likable.  She knows when his calling is respectable.  She
+knows when his speech is proper, his manners correct, and his ways
+attractive.  She found this man all of these things, and she liked him
+accordingly.  At Christmas she told me about it freely."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you any idea how far the thing has gone?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She said then that she had seen him twice a week for two months.  He
+seemed very fond of her.  He had told her he cared more for her than
+any girl he ever had met, and he had asked her to come here this summer
+and pay us a visit, so she wanted to know if he might."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course you told her yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly I told her yes.  I wish now we'd saved money and you'd gone
+to visit her and met him when she first wrote of him.  You could have
+found out who and what he was, and with your experience you might have
+pointed out signs that would have helped her to see, before it was too
+late."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you think is the trouble?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish I knew!  She simply is failing to mention him in her letters;
+all the joy of living has dropped from them, she merely writes about
+her work; and now she is beginning to complain of homesickness and to
+say that she doesn't know how to endure the city any longer.  There's
+something wrong."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Had I better go now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Too late!" said mother, and I could hear her throat go wrong and the
+choke come into her voice.  "She is deeply in love with him; he hasn't
+found in her what he desires; probably he is not coming any more; what
+could you do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I could go and see if there is anything I could do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She may not want you.  I'll write her to-morrow and suggest that you
+or Laddie pay her a visit and learn what she thinks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," said father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He kissed her and went to sleep, but mother was awake yet, and she got
+up and stood looking down at the church and the two little white
+gravestones she could see from her window, until I thought she would
+freeze, and she did nearly, for her hands were cold and the tears
+falling when she examined my covers, and felt my face and hands before
+she went to bed.  My, but the mother of a family like ours is never
+short of a lot of things to think of!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had a new one myself.  Now what do you suppose there was about that
+man?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course after having lived all her life with father and Laddie,
+Shelley would know how a man should look, and act to be right; and this
+one must have been right to make her bloom out in winter the way other
+things do in spring; and now what could be wrong?  Maybe city girls
+were prettier than Shelley.  But all women were made alike on the
+outside, and that was as far as you could see.  You couldn't find out
+whether they had pure blood, true hearts, or clean souls.  No girl
+could be so very much prettier than Shelley; they simply were not made
+that way.  She knew how to behave; she had it beaten into her, like all
+of us.  And she knew her books, what our schools could teach her, and
+Groveville, and Lucy, who had city chances for years, and there never
+was a day at our house when books and papers were not read and
+discussed, and your spelling was hammered into you standing in rows
+against the wall, and memory tests&mdash;what on earth could be the matter
+with Shelley that a man who could make her look and act as she did at
+Christmas, would now make her unhappy?  Sometimes I wanted to be grown
+up dreadfully, and again, times like that, I wished my bed could stay
+in mother's room, and I could creep behind father's paper and go to
+sleep between his coat and vest, and have him warm my feet in his hands
+forever.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This world was too much for me.  I never worked and worried in all my
+life as I had over Laddie and the Princess, and Laddie said I, myself,
+never would know how I had helped him.  Of course nothing was settled;
+he had to try to make her love him by teaching her how lovable he was.
+We knew, because we always had known him, but she was a stranger and
+had to learn.  It was mighty fine for him that he could force his way
+past the dogs, Thomas, the other men, her half-crazy father, and
+through the locked door, and go there to try to make her see, on Sunday
+nights, and week days, every single chance he could invent, and he
+could think up more reasons for going to Pryors' than mother could for
+putting out an extra wash.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now just as I got settled a little about him, and we could see they
+really wanted him there, at least the Princess and her mother did, and
+Mr. Pryor must have been fairly decent or Laddie never would have gone;
+and the Princess came to our house to bring me things to eat, and ask
+how mother was, and once to learn how she embroidered Sally's wedding
+chemise, and social things like that; and when father acted as if he
+liked her so much he hadn't a word to say, and mother seemed to begin
+to feel as if Laddie and the Princess could be trusted to fix it up
+about God; and the old mystery didn't matter after all; why, here
+Shelley popped up with another mystery, and it belonged to us.  But
+whatever ailed that man I couldn't possibly think.  It had got to be
+him, for Shelley was so all right at Christmas, it made her look that
+pretty we hardly knew her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was thinking about her until I scarcely could study my lessons, so I
+could recite to Laddie at night, and not fall so far behind at school.
+Miss Amelia offered to hear me, but I just begged Laddie, and father
+could see that he taught me fifty things in a lesson that you could
+tell to look at Miss Amelia, she never knew.  Why, he couldn't hear me
+read:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"We charged upon a flock of geese,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And put them all to flight</SPAN><BR>
+Except one sturdy gander<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">That thought to show us fight,"&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+without teaching me that the oldest picture in all the world was made
+of a row of geese, some of which were kinds we then had&mdash;the earth
+didn't seem so old when you thought of that&mdash;and how a flock of geese
+once wakened an army and saved a city, and how far wild geese could fly
+without alighting in migration, and everything you could think of about
+geese, only he didn't know why eating the same grass made feathers on
+geese and wool on sheep.  Anyway, Miss Amelia never told you a word but
+what was in the book, and how to read and spell it.  May said that
+father was very much disappointed in her, and he was never going to
+hire another teacher until he met and talked with her, no matter what
+kind of letters she could send.  He was not going to help her get a
+summer school, and O my soul!  I hope no one does, for if they do, I
+have to go, and I'd rather die than go to school in the summer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon came in about that time with more fox stories.  Been in Jacob
+Hood's chicken house and taken his best Dorking rooster, and father
+said it was time to do something.  He never said a word so long as they
+took Deams', except they should have barn room for their geese, but
+when anything was the matter at Hoods' father and mother started doing
+something the instant they heard of it.  So father and Laddie rode
+around the neighbourhood and talked it over, and the next night they
+had a meeting at our schoolhouse; men for miles came, and they planned
+a regular old-fashioned foxchase, and every one was wild about it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie told it at Pryors' and the Princess wanted to go; she asked to
+go with him, and if you please, Mr. Pryor wanted to go too, and their
+Thomas.  They attended the meeting to tell how people chase foxes in
+England, where they seem to hunt them most of the time.  Father said:
+"Thank God for even a foxchase, if it will bring Mr. Pryor among his
+neighbours and help him to act sensibly."  They are going away fifteen
+miles or farther, and form a big circle of men from all directions,
+some walking in a line, and others riding to bring back any foxes that
+escape, and with dogs, and guns, they are going to rout out every one
+they can find, and kill them so they won't take the geese, little pigs,
+lambs, and Hoods' Dorking rooster.  Laddie had a horn that Mr. Pryor
+gave him when he told him this country was showing signs of becoming
+civilized at last; but Leon grinned and said he'd beat that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then when you wanted him, he was in the wood house loft at work, but
+father said he couldn't get into mischief there.  He should have seen
+that churn when it was full of wedding breakfast!  We ate for a week
+afterward, until things were all moulded, and we didn't dare anymore.
+One night I begged so hard and promised so faithfully he trusted me; he
+did often, after I didn't tell about the Station; and I went to the
+loft with him, and watched him work an hour.  He had a hollow limb
+about six inches through and fourteen long.  He had cut and burned it
+to a mere shell, and then he had scraped it with glass inside and out,
+until it shone like polished horn.  He had shaved the wool from a piece
+of sheepskin, soaked, stretched, and dried it, and then fitted it over
+one end of the drumlike thing he had made, and tacked and bound it in a
+little groove at the edge.  He put the skin on damp so he could stretch
+it tight.  Then he punched a tiny hole in the middle, and pulled
+through it, down inside the drum, a sheepskin thong rolled in resin,
+with a knot big enough to hold it, and not tear the head.  Then he took
+it under his arm and we slipped across the orchard below the Station,
+and went into the hollow and tried it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It worked!  I almost fell dead with the first frightful sound.  It just
+bellowed and roared.  In only a little while he found different ways to
+make it sound by his manner of working the tongue.  A long, steady,
+even pull got that kind of a roar.  A short, quick one made it bark.  A
+pull half the length of the thong, a pause, and another pull, made it
+sound like a bark and a yelp.  To pull hard and quick, made it go
+louder, and soft and easy made it whine.  Before he had tried it ten
+minutes he could do fifty things with it that would almost scare the
+livers out of those nasty old foxes that were taking every one's geese,
+Dorking roosters, and even baby lambs and pigs.  Of course people
+couldn't stand that; something had to be done!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Even in the Bible it says, "Beware of the little foxes that spoil the
+vines," and geese, especially blue ones, Dorking roosters, lambs, and
+pigs were much more valuable than mere vines; so Leon made that awful
+thing to scare the foxes from their holes that's in the Bible too,
+about the holes I mean, not the scaring.  I wanted Leon to slip to the
+back door and make the dumb-bell&mdash;that's what he called it; if I had
+been naming it I would have called it the thunder-bell&mdash;go; but he
+wouldn't.  He said he didn't propose to work as he had, and then have
+some one find out, and fix one like it.  He said he wouldn't let it
+make a sound until the night before the chase, and then he'd raise the
+dead.  I don't know about the dead; but it was true of the living.
+Father went a foot above his chair and cried: "Whoo-pee!"  All of us,
+even I, when I was waiting for it, screamed as if Paddy Ryan raved at
+the door.  Then Leon came in and showed us, and every one wanted to
+work the dumb-bell, even mother.  Leon marched around and showed off;
+he looked "See the conquering hero comes," all over.  I never felt
+worse about being made into a girl than I did that night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I couldn't sleep for excitement, and mother said I might as well, for
+it would be at least one o'clock before they would round-up in our
+meadow below the barn.  All the neighbours were to shut up their stock,
+tie their dogs, or lead them with chains, if they took them, so when
+the foxes were surrounded, they could catch them alive, and save their
+skins.  I wondered how some of those chasing people, even Laddie, Leon,
+and father&mdash;think of that!  father was going too&mdash;I wondered how they
+would have liked to have had something as much bigger than they were,
+as they were bigger than the foxes, chase them with awful noises, guns
+and dogs, and catch them alive&mdash;to save their skins.  No wonder I
+couldn't sleep!  I guess the foxes wouldn't either, if they had known
+what was coming.  Maybe hereafter the mean old things would eat rabbits
+and weasels, and leave the Dorking roosters alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+May, Candace, and Miss Amelia were going to Deams' to wait, and when
+the round-up formed a solid line, they planned to stand outside, and
+see the sport.  If they had been the foxes, maybe they wouldn't have
+thought it was so funny; but of course, people just couldn't have even
+their pigs and lambs taken.  We had to have wool to spin yarn for our
+stockings, weave our blankets and coverlids, and our Sunday winter
+dresses of white flannel with narrow black crossbars were from the
+backs of our own sheep, and we had to have ham to fry with eggs, and
+boil for Sunday night suppers, and bacon to cook the greens with&mdash;of
+course it was all right.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before it was near daylight I heard Laddie making the kitchen fire, so
+father got right up, Leon came down, and all of them went to the barn
+to do the feeding.  I wanted to get up too, but mother said I should
+stay in bed until the house was warm, because if I took more cold I'd
+be sick again.  At breakfast May asked father about when they should
+start for Deams' to be ahead of the chase, and he said by ten o'clock
+at least; because a fox driven mad by pursuit, dogs, and noise, was a
+very dangerous thing, and a bite might make hy&mdash;&mdash;the same thing as a
+mad dog.  He said our back barn door opening from the threshing floor
+would afford a fine view of the meet, but Candace, May, and Miss Amelia
+wanted to be closer.  I might go with them if they would take good care
+of me, and they promised to; but when the time came to start, there was
+such a queer feeling inside me, I thought maybe it was more fever, and
+with mother would be the best place for me, so I said I wanted to watch
+from the barn.  Father thought that was a capital idea, because I would
+be on the east side, where there would be no sun and wind, and it would
+be perfectly safe; also, I really could see what was going on better
+from that height than on the ground.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sun was going to shine, but it hadn't peeped above Deams'
+strawstack when father on his best saddle horse, and Laddie on Flos,
+rode away, their eyes shining, their faces red, their blood pounding so
+it made their voices sound excited and different.  Leon was to go on
+foot.  Father said he would ride a horse to death.  He just grinned and
+never made a word of complaint.  Seemed funny for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was over having a little confidential chat with my horse, last
+night," he said, "and next year we'll be in the chase, and we'll show
+you how to take fences, and cut curves; just you wait!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leon, DON'T build so on that horse," wailed mother.  "I'm sure that
+money was stolen like ours, and the owner will claim it! I feel it in
+my bones!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aw, shucks!" said Leon.  "That money is mine.  He won't either!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When they started, father took Leon behind him to ride as far as the
+county line.  He said he would go slowly, and it wouldn't hurt the
+horse, but Leon slipped off at Hoods', and said he'd go with their
+boys, so father let him, because light as Leon was, both of them were
+quite a load for one horse.  Laddie went to ride with the Princess.  We
+could see people moving around in Pryors' barnyard when our men
+started.  Candace washed, Miss Amelia wiped the dishes, May swept, and
+all of them made the beds, and then they went to Deams', while I stayed
+with mother.  When she thought it was time, she bundled me up warmly,
+and I went to the barn.  Father had the east doors standing open for
+me, so I could sit in the sun, hang my feet against the warm boards,
+and see every inch of our meadow where the meet was to be.  I was
+really too warm there, and had to take off the scarf, untie my hood,
+and unbutton my coat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a trifle muddy, but the frost had not left the ground yet, the
+sparrows were singing fit to burst, so were the hens.  I didn't care
+much for the music of the hen, but I could see she meant well.  She
+liked her nest quite as much as the red velvet bird with black wings,
+or the bubbly yellow one, and as for baby chickens, from the first peep
+they beat a little naked, blind, wobbly tree bird, so any hen had a
+right to sing for joy because she was going to be the mother of a large
+family of them.  A hen had something was going to be the mother of a
+large family of them.  A hen had something to sing about all right, and
+so had we, when we thought of poached eggs and fried chicken.  When I
+remembered them, I saw that it was no wonder the useful hen warbled so
+proudlike; but that was all nonsense, for I don't suppose a hen ever
+tasted poached eggs, and surely she wouldn't be happy over the prospect
+of being fried.  Maybe one reason she sang was because she didn't know
+what was coming; I hardly think she'd be so tuneful if she did.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sometimes the geese, shut in the barn, raised an awful clatter, and the
+horses and cattle complained about being kept from the sunshine and
+fresh air.  You couldn't blame them.  It was a lovely day, and the big
+upper door the pleasantest place.  I didn't care if the fox hunters
+never came, there was so much to see, hear, and smell.  Everything was
+busy making signs of spring, and one could become tired of ice and snow
+after a while, and so hungry for summer that those first days which
+were just hints of what was coming were almost better than the real
+thing when it arrived.  Bud perfume was stronger than last week, many
+doves and bluebirds were calling, and three days more of such sunshine
+would make cross-country riding too muddy to be pleasant.  I sat there
+thinking; grown people never know how much children do think, they have
+so much time, and so many bothersome things to study out.  I heard it
+behind me, a long, wailing, bellowing roar, and my hood raised right up
+with my hair.  I was in the middle of the threshing floor in a second,
+in another at the little west door, cut into the big one, opening it a
+tiny crack to take a peep, and see how close they were.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I could see nothing, but I heard a roar of dreadful sound steadily
+closing in a circle around me.  No doubt the mean old foxes wished then
+they had let the Dorking roosters alone.  Closer it came and more
+dreadful.  Never again did I want to hear such sounds coming at me;
+even when I knew what was making them.  And then away off, beyond
+Pryors', and Hoods', and Dovers', I could see a line of tiny specks
+coming toward me, and racing flying things that must have been people
+on horses riding back and forth to give the foxes no chance to find a
+hiding place.  No chance!  Laddie and the Princess, Mr. Pryor and
+father, and all of them were after the bad old foxes; and they were
+going to get them; because they'd have no chance&mdash;Not with a solid line
+of men with raving dogs surrounding them, and people on horseback
+racing after them, no! the foxes would wish now that they had left the
+pigs and lambs alone.  In that awful roaring din, they would wish, Oh
+how they would wish, they were birds and could fly!  Fly back to their
+holes like the Bible said they had, where maybe they LIKED to live, and
+no doubt they had little foxes there, that would starve when their
+mammies were caught alive, to save their skins.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To save their skins!  I could hear myself breathe, and feel my teeth
+click, and my knees knock together.  And then!  Oh dear!  There they
+came across our cornfield.  Two of them!  And they could fly, almost.
+At least you could scarcely see that they touched the ground.  The mean
+old things were paying up for the pigs and lambs now.  Through the
+fence, across the road, straight toward me they came.  Almost red
+backs, nearly white beneath, long flying tails, beautiful pointed ears,
+and long tongues, fire red, hanging from their open mouths; their sleek
+sides pulsing, and that awful din coming through the woods behind them.
+One second, the first paused to glance toward either side, and threw
+back its head to listen.  What it saw, and heard, showed it.  I guess
+then it was sorry it ever took people's ham, and their greens, and
+their blankets; and it could see and hear that it had no chance&mdash;to
+save its skin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh Lord!  Dear Lord!  Help me!" I prayed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It had to be me, there was no one else.  I never had opened the big
+doors; I thought it took a man, but when I pushed with all my
+might&mdash;and maybe if the hairs of our heads were numbered, and the
+sparrows counted, there would be a little mercy for the foxes&mdash;I asked
+for help; maybe I got it.  The doors went back, and I climbed up the
+ladder to the haymow a few steps and clung there, praying with all my
+might:  "Make them come in!  Dear Lord, make them come in!  Give them a
+chance!  Help them to save their skins, O Lord!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a whizz and a flash one went past me, skimmed the cider press, and
+rushed across the hay; then the other.  I fell to the floor and the
+next thing I knew the doors were shut, and I was back at my place.  I
+just went down in a heap and leaned against the wall and shook, and
+then I laughed and said:  "Thank you, Lord!  Thank you for helping with
+the door!  And the foxes!  The beautiful little red and white foxes!
+They've got their chance!  They'll save their skins!  They'll get back
+to their holes and their babies!  Praise the Lord!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I knew when I heard that come out, that it was exactly like my father
+said it when Amos Hurd was redeemed.  I never knew father to say it so
+impressively before, because Amos had been so bad, people really were
+afraid of him, and father said if once he got started right, he would
+go at it just as hard as he had gone at wrongdoing.  I suppose I
+shouldn't have said it about a fox, when there were the Dorkings, and
+ham, and white wool dresses, and all that, but honestly, I couldn't
+remember that I cared particularly whether Amos Hurd was redeemed or
+not; he was always lovely to children; while I never in all my life had
+wanted anything worse than I wanted those foxes to save their skins.  I
+could hear them pant like run out dogs; and I could hear myself, and I
+hadn't been driven from my home and babies, maybe&mdash;and chased miles and
+miles, either.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I just shook.  They came pounding, roaring and braying right
+around the barn, and down the lane.  The little door flew open and a
+strange man stuck in his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shut that door!" I screamed.  "You'll let them in on me, and they
+bite!  They're poison!  They'll kill me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I hadn't even thought of it before.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See any foxes?" cried the man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Two crossed our barnyard headed that way!" I cried back, pointing
+east.  "Shut the door!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man closed it and ran calling as he went:  "It's all right!  They
+crossed the barnyard.  We've got them!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I began to dance and beat my hands, and then I stopped and held my
+breath.  They were passing, and the noise was dreadful.  They struck
+the sides of the barn, poked around the strawstack, and something made
+me look up, and at the edge of the hay stood a fox ready to spring.  If
+it did, it would go from the door, right into the midst thereof.
+Nothing but my red hood sailing straight at it, and a yell I have,
+drove it back.  No one hit the barn again, the line closed up, and went
+on at a run now, they were so anxious to meet and see what they had.
+Then came the beat of hoofs and I saw that all the riders had dropped
+back, and were behind the line of people on foot.  I watched Laddie as
+he flew past waving to me, and I grabbed my scarf to wave at him.  The
+Princess flashed by so swiftly I couldn't see how she looked, and then
+I heard a voice I knew cry:  "Ep!  Ep!  Over Lad!"  And I almost fell
+dead where I stood.  Mr. Pryor sailed right over the barnyard fence
+into the cornfield, ripping that dumb-bell as he went, and neck and
+neck, even with him, on one of his finest horses, was our Leon.  His
+feet were in the stirrups, he had the reins tight, he almost stood as
+he arose, his face was crimson, his head bare, his white hair flying,
+the grandest sight you ever saw.  At the top of my voice I screamed
+after them, "Ep!  Ep!  Over lad!" and then remembered and looked to see
+if I had to chase back the foxes, but they didn't mind only me, after
+what they had been through.  Then I sat down suddenly again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well!  What would father think of that!  Leon kill a horse of ours
+indeed!  There he was on one of Mr. Pryor's, worth as much as six of
+father's no doubt, flying over fences, and the creek was coming, and
+the bank was steep behind the barn.  I was up again straining to see.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ep!  Ep!  Over!" rang the cry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There they went!  Laddie and the Princess too.  I'll never spend
+another cent on paper dolls, candy, raisins, or oranges.  I'll give all
+I have to help Leon buy his horse; then I'm going to begin saving for
+mine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The line closed up, a solid wall of men with sticks, clubs and guns;
+the dogs ranged outside, and those on horseback stopped where they
+could see best; and inside, raced back and forth, and round and round,
+living creatures.  I couldn't count they moved so, but even at that
+distance I could see that some were poor little cotton tails.  The
+scared things!  A whack over the head, a backward toss, and the dogs
+were mouthing them.  The long tailed, sleek, gracefully moving ones,
+they were foxes, the foxes driven from their holes, and nothing on
+earth could save their skins for them now; those men meant to have them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I pulled the doors shut suddenly.  I was so sick I could scarcely
+stand.  I had to work, but at last I pushed the west doors open again.
+I don't think the Lord helped me any that time, for I knew what it
+took&mdash;before, they just went.  Or maybe He did help me quite as much,
+but I had harder work to do my share, because I felt so dizzy and ill.
+Anyway, they opened.  Then I climbed the upright ladder to the top
+beam, walked it to the granary, and there I danced, pounded and yelled
+so that the foxes jumped from the hay, leaped lightly to the threshing
+floor, and stood looking and listening.  I gave them time to hear where
+the dreadful racket was, and then I jumped to the hay and threw the
+pitchfork at them.  It came down smash! and both of them sprang from
+the door.  When I got down the ladder and where I could see, they were
+so rested they were hiking across the cornfield like they never had
+raced a step before; and as the clamour went up behind me, that
+probably meant the first fox had lost its beautiful red and white skin,
+they reached our woods in safety.  The doors went shut easier, and I
+started to the house crying like any blubbering baby; but when mother
+turned from the east window, and I noticed her face, I forgot the foxes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You saw Leon!" I cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That I did!" she exulted, rocking on her toes the same as she does at
+the Meeting House when she is going to cry, "Glory!" any minute.  "That
+I did!  Ah! the brave little chap!  Ah! the fine fellow!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her cheeks were the loveliest pink, and her eyes blazed.  I scarcely
+knew her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What will father say?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If his father isn't every particle as proud of him as I am this day,
+I've a big disappointment coming," she answered.  "If Mr. Pryor chose
+to let him take that fine horse, and taught him how to ride it, father
+should be glad."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If he'd gone into the creek, you wouldn't feel so fine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah! but he didn't!  He didn't!  He stuck to the saddle and sailed over
+in one grand, long sweep!  It was fine!  I hope&mdash;to my soul, I hope his
+father saw it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He did!" I said.  "He did!  He was about halfway down the lane.  He
+was where he could see fine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You didn't notice&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was watching if Leon went under.  What if he had, mother?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They'd have taken him out, and brought him to me, and I'd have worked
+with all the strength and skill God has given me, and if it were
+possible to us, he would be saved, and if it were not, it would be a
+proud moment for a woman to offer a boy like that to the God who gave
+him.  One would have nothing to be ashamed of!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Could you do it, like you are now, and not cry, mother?" I asked
+wonderingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Patience no!" said she.  "Before long you will find out, child, that
+the fountain head of tears and laughter lies in the same spot, deep in
+a woman's heart.  Men were made for big things!  They must brave the
+wild animals, the Indians, fight the battles, ride the races, till the
+fields, build the homes.  In the making of a new country men must have
+the thing in their souls that carried Leon across the creek.  If he had
+checked that horse and gone to the ford, I would have fallen where I
+stood!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father crossed the ford!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"True!  But that's different.  He never had a chance at a horse like
+that!  He never had time for fancy practice, and his nose would have
+been between the pages of a book if he had.  But remember this!  Your
+father's hand has never faltered, and his aim has never failed.  All of
+us are here, safe and comfortable, through him.  It was your father who
+led us across the wilderness, and fended from us the wildcat, wolf, and
+Indian.  He built this house, cleared this land, and gave to all of us
+the thing we love.  Get this in your head straight.  Your father rode a
+plow horse; he never tried flourishes in riding; but no man can stick
+in the saddle longer, ride harder, and face any danger with calmer
+front.  If you think this is anything, you should have seen his face
+the day he stood between me and a band of Indians, we had every reason
+to think, I had angered to the fighting point."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me!  Please tell me!" I begged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All of us had been brought up on that story, but we were crazy to hear
+it, and mother loved to tell it, so she dropped on a chair and began:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We were alone in a cabin in the backwoods of Ohio.  Elizabeth was only
+nine months old, and father always said a mite the prettiest of any
+baby we ever had.  Many of the others have looked quite as well to me,
+but she was the first, and he was so proud of her he always wanted me
+to wait in the wagon until he hitched the horses, so he would get to
+take and to carry her himself.  Well, she was in the cradle, cooing and
+laughing, and I had my work all done, and cabin shining.  I was heating
+a big poker red-hot, and burning holes into the four corners of a board
+so father could put legs in it to make me a bench.  A greasy old squaw
+came to the door with her papoose on her back.  She wanted to trade
+berries for bread.  There were berries everywhere for the picking; I
+had more dried than I could use in two years.  We planted only a little
+patch of wheat and father had to ride three days to carry to mill what
+he could take on a horse.  I baked in an outoven and when it was done,
+a loaf of white bread was by far the most precious thing we had to eat.
+Sometimes I was caught, and forced to let it go.  Often I baked during
+the night and hid the bread in the wheat at the barn.  There was none
+in the cabin that day and I said so.  She didn't believe me.  She set
+her papoose on the floor beside the fireplace, and went to the
+cupboard.  There wasn't a crumb there except cornbread, and she didn't
+want that.  She said:  'Brod!  Brod!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She learned that from the Germans in the settlement.  I shook my head.
+Then she pulled out a big steel hunting knife, such as the whites
+traded to the Indians so they would have no trouble in scalping us
+neatly, and walked to the cradle.  She took that knife loosely between
+her thumb and second finger and holding it directly above my baby's
+face, she swung it lightly back and forth and demanded:  'Brod!  Brod!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If the knife fell, it would go straight through my baby's head, and
+Elizabeth was reaching her little hands and laughing.  There was only
+one thing to do, and I did it.  I caught that red-hot poker from the
+fire, and stuck it so close her baby's face, that the papoose drew back
+and whimpered.  I scarcely saw how she snatched it up and left.  When
+your father came, I told him, and we didn't know what to do.  We knew
+she would come back and bring her band.  If we were not there, they
+would burn the cabin, ruin our crops, kill our stock, take everything
+we had, and we couldn't travel so far, or so fast, that on their ponies
+they couldn't overtake us.  We endangered any one with whom we sought
+refuge, so we gripped hands, knelt down and told the Lord all about it,
+and we felt the answer was to stay.  Father cleaned the gun, and hours
+and hours we waited.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"About ten o'clock the next day they came, forty braves in war paint
+and feathers.  I counted until I was too sick to see, then I took the
+baby in my arms and climbed to the loft, with our big steel knife in
+one hand.  If your father fell, I was to use it, first on Elizabeth,
+then on myself.  The Indians stopped at the woodyard, and the chief of
+the band came to the door, alone.  Your father met him with his gun in
+reach, and for a whole eternity they stood searching each other's eyes.
+I was at the trapdoor where I could see both of them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To the depths of my soul I enjoyed seeing Leon take the fence and
+creek: but what was that, child, to compare with the timber that stood
+your father like a stone wall between me and forty half-naked, paint
+besmeared, maddened Indians?  Don't let any showing the men of to-day
+can make set you to thinking that father isn't a king among men.  Not
+once, but again and again in earlier days, he fended danger from me
+like that.  I can shut my eyes and see his waving hair, his white brow,
+his steel blue eyes, his unfaltering hand.  I don't remember that I had
+time or even thought to pray.  I gripped the baby, and the knife, and
+waited for the thing I must do if an arrow or a shot sailed past the
+chief and felled father.  They stood second after second, like two
+wooden men, and then slowly and deliberately the chief lighted his big
+pipe, drew a few puffs and handed it to father.  He set down his gun,
+took the pipe and quite as slowly and deliberately he looked at the
+waiting band, at the chief, and then raised it to his lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'White squaw brave!  Heap much brave!' said the chief.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'In the strength of the Lord.  Amen!' said father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then he reached his hand and the chief took it, so I came down the
+ladder and stood beside father, as the Indians began to file in the
+front door and out the back.  As they passed, every man of them made
+the peace sign and piled in a heap, venison, fish, and game, while each
+squaw played with the baby and gave me a gift of beads, a metal
+trinket, or a blanket she had woven.  After that they came often, and
+brought gifts, and if prowling Gypsies were pilfering, I could look to
+see a big Indian loom up and seat himself at my fireside until any
+danger was past.  I really got so I liked and depended on them, and
+father left me in their care when he went to mill, and I was safe as
+with him.  You have heard the story over and over, but to-day is the
+time to impress on you that an exhibition like THIS is the veriest
+child's play compared with what I have seen your father do repeatedly!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But it was you, the chief said was brave!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had to be, baby," she said.  "Mother had no choice.  There's only
+one way to deal with an Indian.  I had lived among them all my life,
+and I knew what must be done."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think both of you were brave," I said, "you, the bravest!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite the contrary," laughed mother.  "I shall have to confess that
+what I did happened so quickly I'd no time to think.  I only realized
+the coal red iron was menacing the papoose when it drew back and
+whimpered.  Father had all night to face what was coming to him, and it
+was not one to one, but one to forty, with as many more squaws, as good
+fighters as the braves, to back them.  It was a terror but I never have
+been sorry we went through it together.  I have rested so securely in
+your father ever since."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And he is as safe in you," I insisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As you will," said mother.  "This world must have her women quite as
+much as her men.  It is shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart, business."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The clamour in the meadow arose above our voices and brought us back to
+the foxes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There goes another!" I said, the tears beginning to roll again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is heathenish business," said mother.  "I don't blame you!  If
+people were not too shiftless to care for their stuff, the foxes
+wouldn't take their chickens and geese.  They never get ours!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hoods aren't shiftless!" I sobbed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There are always exceptions," said mother, "and they are the exception
+in this case."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The door flew open and Leon ran in.  He was white with excitement, and
+trembling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother, come and see me take a fence on Pryor's Rocket!" he cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother had him in her arms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You little whiffet!" she said.  "You little tow-haired whiffet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Both of them were laughing and crying at the same time, and so was I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I saw you take one fence and the creek, Weiscope!" she said, holding
+him tight, and stroking his hair.  "That will do for to-day.  Ride the
+horse home slowly, rub it down if they will allow you, and be sure to
+remember your manners when you leave.  To trust such a child as you
+with so valuable a horse, and for Mr. Pryor to personally ride with you
+and help you, I think that was a big thing for a man like him to do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, mother, he's been showing me for weeks, or I couldn't have done
+it to-day.  It was our secret to surprise you.  When I get my horse,
+I'll be able to ride a little, as well as Mr. Laddie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leon, don't," said mother, gripping him tighter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must bear in mind, word about that money may come any day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aw, it won't either," said Leon, pulling away.  "And say, mother, that
+dumb-bell was like country boys make in England.  He helped me hunt the
+wood and showed me, and I couldn't ride and manage it, so he had it all
+day, and you should have heard him make it rip.  Say, mother, take my
+word, he was some pumpkins in England.  I bet he ordered the Queen
+around, when he was there!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No doubt!" laughed mother, kissing him and pushing him from the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Some people are never satisfied.  After that splendid riding and the
+perfect day, father, Leon, and Laddie came home blaming every one, and
+finding fault, and trying to explain how it happened, that the people
+from the east side claimed two foxes, and there was only one left for
+the west side, when they had seen and knew they had driven three for
+miles.  They said they lost them in our Big Woods.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I didn't care one speck.  I would as lief wear a calico dress, and let
+the little foxes have their mammies to feed them; and I was willing to
+bet all my money that we would have as much ham, and as many greens
+next summer as we ever had.  And if the foxes took Hoods' Dorkings
+again, let them build a coop with safe foundations.  The way was to use
+stone and heap up dirt around it in the fall, to be perfectly sure, and
+make it warmer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We took care of our chickens because we had to have them.  All the year
+we needed them, but most especially for Easter.  Mother said that was
+ordained chicken time.  Turkeys for Thanksgiving, sucking pigs for
+Christmas, chickens for Easter, goose, she couldn't abide.  She thought
+it was too strong.  She said the egg was a symbol of life; of
+awakening, of birth, and the chickens came from the eggs, first ones
+about Easter, so that proved it was chicken time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I am going to quit praying about little things I can manage myself.
+Father said no prayer would bring an answer unless you took hold and
+pulled with all your being for what you wanted.  I had been intending
+for days to ask the Lord to help me find where Leon hid his Easter
+eggs.  It had been the law at our house from the very first, that for
+the last month before Easter, aside from what mother had to have for
+the house, all of us might gather every egg we could find and keep them
+until Easter.  If we could locate the hiding place of any one else, we
+might take all theirs.  The day before Easter they were brought in,
+mother put aside what she required, and the one who had the most got to
+sell all of them and take the money.  Sometimes there were two washtubs
+full, and what they brought was worth having, for sure.  So we watched
+all year for safe places, and when the time came we almost ran after
+the hens with a basket.  Because Laddie and Leon were bigger they could
+outrun us, and lots of hens laid in the barn, so there the boys always
+had first chance.  Often during the month we would find and take each
+other's eggs a dozen times.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We divided them, and hid part in different places, so that if either
+were found there would still be some left.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie had his in the hopper of the cider press right on the threshing
+floor, and as he was sure to get more than I had anyway, I usually put
+mine with his.  May had hers some place, and where Leon had his, none
+of us could find or imagine.  I almost lay awake of nights trying to
+think, and every time I thought of a new place, the next day I would
+look, and they wouldn't be there.  Three days before Easter, mother
+began to cook and get the big dinner ready, and she ran short of eggs.
+She told me to go to the barn and tell the boys that each of them must
+send her a dozen as quickly as they could.  Of course that was fair, if
+she made both give up the same number.  So I went to the barn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lane was muddy, and as I had been sick, I wore my rubbers that
+spring.  I thought to keep out of the deep mud, where horses and cattle
+trampled, I'd go up the front embankment, and enter the little door.
+My feet made no sound, and it so happened that the door didn't either,
+and as I started to open it.  I saw Leon disappearing down the
+stairway, with a big sack on his back.  I thought it was corn for the
+horses, and followed him, but he went to the cow stable door and
+started toward the lane, and then I thought it was for the pigs, so I
+called Laddie and told him about the eggs.  He said he'd give me two
+dozen of his, and Leon could pay him back.  We went together to get
+them, and there was only one there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Wasn't that exactly like Leon?  Leave ONE for the nest egg!  If he were
+dying and saw a joke or a trick, he'd stop to play it before he
+finished, if he possibly could.  If he had no time at all, then he'd go
+with his eyes twinkling over the thoughts of the fun it would have been
+if he possibly could have managed it.  Of course when we saw that one
+lonely egg in the cider hopper, just exactly like the "Last Rose of
+Summer, left to pine on the stem," I thought of the sack Leon carried,
+and knew what had been in it.  We hurried out and tried to find him,
+but he was swallowed up.  You couldn't see him or hear a sound of him
+anywhere.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother was as cross as she ever gets.  Right there she made a new rule,
+and it was that two dozen eggs must be brought to the house each day,
+whether any were hidden or not.  She had to stop baking until she got
+eggs.  She said a few times she had used a goose egg in custard.  I
+could fix that.  I knew where one of our gray geese had a nest, and if
+she'd cook any goose egg, it would be a gray one.  Of course I had
+sense enough not to take a blue one.  So I slipped from the east door,
+crossed the yard and orchard corner, climbed the fence and went down
+the lane.  There was the creek up and tearing.  It was half over the
+meadow, and the floodgate between the pasture and the lane rocked with
+the rush of water; still, I believed I could make it.  So I got on the
+fence and with my feet on the third rail, and holding by the top one, I
+walked sidewise, and so going reached the floodgate.  It was pretty
+wobbly, but I thought I could cross on the run.  I knew I could if I
+dared jump at the other end; but there the water was over the third
+rail, and that meant above my head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was right at that time of spring when you felt so good you thought
+you could do most anything, except fly&mdash;I tried that once&mdash;so I went
+on.  The air was cold for all the sun shone, the smell of catkin
+pollen, bursting buds, and the odour of earth steaming in the sun, was
+in every breath; the blackbirds were calling, and the doves; the
+ganders looked longingly at the sky and screamed a call to every
+passing wild flock, and Deams' rooster wanted to fight all creation, if
+you judged by the boasting he was doing from their barnyard gate.  He
+made me think of eggs, so I set my jaws, looked straight ahead, and
+scooted across the floodgate to the post that held it and the rails of
+the meadow fence.  I made it too, and then the fence was easy, only I
+had to double quite short, because the water was over the third rail
+there, but at last it was all gone, and I went to the fence corner and
+there was the goose on the nest, laying an egg.  She had built on a
+little high place, among puddles, wild rose bushes, and thorns, and the
+old thing wouldn't get off.  She just sat there and stuck out her head
+and hissed and hissed.  I never noticed before that geese were so big
+and so aggravating.  I wasn't going to give up, after that floodgate,
+so I hunted a big stick, set it against her wing, pushed her off and
+grabbed three eggs and ran.  When I got to the fence, I was in a pickle
+for sure.  I didn't know what in the world to do with the eggs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last I unbuttoned my coat, put them in my apron front, gathered it
+up, and holding it between my teeth, started back.  I had to double
+more than ever on account of the eggs, and when I reached the floodgate
+it rocked like a branch in the wind; but I had to get back, so I rested
+and listened to the larks a while.  That was a good plan.  They were
+calling for mates, and what they said was so perfectly lovely, you
+couldn't think of anything else; and the less you thought about how
+that gate rocked, and how deep and swift the water ran, the better for
+you.  At last one lark went almost from sight and he rang, twisted and
+trilled his call, until my heart swelled so big it hurt.  I crossed on
+the jump with no time to think at all.  That was a fine plan, for I
+made it, but I hit the post so hard I broke the middle egg.  I was
+going to throw it away, but there was so much starch in my apron it
+held like a dish, and it had been clean that morning, now the egg
+soiled it anyway, so I ran and got home all right.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother was so pleased about the eggs she changed the apron and never
+said a word, except to brag on me.  She said she couldn't keep house
+without me, and I guess that was a fact.  I came in handy a lot of
+times.  But at dinner when she scolded the boys about the eggs, and
+told them I brought the goose eggs for her custard, else there would
+have been no pie, father broke loose, and I thought he was going to
+whip me sure.  He told mother all about the water and the gate, and how
+I had to cross, and he said, 'it was a dispensation of Providence that
+we didn't have a funeral instead of celebrating Easter,' so I said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, if you think I came so near drowning myself, when you rejoice
+because Christ is risen from the dead, you can be glad I am too, and
+that will make it all the better."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The boys laughed, but father said it was no laughing matter.  I think
+that speech saved me from going on the threshing floor, for he took me
+on his lap when I thought I'd have to go, and told me never, never to
+do anything like that again, and then he hugged me until I almost
+broke.  Gracious!  He should have seen us going to school some days.
+Why, we even walked the top rail when it was the only one above water,
+and we could cross the bridge if we wanted to.  At least when Laddie or
+Miss Amelia was not around, we did.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon was so bursting full he scarcely could eat, and Laddie looked
+pretty glum when he had to admit he had no eggs; so Laddie had to hand
+over the whole two dozen.  Leon didn't mind that, but he said if he
+must, then all of us should stay in the dining-room until he brought
+them, because of course he couldn't walk straight and get them in broad
+daylight with us watching, and not show where they were.  Father said
+that was fair, so Leon went out and before so very long he came back
+with the eggs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I thought until my skull almost cracked, about where he COULD have
+gone, and I was almost to the place where the thing seemed serious
+enough that I'd ask the Lord to help me find Laddie's eggs, when mother
+sent me to the garret for red onion skins.  She had an hour to rest,
+and she was going to spend it fixing decorations for our eggs.  Of
+course there were always red and black aniline ones, and yellow and
+blue, but none of us ever like them half so well as those mother
+coloured, herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She took the dark red skins and cut boys, girls, dogs, cats, stars,
+flowers, butterflies, fish, and everything imaginable, and wet the
+skins a little and laid them on very white eggs that had been soaked in
+alum water to cut the grease, and then wrapped light yellow skins over,
+and then darker ones, and at last layer after layer of cloth, and wet
+that, and roasted them an hour in hot ashes and then let them cool and
+dry, before unwrapping.  When she took them out, rubbed on a little
+grease and polished them&mdash;there they were!  They would have our names,
+flowers, birds, animals, all in pale yellow, deep rich brown, almost
+red, and perfectly beautiful colours, while you could hunt and hunt
+before you found everything on one egg.  And sometimes the onion skins
+slipped, and made things of themselves that she never put on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was coming from the bin with an apron full of skins and I almost fell
+over.  I couldn't breathe for a long time.  I danced on my toes, and
+held my mouth to keep from screaming.  On the garret floor before me
+lay a little piece of wet mud, and the faintest outline of a boot, a
+boot about Leon's size.  That was all I needed to know.  As soon as I
+could hold steady, I took the skins to mother, slipped back and hunted
+good; and of course I had to find them&mdash;grainsacks half full of
+them&mdash;carried in the front door in the evening, and up the front
+stairs, where no one went until bedtime, unless there were company.
+Away back under the eaves, across the joists, behind the old clothing
+waiting to be ripped, coloured and torn for carpet rangs and rugs, Mr.
+Leon had almost every egg that had been laid on the place for a month.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+NOW he'd see what he'd get for taking Laddie's!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I stopped short.  What I thought most made me sick, but I didn't
+propose to lie in bed again for a year at least, for it had its bad
+parts as well as its good; so I went straight and whispered to Laddie.
+He never looked pleased at all, so I knew I had been right.  He kissed
+me, and thanked me, and then said slowly:  "It's mighty good of you,
+Little Sister, but you see it wouldn't be FAIR.  He found mine himself,
+so he had a right to take them.  But I don't dare touch his, when you
+tell me where they are.  I never in a month of Sundays would have
+looked for them in the house.  I was going to search the wood house and
+smoke house this afternoon.  I can't take them.  But thank you just as
+much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I went to father and he laughed.  How he did laugh!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Laddie is right!" he said at last.  "He didn't find them, and he
+mustn't take them.  But you may!  They're yours!  That front door
+scheme of Leon's was fairly well, but it wasn't quite good enough.  If
+he'd cleaned his feet as he should, before he crossed mother's carpet
+and climbed the stairs, he'd have made it all right.  'His tracks
+betrayed him,' as tracks do all of us, if we are careless enough to
+leave any.  The eggs are yours, and to-night is the time to produce
+them.  Where do you want to hide them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well of all things! and after I had stumbled on them without pestering
+the Lord, either!  Just as slick as anything!  Mine!  I never ever
+thought of it.  But when I did think, I liked it.  The more I thought,
+the funnier it grew.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Under mother's bed," I whispered.  "But I never can get them.  They're
+in wheat sacks, and full so high, and they'll have to be handled like
+eggs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll do the carrying," laughed father.  "Come show me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So we took all those eggs, and put them under mother's bed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course she and Candace saw us, but they didn't hunt eggs and they'd
+never tell.  If ever I thought I'd burst wide open!  About dusk I saw
+Leon coming from the barn carrying his hat at his side&mdash;more eggs&mdash;so I
+ran like a streak and locked the front door, and then slipped back in
+the dining-room and almost screamed, when I could hear him trying it,
+and he couldn't get in.  After a while he came in, fussed around, and
+finally went into the sitting-room, and the key turned and he went
+upstairs.  I knew I wouldn't dare look at him when he came down, so I
+got a reader and began on a piece I just love:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"A nightingale made a mistake;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">She sang a few notes out of tune:</SPAN><BR>
+Her heart was ready to break,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And she hid away from the moon."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+When I did get a peep, gracious but he was black!  Maybe it wasn't
+going to be so much fun after all.  But he had the money last year, and
+the year before, and if he'd cleaned his feet well&mdash;I was not hunting
+his eggs, when I found them.  "His tracks betrayed him," as father
+said.  I was thankful supper was ready just then, and while it was
+going on mother said:  "As soon as you finish, all bring in your eggs.
+I want to wrap the ones to colour to-night, and bury them in the
+fireplace so they will colour, dry, and be ready to open in the
+morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No one said a word, but neither Laddie nor Leon looked very happy, and
+I took awful bites to keep my face straight.  When all of us finished
+May brought a lot from the bran barrel in the smoke house, but Laddie
+and Leon only sat there and looked silly; it really was funny.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must have more eggs than this?" said mother.  "Where are they to
+come from?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father nodded to me and I said:  "From under your bed!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, it was you!  And I never once caught you snooping!" cried Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Easy son!" said father.  "That will do.  You lost through your own
+carelessness.  You left wet mud on the garret floor, and she saw it
+when mother sent her for the onion skins.  You robbed Laddie of his
+last egg this morning; be a good loser yourself!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, anyway, you didn't get 'em," said Leon to Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And she only found them by accident!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then we had a big time counting all those eggs, and such another heap
+as there was to sell, after mother filled baskets to cook with and
+colour.  When the table was cleared, Laddie and Leon made tallow
+pencils from a candle and wrote all sorts of things over eggs that had
+been prepared to colour.  Then mother boiled them in copperas water,
+and aniline, and all the dyes she had, and the boys polished them, and
+they stood in shining black, red, blue and yellow heaps.  The onion
+ones would be done in the morning.  Leon had a goose egg and mother let
+him keep it, so he wrote and wrote on it, until Laddie said it would be
+all writing, and no colour, and he boiled it in red, after mother
+finished, and polished it himself.  It came out real pretty with roses
+on it and lots of words he wouldn't let any of us read; but of course
+it was for Susie Fall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Next morning he slipped it to her at church.  When we got home, all of
+us were there except Shelley, and we had a big dinner and a fine time
+and Laddie stayed until after supper, before he went to Pryors'.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How is he making it?" asked Sally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You could see she was making it all right; she never looked lovelier,
+and mother said Peter was letting her spend away too much money on her
+clothes.  She told him so, but Peter just laughed and said business was
+good, and he could afford it, and she was a fine advertisement for his
+store when she was dressed well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All I know is," said mother, "that he goes there every whipstitch, and
+the women, at least, seem glad to have him.  He says Mr. Pryor treats
+him decently, and that is more than he does his own family and
+servants.  He and the girl and her mother are divided about something.
+She treats her father respectfully, but she's in sympathy with mother."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Laddie can't find out what the trouble is?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think that he tries."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe he'd feel better not to know," said Peter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Possibly!" said mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nonsense!" said father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You seem to be reconciled," said Elizabeth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That girl would reconcile a man to anything," said father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not to the loss of his soul, I hope," said mother stiffly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Souls are not so easy to lose," said father.  "Besides, I am counting
+on Laddie saving hers."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap13"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIII
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+The Garden of the Lord
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"With what content and merriment,<BR>
+Their days are spent, whose minds are bent<BR>
+To follow the useful plow."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+That spring I decided if school didn't stop pretty soon, I'd run away
+again, and I didn't in the least care what they did to me.  A country
+road was all right and it was good enough, if it had been heaped up,
+leveled and plenty of gravel put on; and of course our road would be
+fine, because father was one of the commissioners, and as long as he
+filled that office, every road in the county would be just as fine as
+the law would allow him to make it.  I have even heard him tell mother
+that he "stretched it a leetle mite," when he was forced to by people
+who couldn't seem to be made to understand what was required to upbuild
+a nation.  He said our language was founded on the alphabet, and to
+master it you had to begin with "a".  And he said the nation was like
+that; it was based on townships, and when a township was clean, had
+good roads, bridges, schoolhouses, and churches, a county was in fine
+shape, and when each county was in order, the state was right, and when
+the state was prosperous, the nation could rejoice in its strength.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He said Atlas in the geography book, carrying the world on his back,
+was only a symbol, but it was a good one.  He said when the county
+elected him to fill an important office, it used his shoulder as a prop
+for the nation, so it became his business to stand firmly, and use
+every ounce of strength and brains he had, first of all to make his own
+possessions a model, then his township, his county, and his state, and
+if every one worked together doing that, no nation on earth had our
+amount of territory and such fine weather, so none of them could beat
+us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Our road was like the barn floor, where you drove: on each side was a
+wide grassy strip, and not a weed the length of our land.  All the
+rails in the fences were laid straight, the gates were solid, sound,
+and swung firmly on their beams, our fence corners were full of alders,
+wild roses, sumac, blackberry vines, masses of wild flowers beneath
+them, and a bird for every bush.  Some of the neighbours thought that
+to drive two rails every so often, lay up the fences straight, and grub
+out the shrubs was the way, but father said they were vastly mistaken.
+He said that was such a shortsighted proceeding, he would be ashamed to
+indulge in it.  You did get more land, but if you left no place for the
+birds, the worms and insects devoured your crops, and you didn't raise
+half so much as if you furnished the birds shelter and food.  So he
+left mulberries in the fields and fence corners and wild cherries,
+raspberries, grapes, and every little scrub apple tree from seeds sown
+by Johnny Appleseed when he crossed our land.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother said those apples were so hard a crane couldn't dent them, but
+she never watched the birds in winter when the snow was beginning to
+come and other things were covered up.  They swarmed over those trees
+until spring, for the tiny sour apples stuck just like oak leaves
+waiting for next year's crop to push them off.  She never noticed us,
+either.  After a few frosts, we could almost get tipsy on those apples;
+there was not a tree in our orchard that had the spicy, teasing tang of
+Johnny Appleseed's apples.  Then too, the limbs could be sawed off and
+rambo and maiden's-blush grafted on, if you wanted to; father did on
+some of them, so there would be good apples lying beside the road for
+passers-by, and they needn't steal to get them.  You could graft red
+haws on them too, and grow great big, little haw-apples, that were the
+prettiest things you ever saw, and the best to eat.  Father said if it
+didn't spoil the looks of the road, he wouldn't care how many of his
+neighbours straightened their fences.  If they did, the birds would
+come to him, and the more he had, the fewer bugs and worms he would be
+troubled with, so he would be sure of big crops, and sound fruit.  He
+said he would much rather have a few good apples picked by robins or
+jays, than untouched trees, loaded with wormy falling ones he could
+neither use nor sell.  He always patted my head and liked every line of
+it when I recited, sort of tearful-like and pathetic:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Don't kill the birds! the happy birds,<BR>
+That bless the field and grove;<BR>
+So innocent to look upon,<BR>
+They claim our warmest love."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The roads crossing our land were all right, and most of the others near
+us; and a road is wonderful, if it is taking you to the woods or a
+creek or meadow; but when it is walking you straight to a stuffy little
+schoolhouse where you must stand up to see from a window, where a
+teacher is cross as fire, like Miss Amelia, and where you eternally
+HEAR things you can't see, there comes a time about the middle of April
+when you had quite as soon die as to go to school any longer; and what
+you learn there doesn't amount to a hill of beans compared with what
+you can find out for yourself outdoors.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Schoolhouses are made wrong.  If they must be, they should be built in
+a woods pasture beside a stream, where you could wade, swim, and be
+comfortable in summer, and slide and skate in winter.  The windows
+should be cut to the floor, and stand wide open, so the birds and
+butterflies could pass through.  You ought to learn your geography by
+climbing a hill, walking through a valley, wading creeks, making
+islands in them, and promontories, capes, and peninsulas along the
+bank.  You should do your arithmetic sitting under trees adding
+hickory-nuts, subtracting walnuts, multiplying butternuts, and dividing
+hazelnuts.  You could use apples for fractions, and tin cups for liquid
+measure.  You could spell everything in sight and this would teach you
+the words that are really used in the world.  Every single one of us
+could spell incompatibility, but I never heard father, or the judge, or
+even the Bishop, put it in a speech.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If you simply can't have school THAT way, then you should be shut in
+black cells, deep under the ground, where you couldn't see, or hear a
+sound, and then if they'd give you a book and candle and Miss Amelia,
+and her right-hand man, Mister Ruler, why you might learn something.
+This way, if you sat and watched the windows you could see a bird cross
+our woods pasture to the redbird swamp every few minutes; once in a
+while one of my big hawks took your breath as he swept, soared, sailed,
+and circled, watching the ground below for rabbits, snakes, or
+chickens.  The skinny old blue herons crossing from the Wabash to hunt
+frogs in the cowslip swale in our meadow, sailed so slow and so low,
+that you could see their sharp bills stuck out in front, their uneven,
+ragged looking feathers, and their long legs trailing out behind.  I
+bet if Polly Martin wore a blue calico dress so short her
+spindle-shanks showed, and flew across our farm, you couldn't tell her
+from a heron.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were so many songs you couldn't decide which was which to save
+you; it was just a pouring jumble of robins, larks, doves, blackbirds,
+sparrows, everything that came that early; the red and the yellow birds
+had not come yet, or the catbirds or thrushes.  You could hear the
+thumping wings of the roosters in Sills' barnyard nearest the
+schoolhouse, and couldn't tell which was whipping, so you had to sit
+there and wonder; and worst of all you must stand Miss Amelia calmly
+telling you to pay attention to your books or you would be kept in, and
+all the time you were forced to bear torments, while you watched her
+walk from window to window to see every speck of the fight.  One day
+they had thumped and fought for half an hour; she had looked from every
+window in the room, and at last there was an awful whacking, and then
+silence.  It grew so exciting I raised my hand, and almost before she
+nodded permission, "Which whipped?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Amelia turned red as a beet.  Gee, but she was mad!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did!" she said.  "Or at least I will.  You may remain for it after
+school is dismissed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now if you are going to be switched, they never do it until they are
+just so angry anyway, and then they always make it as hard as they dare
+not to stripe you, so it isn't much difference HOW provoked they are,
+it will be the same old thrashing, and it's sure to sting for an hour
+at least, so you might as well be beaten for a little more as hardly
+anything at all.  At that instant from the fence not far from my window
+came a triumphant crow that fairly ripped across the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, it was the Dorking!" I said.  "No wonder you followed clear around
+the room to see him thrash a Shanghai three times his size!  I bet a
+dollar it was great!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Usually, I wouldn't have put up more than five cents, but at that time
+I had over six dollars from my Easter eggs, and no girl of my age at
+our school ever had half that much.  Miss Amelia started toward me, and
+I braced my feet so she'd get a good jolt herself, when she went to
+shake me; she never struck us over the head since Laddie talked to her
+that first day; but John Hood's foot was in the aisle.  I thought maybe
+I'd have him for my beau when we grew up, because I bet he knew she was
+coming, and stuck out his foot on purpose; anyway, she pitched, and had
+to catch a desk to keep off the floor, and that made her so mad at him,
+that she forgot me, while he got his scolding; so when my turn came at
+last, she had cooled down enough that she only marched past to her
+desk, saying I was to remain after school.  I had to be careful after
+that to be mighty good to May and Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When school was out they sat on the steps before the door and waited.
+Miss Amelia fussed around and there they sat.  Then her face grew more
+gobblerish than usual, and she went out and told them to go home.
+Plain as anything I heard May say It:  "She's been awful sick, you
+know, and mother wouldn't allow it."  And then Leon piped up:  "You DID
+watch the roosters, all the time they fought, and of course all of us
+wanted to see just as badly as you did."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She told them if they didn't go right home she'd bring them back and
+whip them too; so they had to start, and leave me to my sad fate.  I
+was afraid they had made it sadder, instead of helping me; she was so
+provoked when she came in she was crying, and over nothing but the
+plain truth too; if we had storied on her, she'd have had some cause to
+beller.  She arranged her table, cleaned the board, emptied the water
+bucket, and closed the windows.  Then she told me I was a rude,
+untrained child.  I was rude, I suppose, but goodness knows, I wasn't
+untrained; that was hard on father and mother; I had a big notion to
+tell them; and then, she never whipped me at all.  She said if I wanted
+her to love me, I mustn't be a saucy, impudent girl, and I should go
+straight home and think it over.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went, but I was so dazed at her thinking I wanted her to love me,
+that I hardly heard May and Leon calling; when I did I went to the
+cemetery fence and there they lay in the long grass waiting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you cried, we were coming back and pitch into her," said Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a pointer.  Next time, first cut she gave me, I decided to
+scream bloody murder.  But that would be no Crusader way.  There was
+one thing though.  No Crusader ever sat and heard a perfectly lovely
+fight going on, and never even wondered which whipped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+May and Leon stepped one on each side, took a hand, and we ran like
+Indians, and slid down the hill between the bushes, climbed the fence,
+crossed the pasture back of the church, and went to the creek.  There
+we sat on a log, I told them, and we just laughed.  I didn't know what
+I could do to pay them, for they saved me sure as fate that time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I wished we lived in the woods the way it was when father and mother
+were married and moved to Ohio.  The nearest neighbours were nine
+miles, and there wasn't a dollar for school funds, so of course the
+children didn't have to go, and what their fathers and mothers taught
+them was all they knew.  That would not have helped me much though, for
+we never had one single teacher who knew anything to compare with what
+father and mother did, and we never had one who was forever reading
+books, papers, and learning more things that help, to teach other
+people.  I wished father had time to take our school.  It would have
+been some fun to go to him, because I just knew he would use the woods
+for the room, and teach us things it would do some good to know about.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I began debating whether it was a big enough thing to bother the Lord
+with: this being penned up in the schoolhouse droning over spelling and
+numbers, when you could smell tree bloom, flower bloom, dozens of birds
+were nesting, and everything was beginning to hum with life.  I
+couldn't think for that piece about "Spring" going over in my head:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"I am coming, I am coming:<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Hark! the little bee is humming:</SPAN><BR>
+See! the lark is soaring high,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">In the bright and sunny sky;</SPAN><BR>
+All the birds are on the wing:<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Little maiden, now is spring."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+I made up my mind that it was of enough importance to call for the
+biggest prayer I could think of and that I would go up in the barn to
+the top window, stand on a beam, and turn my face to the east, where
+Jesus used to be, and I'd wrestle with the Lord for freedom, as Jacob
+wrestled with the Angel on the banks of the Jabbok in the land of
+Ammon.  I was just getting up steam to pray as hard as ever I could;
+for days I'd been thinking of it, and I was nearly to the point where
+one more killdeer crying across the sky would have sent me headlong
+from the schoolhouse anywhere that my feet were on earth, and the air
+didn't smell of fried potatoes, kraut, sweat, and dogs, like it did
+whenever you sat beside Clarissa Polk.  When I went to supper one
+night; father had been to Groveville, and he was busy over his papers.
+After he finished the blessing, he seemed worried, at last he said the
+funds were all out, and the county would make no appropriation so
+school would have to close next week.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well that beats me!  I had faith in that prayer I was going to make,
+and here the very thing I intended to ask for happened before I prayed.
+I decided I would save the prayer until the next time I couldn't stand
+anything another minute, and then I would try it with all my might, and
+see if it really did any good.  After supper I went out the back door,
+spread my arms wide, and ran down the orchard to the fence in great
+bounds, the fastest I ever went in my life.  I climbed my pulpit in the
+corner and tried to see how much air my lungs would hold without
+bursting, while I waved my arms and shouted at the top of my voice:
+"Praise ye the Lord!  Praised be His holy name!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ker-awk!" cried an old blue heron among the cowslips below me.  I had
+almost scared it to death, and it arose on flapping wings and paid me
+back by frightening me so I screamed as I dodged its shadow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is all this?" asked father behind me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come up and take a seat, and I'll try to tell you," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So he stepped on my pulpit and sat on the top rail, while I stood
+between his knees, put my arms around his neck, took off his hat and
+loosened his hair so the wind could wave it, and make his head feel
+cool and good.  His hair curled a little and it was black and fine.
+His cheeks were pink and his eyes the brightest blue, with long lashes,
+and heavier brows than any other man I ever have seen.  He was the best
+looking&mdash;always so clean and fresh, and you never had to be afraid of
+him, unless you had been a bad, sinful child.  If you were all right,
+you would walk into his arms, play with his hair, kiss him all you
+pleased, and there wasn't a thing on earth you couldn't tell him,
+excepting a secret you had promised to keep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So I explained all this, and more too.  About how I wanted to hunt for
+the flowers, to see which bloomed first, and watch in what order the
+birds came, and now it was a splendid time to locate nests, because
+there were no leaves, so I could see easily, and how glad mother would
+be to know where the blue goose nested, and her white turkey hen;
+because she wanted her geese all blue, and the turkeys all white, as
+fast as she could manage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Every little thing that troubled me or that I wanted, I told him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sat there and he couldn't have listened with more interest or been
+quieter if I had been a bishop, which is the biggest thing that ever
+happened at our house; his name was Ninde and he came from Chicago to
+dedicate our church when it was new.  So father listened and thought
+and held his arms around me, and&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you think the Lord was at the bottom of the thing that makes you
+happy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you always go to Him about what concerns you, and you say,
+'Praise the Lord,' when things go to please you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do indeed!" said father.  "But I had thought of this running short
+of school funds as a calamity.  If I had been praying about it, I would
+have asked Him to show me a way to raise money to continue until middle
+May at least."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh father!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I just crumpled up in his arms and began to cry; to save me I couldn't
+help it.  He held me tight.  At last he said:  "I think you are a
+little overstrained this spring.  Maybe you were sicker than we knew,
+or are growing too fast.  Don't worry any more about school.  Possibly
+father can fix it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Next morning when I wakened, my everyday clothes lay across the foot of
+the bed, so I called mother and asked if I should put them on; she took
+me in her arms, and said father thought I had better be in the open,
+and I needn't go to school any more that spring.  I told her I thought
+I could bear it a few more days, now it was going to be over so soon;
+but she said I might stay at home, father and Laddie would hear me at
+night, and I could take my books anywhere I pleased and study when I
+chose, if I had my spelling and reading learned at evening.  NOW, say
+the Lord doesn't help those who call on Him in faith believing!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Think of being allowed to learn your lessons on the top of the granary,
+where you could look out of a window above the treetops, lie in the
+cool wind, and watch swallows and martins.  Think of studying in the
+pulpit when the creek ran high, and the wild birds sang so sweetly you
+seemed to hear them for the first time in all your life, and hens,
+guineas, and turkeys made prime music in the orchard.  You could see
+the buds swell, and the little blue flags push through the grass, where
+Mrs. Mayer had her flowerbed, and the cowslips greening under the water
+of the swale at the foot of the hill, while there might be a Fairy
+under any leaf.  I was so full, so swelled up and excited, that when I
+got ready to pick up a book, I could learn a lesson in a few minutes,
+tell all about it, spell every word, and read it back, front, and
+sideways.  I never learned lessons so quick and so easy in all my life;
+father, Laddie, and every one of them had to say so.  One night, father
+said to Laddie:  "This child is furnishing evidence that our school
+system is wrong, and our methods of teaching far from right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or is it merely proof that she is different," said Laddie, "and you
+can't run her through the same groove you could the rest of us?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A little of both," said father, "but most that the system is wrong.
+We are not going at children in a way to gain and hold their interest,
+and make them love their work.  There must be a better way of teaching,
+and we should find different teachers.  You'll have to try the school
+next year yourself, Laddie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have a little plan about a piece of land I am hoping to take before
+then," answered Laddie.  "It's time for me to try my wings at making a
+living, and land is my choice.  I have fully decided.  I stick to the
+soil!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Amen!" cried father.  "You please me mightily.  I hate to see sons of
+mine thriving on law, literally making their living out of the fruit of
+other men's discord.  I dislike seeing them sharpen their wits in
+trade, buying at the lowest limit, extorting the highest.  I don't want
+their horizons limited by city blocks, their feet on pavements,
+everything under the sun in their heads that concerns a scheme to make
+money; not room for an hour's thought or study in a whole day, about
+the really vital things of life.  After all, land and its products are
+the basis of everything; the city couldn't exist a day unless we feed
+and clothe it.  In the things that I consider important, you are a king
+among men, with your feet on soil you own."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So I figure it," said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you are the best educated man I have reared," said father.  "Take
+this other thought with you: on land, the failure of the bank does not
+break you.  The fire another man's carelessness starts, does not wipe
+out your business or home.  You are not in easy reach of contagion.
+Any time you want to branch out, your mother and I will stand back of
+you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you!" said Laddie.  "You backed none of the others.  They would
+resent it.  I'll make the best start I can myself, and as they did,
+stand alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father looked at him and smiled slowly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are right, as always," he said.  "I hadn't thought so far.  It
+would make trouble.  At any rate, let me inspect and help you select
+your land."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That of course!" said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I suspect it's not a very nice thing for me to tell, but all of us were
+tickled silly the day Miss Amelia packed her trunk and left for sure.
+Mother said she never tried harder in all her days, but Miss Amelia was
+the most distinctly unlovable person she ever had met.  She sympathized
+with us so, she never said a word when Leon sang:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,</SPAN><BR>
+Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Like fairy-gifts fading away,</SPAN><BR>
+Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Let thy loveliness fade as it will,</SPAN><BR>
+And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Would entwine itself verdantly still&mdash;"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+while Miss Amelia drove from sight up the Groveville road.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he sang Leon stretched out his arms after her vanishing form.  "I
+hope," he said, "that you caught that touching reference to 'the dear
+ruin,' and could anything be expressed more beautifully and poetically
+than that 'verdantly still?'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I feel sorry for a snake.  I like hoptoads, owls, and shitepokes.  I
+envy a buzzard the way it can fly, and polecats are beautiful; but I
+never could get up any sort of feeling at all for Miss Amelia, whether
+she was birdlike or her true self.  So no one was any gladder than I
+when she was gone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After that, spring came pushing until you felt shoved.  Our family
+needed me then.  If they never had known it before, they found out
+there was none too many of us.  Every day I had to watch the blue
+goose, and bring in her egg before it was chilled, carrying it
+carefully so it would not be jarred.  I had to hunt the turkey nests
+and gather their eggs so they would be right for setting.  There had to
+be straw carried from the stack for new nests, eggs marked, and hens
+set by the dozen.  Garden time came, so leaves had to be raked from the
+beds and from the dooryard.  No one was busier than I; but every little
+while I ran away, and spent some time all by myself in the pulpit,
+under the hawk oak, or on the roof.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Coming from church that Sunday, when we reached the top of the Big
+Hill, mother touched father's arm.  "Stop a minute," she said, and he
+checked the horses, while we sat there and wondered why, as she looked
+and looked all over the farm, then, "Now drive to the top of the Little
+Hill and turn, and stop exactly on the place from which we first viewed
+this land together," she said.  "You know the spot, don't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You may well believe I know it," said father.  "I can hit it to the
+inch.  You see, children," he went on, "your mother and I arranged
+before the words were said over us"&mdash;he always put it that way&mdash;I never
+in my life heard him say, "when we were married"; he read so many books
+he talked exactly like a book&mdash;"that we would be partners in
+everything, as long as we lived.  When we decided the Ohio land was not
+quite what we wanted, she sent me farther west to prospect, while she
+stayed at home and kept the baby.  When I reached this land, found it
+for sale, and within my means, I bought it, and started home happy.
+Before I'd gone a mile, I turned to look back, and saw that it was
+hilly, mostly woods, and there was no computing the amount of work it
+would require to make it what I could see in it; so I began to think
+maybe she wouldn't like it, and to wish I had brought her, before I
+closed the deal.  By the time I returned home, packed up, and travelled
+this far on the way back with her, there was considerable tension in my
+feelings&mdash;considerable tension," repeated father as he turned the
+horses and began driving carefully, measuring the distance from Hoods'
+and the bridge.  At last he stopped, backed a step, and said:  "There,
+mommy, did I hit the spot?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You did!" said mother, stepping from the carriage and walking up
+beside him.  She raised one hand and laid it on the lamp near him.  He
+shifted the lines, picked up her hand, and held it tight.  Mother stood
+there looking, just silently looking.  May jabbed me in the side,
+leaned over and whispered:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Could we but stand where Moses stood,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And view the landscape o'er,</SPAN><BR>
+Not our Little Creek, nor dinner getting cold,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Could fright us from that shore."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+I couldn't help giggling, but I knew that was no proper time, so I hid
+my head in her lap and smothered the sound the best I could; but they
+were so busy soft-soddering each other they didn't pay a bit of
+attention to us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was May now, all the leaves were fresh and dustless, everything that
+flowered at that time was weighted with bloom, bees hummed past,
+butterflies sailed through the carriage, while birds at the tops of
+their voices, all of them, every kind there was, sang fit to split;
+friendly, unafraid bluebirds darted around us, and talked a blue streak
+from every fence rider.  Made you almost crazy to know what they said.
+The Little Creek flowed at our feet across the road, through the
+blue-flag swamp, where the red and the yellow birds lived.  You could
+see the sun flash on the water where it emptied into the stream that
+crossed Deams', and flowed through our pasture; and away beyond the Big
+Hill arose, with the new church on top, the graveyard around it, the
+Big Creek flashing at its base.  In the valley between lay our fields,
+meadows, the big red barn, the white house with the yard filled with
+trees and flowering shrubs, beyond it the garden, all made up, neat and
+growing; and back of it the orchard in full bloom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother looked and looked.  Suddenly she raised her face to father.
+"Paul," she said, "that first day, did you ever dream it could be made
+to look like this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!" said father.  "I never did!  I saw houses, barns, and cleared
+fields; I hoped for comfort and prosperity, but I didn't know any place
+could grow to be so beautiful, and there is something about it, even on
+a rainy November day, there is something that catches me in the breast,
+on the top of either of these hills, until it almost stifles me.  What
+is it, Ruth?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Home Feeling!" said mother.  "It is in my heart so big this
+morning I am filled with worship.  Just filled with the spirit of
+worship."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was rocking on her toes like she does when she becomes too happy at
+the Meeting House to be quiet any longer, and cries, "Glory!" right out
+loud.  She pointed to the orchard, an immense orchard of big apple
+trees in full bloom, with two rows of peach trees around the sides.  It
+looked like a great, soft, pinkish white blanket, with a deep pink
+border, spread lightly on the green earth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We planted that way because we thought it was best; how could we know
+how it would look in bloom time?  It seems as if you came to these
+hilltops and figured on the picture you would make before you cleared,
+or fenced a field."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's exactly what I did," said father.  "Many's the hour, all told,
+that I have stopped my horse on one of these hilltops and studied how
+to make the place beautiful, as well as productive.  That was a task
+you set me, my girl.  You always considered BEAUTY as well as USE about
+the house and garden, and wherever you worked.  I had to hold my part
+in line."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have made it all a garden," said mother.  "You have made it a
+garden growing under the smile of the Master; a very garden of the
+Lord, father."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father drew up her hand and held it tight against his heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your praise is sweet, my girl, sweet!" he said.  "I have tried, God
+knows I have tried, to make it first comfortable, then beautiful, for
+all of us.  To the depths of my soul I thank Him for this hour.  I am
+glad, Oh I am so glad you like your home, Ruth!  I couldn't endure it
+if you complained, found fault and wished you lived elsewhere."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, father!" said my mother in the most surprised voice.  "Why,
+father, it would kill me to leave here.  This is ours.  We have made it
+by and through the strength of the Lord and our love for each other.
+All my days I want to live here, and when I die, I want to lie beside
+my blessed babies and you, Paul, down by the church we gave the land
+for, and worked so hard to build.  I love it, Oh I love it!  See how
+clean and white the dark evergreens make the house look!  See how the
+big chestnuts fit in and point out the yellow road.  I wish we had a
+row the length of it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They wouldn't grow," said father.  "You mind the time I had finding
+the place those wanted to set their feet?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do indeed!" said mother, drawing her hand and his with it where she
+could rub her cheek against it.  "Now we'll go home and have our dinner
+and a good rest.  I'm a happy woman this day, father, a happy, happy
+woman.  If only one thing didn't worry me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Must there always be a 'fly in the ointment,' mother?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked at him with a smile that was like a hug and kiss, and she
+said:  "I have found it so, father, and I have been happy in spite of
+it.  Where one has such wide interests, at some point there is always a
+pull, but in His own day, in His own way, the Lord is going to make
+everything right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Thy faith hath made thee whole,'" quoted father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then she stepped into the carriage, and he waited a second, quite long
+enough to let her see that he was perfectly willing to sit there all
+day if she wanted him to, and then he slowly and carefully drove home,
+as he always did when she was in the carriage.  Times when he had us
+children out alone, he went until you couldn't see the spokes in the
+wheels.  He just loved to "speed up" once in a while on a piece of fine
+road to let us know how going fast felt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother sat there trembling a little, smiling, misty-eyed.  I was
+thinking, for I knew what the "fly in the ointment" was.  She had a
+letter from Shelley yesterday, and she said there wasn't a reason on
+earth why father or Laddie should spend money to come to Chicago, she
+would soon be home, she was counting the hours, and she never wanted to
+leave again.  In the start she didn't want to go at all, unless she
+could stay three years, at the very least.  Of course it was that
+dreadful man, who had made her so beautiful and happy, and then taken
+away all the joy; how COULD a man do it?  It was the hardest thing to
+understand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Next morning mother was feeling fine, the world was lovely, Miss Amelia
+was gone, May was home to help, so she began housecleaning by washing
+all the curtains.  She had been in the kitchen to show Candace how.  I
+had all my work done, and was making friends with a robin brooding in
+my very own catalpa tree, when Mr. Pryor rode up, tied his horse, and
+started toward the gate.  I knew he and father had quarrelled; that is,
+father had told him he couldn't say "God was a myth" in this house, and
+he'd gone home mad as hops; so I knew it would be something mighty
+important that was bringing him back.  I slid from the tree, ran and
+opened the gate, and led the way up the walk.  I opened the front door
+and asked him in, and then I did the wrong thing.  I should have taken
+his hat, told him to be seated, and said I would see if I could find
+father; I knew what to do, and how to do it, but because of that about
+God, I was so excited I made a mistake.  I never took his hat, or
+offered him a chair; I just bolted into the dining-room, looking for
+father or mother, and left the door wide open, so he thought that
+wasn't the place to sit, because I didn't give him a chair, and he
+followed me.  The instant I saw mother's face, I knew what I had done.
+The dining-room was no place for particular company like him, and
+bringing him in that way didn't give her time to smooth her hair, pull
+shut her dress band at the neck, put on her collar, and shiny goldstone
+pin, her white apron, and rub her little flannel rag, with rice flour
+on it, on her nose to take away the shine.  I had made a mess of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There she came right in the door, just as she was from the tub.  Her
+hair was damp and crinkled around her face, her neckband had been close
+in stooping, so she had unfastened it, and tucked it back in a little
+V-shaped place to give her room and air.  Her cheeks were pink, her
+eyes bright, her lips red as a girl's, and her neck was soft and white.
+The V-shaped place showed a little spot like baby skin, right where her
+neck went into her chest.  Sure as father kissed her lips, he always
+tipped back her head, bent lower and kissed that spot too.  I had seen
+hundreds of them go there, and I had tried it myself, lots of times,
+and it WAS the sweetest place.  Seeing what I had done, I stopped
+breathless.  You have to beat most everything you teach a child right
+into it properly to keep it from making such a botch of things as that.
+I hardly dared to peep at mother, but when I did, she took my breath
+worse than the mistake I had made.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Caught, she stood her ground.  She never paused a second.  Straight to
+him she went, holding out her hand, and I could see that it was red and
+warm from pressing the lace in the hot suds.  A something flashed over
+her, that made her more beautiful than she was in her silk dress going
+to town to help Lucy give a party, and her voice was sweet as the
+bubbling warbler on the garden fence when he was trying to coax a mate
+into the privet bush to nest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother asked him to be seated, so he took one of the chairs nearest
+him, and sat holding his hat in one hand, his whip in the other.
+Mother drew a chair beside the dining table, dropped her hands on each
+other, and looking in his eyes, she smiled at him.  I tell the same
+thing over about people's looks, but I haven't told of this smile of
+mother's; because I never saw exactly how it was, or what it would do
+to people, until that morning.  Then as I watched her&mdash;for how she felt
+decided what would happen to me, after Mr. Pryor was gone I saw
+something I never had noticed until that minute.  She could laugh all
+over her face, before her lips parted until her teeth showed.  She was
+doing it now.  With a wide smile running from cheek to cheek, pushing
+up a big dimple at each end, her lips barely touching, her eyes
+dancing, she sat looking at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This IS the most blessed season for warming up the heart," she said.
+"If you want the half of my kingdom, ask quickly.  I'm in the mood to
+bestow it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How she laughed!  He just had to loosen up a little, and smile back,
+even though it looked pretty stiff.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I'll not tax you so far," he said.  "I only want Mr. Stanton."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But he is the whole of the kingdom, and the King to boot!" she
+laughed, dimpled, and flamed redder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Pryor stared at her wonderingly.  You could even see the wonder,
+like it was something you could take hold of.  I suppose he wondered
+what could make a woman so happy, like that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lucky man!" he said.  "All of us are not so fortunate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then it must be you don't covet the place or the title," said mother
+more soberly.  "Any woman will crown the man she marries, if he will
+allow her.  Paul went farther.  He compelled it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder how!" said Mr. Pryor, his eyes steadily watching mother's
+face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By never failing in a million little things, that taken as a whole,
+make up one mighty big thing, on which he stands like the Rock of Ages."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yet they tell me that you are the mother of twelve children," he said,
+as if he marvelled at something.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes!" cried mother, and the word broke right through a bubbling laugh.
+"Am I not fortunate above most women?  We had the grief to lose two
+little daughters at the ages of eight and nine, all the others I have,
+and I rejoice in them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She reached out, laid a hand on me, drew me to her, and lightly touched
+my arm, sending my spirits sky-high.  She wasn't going to do a thing to
+me, not even scold!  Mr. Pryor stared at her like Jacob Hood does at
+Laddie when he begins rolling Greek before him, so I guess what mother
+said must have been Greek to Mr. Pryor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I came to see Mr. Stanton," he said suddenly, and crosslike as if he
+didn't believe a word she said, and had decided she was too foolish to
+bother with any longer; but he kept on staring.  He couldn't quit that,
+no matter how cross he was.  The funniest thing came into my mind.  I
+wondered what on earth he'd have done if she'd gone over, sat on his
+lap, put her arms around his neck, took his face between her hands and
+kissed his forehead, eyes, lips, and tousled his hair, like she does
+father and our boys.  I'll bet all I got, he'd have turned to stonier
+stone than Sabethany.  You could see that no one ever served HIM like
+that in all his old, cold, hard, cross, mysterious, shut-in life.  I
+was crazy to ask, "Say, did anybody ever kiss you?" but I had such a
+close escape bringing him in wrong, I thought it would be wise not to
+take any risks so soon after.  It was enough to stand beside mother,
+and hear every word they said.  What was more, she wanted me, because
+she kept her hand on mine, or touched my apron every little while.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm so sorry!" she said.  "He was called to town on business.  The
+County Commissioners are sitting to-day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are deciding about the Groveville bridge, and pike?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  He is working so hard for them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The devil you say!  I beg pardon!  But it was about that I came.  I'm
+three miles from there, and I'm taxed over sixty pounds for it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you cross the bridge every time you go to town, and travel the
+road.  Groveville is quite a resort on account of the water and lovely
+country.  Paul is very anxious to have the work completed before the
+summer boarders come from surrounding cities.  We are even farther from
+it than you; but it will cost us as much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you insane?" cried Mr. Pryor, not at all politely; but you could
+see that mother was bound she wouldn't become provoked about anything,
+for she never stopped a steady beam on him.  "Spend all that money for
+strangers to lazy around on a few weeks and then go!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But a good bridge and fine road will add to their pleasure, and when
+they leave, the improvements remain.  They will benefit us and our
+children through all the years to come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Talk about 'the land of the free'!" cried Mr. Pryor.  "This is a
+tax-ridden nation.  It's a beastly outrage!  Ever since I came, it's
+been nothing but notice of one assessment after another.  I won't pay
+it!  I won't endure it.  I'll move!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother let go of me, gripped her hands pretty tight together on the
+table, and she began to talk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As for freedom&mdash;no man ever was, or is, or will be free," she said,
+quite as forcibly as he could speak.  "You probably knew when you came
+here that you would find a land tax-ridden from a great civil war of
+years' duration, and from newness of vast territory to be opened up and
+improved.  You certainly studied the situation."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Studied the situation'!"  His whip beat across his knee.  "'Studied
+the situation'!  My leaving England was&mdash;er&mdash;the result of intolerable
+conditions there&mdash;in the nature of flight from things not to be
+endured.  I had only a vague idea of the States."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If England is intolerable, and the United States an outrage, I don't
+know where in this world you'll go," said mother softly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Pryor stared at her sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Madame is pleased to be facetious," he said sneeringly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother's hands parted, and one of them stretched across the table
+toward him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Forgive me!" she cried.  "That was unkind.  I know you are in dreadful
+trouble.  I'd give&mdash;I'd almost give this right hand to comfort you.
+I'd do nearly anything to make you feel that you need bear no burden
+alone; that we'd love to help support you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believe you would," he said slowly, his eyes watching her again.  "I
+believe you would.  I wonder why!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All men are brothers, in the broader sense," said mother, "and if
+you'll forgive me, your face bears marks of suffering almost amounting
+to torture."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stretched out the other hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You couldn't possibly let us help you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Slowly he shook his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Think again!" urged mother.  "A trouble shared is half over to start
+with.  You lay a part of it on your neighbours, and your neighbours in
+this case would be glad, glad indeed, to see you care-free and happy as
+all men should be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We'll not discuss it," he said.  "You can't possibly imagine the root
+of my trouble."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shan't try!" said mother.  "But let me tell you this:  I don't care
+if you have betrayed your country, blasphemed your God, or killed your
+own child!  So long, as you're a living man, daily a picture of
+suffering before me, you're a burden on my heart.  You're a load on my
+shoulders, without your consent.  I have implored God, I shall never
+cease to implore Him, until your brow clears, your head is lifted, and
+your heart is at rest.  You can't prevent me!  This hour I shall go to
+my closet and beg Him to have mercy on your poor soul, and when His
+time comes, He will.  You can't help yourself, or you would have done
+so, long ago.  You must accept aid!  This must end, or there will be
+tragedy in your house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Madame, there has been!" said Mr. Pryor, shaking as he sat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I recognize that," said mother.  "The question is whether what has
+passed is not enough."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You simply cannot understand!" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Pryor," she said, "you're in the position of a man doubly bereft.
+You are without a country, and without a God.  Your face tells every
+passer-by how you are enjoying that kind of life.  Forgive me, if I
+speak plainly.  I admire some things about you so much, I am venturing
+positive unkindness to try to make you see that in shutting out your
+neighbours you will surely make them think more, and worse things, than
+are true.  I haven't a doubt in my mind but that your trouble is not
+one half so dreadful as you imagine while brooding over it.  We will
+pass that.  Let me tell you how we feel about this road matter.  You
+see we did our courting in Pennsylvania, married and tried Ohio, and
+then came on here.  We took this land when it was mostly woods.  I
+could point you to the exact spot where we stopped; we visited it
+yesterday, looked down the hill and selected the place where we would
+set this house, when we could afford to build it.  We moved into the
+cabin that was on the land first, later built a larger one, and finally
+this home as we had planned it.  Every fruit tree, bush, vine, and
+flower we planted.  Here our children have been born, lived, loved, and
+left us; some for the graveyard down yonder, some for homes of their
+own.  Always we have planned and striven to transform this into the
+dearest, the most beautiful spot on earth.  In making our home the best
+we can, in improving our township, county, and state, we are doing our
+share toward upbuilding this nation."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She began at the a b c's, and gave it to him straight: the whole thing,
+just as we saw it; and he listened, as if he were a prisoner, and she a
+judge telling him what he must do to gain his freedom.  She put in the
+birds to keep away the worms, the trees to break the wind, the creeks
+to save the moisture.  She whanged him, and she banged him, up one
+side, and down the other.  She didn't stop to be mincy.  She shot
+things at him like a man talking to another man who had plenty of sense
+but not a particle of reason.  She gave him the reason.  She told him
+exactly why, and how, and where, and also just WHAT he must do to feel
+RIGHT toward his neighbours, his family, and his God.  No preacher ever
+talked half so well.  Yea verily, she was as interesting as the Bishop
+himself, and far pleasanter to look at.  When she ran short of breath,
+and out of words, she reached both hands toward him again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"OH DO PLEASE THINK OF THESE THINGS!" she begged.  "Do try to believe
+that I am a sensible person, and know what I am talking about."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Madame," said Mr. Pryor, "there's no doubt in my mind but you are the
+most wonderful woman I ever have met.  Surely I believe you!  Surely I
+know your plan of life is the true, the only right way.  It is one
+degree added to my humiliation that the ban I am under keeps me from
+friendly intercourse with so great a lady."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Lady'?" said my mother, her eyes widening.  "'Lady'?  Now it is you
+who are amused."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't understand!" he said.  "Certainly you are a lady, a very great
+lady."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Goodness, gracious me!" cried my mother, laughing until her dimples
+would have held water.  "That's the first time in all my life I was
+ever accused of such a thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Again, I do not comprehend," said Mr. Pryor, as if vexed about all he
+would endure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother laughed on, and as she did so she drew back her hands and
+studied them.  Then she looked at him again, one pink dimple flashing
+here and there, all over her face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, to begin at the root of the matter," she said, "that is an
+enormous big word that you are using lightly.  Any one in petticoats is
+not a lady&mdash;by no means!  A lady must be born of unsullied blood for at
+least three generations, on each side of her house.  Think for a minute
+about where you are going to fulfil that condition.  Then she must be
+gentle by nature, and rearing.  She must know all there is to learn
+from books, have wide experience to cover all emergencies, she must be
+steeped in social graces, and diplomatic by nature.  She must rise
+unruffled to any emergency, never wound, never offend, always help and
+heal, she must be perfect in deportment, virtue, wifehood and
+motherhood.  She must be graceful, pleasing and beautiful.  She must
+have much leisure to perfect herself in learning, graces and arts&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Madame, you draw an impossible picture!" cried Mr. Pryor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I draw the picture of the only woman on earth truly entitled to be
+called a lady.  You use a good word lightly.  I have told you what it
+takes to make a lady&mdash;now look at me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How she laughed! Mr. Pryor looked, but he didn't laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"More than ever you convince me that you are a lady, indeed," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother wiped her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear man!" she cried, "I'm the daughter of a Dutch miller, who
+lived on a Pennsylvania mountain stream.  There never was a school
+anywhere near us, and father and mother only taught us to work.  Paul
+Stanton took a grist there, and saw me.  He married me, and brought me
+here.  He taught me to read and write.  I learned my lessons with my
+elder children.  He has always kept school in our house, every night of
+his life.  Our children supposed it was for them; I knew it was quite
+as much for me.  While I sat at knitting or sewing, I spelled over the
+words he gave out.  I know nothing of my ancestors, save that they came
+from the lowlands of Holland, down where there were cities, schools,
+and business.  They were well educated, but they would not take the
+trouble to teach their children.  As I have spoken to you, my husband
+taught me.  All I know I learn from him, from what he reads aloud, and
+places he takes me.  I exist in a twenty-mile radius, but through him,
+I know all lands, principalities and kingdoms, peoples and customs.  I
+need never be ashamed to go, or afraid to speak, anywhere."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed not!" cried Mr. Pryor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But when you think on the essentials of a real lady&mdash;and then picture
+me patching, with a First Reader propped before me; facing Indians,
+Gypsies, wild animals&mdash;and they used to be bad enough&mdash;why, I mind one
+time in Ohio when our first baby was only able to stand beside a chair,
+and through the rough puncheon floor a copperhead stuck up its gleam of
+bronzy gold, and shot its darting tongue within a foot of her bare leg.
+By all accounts, a lady would have reached for her smelling salts and
+gracefully fainted away; in fact, a lady never would have been in such
+a place at all.  It was my job to throw the first thing I could lay my
+hands on so straight and true that I would break that snake's neck, and
+send its deadly fangs away from my baby.  I did it with Paul's plane,
+and neatly too!  Then I had to put the baby on the bed and tear up
+every piece of the floor to see that the snake had not a mate in hiding
+there, for copperheads at that season were going pairs.  Once I was
+driven to face a big squaw, and threatened the life of her baby with a
+red-hot poker while she menaced mine with a hunting knife.  There is
+not one cold, rough, hard experience of pioneer life that I have not
+endured.  Shoulder to shoulder, and heart to heart, I've stood beside
+my man, and done what had to be done, to build this home, rear our
+children, save our property.  Many's the night I have shivered in a
+barn doctoring sick cattle and horses we could ill afford to lose.
+Time and again I have hung on and brought things out alive, after the
+men gave up and quit.  A lady?  How funny!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The amusement is all on your part, Madame."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So it seems!" said mother.  "But you see, I know so well how
+ridiculous it is.  When I think of the life a woman must lead in order
+to be truly a lady, when I review the life I have been forced to live
+to do my share in making this home, and rearing these children, the
+contrast is too great.  I thank God for any part I have been able to
+take.  Had I life to live over, I see now where I could do more; but
+neighbour, believe me, my highest aspiration is to be a clean, thrifty
+housekeeper, a bountiful cook, a faithful wife, a sympathetic mother.
+That is life work for any woman, and to be a good woman is the greatest
+thing on earth.  Never mind about the ladies; if you can honestly say
+of me, she is a good woman, you have paid me the highest possible
+tribute."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have nothing to change, in the face of your argument," said Mr.
+Pryor.  "Our loved Queen on her throne is no finer lady."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That time mother didn't laugh.  She looked straight at him a minute and
+then she said:  "Well, for an Englishman, as I know them, you have said
+the last word.  Higher praise there is none.  But believe me, I make no
+such claim.  To be a good wife and mother is the end toward which I
+aspire.  To hold the respect and love of my husband is the greatest
+object of my life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you have succeeded.  You stand a monument to wifehood; your
+children prove your idea of motherhood," said Mr. Pryor.  "How in this
+world have you managed it?  The members of your family whom I have seen
+are fine, interesting men and women, educated above the average.  It is
+not idle curiosity.  I am deeply interested in knowing how such an end
+came to be accomplished here on this farm.  I wish you would tell me
+just how you have gone about schooling your children."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By educating ourselves before their coming, and with them afterward.
+Self-control, study, work, joy of life, satisfaction with what we have
+had, never-ending strife to go higher, and to do better&mdash;Dr. Fenner
+laughs when I talk of these things.  He says he can take a little naked
+Hottentot from the jungle, and educate it to the same degree that I can
+one of mine.  I don't know; but if these things do not help before
+birth, at least they do not hinder; and afterward, you are in the
+groove in which you want your children to run.  With all our twelve
+there never has been one who at nine months of age did not stop crying
+if its father lifted his finger, or tapped his foot and told it to.
+From the start we have rigorously guarded our speech and actions before
+them.  From the first tiny baby my husband has taught all of them to
+read, write and cipher some, before they went to school at all.  He is
+always watching, observing, studying: the earth, the stars, growing
+things; he never comes to a meal but he has seen something that he has
+or will study out for all of us.  There never has been one day in our
+home on which he did not read a new interesting article from book or
+paper; work out a big problem, or discuss some phase of politics,
+religion, or war.  Sometimes there has been a little of all of it in
+one day, always reading, spelling, and memory exercises at night.  He
+has a sister who twice in her life has repeated the Bible as a test
+before a committee.  He, himself, can go through the New Testament and
+all of the Old save the books of the generations.  He always says he
+considers it a waste of gray matter to learn them.  He has been a
+schoolmaster, his home his schoolroom, his children, wife and helpers
+his pupils; the common things of life as he meets them every day, the
+books from which we learn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was ignorant at first of bookish subjects, but in his atmosphere, if
+one were no student, and didn't even try to keep up, or forge ahead,
+they would absorb much through association.  Almost always he has been
+on the school board and selected the teachers; we have made a point of
+keeping them here, at great inconvenience to ourselves, in order to
+know as much of them as possible, and to help and guide them in their
+work.  When the children could learn no more here, for most of them we
+have managed the high school of Groveville, especially after our
+daughter moved there, and for each of them we have added at least two
+years of college, music school, or whatever the peculiar bent of the
+child seemed to demand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Before any daughter has left our home for one of her own, she has been
+taught all I know of cleanliness about a house, cookery, sewing,
+tending the sick, bathing and dressing the new born.  She has to bake
+bread, pie, cake, and cook any meat or vegetable we have.  She has had
+her bolt of muslin to make as she chose for her bedding, and linen for
+her underclothing.  The quilts she pieced and the blankets she wove
+have been hers.  All of them have been as well provided for as we could
+afford.  They can knit, darn, patch, tuck, hem, and embroider, set a
+hen and plant a garden.  I go on a vacation and leave each of them to
+keep house for her father a month, before she enters a home of her own.
+They are strong, healthy girls; I hope all of them are making a good
+showing at being useful women, and I know they are happy, so far at
+least."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wonderful!" said Mr. Pryor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father takes the boys in hand and they must graduate in a straight
+furrow, an even fence, planting and tending crops, trimming and
+grafting trees, caring for stock, and handling plane, auger and chisel.
+Each one must select his wood, cure, fashion, and fit his own ax with a
+handle, grind and swing it properly, as well as cradle, scythe and
+sickle.  They must be able to select good seed grain, boil sap, and
+cure meat.  They must know animals, their diseases and treatment, and
+when they have mastered all he can teach them, and done each thing
+properly, they may go for their term at college, and make their choice
+of a profession.  As yet I'm sorry to say but one of them has come back
+to the land."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean Laddie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has decided to be a farmer?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is determined to make the soil yield his living."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am sorry&mdash;sorry indeed to hear it," said Mr. Pryor.  "He has brain
+and education to make a brilliant figure at law or statesmanship; he
+would do well in trade."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What makes you think he would not do well on land?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wasted!" cried Mr. Pryor.  "He would be wasted!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hold a bit!" said mother, her face flushing as it did when she was
+very provoked.  "My husband is, and always has been, on land.  He is
+far from being wasted.  He is a power in this community.  He has sons
+in cities in law and in trade.  Not one of them has the friends, and
+the influence on his time, that his father has.  Any day he says the
+word, he can stand in legislative halls, and take any part he chooses
+in politics.  He prefers his home and family, and the work he does
+here, but let me tell you, no son of his ever had his influence or
+opportunity, or ever will have."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All this is news to me," said Mr. Pryor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You didn't expect us to come over, force our way in and tell you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was his turn to blush and he did.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Laddie has been at our house often," he said.  "He might have
+mentioned&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother laughed.  She was the gayest that morning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He 'might,' but he never would.  Neither would I if you hadn't seemed
+to think that the men who do the things Mr. Stanton REFUSES to do are
+the ones worth while."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He could accomplish much in legislative halls."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He figures in the large.  He thinks that to be a commissioner, travel
+his county and make all of it the best possible, to stand in primaries
+and choose only worthy men for all offices, is doing a much bigger work
+than to take one place for himself, and strive only for that.  Besides,
+he really loves his land, his house, and family.  He says no man has a
+right to bring twelve children into the world and not see personally to
+rearing and educating them.  He thinks the farm and the children too
+much for me, and he's sure he is doing the biggest thing for the
+community at large, to go on as he does."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps so," said Mr. Pryor slowly.  "He should know best.  Perhaps he
+is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I make no doubt!" said mother, lifting her head proudly.  "And as
+Laddie feels and has fitted himself, I look to see him go head and
+shoulders above any other son I have.  Trade is not the only way to
+accumulate.  Law is not the only path to the legislature.  Comfort,
+independence, and freedom, such as we know here, is not found in any
+city I ever have visited.  We think we have the best of life, and we
+are content on land.  We have not accumulated much money; we have spent
+thousands; we have had a big family for which to provide, and on
+account of the newness of the country, taxes always have been heavy.
+But we make no complaint.  We are satisfied.  We could have branched
+off into fifty different things after we had a fair start here.  We
+didn't, because we preferred life as we worked it out for ourselves.
+Paul says when he leaves the city, and his horses' hoofs strike the
+road between our fields, he always lifts his head higher, squares his
+shoulders, and feels a man among men.  To own land, and to love it, is
+a wonderful thing, Mr. Pryor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She made me think of something.  Ever since I had added to my quill and
+arrow money, the great big lot at Easter, father had shared his chest
+till with me.  The chest stood in our room, and in it lay his wedding
+suit, his every Sunday clothes, his best hat with a red silk
+handkerchief in the crown, a bundle of precious newspapers he was
+saving on account of rare things in them he wanted for reference, and
+in the till was the wallet of ready money he kept in the house for
+unexpected expense, his deeds, insurance papers, all his particular
+private papers, the bunches of lead pencils, slate pencils, and the box
+of pens from which he supplied us for school.  Since I had grown so
+rich, he had gone partners with me, and I might lift the lid, open the
+till and take out my little purse that May bought from the huckster for
+my last birthday.  I wasn't to touch a thing, save my own, and I never
+did; but I knew precious well what was there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If Mr. Pryor thought my father didn't amount to much because he lived
+on land; if it made him think more of him, to know that he could be in
+the legislature if he chose, maybe he'd think still more&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I lifted the papers, picked it up carefully, and slipping back quietly,
+I laid it on Mr. Pryor's knee.  He picked it up and held it a minute,
+until he finished what he was saying to mother, and then he looked at
+it.  Then he looked long and hard.  Then he straightened up and looked
+again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God bless my soul!" he cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+You see when he was so astonished he didn't know what he was saying, he
+called on God, just as father says every one does.  I took a side look
+at mother.  Her face was a little extra flushed, but she was still
+smiling; so I knew she wasn't angry with me, though of course she
+wouldn't have shown the thing herself.  She and father never did,
+except as each of us grew big enough to be taught about the Crusaders.
+Father said he didn't care the snap of his finger about it, except as
+it stood for hardihood and bravery.  But Mr. Pryor cared!  He cared
+more than he could say.  He stared, and stared, and over and over he
+wonderingly repeated:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God bless my soul!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where did you get the crest of the Earl of Eastbrooke, the master of
+Stanton house?" he demanded.  "Stanton house!" he repeated.  "Why&mdash;why,
+the name!  It's scarcely possible, but&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But there it is!" laughed mother.  "A mere bauble for show and
+amounting to nothing on earth save as it stands a mark for brave men
+who have striven to conquer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Surgere tento!" read Mr. Pryor, from the little shield.  "Four shells!
+Madame, I know men who would give their lives to own this, and to have
+been born with the right to wear it.  It came to your husband in
+straight line?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said mother, "but generations back.  He never wore it.  He never
+would.  He only saves it for the children."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It goes to your eldest son?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By rights, I suppose it should," said mother.  "But father mentioned
+it the other night.  He said none of his boys had gone as he tried to
+influence them, unless Laddie does now in choosing land for his future,
+and if he does, his father is inclined to leave it to him, and I agree.
+At our death it goes to Laddie I am quite sure."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I hope&mdash;I hope," said Mr. Pryor, "that the young man has the wit
+to understand what this would mean to him in England."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"His wit is just about level with his father's," said mother.  "He
+never has been in England, and most probably he never will be.  I don't
+think it means a rap more to Laddie than it does to my husband.  Laddie
+is so busy developing the manhood born in him, he has no time to chase
+the rainbow of reflected glory, and no belief in its stability if he
+walked in its light.  The child of my family to whom that trinket
+really means something is Little Sister, here.  When Leon came in with
+the thief, I thought he should have it; but after all, she is the
+staunchest little Crusader I have."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Pryor looked me over with much interest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, yes!  No doubt!" he said.  "But the male line!  This priceless
+treasure should descend to one of the male line!  To one whose name
+will remain Stanton!  To Laddie would be best, no doubt!  No doubt at
+all!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We will think about it," said mother serenely as Mr. Pryor arose to go.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He apologized for staying so long, and mother said it hadn't been long,
+and asked him the nicest ever to come again.  She walked in the
+sunlight with him and pointed out the chestnuts.  She asked what he
+thought of a line of trees to shade the road, and they discussed
+whether the pleasure they would give in summer would pay for the
+dampness they would hold in winter.  They wandered around the yard and
+into the garden.  She sent me to bring a knife, trowel, and paper, so
+when he started for home, he was carrying a load of cuttings, and roots
+to plant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When father came from town that evening, at the first sight of him, she
+went straight into his arms, her face beaming; she had been like a sun
+all that day.  Some of it must have been joy carried over from
+yesterday.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Praise God, the wedge is in!" she cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father held her tight, stroked her hair, and began smiling without
+having the least idea why, but he very well knew that whatever pleased
+her like that was going to be good news for him also.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What has happened, mother?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Pryor came over about the road and bridge tax, and oh Paul!  I've
+said every word to him I've been bursting to say from the very start.
+Every single word, Paul!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How did he take it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Time will tell.  Anyway, he heard it, all of it, and he went back
+carrying a load of things to plant.  Only think of that!  Once he
+begins planting, and watching things grow, the home feeling is bound to
+come.  I tell you, Paul, the wedge is in!  Oh I'm so happy!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap14"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIV
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+The Crest of Eastbrooke
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Sow;&mdash;and look onward, upward,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Where the starry light appears,&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+Where, in spite of coward's doubting,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Or your own heart's trembling fears,</SPAN><BR>
+You shall reap in joy the harvest<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">You have sown to-day in tears."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Any objections to my beginning to break ground on the west eighty
+to-day?" asked Laddie of father at breakfast Monday morning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had thought we would commence on the east forty, when planning the
+work."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So had I," said Laddie.  "But since I thought that, a very particular
+reason has developed for my beginning to plow the west eighty at once,
+and there is a charming little ditty I feel strongly impelled to
+whistle every step of the way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father looked at him sharply, and so, I think, did all of us.  And
+because we loved him deeply, we saw that his face was a trifle pale for
+him; his clear eyes troubled, in spite of his laughing way.  He knew we
+were studying him too, but he wouldn't have said anything that would
+make us look and question if he had minded our doing it.  That was
+exactly like Laddie.  He meant it when he said he hated a secret.  He
+said there was no place on earth for a man to look for sympathy and
+love if he couldn't find it in his own family; and he never had been so
+happy since I had been big enough to notice his moods as he had been
+since all of us knew about the Princess.  He didn't wait for father to
+ask why he'd changed his mind about the place to begin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see," he said, "a very charming friend of mine expressed herself
+strongly last night about the degrading influence of farming,
+especially that branch of agriculture which evolves itself in a furrow;
+hence it is my none too happy work to plow the west eighty where she
+can't look our way without seeing me; and I have got to whistle my
+favourite 'toon' where she must stop her ears if she doesn't hear; and
+then it will be my painful task, I fear, to endeavour to convince her
+that I am still clean, decent, and not degraded."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh Laddie!" cried mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Abominable foolishness!" roared father like he does roar once in about
+two years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Isn't it now?" asked Laddie sweetly.  "I don't know what has got into
+her head.  She has seen me plowing fifty times since their land has
+joined ours, and she never objected before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can tell you blessed well!" said mother.  "She didn't care two hoots
+how much my son plowed, but it makes a difference when it comes to her
+lover."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maw, you speak amazing reckless," said Laddie, "if I thought there was
+anything in THAT feature of the case, I'd attempt a Highland fling on
+the ridgepole of our barn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be serious!" said father sternly.  "This is no laughing matter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's precisely why I am laughing," said Laddie.  "Would it help me
+any to sit down and weep?  I trow not!  I have thought most of the
+silent watches&mdash;by the way they are far from silent in May&mdash;and as I
+read my title clear, it's my job to plow the west eighty immejit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father tried to look stern, but he just had to laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right then, plow it!" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did she say?" asked mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Phew!" Laddie threw up both hands.  "She must have been bottled some
+time on the subject.  The ferment was a spill of considerable
+magnitude.  The flood rather overwhelmed me, because it was so
+unexpected.  I had been taking for granted that she accepted my
+circumstances and surroundings as she did me.  But no, kind friends,
+far otherwise!  She said last night, in the clearest English I ever
+heard spoken impromptu, that I was a man suitable for her friend, but I
+would have to change my occupation before I could be received on more
+than a friendly footing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'On more than a friendly footing'?" repeated mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have her exact words," said Laddie.  "Kindly pass the ham."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did you say?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing!  I am going to plow the answer.  Please don't object to my
+beginning this morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You try yourself all winter to get as far as you have, and then upset
+the bowl like this?" cried mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Softly, mummy, softly!" said Laddie.  "What am I to do?  I've
+definitely decided on my work.  I see land and life, as you and father
+taught me, in range and in perspective far more than you've got from
+it.  You had a first hand wrestle.  The land I covet has been greatly
+improved already.  I can do what I choose with it, making no more
+strenuous effort than plowing; and I am proud to say that I LOVE to
+plow.  I like my feet in the soil.  I want my head in the spring air.
+I can become almost tipsy on the odours that fill my nostrils.  Music
+evolved by the Almighty is plenty good enough for me.  I'm proud of a
+spanking big team, under the control of a touch or a word.  I enjoy
+farming, and I am going to be a farmer.  Plowing is one of the most
+pleasing parts of the job.  Sowing the seed beats it a little, from an
+artistic standpoint, either is preferable to haying, threshing, or corn
+cutting: all are parts of my work, so I'm going to begin.  Mother, I
+hope you don't mind if I take your grays.  I'll be very careful; but
+the picture I present to my girl to-day is going to go hard with her at
+best, so I'd like to make it level best."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He arose, went around and knelt beside mother.  He took her, chair and
+all, in his arms:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Best of mothers! on my breast<BR>
+Lean thy head, and sink to rest."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+She quoted.  Mother laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mammy," he asked bending toward her, "am I clean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You goose!" she said, putting her arms around him and holding him
+tight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gander love," said Laddie, turning up his face for a kiss.  "Honest
+mother, you have been through nigh unto forty years of it, tell me, can
+a man be a farmer and keep neat enough not to be repulsive to a refined
+woman?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your father is the answer," said mother.  "All of you know how
+perfectly repulsive he is and always has been to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Repulsive,"' said father.  "That's an ugly word!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There are a whole lot of unpleasant things that peep around corners
+occasionally," said Laddie.  "But whoever of you dear people it was
+that showed Mr. Pryor the Crest of Eastbrooke, brought out this
+particular dragon for me to slay."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tut, tut!  Now what does that mean?" said father.  "Have we had a
+little exhibition of that especial brand of pride that goes before a
+fall?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have! and I take the tumble," said Laddie.  "Watch me start!  'Jack
+fell down and broke his crown.'  Question&mdash;will 'Jill come tumbling
+after?'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My heart stopped and I was shaking in my bare feet, because I wore no
+shoes to shake in.  Oh my soul!  No matter how Laddie jested I knew he
+was almost killed; the harder he made fun, the worse he was hurt.  I
+opened my mouth to say I did it, I had to, but Leon began to talk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I think she's smart!" he cried.  "If she was going to give you
+the mitten, why didn't she do it long ago?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She had to find out first whether there were a possibility of her
+wanting to keep it," said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're sure you are all signed, sealed, and delivered on this plowing
+business, are you?" asked Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dead sure!" said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, if you like it!" said Leon.  "None for me after college!
+But say, you can be a farmer and not plow, you know.  You go trim the
+trees, and work at cleaner, more gentlemanly jobs.  I'll plow that
+field.  I'd just as soon as not.  I plowed last year and you said I did
+well, didn't you, father?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, on the potato patch," said father.  "A cornfield is a different
+thing.  I fear you are too light."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh but that was a year ago!" cried Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pushed back his chair and went to father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just feel my biceps now!  Most like steel!" he boasted.  "A fellow can
+grow a lot in a year, and all the riding I've been doing, and all the
+exercise I've had.  Cert' I can plow that meadow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're all right, shaver," said Laddie.  "I'll not forget your offer;
+but in this case it wouldn't help.  Either the Princess takes her
+medicine or I take mine.  I'm going to live on land: I'm going to plow
+in plain sight of the Pryor house this week, if I have to hire to Jacob
+Hood to get the chance.  May I plow, and may I take the grays, father?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes!" said father roundly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then here goes!" said Laddie.  "You needn't fret, mother.  I'll not
+overheat them.  I must give a concert simultaneous with this plowing
+performance, and I'm particular about the music, so I can't go too
+fast.  Also, I'll wrap the harness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Goodness knows I'm not thinking about the horses," said mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, but if they turned up next Sunday, wind-broken, and with nice
+large patches of hair rubbed from their sides, you would be!  If you
+were me, would you whistle, or vocalize to start on?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother burst right out crying and laid her face all tear-wet against
+him.  Laddie kissed her, and wiped away the tears, teased her, and soon
+as he could he bolted from the east door; but I was closest, so I saw
+plainly that his eyes were wet too.  My soul and body!  AND I HAD DONE
+IT!  I might as well get it over.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I showed Mr. Pryor the trinket," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How did you come to do that?" asked father sternly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When he was talking with mother.  He told her Laddie would be 'wasted'
+farming&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wasted?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's what he said.  Mother told him you had always farmed and you
+were a 'power in this community.'  She told him about what you did,
+because you wanted to, and what you COULD do if you chose, about
+holding office, you know, and that seemed to make him think heaps more
+of you, so I thought it would be a good thing for him to know about the
+Crusaders too, and I ran and got the crest.  I THOUGHT it would
+help&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And so it will," said mother.  "They constantly make the best showing
+they can, we might as well, too.  The trouble is they got more than
+they expected.  They thought they could look down on us, and patronize
+us, if they came near at all; when they found we were quite as well
+educated as they, had as much land, could hold prominent offices if we
+chose, and had the right to that bauble, they veered to the other
+extreme.  Now they seem to demand that we quit work&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Move to the city, 'sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,'" suggested
+father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly!" said mother.  "They'll have to find out we are running our
+own business; but I'm sorry it fell to Laddie to show them.  You could
+have done it better.  It will come out all right.  The Princess is not
+going to lose a man like Laddie on account of how he makes his money."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't be too confident," said father.  "With people of their stripe,
+how much money a man can earn, and at what occupation, constitute the
+whole of life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She wasn't too confident.  Yesterday she had been so happy she almost
+flew.  To-day she kept things going, and sang a lot, but nearly every
+time you looked at her you could see her lips draw tight, a frown cross
+her forehead, and her head shake.  Pretty soon we heard a racket on the
+road, so we went out.  There was Laddie with the matched team of
+carriage horses and a plow.  Now, in dreadfully busy times, father let
+Ned and Jo work a little, but not very much.  They were not plow
+horses; they were roadsters.  They liked to prance, and bow their necks
+and dance to the carriage.  It shamed them to be hitched to a plow.
+They drooped their heads and slunk along like dogs caught sucking eggs.
+But they were a sight on the landscape.  They were lean and slender and
+yet round too, matched dapple gray on flank and side, with long
+snow-white manes and tails.  No wonder mother didn't want them to work.
+Laddie had reached through the garden fence and hooked a bunch of red
+tulips and yellow daffodils.  The red was at Jo's ear, and the yellow
+at Ned's, and they did look fine.  So did he!  Big, strong, clean, a
+red flower in his floppy straw hat band; and after he drove through the
+gate, he began a shrill, fifelike whistle you could have heard a half
+mile:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"See the merry farmer boy, tramp the meadows through,<BR>
+Swing his hoe in careless joy, while dashing off the dew.<BR>
+Bobolink in maple high, trills a note of glee,<BR>
+Farmer boy in gay reply now whistles cheerily."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The chorus was all whistle, and it was written for folks who could.  It
+went up until it almost split the echoes, and Laddie could easily sail
+a measure above the notes.  He did it too.  As for me, I kept from
+sight.  For a week Laddie whistled and plowed.  He wore that tune
+threadbare, and got an almost continuous pucker on his lips.  Leon said
+if he didn't stop whistling, and sing more, the girls would think he
+was doing a prunes and prisms stunt.  So after that he sang the words,
+and whistled the chorus.  But he made no excuse to go, and he didn't
+go, to Pryors'.  When Sunday came, he went to Westchester to see
+Elizabeth, and stayed until Monday morning.  Not once that week did the
+Princess ride past our house, or her father either.  By noon Monday
+Laddie was back in the field, and I had all I could bear.  He was
+neither whistling nor singing so much now, because he was away at the
+south end, where he couldn't be seen or heard at Pryors'.  He almost
+scoured the skin from him, and he wore his gloves more carefully than
+usual.  If he soiled his clothing in the least, and it looked as if he
+would make more than his share of work, he washed the extra pieces at
+night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tuesday morning I hurried with all my might, and then I ran to the
+field where he was.  I climbed on the fence, sat there until he came
+up, and then I gave him some cookies.  He stopped the horses, climbed
+beside me and ate them.  Then he put his arms around me and hugged me
+tight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Laddie, do you know I did it?" I wailed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you now?" said Laddie.  "No, I didn't know for sure, but I had
+suspicions.  You always have had such a fondness for that particular
+piece of tinware."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But Laddie, it means so much!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doesn't it?" said Laddie.  "A few days ago no one could have convinced
+me that it meant anything at all to me, or ever could.  Just look at me
+now!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't joke, Laddie!  Something must be done."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, ain't I doing it?" asked Laddie.  "Look at all these acres and
+acres of Jim-dandy plowing!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't!" I begged.  "Why don't you go over there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No use, Chicken," said Laddie.  "You see her exact stipulation was
+that I must CHANGE MY OCCUPATION before I came again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What does she want you to do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Law, I think.  Unfortunately, I showed her a letter from Jerry asking
+me to enter his office this fall."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hadn't you better do it, Laddie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How would you like to be shut in little, stuffy rooms, and set to
+droning over books and papers every hour of the day, all your life, and
+to spend the best of your brain and bodily strength straightening out
+other men's quarrels?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh Laddie, you just couldn't!" I cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Precisely!" said Laddie.  "I just couldn't, and I just won't!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What can you do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I might compromise on stock," he said.  "I could follow the same
+occupation as her father, and with better success.  Neither he nor his
+men get the best results from horses.  They don't understand them,
+especially the breeds they are attempting to handle.  Most Arab
+horsemen are tent dwellers.  They travel from one oasis to another with
+their stock.  At night their herds are gathered around them as
+children.  As children they love them, pet them, feed them.  Each is
+named for a divinity, a planet or a famous ruler, and the understanding
+between master and beast is perfect.  Honestly, Little Sister, I think
+you have got to believe in the God of Israel, in order to say the right
+word to an Arabian horse; and I know you must believe in the God of
+love.  A beast of that breed, jerked, kicked, and scolded is a fine
+horse ruined.  If I owned half the stock Mr. Pryor has over there, I
+could put it in such shape for market that I could get twice from it
+what his men will."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are Thomas and James rough with the horses?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Like master, like man,'" quoted Laddie.  "They are!  They are foolish
+with the Kentucky strain, and fools with the Arab; and yet, that
+combination beats the world.  But I must get on with the P.C. job."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He slid from the fence, took a drink from his water jug, and pulled a
+handful of grass for each horse.  As he stood feeding them, I almost
+fell from the top rail.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Laddie!" I whispered.  "Look!  Mr. Pryor is halfway across the field
+on Ranger."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So?" said Laddie.  "Now I wonder&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shall I go?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No indeed!" said Laddie.  "Stay right where you are.  It can't be
+anything of much importance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At first it didn't seem to be.  They talked about the weather, the
+soil, the team.  Laddie scooped a handful of black earth, and holding
+it out, told Mr. Pryor all about how good it was, and why, and he
+seemed interested.  Then they talked about everything; until if he had
+been Jacob Hood, he would have gone away.  But just at the time when I
+expected him to start, he looked at Laddie straight and hard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I missed you Sabbath evening," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I looked at him.  He had changed, some way.  He seemed more human,
+more like our folks, less cold and stern.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I sincerely hope it was unanimous," said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Pryor had to laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was a majority, at any rate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie stared dazed.  You see that was kind of a joke.  An easy one,
+because I caught it; but we were not accustomed to expecting a jest
+from Mr. Pryor.  Not one of us dreamed there was a joke between his hat
+crown and his boot soles.  Then Laddie laughed; but he sobered quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm mighty sorry if Mrs. Pryor missed me," he said.  "I thought of
+her.  I have grown to be her devoted slave, and I hoped she liked me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You put it mildly," said Mr. Pryor.  "Since you didn't come when she
+expected you, we've had the worst time with her that we have had since
+we reached this da&mdash;ah&mdash;er&mdash;um&mdash;this country."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Could you make any suggestion?" asked Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I could!  I would suggest that you act like the sensible fellow I know
+you to be, and come as usual, at your accustomed times."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I'm forbidden, man!" cried Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ugh!  Such awful things as Mr. Pryor said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Forbidden!" he cried.  "Is a man's roof his own, or is it not?  While
+I live, I propose to be the head of my family.  I invite you!  I ask
+you!  Mrs. Pryor and I want you!  What more is necessary?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"TWO things," said Laddie, just as serenely.  "That Miss Pryor wants
+me, and that I want to come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"D'ye mean to tell me that you DON'T want to come, eh?  After the fight
+you put up to force your way in!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie studied the sky, a whimsy smile on his lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now wasn't that a good fight?" he inquired.  "I'm mighty proud of it!
+But not now, or ever, do I wish to enter your house again, if Miss
+Pryor doesn't want, and welcome me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he went over, took Mr. Pryor's horse by the head, and began
+working with its bridle.  It didn't set right some way, and Mr. Pryor
+had jerked, spurred, and mauled, until there was a big space tramped to
+mortar.  Laddie slid his fingers beneath the leather, eased it a
+little, and ran his hands over the fretful creature's head.  It just
+stopped, stood still, pushed its nose under his arm, and pressed
+against his side.  Mr. Pryor arose in one stirrup, swung around and
+alighted.  He looped an arm through the bridle rein, and with both
+hands gripped his whipstock.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How the devil do you do it?" he asked, as if he were provoked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"First, the bridle was uncomfortable; next, you surely know, Mr. Pryor,
+that a man can transfer his mental state to his mount."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie pointed to the churned up earth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"THAT represents your mental state; THIS"&mdash;he slid his hand down the
+neck of the horse&mdash;"portrays mine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Pryor's face reddened, but Laddie was laughing so heartily he
+joined in sort of sickly-like.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh I doubt if you are so damnably calm!" he cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm CALM enough, so far as that goes," said Laddie.  "I'm not denying
+that I've got about all the heartache I can conveniently carry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you mind telling me how far this affair has gone?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wouldn't a right-minded man give the woman in the case the first
+chance to answer that question?  I greatly prefer that you ask Miss
+Pryor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If ever I felt sorry for any one, I did then for Mr. Pryor.  He stood
+there gripping the whip with both hands and he looked exactly as if the
+May wind might break him into a thousand tiny pieces, and every one of
+them would be glass.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Um&mdash;er&mdash;&mdash;" he said at last.  "You're right, of course, but
+unfortunately, Pamela and her mother did not agree with my motives, or
+my course in coming to this country; and while there is no outward
+demonstration er&mdash;um&mdash;other than Mrs. Pryor's seclusion; yet,
+er&mdash;um!&mdash;I am forced to the belief that I'm NOT in their confidence."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see!" said Laddie.  "And of course you love your daughter as any man
+would love so beautiful a child, and when she is all he has&mdash;&mdash;"  I
+thought the break was coming right there, but Mr. Pryor clenched his
+whip and put it off; still, any one watching with half an eye could see
+that it was only put off, and not for long at that,&mdash;"It has been my
+idea, Mr. Pryor, that the proper course for me was to see if I could
+earn any standing with your daughter.  If I could, and she gave me
+permission, then I intended coming to you the instant I knew how she
+felt.  But in such a case as this, I don't think I shall find the
+slightest hesitation in telling you anything you want to know, that I
+am able."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't know how you stand with her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair.  His feet
+were planted widely apart, and his face was sober enough for any
+funeral now.  At last he spoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've been trying to figure that out," he said slowly.  "I believe the
+situation is as open to you as it is to me.  She was a desperately
+lonely, homesick girl, when she caught my eye and heart; and I placed
+myself on her horizon.  In her case the women were slow in offering
+friendship, because, on account of Mrs. Pryor's seclusion, none was
+felt to be wanted; then Miss Pryor was different in dress and manner.
+I found a way to let her see that I wanted to be friends, and she
+accepted my friendship, and at the same time allowed it go only so far.
+On a few rare occasions, I've met her alone, and we've talked out
+various phases of life together; but most of our intercourse has taken
+place in your home, and in your presence.  You probably have seen her
+meet and entertain her friends frequently.  I should think you would be
+more nearly able to gauge my standing with her than I am."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You haven't told her that you love her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Haven't I though?" cried Laddie.  "Man alive!  What do you think I'm
+made of?  Putty?  Told her?  I've told her a thousand times.  I've said
+it, and sung it and whistled it, and looked it, and lived it.  I've
+written it, and ridden it, and this week I've plowed it!  Your daughter
+knows as she knows nothing else, in all this world, that she has only
+to give me one glance, one word, one gesture of invitation, to find me
+before her six feet of the worst demoralized beefsteak a woman ever
+undertook to handle.  Told her?  Ye Gods!  I should say I've told her!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If any of Pryors had been outdoors they certainly could have heard Mr.
+Pryor.  How he laughed!  He shook until he tottered.  Laddie took his
+arm and led him to the fence.  He lifted a broad top rail, pushed it
+between two others across a corner and made a nice comfortable seat for
+him.  After a while Mr. Pryor wiped his eyes.  Laddie stood watching
+him with a slow grin on his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And she hasn't given the signal you are waiting for?" he asked at last.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie slowly shook his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nary the ghost of a signal!" he said.  "Now we come to Sunday before
+last.  I only intimated, vaguely, that a hint of where I stood would be
+a comfort&mdash;and played Jonah.  The whale swallowed me at a gulp, and for
+all my inches, never batted an eye.  You see, a few days before I
+showed her a letter from my brother Jerry, because I thought it might
+interest her.  There was something in it to which I had paid little or
+no attention, about my going to the city and beginning work in his law
+office; to cap that, evidently you had mentioned before her our prize
+piece of family tinware.  There was a culmination like a thunder clap
+in a January sky.  She said everything that was on her mind about a man
+of my size and ability doing the work I am, and then she said I must
+change my occupation before I came again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And for answer you've split the echoes with some shrill, abominable
+air, and plowed, before her very eyes, for a week!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Laddie laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know," he said; "that's a good one on me!  It never occurred to
+me that she would not be familiar with that air, and understand its
+application.  Do you mean to crush me further by telling me that all my
+perfectly lovely vocalizing and whistling was lost?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was a dem irritating, challenging sort of thing," said Mr. Pryor.
+"I listened to it by the hour, myself, trying to make out exactly what
+it did mean.  It seemed to combine defiance with pleading, and through
+and over all ran a note of glee that was really quite charming."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have quoted a part of it, literally," said Laddie.  "'A note of
+glee'&mdash;the cry of a glad heart, at peace with all the world, busy with
+congenial work."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shouldn't have thought you'd have been so particularly joyful."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, the joy was in the music," said Laddie.  "That was a whistle to
+keep up my courage.  The joy was in the song, not in me!  Last week was
+black enough for me to satisfy the most exacting pessimist."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish you might have seen the figure you cut!  That fine team, flower
+bedecked, and the continuous concert!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I did!" cried Laddie.  "We have mirrors.  That song can't be
+beaten.  I know this team is all right, and I'm not dwarfed or
+disfigured.  That was the pageant of summer passing in review.  It
+represented the tilling of the soil; the sowing of seed, garnering to
+come later.  You buy corn and wheat, don't you?  They are vastly
+necessary.  Much more so than the settling of quarrels that never
+should have taken place.  Do you think your daughter found the
+spectacle at all moving?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Damn you, sir, what I should do, is to lay this whip across your
+shoulders!" cried Mr. Pryor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But if you will believe it, he was laughing again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I prefer that you don't," said Laddie, "or on Ranger either.  See how
+he likes being gentled."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he straightened and drew a deep breath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Pryor," he said, "as man to man, I have got this to say to
+you&mdash;and you may use your own discretion about repeating it to your
+daughter:  I can offer her six feet of as sound manhood as you can find
+on God's footstool.  I never in my whole life have had enough impure
+blood in my body to make even one tiny eruption on my skin.  I never
+have been ill a day in my life.  I never have touched a woman save as I
+lifted and cared for my mother, and hers, or my sisters.  As to my
+family and education she can judge for herself.  I offer her the first
+and only love of my heart.  She objects to farming, because she says it
+is dirty, offensive work.  There are parts of it that are dirty.  Thank
+God, it only soils the body, and that can be washed.  To delve and to
+dive into, and to study and to brood over the bigger half of the law
+business of any city is to steep your brain in, and smirch your soul
+with, such dirt as I would die before I'd make an occupation of
+touching.  Will you kindly tell her that word for word, and that I
+asked you to?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Pryor was standing before I saw him rise.  He said those awful
+words again, but between them he cried:  "You're right!  It's the
+truth! It's the eternal truth!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It IS the truth," said Laddie.  "I've only to visit the offices, and
+examine the business of those of my family living by law, to KNOW that
+it's the truth.  Of course there's another side!  There are times when
+there are great opportunities to do good; I recognize that.  To some
+these may seem to overbalance that to which I object.  If they do, all
+right.  I am merely deciding for myself.  Once and for all, for me it
+is land.  It is born in me to love it, to handle it easily, to get the
+best results from stock.  I am going to take the Merriweather place
+adjoining ours on the west, and yours on the south.  I intend to lease
+it for ten years, with purchase privilege at the end, so that if I make
+of it what I plan, my work will not be lost to me.  I had thought to
+fix up the place and begin farming.  If Miss Pryor has any use whatever
+for me, and prefers stock, that is all right with me.  I'll go into the
+same business she finds suitable for you.  I can start in a small way
+and develop.  I can afford a maid for her from the beginning, but I
+couldn't clothe her as she has been accustomed to being dressed, for
+some time.  I would do my best, however.  I know what store my mother
+sets by being well gowned.  And as a husband, I can offer your daughter
+as loving consideration as woman ever received at the hands of man.
+Provided by some miracle I could win her consent, would you even
+consider me, and such an arrangement?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Frankly sir," said Mr. Pryor, "I have reached the place where I would
+be&mdash;&mdash;" whenever you come to a long black line like that, it means that
+he just roared a lot of words father never said, and never will&mdash;"glad
+to!  To tell the truth, the thing you choose to jestingly refer to as
+'tinware'&mdash;I hope later to convince of the indelicacy of such
+allusion&mdash;would place you in England on a social level above any we
+ever occupied, or could hope to.  Your education equals ours.  You are
+a physical specimen to be reckoned with, and I believe what you say of
+yourself.  There's something so clean and manly about you, it amounts
+to confirmation.  A woman should set her own valuation on that; and the
+height of it should correspond with her knowledge of the world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you!" said Laddie.  "You are more than kind! more than generous!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As to the arrangements you could make for Pamela," said Mr. Pryor,
+"she's all we have.  Everything goes to her, ultimately.  She has her
+stipulated allowance now; whether in my house or yours, it would go
+with her.  Surely you wouldn't be so callous as to object to our giving
+her anything that would please us!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why should I?" asked Laddie.  "That's only natural on your part.  Your
+child is your child; no matter where or what it is, you expect to
+exercise a certain amount of loving care over it.  My father and mother
+constantly send things to their children absent from home, and they
+take much pleasure in doing it.  That is between you and your daughter,
+of course.  I shouldn't think of interfering.  But in the meantime,
+unless Miss Pryor has been converted to the beauties of plowing through
+my continuous performance of over a week, I stand now exactly where I
+did before, so far as she is concerned.  If you and Mrs. Pryor have no
+objection to me, if you feel that you could think of me, or find for me
+any least part of a son's place in your hearts, I believe I should know
+how to appreciate it, and how to go to work to make myself worthy of
+it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Pryor sat down so suddenly, the rail almost broke.  I thought the
+truth was, that he had heart trouble, himself.  He stopped up, choked
+on things, flopped around, and turned so white.  I suppose he thought
+it was womanish, and a sign of weakness, and so he didn't tell, but I
+bet anything that he had it&mdash;bad!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll try to make the little fool see!" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gently, gently!  You won't help me any in that mood," said Laddie.
+"The chances are that Miss Pryor repeated what she heard from you long
+ago, and what she knows you think and feel, unless you've changed
+recently."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's the amount of it!" cried Mr. Pryor.  "All my life I've had a
+lot of beastly notions in my head about rank, and class, and here they
+don't amount to a damn!  There's no place for them.  Things are
+different.  Your mother, a grand, good woman, opened my eyes to many
+things recently, and I get her viewpoint&mdash;clearly, and I agree with
+her, and with you, sir!&mdash;I agree with you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am more than glad," said Laddie.  "You certainly make a friend at
+court.  Thank you very much!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you will come&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The instant Miss Pryor gives me the slightest sign that I am wanted,
+and will be welcomed by her, I'll come like a Dakota blizzard!  Flos
+can hump herself on time for once."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you won't come until she does?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Man alive!  I can't!" cried Laddie.  "Your daughter said positively
+exactly what she meant.  It was unexpected and it hit me so hard I
+didn't try to argue.  I simply took her at her word, her very explicit
+word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fool!" cried Mr. Pryor.  "The last thing on earth any woman ever wants
+or expects is for a man to take her at her word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" cried Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She had what she said in her mind of course, but what she wanted was
+to be argued out of it!  She wanted to be convinced!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think not!  She was entirely too convincing herself," said Laddie.
+"It's my guess that she has thought matters over, and that her mind is
+made up; but I would take it as a mighty big favour if you would put
+that little piece of special pleading squarely up to her.  Will you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Mr. Pryor, "I will.  I'll keep cool and do my best, but I
+am so unfortunate in my temper.  I could manage slaves better than
+women.  This time I'll be calm, and reason things out with her, or I'll
+blow out my brains."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you dare!" laughed Laddie.  "You and I are going to get much
+pleasure, comfort and profit from this world, now that we have come to
+an understanding."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Pryor arose and held out his hand.  Laddie grasped it tight, and
+they stood there looking straight at each other, while a lark on the
+fence post close by cried, "Spring o' ye-ar!" at them, over and over,
+but they never paid the least attention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see," said Mr. Pryor, "I've been thinking things over deeply,
+deeply! ever since talking with your mother.  I've cut myself off from
+going back to England, by sacrificing much of my property in hasty
+departure, if by any possibility I should ever want to return, and
+there is none, not the slightest!  There's no danger of any one
+crossing the sea, and penetrating to this particular spot so far
+inland; we won't be molested!  And lately&mdash;lately, despite the rawness,
+and the newness, there is something about the land that takes hold,
+after all.  I should dislike leaving now!  I found in watching some
+roots your mother gave me, that I wanted them to grow, that I very much
+hoped they would develop, and beautify our place with flowers, as yours
+is.  I find myself watching them, watching them daily, and oftener, and
+there seems to be a sort of home feeling creeping around my heart.  I
+wish Pamela would listen to reason!  I wish she would marry you soon!
+I wish there would be little children.  Nothing else on earth would
+come so close to comforting my wife, and me also.  Nothing!  Go ahead,
+lad, plow away!  I'll put your special pleading up to the girl."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He clasped Laddie's hand, mounted and rode back to the gate he had
+entered when he came.  Laddie sat on the rail, so I climbed down beside
+him.  He put his arm around me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do I feel any better?" he asked dubiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course you do!" I said stoutly.  "You feel whole heaps, and stacks,
+and piles better.  You haven't got him to fight any more, or Mrs.
+Pryor.  It's now only to convince the Princess about how it's all right
+to plow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Small matter, that!" said Laddie.  "And easy!  Just as simple and
+easy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you asked the Fairies to help you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aye, aye, sir," said Laddie.  "Also the winds, the flowers, the birds
+and the bees!  I have asked everything on earth to help me except you,
+Little Sister.  I wonder if I have been making a mistake there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you mad at me, Laddie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Cause for why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"About the old crest thing!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Forget it!" laughed Laddie.  "I have.  And anyway, in the long run, I
+must be honest enough to admit that it may have helped.  It seems to
+have had its influence with Mr. Pryor, no doubt it worked the same on
+Mrs. Pryor, and it may be that it was because she had so much more to
+bank on than she ever expected, that the Princess felt emboldened to
+make her demand.  It may be, you can't tell!  Anyway, it's very evident
+that it did no real harm.  And forget my jesting, Chicken.  A man can't
+always cry because there are tears in his heart.  I think quite as much
+of that crest as you do.  In the sum of human events, it is a big
+thing.  No one admires a Crusader more than I.  No one likes a good
+fight better.  No Crusader ever put up a stiffer battle than I have in
+the past week while working in these fields.  Every inch of them is
+battlefield, every furrow a separate conflict.  Gaze upon the scene of
+my Waterloo!  When June covers it with green, it will wave over the
+resting place of my slain heart!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh Laddie!" I sobbed.  "There you go again!  How can you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whoo-pee!" cried Laddie.  "That's the question!  How can I?  Got to,
+Little Sister!  There's no other way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," I was forced to admit, "there isn't.  What are we going to do
+now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Life-saver, we'll now go to dinner," said Laddie.  "Nothing except the
+partnership implied in 'we' sustains me now.  YOU'LL FIND A WAY TO HELP
+ME OUT, WON'T YOU, LITTLE SISTER?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"OF COURSE I WILL!" I promised, without ever stopping a minute to think
+what kind of a job that was going to be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Did you ever wish with all your might that something would happen, and
+wait for it, expect it, and long for it, and nothing did, until it grew
+so bad, it seemed as if you had to go on another minute you couldn't
+bear it?  Now I thought when Mr. Pryor talked to her, maybe she'd send
+for Laddie that very same night; but send nothing!  She didn't even
+ride on our road any more.  Of course her father had made a botch of
+it!  Bet I could have told her Laddie's message straighter than he did.
+I could think it over, and see exactly how he'd do.  He'd talk nicely
+about one minute, and the first word she said, that he didn't like,
+he'd be ranting, and using unsuitable words.  Just as like as not he
+told her that he'd lay his whip across her shoulders, like he had
+Laddie.  Any one could see that as long as she was his daughter, she
+might be slightly handy with whips herself; at least she wouldn't be
+likely to stand still and tell him to go ahead and beat her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sunday Laddie went to Lucy's.  He said he was having a family reunion
+on the installment plan.  Of course we laughed, but none of us missed
+the long look he sent toward Pryors' as he mounted to start in the
+opposite direction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Everything went on.  I didn't see how it could, but it did.  It even
+got worse, for another letter came from Shelley that made matters
+concerning her no brighter, and while none of us talked about Laddie,
+all of us knew mighty well how we felt; and what was much worse, how he
+felt.  Father and mother had quit worrying about God; especially
+father.  He seemed to think that God and Laddie could be trusted to
+take care of the Princess, and I don't know exactly what mother
+thought.  No doubt she saw she couldn't help herself, and so she
+decided it was useless to struggle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The plowing on the west side was almost finished, and some of the seed
+was in.  Laddie went straight ahead flower-trimmed and whistling until
+his face must have ached as badly as his heart.  In spite of how hard
+he tried to laugh, and keep going, all of us could see that he fairly
+had to stick up his head and stretch his neck like the blue goose, to
+make the bites go down.  And you couldn't help seeing the roundness and
+the colour go from his face, a little more every day.  My! but being in
+love, when you couldn't have the one you loved, was the worst of all.
+I wore myself almost as thin as Laddie, hunting a Fairy to ask if she'd
+help me to make the Princess let Laddie go on and plow, when he was so
+crazy about it.  I prayed beside my bed every night, until the Lord
+must have grown so tired He quit listening to me, for I talked right up
+as impressively as I knew how, and it didn't do the least bit of good.
+I hadn't tried the one big prayer toward the east yet; but I was just
+about to the place where I intended to do it soon.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap15"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XV
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Laddie, the Princess, and the Pie
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"O whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Candace was baking the very first batch of rhubarb pies for the season
+and the odour was so tempting I couldn't keep away from the kitchen
+door.  Now Candace was a splendid cook about chicken gizzards&mdash;the
+liver was always mother's&mdash;doughnuts and tarts, but I never really did
+believe she would cut into a fresh rhubarb pie, even for me.  As I
+reached for the generous big piece I thought of Laddie poor Laddie,
+plowing away at his Crusader fight, and not a hint of victory.  No one
+in the family liked rhubarb pie better than he did.  I knew there was
+no use to ask for a plate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait&mdash;oh wait!" I cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I ran to the woodshed, pulled a shining new shingle from a bale stacked
+there, and held it for Candace.  Then I slipped around the house
+softly.  I didn't want to run any one's errands that morning.  I laid
+the pie on the horseblock and climbed the catalpa carefully, so as not
+to frighten my robins.  They were part father's too, because robins
+were his favourite birds; he said their song through and after rain was
+the sweetest music on earth, and mostly he was right; so they were not
+all my robins, but they were most mine after him; and I owned the tree.
+I hunted the biggest leaf I could see, and wiped it clean on my apron,
+although it was early for much dust.  It covered the pie nicely,
+because it was the proper shape, and I held the stem with one hand to
+keep it in place.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If I had made that morning myself I couldn't have done better.  It was
+sunny, spring air, but it was that cool, spicy kind that keeps you
+stopping every few minutes to see just how full you can suck your lungs
+without bursting.  It seemed to wash right through and through and make
+you all over.  The longer you breathed it the clearer your head became,
+and the better you felt, until you would be possessed to try and see if
+you really couldn't fly.  I tried that last summer, and knocked myself
+into jelly.  You'd think once would have been enough, but there I was
+going down the road with Laddie's pie, and wanting with all my heart to
+try again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sometimes I raced, but I was a little afraid the pie would shoot from
+the shingle and it was like pulling eye teeth to go fast that morning.
+I loved the soft warm dust, that was working up on the road.  Spat!
+Spat!  I brought down my bare feet, already scratched and turning
+brown, and laughed to myself at the velvety feel of it.  There were
+little puddles yet, where May and I had "dipped and faded" last fall,
+and it was fun to wade them.  The roadsides were covered with meadow
+grass and clover that had slipped through the fence.  On slender green
+blades, in spot after spot, twinkled the delicate bloom of blue-eyed
+grass.  Never in all this world was our Big Creek lovelier.  It went
+slipping, and whispering, and lipping, and lapping over the stones,
+tugging at the rushes and grasses as it washed their feet; everything
+beside it was in masses of bloom, a blackbird was gleaming and preening
+on every stone, as it plumed after its bath.  Oh there's no use to
+try&mdash;it was just SPRING when it couldn't possibly be any better.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But even spring couldn't hold me very long that morning, for you see my
+heart was almost sick about Laddie; and if he couldn't have the girl he
+wanted, at least I could do my best to comfort him with the pie.  I was
+going along being very careful the more I thought about how he would
+like it, so I was not watching the road so far ahead as I usually did.
+I always kept a lookout for Paddy Ryan, Gypsies, or Whitmore's bull.
+When I came to an unusually level place, and took a long glance ahead,
+my heart turned right over and stopped still, and I looked long enough
+to be sure, and then right out loud some one said, "I'll DO something!"
+and as usual, I was the only one there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For days I'd been in a ferment, like the vinegar barrel when the cider
+boils, or the yeast jar when it sets too close to the stove.  To have
+Laddie and the Princess separated was dreadful, and knowing him as I
+did, I knew he never really would get over it.  I had tried to help
+once, and what I had done started things going wrong; no wonder I was
+slow about deciding what to try next.  That I was going to do
+something, I made up my mind the instant Laddie said he was not mad at
+me; that I was his partner, and asked me to help; but exactly WHAT
+would do any good, took careful thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here was my chance coming right at me.  She was far up the road, riding
+Maud like racing.  I began to breathe after a while, like you always
+do, no matter how you are worked up, and with my brain whirling, I went
+slowly toward her.  How would I manage to stop her?  Or what could I
+say that would help Laddie?  I was shaking, and that's the truth; but
+through and over it all, I was watching her too.  I only wish you might
+have seen her that morning.  Of course the morning was part of it.  A
+morning like that would make a fence post better looking.  Half a mile
+away you could see she was tipsy with spring as I was, or the song
+sparrows, or the crazy babbling old bobolinks on the stakes and riders.
+She made such a bright splash against the pink fence row, with her dark
+hair, flushed cheeks, and red lips, she took my breath.  Father said
+she was the loveliest girl in three counties, and Laddie stretched that
+to the whole world.  As she came closer, smash!  through me went the
+thought that she looked precisely as Shelley had at Christmas time; and
+Shelley had been that way because she was in love with the Paget man.
+Now if the Princess was gleaming and flashing like that, for the same
+reason, there wasn't any one for her to love so far as I knew, except
+Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then smash! came another thought.  She HAD to love him!  She couldn't
+help herself.  She had all winter, all last summer, and no one but
+themselves knew how long before that, and where was there any other man
+like Laddie?  Of course she loved him!  Who so deserving of love?  Who
+else had his dancing eyes of deep tender blue, cheeks so pink, teeth so
+white, such waving chestnut hair, and his height and breadth?  There
+was no other man who could ride, swim, leap, and wrestle as he could.
+None who could sing the notes, do the queer sums with letters having
+little figures at the corners in the college books, read Latin as fast
+as English, and even the Greek Bible.  Of course she loved him!  Every
+one did!  Others might plod and meander, Laddie walked the tired, old
+road that went out of sight over the hill, with as prideful a step as
+any king; his laugh was as merry as the song of the gladdest thrush,
+while his touch was so gentle that when mother was in dreadful pain I
+sometimes thought she would a little rather have him hold her than
+father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, he was in this fearful trouble, the colour was going from his
+face, his laugh was a little strained, and the heartache almost more
+than he could endure&mdash;and there she came!  I stepped squarely in the
+middle of the road so she would have to stop or ride over me, and when
+she was close, I stood quite still.  I was watching with my eyes,
+heart, and brain, and I couldn't see that she was provoked, as she drew
+rein and cried:  "Good morning, Little Queer Person!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had supposed she would say Little Sister, she had for ages, just like
+Laddie, but she must have thought it was queer for me to stop her that
+way, so she changed.  I was in for it.  I had her now, so I smiled the
+very sweetest smile that I could think up in such a hurry, and said,
+"Good morning," the very politest I ever did in all my life.  Then I
+didn't know what to do next, but she helped me out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What have you there?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a piece of the very first rhubarb pie for this spring, and I'm
+carrying it to Laddie," I said, as I lifted the catalpa leaf and let
+her peep, just to show her how pie looked when it was right.  I bet she
+never saw a nicer piece.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess slid her hand down Maud's neck to quiet her prancing, and
+leaned in the saddle, her face full of interest.  I couldn't see a
+trace of anything to discourage me; her being on our road again looked
+favourable.  She seemed to think quite as much of that pie as I did.
+She was the finest little thoroughbred.  She understood so well, I was
+sorry I couldn't give it to her.  It made her mouth water all right,
+for she drew a deep breath that sort of quivered; but it was no use,
+she didn't get that pie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think it looks delicious," she said.  "Are you carrying it for
+Candace?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!  She gave it to me.  It's my very own."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you're doing without it yourself to carry it to Laddie, I'll be
+bound!" cried the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd much rather," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you love Laddie so dearly?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My heart was full of him right then; I forgot all about when I had the
+fever, and as I never had been taught to lie, I told her what I thought
+was the truth, and I guess it WAS:  "Best of any one in all this world!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess looked across the field, where she must have seen him
+finishing the plowing, and thought that over, and I waited, sure in my
+mind, for some reason, that she would not go for a little while longer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have been wanting to see you," she said at last.  "In fact I think I
+came this way hoping I'd meet you.  Do you know the words to a tune
+that goes like this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then she began to whistle "The Merry Farmer Boy." I wish you might have
+heard the flourishes she put to it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course I do," I answered.  "All of us were brought up on it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I have some slight curiosity to learn what they are," she said.
+"Would you kindly repeat them for me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," I said.  "This is the first verse:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"'See the merry farmer boy tramp the meadows through,<BR>
+Swing his hoe in careless joy while dashing off the dew.<BR>
+Bobolink in maple high&mdash;&mdash;'<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"Of course you can see for yourself that they're not.  There isn't a
+single one of them higher than a fence post.  The person who wrote the
+piece had to put it that way so high would rhyme with reply, which is
+coming in the next line."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see!" said the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"'Bobolink in maple high, trills a note of glee<BR>
+Farmer boy a gay reply now whistles cheerily.'<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Then you whistle the chorus like you did it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You do indeed!" said the Princess.  "Proceed!"
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"'Then the farmer boy at noon, rests beneath the shade,<BR>
+Listening to the ceaseless tune that's thrilling through the glade.<BR>
+Long and loud the harvest fly winds his bugle round,<BR>
+Long, and loud, and shrill, and high, he whistles back the sound.'"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"He does!  He does indeed!  I haven't a doubt about that!" cried the
+Princess.  "'Long, and loud, and shrill, and high,' he whistles over
+and over the sound, until it becomes maddening.  Is that all of that
+melodious, entrancing production?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, evening comes yet.  The last verse goes this way:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"'When the busy day's employ, ends at dewy eve,<BR>
+Then the happy farmer boy, doth haste his work to leave,<BR>
+Trudging down the quiet lane, climbing o'er the hill,<BR>
+Whistling back the changeless wail, of plaintive whip-poor-will,'&mdash;<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+and then you do the chorus again, and if you know how well enough you
+whistle in, 'whip-poor-will,' 'til the birds will answer you.  Laddie
+often makes them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My life!" cried the Princess.  "Was that he doing those bird cries?
+Why, I hunted, and hunted, and so did father.  We'd never seen a
+whip-poor-will.  Just fancy us!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you'd only looked at Laddie," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My patience!" cried the Princess.  "Looked at him!  There was no place
+to look without seeing him.  And that ear-splitting thing will ring in
+my head forever, I know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he whistle it too high to suit you, Princess?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He was perfectly welcome to whistle as he chose," she said, "and also
+to plow with the carriage horses, and to bedeck them and himself with
+the modest, shrinking red tulip and yellow daffodil."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now any one knows that tulips and daffodils are NOT modest and
+shrinking.  If any flowers just blaze and scream colour clear across a
+garden, they do.  She was provoked, you could see that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, he only did it to please you," I said.  "He didn't care anything
+about it.  He never plowed that way before.  But you said he mustn't
+plow at all, and he just had to plow, there was no escaping that, so he
+made it as fine and happy as possible to show you how nicely it could
+be done."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Greatly obliged, I'm sure!" cried the Princess.  "He showed me!  He
+certainly did!  And so he feels that there's 'no escaping' plowing,
+does he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I knew where I was.  I'd have given every cent of mine in father's
+chest till, if mother had been in my place.  Once, for a second, I
+thought I'd ask the Princess to go with me to the house, and let mother
+tell her how it was; but if she wouldn't go, and rode away, I felt I
+couldn't endure it, and anyway, she had said she was looking for me; so
+I gripped the shingle, dug in my toes and went at her just as nearly
+like mother talked to her father as I could remember, and I'd been put
+through memory tests, and descriptive tests, nearly every night of my
+life, so I had most of it as straight as a string.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you see, he CAN'T escape it," I said.  "He'd do anything in all
+this world for you that he possibly could; but there are some things no
+man CAN do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't suppose there was anything you thought Laddie couldn't do,"
+she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A little time back, I didn't," I answered.  "But since he took the
+carriage horses, trimmed up in flowers, and sang and whistled so
+bravely, day after day, when his heart was full of tears, why I learned
+that there was something he just COULDN'T DO; NOT TO SAVE HIS LIFE, OR
+HIS LOVE, OR EVEN TO SAVE YOU."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And of course you don't mind telling me what that is?" coaxed the
+Princess in her most wheedling tones.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not at all!  He told our family, and I heard him tell your father.
+The thing he can't do, not even to win you, is to be shut up in a
+little office, in a city, where things roar, and smell, and nothing is
+like this&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I pointed out the orchard, hill, and meadow, so she looked where I
+showed her&mdash;looked a long time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, a city wouldn't be like this," she said slowly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And that isn't even the beginning," I said.  "Maybe he could bear
+that, men have been put in prison and lived through years and years of
+it, perhaps Laddie could too; I doubt it! but anyway the worst of it is
+that he just couldn't, not even to save you, spend all the rest of his
+life trying to settle other people's old fusses.  He despises a fuss.
+Not one of us ever in our lives have been able to make him quarrel,
+even one word.  He simply won't.  And if he possibly could be made to
+by any one on earth, Leon would have done it long ago, for he can start
+a fuss with the side of a barn.  But he can't make Laddie fuss, and
+nobody can.  He NEVER would at school, or anywhere.  Once in a while if
+a man gets so overbearing that Laddie simply can't stand it, he says:
+'Now, you'll take your medicine!'  Then he pulls off his coat, and
+carefully, choosing the right spots, he just pounds the breath out of
+that man, but he never stops smiling, and when he helps him up he
+always says:  'Sorry! hope you'll excuse me, but you WOULD have it.'
+That's what he said about you, that you had to take your medicine&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I made a mistake there.  That made her too mad for any use.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," she cried, "I do? I'll jolly well show the gentleman!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you needn't take the trouble," I cried.  "He's showing you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She just blazed like she'd break into flame.  Any one could fuss with
+her all right; but that was the last thing on earth I wanted to do.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see he already knows about you," I explained as fast as I could
+talk, for I was getting into an awful mess.  "You see he knows that you
+want him to be a lawyer, and that he must quit plowing before he can be
+more than friends with you.  That's what he's plowing for!  If it
+wasn't for that, probably he wouldn't; be plowing at all.  He asked
+father to let him, and he borrowed mother's horses, and he hooked the
+flowers through the fence.  Every night when he comes home, he kneels
+beside mother and asks her if he is 'repulsive,' and she takes him in
+her arms and the tears roll down her cheeks and she says:  'Father has
+farmed all his life, and you know how repulsive he is.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I ventured an upward peep.  I was doing better.  Her temper seemed to
+be cooling, but her face was a jumble.  I couldn't find any one thing
+on it that would help me, so I just stumbled ahead guessing at what to
+say.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He didn't WANT to do it.  He perfectly HATED it.  Those fields were
+his Waterloo.  Every furrow was a FIGHT, but he was FORCED to show you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly WHAT was he trying to show me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can think of three things he told me," I answered.  "That plowing
+could be so managed as not to disfigure the landscape&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The dunce!" she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That he could plow or do dirtier work, and not be repulsive&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The idiot!" she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That if he came over there, and plowed right under your nose, when
+you'd told him he mustn't, or he couldn't be more than friends; and
+when you knew that he'd much rather die and be laid beside the little
+sisters up there in the cemetery than to NOT be more than friends, why,
+you'd see, if he did THAT, he couldn't help it, that he just MUST.
+That he was FORCED&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The soldier!" she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh Princess, he didn't want to!" I cried.  "He tells me secrets he
+doesn't any one else, unless you.  He told me how he hated it; but he
+just had to do it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know WHY?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course!  It's the way he's MADE!  Father is like that!  He has
+chances to live in cities, make big business deals, and go to the
+legislature at Indianapolis; I've seen his letters from his friend
+Oliver P. Morton, our Governor, you know; they're in his chest till
+now; but father can't do it, because he is made so he stays at home and
+works for us, and this farm, and township, and county where he belongs.
+He says if all men will do that the millennium will come to-morrow.  I
+'spose you know what the millennium is?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do!" said the Princess.  "But I don't know what your father and his
+friend Oliver P. Morton have to do with Laddie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, everything on earth!  Laddie is father's son, you see, and he is
+made like father.  None of our other boys is.  Not one of them loves
+land.  Leon is going away as quick as ever he finishes college; but the
+more you educate Laddie, the better he likes to make things grow, the
+more he loves to make the world beautiful, to be kind to every one, to
+gentle animals&mdash;why, the biggest fight he ever had, the man he whipped
+'til he most couldn't bring him back again, was one who kicked his
+horse in the stomach.  Gee, I thought he'd killed him!  Laddie did too
+for a while, but he only said the man deserved it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And so he did!" cried the Princess angrily.  "How beastly!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's one reason Laddie sticks so close to land.  He says he doesn't
+meet nearly so many two-legged beasts in the country.  Almost every
+time he goes to town he either gets into a fight or he sees something
+that makes him fighting mad.  Princess, you think this beautiful, don't
+you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I just pointed anywhere.  All the world was in it that morning.  You
+couldn't look right or left and not see lovely places, hear music, and
+smell flowers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes!  It is altogether wonderful!" she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would you like to live among this all your life, and have your plans
+made to fix you a place even nicer, and then be forced to leave it and
+go to a little room in the city, and make all the money you earned off
+of how much other men fight over business, and land and such perfectly
+awful things, that they always have to be whispered when Jerry tells
+about them?  Would you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You little dunce!" she cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know I'm a fool.  I know I'm not telling you a single thing I
+should!  Maybe I'm hurting Laddie far more than I'm helping him, and if
+I am, I wish I would die before I see him; but oh!  Princess, I'm
+trying with all my might to make you understand how he feels.  He WANTS
+to do every least thing you'd like him to.  He will, almost any thing
+else in the world, he would this&mdash;he would in a minute, but he just
+CAN'T.  All of us know he can't!  If you'd lived with him since he was
+little and always had known him, you wouldn't ask him to; you wouldn't
+want him to!  You don't know what you're doing!  Mother says you don't!
+You'll kill him if you send him to the city to live, you just will!
+You are doing it now!  He's getting thinner and whiter every day.
+Don't!  Oh please don't do it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess was looking at the world.  She was gazing at it so
+dazed-like she seemed to be surprised at what she saw.  She acted as if
+she'd never really seen it before.  She looked and she looked.  She
+even turned her horse a full circle to see all of it, and she went
+around slowly.  I stepped from one foot to the other and sweat; but I
+kept quiet and let her look.  At last when she came around, she glanced
+down at me, and she was all melted, and lovely as any one you ever saw,
+exactly like Shelley at Christmas, and she said:  "I don't think I ever
+saw the world before.  I don't know that I'm so crazy about a city
+myself, and I perfectly hate lawyers.  Come to thing of it, a lawyer
+helped work ruin in our family, and I never have believed, I never will
+believe&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stopped talking and began looking again.  I gave her all the time
+she needed.  I was just straining to be wise, for mother says it takes
+the very wisest person there is to know when to talk, and when to keep
+still.  As I figured it, now was the time not to say another word until
+she made up her mind about what I had told her already.  If Pryors
+didn't know what we thought of them by that time, it wasn't mother's
+fault or mine.  As she studied things over she kept on looking.  What
+she saw seemed to be doing her a world of good.  Her face showed it
+every second plainer and plainer.  Pretty soon it began to look like
+she was going to come through as Amos Hurd did when he was redeemed.
+Then, before my very eyes, it happened!  I don't know how I ever held
+on to the pie or kept from shouting, "Praise the Lord!" as father does
+at the Meeting House when he is happiest.  Then she leaned toward me
+all wavery, and shining eyed, and bloomful, and said:  "Did you ever
+hurt Laddie's feelings, and make him angry and sad?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm sure I never did," I answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But suppose you had!  What would you do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do?  Why, I'd go to him on the run, and I'd tell him I never intended
+to hurt his feelings, and how sorry I was, and I'd give him the very
+best kiss I could."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess stroked Maud's neck a long time and thought while she
+studied our farm, theirs beyond it, and at the last, the far field
+where Laddie was plowing.  She thought, and thought, and afraid to
+cheep, I stood gripping the shingle and waited.  Finally she said:
+"The last time Laddie was at our house, I said to him those things he
+repeated to you.  He went away at once, hurt and disappointed.  Now, if
+you like, along with your precious pie, you may carry him this message
+from me.  You may tell him that I said I am sorry!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I could have cried "Glory!" and danced and shouted there in the road,
+but I didn't.  It was no time to lose my head.  That was all so fine
+and splendid, as far as it went, but it didn't quite cover the case.  I
+never could have done it for myself; but for Laddie I would venture
+anything, so I looked her in the eyes, straight as a dart, and said:
+"He'd want the kiss too, Princess!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+You could see her stiffen in the saddle and her fingers grip the reins,
+but I kept on staring right into her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I could come up, you know," I offered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A dull red flamed in her cheeks and her lips closed tight.  One second
+she sat very still, then a dancing light leaped sparkling into her
+eyes; a flock of dimples chased each other around her lips like
+swallows circling their homing place at twilight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What about that wonderful pie?" she asked me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I ran to the nearest fence corner, and laid the shingle on the gnarled
+roots of a Johnny Appleseed apple tree.  Then I set one foot on the
+arch of the Princess' instep and held up my hands.  One second I
+thought she would not lift me, the next I was on her level and her lips
+met mine in a touch like velvet woven from threads of flame.  Then with
+a turn of her stout little wrist, she dropped me, and a streak went up
+our road.  Nothing so amazing and so important ever had happened to me.
+It was an occasion that demanded something unusual.  To cry, "Praise
+the Lord!" was only to repeat an hourly phrase at our house; this
+demanded something out of the ordinary, so I said just exactly as
+father did the day the brown mare balked with the last load of seed
+clover, when a big storm was breaking&mdash;"Jupiter Ammon!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When I had calmed down so I could, I climbed the fence, and reached
+through a crack for the pie.  As I followed the cool, damp furrow, and
+Laddie's whistle, clear as the lark's above the wheat, thrilled me, I
+was almost insane with joy.  Just joy!  Pure joy!  Oh what a good world
+it was!&mdash;most of the time!  Most of the time!  Of course, there WERE
+Paget men in it.  But anyway, THIS couldn't be beaten.  I had a message
+for Laddie from the Princess that would send him to the seventh heaven,
+wherever that was; no one at our house spent any time thinking farther
+than the first one.  I had her kiss, that I didn't know what would do
+to him, and I also had a big piece of juicy rhubarb pie not yet
+entirely cold.  If that didn't wipe out the trouble I had made showing
+the old crest thing, nothing ever could.  I knew even then, that men
+were pretty hard to satisfy, but I was quite certain that Laddie would
+be satisfied that morning.  As I hurried along I wondered whether it
+would be better to give him my gift first, or the Princess'.  I decided
+that joy would keep, while the pie was cold enough, with all the time I
+had stopped; and if I told him about her first, maybe he wouldn't touch
+it at all, and it wasn't so easy as it looked to carry it to him and
+never even once stick in my finger for the tiniest lick&mdash;joy would
+keep; but I was going to feed him; so with shining face, I offered the
+pie and stood back to see just how happy I could get.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother send it?" asked Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+People were curious that morning, as if I had a habit of stealing pie.
+I only took pieces of cut ones from the cellar when mother didn't care.
+So I explained again that Candace gave it to me, and I was free to
+bring it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh I see!" said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After nearly two weeks of work, the grays had sobered down enough to
+stand without tying; so he wound the lines around the plow handle, sat
+on the beam, and laid aside his hat, having a fresh flower in the band.
+Once he started a thing, he just simply wouldn't give up.  He
+unbuttoned his neckband until I could see his throat where it was white
+like a woman's, took out his knife and ate that pie.  Of course we knew
+better than to use a knife at the table, but there was no other way in
+the field.  He ate that pie, slowly and deliberately, and between bites
+he talked.  I watched him with a wide grin, wondering what in this
+world he WOULD say, in a minute.  I don't think I ever had quite such a
+good time in all my life before, and I never expect to again.  He was
+saying:  "Talk about nectar and ambrosia!  Talk about the feasts of
+Lucullus!  Talk about food for the Gods!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I put on his hat, sat on the ground in front of him, and was the
+happiest girl in the world, of that I am quite sure.  When the last
+morsel was finished, Laddie looked at me steadily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder," he said, "I wonder if there's another man in the world who
+is blest with quite such a loving, unselfish little sister as mine?"
+Then he answered himself:  "No!  By all the Gods, ant half-Gods, I
+swear it&mdash;No!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was grand as a Fourth of July oration or the most exciting part when
+the Bishop dedicated our church.  I couldn't hold in another second, I
+could hear my heart beat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh Laddie!" I shouted, jumping up, "that pie is only the beginning of
+the good things I have brought you.  I have a message, and a gift
+besides, Laddie!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A message and a gift?" Laddie repeated.  "What!  More?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Truly I have a message and a gift for you," I cried, "and Laddie&mdash;they
+are from the Princess!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His eyes raised to mine now, and slowly he turned Sabethany-like.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From the Princess!" he exclaimed.  "A message and a gift for me,
+Little Sister?  You never would let Leon put you up to serve me a
+trick?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That hurt.  He should have KNOWN I wouldn't, and besides, "Leon feels
+just as badly about this as any of us," I said.  "Have you forgotten he
+offered to plow, and let you do the clean, easy work?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Forgive me!  I'm overanxious," said Laddie, his arms reaching for me.
+"Go on and tell carefully, and if you truly love me, don't make a
+mistake!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Crowding close, my arms around his neck, his crisp hair against my
+lips, I whispered my story softly, for this was such a fine and
+splendid secret, that not even the shining blackbirds, and the pert
+robins in the furrows were going to get to hear a word of it.  Before I
+had finished Laddie was breathing as Flos does when he races her the
+limit.  He sat motionless for a long time, while over his face slowly
+crept a beauty that surpassed that of Apollo in his Greek book.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And her gift?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was only a breath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She helped me up, and she sent you this," I answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I set my lips on his, and held them there a second, trying my
+level best to give him her very kiss, but of course I could only try.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Laddie," I cried.  "Her eyes were like when stars shine down in
+our well!  Her cheeks were like mother's damask roses!  She smelled
+like flowers, and when her lips touched mine little stickers went all
+over me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Laddie's arms closed around me and I thought sure every bone in my
+body was going to be broken; when he finished there wasn't a trace of
+that kiss left for me.  Remembering it would be all I'd ever have.  It
+made me see what would have happened to the Princess if she had been
+there; and it was an awful pity for her to miss it, because he'd sober
+down a lot before he reached her, but I was sure as shooting that he
+wouldn't be so crazy as to kiss her hands again.  Peter wasn't a
+patching to him!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That night Laddie rode to Pryors'.  When he brought Flos to the gate
+you could see the shadow of your face on her shining flank; her mane
+and tail were like ravelled silk, her hoofs bright as polished horn,
+and her muzzle was clean as a ribbon.  I broke one of those rank green
+sprouts from the snowball bush and brushed away the flies, so she
+wouldn't fret, stamp, and throw dust on herself.  Then Laddie came,
+fresh from a tubbing, starched linen, dressed in his new riding suit,
+and wearing top hat and gauntlets.  He looked the very handsomest I
+ever had seen him; and at the same time, he seemed trembling with
+tenderness, and bursting with power.  Goodness sake!  I bet the
+Princess took one good look and "came down" like Davy Crockett's coon.
+Mother was on his arm and she walked clear to the gate with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"LADDIE, ARE YOU SURE ENOUGH TO GO?" I heard her ask him whisper-like.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"SURE AS DEATH!" Laddie answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother looked, and she had to see how it was with him; no doubt she saw
+more than I did from having been through it herself, so she smiled kind
+of a half-sad, half-glad smile.  Then she turned to her damask rose
+bush, the one Lucy brought her from the city, and that she was so
+precious about, that none of us dared touch it, and she searched all
+over it and carefully selected the most perfect rose.  When she
+borrowed Laddie's knife and cut the stem as long as my arm, I knew
+exactly how great and solemn the occasion was; for always before about
+six inches had been her limit.  She held it toward him, smiling bravely
+and beautifully, but the tears were running straight down her cheeks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take it to her," she said.  "I think, my son, it is very like."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie took her in his arms and wiped away the tears; he told her
+everything would come out all right about God, and the mystery, even.
+Then he picked me clear off the ground, and he tried to see how near he
+could come to cracking every bone in my body without really doing it,
+and he kissed me over and over.  It hadn't been so easy, but I guess
+you'll admit that paid.  Then he rode away with the damask rose waving
+over his heart.  Mother and I stood beside the hitching rack and looked
+after him, with our arms tight around each other while we tried to see
+which one could bawl the hardest.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap16"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVI
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+The Homing Pigeon
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"A millstone and the human heart,<BR>
+Are ever driven round,<BR>
+And if they've nothing else to grind,<BR>
+They must themselves be ground."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+It seemed to me that my mother was the person who really could have
+been excused for having heart trouble.  The more I watched her, the
+more I wondered that she didn't.  There was her own life, the one she
+and father led, where everything went exactly as she wanted it to; and
+if there had been only themselves to think of, no people on earth could
+have lived happier, unless the pain she sometimes suffered made them
+trouble, and I don't think it would, for neither of them were to blame
+for that.  They couldn't help it.  They just had it to stand, and fight
+the stiffest they could to cure it, and mother always said she was
+better; every single time any one asked, she was better.  I hoped soon
+it would all be gone.  Then they could have been happy for sure, if
+some of us hadn't popped up and kept them in hot water all the time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I can't tell you about Laddie when he came back from Pryors'.  He tore
+down the house, then tore it up, and then threw around the pieces, and
+none of us cared.  Every one was just laughing, shouting, and every bit
+as pleased as he was, while I was the Queen Bee.  Laddie said so,
+himself, and if he didn't know, no one did.  Pryors had been lovely to
+him.  When mother asked him how he made it, he answered:  "I rode over,
+picked up the Princess and helped myself.  After I finished, I
+remembered the little unnecessary formality of asking her to marry me;
+and she said right out loud that she WOULD.  When I had time for them,
+I reached Father and Mother Pryor, and maybe it doesn't show, but
+somewhere on my person I carry their blessing, genially and heartily
+given, I am proud to state.  Now, I'm only needing yours, to make me a
+king among men."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They gave it quite as willingly, I am sure, although you could see
+mother scringe when Laddie said "Father and Mother Pryor."  I knew why.
+She adored Laddie, like the Bible says you must adore the Almighty.
+From a tiny baby Laddie had taken care of her.  He used to go back,
+take her hand, and try to help her over rough places while he still
+wore dresses.  Straight on, he had been like that; always seeing when
+there was too much work and trying to shield her; always knowing when a
+pain was coming and fighting to head it off; always remembering the
+things the others forgot, going to her last at night, and his face
+against hers on her pillow the first in the morning, to learn how she
+was before he left the house.  If you were the mother of a man like
+that, how would you like to hear him call some one else mother, and
+have the word slip from his tongue so slick you could see he didn't
+even realize that he had used it?  The answer would be, if you were
+honest, that you wouldn't have liked it any more than she did.  She
+knew he had to go.  She wanted him to be happy.  She was as sure of the
+man he was going to be as she was sure of the mercy of God.  That is
+the strongest way I know to tell it.  She was unshakably sure of the
+mercy of God, but I wasn't.  There were times when it seemed as if He
+couldn't hear the most powerful prayer you could pray, and when instead
+of mercy, you seemed to get the last torment that could be piled on.
+Take right now.  Laddie was happy, and all of us were, in a way; and in
+another we were almost stiff with misery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I dreaded his leaving us so, I would slip to the hawk oak and cry
+myself sick, more than once; whether any of the others were that big
+babies I don't know; but anyway, THEY were not his Little Sister.  I
+was.  I always had been.  I always would be, for that matter; but there
+was going to be a mighty big difference.  I had the poor comfort that
+I'd done the thing myself.  Maybe if it hadn't been for stopping the
+Princess when I took him that pie, they never would have made up, and
+she might have gone across the sea and stayed there.  Maybe she'd go
+yet, as mysteriously as she had come, and take him along.  Sometimes I
+almost wished I hadn't tried to help him; but of course I didn't
+really.  Then, too, I had sense enough to know that loving each other
+as they did, they wouldn't live on that close together for years and
+years, and not find a way to make up for themselves, like they had at
+the start.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I liked Laddie saying I had made his happiness for him; but I wasn't
+such a fool that I didn't know he could have made it for himself just
+as well, and no doubt better.  So everything was all right with Laddie;
+and what happened to us, the day he rode away for the last time, when
+he went to stay&mdash;what happened to us, then, was our affair.  We had to
+take it, but every one of us dreaded it, while mother didn't know how
+to bear it, and neither did I.  Once I said to her:  "Mother, when
+Laddie goes we'll just have to make it up to each other the best we
+can, won't we?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh my soul, child!" she cried, staring at me so surprised-like.  "Why,
+how unspeakably selfish I have been!  No little lost sheep ever ran
+this farm so desolate as you will be without your brother.  Forgive me
+baby, and come here!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gee, but we did cry it out together!  The God she believed in has wiped
+away her tears long ago; this minute I can scarcely see the paper for
+mine.  If you could call anything happiness, that was mixed with
+feeling like that, why, then, we were happy about Laddie.  But from
+things I heard father and mother say, I knew they could have borne his
+going away, and felt a trifle better than they did.  I was quite sure
+they had stopped thinking that he was going to lose his soul, but they
+couldn't help feeling so long as that old mystery hung over Pryors that
+he might get into trouble through it.  Father said if it hadn't been
+for Mr. Pryor's stubborn and perverted notions about God, he would like
+the man immensely, and love to be friends; and if Laddie married into
+the family we would have to be as friendly as we could anyway.  He said
+he had such a high opinion of Mr. Pryor's integrity that he didn't
+believe he'd encourage Laddie to enter his family if it would involve
+the boy in serious trouble.  Mother didn't know.  Anyway, the thing was
+done, and by fall, no doubt, Laddie would leave us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Just when we were trying to keep a stiff upper lip before him, and
+whistling as hard as ever he had, to brace our courage, a letter came
+for mother from the head of the music school Shelley attended, saying
+she was no longer fit for work, so she was being sent home at once, and
+they would advise us to consult a specialist immediately.  Mother sat
+and stared at father, and father went to hitch the horses to drive to
+Groveville.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There's only one other day of my life that stands out as clearly as
+that.  The house was clean as we could make it.  I finished feeding
+early, and had most of the time to myself.  I went down to the Big
+Hill, and followed the top of it to our woods.  Then I turned around,
+and started toward the road, just idling.  If I saw a lovely spot I sat
+down and watched all around me to see if a Fairy really would go
+slipping past, or lie asleep under a leaf.  I peeked and peered softly,
+going from spot to spot, watching everything.  Sometimes I hung over
+the water, and studied tiny little fish with red, yellow, and blue on
+them, bright as flowers.  The dragonflies would alight right on me, and
+some wore bright blue markings and some blood red.  There was a blue
+beetle, a beautiful green fly, and how the blue wasps did flip, flirt
+and glint in the light.  So did the blackbirds and the redwings.  That
+embankment was left especially to shade the water, and to feed the
+birds.  Every foot of it was covered with alders, wild cherry,
+hazelbush, mulberries, everything having a berry or nut.  There were
+several scrub apple trees, many red haws, the wild strawberries spread
+in big beds in places, and some of them were colouring.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Wild flowers grew everywhere, great beds were blue with calamus, and
+the birds flocked in companies to drive away the water blacksnakes that
+often found nests, and liked eggs and bird babies.  When I came to the
+road at last, the sun was around so the big oak on the top of the hill
+threw its shadow across the bridge, and I lay along one edge and
+watched the creek bottom, or else I sat up so the water flowed over my
+feet, and looked at the embankment and the sky.  In a way, it was the
+most peculiar day of my life.  I had plenty to think of, but I never
+thought at all.  I only lived.  I sat watching the world go past
+through a sort of golden haze the sun made.  When a pair of kingbirds
+and three crows chased one of my hawks pell-mell across the sky, I
+looked on and didn't give a cent what happened.  When a big blacksnake
+darted its head through sweet grass and cattails, and caught a frog
+that had climbed on a mossy stone in the shade to dine on flies, I let
+it go.  Any other time I would have hunted a stick and made the snake
+let loose.  To-day I just sat there and let things happen as they did.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last I wandered up the road, climbed the back garden fence, and sat
+on the board at the edge of a flowerbed, and to-day, I could tell to
+the last butterfly about that garden: what was in bloom, how far things
+had grown, and what happened.  Bobby flew under the Bartlett pear tree
+and crowed for me, but I never called him.  I sat there and lived on,
+and mostly watched the bees tumble over the bluebells.  They were
+almost ready to be cut to put in the buttered tumblers for perfume,
+like mother made for us.  Then I went into the house and looked at
+Grace Greenwood, but I didn't take her along.  Mother came past and
+gave me a piece of stiff yellow brocaded silk as lovely as I ever had
+seen, enough for a dress skirt; and a hand-embroidered chemise sleeve
+that only needed a band and a button to make a petticoat for a Queen
+doll, but I laid them away and wandered into the orchard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I dragged my bare feet through the warm grass, and finally sat under
+the beet red peach tree.  If ever I seemed sort of lost and sorry for
+myself, that was a good place to go; it was so easy to feel abused
+there because you didn't dare touch those peaches.  Fluffy baby
+chickens were running around, but I didn't care; there was more than a
+bird for every tree, bluebirds especially; they just loved us and came
+early and stayed late, and grew so friendly they nested all over the
+wood house, smoke house, and any place we fixed for them, and in every
+hollow apple limb.  Bobby came again, but I didn't pay any attention to
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I heard the carriage cross the bridge.  I knew when it was father,
+every single time his team touched the first plank.  So I ran like an
+Indian, and shinned up a cedar tree, scratching myself until I bled.
+Away up I stood on a limb, held to the tree and waited.  Father drove
+to the gate, and mother came out, with May, Candace, and Leon
+following.  When Shelley touched the ground and straightened, any other
+tree except a spruce having limbs to hold me up, I would have fallen
+from it.  She looked exactly as if she had turned to tombstone with
+eyes and hair alive.  She stopped a second to brush a little kiss
+across mother's lips, to the others she said without even glancing at
+them:  "Oh do let me lie down a minute!  The motion of that train made
+me sick."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, I should say it did!  I quit living, and began thinking in a
+hooray, and so did every one else at our house.  Once I had been sick
+and queened it over them for a while, now all of us strained ourselves
+trying to wait on Shelley; but she wouldn't have it.  She only said she
+was tired to death, to let her rest, and she turned her face to the
+wall and lay there.  Once she said she never wanted to see a city again
+so long as she lived.  When mother told her about Laddie and the
+Princess to try to interest her, she never said a word; I doubted if
+she even listened.  Father and mother looked at each other, when they
+thought no one would see, and their eyes sent big, anxious questions
+flashing back and forth.  I made up my mind I'd keep awake that night
+and hear what they said, if I had to take pins to bed with me and stick
+myself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Once mother said to Shelley that she was going to send for Dr. Fenner,
+and she answered:  "All right, if you need him.  Don't you dare for me!
+I'll not see him.  All I want is a little peace and rest."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The idea!  Not one of us ever had spoken to mother like that before in
+all our born days.  I held my breath to see what she would do, but she
+didn't seem to have heard it, or to notice how rude it had been.  Well,
+THAT told about as plain as anything what we had on our hands.  I
+wandered around and NOW there was no trouble about thinking things.
+They came in such a jumble I could get no sense from them; but one big
+black thought came over, and over, and over, and wouldn't be put away.
+It just stood, stayed, forced you, and made you look it in the face.
+If Shelley weren't stopped quickly she was going up on the hill with
+the little fever and whooping cough sisters.  There it was!  You could
+try to think other things, to play, to work, to talk it down in the
+pulpit, to sing it out in a tree, to slide down the haystack away from
+it&mdash;there it stayed!  And every glimpse you had of Shelley made it
+surer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no trouble about keeping awake that night; I couldn't sleep.
+I stood at the window and looked down the Big Hill through the soft
+white moonlight, and thought about it, and then I thought of mother.  I
+guess NOW you see what kind of things mothers have to face.  All day
+she had gone around doing her work, every few minutes suggesting some
+new thing for one of us to try, or trying it herself; all day she had
+talked and laughed, and when Sarah Hood came she told her she thought
+Shelley must be bilious, that she had travelled all night and was
+sleeping: but she would be up the first place she went, and then they
+talked all over creation and Mrs. Hood went home and never remembered
+that she hadn't seen Shelley.  She worked Mrs. Freshett off the same
+way, but you could see she was almost too tired to do it, so by night
+she was nearly as white as Shelley, yet keeping things going.  When the
+house was still, she came into the room, and stood at the window as I
+had, until father entered, then she turned, and I could see they were
+staring at each other in the moonlight, as they had all day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's sick?" asked father, at last.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Heartsick!" said mother bitterly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We'd better have Doc come?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She says she isn't sick, and she won't see him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She will if I put my foot down."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Best not, Paul!  She'll feel better soon.  She's so young!  She must
+get over it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were silent for a long time and then father asked in a harsh
+whisper:  "Ruth, can she possibly have brought us to shame?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God forbid!" cried mother.  "Let us pray."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then those two people knelt on each side of that bed, and I could hear
+half the words they muttered, until I was wild enough to scream.  I
+wished with all my heart that I hadn't listened.  I had always known it
+was no nice way.  I must have gone to sleep after a while, but when I
+woke up I was still thinking about it, and to save me, I couldn't quit.
+All day, wherever I went, that question of father's kept going over in
+my head.  I thought about it until I was almost crazy, and I just
+couldn't see where anything about shame came in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was only mistaken.  She THOUGHT he loved her, and he didn't.  She
+never could have been so bloomy, so filled with song, laughter, and
+lovely like she was, if she hadn't truly believed with all her heart
+that he loved her.  Of course it would almost finish her to give him
+up, when she felt like that; and maybe she did wrong to let herself
+care so much, before she was sure about him; but that would only be
+foolish, there wouldn't be even a shadow of shame about it.  Besides,
+Laddie had done exactly the same thing.  He loved the Princess until it
+nearly killed him when he thought he had to give her up, and he loved
+her as hard as ever he could, when he hadn't an idea whether she would
+love him back, even a tiny speck; and the person who wasn't foolish,
+and never would be, was Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The more I thought, the worse I got worked up, and I couldn't see how
+Shelley was to blame for anything at all.  Love just came to her, like
+it came to Laddie.  She would hardly have knelt down and beseeched the
+Lord to make her fall in love with a man she scarcely knew, and when
+she couldn't be sure what he was going to do about it&mdash;not the Lord,
+the man, I mean.  You could see for yourself she wouldn't do that.  I
+finished my work, and then I tried to do things for her, and she
+wouldn't let me.  Mother told me to ask her to make Grace Greenwood the
+dress she had promised when I was so sick; so I took the Scotch plaid
+to her and reminded her, and she pushed me away and said:  "Some time!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I even got Grace, and showed Shelley the spills on her dress, and how
+badly she needed a new one, but she never looked, she said: "Oh bother!
+My head aches.  Do let me be!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother was listening.  I could see her standing outside the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She motioned to me to come away, so I went to her and she was white as
+Shelley.  She was sick too, she couldn't say a word for a minute, but
+after a while she kissed me, I could feel the quivers in her lips, and
+she said stifflike:  "Never mind, she'll be better soon, then she will!
+Run play now!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sometimes I wandered around looking at things and living dully.  I
+didn't try to study out anything, but I must have watched closer than I
+knew, for every single thing I saw then, over that whole farm, I can
+shut my eyes and see to-day; everything, from the old hawk tilting his
+tail to steer him in soaring, to a snake catching field mice in the
+grass, lichens on the fence, flowers, butterflies, every single thing.
+Mostly I sat to watch something that promised to become interesting,
+and before I knew it, I was back on the shame question.  That's the
+most dreadful word in the dictionary.  There's something about it that
+makes your face burn, only to have it in your mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie said he never had met any man who knew the origin of more words
+than father.  He could even tell every clip what nationality a man was
+from his name.  Hundreds of time I have heard him say to stranger
+people, "From your name you'd be of Scotch extraction," or Irish, or
+whatever it was, and every time the person he was talking with would
+say, "Yes."  Some day away out in the field, alone, I thought I would
+ask him what people first used the word "shame," and just exactly what
+it did mean, and what the things were that you could do that would make
+the people who loved you until they would die for you, ashamed of you.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thinking about that and planning out what it was that I wanted to know,
+gave me another idea.  Why not ask her?  She was the only one who knew
+what she had done away there in the city, alone among strangers; I
+wasn't sure whether all the music a girl could learn was worth letting
+her take the chances she would have to in a big city.  From the way
+Laddie and father hated them, they were a poor place for men, and they
+must have been much worse for girls.  Shelley knew, why not ask HER?
+Maybe I could coax her to tell me, and it would make my life much
+easier to know; and only think what was going on in father's and
+mother's heads and hearts, when I felt that way, and didn't even know
+what there was to be ashamed about.  She wouldn't any more than slap
+me; and sick as she was, I made up my mind not to get angry at her, or
+ever to tell, if she did.  I'd rather have her hit me when she was so
+sick than to have Sally beat me until she couldn't strike another lick,
+just because she was angry.  But I forgave her that, and I was never
+going to think of it again&mdash;only I did.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother kept sending Leon to the post-office, and she met him at the
+gate half the time herself and fairly snatched the letters from his
+hands.  Hum!  She couldn't pull the wool over my eyes.  I knew she
+hoped somehow, some way, there would be a big fat one with Paget, Legal
+Adviser, or whatever a Chicago lawyer puts on his envelopes.  Jerry's
+just say:  "Attorney at Law."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No letter ever came that had Paget in the corner, or anything happened
+that did Shelley any good.  Far otherwise!  Just before supper Leon
+came from Groveville one evening, and all of us could see at a glance
+that he had been crying like a baby.  He had wiped up, and was trying
+to hold in, but he was killed, next.  I nearly said, "Well, for
+heaven's sake, another!" when I saw him.  He slammed down a big, long
+envelope, having printing on it, before father, and glared at it as if
+he wanted to tear it to smithereens, and he said:  "If you want to know
+why it looks like that, I buried it under a stone once; but I had to go
+back, and then I threw it as far as I could send it, into Ditton's
+gully, but after a while I hunted it up again!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he keeled over on the couch mother keeps for her in the
+dining-room, and sobbed until he looked like he'd come apart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course all of us knew exactly what that letter was from the way he
+acted.  Mother had told him, time and again, not to set his heart so;
+father had, too and Laddie, and every one of us, but that little
+half-Arab, half-Kentucky mare was the worst temptation a man who loved
+horses could possibly have; and while father and mother stopped at good
+work horses, and matched roadsters for the carriage, they managed to
+prize and tend them so that every one of us had been born horse-crazy,
+and we had been allowed to ride, care for, and taught to love horses
+all our lives.  Treat a horse ugly, and we'd have gone on the thrashing
+floor ourselves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father laid the letter face down, his hand on it, and shook his head.
+"This is too bad!" he said.  "It's a burning shame, but the money, the
+exact amount, was taken from a farmer in Medina County, Ohio, by a
+traveller he sheltered a few days, because he complained of a bad foot.
+The description of the man who robbed us is perfect.  The money was
+from the sale of some prize cattle.  It will have to be returned."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just let me see the letter a minute," said Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He read it over thoughtfully.  He was long enough about it to have gone
+over it three times; then he looked at Leon, and his forehead creased
+in a deep frown.  The tears slid down mother's cheeks, but she didn't
+know it, or else she'd have wiped them away.  She was never mussy about
+the least little thing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father!" she said.  "Father&mdash;&mdash;!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was as far as she could go.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The man must have his money," said father, "but we'll look into
+this&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pushed back the plates and tablecloth, and cleared his end of the
+table.  Mother never budged to stack the plates, or straighten the
+cloth so it wouldn't be wrinkled.  Then father brought his big account
+book from the black walnut chest in our room, some little books, and
+papers, sharpened a pencil and began going up and down the columns and
+picking out figures here and there that he set on a piece of paper.  I
+never had seen him look either old or tired before; but he did then.
+Mother noticed it too, for her lips tightened, she lifted her head,
+wiped her eyes, and pretended that she felt better.  Laddie said
+something about doing the feeding, and slipped out.  Just then Shelley
+came into the room, stopped, and looked questioningly at us.  Her eyes
+opened wide, and she stared hard at Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why what ails him?" she asked mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You remember what I wrote you about a man who robbed us, and the money
+Leon was to have, provided no owner was found in a reasonable time; and
+the horse the boy had planned to buy, and how he had been going to
+Pryors'&mdash;Oh, I think he's slipped over there once a day, and often
+three times, all this spring!  Mr. Pryor encouraged him, let him take
+his older horses to practise on, even went out and taught him
+cross-country riding himself&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I remember!" said Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon sobbed out loud.  Shelley crossed the room swiftly, dropped beside
+him and whispered something in his ear.  Quick as a shot his arm
+reached out and went around her.  She hid her head deep in the pillow
+beside him, and they went to pieces together.  Clear to pieces!  Pretty
+soon father had to take off his glasses and wipe them so he could see
+the figures.  Mother took one long look at him, a short one at Leon and
+Shelley, then she arose, her voice as even and smooth, and she said:
+"While you figure, father, I'll see about supper.  I have tried to plan
+an extra good one this evening."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She left the room.  NOW, I guess you know about all I can tell you of
+mother!  I can't see that there's a thing left.  That was the kind of
+soldier she was.  Talk about Crusaders, and a good fight!  All the
+blood of battle in our family wasn't on father's side, not by any
+means!  The Dutch could fight too!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father's pencil scraped a little, a bee that had slipped in buzzed over
+the apple butter, while the clock ticked as if it used a hammer.  It
+was so loud one wanted to pitch it from the window.  May and I sat
+still as mice when the cat is near.  Candace couldn't keep away from
+the kitchen door to save her, and where mother went I hadn't an idea,
+but she wasn't getting an extra good supper.  Shelley and Leon were
+quieter now.  May nudged me, and I saw that his arm around her was
+gripping her tight, while her hand on his head was patting him and
+fingering his hair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ca-lumph!  Ca-lumph! came the funniest sound right on the stone walk
+leading to the east door, then a shrill whicker that made father drop
+his pencil.  Leon was on his feet, Shelley beside him, while at the
+door stood Laddie grinning as if his face would split, and with her
+forefeet on the step and her nose in the room, stood the prettiest, the
+very prettiest horse I ever saw.  She was sticking her nose toward
+Leon, whinnying softly, as she lifted one foot, and if Laddie hadn't
+backed her, she would have walked right into the dining-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come on, Weiscope, she's yours!" said Laddie.  "Take her to the barn,
+and put her in one of the cow stalls, until we fix a place for her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon crossed the room, but he never touched the horse.  He threw his
+arms around Laddie's neck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Son!  Son!  Haven't you let your feelings run away with you?  What
+does this mean?" asked father sternly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's nothing remarkable in a big six-footer like me buying a
+horse," said Laddie.  "I expect to purchase a number soon, and without
+a cent to pay, in the bargain.  I contracted to give five hundred
+dollars for this mare.  She is worth more; but that should be
+satisfactory all around.  I am going to earn it by putting five of Mr.
+Pryor's fancy, pedigreed horses in shape for market, taking them
+personally, and selling them to men fit to own and handle real horses.
+I get one hundred each, and my expenses for the job.  I'll have as much
+fun doing it as I ever had at anything.  It suits me far better than
+plowing, even."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother entered the room at a sweep, and pushed Leon aside.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh you man of my heart!" she cried.  "You man after my own heart!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie bent and kissed her, holding her tight as he looked over her
+head at father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's all right, of course?" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never have known of anything quite so altogether right," said
+father.  "Thank you, lad, and God bless you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took Laddie's hand, and almost lifted him from the floor, then he
+wiped his glasses, gathered up his books with a big, deep breath of
+relief, and went into his room.  If the others had looked to see why he
+was gone so long, they would have seen him on his knees beside his bed
+thanking God, as usual.  Leon couldn't have come closer than when he
+said, "The same yesterday, to-day, and forever," about father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon had his arms around the neck of his horse now, and he was kissing
+her, patting her, and explaining to Shelley just why no other horse was
+like her.  He was pouring out a jumble all about the oasis of the
+desert, the tent dwellers, quoting lines from "The Arab to His Horse,"
+bluegrass, and gentleness combined with spirit, while Shelley had its
+head between her hands, stroking it and saying, "Yes," to every word
+Leon told her.  Then he said: "Just hop on her back from that top step
+and ride her to the barn, if you want to see the motion she has."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shelley said:  "Has a woman ever been on her back?  Won't she shy at my
+skirts?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," explained Leon.  "I've been training her with a horse blanket
+pinned around me, so Susie could ride her!  She'll be all right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Shelley mounted, and the horse turned her head, and tried to rub
+against her, as she walked away, tame as a sheep.  I wondered if she
+could be too gentle.  If she went "like the wind," as Leon said, it
+didn't show then.  I was almost crazy to go along, and maybe Leon would
+let me ride a little while; but I had a question that it would help me
+to know the answer and I wanted to ask father before I forgot; so I
+waited until he came out.  When he sat down, smiled at me and said,
+"Well, is the girl happy for brother?"  I knew it was a good time, and
+I could ask anything I chose, so I sat on his knee and said:  "Father,
+when you pray for anything that it's all perfectly right for you to
+have, does God come down from heaven and do it Himself, or does He send
+a man like Laddie to do it for him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father hugged me tight, smiling the happiest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, you have the whole thing right there in a nutshell, Little
+Sister," he said.  "You see it's like this: the Book tells us most
+distinctly that 'God is love.'  Now it was love that sent Laddie to
+bind himself for a long, tedious job, to give Leon his horse, wasn't
+it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course!" I said.  "He wouldn't have been likely to do it if he
+hated him.  It was love, of course!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then it was God," said father, "because 'God is love.'  They are one
+and the same thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he kissed me, and THAT was settled.  So I wondered when you longed
+for anything so hard you really felt it was worth bothering God about,
+whether the quickest way to get it was to ask Him for it, or to try to
+put a lot of love into the heart of some person who could do what you
+wanted.  I decided it all went back to God though, for most of the time
+probably we wouldn't know who the right one was to try to awaken love
+in.  I was mighty sure none of us ever dreamed Laddie could walk over
+to Pryors', and come back with that horse, in a way perfectly
+satisfactory to every one, slick as an eel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+You should have seen Leon following around after Laddie, trying to do
+things for him, taking on his work to give him more time with the
+horses, getting up early to finish his own stunts, so he could go over
+to Pryors' and help.  Mother said it had done more to make a man of him
+than anything that ever happened.  It helped Shelley, too.  Something
+seemed to break in her, when she cried so with Leon, because he was in
+trouble.  Then he was so crazy to show off his horse he had Shelley
+ride up and down the lane, while he ran along and led, so she got a lot
+of exercise, and it made her good and hungry.  If you don't think by
+this time that my mother was the beatenest woman alive, I'll prove it
+to you.  When the supper bell rang there was strawberry preserves
+instead of the apple butter, biscuit, fried chicken, and mashed
+potatoes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She must have slapped those chickens into the skillet before they knew
+their heads were off.  When Shelley came to the table, for the first
+time since she'd been home, had pink in her cheeks, and talked some,
+and ate too, mother forgot her own supper.  She fumbled over her plate,
+but scarcely touched even the livers, and those delicious little
+kidneys in the tailpiece like Leon and I had at Sally's wedding.  When
+we finished, and it was time for her to give the signal to arise, no
+one had asked to be excused, she said:  "Let us have a word with the
+Most High."  Then she bowed her head, so all of us did too.  "O Lord,
+we praise Thee for all Thy tender mercies, and all Thy loving kindness.
+Amen!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course father always asked the blessing to begin with, and mostly it
+was the same one, and that was all at meal time, but this was a little
+extra that mother couldn't even wait until night to tell the Almighty,
+she was so pleased with Him.  Maybe I haven't told everything about
+her, after all.  Father must have thought that was lovely of her; he
+surely felt as happy as she did, to see Shelley better, for he hugged
+and kissed her over and over, finishing at her neck like he always did,
+and then I be hanged, if he didn't hug and kiss every last one of
+us&mdash;tight, even the boys.  Shelley he held long and close, and patted
+her a little when he let her go.  It made me wonder if the rest of us
+didn't get ours, so he'd have a chance at her without her noticing it.
+One thing was perfectly clear.  If shame came to us, they were going to
+love her, and stick tight to her right straight through it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now that everything was cleared up so, Shelley seemed a little more
+like herself every day, although it was bad enough yet; I thought I
+might as well hurry up the end a little, and stop the trouble
+completely, so I began watching for a chance to ask her.  But I wanted
+to get her away off alone, so no one would see if she slapped me.  I
+didn't know how long I'd have to wait.  I tried coaxing her to the
+orchard to see a bluebird's nest, but she asked if bluebirds were
+building any different that year, and I had to admit they were not.
+Then I tried the blue-eyed Mary bed, but she said she supposed it was
+still under the cling peach tree, and the flower, two white petals up,
+two blue down, and so it was.  Just as I was beginning to think I'd
+have to take that to the Lord in prayer, I got my chance by accident.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+May and Candace were forever going snake hunting.  You would think any
+one with common sense would leave them alone and be glad of the chance,
+but no indeed!  They went nearly every day as soon as the noon work was
+finished, and stayed until time to get supper.  They did have heaps of
+fun and wild excitement.  May was gentle, and tender with everything
+else on earth; so I 'spose she had a right to bruise the serpent with
+her heel&mdash;really she used sticks and stones&mdash;if she wanted to.  I asked
+her how she COULD, and she said there was a place in the Bible that
+told how a snake coaxed Eve to eat an apple, that the Lord had told her
+she mustn't touch; and so she got us into most of the trouble there was
+in the world.  May said it was all the fault of the SNAKE to begin
+with, and she meant to pay up every one she could find, because she had
+none of the apple, and lots of the trouble.  Candace cried so much
+because Frederick Swartz had been laid in the tomb, that mother was
+pleased to have her cheer up, even enough to go snake hunting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That afternoon Mehitabel Heasty had come to visit May, so she went
+along, and I followed.  They poked around the driftwood at the
+floodgate behind the barn, and were giving up the place.  Candace had
+crossed the creek and was coming back, and May had started, when she
+saw a tiny little one and chased it.  We didn't know then that it was a
+good thing to have snakes to eat moles, field mice, and other pests
+that bother your crops; the Bible had no mercy on them at all, so we
+were not saving our snakes; and anyway we had more than we needed,
+while some of them were too big to be safe to keep, and a few poison as
+could be.  May began to bruise the serpent, when out of the driftwood
+where they hadn't found anything came its mammy, a great big
+blacksnake, maddest you ever saw, with its pappy right after her, mad
+as ever too.  Candace screamed at May to look behind her, but May was
+busy with the snake and didn't look quick enough, so the old mammy
+struck right in her back.  She just caught in the hem of May's skirt,
+and her teeth stuck in the goods&mdash;you know how a snake's teeth turn
+back&mdash;so she couldn't let go.  May took one look and raced down the
+bank to the crossing, through the water, and toward us, with the snake
+dragging and twisting, and trying her best to get away.  May was
+screaming at every jump for Candace, and Mehitabel was flying up and
+down crying:  "Oh there's snakes in my shoes!  There's snakes in my
+shoes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was a fair sample of how much sense a Heasty ever had.  It took
+all Mehitabel's shoes could do to hold her feet, for after one went
+barefoot all week, and never put on shoes except on Sunday or for a
+visit, the feet became so spread out, shoes had all they could do to
+manage them, and then mostly they pinched until they made one squirm.
+But she jumped and said that, while May ran and screamed, and Candace
+gripped her big hickory stick and told May to stand still.  Then she
+bruised that serpent with her whole foot, for she stood on it, and
+swatted it until she broke its neck.  Then she turned ready for the
+other one, but when it saw what happened to its mate, it decided to go
+back.  Even snakes, it doesn't seem right to break up families like
+that; so by the time Candace got the mammy killed, loose from May's
+hem, and stretched out with the back up, so she wouldn't make it rain,
+when Candace wasn't sure that father wanted rain, I had enough.  I went
+down the creek until I was below the orchard, then I crossed, passed
+the cowslip bed, climbed the hill and fence, and stopped to think what
+I would do first; and there only a few feet away was Shelley.  She was
+sitting in the shade, her knees drawn up, her hands clasped around
+them, staring straight before her across the meadow at nothing in
+particular, that I could see.  She jumped as if I had been a snake when
+she saw me, then she said, "Oh, is it you?" like she was half glad of
+it.  My chance had come.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went to her, sat close beside her and tried snuggling up a little.
+It worked.  She put her arm around me, drew me tight, rubbed her cheek
+against my head and we sat there.  I was wondering how in the world I
+could ask her, and not get slapped.  I was growing most too big for
+that slapping business, anyway.  We sat there; I was looking across the
+meadow as she did, only I was watching everything that went on, so when
+I saw a grosbeak fly from the wild grape where Shelley had put the
+crock for sap, it made me think of her hair.  She used to like to have
+me play with it so well, she'd give me pennies if I did.  I got up, and
+began pulling out her pins carefully.  I knew I was getting a start
+because right away she put up her hand to help me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can get them," I said just as flannel-mouthed as ever I could, like
+all of us talked to her now, so I got every one and never pulled a
+mite.  When I reached over her shoulder to drop them in her lap, being
+so close I kissed her cheek.  Then I shook down her hair, spread it
+out, lifted it, parted it, and held up strands to let the air on her
+scalp.  She shivered and said: "Mercy child, how good that does feel!
+My head has ached lately until it's a wonder there's a hair left on it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So I was pleasing her.  I never did handle hair so carefully.  I tried
+every single thing it feels good to you to have done with your hair,
+rubbed her head gently, and to cheer her up I told her about May and
+the snake, and what fool Mehitabel had said, and she couldn't help
+laughing; so I had her feeling about as good as she could, for the way
+she actually felt, but still I didn't really get ahead.  Come right to
+the place to do it, that was no very easy question to ask a person,
+when you wouldn't hurt their feelings for anything; I was beginning to
+wonder if I would lose my chance, when all at once a way I could manage
+popped into my mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shelley," I said, "they told you about Laddie and the Princess, didn't
+they?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I knew they had, but I had to make a beginning some way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she said.  "I'm glad of it!  I think she's pretty as a picture,
+and nice as she looks.  Laddie may have to hump himself to support her,
+but if he can't get her as fine clothes as she has, her folks can help
+him.  They seem to have plenty, and she's their only child."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They're going to.  I heard Mr. Pryor ask Laddie if he'd be so unkind
+as to object to them having the pleasure of giving her things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, the greenhorn didn't say he would!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No.  He didn't want to put his nose to the grindstone quite that
+close.  He said it was between them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should think so!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shelley, there's a question I've been wanting to ask some one for
+quite a while."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, this!  You know, Laddie was in love with the Princess, like you
+are when you want to marry folks, for a long, long time, before he
+could be sure whether she loved him back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, now, 'spose she never had loved him, would he have had anything
+to be ashamed of?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't see that he would.  Some one must start a courtship, or there
+would be no marrying, and it's conceded to be the place of the man.
+No.  He might be disappointed, or dreadfully hurt, but there would be
+no shame about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then, suppose she loved him, and wanted to marry him, and he
+hadn't loved her, or wanted her, would SHE have had anything to be
+ashamed of?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think so!  If she was attracted by him, and thought she would
+like him, she would have a right to go to a certain extent, to find out
+if he cared for her, and if he didn't, why, she'd just have to give him
+up.  But any sensible girl waits for a man to make the advances, and
+plenty of them, before she allows herself even to dream of loving him,
+or at least, I would."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now I was getting somewhere!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course you would!" I said.  "That would be the WAY mother would,
+wouldn't it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Surely!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If that Paget man you used to write about had seemed to be just what
+you liked, you'd have waited to know if he wanted you, before you loved
+him, wouldn't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I certainly would!" answered Shelley.  "Or at least, I'd have waited
+until I THOUGHT sure as death, I knew.  It seems that sometimes you can
+be fooled about those things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But if you thought sure you knew, and then found out you had been
+mistaken, you wouldn't have anything to be ASHAMED of, would you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not-on-your-life-I-wouldn't!" cried Shelley, hammering each word into
+her right knee with her doubled fist.  "What are you driving at,
+Blatherskite?  What have you got into your head?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh just studying about things," I said, which was exactly the truth.
+"Sally getting married last fall, and Laddie going to this, just
+started me to wondering."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fooled her, too!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh well, there's no harm done," she said.  "The sooner you get these
+matters straightened out, the better able you will be to take care of
+yourself.  If you ever go to a city, you'll find out that a girl needs
+considerable care taken of her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You could look out for yourself, Shelley?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I don't know as I made such a glorious fist of it," she said,
+"but at least, as you say, I've nothing to be ashamed of!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I almost hugged her head off.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course you haven't!" I cried.  "Of course you wouldn't have!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I just kissed her over and over for joy; I was so glad my heart hurt
+for father and mother.  Shame had not come to them!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, I guess I'll run to the house and get a comb," I told her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on," said Shelley.  "I know you are tired."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not in the least," I said.  "Don't you remember I always use a
+comb when I fuss with your hair?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is better," said Shelley.  "Go get one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As I got up to start I took a last look at her, and there was something
+in her face that I couldn't bear.  I knelt beside her, and put both
+arms around her neck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shelley, it's a secret," I said in a breathless half whisper.  "It's a
+great, big secret, but I'm going to tell you.  Twice now I've had a
+powerful prayer all ready to try.  It's the kind where you go to the
+barn, all alone, stand on that top beam below the highest window and
+look toward the east.  You keep perfectly still, and just think with
+all your might, and you look away over where Jesus used to be, and when
+the right feeling comes, you pray that prayer as if He stood before
+you, and it will come true.  I KNOW it will come true.  The reason I
+know is because twice now I've been almost ready to try it, and what I
+intended to ask for happened before I had time; so I've saved that
+prayer; but Shelley, shall I pray it about the Paget man, for you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She gripped me, and she shook until she was all twisted up; you could
+hear her teeth click, she chilled so.  The tears just gushed, and she
+pulled me up close and whispered right in my ear:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was only pretend about the comb; what I really wanted was to get to
+father and mother quick.  I knew he was at the barn and he was going to
+be too happy for words in a minute.  But as I went up the lane, I
+wasn't sure whether I'd rather pray about that Paget man or bruise him
+with my heel like a serpent.  The only way I could fix it was to
+remember if Shelley loved him so, he must be mighty nice.  Father was
+in the wagon shovelling corn from it to a platform where it would be
+handy to feed the pigs, so I ran and called him, and put one foot on a
+hub and raised my hands.  He pulled me up and when he saw how important
+it was, he sat on the edge of the bed, so I told him:  "Father, you
+haven't got a thing in the world to be ashamed of about Shelley."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Praise the Lord!" said father like I knew he would, but you should
+have seen his face.  "Tell me about it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I told him and he said:  "Well, I don't know but this is the gladdest
+hour of my life.  Go straight and repeat to your mother exactly what
+you've said to me.  Take her away all alone, and then forget about it,
+you little blessing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father, have you got too many children?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!" he said.  "I wish I had a dozen more, if they'd be like you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When I went up the lane I was so puffed up with importance I felt too
+dignified to run.  I strutted like our biggest turkey gobbler.  The
+only reason you couldn't hear my wings scrape, was because through
+mistake they grew on the turkey.  If I'd had them, I would have dragged
+them sure, and cried "Ge-hobble-hobble!" at every step.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I took mother away alone and told her, and she asked many more
+questions than father, but she was even gladder than he.  She almost
+hugged the breath out of me.  Sometimes I get things RIGHT, anyway!
+Then I took the comb and ran back to Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought you'd forgotten me," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had wiped up and was looking better.  If ever I combed carefully I
+did then.  Just when I had all the tangles out, there came mother.  She
+had not walked that far in a long time.  I thought maybe she could
+comfort Shelley, so I laid the comb in her lap and went to see how the
+snake hunters were coming on.  It must be all right, when the Bible
+says so, but the African Jungle will do for me, and a popgun is not
+going to scatter families.  I never felt so strongly about breaking
+home ties in my life as I did then.  There was nothing worse.  It was
+not where I wanted to be, so I thought I'd go back to the barn, and
+hang around father, hoping maybe he'd brag on me some more.  Going up
+the lane I saw a wagon passing with the biggest box I ever had seen,
+and I ran to the gate to watch where it went.  It stopped at our house
+and Frank came toward me as I hurried up the road.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where are the folks?" he asked, without paying the least attention to
+my asking him over and over what was in the box.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May and Candace are killing every snake in the driftwood behind the
+barn, Shelley and mother are down in the orchard, and father and the
+boys are hauling corn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go tell the boys to come quickly and keep quiet," he said.  "But don't
+let any one else know I'm here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was so exciting I almost fell over my feet running, and all three
+of them came quite as fast.  I stood back and watched, and I just
+danced a steady hop from one foot to the other while those men got the
+big box off the wagon and opened it.  On the side I spelled Piano, so
+of course it was for Shelley.  It was so heavy it took all six of them,
+father and the three boys, the driver and another very stylish looking
+man to carry it.  They put it in the parlour, screwed a leg on each
+corner, and a queer harp in the middle, then they lifted it up and set
+it on its feet, under the whatnot, and it seemed as if it filled half
+the room.  Then Frank spread a beauteous wine coloured cover all
+embroidered in pink roses with green leaves over it, and the stylish
+man opened a lid, sat down and spread out his hands.  Frank said:
+"Soft pedal!  Mighty soft!"  So he smothered it down, and tried only
+enough to find that it had not been hurt coming, and then he went away
+on the wagon.  Father and the boys gathered up every scrap, swept the
+walk, and put all the things they had used back where they got them,
+like we always did.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Frank took a card from his pocket and tied it to the music rack,
+and it read:  "For Shelley, from her brothers in fact, and in law."  To
+a corner of the cover he pinned another card that read:  "From Peter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is that?" asked father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's from Peter," said Frank.  "Peter is great on finishing touches.
+He had to outdo the rest of us that much or bust.  Fact is, none of us
+thought of a cover except him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How about this?" asked father, staring at it as if it were an animal
+that would bite.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Frank, "it was apparent that practising her fingers to the
+bone wouldn't do Shelley much good unless she could keep it up in
+summer, and you and mother always have done so much for the rest of us,
+and now mother isn't so strong and the expenses go on the same with
+these youngsters; we know you were figuring on it, but we beat you.
+Put yours in the bank, and try the feel of a surplus once more.
+Haven't had much lately, have you, father?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, not to speak of," said father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now let's shut everything up, ring the bell to call them, and get
+Shelley in here and surprise her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's not very well," said father.  "Mother thinks she worked too
+hard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's all right now, father," I said.  "She is getting pink again and
+rounder, and this will fix her grand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Wouldn't it though!  There wasn't one anywhere, short of the city.
+Even the Princess had none.  Father hunted up a song book, opened it
+and set it on the rack.  Then all of us went out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We'll write to the boys, mother and I, and Shelley also," said father.
+"I can't express myself just now.  This is a fine thing for all of you
+to do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Frank seemed to think so too, and looked rather puffed up, until Leon
+began telling about his horse.  When Frank found out that Laddie, who
+had not yet branched out for himself, had given Leon much more than any
+one of them had Shelley, he looked a little disappointed.  He explained
+how the piano cost eight hundred dollars, but by paying cash all at
+once, the man took seven hundred and fifty, so it only cost them one
+hundred and fifty a piece, and none of them felt it at all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sometimes the clouds loom up pretty black, and mother and I scarcely
+know how to go on, save for the help of the Lord, but we certainly are
+blest with good children, children we can be proud of.  Your mother
+will like that instrument as well as Shelley, son," said father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Frank went out and rang the bell, tolled it, and made a big noise like
+he always did when he came unexpectedly, and then sat on the back fence
+until he saw them coming, and went to meet them.  He walked between
+mother and Shelley, with an arm around each one.  If he thought Shelley
+looked badly, he didn't mention it.  What he did say was that he was
+starved, and to fly around and get supper.  I thought I'd burst.  They
+began to cook, and the boys went to feed and see Leon's horse, and then
+we had supper.  I just sat and stared at Frank and grinned.  I couldn't
+eat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do finish your supper," said mother.  "I never saw anything take your
+appetite like seeing your brother.  You'll be wanting a piece before
+bedtime."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I didn't say a word, because I was afraid to, but I kept looking at
+Leon and he smiled back, and we had great fun.  Secrets are lovely.
+Mother couldn't have eaten a bite if she'd known about that great
+shining thing, all full of wonderful sound, standing in our parlour.
+When the last slow person had finished, father said:  "Shelley, won't
+you step into the front room and bring me that book I borrowed from
+Frank on 'Taxation.' I want to talk over a few points."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All of us heard her little breathless cry, and mother said, "There!" as
+if she'd been listening for something, and she beat all of us to the
+door.  Then she cried out too, and such a time as we did have.  At last
+after all of us had grown sensible enough to behave, Shelley sat on the
+stool, spread her fingers over the keys and played at the place father
+had selected, and all of us sang as hard as we could:  "Be it ever so
+humble, There's no place like home;" and there WAS no place like ours,
+of THAT I'm quite sure.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap17"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVII
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+In Faith Believing
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Nor could the bright green world around<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1.5em">A joy to her impart,</SPAN><BR>
+For still she missed the eyes that made<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1.5em">The summer of her heart."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Soon as she had the piano, Shelley needed only the Paget man to make
+her happy as a girl could be; and having faith in that prayer, I
+decided to try it right away.  So I got Laddie to promise surely that
+he'd wake me when he got up the next morning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I laid my clothes out all ready; he merely touched my foot, and I came
+to, slipped out with him, and he helped me dress.  We went to the barn
+when the morning was all gray.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What the dickens have you got in your head now, Chicken?" he asked.
+"Is it business with the Fairies?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, this is with the Most High," I said solemnly, like father.  "Go
+away and leave me alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well of all the queer chickens!" he said, but he kissed me and went.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I climbed the stairs to the threshing floor, then the ladder to the
+mow, walked a beam to the wall, there followed one to the east end, and
+another to the little, high-up ventilator window.  There I stood
+looking at the top of the world.  A gray mist was rising like steam
+from the earth, there was a curious colour in the east, stripes of
+orange and flames of red, where the sun was coming.  I folded my hands
+on the sill, faced the sky, and stood staring.  Just stood, and stood,
+never moving a muscle.  By and by I began to think how much we loved
+Shelley, how happy she had been at Christmas the way she was now, and
+how much all of us would give in money, or time, or love, to make her
+sparkling, bubbling, happy again; so I thought and thought, gazing at
+the sky, which every second became a grander sight.  Little cold chills
+began going up my back, and soon I was talking to the Lord exactly as
+if He stood before me on the reddest ray that topped our apple trees.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I don't know all I said.  That's funny, for I usually remember to the
+last word; but this time it was so important, I wanted it so badly, and
+I was so in earnest that words poured in a stream.  I began by
+reminding Him that He knew everything, and so He'd understand if what I
+asked was for the best.  Then I told Him how it looked to us, who knew
+only a part; and then I went at Him and implored and beseeched, if it
+would be best for Shelley, and would make her happy, to send her the
+Paget man, and to be quick about it.  When I had said the last word
+that came to me, and begged all I thought becoming&mdash;I don't think with
+His face, that Jesus wants us to grovel to Him, at least He looks too
+dignified to do it Himself&mdash;I just stood there, still staring.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I didn't expect to see a burning bush, or a pillar of fire, or a cloud
+of flame, or even to hear a small, still voice; but I watched, so I
+wouldn't miss it if there should be anything different in that sunrise
+from any other I ever had seen, and there was not.  Not one thing!  It
+was so beautiful, and I was so in earnest my heart hurt; but that was
+like any other sunrise on a fine July morning.  There wasn't the least
+sign that Jesus had heard me, and would send the man; yet before I knew
+it, I was amazed to find the feeling creeping over me that he was
+coming.  If I had held the letter in my hand saying he would arrive on
+the noon train, I couldn't have grown surer.  Why, I even looked down
+the first time I moved, to see if I had it; but I was certain anyway.
+So I looked steadily toward the east once more and said, "Thank you,
+with all my heart, Lord Jesus," then I slowly made my way down and back
+to the house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shelley was at the orchard gate, waiting; so I knew they had missed me,
+and Laddie had told them where I was and not to call.  She had the
+strangest look on her face, as she asked:  "Where have you been?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked straight and hard at her and said, "It's all right, Shelley.
+He's going to come soon"; but I didn't think it was a thing to mouth
+over, so I twisted away from her, and ran to the kitchen to see if
+breakfast had all been eaten.  I left Shelley standing there with her
+eyes wide, also her mouth.  She looked about as intelligent as
+Mehitabel Heasty, and it wouldn't have surprised me if she had begun to
+jump up and down and say there were snakes in HER shoes.  No doubt you
+have heard of people having been knocked silly; I knew she was, and so
+she had a perfect right to look that way, until she could remember what
+she was doing, and come back to herself.  Maybe it took her longer,
+because mother wasn't there, to remind her about her mouth, and I
+didn't propose to mention it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At breakfast, mother said father was going to drive Frank home in the
+carriage, and if I would like, I might go along.  I would have to sit
+on the back seat alone, going; but coming home I could ride beside and
+visit with father.  I loved that, for you could see more from the front
+seat, and father would stop to explain every single thing.  He always
+gave me the money and let me pay the toll.  He would get me a drink at
+the spring, let me wade a few minutes at Enyard's riffles, where their
+creek, with the loveliest gravel bed, ran beside the road; and he
+always raced like wildfire at the narrows, where for a mile the
+railroad ran along the turnpike.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We took Frank to his office, stopped a little while to visit Lucy, and
+give her the butter and cream mother sent, went to the store to see
+Peter, and then to the post-office.  From there we could see that the
+veranda of the hotel across the street was filled with gayly dressed
+people, and father said that the summer boarders from big cities around
+must be pouring in fast.  When he came out with the mail he said he
+better ask if the landlord did not want some of mother's corn and milk
+fed spring chickens, because last year he had paid her more than the
+grocer.  So he drove across the street, stopped at the curb, and left
+me to hold the team.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Maybe you think I wasn't proud!  I've told you about Ned and Jo, with
+their sharp ears, dappled sides, and silky tails, and the carriage
+almost new, with leather seats, patent leather trimmings, and side
+lamps, so shiny you could see yourself in the brass.  We never drove
+into the barn with one speck of mud or dust on it.  That was how
+particular mother was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I watched the team carefully; I had to if I didn't want my neck broken;
+but I also kept an eye on that veranda.  You could see at a glance that
+those were stylish women.  Now my mother liked to be in fashion as well
+as any one could; so I knew she'd be mightily pleased if I could tell
+her a new place to set her comb, a different way to fasten her collar,
+or about an unusual pattern for a frock.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I got my drink at the spring, father offered to stop at the riffle, but
+I was enjoying the ride so much, and I could always wade at home,
+although our creek was not so beautiful as Enyard's, but for common
+wading it would do; we went through the narrows, like two shakes of a
+sheep's tail, then we settled down to a slow trot, and were having the
+loveliest visit possible, when in the bundle on my lap, I saw the end
+of something that interested me.  Mr. Agnew always made our mail into a
+roll with the Advocate and the Agriculturist on the outside, and
+because every one was so anxious about their letters, and some of them
+meant so much, I felt grown and important while holding the package.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was gripping it tight when I noticed the end of one letter much wider
+and fatter than any I ever had seen, so when father was not looking I
+began pushing it a little at one end, and pulling it at the other, to
+work it up, until I could read the address.  I got it out so far I
+thought every minute he'd notice, and tell me not to do that, but I
+could only see Stanton.  All of us were Stanton, so it might be for me,
+for that matter.  Jerry might be sending me pictures, or a book, he did
+sometimes, but there was an exciting thing about it.  Besides being
+fatter than it looked right at the end, it was plastered with
+stamps&mdash;lots of them, enough to have brought it clear around the world.
+I pushed that end back, pulled out the other, and took one good look.
+I almost fell from the carriage.  I grabbed father's arm and cried:
+"Stop!  Stop this team quick.  Stop them and see if I can read."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you crazy, child?" asked father, but he checked the horses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, but you are going to be in a minute," I said.  "Look at that!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I yanked the letter from the bundle, and held it over.  I THOUGHT I
+could read, but I was too scared to be sure.  I thought it said in big,
+strong, upstanding letters, Miss Shelley Stanton, Groveville, Indiana.
+And in the upper corner, Blackburn, Yeats and PAGET, Counsellors of
+Law, 37 to 39 State St., Chicago.  I put my finger on the Paget, and
+looked into father's face.  I was no fool after all.  He was not a bit
+surer that HE could read than I was, from the dazed way he stared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see!" I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It says Paget!" he said, like he would come nearer believing; it if he
+heard himself pronounce the word.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I THOUGHT it said 'Paget,'" I gasped, "but I wanted to know if you
+thought so too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, it's Paget plain enough," said father, but he acted like there
+was every possibility that it might change to Jones any minute.  "It
+says 'Paget,' plain as print."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father!" I cried, clutching his arm, "father, see how fat it is!
+There must be pages and pages!  Father, it wouldn't take all that to
+tell her he didn't like her, and he never wanted to see her again.
+Would it, father?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It doesn't seem probable," said father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father don't you think it means there's been some big mistake, and it
+takes so much to tell how it can be fixed?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It seems reasonable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I gripped him tighter, and maybe shook him a little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father!" I cried.  "Father, doesn't it just look HURRY, all over?
+Can't you speed up a little?  They have all day to cool off.  Oh
+father, won't you speed a little?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That I will!" said father.  "Get a tight hold, and pray God it is good
+word we carry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I prayed the one big prayer to get this," I said.  "It wouldn't be
+sent if it wasn't good.  The thing to do now is to thank the Lord for
+'all his loving kindnesses,' like mother said."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Drive father!  Make them go!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At first he only touched them up; I couldn't see that we were getting
+home so fast; but in a minute a cornfield passed like a streak, a piece
+of woods flew by a dark blur, a bridge never had time to rattle, and we
+began to rock from side to side a little.  Then I gripped the top
+supports with one hand, the mail with the other, and hung on for dear
+life.  I took one good look at father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His feet were on the brace, his face was clear, even white, his eyes
+steely, and he never moved a muscle.  When Jo thought it was funny,
+that he was loose in the pasture, and kicked up a little behind, father
+gave him a sharp cut with the whip and said: "Steady boy!  Get along
+there!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sometimes he said, "Aye, aye!  Easy!" but he never stopped a mite.  We
+whizzed past the church and cemetery, and scarcely touched the Big
+Hill.  People ran to their doors, even to the yards, and I was sure
+they thought we were having a runaway, but we were not.  Father began
+to stop at the lane gate, he pulled all the way past the garden, and it
+was as much as he could do to get them slowed down so that I could jump
+out by the time we reached the hitching rack.  He tied them, and
+followed me into the house instead of going to the barn.  I ran ahead
+calling: "Shelley!  Where is Shelley?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What in this world has happened, child?" asked mother, catching my arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Her letter has come!  Her Paget letter!  The one you looked for until
+you gave up.  It's come at last!  Oh, where is she?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be calmer, child, you'll frighten her," said mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+May snatched the letter from my fingers and began to read all that was
+on it aloud.  I burst out crying.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Make her give that back!" I sobbed to father.  "It's mine!  I found
+it.  Father, make her let me take it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Give it to her!" said father.  "I rather feel that it is her right to
+deliver it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+May passed it back, but she looked so disappointed, that by how she
+felt I knew how much I wanted to take it myself; so I reached my hand
+to her and said:  "You can come along!  We'll both take it!  Oh where
+is she?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She went down in the orchard," said mother.  "I think probably she's
+gone back where she was the other day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gee, but we ran!  And there she was!  As we came up, she heard us and
+turned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shelley!" I cried.  "Here's your letter!  Everything is all right!
+He's coming, Shelley!  Look quick, and see when!  Mother will want to
+begin baking right away!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shelley looked at me, and said coolly:  "Paddy Ryan!  What's the
+matter?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your letter!" I cried, shoving it right against her hands.  "Your
+letter from Robert!  From the Paget man, you know!  I told you he was
+coming!  Hurry, and see when!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She took it, and sat there staring at it, so much like father, that it
+made me think of him, so I saw that she was going to have to come
+around to it as we did, and that one couldn't hurry her.  She just had
+to take her time to sense it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shall I open it for you?" I asked, merely to make her see that it was
+time she was doing it herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blest if she didn't reach it toward me!&mdash;sort of woodenlike.  I stuck
+my finger under the flap, gave it a rip across and emptied what was
+inside into her lap.  Bet there were six or seven letters in queer
+yellow envelopes I never before had seen any like, and on them was the
+name, Robert Paget, while in one corner it said, "Returned Dead
+Letter"; also there was a loose folded white sheet.  She sat staring at
+the heap, touching one, another, and repeating "Robert Paget?" as she
+picked each up in turn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you suppose it means?" she asked May.  May examined them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must read the loose sheet," she advised.  "No doubt that will
+explain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Shelley never touched it.  She handled those letters and stared at
+them.  Father and mother came through the orchard and stood together
+behind us, so father knelt down at last, reached across Shelley's
+shoulder, picked one up and looked at it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you good word, dear?" asked mother of Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, I don't understand at all," said Shelley.  "Just look at all
+these queer letters, addressed to Mr. Paget.  Why should they be sent
+to me?  I mustn't open them.  They're not mine.  There must be some
+mistake."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"These are DEAD LETTERS," said father.  "They've been written to you,
+couldn't be delivered, and so were sent to the Dead Letter Office at
+Washington, which returned them to the writer, and unopened he has
+forwarded them once more to you.  You've heard of dead letters, haven't
+you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose so," said Shelley.  "I don't remember just now; but there
+couldn't be a better name.  They've come mighty near killing me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you'd only read that note!" urged May, putting it right into her
+fingers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shelley still sat there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm afraid of it," she said exactly like I'd have spoken if there had
+been a big rattlesnake coming right at me, when I'd nothing at hand to
+bruise it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie and Leon came from the barn.  They had heard me calling, seen
+May and me run, and then father and mother coming down, so they walked
+over.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's up?" asked Leon.  "Has Uncle Levi's will been discovered, and
+does mother get his Mexican mines?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What have you got, Shelley?" asked Laddie, kneeling beside her, and
+picking up one of the yellow letters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hardly know," said Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I brought her a big letter with all those little ones and a note in
+it, and they are from the Paget man," I explained to him.  "But she
+won't even read the note, and see what he writes.  She says she's
+afraid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor child!  No wonder!" said Laddie, sitting beside her and putting
+his arm around her.  "Suppose I read it for you.  May I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Shelley.  "You read it.  Read it out loud.  I don't care."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She leaned against him, while he unfolded the white sheet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Umph!" he said.  "This DOES look bad for you.  It begins:  'My own
+darling Girl.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me see!" cried Shelley, suddenly straightening, and reaching her
+hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie held the page toward her, but she only looked, she didn't offer
+to touch it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'My own darling Girl:'" repeated Laddie tenderly, making it mean just
+all he possibly could, because he felt so dreadfully sorry for
+her&mdash;"'On my return to Chicago, from the trip to England I have so
+often told you I intended to make some time soon&mdash;&mdash;'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he?" asked mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," answered Shelley.  "He couldn't talk about much else.  It was
+his first case.  It was for a friend of his who had been robbed of
+everything in the world; honour, relatives, home, and money.  If Robert
+won it, he got all that back for his friend and enough for
+himself&mdash;that he could&mdash;a home of his own, you know!  Read on, Laddie!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I was horrified to find on my desk every letter I had written you
+during my absence returned to me from the Dead Letter Office, as you
+see.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good gracious!" cried mother, picking up one and clutching it tight as
+if she meant to see that it didn't get away again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on!" cried Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I am enclosing some of them as they came back to me, in proof of my
+statement.  I drove at once to your boarding place and found you had
+not been there for weeks, and your landlady was distinctly crabbed.
+Then I went to the college, only to find that you had fallen ill and
+gone to your home.  That threw me into torments, and all that keeps me
+from taking the first train is the thought that perhaps you refused to
+accept these letters, for some reason.  Shelley, you did not, did you?
+There is some mistake somewhere, is there not&mdash;&mdash;'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One would be led to think so," said father sternly.  "Seems as if he
+might have managed some way&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you blame him!" cried Shelley.  "Can't you see it's all my
+fault?  He'd been coming regularly, and the other girls envied me; then
+he just disappeared, and there was no word or anything, and they
+laughed and whispered until I couldn't endure it; so I moved in with
+Peter's cousin, as I wrote you; but that left Mrs. Fleet with an empty
+room in the middle of the term, and it made her hopping mad.  I bet
+anything she wouldn't give the postman my new address, to pay me back.
+I left it, of course.  But if I'd been half a woman, and had the
+confidence I should have had in myself and in him&mdash;&mdash;  Oh how I've
+suffered, and punished all of you&mdash;&mdash;!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never you mind about that," said mother, stroking Shelley's hair.
+"Likely there isn't much in Chicago to give a girl who never had been
+away from her family before, 'confidence' in herself or any one else.
+As for him&mdash;just disappearing like that, without a word or even a
+line&mdash;&mdash;  Go on Laddie!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Surely, you knew that I was only waiting the outcome of this trip to
+tell you how dearly I love you.  Surely, you encouraged me in thinking
+you cared for me a little, Shelley.  Only a little will do to begin
+with&mdash;&mdash;'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see, I DID have something to go on!" cried Shelley, wiping her
+eyes and straightening up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'No doubt you misunderstood and resented my going without coming to
+explain, and bid you good-bye in person, but Shelley, <I>I</I> SIMPLY DARED
+NOT.  You see, it was this way:  I got a cable about the case I was
+always talking of, and the only man who could give the testimony I MUST
+HAVE was dying!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For land's sake!  The poor boy!" cried mother, patting Shelley's
+shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'An hour's delay might mean the loss of everything in the world to me,
+even you.  For if I lost any time, and the man escaped me, there was no
+hope of winning my case, and everything, even you, as I said before,
+depended on him&mdash;&mdash;'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good Lord!  I mean land!" cried Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'If I could catch the train in an hour, I could take a boat at New
+York, and go straight through with no loss of time.  So I wrote you a
+note that probably said more than I would have ventured in person, and
+paid a boy to deliver it.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kept the money and tore up the note, I bet!" said May.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I wrote on the train, but found after sailing that I had rushed so I
+had failed to post it in New York.  I kept on writing every day on the
+boat, and mailed you six at Liverpool.  All the time I have written
+frequently; there are many more here that this envelope will not hold,
+that I shall save until I hear from you.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, well!" said father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Shelley, I beat death, reached my man, got the testimony I had to
+have, and won my case.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Glory!" cried mother.  "Praise the Lord!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Then I scoured England, and part of the continent, hunting some
+interested parties; and when I was so long finding them, and still no
+word came from you, I decided to come back and get you, if you would
+come with me, and go on with the work together.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen to that!  More weddings!" cried Leon.  He dropped on his knees
+before Shelley.  "Will you marry me, my pretty maid?" he begged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Young man, if you cut any capers right now, I'll cuff your ears!"
+cried father.  "This is no proper time for your foolishness!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Shelley, I beg that you will believe me, and if you care for me in
+the very least, telegraph if I may come.  Quick!  I'm half insane to
+see you.  I have many things to tell you, first of all how dear you are
+to me.  Please telegraph.  Robert.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Saddle a horse, Leon!" father cried as he unstrapped his wallet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Laddie, take down her message."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can you put it into ten words?" asked Laddie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother, what would you say?" questioned Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon held up his fingers and curled down one with each word.  "Say,
+'Dear Robert.  Well and happy.  Come when you get ready.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But then I won't know when he's coming," objected Shelley.  "You don't
+need to," said Leon.  "You can take it for granted from that epistolary
+effusion that he won't let the grass grow under his feet while coming
+here.  That's a bully message!  It sounds as if you weren't crazy over
+him, and it's a big compliment to mother.  Looks as if she didn't have
+to know when people are coming&mdash;like she's ready all the time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Write it out and let me see," said Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Laddie wrote it, and she looked at it a long time, it seemed to me,
+at last she said:  "I don't like that 'get.'  It doesn't sound right.
+Wouldn't 'are' be better?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come when you are ready," repeated Laddie.  "Yes, that's better.
+'Get' sounds rather saucy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why not put it, 'Come when you choose?'" suggested mother.  "That will
+leave a word to spare, so it won't look as if you had counted them and
+used exactly ten on purpose, and it doesn't sound as if you expected
+him to make long preparations, like the other.  That will leave it with
+him to start whenever he likes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes! yes!" cried Shelley.  "That's much better!  Say, 'Come when you
+choose!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right!" said Laddie as he wrote it.  "Now I'll take this!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh no you won't!" cried Leon.  "Father told me to saddle my horse.
+She's got enough speed in her to beat yours a mile.  I take that!
+Didn't you say for me to saddle, father?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Such important business, I think I better," said Laddie, and Leon
+began to cry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think you should both go," said Shelley.  "It is so important, and
+if one goes to make a mistake, maybe the other will notice it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, that's the best way," said mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, both go," said father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was like one streak when they went up the Big Hill.  Father shook
+his head.  "Poor judgment&mdash;that," he said.  "Never run a horse up hill!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But they're in such a hurry," Shelley reminded him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So they are," said father.  "In this case I might have broken the rule
+myself.  Now come all of you, and let the child get at her mail."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I want you to stay," said Shelley.  "I'm so addle-pated this
+morning.  I need my family to help me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course you do, child," said mother.  "Families were made to cling
+together, and stand by each other in every circumstance of life&mdash;joy or
+sorrow.  Of course you need your family."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+May began sorting the letters by dates so Shelley could start on the
+one that had been written first.  Father ran his knife across the top
+of each, and cut all the envelopes, and Shelley took out the first and
+read it; that was the train one.  In it he told her about sending the
+boy with the note again, and explained more about how it was so very
+important for him to hurry, because the only man who could help him was
+so sick.  We talked it over, and all of us thought the boy had kept the
+money and torn up the note.  Father said the way would have been to
+send the note and pay the boy when he came back; but Shelley said Mr.
+Paget would have been gone before the boy got back, so father saw that
+wouldn't have been the way, in such a case.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Next she read one written on the boat.  He told more about sending the
+boy; how he loved her, what it would mean to both of them if he got the
+evidence he wanted and won his first case; and how much it would bring
+his friend.  The next one told it all over again, and more.  In that he
+wrote a little about the ocean, the people on board the ship, and he
+gave Shelley the name of the place where he was going and begged her to
+write to him.  He told her if the ship he was on passed another, they
+were going to stop and send back the mail.  He begged her to write
+often, and to say she forgave him for starting away without seeing her,
+as he had been forced to.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next one was the same thing over, only a little more yet.  In the
+last he had reached England, the important man was still living, but he
+was almost gone, and Mr. Paget took two good witnesses, all the
+evidence he had, and went to see him; and the man saw it was no use, so
+he made a statement, and Robert had it all written out, signed and
+witnessed.  For the real straight sense there was in that letter, I
+could have done as well myself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a wild jumble, because Robert was so crazy over having the
+evidence that would win his case; and he told Shelley that now he was
+perfectly free to love her all she would allow him.  He said he had to
+stay a while longer to find his friend's people so they would get back
+their share of the money, but it was not going to be easy to locate
+them.  You wouldn't think the world so big, but maybe it seemed smaller
+to me because as far as I could see from the top of our house, was all
+I knew about it.  After Shelley had read the letters, and the note
+again, father heaved a big sigh that seemed to come clear from his boot
+soles and he said:  "Well Shelley, it looks to me as if you had found a
+MAN.  Seems to me that's a mighty important case for a young lawyer to
+be trusted with, in a first effort."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, but it was for Robert's best friend, and only think, he has won!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't see how he could have done better if he'd been old as
+Methuselah, and wise as Solomon," boasted mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But he hasn't found the people who must have back their money," said
+May.  "He will have to go to England again.  And he wants to take you,
+Shelley.  My!  You'll get to sail on a big steamer, cross the Atlantic
+Ocean, and see London.  Maybe you'll even get a peep at the Queen!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shelley was busy making a little heap of her letters; when the top one
+slid off I reached over and put it back for her.  She looked straight
+at me, and smiled the most wonderful and the most beautiful smile I
+ever saw on any one's face, so I said to her: "You see! I TOLD you he
+was coming!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't understand it!" said Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"YOU KNOW I told you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course I do!  But what made you think so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That was the answer.  Just that he was coming."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you two talking about?" asked mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shelley looked at me, and waited for me to tell mother as much as I
+wanted to, of what had happened.  But I didn't think things like that
+were to be talked about before every one, so I just said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh nothing!  Only, I told Shelley this very morning that the Paget man
+was coming soon, and that everything was going to be all right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You did?  Well of all the world!  I can't see why."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh something told me! I just FELT that way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"More of that Fairy nonsense?" asked father sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No.  I didn't get that from the Fairies."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, never mind!" said Shelley, rising, because she saw that I had
+told all I wanted to.  "Little Sister DID tell me this morning that he
+was coming, that everything would be made right, and it's the queerest
+thing, but instantly I believed her.  Didn't I sing all morning,
+mother?  The first note since Robert didn't come when I expected him in
+Chicago, weeks ago."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said mother.  "That's a wonderfully strange thing.  I can't see
+what made you think so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Anyway, I did!" I said.  "Now let's go have dinner.  I'm starving."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I caught May's hand, and ran to get away from them.  Father and mother
+walked one on each side of Shelley, while with both hands she held her
+letters before her.  When we reached the house we just talked about
+them all the time.  Pretty soon the boys were back, and then they told
+about sending the telegram.  Leon vowed he gave the operator a dime
+extra to start that message with a shove, so it would go faster.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will go all right," said Laddie, "and how it will go won't be a
+circumstance to the way he'll come.  If there's anything we ought to
+do, before he gets here, we should hustle.  Chicago isn't a thousand
+miles away.  That message can reach him by two o'clock, it's probable
+he has got ready while he was waiting, so he will start on the first
+train our way.  He could reach Groveville on the ten, to-morrow.  We
+better meet it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, we'll meet it," said mother.  "Is the carriage perfectly clean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father said:  "It must be gone over.  Our general manager here ordered
+me to speed up, and we drove a little coming from town."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother went to planning what else should be done.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't do anything!" cried Shelley.  "The house is all right.  There's
+no need to work and worry into a sweat.  He won't notice or care how
+things look."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I miss my guess if he doesn't notice and care very much indeed," said
+mother emphatically.  "Men are not blind.  No one need think they don't
+see when things are not as they should be, just because they're not
+cattish enough to let you know it, like a woman always does.  Shelley,
+wouldn't you like to ride over and spend the afternoon with the
+Princess?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nope!" said Shelley.  "It's her turn to come to see me.  Besides, you
+don't get me out of the way like that.  I know what you'll do here, and
+I intend to help."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you need one of the boys at the house?" asked father, and if you'll
+believe it, both of them wanted to stay.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father said he must have one to help wash the carriage and do a little
+fixing around the barn; so he took Leon, but he didn't like to go.  He
+said:  "I don't see what all this fuss is about, anyway.  Probably
+he'll be another Peter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shelley looked at him:  "Oh Mr. Paget isn't nearly so large as Peter,"
+she said, "and his hair is whiter than yours, while his eyes are not so
+blue."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Saints preserve us!" cried Leon.  "Come on, father, let's only dust
+the carriage!  He's not worth washing it for."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is he like that?" asked mother anxiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait and see!" said Shelley.  "Looks don't make a man.  He has proved
+what he can do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then all of us went to work.  Before night we were hunting over the
+yard, and beside the road, to see if we could find anything to pick up.
+Six chickens were in the cellar, father was to bring meat and a long
+list of groceries from town in the morning.  He was to start early, get
+them before train time, put them under the back seat, and take them out
+after he drove into the lane, when he came back.  That made a little
+more trouble for father, but there was not the slightest necessity for
+making Mr. Paget feel that he had ridden in a delivery wagon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Next morning I wakened laughing softly, because some one was fussing
+with my hair, patting my face, and kissing me, so I put up my arms and
+pulled that loving person down on my pillow, and gave back little
+half-asleep kisses, and slept on; but it was Shelley, and she gently
+shook me and began repeating that fool old thing I have been waked up
+with half the mornings of my life:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Get up, Little Sister, the morning is bright,<BR>
+The birds are all singing to welcome the light,<BR>
+Get up; for when all things are merry and glad,<BR>
+Good children should never be lazy and sad;<BR>
+For God gives us daylight, dear sister, that we<BR>
+May rejoice like the lark and work like the bee."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Usually I'd have gone on sleeping, but Shelley was so sweet and lovely,
+and she kissed me so hard, that I remembered it was going to be a most
+exciting day, so I came to quick as snap and jumped right up, for I
+didn't want to miss a single thing that might happen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The carriage was shining when it came to the gate, so was father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I thought there was going to be a vacant seat beside him, and I asked
+if I might go along.  He said:  "Yes, if mother says so." He always
+would stick that in.  So I ran to ask her, and she didn't care, if
+Shelley made no objections.  I was just starting to find her, when here
+she came, all shining too, but Laddie was with her.  I hadn't known
+that he was going, and I was so disappointed I couldn't help crying.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the matter?" asked Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father and mother both said I might go, if you didn't care."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, I'm dreadfully sorry," said Shelley, "but I have several things I
+want Laddie to do for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie stooped down to kiss me good-bye and he said:  "Don't cry,
+Little Sister.  The way to be happy is to be good."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then they drove to Groveville, and we had to wait.  But there was so
+much to do, it made us fly to get all of it finished.  So mother sent
+Leon after Mrs. Freshett to help in the kitchen, while Candace wore her
+white dress, and waited on the table.  Mother cut flowers for the
+dining table, and all through the house.  She left the blinds down to
+keep the rooms cool, chilled buttermilk to drink, and if she didn't
+think of every single, least little thing, I couldn't see what it was.
+Then all of us put on our best dresses.  Mother looked as glad and
+sweet as any girl, when she sat to rest a little while.  I didn't dare
+climb the catalpa in my white dress, so I watched from the horse block,
+and when I saw the grays come over the top of the hill, I ran to tell.
+As mother went to the gate, she told May and me to walk behind, to stay
+back until we were spoken to, and then to keep our heads level, and
+remember our manners.  I don't know where Leon went.  He said he lost
+all interest when he found there was to be another weak-eyed towhead in
+the family, and I guess he was in earnest about it, because he wasn't
+even curious enough to be at the gate when Mr. Paget came.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father stopped with a flourish, Laddie hurried around and helped
+Shelley, and then Mr. Paget stepped down.  Goodness, gracious, sakes
+alive!  Little?  Towhead?  He was taller than Laddie.  His hair was
+most as black as ink, and wavy.  His eyes were big and dark; he was
+broad and strong and there was the cleanest, freshest look about him.
+He put his arm spang around Shelley, right there in the road, and
+mother said:  "Hold there!  Not so fast, young man!  I haven't given my
+consent to that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laughed, and he said:  "Yes, but you'ah going to!"  And he put his
+other arm around mother, so May and I crowded up, and we had a family
+reunion right between the day lilies and the snowball bush.  We went
+into the house, and he LIKED us, his room, and everything went exactly
+right.  He was crazy about the cold buttermilk, and while he was
+drinking it Leon walked into the dining-room, because he thought of
+course Mr. Paget and Shelley would be on the davenport in the parlour.
+When he saw Robert he said lowlike to Shelley:  "Didn't Mr. Paget come?
+Who's that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shelley looked so funny for a minute, then she remembered what she had
+told him and she just laughed as she said:  "Mr. Paget, this is my
+brother."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Robert went to shake hands, and Leon said right to his teeth: "Well a
+divil of a towhead you are!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Towhead?" said Robert, bewildered-like.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shelley said you were a little bit of a man, with watery blue eyes,
+and whiter hair than mine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh I say!" cried Robert.  "She must have been stringin' you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon just whooped; because while Mr. Paget didn't talk like the 'orse,
+'ouse people, he made you think of them in the way he said things, and
+the sound of his voice.  Then we had dinner, and I don't remember that
+we ever had quite such a feast before.  Mother had put on every single
+flourish she knew.  She used her very best dishes, and linen, and no
+cook anywhere could beat Candace alone; now she had Mrs. Freshett to
+help her, and mother also.  If she tried to show Mr. Paget, she did it!
+No visitor was there except him, but we must have been at the table two
+hours talking, and eating from one dish after another.  Candace LIKED
+to wear her white dress, and carry things around, and they certainly
+were good.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And talk!  Father, Laddie, and Robert talked over all creation.  Every
+once in a while when mother saw an opening, she put in her paddle, and
+no one could be quicker, when she watched sharp and was trying to make
+a good impression.  Shelley was very quiet; she scarcely spoke or
+touched that delicious food.  Once the Paget man turned to her, looking
+at her so fondlike, as he picked up one of her sauce dishes and her
+spoon and wanted to feed her.  And he said:  "Heah child, eat your
+dinnah!  You have nawthing to be fussed ovah!  I mean to propose to
+you, and your parents befowr night.  That is what I am heah for."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Every one laughed so, Shelley never got the bite; but after that she
+perked up more and ate a little by herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last father couldn't stand it any longer, so he began asking Robert
+about his trip to England, and the case he had won.  When the table was
+cleared for dessert, Mr. Paget asked mother to have Candace to bring
+his satchel.  He opened it and spread papers all over, so that father
+and Laddie could see the evidence, while he told them how it was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed there was a law in England, all of us knew about it, because
+father often had explained it.  This law said that a man who had lots
+of money and land must leave almost all of it to his eldest son; and
+the younger ones must go into law, the army, be clergymen, or enter
+trade and earn a living, while the eldest kept up the home place.  Then
+he left it to his eldest son, and his other boys had to work for a
+living.  It kept the big estates together; but my! it was hard on the
+younger sons, and no one seemed even to think about the daughters.  I
+never heard them mentioned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now there was a very rich man; he had only two sons, and each of them
+married, and had one son.  The younger son died, and sent his boy for
+his elder brother to take care of.  He pretended to be good, but for
+sure, he was bad as ever he could be.  He knew that if his cousin were
+out of the way, all that land and money would be his when his uncle
+died.  So he went to work and he tried for years, and a lawyer man who
+had no conscience at all, helped him.  At last when they had done
+everything they could think of, they took a lot of money and put it in
+the pocket of the son they wanted to ruin; then when his father missed
+the money, and the house was filled with policemen, detectives, and
+neighbours, the bad man said he'd feel more comfortable to have the
+family searched too, merely as a formality, so he stepped out and was
+gone over, and when the son's turn came, there was the money on him!
+That made him a public disgrace to his family, and a criminal who
+couldn't inherit the estate, and his father went raving mad and tried
+to kill him, so he had to run away.  At first he didn't care what he
+did, so he came over here.  Robert said that man was his best friend,
+and as men went, he was a decent fellow, so he cheered him up all he
+could, and went to work with all his might to prove he was innocent,
+and to get back his family, and his money for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Robert had enough evidence that he was almost ready to start to
+England, his man got a cable from an old friend of his father's, who
+always had believed in him, and it said that the bad man was dying&mdash;to
+come quick.  So Robert went all of a sudden, like the Dead Letters told
+about.  Now, he described how he reached there, took the old friend of
+the father of his friend with him, and other witnesses, and all the
+evidence he had, and went to see the sick man.  When Robert showed him
+what he could prove, the bad man said it was no use, he had to die in a
+few days, so he might as well go with a clean conscience, and he told
+about everything he had done.  Robert had it all written out, signed
+and sworn to.  He told about all of it, and then he said to father:
+"Have I made it clear to you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon was so excited he forgot all the manners he ever had, for he
+popped up before father could open his head, and cried: "Clear as mud!
+I got that son business so plain in my mind, I'd know the party of the
+first part, from the party of the second part, if I met him promenading
+on the Stone Wall of China!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father and Laddie knew so much law they asked dozens of questions; but
+that Robert man wasn't a smidgin behind, for every clip he had the
+answer ready, and then he could go on and tell much more than he had
+been asked.  He said as a Case, it was a pretty thing to work on; but
+it was much more than a case to him, because he always had known that
+his friend was not guilty; that he was separated from his family,
+suffering terribly under the disgrace, and they must be also.  He had
+worked for life for his friend, because the whole thing meant so much
+to both of them.  He said he must go back soon and finish up a little
+more that he should have done while he was there, if it hadn't been
+that he received no word from Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When I didn't heah from heh for so long, and wrote so many letters,
+and had no reply, I thought possibly some gay 'young Lochinvah had come
+out from the west,' and taken my sweet 'eart," he said, "and while I
+had my armour on, I made up my mind that I'd give him a fight too.  I
+didn't propose to lose Shelley, if it were in my powah to win heh.  I
+hadn't been able to say to heh exactly what I desiahed, on account of
+getting a start alone in this country; but if I won this case, I would
+have ample means.  When I secuahed the requiahed evidence, I couldn't
+wait to finish, so I came straight ovah, to make sure of heh."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He arose and handed the satchel to father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I notice you have a very good looking gun convenient," he said.
+"Would you put these papahs where you consider them safe until I'm
+ready to return?  Our home, our living, and the honah of a man are
+there, and we are mighty particular about that bag, are we not,
+Shelley?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well I should think we are!" cried Shelley.  "For goodness sake,
+father, hang to it!  Is the man still living?  Could you get that
+evidence over again?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He was alive when I left, but the doctors said ten days would be his
+limit, so he may be gone befowr this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father picked up the satchel, set it on his knees, and stroked it as if
+it were alive.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well!  Well!" he said.  "Now would any one think such a little thing
+could contain so much?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shelley leaned toward Robert.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your friend!" she cried, "Your friend!  What DID he say to you?  What
+did he DO?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, for a time he was wildly happy ovah having the stain removed
+from his honah, and knowing that he would have his family and faw'tn
+back; but there is an extremely sad feature to his case that is not yet
+settled, so he must keep his head level until we work that out.  Now
+about that hoss you wanted to show me&mdash;&mdash;" he turned to Leon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother gave the signal, and we left the table.  Father carried the
+satchel to his chest, made room for it, locked it in and put the key in
+his pocket.  Then our men started to the barn to show the Arab-Kentucky
+horse.  Mr. Paget went to Shelley and took her in his arms exactly like
+Peter did Sally before the parlour door that time when I got into
+trouble, and he looked at mother and laughed as he said:  "I hope you
+will excuse me, but I've been having a very nawsty, anxious time, and I
+cawn't conform to the rules for a few days, until I become accustomed
+to the fawct that Shelley is not lost to me.  It was beastly when I
+reached Chicago, had back all my letters, and found she had gone home
+ill.  I've much suffering to recompense.  I'll atone for a small
+portion immediately."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He lifted Shelley right off the floor&mdash;that's how big and strong he
+was&mdash;he hugged her tight, and kissed her forehead, cheeks, and eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When I've gone through the fahmality of asking your parents for you,
+and they have said a gracious 'yes,' I'll put the fust one on your
+lips," he said, setting her down carefully.  "In the meantime, you be
+fixing your mouth to say, 'yes,' also, when I propose to you, because
+it's coming befowr you sleep."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shelley was like a peach blossom.  She reached up and touched his
+cheek, while she looked at mother all smiling, and sparkling, as she
+said:  "You see!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother smiled back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do, indeed!" she answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leon pulled Mr. Paget's sleeve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aw quit lally-gaggin' and come see a real horse," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Robert put his other arm around Leon, drew him to his side and hugged
+him as if he were a girl.  "I'm so glad Shelley has a lawge family," he
+said.  "Big families are jolly.  I'm so proud of all the brothers I'm
+going to have.  I was the only boy at home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You haven't told us about your family," said mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Robert, "but I intend to.  I have a family!  One of the
+finest on uth.  We'll talk about them after this hoss is inspected."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He let Shelley go and walked away, his arm still around Leon.  Shelley
+ran to mother and both of them sobbed out loud.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"NOW YOU SEE HOW IT WAS!" she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You poor child!" cried mother.  "Indeed I DO see how it was.  You've
+been a brave girl.  A good, brave girl!  Father and I are mighty proud
+of you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh mother!  I thought you were ashamed of me!" sobbed Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh my child!" said mother quavery-like.  "Oh my child!  You surely see
+that none of us could understand, as we do now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She patted Shelley, and told her to run upstairs and lie down for a
+while, because she was afraid she would be sick.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We mustn't have a pale, tired girl right now," said mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well!" said Shelley, but she just stood there holding mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?" said mother gripping her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see!" said Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Child," said mother, "I DO see!  I see six feet of as handsome manhood
+as I ever have seen anywhere.  His manner is perfect, and I find his
+speech most attractive.  I am delighted with him.  I do see indeed!
+Your father is quite as proud and pleased as I am.  Now go to bed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shelley held up her lips, and then went.  I ran to the barn, where the
+men were standing in the shade, while Leon led his horse up and down
+before them, told about its pedigree, its record, how he came to have
+it.  The Paget man stood there looking and listening gravely, as he
+studied the horse.  At last he went over her, and gee! but he knew
+horse!  Then Laddie brought out Flos and they talked all about her, and
+then went into the barn.  Father opened the east doors to show how much
+land he had, which were his lines; and while the world didn't look
+quite so pretty as it had in May, still it was good enough.  Then they
+went into the orchard, sat under the trees and began talking about
+business conditions.  That was so dry I went back to the house.  And
+maybe I didn't strike something interesting there!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As I came up the orchard path to a back yard gate, I saw a carriage at
+the hitching rack in front of the house, so I took a peep and almost
+fell over.  It was the one the Princess had come to Sally's wedding in;
+so I knew she was in the house visiting Shelley.  I went to the parlour
+and there I had another shock; for lo and behold! in our big rocking
+chair, and looking as well as any one, so far as you could see&mdash;of
+course you can't see heart trouble, though&mdash;sat Mrs. Pryor.  The
+Princess and mother were there, all of them talking, laughing and
+having the best time, while on the davenport enjoying himself as much
+as any one, was Mr. Pryor.  They talked about everything, and it was
+easy to see that the Pryor door was OPEN so far as we were concerned,
+anyway.  Mrs. Pryor was just as nice and friendly as she could be, and
+so was he.  Shelley sat beside him, and he pinched her cheek and said:
+"Something seems to make you especially brilliant today, young woman!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shelley flushed redder, laughed, and glanced at mother, so she said:
+"Shelley is having a plain old-fashioned case of beau.  She met a young
+man in Chicago last fall and he's here now to ask our consent.  All of
+us are quite charmed with him.  That's why she's so happy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the Princess sprang up and kissed Shelley, so did Mrs. Pryor,
+while such a chatter you never heard.  No one could repeat what they
+said, for as many as three talked at the same time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh do let's have a double wedding!" cried the Princess when the
+excitement was over a little.  "I think it would be great fun; do
+let's!  When are you planning for?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing is settled yet," said Shelley.  "We've had no time to talk!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mercy!" cried the Princess.  "Go make your arrangements quickly!
+Hurry up, then come over, and we'll plan for the same time.  It will be
+splendid!  Don't you think that would be fine, Mrs. Stanton?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't see any objections to it," said mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is your young man?  I'm crazy to see him," cried the Princess.
+"If you have gone and found a better looking one than mine, I'll never
+speak to you again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She hasn't!" cried Mrs. Pryor calmly, like that settled it.  I like
+her.  "They're not made!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not so sure of that," said Shelley proudly.  "Mother, isn't my
+man quite as good looking, and as nice in every way, as Laddie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fully as handsome, and so far as can be seen in such a short time,
+quite as fine," said mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was perfectly amazed at her; as if any man could be!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't believe it, I won't stand it, and I shan't go home until I
+have seen for myself!" cried the Princess, laughing, and yet it sounded
+as if she were half-provoked, and I knew I was.  The Paget man was all
+right, but I wasn't going to lose my head over him.  Laddie was the
+finest, of course!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, he's somewhere on the place with our men, this minute," said
+Shelley, "but you stay for supper, and meet him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When you haven't your arrangements made yet!  You surely are
+unselfish!  Of course I won't do that, but I'd love to have one little
+peep, then you bring him and come over to-morrow, so all of us can
+become acquainted, and indeed, I'm really in earnest about a double
+wedding."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go see where the men are," said Shelley to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went to the back door, and their heads were bobbing far down in the
+orchard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They're under the greening apple tree," I reported.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you will excuse us," said Shelley to Mr. and Mrs. Pryor, "we'll
+walk down a few minutes and prove that I'm right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't stay," said Mrs. Pryor.  "This trip is so unusual for me that
+I'm quite tired.  For a first venture, in such a long time, I think
+I've done well.  But now I'm beginning to feel I should go home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go straight along," said the Princess.  "I'll walk across the fields,
+or Thomas can come back after me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Mr. and Mrs. Pryor went away, while the Princess, Shelley, May, and
+I walked through the orchard toward the men.  They were standing on the
+top of the hill looking over the meadow, and talking with such interest
+they didn't hear us or turn until Shelley said:  "Mr. Paget, I want to
+present you to Laddie's betrothed&mdash;Miss Pamela Pryor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He swung around, finishing what he was saying as he turned, the
+Princess took a swift step toward him, then, at the same time, both of
+them changed to solid tombstone, and stood staring, and so did all of
+us, while no one made a sound.  At last the Paget man drew a deep,
+quivery breath and sort of shook himself as he gazed at her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Pam!" he cried.  "Darling Pam, cawn it possibly be you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If you ever heard the scream of a rabbit when the knives of a reaper
+cut it to death, why that's exactly the way she cried out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She covered her eyes with her hands.  He drew back and smiled, the red
+rushed into his face, and he began to be alive again.  Laddie went to
+the Princess and took her hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What does this mean?" he begged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She pulled away from him, and went to the Paget man slowly, her big
+eyes wild and strained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Robert!" she cried.  "Robert! how did you get here?  Were you hunting
+us?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All ovah England, yes," he said.  "Not heah!  I came heah to see
+Shelley.  But you?  How do you happen to be in this country?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We've lived on adjoining land for two years!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You moved heah!  To escape the pity of our friends?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father moved!  Mother and I had no means, and no refuge.  We were
+forced.  We never believed it!  Oh Robert, we never&mdash;not for a minute!
+Oh Robert, say you never did it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Try our chawming cousin Emmet your next guess!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That devil!  Oh that devil!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She cried out that hurt way again, so he took her tight in his arms;
+but sure as ever Laddie was my brother, he was hers, so that was all
+right.  When they were together you wondered why in this world you
+hadn't thought of it the instant you saw him alone.  They were like as
+two peas.  They talked exactly the same, only he sounded much more so,
+probably from having just been in England for weeks, while in two years
+she had grown a little as we were.  We gazed at them, open-mouthed,
+like as not, and no one said a word.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last Mr. Paget looked over the Princess' shoulder at father and
+said:  "I can explain this, Mr. Stanton, in a very few wuds.  I am my
+friend.  The case was my own.  The evidence I secuahed was for myself.
+This is my only sisteh.  Heh people are mine&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The relationship is apparent," said father.  "There is a striking
+likeness between you and your sister, and I can discern traces of your
+parents in your face, speech and manner."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you know my father," said Robert, "then you undehstand what
+happened to me when I was found with his money on my pehson, in the
+presence of our best friends and the police.  He went raving insane on
+the instant, and he would have killed me if he hadn't been prevented;
+he tried to; has he changed any since, Pam?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Princess was clinging to him with both hands, staring at him,
+wonder, joy, and fear all on her lovely face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Worse!" she cried.  "He's much worse!  The longer he broods, the more
+mother grieves, the bitterer he becomes.  Mr. Stanton, he is always
+armed.  He'll shoot on sight.  Oh what shall we do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Pamela," said Leon, "did your man Thomas know your brother in
+England?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All his life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then, we'd better be doing something quick.  He tied the horses
+and was walking up and down the road while he waited, and he saw us
+plainly when we crossed the wood yard a while ago.  He followed us and
+stared so, I couldn't help noticing him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jove!" cried Robert.  "I must have seen him in the village this
+morning.  A man reminded me of him, then I remembered how like people
+of his type are, and concluded I was mistaken.  Mr. Stanton, you have
+agreed that the evidence I hold is sufficient.  Pam cawn tell you that
+while I don't deny being full of tricks as a boy, they weh not dirty,
+not low, and while father always taking Emmet's paht against me drove
+me to recklessness sometimes, I nevah did anything underhand or
+disgraceful.  She knows what provocation I had, and exactly what
+happened.  Let heh tell you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't feel that I require any further information," said father.
+"You see, I happen to be fairly well acquainted with Mr. Pryor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pryor?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He made us use that name here," explained the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"WELL, HIS NAME IS PAGET!" said Robert angrily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie told me long ago he didn't believe it was Pryor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then, if you are acquainted with my father, what would you counsel?
+Unless I'm prepahed to furnish the central figyah of interest in a
+funeral, I dare not meet him, until he has seen this evidence, had time
+to digest it, and calm himself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shelley caught him by the arm.  No wonder!  She hadn't been proposed
+to, or even had a kiss on her lips.  She pulled him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You come straight to the house," she said.  "Thomas may tell your
+father he thought he saw you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was about as serious as anything could be, but nothing ever
+stopped Leon.  He sidled away from father, repeating in a low voice:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"'For sore dismayed, through storm and shade<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">His child he did discover;</SPAN><BR>
+One lovely hand she stretched for aid,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And one was round her lover&mdash;'"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Shelley just looked daggers at him, but she was too anxious to waste
+any time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would Thomas tell your father?" she asked the Princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The instant he saw him alone, yes.  He wouldn't before mother."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hold one minute!" cried father.  "We must think of our mother, just a
+little.  Shelley, you and the girls run up and explain how this is.
+Better all of you go to the house, except Mr. Paget.  He'll be safe
+here as anywhere.  Mr. Pryor will stop there, if he comes.  So it would
+be best for you to keep out of sight, Robert, until I have had a little
+talk with him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll stay here," I offered.  "We'll talk until you get Mr. Pryor
+cooled off.  He can be awful ragesome when he's excited, and it doesn't
+take much to start him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're right about that!" agreed Robert.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So we sat under the greening and were having a fine visit while the
+others went to break the news gently to mother that the Pryor mystery
+had gone up higher than Gilderoy's kite.  My! but she'd be glad!  It
+would save her many a powerful prayer.  I was telling Robert all about
+the time his father visited us, and what my mother said to him, and he
+said:  "She'd be the one to talk with him now.  Possibly he'd listen to
+her, until he got it through his head that his own son is not a common
+thief."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe he'll have to be held, like taking quinine, and made to listen,"
+I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That would be easy, if he were not a walking ahsenal," said Robert.
+"You have small chance to reason with a half-crazy man while he is
+handling a pistol."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He meant revolver.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But he'll shoot!" I cried.  "The Princess said he'd shoot!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So he will!" said Robert.  "Shoot first, then find out how things are,
+and kill himself and every one else with remorse, afterward.  He is
+made that way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then he doesn't dare see you until he finds out how mistaken he has
+been," I said, for I was growing to like Robert better every minute
+longer I knew him.  Besides, there was the Princess, looking like him
+as possible, and loving him of course, like I did Laddie, maybe.  And
+if anything could cure Mrs. Pryor's heart trouble, having her son back
+would, because that was what made it in the first place, and even
+before them, there was Shelley to be thought of, and cared for.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap18"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVIII
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+The Pryor Mystery
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"And now old Dodson, turning pale,<BR>
+Yields to his fate&mdash;so ends my tale."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+It didn't take me long to see why Shelley liked Robert Paget.  He was
+one of the very most likeable persons I ever had seen.  We were sitting
+under the apple tree, growing better friends every minute, when we
+heard a smash, so we looked up, and it was the sound made by Ranger as
+Mr. Pryor landed from taking our meadow fence.  He had ridden through
+the pasture, and was coming down the creek bank.  He was a spectacle to
+behold.  A mile away you could see that Thomas had told him he had seen
+Robert, and where he was.  Father had been mistaken in thinking Mr.
+Pryor would go to the house.  He had lost his hat, his white hair was
+flying, his horse was in a lather, and he seemed to be talking to
+himself.  Robert took one good look.  "Ye Gods!" he cried.  "There he
+comes now, a chattering madman!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Station," I panted.  "Up that ravine!  Roll back the stone and
+pull the door shut after you.  Quick!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He never could have been inside, before Mr. Pryor's horse was raving
+along the embankment beside the fence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is he?" he cried.  "Thomas saw him here!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I didn't think his horse could take the fence at the top of the hill,
+but it looked as if he intended trying to make it, and I had to stop
+him if I could.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Saw who?" I asked with clicking teeth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A tall, slender man, with a handsome face, and the heart of a devil."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, there was a man here like that in the face.  I didn't see his
+heart," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Which way?" raved Mr. Pryor.  "Which way?  Is he at your house?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I saw that he had the reins in his left hand, and a big revolver
+in his right.  So there was no mistake about whether he'd really shoot.
+But that gun provoked me.  People have no business to be careless with
+those things.  They're dangerous!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He didn't do what you think he did," I cried, "and he can prove he
+didn't, if you'll stop cavorting, and listen to reason."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Pryor leaned over the fence, dark purple like a beet now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You tell me where he is, or I'll choke it out of you," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I guess he meant it.  I took one long look at his lean, clawlike
+fingers, and put both hands around my neck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He knew Thomas saw him.  He went that way," I said, waving off toward
+the north.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hah! striking for petticoats, as usual!" he cried, and away he went in
+the direction of his house.  Then I flew for the Station.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come from there, quick!" I cried.  "I've sent him back to his house,
+but when he finds you're not there, he will come here again.  Hurry,
+and I'll put you in the woodshed loft.  He'd never think of looking
+there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He came out and we started toward the house, going pretty fast.  Almost
+to the back gate we met Shelley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Does mother know?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I just told her," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father," I cried, going in the back dining-room door.  "Mr. Pryor was
+down in the meadow on Ranger.  Thomas did see Robert, and his father is
+hunting him with a gun.  We saw him coming, so I hid Robert in the
+Station and sent Mr. Pryor back home&mdash;I guess I told him a lie, father,
+or at least part of one, I said he went 'that way,' and he did, but not
+so far as I made his father think; so he started back home, but when he
+gets there and doesn't find Robert he'll come here again, madder than
+ever.  Oh father, he'll come again, and he's crazy, father!  Clear,
+raving crazy!  I know he'll come again!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said father calmly.  "I think it very probable that he will come
+again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he started around shutting and latching windows, closing and
+locking the doors, and he carefully loaded his gun, and leaned it
+against the front casing.  Then he put on his glasses, and began
+examining the papers they had brought out again.  Robert stood beside
+him, and explained and showed him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see with me out of the way, the English law would give everything
+to my cousin," he said, and he explained it all over again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And to think how he always posed for a perfect saint!" cried the
+Princess.  "Oh I hope the devil knows how to make him pay for what all
+of us have suffered!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Child!  Child!" cried mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't help it!" said the Princess.  "Let me tell you, Mr. Stanton."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then SHE told everything all over again, but it was even more
+interesting than the way Robert explained it, because what she said was
+about how it had been with her and her mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It made father what he is," she said.  "He would have killed Robert,
+if our friends hadn't helped him away.  He will now, if he isn't
+stopped.  I tell you he will!  He sold everything he could legally
+control, for what any one chose to give him, and fled here stricken in
+pride, heartbroken, insane with anger, the creature you know.  In a
+minute he'll be back again.  Oh what are we going to do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father was laying out the papers that he wanted to use very carefully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"These constitute all the proof any court would require," he said to
+Robert.  "If he returns, all of you keep from sight.  This is my house;
+I'll manage who comes here, in my own way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you must be allowed to take no risk!" cried Robert.  "I cawn't
+consent to youah facing danger for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There will be no risk," said father.  "There is no reason why he
+should want to injure me.  As the master of this house, I am accustomed
+to being obeyed.  If he comes, step into the parlour there, until I
+call you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was busy with the papers when he saw Mr. Pryor coming.  I wondered
+if he would jump the yard fence and ride down mother's flowers, but he
+left his horse at the hitching rack, and pounded on the front door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did any of you notice whether he was displaying a revolver?" asked
+father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes father!  Yes!" I cried.  "And he's shaking so I'm afraid he'll
+make it go, when he doesn't intend to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father picked up and levelled his rifle on the front door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leon," he said, "you're pretty agile.  Open this door, keep yourself
+behind it, and step around in the parlour.  The rest of you get out,
+and stay out of range."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Those nearest hurried into the parlour.  Candace, May, and I crouched
+in the front stairway, but things were so exciting we just had to keep
+the door open a tiny crack so we could see plain as anything.  There
+had been nothing for Mrs. Freshett to do all afternoon, so she had gone
+over to visit an hour with Amanda Deam.  Now Mr. Pryor probably thought
+father would meet him with the Bible in his hand, and read a passage
+about loving your neighbour as yourself.  I'll bet anything you can
+mention that he never expected to find himself looking straight down
+the barrel of a shining big rifle when that door swung open.  It
+surprised him so, he staggered, and his arm wavered.  If he had shot
+and hit anything then, it would have been an accident.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Got you over the heart," said father, in precisely the same voice he
+always said, "This is a fine day we are having."  "Now why are you
+coming here in such a shape?"  This was a little cross.  "I'm not the
+man to cringe before you!"  This was quite boastful.  "You'll get
+bullet for bullet, if you attempt to invade my house with a gun."  This
+pinged as if father shot words instead of bullets.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want my daughter to come home," said Mr. Pryor.  "And if you're
+sheltering the thief she is trying to hide, yield him up, if you would
+save yourself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I'm not anxious about dying, with the family I have on my hands,
+neighbour," said father, his rifle holding without a waver, "but unless
+you put away that weapon, and listen to reason, you cannot enter my
+house.  Calm yourself, man, and hear what there is to be said!  Examine
+the proof, that is here waiting to be offered to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Once and but once, send them out, or I'll enter over you!" cried Mr.
+Pryor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sorry," said father, "but if only a muscle of your trigger finger
+moves, you fall before I do.  I've the best range, and the most
+suitable implement for the work."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Implement for the work!"  Well, what do you think of father?  Any one
+who could not see, to have heard him, would have thought he was talking
+about a hoe.  We saw a shadow before we knew what made it; then, a
+little at a time, wonderingly, her jolly face a bewildered daze, her
+mouth slowly opening, Mrs. Freshett, half-bent and peering, stooped
+under Mr. Pryor's arm and looked in our door.  She had come back to
+help get supper, and because the kitchen was locked, she had gone
+around the house to see if she could get in at the front.  What she saw
+closed her mouth, and straightened her back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"WHY, YOU TWO OLD FOOLS!" she cried.  "IF YE AIN'T DRAWED A BEAD ON
+EACH OTHER!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+None of us saw her do it.  We only knew after it was over what must
+have happened.  She had said she'd risk her life for mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She never stopped an instant when her chance came.  She must have
+turned, and thrown her big body against Mr. Pryor.  He was tired, old,
+and shaking with anger.  They went down together, she gripping his
+right wrist with both hands, and she was strong as most men.  Father
+set the gun beside the door, and bent over them.  A minute more and he
+handed the revolver to Leon, and helped Mrs. Freshett to her feet.  Mr.
+Pryor lay all twisted on the walk, his face was working, and what he
+said was a stiff jabber no one could understand.  He had broken into
+the pieces we often feared he would.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Robert and Laddie came running to help father carry him in, and lay him
+on the couch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope, Miss Stanton," said Mrs. Freshett, "that I wa'n't too rough
+with him.  He was so shaky-like, I was 'feered that thing would go off
+without his really makin' it, and of course I couldn't see none of
+yourn threatened with a deadly weepon, 'thout buttin' in and doin' the
+best I could."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother put her arms around her as far as they would reach.  She would
+have had to take her a side at a time to really hug all of her, and she
+said:  "Mrs. Freshett, you are an instrument in the hands of the Lord
+this day.  Undoubtedly you have kept us from a fearful tragedy;
+possibly you have saved my husband for me.  None of us ever can thank
+you enough."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Loosen his collar and give him air," said Mrs. Freshett pushing mother
+away.  "I think likely he has bust a blood vessel."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Father sent Leon flying to bring Dr. Fenner.  Laddie took the carriage
+and he and Robert went after Mrs. Pryor, while father, mother, Mrs.
+Freshett, the Princess, May, and I, every last one, worked over Mr.
+Pryor.  We poured hot stuff down his throat, put warm things around
+him, and rubbed him until the sweat ran on us, trying to get his
+knotted muscles straightened out.  When Dr. Fenner came he said we were
+doing all he could; MAYBE Mr. Pryor would come to and be all right, and
+maybe his left side would be helpless forever; it was a stroke.  Seemed
+to me having Mrs. Freshett come against you like that, could be called
+a good deal more than a stroke, but I couldn't think of the right word
+then.  And after all, perhaps stroke was enough.  He couldn't have been
+much worse off if the barn had fallen on him.  I didn't think there was
+quite so much of Mrs. Freshett; but then she was scared, and angry; and
+he was about ready to burst, all by himself, if no one had touched him.
+He had much better have stayed at home and listened to what was to be
+said, reasonably, like father would; and then if he really had to
+shoot, he would have been in some kind of condition to take aim.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a long hard fight we got him limber, straightened out, and warm,
+it didn't rip so when he breathed, then they put him in the parlour on
+the big davenport.  Leon said if the sparkin' bench didn't bring him
+to, nothing would.  Laddie sat beside him and mother kept peeping.  She
+wouldn't let Dr. Fenner go, because she said Mr. Pryor just must come
+out of it right, and have a few years of peace and happiness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Pryor came back with Laddie and Robert.  He carried her in, put
+her in the big rocking chair again, and he sat beside her, stroking and
+kissing her, while she held him with both hands.  You could see NOW why
+his mother couldn't sleep, walked the road, and held her hands over her
+heart.  She was a brave woman, and she had done well to keep alive and
+going in any shape at all.  You see we knew.  There had been only the
+few hours when it seemed possible that one of our boys had taken
+father's money and was gone.  I well remembered what happened to our
+mother then.  And if she had been disgraced before every one, dragged
+from her home away across a big sea to live among strangers, and not
+known where her boy was for years, I'm not a bit sure that she'd have
+done better than Mrs. Pryor.  Yes, she would too; come to think it
+out&mdash;she'd have kept on believing the Lord had something to do with it,
+and that He'd fix it some way; and I know she and father would have
+held hands no matter what happened or where they went.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I guess the biggest thing the matter with Pryors was that they didn't
+know how to go about loving each other right; maybe it was because they
+didn't love God, so they couldn't know exactly what PROPER LOVE was;
+because God is love, like father said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Pryor didn't want to see Mr. Pryor&mdash;I can't get used to calling
+them Paget&mdash;and she didn't ask anything about him.  I guess she was
+pretty mad at him.  She never had liked the Emmet cousin, and she'd had
+nothing but trouble with him all the time he had been in her family,
+and then that awful disgrace, that she always THOUGHT was all him, but
+she couldn't prove it, and she had no money.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That's a very bad thing.  A woman should always have some money.  She
+works as hard as any one, and usually she has more that worries her, so
+it's only fair for her to have part of what the work and worry bring.
+Mother always has money.  Why, she has so much, she can help father out
+when he is pushed with bills, as she did last fall, to start Shelley to
+music school.  It's no way to be forced to live with a man, just to get
+a home, food, and clothing.  I don't believe mother ever would do it in
+all this world.  But then mother has worked all her life, and so if
+father doesn't do as she wants him to, she'd know exactly how to go
+about taking care of herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After all Mrs. Pryor didn't need to sit back on her dignity and look so
+abused.  He couldn't knock her down, and drag her clear here.  Why
+didn't she say right out, in the beginning, that her son COULDN'T be a
+thief, that she knew it, and she'd stay at home and wait for him to
+come back?  She could have put a piece in the paper saying she knew her
+boy was all right, and for him to come back, so they could go to work
+and PROVE it.  I bet if she'd had one tenth of the ginger mother has,
+she'd have stopped the whole fuss in the start.  I looked at her almost
+steadily, trying to figure out just what mother would have done in her
+place.  Maybe I'm mistaken about exactly how she would have set to
+work, but this I KNOW: she'd have stuck to the Lord; she'd have loved
+father, so dearly, he just COULDN'T have wanted her to do things that
+hurt her until it gave her heart trouble; and she never, never would
+have given up one of us, and sat holding her heart for months, refusing
+to see or to speak to any one, while she waited for some one else to do
+something.  Mother never waits.  She always thinks a minute, if she's
+in doubt she asks father; if he can't decide, both of them ask God; and
+then you ought to see things begin to fly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The more I watched Mrs. Pryor, the more I began to think she was a
+lady; and just about when I was sure that was what ailed her, I heard
+father say:  "Perhaps the lady would like a cup of tea."  I had a big
+notion to tell her to come on, and I would show her where the cannister
+was, but I thought I better not.  I wanted to, though.  She'd have felt
+much better if she had got up and worked like the rest of us.  With all
+the excitement, and everything happening at once, you'd have thought
+mother would be flat on her back, but flat nothing!  Everything was
+picked up and slid back, fast as it was torn down; she found time to
+flannel her nose and brush her hair, her collar was straight, and the
+goldstone pin shone in the light, while her starched white apron
+fluttered as she went through the doors.  She said a few words to
+Candace and Mrs. Freshett, May took out a linen cloth and began to set
+places for all the grown people, so I knew there'd be strawberry
+preserves and fried ham, but in all that, would you ever have thought
+that she'd find a second to make biscuit, and tea cakes herself?  Plain
+as preaching I heard her say to Mrs. Freshett:  "I do hope and pray
+that Mr. Pryor will come out of it right, so we can take him home, and
+teach him to behave himself; but if he's gone this minute, I intend to
+have another decent meal for Shelley to offer her young man; and I
+don't care if I show Mrs. Pryor that we're not hungry over here, if we
+do lack servants to carry in food on silver platters."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That I jest would!" said Mrs. Freshett.  "Even if he turns up his
+toes, 'tain't YOUR funeral, thank the Lord! an' looky here, I'd jest as
+soon set things in a bake pan an' pass 'em for you, myself.  I'll do
+it, if you say the word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mother bit her lip, and fought her face to keep it straight, as she
+said confidential-like:  "No, I'm not going to toady to her.  I only
+want her to see that a meal really consists of food after all; I don't
+mind putting my best foot foremost, but I won't ape her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Huccome they to fuss like this, peaceable as Mr. Stanton be, an'
+what's Shelley's beau to them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should think you could tell by looking at Pryors," said mother.
+"He's their mystery, and also their son.  Shelley met him in Chicago,
+he came here to see her, and ran right into them.  I'll tell you about
+it before you go.  Now, I must keep these applications hot, for I've
+set my head on pulling Mr. Pryor out so that he can speak, and have a
+few decent years of life yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But why did the old devil&mdash;EX-cuse me, I mean the old GENTLEMAN, want
+to shoot your man?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He didn't!  I'll tell you all about it after they're gone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I bet you don't get shet of them the night," said Mrs. Freshett.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right!" said mother.  "Whatever Dr. Fenner thinks.  I won't have
+Mr. Pryor moved until it can't hurt him, if he stays a week.  I blame
+her quite as much as I do him; from what I know.  If a woman is going
+to live with a man, there are times when she's got to put her foot
+down&mdash;flat&mdash;most unmercifully flat!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ain't she though!" said Mrs. Freshett; then she and mother just
+laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There!  What did I tell you?  I feel as good as if father had patted me
+on the head and bragged on me a lot.  I THOUGHT mother wouldn't think
+that Mr. Pryor was ALL to blame, and she didn't.  I figured that out by
+myself, too.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Every minute Mr. Pryor grew better.  He breathed easier, and mother
+tilted on her toes and waved her hands, when he moved his feet, threw
+back his head, lifted his hand to it, and acted like he was almost over
+it, and still in shape to manage himself.  She hurried to tell Mrs.
+Pryor, and I know mother didn't like it when she never even said she
+was glad, or went to see for herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie and the Princess watched him, while every one else went to
+supper.  Laddie picked up Mrs. Pryor's chair, carried her to the
+dining-room, and set her in my place beside father.  He placed Dr.
+Fenner next her, and left Robert to sit with Shelley.  I don't think
+Mrs. Pryor quite liked that, but no one asked her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I watched and listened until everything seemed to be going right there,
+and then I slipped into the parlour, where Laddie and the Princess were
+caring for Mr. Pryor.  With one hand Laddie held hers, the other
+grasped Mr. Pryor's wrist.  Laddie never took his eyes from that white,
+drawn face, except to smile at her, and squeeze her hand every little
+while.  At last Mr. Pryor turned over and sighed, pretty soon he opened
+his eyes, and looked at Laddie, then at the Princess, and it was
+nothing new to see them, so he smiled and dozed again.  After a while
+he opened them wider, then he saw the piano&mdash;that was an eye-opener for
+any one&mdash;and the strange room, so he asked, most as plain as he ever
+talked, why he was at our house again, and then he began to remember.
+He struggled to sit up and the colour came into his face.  So Laddie
+let go the Princess, and held him down while he said:  "Mr. Pryor,
+answer me this.  Do you want to spend the remainder of your life in an
+invalid's chair, or would you like to walk abroad and sit a horse
+again?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He glared at Laddie, but he heard how things were plainly enough.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie held him, while he explained what a fight we had to unlock his
+muscles, and start him going again, and how, if we hadn't loved him,
+and wanted him so, and had left him untouched until the Doctor came,
+very likely he'd have been paralyzed all the rest of his life, if he
+hadn't died; and he said he wished he HAD, and he didn't THANK any one
+for saving him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh yes you do!" said Laddie, the same as he'd have talked to Leon.
+"You can't stuff me on that, and you needn't try.  Being dead is a
+cold, clammy proposition, that all of us put off as long as we can.
+You know you want to see Pamela in her own home.  You know you are
+interested in how I come out with those horses.  You know you want the
+little people you spoke of, around you.  You know the pain and suspense
+you have borne have almost driven you insane, and it was because you
+cared so deeply.  Now lie still, and keep quiet!  All of us are tired
+and there's no sense in making us go through this again, besides the
+risk of crippling yourself that you run.  Right here in this house are
+the papers to prove that your nephew took your money, and hid it in
+your son's clothing, as he already had done a hundred lesser things,
+before, purposely to estrange you.  Hold steady!  You must hear this!
+The sooner you know it, the better you'll feel.  You remember, don't
+you, that before your nephew entered your home, you idolized your son.
+You thought the things he did were amusing.  A boy is a boy, and if
+he's alive, he's very apt to be lively.  Mother could tell you a few
+pranks that Leon has put us through; but they're only a boy's
+foolishness, they are not unusual or unforgivable.  I've gone over the
+evidence your son brings, with extreme care, so has father.  Both of us
+are quite familiar with common law.  He has every proof you can
+possibly desire.  You can't get around it, even if your heart wasn't
+worn out with rebellion, and you were not crazy to have the loving
+sympathy of your family again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't believe a word of it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have got to!  I tell you it is PROOF, man!  The documents are in
+this house now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He forged them, or stole them, as he took the money!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie just laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How you do long, and fight, to be convinced!" he said.  "I don't blame
+you!  When anything means this much, of course you must be sure.  But
+you'll know your nephew's signature; also your lawyer's.  You'll know
+letters from old friends who are above question.  Sandy McSheel has
+written you that he was with Robert through all of it, and he gives you
+his word that everything is all right.  You will believe him, won't
+you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Big tears began to squeeze from under Mr. Pryor's lids, until Laddie
+and the Princess each tried to see how much of him they could hold to
+keep him together-like.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me!" he said at last, so they took turns explaining everything
+plain as day, and soon he listened without being held.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When they had told him everything they could think of, he asked: "Did
+Robert kill Emmet?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am very happy to be able to tell you that he did not.  It would have
+been painful, and not helped a bad matter a particle.  Your nephew had
+dissipated until he was only a skeleton just breathing his last.  It's
+probable that his fear of death helped your son out, so that he got the
+evidence he wanted easier than he hoped to in the beginning.  I don't
+mean that he is dead now; but he is passing slowly, and loathsomely.
+Robert thinks word that he has gone will come any hour.  Think how
+pleasant it will be to have your son!  Think how happy your home will
+be now!  Think how you will love to see Sandy, and all your old
+friends!  Think how glad you'll be to go home, and take charge of your
+estate!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Think!" cried Mr. Pryor, pushing Laddie away and sitting up: "Think
+how I shall enjoy wringing the last drop of blood from that craven's
+body with these old hands!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What a sight he did look to be sure!  Sick, half-crazy, on the very
+verge of the grave himself, and wanting to kill a poor man already
+dying.  Aren't some people too curious?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laddie carefully laid him down, straightened him out and held him
+again.  Mother always said he was "patient as Job," and that day it
+proved to be a good thing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're determined to keep yourself well supplied with trouble,"
+laughed Laddie.  I don't believe any one else would have dared.  "Now
+to an unbiased observer, it would seem that you'd be ready to let well
+enough alone.  You have your son back, you have him fully exonerated,
+you have much of your property, you are now ready for freedom, life,
+and love, with the best of us; you have also two weddings on your hands
+in the near future.  Why in the name of sense are you anxious for more?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should have thought that Sandy McSheel, if he's a real friend of
+mine&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sandy tells you all about it in the letter he has sent.  He went with
+Robert fully intending to do that very thing for you, but the poor
+creature was too loathsome.  The sight of him made Sandy sick.  He
+writes you that when he saw the horrible spectacle, all he could think
+of was to secure the evidence needed and get away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly the Princess arose and knelt beside the davenport.  She put
+her arms around her father's neck and drew his wrinkled, white old face
+up against her lovely one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Daddy!  Dear old Daddy!" she cried.  "I've had such a hard spot in my
+heart against you for so long.  Oh do let's forget everything, and
+begin all over again; begin away back where we were before Emmet ever
+came.  Oh Daddy, do let's forget, and begin all over new, like other
+people!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He held her tight a minute, then his lips began whispering against her
+ear.  Finally he said:  "Take yourselves off, and send Robert here.  I
+want my son.  Oh I want my boy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a long time before Robert came from the parlour; when he did, it
+was only to get his mother and take her back with him; then it was a
+still longer time before the door opened; but when it did, it was
+perfectly sure that they were all friends again.  Then Leon went to
+tell Thomas, and he came with the big carriage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+White and shaking, Mr. Pryor was lifted into it and they went home
+together, taking Shelley with them to stay that night; so no doubt she
+was proposed to and got her kiss before she slept.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That fall there were two weddings at our church at the same time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sally's had been fine; but it wasn't worth mentioning beside Laddie and
+the Princess, and Robert and Shelley.  You should have seen my mother!
+She rocked like a kingbird on the top twig of the winesap, which was
+the tallest tree in our orchard, and for once there wasn't a single fly
+in her ointment, not one, she said so herself, and so did father.  As
+we watched the big ve-hi-ackle, as Leon called it, creep slowly down
+the Little Hill, it made me think of that pathetic poem, "The Three
+Warnings," in McGuffey's Sixth.  I guess I gave Mr. Pryor the first,
+that time he got so angry he hit his horse until it almost ran away.
+Mother delivered the second when she curry-combed him about the taxes,
+and Mrs. Freshett finished the job.  The last two lines read as if they
+had been especially written about him:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"And now old Dodson, turning pale,<BR>
+Yields to his fate&mdash;so ends my tale."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Laddie, by Gene Stratton-Porter
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #286 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/286)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Laddie, by Gene Stratton Porter
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Laddie
+
+Author: Gene Stratton Porter
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2008 [EBook #286]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADDIE ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+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 hummingbird stood on air
+before them.  A sort of golden throbbing filled the woods, and my heart
+began to leap, why, I don't know; but I'm sure Laddie's did too, for I
+looked at him and his eyes were shining as I never had seen them
+before, while his cheeks were a little red, and he was breathing like
+when you've been running; then suddenly his body grew tense against
+mine, and that meant she was coming.
+
+Like that first day, she came slowly through the woods, stopping here
+and there to touch the trunk of a tree, put back a branch, or bend over
+a flower face.  Brown as the wood floor was her dress, and cardinal
+flowers blazed on her breast, and the same colour showed on her cheeks
+and lips.  Her eyes were like Laddie's for brightness, and she was
+breathing the same way.  I thought sure there was going to be something
+to remember a lifetime--I was so excited I couldn't stand still.
+Before it could happen Laddie went and said it was a "beautiful day,"
+and she said "it didn't show in the woods, but the pastures needed
+rain."  Then she kissed me.  Well if I ever!  I sank on the throne and
+sat there.  They went on talking like that, until it was too dull to
+bear, so I slipped out and wandered away to see what I could find.
+When I grew tired and went back, Laddie was sitting on the Magic Carpet
+with his back against the beech, and the Princess was on the throne
+reading from a little book, reading such interesting things that I
+decided to listen.  After a while she came to this:
+
+  "Thou are mated with a clown,
+  And the grossness of his nature, will have weight to bear thee
+      down."
+
+Laddie threw back his head, and how he laughed!  The Princess put down
+the book and looked at him so surprised.
+
+"Are you reading that to me because you think it appropriate?" asked
+Laddie.
+
+"I am reading it because it is conceded to be one of the most beautiful
+poems ever written," said the Princess.
+
+"You knew when you began that you would come to those lines."
+
+"I never even thought of such a thing."
+
+"But you knew that is how your father would regard any relationship,
+friendly or deeper, with me!"
+
+"I cannot possibly be held responsible for what my father thinks."
+
+"It is natural that you should think alike."
+
+"Not necessarily!  You told me recently that you didn't agree with your
+father on many subjects."
+
+"Kindly answer me this," said Laddie:  "Do you feel that I'm a 'clown'
+because I'm not schooled to the point on all questions of good manners?
+Do you find me gross because I plow and sow?"
+
+"You surprise me," said the Princess.  "My consenting to know and to
+spend a friendly hour with you here is sufficient answer.  I have not
+found the slightest fault with your manners.  I have seen no suspicion
+of 'grossness' about you."
+
+"Will you tell me, frankly, exactly what you do think of me?"
+
+"Surely!  I think you are a clean, decent man, who occasionally kindly
+consents to put a touch of human interest into an hour, for a very
+lonely girl.  What has happened, Laddie?  This is not like you."
+
+Laddie sat straight and studied the beech branches.  Father said beech
+trees didn't amount to much; but I first learned all about them from
+that one, and what it taught me made me almost worship them always.
+There were the big trunk with great rough spreading roots, the bark in
+little ridges in places, smooth purple gray between, big lichens for
+ornament, the low flat branches, the waxy, wavy-edged leaves, with
+clear veins, and the delicious nuts in their little brown burrs.  The
+Princess and I both stared at the branches and waited while a little
+breath of air stirred the leaves, the sunshine flickered, and a cricket
+sang a sort of lonesome song.  Laddie leaned against the tree again,
+and he was thinking so hard, to look at him made me begin to repeat to
+myself the beech part of that beautiful churchyard poem our big folks
+recite:
+
+  "There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech,
+   That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
+   His listless length at noontide he would stretch,
+   And pore upon the brook that babbles by."
+
+
+Only he was studying so deeply you could almost feel what was in his
+mind, and it was not about the brook at all, even if one ran close.
+Soon he began talking.
+
+"Not so bad!" he said.  "You might think worse.  I admit the
+cleanliness, I strive for decency, I delight in being humanely
+interesting, even for an hour; you might think worse, much worse!  You
+might consider me a 'clown.'  'A country clod.'  Rather a lowdown,
+common thing, a 'clod,' don't you think?  And a 'clown'!  And 'gross'
+on top of that!"
+
+"What can you mean?" asked the Princess.
+
+"Since you don't seem to share the estimate of me, I believe I'll tell
+you," said Laddie.  "The other day I was driving from the gravel pit
+with a very heavy load.  The road was wide and level on either side.  A
+man came toward me on horseback.  Now the law of the road is to give
+half to a vehicle similar to the one you are driving, but to keep all
+of it when you are heavily loaded, if you are passing people afoot or
+horseback.  The man took half the road, and kept it until the nose of
+his horse touched one of the team I was driving.  I stopped and said:
+'Good morning, sir!  Do you wish to speak with me?'  He called angrily:
+'Get out of my way, you clod!'  'Sorry sir, but I can't,' I said.  'The
+law gives me this road when I am heavily loaded, and you are on foot or
+horseback.'"
+
+"What did he do?" asked the Princess.
+
+And from the way she looked I just knew she guessed the man was the
+same one I thought of.
+
+"He raised his whip to strike my horse," said Laddie.
+
+"Ah, surely!" said the Princess.  "Always an arm raised to strike.  And
+you, Man?  What did you do?" she cried eagerly.
+
+"I stood on my load, suddenly," said Laddie, "and I called: 'Hold one
+minute!'"
+
+"And he?" breathed the Princess.
+
+"Something made him pause with his arm still raised.  I said to him:
+'You must not strike my horse.  It never has been struck, and it can't
+defend itself.  If you want to come a few steps farther and tackle me,
+come ahead!  I can take it or return it, as I choose.'"
+
+"Go on!" said the Princess.
+
+"That's all," said Laddie, "or at least almost all."
+
+"Did he strike?"
+
+"He did not.  He stared at me a second, and then he rode around me; but
+he was making forceful remarks as he passed about 'country clods,' and
+there was an interesting one about a 'gross clown.'  What you read made
+me think of it, that is all."
+
+The Princess stared into the beech branches for a time and then she
+said:  "I will ask your pardon for him.  He always had a domineering
+temper, and trouble he had lately has almost driven him mad; he is
+scarcely responsible at times.  I hesitate about making him angry."
+
+"I think perhaps," said Laddie, "I would have done myself credit if I
+had recognized that, and given him the road, when he made a point of
+claiming it."
+
+"Indeed no!" cried the Princess.  "To be beaten at the game he started
+was exactly what he needed.  If you had turned from his way, he would
+have considered you a clod all his life.  Since you made him go around,
+it may possibly dawn on him that you are a man.  You did the very best
+thing."
+
+Then she began to laugh, and how she did laugh.
+
+"I would give my allowance for a quarter to have seen it," she cried.
+"I must hurry home and tell mother."
+
+"Does your mother know about me?" he demanded.  "Does she know that you
+come here?"
+
+The Princess arose and stood very tall and straight.
+
+"You may beg my pardon or cease to know me," she said.  "Whatever led
+you to suppose that I would know or meet you without my mother's
+knowledge?"
+
+Then she started toward the entrance.
+
+"One minute!" cried Laddie.
+
+A leap carried him to her side.  He caught her hands and held them
+tight, and looked straight into her eyes.  Then he kissed her hands
+over and over.  I thought from the look on her face he might have
+kissed her cheek if he had dared risk it; but he didn't seem to notice.
+Then she stooped and kissed me, and turned toward home, while Laddie
+and I crossed the woods to the west road, and went back past the
+schoolhouse.  I was so tired Laddie tied the strings together and hung
+my shoes across his shoulders and took me by the arm the last mile.
+
+All of them were at home when we got there, and Miss Amelia came to the
+gate to meet us.  She was mealy-mouthed and good as pie, not at all as
+I had supposed she would be.  I wonder what Laddie said to her.  But
+then he always could manage things for every one.  That set me to
+wondering if by any possible means he could fix them for himself.  I
+climbed to the catalpa to think, and the more I thought, the more I
+feared he couldn't; but still mother always says one never can tell
+until they try, and I knew he would try with every ounce of brain and
+muscle in him.  I sat there until the supper bell rang, and then I
+washed and reached the table last.  The very first thing, mother asked
+how I bruised my face, and before I could think what to tell her, Leon
+said just as careless like:  "Oh she must have run against something
+hard, playing tag at recess."  Laddie began talking about Peter coming
+that night, and every one forgot me, but pretty soon I slipped a glance
+at Miss Amelia, and saw that her face was redder than mine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The Wedding Gown
+
+  "The gay belles of fashion may boast of excelling
+    In waltz or cotillon, at whist or quadrille;
+  And seek admiration by vauntingly telling
+    Of drawing and painting, and musical skill;
+  But give me the fair one, in country or city,
+    Whose home and its duties are dear to her heart,
+  Who cheerfully warbles some rustical ditty,
+    While plying the needle with exquisite art:
+  The bright little needle, the swift-flying needle,
+    The needle directed by beauty and art."
+
+
+The next morning Miss Amelia finished the chapter--that made two for
+our family.  Father always read one before breakfast--no wonder I knew
+the Bible quite well--then we sang a song, and she made a stiff, little
+prayer.  I had my doubts about her prayers; she was on no such terms
+with the Lord as my father.  He got right at Him and talked like a
+doctor, and you felt he had some influence, and there was at least a
+possibility that he might get what he asked for; but Miss Amelia prayed
+as if the Lord were ten million miles away, and she would be surprised
+to pieces if she got anything she wanted.  When she asked the Almighty
+to make us good, obedient children, there was not a word she said that
+showed she trusted either the Lord or us, or thought there was anything
+between us and heaven that might make us good because we wanted to be.
+You couldn't keep your eyes from the big gad and ruler on her desk; she
+often fingered them as she prayed, and you knew from her stiff, little,
+sawed-out petition that her faith was in implements, and she'd hit you
+a crack the minute she was the least angry, same as she had me the day
+before.  I didn't feel any too good toward her, but when the blood of
+the Crusaders was in the veins, right must be done even if it took a
+struggle.  I had to live up to those little gold shells on the trinket.
+Father said they knew I was coming down the line, so they put on a bird
+for me; but I told him I would be worthy of the shells too.  This took
+about as hard a fight for me as any Crusade would for a big, trained
+soldier.  I had been wrong, Laddie had made me see that.  So I held up
+my hand, and Miss Amelia saw me as she picked up Ray's arithmetic.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+I held to the desk to brace myself, and tried twice before I could
+raise my voice so that she heard.
+
+"Please, Miss Amelia," I said, "I was wrong about the birds yesterday.
+Not that they don't fight--they do!  But I was wrong to contradict you
+before every one, and on your first day, and if you'll only excuse me,
+the next time you make a mistake, I'll tell you after school or at
+recess."
+
+The room was so still you could hear the others breathing.  Miss Amelia
+picked up the ruler and started toward me.  Possibly I raised my hands.
+That would be no Crusader way, but you might do it before you had time
+to think, when the ruler was big and your head was the only place that
+would be hit.  The last glimpse I had of her in the midst of all my
+trouble made me think of Sabethany Perkins.
+
+Sabethany died, and they buried her at the foot of the hill in our
+graveyard before I could remember.  But her people thought heaps of
+her, and spent much money on the biggest tombstone in the cemetery, and
+planted pinies and purple phlox on her, and went every Sunday to visit
+her.  When they moved away, they missed her so, they decided to come
+back and take her along.  The men were at work, and Leon and I went to
+see what was going on.  They told us, and said we had better go away,
+because possibly things might happen that children would sleep better
+not to see.  Strange how a thing like that makes you bound you will
+see.  We went and sat on the fence and waited.  Soon they reached
+Sabethany, but they could not seem to get her out.  They tried, and
+tried, and at last they sent for more men.  It took nine of them to
+bring her to the surface.  What little wood was left, they laid back to
+see what made her so fearfully heavy, and there she was turned to solid
+stone.  They couldn't chip a piece off her with the shovel.  Mother
+always said, "For goodness sake, don't let your mouth hang open," and
+as a rule we kept ours shut; but you should have seen Leon's when he
+saw Sabethany wouldn't chip off, and no doubt mine was as bad.
+
+"When Gabriel blows his trumpet, and the dead arise and come forth,
+what on earth will they do with Sabethany?" I gasped.  "Why, she
+couldn't fly to Heaven with wings a mile wide, and what use could they
+make of her if she got there?"
+
+"I can't see a thing she'd be good for except a hitching post," said
+Leon, "and I guess they don't let horses in.  Let's go home."
+
+He acted sick and I felt that way; so we went, but the last glimpse of
+Sabethany remained with me.
+
+As my head went down that day, I saw that Miss Amelia looked exactly
+like her.  You would have needed a pick-ax or a crowbar to flake off
+even a tiny speck of her.  When I had waited for my head to be cracked,
+until I had time to remember that a Crusader didn't dodge and hide, I
+looked up, and there she stood with the ruler lifted; but now she had
+turned just the shade of the wattles on our fightingest turkey gobbler.
+
+"Won't you please forgive me?"
+
+I never knew I had said it until I heard it, and then the only way to
+be sure was because no one else would have been likely to speak at that
+time.
+
+Miss Amelia's arm dropped and she glared at me.  I wondered whether I
+ever would understand grown people; I doubted if they understood
+themselves, for after turning to stone in a second--father said it had
+taken Sabethany seven years--and changing to gobbler red, Miss Amelia
+suddenly began to laugh.  To laugh, of all things!  And then, of
+course, every one else just yelled.  I was so mortified I dropped my
+head again and began to cry as I never would if she'd hit me.
+
+"Don't feel badly!" said Miss Amelia.  "Certainly, I'll forgive you.  I
+see you had no intention of giving offense, so none is taken.  Get out
+your book and study hard on another lesson."
+
+That was surprising.  I supposed I'd have to do the same one over, but
+I might take a new one.  I was either getting along fast, or Miss
+Amelia had her fill of birds.  I wiped my eyes as straight in front of
+me as I could slip up my handkerchief, and began studying the first
+lesson in my reader:  "Pretty bee, pray tell me why, thus from flower
+to flower you fly, culling sweets the livelong day, never leaving off
+to play?"  That was a poetry piece, and it was quite cheery, although
+it was all strung together like prose, but you couldn't fool me on
+poetry; I knew it every time.  As I studied I felt better, and when
+Miss Amelia came to hear me she was good as gold.  She asked if I liked
+honey, and I started to tell her about the queen bee, but she had no
+time to listen, so she said I should wait until after school.  Then we
+both forgot it, for when we reached home, the Princess' horse was
+hitched to our rack, and I fairly ran in, I was so anxious to know what
+was happening.
+
+I was just perfectly amazed at grown people!  After all the things our
+folks had said!  You'd have supposed that Laddie would have been locked
+in the barn; father reading the thirty second Psalm to the Princess,
+and mother on her knees asking God to open her eyes like Saul's when he
+tried to kick against the pricks, and make her to see, as he did, that
+God was not a myth, Well, there was no one in the sitting-room or the
+parlour, but there were voices farther on; so I slipped in.  I really
+had to slip, for there was no other place they could be except the
+parlour bedroom, and Sally's wedding things were locked up there, and
+we were not to see until everything was finished, like I told you.
+
+Well, this was what I saw: our bedroom had been a porch once, and when
+we had been crowded on account of all of us coming, father enclosed it
+and made a room.  But he never had taken out the window in the wall.
+So all I had to do when I wanted to know how fast the dresses were
+being made, was to shove up the window above my bed, push back the
+blind, and look in.  I didn't care what she had.  I just wanted to get
+ahead of her and see before she was ready, to pay her for beating me.
+I knew what she had, and I meant to tell her, and walk away with my
+nose in the air when she offered to show me; but this was different.  I
+was wild to see what was going on because the Princess was there.  The
+room was small, and the big cherry four-poster was very large, and all
+of them were talking, so no one paid the slightest attention to me.
+
+Mother sat in the big rocking chair, with Sally on one of its arms,
+leaning against her shoulder.  Shelley and May and the sewing woman
+were crowded between the wall and the footboard, and the others lined
+against the wall.  The bed was heaped in a tumble of everything a woman
+ever wore.  Seemed to me there was more stuff there than all the rest
+of us had, put together.  The working dresses and aprons had been made
+on the machine, but there were heaps and stacks of hand-made
+underclothes.  I could see the lovely chemise mother embroidered lying
+on top of a pile of bedding, and over and over Sally had said that
+every stitch in the wedding gown must be taken by hand.  The Princess
+stood beside the bed.  A funny little tight hat like a man's and a
+riding whip lay on a chair close by.  I couldn't see what she wore--her
+usual riding clothes probably--for she had a nip in each shoulder of a
+dress she was holding to her chin and looking down at.  After all, I
+hadn't seen everything!  Never before or since have I seen a lovelier
+dress than that.  It was what always had been wrapped in the sheet on
+the foot of the bed and I hadn't got a peep at it.  The pale green silk
+with tiny pink moss roses in it, that I had been thinking was the
+wedding dress, looked about right to wash the dishes in, compared with
+this.
+
+This was a wedding dress.  You didn't need any one to tell you.  The
+Princess had as much red as I ever had seen in her cheeks, her eyes
+were bright, and she was half-laughing and half-crying.
+
+"Oh you lucky, lucky girl!" she was saying.  "What a perfectly
+beautiful bride you will be!  Never have I seen a more wonderful dress!
+Where did you get the material?"
+
+Now we had been trained always to wait for mother to answer a visitor
+as she thought suitable, or at least to speak one at a time and not
+interrupt; but about six of those grown people told the Princess all at
+the same time how our oldest sister Elizabeth was married to a merchant
+who had a store at Westchester and how he got the dress in New York,
+and gave it to Sally for her wedding present, or she never could have
+had it.
+
+The Princess lifted it and set it down softly.  "Oh look!" she cried.
+"Look!  It will stand alone!"
+
+There it stood!  Silk stiff enough to stand by itself, made into a
+little round waist, cut with a round neck and sleeves elbow length and
+flowing almost to where Sally's knees would come.  It was a pale
+pearl-gray silk crossed in bars four inches square, made up of a dim
+yellow line almost as wide as a wheat straw, with a thread of black on
+each side of it, and all over, very wide apart, were little faint
+splashes of black as if they had been lightly painted on.  The skirt
+was so wide it almost filled the room.  Every inch of that dress was
+lined with soft, white silk.  There was exquisite lace made into a flat
+collar around the neck, and ruffled from sight up the inside of the
+wide sleeves.  That was the beginning.  The finish was something you
+never saw anything like before.  It was a trimming made of white and
+yellow beads.  There was a little heading of white beads sewed into a
+pattern, then a lacy fringe that was pale yellow beads, white inside,
+each an inch long, that dangled, and every bead ended with three tiny
+white ones.  That went around the neck, the outside of the sleeves, and
+in a pattern like a big letter V all the way around the skirt.  And
+there it stood--alone!
+
+The Princess, graceful as a bird and glowing like fire, danced around
+it, and touched it, and lifted the sleeves, and made the bead fringe
+swing, and laughed, and talked every second.  Sally, and mother, and
+all of them had smiled such wide smiles for so long, their faces looked
+almost as set as Sabethany's, but of course far different.  Being dead
+was one thing, getting ready for a wedding another.
+
+And it looked too as if God might be a myth, for all they cared, so
+long as the Princess could make the wedding dress stand alone, and talk
+a blue streak of things that pleased them.  It was not put on either,
+for there stood the dress, shimmering like the inside of a pearl-lined
+shell, white as a lily, and the tinkly gold fringe.  No one COULD have
+said enough about it, so no matter what the Princess said, it had to be
+all right.  She kept straight on showing all of them how lovely it was,
+exactly as if they hadn't seen it before, and she had to make them
+understand about it, as if she felt afraid they might have missed some
+elegant touch she had seen.
+
+"Do look how the lace falls when I raise this sleeve!  Oh how will you
+wear this and think of a man enough to say the right words in the right
+place?"
+
+Mother laughed, and so did all of them.
+
+"Do please show me the rest," begged the Princess.  "I know there are
+slippers and a bonnet!"
+
+Sally just oozed pride.  She untied the strings and pushed the
+prettiest striped bag from a lovely pink bandbox and took out a dear
+little gray bonnet with white ribbons, and the yellow bead fringe, and
+a bunch of white roses with a few green leaves.  These she touched
+softly, "I'm not quite sure about the leaves," she said.
+
+The Princess had the bonnet, turning and tilting it.
+
+"Perfect!" she cried.  "Quite perfect!  You need that touch of colour,
+and it blends with everything.  How I envy you!  Oh why doesn't some
+one ask me, so I can have things like these?  I think your brother is a
+genius.  I'm going to ride to Westchester tomorrow and give him an
+order to fill for me the next time he goes to the city.  No one shows
+me such fabrics when I go, and Aunt Beatrice sends nothing from London
+I like nearly so well.  Oh!  Oh!"
+
+She was on her knees now, lifting the skirt to set under little white
+satin slippers with gold buckles, and white bead buttons.  When she had
+them arranged to suit her, she sat on the floor and kept straight on
+saying the things my mother and sisters seemed crazy to hear.  When
+Sally showed her the long white silk mitts that went with the bonnet,
+the Princess cried:  "Oh do ride home with me and let me give you a
+handkerchief Aunt Beatrice sent me, to carry in your hand!"
+
+Then her face flushed and she added without giving Sally time to say
+what she would do:  "Or I can bring it the next time I come past.  It
+belongs with these things and I have no use for it.  May I?"
+
+"Please do!  I'll use it for the thing I borrow."
+
+"But I mean it to be a gift," said the Princess.  "It was made to go
+with these lace mitts and satin slippers.  You must take it!"
+
+"Thank you very much," said Sally.  "If you really want me to have it,
+of course I'd love to."
+
+"I'll bring it to-morrow," promised the Princess.  "And I wish you'd
+let me try a way I know to dress hair for a wedding.  Yours is so
+beautiful."
+
+"You're kind, I'm sure," said Sally.  "I had intended to wear it as I
+always do, so I would appear perfectly natural to the folks; but if you
+know a more becoming way, I could begin it now, and they would be
+familiar with it by that time."
+
+"I shan't touch it," said the Princess, studying Sally's face.  "Your
+idea is right.  You don't want to commence any new, unfamiliar style
+that would make you seem different, just at a time when every one
+should see how lovely you are, as you always have been.  But don't
+forget to wear something blue, and something borrowed for luck, and oh
+do please put on one of my garters!"
+
+"Well for mercy sake!" cried my mother.  "Why?"
+
+"So some one will propose to me before the year is out," laughed the
+Princess.  "I think it must be the most fun of all, to make beautiful
+things for your very own home, and lovely dresses, and be surrounded by
+friends all eager to help you, and to arrange a house and live with a
+man you love well enough to marry, and fix for little people who might
+come----"
+
+"You know perfectly there isn't a single man in the county who wouldn't
+propose to you, if you'd let him come within a mile of you," said
+Shelley.
+
+"When the right man comes I'll go half the mile to meet him? you may be
+sure of that; won't I, Mrs. Stanton?" the Princess turned to mother.
+
+"I have known girls who went even farther," said my mother rather dryly.
+
+"I draw the line at half," laughed the Princess.  "Now I must go; I
+have been so long my people will be wondering what I'm doing."
+
+Standing in the middle of the room she put on her hat, picked up her
+whip and gloves, and led the way to the hitching rack, while all of us
+followed.  At the gate stood Laddie as he had come from the field.  His
+old hat was on the back of his head, his face flushed, his collar
+loosened so that his strong white neck showed, and his sleeves were
+rolled to the elbow, as they had been all summer, and his arms were
+burned almost to blisters.  When he heard us coming he opened the gate,
+went to the rack, untied the Princess' horse and led it beside the
+mounting block.  As she came toward him, he took off his hat and
+pitched it over the fence on the grass.
+
+"Miss Pryor, allow me to make you acquainted with my son," said mother.
+
+I felt as if I would blow up.  I couldn't keep my eyes from turning
+toward the Princess.  Gee!  I could have saved my feelings.  She made
+mother the prettiest little courtsey I ever set eyes on, and then
+turned and made a deeper one to Laddie.
+
+"I met your son in one of the village stores some time ago," she said.
+"Back her one step farther, please!"
+
+Laddie backed the horse, and quicker than you could see how it was
+done, she flashed up the steps and sat the saddle; but as she leaned
+over the horse's neck to take the rein from Laddie, he got one level
+look straight in the eyes that I was sure none of the others saw,
+because they were not watching for it, and I was.  Laddie bowed from
+the waist, and put the reins in her fingers all in one movement.  He
+caught the glance she gave him too; I could almost feel it like a band
+passing between them.  Then she called a laughing good-bye to all of us
+at once, and showed us how to ride right, as she flashed toward the
+Little Hill.  That was riding, you may believe, and mother sighed as
+she watched her.
+
+"If I were a girl again," she said, "I would ride as well as that, or
+I'd never mount a horse."
+
+"She's been trained from her cradle, and her father deals in horses.
+Half the battle in riding is a thoroughbred," said Laddie.  "No such
+horse as that ever stepped these roads before."
+
+"And no such girl ever travelled them," said my mother, folding her
+hands one over the other on top of a post of the hitching rack.  "I
+must say I don't know how this is coming out, and it troubles me."
+
+"Why, what's up?" asked Laddie, covering her hands with his and looking
+her in the eyes.
+
+"Just this," said my mother.  "She's more beautiful of face and form
+than God ought to allow any woman to be, in mercy to the men who will
+be forced to meet her.  Her speech is highly cultured.  Her manners are
+perfect, and that is a big and unusual thing in a girl of her age.
+Every word she said, every move she made to-day, was exactly as I would
+have been proud to hear, and to see a daughter of mine speak and move.
+If I had only myself to consider, I would make her my friend, because
+I'm seasoned in the ways of the world, and she could influence me only
+as I chose to allow her.  With you youngsters it is different.  You'll
+find her captivating, and you may let her ways sway you without even
+knowing it.  All these outward things are not essential; they are
+pleasing, I grant, but they have nothing to do with the one big,
+elemental fact that a Godless life is not even half a life.  I never
+yet have known any man or woman who attempted it who did not waste
+life's grandest opportunities, and then come crawling and defeated to
+the foot of the cross in the end, asking God's mercy where none was
+deserved or earned.  It seems to me a craven way.  I know all about the
+forgiveness on the cross!  I know God is big enough and merciful enough
+to accept even death-bed repentance, but what is that to compare with
+laying out your course and running it a lifetime without swerving?  I
+detest and distrust this infidel business.  I want no child of mine
+under its influence, or in contact with it."
+
+"But when your time comes, if you said just those things to hers and
+won her, what a triumph, little mother!"
+
+"'If!'" answered mother.  "That's always the trouble!  One can't be
+sure!  'If' I knew I could accomplish that, I would get on my knees and
+wrestle with the Lord for the salvation of the soul of a girl like
+that, not to mention her poor, housebound mother, and that man with the
+unhappiest face I ever have seen, her father.  It's worth trying, but
+suppose I try and fail, and at the same time find that in bringing her
+among us she has influenced some of mine to the loss of their immortal
+souls then, what will I have done?"
+
+"Mother," said Laddie; "mother, have you such a poor opinion of the
+things you and father have taught us, and the lives you've lived before
+us, that you're really afraid of a slip of a girl, almost a stranger?"
+
+"The most attractive girl I ever have seen, and mighty willing to be no
+longer a stranger, Lad."
+
+"Well, I can't promise for the others," said Laddie, "but for myself I
+will give you my word of honour that I won't be influenced the breadth
+of one hair by her, in a doctrinal way."
+
+"Humph!" said my mother.  "And it is for you I fear.  If a young man is
+given the slightest encouragement by a girl like that, even his God
+can't always hold him; and you never have made a confession of faith,
+Laddie.  It is you she will be most likely to captivate."
+
+"If you think I have any chance, I'll go straight over and ask her
+father for her this very evening," said Laddie, and even mother
+laughed; then all of us started to the house, for it was almost supper
+time.  I got ready and thought I'd take one more peep at the dress
+before Sally pinned it in the sheet again, and when I went back, there
+all huddled in a bunch before it stood Miss Amelia, the tears running
+down her cheeks.
+
+"Did Sally say you might come here?" I asked.
+
+"No," said Miss Amelia, "but I've been so crazy to see I just slipped
+in to take a peep when I noticed the open door.  I'll go this minute.
+Please don't tell her."
+
+I didn't say what I would do, but I didn't intend to.
+
+"What are you crying about?" I inquired.
+
+"Ah, I too have known love," sobbed Miss Amelia.  "Once I made a
+wedding dress, and expected to be a happy bride."
+
+"Well, wasn't you?" I asked, and knew at once it was a silly question,
+for of course she would not be a miss, if she had not missed marrying.
+
+"He died!" sobbed Miss Amelia.
+
+If he could have seen her then, I believe he'd have been glad of it;
+but maybe he looked as bony and dejected as she did before he went; and
+he may have turned to stone afterward, as sometimes happens.  Right
+then I heard Sally coming, so I grabbed Miss Amelia and dragged her
+under the fourposter, where I always hid when caught doing something I
+shouldn't.  But Sally had so much stuff she couldn't keep all of it on
+the bed, and when she stooped and lifted the ruffle to shove a box
+under, she pushed it right against us, and knelt to look, and there we
+were.
+
+"Well upon my soul!" she cried, and sat flat on the floor, holding the
+ruffle, peering in.  "Miss Amelia!  And in tears!  Whatever is the
+trouble?"
+
+Miss Amelia's face was redder than any crying ever made it, and I saw
+she wanted to kill me for getting her into such a fix, and if she
+became too angry probably she'd take it out on me in school the next
+day, so I thought I'd better keep her at work shedding tears.
+
+"'HE DIED!'"  I told Sally as pathetically as ever I could.
+
+Sally dropped the ruffle instantly, but I saw her knees shake against
+the floor.  After a while she lifted the curtain and offered Miss
+Amelia her hand.
+
+"I was leaving my dress to show you before putting it away," she said.
+
+I didn't believe it; but that was what she said.  Maybe it was an
+impulse.  Mother always said Sally was a creature of impulse.  When she
+took off her flannel petticoat and gave it to poor little half-frozen
+Annie Hasty, that was a good impulse, but it sent Sally to bed for a
+week.  And when she threw a shovel of coals on Bill Ramsdell's dog,
+because Bill was a shiftless lout, and the dog was so starved it all
+the time came over and sucked our eggs, that was a bad impulse, because
+it didn't do Bill a particle of good, and it hurt the dog, which would
+have been glad to suck eggs at home, no doubt, if Bill hadn't been too
+worthless to keep hens.
+
+That was a good impulse she had then, for she asked Miss Amelia to help
+her straighten the room, and of course that meant to fold and put away
+wedding things.  Any woman would have been wild to do that.  Then she
+told Miss Amelia that she was going to ask father to dismiss school for
+half a day, and allow her to see the wedding, and she asked her if she
+would help serve the breakfast.
+
+Miss Amelia wiped her eyes, and soon laughed and was just beaming.  I
+would have been willing to bet my three cents for lead pencils the next
+time the huckster came, that Sally never thought of wanting her until
+that minute; and then she arranged for her to wait on table to keep her
+from trying to eat with the wedding party, because Miss Amelia had no
+pretty clothes for one thing, and for another, you shouldn't act as if
+you were hungry out in company, and she ate every meal as if she were
+breaking a forty days' fast.  I wondered what her folks cooked at home.
+
+After supper Peter came, and the instant I saw him I thought of
+something, and it was such a teasing thought I followed around and
+watched him harder every minute.  At last he noticed me, and put his
+arms around me.
+
+"Well, what is it, Little Sister?" he asked.
+
+I did wish he would quit that.  No one really had a right to call me
+that, except Laddie.  Maybe I had to put up with Peter doing it when I
+was his sister by law, but before, the old name the preacher baptized
+on me was good enough for Peter.  I was thinking about that so hard, I
+didn't answer, and he asked again.
+
+"I have seen Sally's wedding dress," I told him.
+
+"But that's no reason why you should stare at me."
+
+"That's just exactly the reason," I answered.  "I was trying to see
+what in the world there is about you to be worth a dress like that."
+
+Peter laughed and laughed.  At last he said that he was not really
+worth even a calico dress; and he was so little worthy of Sally that he
+would button her shoes, if she would let him.  He got that mixed.  The
+buttons were on her slippers: her shoes laced.  But it showed a humble
+spirit in Peter.  Not that I care for humble spirits.  I am sure the
+Crusaders didn't have them.  I don't believe Laddie would lace even the
+Princess' shoes, at least not to make a steady business of it.  But
+maybe Peter and Sally had an agreement to help each other.  She was
+always fixing his tie, and straightening his hair.  Maybe that was an
+impulse, though, and mother said Sally would get over being so
+impulsive when she cut her eye teeth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+When Sally Married Peter
+
+  "Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
+  Be it ever so humble there's no place like home!
+  A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
+  Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere."
+
+
+When they began arranging the house for the wedding, it could be seen
+that they had been expecting it, and getting ready for a long time.
+From all the closets, shelves and chests poured heaps of new things.
+First, the walls were cleaned and some of them freshly papered, then
+the windows were all washed long before regular housecleaning time, the
+floors were scrubbed and new carpet put down.  Mother had some window
+blinds that Winfield had brought her from New York in the spring, and
+she had laid them away; no one knew why, then.  We all knew now.  When
+mother was ready to put them up, father had a busy day and couldn't
+help her, and she was really provoked.  She almost cried about it, when
+Leon rode in bringing the mail, and said Hannah Dover had some exactly
+like ours at her windows, that her son had sent from Illinois.  Father
+felt badly enough then, for he always did everything he could to help
+mother to be first with everything; but so she wouldn't blame him, he
+said crosslike that if she had let him put them up when they came, as
+he wanted to, she'd have been six months ahead.
+
+When they finally got ready to hang the blinds no one knew how they
+went.  They were a beautiful shiny green, plain on one side, and on the
+other there was a silver border across the bottom and one pink rose as
+big as a pie plate.  Mother had neglected to ask Winfield on which side
+the rose belonged.  Father said from the way the roll ran, it went
+inside.  Mother said they were rolled that way to protect the roses,
+and that didn't prove anything.  Laddie said he would jump on a horse
+and ride round the section, and see how Hannah Dover had hers, and
+exactly opposite would be right.  Everyone laughed, but no one thought
+he meant it.  Mother had father hold one against the window, and she
+stepped outside to see if she could tell from there.  When she came in
+she said the flower looked mighty pretty, and she guessed that was the
+way, so father started hanging them.  He had only two up when Laddie
+came racing down the Big Hill bareback, calling for him to stop.
+
+"I tell you that's not right, mother!" he said as he hurried in.
+
+"But I went outside and father held one, and it looked real pretty,"
+said mother.
+
+"One!  Yes!" said Laddie.  "But have you stopped to consider how two
+rows across the house are going to look?  Nine big pink roses, with the
+sun shining on them!  Anything funnier than Dovers' front I never saw.
+And look here!"
+
+Laddie picked up a blind.  "See this plain back?  It's double coated
+like a glaze.  That is so the sun shining through glass won't fade it.
+The flowers would be gone in a week.  They belong inside, mother, sure
+as you live."
+
+"Then when the blinds are rolled to the middle sash in the daytime no
+one can see them," wailed mother, who was wild about pink roses.
+
+"But at night, when they are down, you can put the curtains back enough
+to let the roses show, and think how pretty they will look then."
+
+"Laddie is right!" said father, climbing on the barrel to take down the
+ones he had fixed.
+
+"What do you think, girls?" asked mother.
+
+"I think the Princess is coming down the Little Hill," said Shelley.
+"Hurry, father!  Take them down before she sees!  I'm sure they're
+wrong."
+
+Father got one all right, but tore the corner of the other.  Mother
+scolded him dreadfully cross, and he was so flustered he forgot about
+being on the barrel, so he stepped back the same as on the floor, and
+fell crashing.  He might have broken some of his bones, if Laddie
+hadn't seen and caught him.
+
+"If you are SURE the flowers go inside, fix one before she comes!"
+cried mother.
+
+Father stepped too close the edge of the chair, and by that time he
+didn't know how to hang anything, so Laddie climbed up and had one
+nailed before the Princess stopped.  She came to bring Sally the
+handkerchief, and it was the loveliest one any of us ever had seen.
+There was a little patch in the middle about four inches square, and
+around it a wide ruffle of dainty lace.  It was made to carry in a hand
+covered with white lace mitts, when you were wearing a wedding gown of
+silver silk, lined with white.  Of course it wouldn't have been the
+slightest use for a funeral or with a cold in your head.  And it had
+come from across the sea!  From the minute she took it by a pinch in
+the middle, Sally carried her head so much higher than she ever had
+before, that you could notice the difference.
+
+Laddie went straight on nailing up the blinds, and every one he fixed
+he let down full length so the Princess could see the roses were
+inside; he was so sure he was right.  After she had talked a few
+minutes she noticed the blinds going up.  Laddie, in a front window,
+waved to her from the barrel.  She laughed and answered with her whip,
+and then she laughed again.
+
+"Do you know," she said, "there is the funniest thing at Dovers'.  I
+rode past on the way to Groveville this morning and they have some
+blinds like those you are putting up."
+
+"Indeed?" inquired my mother.  "Winfield sent us these from New York in
+the spring, but I thought the hot summer sun would fade them, so I
+saved them until the fall cleaning.  The wedding coming on makes us a
+little early but----"
+
+"Well, they may not be exactly the same," said the Princess.  "I only
+saw from the highway."  She meant road; there were many things she said
+differently.  "Have yours big pink roses and silver scrolls inside?"
+
+"Yes," said mother.
+
+The Princess bubbled until it made you think one of those yellow oriole
+birds had perched on her saddle.  "That poor woman has gone and put
+hers up wrong side out.  The effect of all those big pink roses on her
+white house front is most amusing.  It looks as if the house were
+covered with a particularly gaudy piece of comfort calico.  Only fancy!"
+
+She laughed again and rode away.  Mother came in just gasping.
+
+"Well, for all His mercies, large and small, the Lord be praised!" she
+cried piously, as she dropped into the big rocking chair.  "THAT is
+what I consider escaping by the skin of your teeth!"
+
+Then father and Laddie laughed, and said they thought so too.  When the
+blinds were up, the outside looked well, and you should have seen the
+inside!  The woodwork was enamelled white, and the wall paper was
+striped in white and silver.  Every so far on the silver there was a
+little pink moss rose having green leaves.  The carpet was plum red and
+green in wide stripes, and the lace curtains were freshly washed,
+snowy, and touched the floor.  The big rocker, the straight-backed
+chairs, and the sofa were beautiful red mahogany wood, and the seats
+shining haircloth.  If no one happened to be looking, you could sit on
+a sofa arm, stick your feet out and shoot off like riding down a
+haystack; the landing was much better.  On the sofa you bounced two
+feet high the first time; one, the second; and a little way the third.
+On the haystack, maybe you hit a soft spot, and maybe you struck a
+rock.  Sometimes if you got smart, and tried a new place, and your feet
+caught in a tangle of weeds and stuck, you came up straight, pitched
+over, and landed on your head.  THEN if you struck a rock, you were
+still, quite a while.  I was once.  But you never dared let mother see
+you--on the sofa, I mean; she didn't care about the haystack.
+
+There were pictures in oval black frames having fancy edges, and a
+whatnot where all our Christmas and birthday gifts, almost too dainty
+to handle, were kept.  You fairly held your breath when you looked at
+the nest of spun green glass, with the white dove in it, that George
+Washington Mitchell gave to Shelley.  Of course a dove's nest was never
+deep, and round, and green, and the bird didn't have red eyes and a
+black bill.  I thought whoever could blow glass as beautifully as that,
+might just as easy have made it right while he was at it; but anyway,
+it was pretty.  There were pitchers, mugs, and vases, almost too
+delicate to touch, and the cloth-covered box with braids of hair coiled
+in wreaths from the heads of the little fever and whooping cough
+sisters.
+
+Laddie asked Sally if she and Peter were going to have the ceremony
+performed while they sat on the sofa.  Seemed the right place.  They
+had done all their courting there, even on hot summer days; but I
+supposed that was because Sally didn't want to be seen fixing Peter's
+tie until she was ready.  She made no bones about it then.  She fixed
+it whenever she pleased; likewise he held her hand.  Shelley said that
+was disgusting, and you wouldn't catch her.  Leon said he bet a dollar
+he would; and I said if he knew he'd get beaten as I did, I bet two
+dollars he wouldn't tell what he saw.  The mantel was white, with vases
+of the lovely grasses that grew beside the stream at the foot of the
+Big Hill.  Mother gathered the fanciest every fall, dried them, and
+dipped them in melted alum coloured with copperas, aniline, and indigo.
+Then she took bunches of the colours that went together best and made
+bouquets for the big vases.  They were pretty in the daytime, but at
+night you could watch them sparkle and shimmer forever.
+
+I always thought the sitting-room was nicer than the parlour.  The
+woodwork was white enamel there too, but the bureau and chairs were
+just cherry and not too precious to use.  They were every bit as
+pretty.  The mantel was much larger.  I could stand up in the
+fireplace, and it took two men to put on an everyday log, four the
+Christmas one.  On each side were the book shelves above, and the linen
+closets below.  The mantel set between these, and mother always used
+the biggest, most gorgeous bouquets there, because she had so much
+room.  The hearth was a slab of stone that came far into the room.  We
+could sit on it and crack nuts, roast apples, chestnuts, and warm our
+cider, then sweep all the muss we made into the fire.  The wall paper
+was white and pale pink in stripes, and on the pink were little handled
+baskets filled with tiny flowers of different colours.  We sewed the
+rags for the carpet ourselves, and it was the prettiest thing.  One
+stripe was wide, all gray, brown, and dull colours, and the other was
+pink.  There were green blinds and lace curtains here also, and nice
+braided rugs that all of us worked on of winter evenings.  Everything
+got spicker and spanner each day.
+
+Mother said there was no use in putting down a carpet in a dining-room
+where you constantly fed a host, and the boys didn't clean their feet
+as carefully as they should in winter; but there were useful rags where
+they belonged, and in our bedroom opening from it also.  The
+dining-room wall paper had a broad stripe of rich cream with pink
+cabbage roses scattered over it and a narrow pink stripe, while the
+woodwork was something perfectly marvellous.  I didn't know what kind
+of wood it was, but a man who could turn his hand to anything, painted
+it.  First, he put on a pale yellow coat and let it dry.  Then he added
+wood brown, and while it was wet, with a coarse toothed comb, a rag,
+and his fingers, he imitated the grain, the even wood, and knotholes of
+dressed lumber, until many a time I found myself staring steadily at a
+knot to see if a worm wouldn't really come working out.  You have to
+see a thing like that to understand how wonderful it is.  You couldn't
+see why they washed the bedding, and took the feathers from the pillows
+and steamed them in mosquito netting bags and dried them in the shade,
+when Sally's was to be a morning wedding, but they did.  I even had to
+take a bucket and gather from around the walls all the little heaps of
+rocks and shells that Uncle Abraham had sent mother from California,
+take them out and wash and wipe them, and stack them back, with the
+fanciest ones on top.  He sent her a ring made of gold he dug himself.
+She always kept the ring in a bottle in her bureau, and she meant to
+wear it at the wedding, with her new silk dress.  I had a new dress
+too.  I don't know how they got everything done.  All of them worked,
+until the last few days they were perfect cross patches.
+
+When they couldn't find another thing indoors to scour, they began on
+the yard, orchard, barn and road.  Mother even had Leon stack the wood
+pile straighter.  She said when corded wood leaned at an angle, it made
+people seem shiftless; and she never passed a place where it looked
+that way that her fingers didn't just itch to get at it.  He had to
+pull every ragweed on each side of the road as far as our land reached,
+and lay every rail straight in the fences.  Father had to take spikes
+and our biggest maul and go to the bridges at the foot of the Big and
+the Little Hill, and see that every plank was fast, so none of them
+would rattle when important guests drove across.  She said she just
+simply wouldn't have them in such a condition that Judge Pettis
+couldn't hear himself think when he crossed; for you could tell from
+his looks that it was very important that none of the things he thought
+should be lost.  There wasn't a single spot about the place inside or
+out that wasn't gone over; and to lots of it you never would have known
+anything had been done if you hadn't seen, because the place was always
+in proper shape anyway; but father said mother acted just like that,
+even when her sons were married at other people's houses; and if she
+kept on getting worse, every girl she married off, by the time she
+reached me, we'd all be scoured threadbare and she'd be on the verge of
+the grave.  May and I weeded the flowerbeds, picked all the ripe seed,
+and pulled up and burned all the stalks that were done blooming.
+Father and Laddie went over the garden carefully; they scraped the
+walks and even shook the palings to see if one were going to come loose
+right at the last minute, when every one would be so flustrated there
+would be no time to fix it.
+
+Then they began to talk about arrangements for the ceremony, whether we
+should have our regular minister, or Presiding Elder Lemon, and what
+people they were going to invite.  Just when we had planned to ask
+every one, have the wedding in the church, and the breakfast at the
+house, and all drive in a joyous procession to Groveville to give them
+a good send-off in walked Sally.  She had been visiting Peter's people,
+and we planned a lot while she was away.
+
+"What's going on here?" she asked, standing in the doorway, dangling
+her bonnet by the ties.
+
+She never looked prettier.  Her hair had blown out in little curls
+around her face from riding, her cheeks were so pink, and her eyes so
+bright.
+
+"We were talking about having the ceremony in the church, so every one
+can be comfortably seated, and see and hear well," answered mother.
+
+Sally straightened up and began jerking the roses on her bonnet far too
+roughly for artificial flowers.  Perhaps I surprised you with that
+artificial word, but I can spell and define it; it's easy divided into
+syllables.  Goodness knows, I have seen enough flowers made from the
+hair of the dead, wax, and paper, where you get the shape, but the
+colour never is right.  These of Sally's were much too bright, but they
+were better than the ones made at our house.  Hers were of cloth and
+bought at a store.  You couldn't tell why, but Sally jerked her roses;
+I wished she wouldn't, because I very well knew they would be used to
+trim my hat the next summer, and she said:  "Well, people don't have to
+be comfortable during a wedding ceremony; they can stand up if I can,
+and as for seeing and hearing, I'm asking a good many that I don't
+intend to have see or hear either one!"
+
+"My soul!" cried mother, and she dropped her hands and her mouth fell
+open, like she always told us we never should let ours, while she
+stared at Sally.
+
+"I don't care!" said Sally, straightening taller yet; her eyes began to
+shine and her lips to quiver, as if she would cry in a minute; "I don't
+care----!"
+
+"Which means, my child, that you DO care, very much," said father.
+"Suppose you cease such reckless talk, and explain to us exactly what
+it is that you do want."
+
+Sally gave her bonnet an awful jerk.  Those roses would look like sin
+before my turn to wear them came, and she said:  "Well then, I do care!
+I care with all my might!  The church is all right, of course; but I
+want to be married in my very own home!  Every one can think whatever
+they please about their home, and so can I, and what I think is, that
+this is the nicest and the prettiest place in all the world, and I
+belong here----"
+
+
+Father lifted his head, his face began to shine, and his eyes to grow
+teary; while mother started toward Sally.  She put out her hand and
+held mother from her at arm's length, and she turned and looked behind
+her through the sitting-room and parlour, and then at us, and she
+talked so fast you never could have understood what she said if you
+hadn't known all of it anyway, and thought exactly the same thing
+yourself.
+
+"I have just loved this house ever since it was built," she said, "and
+I've had as good times here as any girl ever had.  If any one thinks
+I'm so very anxious to leave it, and you, and mother, and all the
+others, why it's a big mistake.  Seems as if a girl is expected to
+marry and go to a home of her own; it's drummed into her and things
+fixed for her from the day of her birth; and of course I do like Peter,
+but no home in the world, not even the one he provides for me, will
+ever be any dearer to me than my own home; and as I've always lived in
+it, I want to be married in it, and I want to stay here until the very
+last second----"
+
+"You shall, my child, you shall!" sobbed mother.
+
+"And as for having a crowd of men that father is planning to ask,
+staring at me, because he changes harvest help and wood chopping with
+them, or being criticised and clawed over by some women simply because
+they'll be angry if they don't get the chance, I just won't--so there!
+Not if I have to stand the minister against the wall, and turn our
+backs to every one.  I think----"
+
+"That will do!" said father, wiping his eyes.  "That will do, Sally!
+Your mother and I have got a pretty clear understanding of how you
+feel, now.  Don't excite yourself!  Your wedding shan't be used to pay
+off our scores.  You may ask exactly whom you please, want, and feel
+quite comfortable to have around you----"
+
+Then Sally fell on mother's neck and every one cried a while; then we
+wiped up, Leon gave Sally his slate, and she came and sat beside the
+table and began to make out a list of those she really wanted to
+invite.  First she put down all of our family, even many away in Ohio,
+and all of Peter's, and then his friends, and hers.  Once in the list
+of girls she stopped and said:  "If I take that beautiful imported
+handkerchief from Pamela Pryor, I have just got to invite her."
+
+"And she will outdress and outshine you at your own wedding," put in
+Shelley.
+
+"Let her, if she can!" said Sally calmly.  "She'll have to hump herself
+if she beats that dress of mine; and as for looks, I know lots of
+people who think gray eyes, pink cheeks, and brown curls far daintier
+and prettier than red cheeks and black eyes and curls.  If she really
+is better looking than I am, it isn't her fault; God made her that way,
+and He wouldn't like us to punish her for it; and it would, because any
+one can see she wants to be friends; don't you think, mother?"--mother
+nodded--"and besides, I think she's better looking than I am, myself!"
+
+Sally said that, and wrote down the Princess' name in big letters, and
+no one cheeped.
+
+Then she began on our neighbourhood, thinking out loud and writing what
+she thought.  So all of us were as still, and held our breath in softly
+and waited, and Sally said slow and musing like, "Of course we couldn't
+have anything at THIS house without Sarah Hood.  She dressed most of us
+when we were born, nursed us when we were sick, helped with threshing,
+company, and parties, and she's just splendid anyway; we better ask all
+the Hoods"; so she wrote them down.  "And it will be lonely for Widow
+Willis and the girls to see every one else here--we must have them; and
+of course Deams--Amanda is always such splendid help; and the Widow
+Fall is so perfectly lovely, we want her for decorative purposes; and
+we could scarcely leave out Shaws; they always have all of us
+everything they do; and Dr. Fenner of course; and we'll want Flo and
+Agnes Kuntz to wait on table, so their folks might as well come too----"
+
+So she went on taking up each family we knew, and telling what they had
+done for us, or what we had done for them; and she found some good
+reason for inviting them, and pretty soon father settled back in his
+chair and never took his eyes from Sally's shining head as she bent
+over the slate, and then he began pulling his lower lip, like when it
+won't behave, and his eyes danced exactly as I've seen Leon's.  I never
+had noticed that before.
+
+Sally went straight on and at last she came to Freshetts.  "I am going
+to have all of them, too," she said.  "The children are good children,
+and it will help them along to see how things are done when they are
+right; and I don't care what any one says, I LIKE Mrs. Freshett.  I'll
+ask her to help work, and that will keep her from talking, and give the
+other women a chance to see that she's clean, and human, and would be a
+good neighbour if they'd be friendly.  If we ask her, then the others
+will."
+
+When she finished--as you live--there wasn't a soul she had left out
+except Bill Ramsdell, who starved his dog until it sucked our eggs, and
+Isaac Thomas, who was so lazy he wouldn't work enough to keep his wife
+and children dressed so they ever could go anywhere, but he always
+went, even with rags flying, and got his stomach full just by talking
+about how he loved the Lord.  To save me I couldn't see Isaac Thomas
+without beginning to myself:
+
+  "'Tis the voice of the sluggard; I hear him complain,
+  You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again.
+  I passed by his garden, I saw the wild brier,
+  The thorn, and the thistle, grow broader and higher;
+  The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags;
+  And his money he wastes, till he starves or he begs."
+
+
+That described Isaac to the last tatter, only he couldn't waste money;
+he never had any.  Once I asked father what he thought Isaac would do
+with it, if by some unforeseen working of Divine Providence, he got ten
+dollars.  Father said he could tell me exactly, because Isaac once sold
+some timber and had a hundred all at once.  He went straight to town
+and bought Mandy a red silk dress and a brass breastpin, when she had
+no shoes.  He got the children an organ, when they were hungry; and
+himself a plug hat.  Mandy and the children cried because he forgot
+candy and oranges until the last cent was gone.  Father said the only
+time Isaac ever worked since he knew him was when he saw how the hat
+looked with his rags.  He actually helped the men fell the trees until
+he got enough to buy a suit, the remains of which he still wore on
+Sunday.  I asked father why he didn't wear the hat too, and father said
+the loss of that hat was a blow, from which Isaac never had recovered.
+Once at camp-meeting he laid it aside to pray his longest, most
+impressive prayer, and an affectionate cow strayed up and licked the
+nap all off before Isaac finished, so he never could wear it again.
+
+Sally said:  "I'll be switched if I'll have that disgusting creature
+around stuffing himself on my wedding day; but if you're not in bed,
+when it's all over, mother, I do wish you'd send Mandy and the children
+a basket."
+
+Mother promised, and father sat and looked on and pulled his lower lip
+until his ears almost wiggled.  Then Sally said she wanted Laddie and
+Shelley to stand at the parlour door and keep it tight shut, and seat
+every one in the sitting-room except a special list she had made out to
+send in there.  She wanted all our family and Peter's, and only a few
+very close friends, but it was enough to fill the room.  She said when
+she and Peter came downstairs every one could see how they looked when
+they crossed the sitting-room, and for all the difference the door
+would make, it could be left open then; she would be walled in by
+people she wanted around her, and the others could have the fun of
+being there, seeing what they could, and getting all they wanted to
+eat.  Father and mother said that was all right, only to say nothing
+about the plan to shut the door; but when the time came just to close
+it and everything would be satisfactory.
+
+Then Sally took the slate upstairs to copy the list with ink, so every
+one went about something, while mother crossed to father and he took
+her on his lap, and they looked at each other the longest and the
+hardest, and neither of them said a word.  After a while they cried and
+laughed, and cried some more, and it was about as sensible as what a
+flock of geese say when they are let out of the barn and start for the
+meadow in the morning.  Then father, all laughy and criey, said:
+"Thank God!  Oh, thank God, the girl loves the home we have made for
+her!"
+
+Just said it over and over, and mother kept putting in:  "It pays,
+Paul!  It pays!"
+
+Next day Sally put on her riding habit and fixed herself as pretty as
+ever she could, and went around to have a last little visit with every
+one, and invited them herself, and then she wrote letters to people
+away.  Elizabeth and Lucy came home, and every one began to work.
+Father and mother went to the village in the carriage and brought home
+the bed full of things to eat, and all we had was added, and mother
+began to pack butter, and save eggs for cakes, and the day before, I
+thought there wouldn't be a chicken left on the place.  They killed and
+killed, and Sarah Hood, Amanda Deam, and Mrs. Freshett picked and
+picked.
+
+"I'll bet a dollar we get something this time besides ribs and neck,"
+said Leon.  "How do you suppose thigh and breast would taste?"
+
+"I was always crazy to try the tail," I said.
+
+"Much chance you got," sniggered Leon.  "'Member the time that father
+asked the Presiding Elder, 'Brother Lemon, what piece of the fowl do
+you prefer?' and he up and said: 'I'm partial to the rump, Brother
+Stanton.'  There sat father bound he wouldn't give him mother's piece,
+so he pretended he couldn't find it, and forked all over the platter
+and then gave him the ribs and the thigh.  Gee, how mother scolded him
+after the preacher had gone!  You notice father hasn't asked that
+since.  Now, he always says: 'Do you prefer light or dark meat?'  Much
+chance you have of ever tasting a tail, if father won't even give one
+to the Presiding Elder!"
+
+"But as many as they are killing----"
+
+"Oh THIS time," said Leon with a flourish, "this time we are going to
+have livers, and breast, and thighs, AND tails, if you are beholden to
+tail."
+
+"I'd like to know how we are?"
+
+"Well, since you have proved that you can keep your mouth shut, for a
+little while, anyway, I'm going to take you in on this," said Leon.
+"You keep your eyes on me.  When the wedding gets going good, you watch
+me, and slip out.  That's all!  I'll be fixed to do the rest.  But mind
+this, get out when I do."
+
+"All right," I promised.
+
+They must have wakened about four o'clock on the wedding day; it wasn't
+really light when I got up.  I had some breakfast in my night dress,
+and then I was all fixed up in my new clothes, and made to sit on a
+chair, and never move for fear I would soil my dress, for no one had
+time to do me over, and there was only one dress anyway.  There was so
+much to see you could keep interested just watching, and I was as
+anxious to look nice before the boys and girls, and the big people, as
+any one.
+
+Every mantel and table and bureau was covered with flowers, and you
+could have smelled the kitchen a mile away, I know.  The dining table
+was set for the wedding party, our father and mother, and Peter's, and
+the others had to wait.  You couldn't have laid the flat of your hand
+on that table anywhere, it was so covered with things to eat.  Miss
+Amelia, in a dress none of us ever had seen before, a real nice white
+dress, pranced around it and smirked at every one, and waved the
+peacock feather brush to keep the flies from the jelly, preserves, jam,
+butter, and things that were not cooked.
+
+For hours Mrs. Freshett had stood in the kitchen on one side of the
+stove frying chicken and heaping it in baking pans in the oven, and
+Amanda Deam on the other, frying ham, while Sarah Hood cooked other
+things, and made a wash boiler of coffee.  Everything was ready by the
+time it should have been.  I had watched them until I was tired, when
+Sally came through the room where I was, and she said I might come
+along upstairs and see her dressed.  When we reached the door I
+wondered where she would put me, but she pushed clothing together on a
+bed, and helped me up, and that was great fun.
+
+She had been bathed and had on her beautiful new linen underclothing
+that mother punched full of holes and embroidered in flowers and vines,
+and Shelley was brushing her hair when some one called out:  "The
+Princess is coming!"
+
+I jumped for the window, and all of them, even Sally, crowded behind.
+Well, talk about carriages!  No one ever had seen THAT one before.  It
+WAS a carriage.  And such horses!  The funny "'orse, 'ouse" man who
+made the Pryor garden was driving.  He stopped at the gate, got out and
+opened a door, and the Princess' father stepped down, tall and
+straight, all in shiny black.  He turned around and held out his hand,
+bowing double, and the Princess laid her hand in his and stepped out
+too.  He walked with her to the gate, made another bow, kissed her
+hand, and stepped back, and she came down the walk alone.  He got in
+the carriage, the man closed the door, and they drove away.
+
+Sally must have arranged before that the Princess was to come early,
+for she came straight upstairs.  She wore a soft white silk dress with
+big faded pink roses in it, and her hair was fastened at each ear with
+a bunch of little pink roses.  She was lovely, but she didn't "outdress
+or outshine" Sally one bit, and she never even glanced at the mirror to
+see how she looked; she began helping with Sally's hair, and to dress
+her.  When Bess Kuntz prinked so long she made every one disgusted, the
+Princess said:  "Oh save your trouble.  No one will look at you when
+there's a bride in the house."
+
+There was a roll almost as thick as your arm of garters that all the
+other girls wanted Sally to wear for them so they would get a chance to
+marry that year, and Agnes Kuntz's was so large it went twice around,
+and they just laughed about it.  They put a blue ribbon on Sally's
+stays for luck, and she borrowed Peter's sister Mary's comb to hold her
+back hair.  They had the most fun, and when she was all ready except
+her dress they went away, and Sally stood in the middle of the room
+trembling a little.  Outside you could hear carriage wheels rolling,
+the beat of horses' hoofs, and voices crying greetings.  "There was a
+sound of revelry," by day.  Mother came in hurriedly.  She wore her new
+brown silk, with a lace collar pinned at the throat with the pin that
+had a brown goldstone setting in it, and her precious ring was on her
+finger.  She was dainty and pretty enough to have been a bride herself.
+She turned Sally around slowly, touching her hair a little and her
+skirts; then she went to the closet, took out the wedding dress, put
+the skirt over Sally's head, and she came up through the whiteness,
+pink and glowing.  She slipped her arms into the sleeves, and mother
+fastened it, shook out the skirt, saw that the bead fringe hung right,
+and the lace collar lay flat, then she took Sally in her arms, held her
+tight and said: "God bless you, dear, and keep you always.  Amen."
+
+Then she stepped to the door, and Peter, all shining and new, came in.
+He hugged Sally and kissed her like it didn't make the least difference
+whether she had on calico or a wedding dress, and he just stared, and
+stared at her, and never said a word, so at last she asked:  "Well
+Peter, do you like my dress?"
+
+And the idiot said:  "Why Sally, I hadn't even seen it!"
+
+Then both of them laughed, and the Presiding Elder came.
+
+I never liked to look at him very well because something had happened,
+and he had only one eye.  I always wondered if he had "plucked it out"
+because it had "offended" him; but if you could forget his eye, and
+just listen to his voice, it was like the sweetest music.  He married
+those two people right there in the bedroom, all but about three words
+at the end.  I heard and saw every bit of it.  Then Sally said it was
+time for me to go to mother, but she followed me into the boys' room
+and shut the door.  Then she knelt in her beautiful silver dress, and
+put her arms around me and said:  "Honest, Little Sister, aren't you
+going to kiss me goodbye?"
+
+"Oh I can if you want me to," I said, but I didn't look at her; I
+looked out of the window.
+
+She laughed a breathless little catchy sort of laugh and said: "That's
+exactly what I do want."
+
+"You didn't even want me, to begin with," I reminded her.
+
+"There isn't a doubt but whoever told you that, could have been in
+better business," said Sally, angry-like.  "I was much younger then,
+and there were many things I didn't understand, and it wasn't you I
+didn't want; it was just no baby at all.  I wouldn't have wanted a boy,
+or any other girl a bit more.  I foolishly thought we had children
+enough in this house.  I see now very plainly that we didn't, for this
+family never could get along without you, and I'm sorry I ever thought
+so, and I'd give anything if I hadn't struck you and----"
+
+"Oh be still, and go on and get married!" I said.  I could just feel a
+regular beller coming in my throat.  "I was only fooling to pay you up.
+I meant all the time to kiss you good-bye when the others did.  I'll
+nearly die being lonesome when you're gone----"
+
+Then I ran for downstairs, and when I reached the door, where the steps
+went into the sitting-room, I stopped, scared at all the people.  It
+was like camp-meeting.  You could see the yard full through the
+windows.  Just as I was thinking I'd go back to the boys' room, and
+from there into the garret, and down the back stairway, Laddie went and
+saw me.  He came over, led me to the parlour door, put me inside, and
+there mother took my hand and held me tight, and I couldn't see Leon
+anywhere.
+
+I was caught, but they didn't have him.  Mother never hung on as she
+did that day.  I tried and tried to pull away, and she held tight.  It
+was only a minute until the door opened, people crowded back, and the
+Presiding Elder, followed by Sally and Peter, came into the room, and
+they began being married all over again.
+
+If it hadn't grown so solemn my mother sprung a tear, I never would
+have made it.  She just had to let me go to sop her face, because tears
+are salty, and they would turn her new brown silk front yellow.  The
+minute my hand was free, I slipped between the people and looked at the
+parlour door.  It was wedged full and more standing on chairs behind
+them.  No one could get out there.
+
+I thought I would fail Leon sure, and then I remembered the parlour
+bedroom.  I got through that door easy as anything, and it was no trick
+at all to slip behind the blind, raise the window, and drop into
+mother's room from the sill.  From there I reached the back dining-room
+door easy enough, went around to the kitchen, and called Leon softly.
+He opened the door at once and I slipped in.  He had just got there.
+We looked all around and couldn't see where to begin at first.  There
+was enough cooked food there to load two wagons.
+
+An old pillow-case that had dried sage in it was lying across a chair
+and Leon picked it up and poured the sage into the wood-box, and handed
+the case to me.  He went over and knelt before the oven, while I
+followed and held open the case.  Leon rolled his eyes to the ceiling
+and said so exactly like father when he is serving company that not one
+of us could have told the difference:  "Which part of the fowl do you
+prefer, Brother Lemon?"
+
+It was so funny it made me snigger, but I straightened up and answered
+as well as I could:  "I'm especially fond of the rump, Brother Stanton."
+
+Leon stirred the heap and piled four or five tails in the case.  I
+thought that was all I could manage before they would spoil, so I said:
+"Do you prefer light or dark meat, Sister Abigail?"
+
+"I wish to choose breast," said Leon, simpering just like that silly
+Abigail Webster.  He put in six breasts.  Then we found them hidden
+away back in the oven in a pie pan, for the bride's table, I bet, and
+we took two livers apiece; we didn't dare take more for fear they had
+been counted.  Then he threw in whatever he came to that was a first
+choice big piece, until I was really scared, and begged him to stop;
+but he repeated what the fox said in the story of the "Quarrelsome
+Cocks"--"Poco was very good, but I have not had enough yet," so he
+piled in pieces until I ran away with the pillow-case; then he slid in
+a whole plateful of bread, another of cake, and put the plates in a tub
+of dishes under the table.  Then we took some of everything that wasn't
+too runny.  Just then the silence broke in the front part of the house,
+and we scooted from the back door, closing it behind us, ran to the
+wood house and climbed the ladder to the loft over the front part.
+There we were safe as could be, we could see to the road, hear almost
+everything said in the kitchen, and "eat our bites in peace," like
+Peter Justice told the Presiding Elder at the church trial that he
+wanted his wife to, the time he slapped her.  Before very long, they
+began calling us, and called, and called.  We hadn't an idea what they
+wanted, so we ate away.  We heard them first while I was holding over a
+back to let Leon taste kidney, and it made him blink when he got it
+good.
+
+"Well my soul!" he said.  "No wonder father didn't want to feed that to
+another man when mother isn't very well, and likes it!  No wonder!"
+
+Then he gave me a big bite of breast.  It was sort of dry and
+tasteless; I didn't like it.
+
+"Why, I think neck or back beats that all to pieces!" I said in
+surprise.
+
+"Fact is, they do!" said Leon.  "I guess the people who 'wish to choose
+breast,' do it to get the biggest piece."
+
+I never had thought of it before, but of course that would be the
+reason.
+
+"Allow me, Sister Stanton," said Leon, holding out a piece of thigh.
+
+That was really chicken!  Then we went over the backs and picked out
+all the kidneys, and ate the little crusty places, and all the cake we
+could swallow; then Leon fixed up the bag the best he could, and set it
+inside an old cracked churn and put on the lid.
+
+He said that would do almost as well as the cellar, and the food would
+keep until to-morrow.  I wanted to slip down and put it in the
+Underground Station; but Leon said father must be spending a lot of
+money right now, and he might go there to get some, so that wouldn't be
+safe.  Then he cleaned my face, and I told him when he got his right,
+and we slipped from the back door, crossed the Lawton blackberry patch,
+and went to the house from the orchard.  Leon took an apple and broke
+it in two, and we went in eating as if we were starving.  When father
+asked us where in this world we had been, Leon told him we thought it
+would be so awful long before the fourth or fifth table, and we hadn't
+had much breakfast, and we were so hungry we went and hunted something
+to eat.
+
+"If you'd only held your horses a minute," said father; "they were
+calling you to take places at the bride's table."
+
+Well for land's sake!  Our mouths dropped open until it's a wonder the
+cake and chicken didn't show, and we never said a word.  There didn't
+seem to be anything to say, for Leon loved to be with grown folks, and
+to have eaten at the bride's table would have been the biggest thing
+that ever happened to me.  At last, when I could speak, I asked who had
+taken our places, and bless your heart if it wasn't that mealy-faced
+little sister of Peter's, and one of the aunts from Ohio.  They had
+finished, and Sally was upstairs putting on her travelling dress, while
+the guests were eating, when I heard Laddie ask the Princess to ride
+with him and Sally's other friends, who were going to escort her to the
+depot.
+
+"You'll want all your horses.  What could I ride?"
+
+"If I find you a good horse and saddle will you go?"
+
+"I will.  I think it would be fine sport."
+
+Laddie turned and went from sight that minute.  The Princess laughed
+and kept on making friends with every one, helping wait on people,
+thinking of nice things to do, and just as the carriage was at the gate
+for father and mother, and Sally and Peter, and every one else was
+untying their horses to ride in the procession to the village, from
+where I was standing on the mounting block I saw something coming down
+the Little Hill.  I took one look, ran to the Princess, and almost
+dragged her.
+
+Up raced Laddie, his face bright, his eyes snapping with fun.  He rode
+Flos, was leading the Princess' horse Maud, and carrying a big bundle
+under his arm.  He leaped from the saddle and fastened both horses.
+
+"Gracious Heaven!  What have you done?" gasped the Princess.
+
+"Brought your mount," said Laddie, quite as if he were used to going to
+Pryors' after the sausage grinder or the grain sacks.  But the Princess
+was pale and trembling.  She stepped so close she touched him, and he
+immediately got a little closer.  You couldn't get ahead of Laddie, and
+he didn't seem to care who saw, and neither did she.
+
+"Tell me exactly what occurred," she said, just as father does when he
+means to whale us completely.
+
+"I rapped at the front door," said Laddie.
+
+"And who opened it?" cried the Princess.
+
+"Your father!"
+
+"My father?"
+
+"Yes, your father!" said Laddie.  "And because I was in such a hurry, I
+didn't wait for him to speak.  I said:  'Good morning, Mr. Pryor.  I'm
+one of the Stanton boys, and I came for Miss Pryor's mount and habit.
+All the young people who are on horseback are going to ride an escort
+to the village, around my sister's bridal carriage, and Miss Pryor
+thinks she would enjoy going.  Please excuse such haste, but we only
+this minute made the plan, and the train won't wait.'"
+
+"And he?"
+
+"He said:  'Surely!  Hold one minute.'  I stood on the step and waited,
+and I could hear him give the order to some one to get your riding
+habit quickly, and then he blew a shrill whistle, and your horse was at
+the gate the fastest of anything I ever saw."
+
+"Did he do or say----"
+
+"Nothing about 'clods, and clowns, and grossness!'  Every other word he
+spoke was when I said, 'Thank you, and good morning,' and was turning
+away.  He asked:  'Did Miss Pryor say whether she preferred to ride
+home, or shall I escort her in the carriage?'"
+
+"'She did not,' I answered.  'The plan was so sudden she had no time to
+think that far.  But since she will have her horse and habit, why not
+allow my father to escort her?'  So you see, I'm going to take you
+home," exulted Laddie.
+
+"But you told him your FATHER," said the Princess.
+
+"And thereby created the urgent necessity," said Laddie with a
+flourish, "for speaking to him again, and telling him that my father
+had visitors from Ohio, and couldn't leave them.  We will get all the
+fun from the day that we can; but before dusk, too early for them to
+have any cause for cavil, 'the gross country clod' is going to take you
+home!"
+
+One at a time, Laddie pounded those last words into the hitching post,
+with his doubled fist.
+
+"Suppose he sets the dogs on you!  You know he keeps two dreadful ones."
+
+Laddie just roared.  He leaned closer.
+
+"Beaucheous Lady," he said, "I have fed those same dogs and rubbed
+their ears so many nights lately, he'll get the surprise of his life if
+he tries that."
+
+The Princess drew away and stared at Laddie the funniest.
+
+"On my life!" she said at last.  "Well for a country clod----!"
+
+Then she turned with the habit bundle, and ran into the house.  Father
+and mother came from the front door arm in arm and walked to the
+carriage, and Sally and Peter followed.  My, but they looked fine!  The
+Princess had gone to the garden and gathered flowers and lined all the
+children in rows down each side of the walk.  They were loaded with
+blooms to throw at Sally; but when she came out, in her beautiful gray
+poplin travelling dress, trimmed in brown ribbon, the same shade as her
+curls, her face all pink, her eyes shining, and the ties of her little
+brown bonnet waving to her waist, she was so perfectly beautiful, every
+single child watched her open mouthed, gripped its flowers, and forgot
+to throw them at all.
+
+And this you scarcely will believe after what she had said the day she
+made her list, and when all of us knew her heart was all torn up, Sally
+just swept along smiling at every one and calling "good-bye" to those
+who had no way to ride to the village, as if leaving didn't amount to
+much.  At the carriage, a little white, but still smiling, she turned
+and took one long look at everything, and then she got in and called
+for me, right out loud before every one, so I got to hold up my head as
+high as it would go, and step in too, and ride all the way to
+Groveville between her and Peter, and instead of holding his hand, she
+held mine, just gripped it tight.  She gripped so hard she squeezed all
+the soreness at her from my heart, and when she kissed me good-bye the
+very last of all, I whispered in her ear that I wouldn't ever be angry
+any more, and I wasn't, because after she had explained I saw how it
+had been.  It wasn't ME she didn't want; it was just no baby.
+
+After our carriage came Peter's people, then one father borrowed for
+the Ohio relatives, then the other children, and all the neighbours
+followed, and when we reached the high hill where you turn beside the
+woods, I saw father gather up the lines and brace himself, for Ned and
+Jo were what he called "mettlesome."  "Then came a burst of thunder
+sound," as it says in "Casablanca," and the horseback riders came
+sweeping around us, Laddie and the Princess leading.  These two rode
+ahead of us, and the others lined three deep on either side, and the
+next carriage dropped back and let them close in behind, so Sally and
+Peter were "in the midst thereof."  Instead of throwing old shoes, as
+always had been done, the Princess coaxed them to throw rice and roses,
+and every other flower pulled from the bouquets at home, and from the
+gardens we had passed.  Every one was out watching us go by, and when
+William Justus rode beside the fences crying, "Flowers for the bride!
+Give us flowers for the bride!" some of the women were so excited they
+pulled things up by the roots and gave him armloads, and he rode ahead
+and supplied Laddie and the Princess, and they kept scattering them in
+the road until every foot of the way to Groveville was covered with
+flowers, "the fair young flowers that lately sprang and stood."  He
+even made side-cuts into swampy places and gathered armloads of those
+perfectly lovely, fringy blue gentians, caught up, and filled the
+carriage and scattered them in a wicked way, because you should only
+take a few of those rare, late flowers that only grow from seed.
+
+Sally looked just as if she had come into her own and was made for it;
+I never did see her look so pretty, but Peter sweated and acted awful
+silly.  Father had a time with the team.  Ned and Jo became excited and
+just ranted.  They simply danced.  Laddie had braided their manes and
+tails, and they waved like silken floss in the sunshine, and the
+carriage was freshly washed and the patent leather and brass shone, and
+we rode flower-covered.  Ahead, Laddie and the Princess fairly tried
+themselves.  She hadn't put on her hat or habit after all.  When Laddie
+told her they were going to lead, she said:  "Very well!  Then I shall
+go as I am.  The dress makes no difference.  It's the first time I've
+had a chance to spoil one since I left England."
+
+When the other girls saw what she was going to do, nearly every one of
+them left off their hats and riding skirts.  Every family had saddle
+horses those days, and when the riders came racing up they looked like
+flying flowers, they were all laughing, bloom ladened, singing and
+calling jokes.  Ahead, Laddie and the Princess just plain showed off.
+Her horse came from England with them, and Laddie said it had Arab
+blood in it, like the one in the Fourth Reader poem, "Fret not to roam
+the desert now, With all thy winged speed," and the Princess loved her
+horse more than that man did his.  She said she'd starve before she'd
+sell it, and if her family were starving, she'd go to work and earn
+food for them, and keep her horse.  Laddie's was a Kentucky
+thoroughbred he'd saved money for years to buy; and he took a young one
+and trained it himself, almost like a circus horse.  Both of them COULD
+ride; so that day they did.  They ran those horses neck and neck, right
+up the hill approaching Groveville, until they were almost from sight,
+then they whirled and came sweeping back fast as the wind.  The
+Princess' eyes were like dead coals, and her black curls streamed, the
+thin silk dress wrapped tight around her and waved back like a gossamer
+web such as spiders spin in October.  Laddie's hair was blowing, his
+cheeks and eyes were bright, and with one eye on the Princess--she
+didn't need it--and one on the road, he cut curves, turned, wheeled,
+and raced, and as he rode, so did she.
+
+"Will they break their foolish necks?" wailed mother.
+
+"They are the handsomest couple I ever have seen in my life!" said
+father.
+
+"Yes, and you two watch out, or you'll strike trouble right there,"
+said Sally, leaning forward.
+
+I gave her an awful nudge.  It made me so happy I could have screamed
+to see them flying away together like that.
+
+"Well, if that girl represents trouble," said father, "God knows it
+never before came in such charming guise."
+
+"You can trust a man to forget his God and his immortal soul if a
+sufficiently beautiful woman comes along," said my mother dryly, and
+all of them laughed.
+
+She didn't mean that to be funny, though.  You could always tell by the
+set of her lips and the light in her eyes.
+
+Just this side of Groveville we passed a man on horseback.  He took off
+his hat and drew his horse to one side when Laddie and the Princess
+rode toward him.  He had a big roll of papers under his arm, to show
+that he had been for his mail.  But I knew, so did Laddie and the
+Princess, that he had been compelled to saddle and ride like mad, to
+reach town and come that far back in time to watch us pass; for it was
+the Princess' father, and WATCH was exactly what he was doing; he
+wanted to see for himself.  Laddie and the Princess rode straight at
+him, neck and neck, and then both of them made their horses drop on
+their knees and they waved a salute, and then they were up and away.
+Of course father and mother saw, so mother bowed, and father waved his
+whip as we passed.  He sat there like he'd turned the same on horseback
+as Sabethany had in her coffin; but he had to see almost a mile of us
+driving our best horses and carriages, wearing our wedding garments and
+fine raiment, and all that "cavalcade," father called it, of young,
+reckless riders.  You'd have thought if there were a hint of a smile in
+his whole being it would have shown when Sally leaned from the carriage
+to let him see that her face and clothes were as good as need be and
+smiled a lovely smile on him, and threw him a rose.  He did leave his
+hat off and bow low, and then Shelley, always the very dickens for
+daring, rode right up to him and laughed in his face, and she leaned
+and thrust a flower into his bony hands; you would have thought he
+would have been simply forced to smile then, but he looked far more as
+if he would tumble over and roll from the saddle.  My heart ached for a
+man in trouble like that.  I asked the Lord to preserve us from secrets
+we couldn't tell the neighbours!
+
+At the station there wasn't a thing those young people didn't do.
+
+They tied flowers and ribbons all over Sally's satchel and trunk.
+
+They sowed rice as if it were seeding time in a wheatfield.  They
+formed a circle around Sally and Peter and as mushy as ever they could
+they sang, "As sure as the grass grows around the stump, You are my
+darling sugar lump," while they danced.  They just smiled all the time
+no matter what was done to them.  Some of it made me angry, but I
+suppose to be pleasant was the right way.  Sally was strong on always
+doing the right thing, so she just laughed, and so did all of us.
+Going home it was wilder yet, for all of them raced and showed how they
+could ride.
+
+At the house people were hungry again, so the table was set and they
+ate up every scrap in sight, and Leon and I ate with them that time and
+saved ours.  Then one by one the carriages, spring wagons, and
+horseback riders went away, all the people saying Sally was the
+loveliest bride, and hers had been the prettiest wedding they'd ever
+seen, and the most good things to eat, and Laddie and the Princess went
+with them.  When the last one was gone, and only the relatives from
+Ohio were left, mother pitched on the bed, gripped her hands and cried
+as if she'd go to pieces, and father cried too, and all of us, even
+Mrs. Freshett, who stayed to wash up the dishes.  She was so tickled to
+be there, and see, and help, that mother had hard work to keep her from
+washing the linen that same night.  She did finish the last dish, scrub
+the kitchen floor, black the stove, and pack all the borrowed china in
+tubs, ready to be taken home, and things like that.  Mother said it was
+a burning shame for any neighbourhood to let a woman get so starved out
+and lonesome she'd act that way.  She said enough was enough, and when
+Mrs. Freshett had cooked all day, and washed dishes until the last
+skillet was in place, she had done as much as any neighbour ought to
+do, and the other things she went on and did were a rebuke to us.
+
+I felt sore, weepy, and tired out.  It made me sick to think of the
+sage bag in the cracked churn, so I climbed my very own catalpa tree in
+the corner, watched up the road for Laddie, and thought things over.
+If I ever get married I want a dress, and a wedding exactly like that,
+but I would like a man quite different from Peter; like Laddie would
+suit me better.  When he rode under the tree, I dropped from a limb
+into his arms, and went with him to the barn.  He asked me what was
+going on at the house, and I told him about Mrs. Freshett being a
+rebuke to us; and Laddie said she was, and he didn't believe one word
+against her.  When I told him mother was in bed crying like anything,
+he said:  "I knew that had to come when she kept up so bravely at the
+station.  Thank the Lord, she showed her breeding by holding in until
+she got where she had a right to cry if she pleased."
+
+Then I whispered for fear Leon might be around:  "Did he set the dogs
+on you?"
+
+"He did not," said Laddie, laughing softly.
+
+"Did he call you names again?"
+
+"He did!" said Laddie, "but I started it.  You see, when we got there,
+Thomas was raking the grass and he came to take the Princess' horse.
+Her father was reading on a bench under a tree.  I helped her down, and
+walked with her to the door and said good-bye, and thanked her for the
+pleasure she had added to the day for us, loudly enough that he could
+hear; then I went over to him and said:  'Good evening, Mr. Pryor.  If
+my father knew anything about it, he would very much regret that
+company from Ohio detained him and compelled me to escort your daughter
+home.  He would greatly have enjoyed the privilege, but I honestly
+believe that I appreciated it far more than he could.'"
+
+"Oh Laddie, what did he say?"
+
+"He arose and glared at me, and choked on it, and he tried several
+times, until I thought the clods were going to fly again, but at last
+he just spluttered:  'You blathering rascal, you!' That was such a
+compliment compared with what I thought he was going to say that I had
+to laugh.  He tried, but he couldn't keep from smiling himself, and
+then I said:  'Please think it over, Mr. Pryor, and if you find that
+Miss Pryor has had an agreeable, entertaining day, won't you give your
+consent for her to come among us again?  Won't you allow me to come
+here, if it can be arranged in such a way that I intrude on no one?'"
+
+"Oh Laddie!"
+
+"He exploded in a kind of a snarl that meant, I'll see you in the Bad
+Place first.  So I said to him:  'Thank you very much for to-day,
+anyway.  I'm sure Miss Pryor has enjoyed this day, and it has been the
+happiest of my life--one to be remembered always.  Of course I won't
+come here if I am unwelcome, but I am in honour bound to tell you that
+I intend to meet your daughter elsewhere, whenever I possibly can.  I
+thought it would be a better way for you to know and have us where you
+could see what was going on, if you chose, than for us to meet without
+your knowledge."
+
+"Oh Laddie," I wailed, "now you've gone and ruined everything!"
+
+"Not so bad as that, Little Sister," laughed Laddie.  "Not half so bad!
+He exploded in another growl, and he shook his walking stick at me, and
+he said--guess what he said."
+
+"That he would kill you," I panted, clinging to him.
+
+"Right!" said Laddie.  "You have it exactly.  He said:  'Young man,
+I'll brain you with my walking stick if ever I meet you anywhere with
+my daughter, when you have not come to her home and taken her with my
+permission.'"
+
+"What!" I stammered.  "What!  Oh Laddie, say it over!  Does it
+mean----?"
+
+"It means," said Laddie, squeezing me until I was near losing my
+breath, "it means, Little Sister, that I shall march to his door and
+ask him squarely, and if it is anywhere the Princess wants to go, I
+shall take her."
+
+"Like, 'See the conquering hero comes?'"
+
+"Exactly!" laughed Laddie.
+
+"What will mother say?"
+
+"She hasn't made up her mind yet," answered Laddie.
+
+"Do you mean----?" I gasped again.
+
+"Of course!" said Laddie.  "I wasn't going to let a girl get far ahead
+of me.  The minute I knew she had told her mother, I told mine the very
+first chance."
+
+"Mother knows that you feel about the Princess as father does about
+her?"
+
+"Mother knows," answered Laddie, "and so does father.  I told both of
+them."
+
+Both of them knew!  And it hadn't made enough difference that any one
+living right with them every day could have told it.  Time and work
+will be needed to understand grown people.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The Shropshire and the Crusader
+
+  "For, among the rich and gay,
+    Fine, and grand, and decked in laces,
+  None appear more glad then they,
+    With happier hearts, or happier faces."
+
+
+Every one told mother for a week before the wedding that she would be
+sick when it was over, and sure enough she was.  She had been on her
+feet too much, and had so many things to think about, and there had
+been such a dreadful amount of work for her and Candace, even after all
+the neighbours helped, that she was sick in bed and we couldn't find a
+thing she could eat, until she was almost wild with hunger and father
+seemed as if he couldn't possibly bear it a day longer.
+
+After Candace had tried everything she could think of, I went up and
+talked it over with Sarah Hood, and she came down, pretending she
+happened in, and she tried thickened milk, toast and mulled buttermilk;
+she kept trying for two days before she gave up.  Candace thought of
+new things, and Mrs. Freshett came and made all the sick dishes she
+knew, but mother couldn't even taste them; so we were pretty blue, and
+we nearly starved ourselves, for how could we sit and eat everything
+you could mention, and mother lying there, almost crying with hunger?
+
+Saturday morning I was hanging around her room hoping maybe she could
+think of some least little thing I could do for her, even if no more
+than to bring a glass of water, or a late rose to lay on her pillow; it
+would be better than not being able to do anything at all.  After a
+while she opened her eyes and looked at me, and I scarcely knew her.
+She smiled the bravest she could and said:  "Sorry for mother, dear?"
+
+I nodded.  I couldn't say much, and she tried harder than ever to be
+cheerful and asked:  "What are you planning to do to-day?"
+
+"If you can't think of one thing I can do for you, guess I'll go
+fishing," I said.
+
+Her eyes grew brighter and she seemed half interested.
+
+"Why, Little Sister," she said, "if you can catch some of those fish
+like you do sometimes, I believe I could eat one of them."
+
+I never had such a be-hanged time getting started.  I slipped from the
+room, and never told a soul even where I was going.  I fell over the
+shovel and couldn't find anything quick enough but my pocket to put the
+worms in, and I forgot my stringer.  At last, when I raced down the
+hill to the creek and climbed over the water of the deep place, on the
+roots of the Pete Billings yowling tree, I had only six worms, my apple
+sucker pole, my cotton cord line, and bent pin hook.  I put the first
+worm on carefully, and if ever I prayed!  Sometimes it was hard to
+understand about this praying business.  My mother was the best and
+most beautiful woman who ever lived.  She was clean, and good, and
+always helped "the poor and needy who cluster round your door," like it
+says in the poetry piece, and there never could have been a reason why
+God would want a woman to suffer herself, when she went flying on
+horseback even dark nights through rain or snow, to doctor other
+people's pain, and when she gave away things like she did--why, I've
+seen her take a big piece of meat from the barrel, and a sack of meal,
+and heaps of apples and potatoes to carry to Mandy Thomas--when she
+gave away food by the wagonload at a time, God couldn't have WANTED her
+to be hungry, and yet she WAS that very minute almost crying for food;
+and I prayed, oh how I did pray! and a sneaking old back-ended crayfish
+took my very first worm.  I just looked at the sky and said:  "Well,
+when it's for a sick woman, can't You do any better than that?"
+
+I suppose I shouldn't have said it, but if it had been your mother, how
+would you have felt?  I pinched the next worm in two, so if a crayfish
+took that, it wouldn't get but half.  I lay down across the roots and
+pulled my bonnet far over my face and tried to see to the bottom.  I
+read in school the other day:
+
+  "And by those little rings on the water I know
+   The fishes are merrily swimming below."
+
+
+There were no rings on the water, but after a while I saw some fish
+darting around, only they didn't seem to be hungry; for they would come
+right up and nibble a tiny bit at my worm, but they wouldn't swallow
+it.  Then one did, so I jerked with all my might, jerked so hard the
+fish and worm both flew off, and I had only the hook left.  I put on
+the other half and tried again.  I prayed straight along, but the tears
+would come that time, and the prayer was no powerful effort like
+Brother Hastings would have made; it was little torn up pieces mostly:
+"O Lord, please do make only one fish bite!"  At last one did bite
+good, so I swung carefully that time, and landed it on the grass, but
+it was so little and it hit a stone and was killed.  I had no stringer
+to put it back in the water to keep cool, and the sun was hot that day,
+like times in the fall.  Stretched on the roots, with it shining on my
+back, and striking the water and coming up from below, I dripped with
+heat and excitement.
+
+I threw that one away, put on another worm, and a big turtle took it,
+the hook, and broke my line, and almost pulled me in.  I wouldn't have
+let go if it had, for I just had to have a fish.  There was no help
+from the Lord in that, so I quit praying, only what I said when I
+didn't know it.  Father said man was born a praying animal, and no
+matter how wicked he was, if he had an accident, or saw he had just got
+to die, he cried aloud to the Lord for help and mercy before he knew
+what he was doing.
+
+I could hear the roosters in the barnyard, the turkey gobbler, and the
+old ganders screamed once in a while, and sometimes a bird sang a
+skimpy little fall song; nothing like spring, except the killdeers and
+larks; they were always good to hear--and then the dinner bell rang.  I
+wished I had been where I couldn't have heard that, because I didn't
+intend going home until I had a fish that would do for mother if I
+stayed until night.  If the best one in the family had to starve, we
+might as well all go together; but I wouldn't have known how hungry I
+was, if the bell hadn't rung and told me the others were eating.  So I
+bent another pin and tried again.  I lost the next worm without knowing
+how, and then I turned baby and cried right out loud.  I was so
+thirsty, the salty tears running down my cheeks tasted good, and doing
+something besides fishing sort of rested me; so I looked around and up
+at the sky, wiped my face on the skirt of my sunbonnet, and put on
+another worm.  I had only one more left, and I began to wonder if I
+could wade in and catch a fish by hand; I did teeny ones sometimes, but
+I knew the water there was far above my head, for I had measured it
+often with the pole; it wouldn't do to try that; instead of helping
+mother any, a funeral would kill her, too, so I fell back on the
+Crusaders, and tried again.
+
+Strange how thinking about them helped.  I pretended I was fighting my
+way to the Holy City, and this was the Jordan just where it met the
+sea, and I had to catch enough fish to last me during the pilgrimage
+west or I'd never reach Jerusalem to bring home a shell for the Stanton
+crest.  I pretended so hard, that I got braver and stronger, and asked
+the Lord more like there was some chance of being heard.  All at once
+there was a jerk that almost pulled me in, so I jerked too, and a big
+fish flew over my head and hit the bank behind me with a thump.  Of
+course by a big fish I don't mean a red horse so long as my arm, like
+the boys bring from the river; I mean the biggest fish I ever caught
+with a pin in our creek.  It looked like the whale that swallowed
+Jonah, as it went over my head.  I laid the pole across the roots,
+jumped up and turned, and I had to grab the stump to keep from falling
+in the water and dying.  There lay the fish, the biggest one I ever had
+seen, but it was flopping wildly, and it wasn't a foot from a hole in
+the grass where a muskrat had burrowed through.  If it gave one flop
+that way, it would slide down the hole straight back into the water;
+and between me and the fish stood our cross old Shropshire ram.  I
+always looked to see if the sheep were in the meadow before I went to
+the creek, but that morning I had been so crazy to get something for
+mother to eat, I never once thought of them--and there it stood!
+
+That ram hadn't been cross at first, and father said it never would be
+if treated right, and not teased, and if it were, there would be
+trouble for all of us.  I was having more than my share that minute,
+and it bothered me a lot almost every day.  I never dared enter a field
+any more if it were there, and now it was stamping up and down the
+bank, shaking its head, and trying to get me; with one flop the fish
+went ALMOST in the hole, and the next a little away from it.
+Everything put together, I thought I couldn't stand it.  I never wanted
+anything as I wanted that fish, and I never hated anything as I hated
+that sheep.  It wasn't the sheep's fault either; Leon teased it on
+purpose, just to see it chase Polly Martin; but that was more her
+doings than his.
+
+She was a widow and she crossed our front meadow going to her sister's.
+She had two boys big as Laddie, and three girls, and father said they
+lived like "the lilies of the field; they toiled not, neither did they
+spin."  They never looked really hungry or freezing, but they never
+plowed, or planted, they had no cattle or pigs or chickens, only a
+little corn for meal, and some cabbage, and wild things they shot for
+meat, and coons to trade the skins for more powder and lead--bet they
+ate the coons--never any new clothes, never clean, they or their house.
+Once when father and mother were driving past, they saw Polly at the
+well and they stopped for politeness sake to ask how she was, like they
+always did with every one.  Polly had a tin cup of water and was
+sopping at her neck with a carpet rag, and when mother asked, "How are
+you, Mrs. Martin?" she answered:  "Oh I ain't very well this spring; I
+gest I got the go-backs!"
+
+Mother said Polly looked as if she'd been born with the "go-backs," and
+had given them to all her children, her home, garden, fields, and even
+the FENCES.  We hadn't a particle of patience with such people.  When
+you are lazy like that it is very probable that you'll live to see the
+day when your children will peep through the fence cracks and cry for
+bread.  I have seen those Martin children come mighty near doing it
+when the rest of us opened our dinner baskets at school; and if mother
+hadn't always put in enough so that we could divide, I bet they would.
+If Polly Martin had walked up as if she were alive, and had been washed
+and neat, and going somewhere to do some one good, Leon never would
+have dreamed of such a thing as training the Shropshire to bunt her.
+She was so long and skinny, always wore a ragged shawl over her head, a
+floppy old dress that the wind whipped out behind, and when she came to
+the creek, she sat astride the foot log, and hunched along with her
+hands; that tickled the boys so, Leon began teasing the sheep on
+purpose to make it get her.  But inasmuch as she saw fit to go abroad
+looking so funny, that any one could see she'd be a perfect circus if
+she were chased, I didn't feel that it was Leon's fault.  If, like the
+little busy bee, she had "improved each shining hour," he never would
+have done it.  Seems to me, she brought the trouble on her own head.
+
+First, Leon ran at the Shropshire and then jumped aside; but soon it
+grew so strong and quick he couldn't manage that, so he put his hat on
+a stick and poked it back and forth through a fence crack, and that
+made the ram raving mad.  At last it would butt the fence until it
+would knock itself down, and if he dangled the hat again, get right up
+and do it over.  Father never caught Leon, so he couldn't understand
+what made the sheep so dreadfully cross, because he had thought it was
+quite peaceable when he bought it.  The first time it got after Polly,
+she threw her shawl over its head, pulled up her skirts, and Leon said
+she hit just eleven high places crossing an eighty-acre field; she came
+to the house crying, and father had to go after her shawl, and mother
+gave her a roll of butter and a cherry pie to comfort her.
+
+The Shropshire never really got Polly, but any one could easily see
+what it would do to me if I dared step around that stump, and it was
+dancing and panting to begin.  If whoever wrote that "Gentle Sheep,
+pray tell me why," piece ever had seen a sheep acting like that, it
+wouldn't have been in the books; at least I think it wouldn't, but one
+can't be sure.  He proved that he didn't know much about anything
+outdoors or he wouldn't have said that sheep were "eating grass and
+daisies white, from the morning till the night," when daisies are
+bitter as gall.
+
+Flop! went the fish, and its tail touched the edge of the hole.  Then I
+turned around and picked up the pole.  I put my sunbonnet over the big
+end of it, and poked it at the ram, and drew it back as Leon did his
+hat.  One more jump and mother's fish would be gone.  I stood on the
+roots and waved my bonnet.  The sheep lowered its head and came at it
+with a rush.  I drew back the pole, and the sheep's forefeet slid over
+the edge, and it braced and began to work to keep from going in.  The
+fish gave a big flop and went down the hole.  Then I turned Crusader
+and began to fight, and I didn't care if I were whipped black and blue,
+I meant to finish that old black-faced Shropshire.  I set the pole on
+the back of its neck and pushed with all my might, and I got it in,
+too.  My, but it made a splash!  It wasn't much good at swimming
+either, and it had no chance, for I stood on the roots and pushed it
+down, and hit it over the nose with all my might, and I didn't care how
+far it came on the cars, or how much money it cost, it never would
+chase me, and make me lose my fish again.
+
+I didn't hear him until he splashed under the roots and then I was so
+mad I didn't see that it was Laddie; I only knew that it was someone
+who was going to help out that miserable ram, so I struck with all my
+might, the sheep when I could hit it, if not, the man.
+
+"You little demon, stop!" cried Laddie.
+
+I got in a good one right on the ram's nose.  Then Laddie dropped the
+sheep and twisted the fish pole from my fingers, and I pushed him as
+hard as I could, but he was too strong.  He lifted the sheep, pulled it
+to the bank, and rolled it, worked its jaws, and squeezed water from
+it, and worked and worked.
+
+"I guess you've killed it!" he said at last.
+
+"Goody!" I shouted.  "Goody!  Oh but I am glad it's dead!"
+
+"What on earth has turned you to a fiend?" asked Laddie, beginning work
+on the sheep again.
+
+"That ram!" I said.  "Ever since Leon made it cross so it would chase
+Polly Martin, it's got me oftener than her.  I can't go anywhere for
+it, and to-day it made me lose a big fish, and mother is waiting.  She
+thought maybe she could eat some."
+
+Then I roared; bet I sounded like Bashan's bull.
+
+"Dear Lord!" said Laddie dropping the sheep and taking me in his wet
+arms.  "Tell me, Biddy!  Tell me how it is."
+
+Then I forgot I was a Crusader, and told him all about it as well as I
+could for choking, and when I finished he bathed my hot face, and
+helped me from the roots.  Then he went and looked down the hole I
+showed him and he cried out quicklike, and threw himself on the grass,
+and in a second up came the fish.  Some one had rolled a big stone in
+the hole, so the fish was all right, not even dead yet, and Laddie said
+it was the biggest one he ever had seen taken from the creek.  Then he
+said if I'd forgive him and all our family, for spoiling the kind of a
+life I had a perfect right to lead, and if I'd run to the house and get
+a big bottle from the medicine case quick, he would see to it that some
+place was fixed for that sheep where it would never bother me again.
+So I took the fish and ran as fast as I could, but I sent May back with
+the bottle, and did the scaling myself.  No one at our house could do
+it better, for Laddie taught me the right way long ago, when I was
+small, and I'd done it hundreds of times.
+
+Then I went to Candace and she put a little bit of butter and a speck
+of lard in a skillet, and cooked the fish brown.  She made a slice of
+toast and boiled a cup of water and carried it to the door; then she
+went in and set the table beside the bed, and I took in the tray, and
+didn't spill a drop.  Mother never said a word; she just reached out
+and broke off a tiny speck and nibbled it, and it stayed; she tried a
+little bigger piece, and another, and she said:  "Take out the bones,
+Candace!"  She ate every scrap of that fish like the hungriest
+traveller who ever came to our door, and the toast, and drank the hot
+water.  Then she went into a long sleep and all of us walked tiptoe,
+and when she waked up she was better, and in a few days she could sit
+in her chair again, and she began getting Shelley ready to go to music
+school.
+
+I have to tell you the rest, too.  Laddie made the ram come alive, and
+father sold it the next day for more than he paid for it.  He said he
+hoped I'd forgive him for not having seen how it had been bothering me,
+and that he never would have had it on the place a day if he'd known.
+The next time he went to town he bought me a truly little cane rod, a
+real fishing line, several hooks, and a red bobber too lovely to put
+into the water.  I thought I was a great person from the fuss all of
+them made over me, until I noticed Laddie shrug his shoulders, and
+reach back and rub one, and then I remembered.
+
+I went flying, and thank goodness! he held out his arms.
+
+"Oh Laddie!  I never did it!" I cried.  "I never, never did!  I
+couldn't!  Laddie, I love you best of any one; you know I do!"
+
+"Of course you didn't!" said Laddie.  "My Little Sister wasn't anywhere
+around when that happened.  That was a poor little girl I never saw
+before, and she was in such trouble she didn't know WHAT she was doing.
+And I hope I'll never see her again," he ended, twisting his shoulder.
+But he kissed me and made it all right, and really I didn't do that; I
+just simply couldn't have struck Laddie.
+
+Marrying off Sally was little worse than getting Shelley ready for
+school.  She had to have three suits of everything, and a new dress of
+each kind, and three hats; her trunk wouldn't hold all there was to put
+in it; and father said he never could pay the bills.  He had promised
+her to go, and he didn't know what in this world to do; because he
+never had borrowed money in his life, and he couldn't begin; for if he
+died suddenly, that would leave mother in debt, and they might take the
+land from her.  That meant he'd spent what he had in the bank on
+Sally's wedding, and all that was in the Underground Station, or maybe
+the Station money wasn't his.
+
+Just when he was awfully bothered, mother said to never mind, she
+believed she could fix it.  She sent all of us into the orchard to pick
+the fine apples that didn't keep well, and father made three trips to
+town to sell them.  She had big jars of lard she wouldn't need before
+butchering time came again, and she sold dried apples, peaches, and
+raspberries from last year.  She got lots of money for barrels of
+feathers she'd saved to improve her feather beds and pillows; she said
+she would see to that later.  Father was so tickled to get the money to
+help him out that he said he'd get her a pair of those wonderful new
+blue geese like Pryors had, that every one stopped to look at.  When
+there was not quite enough yet, from somewhere mother brought out money
+that she'd saved for a long time, from butter and eggs, and chickens,
+and turkeys, and fruit and lard, and things that belonged to her.
+Father hated to use it the worst way, but she said she'd saved it for
+an emergency, and now seemed to be the time.
+
+She said if the child really had talent, she should be about developing
+it, and while there would be many who would have far finer things than
+Shelley, still she meant her to have enough that she wouldn't be the
+worst looking one, and so ashamed she couldn't keep her mind on her
+work.  Father said, with her face it didn't make any difference what
+she wore, and mother said that was just like a man; it made all the
+difference in the world what a girl wore.  Father said maybe it did to
+the girl, and other women; what he meant was that it made none to a
+man.  Mother said the chief aim and end of a girl's life was not
+wrapped up in a man; and father said maybe not with some girls, but it
+would be with Shelley: she was too pretty to escape.  I do wonder if
+I'm going to be too pretty to escape, when I put on long dresses.
+Sometimes I look in the glass to see if it's coming, but I don't
+suppose it's any use.  Mother says you can't tell a thing at the
+growing age about how a girl is going to look at eighteen.
+
+When everything was almost ready, Leon came in one day and said:
+"Shelley, what about improving your hair?  Have you tried your wild
+grape sap yet?"
+
+Shelley said:  "Why, goodness me!  We've been so busy getting Sally
+married, and my clothes made, I forgot all about that.  Have you
+noticed the crock in passing?  Is there anything in it?"
+
+"It was about half full, once when I went by," said Leon. "I haven't
+seen it lately."
+
+"Do please be a dear and look, when you go after the cows this
+evening," said Shelley.  "If there's anything in it, bring it up."
+
+
+  "Do it yourself for want of me,
+   The boy replied quite manfully,"
+
+quoted Leon from "The Little Lord and the Farmer."  He was always
+teasing.
+
+"I think you're mean as dirt if you don t bring it," said Shelley.
+
+Leon grinned and you should have heard the nasty, teasing way he said
+more of that same piece:
+
+  "Anger and pride are both unwise,
+   Vinegar never catches flies----"
+
+
+I wondered she didn't slap him.  You could see she wanted to.  "I can
+get it myself," she said angrily.
+
+"What will you give me to bring it?" asked Leon, who never missed a
+chance to make a bargain.
+
+"My grateful thanks.  Are they not a proper reward?" asked Shelley.
+
+"Thanks your foot!" said Leon.  "Will you bring something pretty from
+Chicago for Susie Fall's Christmas present?"
+
+Every one laughed, but Leon never cared.  He liked Susie best of any of
+the girls, and he wanted every one to know it.  He went straight to her
+whenever he had a chance, and he'd already told her mother to keep all
+the other boys away, because he meant to marry her when he grew up, and
+Widow Fall said that was fair enough, and she'd save her for him.  So
+Shelley said she would get him something for Susie, and Leon brought
+the crock.  Shelley looked at it sort of dubious-like, tipped it, and
+stared at the dirt settled in the bottom, and then stuck in her finger
+and tasted it.  She looked at Leon with a queer grin and said: "Smarty,
+smarty, think you're smart!"  She threw the creek water into the swill
+bucket.  No one said a word, but Leon looked much sillier than she did.
+After he was gone I asked her if she would bring him a Christmas
+present for Susie NOW, and she said she ought to bring him a pretty
+glass bottle labelled perfume, with hartshorn in it, and she would, if
+she thought he'd smell it first.
+
+Shelley felt badly about leaving mother when she wasn't very well; but
+mother said it was all right, she had Candace to keep house and May and
+me, and father, and all of us to take care of her, and it would be best
+for Shelley to go now and work hard as she could, while she had the
+chance.  So one afternoon father took her trunk to the depot and bought
+the tickets and got the checks, and the next day Laddie drove to
+Groveville with father and Shelley, and she was gone.  Right at the
+last, she didn't seem to want to leave so badly, but all of them said
+she must.  Peter's cousin, who had gone last year, was to meet her, and
+have a room ready where she boarded if she could, and if she couldn't
+right away, then the first one who left, Shelley was to have the place,
+so they'd be together.
+
+There were eight of us left, counting Candace and Miss Amelia, and you
+wouldn't think a house with eight people living in it would be empty,
+but ours was.  Everything seemed to wilt.  The roses on the window
+blinds didn't look so bright as they had; mother said the only way she
+could get along was to keep right on working.  She helped Candace all
+she could, but she couldn't be on her feet very much, so she sat all
+day long and peeled peaches to dry, showed Candace how to jelly,
+preserve, and spice them, and peeled apples for butter and to dry,
+quantities more than we could use, but she said she always could sell
+such things, and with the bunch of us to educate yet, we'd need the
+money.
+
+When it grew cold enough to shut the doors, and have fire at night,
+first thing after supper all of us helped clear the table, then we took
+our slates and books and learned our lessons for the next day, and then
+father lined us against the wall, all in a row from Laddie down, and he
+pronounced words--easy ones that divided into syllables nicely, for me,
+harder for May, and so up until I might sit down.  For Laddie, May and
+Leon he used the geography, the Bible, Roland's history, the Christian
+Advocate, and the Agriculturist.  My, but he had them so they could
+spell!  After that, as memory tests, all of us recited our reading
+lesson for the next day, especially the poetry pieces.  I knew most of
+them, from hearing the big folks repeat them so often and practise the
+proper way to read them.  I could do "Rienzi's Address to the Romans,"
+"Casablanca," "Gray's Elegy," or "Mark Antony's Speech," but best of
+all, I liked "Lines to a Water-fowl."  When he was tired, if it were
+not bedtime yet, all of us, boys too, sewed rags for carpet and rugs.
+Laddie braided corn husks for the kitchen and outside door mats, and
+they were pretty, and "very useful too," like the dog that got his head
+patted in McGuffey's Second.
+
+Then they picked the apples.  These had to be picked by hand, wrapped
+in soft paper, packed in barrels, and shipped to Fort Wayne.  Where
+they couldn't reach by hand, they stood on barrels or ladders, and used
+a long handled picker, so as not to bruise the fruit.  Laddie helped
+with everything through the day, worked at his books at night, and
+whenever he stepped outside he looked in the direction of Pryors'.  He
+climbed to the topmost limbs of the trees with a big basket, picked it
+full and let it down with a long piece of clothesline.  I loved to be
+in the orchard when they were working; there were plenty of summer
+apples to eat yet; it was fun to watch the men, and sometimes I could
+be useful by handing baskets or heaping up apples to be buried for us.
+
+One night father read about a man who had been hanged for killing
+another man, and they cut him down too soon, so he came alive, and they
+had to hang him over; and father got all worked up about it.  He said
+the man had suffered death the first time to "all intents and
+purposes," so that fulfilled the requirements of the law, and they were
+wrong when they hanged him again.  Laddie said it was a piece of
+bungling sure enough, but the law said a man must be "hanged by his
+neck until he was dead," and if he weren't dead, why, it was plain he
+hadn't fulfilled the requirements of the law, so they were forced to
+hang him again.  Father said that law was wrong; the man never should
+have been hanged in the first place.  They talked and argued until we
+were all excited about it, and the next evening after school Leon and I
+were helping pick apples, and when father and Laddie went to the barn
+with a load we sat down to rest and we thought about what they said.
+
+"Gee, that was tough on the man!" said Leon, "but I guess the law is
+all right.  Of course he wouldn't want to die, and twice over at that,
+but I don't suppose the man he killed liked to die either.  I think if
+you take a life, it's all right to give your own to pay for it."
+
+"Leon," I said, "some time when you are fighting Absalom Saunders or
+Lou Wicks, just awful, if you hit them too hard on some tender spot and
+kill them, would you want to die to pay for it?"
+
+"I wouldn't want to, but I guess I'd have to," said Leon.  "That's the
+law, and it's as good a way to make it as any.  But I'm not going to
+kill any one.  I've studied my physiology hard to find all the spots
+that will kill.  I never hit them behind the ear, or in the pit of the
+stomach; I just black their eyes, bloody their snoots, and swat them on
+the chin to finish off with."
+
+"Well, suppose they don't study their physiologies like you do, and hit
+YOU in the wrong place, and kill you, would you want THEM hanged by the
+neck until they were dead, to pay for it?"
+
+"I don't think I'd want anything if I were dead," he said.  "I wonder
+how it feels to die.  Now THAT man knew.  I'd like to be hanged enough
+to find out how it goes, and then come back, and brag about it.  I
+don't think it hurts much; I believe I'll try it."
+
+So Leon took the rope Laddie lowered the baskets with, and threw it
+over a big limb.  Then he rolled up a barrel and stood on it and put my
+sunbonnet on with the crown over his face, for a black cap, and made
+the rope into a slip noose over his head, and told me to stand back by
+the apple tree and hold the rope tight, until he said he was hanged
+enough.  Then he stepped from the barrel.  It jerked me toward him
+about a yard, as he came down smash! on his feet.  I held with all my
+might, but he was too heavy--and falling that way.  So he went to
+trying to fix some other plan, and I told him the sensible thing to do
+would be for him to hang me, because he'd be strong enough to hold me
+and I could tell him how it felt just as well.  So we fixed me up like
+we had him, and when Leon got the rope stretched, he wrapped it twice
+around the apple tree so it wouldn't jerk him as it had me, and when he
+said "Ready," I stepped from the barrel.  The last thing I heard was
+Leon telling me to say when I was hanged enough.  I was so heavy, the
+rope stretched, and I went down until it almost tore off my head, and I
+couldn't get a single breath, so of course I didn't tell him, and I
+couldn't get on the barrel, and my tongue went out, and my chest
+swelled up, and my ears roared, and I kicked and struggled, and all the
+time I could hear Leon laughing, and shouting to keep it up, that I was
+dying fine; only he didn't know that I really was, and at last I didn't
+feel or know anything more.
+
+When I came to, I was lying on the grass, while father was pumping my
+arms, and Laddie was pouring creek water on my face from his hat, and
+Leon was running around in circles, clear crazy.  I heard father tell
+him he'd give him a scutching he'd remember to the day of his death;
+but inasmuch as I had told Leon to do it, I had to grab father and hold
+to him tight as I could, until I got breath enough to explain how it
+happened.  Even then I wasn't sure what he was going to do.
+
+After all that, when I tried to tell Leon how it felt, he just cried
+like a baby, and he wouldn't listen to a word, even when he'd wanted to
+know so badly.  He said if I hadn't come back, he'd have gone to the
+barn and used the swing rope on himself, so it was a good thing I did,
+for one funeral would have cost enough, when we needed money so badly,
+not to mention how mother would have felt to have two of us go at once,
+like she had before.  And anyway, it didn't amount to so awful much.
+It was pretty bad at first, but it didn't last long, and the next day
+my neck was only a little blue and stiff, and in three days it was all
+over, only a rough place where the rope grained the skin as I went
+down; but I never got to tell Leon how it felt; I just couldn't talk
+him into hearing, and it was quite interesting too; but still I easily
+saw why the man in the paper would object to dying twice, to pay for
+killing another man once.
+
+When the apples were picked and the cabbage, beets, turnips, and
+potatoes were buried, some corn dried in the garret for new meal,
+pumpkins put in the cellar, the field corn all husked, and the
+butchering done, father said the work was in such fine shape, with
+Laddie to help, and there was so much more corn than he needed for us,
+and the price was so high, and the turkeys did so well, and everything,
+that he could pay back what mother helped him, and have quite a sum
+over.
+
+It was Thanksgiving by that time, and all of Winfield's, Lucy's, Sally
+and Peter, and our boys came home.  We had a big time, all but Shelley;
+it was too expensive for her to come so far for one day, but mother
+sent her a box with a whole turkey for herself and her friends; and
+cake, popcorn, nuts, and just everything that wasn't too drippy.
+Shelley wrote such lovely letters that mother saved them and after we
+had eaten as much dinner as we could, she read them before we left the
+table.
+
+I had heard most of them, but I liked to listen again, because they
+sounded so happy.  You could hear Shelley laugh on every page.  She
+told about how Peter's cousin was waiting when the train stopped.  They
+couldn't room together right away, but they were going to the first
+chance they had.  Shelley felt badly because they were so far apart,
+but she was in a nice place, where she could go with other girls of the
+school until she learned the way.  She told about her room and the
+woman she boarded with and what she had to eat; she wrote mother not to
+worry about clothes, because most of the others were from the country,
+or small towns, and getting ready to teach, and lots of them didn't
+have NEARLY as many or as pretty dresses as she did.  She told about
+the big building, the classes, the professors, and of going to public
+recitals where some of the pupils who knew enough played; and she was
+working her fingers almost to the bone, so she could next year.  She
+told of people she met, and how one of the teachers took a number of
+girls in his class to see a great picture gallery.  She wrote pages
+about a young Chicago lawyer she met there, and only a few lines about
+the pictures, so father said as that was the best collection of art
+work in Chicago, it was easy enough to see that Shelley had been far
+more impressed with the man than she had been with the pictures.
+Mother said she didn't see how he could say a thing like that about the
+child.  Of course she couldn't tell in a letter about hundreds of
+pictures, but it was easy enough to tell all about a man.
+
+Father got sort of spunky at that, and he said it was mighty little
+that mattered most, that could be told about a Chicago lawyer; and
+mother had better caution Shelley to think more about her work, and
+write less of the man.  Mother said that would stop the child's
+confidences completely and she'd think all the time about the man, and
+never mention him again, so she wouldn't know what WAS going on.  She
+said she was glad Shelley had found pleasing, refined friends, and
+she'd encourage her all she could in cultivating them; but of course
+she'd caution her to be careful, and she'd tell her what the danger
+was, and after that Shelley wrote and wrote.  Mother didn't always read
+the letters to us, but she answered every one she got that same night.
+Sometimes she pushed the pen so she jabbed the paper, and often she
+smiled or laughed softly.
+
+I liked Thanksgiving.  We always had a house full of company, and they
+didn't stay until we were tired of them, as they did at Christmas, and
+there was as much to eat; the only difference was that there were no
+presents.  It wasn't nearly so much work to fix for one day as it was
+for a week; so it wasn't so hard on mother and Candace, and father
+didn't have to spend much money.  We were wearing all our clothes from
+last fall that we could, and our coats from last winter to help out,
+but we didn't care.  We had a lot of fun, and we wanted Sally and
+Shelley to have fine dresses, because they were in big cities where
+they needed them, and in due season, no doubt, we would have much more
+than they, because, as May figured it, there would be only a few of us
+by that time, so we could have more to spend.  That looked sensible,
+and I thought it would be that way, too.  We were talking it over
+coming from school one evening, and when we had settled it, we began to
+play "Dip and Fade."  That was a game we made up from being at church,
+and fall and spring were the only times we could play it, because then
+the rains filled all the ditches beside the road where the dirt was
+plowed up to make the bed higher, and we had to have the water to dip
+in and fade over.
+
+We played it like that, because it was as near as we could come to
+working out a song Isaac Thomas sang every time he got happy.  He had a
+lot of children at home, and more who had died, from being half-fed and
+frozen, mother thought; and he was always talking about meeting the
+"pore innocents" in Heaven, and singing that one song.  Every time he
+made exactly the same speech in meeting.  It began like reciting
+poetry, only it didn't rhyme, but it sort of cut off in lines, and
+Isaac waved back and forth on his feet, and half sung it, and the rags
+waved too, but you just couldn't feel any thrills of earnestness about
+what he said, because he needed washing, and to go to work and get him
+some clothes and food to fill out his frame.  He only looked funny, and
+made you want to laugh.  It took Emanuel Ripley to raise your hair.  I
+don't know why men like my father, and the minister, and John Dover
+stood it; they talked over asking Isaac to keep quiet numbers of times,
+but the minister said there were people like that in every church, they
+always came among the Lord's anointed, and it was better to pluck out
+your right eye than to offend one of them, and he was doubtful about
+doing it.  So we children all knew that the grown people scarcely could
+stand Isaac's speech, and prayer, and song, and that they were afraid
+to tell him plain out that he did more harm than good.  Every meeting
+about the third man up was Isaac, and we had to watch him wave, and
+rant, and go sing-songy:
+
+  "Oh brethering and sistering--ah,
+  It delights my heart--ah to gather with you,
+  In this holy house of worship--ah.
+  In his sacred word--ah,
+  The Lord--ah tells us,
+  That we are all his childring--ah.
+  And now, lemme exhort you to-night--ah,
+  As one that loves you--ah,
+  To choose that good part, that Mary chose--ah,
+  That the worrrr-uld kin neither give ner take away--ah."
+
+That went on until he was hoarse, then he prayed, and arose and sang
+his song.  Other men spoke where they stood.  Isaac always walked to
+the altar, faced the people, and he was tired out when he finished, but
+so proud of himself, so happy, and he felt so sure that his efforts
+were worth a warm bed, sausage, pancakes, maple syrup, and coffee for
+breakfast, that it was mighty seldom he failed to fool some one else
+into thinking so too, and if he could, he wouldn't have to walk four
+miles home on cold nights, with no overcoat.  In summer, mostly, they
+let him go.  Isaac always was fattest in winter, especially during
+revivals, but at any time mother said he looked like a sheep's carcass
+after the buzzards had picked it.  It could be seen that he was
+perfectly strong, and could have fed and clothed himself, and Mandy and
+the children, quite as well as our father did us, if he had wanted to
+work, for we had the biggest family of the neighbourhood.  So we
+children made fun of him and we had to hold our mouths shut when he got
+up all tired and teary-like, and began to quaver:
+
+    "Many dear childurn we know dew stan'
+    Un toon ther harps in the better lan',
+    Ther little hans frum each soundin' string,
+    Bring music sweet, wile the Anguls sing,
+    Bring music sweet, wile the Anguls sing,--
+
+      We shell meet them agin on that shore,
+      We shell meet them agin on that shore,
+      With fairer face, un angel grace,
+      Each loved un ull welcome us ther.
+
+    "They uster mourn when the childurn died,
+    Un said goo-bye at the river side,
+    They dipped ther feet in the glidin' stream,
+    Un faded away, like a loveli dream,
+    Un faded away like a loveli dream."
+
+
+Then the chorus again, and then Isaac dropped on the front seat
+exhausted, and stayed there until some good-hearted woman, mostly my
+mother, felt so sorry about his shiftlessness she asked him to go home
+with us and warmed and fed him, and put him in the traveller's bed to
+sleep.  The way we played it was this: we stood together at the edge of
+a roadside puddle and sang the first verse and the chorus exactly as
+Isaac did.  Then I sang the second verse, and May was one of the "many
+dear childurn," and as I came to the lines she dipped her feet in the
+"glidin' stream," and for "fading away," she jumped across.
+
+Now May was a careful little soul, and always watched what she was
+doing, so she walked up a short way, chose a good place, and when I
+sang the line, she was almost birdlike, she dipped and faded so
+gracefully.  Then we laughed like dunces, and then May began to sway
+and swing, and drone through her nose for me, and I was so excited I
+never looked.  I just dipped and faded on the spot.  I faded all right
+too, for I couldn't jump nearly across, and when I landed in pure clay
+that had been covered with water for three weeks, I went down to my
+knees in mud, to my waist in water, and lost my balance and fell
+backward.
+
+A man passing on horseback pried me out with a rail and helped me home.
+Of course he didn't know how I happened to fall in, and I was too
+chilled to talk.  I noticed May only said I fell, so I went to bed
+scorched inside with red pepper tea, and never told a word about
+dipping and fading.  Leon whispered and said he bet it was the last
+time I would play that, so as soon as my coat and dress were washed and
+dried, and I could go back to school, I did it again, just to show him
+I was no cowardy-calf; but I had learned from May to choose a puddle I
+could manage before I faded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"Even So"
+
+  "All things whatsoever ye would
+  That men should do to you,
+  Do ye even so to them."
+
+
+Our big girls and boys always made a dreadful fuss and said we would
+catch every disease you could mention, but mother and father were set
+about it, just like the big rocks in the hills.  They said they,
+themselves, once had been at the mercy of the people, and they knew how
+it felt.  Mother said when they were coming here in a wagon, and she
+had ridden until she had to walk to rest her feet, and held a big baby
+until her arms became so tired she drove while father took it, and when
+at last they saw a house and stopped, she said if the woman hadn't
+invited her in, and let her cook on the stove, given her milk and eggs,
+and furnished her a bed to sleep in once in a while, she couldn't have
+reached here at all; and she never had been refused once.  Then she
+always quoted:  "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to
+you, do ye EVEN SO to them."
+
+Father said there were men who made a business of splitting hairs, and
+of finding different meanings in almost everything in the Bible.  I
+would like to have seen any one split hairs about that, or it made to
+mean something else.  Of all the things in the Bible that you had to do
+because it said to, whether you liked it or not, that was the one you
+struck oftenest in life and it took the hardest pull to obey.  It was
+just the hatefulest text of any, and made you squirm most.  There was
+no possible way to get around it.  It meant, that if you liked a
+splinter new slate, and a sharp pencil all covered with gold paper, to
+make pictures and write your lessons, when Clarissa Polk sat next you
+and sang so low the teacher couldn't hear until she put herself to
+sleep on it, "I WISHT I had a slate!  I wisht I HAD a slate!  I wisht I
+had a SLATE!  Oh I WISHT I HAD A SLATE!"--it meant that you just had to
+wash up yours and stop making pictures yourself, and pass it over; you
+even had to smile when you offered it, if you did it right.  I seldom
+got through it as the Lord would, for any one who loaned Clarissa a
+slate knew that it would come back with greasy, sweaty finger marks on
+it you almost had to dig a hole to wash off, and your pencil would be
+wet.  And if there were the least flaw of crystal in the pencil, she
+found it, and bore down so hard that what she wrote never would come
+off.
+
+The Lord always seemed bigger and more majestic to me, than at any
+other time, when I remembered that He could have known all that, and
+yet smiled as He loaned Clarissa His slate.  And that old Bible thing
+meant, too, that if you would like it if you were travelling a long
+way, say to California to hunt gold, or even just to Indiana, to find a
+farm fit to live on--it meant that if you were tired, hungry, and sore,
+and would want to be taken in and fed and rested, you had to let in
+other people when they reached your house.  Father and mother had been
+through it themselves, and they must have been tired as could be,
+before they reached Sarah Hood's and she took them in, and rested and
+fed them, even when they were only a short way from the top of the
+Little Hill, where next morning they looked down and stopped the wagon,
+until they chose the place to build their house.  Sarah Hood came
+along, and helped mother all day, so by night she was settled in the
+old cabin that was on the land, and ready to go to work making money to
+build a new one, and then a big house, and fix the farm all beautiful
+like it was then.  They knew so well how it felt, that they kept one
+bed in the boys' room, and any man who came at dusk got his supper, to
+sleep there, and his breakfast, and there never was anything to pay.
+The girls always scolded dreadfully about the extra washing, but mother
+said she slept on sheets when she came out, and some one washed them.
+
+One time Sally said:  "Mother, have you ever figured out how many
+hundred sheets you've washed since, to pay for that?"
+
+Mother said:  "No, but I just hope it will make a stack high enough for
+me to climb from into Heaven."
+
+Sally said:  "The talk at the church always led me to think that you
+flew to Heaven."
+
+Mother answered:  "So I get there, I don't mind if I creep."
+
+Then Sally knew it was time to stop.  We always knew.  And we stopped,
+too!
+
+We had heard that "All things" quotation, until the first two words
+were as much as mother ever needed repeat of it any more, and we had
+cooked, washed for, and waited on people travelling, until Leon got so
+when he saw any one coming--of course we knew all the neighbours, and
+their horses and wagons and carriages--he always said:  "Here comes
+another 'Even So!'"  He said we had done "even so" to people until it
+was about our share, but mother said our share was going to last until
+the Lord said, "Well done, good and faithful servant," and took us
+home.  She had much more about the stranger at the gate and
+entertaining angels unawares; why, she knew every single thing in the
+Bible that meant it was her duty to feed and give a bed to any one, no
+matter how dirty or miserable looking he was!  So when Leon came in one
+evening at dusk and said, "There's another 'Even So' coming down the
+Little Hill!" all of us knew that we'd have company for the night, and
+we had.
+
+I didn't like that man, but some of the others seemed to find him
+amusing.  Maybe it was because I had nothing to do but sit and watch
+him, and so I saw more of him than the ones who came and went all the
+time.  As long as there was any one in the room, he complained
+dreadfully about his sore foot, and then cheered up and talked, and he
+could tell interesting things.  He was young, but he must have been
+most everywhere and seen everything.  He was very brave and could stand
+off three men who were going to take from him the money he was carrying
+to buy a piece of land in Illinois.  The minute the grown folks left
+the room to milk, do the night feeding, and begin supper, he twisted in
+his chair and looked at every door, and went and stood at the back
+dining-room window, where he could see the barn and what was out there,
+and coming back he took a peep into father's and mother's room, and
+although he limped dreadfully when he came, he walked like any one when
+he went over and picked up father's gun and looked to see if it were
+loaded, and seemed mighty glad when he found it wasn't.  Father said he
+could load in a flash when it was necessary, but he was dubious about a
+loaded gun in a house full of children.  Not one of us ever touched it,
+until the boys were big enough to have permission, like Laddie and Leon
+had.  He said a gun was such a great "moral persuader," that the sight
+of one was mostly all that was needed, and nobody could tell by looking
+at it whether it was loaded or not.  This man could, for he examined
+the lock and smiled in a pleased way over it, and he never limped a
+step going back to his chair.  He kept on complaining, until father
+told him before bedtime that he had better rest a day or two, and
+mother said that would be a good idea.
+
+He talked so much we couldn't do our lessons or spell very well, but it
+was Friday and we'd have another chance Saturday, so it didn't make so
+much difference.  Father said the traveller must be tired and sleepy
+and Leon should take a light and show him to bed.  He stayed so long
+father went to the foot of the stairway, and asked him why he didn't
+come down and he said he was in bed too.  The next morning he was
+sleepy at breakfast and Laddie said it was no wonder, because Leon and
+the traveller were talking when he went upstairs.  The man turned to
+father and said: "That's a mighty smart boy, Mr. Stanton."  Father
+frowned and said:  "Praise to the face is open disgrace.  I hope he
+will be smart enough not to disgrace us, anyway."
+
+The traveller said he was sure he would be, and we could see that he
+had taken a liking to Leon, for he went with him to the barn to help do
+the morning feeding.  They stayed so long mother sent me to call them,
+and when I got there, the man was telling Leon how foolish it was for
+boys to live on a farm; how they never would amount to anything unless
+they went to cities, and about all the fun there was there, and how
+nice it was to travel, even along the roads, because every one fed you,
+and gave you a good bed.  He forgot that walking had made his foot
+lame, and I couldn't see, to save me, why he was going to spend his
+money to buy a farm, if he thought a town the only place where it was
+fit to live.
+
+He stayed all Saturday, and father said Sunday was no suitable time to
+start on a journey again, and the man's foot was bad when father was
+around, so it would be better to wait until Monday.  The traveller
+tagged Leon and told him what a fine fellow he was, how smart he was,
+and to prove it, Leon boasted about everything he knew, and showed the
+man all over the farm.
+
+I even saw them pass the Station in the orchard, and heard Leon brag
+how father had been an agent for the Governor; but of course he didn't
+really show him the place, and probably it would have made no
+difference if he had, for all the money must have been spent on Sally's
+wedding.  Of course father might have put some there he had got since,
+or that money might never have been his at all, but it seemed as if it
+would be, because it was on his land.
+
+Sunday evening all of us attended church, but the traveller was too
+tired, so when Leon said he'd stay with him, father thought it was all
+right.  I could see no one wanted to leave the man alone in the house.
+He said they'd go to bed early, and we came in quite late.  The lamp
+was turned low, the door unlocked, and everything in place.  Laddie
+went to bed without a candle, and said he'd undress and slip in easy so
+as not to waken them.
+
+In the morning when he got up the traveller's bed hadn't been slept in,
+and neither had Leon's.  The gun was gone, and father stared at mother,
+and mother stared at Laddie, and he turned and ran straight toward the
+Station, and in a minute he was back, whiter than a plate.  He just
+said:  "All gone!"  Father and mother both sat down suddenly and hard.
+Then Laddie ran to the barn and came back and said none of the horses
+had been taken.  Soon they went into the parlour and shut the door, and
+when they came out father staggered and mother looked exactly like
+Sabethany.  Laddie ran to the barn, saddled Flos and rode away.  Father
+wanted to ring an alarm on the dinner bell, like he had a call arranged
+to get all the neighbours there quickly if we had sickness or trouble,
+and mother said:  "Paul, you shall not!  He's so young!  We've got to
+keep this as long as we can, and maybe the Lord will help us find him,
+and we can give him another chance."
+
+Father started to say something, and mother held up her hand and just
+said, "Paul!" and he sank back in the chair and kept still.  Mother
+always had spoken of him as "the Head of the Family," and here he
+wasn't at all!  He minded her quickly as I would.
+
+When Miss Amelia came downstairs they let her start to school and never
+told her a word, but mother said May and I were not to go.  So I
+slipped out and ran through the orchard to look at the Station, and
+sure enough! the stone was rolled back, the door open and the can lying
+on the floor.  I slid down and picked it up, and there was one sheet of
+paper money left in it stuck to the sides.  It was all plain as a
+pikestaff.  Leon must have thought the money had been spent, and showed
+the traveller the Station, just to brag, and he guessed there might be
+something there, and had gone while we were at church and taken it.  He
+had all night the start of us, and he might have a horse waiting
+somewhere, and be almost to Illinois by this time, and if the money
+belonged to father, there would be no Christmas; and if it happened to
+be the money the county gave him to pay the men who worked the roads
+every fall, and Miss Amelia, or collections from the church, he'd have
+to pay it back, even if it put him in debt; and if he died, they might
+take the land, like he said; and where on earth was Leon?  Knew what
+he'd done and hiding, I bet!  He needed the thrashing he would get that
+time, and I started out to hunt him and have it over with, so mother
+wouldn't be uneasy about him yet; and then I remembered Laddie had said
+Leon hadn't been in bed all night.  He was gone too!
+
+Maybe he wanted to try life in a city, where the traveller had said
+everything was so grand; but he must have known that he'd kill his
+mother if he went, and while he didn't kiss her so often, and talk so
+much as some of us, I never could see that he didn't run quite as fast
+to get her a chair or save her a step.  He was so slim and light he
+could race for the doctor faster than Laddie or father, either one.  Of
+course he loved his mother, just as all of us did; he never, never
+could go away and not let her know about it.  If he had gone, that
+watchful-eyed man, who was lame only part of the time, had taken the
+gun and made him go.  I thought I might as well save the money he'd
+overlooked, so I gripped it tight in my hand, and put it in my apron
+pocket, the same as I had Laddie's note to the Princess, and started to
+the barn, on the chance that Leon might be hiding.  I knew precious
+well I would, if I were in his place.  So I hunted the granaries, the
+haymow, the stalls, then I stood on the threshing floor and cried:
+"Leon!  If you're hiding come quick!  Mother will be sick with worrying
+and father will be so glad to see you, he won't do anything much.  Do
+please hurry!"
+
+Then I listened, and all I could hear was a rat gnawing at a corner of
+the granary under the hay.  Might as well have saved its teeth, it
+would strike a strip of tin when it got through, but of course it
+couldn't know that.  Then I went to every hole around the haystack,
+where the cattle had eaten; none were deep yet, like they would be
+later in the season, and all the way I begged of Leon to come out.
+Once a rooster screamed, flew in my face and scared me good, but no
+Leon; so I tried the corn crib, the implement shed, and the wood house,
+climbing the ladder with the money still gripped in one hand.  Then I
+slipped in the front door, up the stairs, and searched the garret, even
+away back where I didn't like to very well.  At last I went to the
+dining-room, and I don't think either father or mother had moved, while
+Sabethany turned to stone looked good compared with them.  Seemed as if
+it would have been better if they'd cried, or scolded, or anything but
+just sit there as they did, when you could see by their moving once in
+a while that they were alive.  In the kitchen Candace and May finished
+the morning work, and both of them cried steadily.  I slipped to May,
+"Whose money was it?" I whispered.  "Father's, or the county's, or the
+church's?"
+
+"All three," said May.
+
+"The traveller took it."
+
+"How would he find it?  None of us knew there was such a place before."
+
+"Laddie seemed to know!"
+
+"Oh Laddie!  Father trusts him about everything."
+
+"They don't think HE told?"
+
+"Of course not, silly.  It's Leon who is gone!"
+
+"Leon may have told about the Station!" I cried.  "He didn't touch the
+money.  He never touched it!"
+
+Then I went straight to father.  Keeping a secret was one thing; seeing
+the only father you had look like that, was another.  I held out the
+money.
+
+"There's one piece old Even So didn't get, anyway," I said.  "Found it
+on the floor of the Station, where it was stuck to the can.  And I
+thought Leon must be hiding for fear he'd be whipped for telling, but
+I've hunted where we usually hide, and promised him everything under
+the sun if he'd come out; but he didn't, so I guess that traveller man
+must have used the gun to make him go along."
+
+Father sat and stared at me.  He never offered to touch the money, not
+even when I held it against his hand.  So I saw that money wasn't the
+trouble, else he'd have looked quick enough to see how much I had.
+They were thinking about Leon being gone, at least father was.  Mother
+called me to her and asked:  "You knew about the Station?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"When?"
+
+"On the way back from taking Amanda Deam her ducks this summer."
+
+"Leon was with you?"
+
+"He found it."
+
+"What were you doing?"
+
+"Sitting on the fence eating apples.  We were wondering why that ravine
+place wasn't cleaned up, when everywhere else was, and then Leon said
+there might be a reason.  He told about having seen a black man, and
+that he was hidden some place, and we hunted there and found it.  We
+rolled back the stone, and opened the door, and Leon went in, and both
+of us saw a can full of money."
+
+"Go on."
+
+"We didn't touch it, mother!  Truly we didn't!  Leon said we'd found
+something not intended for children, and we'd be whipped sick if we
+ever went near or told, and we never did, not even once, unless Leon
+wanted to boast to the traveller man, but if he showed him the place,
+he thought sure the money had all been spent on the wedding and sending
+Shelley away."
+
+Father's arms shot out, and his head pitched on the table.  Mother got
+up and began to walk the floor, and never went near or even touched
+him.  I couldn't bear it.  I went and pulled his arm and put the bill
+under his hand.
+
+"Leon didn't take your money!  He didn't!  He didn't!  I just know he
+didn't!  He does tricks because they are so funny, or he thinks they'll
+be, but he doesn't steal!  He doesn't touch a single thing that is not
+his, only melons, or chicken out of the skillet, or bread from the
+cellar; but not money and things.  I take gizzards and bread myself,
+but I don't steal, and Leon or none of us do!  Oh father, we don't!
+Not one of us do!  Don't you remember about 'Thou shalt not,' and the
+Crusaders?  Leon's the best fighter of any of us.  I'm not sure that he
+couldn't even whip Laddie, if he got mad enough!  Maybe he can't whip
+the traveller if he has the gun, but, father, Leon simply couldn't take
+the money.  Laddie will stay home and work, and all of us.  We can help
+get it back.  We can sell a lot of things.  Laddie will sell Flos
+before he'll see you suffer so; and all of us will give up Christmas,
+and we'll work!  We'll work as hard as ever we can, and maybe you could
+spare the little piece Joe Risdell wants to build his cabin on.  We can
+manage about the money, father, indeed we can.  But you don't dare
+think Leon took it!  He never did!  Why, he's yours!  Yours and
+mother's!"
+
+Father lifted his head and reached out his arms.
+
+"You blessing!" he said.  "You blessing from the Lord!"
+
+Then he gave me a cold, stiff kiss on the forehead, went to mother,
+took her arm, and said:  "Come, mommy, let's go and tell the Lord about
+it, and then we'll try to make some plan.  Perhaps Laddie will be back
+with word soon."
+
+But he almost had to carry her.  Then we could hear him praying, and he
+was so anxious, and he made it so earnest it sounded exactly like the
+Lord was in our room and father was talking right to His face.  I tried
+to think, and this is what I thought: as father left the room, he
+looked exactly as I had seen Mr. Pryor more than once, and my mother
+had both hands gripped over her heart, and she said we must not let any
+one know.  Now if something could happen to us to make my father look
+like the Princess' and my mother hold her heart with both hands, and if
+no one were to know about it like they had said, how were we any
+different from Pryors?  We might be of the Lord's anointed, but we
+could get into the same kind of trouble the infidels could, and have
+secrets ourselves, or at least it seemed as if it might be very nearly
+the same, when it made father and mother look and act the way they did.
+I wondered if we'd have to leave our lovely, lovely home, cross a sea
+and be strangers in a strange land, as Laddie said; and if people would
+talk about us, and make us feel that being a stranger was the
+loneliest, hardest thing in all the world.  Well, if mysteries are like
+this, and we have to live with one days and years, the Lord have mercy
+on us!  Then I saw the money lying on the table, so I took it and put
+it in the Bible.  Then I went out and climbed the catalpa tree to watch
+for Laddie.
+
+Soon I saw a funny thing, such as I never before had seen.  Coming
+across the fields, straight toward our house, sailing over the fences
+like a bird, came the Princess on one of her horses.  Its legs
+stretched out so far its body almost touched the ground, and it lifted
+up and swept over the rails.  She took our meadow fence lengthwiselike,
+and at the hitching rack she threw the bridle over the post,
+dismounted, and then I saw she had been riding astride, like a man.  I
+ran before her and opened the sitting-room door, but no one was there,
+so I went on to the dining-room.  Father had come in, and mother was
+sitting in her chair.  Both of them looked at the Princess and never
+said a word.
+
+She stopped inside the dining-room door and spoke breathlessly, as if
+she as well as the horse had raced.
+
+"I hope I'm not intruding," she said, "but a man north of us told our
+Thomas in the village that robbers had taken quite a large sum of
+hidden money you held for the county, and church, and of your own, and
+your gun, and got away while you were at church last night.  Is it
+true?"
+
+"Practically," said my father.
+
+Then my mother motioned toward a chair.
+
+"You are kind to come," she said.  "Won't you be seated?"
+
+The Princess stepped to the chair, but she gripped the back in both
+hands and stood straight, breathing fast, her eyes shining with
+excitement, her lips and cheeks red, so lovely you just had to look,
+and look.
+
+"No," she said.  "I'll tell you why I came, and then if there is
+nothing I can do here, and no errand I can ride for you, I'll go.
+Mother has heart trouble, the worst in all the world, the kind no
+doctor can ever hope to cure, and sometimes, mostly at night, she is
+driven to have outside air.  Last night she was unusually ill, and I
+heard her leave the house, after I'd gone to my room.  I watched from
+my window and saw her take a seat on a bench under the nearest tree.  I
+was moving around and often I looked to see if she were still there.
+Then the dogs began to rave, and I hurried down.  They used to run
+free, but lately, on account of her going out, father has been forced
+to tie them at night.  They were straining at their chains, and barking
+dreadfully.  I met her at the door, but she would only say some one
+passed and gave her a fright.  When Thomas came in and told what he had
+heard, she said instantly that she had seen the man.
+
+"She said he was about the size of Thomas, that he came from your
+direction, that he ran when our dogs barked, but he kept beside the
+fences, and climbed over where there were trees.  He crossed our
+barnyard and went toward the northwest.  Mother saw him distinctly as
+he reached the road, and she said he was not a large man, he stooped
+when he ran, and she thought he moved like a slinking, city thief.  She
+is sure he's the man who took your money; she says he acted exactly as
+if he were trying to escape pursuit; but I was to be SURE to tell you
+that he didn't carry a gun.  If your gun is gone, there must have been
+two, and the other man took that and went a different way.  Did two men
+stop here?"
+
+"No," said father.  "Only one."
+
+The Princess looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"Do you think, Mr. Stanton," she said, "that the man who took the money
+would burden himself with a gun?  Isn't a rifle heavy for one in flight
+to carry?"
+
+"It is," said father.  "Your mother saw nothing of two men?"
+
+"Only one, and she knows he didn't carry a gun.  Except the man you
+took in, no stranger has been noticed around here lately?"
+
+"No one.  We are quite careful.  Even the gun was not loaded as it
+stood; whoever took it carried the ammunition also, but he couldn't
+fire until he loaded."
+
+Father turned to the corner where the gun always stood and then he
+stooped and picked up two little white squares from the floor.
+
+They were bits of unbleached muslin in which he wrapped the bullets he
+made.
+
+"The rifle was loaded before starting, and in a hurry," he said, as he
+held up the squares of muslin.  Then he scratched a match, bent, and
+ran it back and forth over the floor, and at one place there was a
+flash, and the flame went around in funny little fizzes as it caught a
+grain of powder here and there.  "You see the measure was overrun."
+
+"Wouldn't the man naturally think the gun was loaded, and take it as it
+stood?"
+
+"That would be a reasonable conclusion," said father.
+
+"But he looked!" I cried.  "That first night when you and the boys went
+to the barn, and the girls were getting supper, he looked at the gun,
+and he LIKED it when he saw it wasn't loaded.  He smiled.  And he
+didn't limp a mite when I was the only one in the room.  He and Leon
+knew it wasn't loaded, and I guess he didn't load it, for he liked
+having it empty so well."
+
+"Ummmm!" said father.  "What it would save in this world if a child
+only knew when to talk and when to keep still.  Little Sister, the next
+time you see a stranger examine my gun when I'm not in the room,
+suppose you take father out alone and whisper to him about it."
+
+"Yes, sir," I said.
+
+The way I wished I had told that at the right time made me dizzy, but
+then there were several good switchings I'd had for telling things,
+besides what Sally did to me about her and Peter.  I would have enjoyed
+knowing how one could be sure.  Hereafter, it will be all right about
+the gun, anyway.
+
+"Could I take my horse and carry a message anywhere for you?  Are both
+your sons riding to tell the neighbours?"
+
+Father hesitated, but it seemed as if he stopped to think, so I just
+told her:  "Laddie is riding.  Leon didn't take a horse."
+
+Father said there was nothing she could do, so she took my hand and we
+started for the gate.
+
+"I do hope they will find him, and get back the money, and give him
+what he deserves!" she cried.
+
+"Yes, father and mother are praying that they'll find him," I said.
+"It doesn't seem to make the least difference to them about the money.
+Father didn't even look at a big paper piece I found where it was
+hidden.  But they are anxious about the man.  Mother says he is so
+young, we just must find him, and keep this a secret, and give him
+another chance.  You won't tell, will you?"
+
+The Princess stood still on our walk, and then of all things!  if she
+didn't begin to go Sabethany-like.  The colour left her cheeks and lips
+and she shivered and shook and never said one word.  I caught her arm.
+"Say, what ails you?" I cried.  "You haven't gone and got heart trouble
+too, have you?"
+
+She stood there trembling, and then, wheeling suddenly, ran back into
+the house, and went to my mother.  On her knees, the Princess buried
+her face in mother's breast and said:  "Oh Mrs. Stanton!  Oh, if I only
+could help you!"
+
+She began to cry as if something inside her had broken, and she'd shake
+to pieces.
+
+Mother stared above her head at father, with her eyebrows raised high,
+and he waved his hand toward me.  Mother turned to me, but already she
+had put her arms around the Princess, and was trying to hold her
+together.
+
+"What did you tell her that made her come back?" she asked sternlike.
+
+"You forgot to explain that the man was so young, and you wanted to
+keep it a secret and give him another chance," I said.  "I just asked
+her not to tell."
+
+Mother looked at father and all the colour went from her face, and she
+began to shake.  He stared at her, then he opened her door and lifted
+the Princess with one arm, and mother with the other, and helped them
+into mother's room, stepped back and closed the door.  After a while it
+opened and they came out together, with both mother's arms around the
+Princess, and she had cried until she staggered.  Mother lifted her
+face and kissed her, when they reached the door and said:  "Tell your
+mother I understand enough to sympathize.  Carry her my love.  I do
+wish she would give herself the comfort of asking God to help her."
+
+"She does!  Oh, I'm sure she does!" said the Princess.  "It's father
+who has lost all judgment and reason."
+
+Father went with her to the gate, and this time she needed help to
+mount her horse, and she left it to choose its way and go where it
+pleased on the road.  When father came in he looked at mother, and she
+said:  "I haven't the details, but she understands too well.  The Pryor
+mystery isn't much of a mystery any more.  God help their poor souls,
+and save us from suffering like that!"
+
+She said so little and meant so much, I couldn't figure out exactly
+what she did mean, but father seemed to understand.
+
+"I've often wondered," he said, but he didn't say what he wondered, and
+he hurried to the barn and saddled our best horse and came in and began
+getting ready to ride, and we knew he would go northwest.  I went back
+to the catalpa tree and wondered myself; but it was too much for me to
+straighten out: just why my mother wanting to give the traveller man
+another chance would make the Princess feel like that.  If she had
+known my mother as I did, she'd have known that she ALWAYS wanted to
+give every man a second chance, no matter whether he was young or old.
+
+Then I saw Laddie coming down the Big Hill beside the church, but he
+was riding so fast I thought he wouldn't want to bother with me, so I
+slid from the tree, and ran to tell mother.  She went to the door and
+watched as he rode up, but you could see by his face he had not heard
+of them.
+
+"Nothing, but I have some men out.  I am going east now," he said.  "I
+wish, father, you would rub Flos down, blanket her, and if you can,
+walk her slowly an hour while she cools off.  I am afraid I've ruined
+her.  How much had you there?"
+
+"I haven't stopped to figure," said father.  "I think I'd better take
+the horse I have ready and go on one of the northwest roads.  The Pryor
+girl was here a few moments ago, and her mother saw a man cross their
+place about the right time last evening.  He ran and acted suspiciously
+when the dogs barked.  But he was alone and he didn't have a gun."
+
+"Was she sure?"
+
+"Positive."
+
+"Then it couldn't have been our man, but I'll ride in that direction
+and start a search.  They would keep to the woods, I think!  You'd
+better stay with mother.  I'll ask Jacob Hood to take your place."
+
+So Laddie rode away again without even going into the house, and mother
+said to father:  "What can he be saying to people, that the neighbours
+don't come?"
+
+Father answered:  "I don't know, but if any one can save the situation,
+Laddie will."
+
+Mother went to bed, while father sat beside her reading aloud little
+scraps from the Bible, and they took turns praying.  From the way they
+talked to the Lord, you could plainly see that they were reminding Him
+of all the promises He had made to take care of people, comfort those
+in trouble, and heal the broken-hearted.
+
+One thing was so curious, I asked May if she noticed, and she had.
+When they had made such a fuss about money only a short while before,
+and worked so hard to get our share together, and when they would have
+to pay back all that belonged to the county and church, neither of them
+ever even mentioned money then.  Every minute I expected father to ask
+where I'd put the piece I found, and when he opened right at it, in the
+Bible, he turned on past, exactly as if it were an obituary, or a piece
+of Sally's wedding dress, or baby hair from some of our heads.  He went
+on hunting places where the Lord said sure and strong that He'd help
+people who loved Him.  When either of them prayed, they asked the Lord
+to help those near them who were in trouble, as often and earnestly as
+they begged Him to help them.  There were no people near us who were in
+trouble that we knew of, excepting Pryors.  Hard as father and mother
+worked, you'd have thought the Lord wouldn't have minded if they asked
+only once to get the money back, or if they forgot the neighbours, but
+they did neither one.
+
+May said because they were big like that was why all of us loved them
+so.
+
+I would almost freeze in the catalpa, but as I could see far in all
+directions there, I went back, and watched the roads, and when I
+remembered what Laddie had said, I kept an eye on the fields too.  At
+almost dusk, and frozen so stiff I could scarcely hang to the limb, I
+heard the bulldogs at Pryors' begin to rave.  They kept on steadily,
+and I thought Gypsies must be passing.  Then from the woods came a
+queer party that started across the cornfield toward the Big Meadow in
+front of the house, and I thought they were hunters.  I stood in the
+tree and watched until they climbed the meadow fence, and by that time
+I could see plainly.
+
+The traveller man got over first, then Leon and the dogs, and then Mr.
+Pryor handed Leon the gun, leaped over, and took it.  I looked again,
+and then fell from the tree and almost bursted.  As soon as I could get
+up, and breathe, I ran to the front door, screaming:  "Father!  Father!
+Come open the Big Gate.  Leon's got him, but he's so tired Mr. Pryor is
+carrying the gun, and helping him walk!"
+
+Just like one, all of us ran; father crossed the road, and opened the
+gate.  The traveller man wouldn't look up, he just slouched along.  But
+Leon's chin was up and his head high.  He was scratched, torn, and
+dirty.  He was wheezing every breath most from his knees, and Mr. Pryor
+half carried him and the gun.  When they met us, Leon reached in his
+trousers pocket and drew out a big roll of money that he held toward
+father.  "My fault!" he gasped.  "But I got it back for you."
+
+Then he fell over and father caught him in his arms and carried him
+into the house, and laid him on the couch in the dining-room.
+
+Mr. Pryor got down and gathered up the money from the road.  He
+followed into the house and set the gun in the corner.
+
+"Don't be frightened," he said to mother.  "The boy has walked all
+night, and all day, with no sleep or food, and the gun was a heavy load
+for him.  I gathered from what he said, when the dogs let us know they
+were coming, that this hound took your money.  Your dog barked and
+awakened the boy and he loaded the gun and followed.  The fellow had a
+good start and he didn't get him until near daybreak.  It's been a
+stiff pull for the youngster and he seems to feel it was his fault that
+this cowardly cur you sheltered learned where you kept your money.  If
+that is true, I hope you won't be hard on him!"
+
+Father was unfastening Leon's neckband, mother was rubbing his hands,
+Candace was taking off his shoes, and May was spilling water father had
+called for, all over the carpet, she shook so.  When Leon drew a deep
+breath and his head rolled on the pillow, father looked at Mr. Pryor.
+I don't think he heard all of it, but he caught the last words.
+
+"'Hard on him!  Hard on him!'" he said, the tears rolling down his
+cheeks.  "'This my son, who was lost, is found!'"
+
+"Oh!" shouted Mr. Pryor, slamming the money on the table.  "Poor drivel
+to fit the circumstances.  If I stood in your boots, sir, I would rise
+up in the mighty strength of my pride and pull out foundation stones
+until I shook the nation!  I never envied mortal man as I envy you
+to-day!"
+
+Candace cried out:  "Oh look, his poor feet!  They are blistered and
+bleeding!"
+
+Mother moved down a little, gathered them in her arms, and began
+kissing them.  Father wet Leon's lips and arose.  He held out his hand,
+and Mr. Pryor took it.
+
+"I will pray God," he said, "that it may happen 'even so' to you."
+
+Leon opened his eyes and caught only the last words.
+
+"You had better look out for the 'Even So's,' father," he said.
+
+And father had to laugh, but Mr. Pryor went out, and slammed the door,
+until I looked to see if it had cracked from top to bottom; but we
+didn't care if it had, we were so happy over having Leon back.
+
+I went and picked up the money and carried it to father to put away,
+and that time he took it.  But even then he didn't stop to see if he
+had all of it.
+
+"You see!" I said, "I told you----"
+
+"You did indeed!" said father.  "And you almost saved our reason.
+There are times when things we have come to feel we can't live without,
+so press us, that money seems of the greatest importance.  This is our
+lesson.  Hereafter, I and all my family, who have been through this,
+will know that money is not even worth thinking about when the life and
+honour of one you love hangs in the balance.  When he can understand,
+your brother shall know of the wondrous faith his Little Sister had in
+him."
+
+"Maybe he won't like what you and mother thought.  Maybe we better not
+tell him.  I can keep secrets real well.  I have several big ones I've
+never told, and I didn't say a word about the Station when Leon said I
+shouldn't."
+
+"After this there will be no money kept on the place," said father.
+"It's saving time at too great cost.  All we have goes into the bank,
+and some of us will cheerfully ride for what we want, when we need it.
+As for not telling Leon, that is as your mother decides.  For myself, I
+believe I'd feel better to make a clean breast of it."
+
+Mother heard, for she sobbed as she bathed Leon's feet, and when his
+eyes came open so they'd stay a little while, he kept looking at her so
+funny, between sips of hot milk.
+
+"Don't CRY, mammy!" he said.  "I'M all right.  Sorry such a rumpus!
+Let him fool me.  Be smart as the next fellow, after this!  Know how
+glad you are to get the money!"
+
+Mother sat back on her heels and roared as I do when I step in a
+bumblebee's nest, and they get me.  Leon was growing better every
+minute, and he stared at her, and then his dealish, funny old grin
+began to twist his lips and he cried:  "Oh golly!  You thought _I_
+helped take it and went with him, didn't you?"
+
+"Oh my son, my son!" wailed mother until she made me think of Absalom
+under the oak.
+
+"Well, I be ding-busted!" said Leon, sort of slow and wondering-like,
+and father never opened his head to tell him that was no way to talk.
+
+Mother cried more than ever, and between sobs she tried to explain that
+I heard what the traveller man had said about how bad it was to live in
+the country; and how Leon was now at an age where she'd known boys to
+get wrong ideas, and how things looked, and in the middle of it he
+raised on his elbow and took her in his arms and said:  "Well of all
+the geese!  And I 'spose father was in it too!  But since it's the
+first time, and since it is you----!  Go to bed now, and let me
+sleep----  But see that you don't ever let this happen again."
+
+Then he kissed her over and over and clung to her tight and at last
+dropped back and groaned:
+
+  "My reputation, O my reputation!
+   I've lost my reputation!"
+
+
+She had to laugh while the tears were still running, and father and
+Laddie looked at each other and shouted.  I guess they thought Leon was
+about right after that.  Laddie went and bent over him and took his
+hand.
+
+"Don't be in quite such a hurry, old man," he said.  "Before you wink
+out I have got to tell you how proud I am of having a brother who is a
+real Crusader.  The Lord knows this took nerve!  You're great, boy,
+simply great!"
+
+Leon grabbed Laddie's hand with both of his and held tight and laughed.
+You could see the big tears squeeze out, although he fought to wink
+them back.  He held to Laddie and said low-like, only for him to hear:
+"It's all right if you stay by a while, old man."
+
+He began to talk slowly.
+
+"It was a long time before I caught up, and then I had to hide, and
+follow until day, and he wasn't so very easy to handle.  Once I thought
+he had me sure!  It was an awful load, but if it hadn't been for the
+good old gun, I'd never have got him.  When we mixed up, I had fine
+luck getting that chin punch on him; good thing I worked it out so
+slick on Absalom Saunders, and while old Even So was groggy I got the
+money away from him, took the gun, and stood back some distance, before
+he came out of it.  Once we had it settled who walked ahead, and who
+carried the money and gun, we got along better, but I had to keep an
+eye on him every minute.  To come through the woods was the shortest,
+but I'm tired out, and so is he.  Getting close I most felt sorry for
+him, he was so forlorn, and so scared about what would be done to him.
+He stopped and pulled out another roll, and offered me all of it, if
+I'd let him go.  I didn't know whether it was really his, or part of
+father's, so I told him he could just drop it until I found out.  Made
+him sweat blood, but I had the gun, and he had to mind.  I was master
+then.  So there may be more in the roll I gave father than Even So
+took.  Father can figure up and keep what belongs to him.  Even So had
+gone away past Flannigans' before I tackled him, and I was sleepy,
+cold, and hungry; you'd have thought there'd have been a man out
+hunting, or passing on the road, but not a soul did we see 'til
+Pryors'!  Say, the old man was bully!  He helped me so, I almost
+thought I belonged to him!  My! he's fine, when you know him!  After he
+came on the job, you bet old Even So walked up.  Say, where is he?
+Have you fed him?"
+
+Laddie looked at father, who was listening, and we all rushed to the
+door, but it must have been an hour, and Even So hadn't waited.  Father
+said it was a great pity, because a man like that shouldn't be left to
+prey on the community; but mother said she didn't want to be mixed up
+with a trial, or to be responsible for taking the liberty of a fellow
+creature, and father said that was exactly like a woman.  Leon went to
+sleep, but none of us thought of going to bed; we just stood around and
+looked at him, and smiled over him, and cried about him, until you
+would have thought he had been shipped to us in a glass case, and cost,
+maybe, a hundred dollars.
+
+Father got out his books and figured up his own and the road money, and
+Miss Amelia's, and the church's.  Laddie didn't want her around, so he
+stopped at the schoolhouse and told her to stay at Justices' that
+night, we'd need all our rooms; but she didn't like being sent away
+when there was such excitement, but every one minded Laddie when he
+said so for sure.
+
+When father had everything counted there was more than his, quite a lot
+of it, stolen from other people who sheltered the traveller no doubt,
+father said.  We thought he wouldn't be likely to come back for it, and
+father said he was at loss what to do with it, but Laddie said he
+wasn't--it was Leon's--he had earned it; so father said he would try to
+find out if anything else had been stolen, and he'd keep it a year, and
+then if no one claimed it, he would put it on interest until Leon
+decided what he wanted to do with it.
+
+When you watched Leon sleep you could tell a lot more about what had
+happened to him than he could.  He moaned, and muttered constantly, and
+panted, and felt around for the gun, and breathed like he was running
+again, and fought until Laddie had to hold him on the couch, and
+finally awakened him.  But it did no good; he went right off to sleep
+again, and it happened all over.  Then father began getting his
+Crusader blood up, although he always said he was a man of peace.  But
+it was a lucky thing Even So got away; for after father had watched
+Leon a while, he said if that man had been on the premises, his fingers
+itched so to get at him, he was positive he'd have vented a little
+righteous indignation on him that would have cost him within an inch of
+his life.  And he'd have done it too!  He was like that.  It took a
+lot, and it was slow coming, but when he became angry enough, and felt
+justified in it, why you'd be much safer to be some one else than the
+man who provoked him.
+
+After ten o'clock the dog barked, some one tapped, and father went; he
+always would open the door; you couldn't make him pretend he was
+asleep, or not at home when he was, and there stood Mr. Pryor.  He said
+they could see the lights and they were afraid the boy was ill, and
+could any of them help.  Father said there was nothing they could do;
+Leon was asleep.  Then Mr. Pryor said:  "If he is off sound, so it
+won't disturb him, I would like to see him again."
+
+Father told him Leon was restless, but so exhausted a railroad train
+wouldn't waken him, so Mr. Pryor came in and went to the couch.  He
+took off his hat, like you do beside a grave, while his face slowly
+grew whiter than his hair, and that would be snow-white; then he turned
+at last and stumbled toward the door.  Laddie held it for him, but he
+didn't seem to remember he was there.  He muttered over and over:
+"Why?  Why?  In the name of God, why?"  Laddie followed to the gate to
+help him on his horse, because he thought he was almost out of his
+head, but he had walked across the fields, so Laddie kept far behind
+and watched until he saw him go safely inside his own door.
+
+I think father and Laddie sat beside Leon all night.  The others went
+to sleep.  A little after daybreak, just as Laddie was starting to
+feed, there was an awful clamour, and here came a lot of neighbours
+with Even So.  Mr. Freshett had found him asleep in a cattle hole in
+the straw stack, and searched him, and he had more money, and that made
+Mr. Freshett sure; and as he was very strong, and had been for years a
+soldier, and really loved to fight, he marched poor Even So back to our
+house.  Every few rods they met more men out searching who came with
+them, until there were so many, our front yard and the road were
+crowded.  Of all the sights you ever saw, Even So looked the worst.
+You could see that he'd drop over at much more.  Those men kept crying
+they were going to hang him; but mother went out and talked to them,
+and said they mustn't kill a man for taking only money.  She told them
+how little it was worth compared with other things; she had Candace
+bring Even So a cup of hot coffee, lots of bread, and sausage from the
+skillet, and she said it was our money, and our lad, and we wanted
+nothing done about it.  The men didn't like it, but the traveller did.
+He grabbed and gobbled like a beast at the hot food and cried, and
+mother said she forgave him, and to let him go.
+
+Then Mr. Freshett looked awful disappointed, and he came up to father,
+with his back toward mother, and asked:  "That's your say too, Mr.
+Stanton?"  Father grinned sort of rueful-like, but he said to give Even
+So his money and let him go.  He told all about getting ours back, and
+having had him at the house once before.  He brought the money Leon
+took from him, but the men said no doubt he had stolen that, and Leon
+had earned it bringing him back, so the traveller shouldn't have it.
+They took him away on a horse and said they'd let him go, but that
+they'd escort him from the county.  Father told Mr. Freshett that he
+was a little suspicious of them, and he would hold him responsible for
+the man's life.  Mr. Freshett said that he'd give his word that the man
+would be safe; they only wanted to make sure he wouldn't come back, and
+that he'd be careful in the future how he abused hospitality, so they
+went, and all of us were glad of it.
+
+I don't know what Mr. Freshett calls safe, for they took Even So to
+Groveville and locked him up until night.  Then they led him to the
+railroad, and made him crawl back and forth through an old engine
+beside the track, until he was blacker than any negro ever born; and
+then they had him swallow a big dose of croton oil for his health.
+That was the only KIND thing they did, for afterward they started him
+down the track and told him to run, and all of them shot at his feet as
+he went.  Hannah Freshett told me at school the next day.  Her father
+said Even So just howled, and flew up in the air, and ducked, and
+dodged and ran like he'd never walked a step, or was a bit tired.  We
+made a game of it, and after that one of the boys was Even So, and the
+others were the mob, and the one who could howl nicest, jump highest,
+and go fastest, could be "It" oftenest.
+
+Leon grew all right faster than you would think.  He went to school day
+after next, and the boys were sick with envy.  They asked and asked,
+but Leon wouldn't tell much.  He didn't seem to like to talk about it,
+and he wouldn't play the game or even watch us.  He talked a blue
+streak about the money.  Father was going to write to every sheriff of
+the counties along the way the man said he had come, and if he could
+find no one before spring who had been robbed, he said Leon might do
+what he liked with the money.  I used to pretend it was coming to me,
+and each day I thought of a new way to spend it.  Leon was so sure he'd
+get it he marched right over and asked Mr. Pryor about a nice young
+thoroughbred horse, from his stables, and when he came back he could
+get a coltlike one so very cheap that father and Laddie looked at each
+other and gasped, and never said a word.  They figured up, and if Leon
+got the money, he could have the horse, and save some for college, and
+from the start he never changed a mite about those two things he wanted
+to do with it.  He had the horse picked out and went to the field to
+feed and pet it and make it gentle, so he could ride bareback, and
+mother said he would be almost sick if the owner of the money turned up.
+
+Pulling his boots one night, father said so too, and that the thoughts
+of it worried him.  He said Mr. Pryor had shaded his price so that if
+the money had to go, he would be tempted to see if we couldn't manage
+it ourselves.  I don't know how shading the price of a horse would make
+her feel better, but it did, and maybe Leon is going to get it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Laddie Takes the Plunge
+
+  "This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
+  The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms,
+  And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;
+  The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
+  And, when he thinks, good, easy man, full surely
+  His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
+  And then he falls, as I do."
+
+
+"Watch me take the plunge!" said Laddie.
+
+"'Mad frenzy fires him now,'" quoted Leon.
+
+It was Sunday after dinner.  We had been to church and Sunday-school in
+the forenoon, and we had a houseful of company for dinner.  All of them
+remained to spend the afternoon, because in our home it was perfectly
+lovely.  We had a big dinner with everything good to start on, and then
+we talked and visited and told all the news.  The women exchanged new
+recipes for cooking, advised each other about how to get more work done
+with less worry, to doctor their sick folks, and to make their dresses.
+At last, when every thing was talked over, and there began to be a
+quiet time, father would reach across the table, pick up a paper and
+read all the interesting things that had happened in the country during
+the past week; the jokes too, and they made people think of funny
+stories to tell, and we just laughed.  In the Agriculturist there were
+new ways to farm easier, to make land bear more crops; so he divided
+that with the neighbours, also how to make gardens, and prune trees.
+Before he finished, he always managed to work in a lot about being
+honest, kind, and loving God.
+
+He and mother felt so good over Leon, and by this time they were
+beginning to see that they were mighty glad about the money too.  It
+wouldn't have been so easy to work, and earn, and pay back all that for
+our school, roads, and the church; and every day you could see plainer
+how happy they felt that they didn't have to do it.  Because they were
+so glad about these things, they invited every one they met that day;
+but we knew Saturday mother felt that probably she would ask a crowd,
+from the chickens, pie, and cake she got ready.  When the reading part
+was over, and the women were beginning to look at the clock, and you
+knew they felt they should go home, and didn't want to, Laddie arose
+and said that, and Leon piped up like he always does and made every one
+laugh.  Of course they looked at Laddie, and no one knew what he meant,
+so all the women and a few of the men asked him.
+
+"Watch me, I said," laughed Laddie as he left the room.
+
+Soon Mrs. Dover, sitting beside the front window, cried:  "Here he is
+at the gate!"
+
+He was on his horse, but he hitched it and went around the house and up
+the back way.  Before long the stair door of the sitting-room opened,
+and there he stood.  We stared at him.  Of course he was bathed, and in
+clean clothing to start with, but he had washed and brushed some more,
+until he shone.  His cheeks were as smooth and as clear pink as any
+girl's, his eyes blue-gray and big, with long lashes and heavy brows.
+His hair was bright brown and wavy, and he was so big and broad.  He
+never had been sick a day in his life, and he didn't look as if he ever
+would be.
+
+And clothes DO make a difference.  He would have had exactly the same
+hair, face, and body, wearing a hickory shirt and denim trousers; but
+he wouldn't have looked as he did in the clothes he wore at college,
+when it was Sunday there, or he was invited to a party at the
+President's.  I don't see how any man could possibly be handsomer or
+look finer.  His shirt, collar, and cuffs were snow-white, like
+everything had to be before mother got through with it; his big loose
+tie almost reached his shoulders; and our men could do a thing no other
+man in the neighbourhood did: they could appear easier in the finest
+suit they could put on than in their working clothes.
+
+Mother used to say one thing she dreaded about Sunday was the evident
+tortures of the poor men squirming in boots she knew pinched them,
+coats too tight, and collars too high.  She said they acted like
+half-broken colts fretting over restriction.  Always she said to father
+and the boys when they went to buy their new clothes:  "Now, DON'T join
+the harness fighters!  Get your clothing big enough to set your bodies
+with comfort and ease."
+
+I suppose those other men would have looked like ours if their mothers
+had told them.  You can always see that a man needs a woman to help him
+out awful bad.
+
+Of course Laddie knew he was handsome; he had to know all of them were
+looking at him curiously, but he stood there buttoning his glove and
+laughing to himself until Sarah Hood asked:  "Now what are you up to?"
+
+He took a step toward her, ran one hand under her lanternjawed chin,
+pulled her head against his side and turned up her face.
+
+"Sarah," he said, "'member the day we spoiled the washing?"
+
+Every one laughed.  They had made jokes about it until our friends knew
+what they meant.
+
+"What are you going to spoil now?" asked Sarah.
+
+"The Egyptians!  The 'furriners.' I'm going right after them!"
+
+"Well, you could be in better business," said Sarah Hood sharply.
+
+Laddie laughed and squeezed her chin, and hugged her head against him.
+
+"Listen to that, now!" he cried.  "My best friend going back on me.
+Sarah, I thought you, of all people, would wish me luck."
+
+"I do!" she said instantly.  "And that's the very reason I don't want
+you mixed up with that mysterious, offish, stuck-up mess."
+
+"Bless your dear heart!" said Laddie, giving her a harder squeeze than
+ever.  "You got that all wrong, Sarah.  You'll live to see the day,
+very shortly, when you'll change every word of it."
+
+"I haven't done anything but get surer about it every day for two
+years, anyway," said Sarah Hood.
+
+"Exactly!" said Laddie, "but wait until I have taken the plunge!  Let
+me tell you how the Pryor family strikes me.  I think he is a
+high-tempered, domineering man, proud as Lucifer!  For some cause, just
+or not, he is ruining his life and that of his family because he so
+firmly believes it just; he is hiding here from his home country, his
+relatives, and friends.  I think she is, barring you and mother, the
+handsomest woman of her age I ever saw----"
+
+All of them laughed, because Sarah Hood was nearly as homely as a woman
+could grow, and maybe other people didn't find our mother so lovely as
+we thought her.  I once heard one of her best friends say she was
+"distinctly plain."  I didn't see how she could; but she said that.
+
+"--and the most pitiful," Laddie went on.  "Sarah, what do you suppose
+sends a frail little woman pacing the yard, and up and down the road,
+sometimes in storm and rain, gripping both hands over her heart?"
+
+"I suppose it's some shameful thing I don't want you mixed up with!"
+said Sarah Hood promptly, and people just shouted.
+
+"Sarah," said Laddie, "I've seen her closely, watched her move, and
+studied her expression.  There's not one grain of possibility that you,
+or mother, or Mrs. Fall, or any woman here, could be any closer
+connected with SHAME.  Shame there is," said Laddie, "and what a word!
+How it stings, burns, withers, and causes heart trouble and hiding; but
+shame in connection with that woman, more than shame thrust upon her,
+which might come to any of us, at any time, shame that is her error, in
+the life of a woman having a face like hers, Sarah, I am ashamed of
+you!  Your only excuse is that you haven't persisted as I have until
+you got to see for yourself."
+
+"I am not much on persistence in the face of a locked door, a cast-iron
+man with a big cane, and two raving bulldogs," said Mrs. Hood.  "Wait,
+young man!  Just wait until he sets them on you."
+
+Laddie's head went back and how he laughed.
+
+"Hist!  A word with you, Sarah!" he said.  "'Member I have a sort of
+knack with animals.  I never yet have failed with one I undertook to
+win.  Now those bulldogs of Pryors' are as mild as kittens with a man
+who knows the right word.  Reason I know, Sarah, I've said the word to
+them, separately and collectively, and it worked.  There is a contrast,
+Sarah, between what I say and do to those dogs, and the kicks and
+curses they get from their owner.  I'll wager you two to one that if
+you can get Mr. Pryor to go into a 'sic-ing' contest with me, I can
+have his own dogs at his throat, when he can't make them do more than
+to lick my hands."
+
+They laughed as if that were funny.
+
+"Well, I didn't know about this," said Sarah.  "How long have you lived
+at Pryors'?"
+
+You couldn't have heard what Laddie said if he'd spoken; so he waited
+until he could be heard, and it never worried him a speck.
+
+He only stood and laughed too; then, "Long enough," he said, "to know
+that all of us are making a big and cruel mistake in taking them at
+their word, and leaving them penned up there weltering in misery.  What
+we should do, is to go over there, one at a time, or in a body, and
+batter at the door of their hearts, until we break down the wall of
+pride they have built around them, ease their pain, and bring them with
+us socially, if they are going to live among us.  You people who talk
+loudly and often about loving God, and 'doing unto others,' should have
+gone long ago, for Jesus' sake; I'm going for the sake of a girl, with
+a face as sweet, and a heart as pure, as any accepted angel at the foot
+of the throne.  Mother, I want a cup of peach jelly, and some of that
+exceptionally fine cake you served at dinner, to take to our sick
+neighbour."
+
+Mother left the room.
+
+"Father, I want permission to cut and carry a generous chestnut branch,
+burred, and full fruited, to the young woman.  There is none save ours
+in this part of the country, and she may never have seen any, and be
+interested.  And I want that article about foot disease in horses, for
+Mr. Pryor.  I'll bring it back when he finishes."
+
+Father folded the paper and handed it to Laddie, who slipped it in his
+pocket.
+
+"Take the finest branch you can select," father said, and I almost fell
+over.
+
+He had carried those trees from Ohio, before I had been born, and
+mother said for years he wrapped them in her shawl in winter and held
+an umbrella over them in summer, and father always went red and grinned
+when she told it.  He was wild about trees, and bushes, so he made up
+his mind he'd have chestnuts.  He planted them one place, and if they
+didn't like it, he dug them up and set them another where he thought
+they could have what they needed and hadn't got the last place.
+Finally, he put them, on the fourth move, on a little sandy ridge
+across the road from the wood yard, and that was the spot.  They shot
+up, branched, spread, and one was a male and two were females, so the
+pollen flew, the burrs filled right, and we had a bag of chestnuts to
+send each child away from home, every Christmas.  The brown leaves and
+burrs were so lovely, mother cut one of the finest branches she could
+select and hung it above the steel engraving of "Lincoln Freeing the
+Slaves," in the boys' room, and nothing in the house was looked at
+oftener, or thought prettier.  That must have been what was in the back
+of Laddie's head when he wanted a branch for the Princess.
+
+Mother came in with the cake and jelly in a little fancy basket, and
+Laddie said:  "Thank you!  Now every one wish me luck!  I'm going to
+ride to Pryors', knock at the door, and present these offerings with my
+compliments.  If I'm invited in, I'm going to make the effort of my
+life at driving the entering wedge toward social intercourse between
+Pryors and their neighbours.  If I'm not, I'll be back in thirty
+minutes and tell you what happened to me.  If they refuse my gifts, you
+shall have the jelly, Sarah; I'll give Mrs. Fall the olive branch,
+bring back the paper, and eat the cake to console my wounded spirits."
+
+Of course every one laughed; they couldn't help it.  I watched father
+and he laughed hardest of the men, but mother was more stiff-lipped
+about it; she couldn't help a little, though.  And I noticed some of
+those women acted as if they had lost something.  Maybe it was a chance
+to gossip about Laddie, for he hadn't left them a thing to guess at,
+and mother says the reason gossip is so dreadful is because it is
+always GUESSWORK.  Well, that was all fair and plain.  He had told
+those people, our very best friends, what he thought about everything,
+the way they acted included.  He was carrying something to each member
+of the Pryor family, and he'd left a way to return joking and
+unashamed, if they wouldn't let him in.  He had fixed things so no one
+had anything to guess at, and it would look much worse for the Pryors
+than it would for him, if he did come back.
+
+I wondered if he had been born that smart, or if he learned it in
+college.  If he did, no wonder Leon was bound to go.  Come to think of
+it, though, mother said Laddie was always like that.  She said he never
+bit her when he nursed; he never mauled her as if she couldn't be hurt
+when he was little, he never tore his clothes and made extra work as he
+grew, and never in his life gave her an hour's uneasiness.  But I guess
+she couldn't have said that about uneasiness lately, for she couldn't
+keep from looking troubled as all of us followed to the gate to see him
+start.
+
+How they joked, and tried to tease him!  But they couldn't get a breath
+ahead.  He shot back answers as fast as they could ask questions, while
+he cut the branch and untied the horse.  He gave the limb and basket to
+mother to hold, kissed her good-bye, and me too, before he mounted.
+With my arms around his neck--I never missed a chance to try to squeeze
+into him how I loved him--I whispered:  "Laddie, is it a secret any
+more?"
+
+He threw back his head and laughed the happiest.
+
+"Not the ghost of a secret!" he said.  "But you let me do the talking,
+until I tell you."  Then he went on right out loud: "I'm riding up the
+road waving the banner of peace.  If I suffer repulse, the same thing
+has happened to better men before, so I'll get a different banner and
+try again."
+
+Laddie mounted, swept a circle in the road, dropped Flos on her knees
+in a bow, and waved the branch.  Leon began to sing at the top of his
+voice, "Nothing but leaves, nothing but leaves," while Laddie went
+flashing up the road.
+
+The women went back to the house; the men stood around the gate,
+watched him from sight, talked about his horse, how he rode, and made
+wagers that he'd get shut out, like every one did, but they said if
+that happened he wouldn't come back.  Father was annoyed.
+
+"You heard Laddie say he'd return immediately if they wouldn't let him
+in," he said.  "He's a man of his word.  He will either enter or come
+home at once."
+
+It was pitch dark and we had supper before some of them left; they
+never stayed so late.  After we came from church, father read the
+chapter and we were ready for bed; still Laddie hadn't come back.  And
+father liked it!  He just plain liked it!  He chuckled behind the
+Advocate until you could see it shake; but mother had very little to
+say, and her lips closed tight.
+
+At bedtime he said to mother:  "Well, they don't seem in a hurry about
+sending the boy back."
+
+"Did you really think he WOULD be sent back?" asked mother.
+
+"Not ordinarily," said father, "no!  If he had no brain, no wit, no
+culture, on an animal basis, a woman would look twice before she'd send
+him away; but with such fanatics as Pryors, one can't always tell what
+will happen."
+
+"In a case like this, one can be reasonably certain," said mother.
+
+"You don't know what social position they occupied at home.  Their
+earmarks are all good.  We've no such notions here as they have."
+
+"Thank God for so much, at any rate," said mother.  "How old England
+would rise up and exult if she had a man in line with Laddie's body,
+blood and brain, to set on her throne.  This talk about class and
+social position makes me sick.  Men are men, and Laddie is as much
+above the customary timber found in kings and princes, physically and
+mentally, as the sky is above the earth.  Talk me no talk about class!
+If I catch it coming from any of mine, save you, I will beat it out of
+them.  He has admitted he's in love with the girl; the real question
+is, whether she's fit to be his wife."
+
+"I should say she appears so," said father.
+
+"Drat appearances!" cried mother.  "When it's a question of lifetime
+misery, and the soul's salvation of my son, if things go wrong, I've no
+time for appearances.  I want to know!"
+
+He might have known he would make her angry when he laughed.  She
+punched the pillow, and wouldn't say another word; so I went to sleep,
+and didn't miss anything that time.
+
+Next morning at breakfast Laddie was beaming, and father hardly waited
+to ask the blessing before he inquired:  "Well, how did you make it,
+son?"
+
+Laddie laughed and answered:  "Altogether, it might have been much
+worse."
+
+That was all he would say until Miss Amelia started to school, then he
+took me on his lap and talked as he buttoned my coat.
+
+"Thomas met me at the gate," he said, "and held my horse while I went
+to the door.  One of their women opened it, and I inquired for Mr.
+Pryor.  She said he was in the field looking at the horses, so I asked
+for Miss Pryor.  She came in a minute, so I gave her the branch, told
+her about it, and offered the jelly and cake for her mother.  The
+Princess invited me to enter.  I told her I couldn't without her
+father's permission, so I went to the field to see him.  The dogs were
+with him and he had the surprise of his life when his man-eaters rolled
+at my feet, and licked my hands."
+
+"What did he say?" chuckled father.
+
+"Told Thomas they'd been overfed and didn't amount to a brass farthing;
+to take them to the woods and shoot them.  Thomas said he'd see to it
+the very first thing in the morning, and then Mr. Pryor told him he
+would shoot him if he did."
+
+"Charming man to work for," said mother.
+
+"Then I told him I'd been at the house to carry a little gift to his
+wife and daughter, and to inquire if I might visit an hour, and as he
+was not there, I had come to the field to ask him.  Then I looked him
+in the eye and said:  'May I?'
+
+"'I'll warrant the women asked you to come in,' he said.
+
+"'Miss Pryor was so kind,' I answered, 'but I enter no man's house
+without his permission.  May I talk with your daughter an hour, and
+your wife, if she cares to see me?'
+
+"'It makes no earthly difference to me,' he said, which was not
+gracious, but might have been worse, so I thanked him, and went back to
+the house.  When I knocked the second time, the Princess came, and I
+told her the word was that it made 'no difference to her father' if I
+came in, so she opened the door widely, took my hat and offered me a
+seat.  Then she went to the next room and said:  'Mother, father has
+given Mr. Stanton permission to pay us a call.  Do you feel able to
+meet him?'  She came at once, offering her hand and saying:  'I have
+already met Mr. Stanton so often, really, we should have the privilege
+of speaking.'"
+
+"What did she mean by that?" asked mother.
+
+"She meant that I have haunted the road passing their place for two
+years, and she'd seen me so frequently that she came to recognize me."
+
+"Umph!" said mother.
+
+"Laddie tell on!" I begged.
+
+"Well, I sharpened all the wits I had and went to work.  I never tried
+so hard in my life to be entertaining.  Of course I had to feel my way.
+I'd no idea what would interest a delicate, high-bred lady"--mother
+sniffed again--"so I had to search and probe, and go by guess until I
+saw a shade of interest, then I worked in more of the same.  It was
+easy enough to talk to the Princess--all young folks have a lot in
+common, we could get along on fifty topics; it was different with the
+housebound mother.  I did my best, and after a while Mr. Pryor came in.
+I asked him if any of his horses had been attacked with the trouble
+some of the neighbours were having, and told him what it was.  He had
+the grace to thank me.  He said he would tell Thomas not to tie his
+horse at the public hitching rack when he went to town, and once he got
+started, he was wild to talk with a man, and I'd no chance to say a
+word to the women.  He was interested in our colleges, state, and
+national laws, in land development, and everything that all live men
+are.  When a maid announced dinner I apologized for having stayed so
+long, and excused myself, because I had been so interested, but Mrs.
+Pryor merely said:  'I'm waiting to be offered your arm.'
+
+"Well, you should have seen me drop my hat and step up.  I did my best,
+and while I talked to him a little, I made it most to the women.  Any
+one could see they were starved for company, so I took the job of
+entertaining them.  I told some college jokes, funny things that had
+happened in the neighbourhood, and everything of interest I could think
+up.  I know we were at the table for two hours with things coming and
+going on silver platters."
+
+Mother sat straight suddenly.
+
+"Just what did they have to eat, and how did they serve it?" she asked.
+
+"Couldn't tell if I were to be shot for it, mummy," said Laddie.
+"Forgive me!  Next time I'll take notes for you.  This first plunge, I
+had to use all my brains, not to be a bore to them; and to handle food
+and cutlery as the women did.  It's quite a process, but as they were
+served first, I could do right by waiting.  I never was where things
+were done quite so elaborately before."
+
+"And they didn't know they would have company until you went to the
+table?"
+
+"Well, they must have thought likely, there was a place for me."
+
+"Umph!" said mother.  "Fine idea!  Then any one who drops in can be
+served, and see that they are not a mite of trouble.  Candace, always
+an extra place after this!"
+
+Father just shouted.
+
+"I thought you'd get something out of it!" he said.
+
+"Happy to have justified your faith!" replied mother calmly.  "Go on,
+son!"
+
+"That's all!" said Laddie.  "We left the table and talked an hour more.
+The women asked me to come again; he didn't say anything on that
+subject; but when he ordered my horse, he asked the Princess if she
+would enjoy a little exercise, and she said she would, so he told
+Thomas to bring their horses, and we rode around the section, the
+Princess and I ahead, Mr. Pryor following.  Where the road was good and
+the light fine enough that there was no danger of laming a horse, we
+dropped back, one on either side of him, so we could talk.  Mrs. Pryor
+ate the cake and said it was fine; and the 'conserve,' she called it,
+delicious as she ever had tasted.  She said all our fruits here had
+much more flavour than at home; she thought it was the dryer climate
+and more sunshine.  She sent her grateful thanks, and she wants your
+recipe before next preserving time."
+
+Mother just beamed.  My! but she did love to have the things she
+cooked, bragged on.
+
+"Possibly she'd like my strawberries?" she said.
+
+"There isn't a doubt about it," said Laddie.  "I've yet to see the
+first person who doesn't."
+
+"Is that all?" asked mother.
+
+"I can think of nothing more at this minute," answered Laddie.  "If
+anything comes to my mind later, I won't forget to tell you.  Oh yes,
+there was one thing:  You couldn't keep Mr. Pryor from talking about
+Leon.  He must have taken a great fancy to him.  He talked until he
+worried the Princess, and she tried to keep him away from the subject,
+but his mind seemed to run on it constantly.  When we were riding she
+talked quite as much as he, and it will hustle us to think what the
+little scamp did, any bigger than they do.  Of course, father, you
+understood the price Mr. Pryor made on one of his very finest colts was
+a joke.  There's a strain of Arab in the father--he showed me the
+record--and the mother is bluegrass.  There you get gentleness and
+endurance combined with speed and nerve.  I'd trade Flos for that colt
+as it stands to-day.  There's nothing better on earth in the way of
+horse.  His offer is practically giving it away.  I know, with the
+records to prove its pedigree, what that colt would bring him in any
+city market."
+
+"I don't like it," said mother.  "I want Leon to have a horse, but a
+boy in a first experience, and reckless as he is, doesn't need a horse
+like that, for one thing, and what is more important, I refuse to be
+put under any obligations to Pryors."
+
+"That's the reason Mr. Pryor asked anything at all for the horse.  It
+is my opinion that he would be greatly pleased to give it to Leon, if
+he could do what he liked."
+
+"Well, that's precisely the thing he can't do in this family," said
+mother sternly.
+
+"What do you think, father?" asked Laddie.
+
+"I think Amen! to that proposition," said father; "but I would have to
+take time to thresh it out completely.  It appeals to me that Leon is
+old enough to recognize the value of the animal; and that the care of
+it would develop and strengthen his character.  It would be a
+responsibility that would steady him.  You could teach him to tend and
+break it."
+
+"Break it!" cried Laddie.  "Break it!  Why father, he's riding it
+bareback all over the Pryor meadow now, and jumping it over logs.
+Whenever he leaves, it follows him to the fence, and the Princess says
+almost any hour of the day you look out you can see it pacing up and
+down watching this way and whinnying for him to come."
+
+"And your best judgment is----?"
+
+Laddie laughed as he tied my hood strings.  "Well I don't feel about
+the Pryors as the rest of you do," he said.  "If the money isn't
+claimed inside the time you specified, I would let Leon and Mr. Pryor
+make their own bargain.  The boy won't know for years that it is
+practically a gift, and it would please Mr. Pryor immensely.  Now run,
+or you'll be late!"
+
+I had to go, so I didn't know how they settled it, but if they wouldn't
+let Leon have that horse, it was downright mean.  What if we were under
+obligations to Mr. Pryor?  We were to Sarah Hood, and half the people
+we knew, and what was more, we LIKED to be.
+
+When I came from school that night father had been to town.  He had an
+ax and was opening a big crate, containing two of the largest, bluest
+geese you ever saw.  Laddie said being boxed that way and seeing them
+so close made them look so big; really, they were no finer than
+Pryors', where he had got the address of the place that sold them.
+Mother was so pleased.  She said she had needed a new strain, for a
+long time, to improve her feathers; now she would have pillows worth
+while, in a few years.  They put them in the barn where our geese
+stayed over night, and how they did scream.  That is, one of them did;
+the other acted queerly and father said to Laddie that he was afraid
+the trip was hard on it.  Laddie said it might have been hurt, and
+mother was worried too.  Before she had them an hour, she had sold all
+our ganders; spring had come, she had saved the blue goose eggs, set
+them under a hen, raised the goslings with the little chickens, never
+lost one, picked them and made a new pair of pillows too fine for any
+one less important than a bishop, or a judge, or Dr. Fenner to sleep
+on.  Then she began saving for a featherbed.  And still the goose
+didn't act as spry or feel as good as the gander.  He stuck up his
+head, screamed, spread his wings and waved them, and the butts looked
+so big and hard, I was not right certain whether it would be safe to
+tease him or not.
+
+The first person who came to see them was Sarah Hood, and she left with
+the promise of a pair as soon as mother could raise them.  Father said
+the only reason mother didn't divide her hair with Sarah Hood was
+because it was fast, and she couldn't.  Mother said gracious goodness!
+she'd be glad to get rid of some of it if she could, and of course
+Sarah should have first chance at it.  Hadn't she kept her over night
+so she could see her new home when she was rested, and didn't she come
+with her, and help her get settled, and had she ever failed when we had
+a baby, or sickness, or trouble, or thrashers, or a party?  Of course
+she'd gladly divide, even the hair of her head, with Sarah Hood.  And
+father said, "Yes, he guessed she would, and come to think of it, he'd
+just as soon spare Sarah part of his," and then they both laughed, when
+it was nothing so very funny that I could see.
+
+The next caller the geese had was Mrs. Freshett.  My! she thought they
+were big and fine.  Mother promised her a couple of eggs to set under a
+hen.  Father said she was gradually coming down the scale of her
+feelings, and before two weeks she'd give Isaac Thomas, at least, a
+quill for a pen.  Almost no one wrote with them any more, but often
+father made a few, and showed us how to use them.  He said they were
+gone with candles, sand boxes, and snuff.  Mother said she had no use
+for snuff, but candles were not gone, she'd make and use them to the
+day of her death, as they were the nicest light ever invented to carry
+from room to room, or when you only wanted to sit and think.  Father
+said there was really no good pen except the quill you sharpened
+yourself; and while he often used steel ones like we children had at
+school to write to the brothers and sisters away, and his family, he
+always kept a few choice quills in the till of his chest, and when he
+wrote a deed, or any valuable paper, where there was a deal with money,
+he used them.  He said it lent the dignity of a past day to an
+important occasion.
+
+After mother and Mrs. Freshett had talked over every single thing about
+the geese, and that they were like Pryors' had been settled, Mrs.
+Freshett said:  "Since he told about it before all of us, and started
+out the way he did, would it be amiss to ask how Laddie got on at
+Pryors'?"
+
+"Just the way I thought he would," said mother.  "He stayed until all
+of us were in bed, and I'd never have known when he came in, if it were
+not a habit of his always to come to my door to see if I'm sleeping.
+Sometimes I'm wakeful, and if he pommels my pillow good, brings me a
+drink, and rubs my head a few strokes with his strong, cool hands, I
+can settle down and have a good night's rest.  I was awake when he
+came, or I'd never have known.  It was almost midnight; but they sat
+two hours at the table, and then all of them rode."
+
+"Not the Missus?"
+
+"Oh no!  She's not strong enough.  She really has incurable heart
+trouble, the worst kind there is; her daughter told me so."
+
+"Then they better look out," said Mrs. Freshett.  "She is likely to
+keel over at a breath."
+
+"They must know it.  That's why she keeps so quiet."
+
+"And they had him to supper?"
+
+"It was a dinner served at night.  Yes.  He took Mrs. Pryor in on his
+arm, and it was like a grand party, just as they fixed for themselves,
+alone.  Waiters, and silver trays, and things carried in and out in
+courses."
+
+"My land!  Well, I s'pose he had enough schoolin' to get him through it
+all right!"
+
+My mother's face grew red.  She never left any one in doubt as to what
+she meant.  Father said that "was the Dutch of it."  And mother always
+answered that if any one living could put things plainer than the
+English, she would like to hear them do it.
+
+"He certainly had," said mother, "or they wouldn't have invited him to
+come again.  And all mine, Mrs. Freshett, knew how to sit properly at
+the table, and manage a knife, fork and napkin, before they ever took a
+meal away from home."
+
+"No 'fence," laughed Mrs. Freshett.  "I meant that maybe his years of
+college schoolin' had give him ways more like theirs than most of us
+have.  For all the money it takes to send a boy to college, he ought to
+get somethin' out of it more than jest fillin' his head with figgers,
+an' stars, an' oratin'; an' most always you can see that he does."
+
+"It is contact with cultivated people," said mother.  "You are always
+influenced by it, without knowing it often."
+
+"Maybe you are, bein' so fine yourself," said Mrs. Freshett.  "An' me
+too, I never get among my betters that I don't carry home a lot I put
+right into daily use, an' nobody knows it plainer.  I come here
+expectin' to learn things that help me, an' when I go home I know I
+have."
+
+"Why, thank you," said mother.  "I'm sure that is a very nice
+compliment, and I wish I really could feel that it is well deserved."
+
+"Oh I guess you do!" said Mrs. Freshett laughing.  "I often noticed you
+makin' a special effort to teach puddin' heads like me somethin', an' I
+always thank you for it.  There's a world in right teachin'.  I never
+had any.  So all I can pick up an' hammer into mine is a gain for me
+an' them.  If my Henry had lived, an' come out anything like that boy
+o' yourn an' the show he made last Sunday, I'd do well if I didn't
+swell up an' bust with pride.  An' the little tow-haired strip, takin'
+the gun an' startin' out alone after a robber, even if he wa'n't much
+of a man, that was downright spunky.  If my boys will come out anywhere
+near like yourn, I'll be glad."
+
+"I don't know how my boys will come out," said mother.  "But I work,
+pray, hope, and hang to them; that's all I know to do."
+
+"Well, if they don't come out right, they ought to be bumped!" said
+Mrs. Freshett.  "After all the chances they've had!  I don' know jest
+how Freshett was brung up, but I'd no chance at all.  My folks--well, I
+guess the less said--little pitchers, you know!  I can't see as I was
+to blame.  I was the youngest, an' I knew things was wrong.  I fought
+to go to school, an' pap let me enough that I saw how other people
+lived.  Come night I'd go to the garret, an' bar the trapdoor; but
+there would be times when I couldn't help seein' what was goin' on.
+How'd you like chances such as that for a girl of yourn?"
+
+"Dreadful!" said mother.  "Mrs. Freshett, please do be careful!"
+
+"Sure!" laughed Mrs. Freshett.  "I was jest goin' to tell you about me
+an' Josiah.  He come to our house one night, a stranger off the road.
+He said he was sick, an' tired, an' could he have a bed.  Mother said,
+'No, for him to move on.'  He tried an' he couldn't.  They was
+somethin' about him--well, you know how them things go!  I wa'n't only
+sixteen, but I felt so sorry for him, all fever burned and mumblin', I
+helped pap put him to bed, an' doctored him all I could.  Come mornin'
+he was a sick man.  Pap went for the county doctor, an' he took jest
+one look an' says: 'Small pox!  All of ye git!'
+
+"I was bound I wouldn't go, but pap made me, an' the doctor said he'd
+send a man who'd had it; so I started, but I felt so bad, come a chanct
+when they got to Groveville, I slipped out an' went back.  The man
+hadn't come, so I set to work the best I knowed.  'Fore long Josiah was
+a little better an' he asked who I was, an' where my folks went, an' I
+told him, an' he asked WHY I came back an' I didn't know what to say,
+so I jest hung my head an' couldn't face him.  After a while he says,
+'All right!  I guess I got this sized up.  If you'll stay an' nuss me
+through, I'll be well enough to pull you out, by the time you get it,
+an' soon as you're able we'll splice, if you say so.'
+
+"'Marry me, you mean?' says I.  They wa'n't ever any talk about
+marryin' at our house.  'Sure!' says he.  'You're a mighty likely
+lookin' girl!  I'll do fair by ye.'  An' he always has, too!  But I
+didn't feel right to let him go it blind, so I jest up and says.  'You
+wouldn't if you knowed my folks!'  'You look as decent as I do,' says
+he; 'I'll chance it!'  Then I tole him I was as good as I was born, an'
+he believed me, an' he always has, an' I was too!  So I nussed him, but
+I didn't make the job of it he did.  You 'member he is pitted
+considerable.  He was so strong I jest couldn't keep him from
+disfigerin' himself, but he tied me.  I begged to be loose, an' he
+wouldn't listen, so I got a clean face, only three little scars, an'
+they ain't deep to speak of.  He says he looks like a piece of side
+meat, but say! they ain't nothin' the matter with his looks to me!
+
+"The nuss man never did come, but the county doctor passed things in
+the winder, till I was over the worst, an' Josiah sent for a preacher
+an' he married us through the winder--I got the writin's to show, all
+framed an' proper.  Josiah said he'd see I got all they was in it long
+that line, anyway.  When I was well, hanged if he didn't perdooce a wad
+from his clothes before they burnt 'em, an' he got us new things to
+wear, an' a horse, an' wagon, an' we driv away here where we thought we
+could start right, an' after we had the land, an' built the cabin, an'
+jest as happy as heart could wish, long come a man I'd made mad once,
+an' he tole everythin' up and down.  Josiah was good about it.  He
+offered to sell the land, an' pull up an' go furder.  'What's the use?'
+says I.  'Hundreds know it.  We can't go so far it won't be like to
+follow us; le's stay here an' fight it.'  'All right,' says Josiah, but
+time an' ag'in he has offered to go, if I couldn't make it.  'Hang on a
+little longer,' says I, every time he knew I was snubbed an' slighted.
+I never tole what he didn't notice.  I tried church, when my children
+began to git a size I wanted 'em to have right teachin', an' you come
+an' welcomed me an' you been my friend, an' now the others is comin'
+over at last, an' visitin' me, an' they ain't a thing more I want in
+life."
+
+"I am so glad!" said mother.  "Oh my dear, I am so glad!"
+
+"Goin' right home an' tell that to Josiah," said Mrs. Freshett, jumping
+up laughing and crying like, "an' mebby I'll jest spread wings and fly!
+I never was so happy in all my life as I was Sunday, when you ast me
+before all of them, so cordial like, an' says I to Josiah, 'We'll go
+an' try it once,' an' we come an' nobody turned a cold shoulder on us,
+an' I wa'n't wearin' specks to see if they did, for I never knowed him
+so happy in all his days.  Orter heard him whistle goin' home, an' he's
+tryin' all them things he learned, on our place, an' you can see it
+looks a heap better a'ready, an' now he's talkin' about buildin' in the
+spring.  I knowed he had money, but he never mentioned buildin' before,
+an' I always thought it was bekase he 'sposed likely we'd have to move
+on, some time.  'Pears now as if we can settle, an' live like other
+folks, after all these years.  I knowed ye didn't want me to talk, but
+I had to tell you!  When you ast us to the weddin', and others began
+comin' round, says I to Josiah, 'Won't she be glad to know that my
+skirts is clear, an' I did as well as I could?'  An' he says, 'That she
+will!  An' more am I,' says he.  'I mighty proud of you,' says he.
+Proud!  Think of that!  Miss Stanton, I'd jest wade fire and blood for
+you!"
+
+"Oh my dear!" said mother.  "What a dreadful thing to say!"
+
+"Gimme the chanct, an' watch if I don't," said Mrs. Freshett.  "Now,
+Josiah is proud I stuck it out!  Now, I can have a house!  Now, my
+children can have all the show we can raise to give 'em!  I'm done
+cringin' an' dodgin'!  I've always done my best; henceforth I mean to
+hold up my head an' say so.  I sure can't be held for what was done
+'fore I was on earth, or since neither.  You've given me my show, I'm
+goin' to take it, but if you want to know what's in my heart about you,
+gimme any kind of a chanct to prove, an' see if I don't pony right up
+to it!"
+
+Mother laughed until the tears rolled, she couldn't help it.  She took
+Mrs. Freshett in her arms and hugged her tight, and kissed her mighty
+near like she does Sarah Hood.  Mrs. Freshett threw her arms around
+mother, and looked over her shoulder, and said to me, "Sis, when you
+grow up, always take a chanct on welcomin' the stranger, like your maw
+does, an' heaven's bound to be your home!  My, but your maw is a woman
+to be proud of!" she said, hugging mother and patting her on the back.
+
+"All of us are proud of her!" I boasted.
+
+"I doubt if you are proud enough!" cried Mrs. Freshett.  "I have my
+doubts!  I don't see how people livin' with her, an' seein' her every
+day, are in a shape to know jest what she can do for a person in the
+place I was in.  I have my doubts!"
+
+That night when I went home from school mother was worrying over the
+blue goose.  When we went to feed, she told Leon that she was afraid it
+was weak, and not getting enough to eat when it fed with the others.
+She said after the work was finished, to take it out alone, and give it
+all it would eat; so when the horses were tended, the cows milked,
+everything watered, and the barn ready to close for the night, Laddie
+took the milk to the house, while Leon and I caught the blue goose,
+carried her to the well, and began to shell corn.  She was starved to
+death, almost.  She ate a whole ear in no time and looked for more, so
+Leon sent me after another.  By the time that was most gone she began
+to eat slower, and stick her bill in the air to help the grains slip
+down, so I told Leon I thought she had enough.
+
+"No such thing!" said Leon.  "You distinctly heard mother tell me to
+give her 'all she would eat.'  She's eating, isn't she?  Go bring
+another ear!"
+
+So she was, but I was doubtful about more.
+
+Leon said I better mind or he would tell mother, so I got it.  She
+didn't begin on it with any enthusiasm.  She stuck her bill higher,
+stretched her neck longer, and she looked so funny when she did it,
+that we just shrieked.  Then Leon reached over, took her by the bill,
+and stripped her neck to help her swallow, and as soon as he let go,
+she began to eat again.
+
+"You see!" said Leon, "she's been starved.  She can't get enough.  I
+must help her!"
+
+So he did help her every little bit.  By that time we were interested
+in seeing how much she could hold; and she looked so funny that Leon
+sent me for more corn; but I told him I thought what she needed now was
+water, so we held her to the trough, and she tried to drink, but she
+couldn't swallow much.  We set her down beside the corn, and she went
+to eating again.
+
+"Go it, old mill-hopper!" cried Leon.
+
+Right then there was an awful commotion in the barn, and from the
+squealing we knew one of the horses was loose, and fighting the others.
+We ran to fix them, and had a time to get Jo back into his stall, and
+tied.  Before we had everything safe, the supper bell rang, and I bet
+Leon a penny I could reach the house while he shut the door and got
+there.  We forgot every single thing about the goose.
+
+At supper mother asked Leon if he fed the goose all she would eat, and
+I looked at him guilty-like, for I remembered we hadn't put her back.
+He frowned at me cross as a bear, and I knew that meant he had
+remembered, and would slip back and put her inside when he finished his
+supper, so I didn't say anything.
+
+"I didn't feed her ALL she would eat!" said Leon.  "If I had, she'd be
+at it yet.  She was starved sure enough!  You never saw anything like
+the corn she downed."
+
+"Well I declare!" said mother.  "Now after this, take her out alone,
+for a few days, and give her as much as she wants."
+
+"All right!" chuckled Leon, because it was a lot of fun to see her run
+her bill around, and gobble up the corn, and stick up her head.
+
+The next day was Saturday, so after breakfast I went with Leon to drive
+the sheep and geese to the creek to water; the trough was so high it
+was only for the horses and cattle; when we let out the geese, the blue
+one wasn't there.
+
+"Oh Leon, did you forget to come back and put her in?"
+
+"Yes I did!" he said.  "I meant to when I looked at you to keep still,
+and I started to do it, but Sammy Deam whistled, so I went down in the
+orchard to see what he wanted, and we got to planning how to get up a
+fox chase, and I stayed until father called for night, and then I ran
+and forgot all about the blame old goose."
+
+"Oh Leon!  Where is she?  What will mother say? 'Spose a fox got her!"
+
+"It wouldn't help me any if it had, after I was to blame for leaving
+her outside.  Blast a girl!  If you ever amounted to anything, you
+could have put her in while I fixed the horses.  At least you could
+have told me to."
+
+I stood there dumblike and stared at him.  He has got the awfulest way
+of telling the truth when he is scared or provoked.  Of course I should
+have thought of the goose when he was having such a hard fight with the
+horses.  If I'd been like he was, I'd have told him that he was older,
+mother told HIM to do it, and it wasn't my fault; but in my heart I
+knew he did have his hands full, and if you're your brother's keeper,
+you ought to HELP your brother remember.  So I stood gawking, while
+Leon slowly turned whiter and whiter.
+
+"We might as well see if we can find her," he said at last, so slow and
+hopeless like it made my heart ache.  So he started around the straw
+stack one way, and I the other, looking into all the holes, and before
+I had gone far I had a glimpse of her, and it scared me so I screamed,
+for her head was down, and she didn't look right.  Leon came running
+and pulled her out.  The swelled corn rolled in a little trail after
+her, and the pigs ran up and began to eat it.  Pigs are named righter
+than anything else I know.
+
+"Busted!" cried Leon in tones of awe; about the worst awe you ever
+heard, and the worst bust you ever saw.
+
+From bill to breast she was wide open, and the hominy spilling.  We
+just stood staring at her, and then Leon began to kick the pigs;
+because it would be no use to kick the goose; she would never know.
+Then he took her up, carried her into the barn, and put her on the
+floor where the other geese had stayed all night.  We stood and looked
+at her some more, as if looking and hoping would make her get up and be
+alive again.  But there's nothing in all this world so useless as
+wishing dead things would come alive; we had to do something.
+
+"What are you going to tell mother?"
+
+"Shut up!" said Leon.  "I'm trying to think."
+
+"I'll say it was as much my fault as yours.  I'll go with you.  I'll
+take half whatever they do to you."
+
+"Little fool!" said Leon.  "What good would that do me?"
+
+"Do you know what they cost?  Could you get another with some of your
+horse money?"
+
+I saw it coming and dodged again, before I remembered the Crusaders.
+
+"All right!" I said.  "If that's the way you are going to act, Smarty,
+I'll lay all the blame on you; I won't help you a bit, and I don't care
+if you are whipped until the blood runs."
+
+Then I went out of the barn and slammed the door.  For a minute I felt
+better; but it was a short time.  I SAID that to be mean, but I did
+care.  I cared dreadfully; I was partly to blame, and I knew it.
+Coming around the barn, I met Laddie, and he saw in a flash I was in
+trouble, so he stopped and asked:  "What now, Chicken?"
+
+"Come into the barn where no one will hear us," I said.
+
+So we went around the outside, entered at the door on the embankment,
+and he sat in the wheelbarrow on the threshing floor while I told him.
+I thought I felt badly enough, but after I saw Laddie, it grew worse,
+for I remembered we were short of money that fall, that the goose was a
+fine, expensive one, and how proud mother was of her, and how she'd be
+grieved, and that was trouble for sure.
+
+"Run along and play!" said Laddie, "and don't tell any one else if you
+can help it.  I'll hide the goose, and see if I can get another in time
+to take the place of this one, so mother won't be worried."
+
+I walked to the house slowly, but I was afraid to enter.  When you are
+all choked up, people are sure to see it, and ask fool questions.  So I
+went around to the gate and stood there looking up and down the road,
+and over the meadow toward the Big Woods; and all at once, in one of
+those high, regular bugle calls, like they mostly scream in spring, one
+of Pryors' ganders split the echoes for a mile; maybe farther.
+
+I was across the road and slinking down inside the meadow fence before
+I knew it.  There was no thought or plan.  I started for Pryors' and
+went straight ahead, only I kept out of line with our kitchen windows.
+I tramped through the slush, ice, and crossed fields where I was afraid
+of horses; but when I got to the top of the Pryor backyard fence, I
+stuck there, for the bulldogs were loose, and came raving at me.  I was
+going to be eaten alive, for I didn't know the word Laddie did; and
+those dogs climbed a fence like a person; I saw them the time Leon
+brought back Even So.  I was thinking what a pity it was, after every
+one had grown accustomed to me, and had begun loving me, that I should
+be wasted for dog feed, when Mr. Pryor came to the door, and called
+them; they didn't mind, so he came to the fence, and crossest you ever
+heard, every bit as bad as the dogs, he cried:  "Whose brat are you,
+and what are you doing here?"
+
+I meant to tell him; but you must have a minute after a thing like that.
+
+"God of my life!" he fairly frothed.  "What did anybody send a dumb
+child here for?"
+
+"Dumb child!"  I didn't care if Mr. Pryor did wear a Crown of Glory.
+It wasn't going to do him one particle of good, unless he was found in
+the way of the Lord.  "Dumb child!"  I was no more dumb than he was,
+until his bulldogs scared me so my heart got all tangled up with my
+stomach, my lungs, and my liver.  That made me mad, and there was
+nothing that would help me to loosen up and talk fast, like losing my
+temper.  I wondered what kind of a father he had.  If he'd been stood
+against the wall and made to recite, "Speak gently," as often as all of
+us, perhaps he'd have remembered the verse that says:
+
+  "Speak gently to the little child;
+    Its love be sure to gain;
+  Teach it in accents soft and mild;
+    It may not long remain."
+
+I should think not, if it had any chance at all to get away!  I was so
+angry by that time I meant to tell him what I thought.  Polite or not
+polite, I'd take a switching if I had to, but I wasn't going to stand
+that.
+
+"You haven't got any God in your life," I reminded him, "and no one
+sent me here.  I came to see the Princess, because I'm in awful trouble
+and I hoped maybe she could fix up a way to help me."
+
+"Ye Gods!" he cried.  He would stick to calling on God, whether he
+believed in Him or not.  "If it isn't Nimrod!  I didn't recognize you
+in all that bundling."
+
+Probably he didn't know it, but Nimrod was from the Bible too!  By
+bundling, he meant my hood and coat.  He helped me from the fence, sent
+the bulldogs rolling--sure enough he did kick them, and they didn't
+like it either--took my hand and led me straight into the house, and
+the Princess was there, and a woman who was her mother no doubt, and he
+said:  "Pamela, here is our little neighbour, and she says she's in
+trouble, and she thinks you may be of some assistance to her.  Of
+course you will be glad if you can."
+
+"Surely!" said the Princess, and she introduced me to her mother, so I
+bowed the best I knew, and took off my wet mitten, dirty with climbing
+fences, to shake hands with her.  She was so gracious and lovely I
+forgot what I went after.  The Princess brought a cloth and wiped the
+wet from my shoes and stockings, and asked me if I wouldn't like a cup
+of hot tea to keep me from taking a chill.
+
+"I've been much wetter than this," I told her, "and I never have taken
+a chill, and anyway my throat's too full of trouble to drink."
+
+"Why, you poor child!" said the Princess.  "Tell me quickly!  Is your
+mother ill again?"
+
+"Not now, but she's going to be as soon as she finds out," I said, and
+then I told them.
+
+They all listened without a sound until I got where Leon helped the
+goose eat, and from that on Mr. Pryor laughed until you could easily
+see that he had very little feeling for suffering humanity.  It was
+funny enough when we fed her, but now that she was bursted wide open
+there was nothing amusing about it; and to roar when a visitor plainly
+told you she was in awful trouble, didn't seem very good manners to me.
+The Princess and her mother never even smiled; and before I had told
+nearly all of it, Thomas was called to hitch the Princess' driving
+cart, and she took me to their barnyard to choose the goose that looked
+most like mother's, and all of them seemed like hers, so we took the
+first one Thomas could catch, put it into a bag in the back of the
+cart, and then we got in and started for our barn.  As we reached the
+road, I said to her:  "You'd better go past Dovers', for if we come
+down our Little Hill they will see us sure; it's baking day."
+
+"All right!" said the Princess, so we went the long way round the
+section, but goodness me! when she drove no way was far.
+
+When we were opposite our barn she stopped, hitched her horse to the
+fence, and we climbed over, and slipping behind the barn, carried the
+goose around to the pen and put it in with ours.  She said she wanted
+the broken one, because her father would enjoy seeing it.  I didn't see
+how he could!  We were ready to slip out, when our geese began to run
+at the new one, hiss and scream, and make such a racket that Laddie and
+Leon both caught us.  They looked at the goose, at me, the Princess,
+and each other, and neither said a word.  She looked back a little bit,
+and then she laughed as hard as she could.  Leon grew red, and he
+grinned ashamed-like, so she laughed worse than ever.  Laddie spoke to
+me:  "You went to Mr. Pryor's and asked for that goose?"
+
+"She did not!" said the Princess before I could answer.  "She never
+asked for anything.  She was making a friendly morning call and in the
+course of her visit she told about the pathetic end of the goose that
+was expected to lay the golden egg--I mean stuff the Bishop's
+pillow--and as we have a large flock of blue geese, father gave her
+one, and he had the best time he's had in years doing it.  I wouldn't
+have had him miss the fun he got from it for any money.  He laughed
+like home again.  Now I must slip away before any one sees me, and
+spoils our secret.  Leon, lad, you can go to the house and tell your
+little mother that the feeding stopped every pain her goose had, and
+hereafter it looks to you as if she'd be all right."
+
+"Miss Pryor," said Leon, "did you care about what I said at you in
+church that day?"
+
+"'Thou art all fair, my love.  There is no spot in thee.'  Well, it was
+a little pointed, but since you ask a plain question, I have survived
+it."
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," said Leon.  "Of course I never would, if I'd known
+you could be this nice."
+
+The Princess looked at Laddie and almost gasped, and then both of them
+laughed.  Leon saw that he had told her he was sorry he said she was
+"fair, and no spot in her."
+
+"Oh I don't mean that!" he said.  "What I do mean is that I thank you
+awful much for the goose, and helping me out like such a brick of a
+good fellow, and what I wish is, that I was as old as Laddie, and he'd
+hump himself if he got to be your beau."
+
+The Princess almost ran.  Laddie and I followed to the road, where he
+unhitched the horse and helped her in.  Then he stood stroking its
+neck, as he held the bridle.
+
+"I don't know what to say!" said Laddie.
+
+"In such case, I would counsel silence," advised the Princess.
+
+"I hope you understand how I thank you."
+
+"I fail to see what for.  Father gave the goose to Little Sister.  Her
+thanks and Leon's are more than enough for him.  We had great sport."
+
+"I insist on adding mine.  Deep and fervent!"
+
+"You take everything so serious.  Can't you see the fun of this?"
+
+"No," said Laddie.  "But if you can, I am glad, and I'm thankful for
+anything that gives me a glimpse of you."
+
+"Bye, Little Sister," said the Princess, and when she loosened the
+lines the mud flew a rod high.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Keeping Christmas Our Way
+
+  "I remember, I remember
+    How my childhood fleeted by,--
+  The mirth of its December,
+    And the warmth of its July."
+
+
+When dusk closed in it would be Christmas eve.  All day I had three
+points--a chair beside the kitchen table, a lookout melted through the
+frost on the front window, and the big sitting-room fireplace.
+
+All the perfumes of Araby floated from our kitchen that day.  There was
+that delicious smell of baking flour from big snowy loaves of bread,
+light biscuit, golden coffee cake, and cinnamon rolls dripping a waxy
+mixture of sugar, butter, and spice, much better than the finest
+butterscotch ever brought from the city.  There was the tempting odour
+of boiling ham and baking pies.  The air was filled with the smell of
+more herbs and spices than I knew the names of, that went into
+mincemeat, fruit cake, plum pudding, and pies.  There was a teasing
+fragrance in the spiced vinegar heating for pickles, a reminder of
+winesap and rambo in the boiling cider, while the newly opened bottles
+of grape juice filled the house with the tang of Concord and muscadine.
+It seemed to me I never got nicely fixed where I could take a sly dip
+in the cake dough or snipe a fat raisin from the mincemeat but Candace
+would say:  "Don't you suppose the backlog is halfway down the lane?"
+
+Then I hurried to the front window, where I could see through my melted
+outlook on the frosted pane, across the west eighty to the woods, where
+father and Laddie were getting out the Christmas backlog.  It was too
+bitterly cold to keep me there while they worked, but Laddie said that
+if I would watch, and come to meet them, he would take me up, and I
+might ride home among the Christmas greens on the log.
+
+So I flattened my nose against the pane and danced and fidgeted until
+those odours teased me back to the kitchen; and no more did I get
+nicely located beside a jar of pudding sauce than Candace would object
+to the place I had hung her stocking.  It was my task, my delightful
+all-day task, to hang the stockings.  Father had made me a peg for each
+one, and I had ten feet of mantel front along which to arrange them.
+But it was no small job to do this to every one's satisfaction.  No
+matter what happened to any one else, Candace had to be pleased: for
+did not she so manage that most fowls served on mother's table went
+gizzardless to the carving?  She knew and acknowledged the great
+importance of trying cookies, pies, and cake while they were hot.  She
+was forever overworked and tired, yet she always found time to make
+gingerbread women with currant buttons on their frocks, and pudgy
+doughnut men with clove eyes and cigars of cinnamon.  If my own
+stocking lay on the hearth, Candace's had to go in a place that
+satisfied her--that was one sure thing.  Besides, I had to make up to
+her for what Leon did, because she was crying into the corner of her
+apron about that.
+
+He slipped in and stole her stocking, hung it over the broomstick, and
+marched around the breakfast table singing to the tune of--
+
+  "Ha, ha, ha, who wouldn't go--
+    Up on the housetop click, click, click?
+  Down through the chimney,
+    With good Saint Nick----"
+
+words he made up himself.  He walked just fast enough that she couldn't
+catch him, and sang as he went:
+
+  "Ha, ha, ha, good Saint Nick,
+    Come and look at this stocking, quick!
+
+  If you undertake its length to fill,
+    You'll have to bust a ten-dollar bill.
+  Who does it belong to?  Candace Swartz.
+    Bring extra candy,--seven quarts----"
+
+
+She got so angry she just roared, so father made Leon stop it, but I
+couldn't help laughing myself.  Then we had to pet her all day, so
+she'd cheer up, and not salt the Christmas dinner with her tears.  I
+never saw such a monkey as Leon!  I trotted out to comfort her, and
+snipped bites, until I wore a triangle on the carpet between the
+kitchen and the mantel, the mantel and the window, and the window and
+the kitchen, while every hour things grew more exciting.
+
+There never had been such a flurry at our house since I could remember;
+for to-morrow would be Christmas and bring home all the children, and a
+house full of guests.  My big brother, Jerry, who was a lawyer in the
+city, was coming with his family, and so were Frank, Elizabeth, and
+Lucy with theirs, and of course Sally and Peter--I wondered if she
+would still be fixing his tie--and Shelley came yesterday, blushing
+like a rose, and she laughed if you pointed your finger at her.
+
+Something had happened to her in Chicago.  I wasn't so sure as I had
+been about a city being such a dreadful place of noise, bad air, and
+wicked people.  Nothing had hurt Shelley.  She had grown so much that
+you could see she was larger.  Her hair and face--all of Shelley just
+shone.  Her eyes danced, she talked and laughed all the time, and she
+hugged every one who passed her.  She never loved us so before.  Leon
+said she must have been homesick and coming back had given her a spell.
+I did hope it would be a bad one, and last forever.  I would have liked
+for all our family to have had a spell if it would have made them act
+and look like Shelley.  The Princess was not a speck lovelier, and she
+didn't act any nicer.
+
+If I could have painted, I'd have made a picture of Shelley with a
+circle of light above her head like the one of the boy Jesus where He
+talked with the wise men in the temple.  I asked father if he noticed
+how much prettier and nicer she was, and he said he did.  Then I asked
+him if he thought now, that a city was such a bad place to live in, and
+he said where she was had nothing to do with it, the same thing would
+happen here, or anywhere, when life's greatest experience came to a
+girl.  That was all he would say, but figuring it out was easy.  The
+greatest experience that happened to our girls was when they married,
+like Sally, so it meant that Shelley had gone and fallen in love with
+that lawyer man, and she liked sitting on the sofa with him, and no
+doubt she fixed his ties.  But if any one thought I would tell anything
+I saw when he came they were badly mistaken.
+
+All of us rushed around like we were crazy.  If father and mother
+hadn't held steady and kept us down, we might have raised the roof.  We
+were all so glad about getting Leon and the money back; mother hadn't
+been sick since the fish cured her; the new blue goose was so like the
+one that had burst, even father never noticed any difference; all the
+children were either home or coming, and after we had our gifts and the
+biggest dinner we ever had, Christmas night all of us would go to the
+schoolhouse to see our school try to spell down three others to whom
+they had sent saucy invitations to come and be beaten.
+
+Mother sat in the dining-room beside the kitchen door, so that she
+could watch the baking, brewing, pickling, and spicing.  It took four
+men to handle the backlog, which I noticed father pronounced every year
+"just a little the finest we ever had," and Laddie strung the house
+with bittersweet, evergreens, and the most beautiful sprays of myrtle
+that he raked from under the snow.  Father drove to town in the sleigh,
+and the list of things to be purchased mother gave him as a reminder
+was almost a yard long.
+
+The minute they finished the outdoor work Laddie and Leon began
+bringing in baskets of apples, golden bellflowers, green pippins, white
+winter pearmains, Rhode Island greenings, and striped rambos all
+covered with hoarfrost, yet not frozen, and so full of juice you had to
+bite into them carefully or they dripped and offended mother.  These
+they washed and carried to the cellar ready for use.
+
+Then they cracked big dishes of nuts; and popped corn that popped with
+the most resounding pops in all my experience--popped a tubful, and
+Laddie melted maple sugar and poured over it and made big balls of
+fluff and sweetness.  He took a pan and filled it with grains, selected
+one at a time, the very largest and whitest, and made an especial ball,
+in the middle of which he put a lovely pink candy heart on which was
+printed in red letters: "How can this heart be mine, yet yours, unless
+our hearts are one?"  He wouldn't let any of them see it except me, and
+he only let me because he knew I'd be delighted.
+
+It was almost dusk when father came through the kitchen loaded with
+bundles and found Candace and the girls still cooking.
+
+We were so excited we could scarcely be gathered around the supper
+table, and mother said we chattered until she couldn't hear herself
+think.  After a while Laddie laid down his fork and looked at our
+father.
+
+"Have you any objection to my using the sleigh to-morrow night?" he
+asked.
+
+Father looked at mother.
+
+"Had you planned to use it, mother?"
+
+Mother said:  "No.  If I go, I'll ride in the big sled with all of us.
+It is such a little way, and the roads are like glass."
+
+So father said politely, as he always spoke to us:  "Then it will give
+me great pleasure for you to take it, my son."
+
+That made Leon bang his fork loudly as he dared and squirm in his
+chair, for well he knew that if he had asked, the answer would have
+been different.  If Laddie took the sleigh he would harness carefully,
+drive fast, but reasonably, blanket his horse, come home at the right
+time, and put everything exactly where he found it.  But Leon would
+pitch the harness on some way, race every step, never think of his
+steaming horse, come home when there was no one so wild as he left to
+play pranks with, and scatter the harness everywhere.  He knew our
+father would love to trust him the same as he did Laddie.  He wouldn't
+always prove himself trustworthy, but he envied Laddie.
+
+"You think you'll take the Princess to the spelling bee, don't you?" he
+sneered.
+
+"I mean to ask her," replied Laddie.
+
+"Maybe you think she'll ride in our old homemade, hickory cheesebox,
+when she can sail all over the country like a bird in a velvet-lined
+cutter with a real buffalo robe."
+
+There was a quick catch in mother's breath and I felt her hand on my
+chair tremble.  Father's lips tightened and a frown settled on his
+face, while Laddie fairly jumped.  He went white to the lips, and one
+hand dropped on the table, palm up, the fingers closing and unclosing,
+while his eyes turned first to mother, and then to father, in dumb
+appeal.  We all knew that he was suffering.  No one spoke, and Leon
+having shot his arrow straight home, saw as people so often do in this
+world that the damage of unkind words could not easily be repaired; so
+he grew red in the face and squirmed uncomfortably.
+
+At last Laddie drew a deep, quivering breath.  "I never thought of
+that," he said.  "She has seemed happy to go with me several times when
+I asked her, but of course she might not care to ride in ours, when she
+has such a fine sleigh of her own."
+
+Father's voice fairly boomed down the length of the table.
+
+"Your mother always has found our sleigh suitable," he said.
+
+The fact was, father was rarely proud of it.  He had selected the
+hickory in our woods, cut it and hauled it to the mill, cured the
+lumber, and used all his spare time for two winters making it.  With
+the exception of having the runners turned at a factory and iron-bound
+at a smithy, he had completed it alone with great care, even to
+staining it a beautiful cherry colour, and fitting white sheepskins
+into the bed.  We had all watched him and been so proud of it, and now
+Leon was sneering at it.  He might just as well have undertaken to
+laugh at father's wedding suit or to make fun of "Clark's Commentaries."
+
+Laddie appealed to mother:  "Do you think I'd better not ask her?"
+
+He spoke with an effort.
+
+"Laddie, that is the first time I ever heard you propose to do any one
+an injustice," she said.
+
+"I don't see how," said Laddie.
+
+"It isn't giving the Princess any chance at all," replied mother
+"You've just said that she has seemed pleased to accompany you before,
+now you are proposing to cut her out of what promises to be the most
+delightful evening of the winter, without even giving her the chance to
+say whether she'd go with you or not.  Has she ever made you feel that
+anything you offered her or wanted to do for her was not good enough?"
+
+"Never!" exclaimed Laddie fervently.
+
+"Until she does, then, do you think it would be quite manly and
+honourable to make decisions for her?  You say you never thought of
+anything except a pleasant time with her; possibly she feels the same.
+Unless she changes, I would scarcely let a boy's foolish tongue disturb
+her pleasure.  Moreover, as to the matter of wealth, your father may be
+as rich as hers; but they have one, we have many.  If what we spend on
+all our brood could be confined to one child, we could easily duplicate
+all her luxuries, and I think she has the good sense to realize the
+fact as quickly as any one.  I've no doubt she would gladly exchange
+half she has for the companionship of a sister or a brother in her
+lonely life."
+
+Laddie turned to father, and father's smile was happy again.  Mother
+was little but she was mighty.  With only a few words she had made Leon
+feel how unkind and foolish he had been, quieted Laddie's alarm, and
+soothed the hurt father's pride had felt in that he had not been able
+to furnish her with so fine a turnout as Pryors had.
+
+Next morning when the excitement of gifts and greetings was over, and
+Laddie's morning work was all finished, he took a beautiful volume of
+poems and his popcorn ball and started across the fields due west; all
+of us knew that he was going to call on and offer them to the Princess,
+and ask to take her to the spelling bee.  I suppose Laddie thought he
+was taking that trip alone, but really he was surrounded.  I watched
+him from the window, and my heart went with him.  Presently father went
+and sat beside mother's chair, and stroking her hand, whispered softly:
+"Please don't worry, little mother.  It will be all right.  Your boy
+will come home happy."
+
+"I hope so," she answered, "but I can't help feeling dreadfully
+nervous.  If things go wrong with Laddie, it will spoil the day."
+
+"I have much faith in the Princess' good common sense," replied father,
+"and considering what it means to Laddie, it would hurt me sore to lose
+it."
+
+Mother sat still, but her lips moved so that I knew she was making soft
+little whispered prayers for her best loved son.  But Laddie, plowing
+through the drift, never dreamed that all of us were with him.  He was
+always better looking than any other man I ever had seen, but when, two
+hours later, he stamped into the kitchen he was so much handsomer than
+usual, that I knew from the flush on his cheek and the light in his
+eye, that the Princess had been kind, and by the package in his hand,
+that she had made him a present.  He really had two, a beautiful book
+and a necktie.  I wondered to my soul if she gave him that, so she
+could fix it!  I didn't believe she had begun on his ties at that time;
+but of course when he loved her as he did, he wished she would.
+
+It was the very jolliest Christmas we ever had, but the day seemed
+long.  When night came we were in a precious bustle.  The wagon bed on
+bobs, filled with hay and covers, drawn by Ned and Jo, was brought up
+for the family, and the sleigh made spick-and-span and drawn by
+Laddie's thoroughbred, stood beside it.  Laddie had filled the kitchen
+oven with bricks and hung up a comfort at four o'clock to keep the
+Princess warm.
+
+Because he had to drive out of the way to bring her, Laddie wanted to
+start early; and when he came down dressed in his college clothes, and
+looking the manliest of men, some of the folks thought it funny to see
+him carefully rake his hot bricks from the oven, and pin them in an old
+red breakfast shawl.  I thought it was fine, and I whispered to mother:
+"Do you suppose that if Laddie ever marries the Princess he will be
+good to her as he is to you?"
+
+Mother nodded with tear-dimmed eyes, but Shelley said:  "I'll wager a
+strong young girl like the Princess will laugh at you for babying over
+her."
+
+"Why?" inquired Laddie.  "It is a long drive and a bitter night, and if
+you fancy the Princess will laugh at anything I do, when I am doing the
+best I know for her comfort, you are mistaken.  At least, that is the
+impression she gave me this morning."
+
+I saw the swift glance mother shot at father, and father laid down his
+paper and said, while he pretended his glasses needed polishing:  "Now
+there is the right sort of a girl for you.  No foolishness about her,
+when she has every chance.  Hurrah for the Princess!"
+
+It was easy to see that she wasn't going to have nearly so hard a time
+changing father's opinion as she would mother's.  It was not nearly a
+year yet, and here he was changed already.  Laddie said good-bye to
+mother--he never forgot--gathered up his comfort and bricks, and
+started for Pryors' downright happy.  We went to the schoolhouse a
+little later, all of us scoured, curled, starched, and wearing our very
+best clothes.  My! but it was fine.  There were many lights in the room
+and it was hung with greens.  There was a crowd even though it was
+early.  On Miss Amelia's table was a volume of history that was the
+prize, and every one was looking and acting the very best he knew how,
+although there were cases where they didn't know so very much.
+
+Our Shelley was the handsomest girl there, until the Princess came, and
+then they both were.  Shelley wore one of her city frocks and a quilted
+red silk hood that was one of her Christmas gifts, and she looked just
+like a handsome doll.  She made every male creature in that room feel
+that she was pining for him alone.  May had a gay plaid frock and curls
+nearly a yard long, and so had I, but both our frocks and curls were
+homemade; mother would have them once in a while; father and I couldn't
+stop her.
+
+But there was not a soul there who didn't have some sort of gift to
+rejoice over, and laughter and shouts of "Merry Christmas!" filled the
+room.  It was growing late and there was some talk of choosers, when
+the door opened and in a rush of frosty air the Princess and Laddie
+entered.  Every one stopped short and stared.
+
+There was good reason.  The Princess looked as if she had accidentally
+stepped from a frame.  She was always lovely and beautifully dressed,
+but to-night she was prettier and finer than ever before.  You could
+fairly hear their teeth click as some of the most envious of those
+girls caught sight of her, for she was wearing a new hat!--a black
+velvet store hat, fitting closely over her crown, with a rim of twisted
+velvet, a scarlet bird's wing, and a big silver buckle.  Her dress was
+of scarlet cloth cut in forms, and it fitted as if she had been melted
+and poured into it.  It was edged around the throat, wrists, and skirt
+with narrow bands of fur, and she wore a loose, long, silk-lined coat
+of the same material, and worst of all, furs--furs such as we had heard
+wealthy and stylish city ladies were wearing.  A golden brown cape that
+reached to her elbows, with ends falling to the knees, finished in the
+tails of some animal, and for her hands a muff as big as a nail keg.
+
+Now, there was not a girl in that room, except the Princess, an she had
+those clothes, who wouldn't have flirted like a peacock, almost
+bursting with pride; but because the Princess had them, and they
+didn't, they sat stolid and sullen, and cast glances at each other as
+if they were saying:  "The stuck-up thing!" "Thinks she's smart, don't
+she?"
+
+Many of them should have gone to meet her and made her welcome, for she
+was not of our district and really their guest.  Shelley did go, but I
+noticed she didn't hurry.
+
+The choosers began at once, and Laddie was the first person called for
+our side, and the Princess for the visitors'.  Every one in the room
+was chosen on one side or the other; even my name was called, but I
+only sat still and shook my head, for I very well knew that no one
+except father would remember to pronounce easy ones for me, and besides
+I was so bitterly disappointed I could scarcely have stood up.  They
+had put me in a seat near the fire; the spellers lined either wall, and
+a goodly number that refused to spell occupied the middle seats.  I
+couldn't get a glimpse of Laddie or the home folks, or worst of all, of
+my idolized Princess.
+
+I never could bear to find a fault with Laddie, but I sadly reflected
+that he might as well have left me at home, if I were to be buried
+where I could neither hear nor see a thing.  I was just wishing it was
+summer so I could steal out to the cemetery, and have a good visit with
+the butterflies that always swarmed around Georgiana Jane Titcomb's
+grave at the corner of the church.  I never knew Georgiana Jane, but
+her people must have been very fond of her, for her grave was scarlet
+with geraniums, and pink with roses from earliest spring until frost,
+and the bright colours attracted swarms of butterflies.  I had learned
+that if I stuck a few blossoms in my hair, rubbed some sweet smelling
+ones over my hands, and knelt and kept so quiet that I fitted into the
+landscape, the butterflies would think me a flower too, and alight on
+my hair, dress, and my hands, even.  God never made anything more
+beautiful than those butterflies, with their wings of brightly painted
+velvet down, their bright eyes, their curious antennae, and their
+queer, tickly feet.  Laddie had promised me a book telling all about
+every kind there was, the first time he went to a city, so I was
+wishing I had it, and was among my pet beauties with it, when I
+discovered him bending over me.
+
+He took my arm, and marching back to his place, helped me to the deep
+window seat beside him, where with my head on a level, and within a
+foot of his, I could see everything in the whole room.  I don't know
+why I ever spent any time pining for the beauties of Georgiana Jane
+Titcomb's grave, even with its handsome headstone on which was carved a
+lamb standing on three feet and holding a banner over its shoulder with
+the fourth, and the geraniums, roses, and the weeping willow that grew
+over it, thrown in.  I might have trusted Laddie.  He never had
+forgotten me; until he did, I should have kept unwavering faith.
+
+Now, I had the best place of any one in the room, and I smoothed my new
+plaid frock and shook my handmade curls just as near like Shelley as
+ever I could.  But it seems that most of the ointment in this world has
+a fly in it, like in the Bible, for fine as my location was, I soon
+knew that I should ask Laddie to put me down, because the window behind
+me didn't fit its frame, and the night was bitter.  Before half an hour
+I was stiff with cold; but I doubt if I would have given up that
+location if I had known I would freeze, because this was the most fun I
+had ever seen.
+
+Miss Amelia began with McGuffey's spelling book, and whenever some poor
+unfortunate made a bad break the crowd roared with laughter.  Peter
+Justice stood up to spell and before three rounds he was nodding on his
+feet, so she pronounced "sleepy" to him.  Some one nudged Pete and he
+waked up and spelled it, s-l-e, sle, p-e, pe, and because he really was
+so sleepy it made every one laugh.  James Whittaker spelled compromise
+with a k, and Isaac Thomas spelled soap, s-o-a-p-e, and it was all the
+funnier that he couldn't spell it, for from his looks you could tell
+that he had no acquaintance with it in any shape.  Then Miss Amelia
+gave out "marriage" to the spooniest young man in the district, and
+"stepfather" to a man who was courting a widow with nine children; and
+"coquette" to our Shelley, who had been making sheep's eyes at Johnny
+Myers, so it took her by surprise and she joined the majority, which by
+that time occupied seats.
+
+There was much laughing and clapping of hands for a time, but when Miss
+Amelia had let them have their fun and thinned the lines to half a
+dozen on each side who could really spell, she began business, and
+pronounced the hardest words she could find in the book, and the
+spellers caught them up and rattled them off like machines.
+
+"Incompatibility," she gave out, and before the sound of her voice died
+away the Princess was spelling:  "I-n, in, c-o-m, com, in com, p-a-t,
+pat, incompat, i, incompati, b-i-l, bil, incompatibil, i,
+incompatibili, t-y, ty, incompatibility."
+
+Then Laddie spelled "incomprehensibility," and they finished up the
+"bilities" and the "alities" with a rush and changed McGuffey's for
+Webster, with five on Laddie's side and three on the Princess', and
+when they quit with it, the Princess was alone, and Laddie and our
+little May facing her.
+
+From that on you could call it real spelling.  They spelled from the
+grammars, hyperbole, synecdoche, and epizeuxis.  They spelled from the
+physiology, chlorophyll, coccyx, arytenoid, and the names of the bones
+and nerves, and all the hard words inside you.
+
+They tried the diseases and spelled jaundice, neurasthenia, and
+tongue-tied.  They tried all the occupations and professions, and went
+through the stores and spelled all sorts of hardware, china and dry
+goods.  Each side kept cheering its own and urging them to do their
+best, and every few minutes some man in the back of the house said
+something that was too funny.  When Miss Amelia pronounced "bombazine"
+to Laddie our side cried, "Careful, Laddie, careful! you're out of your
+element!"
+
+And when she gave "swivel-tree" to the Princess, her side whispered,
+"Go easy!  Do you know what it is?  Make her define it."
+
+They branched over the country.  May met her Jonah on the mountains.
+Katahdin was too much for her, and Laddie and the Princess were left to
+fight it out alone.  I didn't think Laddie liked it.  I'm sure he never
+expected it to turn out that way.  He must have been certain he could
+beat her, for after he finished English there were two or three other
+languages he knew, and every one in the district felt that he could
+win, and expected him to do it.  It was an awful place to put him in, I
+could see that.  He stood a little more erect than usual, with his eyes
+toward the Princess, and when his side kept crying, "Keep the prize,
+Laddie!  Hold up the glory of the district!" he ground out the words as
+if he had a spite at them for not being so hard that he would have an
+excuse for going down.
+
+The Princess was poised lightly on her feet, her thick curls, just
+touching her shoulders, shining in the light; her eyes like stars, her
+perfect, dark oval face flushed a rich red, and her deep bosom rising
+and falling with excitement.  Many times in later years I have tried to
+remember when the Princess was loveliest of all, and that night always
+stands first.
+
+I was thinking fast.  Laddie was a big man.  Men were strong on purpose
+so they could bear things.  He loved the Princess so, and he didn't
+know whether she loved him or not; and every marriageable man in three
+counties was just aching for the chance to court her, and I didn't feel
+that he dared risk hurting her feelings.
+
+Laddie said, to be the man who conquered the Princess and to whom she
+lifted her lips for a first kiss was worth life itself.  I made up my
+mind that night that he knew just exactly what he was talking about.  I
+thought so too.  And I seemed to understand why Laddie--Laddie in his
+youth, strength, and manly beauty, Laddie, who boasted that there was
+not a nerve in his body--trembled before the Princess.
+
+It looked as if she had set herself against him and was working for the
+honours, and if she wanted them, I didn't feel that he should chance
+beating her, and then, too, it was beginning to be plain that it was
+none too sure he could.  Laddie didn't seem to be the only one who had
+been well drilled in spelling.
+
+I held my jaws set a minute, so that I could speak without Laddie
+knowing how I was shivering, and then I whispered:  "Except her eyes
+are softer, she looks just like a cardinal."
+
+Laddie nodded emphatically and moving a step nearer laid his elbow
+across my knees.  Heavens, how they spelled!  They finished all the
+words I ever heard and spelled like lightning through a lot of others
+the meaning of which I couldn't imagine.  Father never gave them out at
+home.  They spelled epiphany, gaberdine, ichthyology, gewgaw,
+kaleidoscope, and troubadour.  Then Laddie spelled one word two
+different ways; and the Princess went him one better, for she spelled
+another three.
+
+They spelled from the Bible, Nebuchadnezzar, Potiphar, Peleg,
+Belshazzar, Abimelech, and a host of others I never heard the minister
+preach about.  Then they did the most dreadful thing of all.  "Broom,"
+pronounced the teacher, and I began mentally, b-r-o-o-m, but Laddie
+spelled "b-r-o-u-g-h-a-m," and I stared at him in a daze.  A second
+later Miss Amelia gave out "Beecham" to the Princess, and again I tried
+it, b-e-e-c-h, but the Princess was spelling "B-e-a-u-c-h-a-m-p," and I
+almost fell from the window.
+
+They kept that up until I was nearly crazy with nervousness; I forgot I
+was half frozen.  I pulled Laddie's sleeve and whispered in his ear:
+"Do you think she'll cry if you beat her?"
+
+I was half crying myself, the strain had been awful.  I was torn
+between these dearest loves of mine.
+
+"Seen me have any chance to beat her?" retorted Laddie.
+
+Miss Amelia seemed to have used most of her books, and at last picked
+up an old geography and began giving out points around the coast, while
+Laddie and the Princess took turns snatching the words from her mouth
+and spelling them.  Father often did that, so Laddie was safe there.
+They were just going it when Miss Amelia pronounced, "Terra del Fuego,"
+to the Princess.  "T-e-r-r-a, Terra, d-e-l, del, F-i-e-u-g-o," spelled
+the Princess, and sat down suddenly in the midst of a mighty groan from
+her side, swelled by a wail from one little home district deserter.
+
+"Next!" called Miss Amelia.
+
+"T-e-r-r-a, Terra, d-e-l, del, F-e-u-g-o," spelled Laddie.
+
+"Wrong!" wailed Miss Amelia, and our side breathed one big groan in
+concert, and I lifted up my voice in that also.  Then every one laughed
+and pretended they didn't care, and the Princess came over and shook
+hands with Laddie, and Laddie said to Miss Amelia:
+
+"Just let me take that book a minute until I see how the thing really
+does go."  It was well done and satisfied the crowd, which clapped and
+cheered; but as I had heard him spell it many, many times for father,
+he didn't fool me.
+
+Laddie and the Princess drew slips for the book and it fell to her.  He
+was so pleased he kissed me as he lifted me down and never noticed I
+was so stiff I could scarcely stand--and I did fall twice going to the
+sleigh.  My bed was warm and my room was warm, but I chilled the night
+through and until the next afternoon, when I grew so faint and sleepy I
+crept to Miss Amelia's desk, half dead with fright--it was my first
+trip to ask an excuse--and begged:  "Oh teacher, I'm so sick.  Please
+let me go home."
+
+I think one glance must have satisfied her that it was true, for she
+said very kindly that I might, and she would send Leon along to take
+care of me.  But my troubles were only half over when I had her
+consent.  It was very probable I would be called a baby and sent back
+when I reached home, so I refused company and started alone.  It seemed
+a mile past the cemetery.  I was so tired I stopped, and leaning
+against the fence, peeped through at the white stones and the whiter
+mounds they covered, and wondered how my mother would feel if she were
+compelled to lay me beside the two little whooping cough and fever
+sisters already sleeping there.  I decided that it would be so very
+dreadful, that the tears began to roll down my cheeks and freeze before
+they fell.
+
+Down the Big Hill slowly I went.  How bare it looked then!  Only
+leafless trees and dried seed pods rattling on the bushes, the sand
+frozen, and not a rush to be seen for the thick blanket of snow.  A few
+rods above the bridge was a footpath, smooth and well worn, that led
+down to the creek, beaten by the feet of children who raced it every
+day and took a running slide across the ice.  I struck into the path as
+always; but I was too stiff to run, for I tried.  I walked on the ice,
+and being almost worn out, sat on the bridge and fell to watching the
+water bubbling under the glassy crust.  I was so dull a horse's feet
+struck the bridge before I heard the bells--for I had bells in my ears
+that day--and when I looked up it was the Princess--the Princess in her
+red dress and furs, with a silk hood instead of her hat, her sleigh
+like a picture, with a buffalo robe, that it was whispered about the
+country, cost over a hundred dollars, and her thoroughbred mare Maud
+dancing and prancing.  "Bless me!  Is it you, Little Sister?" she
+asked.  "Shall I give you a ride home?"
+
+Before I could scarcely realize she was there, I was beside her and she
+was tucking the fine warm robe over me.  I lifted a pair of dull eyes
+to her face.
+
+"Oh Princess, I am so glad you came," I said.  "I don't think I could
+have gone another step if I had frozen on the bridge."
+
+The Princess bent to look in my face.  "Why, you poor child!" She
+exclaimed, "you're white as death!  Where are you ill?"
+
+I leaned on her shoulder, though ordinarily I would not have offered to
+touch her first, and murmured:  "I am not ill, outdoors, only dull,
+sleepy, and freezing with the cold."
+
+"It was that window!" she exclaimed.  "I thought of it, but I trusted
+Laddie."
+
+That roused me a little.
+
+"Oh Princess," I cried, "you mustn't blame Laddie!  I knew it was too
+cold, but I wouldn't tell him, because if he put me down I couldn't see
+you, and we thought, but for your eyes being softer, you looked just
+like a cardinal."
+
+The Princess hugged me close and laughed merrily.  "You darling!" she
+cried.
+
+Then she shook me up sharply:  "Don't you dare go to sleep!" she said.
+"I must take you home first."
+
+Once there she quieted my mother's alarm, put me to bed, drove three
+miles for Dr. Fenner and had me started nicely on the road to a month
+of lung fever, before she left.  In my delirium I spelled volumes; and
+the miracle of it was I never missed a word until I came to "Terra del
+Fuego," and there I covered my lips and stoutly insisted that it was
+the Princess' secret.
+
+To keep me from that danger sleep on the road, she shook me up and
+asked about the spelling bee.  I thought it was the grandest thing I
+had ever seen in my life, and I told her so.  She gathered me close and
+whispered:  "Tell me something, Little Sister, please."
+
+The minx!  She knew I thought that a far finer title than hers.
+
+"Would Laddie care?" I questioned.
+
+"Not in the least!"
+
+"Well then, I will."
+
+"Can Laddie spell 'Terra del Fuego?'" she whispered.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"I have heard him do it over and over for father."
+
+The Princess forgot I was so sick, forgot her horse, forgot everything.
+She threw her head back and her hands up, until her horse stopped in
+answer to the loosened line, and she laughed and laughed.  She laughed
+until peal on peal re-echoed from our Big Woods clear across the west
+eighty.  She laughed until her ringing notes set my slow pulses on
+fire, and started my numbed brain in one last effort.  I stood up and
+took her lovely face between my palms, turning it until I could see
+whether the thought that had come to me showed in her eyes, and it did.
+
+"Oh you darling, splendid Princess!" I cried.  "You missed it on
+purpose to let Laddie beat!  You can spell it too!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+The Horn of the Hunter
+
+  "The dusky night rides down the sky,
+    And ushers in the morn:
+  The hounds all join in glorious cry,
+    The huntsman winds his horn."
+
+
+Leon said our house reminded him of the mourners' bench before any one
+had "come through."  He said it was so deadly with Sally and Shelley
+away, that he had a big notion to marry Susie Fall and bring her over
+to liven things up a little.  Mother said she thought that would be a
+good idea, and Leon started in the direction of Falls', but he only
+went as far as Deams'.  When he came back he had a great story to tell
+about dogs chasing their sheep, and foxes taking their geese.  Father
+said sheep were only safe behind securely closed doors, especially in
+winter, and geese also.  Leon said every one hadn't as big a barn as
+ours, and father said there was nothing to prevent any man from
+building the sized barn he needed to shelter his creatures in safety
+and comfort, if he wanted to dig in and earn the money to put it up.
+There was no answer to that, and Mr. Leon didn't try to make any.
+Mostly, he said something to keep on talking, but sometimes he saw when
+he had better quit.
+
+I was having a good time, myself.  Of course when the fever was the
+worst, and when I never had been sick before, it was pretty bad, but as
+soon as I could breathe all right, there was no pain to speak of, and
+every one was so good to me.  I could have Bobby on the footboard of my
+bed as long as I wanted him, and he would crow whenever I told him to.
+I kept Grace Greenwood beside me, and spoiled her dress making her take
+some of each dose of medicine I did, but Shelley wrote that she was
+saving goods and she would make her another as soon as she came home.
+I made mother put red flannel on Grace's chest and around her neck,
+until I could hardly find her mouth when she had to take her medicine,
+but she swallowed it down all right, or she got her nose held, until
+she did.  She was not nearly so sick as I was, though.  We both grew
+better together, and, when Dr. Fenner brought me candy, she had her
+share.
+
+When I began to get well it was lovely.  Such toast, chicken broth, and
+squirrels, as mother always had.  I even got the chicken liver,
+oranges, and all of them gave me everything they had that I wanted--I
+must almost have died to make them act like that!
+
+Laddie and father would take me up wrapped in blankets and hold me to
+rest my back.  Father would rock me and sing about "Young Johnny," just
+as he had when I was little.  We always laughed at it, we knew it was a
+fool song, but we liked it.  The tune was smooth and sleepy-like and
+the words went:
+
+  "One day young Johnny, he did go,
+   Way down in the meadow for to mow.
+     Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+   He scarce had mowed twice round the field,
+   When a pesky sarpent bit him on the heel,
+     Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+   He threw the scythe upon the ground,
+   An' shut his eyes, and looked all round,
+     Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+   He took the sarpent in his hand,
+   And then ran home to Molly Bland,
+     Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+   O Molly dear, and don't you see,
+   This pesky sarpent that bit me?
+     Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+   O Johnny dear, why did you go,
+   Way down in the meadow fot to mow?
+     Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+   O Molly dear, I thought you knowed
+   'Twas daddy's grass, and it must be mowed,
+     Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-n an-incty, noddy O!
+
+   Now all young men a warning take,
+   And don't get bit by a rattlesnake.
+     Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!"
+
+
+All of them told me stories, read to me, and Frank, one of my big
+gone-away brothers, sent me the prettiest little book.  It had a green
+cover with gold on the back, and it was full of stories and poems, not
+so very hard, because I could read every one of them, with help on a
+few words.  The piece I liked best was poetry.  If it hadn't been for
+that, I'm afraid, I was having such a good time, I'd have lain there
+until I forgot how to walk, with all of them trying to see who could be
+nicest to me.  The ones who really could, were Laddie and the Princess,
+except mother.  Laddie lifted me most carefully, the Princess told the
+best stories, but after all, if the burning and choking grew so bad I
+could scarcely stand it, mother could lay her hand on my head and say,
+"Poor child," in a way that made me work to keep on breathing.  Maybe I
+only THOUGHT I loved Laddie best.  I guess if I had been forced to take
+my choice when I had the fever, I'd have stuck pretty tight to mother.
+Even Dr. Fenner said if I pulled through she'd have to make me.  I
+might have been lying there yet, if it hadn't been for the book Frank
+sent me, with the poetry piece in it.  It began:
+
+  "Somewhere on a sunny bank, buttercups are bright,
+  Somewhere 'mid the frozen grass, peeps the daisy white."
+
+
+I read that so often I could repeat it quite as well with the book shut
+as open, and every time I read it, I wanted outdoors worse.  In one
+place it ran:
+
+  "Welcome, yellow buttercups, welcome daisies white,
+  Ye are in my spirit visioned a delight.
+  Coming in the springtime of sunny hours to tell,
+  Speaking to our hearts of Him who doeth all things well."
+
+
+That piece helped me out of bed, and the blue gander screaming opened
+the door.  It was funny about it too.  I don't know WHY it worked on me
+that way; it just kept singing in my heart all day, and I could shut my
+eyes and go to sleep seeing buttercups in a gold sheet all over our Big
+Hill, although there never was a single one there; and meadows full of
+daisies, which were things father said were a pest he couldn't
+tolerate, because they spread so, and he grubbed up every one he found.
+Yet that piece filled our meadow until I imagined I could roll on
+daisies.  They might be a pest to farmers, but sheets of them were
+pretty good if you were burning with fever.  Between the buttercups and
+the daisies I left the bed with a light head and wobbly legs.
+
+Of course I wasn't an idiot.  I knew when I looked from our south
+window exactly what was to be seen.  The person who wrote that piece
+was the idiot.  It sang and sounded pretty, and it pulled you up and
+pushed you out, but really it was a fool thing, as I very well knew.  I
+couldn't imagine daisies peeping through frozen grass.  Any baby should
+have known they bloomed in July.  Skunk cabbage always came first, and
+hepatica.  If I had looked from any of our windows and seen daisies and
+buttercups in March, I'd have fallen over with the shock.  I knew there
+would be frozen brown earth, last year's dead leaves, caved-in apple
+and potato holes, the cabbage row almost gone, puddles of water and mud
+everywhere, and I would hear geese scream and hens sing.  And yet that
+poem kept pulling and pulling, and I was happy as a queen--I wondered
+if they were for sure; mother had doubts--the day I was wrapped in
+shawls and might sit an hour in the sun on the top board of the back
+fence, where I could see the barn, orchard, the creek and the meadow,
+as you never could in summer because of the leaves.  I wasn't looking
+for buttercups and daisies either.  I mighty well knew there wouldn't
+be any.
+
+But the sun was there.  A little taste of willow, oak and maple was in
+the air.  You could see the buds growing fat too, and you could smell
+them.  If you opened your eyes and looked in any direction you could
+see blue sky, big, ragged white clouds, bare trees, muddy earth with
+grassy patches, and white spots on the shady sides where unmelted snow
+made the icy feel in the air, even when the sun shone.  You couldn't
+hear yourself think for the clatter of the turkeys, ganders, roosters,
+hens, and everything that had a voice.  I was so crazy with it I could
+scarcely hang to the fence; I wanted to get down and scrape my wings
+like the gobbler, and scream louder than the gander, and crow oftener
+than the rooster.  There was everything all ice and mud.  They would
+have frozen, if they hadn't been put in a house at night, and starved,
+if they hadn't been fed; they were not at the place where they could
+hunt and scratch, and not pay any attention to feeding time, because of
+being so bursting full.  They had no nests and babies to rejoice over.
+But there they were!  And so was I!  Buttercups and daisies be-hanged!
+Ice and mud really!  But if you breathed that air, and shut your eyes,
+north, you could see blue flags, scarlet lilies, buttercups, cattails
+and redbirds sailing over them; east, there would be apple bloom and
+soft grass, cowslips, and bubbling water, robins, thrushes, and
+bluebirds; and south, waving corn with wild rose and alder borders, and
+sparrows, and larks on every fence rider.
+
+Right there I got that daisy thing figured out.  It wasn't that there
+were or ever would be daisies and buttercups among the frozen grass;
+but it was forever and always that when this FEEL came into the air,
+you knew they were COMING.  THAT was what ailed the gander and the
+gobbler.  They hadn't a thing to be thankful for yet, but something
+inside them was swelling and pushing because of what was coming.  I
+felt exactly as they did, because I wanted to act the same way, but I'd
+been sick enough to know that I'd better be thankful for the chance to
+sit on the fence, and think about buttercups and daisies.  Really, one
+old brown and purple skunk cabbage with a half-frozen bee buzzing over
+it, or a few forlorn little spring beauties, would have set me wild,
+and when a lark really did go over, away up high, and a dove began to
+coo in the orchard, if Laddie hadn't come for me, I would have fallen
+from the fence.
+
+I simply had to get well and quickly too, for the wonderful time was
+beginning.  It was all very well to lie in bed when there was nothing
+else to do, and every one would pet me and give me things; but here was
+maple syrup time right at the door, and the sugar camp most fun alive;
+here was all the neighbourhood crazy mad at the foxes, and planning a
+great chase covering a circuit of miles before the ground thawed; here
+was Easter and all the children coming, except Shelley--again, it would
+cost too much for only one day--and with everything beginning to hum, I
+found out there would be more amusement outdoors than inside.  That was
+how I came to study out the daisy piece.  There was nothing in the
+silly, untrue lines: the pull and tug was in what they made you think
+of.
+
+I was still so weak I had to take a nap every day, so I wasn't sleepy
+as early at night, and I heard father and mother talk over a lot of
+things before they went to bed.  After they mentioned it, I remembered
+that we hadn't received nearly so many letters from Shelley lately, and
+mother seldom found time to read them aloud during the day and forgot,
+or her eyes were tired, at night.
+
+"Are you worrying about Shelley?" asked father one night.
+
+"Yes, I am," answered mother.
+
+"What do you think is the trouble?"
+
+"I'm afraid things are not coming out with Mr. Paget as she hoped."
+
+"If they don't, she is going to be unhappy?"
+
+"That's putting it mildly."
+
+"Well, I was doubtful in the beginning."
+
+"Now hold on," said mother.  "So was I; but what are you going to do?
+I can't go through the world with my girls, and meet men for them.  I
+trained them just as carefully as possible before I started them out;
+that was all I could do.  Shelley knows when a man appears clean,
+decent and likable.  She knows when his calling is respectable.  She
+knows when his speech is proper, his manners correct, and his ways
+attractive.  She found this man all of these things, and she liked him
+accordingly.  At Christmas she told me about it freely."
+
+"Have you any idea how far the thing has gone?"
+
+"She said then that she had seen him twice a week for two months.  He
+seemed very fond of her.  He had told her he cared more for her than
+any girl he ever had met, and he had asked her to come here this summer
+and pay us a visit, so she wanted to know if he might."
+
+"Of course you told her yes."
+
+"Certainly I told her yes.  I wish now we'd saved money and you'd gone
+to visit her and met him when she first wrote of him.  You could have
+found out who and what he was, and with your experience you might have
+pointed out signs that would have helped her to see, before it was too
+late."
+
+"What do you think is the trouble?"
+
+"I wish I knew!  She simply is failing to mention him in her letters;
+all the joy of living has dropped from them, she merely writes about
+her work; and now she is beginning to complain of homesickness and to
+say that she doesn't know how to endure the city any longer.  There's
+something wrong."
+
+"Had I better go now?"
+
+"Too late!" said mother, and I could hear her throat go wrong and the
+choke come into her voice.  "She is deeply in love with him; he hasn't
+found in her what he desires; probably he is not coming any more; what
+could you do?"
+
+"I could go and see if there is anything I could do?"
+
+"She may not want you.  I'll write her to-morrow and suggest that you
+or Laddie pay her a visit and learn what she thinks."
+
+"All right," said father.
+
+He kissed her and went to sleep, but mother was awake yet, and she got
+up and stood looking down at the church and the two little white
+gravestones she could see from her window, until I thought she would
+freeze, and she did nearly, for her hands were cold and the tears
+falling when she examined my covers, and felt my face and hands before
+she went to bed.  My, but the mother of a family like ours is never
+short of a lot of things to think of!
+
+I had a new one myself.  Now what do you suppose there was about that
+man?
+
+Of course after having lived all her life with father and Laddie,
+Shelley would know how a man should look, and act to be right; and this
+one must have been right to make her bloom out in winter the way other
+things do in spring; and now what could be wrong?  Maybe city girls
+were prettier than Shelley.  But all women were made alike on the
+outside, and that was as far as you could see.  You couldn't find out
+whether they had pure blood, true hearts, or clean souls.  No girl
+could be so very much prettier than Shelley; they simply were not made
+that way.  She knew how to behave; she had it beaten into her, like all
+of us.  And she knew her books, what our schools could teach her, and
+Groveville, and Lucy, who had city chances for years, and there never
+was a day at our house when books and papers were not read and
+discussed, and your spelling was hammered into you standing in rows
+against the wall, and memory tests--what on earth could be the matter
+with Shelley that a man who could make her look and act as she did at
+Christmas, would now make her unhappy?  Sometimes I wanted to be grown
+up dreadfully, and again, times like that, I wished my bed could stay
+in mother's room, and I could creep behind father's paper and go to
+sleep between his coat and vest, and have him warm my feet in his hands
+forever.
+
+This world was too much for me.  I never worked and worried in all my
+life as I had over Laddie and the Princess, and Laddie said I, myself,
+never would know how I had helped him.  Of course nothing was settled;
+he had to try to make her love him by teaching her how lovable he was.
+We knew, because we always had known him, but she was a stranger and
+had to learn.  It was mighty fine for him that he could force his way
+past the dogs, Thomas, the other men, her half-crazy father, and
+through the locked door, and go there to try to make her see, on Sunday
+nights, and week days, every single chance he could invent, and he
+could think up more reasons for going to Pryors' than mother could for
+putting out an extra wash.
+
+Now just as I got settled a little about him, and we could see they
+really wanted him there, at least the Princess and her mother did, and
+Mr. Pryor must have been fairly decent or Laddie never would have gone;
+and the Princess came to our house to bring me things to eat, and ask
+how mother was, and once to learn how she embroidered Sally's wedding
+chemise, and social things like that; and when father acted as if he
+liked her so much he hadn't a word to say, and mother seemed to begin
+to feel as if Laddie and the Princess could be trusted to fix it up
+about God; and the old mystery didn't matter after all; why, here
+Shelley popped up with another mystery, and it belonged to us.  But
+whatever ailed that man I couldn't possibly think.  It had got to be
+him, for Shelley was so all right at Christmas, it made her look that
+pretty we hardly knew her.
+
+I was thinking about her until I scarcely could study my lessons, so I
+could recite to Laddie at night, and not fall so far behind at school.
+Miss Amelia offered to hear me, but I just begged Laddie, and father
+could see that he taught me fifty things in a lesson that you could
+tell to look at Miss Amelia, she never knew.  Why, he couldn't hear me
+read:
+
+  "We charged upon a flock of geese,
+    And put them all to flight
+  Except one sturdy gander
+    That thought to show us fight,"--
+
+without teaching me that the oldest picture in all the world was made
+of a row of geese, some of which were kinds we then had--the earth
+didn't seem so old when you thought of that--and how a flock of geese
+once wakened an army and saved a city, and how far wild geese could fly
+without alighting in migration, and everything you could think of about
+geese, only he didn't know why eating the same grass made feathers on
+geese and wool on sheep.  Anyway, Miss Amelia never told you a word but
+what was in the book, and how to read and spell it.  May said that
+father was very much disappointed in her, and he was never going to
+hire another teacher until he met and talked with her, no matter what
+kind of letters she could send.  He was not going to help her get a
+summer school, and O my soul!  I hope no one does, for if they do, I
+have to go, and I'd rather die than go to school in the summer.
+
+Leon came in about that time with more fox stories.  Been in Jacob
+Hood's chicken house and taken his best Dorking rooster, and father
+said it was time to do something.  He never said a word so long as they
+took Deams', except they should have barn room for their geese, but
+when anything was the matter at Hoods' father and mother started doing
+something the instant they heard of it.  So father and Laddie rode
+around the neighbourhood and talked it over, and the next night they
+had a meeting at our schoolhouse; men for miles came, and they planned
+a regular old-fashioned foxchase, and every one was wild about it.
+
+Laddie told it at Pryors' and the Princess wanted to go; she asked to
+go with him, and if you please, Mr. Pryor wanted to go too, and their
+Thomas.  They attended the meeting to tell how people chase foxes in
+England, where they seem to hunt them most of the time.  Father said:
+"Thank God for even a foxchase, if it will bring Mr. Pryor among his
+neighbours and help him to act sensibly."  They are going away fifteen
+miles or farther, and form a big circle of men from all directions,
+some walking in a line, and others riding to bring back any foxes that
+escape, and with dogs, and guns, they are going to rout out every one
+they can find, and kill them so they won't take the geese, little pigs,
+lambs, and Hoods' Dorking rooster.  Laddie had a horn that Mr. Pryor
+gave him when he told him this country was showing signs of becoming
+civilized at last; but Leon grinned and said he'd beat that.
+
+Then when you wanted him, he was in the wood house loft at work, but
+father said he couldn't get into mischief there.  He should have seen
+that churn when it was full of wedding breakfast!  We ate for a week
+afterward, until things were all moulded, and we didn't dare anymore.
+One night I begged so hard and promised so faithfully he trusted me; he
+did often, after I didn't tell about the Station; and I went to the
+loft with him, and watched him work an hour.  He had a hollow limb
+about six inches through and fourteen long.  He had cut and burned it
+to a mere shell, and then he had scraped it with glass inside and out,
+until it shone like polished horn.  He had shaved the wool from a piece
+of sheepskin, soaked, stretched, and dried it, and then fitted it over
+one end of the drumlike thing he had made, and tacked and bound it in a
+little groove at the edge.  He put the skin on damp so he could stretch
+it tight.  Then he punched a tiny hole in the middle, and pulled
+through it, down inside the drum, a sheepskin thong rolled in resin,
+with a knot big enough to hold it, and not tear the head.  Then he took
+it under his arm and we slipped across the orchard below the Station,
+and went into the hollow and tried it.
+
+It worked!  I almost fell dead with the first frightful sound.  It just
+bellowed and roared.  In only a little while he found different ways to
+make it sound by his manner of working the tongue.  A long, steady,
+even pull got that kind of a roar.  A short, quick one made it bark.  A
+pull half the length of the thong, a pause, and another pull, made it
+sound like a bark and a yelp.  To pull hard and quick, made it go
+louder, and soft and easy made it whine.  Before he had tried it ten
+minutes he could do fifty things with it that would almost scare the
+livers out of those nasty old foxes that were taking every one's geese,
+Dorking roosters, and even baby lambs and pigs.  Of course people
+couldn't stand that; something had to be done!
+
+Even in the Bible it says, "Beware of the little foxes that spoil the
+vines," and geese, especially blue ones, Dorking roosters, lambs, and
+pigs were much more valuable than mere vines; so Leon made that awful
+thing to scare the foxes from their holes that's in the Bible too,
+about the holes I mean, not the scaring.  I wanted Leon to slip to the
+back door and make the dumb-bell--that's what he called it; if I had
+been naming it I would have called it the thunder-bell--go; but he
+wouldn't.  He said he didn't propose to work as he had, and then have
+some one find out, and fix one like it.  He said he wouldn't let it
+make a sound until the night before the chase, and then he'd raise the
+dead.  I don't know about the dead; but it was true of the living.
+Father went a foot above his chair and cried: "Whoo-pee!"  All of us,
+even I, when I was waiting for it, screamed as if Paddy Ryan raved at
+the door.  Then Leon came in and showed us, and every one wanted to
+work the dumb-bell, even mother.  Leon marched around and showed off;
+he looked "See the conquering hero comes," all over.  I never felt
+worse about being made into a girl than I did that night.
+
+I couldn't sleep for excitement, and mother said I might as well, for
+it would be at least one o'clock before they would round-up in our
+meadow below the barn.  All the neighbours were to shut up their stock,
+tie their dogs, or lead them with chains, if they took them, so when
+the foxes were surrounded, they could catch them alive, and save their
+skins.  I wondered how some of those chasing people, even Laddie, Leon,
+and father--think of that!  father was going too--I wondered how they
+would have liked to have had something as much bigger than they were,
+as they were bigger than the foxes, chase them with awful noises, guns
+and dogs, and catch them alive--to save their skins.  No wonder I
+couldn't sleep!  I guess the foxes wouldn't either, if they had known
+what was coming.  Maybe hereafter the mean old things would eat rabbits
+and weasels, and leave the Dorking roosters alone.
+
+May, Candace, and Miss Amelia were going to Deams' to wait, and when
+the round-up formed a solid line, they planned to stand outside, and
+see the sport.  If they had been the foxes, maybe they wouldn't have
+thought it was so funny; but of course, people just couldn't have even
+their pigs and lambs taken.  We had to have wool to spin yarn for our
+stockings, weave our blankets and coverlids, and our Sunday winter
+dresses of white flannel with narrow black crossbars were from the
+backs of our own sheep, and we had to have ham to fry with eggs, and
+boil for Sunday night suppers, and bacon to cook the greens with--of
+course it was all right.
+
+Before it was near daylight I heard Laddie making the kitchen fire, so
+father got right up, Leon came down, and all of them went to the barn
+to do the feeding.  I wanted to get up too, but mother said I should
+stay in bed until the house was warm, because if I took more cold I'd
+be sick again.  At breakfast May asked father about when they should
+start for Deams' to be ahead of the chase, and he said by ten o'clock
+at least; because a fox driven mad by pursuit, dogs, and noise, was a
+very dangerous thing, and a bite might make hy----the same thing as a
+mad dog.  He said our back barn door opening from the threshing floor
+would afford a fine view of the meet, but Candace, May, and Miss Amelia
+wanted to be closer.  I might go with them if they would take good care
+of me, and they promised to; but when the time came to start, there was
+such a queer feeling inside me, I thought maybe it was more fever, and
+with mother would be the best place for me, so I said I wanted to watch
+from the barn.  Father thought that was a capital idea, because I would
+be on the east side, where there would be no sun and wind, and it would
+be perfectly safe; also, I really could see what was going on better
+from that height than on the ground.
+
+The sun was going to shine, but it hadn't peeped above Deams'
+strawstack when father on his best saddle horse, and Laddie on Flos,
+rode away, their eyes shining, their faces red, their blood pounding so
+it made their voices sound excited and different.  Leon was to go on
+foot.  Father said he would ride a horse to death.  He just grinned and
+never made a word of complaint.  Seemed funny for him.
+
+"I was over having a little confidential chat with my horse, last
+night," he said, "and next year we'll be in the chase, and we'll show
+you how to take fences, and cut curves; just you wait!"
+
+"Leon, DON'T build so on that horse," wailed mother.  "I'm sure that
+money was stolen like ours, and the owner will claim it! I feel it in
+my bones!"
+
+"Aw, shucks!" said Leon.  "That money is mine.  He won't either!"
+
+When they started, father took Leon behind him to ride as far as the
+county line.  He said he would go slowly, and it wouldn't hurt the
+horse, but Leon slipped off at Hoods', and said he'd go with their
+boys, so father let him, because light as Leon was, both of them were
+quite a load for one horse.  Laddie went to ride with the Princess.  We
+could see people moving around in Pryors' barnyard when our men
+started.  Candace washed, Miss Amelia wiped the dishes, May swept, and
+all of them made the beds, and then they went to Deams', while I stayed
+with mother.  When she thought it was time, she bundled me up warmly,
+and I went to the barn.  Father had the east doors standing open for
+me, so I could sit in the sun, hang my feet against the warm boards,
+and see every inch of our meadow where the meet was to be.  I was
+really too warm there, and had to take off the scarf, untie my hood,
+and unbutton my coat.
+
+It was a trifle muddy, but the frost had not left the ground yet, the
+sparrows were singing fit to burst, so were the hens.  I didn't care
+much for the music of the hen, but I could see she meant well.  She
+liked her nest quite as much as the red velvet bird with black wings,
+or the bubbly yellow one, and as for baby chickens, from the first peep
+they beat a little naked, blind, wobbly tree bird, so any hen had a
+right to sing for joy because she was going to be the mother of a large
+family of them.  A hen had something was going to be the mother of a
+large family of them.  A hen had something to sing about all right, and
+so had we, when we thought of poached eggs and fried chicken.  When I
+remembered them, I saw that it was no wonder the useful hen warbled so
+proudlike; but that was all nonsense, for I don't suppose a hen ever
+tasted poached eggs, and surely she wouldn't be happy over the prospect
+of being fried.  Maybe one reason she sang was because she didn't know
+what was coming; I hardly think she'd be so tuneful if she did.
+
+Sometimes the geese, shut in the barn, raised an awful clatter, and the
+horses and cattle complained about being kept from the sunshine and
+fresh air.  You couldn't blame them.  It was a lovely day, and the big
+upper door the pleasantest place.  I didn't care if the fox hunters
+never came, there was so much to see, hear, and smell.  Everything was
+busy making signs of spring, and one could become tired of ice and snow
+after a while, and so hungry for summer that those first days which
+were just hints of what was coming were almost better than the real
+thing when it arrived.  Bud perfume was stronger than last week, many
+doves and bluebirds were calling, and three days more of such sunshine
+would make cross-country riding too muddy to be pleasant.  I sat there
+thinking; grown people never know how much children do think, they have
+so much time, and so many bothersome things to study out.  I heard it
+behind me, a long, wailing, bellowing roar, and my hood raised right up
+with my hair.  I was in the middle of the threshing floor in a second,
+in another at the little west door, cut into the big one, opening it a
+tiny crack to take a peep, and see how close they were.
+
+I could see nothing, but I heard a roar of dreadful sound steadily
+closing in a circle around me.  No doubt the mean old foxes wished then
+they had let the Dorking roosters alone.  Closer it came and more
+dreadful.  Never again did I want to hear such sounds coming at me;
+even when I knew what was making them.  And then away off, beyond
+Pryors', and Hoods', and Dovers', I could see a line of tiny specks
+coming toward me, and racing flying things that must have been people
+on horses riding back and forth to give the foxes no chance to find a
+hiding place.  No chance!  Laddie and the Princess, Mr. Pryor and
+father, and all of them were after the bad old foxes; and they were
+going to get them; because they'd have no chance--Not with a solid line
+of men with raving dogs surrounding them, and people on horseback
+racing after them, no! the foxes would wish now that they had left the
+pigs and lambs alone.  In that awful roaring din, they would wish, Oh
+how they would wish, they were birds and could fly!  Fly back to their
+holes like the Bible said they had, where maybe they LIKED to live, and
+no doubt they had little foxes there, that would starve when their
+mammies were caught alive, to save their skins.
+
+To save their skins!  I could hear myself breathe, and feel my teeth
+click, and my knees knock together.  And then!  Oh dear!  There they
+came across our cornfield.  Two of them!  And they could fly, almost.
+At least you could scarcely see that they touched the ground.  The mean
+old things were paying up for the pigs and lambs now.  Through the
+fence, across the road, straight toward me they came.  Almost red
+backs, nearly white beneath, long flying tails, beautiful pointed ears,
+and long tongues, fire red, hanging from their open mouths; their sleek
+sides pulsing, and that awful din coming through the woods behind them.
+One second, the first paused to glance toward either side, and threw
+back its head to listen.  What it saw, and heard, showed it.  I guess
+then it was sorry it ever took people's ham, and their greens, and
+their blankets; and it could see and hear that it had no chance--to
+save its skin.
+
+"Oh Lord!  Dear Lord!  Help me!" I prayed.
+
+It had to be me, there was no one else.  I never had opened the big
+doors; I thought it took a man, but when I pushed with all my
+might--and maybe if the hairs of our heads were numbered, and the
+sparrows counted, there would be a little mercy for the foxes--I asked
+for help; maybe I got it.  The doors went back, and I climbed up the
+ladder to the haymow a few steps and clung there, praying with all my
+might:  "Make them come in!  Dear Lord, make them come in!  Give them a
+chance!  Help them to save their skins, O Lord!"
+
+With a whizz and a flash one went past me, skimmed the cider press, and
+rushed across the hay; then the other.  I fell to the floor and the
+next thing I knew the doors were shut, and I was back at my place.  I
+just went down in a heap and leaned against the wall and shook, and
+then I laughed and said:  "Thank you, Lord!  Thank you for helping with
+the door!  And the foxes!  The beautiful little red and white foxes!
+They've got their chance!  They'll save their skins!  They'll get back
+to their holes and their babies!  Praise the Lord!"
+
+I knew when I heard that come out, that it was exactly like my father
+said it when Amos Hurd was redeemed.  I never knew father to say it so
+impressively before, because Amos had been so bad, people really were
+afraid of him, and father said if once he got started right, he would
+go at it just as hard as he had gone at wrongdoing.  I suppose I
+shouldn't have said it about a fox, when there were the Dorkings, and
+ham, and white wool dresses, and all that, but honestly, I couldn't
+remember that I cared particularly whether Amos Hurd was redeemed or
+not; he was always lovely to children; while I never in all my life had
+wanted anything worse than I wanted those foxes to save their skins.  I
+could hear them pant like run out dogs; and I could hear myself, and I
+hadn't been driven from my home and babies, maybe--and chased miles and
+miles, either.
+
+Then I just shook.  They came pounding, roaring and braying right
+around the barn, and down the lane.  The little door flew open and a
+strange man stuck in his head.
+
+"Shut that door!" I screamed.  "You'll let them in on me, and they
+bite!  They're poison!  They'll kill me!"
+
+I hadn't even thought of it before.
+
+"See any foxes?" cried the man.
+
+"Two crossed our barnyard headed that way!" I cried back, pointing
+east.  "Shut the door!"
+
+The man closed it and ran calling as he went:  "It's all right!  They
+crossed the barnyard.  We've got them!"
+
+I began to dance and beat my hands, and then I stopped and held my
+breath.  They were passing, and the noise was dreadful.  They struck
+the sides of the barn, poked around the strawstack, and something made
+me look up, and at the edge of the hay stood a fox ready to spring.  If
+it did, it would go from the door, right into the midst thereof.
+Nothing but my red hood sailing straight at it, and a yell I have,
+drove it back.  No one hit the barn again, the line closed up, and went
+on at a run now, they were so anxious to meet and see what they had.
+Then came the beat of hoofs and I saw that all the riders had dropped
+back, and were behind the line of people on foot.  I watched Laddie as
+he flew past waving to me, and I grabbed my scarf to wave at him.  The
+Princess flashed by so swiftly I couldn't see how she looked, and then
+I heard a voice I knew cry:  "Ep!  Ep!  Over Lad!"  And I almost fell
+dead where I stood.  Mr. Pryor sailed right over the barnyard fence
+into the cornfield, ripping that dumb-bell as he went, and neck and
+neck, even with him, on one of his finest horses, was our Leon.  His
+feet were in the stirrups, he had the reins tight, he almost stood as
+he arose, his face was crimson, his head bare, his white hair flying,
+the grandest sight you ever saw.  At the top of my voice I screamed
+after them, "Ep!  Ep!  Over lad!" and then remembered and looked to see
+if I had to chase back the foxes, but they didn't mind only me, after
+what they had been through.  Then I sat down suddenly again.
+
+Well!  What would father think of that!  Leon kill a horse of ours
+indeed!  There he was on one of Mr. Pryor's, worth as much as six of
+father's no doubt, flying over fences, and the creek was coming, and
+the bank was steep behind the barn.  I was up again straining to see.
+
+"Ep!  Ep!  Over!" rang the cry.
+
+There they went!  Laddie and the Princess too.  I'll never spend
+another cent on paper dolls, candy, raisins, or oranges.  I'll give all
+I have to help Leon buy his horse; then I'm going to begin saving for
+mine.
+
+The line closed up, a solid wall of men with sticks, clubs and guns;
+the dogs ranged outside, and those on horseback stopped where they
+could see best; and inside, raced back and forth, and round and round,
+living creatures.  I couldn't count they moved so, but even at that
+distance I could see that some were poor little cotton tails.  The
+scared things!  A whack over the head, a backward toss, and the dogs
+were mouthing them.  The long tailed, sleek, gracefully moving ones,
+they were foxes, the foxes driven from their holes, and nothing on
+earth could save their skins for them now; those men meant to have them.
+
+I pulled the doors shut suddenly.  I was so sick I could scarcely
+stand.  I had to work, but at last I pushed the west doors open again.
+I don't think the Lord helped me any that time, for I knew what it
+took--before, they just went.  Or maybe He did help me quite as much,
+but I had harder work to do my share, because I felt so dizzy and ill.
+Anyway, they opened.  Then I climbed the upright ladder to the top
+beam, walked it to the granary, and there I danced, pounded and yelled
+so that the foxes jumped from the hay, leaped lightly to the threshing
+floor, and stood looking and listening.  I gave them time to hear where
+the dreadful racket was, and then I jumped to the hay and threw the
+pitchfork at them.  It came down smash! and both of them sprang from
+the door.  When I got down the ladder and where I could see, they were
+so rested they were hiking across the cornfield like they never had
+raced a step before; and as the clamour went up behind me, that
+probably meant the first fox had lost its beautiful red and white skin,
+they reached our woods in safety.  The doors went shut easier, and I
+started to the house crying like any blubbering baby; but when mother
+turned from the east window, and I noticed her face, I forgot the foxes.
+
+"You saw Leon!" I cried.
+
+"That I did!" she exulted, rocking on her toes the same as she does at
+the Meeting House when she is going to cry, "Glory!" any minute.  "That
+I did!  Ah! the brave little chap!  Ah! the fine fellow!"
+
+Her cheeks were the loveliest pink, and her eyes blazed.  I scarcely
+knew her.
+
+"What will father say?"
+
+"If his father isn't every particle as proud of him as I am this day,
+I've a big disappointment coming," she answered.  "If Mr. Pryor chose
+to let him take that fine horse, and taught him how to ride it, father
+should be glad."
+
+"If he'd gone into the creek, you wouldn't feel so fine."
+
+"Ah! but he didn't!  He didn't!  He stuck to the saddle and sailed over
+in one grand, long sweep!  It was fine!  I hope--to my soul, I hope his
+father saw it!"
+
+"He did!" I said.  "He did!  He was about halfway down the lane.  He
+was where he could see fine."
+
+"You didn't notice----?"
+
+"I was watching if Leon went under.  What if he had, mother?"
+
+"They'd have taken him out, and brought him to me, and I'd have worked
+with all the strength and skill God has given me, and if it were
+possible to us, he would be saved, and if it were not, it would be a
+proud moment for a woman to offer a boy like that to the God who gave
+him.  One would have nothing to be ashamed of!"
+
+"Could you do it, like you are now, and not cry, mother?" I asked
+wonderingly.
+
+"Patience no!" said she.  "Before long you will find out, child, that
+the fountain head of tears and laughter lies in the same spot, deep in
+a woman's heart.  Men were made for big things!  They must brave the
+wild animals, the Indians, fight the battles, ride the races, till the
+fields, build the homes.  In the making of a new country men must have
+the thing in their souls that carried Leon across the creek.  If he had
+checked that horse and gone to the ford, I would have fallen where I
+stood!"
+
+"Father crossed the ford!"
+
+"True!  But that's different.  He never had a chance at a horse like
+that!  He never had time for fancy practice, and his nose would have
+been between the pages of a book if he had.  But remember this!  Your
+father's hand has never faltered, and his aim has never failed.  All of
+us are here, safe and comfortable, through him.  It was your father who
+led us across the wilderness, and fended from us the wildcat, wolf, and
+Indian.  He built this house, cleared this land, and gave to all of us
+the thing we love.  Get this in your head straight.  Your father rode a
+plow horse; he never tried flourishes in riding; but no man can stick
+in the saddle longer, ride harder, and face any danger with calmer
+front.  If you think this is anything, you should have seen his face
+the day he stood between me and a band of Indians, we had every reason
+to think, I had angered to the fighting point."
+
+"Tell me!  Please tell me!" I begged.
+
+All of us had been brought up on that story, but we were crazy to hear
+it, and mother loved to tell it, so she dropped on a chair and began:
+
+"We were alone in a cabin in the backwoods of Ohio.  Elizabeth was only
+nine months old, and father always said a mite the prettiest of any
+baby we ever had.  Many of the others have looked quite as well to me,
+but she was the first, and he was so proud of her he always wanted me
+to wait in the wagon until he hitched the horses, so he would get to
+take and to carry her himself.  Well, she was in the cradle, cooing and
+laughing, and I had my work all done, and cabin shining.  I was heating
+a big poker red-hot, and burning holes into the four corners of a board
+so father could put legs in it to make me a bench.  A greasy old squaw
+came to the door with her papoose on her back.  She wanted to trade
+berries for bread.  There were berries everywhere for the picking; I
+had more dried than I could use in two years.  We planted only a little
+patch of wheat and father had to ride three days to carry to mill what
+he could take on a horse.  I baked in an outoven and when it was done,
+a loaf of white bread was by far the most precious thing we had to eat.
+Sometimes I was caught, and forced to let it go.  Often I baked during
+the night and hid the bread in the wheat at the barn.  There was none
+in the cabin that day and I said so.  She didn't believe me.  She set
+her papoose on the floor beside the fireplace, and went to the
+cupboard.  There wasn't a crumb there except cornbread, and she didn't
+want that.  She said:  'Brod!  Brod!'
+
+"She learned that from the Germans in the settlement.  I shook my head.
+Then she pulled out a big steel hunting knife, such as the whites
+traded to the Indians so they would have no trouble in scalping us
+neatly, and walked to the cradle.  She took that knife loosely between
+her thumb and second finger and holding it directly above my baby's
+face, she swung it lightly back and forth and demanded:  'Brod!  Brod!'
+
+"If the knife fell, it would go straight through my baby's head, and
+Elizabeth was reaching her little hands and laughing.  There was only
+one thing to do, and I did it.  I caught that red-hot poker from the
+fire, and stuck it so close her baby's face, that the papoose drew back
+and whimpered.  I scarcely saw how she snatched it up and left.  When
+your father came, I told him, and we didn't know what to do.  We knew
+she would come back and bring her band.  If we were not there, they
+would burn the cabin, ruin our crops, kill our stock, take everything
+we had, and we couldn't travel so far, or so fast, that on their ponies
+they couldn't overtake us.  We endangered any one with whom we sought
+refuge, so we gripped hands, knelt down and told the Lord all about it,
+and we felt the answer was to stay.  Father cleaned the gun, and hours
+and hours we waited.
+
+"About ten o'clock the next day they came, forty braves in war paint
+and feathers.  I counted until I was too sick to see, then I took the
+baby in my arms and climbed to the loft, with our big steel knife in
+one hand.  If your father fell, I was to use it, first on Elizabeth,
+then on myself.  The Indians stopped at the woodyard, and the chief of
+the band came to the door, alone.  Your father met him with his gun in
+reach, and for a whole eternity they stood searching each other's eyes.
+I was at the trapdoor where I could see both of them.
+
+"To the depths of my soul I enjoyed seeing Leon take the fence and
+creek: but what was that, child, to compare with the timber that stood
+your father like a stone wall between me and forty half-naked, paint
+besmeared, maddened Indians?  Don't let any showing the men of to-day
+can make set you to thinking that father isn't a king among men.  Not
+once, but again and again in earlier days, he fended danger from me
+like that.  I can shut my eyes and see his waving hair, his white brow,
+his steel blue eyes, his unfaltering hand.  I don't remember that I had
+time or even thought to pray.  I gripped the baby, and the knife, and
+waited for the thing I must do if an arrow or a shot sailed past the
+chief and felled father.  They stood second after second, like two
+wooden men, and then slowly and deliberately the chief lighted his big
+pipe, drew a few puffs and handed it to father.  He set down his gun,
+took the pipe and quite as slowly and deliberately he looked at the
+waiting band, at the chief, and then raised it to his lips.
+
+"'White squaw brave!  Heap much brave!' said the chief.
+
+"'In the strength of the Lord.  Amen!' said father.
+
+"Then he reached his hand and the chief took it, so I came down the
+ladder and stood beside father, as the Indians began to file in the
+front door and out the back.  As they passed, every man of them made
+the peace sign and piled in a heap, venison, fish, and game, while each
+squaw played with the baby and gave me a gift of beads, a metal
+trinket, or a blanket she had woven.  After that they came often, and
+brought gifts, and if prowling Gypsies were pilfering, I could look to
+see a big Indian loom up and seat himself at my fireside until any
+danger was past.  I really got so I liked and depended on them, and
+father left me in their care when he went to mill, and I was safe as
+with him.  You have heard the story over and over, but to-day is the
+time to impress on you that an exhibition like THIS is the veriest
+child's play compared with what I have seen your father do repeatedly!"
+
+"But it was you, the chief said was brave!"
+
+Mother laughed.
+
+"I had to be, baby," she said.  "Mother had no choice.  There's only
+one way to deal with an Indian.  I had lived among them all my life,
+and I knew what must be done."
+
+"I think both of you were brave," I said, "you, the bravest!"
+
+"Quite the contrary," laughed mother.  "I shall have to confess that
+what I did happened so quickly I'd no time to think.  I only realized
+the coal red iron was menacing the papoose when it drew back and
+whimpered.  Father had all night to face what was coming to him, and it
+was not one to one, but one to forty, with as many more squaws, as good
+fighters as the braves, to back them.  It was a terror but I never have
+been sorry we went through it together.  I have rested so securely in
+your father ever since."
+
+"And he is as safe in you," I insisted.
+
+"As you will," said mother.  "This world must have her women quite as
+much as her men.  It is shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart, business."
+
+The clamour in the meadow arose above our voices and brought us back to
+the foxes.
+
+"There goes another!" I said, the tears beginning to roll again.
+
+"It is heathenish business," said mother.  "I don't blame you!  If
+people were not too shiftless to care for their stuff, the foxes
+wouldn't take their chickens and geese.  They never get ours!"
+
+"Hoods aren't shiftless!" I sobbed.
+
+"There are always exceptions," said mother, "and they are the exception
+in this case."
+
+The door flew open and Leon ran in.  He was white with excitement, and
+trembling.
+
+"Mother, come and see me take a fence on Pryor's Rocket!" he cried.
+
+Mother had him in her arms.
+
+"You little whiffet!" she said.  "You little tow-haired whiffet!"
+
+Both of them were laughing and crying at the same time, and so was I.
+
+"I saw you take one fence and the creek, Weiscope!" she said, holding
+him tight, and stroking his hair.  "That will do for to-day.  Ride the
+horse home slowly, rub it down if they will allow you, and be sure to
+remember your manners when you leave.  To trust such a child as you
+with so valuable a horse, and for Mr. Pryor to personally ride with you
+and help you, I think that was a big thing for a man like him to do."
+
+"But, mother, he's been showing me for weeks, or I couldn't have done
+it to-day.  It was our secret to surprise you.  When I get my horse,
+I'll be able to ride a little, as well as Mr. Laddie."
+
+"Leon, don't," said mother, gripping him tighter.
+
+"You must bear in mind, word about that money may come any day."
+
+"Aw, it won't either," said Leon, pulling away.  "And say, mother, that
+dumb-bell was like country boys make in England.  He helped me hunt the
+wood and showed me, and I couldn't ride and manage it, so he had it all
+day, and you should have heard him make it rip.  Say, mother, take my
+word, he was some pumpkins in England.  I bet he ordered the Queen
+around, when he was there!"
+
+"No doubt!" laughed mother, kissing him and pushing him from the door.
+
+Some people are never satisfied.  After that splendid riding and the
+perfect day, father, Leon, and Laddie came home blaming every one, and
+finding fault, and trying to explain how it happened, that the people
+from the east side claimed two foxes, and there was only one left for
+the west side, when they had seen and knew they had driven three for
+miles.  They said they lost them in our Big Woods.
+
+I didn't care one speck.  I would as lief wear a calico dress, and let
+the little foxes have their mammies to feed them; and I was willing to
+bet all my money that we would have as much ham, and as many greens
+next summer as we ever had.  And if the foxes took Hoods' Dorkings
+again, let them build a coop with safe foundations.  The way was to use
+stone and heap up dirt around it in the fall, to be perfectly sure, and
+make it warmer.
+
+We took care of our chickens because we had to have them.  All the year
+we needed them, but most especially for Easter.  Mother said that was
+ordained chicken time.  Turkeys for Thanksgiving, sucking pigs for
+Christmas, chickens for Easter, goose, she couldn't abide.  She thought
+it was too strong.  She said the egg was a symbol of life; of
+awakening, of birth, and the chickens came from the eggs, first ones
+about Easter, so that proved it was chicken time.
+
+I am going to quit praying about little things I can manage myself.
+Father said no prayer would bring an answer unless you took hold and
+pulled with all your being for what you wanted.  I had been intending
+for days to ask the Lord to help me find where Leon hid his Easter
+eggs.  It had been the law at our house from the very first, that for
+the last month before Easter, aside from what mother had to have for
+the house, all of us might gather every egg we could find and keep them
+until Easter.  If we could locate the hiding place of any one else, we
+might take all theirs.  The day before Easter they were brought in,
+mother put aside what she required, and the one who had the most got to
+sell all of them and take the money.  Sometimes there were two washtubs
+full, and what they brought was worth having, for sure.  So we watched
+all year for safe places, and when the time came we almost ran after
+the hens with a basket.  Because Laddie and Leon were bigger they could
+outrun us, and lots of hens laid in the barn, so there the boys always
+had first chance.  Often during the month we would find and take each
+other's eggs a dozen times.
+
+We divided them, and hid part in different places, so that if either
+were found there would still be some left.
+
+Laddie had his in the hopper of the cider press right on the threshing
+floor, and as he was sure to get more than I had anyway, I usually put
+mine with his.  May had hers some place, and where Leon had his, none
+of us could find or imagine.  I almost lay awake of nights trying to
+think, and every time I thought of a new place, the next day I would
+look, and they wouldn't be there.  Three days before Easter, mother
+began to cook and get the big dinner ready, and she ran short of eggs.
+She told me to go to the barn and tell the boys that each of them must
+send her a dozen as quickly as they could.  Of course that was fair, if
+she made both give up the same number.  So I went to the barn.
+
+The lane was muddy, and as I had been sick, I wore my rubbers that
+spring.  I thought to keep out of the deep mud, where horses and cattle
+trampled, I'd go up the front embankment, and enter the little door.
+My feet made no sound, and it so happened that the door didn't either,
+and as I started to open it.  I saw Leon disappearing down the
+stairway, with a big sack on his back.  I thought it was corn for the
+horses, and followed him, but he went to the cow stable door and
+started toward the lane, and then I thought it was for the pigs, so I
+called Laddie and told him about the eggs.  He said he'd give me two
+dozen of his, and Leon could pay him back.  We went together to get
+them, and there was only one there.
+
+Wasn't that exactly like Leon?  Leave ONE for the nest egg!  If he were
+dying and saw a joke or a trick, he'd stop to play it before he
+finished, if he possibly could.  If he had no time at all, then he'd go
+with his eyes twinkling over the thoughts of the fun it would have been
+if he possibly could have managed it.  Of course when we saw that one
+lonely egg in the cider hopper, just exactly like the "Last Rose of
+Summer, left to pine on the stem," I thought of the sack Leon carried,
+and knew what had been in it.  We hurried out and tried to find him,
+but he was swallowed up.  You couldn't see him or hear a sound of him
+anywhere.
+
+Mother was as cross as she ever gets.  Right there she made a new rule,
+and it was that two dozen eggs must be brought to the house each day,
+whether any were hidden or not.  She had to stop baking until she got
+eggs.  She said a few times she had used a goose egg in custard.  I
+could fix that.  I knew where one of our gray geese had a nest, and if
+she'd cook any goose egg, it would be a gray one.  Of course I had
+sense enough not to take a blue one.  So I slipped from the east door,
+crossed the yard and orchard corner, climbed the fence and went down
+the lane.  There was the creek up and tearing.  It was half over the
+meadow, and the floodgate between the pasture and the lane rocked with
+the rush of water; still, I believed I could make it.  So I got on the
+fence and with my feet on the third rail, and holding by the top one, I
+walked sidewise, and so going reached the floodgate.  It was pretty
+wobbly, but I thought I could cross on the run.  I knew I could if I
+dared jump at the other end; but there the water was over the third
+rail, and that meant above my head.
+
+It was right at that time of spring when you felt so good you thought
+you could do most anything, except fly--I tried that once--so I went
+on.  The air was cold for all the sun shone, the smell of catkin
+pollen, bursting buds, and the odour of earth steaming in the sun, was
+in every breath; the blackbirds were calling, and the doves; the
+ganders looked longingly at the sky and screamed a call to every
+passing wild flock, and Deams' rooster wanted to fight all creation, if
+you judged by the boasting he was doing from their barnyard gate.  He
+made me think of eggs, so I set my jaws, looked straight ahead, and
+scooted across the floodgate to the post that held it and the rails of
+the meadow fence.  I made it too, and then the fence was easy, only I
+had to double quite short, because the water was over the third rail
+there, but at last it was all gone, and I went to the fence corner and
+there was the goose on the nest, laying an egg.  She had built on a
+little high place, among puddles, wild rose bushes, and thorns, and the
+old thing wouldn't get off.  She just sat there and stuck out her head
+and hissed and hissed.  I never noticed before that geese were so big
+and so aggravating.  I wasn't going to give up, after that floodgate,
+so I hunted a big stick, set it against her wing, pushed her off and
+grabbed three eggs and ran.  When I got to the fence, I was in a pickle
+for sure.  I didn't know what in the world to do with the eggs.
+
+At last I unbuttoned my coat, put them in my apron front, gathered it
+up, and holding it between my teeth, started back.  I had to double
+more than ever on account of the eggs, and when I reached the floodgate
+it rocked like a branch in the wind; but I had to get back, so I rested
+and listened to the larks a while.  That was a good plan.  They were
+calling for mates, and what they said was so perfectly lovely, you
+couldn't think of anything else; and the less you thought about how
+that gate rocked, and how deep and swift the water ran, the better for
+you.  At last one lark went almost from sight and he rang, twisted and
+trilled his call, until my heart swelled so big it hurt.  I crossed on
+the jump with no time to think at all.  That was a fine plan, for I
+made it, but I hit the post so hard I broke the middle egg.  I was
+going to throw it away, but there was so much starch in my apron it
+held like a dish, and it had been clean that morning, now the egg
+soiled it anyway, so I ran and got home all right.
+
+Mother was so pleased about the eggs she changed the apron and never
+said a word, except to brag on me.  She said she couldn't keep house
+without me, and I guess that was a fact.  I came in handy a lot of
+times.  But at dinner when she scolded the boys about the eggs, and
+told them I brought the goose eggs for her custard, else there would
+have been no pie, father broke loose, and I thought he was going to
+whip me sure.  He told mother all about the water and the gate, and how
+I had to cross, and he said, 'it was a dispensation of Providence that
+we didn't have a funeral instead of celebrating Easter,' so I said:
+
+"Well, if you think I came so near drowning myself, when you rejoice
+because Christ is risen from the dead, you can be glad I am too, and
+that will make it all the better."
+
+The boys laughed, but father said it was no laughing matter.  I think
+that speech saved me from going on the threshing floor, for he took me
+on his lap when I thought I'd have to go, and told me never, never to
+do anything like that again, and then he hugged me until I almost
+broke.  Gracious!  He should have seen us going to school some days.
+Why, we even walked the top rail when it was the only one above water,
+and we could cross the bridge if we wanted to.  At least when Laddie or
+Miss Amelia was not around, we did.
+
+Leon was so bursting full he scarcely could eat, and Laddie looked
+pretty glum when he had to admit he had no eggs; so Laddie had to hand
+over the whole two dozen.  Leon didn't mind that, but he said if he
+must, then all of us should stay in the dining-room until he brought
+them, because of course he couldn't walk straight and get them in broad
+daylight with us watching, and not show where they were.  Father said
+that was fair, so Leon went out and before so very long he came back
+with the eggs.
+
+I thought until my skull almost cracked, about where he COULD have
+gone, and I was almost to the place where the thing seemed serious
+enough that I'd ask the Lord to help me find Laddie's eggs, when mother
+sent me to the garret for red onion skins.  She had an hour to rest,
+and she was going to spend it fixing decorations for our eggs.  Of
+course there were always red and black aniline ones, and yellow and
+blue, but none of us ever like them half so well as those mother
+coloured, herself.
+
+She took the dark red skins and cut boys, girls, dogs, cats, stars,
+flowers, butterflies, fish, and everything imaginable, and wet the
+skins a little and laid them on very white eggs that had been soaked in
+alum water to cut the grease, and then wrapped light yellow skins over,
+and then darker ones, and at last layer after layer of cloth, and wet
+that, and roasted them an hour in hot ashes and then let them cool and
+dry, before unwrapping.  When she took them out, rubbed on a little
+grease and polished them--there they were!  They would have our names,
+flowers, birds, animals, all in pale yellow, deep rich brown, almost
+red, and perfectly beautiful colours, while you could hunt and hunt
+before you found everything on one egg.  And sometimes the onion skins
+slipped, and made things of themselves that she never put on.
+
+I was coming from the bin with an apron full of skins and I almost fell
+over.  I couldn't breathe for a long time.  I danced on my toes, and
+held my mouth to keep from screaming.  On the garret floor before me
+lay a little piece of wet mud, and the faintest outline of a boot, a
+boot about Leon's size.  That was all I needed to know.  As soon as I
+could hold steady, I took the skins to mother, slipped back and hunted
+good; and of course I had to find them--grainsacks half full of
+them--carried in the front door in the evening, and up the front
+stairs, where no one went until bedtime, unless there were company.
+Away back under the eaves, across the joists, behind the old clothing
+waiting to be ripped, coloured and torn for carpet rangs and rugs, Mr.
+Leon had almost every egg that had been laid on the place for a month.
+
+NOW he'd see what he'd get for taking Laddie's!
+
+Then I stopped short.  What I thought most made me sick, but I didn't
+propose to lie in bed again for a year at least, for it had its bad
+parts as well as its good; so I went straight and whispered to Laddie.
+He never looked pleased at all, so I knew I had been right.  He kissed
+me, and thanked me, and then said slowly:  "It's mighty good of you,
+Little Sister, but you see it wouldn't be FAIR.  He found mine himself,
+so he had a right to take them.  But I don't dare touch his, when you
+tell me where they are.  I never in a month of Sundays would have
+looked for them in the house.  I was going to search the wood house and
+smoke house this afternoon.  I can't take them.  But thank you just as
+much."
+
+Then I went to father and he laughed.  How he did laugh!
+
+"Laddie is right!" he said at last.  "He didn't find them, and he
+mustn't take them.  But you may!  They're yours!  That front door
+scheme of Leon's was fairly well, but it wasn't quite good enough.  If
+he'd cleaned his feet as he should, before he crossed mother's carpet
+and climbed the stairs, he'd have made it all right.  'His tracks
+betrayed him,' as tracks do all of us, if we are careless enough to
+leave any.  The eggs are yours, and to-night is the time to produce
+them.  Where do you want to hide them?"
+
+Well of all things! and after I had stumbled on them without pestering
+the Lord, either!  Just as slick as anything!  Mine!  I never ever
+thought of it.  But when I did think, I liked it.  The more I thought,
+the funnier it grew.
+
+"Under mother's bed," I whispered.  "But I never can get them.  They're
+in wheat sacks, and full so high, and they'll have to be handled like
+eggs."
+
+"I'll do the carrying," laughed father.  "Come show me!"
+
+So we took all those eggs, and put them under mother's bed.
+
+Of course she and Candace saw us, but they didn't hunt eggs and they'd
+never tell.  If ever I thought I'd burst wide open!  About dusk I saw
+Leon coming from the barn carrying his hat at his side--more eggs--so I
+ran like a streak and locked the front door, and then slipped back in
+the dining-room and almost screamed, when I could hear him trying it,
+and he couldn't get in.  After a while he came in, fussed around, and
+finally went into the sitting-room, and the key turned and he went
+upstairs.  I knew I wouldn't dare look at him when he came down, so I
+got a reader and began on a piece I just love:
+
+  "A nightingale made a mistake;
+    She sang a few notes out of tune:
+  Her heart was ready to break,
+    And she hid away from the moon."
+
+
+When I did get a peep, gracious but he was black!  Maybe it wasn't
+going to be so much fun after all.  But he had the money last year, and
+the year before, and if he'd cleaned his feet well--I was not hunting
+his eggs, when I found them.  "His tracks betrayed him," as father
+said.  I was thankful supper was ready just then, and while it was
+going on mother said:  "As soon as you finish, all bring in your eggs.
+I want to wrap the ones to colour to-night, and bury them in the
+fireplace so they will colour, dry, and be ready to open in the
+morning."
+
+No one said a word, but neither Laddie nor Leon looked very happy, and
+I took awful bites to keep my face straight.  When all of us finished
+May brought a lot from the bran barrel in the smoke house, but Laddie
+and Leon only sat there and looked silly; it really was funny.
+
+"I must have more eggs than this?" said mother.  "Where are they to
+come from?"
+
+Father nodded to me and I said:  "From under your bed!"
+
+"Oh, it was you!  And I never once caught you snooping!" cried Leon.
+
+"Easy son!" said father.  "That will do.  You lost through your own
+carelessness.  You left wet mud on the garret floor, and she saw it
+when mother sent her for the onion skins.  You robbed Laddie of his
+last egg this morning; be a good loser yourself!"
+
+"Well, anyway, you didn't get 'em," said Leon to Laddie.
+
+"And she only found them by accident!"
+
+Then we had a big time counting all those eggs, and such another heap
+as there was to sell, after mother filled baskets to cook with and
+colour.  When the table was cleared, Laddie and Leon made tallow
+pencils from a candle and wrote all sorts of things over eggs that had
+been prepared to colour.  Then mother boiled them in copperas water,
+and aniline, and all the dyes she had, and the boys polished them, and
+they stood in shining black, red, blue and yellow heaps.  The onion
+ones would be done in the morning.  Leon had a goose egg and mother let
+him keep it, so he wrote and wrote on it, until Laddie said it would be
+all writing, and no colour, and he boiled it in red, after mother
+finished, and polished it himself.  It came out real pretty with roses
+on it and lots of words he wouldn't let any of us read; but of course
+it was for Susie Fall.
+
+Next morning he slipped it to her at church.  When we got home, all of
+us were there except Shelley, and we had a big dinner and a fine time
+and Laddie stayed until after supper, before he went to Pryors'.
+
+"How is he making it?" asked Sally.
+
+"You could see she was making it all right; she never looked lovelier,
+and mother said Peter was letting her spend away too much money on her
+clothes.  She told him so, but Peter just laughed and said business was
+good, and he could afford it, and she was a fine advertisement for his
+store when she was dressed well."
+
+"All I know is," said mother, "that he goes there every whipstitch, and
+the women, at least, seem glad to have him.  He says Mr. Pryor treats
+him decently, and that is more than he does his own family and
+servants.  He and the girl and her mother are divided about something.
+She treats her father respectfully, but she's in sympathy with mother."
+
+"Laddie can't find out what the trouble is?"
+
+"I don't think that he tries."
+
+"Maybe he'd feel better not to know," said Peter.
+
+"Possibly!" said mother.
+
+"Nonsense!" said father.
+
+"You seem to be reconciled," said Elizabeth.
+
+"That girl would reconcile a man to anything," said father.
+
+"Not to the loss of his soul, I hope," said mother stiffly.
+
+"Souls are not so easy to lose," said father.  "Besides, I am counting
+on Laddie saving hers."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+The Garden of the Lord
+
+  "With what content and merriment,
+  Their days are spent, whose minds are bent
+  To follow the useful plow."
+
+
+That spring I decided if school didn't stop pretty soon, I'd run away
+again, and I didn't in the least care what they did to me.  A country
+road was all right and it was good enough, if it had been heaped up,
+leveled and plenty of gravel put on; and of course our road would be
+fine, because father was one of the commissioners, and as long as he
+filled that office, every road in the county would be just as fine as
+the law would allow him to make it.  I have even heard him tell mother
+that he "stretched it a leetle mite," when he was forced to by people
+who couldn't seem to be made to understand what was required to upbuild
+a nation.  He said our language was founded on the alphabet, and to
+master it you had to begin with "a".  And he said the nation was like
+that; it was based on townships, and when a township was clean, had
+good roads, bridges, schoolhouses, and churches, a county was in fine
+shape, and when each county was in order, the state was right, and when
+the state was prosperous, the nation could rejoice in its strength.
+
+He said Atlas in the geography book, carrying the world on his back,
+was only a symbol, but it was a good one.  He said when the county
+elected him to fill an important office, it used his shoulder as a prop
+for the nation, so it became his business to stand firmly, and use
+every ounce of strength and brains he had, first of all to make his own
+possessions a model, then his township, his county, and his state, and
+if every one worked together doing that, no nation on earth had our
+amount of territory and such fine weather, so none of them could beat
+us.
+
+Our road was like the barn floor, where you drove: on each side was a
+wide grassy strip, and not a weed the length of our land.  All the
+rails in the fences were laid straight, the gates were solid, sound,
+and swung firmly on their beams, our fence corners were full of alders,
+wild roses, sumac, blackberry vines, masses of wild flowers beneath
+them, and a bird for every bush.  Some of the neighbours thought that
+to drive two rails every so often, lay up the fences straight, and grub
+out the shrubs was the way, but father said they were vastly mistaken.
+He said that was such a shortsighted proceeding, he would be ashamed to
+indulge in it.  You did get more land, but if you left no place for the
+birds, the worms and insects devoured your crops, and you didn't raise
+half so much as if you furnished the birds shelter and food.  So he
+left mulberries in the fields and fence corners and wild cherries,
+raspberries, grapes, and every little scrub apple tree from seeds sown
+by Johnny Appleseed when he crossed our land.
+
+Mother said those apples were so hard a crane couldn't dent them, but
+she never watched the birds in winter when the snow was beginning to
+come and other things were covered up.  They swarmed over those trees
+until spring, for the tiny sour apples stuck just like oak leaves
+waiting for next year's crop to push them off.  She never noticed us,
+either.  After a few frosts, we could almost get tipsy on those apples;
+there was not a tree in our orchard that had the spicy, teasing tang of
+Johnny Appleseed's apples.  Then too, the limbs could be sawed off and
+rambo and maiden's-blush grafted on, if you wanted to; father did on
+some of them, so there would be good apples lying beside the road for
+passers-by, and they needn't steal to get them.  You could graft red
+haws on them too, and grow great big, little haw-apples, that were the
+prettiest things you ever saw, and the best to eat.  Father said if it
+didn't spoil the looks of the road, he wouldn't care how many of his
+neighbours straightened their fences.  If they did, the birds would
+come to him, and the more he had, the fewer bugs and worms he would be
+troubled with, so he would be sure of big crops, and sound fruit.  He
+said he would much rather have a few good apples picked by robins or
+jays, than untouched trees, loaded with wormy falling ones he could
+neither use nor sell.  He always patted my head and liked every line of
+it when I recited, sort of tearful-like and pathetic:
+
+  "Don't kill the birds! the happy birds,
+  That bless the field and grove;
+  So innocent to look upon,
+  They claim our warmest love."
+
+
+The roads crossing our land were all right, and most of the others near
+us; and a road is wonderful, if it is taking you to the woods or a
+creek or meadow; but when it is walking you straight to a stuffy little
+schoolhouse where you must stand up to see from a window, where a
+teacher is cross as fire, like Miss Amelia, and where you eternally
+HEAR things you can't see, there comes a time about the middle of April
+when you had quite as soon die as to go to school any longer; and what
+you learn there doesn't amount to a hill of beans compared with what
+you can find out for yourself outdoors.
+
+Schoolhouses are made wrong.  If they must be, they should be built in
+a woods pasture beside a stream, where you could wade, swim, and be
+comfortable in summer, and slide and skate in winter.  The windows
+should be cut to the floor, and stand wide open, so the birds and
+butterflies could pass through.  You ought to learn your geography by
+climbing a hill, walking through a valley, wading creeks, making
+islands in them, and promontories, capes, and peninsulas along the
+bank.  You should do your arithmetic sitting under trees adding
+hickory-nuts, subtracting walnuts, multiplying butternuts, and dividing
+hazelnuts.  You could use apples for fractions, and tin cups for liquid
+measure.  You could spell everything in sight and this would teach you
+the words that are really used in the world.  Every single one of us
+could spell incompatibility, but I never heard father, or the judge, or
+even the Bishop, put it in a speech.
+
+If you simply can't have school THAT way, then you should be shut in
+black cells, deep under the ground, where you couldn't see, or hear a
+sound, and then if they'd give you a book and candle and Miss Amelia,
+and her right-hand man, Mister Ruler, why you might learn something.
+This way, if you sat and watched the windows you could see a bird cross
+our woods pasture to the redbird swamp every few minutes; once in a
+while one of my big hawks took your breath as he swept, soared, sailed,
+and circled, watching the ground below for rabbits, snakes, or
+chickens.  The skinny old blue herons crossing from the Wabash to hunt
+frogs in the cowslip swale in our meadow, sailed so slow and so low,
+that you could see their sharp bills stuck out in front, their uneven,
+ragged looking feathers, and their long legs trailing out behind.  I
+bet if Polly Martin wore a blue calico dress so short her
+spindle-shanks showed, and flew across our farm, you couldn't tell her
+from a heron.
+
+There were so many songs you couldn't decide which was which to save
+you; it was just a pouring jumble of robins, larks, doves, blackbirds,
+sparrows, everything that came that early; the red and the yellow birds
+had not come yet, or the catbirds or thrushes.  You could hear the
+thumping wings of the roosters in Sills' barnyard nearest the
+schoolhouse, and couldn't tell which was whipping, so you had to sit
+there and wonder; and worst of all you must stand Miss Amelia calmly
+telling you to pay attention to your books or you would be kept in, and
+all the time you were forced to bear torments, while you watched her
+walk from window to window to see every speck of the fight.  One day
+they had thumped and fought for half an hour; she had looked from every
+window in the room, and at last there was an awful whacking, and then
+silence.  It grew so exciting I raised my hand, and almost before she
+nodded permission, "Which whipped?" I asked.
+
+Miss Amelia turned red as a beet.  Gee, but she was mad!
+
+"I did!" she said.  "Or at least I will.  You may remain for it after
+school is dismissed."
+
+Now if you are going to be switched, they never do it until they are
+just so angry anyway, and then they always make it as hard as they dare
+not to stripe you, so it isn't much difference HOW provoked they are,
+it will be the same old thrashing, and it's sure to sting for an hour
+at least, so you might as well be beaten for a little more as hardly
+anything at all.  At that instant from the fence not far from my window
+came a triumphant crow that fairly ripped across the room.
+
+"Oh, it was the Dorking!" I said.  "No wonder you followed clear around
+the room to see him thrash a Shanghai three times his size!  I bet a
+dollar it was great!"
+
+Usually, I wouldn't have put up more than five cents, but at that time
+I had over six dollars from my Easter eggs, and no girl of my age at
+our school ever had half that much.  Miss Amelia started toward me, and
+I braced my feet so she'd get a good jolt herself, when she went to
+shake me; she never struck us over the head since Laddie talked to her
+that first day; but John Hood's foot was in the aisle.  I thought maybe
+I'd have him for my beau when we grew up, because I bet he knew she was
+coming, and stuck out his foot on purpose; anyway, she pitched, and had
+to catch a desk to keep off the floor, and that made her so mad at him,
+that she forgot me, while he got his scolding; so when my turn came at
+last, she had cooled down enough that she only marched past to her
+desk, saying I was to remain after school.  I had to be careful after
+that to be mighty good to May and Leon.
+
+When school was out they sat on the steps before the door and waited.
+Miss Amelia fussed around and there they sat.  Then her face grew more
+gobblerish than usual, and she went out and told them to go home.
+Plain as anything I heard May say It:  "She's been awful sick, you
+know, and mother wouldn't allow it."  And then Leon piped up:  "You DID
+watch the roosters, all the time they fought, and of course all of us
+wanted to see just as badly as you did."
+
+She told them if they didn't go right home she'd bring them back and
+whip them too; so they had to start, and leave me to my sad fate.  I
+was afraid they had made it sadder, instead of helping me; she was so
+provoked when she came in she was crying, and over nothing but the
+plain truth too; if we had storied on her, she'd have had some cause to
+beller.  She arranged her table, cleaned the board, emptied the water
+bucket, and closed the windows.  Then she told me I was a rude,
+untrained child.  I was rude, I suppose, but goodness knows, I wasn't
+untrained; that was hard on father and mother; I had a big notion to
+tell them; and then, she never whipped me at all.  She said if I wanted
+her to love me, I mustn't be a saucy, impudent girl, and I should go
+straight home and think it over.
+
+I went, but I was so dazed at her thinking I wanted her to love me,
+that I hardly heard May and Leon calling; when I did I went to the
+cemetery fence and there they lay in the long grass waiting.
+
+"If you cried, we were coming back and pitch into her," said Leon.
+
+There was a pointer.  Next time, first cut she gave me, I decided to
+scream bloody murder.  But that would be no Crusader way.  There was
+one thing though.  No Crusader ever sat and heard a perfectly lovely
+fight going on, and never even wondered which whipped.
+
+May and Leon stepped one on each side, took a hand, and we ran like
+Indians, and slid down the hill between the bushes, climbed the fence,
+crossed the pasture back of the church, and went to the creek.  There
+we sat on a log, I told them, and we just laughed.  I didn't know what
+I could do to pay them, for they saved me sure as fate that time.
+
+I wished we lived in the woods the way it was when father and mother
+were married and moved to Ohio.  The nearest neighbours were nine
+miles, and there wasn't a dollar for school funds, so of course the
+children didn't have to go, and what their fathers and mothers taught
+them was all they knew.  That would not have helped me much though, for
+we never had one single teacher who knew anything to compare with what
+father and mother did, and we never had one who was forever reading
+books, papers, and learning more things that help, to teach other
+people.  I wished father had time to take our school.  It would have
+been some fun to go to him, because I just knew he would use the woods
+for the room, and teach us things it would do some good to know about.
+
+I began debating whether it was a big enough thing to bother the Lord
+with: this being penned up in the schoolhouse droning over spelling and
+numbers, when you could smell tree bloom, flower bloom, dozens of birds
+were nesting, and everything was beginning to hum with life.  I
+couldn't think for that piece about "Spring" going over in my head:
+
+  "I am coming, I am coming:
+    Hark! the little bee is humming:
+  See! the lark is soaring high,
+    In the bright and sunny sky;
+  All the birds are on the wing:
+    Little maiden, now is spring."
+
+
+I made up my mind that it was of enough importance to call for the
+biggest prayer I could think of and that I would go up in the barn to
+the top window, stand on a beam, and turn my face to the east, where
+Jesus used to be, and I'd wrestle with the Lord for freedom, as Jacob
+wrestled with the Angel on the banks of the Jabbok in the land of
+Ammon.  I was just getting up steam to pray as hard as ever I could;
+for days I'd been thinking of it, and I was nearly to the point where
+one more killdeer crying across the sky would have sent me headlong
+from the schoolhouse anywhere that my feet were on earth, and the air
+didn't smell of fried potatoes, kraut, sweat, and dogs, like it did
+whenever you sat beside Clarissa Polk.  When I went to supper one
+night; father had been to Groveville, and he was busy over his papers.
+After he finished the blessing, he seemed worried, at last he said the
+funds were all out, and the county would make no appropriation so
+school would have to close next week.
+
+Well that beats me!  I had faith in that prayer I was going to make,
+and here the very thing I intended to ask for happened before I prayed.
+I decided I would save the prayer until the next time I couldn't stand
+anything another minute, and then I would try it with all my might, and
+see if it really did any good.  After supper I went out the back door,
+spread my arms wide, and ran down the orchard to the fence in great
+bounds, the fastest I ever went in my life.  I climbed my pulpit in the
+corner and tried to see how much air my lungs would hold without
+bursting, while I waved my arms and shouted at the top of my voice:
+"Praise ye the Lord!  Praised be His holy name!"
+
+"Ker-awk!" cried an old blue heron among the cowslips below me.  I had
+almost scared it to death, and it arose on flapping wings and paid me
+back by frightening me so I screamed as I dodged its shadow.
+
+"What is all this?" asked father behind me.
+
+"Come up and take a seat, and I'll try to tell you," I said.
+
+So he stepped on my pulpit and sat on the top rail, while I stood
+between his knees, put my arms around his neck, took off his hat and
+loosened his hair so the wind could wave it, and make his head feel
+cool and good.  His hair curled a little and it was black and fine.
+His cheeks were pink and his eyes the brightest blue, with long lashes,
+and heavier brows than any other man I ever have seen.  He was the best
+looking--always so clean and fresh, and you never had to be afraid of
+him, unless you had been a bad, sinful child.  If you were all right,
+you would walk into his arms, play with his hair, kiss him all you
+pleased, and there wasn't a thing on earth you couldn't tell him,
+excepting a secret you had promised to keep.
+
+So I explained all this, and more too.  About how I wanted to hunt for
+the flowers, to see which bloomed first, and watch in what order the
+birds came, and now it was a splendid time to locate nests, because
+there were no leaves, so I could see easily, and how glad mother would
+be to know where the blue goose nested, and her white turkey hen;
+because she wanted her geese all blue, and the turkeys all white, as
+fast as she could manage.
+
+Every little thing that troubled me or that I wanted, I told him.
+
+He sat there and he couldn't have listened with more interest or been
+quieter if I had been a bishop, which is the biggest thing that ever
+happened at our house; his name was Ninde and he came from Chicago to
+dedicate our church when it was new.  So father listened and thought
+and held his arms around me, and--
+
+"And you think the Lord was at the bottom of the thing that makes you
+happy?"
+
+"Well, you always go to Him about what concerns you, and you say,
+'Praise the Lord,' when things go to please you."
+
+"I do indeed!" said father.  "But I had thought of this running short
+of school funds as a calamity.  If I had been praying about it, I would
+have asked Him to show me a way to raise money to continue until middle
+May at least."
+
+"Oh father!"
+
+I just crumpled up in his arms and began to cry; to save me I couldn't
+help it.  He held me tight.  At last he said:  "I think you are a
+little overstrained this spring.  Maybe you were sicker than we knew,
+or are growing too fast.  Don't worry any more about school.  Possibly
+father can fix it."
+
+Next morning when I wakened, my everyday clothes lay across the foot of
+the bed, so I called mother and asked if I should put them on; she took
+me in her arms, and said father thought I had better be in the open,
+and I needn't go to school any more that spring.  I told her I thought
+I could bear it a few more days, now it was going to be over so soon;
+but she said I might stay at home, father and Laddie would hear me at
+night, and I could take my books anywhere I pleased and study when I
+chose, if I had my spelling and reading learned at evening.  NOW, say
+the Lord doesn't help those who call on Him in faith believing!
+
+Think of being allowed to learn your lessons on the top of the granary,
+where you could look out of a window above the treetops, lie in the
+cool wind, and watch swallows and martins.  Think of studying in the
+pulpit when the creek ran high, and the wild birds sang so sweetly you
+seemed to hear them for the first time in all your life, and hens,
+guineas, and turkeys made prime music in the orchard.  You could see
+the buds swell, and the little blue flags push through the grass, where
+Mrs. Mayer had her flowerbed, and the cowslips greening under the water
+of the swale at the foot of the hill, while there might be a Fairy
+under any leaf.  I was so full, so swelled up and excited, that when I
+got ready to pick up a book, I could learn a lesson in a few minutes,
+tell all about it, spell every word, and read it back, front, and
+sideways.  I never learned lessons so quick and so easy in all my life;
+father, Laddie, and every one of them had to say so.  One night, father
+said to Laddie:  "This child is furnishing evidence that our school
+system is wrong, and our methods of teaching far from right."
+
+"Or is it merely proof that she is different," said Laddie, "and you
+can't run her through the same groove you could the rest of us?"
+
+"A little of both," said father, "but most that the system is wrong.
+We are not going at children in a way to gain and hold their interest,
+and make them love their work.  There must be a better way of teaching,
+and we should find different teachers.  You'll have to try the school
+next year yourself, Laddie."
+
+"I have a little plan about a piece of land I am hoping to take before
+then," answered Laddie.  "It's time for me to try my wings at making a
+living, and land is my choice.  I have fully decided.  I stick to the
+soil!"
+
+"Amen!" cried father.  "You please me mightily.  I hate to see sons of
+mine thriving on law, literally making their living out of the fruit of
+other men's discord.  I dislike seeing them sharpen their wits in
+trade, buying at the lowest limit, extorting the highest.  I don't want
+their horizons limited by city blocks, their feet on pavements,
+everything under the sun in their heads that concerns a scheme to make
+money; not room for an hour's thought or study in a whole day, about
+the really vital things of life.  After all, land and its products are
+the basis of everything; the city couldn't exist a day unless we feed
+and clothe it.  In the things that I consider important, you are a king
+among men, with your feet on soil you own."
+
+"So I figure it," said Laddie.
+
+"And you are the best educated man I have reared," said father.  "Take
+this other thought with you: on land, the failure of the bank does not
+break you.  The fire another man's carelessness starts, does not wipe
+out your business or home.  You are not in easy reach of contagion.
+Any time you want to branch out, your mother and I will stand back of
+you."
+
+"Thank you!" said Laddie.  "You backed none of the others.  They would
+resent it.  I'll make the best start I can myself, and as they did,
+stand alone."
+
+Father looked at him and smiled slowly.
+
+"You are right, as always," he said.  "I hadn't thought so far.  It
+would make trouble.  At any rate, let me inspect and help you select
+your land."
+
+"That of course!" said Laddie.
+
+I suspect it's not a very nice thing for me to tell, but all of us were
+tickled silly the day Miss Amelia packed her trunk and left for sure.
+Mother said she never tried harder in all her days, but Miss Amelia was
+the most distinctly unlovable person she ever had met.  She sympathized
+with us so, she never said a word when Leon sang:
+
+  "Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
+    Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,
+  Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms,
+    Like fairy-gifts fading away,
+  Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art,
+    Let thy loveliness fade as it will,
+  And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
+    Would entwine itself verdantly still--"
+
+while Miss Amelia drove from sight up the Groveville road.
+
+As he sang Leon stretched out his arms after her vanishing form.  "I
+hope," he said, "that you caught that touching reference to 'the dear
+ruin,' and could anything be expressed more beautifully and poetically
+than that 'verdantly still?'"
+
+I feel sorry for a snake.  I like hoptoads, owls, and shitepokes.  I
+envy a buzzard the way it can fly, and polecats are beautiful; but I
+never could get up any sort of feeling at all for Miss Amelia, whether
+she was birdlike or her true self.  So no one was any gladder than I
+when she was gone.
+
+After that, spring came pushing until you felt shoved.  Our family
+needed me then.  If they never had known it before, they found out
+there was none too many of us.  Every day I had to watch the blue
+goose, and bring in her egg before it was chilled, carrying it
+carefully so it would not be jarred.  I had to hunt the turkey nests
+and gather their eggs so they would be right for setting.  There had to
+be straw carried from the stack for new nests, eggs marked, and hens
+set by the dozen.  Garden time came, so leaves had to be raked from the
+beds and from the dooryard.  No one was busier than I; but every little
+while I ran away, and spent some time all by myself in the pulpit,
+under the hawk oak, or on the roof.
+
+Coming from church that Sunday, when we reached the top of the Big
+Hill, mother touched father's arm.  "Stop a minute," she said, and he
+checked the horses, while we sat there and wondered why, as she looked
+and looked all over the farm, then, "Now drive to the top of the Little
+Hill and turn, and stop exactly on the place from which we first viewed
+this land together," she said.  "You know the spot, don't you?"
+
+"You may well believe I know it," said father.  "I can hit it to the
+inch.  You see, children," he went on, "your mother and I arranged
+before the words were said over us"--he always put it that way--I never
+in my life heard him say, "when we were married"; he read so many books
+he talked exactly like a book--"that we would be partners in
+everything, as long as we lived.  When we decided the Ohio land was not
+quite what we wanted, she sent me farther west to prospect, while she
+stayed at home and kept the baby.  When I reached this land, found it
+for sale, and within my means, I bought it, and started home happy.
+Before I'd gone a mile, I turned to look back, and saw that it was
+hilly, mostly woods, and there was no computing the amount of work it
+would require to make it what I could see in it; so I began to think
+maybe she wouldn't like it, and to wish I had brought her, before I
+closed the deal.  By the time I returned home, packed up, and travelled
+this far on the way back with her, there was considerable tension in my
+feelings--considerable tension," repeated father as he turned the
+horses and began driving carefully, measuring the distance from Hoods'
+and the bridge.  At last he stopped, backed a step, and said:  "There,
+mommy, did I hit the spot?"
+
+"You did!" said mother, stepping from the carriage and walking up
+beside him.  She raised one hand and laid it on the lamp near him.  He
+shifted the lines, picked up her hand, and held it tight.  Mother stood
+there looking, just silently looking.  May jabbed me in the side,
+leaned over and whispered:
+
+  "Could we but stand where Moses stood,
+    And view the landscape o'er,
+  Not our Little Creek, nor dinner getting cold,
+    Could fright us from that shore."
+
+
+I couldn't help giggling, but I knew that was no proper time, so I hid
+my head in her lap and smothered the sound the best I could; but they
+were so busy soft-soddering each other they didn't pay a bit of
+attention to us.
+
+It was May now, all the leaves were fresh and dustless, everything that
+flowered at that time was weighted with bloom, bees hummed past,
+butterflies sailed through the carriage, while birds at the tops of
+their voices, all of them, every kind there was, sang fit to split;
+friendly, unafraid bluebirds darted around us, and talked a blue streak
+from every fence rider.  Made you almost crazy to know what they said.
+The Little Creek flowed at our feet across the road, through the
+blue-flag swamp, where the red and the yellow birds lived.  You could
+see the sun flash on the water where it emptied into the stream that
+crossed Deams', and flowed through our pasture; and away beyond the Big
+Hill arose, with the new church on top, the graveyard around it, the
+Big Creek flashing at its base.  In the valley between lay our fields,
+meadows, the big red barn, the white house with the yard filled with
+trees and flowering shrubs, beyond it the garden, all made up, neat and
+growing; and back of it the orchard in full bloom.
+
+Mother looked and looked.  Suddenly she raised her face to father.
+"Paul," she said, "that first day, did you ever dream it could be made
+to look like this?"
+
+"No!" said father.  "I never did!  I saw houses, barns, and cleared
+fields; I hoped for comfort and prosperity, but I didn't know any place
+could grow to be so beautiful, and there is something about it, even on
+a rainy November day, there is something that catches me in the breast,
+on the top of either of these hills, until it almost stifles me.  What
+is it, Ruth?"
+
+"The Home Feeling!" said mother.  "It is in my heart so big this
+morning I am filled with worship.  Just filled with the spirit of
+worship."
+
+She was rocking on her toes like she does when she becomes too happy at
+the Meeting House to be quiet any longer, and cries, "Glory!" right out
+loud.  She pointed to the orchard, an immense orchard of big apple
+trees in full bloom, with two rows of peach trees around the sides.  It
+looked like a great, soft, pinkish white blanket, with a deep pink
+border, spread lightly on the green earth.
+
+"We planted that way because we thought it was best; how could we know
+how it would look in bloom time?  It seems as if you came to these
+hilltops and figured on the picture you would make before you cleared,
+or fenced a field."
+
+"That's exactly what I did," said father.  "Many's the hour, all told,
+that I have stopped my horse on one of these hilltops and studied how
+to make the place beautiful, as well as productive.  That was a task
+you set me, my girl.  You always considered BEAUTY as well as USE about
+the house and garden, and wherever you worked.  I had to hold my part
+in line."
+
+"You have made it all a garden," said mother.  "You have made it a
+garden growing under the smile of the Master; a very garden of the
+Lord, father."
+
+Father drew up her hand and held it tight against his heart.
+
+"Your praise is sweet, my girl, sweet!" he said.  "I have tried, God
+knows I have tried, to make it first comfortable, then beautiful, for
+all of us.  To the depths of my soul I thank Him for this hour.  I am
+glad, Oh I am so glad you like your home, Ruth!  I couldn't endure it
+if you complained, found fault and wished you lived elsewhere."
+
+"Why, father!" said my mother in the most surprised voice.  "Why,
+father, it would kill me to leave here.  This is ours.  We have made it
+by and through the strength of the Lord and our love for each other.
+All my days I want to live here, and when I die, I want to lie beside
+my blessed babies and you, Paul, down by the church we gave the land
+for, and worked so hard to build.  I love it, Oh I love it!  See how
+clean and white the dark evergreens make the house look!  See how the
+big chestnuts fit in and point out the yellow road.  I wish we had a
+row the length of it!"
+
+"They wouldn't grow," said father.  "You mind the time I had finding
+the place those wanted to set their feet?"
+
+"I do indeed!" said mother, drawing her hand and his with it where she
+could rub her cheek against it.  "Now we'll go home and have our dinner
+and a good rest.  I'm a happy woman this day, father, a happy, happy
+woman.  If only one thing didn't worry me----"
+
+"Must there always be a 'fly in the ointment,' mother?"
+
+She looked at him with a smile that was like a hug and kiss, and she
+said:  "I have found it so, father, and I have been happy in spite of
+it.  Where one has such wide interests, at some point there is always a
+pull, but in His own day, in His own way, the Lord is going to make
+everything right."
+
+"'Thy faith hath made thee whole,'" quoted father.
+
+Then she stepped into the carriage, and he waited a second, quite long
+enough to let her see that he was perfectly willing to sit there all
+day if she wanted him to, and then he slowly and carefully drove home,
+as he always did when she was in the carriage.  Times when he had us
+children out alone, he went until you couldn't see the spokes in the
+wheels.  He just loved to "speed up" once in a while on a piece of fine
+road to let us know how going fast felt.
+
+Mother sat there trembling a little, smiling, misty-eyed.  I was
+thinking, for I knew what the "fly in the ointment" was.  She had a
+letter from Shelley yesterday, and she said there wasn't a reason on
+earth why father or Laddie should spend money to come to Chicago, she
+would soon be home, she was counting the hours, and she never wanted to
+leave again.  In the start she didn't want to go at all, unless she
+could stay three years, at the very least.  Of course it was that
+dreadful man, who had made her so beautiful and happy, and then taken
+away all the joy; how COULD a man do it?  It was the hardest thing to
+understand.
+
+Next morning mother was feeling fine, the world was lovely, Miss Amelia
+was gone, May was home to help, so she began housecleaning by washing
+all the curtains.  She had been in the kitchen to show Candace how.  I
+had all my work done, and was making friends with a robin brooding in
+my very own catalpa tree, when Mr. Pryor rode up, tied his horse, and
+started toward the gate.  I knew he and father had quarrelled; that is,
+father had told him he couldn't say "God was a myth" in this house, and
+he'd gone home mad as hops; so I knew it would be something mighty
+important that was bringing him back.  I slid from the tree, ran and
+opened the gate, and led the way up the walk.  I opened the front door
+and asked him in, and then I did the wrong thing.  I should have taken
+his hat, told him to be seated, and said I would see if I could find
+father; I knew what to do, and how to do it, but because of that about
+God, I was so excited I made a mistake.  I never took his hat, or
+offered him a chair; I just bolted into the dining-room, looking for
+father or mother, and left the door wide open, so he thought that
+wasn't the place to sit, because I didn't give him a chair, and he
+followed me.  The instant I saw mother's face, I knew what I had done.
+The dining-room was no place for particular company like him, and
+bringing him in that way didn't give her time to smooth her hair, pull
+shut her dress band at the neck, put on her collar, and shiny goldstone
+pin, her white apron, and rub her little flannel rag, with rice flour
+on it, on her nose to take away the shine.  I had made a mess of it.
+
+There she came right in the door, just as she was from the tub.  Her
+hair was damp and crinkled around her face, her neckband had been close
+in stooping, so she had unfastened it, and tucked it back in a little
+V-shaped place to give her room and air.  Her cheeks were pink, her
+eyes bright, her lips red as a girl's, and her neck was soft and white.
+The V-shaped place showed a little spot like baby skin, right where her
+neck went into her chest.  Sure as father kissed her lips, he always
+tipped back her head, bent lower and kissed that spot too.  I had seen
+hundreds of them go there, and I had tried it myself, lots of times,
+and it WAS the sweetest place.  Seeing what I had done, I stopped
+breathless.  You have to beat most everything you teach a child right
+into it properly to keep it from making such a botch of things as that.
+I hardly dared to peep at mother, but when I did, she took my breath
+worse than the mistake I had made.
+
+Caught, she stood her ground.  She never paused a second.  Straight to
+him she went, holding out her hand, and I could see that it was red and
+warm from pressing the lace in the hot suds.  A something flashed over
+her, that made her more beautiful than she was in her silk dress going
+to town to help Lucy give a party, and her voice was sweet as the
+bubbling warbler on the garden fence when he was trying to coax a mate
+into the privet bush to nest.
+
+Mother asked him to be seated, so he took one of the chairs nearest
+him, and sat holding his hat in one hand, his whip in the other.
+Mother drew a chair beside the dining table, dropped her hands on each
+other, and looking in his eyes, she smiled at him.  I tell the same
+thing over about people's looks, but I haven't told of this smile of
+mother's; because I never saw exactly how it was, or what it would do
+to people, until that morning.  Then as I watched her--for how she felt
+decided what would happen to me, after Mr. Pryor was gone I saw
+something I never had noticed until that minute.  She could laugh all
+over her face, before her lips parted until her teeth showed.  She was
+doing it now.  With a wide smile running from cheek to cheek, pushing
+up a big dimple at each end, her lips barely touching, her eyes
+dancing, she sat looking at him.
+
+"This IS the most blessed season for warming up the heart," she said.
+"If you want the half of my kingdom, ask quickly.  I'm in the mood to
+bestow it."
+
+How she laughed!  He just had to loosen up a little, and smile back,
+even though it looked pretty stiff.
+
+"Well, I'll not tax you so far," he said.  "I only want Mr. Stanton."
+
+"But he is the whole of the kingdom, and the King to boot!" she
+laughed, dimpled, and flamed redder.
+
+Mr. Pryor stared at her wonderingly.  You could even see the wonder,
+like it was something you could take hold of.  I suppose he wondered
+what could make a woman so happy, like that.
+
+"Lucky man!" he said.  "All of us are not so fortunate."
+
+"Then it must be you don't covet the place or the title," said mother
+more soberly.  "Any woman will crown the man she marries, if he will
+allow her.  Paul went farther.  He compelled it."
+
+"I wonder how!" said Mr. Pryor, his eyes steadily watching mother's
+face.
+
+"By never failing in a million little things, that taken as a whole,
+make up one mighty big thing, on which he stands like the Rock of Ages."
+
+"Yet they tell me that you are the mother of twelve children," he said,
+as if he marvelled at something.
+
+"Yes!" cried mother, and the word broke right through a bubbling laugh.
+"Am I not fortunate above most women?  We had the grief to lose two
+little daughters at the ages of eight and nine, all the others I have,
+and I rejoice in them."
+
+She reached out, laid a hand on me, drew me to her, and lightly touched
+my arm, sending my spirits sky-high.  She wasn't going to do a thing to
+me, not even scold!  Mr. Pryor stared at her like Jacob Hood does at
+Laddie when he begins rolling Greek before him, so I guess what mother
+said must have been Greek to Mr. Pryor.
+
+"I came to see Mr. Stanton," he said suddenly, and crosslike as if he
+didn't believe a word she said, and had decided she was too foolish to
+bother with any longer; but he kept on staring.  He couldn't quit that,
+no matter how cross he was.  The funniest thing came into my mind.  I
+wondered what on earth he'd have done if she'd gone over, sat on his
+lap, put her arms around his neck, took his face between her hands and
+kissed his forehead, eyes, lips, and tousled his hair, like she does
+father and our boys.  I'll bet all I got, he'd have turned to stonier
+stone than Sabethany.  You could see that no one ever served HIM like
+that in all his old, cold, hard, cross, mysterious, shut-in life.  I
+was crazy to ask, "Say, did anybody ever kiss you?" but I had such a
+close escape bringing him in wrong, I thought it would be wise not to
+take any risks so soon after.  It was enough to stand beside mother,
+and hear every word they said.  What was more, she wanted me, because
+she kept her hand on mine, or touched my apron every little while.
+
+"I'm so sorry!" she said.  "He was called to town on business.  The
+County Commissioners are sitting to-day."
+
+"They are deciding about the Groveville bridge, and pike?"
+
+"Yes.  He is working so hard for them."
+
+"The devil you say!  I beg pardon!  But it was about that I came.  I'm
+three miles from there, and I'm taxed over sixty pounds for it."
+
+"But you cross the bridge every time you go to town, and travel the
+road.  Groveville is quite a resort on account of the water and lovely
+country.  Paul is very anxious to have the work completed before the
+summer boarders come from surrounding cities.  We are even farther from
+it than you; but it will cost us as much."
+
+"Are you insane?" cried Mr. Pryor, not at all politely; but you could
+see that mother was bound she wouldn't become provoked about anything,
+for she never stopped a steady beam on him.  "Spend all that money for
+strangers to lazy around on a few weeks and then go!"
+
+"But a good bridge and fine road will add to their pleasure, and when
+they leave, the improvements remain.  They will benefit us and our
+children through all the years to come."
+
+"Talk about 'the land of the free'!" cried Mr. Pryor.  "This is a
+tax-ridden nation.  It's a beastly outrage!  Ever since I came, it's
+been nothing but notice of one assessment after another.  I won't pay
+it!  I won't endure it.  I'll move!"
+
+Mother let go of me, gripped her hands pretty tight together on the
+table, and she began to talk.
+
+"As for freedom--no man ever was, or is, or will be free," she said,
+quite as forcibly as he could speak.  "You probably knew when you came
+here that you would find a land tax-ridden from a great civil war of
+years' duration, and from newness of vast territory to be opened up and
+improved.  You certainly studied the situation."
+
+"'Studied the situation'!"  His whip beat across his knee.  "'Studied
+the situation'!  My leaving England was--er--the result of intolerable
+conditions there--in the nature of flight from things not to be
+endured.  I had only a vague idea of the States."
+
+"If England is intolerable, and the United States an outrage, I don't
+know where in this world you'll go," said mother softly.
+
+Mr. Pryor stared at her sharply.
+
+"Madame is pleased to be facetious," he said sneeringly.
+
+Mother's hands parted, and one of them stretched across the table
+toward him.
+
+"Forgive me!" she cried.  "That was unkind.  I know you are in dreadful
+trouble.  I'd give--I'd almost give this right hand to comfort you.
+I'd do nearly anything to make you feel that you need bear no burden
+alone; that we'd love to help support you."
+
+"I believe you would," he said slowly, his eyes watching her again.  "I
+believe you would.  I wonder why!"
+
+"All men are brothers, in the broader sense," said mother, "and if
+you'll forgive me, your face bears marks of suffering almost amounting
+to torture."
+
+She stretched out the other hand.
+
+"You couldn't possibly let us help you?"
+
+Slowly he shook his head.
+
+"Think again!" urged mother.  "A trouble shared is half over to start
+with.  You lay a part of it on your neighbours, and your neighbours in
+this case would be glad, glad indeed, to see you care-free and happy as
+all men should be."
+
+"We'll not discuss it," he said.  "You can't possibly imagine the root
+of my trouble."
+
+"I shan't try!" said mother.  "But let me tell you this:  I don't care
+if you have betrayed your country, blasphemed your God, or killed your
+own child!  So long, as you're a living man, daily a picture of
+suffering before me, you're a burden on my heart.  You're a load on my
+shoulders, without your consent.  I have implored God, I shall never
+cease to implore Him, until your brow clears, your head is lifted, and
+your heart is at rest.  You can't prevent me!  This hour I shall go to
+my closet and beg Him to have mercy on your poor soul, and when His
+time comes, He will.  You can't help yourself, or you would have done
+so, long ago.  You must accept aid!  This must end, or there will be
+tragedy in your house."
+
+"Madame, there has been!" said Mr. Pryor, shaking as he sat.
+
+"I recognize that," said mother.  "The question is whether what has
+passed is not enough."
+
+"You simply cannot understand!" he said.
+
+"Mr. Pryor," she said, "you're in the position of a man doubly bereft.
+You are without a country, and without a God.  Your face tells every
+passer-by how you are enjoying that kind of life.  Forgive me, if I
+speak plainly.  I admire some things about you so much, I am venturing
+positive unkindness to try to make you see that in shutting out your
+neighbours you will surely make them think more, and worse things, than
+are true.  I haven't a doubt in my mind but that your trouble is not
+one half so dreadful as you imagine while brooding over it.  We will
+pass that.  Let me tell you how we feel about this road matter.  You
+see we did our courting in Pennsylvania, married and tried Ohio, and
+then came on here.  We took this land when it was mostly woods.  I
+could point you to the exact spot where we stopped; we visited it
+yesterday, looked down the hill and selected the place where we would
+set this house, when we could afford to build it.  We moved into the
+cabin that was on the land first, later built a larger one, and finally
+this home as we had planned it.  Every fruit tree, bush, vine, and
+flower we planted.  Here our children have been born, lived, loved, and
+left us; some for the graveyard down yonder, some for homes of their
+own.  Always we have planned and striven to transform this into the
+dearest, the most beautiful spot on earth.  In making our home the best
+we can, in improving our township, county, and state, we are doing our
+share toward upbuilding this nation."
+
+She began at the a b c's, and gave it to him straight: the whole thing,
+just as we saw it; and he listened, as if he were a prisoner, and she a
+judge telling him what he must do to gain his freedom.  She put in the
+birds to keep away the worms, the trees to break the wind, the creeks
+to save the moisture.  She whanged him, and she banged him, up one
+side, and down the other.  She didn't stop to be mincy.  She shot
+things at him like a man talking to another man who had plenty of sense
+but not a particle of reason.  She gave him the reason.  She told him
+exactly why, and how, and where, and also just WHAT he must do to feel
+RIGHT toward his neighbours, his family, and his God.  No preacher ever
+talked half so well.  Yea verily, she was as interesting as the Bishop
+himself, and far pleasanter to look at.  When she ran short of breath,
+and out of words, she reached both hands toward him again.
+
+"OH DO PLEASE THINK OF THESE THINGS!" she begged.  "Do try to believe
+that I am a sensible person, and know what I am talking about."
+
+"Madame," said Mr. Pryor, "there's no doubt in my mind but you are the
+most wonderful woman I ever have met.  Surely I believe you!  Surely I
+know your plan of life is the true, the only right way.  It is one
+degree added to my humiliation that the ban I am under keeps me from
+friendly intercourse with so great a lady."
+
+"'Lady'?" said my mother, her eyes widening.  "'Lady'?  Now it is you
+who are amused."
+
+"I don't understand!" he said.  "Certainly you are a lady, a very great
+lady."
+
+"Goodness, gracious me!" cried my mother, laughing until her dimples
+would have held water.  "That's the first time in all my life I was
+ever accused of such a thing."
+
+"Again, I do not comprehend," said Mr. Pryor, as if vexed about all he
+would endure.
+
+Mother laughed on, and as she did so she drew back her hands and
+studied them.  Then she looked at him again, one pink dimple flashing
+here and there, all over her face.
+
+"Well, to begin at the root of the matter," she said, "that is an
+enormous big word that you are using lightly.  Any one in petticoats is
+not a lady--by no means!  A lady must be born of unsullied blood for at
+least three generations, on each side of her house.  Think for a minute
+about where you are going to fulfil that condition.  Then she must be
+gentle by nature, and rearing.  She must know all there is to learn
+from books, have wide experience to cover all emergencies, she must be
+steeped in social graces, and diplomatic by nature.  She must rise
+unruffled to any emergency, never wound, never offend, always help and
+heal, she must be perfect in deportment, virtue, wifehood and
+motherhood.  She must be graceful, pleasing and beautiful.  She must
+have much leisure to perfect herself in learning, graces and arts----"
+
+"Madame, you draw an impossible picture!" cried Mr. Pryor.
+
+"I draw the picture of the only woman on earth truly entitled to be
+called a lady.  You use a good word lightly.  I have told you what it
+takes to make a lady--now look at me!"
+
+How she laughed! Mr. Pryor looked, but he didn't laugh.
+
+"More than ever you convince me that you are a lady, indeed," he said.
+
+Mother wiped her eyes.
+
+"My dear man!" she cried, "I'm the daughter of a Dutch miller, who
+lived on a Pennsylvania mountain stream.  There never was a school
+anywhere near us, and father and mother only taught us to work.  Paul
+Stanton took a grist there, and saw me.  He married me, and brought me
+here.  He taught me to read and write.  I learned my lessons with my
+elder children.  He has always kept school in our house, every night of
+his life.  Our children supposed it was for them; I knew it was quite
+as much for me.  While I sat at knitting or sewing, I spelled over the
+words he gave out.  I know nothing of my ancestors, save that they came
+from the lowlands of Holland, down where there were cities, schools,
+and business.  They were well educated, but they would not take the
+trouble to teach their children.  As I have spoken to you, my husband
+taught me.  All I know I learn from him, from what he reads aloud, and
+places he takes me.  I exist in a twenty-mile radius, but through him,
+I know all lands, principalities and kingdoms, peoples and customs.  I
+need never be ashamed to go, or afraid to speak, anywhere."
+
+"Indeed not!" cried Mr. Pryor.
+
+"But when you think on the essentials of a real lady--and then picture
+me patching, with a First Reader propped before me; facing Indians,
+Gypsies, wild animals--and they used to be bad enough--why, I mind one
+time in Ohio when our first baby was only able to stand beside a chair,
+and through the rough puncheon floor a copperhead stuck up its gleam of
+bronzy gold, and shot its darting tongue within a foot of her bare leg.
+By all accounts, a lady would have reached for her smelling salts and
+gracefully fainted away; in fact, a lady never would have been in such
+a place at all.  It was my job to throw the first thing I could lay my
+hands on so straight and true that I would break that snake's neck, and
+send its deadly fangs away from my baby.  I did it with Paul's plane,
+and neatly too!  Then I had to put the baby on the bed and tear up
+every piece of the floor to see that the snake had not a mate in hiding
+there, for copperheads at that season were going pairs.  Once I was
+driven to face a big squaw, and threatened the life of her baby with a
+red-hot poker while she menaced mine with a hunting knife.  There is
+not one cold, rough, hard experience of pioneer life that I have not
+endured.  Shoulder to shoulder, and heart to heart, I've stood beside
+my man, and done what had to be done, to build this home, rear our
+children, save our property.  Many's the night I have shivered in a
+barn doctoring sick cattle and horses we could ill afford to lose.
+Time and again I have hung on and brought things out alive, after the
+men gave up and quit.  A lady?  How funny!"
+
+"The amusement is all on your part, Madame."
+
+"So it seems!" said mother.  "But you see, I know so well how
+ridiculous it is.  When I think of the life a woman must lead in order
+to be truly a lady, when I review the life I have been forced to live
+to do my share in making this home, and rearing these children, the
+contrast is too great.  I thank God for any part I have been able to
+take.  Had I life to live over, I see now where I could do more; but
+neighbour, believe me, my highest aspiration is to be a clean, thrifty
+housekeeper, a bountiful cook, a faithful wife, a sympathetic mother.
+That is life work for any woman, and to be a good woman is the greatest
+thing on earth.  Never mind about the ladies; if you can honestly say
+of me, she is a good woman, you have paid me the highest possible
+tribute."
+
+"I have nothing to change, in the face of your argument," said Mr.
+Pryor.  "Our loved Queen on her throne is no finer lady."
+
+That time mother didn't laugh.  She looked straight at him a minute and
+then she said:  "Well, for an Englishman, as I know them, you have said
+the last word.  Higher praise there is none.  But believe me, I make no
+such claim.  To be a good wife and mother is the end toward which I
+aspire.  To hold the respect and love of my husband is the greatest
+object of my life."
+
+"Then you have succeeded.  You stand a monument to wifehood; your
+children prove your idea of motherhood," said Mr. Pryor.  "How in this
+world have you managed it?  The members of your family whom I have seen
+are fine, interesting men and women, educated above the average.  It is
+not idle curiosity.  I am deeply interested in knowing how such an end
+came to be accomplished here on this farm.  I wish you would tell me
+just how you have gone about schooling your children."
+
+"By educating ourselves before their coming, and with them afterward.
+Self-control, study, work, joy of life, satisfaction with what we have
+had, never-ending strife to go higher, and to do better--Dr. Fenner
+laughs when I talk of these things.  He says he can take a little naked
+Hottentot from the jungle, and educate it to the same degree that I can
+one of mine.  I don't know; but if these things do not help before
+birth, at least they do not hinder; and afterward, you are in the
+groove in which you want your children to run.  With all our twelve
+there never has been one who at nine months of age did not stop crying
+if its father lifted his finger, or tapped his foot and told it to.
+From the start we have rigorously guarded our speech and actions before
+them.  From the first tiny baby my husband has taught all of them to
+read, write and cipher some, before they went to school at all.  He is
+always watching, observing, studying: the earth, the stars, growing
+things; he never comes to a meal but he has seen something that he has
+or will study out for all of us.  There never has been one day in our
+home on which he did not read a new interesting article from book or
+paper; work out a big problem, or discuss some phase of politics,
+religion, or war.  Sometimes there has been a little of all of it in
+one day, always reading, spelling, and memory exercises at night.  He
+has a sister who twice in her life has repeated the Bible as a test
+before a committee.  He, himself, can go through the New Testament and
+all of the Old save the books of the generations.  He always says he
+considers it a waste of gray matter to learn them.  He has been a
+schoolmaster, his home his schoolroom, his children, wife and helpers
+his pupils; the common things of life as he meets them every day, the
+books from which we learn.
+
+"I was ignorant at first of bookish subjects, but in his atmosphere, if
+one were no student, and didn't even try to keep up, or forge ahead,
+they would absorb much through association.  Almost always he has been
+on the school board and selected the teachers; we have made a point of
+keeping them here, at great inconvenience to ourselves, in order to
+know as much of them as possible, and to help and guide them in their
+work.  When the children could learn no more here, for most of them we
+have managed the high school of Groveville, especially after our
+daughter moved there, and for each of them we have added at least two
+years of college, music school, or whatever the peculiar bent of the
+child seemed to demand.
+
+"Before any daughter has left our home for one of her own, she has been
+taught all I know of cleanliness about a house, cookery, sewing,
+tending the sick, bathing and dressing the new born.  She has to bake
+bread, pie, cake, and cook any meat or vegetable we have.  She has had
+her bolt of muslin to make as she chose for her bedding, and linen for
+her underclothing.  The quilts she pieced and the blankets she wove
+have been hers.  All of them have been as well provided for as we could
+afford.  They can knit, darn, patch, tuck, hem, and embroider, set a
+hen and plant a garden.  I go on a vacation and leave each of them to
+keep house for her father a month, before she enters a home of her own.
+They are strong, healthy girls; I hope all of them are making a good
+showing at being useful women, and I know they are happy, so far at
+least."
+
+"Wonderful!" said Mr. Pryor.
+
+"Father takes the boys in hand and they must graduate in a straight
+furrow, an even fence, planting and tending crops, trimming and
+grafting trees, caring for stock, and handling plane, auger and chisel.
+Each one must select his wood, cure, fashion, and fit his own ax with a
+handle, grind and swing it properly, as well as cradle, scythe and
+sickle.  They must be able to select good seed grain, boil sap, and
+cure meat.  They must know animals, their diseases and treatment, and
+when they have mastered all he can teach them, and done each thing
+properly, they may go for their term at college, and make their choice
+of a profession.  As yet I'm sorry to say but one of them has come back
+to the land."
+
+"You mean Laddie?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He has decided to be a farmer?"
+
+"He is determined to make the soil yield his living."
+
+"I am sorry--sorry indeed to hear it," said Mr. Pryor.  "He has brain
+and education to make a brilliant figure at law or statesmanship; he
+would do well in trade."
+
+"What makes you think he would not do well on land?"
+
+"Wasted!" cried Mr. Pryor.  "He would be wasted!"
+
+"Hold a bit!" said mother, her face flushing as it did when she was
+very provoked.  "My husband is, and always has been, on land.  He is
+far from being wasted.  He is a power in this community.  He has sons
+in cities in law and in trade.  Not one of them has the friends, and
+the influence on his time, that his father has.  Any day he says the
+word, he can stand in legislative halls, and take any part he chooses
+in politics.  He prefers his home and family, and the work he does
+here, but let me tell you, no son of his ever had his influence or
+opportunity, or ever will have."
+
+"All this is news to me," said Mr. Pryor.
+
+"You didn't expect us to come over, force our way in and tell you?"
+
+It was his turn to blush and he did.
+
+"Laddie has been at our house often," he said.  "He might have
+mentioned----"
+
+Mother laughed.  She was the gayest that morning.
+
+"He 'might,' but he never would.  Neither would I if you hadn't seemed
+to think that the men who do the things Mr. Stanton REFUSES to do are
+the ones worth while."
+
+"He could accomplish much in legislative halls."
+
+"He figures in the large.  He thinks that to be a commissioner, travel
+his county and make all of it the best possible, to stand in primaries
+and choose only worthy men for all offices, is doing a much bigger work
+than to take one place for himself, and strive only for that.  Besides,
+he really loves his land, his house, and family.  He says no man has a
+right to bring twelve children into the world and not see personally to
+rearing and educating them.  He thinks the farm and the children too
+much for me, and he's sure he is doing the biggest thing for the
+community at large, to go on as he does."
+
+"Perhaps so," said Mr. Pryor slowly.  "He should know best.  Perhaps he
+is."
+
+"I make no doubt!" said mother, lifting her head proudly.  "And as
+Laddie feels and has fitted himself, I look to see him go head and
+shoulders above any other son I have.  Trade is not the only way to
+accumulate.  Law is not the only path to the legislature.  Comfort,
+independence, and freedom, such as we know here, is not found in any
+city I ever have visited.  We think we have the best of life, and we
+are content on land.  We have not accumulated much money; we have spent
+thousands; we have had a big family for which to provide, and on
+account of the newness of the country, taxes always have been heavy.
+But we make no complaint.  We are satisfied.  We could have branched
+off into fifty different things after we had a fair start here.  We
+didn't, because we preferred life as we worked it out for ourselves.
+Paul says when he leaves the city, and his horses' hoofs strike the
+road between our fields, he always lifts his head higher, squares his
+shoulders, and feels a man among men.  To own land, and to love it, is
+a wonderful thing, Mr. Pryor."
+
+She made me think of something.  Ever since I had added to my quill and
+arrow money, the great big lot at Easter, father had shared his chest
+till with me.  The chest stood in our room, and in it lay his wedding
+suit, his every Sunday clothes, his best hat with a red silk
+handkerchief in the crown, a bundle of precious newspapers he was
+saving on account of rare things in them he wanted for reference, and
+in the till was the wallet of ready money he kept in the house for
+unexpected expense, his deeds, insurance papers, all his particular
+private papers, the bunches of lead pencils, slate pencils, and the box
+of pens from which he supplied us for school.  Since I had grown so
+rich, he had gone partners with me, and I might lift the lid, open the
+till and take out my little purse that May bought from the huckster for
+my last birthday.  I wasn't to touch a thing, save my own, and I never
+did; but I knew precious well what was there.
+
+If Mr. Pryor thought my father didn't amount to much because he lived
+on land; if it made him think more of him, to know that he could be in
+the legislature if he chose, maybe he'd think still more----
+
+I lifted the papers, picked it up carefully, and slipping back quietly,
+I laid it on Mr. Pryor's knee.  He picked it up and held it a minute,
+until he finished what he was saying to mother, and then he looked at
+it.  Then he looked long and hard.  Then he straightened up and looked
+again.
+
+"God bless my soul!" he cried.
+
+You see when he was so astonished he didn't know what he was saying, he
+called on God, just as father says every one does.  I took a side look
+at mother.  Her face was a little extra flushed, but she was still
+smiling; so I knew she wasn't angry with me, though of course she
+wouldn't have shown the thing herself.  She and father never did,
+except as each of us grew big enough to be taught about the Crusaders.
+Father said he didn't care the snap of his finger about it, except as
+it stood for hardihood and bravery.  But Mr. Pryor cared!  He cared
+more than he could say.  He stared, and stared, and over and over he
+wonderingly repeated:
+
+"God bless my soul!"
+
+"Where did you get the crest of the Earl of Eastbrooke, the master of
+Stanton house?" he demanded.  "Stanton house!" he repeated.  "Why--why,
+the name!  It's scarcely possible, but----"
+
+"But there it is!" laughed mother.  "A mere bauble for show and
+amounting to nothing on earth save as it stands a mark for brave men
+who have striven to conquer."
+
+"Surgere tento!" read Mr. Pryor, from the little shield.  "Four shells!
+Madame, I know men who would give their lives to own this, and to have
+been born with the right to wear it.  It came to your husband in
+straight line?"
+
+"Yes," said mother, "but generations back.  He never wore it.  He never
+would.  He only saves it for the children."
+
+"It goes to your eldest son?"
+
+"By rights, I suppose it should," said mother.  "But father mentioned
+it the other night.  He said none of his boys had gone as he tried to
+influence them, unless Laddie does now in choosing land for his future,
+and if he does, his father is inclined to leave it to him, and I agree.
+At our death it goes to Laddie I am quite sure."
+
+"Well, I hope--I hope," said Mr. Pryor, "that the young man has the wit
+to understand what this would mean to him in England."
+
+"His wit is just about level with his father's," said mother.  "He
+never has been in England, and most probably he never will be.  I don't
+think it means a rap more to Laddie than it does to my husband.  Laddie
+is so busy developing the manhood born in him, he has no time to chase
+the rainbow of reflected glory, and no belief in its stability if he
+walked in its light.  The child of my family to whom that trinket
+really means something is Little Sister, here.  When Leon came in with
+the thief, I thought he should have it; but after all, she is the
+staunchest little Crusader I have."
+
+Mr. Pryor looked me over with much interest.
+
+"Yes, yes!  No doubt!" he said.  "But the male line!  This priceless
+treasure should descend to one of the male line!  To one whose name
+will remain Stanton!  To Laddie would be best, no doubt!  No doubt at
+all!"
+
+"We will think about it," said mother serenely as Mr. Pryor arose to go.
+
+He apologized for staying so long, and mother said it hadn't been long,
+and asked him the nicest ever to come again.  She walked in the
+sunlight with him and pointed out the chestnuts.  She asked what he
+thought of a line of trees to shade the road, and they discussed
+whether the pleasure they would give in summer would pay for the
+dampness they would hold in winter.  They wandered around the yard and
+into the garden.  She sent me to bring a knife, trowel, and paper, so
+when he started for home, he was carrying a load of cuttings, and roots
+to plant.
+
+When father came from town that evening, at the first sight of him, she
+went straight into his arms, her face beaming; she had been like a sun
+all that day.  Some of it must have been joy carried over from
+yesterday.
+
+"Praise God, the wedge is in!" she cried.
+
+Father held her tight, stroked her hair, and began smiling without
+having the least idea why, but he very well knew that whatever pleased
+her like that was going to be good news for him also.
+
+"What has happened, mother?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Pryor came over about the road and bridge tax, and oh Paul!  I've
+said every word to him I've been bursting to say from the very start.
+Every single word, Paul!"
+
+"How did he take it?"
+
+"Time will tell.  Anyway, he heard it, all of it, and he went back
+carrying a load of things to plant.  Only think of that!  Once he
+begins planting, and watching things grow, the home feeling is bound to
+come.  I tell you, Paul, the wedge is in!  Oh I'm so happy!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+The Crest of Eastbrooke
+
+  "Sow;--and look onward, upward,
+    Where the starry light appears,--
+  Where, in spite of coward's doubting,
+    Or your own heart's trembling fears,
+  You shall reap in joy the harvest
+    You have sown to-day in tears."
+
+
+"Any objections to my beginning to break ground on the west eighty
+to-day?" asked Laddie of father at breakfast Monday morning.
+
+"I had thought we would commence on the east forty, when planning the
+work."
+
+"So had I," said Laddie.  "But since I thought that, a very particular
+reason has developed for my beginning to plow the west eighty at once,
+and there is a charming little ditty I feel strongly impelled to
+whistle every step of the way."
+
+Father looked at him sharply, and so, I think, did all of us.  And
+because we loved him deeply, we saw that his face was a trifle pale for
+him; his clear eyes troubled, in spite of his laughing way.  He knew we
+were studying him too, but he wouldn't have said anything that would
+make us look and question if he had minded our doing it.  That was
+exactly like Laddie.  He meant it when he said he hated a secret.  He
+said there was no place on earth for a man to look for sympathy and
+love if he couldn't find it in his own family; and he never had been so
+happy since I had been big enough to notice his moods as he had been
+since all of us knew about the Princess.  He didn't wait for father to
+ask why he'd changed his mind about the place to begin.
+
+"You see," he said, "a very charming friend of mine expressed herself
+strongly last night about the degrading influence of farming,
+especially that branch of agriculture which evolves itself in a furrow;
+hence it is my none too happy work to plow the west eighty where she
+can't look our way without seeing me; and I have got to whistle my
+favourite 'toon' where she must stop her ears if she doesn't hear; and
+then it will be my painful task, I fear, to endeavour to convince her
+that I am still clean, decent, and not degraded."
+
+"Oh Laddie!" cried mother.
+
+"Abominable foolishness!" roared father like he does roar once in about
+two years.
+
+"Isn't it now?" asked Laddie sweetly.  "I don't know what has got into
+her head.  She has seen me plowing fifty times since their land has
+joined ours, and she never objected before."
+
+"I can tell you blessed well!" said mother.  "She didn't care two hoots
+how much my son plowed, but it makes a difference when it comes to her
+lover."
+
+"Maw, you speak amazing reckless," said Laddie, "if I thought there was
+anything in THAT feature of the case, I'd attempt a Highland fling on
+the ridgepole of our barn."
+
+"Be serious!" said father sternly.  "This is no laughing matter."
+
+"That's precisely why I am laughing," said Laddie.  "Would it help me
+any to sit down and weep?  I trow not!  I have thought most of the
+silent watches--by the way they are far from silent in May--and as I
+read my title clear, it's my job to plow the west eighty immejit."
+
+Father tried to look stern, but he just had to laugh.
+
+"All right then, plow it!" he said.
+
+"What did she say?" asked mother.
+
+"Phew!" Laddie threw up both hands.  "She must have been bottled some
+time on the subject.  The ferment was a spill of considerable
+magnitude.  The flood rather overwhelmed me, because it was so
+unexpected.  I had been taking for granted that she accepted my
+circumstances and surroundings as she did me.  But no, kind friends,
+far otherwise!  She said last night, in the clearest English I ever
+heard spoken impromptu, that I was a man suitable for her friend, but I
+would have to change my occupation before I could be received on more
+than a friendly footing."
+
+"'On more than a friendly footing'?" repeated mother.
+
+"You have her exact words," said Laddie.  "Kindly pass the ham."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"Nothing!  I am going to plow the answer.  Please don't object to my
+beginning this morning."
+
+"You try yourself all winter to get as far as you have, and then upset
+the bowl like this?" cried mother.
+
+"Softly, mummy, softly!" said Laddie.  "What am I to do?  I've
+definitely decided on my work.  I see land and life, as you and father
+taught me, in range and in perspective far more than you've got from
+it.  You had a first hand wrestle.  The land I covet has been greatly
+improved already.  I can do what I choose with it, making no more
+strenuous effort than plowing; and I am proud to say that I LOVE to
+plow.  I like my feet in the soil.  I want my head in the spring air.
+I can become almost tipsy on the odours that fill my nostrils.  Music
+evolved by the Almighty is plenty good enough for me.  I'm proud of a
+spanking big team, under the control of a touch or a word.  I enjoy
+farming, and I am going to be a farmer.  Plowing is one of the most
+pleasing parts of the job.  Sowing the seed beats it a little, from an
+artistic standpoint, either is preferable to haying, threshing, or corn
+cutting: all are parts of my work, so I'm going to begin.  Mother, I
+hope you don't mind if I take your grays.  I'll be very careful; but
+the picture I present to my girl to-day is going to go hard with her at
+best, so I'd like to make it level best."
+
+He arose, went around and knelt beside mother.  He took her, chair and
+all, in his arms:
+
+  "Best of mothers! on my breast
+  Lean thy head, and sink to rest."
+
+
+She quoted.  Mother laughed.
+
+"Mammy," he asked bending toward her, "am I clean?"
+
+"You goose!" she said, putting her arms around him and holding him
+tight.
+
+"Gander love," said Laddie, turning up his face for a kiss.  "Honest
+mother, you have been through nigh unto forty years of it, tell me, can
+a man be a farmer and keep neat enough not to be repulsive to a refined
+woman?"
+
+"Your father is the answer," said mother.  "All of you know how
+perfectly repulsive he is and always has been to me."
+
+"'Repulsive,"' said father.  "That's an ugly word!"
+
+"There are a whole lot of unpleasant things that peep around corners
+occasionally," said Laddie.  "But whoever of you dear people it was
+that showed Mr. Pryor the Crest of Eastbrooke, brought out this
+particular dragon for me to slay."
+
+"Tut, tut!  Now what does that mean?" said father.  "Have we had a
+little exhibition of that especial brand of pride that goes before a
+fall?"
+
+"We have! and I take the tumble," said Laddie.  "Watch me start!  'Jack
+fell down and broke his crown.'  Question--will 'Jill come tumbling
+after?'"
+
+My heart stopped and I was shaking in my bare feet, because I wore no
+shoes to shake in.  Oh my soul!  No matter how Laddie jested I knew he
+was almost killed; the harder he made fun, the worse he was hurt.  I
+opened my mouth to say I did it, I had to, but Leon began to talk.
+
+"Well, I think she's smart!" he cried.  "If she was going to give you
+the mitten, why didn't she do it long ago?"
+
+"She had to find out first whether there were a possibility of her
+wanting to keep it," said Laddie.
+
+"You're sure you are all signed, sealed, and delivered on this plowing
+business, are you?" asked Leon.
+
+"Dead sure!" said Laddie.
+
+"All right, if you like it!" said Leon.  "None for me after college!
+But say, you can be a farmer and not plow, you know.  You go trim the
+trees, and work at cleaner, more gentlemanly jobs.  I'll plow that
+field.  I'd just as soon as not.  I plowed last year and you said I did
+well, didn't you, father?"
+
+"Yes, on the potato patch," said father.  "A cornfield is a different
+thing.  I fear you are too light."
+
+"Oh but that was a year ago!" cried Leon.
+
+He pushed back his chair and went to father.
+
+"Just feel my biceps now!  Most like steel!" he boasted.  "A fellow can
+grow a lot in a year, and all the riding I've been doing, and all the
+exercise I've had.  Cert' I can plow that meadow."
+
+"You're all right, shaver," said Laddie.  "I'll not forget your offer;
+but in this case it wouldn't help.  Either the Princess takes her
+medicine or I take mine.  I'm going to live on land: I'm going to plow
+in plain sight of the Pryor house this week, if I have to hire to Jacob
+Hood to get the chance.  May I plow, and may I take the grays, father?"
+
+"Yes!" said father roundly.
+
+"Then here goes!" said Laddie.  "You needn't fret, mother.  I'll not
+overheat them.  I must give a concert simultaneous with this plowing
+performance, and I'm particular about the music, so I can't go too
+fast.  Also, I'll wrap the harness."
+
+"Goodness knows I'm not thinking about the horses," said mother.
+
+"No, but if they turned up next Sunday, wind-broken, and with nice
+large patches of hair rubbed from their sides, you would be!  If you
+were me, would you whistle, or vocalize to start on?"
+
+Mother burst right out crying and laid her face all tear-wet against
+him.  Laddie kissed her, and wiped away the tears, teased her, and soon
+as he could he bolted from the east door; but I was closest, so I saw
+plainly that his eyes were wet too.  My soul and body!  AND I HAD DONE
+IT!  I might as well get it over.
+
+"I showed Mr. Pryor the trinket," I said.
+
+"How did you come to do that?" asked father sternly.
+
+"When he was talking with mother.  He told her Laddie would be 'wasted'
+farming----"
+
+"Wasted?"
+
+"That's what he said.  Mother told him you had always farmed and you
+were a 'power in this community.'  She told him about what you did,
+because you wanted to, and what you COULD do if you chose, about
+holding office, you know, and that seemed to make him think heaps more
+of you, so I thought it would be a good thing for him to know about the
+Crusaders too, and I ran and got the crest.  I THOUGHT it would
+help----"
+
+"And so it will," said mother.  "They constantly make the best showing
+they can, we might as well, too.  The trouble is they got more than
+they expected.  They thought they could look down on us, and patronize
+us, if they came near at all; when they found we were quite as well
+educated as they, had as much land, could hold prominent offices if we
+chose, and had the right to that bauble, they veered to the other
+extreme.  Now they seem to demand that we quit work----"
+
+"Move to the city, 'sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,'" suggested
+father.
+
+"Exactly!" said mother.  "They'll have to find out we are running our
+own business; but I'm sorry it fell to Laddie to show them.  You could
+have done it better.  It will come out all right.  The Princess is not
+going to lose a man like Laddie on account of how he makes his money."
+
+"Don't be too confident," said father.  "With people of their stripe,
+how much money a man can earn, and at what occupation, constitute the
+whole of life."
+
+She wasn't too confident.  Yesterday she had been so happy she almost
+flew.  To-day she kept things going, and sang a lot, but nearly every
+time you looked at her you could see her lips draw tight, a frown cross
+her forehead, and her head shake.  Pretty soon we heard a racket on the
+road, so we went out.  There was Laddie with the matched team of
+carriage horses and a plow.  Now, in dreadfully busy times, father let
+Ned and Jo work a little, but not very much.  They were not plow
+horses; they were roadsters.  They liked to prance, and bow their necks
+and dance to the carriage.  It shamed them to be hitched to a plow.
+They drooped their heads and slunk along like dogs caught sucking eggs.
+But they were a sight on the landscape.  They were lean and slender and
+yet round too, matched dapple gray on flank and side, with long
+snow-white manes and tails.  No wonder mother didn't want them to work.
+Laddie had reached through the garden fence and hooked a bunch of red
+tulips and yellow daffodils.  The red was at Jo's ear, and the yellow
+at Ned's, and they did look fine.  So did he!  Big, strong, clean, a
+red flower in his floppy straw hat band; and after he drove through the
+gate, he began a shrill, fifelike whistle you could have heard a half
+mile:
+
+  "See the merry farmer boy, tramp the meadows through,
+  Swing his hoe in careless joy, while dashing off the dew.
+  Bobolink in maple high, trills a note of glee,
+  Farmer boy in gay reply now whistles cheerily."
+
+
+The chorus was all whistle, and it was written for folks who could.  It
+went up until it almost split the echoes, and Laddie could easily sail
+a measure above the notes.  He did it too.  As for me, I kept from
+sight.  For a week Laddie whistled and plowed.  He wore that tune
+threadbare, and got an almost continuous pucker on his lips.  Leon said
+if he didn't stop whistling, and sing more, the girls would think he
+was doing a prunes and prisms stunt.  So after that he sang the words,
+and whistled the chorus.  But he made no excuse to go, and he didn't
+go, to Pryors'.  When Sunday came, he went to Westchester to see
+Elizabeth, and stayed until Monday morning.  Not once that week did the
+Princess ride past our house, or her father either.  By noon Monday
+Laddie was back in the field, and I had all I could bear.  He was
+neither whistling nor singing so much now, because he was away at the
+south end, where he couldn't be seen or heard at Pryors'.  He almost
+scoured the skin from him, and he wore his gloves more carefully than
+usual.  If he soiled his clothing in the least, and it looked as if he
+would make more than his share of work, he washed the extra pieces at
+night.
+
+Tuesday morning I hurried with all my might, and then I ran to the
+field where he was.  I climbed on the fence, sat there until he came
+up, and then I gave him some cookies.  He stopped the horses, climbed
+beside me and ate them.  Then he put his arms around me and hugged me
+tight.
+
+"Laddie, do you know I did it?" I wailed.
+
+"Did you now?" said Laddie.  "No, I didn't know for sure, but I had
+suspicions.  You always have had such a fondness for that particular
+piece of tinware."
+
+"But Laddie, it means so much!"
+
+"Doesn't it?" said Laddie.  "A few days ago no one could have convinced
+me that it meant anything at all to me, or ever could.  Just look at me
+now!"
+
+"Don't joke, Laddie!  Something must be done."
+
+"Well, ain't I doing it?" asked Laddie.  "Look at all these acres and
+acres of Jim-dandy plowing!"
+
+"Don't!" I begged.  "Why don't you go over there?"
+
+"No use, Chicken," said Laddie.  "You see her exact stipulation was
+that I must CHANGE MY OCCUPATION before I came again."
+
+"What does she want you to do?"
+
+"Law, I think.  Unfortunately, I showed her a letter from Jerry asking
+me to enter his office this fall."
+
+"Hadn't you better do it, Laddie?"
+
+"How would you like to be shut in little, stuffy rooms, and set to
+droning over books and papers every hour of the day, all your life, and
+to spend the best of your brain and bodily strength straightening out
+other men's quarrels?"
+
+"Oh Laddie, you just couldn't!" I cried.
+
+"Precisely!" said Laddie.  "I just couldn't, and I just won't!"
+
+"What can you do?"
+
+"I might compromise on stock," he said.  "I could follow the same
+occupation as her father, and with better success.  Neither he nor his
+men get the best results from horses.  They don't understand them,
+especially the breeds they are attempting to handle.  Most Arab
+horsemen are tent dwellers.  They travel from one oasis to another with
+their stock.  At night their herds are gathered around them as
+children.  As children they love them, pet them, feed them.  Each is
+named for a divinity, a planet or a famous ruler, and the understanding
+between master and beast is perfect.  Honestly, Little Sister, I think
+you have got to believe in the God of Israel, in order to say the right
+word to an Arabian horse; and I know you must believe in the God of
+love.  A beast of that breed, jerked, kicked, and scolded is a fine
+horse ruined.  If I owned half the stock Mr. Pryor has over there, I
+could put it in such shape for market that I could get twice from it
+what his men will."
+
+"Are Thomas and James rough with the horses?"
+
+"'Like master, like man,'" quoted Laddie.  "They are!  They are foolish
+with the Kentucky strain, and fools with the Arab; and yet, that
+combination beats the world.  But I must get on with the P.C. job."
+
+He slid from the fence, took a drink from his water jug, and pulled a
+handful of grass for each horse.  As he stood feeding them, I almost
+fell from the top rail.
+
+"Laddie!" I whispered.  "Look!  Mr. Pryor is halfway across the field
+on Ranger."
+
+"So?" said Laddie.  "Now I wonder----"
+
+"Shall I go?"
+
+"No indeed!" said Laddie.  "Stay right where you are.  It can't be
+anything of much importance."
+
+At first it didn't seem to be.  They talked about the weather, the
+soil, the team.  Laddie scooped a handful of black earth, and holding
+it out, told Mr. Pryor all about how good it was, and why, and he
+seemed interested.  Then they talked about everything; until if he had
+been Jacob Hood, he would have gone away.  But just at the time when I
+expected him to start, he looked at Laddie straight and hard.
+
+"I missed you Sabbath evening," he said.
+
+Then I looked at him.  He had changed, some way.  He seemed more human,
+more like our folks, less cold and stern.
+
+"I sincerely hope it was unanimous," said Laddie.
+
+Mr. Pryor had to laugh.
+
+"It was a majority, at any rate."
+
+Laddie stared dazed.  You see that was kind of a joke.  An easy one,
+because I caught it; but we were not accustomed to expecting a jest
+from Mr. Pryor.  Not one of us dreamed there was a joke between his hat
+crown and his boot soles.  Then Laddie laughed; but he sobered quickly.
+
+"I'm mighty sorry if Mrs. Pryor missed me," he said.  "I thought of
+her.  I have grown to be her devoted slave, and I hoped she liked me."
+
+"You put it mildly," said Mr. Pryor.  "Since you didn't come when she
+expected you, we've had the worst time with her that we have had since
+we reached this da--ah--er--um--this country."
+
+"Could you make any suggestion?" asked Laddie.
+
+"I could!  I would suggest that you act like the sensible fellow I know
+you to be, and come as usual, at your accustomed times."
+
+"But I'm forbidden, man!" cried Laddie.
+
+Ugh!  Such awful things as Mr. Pryor said.
+
+"Forbidden!" he cried.  "Is a man's roof his own, or is it not?  While
+I live, I propose to be the head of my family.  I invite you!  I ask
+you!  Mrs. Pryor and I want you!  What more is necessary?"
+
+"TWO things," said Laddie, just as serenely.  "That Miss Pryor wants
+me, and that I want to come."
+
+"D'ye mean to tell me that you DON'T want to come, eh?  After the fight
+you put up to force your way in!"
+
+Laddie studied the sky, a whimsy smile on his lips.
+
+"Now wasn't that a good fight?" he inquired.  "I'm mighty proud of it!
+But not now, or ever, do I wish to enter your house again, if Miss
+Pryor doesn't want, and welcome me."
+
+Then he went over, took Mr. Pryor's horse by the head, and began
+working with its bridle.  It didn't set right some way, and Mr. Pryor
+had jerked, spurred, and mauled, until there was a big space tramped to
+mortar.  Laddie slid his fingers beneath the leather, eased it a
+little, and ran his hands over the fretful creature's head.  It just
+stopped, stood still, pushed its nose under his arm, and pressed
+against his side.  Mr. Pryor arose in one stirrup, swung around and
+alighted.  He looped an arm through the bridle rein, and with both
+hands gripped his whipstock.
+
+"How the devil do you do it?" he asked, as if he were provoked.
+
+"First, the bridle was uncomfortable; next, you surely know, Mr. Pryor,
+that a man can transfer his mental state to his mount."
+
+Laddie pointed to the churned up earth.
+
+"THAT represents your mental state; THIS"--he slid his hand down the
+neck of the horse--"portrays mine."
+
+Mr. Pryor's face reddened, but Laddie was laughing so heartily he
+joined in sort of sickly-like.
+
+"Oh I doubt if you are so damnably calm!" he cried.
+
+"I'm CALM enough, so far as that goes," said Laddie.  "I'm not denying
+that I've got about all the heartache I can conveniently carry."
+
+"Do you mind telling me how far this affair has gone?"
+
+"Wouldn't a right-minded man give the woman in the case the first
+chance to answer that question?  I greatly prefer that you ask Miss
+Pryor."
+
+If ever I felt sorry for any one, I did then for Mr. Pryor.  He stood
+there gripping the whip with both hands and he looked exactly as if the
+May wind might break him into a thousand tiny pieces, and every one of
+them would be glass.
+
+"Um--er----" he said at last.  "You're right, of course, but
+unfortunately, Pamela and her mother did not agree with my motives, or
+my course in coming to this country; and while there is no outward
+demonstration er--um--other than Mrs. Pryor's seclusion; yet,
+er--um!--I am forced to the belief that I'm NOT in their confidence."
+
+"I see!" said Laddie.  "And of course you love your daughter as any man
+would love so beautiful a child, and when she is all he has----"  I
+thought the break was coming right there, but Mr. Pryor clenched his
+whip and put it off; still, any one watching with half an eye could see
+that it was only put off, and not for long at that,--"It has been my
+idea, Mr. Pryor, that the proper course for me was to see if I could
+earn any standing with your daughter.  If I could, and she gave me
+permission, then I intended coming to you the instant I knew how she
+felt.  But in such a case as this, I don't think I shall find the
+slightest hesitation in telling you anything you want to know, that I
+am able."
+
+"You don't know how you stand with her?"
+
+Laddie took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair.  His feet
+were planted widely apart, and his face was sober enough for any
+funeral now.  At last he spoke.
+
+"I've been trying to figure that out," he said slowly.  "I believe the
+situation is as open to you as it is to me.  She was a desperately
+lonely, homesick girl, when she caught my eye and heart; and I placed
+myself on her horizon.  In her case the women were slow in offering
+friendship, because, on account of Mrs. Pryor's seclusion, none was
+felt to be wanted; then Miss Pryor was different in dress and manner.
+I found a way to let her see that I wanted to be friends, and she
+accepted my friendship, and at the same time allowed it go only so far.
+On a few rare occasions, I've met her alone, and we've talked out
+various phases of life together; but most of our intercourse has taken
+place in your home, and in your presence.  You probably have seen her
+meet and entertain her friends frequently.  I should think you would be
+more nearly able to gauge my standing with her than I am."
+
+"You haven't told her that you love her?"
+
+"Haven't I though?" cried Laddie.  "Man alive!  What do you think I'm
+made of?  Putty?  Told her?  I've told her a thousand times.  I've said
+it, and sung it and whistled it, and looked it, and lived it.  I've
+written it, and ridden it, and this week I've plowed it!  Your daughter
+knows as she knows nothing else, in all this world, that she has only
+to give me one glance, one word, one gesture of invitation, to find me
+before her six feet of the worst demoralized beefsteak a woman ever
+undertook to handle.  Told her?  Ye Gods!  I should say I've told her!"
+
+If any of Pryors had been outdoors they certainly could have heard Mr.
+Pryor.  How he laughed!  He shook until he tottered.  Laddie took his
+arm and led him to the fence.  He lifted a broad top rail, pushed it
+between two others across a corner and made a nice comfortable seat for
+him.  After a while Mr. Pryor wiped his eyes.  Laddie stood watching
+him with a slow grin on his face.
+
+"And she hasn't given the signal you are waiting for?" he asked at last.
+
+Laddie slowly shook his head.
+
+"Nary the ghost of a signal!" he said.  "Now we come to Sunday before
+last.  I only intimated, vaguely, that a hint of where I stood would be
+a comfort--and played Jonah.  The whale swallowed me at a gulp, and for
+all my inches, never batted an eye.  You see, a few days before I
+showed her a letter from my brother Jerry, because I thought it might
+interest her.  There was something in it to which I had paid little or
+no attention, about my going to the city and beginning work in his law
+office; to cap that, evidently you had mentioned before her our prize
+piece of family tinware.  There was a culmination like a thunder clap
+in a January sky.  She said everything that was on her mind about a man
+of my size and ability doing the work I am, and then she said I must
+change my occupation before I came again."
+
+"And for answer you've split the echoes with some shrill, abominable
+air, and plowed, before her very eyes, for a week!"
+
+Then Laddie laughed.
+
+"Do you know," he said; "that's a good one on me!  It never occurred to
+me that she would not be familiar with that air, and understand its
+application.  Do you mean to crush me further by telling me that all my
+perfectly lovely vocalizing and whistling was lost?"
+
+"It was a dem irritating, challenging sort of thing," said Mr. Pryor.
+"I listened to it by the hour, myself, trying to make out exactly what
+it did mean.  It seemed to combine defiance with pleading, and through
+and over all ran a note of glee that was really quite charming."
+
+"You have quoted a part of it, literally," said Laddie.  "'A note of
+glee'--the cry of a glad heart, at peace with all the world, busy with
+congenial work."
+
+"I shouldn't have thought you'd have been so particularly joyful."
+
+"Oh, the joy was in the music," said Laddie.  "That was a whistle to
+keep up my courage.  The joy was in the song, not in me!  Last week was
+black enough for me to satisfy the most exacting pessimist."
+
+"I wish you might have seen the figure you cut!  That fine team, flower
+bedecked, and the continuous concert!"
+
+"But I did!" cried Laddie.  "We have mirrors.  That song can't be
+beaten.  I know this team is all right, and I'm not dwarfed or
+disfigured.  That was the pageant of summer passing in review.  It
+represented the tilling of the soil; the sowing of seed, garnering to
+come later.  You buy corn and wheat, don't you?  They are vastly
+necessary.  Much more so than the settling of quarrels that never
+should have taken place.  Do you think your daughter found the
+spectacle at all moving?"
+
+"Damn you, sir, what I should do, is to lay this whip across your
+shoulders!" cried Mr. Pryor.
+
+But if you will believe it, he was laughing again.
+
+"I prefer that you don't," said Laddie, "or on Ranger either.  See how
+he likes being gentled."
+
+Then he straightened and drew a deep breath.
+
+"Mr. Pryor," he said, "as man to man, I have got this to say to
+you--and you may use your own discretion about repeating it to your
+daughter:  I can offer her six feet of as sound manhood as you can find
+on God's footstool.  I never in my whole life have had enough impure
+blood in my body to make even one tiny eruption on my skin.  I never
+have been ill a day in my life.  I never have touched a woman save as I
+lifted and cared for my mother, and hers, or my sisters.  As to my
+family and education she can judge for herself.  I offer her the first
+and only love of my heart.  She objects to farming, because she says it
+is dirty, offensive work.  There are parts of it that are dirty.  Thank
+God, it only soils the body, and that can be washed.  To delve and to
+dive into, and to study and to brood over the bigger half of the law
+business of any city is to steep your brain in, and smirch your soul
+with, such dirt as I would die before I'd make an occupation of
+touching.  Will you kindly tell her that word for word, and that I
+asked you to?"
+
+Mr. Pryor was standing before I saw him rise.  He said those awful
+words again, but between them he cried:  "You're right!  It's the
+truth! It's the eternal truth!"
+
+"It IS the truth," said Laddie.  "I've only to visit the offices, and
+examine the business of those of my family living by law, to KNOW that
+it's the truth.  Of course there's another side!  There are times when
+there are great opportunities to do good; I recognize that.  To some
+these may seem to overbalance that to which I object.  If they do, all
+right.  I am merely deciding for myself.  Once and for all, for me it
+is land.  It is born in me to love it, to handle it easily, to get the
+best results from stock.  I am going to take the Merriweather place
+adjoining ours on the west, and yours on the south.  I intend to lease
+it for ten years, with purchase privilege at the end, so that if I make
+of it what I plan, my work will not be lost to me.  I had thought to
+fix up the place and begin farming.  If Miss Pryor has any use whatever
+for me, and prefers stock, that is all right with me.  I'll go into the
+same business she finds suitable for you.  I can start in a small way
+and develop.  I can afford a maid for her from the beginning, but I
+couldn't clothe her as she has been accustomed to being dressed, for
+some time.  I would do my best, however.  I know what store my mother
+sets by being well gowned.  And as a husband, I can offer your daughter
+as loving consideration as woman ever received at the hands of man.
+Provided by some miracle I could win her consent, would you even
+consider me, and such an arrangement?"
+
+"Frankly sir," said Mr. Pryor, "I have reached the place where I would
+be----" whenever you come to a long black line like that, it means that
+he just roared a lot of words father never said, and never will--"glad
+to!  To tell the truth, the thing you choose to jestingly refer to as
+'tinware'--I hope later to convince of the indelicacy of such
+allusion--would place you in England on a social level above any we
+ever occupied, or could hope to.  Your education equals ours.  You are
+a physical specimen to be reckoned with, and I believe what you say of
+yourself.  There's something so clean and manly about you, it amounts
+to confirmation.  A woman should set her own valuation on that; and the
+height of it should correspond with her knowledge of the world."
+
+"Thank you!" said Laddie.  "You are more than kind! more than generous!"
+
+"As to the arrangements you could make for Pamela," said Mr. Pryor,
+"she's all we have.  Everything goes to her, ultimately.  She has her
+stipulated allowance now; whether in my house or yours, it would go
+with her.  Surely you wouldn't be so callous as to object to our giving
+her anything that would please us!"
+
+"Why should I?" asked Laddie.  "That's only natural on your part.  Your
+child is your child; no matter where or what it is, you expect to
+exercise a certain amount of loving care over it.  My father and mother
+constantly send things to their children absent from home, and they
+take much pleasure in doing it.  That is between you and your daughter,
+of course.  I shouldn't think of interfering.  But in the meantime,
+unless Miss Pryor has been converted to the beauties of plowing through
+my continuous performance of over a week, I stand now exactly where I
+did before, so far as she is concerned.  If you and Mrs. Pryor have no
+objection to me, if you feel that you could think of me, or find for me
+any least part of a son's place in your hearts, I believe I should know
+how to appreciate it, and how to go to work to make myself worthy of
+it."
+
+Mr. Pryor sat down so suddenly, the rail almost broke.  I thought the
+truth was, that he had heart trouble, himself.  He stopped up, choked
+on things, flopped around, and turned so white.  I suppose he thought
+it was womanish, and a sign of weakness, and so he didn't tell, but I
+bet anything that he had it--bad!
+
+"I'll try to make the little fool see!" he said.
+
+"Gently, gently!  You won't help me any in that mood," said Laddie.
+"The chances are that Miss Pryor repeated what she heard from you long
+ago, and what she knows you think and feel, unless you've changed
+recently."
+
+"That's the amount of it!" cried Mr. Pryor.  "All my life I've had a
+lot of beastly notions in my head about rank, and class, and here they
+don't amount to a damn!  There's no place for them.  Things are
+different.  Your mother, a grand, good woman, opened my eyes to many
+things recently, and I get her viewpoint--clearly, and I agree with
+her, and with you, sir!--I agree with you!"
+
+"I am more than glad," said Laddie.  "You certainly make a friend at
+court.  Thank you very much!"
+
+"And you will come----?"
+
+"The instant Miss Pryor gives me the slightest sign that I am wanted,
+and will be welcomed by her, I'll come like a Dakota blizzard!  Flos
+can hump herself on time for once."
+
+"But you won't come until she does?"
+
+"Man alive!  I can't!" cried Laddie.  "Your daughter said positively
+exactly what she meant.  It was unexpected and it hit me so hard I
+didn't try to argue.  I simply took her at her word, her very explicit
+word."
+
+"Fool!" cried Mr. Pryor.  "The last thing on earth any woman ever wants
+or expects is for a man to take her at her word."
+
+"What?" cried Laddie.
+
+"She had what she said in her mind of course, but what she wanted was
+to be argued out of it!  She wanted to be convinced!"
+
+"I think not!  She was entirely too convincing herself," said Laddie.
+"It's my guess that she has thought matters over, and that her mind is
+made up; but I would take it as a mighty big favour if you would put
+that little piece of special pleading squarely up to her.  Will you?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Pryor, "I will.  I'll keep cool and do my best, but I
+am so unfortunate in my temper.  I could manage slaves better than
+women.  This time I'll be calm, and reason things out with her, or I'll
+blow out my brains."
+
+"Don't you dare!" laughed Laddie.  "You and I are going to get much
+pleasure, comfort and profit from this world, now that we have come to
+an understanding."
+
+Mr. Pryor arose and held out his hand.  Laddie grasped it tight, and
+they stood there looking straight at each other, while a lark on the
+fence post close by cried, "Spring o' ye-ar!" at them, over and over,
+but they never paid the least attention.
+
+"You see," said Mr. Pryor, "I've been thinking things over deeply,
+deeply! ever since talking with your mother.  I've cut myself off from
+going back to England, by sacrificing much of my property in hasty
+departure, if by any possibility I should ever want to return, and
+there is none, not the slightest!  There's no danger of any one
+crossing the sea, and penetrating to this particular spot so far
+inland; we won't be molested!  And lately--lately, despite the rawness,
+and the newness, there is something about the land that takes hold,
+after all.  I should dislike leaving now!  I found in watching some
+roots your mother gave me, that I wanted them to grow, that I very much
+hoped they would develop, and beautify our place with flowers, as yours
+is.  I find myself watching them, watching them daily, and oftener, and
+there seems to be a sort of home feeling creeping around my heart.  I
+wish Pamela would listen to reason!  I wish she would marry you soon!
+I wish there would be little children.  Nothing else on earth would
+come so close to comforting my wife, and me also.  Nothing!  Go ahead,
+lad, plow away!  I'll put your special pleading up to the girl."
+
+He clasped Laddie's hand, mounted and rode back to the gate he had
+entered when he came.  Laddie sat on the rail, so I climbed down beside
+him.  He put his arm around me.
+
+"Do I feel any better?" he asked dubiously.
+
+"Of course you do!" I said stoutly.  "You feel whole heaps, and stacks,
+and piles better.  You haven't got him to fight any more, or Mrs.
+Pryor.  It's now only to convince the Princess about how it's all right
+to plow."
+
+"Small matter, that!" said Laddie.  "And easy!  Just as simple and
+easy!"
+
+"Have you asked the Fairies to help you?"
+
+"Aye, aye, sir," said Laddie.  "Also the winds, the flowers, the birds
+and the bees!  I have asked everything on earth to help me except you,
+Little Sister.  I wonder if I have been making a mistake there?"
+
+"Are you mad at me, Laddie?"
+
+"'Cause for why?"
+
+"About the old crest thing!"
+
+"Forget it!" laughed Laddie.  "I have.  And anyway, in the long run, I
+must be honest enough to admit that it may have helped.  It seems to
+have had its influence with Mr. Pryor, no doubt it worked the same on
+Mrs. Pryor, and it may be that it was because she had so much more to
+bank on than she ever expected, that the Princess felt emboldened to
+make her demand.  It may be, you can't tell!  Anyway, it's very evident
+that it did no real harm.  And forget my jesting, Chicken.  A man can't
+always cry because there are tears in his heart.  I think quite as much
+of that crest as you do.  In the sum of human events, it is a big
+thing.  No one admires a Crusader more than I.  No one likes a good
+fight better.  No Crusader ever put up a stiffer battle than I have in
+the past week while working in these fields.  Every inch of them is
+battlefield, every furrow a separate conflict.  Gaze upon the scene of
+my Waterloo!  When June covers it with green, it will wave over the
+resting place of my slain heart!"
+
+"Oh Laddie!" I sobbed.  "There you go again!  How can you?"
+
+"Whoo-pee!" cried Laddie.  "That's the question!  How can I?  Got to,
+Little Sister!  There's no other way."
+
+"No," I was forced to admit, "there isn't.  What are we going to do
+now?"
+
+"Life-saver, we'll now go to dinner," said Laddie.  "Nothing except the
+partnership implied in 'we' sustains me now.  YOU'LL FIND A WAY TO HELP
+ME OUT, WON'T YOU, LITTLE SISTER?"
+
+"OF COURSE I WILL!" I promised, without ever stopping a minute to think
+what kind of a job that was going to be.
+
+Did you ever wish with all your might that something would happen, and
+wait for it, expect it, and long for it, and nothing did, until it grew
+so bad, it seemed as if you had to go on another minute you couldn't
+bear it?  Now I thought when Mr. Pryor talked to her, maybe she'd send
+for Laddie that very same night; but send nothing!  She didn't even
+ride on our road any more.  Of course her father had made a botch of
+it!  Bet I could have told her Laddie's message straighter than he did.
+I could think it over, and see exactly how he'd do.  He'd talk nicely
+about one minute, and the first word she said, that he didn't like,
+he'd be ranting, and using unsuitable words.  Just as like as not he
+told her that he'd lay his whip across her shoulders, like he had
+Laddie.  Any one could see that as long as she was his daughter, she
+might be slightly handy with whips herself; at least she wouldn't be
+likely to stand still and tell him to go ahead and beat her.
+
+Sunday Laddie went to Lucy's.  He said he was having a family reunion
+on the installment plan.  Of course we laughed, but none of us missed
+the long look he sent toward Pryors' as he mounted to start in the
+opposite direction.
+
+Everything went on.  I didn't see how it could, but it did.  It even
+got worse, for another letter came from Shelley that made matters
+concerning her no brighter, and while none of us talked about Laddie,
+all of us knew mighty well how we felt; and what was much worse, how he
+felt.  Father and mother had quit worrying about God; especially
+father.  He seemed to think that God and Laddie could be trusted to
+take care of the Princess, and I don't know exactly what mother
+thought.  No doubt she saw she couldn't help herself, and so she
+decided it was useless to struggle.
+
+The plowing on the west side was almost finished, and some of the seed
+was in.  Laddie went straight ahead flower-trimmed and whistling until
+his face must have ached as badly as his heart.  In spite of how hard
+he tried to laugh, and keep going, all of us could see that he fairly
+had to stick up his head and stretch his neck like the blue goose, to
+make the bites go down.  And you couldn't help seeing the roundness and
+the colour go from his face, a little more every day.  My! but being in
+love, when you couldn't have the one you loved, was the worst of all.
+I wore myself almost as thin as Laddie, hunting a Fairy to ask if she'd
+help me to make the Princess let Laddie go on and plow, when he was so
+crazy about it.  I prayed beside my bed every night, until the Lord
+must have grown so tired He quit listening to me, for I talked right up
+as impressively as I knew how, and it didn't do the least bit of good.
+I hadn't tried the one big prayer toward the east yet; but I was just
+about to the place where I intended to do it soon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Laddie, the Princess, and the Pie
+
+  "O whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad."
+
+
+Candace was baking the very first batch of rhubarb pies for the season
+and the odour was so tempting I couldn't keep away from the kitchen
+door.  Now Candace was a splendid cook about chicken gizzards--the
+liver was always mother's--doughnuts and tarts, but I never really did
+believe she would cut into a fresh rhubarb pie, even for me.  As I
+reached for the generous big piece I thought of Laddie poor Laddie,
+plowing away at his Crusader fight, and not a hint of victory.  No one
+in the family liked rhubarb pie better than he did.  I knew there was
+no use to ask for a plate.
+
+"Wait--oh wait!" I cried.
+
+I ran to the woodshed, pulled a shining new shingle from a bale stacked
+there, and held it for Candace.  Then I slipped around the house
+softly.  I didn't want to run any one's errands that morning.  I laid
+the pie on the horseblock and climbed the catalpa carefully, so as not
+to frighten my robins.  They were part father's too, because robins
+were his favourite birds; he said their song through and after rain was
+the sweetest music on earth, and mostly he was right; so they were not
+all my robins, but they were most mine after him; and I owned the tree.
+I hunted the biggest leaf I could see, and wiped it clean on my apron,
+although it was early for much dust.  It covered the pie nicely,
+because it was the proper shape, and I held the stem with one hand to
+keep it in place.
+
+
+If I had made that morning myself I couldn't have done better.  It was
+sunny, spring air, but it was that cool, spicy kind that keeps you
+stopping every few minutes to see just how full you can suck your lungs
+without bursting.  It seemed to wash right through and through and make
+you all over.  The longer you breathed it the clearer your head became,
+and the better you felt, until you would be possessed to try and see if
+you really couldn't fly.  I tried that last summer, and knocked myself
+into jelly.  You'd think once would have been enough, but there I was
+going down the road with Laddie's pie, and wanting with all my heart to
+try again.
+
+Sometimes I raced, but I was a little afraid the pie would shoot from
+the shingle and it was like pulling eye teeth to go fast that morning.
+I loved the soft warm dust, that was working up on the road.  Spat!
+Spat!  I brought down my bare feet, already scratched and turning
+brown, and laughed to myself at the velvety feel of it.  There were
+little puddles yet, where May and I had "dipped and faded" last fall,
+and it was fun to wade them.  The roadsides were covered with meadow
+grass and clover that had slipped through the fence.  On slender green
+blades, in spot after spot, twinkled the delicate bloom of blue-eyed
+grass.  Never in all this world was our Big Creek lovelier.  It went
+slipping, and whispering, and lipping, and lapping over the stones,
+tugging at the rushes and grasses as it washed their feet; everything
+beside it was in masses of bloom, a blackbird was gleaming and preening
+on every stone, as it plumed after its bath.  Oh there's no use to
+try--it was just SPRING when it couldn't possibly be any better.
+
+But even spring couldn't hold me very long that morning, for you see my
+heart was almost sick about Laddie; and if he couldn't have the girl he
+wanted, at least I could do my best to comfort him with the pie.  I was
+going along being very careful the more I thought about how he would
+like it, so I was not watching the road so far ahead as I usually did.
+I always kept a lookout for Paddy Ryan, Gypsies, or Whitmore's bull.
+When I came to an unusually level place, and took a long glance ahead,
+my heart turned right over and stopped still, and I looked long enough
+to be sure, and then right out loud some one said, "I'll DO something!"
+and as usual, I was the only one there.
+
+For days I'd been in a ferment, like the vinegar barrel when the cider
+boils, or the yeast jar when it sets too close to the stove.  To have
+Laddie and the Princess separated was dreadful, and knowing him as I
+did, I knew he never really would get over it.  I had tried to help
+once, and what I had done started things going wrong; no wonder I was
+slow about deciding what to try next.  That I was going to do
+something, I made up my mind the instant Laddie said he was not mad at
+me; that I was his partner, and asked me to help; but exactly WHAT
+would do any good, took careful thought.
+
+Here was my chance coming right at me.  She was far up the road, riding
+Maud like racing.  I began to breathe after a while, like you always
+do, no matter how you are worked up, and with my brain whirling, I went
+slowly toward her.  How would I manage to stop her?  Or what could I
+say that would help Laddie?  I was shaking, and that's the truth; but
+through and over it all, I was watching her too.  I only wish you might
+have seen her that morning.  Of course the morning was part of it.  A
+morning like that would make a fence post better looking.  Half a mile
+away you could see she was tipsy with spring as I was, or the song
+sparrows, or the crazy babbling old bobolinks on the stakes and riders.
+She made such a bright splash against the pink fence row, with her dark
+hair, flushed cheeks, and red lips, she took my breath.  Father said
+she was the loveliest girl in three counties, and Laddie stretched that
+to the whole world.  As she came closer, smash!  through me went the
+thought that she looked precisely as Shelley had at Christmas time; and
+Shelley had been that way because she was in love with the Paget man.
+Now if the Princess was gleaming and flashing like that, for the same
+reason, there wasn't any one for her to love so far as I knew, except
+Laddie.
+
+Then smash! came another thought.  She HAD to love him!  She couldn't
+help herself.  She had all winter, all last summer, and no one but
+themselves knew how long before that, and where was there any other man
+like Laddie?  Of course she loved him!  Who so deserving of love?  Who
+else had his dancing eyes of deep tender blue, cheeks so pink, teeth so
+white, such waving chestnut hair, and his height and breadth?  There
+was no other man who could ride, swim, leap, and wrestle as he could.
+None who could sing the notes, do the queer sums with letters having
+little figures at the corners in the college books, read Latin as fast
+as English, and even the Greek Bible.  Of course she loved him!  Every
+one did!  Others might plod and meander, Laddie walked the tired, old
+road that went out of sight over the hill, with as prideful a step as
+any king; his laugh was as merry as the song of the gladdest thrush,
+while his touch was so gentle that when mother was in dreadful pain I
+sometimes thought she would a little rather have him hold her than
+father.
+
+Now, he was in this fearful trouble, the colour was going from his
+face, his laugh was a little strained, and the heartache almost more
+than he could endure--and there she came!  I stepped squarely in the
+middle of the road so she would have to stop or ride over me, and when
+she was close, I stood quite still.  I was watching with my eyes,
+heart, and brain, and I couldn't see that she was provoked, as she drew
+rein and cried:  "Good morning, Little Queer Person!"
+
+I had supposed she would say Little Sister, she had for ages, just like
+Laddie, but she must have thought it was queer for me to stop her that
+way, so she changed.  I was in for it.  I had her now, so I smiled the
+very sweetest smile that I could think up in such a hurry, and said,
+"Good morning," the very politest I ever did in all my life.  Then I
+didn't know what to do next, but she helped me out.
+
+"What have you there?" she asked.
+
+"It's a piece of the very first rhubarb pie for this spring, and I'm
+carrying it to Laddie," I said, as I lifted the catalpa leaf and let
+her peep, just to show her how pie looked when it was right.  I bet she
+never saw a nicer piece.
+
+The Princess slid her hand down Maud's neck to quiet her prancing, and
+leaned in the saddle, her face full of interest.  I couldn't see a
+trace of anything to discourage me; her being on our road again looked
+favourable.  She seemed to think quite as much of that pie as I did.
+She was the finest little thoroughbred.  She understood so well, I was
+sorry I couldn't give it to her.  It made her mouth water all right,
+for she drew a deep breath that sort of quivered; but it was no use,
+she didn't get that pie.
+
+"I think it looks delicious," she said.  "Are you carrying it for
+Candace?"
+
+"No!  She gave it to me.  It's my very own."
+
+"And you're doing without it yourself to carry it to Laddie, I'll be
+bound!" cried the Princess.
+
+"I'd much rather," I said.
+
+"Do you love Laddie so dearly?" she asked.
+
+My heart was full of him right then; I forgot all about when I had the
+fever, and as I never had been taught to lie, I told her what I thought
+was the truth, and I guess it WAS:  "Best of any one in all this world!"
+
+The Princess looked across the field, where she must have seen him
+finishing the plowing, and thought that over, and I waited, sure in my
+mind, for some reason, that she would not go for a little while longer.
+
+"I have been wanting to see you," she said at last.  "In fact I think I
+came this way hoping I'd meet you.  Do you know the words to a tune
+that goes like this?"
+
+Then she began to whistle "The Merry Farmer Boy." I wish you might have
+heard the flourishes she put to it.
+
+"Of course I do," I answered.  "All of us were brought up on it."
+
+"Well, I have some slight curiosity to learn what they are," she said.
+"Would you kindly repeat them for me?"
+
+"Yes," I said.  "This is the first verse:
+
+  "'See the merry farmer boy tramp the meadows through,
+  Swing his hoe in careless joy while dashing off the dew.
+  Bobolink in maple high----'
+
+"Of course you can see for yourself that they're not.  There isn't a
+single one of them higher than a fence post.  The person who wrote the
+piece had to put it that way so high would rhyme with reply, which is
+coming in the next line."
+
+"I see!" said the Princess.
+
+  "'Bobolink in maple high, trills a note of glee
+  Farmer boy a gay reply now whistles cheerily.'
+
+
+"Then you whistle the chorus like you did it."
+
+"You do indeed!" said the Princess.  "Proceed!"
+
+  "'Then the farmer boy at noon, rests beneath the shade,
+  Listening to the ceaseless tune that's thrilling through the glade.
+  Long and loud the harvest fly winds his bugle round,
+  Long, and loud, and shrill, and high, he whistles back the sound.'"
+
+
+"He does!  He does indeed!  I haven't a doubt about that!" cried the
+Princess.  "'Long, and loud, and shrill, and high,' he whistles over
+and over the sound, until it becomes maddening.  Is that all of that
+melodious, entrancing production?"
+
+"No, evening comes yet.  The last verse goes this way:
+
+  "'When the busy day's employ, ends at dewy eve,
+  Then the happy farmer boy, doth haste his work to leave,
+  Trudging down the quiet lane, climbing o'er the hill,
+  Whistling back the changeless wail, of plaintive whip-poor-will,'--
+
+and then you do the chorus again, and if you know how well enough you
+whistle in, 'whip-poor-will,' 'til the birds will answer you.  Laddie
+often makes them."
+
+"My life!" cried the Princess.  "Was that he doing those bird cries?
+Why, I hunted, and hunted, and so did father.  We'd never seen a
+whip-poor-will.  Just fancy us!"
+
+"If you'd only looked at Laddie," I said.
+
+"My patience!" cried the Princess.  "Looked at him!  There was no place
+to look without seeing him.  And that ear-splitting thing will ring in
+my head forever, I know."
+
+"Did he whistle it too high to suit you, Princess?"
+
+"He was perfectly welcome to whistle as he chose," she said, "and also
+to plow with the carriage horses, and to bedeck them and himself with
+the modest, shrinking red tulip and yellow daffodil."
+
+Now any one knows that tulips and daffodils are NOT modest and
+shrinking.  If any flowers just blaze and scream colour clear across a
+garden, they do.  She was provoked, you could see that.
+
+"Well, he only did it to please you," I said.  "He didn't care anything
+about it.  He never plowed that way before.  But you said he mustn't
+plow at all, and he just had to plow, there was no escaping that, so he
+made it as fine and happy as possible to show you how nicely it could
+be done."
+
+"Greatly obliged, I'm sure!" cried the Princess.  "He showed me!  He
+certainly did!  And so he feels that there's 'no escaping' plowing,
+does he?"
+
+Then I knew where I was.  I'd have given every cent of mine in father's
+chest till, if mother had been in my place.  Once, for a second, I
+thought I'd ask the Princess to go with me to the house, and let mother
+tell her how it was; but if she wouldn't go, and rode away, I felt I
+couldn't endure it, and anyway, she had said she was looking for me; so
+I gripped the shingle, dug in my toes and went at her just as nearly
+like mother talked to her father as I could remember, and I'd been put
+through memory tests, and descriptive tests, nearly every night of my
+life, so I had most of it as straight as a string.
+
+"Well, you see, he CAN'T escape it," I said.  "He'd do anything in all
+this world for you that he possibly could; but there are some things no
+man CAN do."
+
+"I didn't suppose there was anything you thought Laddie couldn't do,"
+she said.
+
+"A little time back, I didn't," I answered.  "But since he took the
+carriage horses, trimmed up in flowers, and sang and whistled so
+bravely, day after day, when his heart was full of tears, why I learned
+that there was something he just COULDN'T DO; NOT TO SAVE HIS LIFE, OR
+HIS LOVE, OR EVEN TO SAVE YOU."
+
+"And of course you don't mind telling me what that is?" coaxed the
+Princess in her most wheedling tones.
+
+"Not at all!  He told our family, and I heard him tell your father.
+The thing he can't do, not even to win you, is to be shut up in a
+little office, in a city, where things roar, and smell, and nothing is
+like this----"
+
+I pointed out the orchard, hill, and meadow, so she looked where I
+showed her--looked a long time.
+
+"No, a city wouldn't be like this," she said slowly.
+
+"And that isn't even the beginning," I said.  "Maybe he could bear
+that, men have been put in prison and lived through years and years of
+it, perhaps Laddie could too; I doubt it! but anyway the worst of it is
+that he just couldn't, not even to save you, spend all the rest of his
+life trying to settle other people's old fusses.  He despises a fuss.
+Not one of us ever in our lives have been able to make him quarrel,
+even one word.  He simply won't.  And if he possibly could be made to
+by any one on earth, Leon would have done it long ago, for he can start
+a fuss with the side of a barn.  But he can't make Laddie fuss, and
+nobody can.  He NEVER would at school, or anywhere.  Once in a while if
+a man gets so overbearing that Laddie simply can't stand it, he says:
+'Now, you'll take your medicine!'  Then he pulls off his coat, and
+carefully, choosing the right spots, he just pounds the breath out of
+that man, but he never stops smiling, and when he helps him up he
+always says:  'Sorry! hope you'll excuse me, but you WOULD have it.'
+That's what he said about you, that you had to take your medicine----"
+
+I made a mistake there.  That made her too mad for any use.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "I do? I'll jolly well show the gentleman!"
+
+"Oh, you needn't take the trouble," I cried.  "He's showing you!"
+
+She just blazed like she'd break into flame.  Any one could fuss with
+her all right; but that was the last thing on earth I wanted to do.
+
+"You see he already knows about you," I explained as fast as I could
+talk, for I was getting into an awful mess.  "You see he knows that you
+want him to be a lawyer, and that he must quit plowing before he can be
+more than friends with you.  That's what he's plowing for!  If it
+wasn't for that, probably he wouldn't; be plowing at all.  He asked
+father to let him, and he borrowed mother's horses, and he hooked the
+flowers through the fence.  Every night when he comes home, he kneels
+beside mother and asks her if he is 'repulsive,' and she takes him in
+her arms and the tears roll down her cheeks and she says:  'Father has
+farmed all his life, and you know how repulsive he is.'"
+
+I ventured an upward peep.  I was doing better.  Her temper seemed to
+be cooling, but her face was a jumble.  I couldn't find any one thing
+on it that would help me, so I just stumbled ahead guessing at what to
+say.
+
+"He didn't WANT to do it.  He perfectly HATED it.  Those fields were
+his Waterloo.  Every furrow was a FIGHT, but he was FORCED to show you."
+
+"Exactly WHAT was he trying to show me?"
+
+"I can think of three things he told me," I answered.  "That plowing
+could be so managed as not to disfigure the landscape----"
+
+"The dunce!" she said.
+
+"That he could plow or do dirtier work, and not be repulsive----"
+
+"The idiot!" she said.
+
+"That if he came over there, and plowed right under your nose, when
+you'd told him he mustn't, or he couldn't be more than friends; and
+when you knew that he'd much rather die and be laid beside the little
+sisters up there in the cemetery than to NOT be more than friends, why,
+you'd see, if he did THAT, he couldn't help it, that he just MUST.
+That he was FORCED----"
+
+"The soldier!" she said.
+
+"Oh Princess, he didn't want to!" I cried.  "He tells me secrets he
+doesn't any one else, unless you.  He told me how he hated it; but he
+just had to do it."
+
+"Do you know WHY?"
+
+"Of course!  It's the way he's MADE!  Father is like that!  He has
+chances to live in cities, make big business deals, and go to the
+legislature at Indianapolis; I've seen his letters from his friend
+Oliver P. Morton, our Governor, you know; they're in his chest till
+now; but father can't do it, because he is made so he stays at home and
+works for us, and this farm, and township, and county where he belongs.
+He says if all men will do that the millennium will come to-morrow.  I
+'spose you know what the millennium is?"
+
+"I do!" said the Princess.  "But I don't know what your father and his
+friend Oliver P. Morton have to do with Laddie."
+
+"Why, everything on earth!  Laddie is father's son, you see, and he is
+made like father.  None of our other boys is.  Not one of them loves
+land.  Leon is going away as quick as ever he finishes college; but the
+more you educate Laddie, the better he likes to make things grow, the
+more he loves to make the world beautiful, to be kind to every one, to
+gentle animals--why, the biggest fight he ever had, the man he whipped
+'til he most couldn't bring him back again, was one who kicked his
+horse in the stomach.  Gee, I thought he'd killed him!  Laddie did too
+for a while, but he only said the man deserved it."
+
+"And so he did!" cried the Princess angrily.  "How beastly!"
+
+"That's one reason Laddie sticks so close to land.  He says he doesn't
+meet nearly so many two-legged beasts in the country.  Almost every
+time he goes to town he either gets into a fight or he sees something
+that makes him fighting mad.  Princess, you think this beautiful, don't
+you?"
+
+I just pointed anywhere.  All the world was in it that morning.  You
+couldn't look right or left and not see lovely places, hear music, and
+smell flowers.
+
+"Yes!  It is altogether wonderful!" she said.
+
+"Would you like to live among this all your life, and have your plans
+made to fix you a place even nicer, and then be forced to leave it and
+go to a little room in the city, and make all the money you earned off
+of how much other men fight over business, and land and such perfectly
+awful things, that they always have to be whispered when Jerry tells
+about them?  Would you?"
+
+"You little dunce!" she cried.
+
+"I know I'm a fool.  I know I'm not telling you a single thing I
+should!  Maybe I'm hurting Laddie far more than I'm helping him, and if
+I am, I wish I would die before I see him; but oh!  Princess, I'm
+trying with all my might to make you understand how he feels.  He WANTS
+to do every least thing you'd like him to.  He will, almost any thing
+else in the world, he would this--he would in a minute, but he just
+CAN'T.  All of us know he can't!  If you'd lived with him since he was
+little and always had known him, you wouldn't ask him to; you wouldn't
+want him to!  You don't know what you're doing!  Mother says you don't!
+You'll kill him if you send him to the city to live, you just will!
+You are doing it now!  He's getting thinner and whiter every day.
+Don't!  Oh please don't do it!"
+
+The Princess was looking at the world.  She was gazing at it so
+dazed-like she seemed to be surprised at what she saw.  She acted as if
+she'd never really seen it before.  She looked and she looked.  She
+even turned her horse a full circle to see all of it, and she went
+around slowly.  I stepped from one foot to the other and sweat; but I
+kept quiet and let her look.  At last when she came around, she glanced
+down at me, and she was all melted, and lovely as any one you ever saw,
+exactly like Shelley at Christmas, and she said:  "I don't think I ever
+saw the world before.  I don't know that I'm so crazy about a city
+myself, and I perfectly hate lawyers.  Come to thing of it, a lawyer
+helped work ruin in our family, and I never have believed, I never will
+believe----"
+
+She stopped talking and began looking again.  I gave her all the time
+she needed.  I was just straining to be wise, for mother says it takes
+the very wisest person there is to know when to talk, and when to keep
+still.  As I figured it, now was the time not to say another word until
+she made up her mind about what I had told her already.  If Pryors
+didn't know what we thought of them by that time, it wasn't mother's
+fault or mine.  As she studied things over she kept on looking.  What
+she saw seemed to be doing her a world of good.  Her face showed it
+every second plainer and plainer.  Pretty soon it began to look like
+she was going to come through as Amos Hurd did when he was redeemed.
+Then, before my very eyes, it happened!  I don't know how I ever held
+on to the pie or kept from shouting, "Praise the Lord!" as father does
+at the Meeting House when he is happiest.  Then she leaned toward me
+all wavery, and shining eyed, and bloomful, and said:  "Did you ever
+hurt Laddie's feelings, and make him angry and sad?"
+
+"I'm sure I never did," I answered.
+
+"But suppose you had!  What would you do?"
+
+"Do?  Why, I'd go to him on the run, and I'd tell him I never intended
+to hurt his feelings, and how sorry I was, and I'd give him the very
+best kiss I could."
+
+The Princess stroked Maud's neck a long time and thought while she
+studied our farm, theirs beyond it, and at the last, the far field
+where Laddie was plowing.  She thought, and thought, and afraid to
+cheep, I stood gripping the shingle and waited.  Finally she said:
+"The last time Laddie was at our house, I said to him those things he
+repeated to you.  He went away at once, hurt and disappointed.  Now, if
+you like, along with your precious pie, you may carry him this message
+from me.  You may tell him that I said I am sorry!"
+
+I could have cried "Glory!" and danced and shouted there in the road,
+but I didn't.  It was no time to lose my head.  That was all so fine
+and splendid, as far as it went, but it didn't quite cover the case.  I
+never could have done it for myself; but for Laddie I would venture
+anything, so I looked her in the eyes, straight as a dart, and said:
+"He'd want the kiss too, Princess!"
+
+You could see her stiffen in the saddle and her fingers grip the reins,
+but I kept on staring right into her eyes.
+
+"I could come up, you know," I offered.
+
+A dull red flamed in her cheeks and her lips closed tight.  One second
+she sat very still, then a dancing light leaped sparkling into her
+eyes; a flock of dimples chased each other around her lips like
+swallows circling their homing place at twilight.
+
+"What about that wonderful pie?" she asked me.
+
+I ran to the nearest fence corner, and laid the shingle on the gnarled
+roots of a Johnny Appleseed apple tree.  Then I set one foot on the
+arch of the Princess' instep and held up my hands.  One second I
+thought she would not lift me, the next I was on her level and her lips
+met mine in a touch like velvet woven from threads of flame.  Then with
+a turn of her stout little wrist, she dropped me, and a streak went up
+our road.  Nothing so amazing and so important ever had happened to me.
+It was an occasion that demanded something unusual.  To cry, "Praise
+the Lord!" was only to repeat an hourly phrase at our house; this
+demanded something out of the ordinary, so I said just exactly as
+father did the day the brown mare balked with the last load of seed
+clover, when a big storm was breaking--"Jupiter Ammon!"
+
+When I had calmed down so I could, I climbed the fence, and reached
+through a crack for the pie.  As I followed the cool, damp furrow, and
+Laddie's whistle, clear as the lark's above the wheat, thrilled me, I
+was almost insane with joy.  Just joy!  Pure joy!  Oh what a good world
+it was!--most of the time!  Most of the time!  Of course, there WERE
+Paget men in it.  But anyway, THIS couldn't be beaten.  I had a message
+for Laddie from the Princess that would send him to the seventh heaven,
+wherever that was; no one at our house spent any time thinking farther
+than the first one.  I had her kiss, that I didn't know what would do
+to him, and I also had a big piece of juicy rhubarb pie not yet
+entirely cold.  If that didn't wipe out the trouble I had made showing
+the old crest thing, nothing ever could.  I knew even then, that men
+were pretty hard to satisfy, but I was quite certain that Laddie would
+be satisfied that morning.  As I hurried along I wondered whether it
+would be better to give him my gift first, or the Princess'.  I decided
+that joy would keep, while the pie was cold enough, with all the time I
+had stopped; and if I told him about her first, maybe he wouldn't touch
+it at all, and it wasn't so easy as it looked to carry it to him and
+never even once stick in my finger for the tiniest lick--joy would
+keep; but I was going to feed him; so with shining face, I offered the
+pie and stood back to see just how happy I could get.
+
+"Mother send it?" asked Laddie.
+
+People were curious that morning, as if I had a habit of stealing pie.
+I only took pieces of cut ones from the cellar when mother didn't care.
+So I explained again that Candace gave it to me, and I was free to
+bring it.
+
+"Oh I see!" said Laddie.
+
+After nearly two weeks of work, the grays had sobered down enough to
+stand without tying; so he wound the lines around the plow handle, sat
+on the beam, and laid aside his hat, having a fresh flower in the band.
+Once he started a thing, he just simply wouldn't give up.  He
+unbuttoned his neckband until I could see his throat where it was white
+like a woman's, took out his knife and ate that pie.  Of course we knew
+better than to use a knife at the table, but there was no other way in
+the field.  He ate that pie, slowly and deliberately, and between bites
+he talked.  I watched him with a wide grin, wondering what in this
+world he WOULD say, in a minute.  I don't think I ever had quite such a
+good time in all my life before, and I never expect to again.  He was
+saying:  "Talk about nectar and ambrosia!  Talk about the feasts of
+Lucullus!  Talk about food for the Gods!"
+
+I put on his hat, sat on the ground in front of him, and was the
+happiest girl in the world, of that I am quite sure.  When the last
+morsel was finished, Laddie looked at me steadily.
+
+"I wonder," he said, "I wonder if there's another man in the world who
+is blest with quite such a loving, unselfish little sister as mine?"
+Then he answered himself:  "No!  By all the Gods, ant half-Gods, I
+swear it--No!"
+
+It was grand as a Fourth of July oration or the most exciting part when
+the Bishop dedicated our church.  I couldn't hold in another second, I
+could hear my heart beat.
+
+"Oh Laddie!" I shouted, jumping up, "that pie is only the beginning of
+the good things I have brought you.  I have a message, and a gift
+besides, Laddie!"
+
+"A message and a gift?" Laddie repeated.  "What!  More?"
+
+"Truly I have a message and a gift for you," I cried, "and Laddie--they
+are from the Princess!"
+
+His eyes raised to mine now, and slowly he turned Sabethany-like.
+
+"From the Princess!" he exclaimed.  "A message and a gift for me,
+Little Sister?  You never would let Leon put you up to serve me a
+trick?"
+
+That hurt.  He should have KNOWN I wouldn't, and besides, "Leon feels
+just as badly about this as any of us," I said.  "Have you forgotten he
+offered to plow, and let you do the clean, easy work?"
+
+"Forgive me!  I'm overanxious," said Laddie, his arms reaching for me.
+"Go on and tell carefully, and if you truly love me, don't make a
+mistake!"
+
+Crowding close, my arms around his neck, his crisp hair against my
+lips, I whispered my story softly, for this was such a fine and
+splendid secret, that not even the shining blackbirds, and the pert
+robins in the furrows were going to get to hear a word of it.  Before I
+had finished Laddie was breathing as Flos does when he races her the
+limit.  He sat motionless for a long time, while over his face slowly
+crept a beauty that surpassed that of Apollo in his Greek book.
+
+"And her gift?"
+
+It was only a breath.
+
+"She helped me up, and she sent you this," I answered.
+
+Then I set my lips on his, and held them there a second, trying my
+level best to give him her very kiss, but of course I could only try.
+
+"Oh, Laddie," I cried.  "Her eyes were like when stars shine down in
+our well!  Her cheeks were like mother's damask roses!  She smelled
+like flowers, and when her lips touched mine little stickers went all
+over me!"
+
+Then Laddie's arms closed around me and I thought sure every bone in my
+body was going to be broken; when he finished there wasn't a trace of
+that kiss left for me.  Remembering it would be all I'd ever have.  It
+made me see what would have happened to the Princess if she had been
+there; and it was an awful pity for her to miss it, because he'd sober
+down a lot before he reached her, but I was sure as shooting that he
+wouldn't be so crazy as to kiss her hands again.  Peter wasn't a
+patching to him!
+
+That night Laddie rode to Pryors'.  When he brought Flos to the gate
+you could see the shadow of your face on her shining flank; her mane
+and tail were like ravelled silk, her hoofs bright as polished horn,
+and her muzzle was clean as a ribbon.  I broke one of those rank green
+sprouts from the snowball bush and brushed away the flies, so she
+wouldn't fret, stamp, and throw dust on herself.  Then Laddie came,
+fresh from a tubbing, starched linen, dressed in his new riding suit,
+and wearing top hat and gauntlets.  He looked the very handsomest I
+ever had seen him; and at the same time, he seemed trembling with
+tenderness, and bursting with power.  Goodness sake!  I bet the
+Princess took one good look and "came down" like Davy Crockett's coon.
+Mother was on his arm and she walked clear to the gate with him.
+
+"LADDIE, ARE YOU SURE ENOUGH TO GO?" I heard her ask him whisper-like.
+
+"SURE AS DEATH!" Laddie answered.
+
+Mother looked, and she had to see how it was with him; no doubt she saw
+more than I did from having been through it herself, so she smiled kind
+of a half-sad, half-glad smile.  Then she turned to her damask rose
+bush, the one Lucy brought her from the city, and that she was so
+precious about, that none of us dared touch it, and she searched all
+over it and carefully selected the most perfect rose.  When she
+borrowed Laddie's knife and cut the stem as long as my arm, I knew
+exactly how great and solemn the occasion was; for always before about
+six inches had been her limit.  She held it toward him, smiling bravely
+and beautifully, but the tears were running straight down her cheeks.
+
+"Take it to her," she said.  "I think, my son, it is very like."
+
+Laddie took her in his arms and wiped away the tears; he told her
+everything would come out all right about God, and the mystery, even.
+Then he picked me clear off the ground, and he tried to see how near he
+could come to cracking every bone in my body without really doing it,
+and he kissed me over and over.  It hadn't been so easy, but I guess
+you'll admit that paid.  Then he rode away with the damask rose waving
+over his heart.  Mother and I stood beside the hitching rack and looked
+after him, with our arms tight around each other while we tried to see
+which one could bawl the hardest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+The Homing Pigeon
+
+  "A millstone and the human heart,
+  Are ever driven round,
+  And if they've nothing else to grind,
+  They must themselves be ground."
+
+
+It seemed to me that my mother was the person who really could have
+been excused for having heart trouble.  The more I watched her, the
+more I wondered that she didn't.  There was her own life, the one she
+and father led, where everything went exactly as she wanted it to; and
+if there had been only themselves to think of, no people on earth could
+have lived happier, unless the pain she sometimes suffered made them
+trouble, and I don't think it would, for neither of them were to blame
+for that.  They couldn't help it.  They just had it to stand, and fight
+the stiffest they could to cure it, and mother always said she was
+better; every single time any one asked, she was better.  I hoped soon
+it would all be gone.  Then they could have been happy for sure, if
+some of us hadn't popped up and kept them in hot water all the time.
+
+I can't tell you about Laddie when he came back from Pryors'.  He tore
+down the house, then tore it up, and then threw around the pieces, and
+none of us cared.  Every one was just laughing, shouting, and every bit
+as pleased as he was, while I was the Queen Bee.  Laddie said so,
+himself, and if he didn't know, no one did.  Pryors had been lovely to
+him.  When mother asked him how he made it, he answered:  "I rode over,
+picked up the Princess and helped myself.  After I finished, I
+remembered the little unnecessary formality of asking her to marry me;
+and she said right out loud that she WOULD.  When I had time for them,
+I reached Father and Mother Pryor, and maybe it doesn't show, but
+somewhere on my person I carry their blessing, genially and heartily
+given, I am proud to state.  Now, I'm only needing yours, to make me a
+king among men."
+
+They gave it quite as willingly, I am sure, although you could see
+mother scringe when Laddie said "Father and Mother Pryor."  I knew why.
+She adored Laddie, like the Bible says you must adore the Almighty.
+From a tiny baby Laddie had taken care of her.  He used to go back,
+take her hand, and try to help her over rough places while he still
+wore dresses.  Straight on, he had been like that; always seeing when
+there was too much work and trying to shield her; always knowing when a
+pain was coming and fighting to head it off; always remembering the
+things the others forgot, going to her last at night, and his face
+against hers on her pillow the first in the morning, to learn how she
+was before he left the house.  If you were the mother of a man like
+that, how would you like to hear him call some one else mother, and
+have the word slip from his tongue so slick you could see he didn't
+even realize that he had used it?  The answer would be, if you were
+honest, that you wouldn't have liked it any more than she did.  She
+knew he had to go.  She wanted him to be happy.  She was as sure of the
+man he was going to be as she was sure of the mercy of God.  That is
+the strongest way I know to tell it.  She was unshakably sure of the
+mercy of God, but I wasn't.  There were times when it seemed as if He
+couldn't hear the most powerful prayer you could pray, and when instead
+of mercy, you seemed to get the last torment that could be piled on.
+Take right now.  Laddie was happy, and all of us were, in a way; and in
+another we were almost stiff with misery.
+
+I dreaded his leaving us so, I would slip to the hawk oak and cry
+myself sick, more than once; whether any of the others were that big
+babies I don't know; but anyway, THEY were not his Little Sister.  I
+was.  I always had been.  I always would be, for that matter; but there
+was going to be a mighty big difference.  I had the poor comfort that
+I'd done the thing myself.  Maybe if it hadn't been for stopping the
+Princess when I took him that pie, they never would have made up, and
+she might have gone across the sea and stayed there.  Maybe she'd go
+yet, as mysteriously as she had come, and take him along.  Sometimes I
+almost wished I hadn't tried to help him; but of course I didn't
+really.  Then, too, I had sense enough to know that loving each other
+as they did, they wouldn't live on that close together for years and
+years, and not find a way to make up for themselves, like they had at
+the start.
+
+I liked Laddie saying I had made his happiness for him; but I wasn't
+such a fool that I didn't know he could have made it for himself just
+as well, and no doubt better.  So everything was all right with Laddie;
+and what happened to us, the day he rode away for the last time, when
+he went to stay--what happened to us, then, was our affair.  We had to
+take it, but every one of us dreaded it, while mother didn't know how
+to bear it, and neither did I.  Once I said to her:  "Mother, when
+Laddie goes we'll just have to make it up to each other the best we
+can, won't we?"
+
+"Oh my soul, child!" she cried, staring at me so surprised-like.  "Why,
+how unspeakably selfish I have been!  No little lost sheep ever ran
+this farm so desolate as you will be without your brother.  Forgive me
+baby, and come here!"
+
+Gee, but we did cry it out together!  The God she believed in has wiped
+away her tears long ago; this minute I can scarcely see the paper for
+mine.  If you could call anything happiness, that was mixed with
+feeling like that, why, then, we were happy about Laddie.  But from
+things I heard father and mother say, I knew they could have borne his
+going away, and felt a trifle better than they did.  I was quite sure
+they had stopped thinking that he was going to lose his soul, but they
+couldn't help feeling so long as that old mystery hung over Pryors that
+he might get into trouble through it.  Father said if it hadn't been
+for Mr. Pryor's stubborn and perverted notions about God, he would like
+the man immensely, and love to be friends; and if Laddie married into
+the family we would have to be as friendly as we could anyway.  He said
+he had such a high opinion of Mr. Pryor's integrity that he didn't
+believe he'd encourage Laddie to enter his family if it would involve
+the boy in serious trouble.  Mother didn't know.  Anyway, the thing was
+done, and by fall, no doubt, Laddie would leave us.
+
+Just when we were trying to keep a stiff upper lip before him, and
+whistling as hard as ever he had, to brace our courage, a letter came
+for mother from the head of the music school Shelley attended, saying
+she was no longer fit for work, so she was being sent home at once, and
+they would advise us to consult a specialist immediately.  Mother sat
+and stared at father, and father went to hitch the horses to drive to
+Groveville.
+
+There's only one other day of my life that stands out as clearly as
+that.  The house was clean as we could make it.  I finished feeding
+early, and had most of the time to myself.  I went down to the Big
+Hill, and followed the top of it to our woods.  Then I turned around,
+and started toward the road, just idling.  If I saw a lovely spot I sat
+down and watched all around me to see if a Fairy really would go
+slipping past, or lie asleep under a leaf.  I peeked and peered softly,
+going from spot to spot, watching everything.  Sometimes I hung over
+the water, and studied tiny little fish with red, yellow, and blue on
+them, bright as flowers.  The dragonflies would alight right on me, and
+some wore bright blue markings and some blood red.  There was a blue
+beetle, a beautiful green fly, and how the blue wasps did flip, flirt
+and glint in the light.  So did the blackbirds and the redwings.  That
+embankment was left especially to shade the water, and to feed the
+birds.  Every foot of it was covered with alders, wild cherry,
+hazelbush, mulberries, everything having a berry or nut.  There were
+several scrub apple trees, many red haws, the wild strawberries spread
+in big beds in places, and some of them were colouring.
+
+Wild flowers grew everywhere, great beds were blue with calamus, and
+the birds flocked in companies to drive away the water blacksnakes that
+often found nests, and liked eggs and bird babies.  When I came to the
+road at last, the sun was around so the big oak on the top of the hill
+threw its shadow across the bridge, and I lay along one edge and
+watched the creek bottom, or else I sat up so the water flowed over my
+feet, and looked at the embankment and the sky.  In a way, it was the
+most peculiar day of my life.  I had plenty to think of, but I never
+thought at all.  I only lived.  I sat watching the world go past
+through a sort of golden haze the sun made.  When a pair of kingbirds
+and three crows chased one of my hawks pell-mell across the sky, I
+looked on and didn't give a cent what happened.  When a big blacksnake
+darted its head through sweet grass and cattails, and caught a frog
+that had climbed on a mossy stone in the shade to dine on flies, I let
+it go.  Any other time I would have hunted a stick and made the snake
+let loose.  To-day I just sat there and let things happen as they did.
+
+At last I wandered up the road, climbed the back garden fence, and sat
+on the board at the edge of a flowerbed, and to-day, I could tell to
+the last butterfly about that garden: what was in bloom, how far things
+had grown, and what happened.  Bobby flew under the Bartlett pear tree
+and crowed for me, but I never called him.  I sat there and lived on,
+and mostly watched the bees tumble over the bluebells.  They were
+almost ready to be cut to put in the buttered tumblers for perfume,
+like mother made for us.  Then I went into the house and looked at
+Grace Greenwood, but I didn't take her along.  Mother came past and
+gave me a piece of stiff yellow brocaded silk as lovely as I ever had
+seen, enough for a dress skirt; and a hand-embroidered chemise sleeve
+that only needed a band and a button to make a petticoat for a Queen
+doll, but I laid them away and wandered into the orchard.
+
+I dragged my bare feet through the warm grass, and finally sat under
+the beet red peach tree.  If ever I seemed sort of lost and sorry for
+myself, that was a good place to go; it was so easy to feel abused
+there because you didn't dare touch those peaches.  Fluffy baby
+chickens were running around, but I didn't care; there was more than a
+bird for every tree, bluebirds especially; they just loved us and came
+early and stayed late, and grew so friendly they nested all over the
+wood house, smoke house, and any place we fixed for them, and in every
+hollow apple limb.  Bobby came again, but I didn't pay any attention to
+him.
+
+Then I heard the carriage cross the bridge.  I knew when it was father,
+every single time his team touched the first plank.  So I ran like an
+Indian, and shinned up a cedar tree, scratching myself until I bled.
+Away up I stood on a limb, held to the tree and waited.  Father drove
+to the gate, and mother came out, with May, Candace, and Leon
+following.  When Shelley touched the ground and straightened, any other
+tree except a spruce having limbs to hold me up, I would have fallen
+from it.  She looked exactly as if she had turned to tombstone with
+eyes and hair alive.  She stopped a second to brush a little kiss
+across mother's lips, to the others she said without even glancing at
+them:  "Oh do let me lie down a minute!  The motion of that train made
+me sick."
+
+Well, I should say it did!  I quit living, and began thinking in a
+hooray, and so did every one else at our house.  Once I had been sick
+and queened it over them for a while, now all of us strained ourselves
+trying to wait on Shelley; but she wouldn't have it.  She only said she
+was tired to death, to let her rest, and she turned her face to the
+wall and lay there.  Once she said she never wanted to see a city again
+so long as she lived.  When mother told her about Laddie and the
+Princess to try to interest her, she never said a word; I doubted if
+she even listened.  Father and mother looked at each other, when they
+thought no one would see, and their eyes sent big, anxious questions
+flashing back and forth.  I made up my mind I'd keep awake that night
+and hear what they said, if I had to take pins to bed with me and stick
+myself.
+
+Once mother said to Shelley that she was going to send for Dr. Fenner,
+and she answered:  "All right, if you need him.  Don't you dare for me!
+I'll not see him.  All I want is a little peace and rest."
+
+The idea!  Not one of us ever had spoken to mother like that before in
+all our born days.  I held my breath to see what she would do, but she
+didn't seem to have heard it, or to notice how rude it had been.  Well,
+THAT told about as plain as anything what we had on our hands.  I
+wandered around and NOW there was no trouble about thinking things.
+They came in such a jumble I could get no sense from them; but one big
+black thought came over, and over, and over, and wouldn't be put away.
+It just stood, stayed, forced you, and made you look it in the face.
+If Shelley weren't stopped quickly she was going up on the hill with
+the little fever and whooping cough sisters.  There it was!  You could
+try to think other things, to play, to work, to talk it down in the
+pulpit, to sing it out in a tree, to slide down the haystack away from
+it--there it stayed!  And every glimpse you had of Shelley made it
+surer.
+
+There was no trouble about keeping awake that night; I couldn't sleep.
+I stood at the window and looked down the Big Hill through the soft
+white moonlight, and thought about it, and then I thought of mother.  I
+guess NOW you see what kind of things mothers have to face.  All day
+she had gone around doing her work, every few minutes suggesting some
+new thing for one of us to try, or trying it herself; all day she had
+talked and laughed, and when Sarah Hood came she told her she thought
+Shelley must be bilious, that she had travelled all night and was
+sleeping: but she would be up the first place she went, and then they
+talked all over creation and Mrs. Hood went home and never remembered
+that she hadn't seen Shelley.  She worked Mrs. Freshett off the same
+way, but you could see she was almost too tired to do it, so by night
+she was nearly as white as Shelley, yet keeping things going.  When the
+house was still, she came into the room, and stood at the window as I
+had, until father entered, then she turned, and I could see they were
+staring at each other in the moonlight, as they had all day.
+
+"She's sick?" asked father, at last.
+
+"Heartsick!" said mother bitterly.
+
+"We'd better have Doc come?"
+
+"She says she isn't sick, and she won't see him."
+
+"She will if I put my foot down."
+
+"Best not, Paul!  She'll feel better soon.  She's so young!  She must
+get over it."
+
+They were silent for a long time and then father asked in a harsh
+whisper:  "Ruth, can she possibly have brought us to shame?"
+
+"God forbid!" cried mother.  "Let us pray."
+
+Then those two people knelt on each side of that bed, and I could hear
+half the words they muttered, until I was wild enough to scream.  I
+wished with all my heart that I hadn't listened.  I had always known it
+was no nice way.  I must have gone to sleep after a while, but when I
+woke up I was still thinking about it, and to save me, I couldn't quit.
+All day, wherever I went, that question of father's kept going over in
+my head.  I thought about it until I was almost crazy, and I just
+couldn't see where anything about shame came in.
+
+She was only mistaken.  She THOUGHT he loved her, and he didn't.  She
+never could have been so bloomy, so filled with song, laughter, and
+lovely like she was, if she hadn't truly believed with all her heart
+that he loved her.  Of course it would almost finish her to give him
+up, when she felt like that; and maybe she did wrong to let herself
+care so much, before she was sure about him; but that would only be
+foolish, there wouldn't be even a shadow of shame about it.  Besides,
+Laddie had done exactly the same thing.  He loved the Princess until it
+nearly killed him when he thought he had to give her up, and he loved
+her as hard as ever he could, when he hadn't an idea whether she would
+love him back, even a tiny speck; and the person who wasn't foolish,
+and never would be, was Laddie.
+
+The more I thought, the worse I got worked up, and I couldn't see how
+Shelley was to blame for anything at all.  Love just came to her, like
+it came to Laddie.  She would hardly have knelt down and beseeched the
+Lord to make her fall in love with a man she scarcely knew, and when
+she couldn't be sure what he was going to do about it--not the Lord,
+the man, I mean.  You could see for yourself she wouldn't do that.  I
+finished my work, and then I tried to do things for her, and she
+wouldn't let me.  Mother told me to ask her to make Grace Greenwood the
+dress she had promised when I was so sick; so I took the Scotch plaid
+to her and reminded her, and she pushed me away and said:  "Some time!"
+
+I even got Grace, and showed Shelley the spills on her dress, and how
+badly she needed a new one, but she never looked, she said: "Oh bother!
+My head aches.  Do let me be!"
+
+Mother was listening.  I could see her standing outside the door.
+
+She motioned to me to come away, so I went to her and she was white as
+Shelley.  She was sick too, she couldn't say a word for a minute, but
+after a while she kissed me, I could feel the quivers in her lips, and
+she said stifflike:  "Never mind, she'll be better soon, then she will!
+Run play now!"
+
+Sometimes I wandered around looking at things and living dully.  I
+didn't try to study out anything, but I must have watched closer than I
+knew, for every single thing I saw then, over that whole farm, I can
+shut my eyes and see to-day; everything, from the old hawk tilting his
+tail to steer him in soaring, to a snake catching field mice in the
+grass, lichens on the fence, flowers, butterflies, every single thing.
+Mostly I sat to watch something that promised to become interesting,
+and before I knew it, I was back on the shame question.  That's the
+most dreadful word in the dictionary.  There's something about it that
+makes your face burn, only to have it in your mind.
+
+Laddie said he never had met any man who knew the origin of more words
+than father.  He could even tell every clip what nationality a man was
+from his name.  Hundreds of time I have heard him say to stranger
+people, "From your name you'd be of Scotch extraction," or Irish, or
+whatever it was, and every time the person he was talking with would
+say, "Yes."  Some day away out in the field, alone, I thought I would
+ask him what people first used the word "shame," and just exactly what
+it did mean, and what the things were that you could do that would make
+the people who loved you until they would die for you, ashamed of you.
+
+Thinking about that and planning out what it was that I wanted to know,
+gave me another idea.  Why not ask her?  She was the only one who knew
+what she had done away there in the city, alone among strangers; I
+wasn't sure whether all the music a girl could learn was worth letting
+her take the chances she would have to in a big city.  From the way
+Laddie and father hated them, they were a poor place for men, and they
+must have been much worse for girls.  Shelley knew, why not ask HER?
+Maybe I could coax her to tell me, and it would make my life much
+easier to know; and only think what was going on in father's and
+mother's heads and hearts, when I felt that way, and didn't even know
+what there was to be ashamed about.  She wouldn't any more than slap
+me; and sick as she was, I made up my mind not to get angry at her, or
+ever to tell, if she did.  I'd rather have her hit me when she was so
+sick than to have Sally beat me until she couldn't strike another lick,
+just because she was angry.  But I forgave her that, and I was never
+going to think of it again--only I did.
+
+Mother kept sending Leon to the post-office, and she met him at the
+gate half the time herself and fairly snatched the letters from his
+hands.  Hum!  She couldn't pull the wool over my eyes.  I knew she
+hoped somehow, some way, there would be a big fat one with Paget, Legal
+Adviser, or whatever a Chicago lawyer puts on his envelopes.  Jerry's
+just say:  "Attorney at Law."
+
+No letter ever came that had Paget in the corner, or anything happened
+that did Shelley any good.  Far otherwise!  Just before supper Leon
+came from Groveville one evening, and all of us could see at a glance
+that he had been crying like a baby.  He had wiped up, and was trying
+to hold in, but he was killed, next.  I nearly said, "Well, for
+heaven's sake, another!" when I saw him.  He slammed down a big, long
+envelope, having printing on it, before father, and glared at it as if
+he wanted to tear it to smithereens, and he said:  "If you want to know
+why it looks like that, I buried it under a stone once; but I had to go
+back, and then I threw it as far as I could send it, into Ditton's
+gully, but after a while I hunted it up again!"
+
+Then he keeled over on the couch mother keeps for her in the
+dining-room, and sobbed until he looked like he'd come apart.
+
+Of course all of us knew exactly what that letter was from the way he
+acted.  Mother had told him, time and again, not to set his heart so;
+father had, too and Laddie, and every one of us, but that little
+half-Arab, half-Kentucky mare was the worst temptation a man who loved
+horses could possibly have; and while father and mother stopped at good
+work horses, and matched roadsters for the carriage, they managed to
+prize and tend them so that every one of us had been born horse-crazy,
+and we had been allowed to ride, care for, and taught to love horses
+all our lives.  Treat a horse ugly, and we'd have gone on the thrashing
+floor ourselves.
+
+Father laid the letter face down, his hand on it, and shook his head.
+"This is too bad!" he said.  "It's a burning shame, but the money, the
+exact amount, was taken from a farmer in Medina County, Ohio, by a
+traveller he sheltered a few days, because he complained of a bad foot.
+The description of the man who robbed us is perfect.  The money was
+from the sale of some prize cattle.  It will have to be returned."
+
+"Just let me see the letter a minute," said Laddie.
+
+He read it over thoughtfully.  He was long enough about it to have gone
+over it three times; then he looked at Leon, and his forehead creased
+in a deep frown.  The tears slid down mother's cheeks, but she didn't
+know it, or else she'd have wiped them away.  She was never mussy about
+the least little thing.
+
+"Father!" she said.  "Father----!"
+
+That was as far as she could go.
+
+"The man must have his money," said father, "but we'll look into
+this----"
+
+He pushed back the plates and tablecloth, and cleared his end of the
+table.  Mother never budged to stack the plates, or straighten the
+cloth so it wouldn't be wrinkled.  Then father brought his big account
+book from the black walnut chest in our room, some little books, and
+papers, sharpened a pencil and began going up and down the columns and
+picking out figures here and there that he set on a piece of paper.  I
+never had seen him look either old or tired before; but he did then.
+Mother noticed it too, for her lips tightened, she lifted her head,
+wiped her eyes, and pretended that she felt better.  Laddie said
+something about doing the feeding, and slipped out.  Just then Shelley
+came into the room, stopped, and looked questioningly at us.  Her eyes
+opened wide, and she stared hard at Leon.
+
+"Why what ails him?" she asked mother.
+
+"You remember what I wrote you about a man who robbed us, and the money
+Leon was to have, provided no owner was found in a reasonable time; and
+the horse the boy had planned to buy, and how he had been going to
+Pryors'--Oh, I think he's slipped over there once a day, and often
+three times, all this spring!  Mr. Pryor encouraged him, let him take
+his older horses to practise on, even went out and taught him
+cross-country riding himself----"
+
+"I remember!" said Shelley.
+
+Leon sobbed out loud.  Shelley crossed the room swiftly, dropped beside
+him and whispered something in his ear.  Quick as a shot his arm
+reached out and went around her.  She hid her head deep in the pillow
+beside him, and they went to pieces together.  Clear to pieces!  Pretty
+soon father had to take off his glasses and wipe them so he could see
+the figures.  Mother took one long look at him, a short one at Leon and
+Shelley, then she arose, her voice as even and smooth, and she said:
+"While you figure, father, I'll see about supper.  I have tried to plan
+an extra good one this evening."
+
+She left the room.  NOW, I guess you know about all I can tell you of
+mother!  I can't see that there's a thing left.  That was the kind of
+soldier she was.  Talk about Crusaders, and a good fight!  All the
+blood of battle in our family wasn't on father's side, not by any
+means!  The Dutch could fight too!
+
+Father's pencil scraped a little, a bee that had slipped in buzzed over
+the apple butter, while the clock ticked as if it used a hammer.  It
+was so loud one wanted to pitch it from the window.  May and I sat
+still as mice when the cat is near.  Candace couldn't keep away from
+the kitchen door to save her, and where mother went I hadn't an idea,
+but she wasn't getting an extra good supper.  Shelley and Leon were
+quieter now.  May nudged me, and I saw that his arm around her was
+gripping her tight, while her hand on his head was patting him and
+fingering his hair.
+
+Ca-lumph!  Ca-lumph! came the funniest sound right on the stone walk
+leading to the east door, then a shrill whicker that made father drop
+his pencil.  Leon was on his feet, Shelley beside him, while at the
+door stood Laddie grinning as if his face would split, and with her
+forefeet on the step and her nose in the room, stood the prettiest, the
+very prettiest horse I ever saw.  She was sticking her nose toward
+Leon, whinnying softly, as she lifted one foot, and if Laddie hadn't
+backed her, she would have walked right into the dining-room.
+
+"Come on, Weiscope, she's yours!" said Laddie.  "Take her to the barn,
+and put her in one of the cow stalls, until we fix a place for her."
+
+Leon crossed the room, but he never touched the horse.  He threw his
+arms around Laddie's neck.
+
+"Son!  Son!  Haven't you let your feelings run away with you?  What
+does this mean?" asked father sternly.
+
+"There's nothing remarkable in a big six-footer like me buying a
+horse," said Laddie.  "I expect to purchase a number soon, and without
+a cent to pay, in the bargain.  I contracted to give five hundred
+dollars for this mare.  She is worth more; but that should be
+satisfactory all around.  I am going to earn it by putting five of Mr.
+Pryor's fancy, pedigreed horses in shape for market, taking them
+personally, and selling them to men fit to own and handle real horses.
+I get one hundred each, and my expenses for the job.  I'll have as much
+fun doing it as I ever had at anything.  It suits me far better than
+plowing, even."
+
+Mother entered the room at a sweep, and pushed Leon aside.
+
+"Oh you man of my heart!" she cried.  "You man after my own heart!"
+
+Laddie bent and kissed her, holding her tight as he looked over her
+head at father.
+
+"It's all right, of course?" he said.
+
+"I never have known of anything quite so altogether right," said
+father.  "Thank you, lad, and God bless you!"
+
+He took Laddie's hand, and almost lifted him from the floor, then he
+wiped his glasses, gathered up his books with a big, deep breath of
+relief, and went into his room.  If the others had looked to see why he
+was gone so long, they would have seen him on his knees beside his bed
+thanking God, as usual.  Leon couldn't have come closer than when he
+said, "The same yesterday, to-day, and forever," about father.
+
+Leon had his arms around the neck of his horse now, and he was kissing
+her, patting her, and explaining to Shelley just why no other horse was
+like her.  He was pouring out a jumble all about the oasis of the
+desert, the tent dwellers, quoting lines from "The Arab to His Horse,"
+bluegrass, and gentleness combined with spirit, while Shelley had its
+head between her hands, stroking it and saying, "Yes," to every word
+Leon told her.  Then he said: "Just hop on her back from that top step
+and ride her to the barn, if you want to see the motion she has."
+
+Shelley said:  "Has a woman ever been on her back?  Won't she shy at my
+skirts?"
+
+"No," explained Leon.  "I've been training her with a horse blanket
+pinned around me, so Susie could ride her!  She'll be all right."
+
+So Shelley mounted, and the horse turned her head, and tried to rub
+against her, as she walked away, tame as a sheep.  I wondered if she
+could be too gentle.  If she went "like the wind," as Leon said, it
+didn't show then.  I was almost crazy to go along, and maybe Leon would
+let me ride a little while; but I had a question that it would help me
+to know the answer and I wanted to ask father before I forgot; so I
+waited until he came out.  When he sat down, smiled at me and said,
+"Well, is the girl happy for brother?"  I knew it was a good time, and
+I could ask anything I chose, so I sat on his knee and said:  "Father,
+when you pray for anything that it's all perfectly right for you to
+have, does God come down from heaven and do it Himself, or does He send
+a man like Laddie to do it for him?"
+
+Father hugged me tight, smiling the happiest.
+
+"Why, you have the whole thing right there in a nutshell, Little
+Sister," he said.  "You see it's like this: the Book tells us most
+distinctly that 'God is love.'  Now it was love that sent Laddie to
+bind himself for a long, tedious job, to give Leon his horse, wasn't
+it?"
+
+"Of course!" I said.  "He wouldn't have been likely to do it if he
+hated him.  It was love, of course!"
+
+"Then it was God," said father, "because 'God is love.'  They are one
+and the same thing."
+
+Then he kissed me, and THAT was settled.  So I wondered when you longed
+for anything so hard you really felt it was worth bothering God about,
+whether the quickest way to get it was to ask Him for it, or to try to
+put a lot of love into the heart of some person who could do what you
+wanted.  I decided it all went back to God though, for most of the time
+probably we wouldn't know who the right one was to try to awaken love
+in.  I was mighty sure none of us ever dreamed Laddie could walk over
+to Pryors', and come back with that horse, in a way perfectly
+satisfactory to every one, slick as an eel.
+
+You should have seen Leon following around after Laddie, trying to do
+things for him, taking on his work to give him more time with the
+horses, getting up early to finish his own stunts, so he could go over
+to Pryors' and help.  Mother said it had done more to make a man of him
+than anything that ever happened.  It helped Shelley, too.  Something
+seemed to break in her, when she cried so with Leon, because he was in
+trouble.  Then he was so crazy to show off his horse he had Shelley
+ride up and down the lane, while he ran along and led, so she got a lot
+of exercise, and it made her good and hungry.  If you don't think by
+this time that my mother was the beatenest woman alive, I'll prove it
+to you.  When the supper bell rang there was strawberry preserves
+instead of the apple butter, biscuit, fried chicken, and mashed
+potatoes.
+
+She must have slapped those chickens into the skillet before they knew
+their heads were off.  When Shelley came to the table, for the first
+time since she'd been home, had pink in her cheeks, and talked some,
+and ate too, mother forgot her own supper.  She fumbled over her plate,
+but scarcely touched even the livers, and those delicious little
+kidneys in the tailpiece like Leon and I had at Sally's wedding.  When
+we finished, and it was time for her to give the signal to arise, no
+one had asked to be excused, she said:  "Let us have a word with the
+Most High."  Then she bowed her head, so all of us did too.  "O Lord,
+we praise Thee for all Thy tender mercies, and all Thy loving kindness.
+Amen!"
+
+Of course father always asked the blessing to begin with, and mostly it
+was the same one, and that was all at meal time, but this was a little
+extra that mother couldn't even wait until night to tell the Almighty,
+she was so pleased with Him.  Maybe I haven't told everything about
+her, after all.  Father must have thought that was lovely of her; he
+surely felt as happy as she did, to see Shelley better, for he hugged
+and kissed her over and over, finishing at her neck like he always did,
+and then I be hanged, if he didn't hug and kiss every last one of
+us--tight, even the boys.  Shelley he held long and close, and patted
+her a little when he let her go.  It made me wonder if the rest of us
+didn't get ours, so he'd have a chance at her without her noticing it.
+One thing was perfectly clear.  If shame came to us, they were going to
+love her, and stick tight to her right straight through it.
+
+Now that everything was cleared up so, Shelley seemed a little more
+like herself every day, although it was bad enough yet; I thought I
+might as well hurry up the end a little, and stop the trouble
+completely, so I began watching for a chance to ask her.  But I wanted
+to get her away off alone, so no one would see if she slapped me.  I
+didn't know how long I'd have to wait.  I tried coaxing her to the
+orchard to see a bluebird's nest, but she asked if bluebirds were
+building any different that year, and I had to admit they were not.
+Then I tried the blue-eyed Mary bed, but she said she supposed it was
+still under the cling peach tree, and the flower, two white petals up,
+two blue down, and so it was.  Just as I was beginning to think I'd
+have to take that to the Lord in prayer, I got my chance by accident.
+
+May and Candace were forever going snake hunting.  You would think any
+one with common sense would leave them alone and be glad of the chance,
+but no indeed!  They went nearly every day as soon as the noon work was
+finished, and stayed until time to get supper.  They did have heaps of
+fun and wild excitement.  May was gentle, and tender with everything
+else on earth; so I 'spose she had a right to bruise the serpent with
+her heel--really she used sticks and stones--if she wanted to.  I asked
+her how she COULD, and she said there was a place in the Bible that
+told how a snake coaxed Eve to eat an apple, that the Lord had told her
+she mustn't touch; and so she got us into most of the trouble there was
+in the world.  May said it was all the fault of the SNAKE to begin
+with, and she meant to pay up every one she could find, because she had
+none of the apple, and lots of the trouble.  Candace cried so much
+because Frederick Swartz had been laid in the tomb, that mother was
+pleased to have her cheer up, even enough to go snake hunting.
+
+That afternoon Mehitabel Heasty had come to visit May, so she went
+along, and I followed.  They poked around the driftwood at the
+floodgate behind the barn, and were giving up the place.  Candace had
+crossed the creek and was coming back, and May had started, when she
+saw a tiny little one and chased it.  We didn't know then that it was a
+good thing to have snakes to eat moles, field mice, and other pests
+that bother your crops; the Bible had no mercy on them at all, so we
+were not saving our snakes; and anyway we had more than we needed,
+while some of them were too big to be safe to keep, and a few poison as
+could be.  May began to bruise the serpent, when out of the driftwood
+where they hadn't found anything came its mammy, a great big
+blacksnake, maddest you ever saw, with its pappy right after her, mad
+as ever too.  Candace screamed at May to look behind her, but May was
+busy with the snake and didn't look quick enough, so the old mammy
+struck right in her back.  She just caught in the hem of May's skirt,
+and her teeth stuck in the goods--you know how a snake's teeth turn
+back--so she couldn't let go.  May took one look and raced down the
+bank to the crossing, through the water, and toward us, with the snake
+dragging and twisting, and trying her best to get away.  May was
+screaming at every jump for Candace, and Mehitabel was flying up and
+down crying:  "Oh there's snakes in my shoes!  There's snakes in my
+shoes!"
+
+That was a fair sample of how much sense a Heasty ever had.  It took
+all Mehitabel's shoes could do to hold her feet, for after one went
+barefoot all week, and never put on shoes except on Sunday or for a
+visit, the feet became so spread out, shoes had all they could do to
+manage them, and then mostly they pinched until they made one squirm.
+But she jumped and said that, while May ran and screamed, and Candace
+gripped her big hickory stick and told May to stand still.  Then she
+bruised that serpent with her whole foot, for she stood on it, and
+swatted it until she broke its neck.  Then she turned ready for the
+other one, but when it saw what happened to its mate, it decided to go
+back.  Even snakes, it doesn't seem right to break up families like
+that; so by the time Candace got the mammy killed, loose from May's
+hem, and stretched out with the back up, so she wouldn't make it rain,
+when Candace wasn't sure that father wanted rain, I had enough.  I went
+down the creek until I was below the orchard, then I crossed, passed
+the cowslip bed, climbed the hill and fence, and stopped to think what
+I would do first; and there only a few feet away was Shelley.  She was
+sitting in the shade, her knees drawn up, her hands clasped around
+them, staring straight before her across the meadow at nothing in
+particular, that I could see.  She jumped as if I had been a snake when
+she saw me, then she said, "Oh, is it you?" like she was half glad of
+it.  My chance had come.
+
+I went to her, sat close beside her and tried snuggling up a little.
+It worked.  She put her arm around me, drew me tight, rubbed her cheek
+against my head and we sat there.  I was wondering how in the world I
+could ask her, and not get slapped.  I was growing most too big for
+that slapping business, anyway.  We sat there; I was looking across the
+meadow as she did, only I was watching everything that went on, so when
+I saw a grosbeak fly from the wild grape where Shelley had put the
+crock for sap, it made me think of her hair.  She used to like to have
+me play with it so well, she'd give me pennies if I did.  I got up, and
+began pulling out her pins carefully.  I knew I was getting a start
+because right away she put up her hand to help me.
+
+"I can get them," I said just as flannel-mouthed as ever I could, like
+all of us talked to her now, so I got every one and never pulled a
+mite.  When I reached over her shoulder to drop them in her lap, being
+so close I kissed her cheek.  Then I shook down her hair, spread it
+out, lifted it, parted it, and held up strands to let the air on her
+scalp.  She shivered and said: "Mercy child, how good that does feel!
+My head has ached lately until it's a wonder there's a hair left on it."
+
+So I was pleasing her.  I never did handle hair so carefully.  I tried
+every single thing it feels good to you to have done with your hair,
+rubbed her head gently, and to cheer her up I told her about May and
+the snake, and what fool Mehitabel had said, and she couldn't help
+laughing; so I had her feeling about as good as she could, for the way
+she actually felt, but still I didn't really get ahead.  Come right to
+the place to do it, that was no very easy question to ask a person,
+when you wouldn't hurt their feelings for anything; I was beginning to
+wonder if I would lose my chance, when all at once a way I could manage
+popped into my mind.
+
+"Shelley," I said, "they told you about Laddie and the Princess, didn't
+they?"
+
+I knew they had, but I had to make a beginning some way.
+
+"Yes," she said.  "I'm glad of it!  I think she's pretty as a picture,
+and nice as she looks.  Laddie may have to hump himself to support her,
+but if he can't get her as fine clothes as she has, her folks can help
+him.  They seem to have plenty, and she's their only child."
+
+"They're going to.  I heard Mr. Pryor ask Laddie if he'd be so unkind
+as to object to them having the pleasure of giving her things."
+
+"Well, the greenhorn didn't say he would!"
+
+"No.  He didn't want to put his nose to the grindstone quite that
+close.  He said it was between them."
+
+"I should think so!"
+
+"Shelley, there's a question I've been wanting to ask some one for
+quite a while."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Why, this!  You know, Laddie was in love with the Princess, like you
+are when you want to marry folks, for a long, long time, before he
+could be sure whether she loved him back."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, now, 'spose she never had loved him, would he have had anything
+to be ashamed of?"
+
+"I can't see that he would.  Some one must start a courtship, or there
+would be no marrying, and it's conceded to be the place of the man.
+No.  He might be disappointed, or dreadfully hurt, but there would be
+no shame about it."
+
+"Well, then, suppose she loved him, and wanted to marry him, and he
+hadn't loved her, or wanted her, would SHE have had anything to be
+ashamed of?"
+
+"I don't think so!  If she was attracted by him, and thought she would
+like him, she would have a right to go to a certain extent, to find out
+if he cared for her, and if he didn't, why, she'd just have to give him
+up.  But any sensible girl waits for a man to make the advances, and
+plenty of them, before she allows herself even to dream of loving him,
+or at least, I would."
+
+Now I was getting somewhere!
+
+"Of course you would!" I said.  "That would be the WAY mother would,
+wouldn't it?"
+
+"Surely!"
+
+"If that Paget man you used to write about had seemed to be just what
+you liked, you'd have waited to know if he wanted you, before you loved
+him, wouldn't you?"
+
+"I certainly would!" answered Shelley.  "Or at least, I'd have waited
+until I THOUGHT sure as death, I knew.  It seems that sometimes you can
+be fooled about those things."
+
+"But if you thought sure you knew, and then found out you had been
+mistaken, you wouldn't have anything to be ASHAMED of, would you?"
+
+"Not-on-your-life-I-wouldn't!" cried Shelley, hammering each word into
+her right knee with her doubled fist.  "What are you driving at,
+Blatherskite?  What have you got into your head?"
+
+"Oh just studying about things," I said, which was exactly the truth.
+"Sally getting married last fall, and Laddie going to this, just
+started me to wondering."
+
+Fooled her, too!
+
+"Oh well, there's no harm done," she said.  "The sooner you get these
+matters straightened out, the better able you will be to take care of
+yourself.  If you ever go to a city, you'll find out that a girl needs
+considerable care taken of her."
+
+"You could look out for yourself, Shelley?"
+
+"Well, I don't know as I made such a glorious fist of it," she said,
+"but at least, as you say, I've nothing to be ashamed of!"
+
+I almost hugged her head off.
+
+"Of course you haven't!" I cried.  "Of course you wouldn't have!"
+
+I just kissed her over and over for joy; I was so glad my heart hurt
+for father and mother.  Shame had not come to them!
+
+"Now, I guess I'll run to the house and get a comb," I told her.
+
+"Go on," said Shelley.  "I know you are tired."
+
+"I'm not in the least," I said.  "Don't you remember I always use a
+comb when I fuss with your hair?"
+
+"It is better," said Shelley.  "Go get one."
+
+As I got up to start I took a last look at her, and there was something
+in her face that I couldn't bear.  I knelt beside her, and put both
+arms around her neck.
+
+"Shelley, it's a secret," I said in a breathless half whisper.  "It's a
+great, big secret, but I'm going to tell you.  Twice now I've had a
+powerful prayer all ready to try.  It's the kind where you go to the
+barn, all alone, stand on that top beam below the highest window and
+look toward the east.  You keep perfectly still, and just think with
+all your might, and you look away over where Jesus used to be, and when
+the right feeling comes, you pray that prayer as if He stood before
+you, and it will come true.  I KNOW it will come true.  The reason I
+know is because twice now I've been almost ready to try it, and what I
+intended to ask for happened before I had time; so I've saved that
+prayer; but Shelley, shall I pray it about the Paget man, for you?"
+
+She gripped me, and she shook until she was all twisted up; you could
+hear her teeth click, she chilled so.  The tears just gushed, and she
+pulled me up close and whispered right in my ear:
+
+"Yes!"
+
+It was only pretend about the comb; what I really wanted was to get to
+father and mother quick.  I knew he was at the barn and he was going to
+be too happy for words in a minute.  But as I went up the lane, I
+wasn't sure whether I'd rather pray about that Paget man or bruise him
+with my heel like a serpent.  The only way I could fix it was to
+remember if Shelley loved him so, he must be mighty nice.  Father was
+in the wagon shovelling corn from it to a platform where it would be
+handy to feed the pigs, so I ran and called him, and put one foot on a
+hub and raised my hands.  He pulled me up and when he saw how important
+it was, he sat on the edge of the bed, so I told him:  "Father, you
+haven't got a thing in the world to be ashamed of about Shelley."
+
+"Praise the Lord!" said father like I knew he would, but you should
+have seen his face.  "Tell me about it!"
+
+I told him and he said:  "Well, I don't know but this is the gladdest
+hour of my life.  Go straight and repeat to your mother exactly what
+you've said to me.  Take her away all alone, and then forget about it,
+you little blessing."
+
+"Father, have you got too many children?"
+
+"No!" he said.  "I wish I had a dozen more, if they'd be like you."
+
+When I went up the lane I was so puffed up with importance I felt too
+dignified to run.  I strutted like our biggest turkey gobbler.  The
+only reason you couldn't hear my wings scrape, was because through
+mistake they grew on the turkey.  If I'd had them, I would have dragged
+them sure, and cried "Ge-hobble-hobble!" at every step.
+
+I took mother away alone and told her, and she asked many more
+questions than father, but she was even gladder than he.  She almost
+hugged the breath out of me.  Sometimes I get things RIGHT, anyway!
+Then I took the comb and ran back to Shelley.
+
+"I thought you'd forgotten me," she said.
+
+She had wiped up and was looking better.  If ever I combed carefully I
+did then.  Just when I had all the tangles out, there came mother.  She
+had not walked that far in a long time.  I thought maybe she could
+comfort Shelley, so I laid the comb in her lap and went to see how the
+snake hunters were coming on.  It must be all right, when the Bible
+says so, but the African Jungle will do for me, and a popgun is not
+going to scatter families.  I never felt so strongly about breaking
+home ties in my life as I did then.  There was nothing worse.  It was
+not where I wanted to be, so I thought I'd go back to the barn, and
+hang around father, hoping maybe he'd brag on me some more.  Going up
+the lane I saw a wagon passing with the biggest box I ever had seen,
+and I ran to the gate to watch where it went.  It stopped at our house
+and Frank came toward me as I hurried up the road.
+
+"Where are the folks?" he asked, without paying the least attention to
+my asking him over and over what was in the box.
+
+"May and Candace are killing every snake in the driftwood behind the
+barn, Shelley and mother are down in the orchard, and father and the
+boys are hauling corn."
+
+"Go tell the boys to come quickly and keep quiet," he said.  "But don't
+let any one else know I'm here."
+
+That was so exciting I almost fell over my feet running, and all three
+of them came quite as fast.  I stood back and watched, and I just
+danced a steady hop from one foot to the other while those men got the
+big box off the wagon and opened it.  On the side I spelled Piano, so
+of course it was for Shelley.  It was so heavy it took all six of them,
+father and the three boys, the driver and another very stylish looking
+man to carry it.  They put it in the parlour, screwed a leg on each
+corner, and a queer harp in the middle, then they lifted it up and set
+it on its feet, under the whatnot, and it seemed as if it filled half
+the room.  Then Frank spread a beauteous wine coloured cover all
+embroidered in pink roses with green leaves over it, and the stylish
+man opened a lid, sat down and spread out his hands.  Frank said:
+"Soft pedal!  Mighty soft!"  So he smothered it down, and tried only
+enough to find that it had not been hurt coming, and then he went away
+on the wagon.  Father and the boys gathered up every scrap, swept the
+walk, and put all the things they had used back where they got them,
+like we always did.
+
+Then Frank took a card from his pocket and tied it to the music rack,
+and it read:  "For Shelley, from her brothers in fact, and in law."  To
+a corner of the cover he pinned another card that read:  "From Peter."
+
+"What is that?" asked father.
+
+"That's from Peter," said Frank.  "Peter is great on finishing touches.
+He had to outdo the rest of us that much or bust.  Fact is, none of us
+thought of a cover except him."
+
+"How about this?" asked father, staring at it as if it were an animal
+that would bite.
+
+"Well," said Frank, "it was apparent that practising her fingers to the
+bone wouldn't do Shelley much good unless she could keep it up in
+summer, and you and mother always have done so much for the rest of us,
+and now mother isn't so strong and the expenses go on the same with
+these youngsters; we know you were figuring on it, but we beat you.
+Put yours in the bank, and try the feel of a surplus once more.
+Haven't had much lately, have you, father?"
+
+"Well, not to speak of," said father.
+
+"Now let's shut everything up, ring the bell to call them, and get
+Shelley in here and surprise her."
+
+"She's not very well," said father.  "Mother thinks she worked too
+hard."
+
+"She's all right now, father," I said.  "She is getting pink again and
+rounder, and this will fix her grand."
+
+Wouldn't it though!  There wasn't one anywhere, short of the city.
+Even the Princess had none.  Father hunted up a song book, opened it
+and set it on the rack.  Then all of us went out.
+
+"We'll write to the boys, mother and I, and Shelley also," said father.
+"I can't express myself just now.  This is a fine thing for all of you
+to do."
+
+Frank seemed to think so too, and looked rather puffed up, until Leon
+began telling about his horse.  When Frank found out that Laddie, who
+had not yet branched out for himself, had given Leon much more than any
+one of them had Shelley, he looked a little disappointed.  He explained
+how the piano cost eight hundred dollars, but by paying cash all at
+once, the man took seven hundred and fifty, so it only cost them one
+hundred and fifty a piece, and none of them felt it at all.
+
+"Sometimes the clouds loom up pretty black, and mother and I scarcely
+know how to go on, save for the help of the Lord, but we certainly are
+blest with good children, children we can be proud of.  Your mother
+will like that instrument as well as Shelley, son," said father.
+
+Frank went out and rang the bell, tolled it, and made a big noise like
+he always did when he came unexpectedly, and then sat on the back fence
+until he saw them coming, and went to meet them.  He walked between
+mother and Shelley, with an arm around each one.  If he thought Shelley
+looked badly, he didn't mention it.  What he did say was that he was
+starved, and to fly around and get supper.  I thought I'd burst.  They
+began to cook, and the boys went to feed and see Leon's horse, and then
+we had supper.  I just sat and stared at Frank and grinned.  I couldn't
+eat.
+
+"Do finish your supper," said mother.  "I never saw anything take your
+appetite like seeing your brother.  You'll be wanting a piece before
+bedtime."
+
+I didn't say a word, because I was afraid to, but I kept looking at
+Leon and he smiled back, and we had great fun.  Secrets are lovely.
+Mother couldn't have eaten a bite if she'd known about that great
+shining thing, all full of wonderful sound, standing in our parlour.
+When the last slow person had finished, father said:  "Shelley, won't
+you step into the front room and bring me that book I borrowed from
+Frank on 'Taxation.' I want to talk over a few points."
+
+All of us heard her little breathless cry, and mother said, "There!" as
+if she'd been listening for something, and she beat all of us to the
+door.  Then she cried out too, and such a time as we did have.  At last
+after all of us had grown sensible enough to behave, Shelley sat on the
+stool, spread her fingers over the keys and played at the place father
+had selected, and all of us sang as hard as we could:  "Be it ever so
+humble, There's no place like home;" and there WAS no place like ours,
+of THAT I'm quite sure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+In Faith Believing
+
+  "Nor could the bright green world around
+     A joy to her impart,
+  For still she missed the eyes that made
+     The summer of her heart."
+
+
+Soon as she had the piano, Shelley needed only the Paget man to make
+her happy as a girl could be; and having faith in that prayer, I
+decided to try it right away.  So I got Laddie to promise surely that
+he'd wake me when he got up the next morning.
+
+I laid my clothes out all ready; he merely touched my foot, and I came
+to, slipped out with him, and he helped me dress.  We went to the barn
+when the morning was all gray.
+
+"What the dickens have you got in your head now, Chicken?" he asked.
+"Is it business with the Fairies?"
+
+"No, this is with the Most High," I said solemnly, like father.  "Go
+away and leave me alone."
+
+"Well of all the queer chickens!" he said, but he kissed me and went.
+
+I climbed the stairs to the threshing floor, then the ladder to the
+mow, walked a beam to the wall, there followed one to the east end, and
+another to the little, high-up ventilator window.  There I stood
+looking at the top of the world.  A gray mist was rising like steam
+from the earth, there was a curious colour in the east, stripes of
+orange and flames of red, where the sun was coming.  I folded my hands
+on the sill, faced the sky, and stood staring.  Just stood, and stood,
+never moving a muscle.  By and by I began to think how much we loved
+Shelley, how happy she had been at Christmas the way she was now, and
+how much all of us would give in money, or time, or love, to make her
+sparkling, bubbling, happy again; so I thought and thought, gazing at
+the sky, which every second became a grander sight.  Little cold chills
+began going up my back, and soon I was talking to the Lord exactly as
+if He stood before me on the reddest ray that topped our apple trees.
+
+I don't know all I said.  That's funny, for I usually remember to the
+last word; but this time it was so important, I wanted it so badly, and
+I was so in earnest that words poured in a stream.  I began by
+reminding Him that He knew everything, and so He'd understand if what I
+asked was for the best.  Then I told Him how it looked to us, who knew
+only a part; and then I went at Him and implored and beseeched, if it
+would be best for Shelley, and would make her happy, to send her the
+Paget man, and to be quick about it.  When I had said the last word
+that came to me, and begged all I thought becoming--I don't think with
+His face, that Jesus wants us to grovel to Him, at least He looks too
+dignified to do it Himself--I just stood there, still staring.
+
+I didn't expect to see a burning bush, or a pillar of fire, or a cloud
+of flame, or even to hear a small, still voice; but I watched, so I
+wouldn't miss it if there should be anything different in that sunrise
+from any other I ever had seen, and there was not.  Not one thing!  It
+was so beautiful, and I was so in earnest my heart hurt; but that was
+like any other sunrise on a fine July morning.  There wasn't the least
+sign that Jesus had heard me, and would send the man; yet before I knew
+it, I was amazed to find the feeling creeping over me that he was
+coming.  If I had held the letter in my hand saying he would arrive on
+the noon train, I couldn't have grown surer.  Why, I even looked down
+the first time I moved, to see if I had it; but I was certain anyway.
+So I looked steadily toward the east once more and said, "Thank you,
+with all my heart, Lord Jesus," then I slowly made my way down and back
+to the house.
+
+Shelley was at the orchard gate, waiting; so I knew they had missed me,
+and Laddie had told them where I was and not to call.  She had the
+strangest look on her face, as she asked:  "Where have you been?"
+
+I looked straight and hard at her and said, "It's all right, Shelley.
+He's going to come soon"; but I didn't think it was a thing to mouth
+over, so I twisted away from her, and ran to the kitchen to see if
+breakfast had all been eaten.  I left Shelley standing there with her
+eyes wide, also her mouth.  She looked about as intelligent as
+Mehitabel Heasty, and it wouldn't have surprised me if she had begun to
+jump up and down and say there were snakes in HER shoes.  No doubt you
+have heard of people having been knocked silly; I knew she was, and so
+she had a perfect right to look that way, until she could remember what
+she was doing, and come back to herself.  Maybe it took her longer,
+because mother wasn't there, to remind her about her mouth, and I
+didn't propose to mention it.
+
+At breakfast, mother said father was going to drive Frank home in the
+carriage, and if I would like, I might go along.  I would have to sit
+on the back seat alone, going; but coming home I could ride beside and
+visit with father.  I loved that, for you could see more from the front
+seat, and father would stop to explain every single thing.  He always
+gave me the money and let me pay the toll.  He would get me a drink at
+the spring, let me wade a few minutes at Enyard's riffles, where their
+creek, with the loveliest gravel bed, ran beside the road; and he
+always raced like wildfire at the narrows, where for a mile the
+railroad ran along the turnpike.
+
+We took Frank to his office, stopped a little while to visit Lucy, and
+give her the butter and cream mother sent, went to the store to see
+Peter, and then to the post-office.  From there we could see that the
+veranda of the hotel across the street was filled with gayly dressed
+people, and father said that the summer boarders from big cities around
+must be pouring in fast.  When he came out with the mail he said he
+better ask if the landlord did not want some of mother's corn and milk
+fed spring chickens, because last year he had paid her more than the
+grocer.  So he drove across the street, stopped at the curb, and left
+me to hold the team.
+
+Maybe you think I wasn't proud!  I've told you about Ned and Jo, with
+their sharp ears, dappled sides, and silky tails, and the carriage
+almost new, with leather seats, patent leather trimmings, and side
+lamps, so shiny you could see yourself in the brass.  We never drove
+into the barn with one speck of mud or dust on it.  That was how
+particular mother was.
+
+I watched the team carefully; I had to if I didn't want my neck broken;
+but I also kept an eye on that veranda.  You could see at a glance that
+those were stylish women.  Now my mother liked to be in fashion as well
+as any one could; so I knew she'd be mightily pleased if I could tell
+her a new place to set her comb, a different way to fasten her collar,
+or about an unusual pattern for a frock.
+
+I got my drink at the spring, father offered to stop at the riffle, but
+I was enjoying the ride so much, and I could always wade at home,
+although our creek was not so beautiful as Enyard's, but for common
+wading it would do; we went through the narrows, like two shakes of a
+sheep's tail, then we settled down to a slow trot, and were having the
+loveliest visit possible, when in the bundle on my lap, I saw the end
+of something that interested me.  Mr. Agnew always made our mail into a
+roll with the Advocate and the Agriculturist on the outside, and
+because every one was so anxious about their letters, and some of them
+meant so much, I felt grown and important while holding the package.
+
+I was gripping it tight when I noticed the end of one letter much wider
+and fatter than any I ever had seen, so when father was not looking I
+began pushing it a little at one end, and pulling it at the other, to
+work it up, until I could read the address.  I got it out so far I
+thought every minute he'd notice, and tell me not to do that, but I
+could only see Stanton.  All of us were Stanton, so it might be for me,
+for that matter.  Jerry might be sending me pictures, or a book, he did
+sometimes, but there was an exciting thing about it.  Besides being
+fatter than it looked right at the end, it was plastered with
+stamps--lots of them, enough to have brought it clear around the world.
+I pushed that end back, pulled out the other, and took one good look.
+I almost fell from the carriage.  I grabbed father's arm and cried:
+"Stop!  Stop this team quick.  Stop them and see if I can read."
+
+"Are you crazy, child?" asked father, but he checked the horses.
+
+"No, but you are going to be in a minute," I said.  "Look at that!"
+
+I yanked the letter from the bundle, and held it over.  I THOUGHT I
+could read, but I was too scared to be sure.  I thought it said in big,
+strong, upstanding letters, Miss Shelley Stanton, Groveville, Indiana.
+And in the upper corner, Blackburn, Yeats and PAGET, Counsellors of
+Law, 37 to 39 State St., Chicago.  I put my finger on the Paget, and
+looked into father's face.  I was no fool after all.  He was not a bit
+surer that HE could read than I was, from the dazed way he stared.
+
+"You see!" I said.
+
+"It says Paget!" he said, like he would come nearer believing; it if he
+heard himself pronounce the word.
+
+"I THOUGHT it said 'Paget,'" I gasped, "but I wanted to know if you
+thought so too."
+
+"Yes, it's Paget plain enough," said father, but he acted like there
+was every possibility that it might change to Jones any minute.  "It
+says 'Paget,' plain as print."
+
+"Father!" I cried, clutching his arm, "father, see how fat it is!
+There must be pages and pages!  Father, it wouldn't take all that to
+tell her he didn't like her, and he never wanted to see her again.
+Would it, father?"
+
+"It doesn't seem probable," said father.
+
+"Father don't you think it means there's been some big mistake, and it
+takes so much to tell how it can be fixed?"
+
+"It seems reasonable."
+
+I gripped him tighter, and maybe shook him a little.
+
+"Father!" I cried.  "Father, doesn't it just look HURRY, all over?
+Can't you speed up a little?  They have all day to cool off.  Oh
+father, won't you speed a little?"
+
+"That I will!" said father.  "Get a tight hold, and pray God it is good
+word we carry."
+
+"But I prayed the one big prayer to get this," I said.  "It wouldn't be
+sent if it wasn't good.  The thing to do now is to thank the Lord for
+'all his loving kindnesses,' like mother said."
+
+"Drive father!  Make them go!"
+
+At first he only touched them up; I couldn't see that we were getting
+home so fast; but in a minute a cornfield passed like a streak, a piece
+of woods flew by a dark blur, a bridge never had time to rattle, and we
+began to rock from side to side a little.  Then I gripped the top
+supports with one hand, the mail with the other, and hung on for dear
+life.  I took one good look at father.
+
+His feet were on the brace, his face was clear, even white, his eyes
+steely, and he never moved a muscle.  When Jo thought it was funny,
+that he was loose in the pasture, and kicked up a little behind, father
+gave him a sharp cut with the whip and said: "Steady boy!  Get along
+there!"
+
+Sometimes he said, "Aye, aye!  Easy!" but he never stopped a mite.  We
+whizzed past the church and cemetery, and scarcely touched the Big
+Hill.  People ran to their doors, even to the yards, and I was sure
+they thought we were having a runaway, but we were not.  Father began
+to stop at the lane gate, he pulled all the way past the garden, and it
+was as much as he could do to get them slowed down so that I could jump
+out by the time we reached the hitching rack.  He tied them, and
+followed me into the house instead of going to the barn.  I ran ahead
+calling: "Shelley!  Where is Shelley?"
+
+"What in this world has happened, child?" asked mother, catching my arm.
+
+"Her letter has come!  Her Paget letter!  The one you looked for until
+you gave up.  It's come at last!  Oh, where is she?"
+
+"Be calmer, child, you'll frighten her," said mother.
+
+May snatched the letter from my fingers and began to read all that was
+on it aloud.  I burst out crying.
+
+"Make her give that back!" I sobbed to father.  "It's mine!  I found
+it.  Father, make her let me take it!"
+
+"Give it to her!" said father.  "I rather feel that it is her right to
+deliver it."
+
+May passed it back, but she looked so disappointed, that by how she
+felt I knew how much I wanted to take it myself; so I reached my hand
+to her and said:  "You can come along!  We'll both take it!  Oh where
+is she?"
+
+"She went down in the orchard," said mother.  "I think probably she's
+gone back where she was the other day."
+
+Gee, but we ran!  And there she was!  As we came up, she heard us and
+turned.
+
+"Shelley!" I cried.  "Here's your letter!  Everything is all right!
+He's coming, Shelley!  Look quick, and see when!  Mother will want to
+begin baking right away!"
+
+Shelley looked at me, and said coolly:  "Paddy Ryan!  What's the
+matter?"
+
+"Your letter!" I cried, shoving it right against her hands.  "Your
+letter from Robert!  From the Paget man, you know!  I told you he was
+coming!  Hurry, and see when!"
+
+She took it, and sat there staring at it, so much like father, that it
+made me think of him, so I saw that she was going to have to come
+around to it as we did, and that one couldn't hurry her.  She just had
+to take her time to sense it.
+
+"Shall I open it for you?" I asked, merely to make her see that it was
+time she was doing it herself.
+
+Blest if she didn't reach it toward me!--sort of woodenlike.  I stuck
+my finger under the flap, gave it a rip across and emptied what was
+inside into her lap.  Bet there were six or seven letters in queer
+yellow envelopes I never before had seen any like, and on them was the
+name, Robert Paget, while in one corner it said, "Returned Dead
+Letter"; also there was a loose folded white sheet.  She sat staring at
+the heap, touching one, another, and repeating "Robert Paget?" as she
+picked each up in turn.
+
+"What do you suppose it means?" she asked May.  May examined them.
+
+"You must read the loose sheet," she advised.  "No doubt that will
+explain."
+
+But Shelley never touched it.  She handled those letters and stared at
+them.  Father and mother came through the orchard and stood together
+behind us, so father knelt down at last, reached across Shelley's
+shoulder, picked one up and looked at it.
+
+"Have you good word, dear?" asked mother of Shelley.
+
+"Why, I don't understand at all," said Shelley.  "Just look at all
+these queer letters, addressed to Mr. Paget.  Why should they be sent
+to me?  I mustn't open them.  They're not mine.  There must be some
+mistake."
+
+"These are DEAD LETTERS," said father.  "They've been written to you,
+couldn't be delivered, and so were sent to the Dead Letter Office at
+Washington, which returned them to the writer, and unopened he has
+forwarded them once more to you.  You've heard of dead letters, haven't
+you?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Shelley.  "I don't remember just now; but there
+couldn't be a better name.  They've come mighty near killing me."
+
+"If you'd only read that note!" urged May, putting it right into her
+fingers.
+
+Shelley still sat there.
+
+"I'm afraid of it," she said exactly like I'd have spoken if there had
+been a big rattlesnake coming right at me, when I'd nothing at hand to
+bruise it.
+
+Laddie and Leon came from the barn.  They had heard me calling, seen
+May and me run, and then father and mother coming down, so they walked
+over.
+
+"What's up?" asked Leon.  "Has Uncle Levi's will been discovered, and
+does mother get his Mexican mines?"
+
+"What have you got, Shelley?" asked Laddie, kneeling beside her, and
+picking up one of the yellow letters.
+
+"I hardly know," said Shelley.
+
+"I brought her a big letter with all those little ones and a note in
+it, and they are from the Paget man," I explained to him.  "But she
+won't even read the note, and see what he writes.  She says she's
+afraid."
+
+"Poor child!  No wonder!" said Laddie, sitting beside her and putting
+his arm around her.  "Suppose I read it for you.  May I?"
+
+"Yes," said Shelley.  "You read it.  Read it out loud.  I don't care."
+
+She leaned against him, while he unfolded the white sheet.
+
+"Umph!" he said.  "This DOES look bad for you.  It begins:  'My own
+darling Girl.'"
+
+"Let me see!" cried Shelley, suddenly straightening, and reaching her
+hand.
+
+Laddie held the page toward her, but she only looked, she didn't offer
+to touch it.
+
+"'My own darling Girl:'" repeated Laddie tenderly, making it mean just
+all he possibly could, because he felt so dreadfully sorry for
+her--"'On my return to Chicago, from the trip to England I have so
+often told you I intended to make some time soon----'"
+
+"Did he?" asked mother.
+
+"Yes," answered Shelley.  "He couldn't talk about much else.  It was
+his first case.  It was for a friend of his who had been robbed of
+everything in the world; honour, relatives, home, and money.  If Robert
+won it, he got all that back for his friend and enough for
+himself--that he could--a home of his own, you know!  Read on, Laddie!"
+
+"'I was horrified to find on my desk every letter I had written you
+during my absence returned to me from the Dead Letter Office, as you
+see.'"
+
+"Good gracious!" cried mother, picking up one and clutching it tight as
+if she meant to see that it didn't get away again.
+
+"Go on!" cried Shelley.
+
+"'I am enclosing some of them as they came back to me, in proof of my
+statement.  I drove at once to your boarding place and found you had
+not been there for weeks, and your landlady was distinctly crabbed.
+Then I went to the college, only to find that you had fallen ill and
+gone to your home.  That threw me into torments, and all that keeps me
+from taking the first train is the thought that perhaps you refused to
+accept these letters, for some reason.  Shelley, you did not, did you?
+There is some mistake somewhere, is there not----'"
+
+"One would be led to think so," said father sternly.  "Seems as if he
+might have managed some way----"
+
+"Don't you blame him!" cried Shelley.  "Can't you see it's all my
+fault?  He'd been coming regularly, and the other girls envied me; then
+he just disappeared, and there was no word or anything, and they
+laughed and whispered until I couldn't endure it; so I moved in with
+Peter's cousin, as I wrote you; but that left Mrs. Fleet with an empty
+room in the middle of the term, and it made her hopping mad.  I bet
+anything she wouldn't give the postman my new address, to pay me back.
+I left it, of course.  But if I'd been half a woman, and had the
+confidence I should have had in myself and in him----  Oh how I've
+suffered, and punished all of you----!"
+
+"Never you mind about that," said mother, stroking Shelley's hair.
+"Likely there isn't much in Chicago to give a girl who never had been
+away from her family before, 'confidence' in herself or any one else.
+As for him--just disappearing like that, without a word or even a
+line----  Go on Laddie!"
+
+"'Surely, you knew that I was only waiting the outcome of this trip to
+tell you how dearly I love you.  Surely, you encouraged me in thinking
+you cared for me a little, Shelley.  Only a little will do to begin
+with----'"
+
+"You see, I DID have something to go on!" cried Shelley, wiping her
+eyes and straightening up.
+
+"'No doubt you misunderstood and resented my going without coming to
+explain, and bid you good-bye in person, but Shelley, _I_ SIMPLY DARED
+NOT.  You see, it was this way:  I got a cable about the case I was
+always talking of, and the only man who could give the testimony I MUST
+HAVE was dying!'"
+
+"For land's sake!  The poor boy!" cried mother, patting Shelley's
+shoulder.
+
+"'An hour's delay might mean the loss of everything in the world to me,
+even you.  For if I lost any time, and the man escaped me, there was no
+hope of winning my case, and everything, even you, as I said before,
+depended on him----'"
+
+"Good Lord!  I mean land!" cried Leon.
+
+"'If I could catch the train in an hour, I could take a boat at New
+York, and go straight through with no loss of time.  So I wrote you a
+note that probably said more than I would have ventured in person, and
+paid a boy to deliver it.'"
+
+"Kept the money and tore up the note, I bet!" said May.
+
+"'I wrote on the train, but found after sailing that I had rushed so I
+had failed to post it in New York.  I kept on writing every day on the
+boat, and mailed you six at Liverpool.  All the time I have written
+frequently; there are many more here that this envelope will not hold,
+that I shall save until I hear from you.'"
+
+"Well, well!" said father.
+
+"'Shelley, I beat death, reached my man, got the testimony I had to
+have, and won my case.'"
+
+"Glory!" cried mother.  "Praise the Lord!"
+
+"'Then I scoured England, and part of the continent, hunting some
+interested parties; and when I was so long finding them, and still no
+word came from you, I decided to come back and get you, if you would
+come with me, and go on with the work together.'"
+
+"Listen to that!  More weddings!" cried Leon.  He dropped on his knees
+before Shelley.  "Will you marry me, my pretty maid?" he begged.
+
+"Young man, if you cut any capers right now, I'll cuff your ears!"
+cried father.  "This is no proper time for your foolishness!"
+
+"'Shelley, I beg that you will believe me, and if you care for me in
+the very least, telegraph if I may come.  Quick!  I'm half insane to
+see you.  I have many things to tell you, first of all how dear you are
+to me.  Please telegraph.  Robert.'"
+
+"Saddle a horse, Leon!" father cried as he unstrapped his wallet.
+
+"Laddie, take down her message."
+
+"Can you put it into ten words?" asked Laddie.
+
+"Mother, what would you say?" questioned Shelley.
+
+Leon held up his fingers and curled down one with each word.  "Say,
+'Dear Robert.  Well and happy.  Come when you get ready.'"
+
+"But then I won't know when he's coming," objected Shelley.  "You don't
+need to," said Leon.  "You can take it for granted from that epistolary
+effusion that he won't let the grass grow under his feet while coming
+here.  That's a bully message!  It sounds as if you weren't crazy over
+him, and it's a big compliment to mother.  Looks as if she didn't have
+to know when people are coming--like she's ready all the time."
+
+"Write it out and let me see," said Shelley.
+
+So Laddie wrote it, and she looked at it a long time, it seemed to me,
+at last she said:  "I don't like that 'get.'  It doesn't sound right.
+Wouldn't 'are' be better?"
+
+"Come when you are ready," repeated Laddie.  "Yes, that's better.
+'Get' sounds rather saucy."
+
+"Why not put it, 'Come when you choose?'" suggested mother.  "That will
+leave a word to spare, so it won't look as if you had counted them and
+used exactly ten on purpose, and it doesn't sound as if you expected
+him to make long preparations, like the other.  That will leave it with
+him to start whenever he likes."
+
+"Yes! yes!" cried Shelley.  "That's much better!  Say, 'Come when you
+choose!'"
+
+"Right!" said Laddie as he wrote it.  "Now I'll take this!"
+
+"Oh no you won't!" cried Leon.  "Father told me to saddle my horse.
+She's got enough speed in her to beat yours a mile.  I take that!
+Didn't you say for me to saddle, father?"
+
+"Such important business, I think I better," said Laddie, and Leon
+began to cry.
+
+"I think you should both go," said Shelley.  "It is so important, and
+if one goes to make a mistake, maybe the other will notice it."
+
+"Yes, that's the best way," said mother.
+
+"Yes, both go," said father.
+
+It was like one streak when they went up the Big Hill.  Father shook
+his head.  "Poor judgment--that," he said.  "Never run a horse up hill!"
+
+"But they're in such a hurry," Shelley reminded him.
+
+"So they are," said father.  "In this case I might have broken the rule
+myself.  Now come all of you, and let the child get at her mail."
+
+"But I want you to stay," said Shelley.  "I'm so addle-pated this
+morning.  I need my family to help me."
+
+"Of course you do, child," said mother.  "Families were made to cling
+together, and stand by each other in every circumstance of life--joy or
+sorrow.  Of course you need your family."
+
+May began sorting the letters by dates so Shelley could start on the
+one that had been written first.  Father ran his knife across the top
+of each, and cut all the envelopes, and Shelley took out the first and
+read it; that was the train one.  In it he told her about sending the
+boy with the note again, and explained more about how it was so very
+important for him to hurry, because the only man who could help him was
+so sick.  We talked it over, and all of us thought the boy had kept the
+money and torn up the note.  Father said the way would have been to
+send the note and pay the boy when he came back; but Shelley said Mr.
+Paget would have been gone before the boy got back, so father saw that
+wouldn't have been the way, in such a case.
+
+Next she read one written on the boat.  He told more about sending the
+boy; how he loved her, what it would mean to both of them if he got the
+evidence he wanted and won his first case; and how much it would bring
+his friend.  The next one told it all over again, and more.  In that he
+wrote a little about the ocean, the people on board the ship, and he
+gave Shelley the name of the place where he was going and begged her to
+write to him.  He told her if the ship he was on passed another, they
+were going to stop and send back the mail.  He begged her to write
+often, and to say she forgave him for starting away without seeing her,
+as he had been forced to.
+
+The next one was the same thing over, only a little more yet.  In the
+last he had reached England, the important man was still living, but he
+was almost gone, and Mr. Paget took two good witnesses, all the
+evidence he had, and went to see him; and the man saw it was no use, so
+he made a statement, and Robert had it all written out, signed and
+witnessed.  For the real straight sense there was in that letter, I
+could have done as well myself.
+
+It was a wild jumble, because Robert was so crazy over having the
+evidence that would win his case; and he told Shelley that now he was
+perfectly free to love her all she would allow him.  He said he had to
+stay a while longer to find his friend's people so they would get back
+their share of the money, but it was not going to be easy to locate
+them.  You wouldn't think the world so big, but maybe it seemed smaller
+to me because as far as I could see from the top of our house, was all
+I knew about it.  After Shelley had read the letters, and the note
+again, father heaved a big sigh that seemed to come clear from his boot
+soles and he said:  "Well Shelley, it looks to me as if you had found a
+MAN.  Seems to me that's a mighty important case for a young lawyer to
+be trusted with, in a first effort."
+
+"Yes, but it was for Robert's best friend, and only think, he has won!"
+
+"I don't see how he could have done better if he'd been old as
+Methuselah, and wise as Solomon," boasted mother.
+
+"But he hasn't found the people who must have back their money," said
+May.  "He will have to go to England again.  And he wants to take you,
+Shelley.  My!  You'll get to sail on a big steamer, cross the Atlantic
+Ocean, and see London.  Maybe you'll even get a peep at the Queen!"
+
+Shelley was busy making a little heap of her letters; when the top one
+slid off I reached over and put it back for her.  She looked straight
+at me, and smiled the most wonderful and the most beautiful smile I
+ever saw on any one's face, so I said to her: "You see! I TOLD you he
+was coming!"
+
+"I can't understand it!" said Shelley.
+
+"YOU KNOW I told you."
+
+"Of course I do!  But what made you think so?"
+
+"That was the answer.  Just that he was coming."
+
+"What are you two talking about?" asked mother.
+
+Shelley looked at me, and waited for me to tell mother as much as I
+wanted to, of what had happened.  But I didn't think things like that
+were to be talked about before every one, so I just said:
+
+"Oh nothing!  Only, I told Shelley this very morning that the Paget man
+was coming soon, and that everything was going to be all right."
+
+"You did?  Well of all the world!  I can't see why."
+
+"Oh something told me! I just FELT that way."
+
+"More of that Fairy nonsense?" asked father sharply.
+
+"No.  I didn't get that from the Fairies."
+
+"Well, never mind!" said Shelley, rising, because she saw that I had
+told all I wanted to.  "Little Sister DID tell me this morning that he
+was coming, that everything would be made right, and it's the queerest
+thing, but instantly I believed her.  Didn't I sing all morning,
+mother?  The first note since Robert didn't come when I expected him in
+Chicago, weeks ago."
+
+"Yes," said mother.  "That's a wonderfully strange thing.  I can't see
+what made you think so."
+
+"Anyway, I did!" I said.  "Now let's go have dinner.  I'm starving."
+
+I caught May's hand, and ran to get away from them.  Father and mother
+walked one on each side of Shelley, while with both hands she held her
+letters before her.  When we reached the house we just talked about
+them all the time.  Pretty soon the boys were back, and then they told
+about sending the telegram.  Leon vowed he gave the operator a dime
+extra to start that message with a shove, so it would go faster.
+
+"It will go all right," said Laddie, "and how it will go won't be a
+circumstance to the way he'll come.  If there's anything we ought to
+do, before he gets here, we should hustle.  Chicago isn't a thousand
+miles away.  That message can reach him by two o'clock, it's probable
+he has got ready while he was waiting, so he will start on the first
+train our way.  He could reach Groveville on the ten, to-morrow.  We
+better meet it."
+
+"Yes, we'll meet it," said mother.  "Is the carriage perfectly clean?"
+
+Father said:  "It must be gone over.  Our general manager here ordered
+me to speed up, and we drove a little coming from town."
+
+Mother went to planning what else should be done.
+
+"Don't do anything!" cried Shelley.  "The house is all right.  There's
+no need to work and worry into a sweat.  He won't notice or care how
+things look."
+
+"I miss my guess if he doesn't notice and care very much indeed," said
+mother emphatically.  "Men are not blind.  No one need think they don't
+see when things are not as they should be, just because they're not
+cattish enough to let you know it, like a woman always does.  Shelley,
+wouldn't you like to ride over and spend the afternoon with the
+Princess?"
+
+"Nope!" said Shelley.  "It's her turn to come to see me.  Besides, you
+don't get me out of the way like that.  I know what you'll do here, and
+I intend to help."
+
+"Do you need one of the boys at the house?" asked father, and if you'll
+believe it, both of them wanted to stay.
+
+Father said he must have one to help wash the carriage and do a little
+fixing around the barn; so he took Leon, but he didn't like to go.  He
+said:  "I don't see what all this fuss is about, anyway.  Probably
+he'll be another Peter."
+
+Shelley looked at him:  "Oh Mr. Paget isn't nearly so large as Peter,"
+she said, "and his hair is whiter than yours, while his eyes are not so
+blue."
+
+"Saints preserve us!" cried Leon.  "Come on, father, let's only dust
+the carriage!  He's not worth washing it for."
+
+"Is he like that?" asked mother anxiously.
+
+"Wait and see!" said Shelley.  "Looks don't make a man.  He has proved
+what he can do."
+
+Then all of us went to work.  Before night we were hunting over the
+yard, and beside the road, to see if we could find anything to pick up.
+Six chickens were in the cellar, father was to bring meat and a long
+list of groceries from town in the morning.  He was to start early, get
+them before train time, put them under the back seat, and take them out
+after he drove into the lane, when he came back.  That made a little
+more trouble for father, but there was not the slightest necessity for
+making Mr. Paget feel that he had ridden in a delivery wagon.
+
+Next morning I wakened laughing softly, because some one was fussing
+with my hair, patting my face, and kissing me, so I put up my arms and
+pulled that loving person down on my pillow, and gave back little
+half-asleep kisses, and slept on; but it was Shelley, and she gently
+shook me and began repeating that fool old thing I have been waked up
+with half the mornings of my life:
+
+  "Get up, Little Sister, the morning is bright,
+  The birds are all singing to welcome the light,
+  Get up; for when all things are merry and glad,
+  Good children should never be lazy and sad;
+  For God gives us daylight, dear sister, that we
+  May rejoice like the lark and work like the bee."
+
+
+Usually I'd have gone on sleeping, but Shelley was so sweet and lovely,
+and she kissed me so hard, that I remembered it was going to be a most
+exciting day, so I came to quick as snap and jumped right up, for I
+didn't want to miss a single thing that might happen.
+
+The carriage was shining when it came to the gate, so was father.
+
+I thought there was going to be a vacant seat beside him, and I asked
+if I might go along.  He said:  "Yes, if mother says so." He always
+would stick that in.  So I ran to ask her, and she didn't care, if
+Shelley made no objections.  I was just starting to find her, when here
+she came, all shining too, but Laddie was with her.  I hadn't known
+that he was going, and I was so disappointed I couldn't help crying.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Shelley.
+
+"Father and mother both said I might go, if you didn't care."
+
+"Why, I'm dreadfully sorry," said Shelley, "but I have several things I
+want Laddie to do for me."
+
+Laddie stooped down to kiss me good-bye and he said:  "Don't cry,
+Little Sister.  The way to be happy is to be good."
+
+Then they drove to Groveville, and we had to wait.  But there was so
+much to do, it made us fly to get all of it finished.  So mother sent
+Leon after Mrs. Freshett to help in the kitchen, while Candace wore her
+white dress, and waited on the table.  Mother cut flowers for the
+dining table, and all through the house.  She left the blinds down to
+keep the rooms cool, chilled buttermilk to drink, and if she didn't
+think of every single, least little thing, I couldn't see what it was.
+Then all of us put on our best dresses.  Mother looked as glad and
+sweet as any girl, when she sat to rest a little while.  I didn't dare
+climb the catalpa in my white dress, so I watched from the horse block,
+and when I saw the grays come over the top of the hill, I ran to tell.
+As mother went to the gate, she told May and me to walk behind, to stay
+back until we were spoken to, and then to keep our heads level, and
+remember our manners.  I don't know where Leon went.  He said he lost
+all interest when he found there was to be another weak-eyed towhead in
+the family, and I guess he was in earnest about it, because he wasn't
+even curious enough to be at the gate when Mr. Paget came.
+
+Father stopped with a flourish, Laddie hurried around and helped
+Shelley, and then Mr. Paget stepped down.  Goodness, gracious, sakes
+alive!  Little?  Towhead?  He was taller than Laddie.  His hair was
+most as black as ink, and wavy.  His eyes were big and dark; he was
+broad and strong and there was the cleanest, freshest look about him.
+He put his arm spang around Shelley, right there in the road, and
+mother said:  "Hold there!  Not so fast, young man!  I haven't given my
+consent to that."
+
+He laughed, and he said:  "Yes, but you'ah going to!"  And he put his
+other arm around mother, so May and I crowded up, and we had a family
+reunion right between the day lilies and the snowball bush.  We went
+into the house, and he LIKED us, his room, and everything went exactly
+right.  He was crazy about the cold buttermilk, and while he was
+drinking it Leon walked into the dining-room, because he thought of
+course Mr. Paget and Shelley would be on the davenport in the parlour.
+When he saw Robert he said lowlike to Shelley:  "Didn't Mr. Paget come?
+Who's that?"
+
+Shelley looked so funny for a minute, then she remembered what she had
+told him and she just laughed as she said:  "Mr. Paget, this is my
+brother."
+
+Robert went to shake hands, and Leon said right to his teeth: "Well a
+divil of a towhead you are!"
+
+"Towhead?" said Robert, bewildered-like.
+
+"Shelley said you were a little bit of a man, with watery blue eyes,
+and whiter hair than mine."
+
+"Oh I say!" cried Robert.  "She must have been stringin' you!"
+
+Leon just whooped; because while Mr. Paget didn't talk like the 'orse,
+'ouse people, he made you think of them in the way he said things, and
+the sound of his voice.  Then we had dinner, and I don't remember that
+we ever had quite such a feast before.  Mother had put on every single
+flourish she knew.  She used her very best dishes, and linen, and no
+cook anywhere could beat Candace alone; now she had Mrs. Freshett to
+help her, and mother also.  If she tried to show Mr. Paget, she did it!
+No visitor was there except him, but we must have been at the table two
+hours talking, and eating from one dish after another.  Candace LIKED
+to wear her white dress, and carry things around, and they certainly
+were good.
+
+And talk!  Father, Laddie, and Robert talked over all creation.  Every
+once in a while when mother saw an opening, she put in her paddle, and
+no one could be quicker, when she watched sharp and was trying to make
+a good impression.  Shelley was very quiet; she scarcely spoke or
+touched that delicious food.  Once the Paget man turned to her, looking
+at her so fondlike, as he picked up one of her sauce dishes and her
+spoon and wanted to feed her.  And he said:  "Heah child, eat your
+dinnah!  You have nawthing to be fussed ovah!  I mean to propose to
+you, and your parents befowr night.  That is what I am heah for."
+
+Every one laughed so, Shelley never got the bite; but after that she
+perked up more and ate a little by herself.
+
+At last father couldn't stand it any longer, so he began asking Robert
+about his trip to England, and the case he had won.  When the table was
+cleared for dessert, Mr. Paget asked mother to have Candace to bring
+his satchel.  He opened it and spread papers all over, so that father
+and Laddie could see the evidence, while he told them how it was.
+
+It seemed there was a law in England, all of us knew about it, because
+father often had explained it.  This law said that a man who had lots
+of money and land must leave almost all of it to his eldest son; and
+the younger ones must go into law, the army, be clergymen, or enter
+trade and earn a living, while the eldest kept up the home place.  Then
+he left it to his eldest son, and his other boys had to work for a
+living.  It kept the big estates together; but my! it was hard on the
+younger sons, and no one seemed even to think about the daughters.  I
+never heard them mentioned.
+
+Now there was a very rich man; he had only two sons, and each of them
+married, and had one son.  The younger son died, and sent his boy for
+his elder brother to take care of.  He pretended to be good, but for
+sure, he was bad as ever he could be.  He knew that if his cousin were
+out of the way, all that land and money would be his when his uncle
+died.  So he went to work and he tried for years, and a lawyer man who
+had no conscience at all, helped him.  At last when they had done
+everything they could think of, they took a lot of money and put it in
+the pocket of the son they wanted to ruin; then when his father missed
+the money, and the house was filled with policemen, detectives, and
+neighbours, the bad man said he'd feel more comfortable to have the
+family searched too, merely as a formality, so he stepped out and was
+gone over, and when the son's turn came, there was the money on him!
+That made him a public disgrace to his family, and a criminal who
+couldn't inherit the estate, and his father went raving mad and tried
+to kill him, so he had to run away.  At first he didn't care what he
+did, so he came over here.  Robert said that man was his best friend,
+and as men went, he was a decent fellow, so he cheered him up all he
+could, and went to work with all his might to prove he was innocent,
+and to get back his family, and his money for him.
+
+When Robert had enough evidence that he was almost ready to start to
+England, his man got a cable from an old friend of his father's, who
+always had believed in him, and it said that the bad man was dying--to
+come quick.  So Robert went all of a sudden, like the Dead Letters told
+about.  Now, he described how he reached there, took the old friend of
+the father of his friend with him, and other witnesses, and all the
+evidence he had, and went to see the sick man.  When Robert showed him
+what he could prove, the bad man said it was no use, he had to die in a
+few days, so he might as well go with a clean conscience, and he told
+about everything he had done.  Robert had it all written out, signed
+and sworn to.  He told about all of it, and then he said to father:
+"Have I made it clear to you?"
+
+Leon was so excited he forgot all the manners he ever had, for he
+popped up before father could open his head, and cried: "Clear as mud!
+I got that son business so plain in my mind, I'd know the party of the
+first part, from the party of the second part, if I met him promenading
+on the Stone Wall of China!"
+
+Father and Laddie knew so much law they asked dozens of questions; but
+that Robert man wasn't a smidgin behind, for every clip he had the
+answer ready, and then he could go on and tell much more than he had
+been asked.  He said as a Case, it was a pretty thing to work on; but
+it was much more than a case to him, because he always had known that
+his friend was not guilty; that he was separated from his family,
+suffering terribly under the disgrace, and they must be also.  He had
+worked for life for his friend, because the whole thing meant so much
+to both of them.  He said he must go back soon and finish up a little
+more that he should have done while he was there, if it hadn't been
+that he received no word from Shelley.
+
+"When I didn't heah from heh for so long, and wrote so many letters,
+and had no reply, I thought possibly some gay 'young Lochinvah had come
+out from the west,' and taken my sweet 'eart," he said, "and while I
+had my armour on, I made up my mind that I'd give him a fight too.  I
+didn't propose to lose Shelley, if it were in my powah to win heh.  I
+hadn't been able to say to heh exactly what I desiahed, on account of
+getting a start alone in this country; but if I won this case, I would
+have ample means.  When I secuahed the requiahed evidence, I couldn't
+wait to finish, so I came straight ovah, to make sure of heh."
+
+He arose and handed the satchel to father.
+
+"I notice you have a very good looking gun convenient," he said.
+"Would you put these papahs where you consider them safe until I'm
+ready to return?  Our home, our living, and the honah of a man are
+there, and we are mighty particular about that bag, are we not,
+Shelley?"
+
+"Well I should think we are!" cried Shelley.  "For goodness sake,
+father, hang to it!  Is the man still living?  Could you get that
+evidence over again?"
+
+"He was alive when I left, but the doctors said ten days would be his
+limit, so he may be gone befowr this."
+
+Father picked up the satchel, set it on his knees, and stroked it as if
+it were alive.
+
+"Well!  Well!" he said.  "Now would any one think such a little thing
+could contain so much?"
+
+Shelley leaned toward Robert.
+
+"Your friend!" she cried, "Your friend!  What DID he say to you?  What
+did he DO?"
+
+"Well, for a time he was wildly happy ovah having the stain removed
+from his honah, and knowing that he would have his family and faw'tn
+back; but there is an extremely sad feature to his case that is not yet
+settled, so he must keep his head level until we work that out.  Now
+about that hoss you wanted to show me----" he turned to Leon.
+
+Mother gave the signal, and we left the table.  Father carried the
+satchel to his chest, made room for it, locked it in and put the key in
+his pocket.  Then our men started to the barn to show the Arab-Kentucky
+horse.  Mr. Paget went to Shelley and took her in his arms exactly like
+Peter did Sally before the parlour door that time when I got into
+trouble, and he looked at mother and laughed as he said:  "I hope you
+will excuse me, but I've been having a very nawsty, anxious time, and I
+cawn't conform to the rules for a few days, until I become accustomed
+to the fawct that Shelley is not lost to me.  It was beastly when I
+reached Chicago, had back all my letters, and found she had gone home
+ill.  I've much suffering to recompense.  I'll atone for a small
+portion immediately."
+
+He lifted Shelley right off the floor--that's how big and strong he
+was--he hugged her tight, and kissed her forehead, cheeks, and eyes.
+
+"When I've gone through the fahmality of asking your parents for you,
+and they have said a gracious 'yes,' I'll put the fust one on your
+lips," he said, setting her down carefully.  "In the meantime, you be
+fixing your mouth to say, 'yes,' also, when I propose to you, because
+it's coming befowr you sleep."
+
+Shelley was like a peach blossom.  She reached up and touched his
+cheek, while she looked at mother all smiling, and sparkling, as she
+said:  "You see!"
+
+Mother smiled back.
+
+"I do, indeed!" she answered.
+
+Leon pulled Mr. Paget's sleeve.
+
+"Aw quit lally-gaggin' and come see a real horse," he said.
+
+Robert put his other arm around Leon, drew him to his side and hugged
+him as if he were a girl.  "I'm so glad Shelley has a lawge family," he
+said.  "Big families are jolly.  I'm so proud of all the brothers I'm
+going to have.  I was the only boy at home."
+
+"You haven't told us about your family," said mother.
+
+"No," said Robert, "but I intend to.  I have a family!  One of the
+finest on uth.  We'll talk about them after this hoss is inspected."
+
+He let Shelley go and walked away, his arm still around Leon.  Shelley
+ran to mother and both of them sobbed out loud.
+
+"NOW YOU SEE HOW IT WAS!" she said.
+
+"You poor child!" cried mother.  "Indeed I DO see how it was.  You've
+been a brave girl.  A good, brave girl!  Father and I are mighty proud
+of you!"
+
+"Oh mother!  I thought you were ashamed of me!" sobbed Shelley.
+
+"Oh my child!" said mother quavery-like.  "Oh my child!  You surely see
+that none of us could understand, as we do now."
+
+She patted Shelley, and told her to run upstairs and lie down for a
+while, because she was afraid she would be sick.
+
+"We mustn't have a pale, tired girl right now," said mother.
+
+"Well!" said Shelley, but she just stood there holding mother.
+
+"Well?" said mother gripping her.
+
+"You see!" said Shelley.
+
+"Child," said mother, "I DO see!  I see six feet of as handsome manhood
+as I ever have seen anywhere.  His manner is perfect, and I find his
+speech most attractive.  I am delighted with him.  I do see indeed!
+Your father is quite as proud and pleased as I am.  Now go to bed."
+
+Shelley held up her lips, and then went.  I ran to the barn, where the
+men were standing in the shade, while Leon led his horse up and down
+before them, told about its pedigree, its record, how he came to have
+it.  The Paget man stood there looking and listening gravely, as he
+studied the horse.  At last he went over her, and gee! but he knew
+horse!  Then Laddie brought out Flos and they talked all about her, and
+then went into the barn.  Father opened the east doors to show how much
+land he had, which were his lines; and while the world didn't look
+quite so pretty as it had in May, still it was good enough.  Then they
+went into the orchard, sat under the trees and began talking about
+business conditions.  That was so dry I went back to the house.  And
+maybe I didn't strike something interesting there!
+
+As I came up the orchard path to a back yard gate, I saw a carriage at
+the hitching rack in front of the house, so I took a peep and almost
+fell over.  It was the one the Princess had come to Sally's wedding in;
+so I knew she was in the house visiting Shelley.  I went to the parlour
+and there I had another shock; for lo and behold! in our big rocking
+chair, and looking as well as any one, so far as you could see--of
+course you can't see heart trouble, though--sat Mrs. Pryor.  The
+Princess and mother were there, all of them talking, laughing and
+having the best time, while on the davenport enjoying himself as much
+as any one, was Mr. Pryor.  They talked about everything, and it was
+easy to see that the Pryor door was OPEN so far as we were concerned,
+anyway.  Mrs. Pryor was just as nice and friendly as she could be, and
+so was he.  Shelley sat beside him, and he pinched her cheek and said:
+"Something seems to make you especially brilliant today, young woman!"
+
+Shelley flushed redder, laughed, and glanced at mother, so she said:
+"Shelley is having a plain old-fashioned case of beau.  She met a young
+man in Chicago last fall and he's here now to ask our consent.  All of
+us are quite charmed with him.  That's why she's so happy."
+
+Then the Princess sprang up and kissed Shelley, so did Mrs. Pryor,
+while such a chatter you never heard.  No one could repeat what they
+said, for as many as three talked at the same time.
+
+"Oh do let's have a double wedding!" cried the Princess when the
+excitement was over a little.  "I think it would be great fun; do
+let's!  When are you planning for?"
+
+"Nothing is settled yet," said Shelley.  "We've had no time to talk!"
+
+"Mercy!" cried the Princess.  "Go make your arrangements quickly!
+Hurry up, then come over, and we'll plan for the same time.  It will be
+splendid!  Don't you think that would be fine, Mrs. Stanton?"
+
+"I can't see any objections to it," said mother.
+
+"Where is your young man?  I'm crazy to see him," cried the Princess.
+"If you have gone and found a better looking one than mine, I'll never
+speak to you again."
+
+"She hasn't!" cried Mrs. Pryor calmly, like that settled it.  I like
+her.  "They're not made!"
+
+"I am not so sure of that," said Shelley proudly.  "Mother, isn't my
+man quite as good looking, and as nice in every way, as Laddie?"
+
+"Fully as handsome, and so far as can be seen in such a short time,
+quite as fine," said mother.
+
+I was perfectly amazed at her; as if any man could be!
+
+"I don't believe it, I won't stand it, and I shan't go home until I
+have seen for myself!" cried the Princess, laughing, and yet it sounded
+as if she were half-provoked, and I knew I was.  The Paget man was all
+right, but I wasn't going to lose my head over him.  Laddie was the
+finest, of course!
+
+"Well, he's somewhere on the place with our men, this minute," said
+Shelley, "but you stay for supper, and meet him."
+
+"When you haven't your arrangements made yet!  You surely are
+unselfish!  Of course I won't do that, but I'd love to have one little
+peep, then you bring him and come over to-morrow, so all of us can
+become acquainted, and indeed, I'm really in earnest about a double
+wedding."
+
+"Go see where the men are," said Shelley to me.
+
+I went to the back door, and their heads were bobbing far down in the
+orchard.
+
+"They're under the greening apple tree," I reported.
+
+"If you will excuse us," said Shelley to Mr. and Mrs. Pryor, "we'll
+walk down a few minutes and prove that I'm right."
+
+"Don't stay," said Mrs. Pryor.  "This trip is so unusual for me that
+I'm quite tired.  For a first venture, in such a long time, I think
+I've done well.  But now I'm beginning to feel I should go home."
+
+"Go straight along," said the Princess.  "I'll walk across the fields,
+or Thomas can come back after me."
+
+So Mr. and Mrs. Pryor went away, while the Princess, Shelley, May, and
+I walked through the orchard toward the men.  They were standing on the
+top of the hill looking over the meadow, and talking with such interest
+they didn't hear us or turn until Shelley said:  "Mr. Paget, I want to
+present you to Laddie's betrothed--Miss Pamela Pryor."
+
+He swung around, finishing what he was saying as he turned, the
+Princess took a swift step toward him, then, at the same time, both of
+them changed to solid tombstone, and stood staring, and so did all of
+us, while no one made a sound.  At last the Paget man drew a deep,
+quivery breath and sort of shook himself as he gazed at her.
+
+"Why, Pam!" he cried.  "Darling Pam, cawn it possibly be you?"
+
+If you ever heard the scream of a rabbit when the knives of a reaper
+cut it to death, why that's exactly the way she cried out.
+
+She covered her eyes with her hands.  He drew back and smiled, the red
+rushed into his face, and he began to be alive again.  Laddie went to
+the Princess and took her hands.
+
+"What does this mean?" he begged.
+
+She pulled away from him, and went to the Paget man slowly, her big
+eyes wild and strained.
+
+"Robert!" she cried.  "Robert! how did you get here?  Were you hunting
+us?"
+
+"All ovah England, yes," he said.  "Not heah!  I came heah to see
+Shelley.  But you?  How do you happen to be in this country?"
+
+"We've lived on adjoining land for two years!"
+
+"You moved heah!  To escape the pity of our friends?"
+
+"Father moved!  Mother and I had no means, and no refuge.  We were
+forced.  We never believed it!  Oh Robert, we never--not for a minute!
+Oh Robert, say you never did it!"
+
+"Try our chawming cousin Emmet your next guess!"
+
+"That devil!  Oh that devil!"
+
+She cried out that hurt way again, so he took her tight in his arms;
+but sure as ever Laddie was my brother, he was hers, so that was all
+right.  When they were together you wondered why in this world you
+hadn't thought of it the instant you saw him alone.  They were like as
+two peas.  They talked exactly the same, only he sounded much more so,
+probably from having just been in England for weeks, while in two years
+she had grown a little as we were.  We gazed at them, open-mouthed,
+like as not, and no one said a word.
+
+At last Mr. Paget looked over the Princess' shoulder at father and
+said:  "I can explain this, Mr. Stanton, in a very few wuds.  I am my
+friend.  The case was my own.  The evidence I secuahed was for myself.
+This is my only sisteh.  Heh people are mine----"
+
+"The relationship is apparent," said father.  "There is a striking
+likeness between you and your sister, and I can discern traces of your
+parents in your face, speech and manner."
+
+"If you know my father," said Robert, "then you undehstand what
+happened to me when I was found with his money on my pehson, in the
+presence of our best friends and the police.  He went raving insane on
+the instant, and he would have killed me if he hadn't been prevented;
+he tried to; has he changed any since, Pam?"
+
+The Princess was clinging to him with both hands, staring at him,
+wonder, joy, and fear all on her lovely face.
+
+"Worse!" she cried.  "He's much worse!  The longer he broods, the more
+mother grieves, the bitterer he becomes.  Mr. Stanton, he is always
+armed.  He'll shoot on sight.  Oh what shall we do?"
+
+"Miss Pamela," said Leon, "did your man Thomas know your brother in
+England?"
+
+"All his life."
+
+"Well, then, we'd better be doing something quick.  He tied the horses
+and was walking up and down the road while he waited, and he saw us
+plainly when we crossed the wood yard a while ago.  He followed us and
+stared so, I couldn't help noticing him."
+
+"Jove!" cried Robert.  "I must have seen him in the village this
+morning.  A man reminded me of him, then I remembered how like people
+of his type are, and concluded I was mistaken.  Mr. Stanton, you have
+agreed that the evidence I hold is sufficient.  Pam cawn tell you that
+while I don't deny being full of tricks as a boy, they weh not dirty,
+not low, and while father always taking Emmet's paht against me drove
+me to recklessness sometimes, I nevah did anything underhand or
+disgraceful.  She knows what provocation I had, and exactly what
+happened.  Let heh tell you!"
+
+"I don't feel that I require any further information," said father.
+"You see, I happen to be fairly well acquainted with Mr. Pryor."
+
+"Pryor?"
+
+"He made us use that name here," explained the Princess.
+
+"WELL, HIS NAME IS PAGET!" said Robert angrily.
+
+Laddie told me long ago he didn't believe it was Pryor.
+
+"Then, if you are acquainted with my father, what would you counsel?
+Unless I'm prepahed to furnish the central figyah of interest in a
+funeral, I dare not meet him, until he has seen this evidence, had time
+to digest it, and calm himself."
+
+Shelley caught him by the arm.  No wonder!  She hadn't been proposed
+to, or even had a kiss on her lips.  She pulled him.
+
+"You come straight to the house," she said.  "Thomas may tell your
+father he thought he saw you."
+
+That was about as serious as anything could be, but nothing ever
+stopped Leon.  He sidled away from father, repeating in a low voice:
+
+  "'For sore dismayed, through storm and shade
+    His child he did discover;
+  One lovely hand she stretched for aid,
+    And one was round her lover--'"
+
+
+Shelley just looked daggers at him, but she was too anxious to waste
+any time.
+
+"Would Thomas tell your father?" she asked the Princess.
+
+"The instant he saw him alone, yes.  He wouldn't before mother."
+
+"Hold one minute!" cried father.  "We must think of our mother, just a
+little.  Shelley, you and the girls run up and explain how this is.
+Better all of you go to the house, except Mr. Paget.  He'll be safe
+here as anywhere.  Mr. Pryor will stop there, if he comes.  So it would
+be best for you to keep out of sight, Robert, until I have had a little
+talk with him."
+
+"I'll stay here," I offered.  "We'll talk until you get Mr. Pryor
+cooled off.  He can be awful ragesome when he's excited, and it doesn't
+take much to start him."
+
+"You're right about that!" agreed Robert.
+
+So we sat under the greening and were having a fine visit while the
+others went to break the news gently to mother that the Pryor mystery
+had gone up higher than Gilderoy's kite.  My! but she'd be glad!  It
+would save her many a powerful prayer.  I was telling Robert all about
+the time his father visited us, and what my mother said to him, and he
+said:  "She'd be the one to talk with him now.  Possibly he'd listen to
+her, until he got it through his head that his own son is not a common
+thief."
+
+"Maybe he'll have to be held, like taking quinine, and made to listen,"
+I said.
+
+"That would be easy, if he were not a walking ahsenal," said Robert.
+"You have small chance to reason with a half-crazy man while he is
+handling a pistol."
+
+He meant revolver.
+
+"But he'll shoot!" I cried.  "The Princess said he'd shoot!"
+
+"So he will!" said Robert.  "Shoot first, then find out how things are,
+and kill himself and every one else with remorse, afterward.  He is
+made that way."
+
+"Then he doesn't dare see you until he finds out how mistaken he has
+been," I said, for I was growing to like Robert better every minute
+longer I knew him.  Besides, there was the Princess, looking like him
+as possible, and loving him of course, like I did Laddie, maybe.  And
+if anything could cure Mrs. Pryor's heart trouble, having her son back
+would, because that was what made it in the first place, and even
+before them, there was Shelley to be thought of, and cared for.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+The Pryor Mystery
+
+  "And now old Dodson, turning pale,
+  Yields to his fate--so ends my tale."
+
+
+It didn't take me long to see why Shelley liked Robert Paget.  He was
+one of the very most likeable persons I ever had seen.  We were sitting
+under the apple tree, growing better friends every minute, when we
+heard a smash, so we looked up, and it was the sound made by Ranger as
+Mr. Pryor landed from taking our meadow fence.  He had ridden through
+the pasture, and was coming down the creek bank.  He was a spectacle to
+behold.  A mile away you could see that Thomas had told him he had seen
+Robert, and where he was.  Father had been mistaken in thinking Mr.
+Pryor would go to the house.  He had lost his hat, his white hair was
+flying, his horse was in a lather, and he seemed to be talking to
+himself.  Robert took one good look.  "Ye Gods!" he cried.  "There he
+comes now, a chattering madman!"
+
+"The Station," I panted.  "Up that ravine!  Roll back the stone and
+pull the door shut after you.  Quick!"
+
+He never could have been inside, before Mr. Pryor's horse was raving
+along the embankment beside the fence.
+
+"Where is he?" he cried.  "Thomas saw him here!"
+
+I didn't think his horse could take the fence at the top of the hill,
+but it looked as if he intended trying to make it, and I had to stop
+him if I could.
+
+"Saw who?" I asked with clicking teeth.
+
+"A tall, slender man, with a handsome face, and the heart of a devil."
+
+"Yes, there was a man here like that in the face.  I didn't see his
+heart," I said.
+
+"Which way?" raved Mr. Pryor.  "Which way?  Is he at your house?"
+
+Then I saw that he had the reins in his left hand, and a big revolver
+in his right.  So there was no mistake about whether he'd really shoot.
+But that gun provoked me.  People have no business to be careless with
+those things.  They're dangerous!
+
+"He didn't do what you think he did," I cried, "and he can prove he
+didn't, if you'll stop cavorting, and listen to reason."
+
+Mr. Pryor leaned over the fence, dark purple like a beet now.
+
+"You tell me where he is, or I'll choke it out of you," he said.
+
+I guess he meant it.  I took one long look at his lean, clawlike
+fingers, and put both hands around my neck.
+
+"He knew Thomas saw him.  He went that way," I said, waving off toward
+the north.
+
+"Hah! striking for petticoats, as usual!" he cried, and away he went in
+the direction of his house.  Then I flew for the Station.
+
+"Come from there, quick!" I cried.  "I've sent him back to his house,
+but when he finds you're not there, he will come here again.  Hurry,
+and I'll put you in the woodshed loft.  He'd never think of looking
+there."
+
+He came out and we started toward the house, going pretty fast.  Almost
+to the back gate we met Shelley.
+
+"Does mother know?" I asked.
+
+"I just told her," she said.
+
+"Father," I cried, going in the back dining-room door.  "Mr. Pryor was
+down in the meadow on Ranger.  Thomas did see Robert, and his father is
+hunting him with a gun.  We saw him coming, so I hid Robert in the
+Station and sent Mr. Pryor back home--I guess I told him a lie, father,
+or at least part of one, I said he went 'that way,' and he did, but not
+so far as I made his father think; so he started back home, but when he
+gets there and doesn't find Robert he'll come here again, madder than
+ever.  Oh father, he'll come again, and he's crazy, father!  Clear,
+raving crazy!  I know he'll come again!"
+
+"Yes," said father calmly.  "I think it very probable that he will come
+again."
+
+Then he started around shutting and latching windows, closing and
+locking the doors, and he carefully loaded his gun, and leaned it
+against the front casing.  Then he put on his glasses, and began
+examining the papers they had brought out again.  Robert stood beside
+him, and explained and showed him.
+
+"You see with me out of the way, the English law would give everything
+to my cousin," he said, and he explained it all over again.
+
+"And to think how he always posed for a perfect saint!" cried the
+Princess.  "Oh I hope the devil knows how to make him pay for what all
+of us have suffered!"
+
+"Child!  Child!" cried mother.
+
+"I can't help it!" said the Princess.  "Let me tell you, Mr. Stanton."
+
+Then SHE told everything all over again, but it was even more
+interesting than the way Robert explained it, because what she said was
+about how it had been with her and her mother.
+
+"It made father what he is," she said.  "He would have killed Robert,
+if our friends hadn't helped him away.  He will now, if he isn't
+stopped.  I tell you he will!  He sold everything he could legally
+control, for what any one chose to give him, and fled here stricken in
+pride, heartbroken, insane with anger, the creature you know.  In a
+minute he'll be back again.  Oh what are we going to do?"
+
+Father was laying out the papers that he wanted to use very carefully.
+
+"These constitute all the proof any court would require," he said to
+Robert.  "If he returns, all of you keep from sight.  This is my house;
+I'll manage who comes here, in my own way."
+
+"But you must be allowed to take no risk!" cried Robert.  "I cawn't
+consent to youah facing danger for me."
+
+"There will be no risk," said father.  "There is no reason why he
+should want to injure me.  As the master of this house, I am accustomed
+to being obeyed.  If he comes, step into the parlour there, until I
+call you."
+
+He was busy with the papers when he saw Mr. Pryor coming.  I wondered
+if he would jump the yard fence and ride down mother's flowers, but he
+left his horse at the hitching rack, and pounded on the front door.
+
+"Did any of you notice whether he was displaying a revolver?" asked
+father.
+
+"Yes father!  Yes!" I cried.  "And he's shaking so I'm afraid he'll
+make it go, when he doesn't intend to."
+
+Father picked up and levelled his rifle on the front door.
+
+"Leon," he said, "you're pretty agile.  Open this door, keep yourself
+behind it, and step around in the parlour.  The rest of you get out,
+and stay out of range."
+
+Those nearest hurried into the parlour.  Candace, May, and I crouched
+in the front stairway, but things were so exciting we just had to keep
+the door open a tiny crack so we could see plain as anything.  There
+had been nothing for Mrs. Freshett to do all afternoon, so she had gone
+over to visit an hour with Amanda Deam.  Now Mr. Pryor probably thought
+father would meet him with the Bible in his hand, and read a passage
+about loving your neighbour as yourself.  I'll bet anything you can
+mention that he never expected to find himself looking straight down
+the barrel of a shining big rifle when that door swung open.  It
+surprised him so, he staggered, and his arm wavered.  If he had shot
+and hit anything then, it would have been an accident.
+
+"Got you over the heart," said father, in precisely the same voice he
+always said, "This is a fine day we are having."  "Now why are you
+coming here in such a shape?"  This was a little cross.  "I'm not the
+man to cringe before you!"  This was quite boastful.  "You'll get
+bullet for bullet, if you attempt to invade my house with a gun."  This
+pinged as if father shot words instead of bullets.
+
+"I want my daughter to come home," said Mr. Pryor.  "And if you're
+sheltering the thief she is trying to hide, yield him up, if you would
+save yourself."
+
+"Well, I'm not anxious about dying, with the family I have on my hands,
+neighbour," said father, his rifle holding without a waver, "but unless
+you put away that weapon, and listen to reason, you cannot enter my
+house.  Calm yourself, man, and hear what there is to be said!  Examine
+the proof, that is here waiting to be offered to you."
+
+"Once and but once, send them out, or I'll enter over you!" cried Mr.
+Pryor.
+
+"Sorry," said father, "but if only a muscle of your trigger finger
+moves, you fall before I do.  I've the best range, and the most
+suitable implement for the work."
+
+"Implement for the work!"  Well, what do you think of father?  Any one
+who could not see, to have heard him, would have thought he was talking
+about a hoe.  We saw a shadow before we knew what made it; then, a
+little at a time, wonderingly, her jolly face a bewildered daze, her
+mouth slowly opening, Mrs. Freshett, half-bent and peering, stooped
+under Mr. Pryor's arm and looked in our door.  She had come back to
+help get supper, and because the kitchen was locked, she had gone
+around the house to see if she could get in at the front.  What she saw
+closed her mouth, and straightened her back.
+
+"WHY, YOU TWO OLD FOOLS!" she cried.  "IF YE AIN'T DRAWED A BEAD ON
+EACH OTHER!"
+
+None of us saw her do it.  We only knew after it was over what must
+have happened.  She had said she'd risk her life for mother.
+
+She never stopped an instant when her chance came.  She must have
+turned, and thrown her big body against Mr. Pryor.  He was tired, old,
+and shaking with anger.  They went down together, she gripping his
+right wrist with both hands, and she was strong as most men.  Father
+set the gun beside the door, and bent over them.  A minute more and he
+handed the revolver to Leon, and helped Mrs. Freshett to her feet.  Mr.
+Pryor lay all twisted on the walk, his face was working, and what he
+said was a stiff jabber no one could understand.  He had broken into
+the pieces we often feared he would.
+
+Robert and Laddie came running to help father carry him in, and lay him
+on the couch.
+
+"I hope, Miss Stanton," said Mrs. Freshett, "that I wa'n't too rough
+with him.  He was so shaky-like, I was 'feered that thing would go off
+without his really makin' it, and of course I couldn't see none of
+yourn threatened with a deadly weepon, 'thout buttin' in and doin' the
+best I could."
+
+Mother put her arms around her as far as they would reach.  She would
+have had to take her a side at a time to really hug all of her, and she
+said:  "Mrs. Freshett, you are an instrument in the hands of the Lord
+this day.  Undoubtedly you have kept us from a fearful tragedy;
+possibly you have saved my husband for me.  None of us ever can thank
+you enough."
+
+"Loosen his collar and give him air," said Mrs. Freshett pushing mother
+away.  "I think likely he has bust a blood vessel."
+
+Father sent Leon flying to bring Dr. Fenner.  Laddie took the carriage
+and he and Robert went after Mrs. Pryor, while father, mother, Mrs.
+Freshett, the Princess, May, and I, every last one, worked over Mr.
+Pryor.  We poured hot stuff down his throat, put warm things around
+him, and rubbed him until the sweat ran on us, trying to get his
+knotted muscles straightened out.  When Dr. Fenner came he said we were
+doing all he could; MAYBE Mr. Pryor would come to and be all right, and
+maybe his left side would be helpless forever; it was a stroke.  Seemed
+to me having Mrs. Freshett come against you like that, could be called
+a good deal more than a stroke, but I couldn't think of the right word
+then.  And after all, perhaps stroke was enough.  He couldn't have been
+much worse off if the barn had fallen on him.  I didn't think there was
+quite so much of Mrs. Freshett; but then she was scared, and angry; and
+he was about ready to burst, all by himself, if no one had touched him.
+He had much better have stayed at home and listened to what was to be
+said, reasonably, like father would; and then if he really had to
+shoot, he would have been in some kind of condition to take aim.
+
+After a long hard fight we got him limber, straightened out, and warm,
+it didn't rip so when he breathed, then they put him in the parlour on
+the big davenport.  Leon said if the sparkin' bench didn't bring him
+to, nothing would.  Laddie sat beside him and mother kept peeping.  She
+wouldn't let Dr. Fenner go, because she said Mr. Pryor just must come
+out of it right, and have a few years of peace and happiness.
+
+Mrs. Pryor came back with Laddie and Robert.  He carried her in, put
+her in the big rocking chair again, and he sat beside her, stroking and
+kissing her, while she held him with both hands.  You could see NOW why
+his mother couldn't sleep, walked the road, and held her hands over her
+heart.  She was a brave woman, and she had done well to keep alive and
+going in any shape at all.  You see we knew.  There had been only the
+few hours when it seemed possible that one of our boys had taken
+father's money and was gone.  I well remembered what happened to our
+mother then.  And if she had been disgraced before every one, dragged
+from her home away across a big sea to live among strangers, and not
+known where her boy was for years, I'm not a bit sure that she'd have
+done better than Mrs. Pryor.  Yes, she would too; come to think it
+out--she'd have kept on believing the Lord had something to do with it,
+and that He'd fix it some way; and I know she and father would have
+held hands no matter what happened or where they went.
+
+I guess the biggest thing the matter with Pryors was that they didn't
+know how to go about loving each other right; maybe it was because they
+didn't love God, so they couldn't know exactly what PROPER LOVE was;
+because God is love, like father said.
+
+Mrs. Pryor didn't want to see Mr. Pryor--I can't get used to calling
+them Paget--and she didn't ask anything about him.  I guess she was
+pretty mad at him.  She never had liked the Emmet cousin, and she'd had
+nothing but trouble with him all the time he had been in her family,
+and then that awful disgrace, that she always THOUGHT was all him, but
+she couldn't prove it, and she had no money.
+
+That's a very bad thing.  A woman should always have some money.  She
+works as hard as any one, and usually she has more that worries her, so
+it's only fair for her to have part of what the work and worry bring.
+Mother always has money.  Why, she has so much, she can help father out
+when he is pushed with bills, as she did last fall, to start Shelley to
+music school.  It's no way to be forced to live with a man, just to get
+a home, food, and clothing.  I don't believe mother ever would do it in
+all this world.  But then mother has worked all her life, and so if
+father doesn't do as she wants him to, she'd know exactly how to go
+about taking care of herself.
+
+After all Mrs. Pryor didn't need to sit back on her dignity and look so
+abused.  He couldn't knock her down, and drag her clear here.  Why
+didn't she say right out, in the beginning, that her son COULDN'T be a
+thief, that she knew it, and she'd stay at home and wait for him to
+come back?  She could have put a piece in the paper saying she knew her
+boy was all right, and for him to come back, so they could go to work
+and PROVE it.  I bet if she'd had one tenth of the ginger mother has,
+she'd have stopped the whole fuss in the start.  I looked at her almost
+steadily, trying to figure out just what mother would have done in her
+place.  Maybe I'm mistaken about exactly how she would have set to
+work, but this I KNOW: she'd have stuck to the Lord; she'd have loved
+father, so dearly, he just COULDN'T have wanted her to do things that
+hurt her until it gave her heart trouble; and she never, never would
+have given up one of us, and sat holding her heart for months, refusing
+to see or to speak to any one, while she waited for some one else to do
+something.  Mother never waits.  She always thinks a minute, if she's
+in doubt she asks father; if he can't decide, both of them ask God; and
+then you ought to see things begin to fly.
+
+The more I watched Mrs. Pryor, the more I began to think she was a
+lady; and just about when I was sure that was what ailed her, I heard
+father say:  "Perhaps the lady would like a cup of tea."  I had a big
+notion to tell her to come on, and I would show her where the cannister
+was, but I thought I better not.  I wanted to, though.  She'd have felt
+much better if she had got up and worked like the rest of us.  With all
+the excitement, and everything happening at once, you'd have thought
+mother would be flat on her back, but flat nothing!  Everything was
+picked up and slid back, fast as it was torn down; she found time to
+flannel her nose and brush her hair, her collar was straight, and the
+goldstone pin shone in the light, while her starched white apron
+fluttered as she went through the doors.  She said a few words to
+Candace and Mrs. Freshett, May took out a linen cloth and began to set
+places for all the grown people, so I knew there'd be strawberry
+preserves and fried ham, but in all that, would you ever have thought
+that she'd find a second to make biscuit, and tea cakes herself?  Plain
+as preaching I heard her say to Mrs. Freshett:  "I do hope and pray
+that Mr. Pryor will come out of it right, so we can take him home, and
+teach him to behave himself; but if he's gone this minute, I intend to
+have another decent meal for Shelley to offer her young man; and I
+don't care if I show Mrs. Pryor that we're not hungry over here, if we
+do lack servants to carry in food on silver platters."
+
+"That I jest would!" said Mrs. Freshett.  "Even if he turns up his
+toes, 'tain't YOUR funeral, thank the Lord! an' looky here, I'd jest as
+soon set things in a bake pan an' pass 'em for you, myself.  I'll do
+it, if you say the word."
+
+Mother bit her lip, and fought her face to keep it straight, as she
+said confidential-like:  "No, I'm not going to toady to her.  I only
+want her to see that a meal really consists of food after all; I don't
+mind putting my best foot foremost, but I won't ape her."
+
+"Huccome they to fuss like this, peaceable as Mr. Stanton be, an'
+what's Shelley's beau to them?"
+
+"I should think you could tell by looking at Pryors," said mother.
+"He's their mystery, and also their son.  Shelley met him in Chicago,
+he came here to see her, and ran right into them.  I'll tell you about
+it before you go.  Now, I must keep these applications hot, for I've
+set my head on pulling Mr. Pryor out so that he can speak, and have a
+few decent years of life yet."
+
+"But why did the old devil--EX-cuse me, I mean the old GENTLEMAN, want
+to shoot your man?"
+
+"He didn't!  I'll tell you all about it after they're gone."
+
+"I bet you don't get shet of them the night," said Mrs. Freshett.
+
+"All right!" said mother.  "Whatever Dr. Fenner thinks.  I won't have
+Mr. Pryor moved until it can't hurt him, if he stays a week.  I blame
+her quite as much as I do him; from what I know.  If a woman is going
+to live with a man, there are times when she's got to put her foot
+down--flat--most unmercifully flat!"
+
+"Ain't she though!" said Mrs. Freshett; then she and mother just
+laughed.
+
+There!  What did I tell you?  I feel as good as if father had patted me
+on the head and bragged on me a lot.  I THOUGHT mother wouldn't think
+that Mr. Pryor was ALL to blame, and she didn't.  I figured that out by
+myself, too.
+
+Every minute Mr. Pryor grew better.  He breathed easier, and mother
+tilted on her toes and waved her hands, when he moved his feet, threw
+back his head, lifted his hand to it, and acted like he was almost over
+it, and still in shape to manage himself.  She hurried to tell Mrs.
+Pryor, and I know mother didn't like it when she never even said she
+was glad, or went to see for herself.
+
+Laddie and the Princess watched him, while every one else went to
+supper.  Laddie picked up Mrs. Pryor's chair, carried her to the
+dining-room, and set her in my place beside father.  He placed Dr.
+Fenner next her, and left Robert to sit with Shelley.  I don't think
+Mrs. Pryor quite liked that, but no one asked her.
+
+I watched and listened until everything seemed to be going right there,
+and then I slipped into the parlour, where Laddie and the Princess were
+caring for Mr. Pryor.  With one hand Laddie held hers, the other
+grasped Mr. Pryor's wrist.  Laddie never took his eyes from that white,
+drawn face, except to smile at her, and squeeze her hand every little
+while.  At last Mr. Pryor turned over and sighed, pretty soon he opened
+his eyes, and looked at Laddie, then at the Princess, and it was
+nothing new to see them, so he smiled and dozed again.  After a while
+he opened them wider, then he saw the piano--that was an eye-opener for
+any one--and the strange room, so he asked, most as plain as he ever
+talked, why he was at our house again, and then he began to remember.
+He struggled to sit up and the colour came into his face.  So Laddie
+let go the Princess, and held him down while he said:  "Mr. Pryor,
+answer me this.  Do you want to spend the remainder of your life in an
+invalid's chair, or would you like to walk abroad and sit a horse
+again?"
+
+He glared at Laddie, but he heard how things were plainly enough.
+
+Laddie held him, while he explained what a fight we had to unlock his
+muscles, and start him going again, and how, if we hadn't loved him,
+and wanted him so, and had left him untouched until the Doctor came,
+very likely he'd have been paralyzed all the rest of his life, if he
+hadn't died; and he said he wished he HAD, and he didn't THANK any one
+for saving him.
+
+"Oh yes you do!" said Laddie, the same as he'd have talked to Leon.
+"You can't stuff me on that, and you needn't try.  Being dead is a
+cold, clammy proposition, that all of us put off as long as we can.
+You know you want to see Pamela in her own home.  You know you are
+interested in how I come out with those horses.  You know you want the
+little people you spoke of, around you.  You know the pain and suspense
+you have borne have almost driven you insane, and it was because you
+cared so deeply.  Now lie still, and keep quiet!  All of us are tired
+and there's no sense in making us go through this again, besides the
+risk of crippling yourself that you run.  Right here in this house are
+the papers to prove that your nephew took your money, and hid it in
+your son's clothing, as he already had done a hundred lesser things,
+before, purposely to estrange you.  Hold steady!  You must hear this!
+The sooner you know it, the better you'll feel.  You remember, don't
+you, that before your nephew entered your home, you idolized your son.
+You thought the things he did were amusing.  A boy is a boy, and if
+he's alive, he's very apt to be lively.  Mother could tell you a few
+pranks that Leon has put us through; but they're only a boy's
+foolishness, they are not unusual or unforgivable.  I've gone over the
+evidence your son brings, with extreme care, so has father.  Both of us
+are quite familiar with common law.  He has every proof you can
+possibly desire.  You can't get around it, even if your heart wasn't
+worn out with rebellion, and you were not crazy to have the loving
+sympathy of your family again."
+
+"I don't believe a word of it!"
+
+"You have got to!  I tell you it is PROOF, man!  The documents are in
+this house now."
+
+"He forged them, or stole them, as he took the money!"
+
+Laddie just laughed.
+
+"How you do long, and fight, to be convinced!" he said.  "I don't blame
+you!  When anything means this much, of course you must be sure.  But
+you'll know your nephew's signature; also your lawyer's.  You'll know
+letters from old friends who are above question.  Sandy McSheel has
+written you that he was with Robert through all of it, and he gives you
+his word that everything is all right.  You will believe him, won't
+you?"
+
+Big tears began to squeeze from under Mr. Pryor's lids, until Laddie
+and the Princess each tried to see how much of him they could hold to
+keep him together-like.
+
+"Tell me!" he said at last, so they took turns explaining everything
+plain as day, and soon he listened without being held.
+
+When they had told him everything they could think of, he asked: "Did
+Robert kill Emmet?"
+
+"I am very happy to be able to tell you that he did not.  It would have
+been painful, and not helped a bad matter a particle.  Your nephew had
+dissipated until he was only a skeleton just breathing his last.  It's
+probable that his fear of death helped your son out, so that he got the
+evidence he wanted easier than he hoped to in the beginning.  I don't
+mean that he is dead now; but he is passing slowly, and loathsomely.
+Robert thinks word that he has gone will come any hour.  Think how
+pleasant it will be to have your son!  Think how happy your home will
+be now!  Think how you will love to see Sandy, and all your old
+friends!  Think how glad you'll be to go home, and take charge of your
+estate!"
+
+"Think!" cried Mr. Pryor, pushing Laddie away and sitting up: "Think
+how I shall enjoy wringing the last drop of blood from that craven's
+body with these old hands!"
+
+What a sight he did look to be sure!  Sick, half-crazy, on the very
+verge of the grave himself, and wanting to kill a poor man already
+dying.  Aren't some people too curious?
+
+Laddie carefully laid him down, straightened him out and held him
+again.  Mother always said he was "patient as Job," and that day it
+proved to be a good thing.
+
+"You're determined to keep yourself well supplied with trouble,"
+laughed Laddie.  I don't believe any one else would have dared.  "Now
+to an unbiased observer, it would seem that you'd be ready to let well
+enough alone.  You have your son back, you have him fully exonerated,
+you have much of your property, you are now ready for freedom, life,
+and love, with the best of us; you have also two weddings on your hands
+in the near future.  Why in the name of sense are you anxious for more?"
+
+"I should have thought that Sandy McSheel, if he's a real friend of
+mine----"
+
+"Sandy tells you all about it in the letter he has sent.  He went with
+Robert fully intending to do that very thing for you, but the poor
+creature was too loathsome.  The sight of him made Sandy sick.  He
+writes you that when he saw the horrible spectacle, all he could think
+of was to secure the evidence needed and get away."
+
+Suddenly the Princess arose and knelt beside the davenport.  She put
+her arms around her father's neck and drew his wrinkled, white old face
+up against her lovely one.
+
+"Daddy!  Dear old Daddy!" she cried.  "I've had such a hard spot in my
+heart against you for so long.  Oh do let's forget everything, and
+begin all over again; begin away back where we were before Emmet ever
+came.  Oh Daddy, do let's forget, and begin all over new, like other
+people!"
+
+He held her tight a minute, then his lips began whispering against her
+ear.  Finally he said:  "Take yourselves off, and send Robert here.  I
+want my son.  Oh I want my boy!"
+
+It was a long time before Robert came from the parlour; when he did, it
+was only to get his mother and take her back with him; then it was a
+still longer time before the door opened; but when it did, it was
+perfectly sure that they were all friends again.  Then Leon went to
+tell Thomas, and he came with the big carriage.
+
+White and shaking, Mr. Pryor was lifted into it and they went home
+together, taking Shelley with them to stay that night; so no doubt she
+was proposed to and got her kiss before she slept.
+
+That fall there were two weddings at our church at the same time.
+
+Sally's had been fine; but it wasn't worth mentioning beside Laddie and
+the Princess, and Robert and Shelley.  You should have seen my mother!
+She rocked like a kingbird on the top twig of the winesap, which was
+the tallest tree in our orchard, and for once there wasn't a single fly
+in her ointment, not one, she said so herself, and so did father.  As
+we watched the big ve-hi-ackle, as Leon called it, creep slowly down
+the Little Hill, it made me think of that pathetic poem, "The Three
+Warnings," in McGuffey's Sixth.  I guess I gave Mr. Pryor the first,
+that time he got so angry he hit his horse until it almost ran away.
+Mother delivered the second when she curry-combed him about the taxes,
+and Mrs. Freshett finished the job.  The last two lines read as if they
+had been especially written about him:
+
+  "And now old Dodson, turning pale,
+  Yields to his fate--so ends my tale."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Laddie, by Gene Stratton Porter
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Laddie, by Gene Stratton Porter
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+
+
+LADDIE
+A TRUE BLUE STORY
+
+
+To
+LEANDER ELLIOT STRATTON
+"The Way to Be Happy Is to Be Good"
+
+
+Contents
+
+CHAPTER                                         
+I.      Little Sister
+II.     Our Angel Boy
+III.    Mr. Pryor's Door
+IV.     The Last Day in Eden
+V.      The First Day of School
+VI.     The Wedding Gown
+VII.    When Sally Married Peter
+VIII.   The Shropshire and the Crusader
+IX.     "Even So"
+X.      Laddie Takes the Plunge
+XI.     Keeping Christmas Our Way
+XII.    The Horn of the Hunter
+XIII.   The Garden of the Lord
+XIV.    The Crest of Eastbrooke
+XV.     Laddie, the Princess, and the Pie
+XVI.    The Homing Pigeon
+XVII.   In Faith Believing
+XVIII.  The Pryor Mystery
+
+
+LADDIE
+
+CHARACTERS
+
+LADDIE, Who Loved and Asked No Questions.
+THE PRINCESS, From the House of Mystery.
+LEON, Our Angel Child.
+LITTLE SISTER, Who Tells What Happened.
+MR. and MRS. STANTON, Who Faced Life Shoulder to Shoulder.
+SALLY and PETER, Who Married Each Other.
+ELIZABETH, SHELLEY, MAY and Other Stanton Children.
+MR. and MRS. PRYOR, Father and Mother of the Princess.
+ROBERT PAGET, a Chicago Lawyer.
+MRS. FRESHETT, Who Offered Her Life for Her Friend.
+CANDACE, the Cook.
+MISS AMELIA, the School Mistress.
+Interested Relatives, Friends, and Neighbours.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Little Sister
+
+
+            "And could another child-world be my share,
+             I'd be a Little Sister there."
+
+
+Have I got a Little Sister anywhere in this house?" inquired
+Laddie at the door, in his most coaxing voice.
+
+"Yes sir," I answered, dropping the trousers I was making for
+Hezekiah, my pet bluejay, and running as fast as I could.  There
+was no telling what minute May might take it into her head that
+she was a little sister and reach him first.  Maybe he wanted me
+to do something for him, and I loved to wait on Laddie.
+
+"Ask mother if you may go with me a while."
+
+"Mother doesn't care where I am, if I come when the supper bell
+rings."
+
+"All right!" said Laddie.
+
+He led the way around the house, sat on the front step and took
+me between his knees.
+
+"Oh, is it going to be a secret?" I cried.
+
+Secrets with Laddie were the greatest joy in life.  He was so big
+and so handsome.  He was so much nicer than any one else in our
+family, or among our friends, that to share his secrets, run his
+errands, and love him blindly was the greatest happiness. 
+Sometimes I disobeyed father and mother; I minded Laddie like his
+right hand.
+
+"The biggest secret yet," he said gravely.
+
+"Tell quick!" I begged, holding my ear to his lips.
+
+"Not so fast!" said Laddie.  "Not so fast!  I have doubts about
+this.  I don't know that I should send you.  Possibly you can't
+find the way.  You may be afraid.  Above all, there is never to
+be a whisper.  Not to any one!  Do you understand?"
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked.
+
+"Something serious," said Laddie.  "You see, I expected to have
+an hour or two for myself this afternoon, so I made an engagement
+to spend the time with a Fairy Princess in our Big Woods.  Father
+and I broke the reaper taking it from the shed just now and you
+know how he is about Fairies."
+
+I did know how he was about Fairies.  He hadn't a particle of
+patience with them.  A Princess would be the Queen's daughter. 
+My father's people were English, and I had heard enough talk to
+understand that.  I was almost wild with excitement.
+
+"Tell me the secret, hurry!" I cried.
+
+"It's just this," he said.  "It took me a long time to coax the
+Princess into our Big Woods.  I had to fix a throne for her to
+sit on; spread a Magic Carpet for her feet, and build a wall to
+screen her.  Now, what is she going to think if I'm not there to
+welcome her when she comes?  She promised to show me how to make
+sunshine on dark days."
+
+"Tell father and he can have Leon help him."
+
+"But it is a secret with the Princess, and it's HERS as much as
+mine.  If I tell, she may not like it, and then she won't make me
+her Prince and send me on her errands."
+
+"Then you don't dare tell a breath," I said.
+
+"Will you go in my place, and carry her a letter to explain why
+I'm not coming, Little Sister?"
+
+"Of course!" I said stoutly, and then my heart turned right over;
+for I never had been in our Big Woods alone, and neither mother
+nor father wanted me to go.  Passing Gypsies sometimes laid down
+the fence and went there to camp.  Father thought all the wolves
+and wildcats were gone, he hadn't seen any in years, but every
+once in a while some one said they had, and he was not quite sure
+yet.  And that wasn't the beginning of it.  Paddy Ryan had come
+back from the war wrong in his head.  He wore his old army
+overcoat summer and winter, slept on the ground, and ate whatever
+he could find.  Once Laddie and Leon, hunting squirrels to make
+broth for mother on one of her bad days, saw him in our Big Woods
+and he was eating SNAKES.  If I found Pat Ryan eating a snake, it
+
+would frighten me so I would stand still and let him eat me, if
+he wanted to, and perhaps he wasn't too crazy to see how plump I
+was.  I seemed to see swarthy, dark faces, big, sleek cats
+dropping from limbs, and Paddy Ryan's matted gray hair, the
+flying rags of the old blue coat, and a snake in his hands. 
+Laddie was slipping the letter into my apron pocket.  My knees
+threatened to let me down.
+
+"Must I lift the leaves and hunt for her, or will she come to
+me?" I wavered.
+
+"That's the biggest secret of all," said Laddie.  "Since the
+Princess entered them, our woods are Enchanted, and there is no
+telling what wonderful things may happen any minute.  One of them
+is this: whenever the Princess comes there, she grows in size
+until she is as big as, say our Sally, and she fills all the
+place with glory, until you are so blinded you scarcely can see
+her face."
+
+"What is she like, Laddie?" I questioned, so filled with awe and
+interest, that fear was forgotten.
+
+"She is taller than Sally," said Laddie.  "Her face is oval, and
+her cheeks are bright.  Her eyes are big moonlit pools of
+darkness, and silken curls fall over her shoulders.  One hair is
+strong enough for a lifeline that will draw a drowning man
+ashore, or strangle an unhappy one.  But you will not see her. 
+I'm purposely sending you early, so you can do what you are told
+and come back to me before she even reaches the woods."
+
+"What am I to do, Laddie?"
+
+"You must put one hand in your apron pocket and take the letter
+in it, and as long as you hold it tight, nothing in the world can
+hurt you.   Go out our lane to the Big Woods, climb the gate and
+walk straight back the wagon road to the water.  When you reach
+that, you must turn to your right and go toward Hoods' until you
+come to the pawpaw thicket.   Go around that, look ahead, and
+you'll see the biggest beech tree you ever saw.  You know a
+beech, don't you?"
+
+"Of course I do," I said indignantly.  "Father taught me beech
+with the other trees."
+
+"Well then," said Laddie, "straight before you will be a purple
+beech, and under it is the throne of the Princess, the Magic
+Carpet, and the walls I made.  Among the beech roots there is a
+stone hidden with moss.  Roll the stone back and there will be a
+piece of bark.  Lift that, lay the letter in the box you'll find,
+and scamper to me like flying.  I'll be at the barn with father."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"Not quite," said Laddie.  "It's possible that the Fairy Queen
+may have set the Princess spinning silk for the caterpillars to
+weave their little houses with this winter; and if she has, she
+may have left a letter there to tell me.  If there is one, put it
+in your pocket, hold it close every step of the way, and you'll
+be safe coming home as you were going.  But you mustn't let a
+soul see it; you must slip it into my pocket when I'm not
+looking.  If you let any one see, then the Magic will be spoiled,
+and the Fairy won't come again."
+
+"No one shall see," I promised.
+
+"I knew you could be trusted," said Laddie, kissing and hugging
+me hard.  "Now go!  If anything gets after you that such a big
+girl as you really wouldn't be ashamed to be afraid of, climb on
+a fence and call.  I'll be listening, and I'll come flying.  Now
+I must hurry.  Father will think it's going to take me the
+remainder of the day to find the bolts he wants."
+
+We went down the front walk between the rows of hollyhocks and
+tasselled lady-slippers, out the gate, and followed the road. 
+Laddie held one of my hands tight, and in the other I gripped the
+letter in my pocket.  So long as Laddie could see me, and the
+lane lay between open fields, I wasn't afraid.  I was thinking so
+deeply about our woods being Enchanted, and a tiny Fairy growing
+big as our Sally, because she was in them, that I stepped out
+bravely.
+
+Every few days I followed the lane as far back as the Big Gate. 
+This stood where four fields cornered, and opened into the road
+leading to the woods.  Beyond it, I had walked on Sunday
+afternoons with father while he taught me all the flowers, vines,
+and bushes he knew, only he didn't know some of the prettiest
+ones; I had to have books for them, and I was studying to learn
+enough that I could find out.  Or I had ridden on the wagon with
+Laddie and Leon when they went to bring wood for the cookstove,
+outoven, and big fireplace.  But to walk!  To go all alone!  Not
+that I didn't walk by myself over every other foot of the acres
+and acres of beautiful land my father owned; but plowed fields,
+grassy meadows, wood pasture, and the orchard were different.  I
+played in them without a thought of fear.
+
+The only things to be careful about were a little, shiny, slender
+snake, with a head as bright as mother's copper kettle, and a big
+thick one with patterns on its back like those in Laddie's
+geometry books, and a whole rattlebox on its tail; not to eat any
+berry or fruit I didn't know without first asking father; and
+always to be sure to measure how deep the water was before I
+waded in alone.
+
+But our Big Woods!  Leon said the wildcats would get me there.  I
+sat in our catalpa and watched the Gypsies drive past every
+summer.  Mother hated them as hard as ever she could hate any
+one, because once they had stolen some fine shirts, with linen
+bosoms, that she had made by hand for father, and was bleaching
+on the grass.  If Gypsies should be in our west woods to-day and
+steal me, she would hate them worse than ever; because my mother
+loved me now, even if she didn't want me when I was born.
+
+But you could excuse her for that.  She had already bathed,
+spanked, sewed for, and reared eleven babies so big and strong
+not one of them ever even threatened to die.  When you thought of
+that, you could see she wouldn't be likely to implore the
+Almighty to send her another, just to make her family even
+numbers.  I never felt much hurt at her, but some of the others I
+never have forgiven and maybe I never will.  As long as there had
+been eleven babies, they should have been so accustomed to
+children that they needn't all of them have objected to me, all
+except Laddie, of course.  That was the reason I loved him so and
+tried to do every single thing he wanted me to, just the way he
+liked it done.  That was why I was facing the only spot on our
+land where I was in the slightest afraid; because he asked me to.
+
+If he had told me to dance a jig on the ridgepole of our barn, I
+would have tried it.
+
+So I clasped the note, set my teeth, and climbed over the gate. 
+I walked fast and kept my eyes straight before me.  If I looked
+on either side, sure as life I would see something I never had
+before, and be down digging up a strange flower, chasing a
+butterfly, or watching a bird.  Besides, if I didn't look in the
+fence corners that I passed, maybe I wouldn't see anything to
+scare me.  I was going along finely, and feeling better every
+minute as I went down the bank of an old creek that had gone dry,
+and started up the other side toward the sugar camp not far from
+the Big Woods.  The bed was full of weeds and as I passed
+through, away! went Something among them.
+
+Beside the camp shed there was corded wood, and the first thing I
+knew, I was on top of it.  The next, my hand was on the note in
+my pocket.  My heart jumped until I could see my apron move, and
+my throat went all stiff and dry.  I gripped the note and waited.
+
+Father believed God would take care of him.  I was only a little
+girl and needed help much more than a man; maybe God would take
+care of me.  There was nothing wrong in carrying a letter to the
+Fairy Princess.  I thought perhaps it would help if I should
+kneel on the top of the woodpile and ask God to not let anything
+get me.
+
+The more I thought about it, the less I felt like doing it,
+though, because really you have no business to ask God to take
+care of you, unless you KNOW you are doing right.  This was
+right, but in my heart I also knew that if Laddie had asked me, I
+would be shivering on top of that cordwood on a hot August day,
+when it was wrong.  On the whole, I thought it would be more
+honest to leave God out of it, and take the risk myself.  That
+made me think of the Crusaders, and the little gold trinket in
+father's chest till.  There were four shells on it and each one
+stood for a trip on foot or horseback to the Holy City when you
+had to fight almost every step of the way.  Those shells meant
+that my father's people had gone four times, so he said; that,
+although it was away far back, still each of us had a tiny share
+of the blood of the Crusaders in our veins, and that it would
+make us brave and strong, and whenever we were afraid, if we
+would think of them, we never could do a cowardly thing or let
+any one else do one before us.  He said any one with Crusader
+blood had to be brave as Richard the Lion-hearted.  Thinking
+about that helped ever so much, so I gripped the note and turned
+to take one last look at the house before I made a dash for the
+gate that led into the Big Woods.
+
+Beyond our land lay the farm of Jacob Hood, and Mrs. Hood always
+teased me because Laddie had gone racing after her when I was
+born.  She was in the middle of Monday's washing, and the bluing
+settled in the rinse water and stained her white clothes in
+streaks it took months to bleach out.  I always liked Sarah Hood
+for coming and dressing me, though, because our Sally, who was
+big enough to have done it, was upstairs crying and wouldn't come
+down.  I liked Laddie too, because he was the only one of our
+family who went to my mother and kissed her, said he was glad,
+and offered to help her.  Maybe the reason he went was because he
+had an awful scare, but anyway he WENT, and that was enough for
+me.
+
+You see it was this way: no one wanted me; as there had been
+eleven of us, every one felt that was enough.  May was six years
+old and in school, and my mother thought there never would be any
+more babies.  She had given away the cradle and divided the baby
+clothes among my big married sisters and brothers, and was having
+a fine time and enjoying herself the most she ever had in her
+life.  The land was paid for long ago; the house she had planned,
+builded as she wanted it; she had a big team of matched grays and
+a carriage with side lamps and patent leather trimmings; and
+sometimes there was money in the bank.  I do not know that there
+was very much, but any at all was a marvel, considering how many
+of us there were to feed, clothe, and send to college.  Mother
+was forty-six and father was fifty; so they felt young enough yet
+to have a fine time and enjoy life, and just when things were
+going best, I announced that I was halfway over my journey to
+earth.
+
+You can't blame my mother so much.  She must have been tired of
+babies and disliked to go back and begin all over after resting
+six years.  And you mustn't be too hard on my father if he was
+not just overjoyed.  He felt sure the cook would leave, and she
+did.  He knew Sally would object to a baby, when she wanted to
+begin having beaus, so he and mother talked it over and sent her
+away for a long visit to Ohio with father's people, and never
+told her.  They intended to leave her there until I was over the
+colic, at least.  They knew the big married brothers and sisters
+would object, and they did.  They said it would be embarrassing
+for their children to be the nieces and nephews of an aunt or
+uncle younger than themselves.  They said it so often and so
+emphatically that father was provoked and mother cried.  Shelley
+didn't like it because she was going to school in Groveville,
+where Lucy, one of our married sisters, lived, and she was afraid
+I would make so much work she would have to give up her books and
+friends and remain at home.  There never was a baby born who was
+any less wanted than I was.  I knew as much about it as any one
+else, because from the day I could understand, all of them,
+father, mother, Shelley, Sarah Hood, every one who knew, took
+turns telling me how badly I was not wanted, how much trouble I
+made, and how Laddie was the only one who loved me at first. 
+Because of that I was on the cordwood trying to find courage to
+go farther.  Over and over Laddie had told me himself.  He had
+been to visit our big sister Elizabeth over Sunday and about
+eight o'clock Monday morning he came riding down the road, and
+saw the most dreadful thing.  There was not a curl of smoke from
+the chimneys, not a tablecloth or pillowslip on the line, not a
+blind raised.  Laddie said his heart went--just like mine did
+when the Something jumped in the creek bed, no doubt.  Then he
+laid on the whip and rode.
+
+He flung the rein over the hitching post, leaped the fence and
+reached the back door.  The young green girl, who was all father
+could get when the cook left, was crying.  So were Shelley and
+little May, although she said afterward she had a boil on her
+heel and there was no one to poultice it.  Laddie leaned against
+the door casing, and it is easy enough to understand what he
+thought.  He told me he had to try twice before he could speak,
+and then he could only ask:  "What's the matter?"
+
+Probably May never thought she would have the chance, but the
+others were so busy crying harder, now that they had an audience,
+that she was first to tell him:  "We have got a little sister."
+
+"Great Day!" cried Laddie.  "You made me think we had a funeral! 
+Where is mother, and where is my Little Sister?"
+
+He went bolting right into mother's room and kissed her like the
+gladdest boy alive; because he was only a boy then, and he told
+her how happy he was that she was safe, and then he ASKED for me.
+
+He said I was the only living creature in that house who was not
+shedding tears, and I didn't begin for about six months
+afterward.  In fact, not until Shelley taught me by pinching me
+if she had to rock the cradle; then I would cry so hard mother
+would have to take me.  He said he didn't believe I'd ever have
+learned by myself.
+
+He took a pillow from the bed, fixed it in the rocking chair and
+laid me on it.  When he found that father was hitching the horses
+to send Leon for Doctor Fenner, Laddie rode back after Sarah Hood
+and spoiled her washing.  It may be that the interest he always
+took in me had its beginning in all of them scaring him with
+their weeping; even Sally, whom father had to telegraph to come
+home, was upstairs crying, and she was almost a woman.  It may be
+that all the tears they shed over not wanting me so scared Laddie
+that he went farther in his welcome than he ever would have
+thought of going if he hadn't done it for joy when he learned his
+mother was safe.  I don't care about the reason.  It is enough
+for me that from the hour of my birth Laddie named me Little
+Sister, seldom called me anything else, and cared for me all he
+possibly could to rest mother.  He took me to the fields with him
+in the morning and brought me back on the horse before him at
+noon.  He could plow with me riding the horse, drive a reaper
+with me on his knees, and hoe corn while I slept on his coat in a
+fence corner.  The winters he was away at college left me lonely,
+and when he came back for a vacation I was too happy for words. 
+Maybe it was wrong to love him most.  I knew my mother cared for
+and wanted me now.  And all my secrets were not with Laddie.  I
+had one with father that I was never to tell so long as he lived,
+but it was about the one he loved best, next after mother. 
+Perhaps I should never tell it, but I wouldn't be surprised if
+the family knew.  I followed Laddie like a faithful dog, when I
+was not gripping his waving hair and riding in triumph on his
+shoulders.  He never had to go so fast he couldn't take me on his
+back.  He never was in too big a hurry to be kind.  He always had
+patience to explain every shell, leaf, bird, and flower I asked
+about.  I was just as much his when pretty young girls were
+around, and the house full of company, as when we were alone. 
+That was the reason I was shivering on the cordwood, gripping his
+letter and thinking of all these things in order to force myself
+to go farther.
+
+I was excited about the Fairies too.  I often had close chances
+of seeing them, but I always just missed.  Now here was Laddie
+writing letters and expecting answers; our Big Woods Enchanted, a
+Magic Carpet and the Queen's daughter becoming our size so she
+could speak with him.  No doubt the Queen had her grow big as
+Shelley, when she sent her on an errand to tell Laddie about how
+to make sunshine; because she was afraid if she went her real
+size he would accidentally step on her, he was so dreadfully big.
+
+Or maybe her voice was so fine he could not hear what she said. 
+He had told me I was to hurry, and I had gone as fast as I could
+until Something jumped; since, I had been settled on that
+cordwood like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island.  I had to get
+down some time; I might as well start.
+
+I gripped the letter, slid to the ground, and ran toward the big
+gate straight before me.  I climbed it, clutched the note again,
+and ran blindly down the road through the forest toward the
+creek.  I could hurry there.  On either side of it I could not
+have run ten steps at a time.  The big trees reached so high
+above me it seemed as if they would push through the floor of
+Heaven.  I tried to shut my ears and run so fast I couldn't hear
+a sound, and so going, I soon came to the creek bank.  There I
+turned to my right and went slower, watching for the pawpaw
+thicket.  On leaving the road I thought I would have to crawl
+over logs and make my way; but there seemed to be kind of a path
+not very plain, but travelled enough to follow.  It led straight
+to the thicket.  At the edge I stopped to look for the beech.  It
+could be reached in one breathless dash, but there seemed to be a
+green enclosure, so I walked around until I found an entrance. 
+Once there I was so amazed I stood and stared.  I was half
+indignant too.
+
+Laddie hadn't done a thing but make an exact copy of my playhouse
+under the biggest maiden's-blush in our orchard.  He used the
+immense beech for one corner, where I had the apple tree.  His
+Magic Carpet was woolly-dog moss, and all the magic about it, was
+that on the damp woods floor, in the deep shade, the moss had
+taken root and was growing as if it always had been there.  He
+had been able to cut and stick much larger willow sprouts for his
+walls than I could, and in the wet black mould they didn't look
+as if they ever had wilted.  They were so fresh and green, no
+doubt they had taken root and were growing.  Where I had a low
+bench under my tree, he had used a log; but he had hewed the top
+flat, and made a moss cover.  In each corner he had set a fern as
+high as my head.  On either side of the entrance he had planted a
+cluster of cardinal flower that was in full bloom, and around the
+walls in a few places thrifty bunches of Oswego tea and foxfire,
+that I would have walked miles to secure for my wild garden under
+the Bartlett pear tree.  It was so beautiful it took my breath
+away.
+
+"If the Queen's daughter doesn't like this," I said softly,
+"she'll have to go to Heaven before she finds anything better,
+for there can't be another place on earth so pretty."
+
+It was wonderful how the sound of my own voice gave me courage,
+even if it did seem a little strange.  So I hurried to the beech,
+knelt and slipped the letter in the box, and put back the bark
+and stone.  Laddie had said that nothing could hurt me while I
+had the letter, so my protection was gone as soon as it left my
+hands.
+
+There was nothing but my feet to save me now.  I thanked goodness
+I was a fine runner, and started for the pawpaw thicket.  Once
+there, I paused only one minute to see whether the way to the
+stream was clear, and while standing tense and gazing, I heard
+something.  For an instant it was every bit as bad as at the dry
+creek.  Then I realized that this was a soft voice singing, and I
+forgot everything else in a glow of delight.  The Princess was
+coming!
+
+Never in all my life was I so surprised, and astonished, and
+bewildered.  She was even larger than our Sally; her dress was
+pale green, like I thought a Fairy's should be; her eyes were
+deep and dark as Laddie had said, her hair hung from a part in
+the middle of her forehead over her shoulders, and if she had
+been in the sun, it would have gleamed like a blackbird's wing. 
+She was just as Laddie said she would be; she was so much more
+beautiful than you would suppose any woman could be, I stood
+there dumbly staring.  I wouldn't have asked for any one more
+perfectly beautiful or more like Laddie had said the Princess
+would be; but she was no more the daughter of the Fairy Queen
+than I was.  She was not any more of a Princess.  If father ever
+would tell all about the little bauble he kept in the till of his
+big chest, maybe she was not as near!  She was no one on earth
+but one of those new English people who had moved on the land
+that cornered with ours on the northwest.  She had ridden over
+the roads, and been at our meeting house.  There could be no
+mistake.
+
+And neither father nor mother would want her on our place.  They
+didn't like her family at all.  Mother called them the
+neighbourhood mystery, and father spoke of them as the Infidels. 
+They had dropped from nowhere, mother said, bought that splendid
+big farm, moved on and shut out every one.  Before any one knew
+people were shut out, mother, dressed in her finest, with Laddie
+driving, went in the carriage, all shining, to make friends with
+them.  This very girl opened the door and said that her mother
+was "indisposed," and could not see callers.  "In-dis-posed!" 
+That's a good word that fills your mouth, but our mother didn't
+like having it used to her.  She said the "saucy chit" was
+insulting.  Then the man came, and he said he was very sorry, but
+his wife would see no one.  He did invite mother in, but she
+wouldn't go.  She told us she could see past him into the house
+and there was such finery as never in all her days had she laid
+eyes on.  She said he was mannerly as could be, but he had the
+coldest, severest face she ever saw.
+
+They had two men and a woman servant, and no one could coax a
+word from them, about why those people acted as they did.  They
+said 'orse, and 'ouse, and Hengland.  They talked so funny you
+couldn't have understood them anyway.  They never plowed or put
+in a crop.  They made everything into a meadow and had more
+horses, cattle, and sheep than a county fair, and everything you
+ever knew with feathers, even peacocks.  We could hear them
+scream whenever it was going to rain.  Father said they sounded
+heathenish.  I rather liked them.  The man had stacks of money or
+they couldn't have lived the way they did.  He came to our house
+twice on business: once to see about road laws, and again about
+tax rates.  Father was mightily pleased at first, because Mr.
+Pryor seemed to have books, and to know everything, and father
+thought it would be fine to be neighbours.  But the minute Mr.
+Pryor finished business he began to argue that every single thing
+father and mother believed was wrong.  He said right out in plain
+English that God was a myth.  Father told him pretty quickly that
+no man could say that in his house; so he left suddenly and had
+not been back since, and father didn't want him ever to come
+again.
+
+Then their neighbours often saw the woman around the house and
+garden.  She looked and acted quite as well as any one, so
+probably she was not half so sick as my mother, who had nursed
+three of us through typhoid fever, and then had it herself when
+she was all tired out.  She wouldn't let a soul know she had a
+pain until she dropped over and couldn't take another step, and
+father or Laddie carried her to bed.  But she went everywhere,
+saw all her friends, and did more good from her bed than any
+other woman in our neighbourhood could on her feet.  So we
+thought mighty little of those Pryor people.
+
+Every one said the girl was pretty.  Then her clothes drove the
+other women crazy.  Some of our neighbourhood came from far down
+east, like my mother.  Our people back a little were from over
+the sea, and they knew how things should be, to be right.  Many
+of the others were from Kentucky and Virginia, and they were well
+dressed, proud, handsome women; none better looking anywhere. 
+They followed the fashions and spent much time and money on their
+clothes.  When it was Quarterly Meeting or the Bishop dedicated
+the church or they went to town on court days, you should have
+seen them--until Pryors came.  Then something new happened, and
+not a woman in our neighbourhood liked it.  Pamela Pryor didn't
+follow the fashions.  She set them.  If every other woman made
+long tight sleeves to their wrists, she let hers flow to the
+elbow and filled them with silk lining, ruffled with lace.  If
+they wore high neckbands, she had none, and used a flat lace
+collar.  If they cut their waists straight around and gathered
+their skirts on six yards full, she ran hers down to a little
+point front and back, that made her look slenderer, and put only
+half as much goods in her skirt.  Maybe Laddie rode as well as
+she could; he couldn't manage a horse any better, and aside from
+him there wasn't a man we knew who would have tried to ride some
+of the animals she did.
+
+If she ever worked a stroke, no one knew it.  All day long she
+sat in the parlour, the very best one, every day; or on benches
+under the trees with embroidery frames or books, some of them
+fearful, big, difficult looking ones, or rode over the country. 
+She rode in sunshine and she rode in storm, until you would think
+she couldn't see her way through her tangled black hair.  She
+rode through snow and in pouring rain, when she could have stayed
+out of it, if she had wanted to.  She didn't seem to be afraid of
+anything on earth or in Heaven.  Every one thought she was like
+her father and didn't believe there was any God; so when she came
+among us at church or any public gathering, as she sometimes did,
+people were in no hurry to be friendly, while she looked straight
+ahead and never spoke until she was spoken to, and then she was
+precise and cold, I tell you.
+
+Men took off their hats, got out of the road when she came
+pounding along, and stared after her like "be-addled mummies," my
+mother said.  But that was all she, or any one else, could say. 
+The young fellows were wild about her, and if they tried to sidle
+up to her in the hope that they might lead her horse or get to
+hold her foot when she mounted, they always saw when they reached
+her, that she wasn't there.
+
+But she was here!  I had seen her only a few times, but this was
+the Pryor girl, just as sure as I would have known if it had been
+Sally.  What dazed me was that she answered in every particular
+the description Laddie had given me of the Queen's daughter.  And
+worst of all, from the day she first came among us, moving so
+proud and cold, blabbing old Hannah Dover said she carried
+herself like a Princess--as if Hannah Dover knew HOW a Princess
+carried herself!--every living soul, my father even, had called
+her the Princess.  At first it was because she was like they
+thought a Princess would be, but later they did it in meanness,
+to make fun.  After they knew her name, they were used to calling
+her the Princess, so they kept it up, but some of them were
+secretly proud of her; because she could look, and do, and be
+what they would have given anything to, and knew they couldn't to
+save them.
+
+I was never in such a fix in all my life.  She looked more as
+Laddie had said the Princess would than you would have thought
+any woman could, but she was Pamela Pryor, nevertheless.  Every
+one called her the Princess, but she couldn't make reality out of
+that.  She just couldn't be the Fairy Queen's daughter; so the
+letter couldn't possibly be for her.
+
+She had no business in our woods; you could see that they had
+plenty of their own.  She went straight to the door of the willow
+room and walked in as if she belonged there.  What if she found
+the hollow and took Laddie's letter!  Fast as I could slip over
+the leaves, I went back.  She was on the moss carpet, on her
+knees, and the letter was in her fingers.  It's a good thing to
+have your manners soundly thrashed into you.  You've got to be
+scared stiff before you forget them.  I wasn't so afraid of her
+as I would have been if I had known she WAS the princess, and
+have Laddies letter, she should not.  What had the kind of girl
+she was, from a home like hers, to teach any one from our house
+about making sunshine?  I was at the willow wall by that time
+peering through, so I just parted it a little and said:  "Please
+put back that letter where you got it.  It isn't for you."
+
+She knelt on the mosses, the letter in her hand, and her face, as
+she turned to me, was rather startled; but when she saw me she
+laughed, and said in the sweetest voice I ever heard:  "Are you
+so very sure of that?"
+
+"Well I ought to be," I said.  "I put it there."
+
+"Might I inquire for whom you put it there?"
+
+"No ma'am!  That's a secret."
+
+You should have seen the light flame in her eyes, the red deepen
+on her cheeks, and the little curl of laughter that curved her
+lips.
+
+"How interesting!" she cried.  "I wonder now if you are not
+Little Sister."
+
+"I am to Laddie and our folks," I said.  "You are a stranger."
+
+All the dancing lights went from her face.  She looked as if she
+were going to cry unless she hurried up and swallowed it down
+hard and fast.
+
+"That is quite true," she said.  "I am a stranger.  Do you know
+that being a stranger is the hardest thing that can happen to any
+one in all this world?"
+
+"Then why don't you open your doors, invite your neighbours in,
+go to see them, and stop your father from saying such dreadful
+things?"
+
+"They are not my doors," she said, "and could you keep your
+father from saying anything he chooses?"
+
+I stood and blinked at her.  Of course I wouldn't even dare try
+that.
+
+"I'm so sorry," was all I could think to say.
+
+I couldn't ask her to come to our house.  I knew no one wanted
+her.  But if I couldn't speak for the others, surely I might for
+myself.  I let go the willows and went to the door.  The Princess
+arose and sat on the seat Laddie had made for the Queen's
+daughter.  It was an awful pity to tell her she shouldn't sit
+there, for I had my doubts if the real, true Princess would be
+half as lovely when she came--if she ever did.  Some way the
+Princess, who was not a Princess, appeared so real, I couldn't
+keep from becoming confused and forgetting that she was only just
+Pamela Pryor.  Already the lovely lights had gone from her face
+until it made me so sad I wanted to cry, and I was no easy cry-
+baby either.  If I couldn't offer friendship for my family I
+would for myself.
+
+"You may call me Little Sister, if you like," I said.  "I won't
+be a stranger."
+
+"Why how lovely!" cried the Princess.
+
+You should have seen the dancing lights fly back to her eyes. 
+Probably you won't believe this, but the first thing I knew I was
+beside her on the throne, her arm was around me, and it's the
+gospel truth that she hugged me tight.  I just had sense enough
+to reach over and pick Laddie's letter from her fingers, and then
+I was on her side.  I don't know what she did to me, but all at
+once I knew that she was dreadfully lonely; that she hated being
+a stranger; that she was sorry enough to cry because their house
+was one of mystery, and that she would open the door if she
+could.
+
+"I like you," I said, reaching up to touch her curls.
+
+I never had seen her that I did not want to.  They were like I
+thought they would be.  Father and Laddie and some of us had wavy
+hair, but hers was crisp--and it clung to your fingers, and
+wrapped around them and seemed to tug at your heart like it does
+when a baby grips you.  I drew away my hand, and the hair
+stretched out until it was long as any of ours, and then curled
+up again, and you could see that no tins had stabbed into her
+head to make those curls.  I began trying to single out one hair.
+
+"What are you doing?" she asked.
+
+"I want to know if only one hair is strong enough to draw a
+drowning man from the water or strangle an unhappy one," I said.
+
+"Believe me, no!" cried the Princess.  "It would take all I have,
+woven into a rope, to do that."
+
+"Laddie knows curls that just one hair of them is strong enough,"
+I boasted.
+
+"I wonder now!" said the Princess.  "I think he must have been
+making poetry or telling Fairy tales."
+
+"He was telling the truth," I assured her.  "Father doesn't
+believe in Fairies, and mother laughs, but Laddie and I know.  Do
+you believe in Fairies?"
+
+"Of course I do!" she said.
+
+"Then you know that this COULD be an Enchanted Wood?"
+
+"I have found it so," said the Princess.
+
+"And MAYBE this is a Magic Carpet?"
+
+"It surely is a Magic Carpet."
+
+"And you might be the daughter of the Queen?  Your eyes are
+`moonlit pools of darkness.'  If only your hair were stronger,
+and you knew about making sunshine!"
+
+"Maybe it is stronger than I think.  It never has been tested. 
+Perhaps I do know about making sunshine.  Possibly I am as true
+as the wood and the carpet."
+
+I drew away and stared at her.  The longer I looked the more
+uncertain I became.  Maybe her mother was the Queen.  Perhaps
+that was the mystery.  It might be the reason she didn't want the
+people to see her.  Maybe she was so busy making sunshine for the
+Princess to bring to Laddie that she had no time to sew carpet
+rags, and to go to quiltings, and funerals, and make visits.  It
+was hard to know what to think.
+
+"I wish you'd tell me plain out if you are the Queen's daughter,"
+I said.  "It's most important.  You can't have this letter unless
+I KNOW.  It's the very first time Laddie ever trusted me with a
+letter, and I just can't give it to the wrong person."
+
+"Then why don't you leave it where he told you?"
+
+"But you have gone and found the place.  You started to take it
+once; you would again, soon as I left."
+
+"Look me straight in the eyes, Little Sister," said the Princess
+softly.  "Am I like a person who would take anything that didn't
+belong to her?"
+
+"No!" I said instantly.
+
+"How do you think I happened to come to this place?"
+
+"Maybe our woods are prettier than yours."
+
+"How do you think I knew where the letter was?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"If I show you some others exactly like the one you have there,
+then will you believe that is for me?"
+
+"Yes," I answered.
+
+I believed it anyway.  It just SEEMED so, the better you knew
+her.  The Princess slipped her hand among the folds of the
+trailing pale green skirt, and from a hidden pocket drew other
+letters exactly like the one I held.  She opened one and ran her
+finger along the top line and I read, "To the Princess," and then
+she pointed to the ending and it was merely signed, "Laddie," but
+all the words written between were his writing.  Slowly I handed
+her the letter.
+
+"You don't want me to have it?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," I said.  "I want you to have it if Laddie wrote it for
+you--but mother and father won't, not at all."
+
+"What makes you think so?" she asked gently.
+
+"Don't you know what people say about you?"
+
+"Some of it, perhaps."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Do you think it is true?"
+
+"Not that you're stuck up, and hateful and proud, not that you
+don't want to be neighbourly with other people, no, I don't think
+that.  But your father said in our home that there was no God,
+and you wouldn't let my mother in when she put on her best dress
+and went in the carriage, and wanted to be friends.  I have to
+believe that."
+
+"Yes, you can't help believing that," said the Princess.
+
+"Then can't you see why you'll be likely to show Laddie the way
+to find trouble, instead of sunshine?"
+
+"I can see," said the Princess.
+
+"Oh Princess, you won't do it, will you?" I cried.
+
+"Don't you think such a big man as Laddie can take care of
+himself?" she asked, and the dancing lights that had begun to
+fade came back.  "Over there," she pointed through our woods
+toward the southwest, "lives a man you know.  What do his
+neighbours call him?"
+
+"Stiff-necked Johnny," I answered promptly.
+
+"And the man who lives next him?"
+
+"Pinch-fist Williams."
+
+Her finger veered to another neighbour's.
+
+"The girls of that house?"
+
+"Giggle-head Smithsons."
+
+"What about the man who lives over there?"
+
+"He beats his wife."
+
+"And the house beyond?"
+
+"Mother whispers about them.  I don't know."
+
+"And the woman on the hill?"
+
+"She doesn't do anything but gussip and make every one trouble."
+
+"Exactly!" said the Princess.  "Yet most of these people come to
+your house, and your family goes to theirs.  Do you suppose
+people they know nothing about are so much worse than these
+others?"
+
+"If your father will take it back about God, and your mother will
+let people in--my mother and father both wanted to be friends,
+you know."
+
+"That I can't possibly do," she said, "but maybe I could change
+their feelings toward me."
+
+"Do it!" I cried.  "Oh, I'd just love you to do it!  I wish you
+would come to our house and be friends.  Sally is pretty as you
+are, only a different way, and I know she'd like you, and so
+would Shelley.  If Laddie writes you letters and comes here about
+sunshine, of course he'd be delighted if mother knew you; because
+she loves him best of any of us.  She depends on him most as much
+as father."
+
+"Then will you keep the secret until I have time to try--say
+until this time next year?"
+
+"I'll keep it just as long as Laddie wants me to."
+
+"Good!" said the Princess.  "No wonder Laddie thinks you the
+finest Little Sister any one ever had."
+
+"Does Laddie think that?" I asked
+
+"He does indeed!" said the Princess.
+
+"Then I'm not afraid to go home," I said.  "And I'll bring his
+letter the next time he can't come."
+
+"Were you scared this time?"
+
+I told her about that Something in the dry bed, the wolves,
+wildcats, Paddy Ryan, and the Gypsies.
+
+"You little goosie," said the Princess.  "I am afraid that
+brother Leon of yours is the biggest rogue loose in this part of
+the country.  Didn't it ever occur to you that people named Wolfe
+live over there, and they call that crowd next us `wildcats,'
+because they just went on some land and took it, and began living
+there without any more permission than real wildcats ask to enter
+the woods?  Do you suppose I would be here, and everywhere else I
+want to go, if there were any danger?  Did anything really harm
+you coming?"
+
+"You're harmed when you're scared until you can't breathe," I
+said.  "Anyway, nothing could get me coming, because I held the
+letter tight in my hand, like Laddie said.  If you'd write me one
+to take back, I'd be safe going home."
+
+"I see," said the Princess.  "But I've no pencil, and no paper,
+unless I use the back of one of Laddie's letters, and that
+wouldn't be polite."
+
+"You can make new fashions," I said, "but you don't know much
+about the woods, do you?  I could fix fifty ways to send a
+message to Laddie."
+
+"How would you?" asked the Princess.
+
+Running to the pawpaw bushes I pulled some big tender leaves. 
+Then I took the bark from the box and laid a leaf on it.
+
+"Press with one of your rings," I said, "and print what you want
+to say.  I write to the Fairies every day that way, only I use an
+old knife handle."
+
+She tried.  She spoiled two or three by bearing down so hard she
+cut the leaves.  She didn't even know enough to write on the
+frosty side, until she was told.  But pretty soon she got along
+so well she printed all over two big ones.  Then I took a stick
+and punched little holes and stuck a piece of foxfire bloom
+through.
+
+"What makes you do that?" she asked.
+
+"That's the stamp," I explained.
+
+"But it's my letter, and I didn't put it there."
+
+"Has to be there or the Fairies won't like it," I said.
+
+"Well then, let it go," said the Princess.
+
+I put back the bark and replaced the stone, gathered up the
+scattered leaves, and put the two with writing on between fresh
+ones.
+
+"Now I must run," I said, "or Laddie will think the Gypsies have
+got me sure."
+
+"I'll go with you past the dry creek," she offered.
+
+"You better not," I said.  "I'd love to have you, but it would be
+best for you to change their opinion, before father or mother
+sees you on their land."
+
+"Perhaps it would," said the Princess.  "I'll wait here until you
+reach the fence and then you call and I'll know you are in the
+open and feel comfortable."
+
+"I am most all over being afraid now," I told her.
+
+Just to show her, I walked to the creek, climbed the gate and
+went down the lane.  Almost to the road I began wondering what I
+could do with the letter, when looking ahead I saw Laddie coming.
+
+"I was just starting to find you.  You've been an age, child," he
+said.
+
+I held up the letter.
+
+"No one is looking," I said, "and this won't go in your pocket."
+
+You should have seen his face.
+
+"Where did you get it?" he asked.
+
+I told him all about it.  I told him everything--about the hair
+that maybe was stronger than she thought, and that she was going
+to change father's and mother's opinions, and that I put the red
+flower on, but she left it; and when I was done Laddie almost
+hugged the life out of me.  I never did see him so happy.
+
+"If you be very, very careful never to breathe a whisper, I'll
+take you with me some day," he promised.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Our Angel Boy
+
+            "I had a brother once--a gracious boy,
+             Full of all gentleness, of calmest hope,
+             Of sweet and quiet joy,--there was the look
+             Of heaven upon his face."
+
+It was supper time when we reached home, and Bobby was at the
+front gate to meet me.  He always hunted me all over the place
+when the big bell in the yard rang at meal time, because if he
+crowed nicely when he was told, he was allowed to stand on the
+back of my chair and every little while I held up my plate and
+shared bites with him.  I have seen many white bantams, but never
+another like Bobby.  My big brothers bought him for me in Fort
+Wayne, and sent him in a box, alone on the cars.  Father and I
+drove to Groveville to meet him.  The minute father pried off the
+lid, Bobby hopped on the edge of the box and crowed--the biggest
+crow you ever heard from such a mite of a body; he wasn't in the
+least afraid of us and we were pleased about it.  You scarcely
+could see his beady black eyes for his bushy topknot, his wing
+tips touched the ground, his tail had two beautiful plumy
+feathers much longer than the others, his feet were covered with
+feathers, and his knee tufts dragged.  He was the sauciest,
+spunkiest little fellow, and white as muslin.  We went to supper
+together, but no one asked where I had been, and because I was so
+bursting full of importance, I talked only to Bobby, in order to
+be safe.
+
+After supper I finished Hezekiah's trousers, and May cut his coat
+for me.  School would begin in September and our clothes were
+being made, so I used the scraps to dress him.  His suit was done
+by the next forenoon, and father never laughed harder than when
+Hezekiah hopped down the walk to meet him dressed in pink
+trousers and coat.  The coat had flowing sleeves like the
+Princess wore, so Hezekiah could fly, and he seemed to like them.
+
+His suit was such a success I began a sunbonnet, and when that
+was tied on him, the folks almost had spasms.  They said he
+wouldn't like being dressed; that he would fly away to punish me,
+but he did no such thing.  He stayed around the house and was
+tame as ever.
+
+When I became tired sewing that afternoon, I went down the lane
+leading to our meadow, where Leon was killing thistles with a
+grubbing hoe.  I thought he would be glad to see me, and he was. 
+Every one had been busy in the house, so I went to the cellar the
+outside way and ate all I wanted from the cupboard.  Then I
+spread two big slices of bread the best I could with my fingers,
+putting apple butter on one, and mashed potatoes on the other. 
+Leon leaned on the hoe and watched me coming.  He was a hungry
+boy, and lonesome too, but he couldn't be forced to say so.
+
+"Laddie is at work in the barn," he said.
+
+"I'm going to play in the creek," I answered.
+
+Crossing our meadow there was a stream that had grassy banks, big
+trees, willows, bushes and vines for shade, a solid pebbly bed;
+it was all turns and bends so that the water hurried until it
+bubbled and sang as it went; in it lived tiny fish coloured
+brightly as flowers, beside it ran killdeer, plover and solemn
+blue herons almost as tall as I was came from the river to fish;
+for a place to play on an August afternoon, it couldn't be
+beaten.  The sheep had been put in the lower pasture; so the
+cross old Shropshire ram was not there to bother us.
+
+"Come to the shade," I said to Leon, and when we were comfortably
+seated under a big maple weighted down with trailing grapevines,
+I offered the bread.  Leon took a piece in each hand and began to
+eat as if he were starving.  Laddie would have kissed me and
+said:  "What a fine treat!  Thank you, Little Sister."
+
+Leon was different.  He ate so greedily you had to know he was
+glad to get it, but he wouldn't say so, not if he never got any
+more.  When you knew him, you understood he wouldn't forget it,
+and he'd be certain to do something nice for you before the day
+was over to pay back.  We sat there talking about everything we
+saw, and at last Leon said with a grin:  "Shelley isn't getting
+much grape sap is she?"
+
+"I didn't know she wanted grape sap."
+
+"She read about it in a paper.  It said to cut the vine of a wild
+grape, catch the drippings and moisten your hair.  This would
+make it glossy and grow faster."
+
+"What on earth does Shelley want with more hair than she has?"
+
+"Oh, she has heard it bragged on so much she thinks people would
+say more if she could improve it."
+
+I looked and there was the vine, dry as could be, and a milk
+crock beneath it.
+
+"Didn't the silly know she had to cut the vine in the spring when
+the sap was running?"
+
+"Bear witness, O vine! that she did not," said Leon, "and speak,
+ye voiceless pottery, and testify that she expected to find you
+overflowing."
+
+"Too bad that she's going to be disappointed."
+
+"She isn't!  She's going to find ample liquid to bathe her
+streaming tresses.  Keep quiet and watch me."
+
+He picked up the crock, carried it to the creek and dipped it
+full of water.
+
+"That's too much," I objected.  "She'll know she never got a
+crock full from a dry vine."
+
+"She'll think the vine bled itself dry for her sake."
+
+"She isn't that silly."
+
+"Well then, how silly is she?" asked Leon, spilling out half. 
+"About so?"
+
+"Not so bad as that.  Less yet!"
+
+"Anything to please the ladies," said Leon, pouring out more.
+Then we sat and giggled a while.
+
+"What are you going to do now?" asked Leon.
+
+"Play in the creek," I answered.
+
+"All right!  I'll work near you." 
+
+He rolled his trousers above his knees and took the hoe, but he
+was in the water most of the time.  We had to climb on the bank
+when we came to the deep curve, under the stump of the old oak
+that father cut because Pete Billings would climb it and yowl
+like a wildcat on cold winter nights.  Pete was wrong in his head
+like Paddy Ryan, only worse.  As we passed we heard the faintest
+sounds, so we lay and looked, and there in the dark place under
+the roots, where the water was deepest, huddled some of the
+cunningest little downy wild ducks you ever saw.  We looked at
+each other and never said a word.  Leon chased them out with the
+hoe and they swam down stream faster than old ones.  I stood in
+the shallow water behind them and kept them from going back to
+the deep place, while Leon worked to catch them.  Every time he
+got one he brought it to me, and I made a bag of my apron front
+to put them in.  The supper bell rang before we caught all of
+them.  We were dripping wet with creek water and perspiration,
+but we had the ducks, every one of them, and proudly started
+home.  I'll wager Leon was sorry he didn't wear aprons so he
+could carry them.  He did keep the last one in his hands, and
+held its little fluffy body against his cheeks every few minutes.
+
+"Couldn't anything be prettier than a young duck."
+
+"Except a little guinea," I said.
+
+"That's so!" said Leon.  "They are most as pretty as quail.  I
+guess all young things that have down are about as cunning as
+they can be.  I don't believe I know which I like best, myself."
+
+"Baby killdeers."
+
+"I mean tame.  Things we raise."
+
+"I'll take guineas."
+
+"I'll say white turkeys.  They seem so innocent.  Nothing of ours
+is pretty as these."
+
+"But these are wild."
+
+"So they are," said Leon.  "Twelve of them.  Won't mother be
+pleased?"
+
+She was not in the least.  She said we were a sight to behold;
+that she was ashamed to be the mother of two children who didn't
+know tame ducks from wild ones.  She remembered instantly that
+Amanda Deam had set a speckled Dorking hen on Mallard duck
+eggs, where she got the eggs, and what she paid for them.  She
+said the ducks had found the creek that flowed beside Deams'
+barnyard before it entered our land, and they had swum away from
+the hen, and both the hen and Amanda would be frantic.  She put
+the ducks into a basket and said to take them back soon as ever
+we got our suppers, and we must hurry because we had to bathe and
+learn our texts for Sunday-school in the morning.
+
+We went through the orchard, down the hill and across the meadow
+until we came to the creek.  By that time we were tired of the
+basket.  It was one father had woven himself of shaved and soaked
+hickory strips, and it was heavy.  The sight of water suggested
+the proper place for ducks, anyway.  We talked it over and
+decided that they would be much more comfortable swimming than in
+the basket, and it was more fun to wade than to walk, so we went
+above the deep place, I stood in the creek to keep them from
+going down, and Leon poured them on the water.  Pigs couldn't
+have acted more contrary.  Those ducks LIKED us.  They wouldn't
+go to Deams'.  They just fought to swim back to us.  Anyway, we
+had the worst time you ever saw.  Leon cut long switches to herd
+them with, and both of us waded and tried to drive them, but they
+would dart under embankments and roots, and dive and hide.
+
+Before we reached the Deams' I wished that we had carried them as
+mother told us, for we had lost three, and if we stopped to hunt
+them, more would hide.  By the time we drove them under the
+floodgate crossing the creek between our land and the Deams' four
+were gone.  Leon left me on the gate with both switches to keep
+them from going back and he ran to call Mrs. Deam.  She had red
+hair and a hot temper, and we were not very anxious to see her,
+but we had to do it.  While Leon was gone I was thinking pretty
+fast and I knew exactly how things would happen.  First time
+mother saw Mrs. Deam she would ask her if the ducks were all
+right, and she would tell that four were gone.  Mother would ask
+how many she had, and she would say twelve, then mother would
+remember that she started us with twelve in the basket--Oh what's
+the use!  Something had to be done.  It had to be done quickly
+too, for I could hear Amanda Deam, her boy Sammy and Leon coming
+across the barnyard.  I looked around in despair, but when things
+are the very worst, there is almost always some way out.
+
+On the dry straw worked between and pushing against the panels of
+the floodgate, not far from me, I saw a big black water snake.  I
+took one good look at it: no coppery head, no geometry patterns,
+no rattlebox, so I knew it wasn't poisonous and wouldn't bite
+until it was hurt, and if it did, all you had to do was to suck
+the place, and it wouldn't amount to more than two little pricks
+as if pins had stuck you; but a big snake was a good excuse.  I
+rolled from the floodgate among the ducks, and cried, "Snake!" 
+They scattered everywhere.  The snake lazily uncoiled and slid
+across the straw so slowly that--thank goodness! Amanda Deam got
+a fair look at it.  She immediately began to jump up and down and
+scream.  Leon grabbed a stick and came running to the water.  I
+cried so he had to help me out first.
+
+"Don't let her count them!" I whispered.
+
+Leon gave me one swift look and all the mischief in his blue eyes
+peeped out.  He was the funniest boy you ever knew, anyway. 
+Mostly he looked scowly and abused.  He had a grievance against
+everybody and everything.  He said none of us liked him, and we
+imposed on him.  Father said that if he tanned Leon's jacket for
+anything, and set him down to think it over, he would pout a
+while, then he would look thoughtful, suddenly his face would
+light up and he would go away sparkling; and you could depend
+upon it he would do the same thing over, or something worse,
+inside an hour.  When he wanted to, he could smile the most
+winning smile, and he could coax you into anything.  Mother said
+she dreaded to have to borrow a dime from him, if a peddler
+caught her without change, because she knew she'd be kept paying
+it back for the next six months.  Right now he was the busiest
+kind of a boy.
+
+"Where is it?  Let me get a good lick at it!  Don't scare the
+ducks!" he would cry, and chase them from one bank to the other,
+while Amanda danced and fought imaginary snakes.  For a woman who
+had seen as many as she must have in her life, it was too funny. 
+I don't think I could laugh harder, or Leon and Sammy.  We
+enjoyed ourselves so much that at last she began to be angry. 
+She quit dancing, and commenced hunting ducks, for sure.  She
+held her skirts high, poked along the banks, jumped the creek and
+didn't always get clear across.  Her hair shook down, she lost a
+sidecomb, and she couldn't find half the ducks.
+
+"You younguns pack right out of here," she said.  "Me and Sammy
+can get them better ourselves, and if we don't find all of them,
+we'll know where they are."
+
+"We haven't got any of your ducks," I said angrily, but Leon
+smiled his most angelic smile, and it seemed as if he were going
+to cry.
+
+"Of course, if you want to accuse mother of stealing your ducks,
+you can," he said plaintively, "but I should think you'd be
+ashamed to do it, after all the trouble we took to catch them
+before they swam to the river, where you never would have found
+one of them.  Come on, Little Sister, let's go home."
+
+He started and I followed.  As soon as we got around the bend we
+sat on the bank, hung our feet in the water, leaned against each
+other and laughed.  We just laughed ourselves almost sick.  When
+Amanda's face got fire red, and her hair came down, and she
+jumped and didn't go quite over, she looked a perfect fright.
+
+"Will she ever find all of them?" I asked at last.
+
+"Of course," said Leon.  "She will comb the grass and strain the
+water until she gets every one."
+
+"Hoo-hoo!"
+
+I looked at Leon.  He was so intently watching an old turkey
+buzzard hanging in the air, he never heard the call that meant it
+was time for us to be home and cleaning up for Sunday.  It was
+difficult to hurry, for after we had been soaped and scoured, we
+had to sit on the back steps and commit to memory verses from the
+Bible.  At last we waded toward home.  Two of the ducks we had
+lost swam before us all the way, so we knew they were alive, and
+all they needed was finding.
+
+"If she hadn't accused mother of stealing her old ducks, I'd
+catch those and carry them back to her," said Leon.  "But since
+she thinks we are so mean, I'll just let her and little Sammy
+find them."
+
+Then we heard their voices as they came down the creek, so Leon
+reached me his hand and we scampered across the water and meadow,
+never stopping until we sat on the top rail of our back orchard
+fence.  There we heard another call, but that was only two.  We
+sat there, rested and looked at the green apples above our heads,
+wishing they were ripe, and talking about the ducks.  We could
+see Mrs. Deam and Sammy coming down the creek, one on each side. 
+We slid from the fence and ran into a queer hollow that was cut
+into the hill between the never-fail and the Baldwin apple trees.
+
+That hollow was overgrown with weeds, and full of trimmings from
+trees, stumps, everything that no one wanted any place else in
+the orchard.  It was the only unkept spot on our land, and I
+always wondered why father didn't clean it out and make it look
+respectable.  I said so to Leon as we crouched there watching
+down the hill where Mrs. Deam and Sammy hunted ducks with not
+such very grand success.  They seemed to have so many they
+couldn't decide whether to go back or go on, so they must have
+found most of them.
+
+"You know I've always had my suspicions about this place," said
+Leon.  "There is somewhere on our land that people can be hidden
+for a long time.  I can remember well enough before the war ever
+so long, and while it was going worst, we would find the wagon
+covered with more mud in the morning than had been on it at
+night; and the horses would be splashed and tired.  Once I was
+awake in the night and heard voices.  It made me want a drink, so
+I went downstairs for it, and ran right into the biggest,
+blackest man who ever grew.  If father and mother hadn't been
+there I'd have been scared into fits.  Next morning he was gone
+and there wasn't a whisper.  Father said I'd had bad dreams. 
+That night the horses made another mysterious trip.  Now where
+did they keep the black man all that day?"
+
+"What did they have a black man for?"
+
+"They were helping him run away from slavery to be free in
+Canada.  It was all right.  I'd have done the same thing.  They
+helped a lot.  Father was a friend of the Governor.  There were
+letters from him, and there was some good reason why father
+stayed at home, when he was crazy about the war.  I think this
+farm was what they called an Underground Station.  What I want to
+know is where the station was."
+
+"Maybe it's here.  Let's hunt," I said.  "If the black men were
+here some time, they would have to be fed, and this is not far
+from the house."
+
+So we took long sticks and began poking into the weeds.  Then we
+moved the brush, and sure as you live, we found an old door with
+a big stone against it.  I looked at Leon and he looked at me.
+
+"Hoo-hoo!" came mother's voice, and that was the third call.
+
+"Hum!  Must be for us," said Leon.  "We better go as soon as we
+get a little dryer."
+
+He slid down the bank on one side, and I on the other, and we
+pushed at the stone.  I thought we never would get it rolled away
+so we could open the door a crack, but when we did what we saw
+was most surprising.  There was a little room, dreadfully small. 
+but a room.  There was straw scattered over the floor, very deep
+on one side, where an old blanket showed that it had been a bed. 
+Across the end there was a shelf.  On it was a candlestick, with
+a half-burned candle in it, a pie pan with some mouldy crumbs,
+crusts, bones in it, and a tin can.  Leon picked up the can and
+looked in.  I could see too.
+
+It had been used for water or coffee, as the plate had for food,
+once, but now it was stuffed full of money.  I saw Leon pull some
+out and then shove it back, and he came to the door white as
+could be, shut it behind him and began to push at the stone. 
+When we got it in place we put the brush over it, and fixed
+everything like it had been.
+
+At last Leon said:  "That's the time we got into something not
+intended for us, and if father finds it out, we are in for a good
+thrashing.  Are you just a blubbering baby, or are you big enough
+to keep still?"
+
+"I am old enough that I could have gone to school two years ago,
+and I won't tell!" I said stoutly.
+
+"All right!  Come on then," said Leon.  "I don't know but mother
+has been calling us."
+
+We started up the orchard path at the fourth call.
+
+"Hoo-hoo!" answered Leon in a sick little voice to make it sound
+far away.  Must have made mother think we were on Deams' hill. 
+Then we went on side by side.
+
+"Say Leon, you found the Station, didn't you?"
+
+"Don't talk about it!" snapped Leon.
+
+I changed the subject
+
+"Whose money do you suppose that is?"
+
+"Oh crackey!  You can depend on a girl to see everything,"
+groaned Leon.  "Do you think you'll be able to stand the
+switching that job will bring you, without getting sick in bed?"
+
+Now I never had been sick in bed, and from what I had seen of
+other people who were, I never wanted to be.  The idea of being
+switched until it made me sick was too much for me.  I shut my
+mouth tight and I never opened it about the Station place.  As we
+reached the maiden's-blush apple tree came another call, and it
+sounded pretty cross, I can tell you.  Leon reached his hand.
+
+"Now, it's time to run.  Let me do the talking."
+
+We were out of breath when we reached the back door.  There stood
+the tub on the kitchen floor, the boiler on the stove, soap,
+towels, and clean clothing on chairs.  Leon had his turn at
+having his ears washed first, because he could bathe himself
+while mother did my hair.
+
+"Was Mrs. Deam glad to get her ducks back?" she asked as she
+fine-combed Leon.
+
+"Aw, you never can tell whether she's glad about anything or
+not," growled Leon.  "You'd have thought from the way she acted,
+that we'd been trying to steal her ducks.  She said if she missed
+any she'd know where to find them."
+
+"Well as I live!" cried mother.  "Why I wouldn't have believed
+that of Amanda Deam.  You told her you thought they were wild, of
+course."
+
+"I didn't have a chance to tell her anything.  The minute the
+ducks struck the water they started right back down stream, and
+there was a big snake, and we had an awful time.  We got wet
+trying to head them back, and then we didn't find all of them."
+
+"They are like little eels.  You should have helped Amanda."
+
+"Well, you called so cross we thought you would come after us, so
+we had to run."
+
+"One never knows," sighed mother.  "I thought you were loitering.
+
+Of course if I had known you were having trouble with the ducks! 
+I think you had better go back and help them."
+
+"Didn't I do enough to take them home?  Can't Sammy Deam catch
+ducks as fast as I can?"
+
+"I suppose so," said mother.  "And I must get your bathing out of
+the way of supper.  You use the tub while I do Little Sister's
+hair."
+
+I almost hated Sunday, because of what had to be done to my hair
+on Saturday, to get ready for it.  All week it hung in two long
+braids that were brushed and arranged each morning.  But on
+Saturday it had to be combed with a fine comb, oiled and rolled
+around strips of tin until Sunday morning.  Mother did everything
+thoroughly.  She raked that fine comb over our scalps until she
+almost raised the blood.  She hadn't time to fool with tangles,
+and we had so much hair she didn't know what to do with all of
+it, anyway.  When she was busy talking she reached around too far
+and combed across our foreheads or raked the tip of an ear.
+
+But on Sunday morning we forgot all that, when we walked down the
+aisle with shining curls hanging below our waists.  Mother was
+using the fine comb, when she looked up, and there stood Mrs.
+Freshett.  We could see at a glance that she was out of breath.
+
+"Have I beat them?" she cried.
+
+"Whom are you trying to beat?" asked mother as she told May to
+set a chair for Mrs. Freshett and bring her a drink.  
+
+"The grave-kiver men," she said.  "I wanted to get to you first."
+
+"Well, you have," said mother.  "Rest a while and then tell me."
+
+But Mrs. Freshett was so excited she couldn't rest.
+
+"I thought they were coming straight on down," she said, "but
+they must have turned off at the cross roads.  I want to do
+what's right by my children here or there," panted Mrs. Freshett,
+"and these men seemed to think the contrivance they was sellin'
+perfectly grand, an' like to be an aid to the soul's salvation. 
+Nice as it seemed, an' convincin' as they talked, I couldn't get
+the consent of my mind to order, until I knowed if you was goin'
+to kiver your dead with the contraption.  None of the rest of the
+neighbours seem over friendly to me, an' I've told Josiah many's
+the time, that I didn't care a rap if they wa'n't, so long as I
+had you.  Says I, `Josiah, to my way of thinkin', she is top
+crust in this neighbourhood, and I'm on the safe side apin' her
+ways clost as possible.'"
+
+"I'll gladly help you all I can," said my mother.
+
+"Thanky!" said Mrs. Freshett.  "I knowed you would.  Josiah he
+says to me, `Don't you be apin' nobody.'  `Josiah,' says I, `it
+takes a pretty smart woman in this world to realize what she
+doesn't know.  Now I know what I know, well enough, but all I
+know is like to keep me an' my children in a log cabin an' on log
+cabin ways to the end of our time.  You ain't even got the
+remains of the cabin you started in for a cow shed.'  Says I,
+`Josiah, Miss Stanton knows how to get out of a cabin an' into a
+grand big palace, fit fur a queen woman.  She's a ridin' in a
+shinin' kerridge, 'stid of a spring wagon.  She goes abroad
+dressed so's you men all stand starin' like cabbage heads.  All
+hern go to church, an' Sunday-school, an' college, an' come out
+on the top of the heap.  She does jest what I'd like to if I
+knowed how.  An' she ain't come-uppety one morsel.'  If I was to
+strike acrost fields to them stuck-up Pryors, I'd get the door
+slammed in my face if 'twas the missus, a sneer if 'twas the man,
+an' at best a nod cold as an iceberg if 'twas the girl.  Them as
+want to call her kind `Princess,' and encourage her in being more
+stuck up 'an she was born to be, can, but to my mind a Princess
+is a person who thinks of some one besides herself once in a
+while."
+
+"I don't find the Pryors easy to become acquainted with," said
+mother.  "I have never met the woman; I know the man very
+slightly; he has been here on business once or twice, but the
+girl seems as if she would be nice, if one knew her."
+
+"Well, I wouldn't have s'posed she was your kind," said Mrs.
+Freshett.  "If she is, I won't open my head against her any more.
+
+Anyway, it was the grave-kivers I come about."
+
+"Just what is it, Mrs. Freshett?" asked mother.
+
+"It's two men sellin' a patent iron kiver for to protect the
+graves of your dead from the sun an' the rain."
+
+"Who wants the graves of their dead protected from the sun and
+the rain?" demanded my mother sharply.
+
+"I said to Josiah, `I don't know how she'll feel about it, but I
+can't do more than ask.'"
+
+"Do they carry a sample?  What is it like?"
+
+"Jest the len'th an' width of a grave.  They got from baby to
+six-footer sizes.  They are cast iron like the bottom of a cook
+stove on the under side, but atop they are polished so they shine
+somethin' beautiful.  You can get them in a solid piece, or with
+a hole in the centre about the size of a milk crock to set
+flowers through.  They come ten to the grave, an' they are mighty
+stylish lookin' things.  I have been savin' all I could skimp
+from butter, an' eggs, to get Samantha a organ; but says I to
+her:  `You are gettin' all I can do for you every day; there lays
+your poor brother 'at ain't had a finger lifted for him since he
+was took so sudden he was gone before I knowed he was goin'.'  I
+never can get over Henry bein' took the way he was, so I says: 
+`If this would be a nice thing to have for Henry's grave, and the
+neighbours are goin' to have them for theirn, looks to me like
+some of the organ money will have to go, an' we'll make it up
+later.'  I don't 'low for Henry to be slighted bekase he rid
+himself to death trying to make a president out of his pa's
+gin'ral."
+
+"You never told me how you lost your son," said mother, feeling
+so badly she wiped one of my eyes full of oil.
+
+"Law now, didn't I?" inquired Mrs. Freshett.  "Well mebby that is
+bekase I ain't had a chance to tell you much of anythin', your
+bein' always so busy like, an' me not wantin' to wear out my
+welcome.  It was like this:  All endurin' the war Henry an' me
+did the best we could without pa at home, but by the time it was
+over, Henry was most a man.  Seemed as if when he got home, his
+pa was all tired out and glad to set down an' rest, but Henry was
+afire to be up an' goin'.  His pa filled him so full o' Grant, it
+was runnin' out of his ears.  Come the second run the Gin'ral
+made, peered like Henry set out to 'lect him all by hisself.  He
+wore every horse on the place out, ridin' to rallies.  Sometimes
+he was gone three days at a stretch.  He'd git one place an' hear
+of a rally on ten miles or so furder, an' blest if he didn't ride
+plum acrost the state 'fore he got through with one trip.  He set
+out in July, and he rid right straight through to November, nigh
+onto every day of his life.  He got white, an' thin, an' narvous,
+from loss of sleep an' lack of food, an' his pa got restless,
+said Henry was takin' the 'lection more serious 'an he ever took
+the war.  Last few days before votin' was cold an' raw an' Henry
+rid constant.  'Lection day he couldn't vote, for he lacked a
+year of bein' o' age, an' he rid in with a hard chill, an' white
+as a ghost, an' he says:  `Ma,' says he, `I've 'lected Grant, but
+I'm all tuckered out.  Put me to bed an' kiver me warm.'"
+
+I forgot the sting in my eyes watching Mrs. Freshett.  She was
+the largest woman I knew, and strong as most men.  Her hair was
+black and glisteny, her eyes black, her cheeks red, her skin a
+clear, even dark tint.  She was handsome, she was honest, and she
+was in earnest over everything.  There was something about her,
+or her family, that had to be told in whispers, and some of the
+neighbours would have nothing to do with her.  But mother said
+Mrs. Freshett was doing the very best she knew, and for the sake
+of that, and of her children, anyone who wouldn't help her was
+not a Christian, and not to be a Christian was the very worst
+thing that could happen to you.  I stared at her steadily.  She
+talked straight along, so rapidly you scarcely could keep up with
+the words; you couldn't if you wanted to think about them any
+between.  There was not a quiver in her voice, but from her eyes
+there rolled, steadily, the biggest, roundest tears I ever saw. 
+They ran down her cheeks, formed a stream in the first groove of
+her double chin, overflowed it, and dripped drop, drop, a drop at
+a time, on the breast of her stiffly starched calico dress, and
+from there shot to her knees.
+
+"'Twa'n't no time at all 'til he was chokin' an' burnin' red with
+fever, an' his pa and me, stout as we be, couldn't hold him down
+nor keep him kivered.  He was speechifyin' to beat anythin' you
+ever heard.  His pa said he was repeatin' what he'd heard said by
+every big stump speaker from Greeley to Logan.  When he got so
+hoarse we couldn't tell what he said any more, he jest mouthed
+it, an' at last he dropped back and laid like he was pinned to
+the sheets, an' I thought he was restin', but 'twa'n't an hour
+'til he was gone."
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Freshett lifted her apron, covered her face and
+sobbed until her broad shoulders shook.
+
+"Oh you poor soul!" said my mother.  "I'm so sorry for you!"
+
+"I never knowed he was a-goin' until he was gone," she said.  "He
+was the only one of mine I ever lost, an' I thought it would jest
+lay me out.  I couldn't 'a' stood it at all if I hadn't 'a'
+knowed he was saved.  I well know my Henry went straight to
+Heaven.  Why Miss Stanton, he riz right up in bed at the last,
+and clear and strong he jest yelled it:  `Hurrah fur Grant!'"
+
+My mother's fingers tightened in my hair until I thought she
+would pull out a lot, and I could feel her knees stiffen.  Leon
+just whooped.  Mother sprang up and ran to the door.
+
+"Leon!" she cried.  Then there was a slam.  "What in the world is
+the matter?" she asked.
+
+"Stepped out of the tub right on the soap, and it threw me down,"
+explained Leon.
+
+"For mercy sake, be careful!" said my mother, and shut the door.
+
+It wasn't a minute before the knob turned and it opened again a
+little.
+
+I never saw mother's face look so queer, but at last she said
+softly:  "You were thinking of the grave cover for him?"
+
+"Yes, but I wanted to ask you before I bound myself.  I heard you
+lost two when the scarlet fever was ragin' an' I'm goin' to do
+jest what you do.  If you have kivers, I will.  If you don't like
+them when you see how bright and shiny they are, I won't get any
+either."
+
+"I can tell you without seeing them, Mrs. Freshett," said my
+mother, wrapping a strand of hair around the tin so tight I
+slipped up my fingers to feel whether my neck wasn't like a buck-
+eye hull looks, and it was.  "I don't want any cover for the
+graves of my dead but grass and flowers, and sky and clouds.  I
+like the rain to fall on them, and the sun to shine, so that the
+grass and flowers will grow.  If you are satisfied that the soul
+of Henry is safe in Heaven, that is all that is necessary. 
+Laying a slab of iron on top of earth six feet above his body
+will make no difference to him.  If he is singing with the
+angels, by all means save your money for the organ."
+
+"I don't know about the singin', but I'd stake my last red cent
+he's still hollerin' fur Grant.  I was kind o' took with the
+idea; the things was so shiny and scilloped at the edges, peered
+like it was payin' considerable respect to the dead to kiver them
+that-a-way."
+
+"What good would it do?" asked mother.  "The sun shining on the
+iron would make it so hot it would burn any flower you tried to
+plant in the opening; the water couldn't reach the roots, and all
+that fell on the slab would run off and make it that much wetter
+at the edges.  The iron would soon rust and grow dreadfully ugly
+lying under winter snow.  There is nothing at all in it, save a
+method to work on the feelings of the living, and get them to pay
+their money for something that wouldn't affect their dead a
+particle."
+
+"'Twould be a poor idea for me," said Mrs. Freshett.  "I said to
+the men that I wanted to honour Henry all I could, but with my
+bulk, I'd hev all I could do, come Jedgment Day, to bust my box,
+an' heave up the clods, without havin' to hist up a piece of iron
+an' klim from under it."
+
+Mother stiffened and Leon slipped again.  He could have more
+accidents than any boy I ever knew.  But it was only a few
+minutes until he came to mother and gave her a Bible to mark the
+verses he had to learn to recite at Sunday-school next day. 
+Mother couldn't take the time when she had company, so she asked
+if he weren't big enough to pick out ten proper verses and learn
+them by himself, and he said of course he was.  He took his Bible
+and he and May and I sat on the back steps and studied our
+verses.  He and May were so big they had ten; but I had only two,
+and mine were not very long.  Leon giggled half the time he was
+studying.  I haven't found anything so very funny in the Bible. 
+Every few minutes he would whisper to himself:  "THAT'S A GOOD
+ONE!"
+
+He took the book and heard May do hers until she had them
+perfectly, then he went and sat on the back fence with his book
+and studied as I never before had seen him.  Mrs. Freshett stayed
+so long mother had no time to hear him, but he told her he had
+them all learned so he could repeat them without a mistake.
+
+Next morning mother was busy, so she had no time then.  Father,
+Shelley, and I rode on the front seat, mother, May, and Sally on
+the back, while the boys started early and walked.
+
+When we reached the top of the hill, the road was lined with
+carriages, wagons, spring wagons, and saddle horses.  Father
+found a place for our team and we went down the walk between the
+hitching rack and the cemetery fence.  Mother opened the gate and
+knelt beside two small graves covered with grass, shaded by
+yellow rose bushes, and marked with little white stones.  She
+laid some flowers on each and wiped the dust from the carved
+letters with her handkerchief.  The little sisters who had
+scarlet fever and whooping cough lay there.  Mother was still a
+minute and then she said softly:  "`The Lord has given and the
+Lord has taken away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.'"
+
+She was very pale when she came to us, but her eyes were bright
+and she smiled as she put her arms around as many of us as she
+could reach.
+
+"What a beautiful horse!" said Sally.  "Look at that saddle and
+bridle!  The Pryor girl is here."
+
+"Why should she come?" asked Shelley.
+
+"To show her fine clothes and queen it over us!"
+
+"Children, children!" said mother.  "`Judge not!'  This is a
+house of worship.  The Lord may be drawing her in His own way. 
+It is for us to help Him by being kind and making her welcome."
+
+At the church door we parted and sat with our teachers, but for
+the first time as I went down the aisle I was not thinking of my
+linen dress, my patent leather slippers, and my pretty curls.  It
+suddenly seemed cheap to me to twist my hair when it was straight
+as a shingle, and cut my head on tin.  If the Lord had wanted me
+to have curls, my hair would have been like Sally's.  Seemed to
+me hers tried to see into what big soft curls it could roll.  May
+said ours was so straight it bent back the other way.  Anyway, I
+made up my mind to talk it over with father and always wear
+braids after that, if I could get him to coax mother to let me.
+
+Our church was quite new and it was beautiful.  All the casings
+were oiled wood, and the walls had just a little yellow in the
+last skin coating used to make them smooth, so they were a creamy
+colour, and the blinds were yellow.  The windows were wide open
+and the wind drifted through, while the birds sang as much as
+they ever do in August, among the trees and bushes of the
+cemetery.  Every one had planted so many flowers of all kinds on
+the graves you could scent sweet odours.  Often a big, black-
+striped, brown butterfly came sailing in through one of the
+windows, followed the draft across the room, and out of another. 
+I was thinking something funny: it was about what the Princess
+had said of other people, and whether hers were worse.  I looked
+at my father sitting in calm dignity in his Sunday suit and
+thought him quite as fine and handsome as mother did.  Every
+Sabbath he wore the same suit, he sat in the same spot, he
+worshipped the Lord in his calm, earnest way.  The ministers
+changed, but father was as much a part of the service as the
+Bible on the desk or the communion table.  I wondered if people
+said things about him, and if they did, what they were.  I never
+had heard.  Twisting in my seat, one by one I studied the faces
+on the men's side, and then the women.  It was a mighty good-
+looking crowd.  Some had finer clothes than others--that is
+always the way--but as a rule every one was clean, neat, and good
+to see.  From some you scarcely could turn away.  There was Widow
+Fall.  She was French, from Virginia, and she talked like little
+tinkly notes of music.  I just loved to hear her, and she walked
+like high-up royalty.  Her dress was always black, with white
+bands at the neck and sleeves, black rustly silk, and her eyes
+and hair were like the dress.  There was a little red on her
+cheeks and lips, and her face was always grave until she saw you
+directly before her, and then she smiled the sweetest smile.
+
+Maybe Sarah Hood was not pretty, but there was something about
+her lean face and shining eyes that made you look twice before
+you were sure of it, and by that time you had got so used to her,
+you liked her better as she was, and wouldn't have changed her
+for anything.  Mrs. Fritz had a pretty face and dresses and
+manners, and so did Hannah Dover, only she talked too much.  So I
+studied them and remembered what the Princess had said, and I
+wondered if she heard some one say that Peter Justice beat his
+wife, or if she showed it in her face and manner.  She reminded
+me of a scared cowslip that had been cut and laid in the sun an
+hour.  I don't know as that expresses it.  Perhaps a flower
+couldn't look scared, but it could be wilted and faded.  I
+wondered if she ever had bright hair, laughing eyes, and red in
+her lips and cheeks.  She must have been pretty if she had.
+
+At last I reached my mother.  There was nothing scared or faded
+about her, and she was dreadfully sick too, once in a while since
+she had the fever.  She was a little bit of a woman, coloured
+like a wild rose petal, face and body--a piece of pink porcelain
+Dutch, father said.  She had brown eyes, hair like silk, and she
+always had three best dresses.  There was one of alpaca or
+woollen, of black, gray or brown, and two silks.  Always there
+was a fine rustly black one with a bonnet and mantle to match,
+and then a softer, finer one of either gold brown, like her hair,
+or dainty gray, like a dove's wing.  When these grew too old for
+fine use, she wore them to Sunday-school and had a fresh one for
+best.  There was a new gray in her closet at home, so she put on
+the old brown to-day, and she was lovely in it.
+
+Usually the minister didn't come for church services until
+Sunday-school was half over, so the superintendent read a
+chapter, Daddy Debs prayed, and all of us stood up and sang: 
+"Ring Out the Joy Bells."  Then the superintendent read the
+lesson over as impressively as he could.  The secretary made his
+report, we sang another song, gathered the pennies, and each
+teacher took a class and talked over the lesson a few minutes. 
+Then we repeated the verses we had committed to memory to our
+teachers; the member of each class who had learned the nicest
+texts, and knew them best, was selected to recite before the
+school.  Beginning with the littlest people, we came to the big
+folks.  Each one recited two texts until they reached the class
+above mine.  We walked to the front, stood inside the altar, made
+a little bow, and the superintendent kept score.  I could see
+that mother appeared worried when Leon's name was called for his
+class, for she hadn't heard him, and she was afraid he would
+forget.
+
+Among the funny things about Leon was this: while you had to
+drive other boys of his age to recite, you almost had to hold him
+to keep him from it.  Father said he was born for a politician or
+a preacher, if he would be good, and grow into the right kind of
+a man to do such responsible work.
+
+"I forgot several last Sabbath, so I have thirteen to-day," he
+said politely.
+
+Of course no one expected anything like that.  You never knew
+what might happen when Leon did anything.  He must have been
+about sixteen.  He was a slender lad, having almost sandy hair,
+like his English grandfather.  He wore a white ruffled shirt with
+a broad collar, and cuffs turning back over his black jacket, and
+his trousers fitted his slight legs closely.  The wind whipped
+his soft black tie a little and ruffled the light hair where it
+was longest and wavy above his forehead.  Such a perfect picture
+of innocence you never saw.  There was one part of him that
+couldn't be described any better than the way Mr. Rienzi told
+about his brother in his "Address to the Romans," in McGuffey's
+Sixth.  "The look of heaven on his face" stayed most of the time;
+again, there was a dealish twinkle that sparkled and flashed
+while he was thinking up something mischievous to do.  When he
+was fighting angry, and going to thrash Absalom Saunders or die
+trying, he was plain white and his eyes were like steel.  Mother
+called him "Weiscope," half the time.  I can only spell the way
+that sounds, but it means "white-head," and she always used that
+name when she loved him most.  "The look of heaven" was strong on
+his face now.
+
+"One," said the recording secretary.
+
+"Jesus wept," answered Leon promptly.
+
+There was not a sound in the church.  You could almost hear the
+butterflies pass.  Father looked down and laid his lower lip in
+folds with his fingers, like he did sometimes when it wouldn't
+behave to suit him.
+
+"Two," said the secretary after just a breath of pause.
+
+Leon looked over the congregation easily and then fastened his
+eyes on Abram Saunders, the father of Absalom, and said
+reprovingly:  "Give not sleep to thine eyes nor slumber to thine
+eyelids."
+
+Abram straightened up suddenly and blinked in astonishment, while
+father held fast to his lip.
+
+"Three," called the secretary hurriedly.
+
+Leon shifted his gaze to Betsy Alton, who hadn't spoken to her
+next door neighbour in five years.
+
+"Hatred stirreth up strife," he told her softly, "but love
+covereth all sins."
+
+Things were so quiet it seemed as if the air would snap.
+
+"Four."
+
+The mild blue eyes travelled back to the men's side and settled
+on Isaac Thomas, a man too lazy to plow and sow land his father
+had left him.  They were not so mild, and the voice was touched
+with command:  "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways
+and be wise."
+
+Still that silence.
+
+"Five," said the secretary hurriedly, as if he wished it were
+over.  Back came the eyes to the women's side and past all
+question looked straight at Hannah Dover.
+
+"As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman
+without discretion."
+
+"Six," said the secretary and looked appealingly at father, whose
+face was filled with dismay.
+
+Again Leon's eyes crossed the aisle and he looked directly at the
+man whom everybody in the community called "Stiff-necked Johnny."
+
+I think he was rather proud of it, he worked so hard to keep them
+doing it.
+
+"Lift not up your horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck,"
+Leon commanded him.
+
+Toward the door some one tittered.
+
+"Seven," called the secretary hastily.
+
+Leon glanced around the room.
+
+"But how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell
+together in unity," he announced in delighted tones as if he had
+found it out by himself.
+
+"Eight," called the secretary with something like a breath of
+relief.
+
+Our angel boy never had looked so angelic, and he was beaming on
+the Princess.
+
+"Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee," he told
+her.
+
+Laddie would thrash him for that.
+
+Instantly after, "Nine," he recited straight at Laddie:  "I made
+a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?"
+
+More than one giggled that time.
+
+"Ten!" came almost sharply.
+
+Leon looked scared for the first time.  He actually seemed to
+shiver.  Maybe he realized at last that it was a pretty serious
+thing he was doing.  When he spoke he said these words in the
+most surprised voice you ever heard:  "I was almost in all evil
+in the midst of the congregation and assembly."
+
+"Eleven."
+
+Perhaps these words are in the Bible.  They are not there to read
+the way Leon repeated them, for he put a short pause after the
+first name, and he glanced toward our father:  "Jesus Christ, the
+SAME, yesterday, and to-day, and forever!"
+
+Sure as you live my mother's shoulders shook.
+
+"Twelve."
+
+Suddenly Leon seemed to be forsaken.  He surely shrank in size
+and appeared abused.
+
+"When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take
+me up," he announced, and looked as happy over the ending as he
+had seemed forlorn at the beginning.
+
+"Thirteen."
+
+"The Lord is on my side; I will not fear; what can man do unto
+me?" inquired Leon of every one in the church.  Then he soberly
+made a bow and walked to his seat.
+
+Father's voice broke that silence.  "Let us kneel in prayer," he
+said.
+
+He took a step forward, knelt, laid his hands on the altar,
+closed his eyes and turned his face upward.
+
+"Our Heavenly Father, we come before Thee in a trying situation,"
+he said.  "Thy word of truth has been spoken to us by a
+thoughtless boy, whether in a spirit of helpfulness or of jest,
+Thou knowest.  Since we are reasoning creatures, it little
+matters in what form Thy truth comes to us; the essential thing
+is that we soften our hearts for its entrance, and grow in grace
+by its application.  Tears of compassion such as our dear Saviour
+wept are in our eyes this morning as we plead with Thee to help
+us to apply these words to the betterment of this community."
+
+Then father began to pray.  If the Lord had been standing six
+feet in front of him, and his life had depended on what he said,
+he could have prayed no harder.  Goodness knows how fathers
+remember.  He began at "Jesus wept" and told about this sinful
+world and why He wept over it; then one at a time he took those
+other twelve verses and hammered them down where they belonged
+much harder than Leon ever could by merely looking at people. 
+After that he prayed all around each one so fervently that those
+who had been hit the very worst cried aloud and said:  "Amen!" 
+You wouldn't think any one could do a thing like that; but I
+heard and saw my father do it.
+
+When he arose the tears were running down his cheeks, and before
+him stood Leon.  He was white as could be, but he spoke out
+loudly and clearly.
+
+"Please forgive me, sir; I didn't intend to hurt your feelings.
+Please every one forgive me.  I didn't mean to offend any one. 
+It happened through hunting short verses.  All the short ones
+seemed to be like that, and they made me think----"
+
+He got no farther.  Father must have been afraid of what he might
+say next.  He threw his arms around Leon's shoulders, drew him to
+the seat, and with the tears still rolling, he laughed as happily
+as you ever heard, and he cried:  "`Sweeping through the Gates!' 
+All join in!"
+
+You never heard such singing in your life.  That was another
+wonderful thing.  My father didn't know the notes.  He couldn't
+sing; he said so himself.  Neither could half the people there,
+yet all of them were singing at the tops of their voices, and I
+don't believe the angels in Heaven could make grander music.  My
+father was leading:
+
+"These, these are they, who in the conflict dire----"
+
+
+You could tell Emanuel Ripley had been in the war from the way he
+roared:
+
+
+"Boldly have stood amidst the hottest fire----"
+
+
+The Widow Fall soared above all of them on the next line; her man
+was there, and maybe she was lonely and would have been glad to
+go to him:
+
+
+"Jesus now says, `Come up higher----'"
+
+
+Then my little mother:
+
+
+"Washed in the blood of the Lamb----"
+
+
+Like thunder all of them rolled into the chorus:
+
+
+"Sweepin, through the gates to the New Jerusalem----"
+
+
+You wouldn't have been left out of that company for anything in
+all this world, and nothing else ever could make you want to go
+so badly as to hear every one sing, straight from the heart, a
+grand old song like that.  It is no right way to have to sit and
+keep still, and pay other people money to sing about Heaven to
+you.  No matter if you can't sing by note, if your heart and soul
+are full, until they are running over, so that you are forced to
+sing as those people did, whether you can or not, you are sure to
+be straight on the way to the Gates.
+
+Before three lines were finished my father was keeping time like
+a choirmaster, his face all beaming with shining light; mother
+was rocking on her toes like a wood robin on a twig at twilight,
+and at the end of the chorus she cried "Glory!" right out loud,
+and turned and started down the aisle, shaking hands with every
+one, singing as she went.  When she reached Betsy Alton she held
+her hand and led her down the aisle straight toward Rachel Brown.
+
+When Rachel saw them coming she hurried to meet them, and they
+shook hands and were glad to make up as any two people you ever
+saw.  It must have been perfectly dreadful to see a woman every
+day for five years, and not to give her a pie, when you felt sure
+yours were better than she could make, or loan her a new pattern,
+or tell her first who had a baby, or was married, or dead, or
+anything like that.  It was no wonder they felt glad.  Mother
+came on, and as she passed me the verses were all finished and
+every one began talking and moving.  Johnny Dover forgot his neck
+and shook hands too, and father pronounced the benediction.  He
+always had to when the minister wasn't there, because he was
+ordained himself, and you didn't dare pronounce the benediction
+unless you were.
+
+Every one began talking again, and wondering if the minister
+wouldn't come soon, and some one went out to see.  There was
+mother standing only a few feet from the Princess, and I thought
+of something.  I had seen it done often enough, but I never had
+tried it myself, yet I wanted to so badly, there was no time to
+think how scared I would be.  I took mother's hand and led her a
+few steps farther and said:  "Mother, this is my friend, Pamela
+Pryor."
+
+I believe I did it fairly well.  Mother must have been surprised,
+but she put out her hand.
+
+"I didn't know Miss Pryor and you were acquainted."
+
+"It's only been a little while," I told her.  "I met her when I
+was on some business with the Fairies.  They know everything and
+they told me her father was busy"--I thought she wouldn't want me
+to tell that he was plain CROSS, where every one could hear, so I
+said "busy" for politeness--"and her mother not very strong, and
+that she was a good girl, and dreadfully lonesome.  Can't you do
+something, mother?"
+
+"Well, I should think so!" said mother, for her heart was soft as
+rose leaves.  Maybe you won't believe this, but it's quite true. 
+My mother took the Princess' arm and led her to Sally and
+Shelley, and introduced her to all the girls.  By the time the
+minister came and mother went back to her seat, she had forgotten
+all about the "indisposed" word she disliked, and as you live!
+she invited the Princess to go home with us to dinner.  She stood
+tall and straight, her eyes very bright, and her cheeks a little
+redder than usual, as she shook hands and said a few pleasant
+words that were like from a book, they fitted and were so right. 
+When mother asked her to dinner she said:  "Thank you kindly.  I
+should be glad to go, but my people expect me at home and they
+would be uneasy.  Perhaps you would allow me to ride over some
+week day and become acquainted?"
+
+Mother said she would be happy to have her, and Shelley said so
+too, but Sally was none too cordial.  She had dark curls and pink
+cheeks herself, and every one had said she was the prettiest girl
+in the county before Shelley began to blossom out and show what
+she was going to be.  Sally never minded that, but when the
+Princess came she was a little taller, and her hair was a trifle
+longer, and heavier, and blacker, and her eyes were a little
+larger and darker, and where Sally had pink skin and red lips,
+the Princess was dark as olive, and her lips and cheeks were like
+red velvet.  Anyway, the Princess had said she would come over;
+mother and Shelley had been decent to her, and Sally hadn't been
+exactly insulting.  It would be a little more than you could
+expect for her to be wild about the Princess.  I believe she was
+pleased over having been invited to dinner, and as she was a
+stranger she couldn't know that mother had what we called the
+"invitation habit."
+
+I have seen her ask from fifteen to twenty in one trip down the
+aisle on Sunday morning.  She wanted them to come too; the more
+who came, the better she liked it.  If the hitching rack and
+barnyard were full on Sunday she just beamed.  If the sermon
+pleased her, she invited more.  That morning she was feeling so
+good she asked seventeen; and as she only had dressed six
+chickens--third table, backs and ham, for me as usual; but when
+the prospects were as now, I always managed to coax a few
+gizzards from Candace; she didn't dare give me livers--they were
+counted.  Almost everyone in the church was the happiest that
+morning they had been in years.  When the preacher came, he
+breathed it from the air, and it worked on him so he preached the
+best sermon he ever had, and never knew that Leon made him do it.
+
+Maybe after all it's a good thing to tell people about their
+meanness and give them a stirring up once in a while.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Mr. Pryor's Door
+
+            "Grief will be joy if on its edge
+             Fall soft that holiest ray,
+             Joy will be grief if no faint pledge
+             Be there of heavenly day."
+
+Have Sally and Peter said anything about getting married yet?"
+asked my big sister Lucy of mother.  Lucy was home on a visit. 
+She was bathing her baby and mother was sewing.
+
+"Not a word!"
+
+"Are they engaged?"
+
+"Sally hasn't mentioned it."
+
+"Well, can't you find out?"
+
+"How could I?" asked mother.
+
+"Why, watch them a little and see how they act when they are
+together.  If he kisses her when he leaves, of course they are
+engaged."
+
+"It would be best to wait until Sally tells me," laughed mother.
+
+I heard this from the back steps.  Neither mother nor Lucy knew I
+was there.  I went in to see if they would let me take the baby. 
+Of course they wouldn't!  Mother took it herself.  She was
+rocking, and softly singing my Dutch song that I loved best; I
+can't spell it, but it sounds like this:
+
+            "Trus, trus, trill;
+             Der power rid der fill,
+             Fill sphring aveck,
+             Plodschlicter power in der dreck."
+
+
+Once I asked mother to sing it in English, and she couldn't
+because it didn't rhyme that way and the words wouldn't fit the
+notes; it was just, "Trot, trot, trot, a boy rode a colt.  The
+colt sprang aside; down went the boy in the dirt."
+
+"Aw, don't sing my song to that little red, pug-nosed bald-head!"
+I said.
+
+Really, it was a very nice baby; I only said that because I
+wanted to hold it, and mother wouldn't give it up.  I tried to
+coax May to the dam snake hunting, but she couldn't go, so I had
+to amuse myself.  I had a doll, but I never played with it except
+when I was dressed up on Sunday.  Anyway, what's the use of a
+doll when there's a live baby in the house?  I didn't care much
+for my playhouse since I had seen one so much finer that Laddie
+had made for the Princess.  Of course I knew moss wouldn't take
+root in our orchard as it did in the woods, neither would willow
+cuttings or the red flowers.  Finally, I decided to go hunting. 
+I went into the garden and gathered every ripe touch-me-not pod I
+could find, and all the portulaca.  Then I stripped the tiger
+lilies of each little black ball at the bases of the leaves, and
+took all the four o'clock seed there was.  Then I got my biggest
+alder popgun and started up the road toward Sarah Hood's.
+
+I was going along singing a little verse; it wasn't Dutch either;
+the old baby could have that if it wanted it.  Soon as I got from
+sight of the house I made a powderhorn of a curled leaf, loaded
+my gun with portulaca powder, rammed in a tiger lily bullet, laid
+the weapon across my shoulder, and stepped high and lightly as
+Laddie does when he's in the Big Woods hunting for squirrel.  It
+must have been my own singing--I am rather good at hearing
+things, but I never noticed a sound that time, until a voice like
+a rusty saw said:  "Good morning, Nimrod!"
+
+I sprang from the soft dust and landed among the dog fennel of a
+fence corner, in a flying leap.  Then I looked.  It was the
+Princess' father, tall, and gray, and grim, riding a big black
+horse that seemed as if it had been curried with the fine comb
+and brushed with the grease rag.
+
+"Good morning!" I said when I could speak.
+
+"Am I correct in the surmise that you are on the chase with a
+popgun?" he asked politely.
+
+"Yes sir," I answered, getting my breath the best I could.
+
+It came easier after I noticed he didn't seem to be angry about
+anything.
+
+"Where is your hunting ground, and what game are you after?" he
+asked gravely.
+
+"You can see the great African jungle over there.  I am going to
+hunt for lions and tigers."
+
+You always must answer politely any one who speaks to you; and
+you get soundly thrashed, at least at our house, if you don't be
+politest of all to an older person especially with white hair. 
+Father is extremely particular about white hair.  It is a "crown
+of glory," when it is found in the way of the Lord.  Mahlon Pryor
+had enough crown of glory for three men, but maybe his wasn't
+exactly glory, because he wasn't in the way of the Lord.  He was
+in a way of his own.  He must have had much confidence in
+himself.  At our house we would rather trust in the Lord.  I only
+told him about the lions and tigers because he asked me, and that
+was the way I played.  But you should have heard him laugh.  You
+wouldn't have supposed to see him that he could.
+
+"Umph!" he said at last.  "I am a little curious about your
+ammunition.  Just how to you bring down your prey?"
+
+"I use portulaca powder and tiger lily bullets on the tigers, and
+four o'clocks on the lions," I said.
+
+You could have heard him a mile, dried up as he was.
+
+"I used to wear a red coat and ride to the hounds fox hunting,"
+he said.  "It's great sport.  Won't you take me with you to the
+jungle?"
+
+I didn't want him in the least, but if any one older asks right
+out to go with you, what can you do?  I am going to tell several
+things you won't believe, and this is one of them:  He got off
+his horse, tied it to the fence, and climbed over after me.  He
+went on asking questions and of course I had to tell him.  Most
+of what he wanted to know, his people should have taught him
+before he was ten years old, but father says they do things
+differently in England.
+
+"There doesn't seem to be many trees in the jungle."
+
+"Well, there's one, and it's about the most important on our
+land," I told him.  "Father wouldn't cut it down for a farm.  You
+see that little dark bag nearly as big as your fist, swinging out
+there on that limb?  Well, every spring one of these birds,
+yellow as orange peel, with velvet black wings, weaves a nest
+like that, and over on that big branch, high up, one just as
+bright red as the other is yellow, and the same black wings,
+builds a cradle for his babies.  Father says a red bird and a
+yellow one keeping house in the same tree is the biggest thing
+that ever happened in our family.  They come every year and that
+is their tree.  I believe father would shoot any one who drove
+them away."
+
+"Your father is a gunner also?" he asked, and I thought he was
+laughing to himself.
+
+"He's enough of a gunner to bring mother in a wagon from
+Pennsylvania all the way here, and he kept wolves, bears,
+Indians, and Gypsies from her, and shot things for food.  Yes
+sir, my father can shoot if he wants to, better than any of our
+family except Laddie."
+
+"And does Laddie shoot well?"
+
+"Laddie does everything well," I answered proudly.  "He won't try
+to do anything at all, until he practises so he can do it well."
+
+"Score one for Laddie," he said in a queer voice.
+
+"Are you in a hurry about the lions and tigers?"
+
+"Not at all," he answered.
+
+"Well, here I always stop and let Governor Oglesby go swimming,"
+I said.
+
+Mr. Mahlon Pryor sat on the bank of our Little Creek, took off
+his hat and shook back his hair as if the wind felt good on his
+forehead.  I fished Dick Oglesby from the ammunition in my apron
+pocket, and held him toward the cross old man, and he wasn't
+cross at all.  It's funny how you come to get such wrong ideas
+about people.
+
+"My big married sister who lives in Westchester sent him to me
+last Christmas," I explained.  "I have another doll, great big,
+with a Scotch plaid dress made from pieces of mine, but I only
+play with her on Sunday when I dare not do much else.  I like
+Dick the best because he fits my apron pocket.  Father wanted me
+to change his name and call him Oliver P. Morton, after a friend
+of his, but I told him this doll had to be called by the name he
+came with, and if he wanted me to have one named for his friend,
+to get it, and I'd play with it."
+
+"What did he do?"
+
+"He didn't want one named Morton that much."
+
+Mr. Pryor took Dick Oglesby in his fingers and looked at his
+curly black hair and blue eyes, his chubby outstretched arms,
+like a baby when it wants you to take it, and his plump little
+feet and the white shirt with red stripes all a piece of him as
+he was made, and said:  "The honourable governor of our sister
+state seems a little weighty; I am at a loss to understand how he
+swims."
+
+"It's a new way," I said.  "He just stands still and the water
+swims around him.  It's very easy for him."
+
+Then I carried Dick to the water, waded in and stood him against
+a stone.  Something funny happened instantly.  It always did.  I
+found it out one day when I got some apple butter on the governor
+giving him a bite of my bread, and put him in the wash bowl to
+soak.  He was two and a half inches tall; but the minute you
+stood him in water he went down to about half that height and
+spread out to twice his size around.  You should have heard Mr.
+Pryor.
+
+"If you will lie on the bank and watch you'll have more to laugh
+at than that," I promised.
+
+He lay down and never paid the least attention to his clothes. 
+Pretty soon a little chub fish came swimming around to make
+friends with Governor Oglesby, and then a shiner and some more
+chub.  They nibbled at his hands and toes, and then went flashing
+away, and from under the stone came backing a big crayfish and
+seized the governor by the leg and started dragging him, so I had
+to jump in and stop it.  I took a shot at the crayfish with the
+tiger ammunition and then loaded for lions.
+
+We went on until the marsh became a thicket of cattails,
+bulrushes, willow bushes, and blue flags; then I found a path
+where the lions left the jungle, hid Mr. Pryor and told him he
+must be very still or they wouldn't come.  At last I heard one. 
+I touched Mr. Pryor's sleeve to warn him to keep his eyes on the
+trail.  Pretty soon the lion came in sight.  Really it was only a
+little gray rabbit hopping along, but when it was opposite us, I
+pinged it in the side, it jumped up and turned a somersault with
+surprise, and squealed a funny little squeal,--well, I wondered
+if Mr. Pryor's people didn't hear him, and think he had gone
+crazy as Paddy Ryan.  I never did hear any one laugh so.  I
+thought if he enjoyed it like that, I'd let him shoot one.  I do
+May sometimes; so we went to another place I knew where there was
+a tiger's den, and I loaded with tiger lily bullets, gave him the
+gun and showed him where to aim.  After we had waited a long time
+out came a muskrat, and started for the river.  I looked to see
+why Mr. Pryor didn't shoot, and there he was gazing at it as if a
+snake had charmed him; his hands shaking a little, his cheeks
+almost red, his eyes very bright.
+
+"Shoot!" I whispered.  "It won't stay all day!"
+
+He forgot how to push the ramrod like I showed him, so he reached
+out and tried to hit it with the gun.
+
+"Don't do that!" I said.
+
+"But it's getting away!  It's getting away!" he cried.
+
+"Well, what if it is?" I asked, half provoked.  "Do you suppose I
+really would hurt a poor little muskrat?  Maybe it has six hungry
+babies in its home."
+
+"Oh THAT way," he said, but he kept looking at it, so he made me
+think if I hadn't been there, he would have thrown a stone or hit
+it with a stick.  It is perfectly wonderful about how some men
+can't get along without killing things, such little bits of
+helpless creatures too.  I thought he'd better be got from the
+jungle, so I invited him to see the place at the foot of the hill
+below our orchard where some men thought they had discovered gold
+before the war.  They had been to California in '49, and although
+they didn't come home with millions, or anything else except sick
+and tired, they thought they had learned enough about gold to
+know it when they saw it.
+
+I told him about it and he was interested and anxious to see the
+place.  If there had been a shovel, I am quite sure he would have
+gone to digging.  He kept poking around with his boot toe, and he
+said maybe the yokels didn't look good.
+
+He said our meadow was a beautiful place, and when he praised the
+creek I told him about the wild ducks, and he laughed again.  He
+didn't seem to be the same man when we went back to the road.  I
+pulled some sweet marsh grass and gave his horse bites, so Mr.
+Pryor asked if I liked animals.  I said I loved horses, Laddie's
+best of all.  He asked about it and I told him.
+
+"Hasn't your father but one thoroughbred?"
+
+"Father hasn't any," I said.  "Flos really belongs to Laddie, and
+we are mighty glad he has her."
+
+"You should have one soon, yourself," he said.
+
+"Well, if the rest of them will hurry up and marry off, so the
+expenses won't be so heavy, maybe I can."
+
+"How many of you are there?" he asked.
+
+"Only twelve," I said.
+
+He looked down the road at our house.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me you have twelve children there?" he
+inquired.
+
+"Oh no!" I answered.  "Some of the big boys have gone into
+business in the cities around, and some of the girls are married.
+
+Mother says she has only to show her girls in the cities to have
+them snapped up like hot cakes."
+
+"I fancy that is the truth," he said.  "I've passed the one who
+rides the little black pony and she is a picture.  A fine,
+healthy, sensible-appearing young woman!"
+
+"I don't think she's as pretty as your girl," I said.
+
+"Perhaps I don't either," he replied, smiling at me.
+
+Then he mounted his horse.
+
+"I don't remember that I ever have passed that house," he said,
+"without hearing some one singing.  Does it go on all the time?"
+
+"Yes, unless mother is sick."
+
+"And what is it all about?"
+
+"Oh just joy!  Gladness that we are alive, that we have things to
+do that we like, and praising the Lord."
+
+"Umph!" said Mr. Pryor.
+
+"It's just letting out what our hearts are full of," I told him. 
+"Don't you know that song:
+
+            "`Tis the old time religion
+              And you cannot keep it still?'"
+
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"It's an awful nice song," I explained.  "After it sings about
+all the other things religion is good for, there is one line that
+says:  `IT'S GOOD FOR THOSE IN TROUBLE.'"
+
+I looked at him straight and hard, but he only turned white and
+seemed sick.
+
+"So?" said Mr. Pryor.  "Well, thank you for the most interesting
+morning I've had this side England.  I should be delighted if you
+would come and hunt lions in my woods with me some time."
+
+"Oh, do you open the door to children?"
+
+"Certainly we open the door to children," he said, and as I live,
+he looked so sad I couldn't help thinking he was sorry to close
+it against any one.  A mystery is the dreadfulest thing.
+
+"Then if children don't matter, maybe I can come lion-hunting
+some time with the Princess, after she has made the visit at our
+house she said she would."
+
+"Indeed!  I hadn't been informed that my daughter contemplated
+visiting your house," he said.  "When was it arranged?"
+
+"My mother invited her last Sunday."
+
+I didn't like the way he said:  "O-o-o-h!"  Some way it seemed
+insulting to my mother.
+
+"She did it to please me," I said.  "There was a Fairy Princess
+told me the other day that your girl felt like a stranger, and
+that to be a stranger was the hardest thing in all the world. 
+She sat a little way from the others, and she looked so lonely. 
+I pulled my mother's sleeve and led her to your girl and made
+them shake hands, and then mother HAD to ask her to come to
+dinner with us.  She always invites every one she meets coming
+down the aisle; she couldn't help asking your girl, too.  She
+said she was expected at home, but she'd come some day and get
+acquainted.  She needn't if you object.  My mother only asked her
+because she thought she was lonely, and maybe she wanted to
+come."
+
+He sat there staring straight ahead and he seemed to grow whiter,
+and older, and colder every minute.
+
+"Possibly she is lonely," he said at last.  "This isn't much like
+the life she left.  Perhaps she does feel herself a stranger.  It
+was very kind of your mother to invite her.  If she wants to
+come, I shall make no objections."
+
+"No, but my father will," I said.
+
+He straightened up as if something had hit him.
+"Why will he object?"
+
+"On account of what you said about God at our house," I told him.
+"And then, too, father's people were from England, and he says
+real Englishmen have their doors wide open, and welcome people
+who offer friendliness."
+
+Mr. Pryor hit his horse an awful blow.  It reared and went racing
+up the road until I thought it was running away.  I could see I
+had made him angry enough to burst.  Mother always tells me not
+to repeat things; but I'm not smart enough to know what to say,
+so I don't see what is left but to tell what mother, or father,
+or Laddie says when grown people ask me questions.
+
+I went home, but every one was too busy even to look at me, so I
+took Bobby under my arm, hunted father, and told him all about
+the morning.  I wondered what he would think.  I never found out.
+
+He wouldn't say anything, so Bobby and I went across the lane,
+and climbed the gate into the orchard to see if Hezekiah were
+there and wanted to fight.  He hadn't time to fight Bobby because
+he was busy chasing every wild jay from our orchard.  By the time
+he got that done, he was tired, so he came hopping along on
+branches above us as Bobby and I went down the west fence beside
+the lane.
+
+If I had been compelled to choose the side of our orchard I liked
+best, I don't know which I would have selected.  The west side--
+that is, the one behind the dooryard--was running over with
+interesting things.  Two gates opened into it, one from near each
+corner of the yard.  Between these there was quite a wide level
+space, where mother fed the big chickens and kept the hens in
+coops with little ones.  She had to have them close enough that
+the big hawks were afraid to come to earth, or they would take
+more chickens than they could pay for, by cleaning rabbits,
+snakes, and mice from the fields.  Then came a double row of
+prize peach trees; rare fruit that mother canned to take to
+county fairs.  One bore big, white freestones, and around the
+seed they were pink as a rose.  One was a white cling, and one
+was yellow.  There was a yellow freestone as big as a young sun,
+and as golden, and the queerest of all was a cling purple as a
+beet.
+
+Sometimes father read about the hairs of the head being numbered,
+because we were so precious in the sight of the Almighty.  Mother
+was just as particular with her purple tree; every peach on it
+was counted, and if we found one on the ground, we had to carry
+it to her, because it MIGHT be sound enough to can or spice for a
+fair, or she had promised the seed to some one halfway across the
+state.  At each end of the peach row was an enormous big pear
+tree; not far from one the chicken house stood on the path to the
+barn, and beside the other the smoke house with the dog kennel a
+yard away.  Father said there was a distinct relationship between
+a smoke house and a dog kennel, and bulldogs were best.  Just at
+present we were out of bulldogs, but Jones, Jenkins and Co. could
+make as much noise as any dog you ever heard.  On the left grew
+the plum trees all the way to the south fence, and I think there
+was one of every kind in the fruit catalogues.  Father spent
+hours pruning, grafting, and fertilizing them.  He said they
+required twice as much work as peaches.
+
+Around the other sides of the orchard were two rows of peach
+trees of every variety; but one cling on the north was just a
+little the best of any, and we might eat all we wanted from any
+tree we liked, after father tested them and said: "Peaches are
+ripe!"  In the middle were the apple; selected trees, planted,
+trimmed, and cultivated like human beings.  The apples were so
+big and fine they were picked by hand, wrapped in paper, packed
+in barrels, and all we could not use at home went to J. B. White
+in Fort Wayne for the biggest fruit house in the state.  My! but
+father was proud!  He always packed especially fine ones for Mr.
+White's family.  He said he liked him, because he was a real
+sandy Scotchman, who knew when an apple was right, and wasn't
+afraid to say so.
+
+On the south side of the orchard there was the earliest June
+apple tree.  The apples were small, bright red with yellow
+stripes, crisp, juicy and sweet enough to be just right.  The
+tree was very large, and so heavy it leaned far to the northeast.
+
+This sounds like make-believe, but it's gospel truth.  Almost two
+feet from the ground there was a big round growth, the size of a
+hash bowl.  The tree must have been hurt when very small and the
+place enlarged with the trunk.  Now it made a grand step.  If you
+understood that no one could keep from running the last few rods
+from the tree, then figured on the help to be had from this step,
+you could see how we went up it like squirrels.  All the bark on
+the south side was worn away and the trunk was smooth and shiny. 
+The birds loved to nest among the branches, and under the peach
+tree in the fence corner opposite was a big bed of my mother's
+favourite wild flowers, blue-eyed Marys.  They had dainty stems
+from six to eight inches high and delicate heads of bloom made up
+of little flowers, two petals up, blue, two turning down, white. 
+Perhaps you don't know about anything prettier than that.  There
+were maiden-hair ferns among them too! and the biggest lichens
+you ever saw on the fence, while in the hollow of a rotten rail a
+little chippy bird always built a hair nest.  She got the hairs
+at our barn, for most of them were gray from our carriage horses,
+Ned and Jo.  All down that side of the orchard the fence corners
+were filled with long grass and wild flowers, a few alder bushes
+left to furnish berries for the birds, and wild roses for us, to
+keep their beauty impressed on us, father said.
+
+The east end ran along the brow of a hill so steep we coasted
+down it on the big meat board all winter.  The board was six
+inches thick, two and a half feet wide, and six long.  Father
+said slipping over ice and snow gave it the good scouring it
+needed, and it was thick enough to last all our lives, so we
+might play with it as we pleased.  At least seven of us could go
+skimming down that hill and halfway across the meadow on it.  In
+the very place we slid across, in summer lay the cowslip bed. 
+The world is full of beautiful spots, but I doubt if any of them
+ever were prettier than that.  Father called it swale.  We didn't
+sink deep, but all summer there was water standing there.  The
+grass was long and very sweet, there were ferns and a few calamus
+flowers, and there must have been an acre of cowslips--cowslips
+with big-veined, heartshaped, green leaves, and large pale gold
+flowers.  I used to sit on the top rail of that orchard fence and
+look down at them, and try to figure out what God was thinking
+when He created them, and I wished that I might have been where I
+could watch His face as He worked.
+
+Halfway across the east side was a gully where Leon and I found
+the Underground Station, and from any place along the north you
+looked, you saw the Little Creek and the marsh.  At the same time
+the cowslips were most golden, the marsh was blue with flags,
+pink with smart weed, white and yellow with dodder, yellow with
+marsh buttercups having ragged frosty leaves, while the yellow
+and the red birds flashed above it, the red crying, "Chip,"
+"Chip," in short, sharp notes, the yellow spilling music all over
+the marsh while on wing.
+
+It would take a whole book to describe the butterflies; once in a
+while you scared up a big, wonderful moth, large as a sparrow;
+and the orchard was alive with doves, thrushes, catbirds,
+bluebirds, vireos, and orioles.  When you climbed the fence, or a
+tree, and kept quiet, and heard the music and studied the
+pictures, it made you feel as if you had to put it into words.  I
+often had meeting all by myself, unless Bobby and Hezekiah were
+along, and I tried to tell God what I thought about things. 
+Probably He was so busy making more birds and flowers for other
+worlds, He never heard me; but I didn't say anything
+disrespectful at all, so it made no difference if He did listen. 
+It just seemed as if I must tell what I thought, and I felt
+better, not so full and restless after I had finished.
+
+All of us were alike about that.  At that minute I knew mother
+was humming, as she did a dozen times a day:
+
+            "I think when I read that sweet story of old,
+                 When Jesus was here among men
+             How He called little children as lambs to His fold,
+                 I should like to have been with Him then."
+
+
+Lucy would be rocking her baby and singing, "Hush, my dear, lie
+still and slumber."  Candace's favourite she made up about her
+man who had been killed in the war, when they had been married
+only six weeks, which hadn't given her time to grow tired of him
+if he hadn't been "all her fancy painted."  She arranged the
+words like "Ben Battle was a soldier bold," and she sang them to
+suit herself, and cried every single minute:
+
+            "They wrapped him in his uniform,
+                 They laid him in the tomb,
+             My aching heart I thought 'twould break,
+                 But such was my sad doom."
+
+
+Candace just loved that song.  She sang it all the time.  Leon
+said our pie always tasted salty from her tears, and he'd take a
+bite and smile at her sweetly and say:  "How UNIFORM you get your
+pie, Candace!"
+
+May's favourite was "Joy Bells."  Father would be whispering over
+to himself the speech he was preparing to make at the next
+prayer-meeting.  We never could learn his speeches, because he
+read and studied so much it kept his head so full, he made a new
+one every time.  You could hear Laddie's deep bass booming the
+"Bedouin Love Song" for a mile; this minute it came rolling
+across the corn:
+
+            "Open the door of thy heart,
+                 And open thy chamber door,
+         And my kisses shall teach thy lips
+                 The love that shall fade no more
+                     Till the sun grows cold,
+                     And the Stars are old,
+                     And the leaves of the Judgment
+                             Book unfold!"
+
+
+I don't know how the Princess stood it.  If he had been singing
+that song where I could hear it and I had known it was about me,
+as she must have known he meant her, I couldn't have kept my arms
+from around his neck.  Over in the barn Leon was singing:
+
+            "A life on the ocean wave,
+             A home on the rolling deep,
+             Where codfish waggle their tails
+             'Mid tadpoles two feet deep."
+
+
+The minute he finished, he would begin reciting "Marco Bozzaris,"
+and you could be sure that he would reach the last line only to
+commence on the speech of "Logan, Chief of the Mingoes," or any
+one of the fifty others.  He could make your hair stand a little
+straighter than any one else; the best teachers we ever had, or
+even Laddie, couldn't make you shivery and creepy as he could. 
+Because all of us kept going like that every day, people couldn't
+pass without hearing, so THAT was what Mr. Pryor meant.
+
+I had a pulpit in the southeast corner of the orchard.  I liked
+that place best of all because from it you could see two sides at
+once.  The very first little, old log cabin that had been on our
+land, the one my father and mother moved into, had stood in that
+corner.  It was all gone now; but a flowerbed of tiny, purple
+iris, not so tall as the grass, spread there, and some striped
+grass in the shadiest places, and among the flowers a lark
+brooded every spring.  In the fence corner mother's big white
+turkey hen always nested.  To protect her from rain and too hot
+sun, father had slipped some boards between the rails about three
+feet from the ground.  After the turkey left, that was my pulpit.
+
+I stood there and used the top of the fence for my railing.
+
+The little flags and all the orchard and birds were behind me; on
+one hand was the broad, grassy meadow with the creek running so
+swiftly, I could hear it, and the breath of the cowslips came up
+the hill.  Straight in front was the lane running down from the
+barn, crossing the creek and spreading into the woods pasture,
+where the water ran wider and yet swifter, big forest trees grew,
+and bushes of berries, pawpaws, willow, everything ever found in
+an Indiana thicket; grass under foot, and many wild flowers and
+ferns wherever the cattle and horses didn't trample them, and
+bigger, wilder birds, many having names I didn't know.  On the
+left, across the lane, was a large cornfield, with trees here and
+there, and down the valley I could see the Big Creek coming from
+the west, the Big Hill with the church on top, and always the
+white gravestones around it.  Always too there was the sky
+overhead, often with clouds banked until you felt if you only
+could reach them, you could climb straight to the gates that
+father was so fond of singing about sweeping through.  Mostly
+there was a big hawk or a turkey buzzard hanging among them, just
+to show us that we were not so much, and that we couldn't shoot
+them, unless they chose to come down and give us a chance.
+
+I set Bobby and Hezekiah on the fence and stood between them. 
+"We will open service this morning by singing the thirty-fifth
+hymn," I said.  "Sister Dover, will you pitch the tune?"
+
+Then I made my voice high and squeally like hers and sang:
+
+            "Come ye that love the Lord,
+             And let your joys be known,
+             Join in a song of sweet accord,
+             And thus surround the throne."
+
+
+I sang all of it and then said:  "Brother Hastings, will you lead
+us in prayer?"
+
+Then I knelt down, and prayed Brother Hastings' prayer.  I could
+have repeated any one of a dozen of the prayers the men of our
+church prayed, but I liked Brother Hastings' best, because it had
+the biggest words in it.  I loved words that filled your mouth,
+and sounded as if you were used to books.  It began sort of sing-
+songy and measured in stops, like a poetry piece:
+
+        "Our Heavenly Father:  We come before Thee this morning,
+         Humble worms of the dust, imploring thy blessing.
+         We beseech Thee to forgive our transgressions,
+         Heal our backsliding, and love us freely."
+
+
+Sometimes from there on it changed a little, but it always began
+and ended exactly the same way.  Father said Brother Hastings was
+powerful in prayer, but he did wish he'd leave out the "worms of
+the dust."  He said we were not "worms of the dust"; we were
+reasoning, progressive, inventive men and women.  He said a worm
+would never be anything except a worm, but we could study and
+improve ourselves, help others, make great machines, paint
+pictures, write books, and go to an extent that must almost amaze
+the Almighty Himself.  He said that if Brother Hastings had done
+more plowing in his time, and had a little closer acquaintance
+with worms, he wouldn't be so ready to call himself and every one
+else a worm.  Now if you are talking about cutworms or fishworms,
+father is right.  But there is that place where--"Charles his
+heel had raised, upon the humble worm to tread," and the worm
+lifted up its voice and spake thus to Charles:
+
+            "I know I'm now among the things
+                 Uncomely to your sight,
+             But, by and by, on splendid wings,
+                 You'll see me high and bright."
+
+
+Now I'll bet a cent THAT is the kind of worm Brother Hastings
+said we were.  I must speak to father about it.  I don't want him
+to be mistaken; and I really think he is about worms.  Of course
+he knows the kind that have wings and fly.  Brother Hastings
+mixed him up by saying "worms of the dust" when he should have
+said worms of the leaves.  Those that go into little round cases
+in earth or spin cocoons on trees always live on leaves, and many
+of them rear the head, having large horns, and wave it in a
+manner far from humble.  So father and Brother Hastings were both
+partly right, and partly wrong.
+
+When the prayer came to a close, where every one always said
+"Amen," I punched Bobby and whispered, "Crow, Bobby, crow!" and
+he stood up and brought it out strong, like he always did when I
+told him.  I had to stop the service to feed him a little wheat,
+to pay him for crowing; but as no one was there except us, that
+didn't matter.  Then Hezekiah crowded over for some, so I had to
+pretend I was Mrs. Daniels feeding her children caraway cake,
+like she always did in meeting.  If I had been the mother of
+children who couldn't have gone without things to eat in church
+I'd have kept them at home.  Mrs. Daniels always had the carpet
+greasy with cake crumbs wherever she sat, and mother didn't think
+the Lord liked a dirty church any more than we would have wanted
+a mussy house.  When I had Bobby and Hezekiah settled I took my
+text from my head, because I didn't know the meeting feeling was
+coming on me when I started, and I had brought no Bible along.
+
+"Blessed are all men, but most blessed are they who hold their
+tempers."  I had to stroke Bobby a little and pat Hezekiah once
+in a while, to keep them from flying down and fighting, but
+mostly I could give my attention to my sermon.
+
+"We have only to look around us this morning to see that all men
+are blessed," I said.  "The sky is big enough to cover every one.
+
+If the sun gets too hot, there are trees for shade or the clouds
+come up for a while.  If the earth becomes too dry, it always
+rains before it is everlastingly too late.  There are birds
+enough to sing for every one, butterflies enough to go around,
+and so many flowers we can't always keep the cattle and horses
+from tramping down and even devouring beautiful ones, like Daniel
+thought the lions would devour him--but they didn't.  Wouldn't it
+be a good idea, O Lord, for You to shut the cows' mouths and save
+the cowslips also; they may not be worth as much as a man, but
+they are lots better looking, and they make fine greens.  It
+doesn't seem right for cows to eat flowers; but maybe it is as
+right for them as it is for us.  The best way would be for our
+cattle to do like that piece about the cow in the meadow exactly
+the same as ours:
+
+            "`And through it ran a little brook,
+                 Where oft the cows would drink,
+             And then lie down among the flowers,
+                 That grew upon the brink.'
+
+
+"You notice, O Lord, the cows did not eat the flowers in this
+instance; they merely rested among them, and goodness knows,
+that's enough for any cow.  They had better done like the next
+verse, where it says:
+            "`They like to lie beneath the trees,
+                 All shaded by the boughs,
+             Whene'er the noontide heat came on:
+                 Sure, they were happy cows!'
+
+
+"Now, O Lord, this plainly teaches that if cows are happy, men
+should be much more so, for like the cows, they have all Thou
+canst do for them, and all they can do for themselves, besides. 
+So every man is blessed, because Thy bounty has provided all
+these things for him, without money and without price.  If some
+men are not so blessed as others, it is their own fault, and not
+Yours.  You made the earth, and all that is therein, and You made
+the men.  Of course You had to make men different, so each woman
+can tell which one belongs to her; but I believe it would have
+been a good idea while You were at it, if You would have made all
+of them enough alike that they would all work.  Perhaps it isn't
+polite of me to ask more of You than You saw fit to do; and then,
+again, it may be that there are some things impossible, even to
+You.  If there is anything at all, seems as if making Isaac
+Thomas work would be it.  Father says that man would rather
+starve and see his wife and children hungry than to take off his
+coat, roll up his sleeves, and plow corn; so it was good enough
+for him when Leon said, `Go to the ant, thou sluggard,' right at
+him.  So, of course, Isaac is not so blessed as some men, because
+he won't work, and thus he never knows whether he's going to have
+a big dinner on Sunday, until after some one asks him, because he
+looks so empty.  Mother thinks it isn't fair to feed Isaac and
+send him home with his stomach full, while Mandy and the babies
+are sick and hungry.  But Isaac is some blessed, because he has
+religion and gets real happy, and sings, and shouts, and he's
+going to Heaven when he dies.  He must wish he'd go soon,
+especially in winter.
+
+"There are men who do not have even this blessing, and to make
+things worse, O Lord, they get mad as fire and hit their
+horses, and look like all possessed.  The words of my text this
+morning apply especially to a man who has all the blessings Thou
+hast showered and flowered upon men who work, or whose people
+worked and left them so much money they don't need to, and yet a
+sadder face I never saw, or a crosser one.  He looks like he was
+going to hit people, and he does hit his horse an awful crack. 
+It's no way to hit a horse, not even if it balks, because it
+can't hit back, and it's a cowardly thing to do.  If you rub
+their ears and talk to them, they come quicker, O our Heavenly
+Father, and if you hit them just because you are mad, it's a
+bigger sin yet.
+
+"No man is nearly so blessed as he might be who goes around
+looking killed with grief when he should cheer up, no matter what
+ails him; and who shuts up his door and says his wife is sick
+when she isn't, and who scowls at every one, when he can be real
+pleasant if he likes, as some in Divine Presence can testify.  So
+we are going to beseech Thee, O Lord, to lay Thy mighty hand upon
+the man who got mad this beautiful morning and make him feel Thy
+might, until he will know for himself and not another, that You
+are not a myth.  Teach him to have a pleasant countenance, an
+open door, and to hold his temper.  Help him to come over to our
+house and be friendly with all his neighbours, and get all the
+blessings You have provided for every one; but please don't make
+him have any more trouble than he has now, for if You do, You'll
+surely kill him.  Have patience with him, and have mercy on him,
+O Lord!  Let us pray."
+
+That time I prayed myself.  I looked into the sky just as
+straight and as far as I could see, and if I had any influence at
+all, I used it then.  Right out loud, I just begged the Lord to
+get after Mr. Pryor and make him behave like other people, and
+let the Princess come to our house, and for him to come too;
+because I liked him heaps when he was lion hunting, and I wanted
+to go with him again the worst way.  I had seen him sail right
+over the fences on his big black horse, and when he did it in
+England, wearing a red coat, and the dogs flew over thick around
+him, it must have looked grand, but it was mighty hard on the
+fox.  I do hope it got away.  Anyway, I prayed as hard as I
+could, and every time I said the strongest thing I knew, I
+punched Bobby to crow, and he never came out stronger.  Then I
+was Sister Dover and started:  "Oh come let us gather at the
+fountain, the fountain that never goes dry."
+
+Just as I was going to pronounce the benediction like father, I
+heard something, so I looked around, and there went he and Dr.
+Fenner.  They were going toward the house, and yet, they hadn't
+passed me.  I was not scared, because I knew no one was sick. 
+Dr. Fenner always stopped when he passed, if he had a minute, and
+if he hadn't, mother sent some one to the gate with buttermilk
+and slices of bread and butter, and jelly an inch thick.  When a
+meal was almost cooked she heaped some on a plate and he ate as
+he drove and left the plate next time he passed.  Often he was so
+dead tired, he was asleep in his buggy, and his old gray horse
+always stopped at our gate.
+
+I ended with "Amen," because I wanted to know if they had been
+listening; so I climbed the fence, ran down the lane behind the
+bushes, and hid a minute.  Sure enough they had!  I suppose I had
+been so in earnest I hadn't heard a sound, but it's a wonder
+Hezekiah hadn't told me.  He was always seeing something to make
+danger signals about.  He never let me run on a snake, or a hawk
+get one of the chickens, or Paddy Ryan come too close.  I only
+wanted to know if they had gone and listened, and then I intended
+to run straight back to Bobby and Hezekiah; but they stopped
+under the greening apple tree, and what they said was so
+interesting I waited longer than I should, because it's about the
+worst thing you can do to listen when older people don't know. 
+They were talking about me.
+
+"I can't account for her," said father.
+
+"I can!" said Dr. Fenner.  "She is the only child I ever have had
+in my practice who managed to reach earth as all children should.
+During the impressionable stage, no one expected her, so there
+was no time spent in worrying, fretting, and discontent.  I don't
+mean that these things were customary with Ruth.  No woman ever
+accepted motherhood in a more beautiful spirit; but if she would
+have protested at any time, it would have been then.  Instead,
+she lived happily, naturally, and enjoyed herself as she never
+had before.  She was in the fields, the woods, and the garden
+constantly, which accounts for this child's outdoor tendencies. 
+Then you must remember that both of you were at top notch
+intellectually, and physically, fully matured.  She had the
+benefit of ripened minds, and at a time when every faculty
+recently had been stirred by the excitement and suffering of the
+war.  Oh, you can account for her easily enough, but I don't know
+what on earth you are going to do with her.  You'll have to go
+careful, Paul.  I warn you she will not be like the others."
+
+"We realize that.  Mother says she doubts if she can ever teach
+her to sew and become a housewife."
+
+"She isn't cut out for a seamstress or a housewife, Paul.  Tell
+Ruth not to try to force those things on her.  Turn her loose out
+of doors; give her good books, and leave her alone.  You won't be
+disappointed in the woman who evolves."
+
+Right there I realized what I was doing, and I turned and ran for
+the pulpit with all my might.  I could always repeat things, but
+I couldn't see much sense to the first part of that; the last was
+as plain as the nose on your face.  Dr. Fenner said they mustn't
+force me to sew, and do housework; and mother didn't mind the
+Almighty any better than she did the doctor.  There was nothing
+in this world I disliked so much as being kept indoors, and made
+to hem cap and apron strings so particularly that I had to count
+the number of threads between every stitch, and in each stitch,
+so that I got all of them just exactly even.  I liked carpet rags
+a little better, because I didn't have to be so particular about
+stitches, and I always picked out all the bright, pretty colours.
+
+Mother said she could follow my work all over the floor by the
+bright spots.  Perhaps if I were not to be kept in the house I
+wouldn't have to sew any more.  That made me so happy I wondered
+if I couldn't stretch out my arms and wave them and fly.  I sat
+on the pulpit wishing I had feathers.  It made me pretty blue to
+have to stay on the ground all the time, when I wanted to be
+sailing up among the clouds with the turkey buzzards.  It called
+to my mind that place in McGuffey's Fifth where it says:
+
+            "Sweet bird, thy bower is ever green,
+             Thy sky is ever clear;
+             Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
+             No winter in thy year."
+
+
+Of course, I never heard a turkey buzzard sing.  Laddie said they
+couldn't; but that didn't prove it.  He said half the members of
+our church couldn't sing, but they DID; and when all of them were
+going at the tops of their voices, it was just grand.  So maybe
+the turkey buzzard could sing if it wanted to; seemed as if it
+should, if Isaac Thomas could; and anyway, it was the next verse
+I was thinking most about:
+
+            "Oh, could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
+             We'd make with joyful wing,
+             Our annual visit o'er the globe,
+             Companions of the spring."
+
+
+That was so exciting I thought I'd just try it, so I stood on the
+top rail, spread my arms, waved them, and started.  I was bumped
+in fifty places when I rolled into the cowslip bed at the foot of
+the steep hill, for stones stuck out all over the side of it, and
+I felt pretty mean as I climbed back to the pulpit.
+
+The only consolation I had was what Dr. Fenner had said.  That
+would be the greatest possible help in managing father or mother.
+
+I was undecided about whether I would go to school, or not.  Must
+be perfectly dreadful to dress like for church, and sit still in
+a stuffy little room, and do your "abs," and "bes," and "bis,"
+and "bos," all day long.  I could spell quite well without
+looking at a schoolhouse, and read too.  I was wondering if I
+ever would go at all, when I thought of something else.  Dr.
+Fenner had said to give me plenty of good books.  I was wild for
+some that were already promised me.  Well, what would they amount
+to if I couldn't understand them when I got them?  THAT seemed to
+make it sure I would be compelled to go to school until I learned
+enough to understand what the books contained about birds,
+flowers, and moths, anyway; and perhaps there would be some
+having Fairies in them.  Of course those would be interesting.
+
+I never hated doing anything so badly, in all my life, but I
+could see, with no one to tell me, that I had put it off as long
+as I dared.  I would just have to start school when Leon and May
+went in September.  Tilly Baher, who lived across the swamp near
+Sarah Hood, had gone two winters already, and she was only a year
+older, and not half my size.  I stood on the pulpit and looked a
+long time in every direction, into the sky the longest of all. 
+It was settled.  I must go; I might as well start and have it
+over.  I couldn't look anywhere, right there at home, and not see
+more things I didn't know about than I did.  When mother showed
+me in the city, I wouldn't be snapped up like hot cakes; I'd be a
+blockhead no one would have.  It made me so vexed to think I had
+to go, I set Hezekiah on my shoulder, took Bobby under my arm,
+and went to the house.  On the way, I made up my mind that I
+would ask again, very politely, to hold the little baby, and if
+the rest of them went and pigged it up straight along, I'd pinch
+it, if I got a chance.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The Last Day in Eden
+
+            "'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
+              And coming events cast their shadows before."
+
+Of course the baby was asleep and couldn't be touched; but there
+was some excitement, anyway.  Father had come from town with a
+letter from the new school teacher, that said she would expect
+him to meet her at the station next Saturday.  Mother thought she
+might as well get the room ready and let her stay at our house,
+because we were most convenient, and it would be the best place
+for her.  She said that every time, and the teacher always stayed
+with us.  Really it was because father and mother wanted the
+teacher where they could know as much as possible about what was
+going on.  Sally didn't like having her at all; she said with the
+wedding coming, the teacher would be a nuisance.  Shelley had
+finished our school, and the Groveville high school, and instead
+of attending college she was going to Chicago to study music. 
+She was so anxious over her dresses and getting started, she
+didn't seem to think much about what was going to happen to us at
+home; so she didn't care if Miss Amelia stayed at our house.  May
+said it would be best to have the teacher with us, because she
+could help us with our lessons at home, and we could get ahead of
+the others.  May already had decided that she would be at the
+head of her class when she finished school, and every time you
+wanted her and couldn't find her, if you would look across the
+foot of mother's bed, May would be there with a spelling book. 
+Once she had spelled down our school, when Laddie was not there.
+
+
+Father had met Peter Dover in town, and he had said that he was
+coming to see Sally, because he had something of especial
+importance to tell her.
+
+"Did he say what it was?" asked Sally.
+
+"Only what I have told you," replied father.
+
+Sally wanted to take the broom and sweep the parlour.
+
+"It's clean as a ribbon," said mother.
+
+"If you go in there, you'll wake the baby," said Lucy.
+
+"Will it kill it if I do?" asked Sally.
+
+"No, but it will make it cross as fire, so it will cry all the
+time Peter is here," said Lucy.
+
+"I'll be surprised if it doesn't scream every minute anyway,"
+said Sally.
+
+"I hope it will," said Lucy.  "That will make Peter think a while
+before he comes so often."
+
+That made Sally so angry she couldn't speak, so she went out and
+began killing chickens.  I helped her catch them.  They were so
+used to me they would come right to my feet when I shelled corn.
+
+"I'm going to kill three," said Sally.  "I'm going to be sure we
+have enough, but don't you tell until their heads are off."
+
+While she was working on them mother came out and asked how many
+she had, so Sally said three.  Mother counted us and said that
+wasn't enough; there would have to be four at least.
+
+After she was gone Sally looked at me and said:  "Well, for
+land's sake!"
+
+It was so funny she had to laugh, and by the time I caught the
+fourth one, and began helping pick them, she was over being
+provoked and we had lots of fun.
+
+The minute I saw Peter Dover he made me think of something.  I
+rode his horse to the barn with Leon leading it.  There we saw
+Laddie.
+
+"Guess what!" I cried.
+
+"Never could!" laughed Laddie, giving Peter Dover's horse a slap
+as it passed him on the way to a stall.
+
+"Four chickens, ham, biscuit, and cake!" I announced.
+
+"Is it a barbecue?" asked Laddie.
+
+"No, the extra one is for the baby," said Leon.  "Squally little
+runt, I call it."
+
+"It's a nice baby!" said Laddie.
+
+"What do you know about it?" demanded Leon.
+
+"Well, considering that I started with you, and have brought up
+two others since, I am schooled in all there is to know," said
+Laddie.
+
+"Guess what else!" I cried.
+
+"More?" said Laddie.  "Out with it!  Don't kill me with
+suspense."
+
+"Father is going to town Saturday to meet the new teacher and she
+will stay at our house as usual."
+
+Leon yelled and fell back in a manger, while Laddie held harness
+oil to his nose.
+
+"More!" cried Leon, grabbing the bottle.
+
+"Are you sure?" asked Laddie of me earnestly.
+
+"It's decided.  Mother said so," I told him.
+
+"Name of a black cat, why?" demanded Laddie.
+
+"Mother said we were most convenient for the teacher."
+
+"Aren't there enough of us?" asked Leon, straightening up
+sniffing harness oil as if his life depended on it.
+
+"Any unprejudiced person would probably say so to look in," said
+Laddie.
+
+"I'll bet she'll be sixty and a cat," said Leon.  "Won't I have
+fun with her?"
+
+"Maybe so, maybe not!" said Laddie.  "You can't always tell, for
+sure.  Remember your Alamo!  You were going to have fun with the
+teacher last year, but she had it with you."
+
+Leon threw the oil bottle at him.  Laddie caught it and set it on
+the shelf.
+
+"I don't understand," said Leon.
+
+"I do," said Laddie dryly.  "THIS is one reason."  He hit Peter
+Dover's horse another slap.
+
+"Maybe yes," said Leon.
+
+"Shelley to music school, two."
+
+"Yes," said Leon.  "Peter Dovers are the greatest expense, and
+Peter won't happen but once.  Shelley will have at least two
+years in school before it is her turn, and you come next,
+anyway."
+
+"Shut up!" cried Laddie.
+
+"Thanky!  Your orders shall be obeyed gladly."
+
+He laid down the pitchfork, went outside, closed the door, and
+latched it.  Laddie called to him, but he ran to the house.  When
+Laddie and I finished our work, and his, and wanted to go, we had
+to climb the stairs and leave through the front door on the
+embankment.
+
+"The monkey!" said Laddie, but he didn't get mad; he just
+laughed.
+
+The minute I stepped into the house and saw the parlour door
+closed, I thought of that "something" again.  I walked past it,
+but couldn't hear anything.  Of course mother wanted to know; and
+she would be very thankful to me if I could tell her.  I went out
+the front door, and thought deeply on the situation.  The windows
+were wide open, but I was far below them and I could only hear a
+sort of murmur.  Why can't people speak up loud and plain,
+anyway?  Of course they would sit on the big haircloth sofa. 
+Didn't Leon call it the "sparking bench"?  The hemlock tree would
+be best.  I climbed quieter than a cat, for they break bark and
+make an awful scratching with their claws sometimes; my bare feet
+were soundless.  Up and up I went, slowly, for it was dreadfully
+rough.  They were not on the sofa.  I could see plainly through
+the needles.  Then I saw the spruce would have been better, for
+they were standing in front of the parlour door and Peter had one
+hand on the knob.  His other arm was around my sister Sally. 
+Breathlessly I leaned as far as I could, and watched.
+
+"Father said he'd give me the money to buy a half interest, and
+furnish a house nicely, if you said `yes,' Sally," said Peter.
+
+Sally leaned back all pinksome and blushful, and while she
+laughed at him she
+
+            "Carelessly tossed off a curl
+             That played on her delicate brow."
+
+exactly like Mary Dow in McGuffey's Third.
+
+"Well, what did I SAY?" she asked.
+
+"Come to think of it, you didn't say anything."
+
+Sally's face was all afire with dancing lights, and she laughed
+the gayest little laugh.
+
+"Are you so very sure of that, Peter?" she said.
+
+"I'm not sure of anything," said Peter, "except that I am so
+happy I could fly."
+
+"Try it, fool!" I said to myself, deep in my throat.
+
+Sally laughed again, and Peter took his other hand from the door
+and put that arm around Sally too, and he drew her to him and
+kissed her, the longest, hardest kiss I ever saw.  I let go and
+rolled, tumbled, slid, and scratched down the hemlock tree,
+dropped from the last branch to the ground, and scampered around
+the house.  I reached the dining-room door when every one was
+gathering for supper.
+
+"Mother!" I cried.  "Mother!  Yes!  They're engaged!  He's
+kissing her, mother!  Yes, Lucy, they're engaged!"
+
+I rushed in to tell all of them what they would be glad to know,
+and if there didn't stand Peter and Sally!  How they ever got
+through that door, and across the sitting-room before me, I don't
+understand.  Sally made a dive at me, and I was so astonished I
+forgot to run, so she caught me.  She started for the wood house
+with me, and mother followed.  Sally turned at the door and she
+was the whitest of anything you ever saw.
+
+"This is my affair," she said.  "I'll attend to this young lady."
+
+"Very well," said mother, and as I live she turned and left me to
+my sad fate, as it says in a story book we have.  I wish when
+people are going to punish me, they'd take a switch and strike
+respectably, like mother does.  This thing of having some one get
+all over me, and not having an idea where I'm going to be hit, is
+the worst punishment that I ever had.  I'd been down the hill and
+up the hemlock that day, anyway.  I'd always been told Sally
+didn't want me.  She PROVED it right then.  Finally she quit,
+because she was too tired to strike again, so I crept among the
+shavings on the work bench and went to sleep.  I THOUGHT they
+would like to know, and that I was going to please them.
+
+Anyway, they found out, for by the time Sally got back Peter had
+told them about the store, and the furnished house, and asked
+father for Sally right before all of them, which father said was
+pretty brave; but Peter knew it was all right or he couldn't have
+come like he'd been doing.
+
+After that, you couldn't hear anything at our house but wedding. 
+Sally's share of linen and bedding was all finished long ago. 
+Father took her to Fort Wayne on the cars to buy her wedding,
+travelling, and working dresses, and her hat, cloak, and linen,
+like you have when you marry.
+
+It was strange that Sally didn't want mother to go, but she said
+the trip would tire her too much.  Mother said it was because
+Sally could coax more dresses from father.  Anyway, mother told
+him to set a limit and stick to it.  She said she knew he hadn't
+done it as she got the first glimpse of Sally's face when they
+came back, but the child looked so beautiful and happy she hadn't
+the heart to spoil her pleasure.
+
+The next day a sewing woman came; and all of them were shut up in
+the sitting-room, while the sewing machine just whizzed on the
+working dresses.  Sally said the wedding dress had to be made by
+hand.  She kept the room locked, and every new thing that they
+made was laid away on the bed in the parlour bedroom, and none of
+us had a peep until everything was finished.  It was awfully
+exciting, but I wouldn't pretend I cared, because I was huffy at
+her.  I told her I wouldn't kiss her goodbye, and I'd be GLAD
+when she was gone.
+
+Sally said the school-ma'am simply had to go to Winters', or some
+place else, but mother said possibly a stranger would have some
+ideas, and know some new styles, so Sally then thought maybe they
+had better try it a few days, and she could have her place and be
+company when she and Shelley left.  Shelley was rather silent and
+blue, and before long I found her crying, because mother had told
+her she couldn't start for Chicago until after the wedding, and
+that would make her miss six weeks at the start.
+
+Next day word was sent around that school was to begin the coming
+Monday; so Saturday afternoon the people who had children large
+enough to go sent the biggest of them to clean the schoolhouse. 
+May, Leon, and I went to do our share.  Just when there were
+about a bushel of nut shells, and withered apple cores, and inky
+paper on the floor, the blackboard half cleaned, and ashes
+trailed deep between the stove and the window Billy Wilson was
+throwing them from, some one shouted:  "There comes Mr. Stanton
+with Her."
+
+All of us dropped everything and ran to the south windows.  I
+tell you I was proud of our big white team as it came prancing
+down the hill, and the gleaming patent leather trimmings, and the
+brass side lamps shining in the sun.  Father sat very straight,
+driving rather fast, as if he would as lief get it over with, and
+instead of riding on the back seat, where mother always sat, the
+teacher was in front beside him, and she seemed to be talking
+constantly.  We looked at each other and groaned when father
+stopped at the hitching post and got out.  If we had tried to see
+what a dreadful muss we could make, things could have looked no
+worse.  I think father told her to wait in the carriage, but we
+heard her cry:  "Oh Mr. Stanton, let me see the dear children I'm
+to teach, and where I'm to work."
+
+Hopped is the word.  She hopped from the carriage and came
+hopping after father.  She was as tall as a clothes prop and
+scarcely as fat.  There were gray hairs coming on her temples. 
+Her face was sallow and wrinkled, and she had faded, pale-blue
+eyes.  Her dress was like my mother had worn several years
+before, in style, and of stiff gray stuff.  She made me feel that
+no one wanted her at home, and probably that was the reason she
+had come so far away.
+
+Every one stood dumb.  Mother always went to meet people and May
+was old enough to know it.  She went, but she looked exactly as
+she does when the wafer bursts and the quinine gets in her mouth,
+and she doesn't dare spit it out, because it costs five dollars a
+bottle, and it's going to do her good.  Father introduced May and
+some of the older children, and May helped him with the others,
+and then he told us to "dig in and work like troopers," and he
+would take Miss Pollard on home.
+
+"Oh do let me remain and help the dear children!" she cried.
+
+"We can finish!" we answered in full chorus.
+
+"How lovely of you!" she chirped.
+
+Chirp makes you think of a bird; and in speech and manner Miss
+Amelia Pollard was the most birdlike of any human being I ever
+have seen.  She hopped from the step to the walk, turned to us,
+her head on one side, playfulness in the air around her, and
+shook her finger at us.
+
+"Be extremely particular that you leave things immaculate at the
+consummation of your labour," she said.  "`Remember that
+cleanliness is next to Godliness!'"
+
+"Two terms of that!" gasped Leon, sinking on the stove hearth. 
+"Behold Job mourning as close the ashes as he can."
+
+Billy Wilson had the top lid off, so he reached down and got a
+big handful of ashes and sifted them over Leon.  But it's no fun
+to do anything like that to him; he only sank in a more dejected
+heap, and moaned:  "Send for Bildad and Zophar to comfort me, and
+more ashes, please."
+
+"Why does the little feathered dear touch earth at all?  Why
+doesn't she fly?" demanded Silas Shaw.
+
+"I'm going to get a hundred wads ready for Monday," said Jimmy
+Hood.  "We can shoot them when we please."
+
+"Bet ten cents you can't hit her," said Billy Wilson.  "There
+ain't enough of her for a decent mark."
+
+"Let's quit and go home," proposed Leon.  "This will look worse
+than it does now by Monday night."
+
+Then every one began talking at once.  Suddenly May seized the
+poker and began pounding on the top of the stove for order.
+
+"We must clean this up," she said.  "We might as well finish. 
+Maybe you'll shoot wads and do what you please, and maybe you
+won't.  Her eyes went around like a cat that smells mice.  If she
+can spell the language she uses, she is the best we've ever had."
+
+That made us blink, and I never forgot it.  Many times afterward
+while listening to people talk, I wondered if they could spell
+the words they used.
+
+"Well, come on, then!" said Leon.  He seized the broom and handed
+it to Billy Wilson, quoting as he did so, "Work, work, my boy, be
+not afraid"; and he told Silas Shaw as he gave him the mop, to
+"Look labour boldly in the face!" but he never did a thing
+himself, except to keep every one laughing.
+
+So we cleaned up as well as we could, and Leon strutted like
+Bobby, because he locked the door and carried the key.  When we
+reached home I was sorry I hadn't gone with father, so I could
+have seen mother, Sally, Candace, and Laddie when first they met
+the new teacher.  The shock showed yet!  Miss Amelia had taken
+off her smothery woollen dress and put on a black calico, but it
+wasn't any more cheerful.  She didn't know what to do, and you
+could see plainly that no one knew what to do with her, so they
+united in sending me to show her the place.  I asked her what she
+would like most to see, and she said everything was so charming
+she couldn't decide.  I thought if she had no more choice than
+that, one place would do as well as another, so I started for the
+orchard.  Quick as we got there, I knew what to do.  I led her
+straight to our best cling peach tree, told her to climb on the
+fence so she could reach easily, and eat all she chose.  We
+didn't dare shake the tree, because the pigs ran on the other
+side of the fence, and they chanked up every peach that fell
+there.  Those peaches were too good to feed even father's finest
+Berkshires.
+
+By the time Miss Amelia had eaten nine or ten, she was so happy
+to think she was there, she quit tilting her head and using big
+words.  Of course she couldn't know how I loved to hear them, and
+maybe she thought I wouldn't know what they meant, and that they
+would be wasted on me.  If she had understood how much spelling
+and defining I'd heard in my life, I guess she might have talked
+up as big as she could, and still I'd have got most of it.  When
+she reached the place where she ate more slowly, she began to
+talk.  She must have asked me most a hundred questions.  What all
+our names were, how old we were, if our girls had lots of beaus,
+and if there were many men in the neighbourhood, and dozens of
+things my mother never asked any one.  She always inquired if
+people were well, if their crops were growing, how much fruit
+they had, and how near their quilts were finished.
+
+I told her all about Sally and the wedding, because no one cared
+who knew it, after I had been pounded to mince-meat for telling. 
+She asked if Shelley had any beaus, and I said there wasn't any
+one who came like Peter, but every man in the neighbourhood
+wanted to be her beau.  Then she asked about Laddie, and I was
+taking no risks, so I said:  "I only see him at home.  I don't
+know where he goes when he's away.  You'll have to ask him."
+
+"Oh, I never would dare," she said.  "But he must.  He is so
+handsome!  The girls would just compel him to go to see them."
+
+"Not if he didn't want to go," I said.
+
+"You must never, never tell him I said so, but I do think he is
+the handsomest man I ever saw."
+
+"So do I," I said, "and it wouldn't make any difference if I told
+him."
+
+"Then do you mean you're going to tell him my foolish remark?"
+she giggled.
+
+"No use," I said.  "He knows it now.  Every time he parts his
+hair he sees how good looking he is.  He doesn't care.  He says
+the only thing that counts with a man is to be big, strong,
+manly, and well educated."
+
+"Is he well educated?"
+
+"Yes, I think so, as far as he's gone," I answered.  "Of course
+he will go on being educated every day of his life, same as
+father.  He says it is all rot about `finishing' your education. 
+You never do.  You learn more important things each day, and by
+the time you are old enough to die, you have almost enough sense
+to know how to live comfortably.  Pity, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said Miss Amelia, "it's an awful pity, but it's the truth.
+
+Is your mother being educated too?"
+
+"Whole family," I said.  "We learn all the time, mother most of
+any, because father always looks out for her.  You see, it takes
+so much of her time to manage the house, and sew, and knit, and
+darn, that she can't study so much as the others; so father reads
+all the books to her, and tells her about everything he finds
+out, and so do all of us.  Just ask her if you think she doesn't
+know things."
+
+"I wouldn't know what to ask," said Miss Amelia.
+
+"Ask how long it took to make this world, who invented printing,
+where English was first spoken, why Greeley changed his politics,
+how to make bluebell perfumery, cut out a dress, or cure a baby
+of worms.  Just ask her!"
+
+Miss Amelia threw a peach stone through a fence crack and hit a
+pig.  It was a pretty neat shot.
+
+"I don't need ask any of that," she said scornfully.  "I know all
+of it now."
+
+"All right!  What is best for worms?" I asked.
+
+"Jayne's vermifuge," said Miss Amelia.
+
+"Wrong!" I cried.  "That's a patent medicine.  Tea made from male
+fern root is best, because there's no morphine in it!"
+
+The supper bell rang and I was glad of it.  Peaches are not very
+filling after all, for I couldn't see but that Miss Amelia ate as
+much as any of us.  For a few minutes every one was slow in
+speaking, then mother asked about cleaning the schoolhouse,
+Laddie had something to explain to father about corn mould, Sally
+and the dressmaker talked about pipings--not a bird--a new way to
+fold goods to make trimmings, and soon everything was going on
+the same as if the new teacher were not there.  I noticed that
+she kept her head straight, and was not nearly so glib-tongued
+and birdlike before mother and Sally as she had been at the
+schoolhouse.  Maybe that was why father told mother that night
+that the new teacher would bear acquaintance.
+
+Sunday was like every other Sabbath, except that I felt so sad
+all day I could have cried, but I was not going to do it.  Seemed
+as if I never could put on shoes, and so many clothes Monday
+morning, quite like church, and be shut in a room for hours, to
+try to learn what was in books, when the world was running over
+with things to find out where you could have your feet in water,
+leaves in your hair, and little living creatures in your hands. 
+In the afternoon Miss Amelia asked Laddie to take her for a walk
+to see the creek, and the barn, and he couldn't escape.
+
+I suppose our barn was exactly like hundreds of others.  It was
+built against an embankment so that on one side you could drive
+right on the threshing floor with big loads of grain.  On the
+sunny side in the lower part were the sheep pens, cattle stalls,
+and horse mangers.  It was always half bursting with overflowing
+grain bins and haylofts in the fall; the swallows twittered under
+the roof until time to go south for winter, as they sailed from
+the ventilators to their nests plastered against the rafters or
+eaves.  The big swinging doors front and back could be opened to
+let the wind blow through in a strong draft.  From the east doors
+you could see for miles across the country.
+
+I said our barn was like others, but it was not.  There was not
+another like it in the whole world.  Father, the boys, and the
+hired men always kept it cleaned and in proper shape every day. 
+The upper floor was as neat as some women's houses.  It was
+swept, the sun shone in, the winds drifted through, the odours of
+drying hay and grain were heavy, and from the top of the natural
+little hill against which it stood you could see for miles in all
+directions.
+
+The barn was our great playhouse on Sundays.  It was clean there,
+we were where we could be called when wanted, and we liked to
+climb the ladders to the top of the haymows, walk the beams to
+the granaries, and jump to the hay.  One day May came down on a
+snake that had been brought in with a load.  I can hear her yell
+now, and it made her so frantic she's been killing them ever
+since.  It was only a harmless little garter snake, but she was
+so surprised.
+
+Miss Amelia held her head very much on one side all the time she
+walked with Laddie, and she was so birdlike Leon slipped him a
+brick and told him to have her hold it to keep her down.  Seemed
+as if she might fly any minute.  She thought our barn was the
+nicest she ever had seen and the cleanest.  When Laddie opened
+the doors on the east side, and she could see the big, red,
+yellow, and green apples thick as leaves on the trees in the
+orchard, the lane, the woods pasture, and the meadow with
+scattering trees, two running springs, and the meeting of the
+creeks, she said it was the loveliest sight she ever saw--I mean
+beheld.  Laddie liked that, so he told her about the beautiful
+town, and the lake, and the Wabash River, that our creek emptied
+into, and how people came from other states and big cities and
+stayed all summer to fish, row, swim, and have good times.
+
+She asked him to take her to the meadow, but he excused himself,
+because he had an engagement.  So she stood in the door, and
+watched him saddle Flos and start to the house to dress in his
+riding clothes.  After that she didn't care a thing about the
+meadow, so we went back.
+
+Our house looked as if we had a party. We were all dressed in our
+best, and every one was out in the yard, garden, or orchard. 
+Peter and Sally were under the big pearmain apple tree at the
+foot of the orchard, Shelley and a half dozen beaus were
+everywhere.  May had her spelling book in one hand and was in my
+big catalpa talking to Billy Stevens, who was going to be her
+beau as soon as mother said she was old enough.  Father was
+reading a wonderful new book to mother and some of the
+neighbours.  Leon was perfectly happy because no one wanted him,
+so he could tease all of them by saying things they didn't like
+to hear.  When Laddie came out and mounted, Leon asked him where
+he was going, and Laddie said he hadn't fully decided: he might
+ride to Elizabeth's, and not come back until Monday morning.
+
+"You think you're pretty slick," said Leon.  "But if we could see
+north to the cross road we could watch you turn west, and go past
+Pryors to show yourself off, or try to find the Princess on the
+road walking or riding.  I know something I'm saving to tell next
+time you get smart, Mr. Laddie."
+
+Laddie seemed annoyed and no one was quicker to see it than Leon.
+
+Instantly he jumped on the horse block, pulled down his face long
+as he could, stretched his hands toward Laddie, and making his
+voice all wavery and tremulous, he began reciting from "Lochiel's
+Warning," in tones of agonizing pleading:
+
+            "Laddie, Laddie, beware of the day!
+             For, dark and despairing, my sight, I may seal,
+             But man cannot cover what God would reveal;
+             'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
+             And coming events cast their shadows before."
+
+
+That scared me.  I begged Leon to tell, but he wouldn't say a
+word more.  He went and talked to Miss Amelia as friendly as you
+please, and asked her to take a walk in the orchard and get some
+peaches, and she went flying.  He got her all she could carry and
+guided her to Peter and Sally, introduced her to Peter, and then
+slipped away and left her.  Then he and Sally couldn't talk about
+their wedding, and Peter couldn't squeeze her hand, and she 
+couldn't fix his tie, and it was awful.  Shelley and her boys
+almost laughed themselves sick over it, and then she cried, "To
+the rescue!" and started, so they followed.  They captured Miss
+Amelia and brought her back, and left her with father and the
+wonderful book, but I'm sure she liked the orchard better.
+
+I took Grace Greenwood under my arm, Hezekiah on my shoulder, and
+with Bobby at my heels went away.  I didn't want my hair pulled,
+or to be teased that day.  There was such a hardness around my
+heart, and such a lump in my throat, that I didn't care what
+happened to me one minute, and the next I knew I'd slap any one
+who teased me, if I were sent to bed for it.  As I went down the
+lane Peter called to me to come and see him, but I knew exactly
+how he looked, and didn't propose to make up.  There was not any
+sense in Sally clawing me all over, when I only tried to help
+mother and Lucy find out what they wanted to know so badly.  I
+went down the hill, crossed the creek on the stepping-stones, and
+followed the cowpath into the woods pasture.  It ran beside the
+creek bank through the spice thicket and blackberry patches,
+under pawpaw groves, and beneath giant oaks and elms.  Just where
+the creek turned at the open pasture, below the church and
+cemetery, right at the deep bend, stood the biggest white oak
+father owned.  It was about a tree exactly like this that an
+Englishman wrote a beautiful poem in McGuffey's Sixth, that
+begins:
+
+            "A song to the oak, the brave old oak,
+             Who hath ruled in the greenwood long;
+             Here's health and renown to his broad green crown,
+             And his fifty arms so strong."
+
+
+I knew it was the same, because I counted the arms time and
+again, and there were exactly fifty.  There was a pawpaw and
+spice hedge around three sides of this one, and water on the
+other.  Wild grapes climbed from the bushes to the lower branches
+and trailed back to earth again.  Here, I had two secrets I
+didn't propose to tell.  One was that in the crotch of some
+tiptop branches the biggest chicken hawks you ever saw had their
+nest, and if they took too many chickens father said they'd have
+to be frightened a little with a gun.  I can't begin to tell how
+I loved those hawks.  They did the one thing I wanted to most,
+and never could.  When I saw them serenely soar above the lowest
+of the soft fleecy September clouds, I was wild with envy.  I
+would have gone without chicken myself rather than have seen one
+of those splendid big brown birds dropped from the skies.  I was
+so careful to shield them, that I selected this for my especial
+retreat when I wanted most to be alone, and I carefully gathered
+up any offal from the nest that might point out their location,
+and threw it into the water where it ran the swiftest.
+
+I parted the vines and crept where the roots of the big oak
+stretched like bony fingers over the water, that was slowly
+eating under it and baring its roots.  I sat on them above the
+water and thought.  I had decided the day before about my going
+to school, and the day before that, and many, many times before
+that, and here I was having to settle it all over again.  Doubled
+on the sak roots, a troubled little soul, I settled it once more.
+
+No books or teachers were needed to tell me about flowing water
+and fish, how hawks raised their broods and kept house, about the
+softly cooing doves of the spice thickets, the cuckoos slipping
+snakelike in and out of the wild crab-apple bushes, or the brown
+thrush's weird call from the thorn bush.  I knew what they said
+and did, but their names, where they came from, where they went
+when the wind blew and the snow fell--how was I going to find out
+that?  Worse yet were the flowers, butterflies, and moths; they
+were mysteries past learning alone, and while the names I made up
+for them were pretty and suitable, I knew in all reason they
+wouldn't be the same in the books.  I had to go, but no one will
+ever know what it cost.  When the supper bell rang, I sat still. 
+I'd have to wait until at least two tables had been served,
+anyway, so I sat there and nursed my misery, looked and listened,
+and by and by I felt better.  I couldn't see or hear a thing that
+was standing still.  Father said even the rocks grew larger year
+by year.  The trees were getting bigger, the birds were busy, and
+the creek was in a dreadful hurry to reach the river.  It was
+like that poetry piece that says:
+
+            "When a playful brook, you gambolled,"
+
+(Mostly that gambolled word is said about lambs)
+
+                "And the sunshine o'er you smiled,
+            On your banks did children loiter,
+                 Looking for the spring flowers wild?"
+
+
+The creek was more in earnest and working harder at pushing
+steadily ahead without ever stopping than anything else; and like
+the poetry piece again, it really did "seem to smile upon us as
+it quickly passed us by."  I had to quit playing, and go to work
+some time; it made me sorry to think how behind I was, because I
+had not started two years before, when I should.  But that
+couldn't be helped now.  All there was left was to go this time,
+for sure.  I got up heavily and slowly as an old person, and then
+slipped out and ran down the path to the meadow, because I could
+hear Leon whistle as he came to bring the cows.
+
+By fast running I could start them home for him:  Rose, Brindle,
+Bess, and Pidy, Sukey and Muley; they had eaten all day, but they
+still snatched bites as they went toward the gate.  I wanted to
+surprise Leon and I did.
+
+"Getting good, ain't you?" he asked.  "What do you want?"
+
+"Nothing!" I said.  "I just heard you coming and I thought I'd
+help you."
+
+"Where were you?"
+
+"Playing."
+
+"You don't look as if you'd been having much fun."
+
+"I don't expect ever to have any, after I begin school."
+
+"Oh!" said Leon.  "It is kind of tough the first day or two, but
+you'll soon get over it.  You should have behaved yourself, and
+gone when they started you two years ago."
+
+"Think I don't know it?"
+
+Leon stopped and looked at me sharply.
+
+"I'll help you nights, if you want me to," he offered.
+
+"Can I ever learn?" I asked, almost ready to cry.
+
+"Of course you can," said Leon.  "You're smart as the others, I
+suppose.  The sevens and nines of the multiplication table are
+the stickers, but you ought to do them if other girls can.  You
+needn't feel bad because you are behind a little to start on; you
+are just that much better prepared to work, and you can soon
+overtake them.  You know a lot none of the rest of us do, and
+some day it will come your turn to show off.  Cheer up, you'll be
+all right."
+
+Men are such a comfort.  I pressed closer for more.
+
+"Do you suppose I will?" I asked.
+
+"Of course," said Leon.  "Any minute the woods, or birds, or
+flowers are mentioned your time will come; and all of us will
+hear you read and help nights.  I'd just as soon as not."
+
+That was the most surprising thing.  He never offered to help me
+before.  He never acted as if he cared what became of me.  Maybe
+it was because Laddie always had taken such good care of me, Leon
+had no chance.  He seemed willing enough now.  I looked at him
+closely.
+
+"You'll find out I'll learn things if I try," I boasted.  "And
+you will find out I don't tell secrets either."
+
+"I've been waiting for you to pipe up about----"
+
+"Well, I haven't piped, have I?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"I am not going to either."
+
+"I almost believe you.  A girl you could trust would be a funny
+thing to see."
+
+"Tell me what you know about Laddie, and see if I'm funny."
+
+"You'd telltale sure as life!"
+
+"Well, if you know it, he knows it anyway."
+
+"He doesn't know WHAT I know."
+
+"Well, be careful and don't worry mother.  You know how she is
+since the fever, and father says all of us must think of her.  If
+it's anything that would bother her, don't tell before her."
+
+"Say, looky here," said Leon, turning on me sharply, "is all this
+sudden consideration for mother or are you legging for Laddie?"
+
+"For both," I answered stoutly.
+
+"Mostly for Laddie, just the same.  You can't fool me, missy.  I
+won't tell you one word."
+
+"You needn't!" I answered, "I don't care!"
+
+"Yes you do," he said.  "You'd give anything to find out what I
+know, and then run to Laddie with it, but you can't fool me.  I'm
+too smart for you."
+
+"All right," I said.  "You go and tell anything on Laddie, and
+I'll watch you, and first trick I catch you at, I'll do some
+telling myself, Smarty."
+
+"That's a game more than one can play at," said Leon.  "Go
+ahead!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The First Day of School
+
+                "Birds in their little nests agree.
+                 And why can't we?"
+
+B-i-r-d-s, birds, i-n, in, t-h-e-i-r, their, l-i-t-t-l-e, little,
+n-e-s-t-s, nests, a-g-r-e-e, agree."
+
+My feet burned in my new shoes, but most of my body was chilling
+as I stood beside Miss Amelia on the platform, before the whole
+school, and followed the point of her pencil, while, a letter at
+a time, I spelled aloud my first sentence.  Nothing ever had
+happened to me as bad as that.  I was not used to so much
+clothing.  It was like taking a colt from the woods pasture and
+putting it into harness for the first time.  That lovely
+September morning I followed Leon and May down the dusty road, my
+heart sick with dread.
+
+May was so much smaller that I could have picked her up and
+carried her.  She was a gentle, loving little thing, until some
+one went too far, and then they got what they deserved, all at
+once and right away.
+
+Many of the pupils were waiting before the church.  Leon climbed
+the steps, made a deep bow, waved toward the school building
+across the way, and what he intended to say was, "Still sits the
+schoolhouse by the road," but he was a little excited and the s's
+doubled his tongue, so that we heard:  "Shill stits the
+schoolhouse by the road."  We just yelled and I forgot a little
+about myself.
+
+When Miss Amelia came to the door and rang the bell, May must
+have remembered something of how her first day felt, for as we
+reached the steps she waited for me, took me in with her, and
+found me a seat.  If she had not, I'm quite sure I'd have run
+away and fought until they left me in freedom, as I had two years
+before.  All forenoon I had shivered in my seat, while classes
+were arranged, and the elder pupils were started on their work;
+then Miss Amelia called me to her on the platform and tried to
+find out how much schooling I had.  I was ashamed that I knew so
+little, but there was no sense in her making me spell after a
+pencil, like a baby.  I'd never seen the book she picked up.  I
+could read the line she pointed to, and I told her so, but she
+said to spell the words; so I thought she had to be obeyed, for
+one poetry piece I know says:
+
+            "Quickly speed your steps to school
+             And there mind your teacher's rule."
+
+
+I can see Miss Amelia to-day.  Her pale face was lined deeper
+than ever, her drab hair was dragged back tighter.  She wore a
+black calico dress with white huckleberries, and a white calico
+apron figured in large black apples, each having a stem and two
+leaves.  In dress she was a fruitful person.  She had been a
+surprise to all of us.  Chipper as a sparrow, she had hopped, and
+chattered, and darted here and there, until the hour of opening. 
+Then in the stress of arranging classes and getting started, all
+her birdlike ways slipped from her.  Stern and bony she stood
+before us, and with a cold light in her pale eyes, she began
+business in a manner that made Johnny Hood forget all about his
+paper wads, and Leon commenced studying like a good boy, and
+never even tried to have fun with her.  Every one was so
+surprised you could notice it, except May, and she looked, "I
+told you so!" even in the back.  She had a way of doing that very
+thing as I never saw any one else.  From the set of her head, how
+she carried her shoulders, the stiffness of her spine, and her
+manner of walking, if you knew her well, you could tell what she
+thought, the same as if you saw her face.
+
+I followed that pencil point and in a husky voice repeated the
+letters.  I could see Tillie Baher laughing at me from behind her
+geography, and every one else had stopped what they were doing to
+watch and listen, so I forgot to be thankful that I even knew my
+a b c's.  I spelled through the sentence, pronounced the words
+and repeated them without much thought as to the meaning; at that
+moment it didn't occur to me that she had chosen the lesson
+because father had told her how I made friends with the birds. 
+The night before he had been putting me through memory tests, and
+I had recited poem after poem, even long ones in the Sixth
+Reader, and never made one mistake when the piece was about
+birds.  At our house, we heard next day's lessons for all ages
+gone over every night so often, that we couldn't help knowing
+them by heart, if we had any brains at all, and I just loved to
+get the big folk's readers and learn the bird pieces.  Father had
+been telling her about it, so for that reason she thought she
+would start me on the birds, but I'm sure she made me spell after
+a pencil point, like a baby, on purpose to shame me, because I
+was two years behind the others who were near my age.  As I
+repeated the line Miss Amelia thought she saw her chance.  She
+sprang to her feet, tripped a few steps toward the centre of the
+platform, and cried:  "Classes, attention!  Our Youngest Pupil
+has just completed her first sentence.  This sentence contains a
+Thought.  It is a wonderfully beautiful Thought.  A Thought that
+suggests a great moral lesson for each of us.  `Birrrds--in their
+little nests--agreeee.'"
+
+Never have I heard cooing sweetness to equal the melting tones in
+which Miss Amelia drawled those words.  Then she continued, after
+a good long pause in order to give us time to allow the "Thought"
+to sink in:  "There is a lesson in this for all of us.  We are
+here in our schoolroom, like little birds in their nest.  Now how
+charming it would be if all of us would follow the example of the
+birds, and at our work, and in our play, agreeee--be kind,
+loving, and considerate of each other.  Let us all remember
+always this wonderful truth:  `Birrrrds--in their little nests--
+agreeeee!'"
+
+In three steps I laid hold of her apron.  Only last night Leon
+had said it would come, yet whoever would have thought that I'd
+get a chance like this, so soon.
+
+"Ho but they don't!" I cried.  "They fight like anything!  Every
+day they make the feathers fly!"
+
+In a backward stroke Miss Amelia's fingers, big and bony, struck
+my cheek a blow that nearly upset me.  A red wave crossed her
+face, and her eyes snapped.  I never had been so surprised in all
+my life.  I was only going to tell her the truth.  What she had
+said was altogether false.  Ever since I could remember I had
+watched courting male birds fight all over the farm.  After a
+couple had paired, and were nest building, the father always
+drove every other bird from his location.  In building I had seen
+him pecked for trying to place a twig.  I had seen that happen
+again for merely offering food to the mother, if she didn't
+happen to be hungry, or for trying to make love to her when she
+was brooding.  If a young bird failed to get the bite it wanted,
+it sometimes grabbed one of its nestmates by the bill, or the eye
+even, and tried to swallow it whole.  Always the oldest and
+strongest climbed on top of the youngest and fooled his mammy
+into feeding him most by having his head highest, his mouth
+widest, and begging loudest.  There could be no mistake.  I was
+so amazed I forgot the blow, as I stared at the fool woman.
+
+"I don't see why you slap me!" I cried.  "It's the truth!  Lots
+of times old birds pull out bunches of feathers fighting, and
+young ones in the nests bite each other until they squeal."
+
+Miss Amelia caught my shoulders and shook me as hard as she
+could; and she proved to be stronger than you ever would have
+thought to look at her.
+
+"Take your seat!" she cried.  "You are a rude, untrained child!"
+
+"They do fight!" I insisted, as I held my head high and walked to
+my desk.
+
+Leon laughed out loud, and that made everyone else.  Miss Amelia
+had so much to do for a few minutes that she forgot me, and I
+know now why Leon started it, at least partly.  He said afterward
+it was the funniest sight he ever saw.  My cheek smarted and
+burned.  I could scarcely keep from feeling to learn whether it
+were swelling, but I wouldn't have shed a tear or raised my hand
+for anything you could offer.
+
+Recess was coming and I didn't know what to do.  If I went to the
+playground, all of them would tease me; and if I sat at my desk
+Miss Amelia would have another chance at me.  That was too much
+to risk, so I followed the others outdoors, and oh joy! there
+came Laddie down the road.  He set me on one of the posts of the
+hitching rack before the church, and with my arms around his
+neck, I sobbed out the whole story.
+
+"She didn't understand," said Laddie quietly.  "You stay here
+until I come back.  I'll go explain to her about the birds. 
+Perhaps she hasn't watched them as closely as you have."
+
+Recess was over before he returned.  He had wet his handkerchief
+at the water bucket, and now he bathed my face and eyes,
+straightened my hair with his pocket comb, and began unlacing my
+shoes.
+
+"What are you going to do?" I asked.  "I must wear them.  All the
+girls do.  Only the boys are barefoot."
+
+"You are excused," answered Laddie.  "Three-fourths of the day is
+enough to begin on.  Miss Amelia says you may come with me."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+Laddie was stripping off my stockings as he looked into my eyes,
+and smiled a peculiar little smile.
+
+"Oh Laddie!" I cried.  "Will you take me?  Honest!"
+
+He laughed again and then he rubbed my feet.
+
+"Poor abused feet," he said.  "Sometimes I wish shoes had never
+been invented."
+
+"They feel pretty good when there's ice."
+
+"So they do!" said Laddie.
+
+He swung me to the ground, and we crossed the road, climbed the
+fence, and in a minute our redbird swamp shut the schoolhouse and
+cross old Miss Amelia from sight.  Then we turned and started
+straight toward our Big Woods.  I could scarcely keep on the
+ground.
+
+"How are the others getting along?" asked Laddie.
+
+"She's cross as two sticks," I told him.  "Johnny Hood hasn't
+shot one paper wad, and Leon hadn't done a thing until he laughed
+about the birds, and I guess he did that to make her forget me."
+
+"Good!" cried Laddie.  "I didn't suppose the boy thought that
+far."
+
+"Oh, you never can tell by looking at him, how far Leon is
+thinking," I said.
+
+"That's so, too," said Laddie.  "Are your feet comfortable now?"
+
+"Yes, but Laddie, isn't my face marked?"
+
+"I'm afraid it is a little," said Laddie.  "We'll bathe it again
+at the creek.  We must get it fixed so mother won't notice."
+
+"What will the Princess think?"
+
+"That you fell, perhaps," said Laddie.
+
+"Do the tears show?"
+
+"Not at all.  We washed them all away."
+
+"Did I do wrong, Laddie?"
+
+"Yes, I think you did."
+
+"But it wasn't true, what she said."
+
+"That's not the point."
+
+We had reached the fence of the Big Woods.  He lifted me to the
+top rail and explained, while I combed his waving hair with my
+fingers.
+
+"She didn't strike you because what you said was not so, for it
+was.  She knew instantly you were right, if she knows anything at
+all about outdoors.  This is what made her angry: it is her first
+day.  She wanted to make a good impression on her pupils, to
+arouse their interest, and awaken their respect.  When you spoke,
+all of them knew you were right, and she was wrong; that made her
+ridiculous.  Can't you see how it made her look and feel?"
+
+"I didn't notice how she looked, but from the way she hit me, you
+could tell she felt bad enough."
+
+"She surely did," said Laddie, kissing my cheek softly.  "Poor
+little woman!  What a world of things you have to learn!"
+
+"Shouldn't I have told her how mistaken she was?"
+
+"If you had gone to her alone, at recess or noon, or to-night,
+probably she would have thanked you.  Then she could have
+corrected herself at some convenient time and kept her dignity."
+
+"Must I ask her pardon?"
+
+"What you should do, is to put yourself in Miss Amelia's place
+and try to understand how she felt.  Then if you think you
+wouldn't have liked any one to do to you what you did to her,
+you'll know."
+
+I hugged Laddie tight and thought fast--there was no need to
+think long to see how it was.
+
+"I got to tell her I was wrong," I said.  "Now let's go to the
+Enchanted Wood and see if we can find the Queen's daughter."
+
+"All right!" said Laddie.
+
+He leaped the fence, swung me over, and started toward the pawpaw
+thicket.  He didn't do much going around.  He crashed through and
+over; and soon he began whistling the loveliest little dancy
+tune.  It made your head whirl, and your toes tingle, and you
+knew it was singing that way in his heart, and he was just
+letting out the music.  That was why it made you want to dance
+and whirl; it was so alive.  But that wasn't the way in an
+Enchanted Wood.  I pulled his hand.
+
+"Laddie!" I cautioned, "keep in the path!  You'll step on the
+Fairies and crush a whole band with one foot.  No wonder the
+Queen makes her daughter grow big when she sends her to you.  If
+you make so much noise, some one will hear you, then this won't
+be a secret any more."
+
+Laddie laughed, but he stepped carefully in the path after that,
+and he said:  "There are times, Little Sister, when I don't care
+whether this secret is secret another minute or not.  Secrets
+don't agree with me.  I'm too big, and broad, and too much of a
+man, to go creeping through the woods with a secret.  I prefer to
+print it on a banner and ride up the road waving it."
+
+"Like,--`A youth who bore mid snow and ice, A banner with a
+strange device,'" I said.
+
+"That would be `a banner with a strange device,'" laughest
+Laddie.  "But, yes--something like!"
+
+"Have you told the Princess?"
+
+"I have!" Laddie fairly shouted it.
+
+"Docs SHE like secrets?"
+
+"No more than I do!"
+
+"Then why----?"
+
+"There you go!" said Laddie.  "Zeus, but the woman is beginning
+to measle out all over you!  You know as well as any one that
+there's something wrong at her house.  I don't know what it is; I
+can't even make a sensible guess as yet, but it's worse than the
+neighbours think.  It's a thing that has driven a family from
+their home country, under a name that I have doubts about being
+theirs, and sent them across an ocean, `strangers in a strange
+land,' as it says in the Bible.  It's something that keeps a
+cultured gentleman and scholar raging up and down the roads and
+over the country like a madman.  It shuts a white-faced, lovely,
+little woman from her neighbours, but I have passed her walking
+the road at night with both hands pressed against her heart. 
+Sometimes it tries the Princess past endurance and control; and
+it has her so worn and tired struggling with it that she is
+willing to carry another secret, rather than try to find strength
+to do anything that would make more trouble for her father and
+mother."
+
+"Would it trouble them for her to know you, Laddie?"
+
+"So long as they don't and won't become acquainted with me, or
+any one, of course it would."
+
+"Can't you force them to know you?"
+
+"That I can!" said Laddie.  "But you see, I only met the Princess
+a short time ago, and there would be no use in raising trouble,
+unless she will make me her Knight!"
+
+"But hasn't she, Laddie?"
+
+"Not in the very littlest least," said Laddie.  "For all I know,
+she is merely using me to help pass a lonely hour.  You see,
+people reared in England have ideas of class, that two or three
+generations spent here wash out.  The Princess and her family are
+of the unwashed British.  Father's people have been here long
+enough to judge a man on his own merits."
+
+"You mean the Princess' family would think you're not good enough
+to be her Knight?"
+
+"Exactly!"
+
+"And we know that our family thinks they are infidels, and wicked
+people; and that if she would have you, mother would be sick in
+bed over it.  Oh Laddie!"
+
+"Precisely!"
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"That I must find out."
+
+"When it will make so much trouble, why not forget her, and go on
+like you did before she came?  Then, all of us were happy.  Now,
+it makes me shiver to think what will happen."
+
+"Me too," said Laddie.  "But look here, Little Sister, right in
+my face.  Will you ever forget the Princess?"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"Then how can you ask me to?"
+
+"I didn't mean forget her, exactly.  I meant not come here and do
+things that will make every one unhappy."
+
+"One minute, Chick-a-Biddy," said Laddie.  Sometimes he called me
+that, when he loved me the very most of all.  I don't believe any
+one except me ever heard him do it.  "Let me ask you this: does
+our father love our mother?"
+
+"Love her?" I cried.  "Why he just loves her to death!  He turns
+so white, and he suffers so, when her pain is the worst.  Love
+her?  And she him?  Why, don't you remember the other day when he
+tipped her head against him and kissed her throat as he left the
+table; that he asked her if she `loved him yet,' and she said
+right before all of us, `Why Paul, I love you, until I scarcely
+can keep my fingers off you!'  Laddie, is it like that with you
+and the Princess?"
+
+"It is with me," said Laddie.  "Not with the Princess!  Now, can
+I forget her?  Can I keep away from even the chance to pass her
+on the road?"
+
+"No," I said.  "No, you can't, Laddie.  But can you ever make her
+love you?"
+
+"It takes time to find that out," said Laddie.  "I have got to
+try; so you be a woman and keep my secret a little while longer,
+until I find a way out, but don't bother your head about it!"
+
+"I can't help bothering my head, Laddie.  Can't you make her
+understand that God is not a myth?"
+
+"I'm none too sure what I believe myself," said Laddie.  "Not
+that there is no God--I don't mean that--but I surely don't
+believe all father's teachings."
+
+"If you believe God, do other little things matter, Laddie?"
+
+"I think not," said Laddie, "else Heaven would be all Methodists.
+
+As for the Princess, all she has heard in her life has been
+against there being a God.  Now, she is learning something on the
+other side.  After a while she can judge for herself.  It is for
+us, who profess to be a Christian family, to prove to her why we
+believe in God, and what He does for us."
+
+"Well, she would think He could do a good deal, if she knew how
+mother hated asking her to come to our house; and yet she did it,
+beautifully too, just to give her a chance to see that very
+thing.  But I almost made her do it.  I don't believe she ever
+would alone, Laddie, or at least not for a long time yet."
+
+"I saw that, and understood it perfectly," said Laddie.  "Thank
+you, Little Sister."  He picked me up and hugged me tight.  "If I
+could only make you see!"
+
+"But Laddie, I do!  I'm not a baby!  I know how people love and
+make homes for themselves, like Sally and Peter are going to.  If
+it is with you about the Princess as it is with father and
+mother, why I do know."
+
+"All right!  Here we are!" said Laddie.
+
+He parted the willows and we stepped on the Magic Carpet, and
+that minute the Magic worked.  I forgot every awful, solemn,
+troublous thing we had been talking about, and looked around
+while Laddie knelt and hunted for a letter, and there was none. 
+That meant the Princess was coming, so we sat on the throne to
+wait.  We hadn't remembered to bathe my cheek, we had been so
+busy when we passed the water, and I doubt if we were thinking
+much then.  We just waited.  The willow walls waved gently, the
+moss carpet was spotted with little gold patches of sunlight, in
+the shade a few of the red flowers still bloomed, and big, lazy
+bumblebees hummed around them, or a hummingbird stood on air
+before them.  A sort of golden throbbing filled the woods, and my
+heart began to leap, why, I don't know; but I'm sure Laddie's did
+too, for I looked at him and his eyes were shining as I never had
+seen them before, while his cheeks were a little red, and he was
+breathing like when you've been running; then suddenly his body
+grew tense against mine, and that meant she was coming.
+
+Like that first day, she came slowly through the woods, stopping
+here and there to touch the trunk of a tree, put back a branch,
+or bend over a flower face.  Brown as the wood floor was her
+dress, and cardinal flowers blazed on her breast, and the same
+colour showed on her cheeks and lips.  Her eyes were like
+Laddie's for brightness, and she was breathing the same way.  I
+thought sure there was going to be something to remember a
+lifetime--I was so excited I couldn't stand still.  Before it
+could happen Laddie went and said it was a "beautiful day," and
+she said "it didn't show in the woods, but the pastures needed
+rain."  Then she kissed me.  Well if I ever!  I sank on the
+throne and sat there.  They went on talking like that, until it
+was too dull to bear, so I slipped out and wandered away to see
+what I could find.  When I grew tired and went back, Laddie was
+sitting on the Magic Carpet with his back against the beech, and
+the Princess was on the throne reading from a little book,
+reading such interesting things that I decided to listen.  After
+a while she came to this:
+
+        "Thou are mated with a clown,
+And the grossness of his nature, will have weight to bear thee
+down."
+
+Laddie threw back his head, and how he laughed!  The Princess put
+down the book and looked at him so surprised.
+
+"Are you reading that to me because you think it appropriate?"
+asked Laddie.
+
+"I am reading it because it is conceded to be one of the most
+beautiful poems ever written," said the Princess.
+
+"You knew when you began that you would come to those lines."
+
+"I never even thought of such a thing."
+
+"But you knew that is how your father would regard any
+relationship, friendly or deeper, with me!"
+
+"I cannot possibly be held responsible for what my father
+thinks."
+
+"It is natural that you should think alike."
+
+"Not necessarily!  You told me recently that you didn't agree
+with your father on many subjects."
+
+"Kindly answer me this," said Laddie:  "Do you feel that I'm a
+`clown' because I'm not schooled to the point on all questions of
+good manners?  Do you find me gross because I plow and sow?"
+
+"You surprise me," said the Princess.  "My consenting to know and
+to spend a friendly hour with you here is sufficient answer.  I
+have not found the slightest fault with your manners.  I have
+seen no suspicion of `grossness' about you."
+
+"Will you tell me, frankly, exactly what you do think of me?"
+
+"Surely!  I think you are a clean, decent man, who occasionally
+kindly consents to put a touch of human interest into an hour,
+for a very lonely girl.  What has happened, Laddie?  This is not
+like you."
+
+Laddie sat straight and studied the beech branches.  Father said
+beech trees didn't amount to much; but I first learned all about
+them from that one, and what it taught me made me almost worship
+them always.  There were the big trunk with great rough spreading
+roots, the bark in little ridges in places, smooth purple gray
+between, big lichens for ornament, the low flat branches, the
+waxy, wavy-edged leaves, with clear veins, and the delicious nuts
+in their little brown burrs.  The Princess and I both stared at
+the branches and waited while a little breath of air stirred the
+leaves, the sunshine flickered, and a cricket sang a sort of
+lonesome song.  Laddie leaned against the tree again, and he was
+thinking so hard, to look at him made me begin to repeat to
+myself the beech part of that beautiful churchyard poem our big
+folks recite:
+
+
+            "There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech,
+             That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
+             His listless length at noontide he would stretch,
+             And pore upon the brook that babbles by."
+
+
+Only he was studying so deeply you could almost feel what was in
+his mind, and it was not about the brook at all, even if one ran
+close.  Soon he began talking.
+
+"Not so bad!" he said.  "You might think worse.  I admit the
+cleanliness, I strive for decency, I delight in being humanely
+interesting, even for an hour; you might think worse, much worse!
+
+You might consider me a `clown.'  `A country clod.'  Rather a
+lowdown, common thing, a `clod,' don't you think?  And a `clown'!
+
+And `gross' on top of that!"
+
+"What can you mean?" asked the Princess.
+
+"Since you don't seem to share the estimate of me, I believe I'll
+tell you," said Laddie.  "The other day I was driving from the
+gravel pit with a very heavy load.  The road was wide and level
+on either side.  A man came toward me on horseback.  Now the law
+of the road is to give half to a vehicle similar to the one you
+are driving, but to keep all of it when you are heavily loaded,
+if you are passing people afoot or horseback.  The man took half
+the road, and kept it until the nose of his horse touched one of
+the team I was driving.  I stopped and said:  `Good morning, sir!
+
+Do you wish to speak with me?'  He called angrily:  `Get out of
+my way, you clod!'  `Sorry sir, but I can't,' I said.  `The law
+gives me this road when I am heavily loaded, and you are on foot
+or horseback.'"
+
+"What did he do?" asked the Princess.
+
+And from the way she looked I just knew she guessed the man was
+the same one I thought of.
+
+"He raised his whip to strike my horse," said Laddie.
+
+"Ah, surely!" said the Princess.  "Always an arm raised to
+strike.  And you, Man?  What did you do?" she cried eagerly.
+
+"I stood on my load, suddenly," said Laddie, "and I called: 
+`Hold one minute!'"
+
+"And he?" breathed the Princess.
+
+"Something made him pause with his arm still raised.  I said to
+him:  `You must not strike my horse.  It never has been struck,
+and it can't defend itself.  If you want to come a few steps
+farther and tackle me, come ahead!  I can take it or return it,
+as I choose.'"
+
+"Go on!" said the Princess.
+
+"That's all," said Laddie, "or at least almost all."
+
+"Did he strike?"
+
+"He did not.  He stared at me a second, and then he rode around
+me; but he was making forceful remarks as he passed about
+`country clods,' and there was an interesting one about a `gross
+clown.'  What you read made me think of it, that is all."
+
+The Princess stared into the beech branches for a time and then
+she said:  "I will ask your pardon for him.  He always had a
+domineering temper, and trouble he had lately has almost driven
+him mad; he is scarcely responsible at times.  I hesitate about
+making him angry."
+
+"I think perhaps," said Laddie, "I would have done myself credit
+if I had recognized that, and given him the road, when he made a
+point of claiming it."
+
+"Indeed no!" cried the Princess.  "To be beaten at the game he
+started was exactly what he needed.  If you had turned from his
+way, he would have considered you a clod all his life.  Since you
+made him go around, it may possibly dawn on him that you are a
+man.  You did the very best thing."
+
+Then she began to laugh, and how she did laugh.
+
+"I would give my allowance for a quarter to have seen it," she
+cried.  "I must hurry home and tell mother."
+
+"Does your mother know about me?" he demanded.  "Does she know
+that you come here?"
+
+The Princess arose and stood very tall and straight.
+
+"You may beg my pardon or cease to know me," she said.  "Whatever
+led you to suppose that I would know or meet you without my
+mother's knowledge?"
+
+Then she started toward the entrance.
+
+"One minute!" cried Laddie.
+
+A leap carried him to her side.  He caught her hands and held
+them tight, and looked straight into her eyes.  Then he kissed
+her hands over and over.  I thought from the look on her face he
+might have kissed her cheek if he had dared risk it; but he
+didn't seem to notice.  Then she stooped and kissed me, and
+turned toward home, while Laddie and I crossed the woods to the
+west road, and went back past the schoolhouse.  I was so tired
+Laddie tied the strings together and hung my shoes across his
+shoulders and took me by the arm the last mile.
+
+All of them were at home when we got there, and Miss Amelia came
+to the gate to meet us.  She was mealy-mouthed and good as pie,
+not at all as I had supposed she would be.  I wonder what Laddie
+said to her.  But then he always could manage things for every
+one.  That set me to wondering if by any possible means he could
+fix them for himself.  I climbed to the catalpa to think, and the
+more I thought, the more I feared he couldn't; but still mother
+always says one never can tell until they try, and I knew he
+would try with every ounce of brain and muscle in him.  I sat
+there until the supper bell rang, and then I washed and reached
+the table last.  The very first thing, mother asked how I bruised
+my face, and before I could think what to tell her, Leon said
+just as careless like:  "Oh she must have run against something
+hard, playing tag at recess."  Laddie began talking about Peter
+coming that night, and every one forgot me, but pretty soon I
+slipped a glance at Miss Amelia, and saw that her face was redder
+than mine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The Wedding Gown
+
+        "The gay belles of fashion may boast of excelling
+            In waltz or cotillon, at whist or quadrille;
+         And seek admiration by vauntingly telling
+            Of drawing and painting, and musical skill;
+         But give me the fair one, in country or city,
+            Whose home and its duties are dear to her heart,
+         Who cheerfully warbles some rustical ditty,
+            While plying the needle with exquisite art:
+         The bright little needle, the swift-flying needle,
+            The needle directed by beauty and art."
+
+
+The next morning Miss Amelia finished the chapter--that made two
+for our family.  Father always read one before breakfast--no
+wonder I knew the Bible quite well--then we sang a song, and she
+made a stiff, little prayer.  I had my doubts about her prayers;
+she was on no such terms with the Lord as my father.  He got
+right at Him and talked like a doctor, and you felt he had some
+influence, and there was at least a possibility that he might get
+what he asked for; but Miss Amelia prayed as if the Lord were ten
+million miles away, and she would be surprised to pieces if she
+got anything she wanted.  When she asked the Almighty to make us
+good, obedient children, there was not a word she said that
+showed she trusted either the Lord or us, or thought there was
+anything between us and heaven that might make us good because we
+wanted to be.  You couldn't keep your eyes from the big gad and
+ruler on her desk; she often fingered them as she prayed, and you
+knew from her stiff, little, sawed-out petition that her faith
+was in implements, and she'd hit you a crack the minute she was
+the least angry, same as she had me the day before.  I didn't
+feel any too good toward her, but when the blood of the Crusaders
+was in the veins, right must be done even if it took a struggle. 
+I had to live up to those little gold shells on the trinket. 
+Father said they knew I was coming down the line, so they put on
+a bird for me; but I told him I would be worthy of the shells
+too.  This took about as hard a fight for me as any Crusade would
+for a big, trained soldier.  I had been wrong, Laddie had made me
+see that.  So I held up my hand, and Miss Amelia saw me as she
+picked up Ray's arithmetic.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+I held to the desk to brace myself, and tried twice before I
+could raise my voice so that she heard.
+
+"Please, Miss Amelia," I said, "I was wrong about the birds
+yesterday.  Not that they don't fight--they do!  But I was wrong
+to contradict you before every one, and on your first day, and if
+you'll only excuse me, the next time you make a mistake, I'll
+tell you after school or at recess."
+
+The room was so still you could hear the others breathing.  Miss
+Amelia picked up the ruler and started toward me.  Possibly I
+raised my hands.  That would be no Crusader way, but you might do
+it before you had time to think, when the ruler was big and your
+head was the only place that would be hit.  The last glimpse I
+had of her in the midst of all my trouble made me think of
+Sabethany Perkins.
+
+Sabethany died, and they buried her at the foot of the hill in
+our graveyard before I could remember.  But her people thought
+heaps of her, and spent much money on the biggest tombstone in
+the cemetery, and planted pinies and purple phlox on her, and
+went every Sunday to visit her.  When they moved away, they
+missed her so, they decided to come back and take her along.  The
+men were at work, and Leon and I went to see what was going on. 
+They told us, and said we had better go away, because possibly
+things might happen that children would sleep better not to see. 
+Strange how a thing like that makes you bound you will see.  We
+went and sat on the fence and waited.  Soon they reached
+Sabethany, but they could not seem to get her out.  They tried,
+and tried, and at last they sent for more men.  It took nine of
+them to bring her to the surface.  What little wood was left,
+they laid back to see what made her so fearfully heavy, and there
+she was turned to solid stone.  They couldn't chip a piece off
+her with the shovel.  Mother always said, "For goodness sake,
+don't let your mouth hang open," and as a rule we kept ours shut;
+but you should have seen Leon's when he saw Sabethany wouldn't
+chip off, and no doubt mine was as bad.
+
+"When Gabriel blows his trumpet, and the dead arise and come
+forth, what on earth will they do with Sabethany?" I gasped. 
+"Why, she couldn't fly to Heaven with wings a mile wide, and what
+use could they make of her if she got there?"
+
+"I can't see a thing she'd be good for except a hitching post,"
+said Leon, "and I guess they don't let horses in.  Let's go
+home."
+
+He acted sick and I felt that way; so we went, but the last
+glimpse of Sabethany remained with me.
+
+As my head went down that day, I saw that Miss Amelia looked
+exactly like her.  You would have needed a pick-ax or a crowbar
+to flake off even a tiny speck of her.  When I had waited for my
+head to be cracked, until I had time to remember that a Crusader
+didn't dodge and hide, I looked up, and there she stood with the
+ruler lifted; but now she had turned just the shade of the
+wattles on our fightingest turkey gobbler.
+
+"Won't you please forgive me?"
+
+I never knew I had said it until I heard it, and then the only
+way to be sure was because no one else would have been likely to
+speak at that time.
+
+Miss Amelia's arm dropped and she glared at me.  I wondered
+whether I ever would understand grown people; I doubted if they
+understood themselves, for after turning to stone in a second--
+father said it had taken Sabethany seven years--and changing to
+gobbler red, Miss Amelia suddenly began to laugh.  To laugh, of
+all things!  And then, of course, every one else just yelled.  I
+was so mortified I dropped my head again and began to cry as I
+never would if she'd hit me.
+
+"Don't feel badly!" said Miss Amelia.  "Certainly, I'll forgive
+you.  I see you had no intention of giving offense, so none is
+taken.  Get out your book and study hard on another lesson."
+
+That was surprising.  I supposed I'd have to do the same one
+over, but I might take a new one.  I was either getting along
+fast, or Miss Amelia had her fill of birds.  I wiped my eyes as
+straight in front of me as I could slip up my handkerchief, and
+began studying the first lesson in my reader:  "Pretty bee, pray
+tell me why, thus from flower to flower you fly, culling sweets
+the livelong day, never leaving off to play?"  That was a poetry
+piece, and it was quite cheery, although it was all strung
+together like prose, but you couldn't fool me on poetry; I knew
+it every time.  As I studied I felt better, and when Miss Amelia
+came to hear me she was good as gold.  She asked if I liked
+honey, and I started to tell her about the queen bee, but she had
+no time to listen, so she said I should wait until after school. 
+Then we both forgot it, for when we reached home, the Princess'
+horse was hitched to our rack, and I fairly ran in, I was so
+anxious to know what was happening.
+
+I was just perfectly amazed at grown people!  After all the
+things our folks had said!  You'd have supposed that Laddie would
+have been locked in the barn; father reading the thirty second
+Psalm to the Princess, and mother on her knees asking God to open
+her eyes like Saul's when he tried to kick against the pricks,
+and make her to see, as he did, that God was not a myth, Well,
+there was no one in the sitting-room or the parlour, but there
+were voices farther on; so I slipped in.  I really had to slip,
+for there was no other place they could be except the parlour
+bedroom, and Sally's wedding things were locked up there, and we
+were not to see until everything was finished, like I told you.
+
+Well, this was what I saw: our bedroom had been a porch once, and
+when we had been crowded on account of all of us coming, father
+enclosed it and made a room.  But he never had taken out the
+window in the wall.  So all I had to do when I wanted to know how
+fast the dresses were being made, was to shove up the window
+above my bed, push back the blind, and look in.  I didn't care
+what she had.  I just wanted to get ahead of her and see before
+she was ready, to pay her for beating me.  I knew what she had,
+and I meant to tell her, and walk away with my nose in the air
+when she offered to show me; but this was different.  I was wild
+to see what was going on because the Princess was there.  The
+room was small, and the big cherry four-poster was very large,
+and all of them were talking, so no one paid the slightest
+attention to me.
+
+Mother sat in the big rocking chair, with Sally on one of its
+arms, leaning against her shoulder.  Shelley and May and the
+sewing woman were crowded between the wall and the footboard, and
+the others lined against the wall.  The bed was heaped in a
+tumble of everything a woman ever wore.  Seemed to me there was
+more stuff there than all the rest of us had, put together.  The
+working dresses and aprons had been made on the machine, but
+there were heaps and stacks of hand-made underclothes.  I could
+see the lovely chemise mother embroidered lying on top of a pile
+of bedding, and over and over Sally had said that every stitch in
+the wedding gown must be taken by hand.  The Princess stood
+beside the bed.  A funny little tight hat like a man's and a
+riding whip lay on a chair close by.  I couldn't see what she
+wore--her usual riding clothes probably--for she had a nip in
+each shoulder of a dress she was holding to her chin and looking
+down at.  After all, I hadn't seen everything!  Never before or
+since have I seen a lovelier dress than that.  It was what always
+had been wrapped in the sheet on the foot of the bed and I hadn't
+got a peep at it.  The pale green silk with tiny pink moss roses
+in it, that I had been thinking was the wedding dress, looked
+about right to wash the dishes in, compared with this.
+
+This was a wedding dress.  You didn't need any one to tell you. 
+The Princess had as much red as I ever had seen in her cheeks,
+her eyes were bright, and she was half-laughing and half-crying.
+
+"Oh you lucky, lucky girl!" she was saying.  "What a perfectly
+beautiful bride you will be!  Never have I seen a more wonderful
+dress!  Where did you get the material?"
+
+Now we had been trained always to wait for mother to answer a
+visitor as she thought suitable, or at least to speak one at a
+time and not interrupt; but about six of those grown people told
+the Princess all at the same time how our oldest sister Elizabeth
+was married to a merchant who had a store at Westchester and how
+he got the dress in New York, and gave it to Sally for her
+wedding present, or she never could have had it.
+
+The Princess lifted it and set it down softly.  "Oh look!" she
+cried.  "Look!  It will stand alone!"
+
+There it stood!  Silk stiff enough to stand by itself, made into
+a little round waist, cut with a round neck and sleeves elbow
+length and flowing almost to where Sally's knees would come.  It
+was a pale pearl-gray silk crossed in bars four inches square,
+made up of a dim yellow line almost as wide as a wheat straw,
+with a thread of black on each side of it, and all over, very
+wide apart, were little faint splashes of black as if they had
+been lightly painted on.  The skirt was so wide it almost filled
+the room.  Every inch of that dress was lined with soft, white
+silk.  There was exquisite lace made into a flat collar around
+the neck, and ruffled from sight up the inside of the wide
+sleeves.  That was the beginning.  The finish was something you
+never saw anything like before.  It was a trimming made of white
+and yellow beads.  There was a little heading of white beads
+sewed into a pattern, then a lacy fringe that was pale yellow
+beads, white inside, each an inch long, that dangled, and every
+bead ended with three tiny white ones.  That went around the
+neck, the outside of the sleeves, and in a pattern like a big
+letter V all the way around the skirt.  And there it stood--
+alone!
+
+The Princess, graceful as a bird and glowing like fire, danced
+around it, and touched it, and lifted the sleeves, and made the
+bead fringe swing, and laughed, and talked every second.  Sally,
+and mother, and all of them had smiled such wide smiles for so
+long, their faces looked almost as set as Sabethany's, but of
+course far different.  Being dead was one thing, getting ready
+for a wedding another.
+
+And it looked too as if God might be a myth, for all they cared,
+so long as the Princess could make the wedding dress stand alone,
+and talk a blue streak of things that pleased them.  It was not
+put on either, for there stood the dress, shimmering like the
+inside of a pearl-lined shell, white as a lily, and the tinkly
+gold fringe.  No one COULD have said enough about it, so no
+matter what the Princess said, it had to be all right.  She kept
+straight on showing all of them how lovely it was, exactly as if
+they hadn't seen it before, and she had to make them understand
+about it, as if she felt afraid they might have missed some
+elegant touch she had seen.
+
+"Do look how the lace falls when I raise this sleeve!  Oh how
+will you wear this and think of a man enough to say the right
+words in the right place?"
+
+Mother laughed, and so did all of them.
+
+"Do please show me the rest," begged the Princess.  "I know there
+are slippers and a bonnet!"
+
+Sally just oozed pride.  She untied the strings and pushed the
+prettiest striped bag from a lovely pink bandbox and took out a
+dear little gray bonnet with white ribbons, and the yellow bead
+fringe, and a bunch of white roses with a few green leaves. 
+These she touched softly, "I'm not quite sure about the leaves,"
+she said.
+
+The Princess had the bonnet, turning and tilting it.
+
+"Perfect!" she cried.  "Quite perfect!  You need that touch of
+colour, and it blends with everything.  How I envy you!  Oh why
+doesn't some one ask me, so I can have things like these?  I
+think your brother is a genius.  I'm going to ride to Westchester
+tomorrow and give him an order to fill for me the next time he
+goes to the city.  No one shows me such fabrics when I go, and
+Aunt Beatrice sends nothing from London I like nearly so well. 
+Oh!  Oh!"
+
+She was on her knees now, lifting the skirt to set under little
+white satin slippers with gold buckles, and white bead buttons. 
+When she had them arranged to suit her, she sat on the floor and
+kept straight on saying the things my mother and sisters seemed
+crazy to hear.  When Sally showed her the long white silk mitts
+that went with the bonnet, the Princess cried:  "Oh do ride home
+with me and let me give you a handkerchief Aunt Beatrice sent me,
+to carry in your hand!"
+
+Then her face flushed and she added without giving Sally time to
+say what she would do:  "Or I can bring it the next time I come
+past.  It belongs with these things and I have no use for it. 
+May I?"
+
+"Please do!  I'll use it for the thing I borrow."
+
+"But I mean it to be a gift," said the Princess.  "It was made to
+go with these lace mitts and satin slippers.  You must take it!"
+
+"Thank you very much," said Sally.  "If you really want me to
+have it, of course I'd love to."
+
+"I'll bring it to-morrow," promised the Princess.  "And I wish
+you'd let me try a way I know to dress hair for a wedding.  Yours
+is so beautiful."
+
+"You're kind, I'm sure," said Sally.  "I had intended to wear it
+as I always do, so I would appear perfectly natural to the folks;
+but if you know a more becoming way, I could begin it now, and
+they would be familiar with it by that time."
+
+"I shan't touch it," said the Princess, studying Sally's face. 
+"Your idea is right.  You don't want to commence any new,
+unfamiliar style that would make you seem different, just at a
+time when every one should see how lovely you are, as you always
+have been.  But don't forget to wear something blue, and
+something borrowed for luck, and oh do please put on one of my
+garters!"
+
+"Well for mercy sake!" cried my mother.  "Why?"
+
+"So some one will propose to me before the year is out," laughed
+the Princess.  "I think it must be the most fun of all, to make
+beautiful things for your very own home, and lovely dresses, and
+be surrounded by friends all eager to help you, and to arrange a
+house and live with a man you love well enough to marry, and fix
+for little people who might come----"
+
+"You know perfectly there isn't a single man in the county who
+wouldn't propose to you, if you'd let him come within a mile of
+you," said Shelley.
+
+"When the right man comes I'll go half the mile to meet him? you
+may be sure of that; won't I, Mrs. Stanton?" the Princess turned
+to mother.
+
+"I have known girls who went even farther," said my mother rather
+dryly.
+
+"I draw the line at half," laughed the Princess.  "Now I must go;
+I have been so long my people will be wondering what I'm doing."
+
+Standing in the middle of the room she put on her hat, picked up
+her whip and gloves, and led the way to the hitching rack, while
+all of us followed.  At the gate stood Laddie as he had come from
+the field.  His old hat was on the back of his head, his face
+flushed, his collar loosened so that his strong white neck
+showed, and his sleeves were rolled to the elbow, as they had
+been all summer, and his arms were burned almost to blisters. 
+When he heard us coming he opened the gate, went to the rack,
+untied the Princess' horse and led it beside the mounting block. 
+As she came toward him, he took off his hat and pitched it over
+the fence on the grass.
+
+"Miss Pryor, allow me to make you acquainted with my son," said
+mother.
+
+I felt as if I would blow up.  I couldn't keep my eyes from
+turning toward the Princess.  Gee!  I could have saved my
+feelings.  She made mother the prettiest little courtsey I ever
+set eyes on, and then turned and made a deeper one to Laddie.
+
+"I met your son in one of the village stores some time ago," she
+said.  "Back her one step farther, please!"
+
+Laddie backed the horse, and quicker than you could see how it
+was done, she flashed up the steps and sat the saddle; but as she
+leaned over the horse's neck to take the rein from Laddie, he got
+one level look straight in the eyes that I was sure none of the
+others saw, because they were not watching for it, and I was. 
+Laddie bowed from the waist, and put the reins in her fingers all
+in one movement.  He caught the glance she gave him too; I could
+almost feel it like a band passing between them.  Then she called
+a laughing good-bye to all of us at once, and showed us how to
+ride right, as she flashed toward the Little Hill.  That was
+riding, you may believe, and mother sighed as she watched her.
+
+"If I were a girl again," she said, "I would ride as well as
+that, or I'd never mount a horse."
+
+"She's been trained from her cradle, and her father deals in
+horses.  Half the battle in riding is a thoroughbred," said
+Laddie.  "No such horse as that ever stepped these roads before."
+
+"And no such girl ever travelled them," said my mother, folding
+her hands one over the other on top of a post of the hitching
+rack.  "I must say I don't know how this is coming out, and it
+troubles me."
+
+"Why, what's up?" asked Laddie, covering her hands with his and
+looking her in the eyes.
+
+"Just this," said my mother.  "She's more beautiful of face and
+form than God ought to allow any woman to be, in mercy to the men
+who will be forced to meet her.  Her speech is highly cultured. 
+Her manners are perfect, and that is a big and unusual thing in a
+girl of her age.  Every word she said, every move she made to-
+day, was exactly as I would have been proud to hear, and to see a
+daughter of mine speak and move.  If I had only myself to
+consider, I would make her my friend, because I'm seasoned in the
+ways of the world, and she could influence me only as I chose to
+allow her.  With you youngsters it is different.  You'll find her
+captivating, and you may let her ways sway you without even
+knowing it.  All these outward things are not essential; they are
+pleasing, I grant, but they have nothing to do with the one big,
+elemental fact that a Godless life is not even half a life.  I
+never yet have known any man or woman who attempted it who did
+not waste life's grandest opportunities, and then come crawling
+and defeated to the foot of the cross in the end, asking God's
+mercy where none was deserved or earned.  It seems to me a craven
+way.  I know all about the forgiveness on the cross!  I know God
+is big enough and merciful enough to accept even death-bed
+repentance, but what is that to compare with laying out your
+course and running it a lifetime without swerving?  I detest and
+distrust this infidel business.  I want no child of mine under
+its influence, or in contact with it."
+
+"But when your time comes, if you said just those things to hers
+and won her, what a triumph, little mother!"
+
+"`If!'" answered mother.  "That's always the trouble!  One can't
+be sure!  `If' I knew I could accomplish that, I would get on my
+knees and wrestle with the Lord for the salvation of the soul of
+a girl like that, not to mention her poor, housebound mother, and
+that man with the unhappiest face I ever have seen, her father. 
+It's worth trying, but suppose I try and fail, and at the same
+time find that in bringing her among us she has influenced some
+of mine to the loss of their immortal souls then, what will I
+have done?"
+
+"Mother," said Laddie; "mother, have you such a poor opinion of
+the things you and father have taught us, and the lives you've
+lived before us, that you're really afraid of a slip of a girl,
+almost a stranger?"
+
+"The most attractive girl I ever have seen, and mighty willing to
+be no longer a stranger, Lad."
+
+"Well, I can't promise for the others," said Laddie, "but for
+myself I will give you my word of honour that I won't be
+influenced the breadth of one hair by her, in a doctrinal way."
+
+"Humph!" said my mother.  "And it is for you I fear.  If a young
+man is given the slightest encouragement by a girl like that,
+even his God can't always hold him; and you never have made a
+confession of faith, Laddie.  It is you she will be most likely
+to captivate."
+
+"If you think I have any chance, I'll go straight over and ask
+her father for her this very evening," said Laddie, and even
+mother laughed; then all of us started to the house, for it was
+almost supper time.  I got ready and thought I'd take one more
+peep at the dress before Sally pinned it in the sheet again, and
+when I went back, there all huddled in a bunch before it stood
+Miss Amelia, the tears running down her cheeks.
+
+"Did Sally say you might come here?" I asked.
+
+"No," said Miss Amelia, "but I've been so crazy to see I just
+slipped in to take a peep when I noticed the open door.  I'll go
+this minute.  Please don't tell her."
+
+I didn't say what I would do, but I didn't intend to.
+
+"What are you crying about?" I inquired.
+
+"Ah, I too have known love," sobbed Miss Amelia.  "Once I made a
+wedding dress, and expected to be a happy bride."
+
+"Well, wasn't you?" I asked, and knew at once it was a silly
+question, for of course she would not be a miss, if she had not
+missed marrying.
+
+"He died!" sobbed Miss Amelia.
+
+If he could have seen her then, I believe he'd have been glad of
+it; but maybe he looked as bony and dejected as she did before he
+went; and he may have turned to stone afterward, as sometimes
+happens.  Right then I heard Sally coming, so I grabbed Miss
+Amelia and dragged her under the fourposter, where I always hid
+when caught doing something I shouldn't.  But Sally had so much
+stuff she couldn't keep all of it on the bed, and when she
+stooped and lifted the ruffle to shove a box under, she pushed it
+right against us, and knelt to look, and there we were.
+
+"Well upon my soul!" she cried, and sat flat on the floor,
+holding the ruffle, peering in.  "Miss Amelia!  And in tears! 
+Whatever is the trouble?"
+
+Miss Amelia's face was redder than any crying ever made it, and I
+saw she wanted to kill me for getting her into such a fix, and if
+she became too angry probably she'd take it out on me in school
+the next day, so I thought I'd better keep her at work shedding
+tears.
+
+"`HE DIED!'"  I told Sally as pathetically as ever I could.
+
+Sally dropped the ruffle instantly, but I saw her knees shake
+against the floor.  After a while she lifted the curtain and
+offered Miss Amelia her hand.
+
+"I was leaving my dress to show you before putting it away," she
+said.
+
+I didn't believe it; but that was what she said.  Maybe it was an
+impulse.  Mother always said Sally was a creature of impulse. 
+When she took off her flannel petticoat and gave it to poor
+little half-frozen Annie Hasty, that was a good impulse, but it
+sent Sally to bed for a week.  And when she threw a shovel of
+coals on Bill Ramsdell's dog, because Bill was a shiftless lout,
+and the dog was so starved it all the time came over and sucked
+our eggs, that was a bad impulse, because it didn't do Bill a
+particle of good, and it hurt the dog, which would have been glad
+to suck eggs at home, no doubt, if Bill hadn't been too worthless
+to keep hens.
+
+That was a good impulse she had then, for she asked Miss Amelia
+to help her straighten the room, and of course that meant to fold
+and put away wedding things.  Any woman would have been wild to
+do that.  Then she told Miss Amelia that she was going to ask
+father to dismiss school for half a day, and allow her to see the
+wedding, and she asked her if she would help serve the breakfast.
+
+Miss Amelia wiped her eyes, and soon laughed and was just
+beaming.  I would have been willing to bet my three cents for
+lead pencils the next time the huckster came, that Sally never
+thought of wanting her until that minute; and then she arranged
+for her to wait on table to keep her from trying to eat with the
+wedding party, because Miss Amelia had no pretty clothes for one
+thing, and for another, you shouldn't act as if you were hungry
+out in company, and she ate every meal as if she were breaking a
+forty days' fast.  I wondered what her folks cooked at home.
+
+After supper Peter came, and the instant I saw him I thought of
+something, and it was such a teasing thought I followed around
+and watched him harder every minute .  At last he noticed me, and
+put his arms around me.
+
+"Well, what is it, Little Sister?" he asked.
+
+I did wish he would quit that.  No one really had a right to call
+me that, except Laddie.  Maybe I had to put up with Peter doing
+it when I was his sister by law, but before, the old name the
+preacher baptized on me was good enough for Peter.  I was
+thinking about that so hard, I didn't answer, and he asked again.
+
+"I have seen Sally's wedding dress," I told him.
+
+"But that's no reason why you should stare at me."
+
+"That's just exactly the reason," I answered.  "I was trying to
+see what in the world there is about you to be worth a dress like
+that."
+
+Peter laughed and laughed.  At last he said that he was not
+really worth even a calico dress; and he was so little worthy of
+Sally that he would button her shoes, if she would let him.  He
+got that mixed.  The buttons were on her slippers: her shoes
+laced.  But it showed a humble spirit in Peter.  Not that I care
+for humble spirits.  I am sure the Crusaders didn't have them.  I
+don't believe Laddie would lace even the Princess' shoes, at
+least not to make a steady business of it.  But maybe Peter and
+Sally had an agreement to help each other.  She was always fixing
+his tie, and straightening his hair.  Maybe that was an impulse,
+though, and mother said Sally would get over being so impulsive
+when she cut her eye teeth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+When Sally Married Peter
+
+
+"Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
+ Be it ever so humble there's no place like home!
+ A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
+ Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere."
+
+When they began arranging the house for the wedding, it could be
+seen that they had been expecting it, and getting ready for a
+long time.  From all the closets, shelves and chests poured heaps
+of new things.  First, the walls were cleaned and some of them
+freshly papered, then the windows were all washed long before
+regular housecleaning time, the floors were scrubbed and new
+carpet put down.  Mother had some window blinds that Winfield had
+brought her from New York in the spring, and she had laid them
+away; no one knew why, then.  We all knew now.  When mother was
+ready to put them up, father had a busy day and couldn't help
+her, and she was really provoked.  She almost cried about it,
+when Leon rode in bringing the mail, and said Hannah Dover had
+some exactly like ours at her windows, that her son had sent from
+Illinois.  Father felt badly enough then, for he always did
+everything he could to help mother to be first with everything;
+but so she wouldn't blame him, he said crosslike that if she had
+let him put them up when they came, as he wanted to, she'd have
+been six months ahead.
+
+When they finally got ready to hang the blinds no one knew how
+they went.  They were a beautiful shiny green, plain on one side,
+and on the other there was a silver border across the bottom and
+one pink rose as big as a pie plate.  Mother had neglected to ask
+Winfield on which side the rose belonged.  Father said from the
+way the roll ran, it went inside.  Mother said they were rolled
+that way to protect the roses, and that didn't prove anything. 
+Laddie said he would jump on a horse and ride round the section,
+and see how Hannah Dover had hers, and exactly opposite would be
+right.  Everyone laughed, but no one thought he meant it.  Mother
+had father hold one against the window, and she stepped outside
+to see if she could tell from there.  When she came in she said
+the flower looked mighty pretty, and she guessed that was the
+way, so father started hanging them.  He had only two up when
+Laddie came racing down the Big Hill bareback, calling for him to
+stop.
+
+"I tell you that's not right, mother!" he said as he hurried in.
+
+"But I went outside and father held one, and it looked real
+pretty," said mother.
+
+"One!  Yes!" said Laddie.  "But have you stopped to consider how
+two rows across the house are going to look?  Nine big pink
+roses, with the sun shining on them!  Anything funnier than
+Dovers' front I never saw.  And look here!"
+
+Laddie picked up a blind.  "See this plain back?  It's double
+coated like a glaze.  That is so the sun shining through glass
+won't fade it.  The flowers would be gone in a week.  They belong
+inside, mother, sure as you live."
+
+"Then when the blinds are rolled to the middle sash in the
+daytime no one can see them," wailed mother, who was wild about
+pink roses.
+
+"But at night, when they are down, you can put the curtains back
+enough to let the roses show, and think how pretty they will look
+then."
+
+"Laddie is right!" said father, climbing on the barrel to take
+down the ones he had fixed.
+
+"What do you think, girls?" asked mother.
+
+"I think the Princess is coming down the Little Hill," said
+Shelley.  "Hurry, father!  Take them down before she sees!  I'm
+sure they're wrong."
+
+Father got one all right, but tore the corner of the other. 
+Mother scolded him dreadfully cross, and he was so flustered he
+forgot about being on the barrel, so he stepped back the same as
+on the floor, and fell crashing.  He might have broken some of
+his bones, if Laddie hadn't seen and caught him.
+
+"If you are SURE the flowers go inside, fix one before she
+comes!" cried mother.
+
+Father stepped too close the edge of the chair, and by that time
+he didn't know how to hang anything, so Laddie climbed up and had
+one nailed before the Princess stopped.  She came to bring Sally
+the handkerchief, and it was the loveliest one any of us ever had
+seen.  There was a little patch in the middle about four inches
+square, and around it a wide ruffle of dainty lace.  It was made
+to carry in a hand covered with white lace mitts, when you were
+wearing a wedding gown of silver silk, lined with white.  Of
+course it wouldn't have been the slightest use for a funeral or
+with a cold in your head.  And it had come from across the sea! 
+From the minute she took it by a pinch in the middle, Sally
+carried her head so much higher than she ever had before, that
+you could notice the difference.
+
+Laddie went straight on nailing up the blinds, and every one he
+fixed he let down full length so the Princess could see the roses
+were inside; he was so sure he was right.  After she had talked a
+few minutes she noticed the blinds going up.  Laddie, in a front
+window, waved to her from the barrel.  She laughed and answered
+with her whip, and then she laughed again.
+
+"Do you know," she said, "there is the funniest thing at Dovers'.
+I rode past on the way to Groveville this morning and they have
+some blinds like those you are putting up."
+
+"Indeed?" inquired my mother.  "Winfield sent us these from New
+York in the spring, but I thought the hot summer sun would fade
+them, so I saved them until the fall cleaning.  The wedding
+coming on makes us a little early but----"
+
+"Well, they may not be exactly the same," said the Princess.  "I
+only saw from the highway."  She meant road; there were many
+things she said differently.  "Have yours big pink roses and
+silver scrolls inside?"
+
+"Yes," said mother.
+
+The Princess bubbled until it made you think one of those yellow
+oriole birds had perched on her saddle.  "That poor woman has
+gone and put hers up wrong side out.  The effect of all those big
+pink roses on her white house front is most amusing.  It looks as
+if the house were covered with a particularly gaudy piece of
+comfort calico.  Only fancy!"
+
+She laughed again and rode away.  Mother came in just gasping.
+
+"Well, for all His mercies, large and small, the Lord be
+praised!" she cried piously, as she dropped into the big rocking
+chair.  "THAT is what I consider escaping by the skin of your
+teeth!"
+
+Then father and Laddie laughed, and said they thought so too. 
+When the blinds were up, the outside looked well, and you should
+have seen the inside!  The woodwork was enamelled white, and the
+wall paper was striped in white and silver.  Every so far on the
+silver there was a little pink moss rose having green leaves. 
+The carpet was plum red and green in wide stripes, and the lace
+curtains were freshly washed, snowy, and touched the floor.  The
+big rocker, the straight-backed chairs, and the sofa were
+beautiful red mahogany wood, and the seats shining haircloth.  If
+no one happened to be looking, you could sit on a sofa arm, stick
+your feet out and shoot off like riding down a haystack; the
+landing was much better.  On the sofa you bounced two feet high
+the first time; one, the second; and a little way the third.  On
+the haystack, maybe you hit a soft spot, and maybe you struck a
+rock.  Sometimes if you got smart, and tried a new place, and
+your feet caught in a tangle of weeds and stuck, you came up
+straight, pitched over, and landed on your head.  THEN if you
+struck a rock, you were still, quite a while.  I was once.  But
+you never dared let mother see you--on the sofa, I mean; she
+didn't care about the haystack.
+
+There were pictures in oval black frames having fancy edges, and
+a whatnot where all our Christmas and birthday gifts, almost too
+dainty to handle, were kept.  You fairly held your breath when
+you looked at the nest of spun green glass, with the white dove
+in it, that George Washington Mitchell gave to Shelley.  Of
+course a dove's nest was never deep, and round, and green, and
+the bird didn't have red eyes and a black bill.  I thought
+whoever could blow glass as beautifully as that, might just as
+easy have made it right while he was at it; but anyway, it was
+pretty.  There were pitchers, mugs, and vases, almost too
+delicate to touch, and the cloth-covered box with braids of hair
+coiled in wreaths from the heads of the little fever and whooping
+cough sisters.
+
+Laddie asked Sally if she and Peter were going to have the
+ceremony performed while they sat on the sofa.  Seemed the right
+place.  They had done all their courting there, even on hot
+summer days; but I supposed that was because Sally didn't want to
+be seen fixing Peter's tie until she was ready.  She made no
+bones about it then.  She fixed it whenever she pleased; likewise
+he held her hand.  Shelley said that was disgusting, and you
+wouldn't catch her.  Leon said he bet a dollar he would; and I
+said if he knew he'd get beaten as I did, I bet two dollars he
+wouldn't tell what he saw.  The mantel was white, with vases of
+the lovely grasses that grew beside the stream at the foot of the
+Big Hill.  Mother gathered the fanciest every fall, dried them,
+and dipped them in melted alum coloured with copperas, aniline,
+and indigo.  Then she took bunches of the colours that went
+together best and made bouquets for the big vases.  They were
+pretty in the daytime, but at night you could watch them sparkle
+and shimmer forever.
+
+I always thought the sitting-room was nicer than the parlour. 
+The woodwork was white enamel there too, but the bureau and
+chairs were just cherry and not too precious to use.  They were
+every bit as pretty.  The mantel was much larger.  I could stand
+up in the fireplace, and it took two men to put on an everyday
+log, four the Christmas one.  On each side were the book shelves
+above, and the linen closets below.  The mantel set between
+these, and mother always used the biggest, most gorgeous bouquets
+there, because she had so much room.  The hearth was a slab of
+stone that came far into the room.  We could sit on it and crack
+nuts, roast apples, chestnuts, and warm our cider, then sweep all
+the muss we made into the fire.  The wall paper was white and
+pale pink in stripes, and on the pink were little handled baskets
+filled with tiny flowers of different colours.  We sewed the rags
+for the carpet ourselves, and it was the prettiest thing.  One
+stripe was wide, all gray, brown, and dull colours, and the other
+was pink.  There were green blinds and lace curtains here also,
+and nice braided rugs that all of us worked on of winter
+evenings.  Everything got spicker and spanner each day.
+
+Mother said there was no use in putting down a carpet in a
+dining-room where you constantly fed a host, and the boys didn't
+clean their feet as carefully as they should in winter; but there
+were useful rags where they belonged, and in our bedroom opening
+from it also.  The dining-room wall paper had a broad stripe of
+rich cream with pink cabbage roses scattered over it and a narrow
+pink stripe, while the woodwork was something perfectly
+marvellous.  I didn't know what kind of wood it was, but a man
+who could turn his hand to anything, painted it.  First, he put
+on a pale yellow coat and let it dry.  Then he added wood brown,
+and while it was wet, with a coarse toothed comb, a rag, and his
+fingers, he imitated the grain, the even wood, and knotholes of
+dressed lumber, until many a time I found myself staring steadily
+at a knot to see if a worm wouldn't really come working out.  You
+have to see a thing like that to understand how wonderful it is. 
+You couldn't see why they washed the bedding, and took the
+feathers from the pillows and steamed them in mosquito netting
+bags and dried them in the shade, when Sally's was to be a
+morning wedding, but they did.  I even had to take a bucket and
+gather from around the walls all the little heaps of rocks and
+shells that Uncle Abraham had sent mother from California, take
+them out and wash and wipe them, and stack them back, with the
+fanciest ones on top.  He sent her a ring made of gold he dug
+himself.  She always kept the ring in a bottle in her bureau, and
+she meant to wear it at the wedding, with her new silk dress.  I
+had a new dress too.  I don't know how they got everything done. 
+All of them worked, until the last few days they were perfect
+cross patches.
+
+When they couldn't find another thing indoors to scour, they
+began on the yard, orchard, barn and road.  Mother even had Leon
+stack the wood pile straighter.  She said when corded wood leaned
+at an angle, it made people seem shiftless; and she never passed
+a place where it looked that way that her fingers didn't just
+itch to get at it.  He had to pull every ragweed on each side of
+the road as far as our land reached, and lay every rail straight
+in the fences.  Father had to take spikes and our biggest maul
+and go to the bridges at the foot of the Big and the Little Hill,
+and see that every plank was fast, so none of them would rattle
+when important guests drove across.  She said she just simply
+wouldn't have them in such a condition that Judge Pettis couldn't
+hear himself think when he crossed; for you could tell from his
+looks that it was very important that none of the things he
+thought should be lost.  There wasn't a single spot about the
+place inside or out that wasn't gone over; and to lots of it you
+never would have known anything had been done if you hadn't seen,
+because the place was always in proper shape anyway; but father
+said mother acted just like that, even when her sons were married
+at other people's houses; and if she kept on getting worse, every
+girl she married off, by the time she reached me, we'd all be
+scoured threadbare and she'd be on the verge of the grave.  May
+and I weeded the flowerbeds, picked all the ripe seed, and pulled
+up and burned all the stalks that were done blooming.  Father and
+Laddie went over the garden carefully; they scraped the walks and
+even shook the palings to see if one were going to come loose
+right at the last minute, when every one would be so flustrated
+there would be no time to fix it.
+
+Then they began to talk about arrangements for the ceremony,
+whether we should have our regular minister, or Presiding Elder
+Lemon, and what people they were going to invite.  Just when we
+had planned to ask every one, have the wedding in the church, and
+the breakfast at the house, and all drive in a joyous procession
+to Groveville to give them a good send-off in walked Sally.  She
+had been visiting Peter's people, and we planned a lot while she
+was away.
+
+"What's going on here?" she asked, standing in the doorway,
+dangling her bonnet by the ties.
+
+She never looked prettier.  Her hair had blown out in little
+curls around her face from riding, her cheeks were so pink, and
+her eyes so bright.
+
+"We were talking about having the ceremony in the church, so
+every one can be comfortably seated, and see and hear well,"
+answered mother.
+
+Sally straightened up and began jerking the roses on her bonnet
+far too roughly for artificial flowers.  Perhaps I surprised you
+with that artificial word, but I can spell and define it; it's
+easy divided into syllables.  Goodness knows, I have seen enough
+flowers made from the hair of the dead, wax, and paper, where you
+get the shape, but the colour never is right.  These of Sally's
+were much too bright, but they were better than the ones made at
+our house.  Hers were of cloth and bought at a store.  You
+couldn't tell why, but Sally jerked her roses; I wished she
+wouldn't, because I very well knew they would be used to trim my
+hat the next summer, and she said:  "Well, people don't have to
+be comfortable during a wedding ceremony; they can stand up if I
+can, and as for seeing and hearing, I'm asking a good many that I
+don't intend to have see or hear either one!"
+
+"My soul!" cried mother, and she dropped her hands and her mouth
+fell open, like she always told us we never should let ours,
+while she stared at Sally.
+
+"I don't care!" said Sally, straightening taller yet; her eyes
+began to shine and her lips to quiver, as if she would cry in a
+minute; "I don't care----!"
+
+"Which means, my child, that you DO care, very much," said
+father.  "Suppose you cease such reckless talk, and explain to us
+exactly what it is that you do want."
+
+Sally gave her bonnet an awful jerk.  Those roses would look like
+sin before my turn to wear them came, and she said:  "Well then,
+I do care!  I care with all my might!  The church is all right,
+of course; but I want to be married in my very own home!  Every
+one can think whatever they please about their home, and so can
+I, and what I think is, that this is the nicest and the prettiest
+place in all the world, and I belong here----"
+
+
+Father lifted his head, his face began to shine, and his eyes to
+grow teary; while mother started toward Sally.  She put out her
+hand and held mother from her at arm's length, and she turned and
+looked behind her through the sitting-room and parlour, and then
+at us, and she talked so fast you never could have understood
+what she said if you hadn't known all of it anyway, and thought
+exactly the same thing yourself.
+
+"I have just loved this house ever since it was built," she said,
+"and I've had as good times here as any girl ever had.  If any
+one thinks I'm so very anxious to leave it, and you, and mother,
+and all the others, why it's a big mistake.  Seems as if a girl
+is expected to marry and go to a home of her own; it's drummed
+into her and things fixed for her from the day of her birth; and
+of course I do like Peter, but no home in the world, not even the
+one he provides for me, will ever be any dearer to me than my own
+home; and as I've always lived in it, I want to be married in it,
+and I want to stay here until the very last second----"
+
+"You shall, my child, you shall!" sobbed mother.
+
+"And as for having a crowd of men that father is planning to ask,
+staring at me, because he changes harvest help and wood chopping
+with them, or being criticised and clawed over by some women
+simply because they'll be angry if they don't get the chance, I
+just won't--so there!  Not if I have to stand the minister
+against the wall, and turn our backs to every one.  I think----"
+
+"That will do!" said father, wiping his eyes.  "That will do,
+Sally!  Your mother and I have got a pretty clear understanding
+of how you feel, now.  Don't excite yourself!  Your wedding
+shan't be used to pay off our scores.  You may ask exactly whom
+you please, want, and feel quite comfortable to have around
+you----"
+
+Then Sally fell on mother's neck and every one cried a while;
+then we wiped up, Leon gave Sally his slate, and she came and sat
+beside the table and began to make out a list of those she really
+wanted to invite.  First she put down all of our family, even
+many away in Ohio, and all of Peter's, and then his friends, and
+hers.  Once in the list of girls she stopped and said:  "If I
+take that beautiful imported handkerchief from Pamela Pryor, I
+have just got to invite her "
+
+"And she will outdress and outshine you at your own wedding," put
+in Shelley.
+
+"Let her, if she can!" said Sally calmly.  "She'll have to hump
+herself if she beats that dress of mine; and as for looks, I know
+lots of people who think gray eyes, pink cheeks, and brown curls
+far daintier and prettier than red cheeks and black eyes and
+curls.  If she really is better looking than I am, it isn't her
+fault; God made her that way, and He wouldn't like us to punish
+her for it; and it would, because any one can see she wants to be
+friends; don't you think, mother?"--mother nodded--"and besides,
+I think she's better looking than I am, myself!"
+
+Sally said that, and wrote down the Princess' name in big
+letters, and no one cheeped.
+
+Then she began on our neighbourhood, thinking out loud and
+writing what she thought.  So all of us were as still, and held
+our breath in softly and waited, and Sally said slow and musing
+like, "Of course we couldn't have anything at THIS house without
+Sarah Hood.  She dressed most of us when we were born, nursed us
+when we were sick, helped with threshing, company, and parties,
+and she's just splendid anyway; we better ask all the Hoods"; so
+she wrote them down.  "And it will be lonely for Widow Willis and
+the girls to see every one else here--we must have them; and of
+course Deams--Amanda is always such splendid help; and the Widow
+Fall is so perfectly lovely, we want her for decorative purposes;
+and we could scarcely leave out Shaws; they always have all of us
+everything they do; and Dr. Fenner of course; and we'll want Flo
+and Agnes Kuntz to wait on table, so their folks might as well
+come too----"
+
+So she went on taking up each family we knew, and telling what
+they had done for us, or what we had done for them; and she found
+some good reason for inviting them, and pretty soon father
+settled back in his chair and never took his eyes from Sally's
+shining head as she bent over the slate, and then he began
+pulling his lower lip, like when it won't behave, and his eyes
+danced exactly as I've seen Leon's.  I never had noticed that
+before.
+
+Sally went straight on and at last she came to Freshetts.  "I am
+going to have all of them, too," she said.  "The children are
+good children, and it will help them along to see how things are
+done when they are right; and I don't care what any one says, I
+LIKE Mrs. Freshett.  I'll ask her to help work, and that will
+keep her from talking, and give the other women a chance to see
+that she's clean, and human, and would be a good neighbour if
+they'd be friendly.  If we ask her, then the others will."
+
+When she finished--as you live--there wasn't a soul she had left
+out except Bill Ramsdell, who starved his dog until it sucked our
+eggs, and Isaac Thomas, who was so lazy he wouldn't work enough
+to keep his wife and children dressed so they ever could go
+anywhere, but he always went, even with rags flying, and got his
+stomach full just by talking about how he loved the Lord.  To
+save me I couldn't see Isaac Thomas without beginning to myself:
+
+        "'Tis the voice of the sluggard; I hear him complain,
+         You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again.
+         I passed by his garden, I saw the wild brier,
+         The thorn, and the thistle, grow broader and higher;
+         The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags;
+         And his money he wastes, till he starves or he begs."
+
+
+That described Isaac to the last tatter, only he couldn't waste
+money; he never had any.  Once I asked father what he thought
+Isaac would do with it, if by some unforeseen working of Divine
+Providence, he got ten dollars.  Father said he could tell me
+exactly, because Isaac once sold some timber and had a hundred
+all at once.  He went straight to town and bought Mandy a red
+silk dress and a brass breastpin, when she had no shoes.  He got
+the children an organ, when they were hungry; and himself a plug
+hat.  Mandy and the children cried because he forgot candy and
+oranges until the last cent was gone.  Father said the only time
+Isaac ever worked since he knew him was when he saw how the hat
+looked with his rags.  He actually helped the men fell the trees
+until he got enough to buy a suit, the remains of which he still
+wore on Sunday.  I asked father why he didn't wear the hat too,
+and father said the loss of that hat was a blow, from which Isaac
+never had recovered.  Once at camp-meeting he laid it aside to
+pray his longest, most impressive prayer, and an affectionate cow
+strayed up and licked the nap all off before Isaac finished, so
+he never could wear it again.
+
+Sally said:  "I'll be switched if I'll have that disgusting
+creature around stuffing himself on my wedding day; but if you're
+not in bed, when it's all over, mother, I do wish you'd send
+Mandy and the children a basket."
+
+Mother promised, and father sat and looked on and pulled his
+lower lip until his ears almost wiggled.  Then Sally said she
+wanted Laddie and Shelley to stand at the parlour door and keep
+it tight shut, and seat every one in the sitting-room except a
+special list she had made out to send in there.  She wanted all
+our family and Peter's, and only a few very close friends, but it
+was enough to fill the room.  She said when she and Peter came
+downstairs every one could see how they looked when they crossed
+the sitting-room, and for all the difference the door would make,
+it could be left open then; she would be walled in by people she
+wanted around her, and the others could have the fun of being
+there, seeing what they could, and getting all they wanted to
+eat.  Father and mother said that was all right, only to say
+nothing about the plan to shut the door; but when the time came
+just to close it and everything would be satisfactory.
+
+Then Sally took the slate upstairs to copy the list with ink, so
+every one went about something, while mother crossed to father
+and he took her on his lap, and they looked at each other the
+longest and the hardest, and neither of them said a word.  After
+a while they cried and laughed, and cried some more, and it was
+about as sensible as what a flock of geese say when they are let
+out of the barn and start for the meadow in the morning.  Then
+father, all laughy and criey, said:  "Thank God!  Oh, thank God,
+the girl loves the home we have made for her!"
+
+Just said it over and over, and mother kept putting in:  "It
+pays, Paul!  It pays!"
+
+Next day Sally put on her riding habit and fixed herself as
+pretty as ever she could, and went around to have a last little
+visit with every one, and invited them herself, and then she
+wrote letters to people away.  Elizabeth and Lucy came home, and
+every one began to work.  Father and mother went to the village
+in the carriage and brought home the bed full of things to eat,
+and all we had was added, and mother began to pack butter, and
+save eggs for cakes, and the day before, I thought there wouldn't
+be a chicken left on the place.  They killed and killed, and
+Sarah Hood, Amanda Deam, and Mrs. Freshett picked and picked.
+
+"I'll bet a dollar we get something this time besides ribs and
+neck," said Leon.  "How do you suppose thigh and breast would
+taste?"
+
+"I was always crazy to try the tail," I said.
+
+"Much chance you got," sniggered Leon.  "'Member the time that
+father asked the Presiding Elder, `Brother Lemon, what piece of
+the fowl do you prefer?' and he up and said: `I'm partial to the
+rump, Brother Stanton.'  There sat father bound he wouldn't give
+him mother's piece, so he pretended he couldn't find it, and
+forked all over the platter and then gave him the ribs and the
+thigh.  Gee, how mother scolded him after the preacher had gone! 
+You notice father hasn't asked that since.  Now, he always says: 
+`Do you prefer light or dark meat?'  Much chance you have of ever
+tasting a tail, if father won't even give one to the Presiding
+Elder!"
+
+"But as many as they are killing----"
+
+"Oh THIS time," said Leon with a flourish, "this time we are
+going to have livers, and breast, and thighs, AND tails, if you
+are beholden to tail."
+
+"I'd like to know how we are?"
+
+"Well, since you have proved that you can keep your mouth shut,
+for a little while, anyway, I'm going to take you in on this,"
+said Leon.  "You keep your eyes on me.  When the wedding gets
+going good, you watch me, and slip out.  That's all!  I'll be
+fixed to do the rest.  But mind this, get out when I do."
+
+"All right," I promised.
+
+They must have wakened about four o'clock on the wedding day; it
+wasn't really light when I got up.  I had some breakfast in my
+night dress, and then I was all fixed up in my new clothes, and
+made to sit on a chair, and never move for fear I would soil my
+dress, for no one had time to do me over, and there was only one
+dress anyway.  There was so much to see you could keep interested
+just watching, and I was as anxious to look nice before the boys
+and girls, and the big people, as any one.
+
+Every mantel and table and bureau was covered with flowers, and
+you could have smelled the kitchen a mile away, I know.  The
+dining table was set for the wedding party, our father and
+mother, and Peter's, and the others had to wait.  You couldn't
+have laid the flat of your hand on that table anywhere, it was so
+covered with things to eat.  Miss Amelia, in a dress none of us
+ever had seen before, a real nice white dress, pranced around it
+and smirked at every one, and waved the peacock feather brush to
+keep the flies from the jelly, preserves, jam, butter, and things
+that were not cooked.
+
+For hours Mrs. Freshett had stood in the kitchen on one side of
+the stove frying chicken and heaping it in baking pans in the
+oven, and Amanda Deam on the other, frying ham, while Sarah Hood
+cooked other things, and made a wash boiler of coffee. 
+Everything was ready by the time it should have been.  I had
+watched them until I was tired, when Sally came through the room
+where I was, and she said I might come along upstairs and see her
+dressed.  When we reached the door I wondered where she would put
+me, but she pushed clothing together on a bed, and helped me up,
+and that was great fun.
+
+She had been bathed and had on her beautiful new linen
+underclothing that mother punched full of holes and embroidered
+in flowers and vines, and Shelley was brushing her hair when some
+one called out:  "The Princess is coming!"
+
+I jumped for the window, and all of them, even Sally, crowded
+behind.  Well, talk about carriages!  No one ever had seen THAT
+one before.  It WAS a carriage.  And such horses!  The funny
+"'orse, 'ouse" man who made the Pryor garden was driving.  He
+stopped at the gate, got out and opened a door, and the Princess'
+father stepped down, tall and straight, all in shiny black.  He
+turned around and held out his hand, bowing double, and the
+Princess laid her hand in his and stepped out too.  He walked
+with her to the gate, made another bow, kissed her hand, and
+stepped back, and she came down the walk alone.  He got in the
+carriage, the man closed the door, and they drove away.
+
+Sally must have arranged before that the Princess was to come
+early, for she came straight upstairs.  She wore a soft white
+silk dress with big faded pink roses in it, and her hair was
+fastened at each ear with a bunch of little pink roses.  She was
+lovely, but she didn't "outdress or outshine" Sally one bit, and
+she never even glanced at the mirror to see how she looked; she
+began helping with Sally's hair, and to dress her.  When Bess
+Kuntz prinked so long she made every one disgusted, the Princess
+said:  "Oh save your trouble.  No one will look at you when
+there's a bride in the house."
+
+There was a roll almost as thick as your arm of garters that all
+the other girls wanted Sally to wear for them so they would get a
+chance to marry that year, and Agnes Kuntz's was so large it went
+twice around, and they just laughed about it.  They put a blue
+ribbon on Sally's stays for luck, and she borrowed Peter's sister
+Mary's comb to hold her back hair.  They had the most fun, and
+when she was all ready except her dress they went away, and Sally
+stood in the middle of the room trembling a little.  Outside you
+could hear carriage wheels rolling, the beat of horses' hoofs,
+and voices crying greetings.  "There was a sound of revelry," by
+day.  Mother came in hurriedly.  She wore her new brown silk,
+with a lace collar pinned at the throat with the pin that had a
+brown goldstone setting in it, and her precious ring was on her
+finger.  She was dainty and pretty enough to have been a bride
+herself.  She turned Sally around slowly, touching her hair a
+little and her skirts; then she went to the closet, took out the
+wedding dress, put the skirt over Sally's head, and she came up
+through the whiteness, pink and glowing.  She slipped her arms
+into the sleeves, and mother fastened it, shook out the skirt,
+saw that the bead fringe hung right, and the lace collar lay
+flat, then she took Sally in her arms, held her tight and said: 
+"God bless you, dear, and keep you always.  Amen."
+
+Then she stepped to the door, and Peter, all shining and new,
+came in.  He hugged Sally and kissed her like it didn't make the
+least difference whether she had on calico or a wedding dress,
+and he just stared, and stared at her, and never said a word, so
+at last she asked:  "Well Peter, do you like my dress?"
+
+And the idiot said:  "Why Sally, I hadn't even seen it!"
+
+Then both of them laughed, and the Presiding Elder came.
+
+I never liked to look at him very well because something had
+happened, and he had only one eye.  I always wondered if he had
+"plucked it out" because it had "offended" him; but if you could
+forget his eye, and just listen to his voice, it was like the
+sweetest music.  He married those two people right there in the
+bedroom, all but about three words at the end.  I heard and saw
+every bit of it.  Then Sally said it was time for me to go to
+mother, but she followed me into the boys' room and shut the
+door.  Then she knelt in her beautiful silver dress, and put her
+arms around me and said:  "Honest, Little Sister, aren't you
+going to kiss me goodbye?"
+
+"Oh I can if you want me to," I said, but I didn't look at her; I
+looked out of the window.
+
+She laughed a breathless little catchy sort of laugh and said: 
+"That's exactly what I do want."
+
+"You didn't even want me, to begin with," I reminded her.
+
+"There isn't a doubt but whoever told you that, could have been
+in better business," said Sally, angry-like.  "I was much younger
+then, and there were many things I didn't understand, and it
+wasn't you I didn't want; it was just no baby at all.  I wouldn't
+have wanted a boy, or any other girl a bit more.  I foolishly
+thought we had children enough in this house.  I see now very
+plainly that we didn't, for this family never could get along
+without you, and I'm sorry I ever thought so, and I'd give
+anything if I hadn't struck you and----"
+
+"Oh be still, and go on and get married!" I said.  I could just
+feel a regular beller coming in my throat.  "I was only fooling
+to pay you up.  I meant all the time to kiss you good-bye when
+the others did.  I'll nearly die being lonesome when you're
+gone----"
+
+Then I ran for downstairs, and when I reached the door, where the
+steps went into the sitting-room, I stopped, scared at all the
+people.  It was like camp-meeting.  You could see the yard full
+through the windows.  Just as I was thinking I'd go back to the
+boys' room, and from there into the garret, and down the back
+stairway, Laddie went and saw me.  He came over, led me to the
+parlour door, put me inside, and there mother took my hand and
+held me tight, and I couldn't see Leon anywhere.
+
+I was caught, but they didn't have him.  Mother never hung on as
+she did that day.  I tried and tried to pull away, and she held
+tight.  It was only a minute until the door opened, people
+crowded back, and the Presiding Elder, followed by Sally and
+Peter, came into the room, and they began being married all over
+again.
+
+If it hadn't grown so solemn my mother sprung a tear, I never
+would have made it.  She just had to let me go to sop her face,
+because tears are salty, and they would turn her new brown silk
+front yellow.  The minute my hand was free, I slipped between the
+people and looked at the parlour door.  It was wedged full and
+more standing on chairs behind them.  No one could get out there.
+
+I thought I would fail Leon sure, and then I remembered the
+parlour bedroom.  I got through that door easy as anything, and
+it was no trick at all to slip behind the blind, raise the
+window, and drop into mother's room from the sill.  From there I
+reached the back dining-room door easy enough, went around to the
+kitchen, and called Leon softly.  He opened the door at once and
+I slipped in.  He had just got there.  We looked all around and
+couldn't see where to begin at first.  There was enough cooked
+food there to load two wagons.
+
+An old pillow-case that had dried sage in it was lying across a
+chair and Leon picked it up and poured the sage into the wood-
+box, and handed the case to me.  He went over and knelt before
+the oven, while I followed and held open the case.  Leon rolled
+his eyes to the ceiling and said so exactly like father when he
+is serving company that not one of us could have told the
+difference:  "Which part of the fowl do you prefer, Brother
+Lemon?"
+
+It was so funny it made me snigger, but I straightened up and
+answered as well as I could:  "I'm especially fond of the rump,
+Brother Stanton."
+
+Leon stirred the heap and piled four or five tails in the case. 
+I thought that was all I could manage before they would spoil, so
+I said:  "Do you prefer light or dark meat, Sister Abigail?"
+
+"I wish to choose breast," said Leon, simpering just like that
+silly Abigail Webster.  He put in six breasts.  Then we found
+them hidden away back in the oven in a pie pan, for the bride's
+table, I bet, and we took two livers apiece; we didn't dare take
+more for fear they had been counted.  Then he threw in whatever
+he came to that was a first choice big piece, until I was really
+scared, and begged him to stop; but he repeated what the fox said
+in the story of the "Quarrelsome Cocks"--"Poco was very good, but
+I have not had enough yet," so he piled in pieces until I ran
+away with the pillow-case; then he slid in a whole plateful of
+bread, another of cake, and put the plates in a tub of dishes
+under the table.  Then we took some of everything that wasn't too
+runny.  Just then the silence broke in the front part of the
+house, and we scooted from the back door, closing it behind us,
+ran to the wood house and climbed the ladder to the loft over the
+front part.  There we were safe as could be, we could see to the
+road, hear almost everything said in the kitchen, and "eat our
+bites in peace," like Peter Justice told the Presiding Elder at
+the church trial that he wanted his wife to, the time he slapped
+her.  Before very long, they began calling us, and called, and
+called.  We hadn't an idea what they wanted, so we ate away.  We
+heard them first while I was holding over a back to let Leon
+taste kidney, and it made him blink when he got it good.
+
+"Well my soul!" he said.  "No wonder father didn't want to feed
+that to another man when mother isn't very well, and likes it! 
+No wonder!"
+
+Then he gave me a big bite of breast.  It was sort of dry and
+tasteless; I didn't like it.
+
+"Why, I think neck or back beats that all to pieces!" I said in
+surprise.
+
+"Fact is, they do!" said Leon.  "I guess the people who `wish to
+choose breast,' do it to get the biggest piece."
+
+I never had thought of it before, but of course that would be the
+reason.
+
+"Allow me, Sister Stanton," said Leon, holding out a piece of
+thigh.
+
+That was really chicken!  Then we went over the backs and picked
+out all the kidneys, and ate the little crusty places, and all
+the cake we could swallow; then Leon fixed up the bag the best he
+could, and set it inside an old cracked churn and put on the lid.
+
+He said that would do almost as well as the cellar, and the food
+would keep until to-morrow.  I wanted to slip down and put it in
+the Underground Station; but Leon said father must be spending a
+lot of money right now, and he might go there to get some, so
+that wouldn't be safe.  Then he cleaned my face, and I told him
+when he got his right, and we slipped from the back door, crossed
+the Lawton blackberry patch, and went to the house from the
+orchard.  Leon took an apple and broke it in two, and we went in
+eating as if we were starving.  When father asked us where in
+this world we had been, Leon told him we thought it would be so
+awful long before the fourth or fifth table, and we hadn't had
+much breakfast, and we were so hungry we went and hunted
+something to eat.
+
+"If you'd only held your horses a minute," said father; "they
+were calling you to take places at the bride's table."
+
+Well for land's sake!  Our mouths dropped open until it's a
+wonder the cake and chicken didn't show, and we never said a
+word.  There didn't seem to be anything to say, for Leon loved to
+be with grown folks, and to have eaten at the bride's table would
+have been the biggest thing that ever happened to me.  At last,
+when I could speak, I asked who had taken our places, and bless
+your heart if it wasn't that mealy-faced little sister of
+Peter's, and one of the aunts from Ohio.  They had finished, and
+Sally was upstairs putting on her travelling dress, while the
+guests were eating, when I heard Laddie ask the Princess to ride
+with him and Sally's other friends, who were going to escort her
+to the depot.
+
+"You'll want all your horses.  What could I ride?"
+
+"If I find you a good horse and saddle will you go?"
+
+"I will.  I think it would be fine sport."
+
+Laddie turned and went from sight that minute.  The Princess
+laughed and kept on making friends with every one, helping wait
+on people, thinking of nice things to do, and just as the
+carriage was at the gate for father and mother, and Sally and
+Peter, and every one else was untying their horses to ride in the
+procession to the village, from where I was standing on the
+mounting block I saw something coming down the Little Hill.  I
+took one look, ran to the Princess, and almost dragged her.
+
+Up raced Laddie, his face bright, his eyes snapping with fun.  He
+rode Flos, was leading the Princess' horse Maud, and carrying a
+big bundle under his arm.  He leaped from the saddle and fastened
+both horses.
+
+"Gracious Heaven!  What have you done?" gasped the Princess.
+
+"Brought your mount," said Laddie, quite as if he were used to
+going to Pryors' after the sausage grinder or the grain sacks. 
+But the Princess was pale and trembling.  She stepped so close
+she touched him, and he immediately got a little closer.  You
+couldn't get ahead of Laddie, and he didn't seem to care who saw,
+and neither did she.
+
+"Tell me exactly what occurred," she said, just as father does
+when he means to whale us completely.
+
+"I rapped at the front door," said Laddie.
+
+"And who opened it?" cried the Princess.
+
+"Your father!"
+
+"My father?"
+
+"Yes, your father!" said Laddie.  "And because I was in such a
+hurry, I didn't wait for him to speak.  I said:  `Good morning,
+Mr. Pryor.  I'm one of the Stanton boys, and I came for Miss
+Pryor's mount and habit.  All the young people who are on
+horseback are going to ride an escort to the village, around my
+sister's bridal carriage, and Miss Pryor thinks she would enjoy
+going.  Please excuse such haste, but we only this minute made
+the plan, and the train won't wait.'"
+
+"And he?"
+
+"He said:  `Surely!  Hold one minute.'  I stood on the step and
+waited, and I could hear him give the order to some one to get
+your riding habit quickly, and then he blew a shrill whistle, and
+your horse was at the gate the fastest of anything I ever saw."
+
+"Did he do or say----"
+
+"Nothing about `clods, and clowns, and grossness!'  Every other
+word he spoke was when I said, `Thank you, and good morning,' and
+was turning away.  He asked:  `Did Miss Pryor say whether she
+preferred to ride home, or shall I escort her in the carriage?'"
+
+"`She did not,' I answered.  `The plan was so sudden she had no
+time to think that far.  But since she will have her horse and
+habit, why not allow my father to escort her?'  So you see, I'm
+going to take you home," exulted Laddie.
+
+"But you told him your FATHER," said the Princess.
+
+"And thereby created the urgent necessity," said Laddie with a
+flourish, "for speaking to him again, and telling him that my
+father had visitors from Ohio, and couldn't leave them.  We will
+get all the fun from the day that we can; but before dusk, too
+early for them to have any cause for cavil, `the gross country
+clod' is going to take you home!"
+
+One at a time, Laddie pounded those last words into the hitching
+post, with his doubled fist.
+
+"Suppose he sets the dogs on you!  You know he keeps two dreadful
+ones."
+
+Laddie just roared.  He leaned closer.
+
+"Beaucheous Lady," he said, "I have fed those same dogs and
+rubbed their ears so many nights lately, he'll get the surprise
+of his life if he tries that."
+
+The Princess drew away and stared at Laddie the funniest.
+
+"On my life!" she said at last.  "Well for a country clod----!"
+
+Then she turned with the habit bundle, and ran into the house. 
+Father and mother came from the front door arm in arm and walked
+to the carriage, and Sally and Peter followed.  My, but they
+looked fine!  The Princess had gone to the garden and gathered
+flowers and lined all the children in rows down each side of the
+walk.  They were loaded with blooms to throw at Sally; but when
+she came out, in her beautiful gray poplin travelling dress,
+trimmed in brown ribbon, the same shade as her curls, her face
+all pink, her eyes shining, and the ties of her little brown
+bonnet waving to her waist, she was so perfectly beautiful, every
+single child watched her open mouthed, gripped its flowers, and
+forgot to throw them at all.
+
+And this you scarcely will believe after what she had said the
+day she made her list, and when all of us knew her heart was all
+torn up, Sally just swept along smiling at every one and calling
+"good-bye" to those who had no way to ride to the village, as if
+leaving didn't amount to much.  At the carriage, a little white,
+but still smiling, she turned and took one long look at
+everything, and then she got in and called for me, right out loud
+before every one, so I got to hold up my head as high as it would
+go, and step in too, and ride all the way to Groveville between
+her and Peter, and instead of holding his hand, she held mine,
+just gripped it tight.  She gripped so hard she squeezed all the
+soreness at her from my heart, and when she kissed me good-bye
+the very last of all, I whispered in her ear that I wouldn't ever
+be angry any more, and I wasn't, because after she had explained
+I saw how it had been.  It wasn't ME she didn't want; it was just
+no baby.
+
+After our carriage came Peter's people, then one father borrowed
+for the Ohio relatives, then the other children, and all the
+neighbours followed, and when we reached the high hill where you
+turn beside the woods, I saw father gather up the lines and brace
+himself, for Ned and Jo were what he called "mettlesome."  "Then
+came a burst of thunder sound," as it says in "Casablanca," and
+the horseback riders came sweeping around us, Laddie and the
+Princess leading.  These two rode ahead of us, and the others
+lined three deep on either side, and the next carriage dropped
+back and let them close in behind, so Sally and Peter were "in
+the midst thereof."  Instead of throwing old shoes, as always had
+been done, the Princess coaxed them to throw rice and roses, and
+every other flower pulled from the bouquets at home, and from the
+gardens we had passed.  Every one was out watching us go by, and
+when William Justus rode beside the fences crying, "Flowers for
+the bride!  Give us flowers for the bride!" some of the women
+were so excited they pulled things up by the roots and gave him
+armloads, and he rode ahead and supplied Laddie and the Princess,
+and they kept scattering them in the road until every foot of the
+way to Groveville was covered with flowers, "the fair young
+flowers that lately sprang and stood."  He even made side-cuts
+into swampy places and gathered armloads of those perfectly
+lovely, fringy blue gentians, caught up, and filled the carriage
+and scattered them in a wicked way, because you should only take
+a few of those rare, late flowers that only grow from seed.
+
+Sally looked just as if she had come into her own and was made
+for it; I never did see her look so pretty, but Peter sweated and
+acted awful silly.  Father had a time with the team.  Ned and Jo
+became excited and just ranted.  They simply danced.  Laddie had
+braided their manes and tails, and they waved like silken floss
+in the sunshine, and the carriage was freshly washed and the
+patent leather and brass shone, and we rode flower-covered. 
+Ahead, Laddie and the Princess fairly tried themselves.  She
+hadn't put on her hat or habit after all.  When Laddie told her
+they were going to lead, she said:  "Very well!  Then I shall go
+as I am.  The dress makes no difference.  It's the first time
+I've had a chance to spoil one since I left England."
+
+When the other girls saw what she was going to do, nearly every
+one of them left off their hats and riding skirts.  Every family
+had saddle horses those days, and when the riders came racing up
+they looked like flying flowers, they were all laughing, bloom
+ladened, singing and calling jokes.  Ahead, Laddie and the
+Princess just plain showed off.  Her horse came from England with
+them, and Laddie said it had Arab blood in it, like the one in
+the Fourth Reader poem, "Fret not to roam the desert now, With
+all thy winged speed," and the Princess loved her horse more than
+that man did his.  She said she'd starve before she'd sell it,
+and if her family were starving, she'd go to work and earn food
+for them, and keep her horse.  Laddie's was a Kentucky
+thoroughbred he'd saved money for years to buy; and he took a
+young one and trained it himself, almost like a circus horse. 
+Both of them COULD ride; so that day they did.  They ran those
+horses neck and neck, right up the hill approaching Groveville,
+until they were almost from sight, then they whirled and came
+sweeping back fast as the wind.  The Princess' eyes were like
+dead coals, and her black curls streamed, the thin silk dress
+wrapped tight around her and waved back like a gossamer web such
+as spiders spin in October.  Laddie's hair was blowing, his
+cheeks and eyes were bright, and with one eye on the Princess--
+she didn't need it--and one on the road, he cut curves, turned,
+wheeled, and raced, and as he rode, so did she.
+
+"Will they break their foolish necks?" wailed mother.
+
+"They are the handsomest couple I ever have seen in my life!"
+said father.
+
+"Yes, and you two watch out, or you'll strike trouble right
+there," said Sally, leaning forward.
+
+I gave her an awful nudge.  It made me so happy I could have
+screamed to see them flying away together like that.
+
+"Well, if that girl represents trouble," said father, "God knows
+it never before came in such charming guise."
+
+"You can trust a man to forget his God and his immortal soul if a
+sufficiently beautiful woman comes along," said my mother dryly,
+and all of them laughed.
+
+She didn't mean that to be funny, though.  You could always tell
+by the set of her lips and the light in her eyes.
+
+Just this side of Groveville we passed a man on horseback.  He
+took off his hat and drew his horse to one side when Laddie and
+the Princess rode toward him.  He had a big roll of papers under
+his arm, to show that he had been for his mail.  But I knew, so
+did Laddie and the Princess, that he had been compelled to saddle
+and ride like mad, to reach town and come that far back in time
+to watch us pass; for it was the Princess' father, and WATCH was
+exactly what he was doing; he wanted to see for himself.  Laddie
+and the Princess rode straight at him, neck and neck, and then
+both of them made their horses drop on their knees and they waved
+a salute, and then they were up and away.  Of course father and
+mother saw, so mother bowed, and father waved his whip as we
+passed.  He sat there like he'd turned the same on horseback as
+Sabethany had in her coffin; but he had to see almost a mile of
+us driving our best horses and carriages, wearing our wedding
+garments and fine raiment, and all that "cavalcade," father
+called it, of young, reckless riders.  You'd have thought if
+there were a hint of a smile in his whole being it would have
+shown when Sally leaned from the carriage to let him see that her
+face and clothes were as good as need be and smiled a lovely
+smile on him, and threw him a rose.  He did leave his hat off and
+bow low, and then Shelley, always the very dickens for daring,
+rode right up to him and laughed in his face, and she leaned and
+thrust a flower into his bony hands; you would have thought he
+would have been simply forced to smile then, but he looked far
+more as if he would tumble over and roll from the saddle.  My
+heart ached for a man in trouble like that.  I asked the Lord to
+preserve us from secrets we couldn't tell the neighbours!
+
+At the station there wasn't a thing those young people didn't do.
+
+They tied flowers and ribbons all over Sally's satchel and trunk.
+
+They sowed rice as if it were seeding time in a wheatfield.  They
+formed a circle around Sally and Peter and as mushy as ever they
+could they sang, "As sure as the grass grows around the stump,
+You are my darling sugar lump," while they danced.  They just
+smiled all the time no matter what was done to them.  Some of it
+made me angry, but I suppose to be pleasant was the right way. 
+Sally was strong on always doing the right thing, so she just
+laughed, and so did all of us.  Going home it was wilder yet, for
+all of them raced and showed how they could ride.
+
+At the house people were hungry again, so the table was set and
+they ate up every scrap in sight, and Leon and I ate with them
+that time and saved ours.  Then one by one the carriages, spring
+wagons, and horseback riders went away, all the people saying
+Sally was the loveliest bride, and hers had been the prettiest
+wedding they'd ever seen, and the most good things to eat, and
+Laddie and the Princess went with them.  When the last one was
+gone, and only the relatives from Ohio were left, mother pitched
+on the bed, gripped her hands and cried as if she'd go to pieces,
+and father cried too, and all of us, even Mrs. Freshett, who
+stayed to wash up the dishes.  She was so tickled to be there,
+and see, and help, that mother had hard work to keep her from
+washing the linen that same night.  She did finish the last dish,
+scrub the kitchen floor, black the stove, and pack all the
+borrowed china in tubs, ready to be taken home, and things like
+that.  Mother said it was a burning shame for any neighbourhood
+to let a woman get so starved out and lonesome she'd act that
+way.  She said enough was enough, and when Mrs. Freshett had
+cooked all day, and washed dishes until the last skillet was in
+place, she had done as much as any neighbour ought to do, and the
+other things she went on and did were a rebuke to us.
+
+I felt sore, weepy, and tired out.  It made me sick to think of
+the sage bag in the cracked churn, so I climbed my very own
+catalpa tree in the corner, watched up the road for Laddie, and
+thought things over.  If I ever get married I want a dress, and a
+wedding exactly like that, but I would like a man quite different
+from Peter; like Laddie would suit me better.  When he rode under
+the tree, I dropped from a limb into his arms, and went with him
+to the barn.  He asked me what was going on at the house, and I
+told him about Mrs. Freshett being a rebuke to us; and Laddie
+said she was, and he didn't believe one word against her.  When I
+told him mother was in bed crying like anything, he said:  "I
+knew that had to come when she kept up so bravely at the station.
+
+Thank the Lord, she showed her breeding by holding in until she
+got where she had a right to cry if she pleased."
+
+Then I whispered for fear Leon might be around:  "Did he set the
+dogs on you?"
+
+"He did not," said Laddie, laughing softly.
+
+"Did he call you names again?"
+
+"He did!" said Laddie, "but I started it.  You see, when we got
+there, Thomas was raking the grass and he came to take the
+Princess' horse.  Her father was reading on a bench under a tree.
+
+I helped her down, and walked with her to the door and said good-
+bye, and thanked her for the pleasure she had added to the day
+for us, loudly enough that he could hear; then I went over to him
+and said:  `Good evening, Mr. Pryor.  If my father knew anything
+about it, he would very much regret that company from Ohio
+detained him and compelled me to escort your daughter home.  He
+would greatly have enjoyed the privilege, but I honestly believe
+that I appreciated it far more than he could.'"
+
+"Oh Laddie, what did he say?"
+
+"He arose and glared at me, and choked on it, and he tried
+several times, until I thought the clods were going to fly again,
+but at last he just spluttered:  `You blathering rascal, you!' 
+That was such a compliment compared with what I thought he was
+going to say that I had to laugh.  He tried, but he couldn't keep
+from smiling himself, and then I said:  `Please think it over,
+Mr. Pryor, and if you find that Miss Pryor has had an agreeable,
+entertaining day, won't you give your consent for her to come
+among us again?  Won't you allow me to come here, if it can be
+arranged in such a way that I intrude on no one?'"
+
+"Oh Laddie!"
+
+"He exploded in a kind of a snarl that meant, I'll see you in the
+Bad Place first.  So I said to him:  `Thank you very much for to-
+day, anyway.  I'm sure Miss Pryor has enjoyed this day, and it
+has been the happiest of my life--one to be remembered always. 
+Of course I won't come here if I am unwelcome, but I am in honour
+bound to tell you that I intend to meet your daughter elsewhere,
+whenever I possibly can.  I thought it would be a better way for
+you to know and have us where you could see what was going on, if
+you chose, than for us to meet without your knowledge."
+
+"Oh Laddie," I wailed, "now you've gone and ruined everything!"
+
+"Not so bad as that, Little Sister," laughed Laddie.  "Not half
+so bad!  He exploded in another growl, and he shook his walking
+stick at me, and he said--guess what he said."
+
+"That he would kill you," I panted, clinging to him.
+
+"Right!" said Laddie.  "You have it exactly.  He said:  `Young
+man, I'll brain you with my walking stick if ever I meet you
+anywhere with my daughter, when you have not come to her home and
+taken her with my permission.'"
+
+"What!" I stammered.  "What!  Oh Laddie, say it over!  Does it
+mean----?"
+
+"It means," said Laddie, squeezing me until I was near losing my
+breath, "it means, Little Sister, that I shall march to his door
+and ask him squarely, and if it is anywhere the Princess wants to
+go, I shall take her."
+
+"Like, `See the conquering hero comes?'"
+
+"Exactly!" laughed Laddie.
+
+"What will mother say?"
+
+"She hasn't made up her mind yet," answered Laddie.
+
+"Do you mean----?" I gasped again.
+
+"Of course!" said Laddie.  "I wasn't going to let a girl get far
+ahead of me.  The minute I knew she had told her mother, I told
+mine the very first chance."
+
+"Mother knows that you feel about the Princess as father does
+about her?"
+
+"Mother knows," answered Laddie, "and so does father.  I told
+both of them."
+
+Both of them knew!  And it hadn't made enough difference that any
+one living right with them every day could have told it.  Time
+and work will be needed to understand grown people.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The Shropshire and the Crusader
+
+        "For, among the rich and gay,
+            Fine, and grand, and decked in laces,
+         None appear more glad then they,
+            With happier hearts, or happier faces."
+
+Every one told mother for a week before the wedding that she
+would be sick when it was over, and sure enough she was.  She had
+been on her feet too much, and had so many things to think about,
+and there had been such a dreadful amount of work for her and
+Candace, even after all the neighbours helped, that she was sick
+in bed and we couldn't find a thing she could eat, until she was
+almost wild with hunger and father seemed as if he couldn't
+possibly bear it a day longer.
+
+After Candace had tried everything she could think of, I went up
+and talked it over with Sarah Hood, and she came down, pretending
+she happened in, and she tried thickened milk, toast and mulled
+buttermilk; she kept trying for two days before she gave up. 
+Candace thought of new things, and Mrs. Freshett came and made
+all the sick dishes she knew, but mother couldn't even taste
+them; so we were pretty blue, and we nearly starved ourselves,
+for how could we sit and eat everything you could mention, and
+mother lying there, almost crying with hunger?
+
+Saturday morning I was hanging around her room hoping maybe she
+could think of some least little thing I could do for her, even
+if no more than to bring a glass of water, or a late rose to lay
+on her pillow; it would be better than not being able to do
+anything at all.  After a while she opened her eyes and looked at
+me, and I scarcely knew her.  She smiled the bravest she could
+and said:  "Sorry for mother, dear?"
+
+I nodded.  I couldn't say much, and she tried harder than ever to
+be cheerful and asked:  "What are you planning to do to-day?"
+
+"If you can't think of one thing I can do for you, guess I'll go
+fishing," I said.
+
+Her eyes grew brighter and she seemed half interested.
+
+"Why, Little Sister," she said, "if you can catch some of those
+fish like you do sometimes, I believe I could eat one of them."
+
+I never had such a be-hanged time getting started.  I slipped
+from the room, and never told a soul even where I was going.  I
+fell over the shovel and couldn't find anything quick enough but
+my pocket to put the worms in, and I forgot my stringer.  At
+last, when I raced down the hill to the creek and climbed over
+the water of the deep place, on the roots of the Pete Billings
+yowling tree, I had only six worms, my apple sucker pole, my
+cotton cord line, and bent pin hook.  I put the first worm on
+carefully, and if ever I prayed!  Sometimes it was hard to
+understand about this praying business.  My mother was the best
+and most beautiful woman who ever lived.  She was clean, and
+good, and always helped "the poor and needy who cluster round
+your door," like it says in the poetry piece, and there never
+could have been a reason why God would want a woman to suffer
+herself, when she went flying on horseback even dark nights
+through rain or snow, to doctor other people's pain, and when she
+gave away things like she did--why, I've seen her take a big
+piece of meat from the barrel, and a sack of meal, and heaps of
+apples and potatoes to carry to Mandy Thomas--when she gave away
+food by the wagonload at a time, God couldn't have WANTED her to
+be hungry, and yet she WAS that very minute almost crying for
+food; and I prayed, oh how I did pray! and a sneaking old back-
+ended crayfish took my very first worm.  I just looked at the sky
+and said:  "Well, when it's for a sick woman, can't You do any
+better than that?"
+
+I suppose I shouldn't have said it, but if it had been your
+mother, how would you have felt?  I pinched the next worm in two,
+so if a crayfish took that, it wouldn't get but half.  I lay down
+across the roots and pulled my bonnet far over my face and tried
+to see to the bottom.  I read in school the other day:
+
+
+            "And by those little rings on the water I know
+             The fishes are merrily swimming below."
+
+
+There were no rings on the water, but after a while I saw some
+fish darting around, only they didn't seem to be hungry; for they
+would come right up and nibble a tiny bit at my worm, but they
+wouldn't swallow it.  Then one did, so I jerked with all my
+might, jerked so hard the fish and worm both flew off, and I had
+only the hook left.  I put on the other half and tried again.  I
+prayed straight along, but the tears would come that time, and
+the prayer was no powerful effort like Brother Hastings would
+have made; it was little torn up pieces mostly:  "O Lord, please
+do make only one fish bite!"  At last one did bite good, so I
+swung carefully that time, and landed it on the grass, but it was
+so little and it hit a stone and was killed.  I had no stringer
+to put it back in the water to keep cool, and the sun was hot
+that day, like times in the fall.  Stretched on the roots, with
+it shining on my back, and striking the water and coming up from
+below, I dripped with heat and excitement.
+
+I threw that one away, put on another worm, and a big turtle took
+it, the hook, and broke my line, and almost pulled me in.  I
+wouldn't have let go if it had, for I just had to have a fish. 
+There was no help from the Lord in that, so I quit praying, only
+what I said when I didn't know it.  Father said man was born a
+praying animal, and no matter how wicked he was, if he had an
+accident, or saw he had just got to die, he cried aloud to the
+Lord for help and mercy before he knew what he was doing.
+
+I could hear the roosters in the barnyard, the turkey gobbler,
+and the old ganders screamed once in a while, and sometimes a
+bird sang a skimpy little fall song; nothing like spring, except
+the killdeers and larks; they were always good to hear--and then
+the dinner bell rang.  I wished I had been where I couldn't have
+heard that, because I didn't intend going home until I had a fish
+that would do for mother if I stayed until night.  If the best
+one in the family had to starve, we might as well all go
+together; but I wouldn't have known how hungry I was, if the bell
+hadn't rung and told me the others were eating.  So I bent
+another pin and tried again.  I lost the next worm without
+knowing how, and then I turned baby and cried right out loud.  I
+was so thirsty, the salty tears running down my cheeks tasted
+good, and doing something besides fishing sort of rested me; so I
+looked around and up at the sky, wiped my face on the skirt of my
+sunbonnet, and put on another worm.  I had only one more left,
+and I began to wonder if I could wade in and catch a fish by
+hand; I did teeny ones sometimes, but I knew the water there was
+far above my head, for I had measured it often with the pole; it
+wouldn't do to try that; instead of helping mother any, a funeral
+would kill her, too, so I fell back on the Crusaders, and tried
+again.
+
+Strange how thinking about them helped.  I pretended I was
+fighting my way to the Holy City, and this was the Jordan just
+where it met the sea, and I had to catch enough fish to last me
+during the pilgrimage west or I'd never reach Jerusalem to bring
+home a shell for the Stanton crest.  I pretended so hard, that I
+got braver and stronger, and asked the Lord more like there was
+some chance of being heard.  All at once there was a jerk that
+almost pulled me in, so I jerked too, and a big fish flew over my
+head and hit the bank behind me with a thump.  Of course by a big
+fish I don't mean a red horse so long as my arm, like the boys
+bring from the river; I mean the biggest fish I ever caught with
+a pin in our creek.  It looked like the whale that swallowed
+Jonah, as it went over my head.  I laid the pole across the
+roots, jumped up and turned, and I had to grab the stump to keep
+from falling in the water and dying.  There lay the fish, the
+biggest one I ever had seen, but it was flopping wildly, and it
+wasn't a foot from a hole in the grass where a muskrat had
+burrowed through.  If it gave one flop that way, it would slide
+down the hole straight back into the water; and between me and
+the fish stood our cross old Shropshire ram.  I always looked to
+see if the sheep were in the meadow before I went to the creek,
+but that morning I had been so crazy to get something for mother
+to eat, I never once thought of them--and there it stood!
+
+That ram hadn't been cross at first, and father said it never
+would be if treated right, and not teased, and if it were, there
+would be trouble for all of us.  I was having more than my share
+that minute, and it bothered me a lot almost every day.  I never
+dared enter a field any more if it were there, and now it was
+stamping up and down the bank, shaking its head, and trying to
+get me; with one flop the fish went ALMOST in the hole, and the
+next a little away from it.  Everything put together, I thought I
+couldn't stand it.  I never wanted anything as I wanted that
+fish, and I never hated anything as I hated that sheep.  It
+wasn't the sheep's fault either; Leon teased it on purpose, just
+to see it chase Polly Martin; but that was more her doings than
+his.
+
+She was a widow and she crossed our front meadow going to her
+sister's.  She had two boys big as Laddie, and three girls, and
+father said they lived like "the lilies of the field; they toiled
+not, neither did they spin."  They never looked really hungry or
+freezing, but they never plowed, or planted, they had no cattle
+or pigs or chickens, only a little corn for meal, and some
+cabbage, and wild things they shot for meat, and coons to trade
+the skins for more powder and lead--bet they ate the coons--never
+any new clothes, never clean, they or their house.  Once when
+father and mother were driving past, they saw Polly at the well
+and they stopped for politeness sake to ask how she was, like
+they always did with every one.  Polly had a tin cup of water and
+was sopping at her neck with a carpet rag, and when mother asked,
+"How are you, Mrs. Martin?" she answered:  "Oh I ain't very well
+this spring; I gest I got the go-backs!"
+
+Mother said Polly looked as if she'd been born with the "go-
+backs," and had given them to all her children, her home, garden,
+fields, and even the FENCES.  We hadn't a particle of patience
+with such people.  When you are lazy like that it is very
+probable that you'll live to see the day when your children will
+peep through the fence cracks and cry for bread.  I have seen
+those Martin children come mighty near doing it when the rest of
+us opened our dinner baskets at school; and if mother hadn't
+always put in enough so that we could divide, I bet they would. 
+If Polly Martin had walked up as if she were alive, and had been
+washed and neat, and going somewhere to do some one good, Leon
+never would have dreamed of such a thing as training the
+Shropshire to bunt her.  She was so long and skinny, always wore
+a ragged shawl over her head, a floppy old dress that the wind
+whipped out behind, and when she came to the creek, she sat
+astride the foot log, and hunched along with her hands; that
+tickled the boys so, Leon began teasing the sheep on purpose to
+make it get her.  But inasmuch as she saw fit to go abroad
+looking so funny, that any one could see she'd be a perfect
+circus if she were chased, I didn't feel that it was Leon's
+fault.  If, like the little busy bee, she had "improved each
+shining hour," he never would have done it.  Seems to me, she
+brought the trouble on her own head.
+
+First, Leon ran at the Shropshire and then jumped aside; but soon
+it grew so strong and quick he couldn't manage that, so he put
+his hat on a stick and poked it back and forth through a fence
+crack, and that made the ram raving mad.  At last it would butt
+the fence until it would knock itself down, and if he dangled the
+hat again, get right up and do it over.  Father never caught
+Leon, so he couldn't understand what made the sheep so dreadfully
+cross, because he had thought it was quite peaceable when he
+bought it.  The first time it got after Polly, she threw her
+shawl over its head, pulled up her skirts, and Leon said she hit
+just eleven high places crossing an eighty-acre field; she came
+to the house crying, and father had to go after her shawl, and
+mother gave her a roll of butter and a cherry pie to comfort her.
+
+The Shropshire never really got Polly, but any one could easily
+see what it would do to me if I dared step around that stump, and
+it was dancing and panting to begin.  If whoever wrote that
+"Gentle Sheep, pray tell me why," piece ever had seen a sheep
+acting like that, it wouldn't have been in the books; at least I
+think it wouldn't, but one can't be sure.  He proved that he
+didn't know much about anything outdoors or he wouldn't have said
+that sheep were "eating grass and daisies white, from the morning
+till the night," when daisies are bitter as gall.
+
+Flop! went the fish, and its tail touched the edge of the hole. 
+Then I turned around and picked up the pole.  I put my sunbonnet
+over the big end of it, and poked it at the ram, and drew it back
+as Leon did his hat.  One more jump and mother's fish would be
+gone.  I stood on the roots and waved my bonnet.  The sheep
+lowered its head and came at it with a rush.  I drew back the
+pole, and the sheep's forefeet slid over the edge, and it braced
+and began to work to keep from going in.  The fish gave a big
+flop and went down the hole.  Then I turned Crusader and began to
+fight, and I didn't care if I were whipped black and blue, I
+meant to finish that old black-faced Shropshire.  I set the pole
+on the back of its neck and pushed with all my might, and I got
+it in, too.  My, but it made a splash!  It wasn't much good at
+swimming either, and it had no chance, for I stood on the roots
+and pushed it down, and hit it over the nose with all my might,
+and I didn't care how far it came on the cars, or how much money
+it cost, it never would chase me, and make me lose my fish again.
+
+I didn't hear him until he splashed under the roots and then I
+was so mad I didn't see that it was Laddie; I only knew that it
+was someone who was going to help out that miserable ram, so I
+struck with all my might, the sheep when I could hit it, if not,
+the man.
+
+"You little demon, stop!" cried Laddie.
+
+I got in a good one right on the ram's nose.  Then Laddie dropped
+the sheep and twisted the fish pole from my fingers, and I pushed
+him as hard as I could, but he was too strong.  He lifted the
+sheep, pulled it to the bank, and rolled it, worked its jaws, and
+squeezed water from it, and worked and worked.
+
+"I guess you've killed it!" he said at last.
+
+"Goody!" I shouted.  "Goody!  Oh but I am glad it's dead!"
+
+"What on earth has turned you to a fiend?" asked Laddie,
+beginning work on the sheep again.
+
+"That ram!" I said.  "Ever since Leon made it cross so it would
+chase Polly Martin, it's got me oftener than her.  I can't go
+anywhere for it, and to-day it made me lose a big fish, and
+mother is waiting.  She thought maybe she could eat some."
+
+Then I roared; bet I sounded like Bashan's bull.
+
+"Dear Lord!" said Laddie dropping the sheep and taking me in his
+wet arms.  "Tell me, Biddy!  Tell me how it is."
+
+Then I forgot I was a Crusader, and told him all about it as well
+as I could for choking, and when I finished he bathed my hot
+face, and helped me from the roots.  Then he went and looked down
+the hole I showed him and he cried out quicklike, and threw
+himself on the grass, and in a second up came the fish.  Some one
+had rolled a big stone in the hole, so the fish was all right,
+not even dead yet, and Laddie said it was the biggest one he ever
+had seen taken from the creek.  Then he said if I'd forgive him
+and all our family, for spoiling the kind of a life I had a
+perfect right to lead, and if I'd run to the house and get a big
+bottle from the medicine case quick, he would see to it that some
+place was fixed for that sheep where it would never bother me
+again.  So I took the fish and ran as fast as I could, but I sent
+May back with the bottle, and did the scaling myself.  No one at
+our house could do it better, for Laddie taught me the right way
+long ago, when I was small, and I'd done it hundreds of times.
+
+Then I went to Candace and she put a little bit of butter and a
+speck of lard in a skillet, and cooked the fish brown.  She made
+a slice of toast and boiled a cup of water and carried it to the
+door; then she went in and set the table beside the bed, and I
+took in the tray, and didn't spill a drop.  Mother never said a
+word; she just reached out and broke off a tiny speck and nibbled
+it, and it stayed; she tried a little bigger piece, and another,
+and she said:  "Take out the bones, Candace!"  She ate every
+scrap of that fish like the hungriest traveller who ever came to
+our door, and the toast, and drank the hot water.  Then she went
+into a long sleep and all of us walked tiptoe, and when she waked
+up she was better, and in a few days she could sit in her chair
+again, and she began getting Shelley ready to go to music school.
+
+I have to tell you the rest, too.  Laddie made the ram come
+alive, and father sold it the next day for more than he paid for
+it.  He said he hoped I'd forgive him for not having seen how it
+had been bothering me, and that he never would have had it on the
+place a day if he'd known.  The next time he went to town he
+bought me a truly little cane rod, a real fishing line, several
+hooks, and a red bobber too lovely to put into the water.  I
+thought I was a great person from the fuss all of them made over
+me, until I noticed Laddie shrug his shoulders, and reach back
+and rub one, and then I remembered.
+
+I went flying, and thank goodness! he held out his arms.
+
+"Oh Laddie!  I never did it!" I cried.  "I never, never did!  I
+couldn't!  Laddie, I love you best of any one; you know I do!"
+
+"Of course you didn't!" said Laddie.  "My Little Sister wasn't
+anywhere around when that happened.  That was a poor little girl
+I never saw before, and she was in such trouble she didn't know
+WHAT she was doing.  And I hope I'll never see her again," he
+ended, twisting his shoulder.  But he kissed me and made it all
+right, and really I didn't do that; I just simply couldn't have
+struck Laddie.
+
+Marrying off Sally was little worse than getting Shelley ready
+for school.  She had to have three suits of everything, and a new
+dress of each kind, and three hats; her trunk wouldn't hold all
+there was to put in it; and father said he never could pay the
+bills.  He had promised her to go, and he didn't know what in
+this world to do; because he never had borrowed money in his
+life, and he couldn't begin; for if he died suddenly, that would
+leave mother in debt, and they might take the land from her. 
+That meant he'd spent what he had in the bank on Sally's wedding,
+and all that was in the Underground Station, or maybe the Station
+money wasn't his.
+
+Just when he was awfully bothered, mother said to never mind, she
+believed she could fix it.  She sent all of us into the orchard
+to pick the fine apples that didn't keep well, and father made
+three trips to town to sell them.  She had big jars of lard she
+wouldn't need before butchering time came again, and she sold
+dried apples, peaches, and raspberries from last year.  She got
+lots of money for barrels of feathers she'd saved to improve her
+feather beds and pillows; she said she would see to that later. 
+Father was so tickled to get the money to help him out that he
+said he'd get her a pair of those wonderful new blue geese like
+Pryors had, that every one stopped to look at.  When there was
+not quite enough yet, from somewhere mother brought out money
+that she'd saved for a long time, from butter and eggs, and
+chickens, and turkeys, and fruit and lard, and things that
+belonged to her.  Father hated to use it the worst way, but she
+said she'd saved it for an emergency, and now seemed to be the
+time.
+
+She said if the child really had talent, she should be about
+developing it, and while there would be many who would have far
+finer things than Shelley, still she meant her to have enough
+that she wouldn't be the worst looking one, and so ashamed she
+couldn't keep her mind on her work.  Father said, with her face
+it didn't make any difference what she wore, and mother said that
+was just like a man; it made all the difference in the world what
+a girl wore.  Father said maybe it did to the girl, and other
+women; what he meant was that it made none to a man.  Mother said
+the chief aim and end of a girl's life was not wrapped up in a
+man; and father said maybe not with some girls, but it would be
+with Shelley: she was too pretty to escape.  I do wonder if I'm
+going to be too pretty to escape, when I put on long dresses. 
+Sometimes I look in the glass to see if it's coming, but I don't
+suppose it's any use.  Mother says you can't tell a thing at the
+growing age about how a girl is going to look at eighteen.
+
+When everything was almost ready, Leon came in one day and said: 
+"Shelley, what about improving your hair?  Have you tried your
+wild grape sap yet?"
+
+Shelley said:  "Why, goodness me!  We've been so busy getting
+Sally married, and my clothes made, I forgot all about that. 
+Have you noticed the crock in passing?  Is there anything in it?"
+
+"It was about half full, once when I went by," said Leon. "I
+haven't seen it lately."
+
+"Do please be a dear and look, when you go after the cows this
+evening," said Shelley.  "If there's anything in it, bring it
+up."
+
+            "Do it yourself for want of me,
+             The boy replied quite manfully,"
+
+
+quoted Leon from "The Little Lord and the Farmer."  He was always
+teasing.
+
+"I think you're mean as dirt if you don t bring it," said
+Shelley.
+
+Leon grinned and you should have heard the nasty, teasing way he
+said more of that same piece:
+
+            "Anger and pride are both unwise,
+             Vinegar never catches flies----"
+
+
+I wondered she didn't slap him.  You could see she wanted to.  "I
+can get it myself," she said angrily.
+
+"What will you give me to bring it?" asked Leon, who never missed
+a chance to make a bargain.
+
+"My grateful thanks.  Are they not a proper reward?" asked
+Shelley.
+
+"Thanks your foot!" said Leon.  "Will you bring something pretty
+from Chicago for Susie Fall's Christmas present?"
+
+Every one laughed, but Leon never cared.  He liked Susie best of
+any of the girls, and he wanted every one to know it.  He went
+straight to her whenever he had a chance, and he'd already told
+her mother to keep all the other boys away, because he meant to
+marry her when he grew up, and Widow Fall said that was fair
+enough, and she'd save her for him.  So Shelley said she would
+get him something for Susie, and Leon brought the crock.  Shelley
+looked at it sort of dubious-like, tipped it, and stared at the
+dirt settled in the bottom, and then stuck in her finger and
+tasted it.  She looked at Leon with a queer grin and said: 
+"Smarty, smarty, think you're smart!"  She threw the creek water
+into the swill bucket.  No one said a word, but Leon looked much
+sillier than she did.  After he was gone I asked her if she would
+bring him a Christmas present for Susie NOW, and she said she
+ought to bring him a pretty glass bottle labelled perfume, with
+hartshorn in it, and she would, if she thought he'd smell it
+first.
+
+Shelley felt badly about leaving mother when she wasn't very
+well; but mother said it was all right, she had Candace to keep
+house and May and me, and father, and all of us to take care of
+her, and it would be best for Shelley to go now and work hard as
+she could, while she had the chance.  So one afternoon father
+took her trunk to the depot and bought the tickets and got the
+checks, and the next day Laddie drove to Groveville with father
+and Shelley, and she was gone.  Right at the last, she didn't
+seem to want to leave so badly, but all of them said she must. 
+Peter's cousin, who had gone last year, was to meet her, and have
+a room ready where she boarded if she could, and if she couldn't
+right away, then the first one who left, Shelley was to have the
+place, so they'd be together.
+
+There were eight of us left, counting Candace and Miss Amelia,
+and you wouldn't think a house with eight people living in it
+would be empty, but ours was.  Everything seemed to wilt.  The
+roses on the window blinds didn't look so bright as they had;
+mother said the only way she could get along was to keep right on
+working.  She helped Candace all she could, but she couldn't be
+on her feet very much, so she sat all day long and peeled peaches
+to dry, showed Candace how to jelly, preserve, and spice them,
+and peeled apples for butter and to dry, quantities more than we
+could use, but she said she always could sell such things, and
+with the bunch of us to educate yet, we'd need the money.
+
+When it grew cold enough to shut the doors, and have fire at
+night, first thing after supper all of us helped clear the table,
+then we took our slates and books and learned our lessons for the
+next day, and then father lined us against the wall, all in a row
+from Laddie down, and he pronounced words--easy ones that divided
+into syllables nicely, for me, harder for May, and so up until I
+might sit down.  For Laddie, May and Leon he used the geography,
+the Bible, Roland's history, the Christian Advocate, and the
+Agriculturist.  My, but he had them so they could spell!  After
+that, as memory tests, all of us recited our reading lesson for
+the next day, especially the poetry pieces.  I knew most of them,
+from hearing the big folks repeat them so often and practise the
+proper way to read them.  I could do "Rienzi's Address to the
+Romans," "Casablanca," "Gray's Elegy," or "Mark Antony's Speech,"
+but best of all, I liked "Lines to a Water-fowl."  When he was
+tired, if it were not bedtime yet, all of us, boys too, sewed
+rags for carpet and rugs.  Laddie braided corn husks for the
+kitchen and outside door mats, and they were pretty, and "very
+useful too," like the dog that got his head patted in McGuffey's
+Second.
+
+Then they picked the apples.  These had to be picked by hand,
+wrapped in soft paper, packed in barrels, and shipped to Fort
+Wayne.  Where they couldn't reach by hand, they stood on barrels
+or ladders, and used a long handled picker, so as not to bruise
+the fruit.  Laddie helped with everything through the day, worked
+at his books at night, and whenever he stepped outside he looked
+in the direction of Pryors'.  He climbed to the topmost limbs of
+the trees with a big basket, picked it full and let it down with
+a long piece of clothesline.  I loved to be in the orchard when
+they were working; there were plenty of summer apples to eat yet;
+it was fun to watch the men, and sometimes I could be useful by
+handing baskets or heaping up apples to be buried for us.
+
+One night father read about a man who had been hanged for killing
+another man, and they cut him down too soon, so he came alive,
+and they had to hang him over; and father got all worked up about
+it.  He said the man had suffered death the first time to "all
+intents and purposes," so that fulfilled the requirements of the
+law, and they were wrong when they hanged him again.  Laddie said
+it was a piece of bungling sure enough, but the law said a man
+must be "hanged by his neck until he was dead," and if he weren't
+dead, why, it was plain he hadn't fulfilled the requirements of
+the law, so they were forced to hang him again.  Father said that
+law was wrong; the man never should have been hanged in the first
+place.  They talked and argued until we were all excited about
+it, and the next evening after school Leon and I were helping
+pick apples, and when father and Laddie went to the barn with a
+load we sat down to rest and we thought about what they said.
+
+"Gee, that was tough on the man!" said Leon, "but I guess the law
+is all right.  Of course he wouldn't want to die, and twice over
+at that, but I don't suppose the man he killed liked to die
+either.  I think if you take a life, it's all right to give your
+own to pay for it."
+
+"Leon," I said, "some time when you are fighting Absalom Saunders
+or Lou Wicks, just awful, if you hit them too hard on some tender
+spot and kill them, would you want to die to pay for it?"
+
+"I wouldn't want to, but I guess I'd have to," said Leon. 
+"That's the law, and it's as good a way to make it as any.  But
+I'm not going to kill any one.  I've studied my physiology hard
+to find all the spots that will kill.  I never hit them behind
+the ear, or in the pit of the stomach; I just black their eyes,
+bloody their snoots, and swat them on the chin to finish off
+with."
+
+"Well, suppose they don't study their physiologies like you do,
+and hit YOU in the wrong place, and kill you, would you want THEM
+hanged by the neck until they were dead, to pay for it?"
+
+"I don't think I'd want anything if I were dead," he said.  "I
+wonder how it feels to die.  Now THAT man knew.  I'd like to be
+hanged enough to find out how it goes, and then come back, and
+brag about it.  I don't think it hurts much; I believe I'll try
+it."
+
+So Leon took the rope Laddie lowered the baskets with, and threw
+it over a big limb.  Then he rolled up a barrel and stood on it
+and put my sunbonnet on with the crown over his face, for a black
+cap, and made the rope into a slip noose over his head, and told
+me to stand back by the apple tree and hold the rope tight, until
+he said he was hanged enough.  Then he stepped from the barrel. 
+It jerked me toward him about a yard, as he came down smash! on
+his feet.  I held with all my might, but he was too heavy--and
+falling that way.  So he went to trying to fix some other plan,
+and I told him the sensible thing to do would be for him to hang
+me, because he'd be strong enough to hold me and I could tell him
+how it felt just as well.  So we fixed me up like we had him, and
+when Leon got the rope stretched, he wrapped it twice around the
+apple tree so it wouldn't jerk him as it had me, and when he said
+"Ready," I stepped from the barrel.  The last thing I heard was
+Leon telling me to say when I was hanged enough.  I was so heavy,
+the rope stretched, and I went down until it almost tore off my
+head, and I couldn't get a single breath, so of course I didn't
+tell him, and I couldn't get on the barrel, and my tongue went
+out, and my chest swelled up, and my ears roared, and I kicked
+and struggled, and all the time I could hear Leon laughing, and
+shouting to keep it up, that I was dying fine; only he didn't
+know that I really was, and at last I didn't feel or know
+anything more.
+
+When I came to, I was lying on the grass, while father was
+pumping my arms, and Laddie was pouring creek water on my face
+from his hat, and Leon was running around in circles, clear
+crazy.  I heard father tell him he'd give him a scutching he'd
+remember to the day of his death; but inasmuch as I had told Leon
+to do it, I had to grab father and hold to him tight as I could,
+until I got breath enough to explain how it happened.  Even then
+I wasn't sure what he was going to do.
+
+After all that, when I tried to tell Leon how it felt, he just
+cried like a baby, and he wouldn't listen to a word, even when
+he'd wanted to know so badly.  He said if I hadn't come back,
+he'd have gone to the barn and used the swing rope on himself, so
+it was a good thing I did, for one funeral would have cost
+enough, when we needed money so badly, not to mention how mother
+would have felt to have two of us go at once, like she had
+before.  And anyway, it didn't amount to so awful much.  It was
+pretty bad at first, but it didn't last long, and the next day my
+neck was only a little blue and stiff, and in three days it was
+all over, only a rough place where the rope grained the skin as I
+went down; but I never got to tell Leon how it felt; I just
+couldn't talk him into hearing, and it was quite interesting too;
+but still I easily saw why the man in the paper would object to
+dying twice, to pay for killing another man once.
+
+When the apples were picked and the cabbage, beets, turnips, and
+potatoes were buried, some corn dried in the garret for new meal,
+pumpkins put in the cellar, the field corn all husked, and the
+butchering done, father said the work was in such fine shape,
+with Laddie to help, and there was so much more corn than he
+needed for us, and the price was so high, and the turkeys did so
+well, and everything, that he could pay back what mother helped
+him, and have quite a sum over.
+
+It was Thanksgiving by that time, and all of Winfield's, Lucy's,
+Sally and Peter, and our boys came home.  We had a big time, all
+but Shelley; it was too expensive for her to come so far for one
+day, but mother sent her a box with a whole turkey for herself
+and her friends; and cake, popcorn, nuts, and just everything
+that wasn't too drippy.  Shelley wrote such lovely letters that
+mother saved them and after we had eaten as much dinner as we
+could, she read them before we left the table.
+
+I had heard most of them, but I liked to listen again, because
+they sounded so happy.  You could hear Shelley laugh on every
+page.  She told about how Peter's cousin was waiting when the
+train stopped.  They couldn't room together right away, but they
+were going to the first chance they had.  Shelley felt badly
+because they were so far apart, but she was in a nice place,
+where she could go with other girls of the school until she
+learned the way.  She told about her room and the woman she
+boarded with and what she had to eat; she wrote mother not to
+worry about clothes, because most of the others were from the
+country, or small towns, and getting ready to teach, and lots of
+them didn't have NEARLY as many or as pretty dresses as she did. 
+She told about the big building, the classes, the professors, and
+of going to public recitals where some of the pupils who knew
+enough played; and she was working her fingers almost to the
+bone, so she could next year.  She told of people she met, and
+how one of the teachers took a number of girls in his class to
+see a great picture gallery.  She wrote pages about a young
+Chicago lawyer she met there, and only a few lines about the
+pictures, so father said as that was the best collection of art
+work in Chicago, it was easy enough to see that Shelley had been
+far more impressed with the man than she had been with the
+pictures.  Mother said she didn't see how he could say a thing
+like that about the child.  Of course she couldn't tell in a
+letter about hundreds of pictures, but it was easy enough to tell
+all about a man.
+
+Father got sort of spunky at that, and he said it was mighty
+little that mattered most, that could be told about a Chicago
+lawyer; and mother had better caution Shelley to think more about
+her work, and write less of the man.  Mother said that would stop
+the child's confidences completely and she'd think all the time
+about the man, and never mention him again, so she wouldn't know
+what WAS going on.  She said she was glad Shelley had found
+pleasing, refined friends, and she'd encourage her all she could
+in cultivating them; but of course she'd caution her to be
+careful, and she'd tell her what the danger was, and after that
+Shelley wrote and wrote.  Mother didn't always read the letters
+to us, but she answered every one she got that same night. 
+Sometimes she pushed the pen so she jabbed the paper, and often
+she smiled or laughed softly.
+
+I liked Thanksgiving.  We always had a house full of company, and
+they didn't stay until we were tired of them, as they did at
+Christmas, and there was as much to eat; the only difference was
+that there were no presents.  It wasn't nearly so much work to
+fix for one day as it was for a week; so it wasn't so hard on
+mother and Candace, and father didn't have to spend much money. 
+We were wearing all our clothes from last fall that we could, and
+our coats from last winter to help out, but we didn't care.  We
+had a lot of fun, and we wanted Sally and Shelley to have fine
+dresses, because they were in big cities where they needed them,
+and in due season, no doubt, we would have much more than they,
+because, as May figured it, there would be only a few of us by
+that time, so we could have more to spend.  That looked sensible,
+and I thought it would be that way, too.  We were talking it over
+coming from school one evening, and when we had settled it, we
+began to play "Dip and Fade."  That was a game we made up from
+being at church, and fall and spring were the only times we could
+play it, because then the rains filled all the ditches beside the
+road where the dirt was plowed up to make the bed higher, and we
+had to have the water to dip in and fade over.
+
+We played it like that, because it was as near as we could come
+to working out a song Isaac Thomas sang every time he got happy. 
+He had a lot of children at home, and more who had died, from
+being half-fed and frozen, mother thought; and he was always
+talking about meeting the "pore innocents" in Heaven, and singing
+that one song.  Every time he made exactly the same speech in
+meeting.  It began like reciting poetry, only it didn't rhyme,
+but it sort of cut off in lines, and Isaac waved back and forth
+on his feet, and half sung it, and the rags waved too, but you
+just couldn't feel any thrills of earnestness about what he said,
+because he needed washing, and to go to work and get him some
+clothes and food to fill out his frame.  He only looked funny,
+and made you want to laugh.  It took Emanuel Ripley to raise your
+hair.  I don't know why men like my father, and the minister, and
+John Dover stood it; they talked over asking Isaac to keep quiet
+numbers of times, but the minister said there were people like
+that in every church, they always came among the Lord's anointed,
+and it was better to pluck out your right eye than to offend one
+of them, and he was doubtful about doing it.  So we children all
+knew that the grown people scarcely could stand Isaac's speech,
+and prayer, and song, and that they were afraid to tell him plain
+out that he did more harm than good.  Every meeting about the
+third man up was Isaac, and we had to watch him wave, and rant,
+and go sing-songy:
+
+        "Oh brethering and sistering--ah,
+         It delights my heart--ah to gather with you,
+         In this holy house of worship--ah.
+         In his sacred word--ah,
+         The Lord--ah tells us,
+         That we are all his childring--ah.
+         And now, lemme exhort you to-night--ah,
+         As one that loves you--ah,
+         To choose that good part, that Mary chose--ah,
+         That the worrrr-uld kin neither give ner take away--ah."
+
+That went on until he was hoarse, then he prayed, and arose and
+sang his song.  Other men spoke where they stood.  Isaac always
+walked to the altar, faced the people, and he was tired out when
+he finished, but so proud of himself, so happy, and he felt so
+sure that his efforts were worth a warm bed, sausage, pancakes,
+maple syrup, and coffee for breakfast, that it was mighty seldom
+he failed to fool some one else into thinking so too, and if he
+could, he wouldn't have to walk four miles home on cold nights,
+with no overcoat.  In summer, mostly, they let him go.  Isaac
+always was fattest in winter, especially during revivals, but at
+any time mother said he looked like a sheep's carcass after the
+buzzards had picked it.  It could be seen that he was perfectly
+strong, and could have fed and clothed himself, and Mandy and the
+children, quite as well as our father did us, if he had wanted to
+work, for we had the biggest family of the neighbourhood.  So we
+children made fun of him and we had to hold our mouths shut when
+he got up all tired and teary-like, and began to quaver:
+
+        "Many dear childurn we know dew stan'
+         Un toon ther harps in the better lan',
+         Ther little hans frum each soundin' string,
+         Bring music sweet, wile the Anguls sing,
+         Bring music sweet, wile the Anguls sing,--
+                 We shell meet them agin on that shore,
+                 We shell meet them agin on that shore,
+                 With fairer face, un angel grace,
+                 Each loved un ull welcome us ther.
+
+        "They uster mourn when the childurn died,
+         Un said goo-bye at the river side,
+         They dipped ther feet in the glidin' stream,
+         Un faded away, like a loveli dream,
+         Un faded away like a loveli dream."
+
+
+Then the chorus again, and then Isaac dropped on the front seat
+exhausted, and stayed there until some good-hearted woman, mostly
+my mother, felt so sorry about his shiftlessness she asked him to
+go home with us and warmed and fed him, and put him in the
+traveller's bed to sleep.  The way we played it was this: we
+stood together at the edge of a roadside puddle and sang the
+first verse and the chorus exactly as Isaac did.  Then I sang the
+second verse, and May was one of the "many dear childurn," and as
+I came to the lines she dipped her feet in the "glidin' stream,"
+and for "fading away," she jumped across.
+
+Now May was a careful little soul, and always watched what she
+was doing, so she walked up a short way, chose a good place, and
+when I sang the line, she was almost birdlike, she dipped and
+faded so gracefully.  Then we laughed like dunces, and then May
+began to sway and swing, and drone through her nose for me, and I
+was so excited I never looked.  I just dipped and faded on the
+spot.  I faded all right too, for I couldn't jump nearly across,
+and when I landed in pure clay that had been covered with water
+for three weeks, I went down to my knees in mud, to my waist in
+water, and lost my balance and fell backward.
+
+A man passing on horseback pried me out with a rail and helped me
+home.  Of course he didn't know how I happened to fall in, and I
+was too chilled to talk.  I noticed May only said I fell, so I
+went to bed scorched inside with red pepper tea, and never told a
+word about dipping and fading.  Leon whispered and said he bet it
+was the last time I would play that, so as soon as my coat and
+dress were washed and dried, and I could go back to school, I did
+it again, just to show him I was no cowardy-calf; but I had
+learned from May to choose a puddle I could manage before I
+faded.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"Even So"
+
+            "All things whatsoever ye would
+             That men should do to you,
+             Do ye even so to them."
+
+
+Our big girls and boys always made a dreadful fuss and said we
+would catch every disease you could mention, but mother and
+father were set about it, just like the big rocks in the hills. 
+They said they, themselves, once had been at the mercy of the
+people, and they knew how it felt.  Mother said when they were
+coming here in a wagon, and she had ridden until she had to walk
+to rest her feet, and held a big baby until her arms became so
+tired she drove while father took it, and when at last they saw a
+house and stopped, she said if the woman hadn't invited her in,
+and let her cook on the stove, given her milk and eggs, and
+furnished her a bed to sleep in once in a while, she couldn't
+have reached here at all; and she never had been refused once. 
+Then she always quoted:  "All things whatsoever ye would that men
+should do to you, do ye EVEN SO to them."
+
+Father said there were men who made a business of splitting
+hairs, and of finding different meanings in almost everything in
+the Bible.  I would like to have seen any one split hairs about
+that, or it made to mean something else.  Of all the things in
+the Bible that you had to do because it said to, whether you
+liked it or not, that was the one you struck oftenest in life and
+it took the hardest pull to obey.  It was just the hatefulest
+text of any, and made you squirm most.  There was no possible way
+to get around it.  It meant, that if you liked a splinter new
+slate, and a sharp pencil all covered with gold paper, to make
+pictures and write your lessons, when Clarissa Polk sat next you
+and sang so low the teacher couldn't hear until she put herself
+to sleep on it, "I WISHT I had a slate!  I wisht I HAD a slate! 
+I wisht I had a SLATE!  Oh I WISHT I HAD A SLATE!"--it meant that
+you just had to wash up yours and stop making pictures yourself,
+and pass it over; you even had to smile when you offered it, if
+you did it right.  I seldom got through it as the Lord would, for
+any one who loaned Clarissa a slate knew that it would come back
+with greasy, sweaty finger marks on it you almost had to dig a
+hole to wash off, and your pencil would be wet.  And if there
+were the least flaw of crystal in the pencil, she found it, and
+bore down so hard that what she wrote never would come off.
+
+The Lord always seemed bigger and more majestic to me, than at
+any other time, when I remembered that He could have known all
+that, and yet smiled as He loaned Clarissa His slate.  And that
+old Bible thing meant, too, that if you would like it if you were
+travelling a long way, say to California to hunt gold, or even
+just to Indiana, to find a farm fit to live on--it meant that if
+you were tired, hungry, and sore, and would want to be taken in
+and fed and rested, you had to let in other people when they
+reached your house.  Father and mother had been through it
+themselves, and they must have been tired as could be, before
+they reached Sarah Hood's and she took them in, and rested and
+fed them, even when they were only a short way from the top of
+the Little Hill, where next morning they looked down and stopped
+the wagon, until they chose the place to build their house. 
+Sarah Hood came along, and helped mother all day, so by night she
+was settled in the old cabin that was on the land, and ready to
+go to work making money to build a new one, and then a big house,
+and fix the farm all beautiful like it was then.  They knew so
+well how it felt, that they kept one bed in the boys' room, and
+any man who came at dusk got his supper, to sleep there, and his
+breakfast, and there never was anything to pay.  The girls always
+scolded dreadfully about the extra washing, but mother said she
+slept on sheets when she came out, and some one washed them.
+
+One time Sally said:  "Mother, have you ever figured out how many
+hundred sheets you've washed since, to pay for that?"
+
+Mother said:  "No, but I just hope it will make a stack high
+enough for me to climb from into Heaven."
+
+Sally said:  "The talk at the church always led me to think that
+you flew to Heaven."
+
+Mother answered:  "So I get there, I don't mind if I creep."
+
+Then Sally knew it was time to stop.  We always knew.  And we
+stopped, too!
+
+We had heard that "All things" quotation, until the first two
+words were as much as mother ever needed repeat of it any more,
+and we had cooked, washed for, and waited on people travelling,
+until Leon got so when he saw any one coming--of course we knew
+all the neighbours, and their horses and wagons and carriages--he
+always said:  "Here comes another `Even So!'"  He said we had
+done "even so" to people until it was about our share, but mother
+said our share was going to last until the Lord said, "Well done,
+good and faithful servant," and took us home.  She had much more
+about the stranger at the gate and entertaining angels unawares;
+why, she knew every single thing in the Bible that meant it was
+her duty to feed and give a bed to any one, no matter how dirty
+or miserable looking he was!  So when Leon came in one evening at
+dusk and said, "There's another `Even So' coming down the Little
+Hill!" all of us knew that we'd have company for the night, and
+we had.
+
+I didn't like that man, but some of the others seemed to find him
+amusing.  Maybe it was because I had nothing to do but sit and
+watch him, and so I saw more of him than the ones who came and
+went all the time.  As long as there was any one in the room, he
+complained dreadfully about his sore foot, and then cheered up
+and talked, and he could tell interesting things.  He was young,
+but he must have been most everywhere and seen everything.  He
+was very brave and could stand off three men who were going to
+take from him the money he was carrying to buy a piece of land in
+Illinois.  The minute the grown folks left the room to milk, do
+the night feeding, and begin supper, he twisted in his chair and
+looked at every door, and went and stood at the back dining-room
+window, where he could see the barn and what was out there, and
+coming back he took a peep into father's and mother's room, and
+although he limped dreadfully when he came, he walked like any
+one when he went over and picked up father's gun and looked to
+see if it were loaded, and seemed mighty glad when he found it
+wasn't.  Father said he could load in a flash when it was
+necessary, but he was dubious about a loaded gun in a house full
+of children.  Not one of us ever touched it, until the boys were
+big enough to have permission, like Laddie and Leon had.  He said
+a gun was such a great "moral persuader," that the sight of one
+was mostly all that was needed, and nobody could tell by looking
+at it whether it was loaded or not.  This man could, for he
+examined the lock and smiled in a pleased way over it, and he
+never limped a step going back to his chair.  He kept on
+complaining, until father told him before bedtime that he had
+better rest a day or two, and mother said that would be a good
+idea.
+
+He talked so much we couldn't do our lessons or spell very well,
+but it was Friday and we'd have another chance Saturday, so it
+didn't make so much difference.  Father said the traveller must
+be tired and sleepy and Leon should take a light and show him to
+bed.  He stayed so long father went to the foot of the stairway,
+and asked him why he didn't come down and he said he was in bed
+too.  The next morning he was sleepy at breakfast and Laddie said
+it was no wonder, because Leon and the traveller were talking
+when he went upstairs.  The man turned to father and said: 
+"That's a mighty smart boy, Mr. Stanton."  Father frowned and
+said:  "Praise to the face is open disgrace.  I hope he will be
+smart enough not to disgrace us, anyway."
+
+The traveller said he was sure he would be, and we could see that
+he had taken a liking to Leon, for he went with him to the barn
+to help do the morning feeding.  They stayed so long mother sent
+me to call them, and when I got there, the man was telling Leon
+how foolish it was for boys to live on a farm; how they never
+would amount to anything unless they went to cities, and about
+all the fun there was there, and how nice it was to travel,
+even along the roads, because every one fed you, and gave you a
+good bed.  He forgot that walking had made his foot lame, and I
+couldn't see, to save me, why he was going to spend his money to
+buy a farm, if he thought a town the only place where it was fit
+to live.
+
+He stayed all Saturday, and father said Sunday was no suitable
+time to start on a journey again, and the man's foot was bad when
+father was around, so it would be better to wait until Monday. 
+The traveller tagged Leon and told him what a fine fellow he was,
+how smart he was, and to prove it, Leon boasted about everything
+he knew, and showed the man all over the farm.
+
+I even saw them pass the Station in the orchard, and heard Leon
+brag how father had been an agent for the Governor; but of course
+he didn't really show him the place, and probably it would have
+made no difference if he had, for all the money must have been
+spent on Sally's wedding.  Of course father might have put some
+there he had got since, or that money might never have been his
+at all, but it seemed as if it would be, because it was on his
+land.
+
+Sunday evening all of us attended church, but the traveller was
+too tired, so when Leon said he'd stay with him, father thought
+it was all right.  I could see no one wanted to leave the man
+alone in the house.  He said they'd go to bed early, and we came
+in quite late.  The lamp was turned low, the door unlocked, and
+everything in place.  Laddie went to bed without a candle, and
+said he'd undress and slip in easy so as not to waken them.
+
+In the morning when he got up the traveller's bed hadn't been
+slept in, and neither had Leon's.  The gun was gone, and father
+stared at mother, and mother stared at Laddie, and he turned and
+ran straight toward the Station, and in a minute he was back,
+whiter than a plate.  He just said:  "All gone!"  Father and
+mother both sat down suddenly and hard.  Then Laddie ran to the
+barn and came back and said none of the horses had been taken. 
+Soon they went into the parlour and shut the door, and when they
+came out father staggered and mother looked exactly like
+Sabethany.  Laddie ran to the barn, saddled Flos and rode away. 
+Father wanted to ring an alarm on the dinner bell, like he had a
+call arranged to get all the neighbours there quickly if we had
+sickness or trouble, and mother said:  "Paul, you shall not! 
+He's so young!  We've got to keep this as long as we can, and
+maybe the Lord will help us find him, and we can give him another
+chance."
+
+Father started to say something, and mother held up her hand and
+just said, "Paul!" and he sank back in the chair and kept still. 
+Mother always had spoken of him as "the Head of the Family," and
+here he wasn't at all!  He minded her quickly as I would.
+
+When Miss Amelia came downstairs they let her start to school and
+never told her a word, but mother said May and I were not to go. 
+So I slipped out and ran through the orchard to look at the
+Station, and sure enough! the stone was rolled back, the door
+open and the can lying on the floor.  I slid down and picked it
+up, and there was one sheet of paper money left in it stuck to
+the sides.  It was all plain as a pikestaff.  Leon must have
+thought the money had been spent, and showed the traveller the
+Station, just to brag, and he guessed there might be something
+there, and had gone while we were at church and taken it.  He had
+all night the start of us, and he might have a horse waiting
+somewhere, and be almost to Illinois by this time, and if the
+money belonged to father, there would be no Christmas; and if it
+happened to be the money the county gave him to pay the men who
+worked the roads every fall, and Miss Amelia, or collections from
+the church, he'd have to pay it back, even if it put him in debt;
+and if he died, they might take the land, like he said; and where
+on earth was Leon?  Knew what he'd done and hiding, I bet!  He
+needed the thrashing he would get that time, and I started out to
+hunt him and have it over with, so mother wouldn't be uneasy
+about him yet; and then I remembered Laddie had said Leon hadn't
+been in bed all night.  He was gone too!
+
+Maybe he wanted to try life in a city, where the traveller had
+said everything was so grand; but he must have known that he'd
+kill his mother if he went, and while he didn't kiss her so
+often, and talk so much as some of us, I never could see that he
+didn't run quite as fast to get her a chair or save her a step. 
+He was so slim and light he could race for the doctor faster than
+Laddie or father, either one.  Of course he loved his mother,
+just as all of us did; he never, never could go away and not let
+her know about it.  If he had gone, that watchful-eyed man, who
+was lame only part of the time, had taken the gun and made him
+go.  I thought I might as well save the money he'd overlooked, so
+I gripped it tight in my hand, and put it in my apron pocket, the
+same as I had Laddie's note to the Princess, and started to the
+barn, on the chance that Leon might be hiding.  I knew precious
+well I would, if I were in his place.  So I hunted the granaries,
+the haymow, the stalls, then I stood on the threshing floor and
+cried:  "Leon!  If you're hiding come quick!  Mother will be sick
+with worrying and father will be so glad to see you, he won't do
+anything much.  Do please hurry!"
+
+Then I listened, and all I could hear was a rat gnawing at a
+corner of the granary under the hay.  Might as well have saved
+its teeth, it would strike a strip of tin when it got through,
+but of course it couldn't know that.  Then I went to every hole
+around the haystack, where the cattle had eaten; none were deep
+yet, like they would be later in the season, and all the way I
+begged of Leon to come out.  Once a rooster screamed, flew in my
+face and scared me good, but no Leon; so I tried the corn crib,
+the implement shed, and the wood house, climbing the ladder with
+the money still gripped in one hand.  Then I slipped in the front
+door, up the stairs, and searched the garret, even away back
+where I didn't like to very well.  At last I went to the dining-
+room, and I don't think either father or mother had moved, while
+Sabethany turned to stone looked good compared with them.  Seemed
+as if it would have been better if they'd cried, or scolded, or
+anything but just sit there as they did, when you could see by
+their moving once in a while that they were alive.  In the
+kitchen Candace and May finished the morning work, and both of
+them cried steadily.  I slipped to May, "Whose money was it?" I
+whispered.  "Father's, or the county's, or the church's?"
+
+"All three," said May.
+
+"The traveller took it."
+
+"How would he find it?  None of us knew there was such a place
+before."
+
+"Laddie seemed to know!"
+
+"Oh Laddie!  Father trusts him about everything."
+
+"They don't think HE told?"
+
+"Of course not, silly.  It's Leon who is gone!"
+
+"Leon may have told about the Station!" I cried.  "He didn't
+touch the money.  He never touched it!"
+
+Then I went straight to father.  Keeping a secret was one thing;
+seeing the only father you had look like that, was another.  I
+held out the money.
+
+"There's one piece old Even So didn't get, anyway," I said. 
+"Found it on the floor of the Station, where it was stuck to the
+can.  And I thought Leon must be hiding for fear he'd be whipped
+for telling, but I've hunted where we usually hide, and promised
+him everything under the sun if he'd come out; but he didn't, so
+I guess that traveller man must have used the gun to make him go
+along."
+
+Father sat and stared at me.  He never offered to touch the
+money, not even when I held it against his hand.  So I saw that
+money wasn't the trouble, else he'd have looked quick enough to
+see how much I had.  They were thinking about Leon being gone, at
+least father was.  Mother called me to her and asked:  "You knew
+about the Station?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"When?"
+
+"On the way back from taking Amanda Deam her ducks this summer."
+
+"Leon was with you?"
+
+"He found it."
+
+"What were you doing?"
+
+"Sitting on the fence eating apples.  We were wondering why that
+ravine place wasn't cleaned up, when everywhere else was, and
+then Leon said there might be a reason.  He told about having
+seen a black man, and that he was hidden some place, and we
+hunted there and found it.  We rolled back the stone, and opened
+the door, and Leon went in, and both of us saw a can full of
+money."
+
+"Go on."
+
+"We didn't touch it, mother!  Truly we didn't!  Leon said we'd
+found something not intended for children, and we'd be whipped
+sick if we ever went near or told, and we never did, not even
+once, unless Leon wanted to boast to the traveller man, but if he
+showed him the place, he thought sure the money had all been
+spent on the wedding and sending Shelley away."
+
+Father's arms shot out, and his head pitched on the table. 
+Mother got up and began to walk the floor, and never went near or
+even touched him.  I couldn't bear it.  I went and pulled his arm
+and put the bill under his hand.
+
+"Leon didn't take your money!  He didn't!  He didn't!  I just
+know he didn't!  He does tricks because they are so funny, or he
+thinks they'll be, but he doesn't steal!  He doesn't touch a
+single thing that is not his, only melons, or chicken out of the
+skillet, or bread from the cellar; but not money and things.  I
+take gizzards and bread myself, but I don't steal, and Leon or
+none of us do!  Oh father, we don't!  Not one of us do!  Don't
+you remember about `Thou shalt not,' and the Crusaders?  Leon's
+the best fighter of any of us.  I'm not sure that he couldn't
+even whip Laddie, if he got mad enough!  Maybe he can't whip the
+traveller if he has the gun, but, father, Leon simply couldn't
+take the money.  Laddie will stay home and work, and all of us. 
+We can help get it back.  We can sell a lot of things.  Laddie
+will sell Flos before he'll see you suffer so; and all of us will
+give up Christmas, and we'll work!  We'll work as hard as ever we
+can, and maybe you could spare the little piece Joe Risdell wants
+to build his cabin on.  We can manage about the money, father,
+indeed we can.  But you don't dare think Leon took it!  He never
+did!  Why, he's yours!  Yours and mother's!"
+
+Father lifted his head and reached out his arms.
+
+"You blessing!" he said.  "You blessing from the Lord!"
+
+Then he gave me a cold, stiff kiss on the forehead, went to
+mother, took her arm, and said:  "Come, mommy, let's go and tell
+the Lord about it, and then we'll try to make some plan.  Perhaps
+Laddie will be back with word soon."
+
+But he almost had to carry her.  Then we could hear him praying,
+and he was so anxious, and he made it so earnest it sounded
+exactly like the Lord was in our room and father was talking
+right to His face.  I tried to think, and this is what I thought:
+as father left the room, he looked exactly as I had seen Mr.
+Pryor more than once, and my mother had both hands gripped over
+her heart, and she said we must not let any one know.  Now if
+something could happen to us to make my father look like the
+Princess' and my mother hold her heart with both hands, and if no
+one were to know about it like they had said, how were we any
+different from Pryors?  We might be of the Lord's anointed, but
+we could get into the same kind of trouble the infidels could,
+and have secrets ourselves, or at least it seemed as if it might
+be very nearly the same, when it made father and mother look and
+act the way they did.  I wondered if we'd have to leave our
+lovely, lovely home, cross a sea and be strangers in a strange
+land, as Laddie said; and if people would talk about us, and make
+us feel that being a stranger was the loneliest, hardest thing in
+all the world.  Well, if mysteries are like this, and we have to
+live with one days and years, the Lord have mercy on us!  Then I
+saw the money lying on the table, so I took it and put it in the
+Bible.  Then I went out and climbed the catalpa tree to watch for
+Laddie.
+
+Soon I saw a funny thing, such as I never before had seen. 
+Coming across the fields, straight toward our house, sailing over
+the fences like a bird, came the Princess on one of her horses. 
+Its legs stretched out so far its body almost touched the ground,
+and it lifted up and swept over the rails.  She took our meadow
+fence lengthwiselike, and at the hitching rack she threw the
+bridle over the post, dismounted, and then I saw she had been
+riding astride, like a man.  I ran before her and opened the
+sitting-room door, but no one was there, so I went on to the
+dining-room.  Father had come in, and mother was sitting in her
+chair.  Both of them looked at the Princess and never said a
+word.
+
+She stopped inside the dining-room door and spoke breathlessly,
+as if she as well as the horse had raced.
+
+"I hope I'm not intruding," she said, "but a man north of us told
+our Thomas in the village that robbers had taken quite a large
+sum of hidden money you held for the county, and church, and of
+your own, and your gun, and got away while you were at church
+last night.  Is it true?"
+
+"Practically," said my father.
+
+Then my mother motioned toward a chair.
+
+"You are kind to come," she said.  "Won't you be seated?"
+
+The Princess stepped to the chair, but she gripped the back in
+both hands and stood straight, breathing fast, her eyes shining
+with excitement, her lips and cheeks red, so lovely you just had
+to look, and look.
+
+"No," she said.  "I'll tell you why I came, and then if there is
+nothing I can do here, and no errand I can ride for you, I'll go.
+
+Mother has heart trouble, the worst in all the world, the kind no
+doctor can ever hope to cure, and sometimes, mostly at night, she
+is driven to have outside air.  Last night she was unusually ill,
+and I heard her leave the house, after I'd gone to my room.  I
+watched from my window and saw her take a seat on a bench under
+the nearest tree.  I was moving around and often I looked to see
+if she were still there.  Then the dogs began to rave, and I
+hurried down.  They used to run free, but lately, on account of
+her going out, father has been forced to tie them at night.  They
+were straining at their chains, and barking dreadfully.  I met
+her at the door, but she would only say some one passed and gave
+her a fright.  When Thomas came in and told what he had heard,
+she said instantly that she had seen the man.
+
+"She said he was about the size of Thomas, that he came from your
+direction, that he ran when our dogs barked, but he kept beside
+the fences, and climbed over where there were trees.  He crossed
+our barnyard and went toward the northwest.  Mother saw him
+distinctly as he reached the road, and she said he was not a
+large man, he stooped when he ran, and she thought he moved like
+a slinking, city thief.  She is sure he's the man who took your
+money; she says he acted exactly as if he were trying to escape
+pursuit; but I was to be SURE to tell you that he didn't carry a
+gun.  If your gun is gone, there must have been two, and the
+other man took that and went a different way.  Did two men stop
+here?"
+
+"No," said father.  "Only one."
+
+The Princess looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"Do you think, Mr. Stanton," she said, "that the man who took the
+money would burden himself with a gun?  Isn't a rifle heavy for
+one in flight to carry?"
+
+"It is," said father.  "Your mother saw nothing of two men?"
+
+"Only one, and she knows he didn't carry a gun.  Except the man
+you took in, no stranger has been noticed around here lately?"
+
+"No one.  We are quite careful.  Even the gun was not loaded as
+it stood; whoever took it carried the ammunition also, but he
+couldn't fire until he loaded."
+
+Father turned to the corner where the gun always stood and then
+he stooped and picked up two little white squares from the floor.
+
+They were bits of unbleached muslin in which he wrapped the
+bullets he made.
+
+"The rifle was loaded before starting, and in a hurry," he said,
+as he held up the squares of muslin.  Then he scratched a match,
+bent, and ran it back and forth over the floor, and at one place
+there was a flash, and the flame went around in funny little
+fizzes as it caught a grain of powder here and there.  "You see
+the measure was overrun."
+
+"Wouldn't the man naturally think the gun was loaded, and take it
+as it stood?"
+
+"That would be a reasonable conclusion," said father.
+
+"But he looked!" I cried.  "That first night when you and the
+boys went to the barn, and the girls were getting supper, he
+looked at the gun, and he LIKED it when he saw it wasn't loaded. 
+He smiled.  And he didn't limp a mite when I was the only one in
+the room.  He and Leon knew it wasn't loaded, and I guess he
+didn't load it, for he liked having it empty so well."
+
+"Ummmm!" said father.  "What it would save in this world if a
+child only knew when to talk and when to keep still.  Little
+Sister, the next time you see a stranger examine my gun when I'm
+not in the room, suppose you take father out alone and whisper to
+him about it."
+
+"Yes, sir," I said.
+
+The way I wished I had told that at the right time made me dizzy,
+but then there were several good switchings I'd had for telling
+things, besides what Sally did to me about her and Peter.  I
+would have enjoyed knowing how one could be sure.  Hereafter, it
+will be all right about the gun, anyway.
+
+"Could I take my horse and carry a message anywhere for you?  Are
+both your sons riding to tell the neighbours?"
+
+Father hesitated, but it seemed as if he stopped to think, so I
+just told her:  "Laddie is riding.  Leon didn't take a horse."
+
+Father said there was nothing she could do, so she took my hand
+and we started for the gate.
+
+"I do hope they will find him, and get back the money, and give
+him what he deserves!" she cried.
+
+"Yes, father and mother are praying that they'll find him," I
+said.  "It doesn't seem to make the least difference to them
+about the money.  Father didn't even look at a big paper piece I
+found where it was hidden.  But they are anxious about the man. 
+Mother says he is so young, we just must find him, and keep this
+a secret, and give him another chance.  You won't tell, will
+you?"
+
+The Princess stood still on our walk, and then of all things!  if
+she didn't begin to go Sabethany-like.  The colour left her
+cheeks and lips and she shivered and shook and never said one
+word.  I caught her arm.  "Say, what ails you?" I cried.  "You
+haven't gone and got heart trouble too, have you?"
+
+She stood there trembling, and then, wheeling suddenly, ran back
+into the house, and went to my mother.  On her knees, the
+Princess buried her face in mother's breast and said:  "Oh Mrs.
+Stanton!  Oh, if I only could help you!"
+
+She began to cry as if something inside her had broken, and she'd
+shake to pieces.
+
+Mother stared above her head at father, with her eyebrows raised
+high, and he waved his hand toward me.  Mother turned to me, but
+already she had put her arms around the Princess, and was trying
+to hold her together.
+
+"What did you tell her that made her come back?" she asked
+sternlike.
+
+"You forgot to explain that the man was so young, and you wanted
+to keep it a secret and give him another chance," I said.  "I
+just asked her not to tell."
+
+Mother looked at father and all the colour went from her face,
+and she began to shake.  He stared at her, then he opened her
+door and lifted the Princess with one arm, and mother with the
+other, and helped them into mother's room, stepped back and
+closed the door.  After a while it opened and they came out
+together, with both mother's arms around the Princess, and she
+had cried until she staggered.  Mother lifted her face and kissed
+her, when they reached the door and said:  "Tell your mother I
+understand enough to sympathize.  Carry her my love.  I do wish
+she would give herself the comfort of asking God to help her."
+
+"She does!  Oh, I'm sure she does!" said the Princess.  "It's
+father who has lost all judgment and reason."
+
+Father went with her to the gate, and this time she needed help
+to mount her horse, and she left it to choose its way and go
+where it pleased on the road.  When father came in he looked at
+mother, and she said:  "I haven't the details, but she
+understands too well.  The Pryor mystery isn't much of a mystery
+any more.  God help their poor souls, and save us from suffering
+like that!"
+
+She said so little and meant so much, I couldn't figure out
+exactly what she did mean, but father seemed to understand.
+
+"I've often wondered," he said, but he didn't say what he
+wondered, and he hurried to the barn and saddled our best horse
+and came in and began getting ready to ride, and we knew he would
+go northwest.  I went back to the catalpa tree and wondered
+myself; but it was too much for me to straighten out: just why my
+mother wanting to give the traveller man another chance would
+make the Princess feel like that.  If she had known my mother as
+I did, she'd have known that she ALWAYS wanted to give every man
+a second chance, no matter whether he was young or old.
+
+Then I saw Laddie coming down the Big Hill beside the church, but
+he was riding so fast I thought he wouldn't want to bother with
+me, so I slid from the tree, and ran to tell mother.  She went to
+the door and watched as he rode up, but you could see by his face
+he had not heard of them.
+
+"Nothing, but I have some men out.  I am going east now," he
+said.  "I wish, father, you would rub Flos down, blanket her, and
+if you can, walk her slowly an hour while she cools off.  I am
+afraid I've ruined her.  How much had you there?"
+
+"I haven't stopped to figure," said father.  "I think I'd better
+take the horse I have ready and go on one of the northwest roads.
+
+The Pryor girl was here a few moments ago, and her mother saw a
+man cross their place about the right time last evening.  He ran
+and acted suspiciously when the dogs barked.  But he was alone
+and he didn't have a gun."
+
+"Was she sure?"
+
+"Positive."
+
+"Then it couldn't have been our man, but I'll ride in that
+direction and start a search.  They would keep to the woods, I
+think!  You'd better stay with mother.  I'll ask Jacob Hood to
+take your place."
+
+So Laddie rode away again without even going into the house, and
+mother said to father:  "What can he be saying to people, that
+the neighbours don't come?"
+
+Father answered:  "I don't know, but if any one can save the
+situation, Laddie will."
+
+Mother went to bed, while father sat beside her reading aloud
+little scraps from the Bible, and they took turns praying.  From
+the way they talked to the Lord, you could plainly see that they
+were reminding Him of all the promises He had made to take care
+of people, comfort those in trouble, and heal the broken-hearted.
+
+One thing was so curious, I asked May if she noticed, and she
+had.  When they had made such a fuss about money only a short
+while before, and worked so hard to get our share together, and
+when they would have to pay back all that belonged to the county
+and church, neither of them ever even mentioned money then. 
+Every minute I expected father to ask where I'd put the piece I
+found, and when he opened right at it, in the Bible, he turned on
+past, exactly as if it were an obituary, or a piece of Sally's
+wedding dress, or baby hair from some of our heads.  He went on
+hunting places where the Lord said sure and strong that He'd help
+people who loved Him.  When either of them prayed, they asked the
+Lord to help those near them who were in trouble, as often and
+earnestly as they begged Him to help them.  There were no people
+near us who were in trouble that we knew of, excepting Pryors. 
+Hard as father and mother worked, you'd have thought the Lord
+wouldn't have minded if they asked only once to get the money
+back, or if they forgot the neighbours, but they did neither one.
+
+May said because they were big like that was why all of us loved
+them so.
+
+I would almost freeze in the catalpa, but as I could see far in
+all directions there, I went back, and watched the roads, and
+when I remembered what Laddie had said, I kept an eye on the
+fields too.  At almost dusk, and frozen so stiff I could scarcely
+hang to the limb, I heard the bulldogs at Pryors' begin to rave. 
+They kept on steadily, and I thought Gypsies must be passing. 
+Then from the woods came a queer party that started across the
+cornfield toward the Big Meadow in front of the house, and I
+thought they were hunters.  I stood in the tree and watched until
+they climbed the meadow fence, and by that time I could see
+plainly.
+
+The traveller man got over first, then Leon and the dogs, and
+then Mr. Pryor handed Leon the gun, leaped over, and took it.  I
+looked again, and then fell from the tree and almost bursted.  As
+soon as I could get up, and breathe, I ran to the front door,
+screaming:  "Father!  Father!  Come open the Big Gate.  Leon's
+got him, but he's so tired Mr. Pryor is carrying the gun, and
+helping him walk!"
+
+Just like one, all of us ran; father crossed the road, and opened
+the gate.  The traveller man wouldn't look up, he just slouched
+along.  But Leon's chin was up and his head high.  He was
+scratched, torn, and dirty.  He was wheezing every breath most
+from his knees, and Mr. Pryor half carried him and the gun.  When
+they met us, Leon reached in his trousers pocket and drew out a
+big roll of money that he held toward father.  "My fault!" he
+gasped.  "But I got it back for you."
+
+Then he fell over and father caught him in his arms and carried
+him into the house, and laid him on the couch in the dining-room.
+
+Mr. Pryor got down and gathered up the money from the road.  He
+followed into the house and set the gun in the corner.
+
+"Don't be frightened," he said to mother.  "The boy has walked
+all night, and all day, with no sleep or food, and the gun was a
+heavy load for him.  I gathered from what he said, when the dogs
+let us know they were coming, that this hound took your money. 
+Your dog barked and awakened the boy and he loaded the gun and
+followed.  The fellow had a good start and he didn't get him
+until near daybreak.  It's been a stiff pull for the youngster
+and he seems to feel it was his fault that this cowardly cur you
+sheltered learned where you kept your money.  If that is true, I
+hope you won't be hard on him!"
+
+Father was unfastening Leon's neckband, mother was rubbing his
+hands, Candace was taking off his shoes, and May was spilling
+water father had called for, all over the carpet, she shook so. 
+When Leon drew a deep breath and his head rolled on the pillow,
+father looked at Mr. Pryor.  I don't think he heard all of it,
+but he caught the last words.
+
+"`Hard on him!  Hard on him!'" he said, the tears rolling down
+his cheeks.  "`This my son, who was lost, is found!'"
+
+"Oh!" shouted Mr. Pryor, slamming the money on the table.  "Poor
+drivel to fit the circumstances.  If I stood in your boots, sir,
+I would rise up in the mighty strength of my pride and pull out
+foundation stones until I shook the nation!  I never envied
+mortal man as I envy you to-day!"
+
+Candace cried out:  "Oh look, his poor feet!  They are blistered
+and bleeding!"
+
+Mother moved down a little, gathered them in her arms, and began
+kissing them.  Father wet Leon's lips and arose.  He held out his
+hand, and Mr. Pryor took it.
+
+"I will pray God," he said, "that it may happen `even so' to
+you."
+
+Leon opened his eyes and caught only the last words.
+
+"You had better look out for the `Even So's,' father," he said.
+
+And father had to laugh, but Mr. Pryor went out, and slammed the
+door, until I looked to see if it had cracked from top to bottom;
+but we didn't care if it had, we were so happy over having Leon
+back.
+
+I went and picked up the money and carried it to father to put
+away, and that time he took it.  But even then he didn't stop to
+see if he had all of it.
+
+"You see!" I said, "I told you----"
+
+"You did indeed!" said father.  "And you almost saved our reason.
+There are times when things we have come to feel we can't live
+without, so press us, that money seems of the greatest
+importance.  This is our lesson.  Hereafter, I and all my family,
+who have been through this, will know that money is not even
+worth thinking about when the life and honour of one you love
+hangs in the balance.  When he can understand, your brother shall
+know of the wondrous faith his Little Sister had in him."
+
+"Maybe he won't like what you and mother thought.  Maybe we
+better not tell him.  I can keep secrets real well.  I have
+several big ones I've never told, and I didn't say a word about
+the Station when Leon said I shouldn't."
+
+"After this there will be no money kept on the place," said
+father.  "It's saving time at too great cost.  All we have goes
+into the bank, and some of us will cheerfully ride for what we
+want, when we need it.  As for not telling Leon, that is as your
+mother decides.  For myself, I believe I'd feel better to make a
+clean breast of it."
+
+Mother heard, for she sobbed as she bathed Leon's feet, and when
+his eyes came open so they'd stay a little while, he kept looking
+at her so funny, between sips of hot milk.
+
+"Don't CRY, mammy!" he said.  "I'M all right.  Sorry such a
+rumpus!  Let him fool me.  Be smart as the next fellow, after
+this!  Know how glad you are to get the money!"
+
+Mother sat back on her heels and roared as I do when I step in a
+bumblebee's nest, and they get me.  Leon was growing better every
+minute, and he stared at her, and then his dealish, funny old
+grin began to twist his lips and he cried:  "Oh golly!  You
+thought _I_ helped take it and went with him, didn't you?"
+
+"Oh my son, my son!" wailed mother until she made me think of
+Absalom under the oak.
+
+"Well, I be ding-busted!" said Leon, sort of slow and wondering-
+like, and father never opened his head to tell him that was no
+way to talk.
+
+Mother cried more than ever, and between sobs she tried to
+explain that I heard what the traveller man had said about how
+bad it was to live in the country; and how Leon was now at an age
+where she'd known boys to get wrong ideas, and how things looked,
+and in the middle of it he raised on his elbow and took her in
+his arms and said:  "Well of all the geese!  And I 'spose father
+was in it too!  But since it's the first time, and since it is
+you----!  Go to bed now, and let me sleep----But see that you
+don't ever let this happen again."
+
+Then he kissed her over and over and clung to her tight and at
+last dropped back and groaned:
+
+            "My reputation, O my reputation!
+             I've lost my reputation!"
+
+
+She had to laugh while the tears were still running, and father
+and Laddie looked at each other and shouted.  I guess they
+thought Leon was about right after that.  Laddie went and bent
+over him and took his hand.
+
+"Don't be in quite such a hurry, old man," he said.  "Before you
+wink out I have got to tell you how proud I am of having a
+brother who is a real Crusader.  The Lord knows this took nerve! 
+You're great, boy, simply great!"
+
+Leon grabbed Laddie's hand with both of his and held tight and
+laughed.  You could see the big tears squeeze out, although he
+fought to wink them back.  He held to Laddie and said low-like,
+only for him to hear:  "It's all right if you stay by a while,
+old man."
+
+He began to talk slowly.
+
+"It was a long time before I caught up, and then I had to hide,
+and follow until day, and he wasn't so very easy to handle.  Once
+I thought he had me sure!  It was an awful load, but if it hadn't
+been for the good old gun, I'd never have got him.  When we mixed
+up, I had fine luck getting that chin punch on him; good thing I
+worked it out so slick on Absalom Saunders, and while old Even So
+was groggy I got the money away from him, took the gun, and stood
+back some distance, before he came out of it.  Once we had it
+settled who walked ahead, and who carried the money and gun, we
+got along better, but I had to keep an eye on him every minute. 
+To come through the woods was the shortest, but I'm tired out,
+and so is he.  Getting close I most felt sorry for him, he was so
+forlorn, and so scared about what would be done to him.  He
+stopped and pulled out another roll, and offered me all of it, if
+I'd let him go.  I didn't know whether it was really his, or part
+of father's, so I told him he could just drop it until I found
+out.  Made him sweat blood, but I had the gun, and he had to
+mind.  I was master then.  So there may be more in the roll I
+gave father than Even So took.  Father can figure up and keep
+what belongs to him.  Even So had gone away past Flannigans'
+before I tackled him, and I was sleepy, cold, and hungry; you'd
+have thought there'd have been a man out hunting, or passing on
+the road, but not a soul did we see 'til Pryors'!  Say, the old
+man was bully!  He helped me so, I almost thought I belonged to
+him!  My! he's fine, when you know him!  After he came on the
+job, you bet old Even So walked up.  Say, where is he?  Have you
+fed him?"
+
+Laddie looked at father, who was listening, and we all rushed to
+the door, but it must have been an hour, and Even So hadn't
+waited.  Father said it was a great pity, because a man like that
+shouldn't be left to prey on the community; but mother said she
+didn't want to be mixed up with a trial, or to be responsible for
+taking the liberty of a fellow creature, and father said that was
+exactly like a woman.  Leon went to sleep, but none of us thought
+of going to bed; we just stood around and looked at him, and
+smiled over him, and cried about him, until you would have
+thought he had been shipped to us in a glass case, and cost,
+maybe, a hundred dollars.
+
+Father got out his books and figured up his own and the road
+money, and Miss Amelia's, and the church's.  Laddie didn't want
+her around, so he stopped at the schoolhouse and told her to stay
+at Justices' that night, we'd need all our rooms; but she didn't
+like being sent away when there was such excitement, but every
+one minded Laddie when he said so for sure.
+
+When father had everything counted there was more than his, quite
+a lot of it, stolen from other people who sheltered the traveller
+no doubt, father said.  We thought he wouldn't be likely to come
+back for it, and father said he was at loss what to do with it,
+but Laddie said he wasn't--it was Leon's--he had earned it; so
+father said he would try to find out if anything else had been
+stolen, and he'd keep it a year, and then if no one claimed it,
+he would put it on interest until Leon decided what he wanted to
+do with it.
+
+When you watched Leon sleep you could tell a lot more about what
+had happened to him than he could.  He moaned, and muttered
+constantly, and panted, and felt around for the gun, and breathed
+like he was running again, and fought until Laddie had to hold
+him on the couch, and finally awakened him.  But it did no good;
+he went right off to sleep again, and it happened all over.  Then
+father began getting his Crusader blood up, although he always
+said he was a man of peace.  But it was a lucky thing Even So got
+away; for after father had watched Leon a while, he said if that
+man had been on the premises, his fingers itched so to get at
+him, he was positive he'd have vented a little righteous
+indignation on him that would have cost him within an inch of his
+life.  And he'd have done it too!  He was like that.  It took a
+lot, and it was slow coming, but when he became angry enough, and
+felt justified in it, why you'd be much safer to be some one else
+than the man who provoked him.
+
+After ten o'clock the dog barked, some one tapped, and father
+went; he always would open the door; you couldn't make him
+pretend he was asleep, or not at home when he was, and there
+stood Mr. Pryor.  He said they could see the lights and they were
+afraid the boy was ill, and could any of them help.  Father said
+there was nothing they could do; Leon was asleep.  Then Mr. Pryor
+said:  "If he is off sound, so it won't disturb him, I would like
+to see him again."
+
+Father told him Leon was restless, but so exhausted a railroad
+train wouldn't waken him, so Mr. Pryor came in and went to the
+couch.  He took off his hat, like you do beside a grave, while
+his face slowly grew whiter than his hair, and that would be
+snow-white; then he turned at last and stumbled toward the door. 
+Laddie held it for him, but he didn't seem to remember he was
+there.  He muttered over and over:  "Why?  Why?  In the name of
+God, why?"  Laddie followed to the gate to help him on his horse,
+because he thought he was almost out of his head, but he had
+walked across the fields, so Laddie kept far behind and watched
+until he saw him go safely inside his own door.
+
+I think father and Laddie sat beside Leon all night.  The others
+went to sleep.  A little after daybreak, just as Laddie was
+starting to feed, there was an awful clamour, and here came a lot
+of neighbours with Even So.  Mr. Freshett had found him asleep in
+a cattle hole in the straw stack, and searched him, and he had
+more money, and that made Mr. Freshett sure; and as he was very
+strong, and had been for years a soldier, and really loved to
+fight, he marched poor Even So back to our house.  Every few rods
+they met more men out searching who came with them, until there
+were so many, our front yard and the road were crowded.  Of all
+the sights you ever saw, Even So looked the worst.  You could see
+that he'd drop over at much more.  Those men kept crying they
+were going to hang him; but mother went out and talked to them,
+and said they mustn't kill a man for taking only money.  She told
+them how little it was worth compared with other things; she had
+Candace bring Even So a cup of hot coffee, lots of bread, and
+sausage from the skillet, and she said it was our money, and our
+lad, and we wanted nothing done about it.  The men didn't like
+it, but the traveller did.  He grabbed and gobbled like a beast
+at the hot food and cried, and mother said she forgave him, and
+to let him go.
+
+Then Mr. Freshett looked awful disappointed, and he came up to
+father, with his back toward mother, and asked:  "That's your say
+too, Mr. Stanton?"  Father grinned sort of rueful-like, but he
+said to give Even So his money and let him go.  He told all about
+getting ours back, and having had him at the house once before. 
+He brought the money Leon took from him, but the men said no
+doubt he had stolen that, and Leon had earned it bringing him
+back, so the traveller shouldn't have it.  They took him away on
+a horse and said they'd let him go, but that they'd escort him
+from the county.  Father told Mr. Freshett that he was a little
+suspicious of them, and he would hold him responsible for the
+man's life.  Mr. Freshett said that he'd give his word that the
+man would be safe; they only wanted to make sure he wouldn't come
+back, and that he'd be careful in the future how he abused
+hospitality, so they went, and all of us were glad of it.
+
+I don't know what Mr. Freshett calls safe, for they took Even So
+to Groveville and locked him up until night.  Then they led him
+to the railroad, and made him crawl back and forth through an old
+engine beside the track, until he was blacker than any negro ever
+born; and then they had him swallow a big dose of croton oil for
+his health.  That was the only KIND thing they did, for afterward
+they started him down the track and told him to run, and all of
+them shot at his feet as he went.  Hannah Freshett told me at
+school the next day.  Her father said Even So just howled, and
+flew up in the air, and ducked, and dodged and ran like he'd
+never walked a step, or was a bit tired.  We made a game of it,
+and after that one of the boys was Even So, and the others were
+the mob, and the one who could howl nicest, jump highest, and go
+fastest, could be "It" oftenest.
+
+Leon grew all right faster than you would think.  He went to
+school day after next, and the boys were sick with envy.  They
+asked and asked, but Leon wouldn't tell much.  He didn't seem to
+like to talk about it, and he wouldn't play the game or even
+watch us.  He talked a blue streak about the money.  Father was
+going to write to every sheriff of the counties along the way the
+man said he had come, and if he could find no one before spring
+who had been robbed, he said Leon might do what he liked with the
+money.  I used to pretend it was coming to me, and each day I
+thought of a new way to spend it.  Leon was so sure he'd get it
+he marched right over and asked Mr. Pryor about a nice young
+thoroughbred horse, from his stables, and when he came back he
+could get a coltlike one so very cheap that father and Laddie
+looked at each other and gasped, and never said a word.  They
+figured up, and if Leon got the money, he could have the horse,
+and save some for college, and from the start he never changed a
+mite about those two things he wanted to do with it.  He had the
+horse picked out and went to the field to feed and pet it and
+make it gentle, so he could ride bareback, and mother said he
+would be almost sick if the owner of the money turned up.
+
+Pulling his boots one night, father said so too, and that the
+thoughts of it worried him.  He said Mr. Pryor had shaded his
+price so that if the money had to go, he would be tempted to see
+if we couldn't manage it ourselves.  I don't know how shading the
+price of a horse would make her feel better, but it did, and
+maybe Leon is going to get it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Laddie Takes the Plunge
+
+
+            "This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
+             The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms,
+             And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;
+             The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
+             And, when he thinks, good, easy man, full surely
+             His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
+             And then he falls, as I do."
+
+
+Watch me take the plunge!" said Laddie.
+
+"`Mad frenzy fires him now,'" quoted Leon.
+
+It was Sunday after dinner.  We had been to church and Sunday-
+school in the forenoon, and we had a houseful of company for
+dinner.  All of them remained to spend the afternoon, because in
+our home it was perfectly lovely.  We had a big dinner with
+everything good to start on, and then we talked and visited and
+told all the news.  The women exchanged new recipes for cooking,
+advised each other about how to get more work done with less
+worry, to doctor their sick folks, and to make their dresses.  At
+last, when every thing was talked over, and there began to be a
+quiet time, father would reach across the table, pick up a paper
+and read all the interesting things that had happened in the
+country during the past week; the jokes too, and they made people
+think of funny stories to tell, and we just laughed.  In the
+Agriculturist there were new ways to farm easier, to make land
+bear more crops; so he divided that with the neighbours, also how
+to make gardens, and prune trees.  Before he finished, he always
+managed to work in a lot about being honest, kind, and loving
+God.
+
+He and mother felt so good over Leon, and by this time they were
+beginning to see that they were mighty glad about the money too. 
+It wouldn't have been so easy to work, and earn, and pay back all
+that for our school, roads, and the church; and every day you
+could see plainer how happy they felt that they didn't have to do
+it.  Because they were so glad about these things, they invited
+every one they met that day; but we knew Saturday mother felt
+that probably she would ask a crowd, from the chickens, pie, and
+cake she got ready.  When the reading part was over, and the
+women were beginning to look at the clock, and you knew they felt
+they should go home, and didn't want to, Laddie arose and said
+that, and Leon piped up like he always does and made every one
+laugh.  Of course they looked at Laddie, and no one knew what he
+meant, so all the women and a few of the men asked him.
+
+"Watch me, I said," laughed Laddie as he left the room.
+
+Soon Mrs. Dover, sitting beside the front window, cried:  "Here
+he is at the gate!"
+
+He was on his horse, but he hitched it and went around the house
+and up the back way.  Before long the stair door of the sitting-
+room opened, and there he stood.  We stared at him.  Of course he
+was bathed, and in clean clothing to start with, but he had
+washed and brushed some more, until he shone.  His cheeks were as
+smooth and as clear pink as any girl's, his eyes blue-gray and
+big, with long lashes and heavy brows.  His hair was bright brown
+and wavy, and he was so big and broad.  He never had been sick a
+day in his life, and he didn't look as if he ever would be.
+
+And clothes DO make a difference.  He would have had exactly the
+same hair, face, and body, wearing a hickory shirt and denim
+trousers; but he wouldn't have looked as he did in the clothes he
+wore at college, when it was Sunday there, or he was invited to a
+party at the President's.  I don't see how any man could possibly
+be handsomer or look finer.  His shirt, collar, and cuffs were
+snow-white, like everything had to be before mother got through
+with it; his big loose tie almost reached his shoulders; and our
+men could do a thing no other man in the neighbourhood did: they
+could appear easier in the finest suit they could put on than in
+their working clothes.
+
+Mother used to say one thing she dreaded about Sunday was the
+evident tortures of the poor men squirming in boots she knew
+pinched them, coats too tight, and collars too high.  She said
+they acted like half-broken colts fretting over restriction. 
+Always she said to father and the boys when they went to buy
+their new clothes:  "Now, DON'T join the harness fighters!  Get
+your clothing big enough to set your bodies with comfort and
+ease."
+
+I suppose those other men would have looked like ours if their
+mothers had told them.  You can always see that a man needs a
+woman to help him out awful bad.
+
+Of course Laddie knew he was handsome; he had to know all of them
+were looking at him curiously, but he stood there buttoning his
+glove and laughing to himself until Sarah Hood asked:  "Now what
+are you up to?"
+
+He took a step toward her, ran one hand under her lanternjawed
+chin, pulled her head against his side and turned up her face.
+
+"Sarah," he said, "'member the day we spoiled the washing?"
+
+Every one laughed.  They had made jokes about it until our
+friends knew what they meant.
+
+"What are you going to spoil now?" asked Sarah.
+
+"The Egyptians!  The `furriners.' I'm going right after them!"
+
+"Well, you could be in better business," said Sarah Hood sharply.
+
+Laddie laughed and squeezed her chin, and hugged her head against
+him.
+
+"Listen to that, now!" he cried.  "My best friend going back on
+me.  Sarah, I thought you, of all people, would wish me luck."
+
+"I do !" she said instantly.  "And that's the very reason I don't
+want you mixed up with that mysterious, offish, stuck-up mess."
+
+"Bless your dear heart!" said Laddie, giving her a harder squeeze
+than ever.  "You got that all wrong, Sarah.  You'll live to see
+the day, very shortly, when you'll change every word of it."
+
+"I haven't done anything but get surer about it every day for two
+years, anyway," said Sarah Hood.
+
+"Exactly!" said Laddie, "but wait until I have taken the plunge! 
+Let me tell you how the Pryor family strikes me.  I think he is a
+high-tempered, domineering man, proud as Lucifer!  For some
+cause, just or not, he is ruining his life and that of his family
+because he so firmly believes it just; he is hiding here from his
+home country, his relatives, and friends.  I think she is,
+barring you and mother, the handsomest woman of her age I ever
+saw----"
+
+All of them laughed, because Sarah Hood was nearly as homely as a
+woman could grow, and maybe other people didn't find our mother
+so lovely as we thought her.  I once heard one of her best
+friends say she was "distinctly plain."  I didn't see how she
+could; but she said that.
+
+"--and the most pitiful," Laddie went on.  "Sarah, what do you
+suppose sends a frail little woman pacing the yard, and up and
+down the road, sometimes in storm and rain, gripping both hands
+over her heart?"
+
+"I suppose it's some shameful thing I don't want you mixed up
+with!" said Sarah Hood promptly, and people just shouted.
+
+"Sarah," said Laddie, "I've seen her closely, watched her move,
+and studied her expression.  There's not one grain of possibility
+that you, or mother, or Mrs. Fall, or any woman here, could be
+any closer connected with SHAME.  Shame there is," said Laddie,
+"and what a word!  How it stings, burns, withers, and causes
+heart trouble and hiding; but shame in connection with that
+woman, more than shame thrust upon her, which might come to any
+of us, at any time, shame that is her error, in the life of a
+woman having a face like hers, Sarah, I am ashamed of you!  Your
+only excuse is that you haven't persisted as I have until you got
+to see for yourself."
+
+"I am not much on persistence in the face of a locked door, a
+cast-iron man with a big cane, and two raving bulldogs," said
+Mrs. Hood.  "Wait, young man!  Just wait until he sets them on
+you."
+
+Laddie's head went back and how he laughed.
+
+"Hist!  A word with you, Sarah!" he said.  "'Member I have a sort
+of knack with animals.  I never yet have failed with one I
+undertook to win.  Now those bulldogs of Pryors' are as mild as
+kittens with a man who knows the right word.  Reason I know,
+Sarah, I've said the word to them, separately and collectively,
+and it worked.  There is a contrast, Sarah, between what I say
+and do to those dogs, and the kicks and curses they get from
+their owner.  I'll wager you two to one that if you can get Mr.
+Pryor to go into a `sic-ing' contest with me, I can have his own
+dogs at his throat, when he can't make them do more than to lick
+my hands."
+
+They laughed as if that were funny.
+
+"Well, I didn't know about this," said Sarah.  "How long have you
+lived at Pryors'?"
+
+You couldn't have heard what Laddie said if he'd spoken; so he
+waited until he could be heard, and it never worried him a speck.
+
+He only stood and laughed too; then, "Long enough," he said, "to
+know that all of us are making a big and cruel mistake in taking
+them at their word, and leaving them penned up there weltering in
+misery.  What we should do, is to go over there, one at a time,
+or in a body, and batter at the door of their hearts, until we
+break down the wall of pride they have built around them, ease
+their pain, and bring them with us socially, if they are going to
+live among us.  You people who talk loudly and often about loving
+God, and `doing unto others,' should have gone long ago, for
+Jesus' sake; I'm going for the sake of a girl, with a face as
+sweet, and a heart as pure, as any accepted angel at the foot of
+the throne.  Mother, I want a cup of peach jelly, and some of
+that exceptionally fine cake you served at dinner, to take to our
+sick neighbour."
+
+Mother left the room.
+
+"Father, I want permission to cut and carry a generous chestnut
+branch, burred, and full fruited, to the young woman.  There is
+none save ours in this part of the country, and she may never
+have seen any, and be interested.  And I want that article about
+foot disease in horses, for Mr. Pryor.  I'll bring it back when
+he finishes."
+
+Father folded the paper and handed it to Laddie, who slipped it
+in his pocket.
+
+"Take the finest branch you can select," father said, and I
+almost fell over.
+
+He had carried those trees from Ohio, before I had been born, and
+mother said for years he wrapped them in her shawl in winter and
+held an umbrella over them in summer, and father always went red
+and grinned when she told it.  He was wild about trees, and
+bushes, so he made up his mind he'd have chestnuts.  He planted
+them one place, and if they didn't like it, he dug them up and
+set them another where he thought they could have what they
+needed and hadn't got the last place.  Finally, he put them, on
+the fourth move, on a little sandy ridge across the road from the
+wood yard, and that was the spot.  They shot up, branched,
+spread, and one was a male and two were females, so the pollen
+flew, the burrs filled right, and we had a bag of chestnuts to
+send each child away from home, every Christmas.  The brown
+leaves and burrs were so lovely, mother cut one of the finest
+branches she could select and hung it above the steel engraving
+of "Lincoln Freeing the Slaves," in the boys' room, and nothing
+in the house was looked at oftener, or thought prettier.  That
+must have been what was in the back of Laddie's head when he
+wanted a branch for the Princess.
+
+Mother came in with the cake and jelly in a little fancy basket,
+and Laddie said:  "Thank you!  Now every one wish me luck!  I'm
+going to ride to Pryors', knock at the door, and present these
+offerings with my compliments.  If I'm invited in, I'm going to
+make the effort of my life at driving the entering wedge toward
+social intercourse between Pryors and their neighbours.  If I'm
+not, I'll be back in thirty minutes and tell you what happened to
+me.  If they refuse my gifts, you shall have the jelly, Sarah;
+I'll give Mrs. Fall the olive branch, bring back the paper, and
+eat the cake to console my wounded spirits."
+
+Of course every one laughed; they couldn't help it.  I watched
+father and he laughed hardest of the men, but mother was more
+stiff-lipped about it; she couldn't help a little, though.  And I
+noticed some of those women acted as if they had lost something. 
+Maybe it was a chance to gossip about Laddie, for he hadn't left
+them a thing to guess at, and mother says the reason gossip is so
+dreadful is because it is always GUESSWORK.  Well, that was all
+fair and plain.  He had told those people, our very best friends,
+what he thought about everything, the way they acted included. 
+He was carrying something to each member of the Pryor family, and
+he'd left a way to return joking and unashamed, if they wouldn't
+let him in.  He had fixed things so no one had anything to guess
+at, and it would look much worse for the Pryors than it would for
+him, if he did come back.
+
+I wondered if he had been born that smart, or if he learned it in
+college.  If he did, no wonder Leon was bound to go.  Come to
+think of it, though, mother said Laddie was always like that. 
+She said he never bit her when he nursed; he never mauled her as
+if she couldn't be hurt when he was little, he never tore his
+clothes and made extra work as he grew, and never in his life
+gave her an hour's uneasiness.  But I guess she couldn't have
+said that about uneasiness lately, for she couldn't keep from
+looking troubled as all of us followed to the gate to see him
+start.
+
+How they joked, and tried to tease him!  But they couldn't get a
+breath ahead.  He shot back answers as fast as they could ask
+questions, while he cut the branch and untied the horse.  He gave
+the limb and basket to mother to hold, kissed her good-bye, and
+me too, before he mounted.  With my arms around his neck--I never
+missed a chance to try to squeeze into him how I loved him--I
+whispered:  "Laddie, is it a secret any more?"
+
+He threw back his head and laughed the happiest.
+
+"Not the ghost of a secret!" he said.  "But you let me do the
+talking, until I tell you."  Then he went on right out loud: 
+"I'm riding up the road waving the banner of peace.  If I suffer
+repulse, the same thing has happened to better men before, so
+I'll get a different banner and try again."
+
+Laddie mounted, swept a circle in the road, dropped Flos on her
+knees in a bow, and waved the branch.  Leon began to sing at the
+top of his voice, "Nothing but leaves, nothing but leaves," while
+Laddie went flashing up the road.
+
+The women went back to the house; the men stood around the gate,
+watched him from sight, talked about his horse, how he rode, and
+made wagers that he'd get shut out, like every one did, but they
+said if that happened he wouldn't come back.  Father was annoyed.
+
+"You heard Laddie say he'd return immediately if they wouldn't
+let him in," he said.  "He's a man of his word.  He will either
+enter or come home at once."
+
+It was pitch dark and we had supper before some of them left;
+they never stayed so late.  After we came from church, father
+read the chapter and we were ready for bed; still Laddie hadn't
+come back.  And father liked it!  He just plain liked it!  He
+chuckled behind the Advocate until you could see it shake; but
+mother had very little to say, and her lips closed tight.
+
+At bedtime he said to mother:  "Well, they don't seem in a hurry
+about sending the boy back."
+
+"Did you really think he WOULD be sent back?" asked mother.
+
+"Not ordinarily," said father, "no!  If he had no brain, no wit,
+no culture, on an animal basis, a woman would look twice before
+she'd send him away; but with such fanatics as Pryors, one can't
+always tell what will happen."
+
+"In a case like this, one can be reasonably certain," said
+mother.
+
+"You don't know what social position they occupied at home. 
+Their earmarks are all good.  We've no such notions here as they
+have."
+
+"Thank God for so much, at any rate," said mother.  "How old
+England would rise up and exult if she had a man in line with
+Laddie's body, blood and brain, to set on her throne.  This talk
+about class and social position makes me sick.  Men are men, and
+Laddie is as much above the customary timber found in kings and
+princes, physically and mentally, as the sky is above the earth. 
+Talk me no talk about class!  If I catch it coming from any of
+mine, save you, I will beat it out of them.  He has admitted he's
+in love with the girl; the real question is, whether she's fit to
+be his wife."
+
+"I should say she appears so," said father.
+
+"Drat appearances!" cried mother.  "When it's a question of
+lifetime misery, and the soul's salvation of my son, if things go
+wrong, I've no time for appearances.  I want to know!"
+
+He might have known he would make her angry when he laughed.  She
+punched the pillow, and wouldn't say another word; so I went to
+sleep, and didn't miss anything that time.
+
+Next morning at breakfast Laddie was beaming, and father hardly
+waited to ask the blessing before he inquired:  "Well, how did
+you make it, son?"
+
+Laddie laughed and answered:  "Altogether, it might have been
+much worse."
+
+That was all he would say until Miss Amelia started to school,
+then he took me on his lap and talked as he buttoned my coat.
+
+"Thomas met me at the gate," he said, "and held my horse while I
+went to the door.  One of their women opened it, and I inquired
+for Mr. Pryor.  She said he was in the field looking at the
+horses, so I asked for Miss Pryor.  She came in a minute, so I
+gave her the branch, told her about it, and offered the jelly and
+cake for her mother.  The Princess invited me to enter.  I told
+her I couldn't without her father's permission, so I went to the
+field to see him.  The dogs were with him and he had the surprise
+of his life when his man-eaters rolled at my feet, and licked my
+hands."
+
+"What did he say?" chuckled father.
+
+"Told Thomas they'd been overfed and didn't amount to a brass
+farthing; to take them to the woods and shoot them.  Thomas said
+he'd see to it the very first thing in the morning, and then Mr.
+Pryor told him he would shoot him if he did."
+
+"Charming man to work for," said mother.
+
+"Then I told him I'd been at the house to carry a little gift to
+his wife and daughter, and to inquire if I might visit an hour,
+and as he was not there, I had come to the field to ask him. 
+Then I looked him in the eye and said:  `May I?'
+
+"`I'll warrant the women asked you to come in,' he said.
+
+"`Miss Pryor was so kind,' I answered, `but I enter no man's
+house without his permission.  May I talk with your daughter an
+hour, and your wife, if she cares to see me?'
+
+"`It makes no earthly difference to me,' he said, which was not
+gracious, but might have been worse, so I thanked him, and went
+back to the house.  When I knocked the second time, the Princess
+came, and I told her the word was that it made `no difference to
+her father' if I came in, so she opened the door widely, took my
+hat and offered me a seat.  Then she went to the next room and
+said:  `Mother, father has given Mr. Stanton permission to pay us
+a call.  Do you feel able to meet him?'  She came at once,
+offering her hand and saying:  `I have already met Mr. Stanton so
+often, really, we should have the privilege of speaking.'"
+
+"What did she mean by that?" asked mother.
+
+"She meant that I have haunted the road passing their place for
+two years, and she'd seen me so frequently that she came to
+recognize me."
+
+"Umph!" said mother.
+
+"Laddie tell on!" I begged.
+
+"Well, I sharpened all the wits I had and went to work.  I never
+tried so hard in my life to be entertaining.  Of course I had to
+feel my way.  I'd no idea what would interest a delicate, high-
+bred lady"--mother sniffed again--"so I had to search and probe,
+and go by guess until I saw a shade of interest, then I worked in
+more of the same.  It was easy enough to talk to the Princess--
+all young folks have a lot in common, we could get along on fifty
+topics; it was different with the housebound mother.  I did my
+best, and after a while Mr. Pryor came in.  I asked him if any of
+his horses had been attacked with the trouble some of the
+neighbours were having, and told him what it was.  He had the
+grace to thank me.  He said he would tell Thomas not to tie his
+horse at the public hitching rack when he went to town, and once
+he got started, he was wild to talk with a man, and I'd no chance
+to say a word to the women.  He was interested in our colleges,
+state, and national laws, in land development, and everything
+that all live men are.  When a maid announced dinner I apologized
+for having stayed so long, and excused myself, because I had been
+so interested, but Mrs. Pryor merely said:  `I'm waiting to be
+offered your arm.'
+
+"Well, you should have seen me drop my hat and step up.  I did my
+best, and while I talked to him a little, I made it most to the
+women.  Any one could see they were starved for company, so I
+took the job of entertaining them.  I told some college jokes,
+funny things that had happened in the neighbourhood, and
+everything of interest I could think up.  I know we were at the
+table for two hours with things coming and going on silver
+platters."
+
+Mother sat straight suddenly.
+
+"Just what did they have to eat, and how did they serve it?" she
+asked.
+
+"Couldn't tell if I were to be shot for it, mummy," said Laddie. 
+"Forgive me!  Next time I'll take notes for you.  This first
+plunge, I had to use all my brains, not to be a bore to them; and
+to handle food and cutlery as the women did.  It's quite a
+process, but as they were served first, I could do right by
+waiting.  I never was where things were done quite so elaborately
+before."
+
+"And they didn't know they would have company until you went to
+the table?"
+
+"Well, they must have thought likely, there was a place for me."
+
+"Umph!" said mother.  "Fine idea!  Then any one who drops in can
+be served, and see that they are not a mite of trouble.  Candace,
+always an extra place after this!"
+
+Father just shouted.
+
+"I thought you'd get something out of it!" he said.
+
+"Happy to have justified your faith!" replied mother calmly.  "Go
+on, son!"
+
+"That's all!" said Laddie.  "We left the table and talked an hour
+more.  The women asked me to come again; he didn't say anything
+on that subject; but when he ordered my horse, he asked the
+Princess if she would enjoy a little exercise, and she said she
+would, so he told Thomas to bring their horses, and we rode
+around the section, the Princess and I ahead, Mr. Pryor
+following.  Where the road was good and the light fine enough
+that there was no danger of laming a horse, we dropped back, one
+on either side of him, so we could talk.  Mrs. Pryor ate the cake
+and said it was fine; and the `conserve,' she called it,
+delicious as she ever had tasted.  She said all our fruits here
+had much more flavour than at home; she thought it was the dryer
+climate and more sunshine.  She sent her grateful thanks, and she
+wants your recipe before next preserving time."
+
+Mother just beamed.  My! but she did love to have the things she
+cooked, bragged on.
+
+"Possibly she'd like my strawberries?" she said.
+
+"There isn't a doubt about it," said Laddie.  "I've yet to see
+the first person who doesn't."
+
+"Is that all?" asked mother.
+
+"I can think of nothing more at this minute," answered Laddie. 
+"If anything comes to my mind later, I won't forget to tell you. 
+Oh yes, there was one thing:  You couldn't keep Mr. Pryor from
+talking about Leon.  He must have taken a great fancy to him.  He
+talked until he worried the Princess, and she tried to keep him
+away from the subject, but his mind seemed to run on it
+constantly.  When we were riding she talked quite as much as he,
+and it will hustle us to think what the little scamp did, any
+bigger than they do.  Of course, father, you understood the price
+Mr. Pryor made on one of his very finest colts was a joke. 
+There's a strain of Arab in the father--he showed me the record--
+and the mother is bluegrass.  There you get gentleness and
+endurance combined with speed and nerve.  I'd trade Flos for that
+colt as it stands to-day.  There's nothing better on earth in the
+way of horse.  His offer is practically giving it away.  I know,
+with the records to prove its pedigree, what that colt would
+bring him in any city market."
+
+"I don't like it," said mother.  "I want Leon to have a horse,
+but a boy in a first experience, and reckless as he is, doesn't
+need a horse like that, for one thing, and what is more
+important, I refuse to be put under any obligations to Pryors."
+
+"That's the reason Mr. Pryor asked anything at all for the horse.
+
+It is my opinion that he would be greatly pleased to give it to
+Leon, if he could do what he liked."
+
+"Well, that's precisely the thing he can't do in this family,"
+said mother sternly.
+
+"What do you think, father?" asked Laddie.
+
+"I think Amen! to that proposition," said father; "but I would
+have to take time to thresh it out completely.  It appeals to me
+that Leon is old enough to recognize the value of the animal; and
+that the care of it would develop and strengthen his character. 
+It would be a responsibility that would steady him.  You could
+teach him to tend and break it."
+
+"Break it!" cried Laddie.  "Break it!  Why father, he's riding it
+bareback all over the Pryor meadow now, and jumping it over logs.
+Whenever he leaves, it follows him to the fence, and the Princess
+says almost any hour of the day you look out you can see it
+pacing up and down watching this way and whinnying for him to
+come."
+
+"And your best judgment is----?"
+
+Laddie laughed as he tied my hood strings.  "Well I don't feel
+about the Pryors as the rest of you do," he said.  "If the money
+isn't claimed inside the time you specified, I would let Leon and
+Mr. Pryor make their own bargain.  The boy won't know for years
+that it is practically a gift, and it would please Mr. Pryor
+immensely.  Now run, or you'll be late!"
+
+I had to go, so I didn't know how they settled it, but if they
+wouldn't let Leon have that horse, it was downright mean.  What
+if we were under obligations to Mr. Pryor?  We were to Sarah
+Hood, and half the people we knew, and what was more, we LIKED to
+be.
+
+When I came from school that night father had been to town.  He
+had an ax and was opening a big crate, containing two of the
+largest, bluest geese you ever saw.  Laddie said being boxed that
+way and seeing them so close made them look so big; really, they
+were no finer than Pryors', where he had got the address of the
+place that sold them.  Mother was so pleased.  She said she had
+needed a new strain, for a long time, to improve her feathers;
+now she would have pillows worth while, in a few years.  They put
+them in the barn where our geese stayed over night, and how they
+did scream.  That is, one of them did; the other acted queerly
+and father said to Laddie that he was afraid the trip was hard on
+it.  Laddie said it might have been hurt, and mother was worried
+too.  Before she had them an hour, she had sold all our ganders;
+spring had come, she had saved the blue goose eggs, set them
+under a hen, raised the goslings with the little chickens, never
+lost one, picked them and made a new pair of pillows too fine for
+any one less important than a bishop, or a judge, or Dr. Fenner
+to sleep on.  Then she began saving for a featherbed.  And still
+the goose didn't act as spry or feel as good as the gander.  He
+stuck up his head, screamed, spread his wings and waved them, and
+the butts looked so big and hard, I was not right certain whether
+it would be safe to tease him or not.
+
+The first person who came to see them was Sarah Hood, and she
+left with the promise of a pair as soon as mother could raise
+them.  Father said the only reason mother didn't divide her hair
+with Sarah Hood was because it was fast, and she couldn't. 
+Mother said gracious goodness! she'd be glad to get rid of some
+of it if she could, and of course Sarah should have first chance
+at it.  Hadn't she kept her over night so she could see her new
+home when she was rested, and didn't she come with her, and help
+her get settled, and had she ever failed when we had a baby, or
+sickness, or trouble, or thrashers, or a party?  Of course she'd
+gladly divide, even the hair of her head, with Sarah Hood.  And
+father said, "Yes, he guessed she would, and come to think of it,
+he'd just as soon spare Sarah part of his," and then they both
+laughed, when it was nothing so very funny that I could see.
+
+The next caller the geese had was Mrs. Freshett.  My! she thought
+they were big and fine.  Mother promised her a couple of eggs to
+set under a hen.  Father said she was gradually coming down the
+scale of her feelings, and before two weeks she'd give Isaac
+Thomas, at least, a quill for a pen.  Almost no one wrote with
+them any more, but often father made a few, and showed us how to
+use them.  He said they were gone with candles, sand boxes, and
+snuff.  Mother said she had no use for snuff, but candles were
+not gone, she'd make and use them to the day of her death, as
+they were the nicest light ever invented to carry from room to
+room, or when you only wanted to sit and think.  Father said
+there was really no good pen except the quill you sharpened
+yourself; and while he often used steel ones like we children had
+at school to write to the brothers and sisters away, and his
+family, he always kept a few choice quills in the till of his
+chest, and when he wrote a deed, or any valuable paper, where
+there was a deal with money, he used them.  He said it lent the
+dignity of a past day to an important occasion.
+
+After mother and Mrs. Freshett had talked over every single thing
+about the geese, and that they were like Pryors' had been
+settled, Mrs. Freshett said:  "Since he told about it before all
+of us, and started out the way he did, would it be amiss to ask
+how Laddie got on at Pryors'?"
+
+"Just the way I thought he would," said mother.  "He stayed until
+all of us were in bed, and I'd never have known when he came in,
+if it were not a habit of his always to come to my door to see if
+I'm sleeping.  Sometimes I'm wakeful, and if he pommels my pillow
+good, brings me a drink, and rubs my head a few strokes with his
+strong, cool hands, I can settle down and have a good night's
+rest.  I was awake when he came, or I'd never have known.  It was
+almost midnight; but they sat two hours at the table, and then
+all of them rode."
+
+"Not the Missus?"
+
+"Oh no!  She's not strong enough.  She really has incurable heart
+trouble, the worst kind there is; her daughter told me so."
+
+"Then they better look out," said Mrs. Freshett.  "She is likely
+to keel over at a breath."
+
+"They must know it.  That's why she keeps so quiet."
+
+"And they had him to supper?"
+
+"It was a dinner served at night.  Yes.  He took Mrs. Pryor in on
+his arm, and it was like a grand party, just as they fixed for
+themselves, alone.  Waiters, and silver trays, and things carried
+in and out in courses."
+
+"My land!  Well, I s'pose he had enough schoolin' to get him
+through it all right!"
+
+My mother's face grew red.  She never left any one in doubt as to
+what she meant.  Father said that "was the Dutch of it."  And
+mother always answered that if any one living could put things
+plainer than the English, she would like to hear them do it.
+
+"He certainly had," said mother, "or they wouldn't have invited
+him to come again.  And all mine, Mrs. Freshett, knew how to sit
+properly at the table, and manage a knife, fork and napkin,
+before they ever took a meal away from home."
+
+"No 'fence," laughed Mrs. Freshett.  "I meant that maybe his
+years of college schoolin' had give him ways more like theirs
+than most of us have.  For all the money it takes to send a boy
+to college, he ought to get somethin' out of it more than jest
+fillin' his head with figgers, an' stars, an' oratin'; an' most
+always you can see that he does."
+
+"It is contact with cultivated people," said mother.  "You are
+always influenced by it, without knowing it often."
+
+"Maybe you are, bein' so fine yourself," said Mrs. Freshett. 
+"An' me too, I never get among my betters that I don't carry home
+a lot I put right into daily use, an' nobody knows it plainer.  I
+come here expectin' to learn things that help me, an' when I go
+home I know I have."
+
+"Why, thank you," said mother.  "I'm sure that is a very nice
+compliment, and I wish I really could feel that it is well
+deserved."
+
+"Oh I guess you do!" said Mrs. Freshett laughing.  "I often
+noticed you makin' a special effort to teach puddin' heads like
+me somethin', an' I always thank you for it.  There's a world in
+right teachin'.  I never had any.  So all I can pick up an'
+hammer into mine is a gain for me an' them.  If my Henry had
+lived, an' come out anything like that boy o' yourn an' the show
+he made last Sunday, I'd do well if I didn't swell up an' bust
+with pride.  An' the little tow-haired strip, takin' the gun an'
+startin' out alone after a robber, even if he wa'n't much of a
+man, that was downright spunky.  If my boys will come out
+anywhere near like yourn, I'll be glad."
+
+"I don't know how my boys will come out," said mother.  "But I
+work, pray, hope, and hang to them; that's all I know to do."
+
+"Well, if they don't come out right, they ought to be bumped!"
+said Mrs. Freshett.  "After all the chances they've had!  I don'
+know jest how Freshett was brung up, but I'd no chance at all. 
+My folks--well, I guess the less said--little pitchers, you know!
+I can't see as I was to blame.  I was the youngest, an' I knew
+things was wrong.  I fought to go to school, an' pap let me
+enough that I saw how other people lived.  Come night I'd go to
+the garret, an' bar the trapdoor; but there would be times when I
+couldn't help seein' what was goin' on.  How'd you like chances
+such as that for a girl of yourn?"
+
+"Dreadful!" said mother.  "Mrs. Freshett, please do be careful!"
+
+"Sure!" laughed Mrs. Freshett.  "I was jest goin' to tell you
+about me an' Josiah.  He come to our house one night, a stranger
+off the road.  He said he was sick, an' tired, an' could he have
+a bed.  Mother said, `No, for him to move on.'  He tried an' he
+couldn't.  They was somethin' about him--well, you know how them
+things go!  I wa'n't only sixteen, but I felt so sorry for him,
+all fever burned and mumblin', I helped pap put him to bed, an'
+doctored him all I could.  Come mornin' he was a sick man.  Pap
+went for the county doctor, an' he took jest one look an' says: 
+`Small pox!  All of ye git!'
+
+"I was bound I wouldn't go, but pap made me, an' the doctor said
+he'd send a man who'd had it; so I started, but I felt so bad,
+come a chanct when they got to Groveville, I slipped out an' went
+back.  The man hadn't come, so I set to work the best I knowed. 
+'Fore long Josiah was a little better an' he asked who I was, an'
+where my folks went, an' I told him, an' he asked WHY I came back
+an' I didn't know what to say, so I jest hung my head an'
+couldn't face him.  After a while he says, `All right!  I guess I
+got this sized up.  If you'll stay an' nuss me through, I'll be
+well enough to pull you out, by the time you get it, an' soon as
+you're able we'll splice, if you say so.'
+
+"`Marry me, you mean?' says I.  They wa'n't ever any talk about
+marryin' at our house.  `Sure!' says he.  `You're a mighty likely
+lookin' girl!  I'll do fair by ye.'  An' he always has, too!  But
+I didn't feel right to let him go it blind, so I jest up and
+says.  `You wouldn't if you knowed my folks!'  `You look as
+decent as I do,' says he; `I'll chance it!'  Then I tole him I
+was as good as I was born, an' he believed me, an' he always has,
+an' I was too!  So I nussed him, but I didn't make the job of it
+he did.  You 'member he is pitted considerable.  He was so strong
+I jest couldn't keep him from disfigerin' himself, but he tied
+me.  I begged to be loose, an' he wouldn't listen, so I got a
+clean face, only three little scars, an' they ain't deep to speak
+of.  He says he looks like a piece of side meat, but say! they
+ain't nothin' the matter with his looks to me!
+
+"The nuss man never did come, but the county doctor passed things
+in the winder, till I was over the worst, an' Josiah sent for a
+preacher an' he married us through the winder--I got the writin's
+to show, all framed an' proper.  Josiah said he'd see I got all
+they was in it long that line, anyway.  When I was well, hanged
+if he didn't perdooce a wad from his clothes before they burnt
+'em, an' he got us new things to wear, an' a horse, an' wagon,
+an' we driv away here where we thought we could start right, an'
+after we had the land, an' built the cabin, an' jest as happy as
+heart could wish, long come a man I'd made mad once, an' he tole
+everythin' up and down.  Josiah was good about it.  He offered to
+sell the land, an' pull up an' go furder.  `What's the use?' says
+I.  `Hundreds know it.  We can't go so far it won't be like to
+follow us; le's stay here an' fight it.'  `All right,' says
+Josiah, but time an' ag'in he has offered to go, if I couldn't
+make it.  `Hang on a little longer,' says I, every time he knew I
+was snubbed an' slighted.  I never tole what he didn't notice.  I
+tried church, when my children began to git a size I wanted 'em
+to have right teachin', an' you come an' welcomed me an' you been
+my friend, an' now the others is comin' over at last, an'
+visitin' me, an' they ain't a thing more I want in life."
+
+"I am so glad!" said mother.  "Oh my dear, I am so glad!"
+
+"Goin' right home an' tell that to Josiah," said Mrs. Freshett,
+jumping up laughing and crying like, "an' mebby I'll jest spread
+wings and fly!  I never was so happy in all my life as I was
+Sunday, when you ast me before all of them, so cordial like, an'
+says I to Josiah, `We'll go an' try it once,' an' we come an'
+nobody turned a cold shoulder on us, an' I wa'n't wearin' specks
+to see if they did, for I never knowed him so happy in all his
+days.  Orter heard him whistle goin' home, an' he's tryin' all
+them things he learned, on our place, an' you can see it looks a
+heap better a'ready, an' now he's talkin' about buildin' in the
+spring.  I knowed he had money, but he never mentioned buildin'
+before, an' I always thought it was bekase he 'sposed likely we'd
+have to move on, some time.  'Pears now as if we can settle, an'
+live like other folks, after all these years.  I knowed ye didn't
+want me to talk, but I had to tell you!  When you ast us to the
+weddin', and others began comin' round, says I to Josiah, `Won't
+she be glad to know that my skirts is clear, an' I did as well as
+I could?'  An' he says, `That she will!  An' more am I,' says he.
+
+`I mighty proud of you,' says he.  Proud!  Think of that!  Miss
+Stanton, I'd jest wade fire and blood for you!"
+
+"Oh my dear !" said mother.  "What a dreadful thing to say!"
+
+"Gimme the chanct, an' watch if I don't," said Mrs. Freshett. 
+"Now, Josiah is proud I stuck it out!  Now, I can have a house! 
+Now, my children can have all the show we can raise to give 'em! 
+I'm done cringin' an' dodgin'!  I've always done my best;
+henceforth I mean to hold up my head an' say so.  I sure can't be
+held for what was done 'fore I was on earth, or since neither. 
+You've given me my show, I'm goin' to take it, but if you want to
+know what's in my heart about you, gimme any kind of a chanct to
+prove, an' see if I don't pony right up to it!"
+
+Mother laughed until the tears rolled, she couldn't help it.  She
+took Mrs. Freshett in her arms and hugged her tight, and kissed
+her mighty near like she does Sarah Hood.  Mrs. Freshett threw
+her arms around mother, and looked over her shoulder, and said to
+me, "Sis, when you grow up, always take a chanct on welcomin' the
+stranger, like your maw does, an' heaven's bound to be your home!
+My, but your maw is a woman to be proud of!" she said, hugging
+mother and patting her on the back.
+
+"All of us are proud of her!" I boasted.
+
+"I doubt if you are proud enough!" cried Mrs. Freshett.  "I have
+my doubts!  I don't see how people livin' with her, an' seein'
+her every day, are in a shape to know jest what she can do for a
+person in the place I was in.  I have my doubts!"
+
+That night when I went home from school mother was worrying over
+the blue goose.  When we went to feed, she told Leon that she was
+afraid it was weak, and not getting enough to eat when it fed
+with the others.  She said after the work was finished, to take
+it out alone, and give it all it would eat; so when the horses
+were tended, the cows milked, everything watered, and the barn
+ready to close for the night, Laddie took the milk to the house,
+while Leon and I caught the blue goose, carried her to the well,
+and began to shell corn.  She was starved to death, almost.  She
+ate a whole ear in no time and looked for more, so Leon sent me
+after another.  By the time that was most gone she began to eat
+slower, and stick her bill in the air to help the grains slip
+down, so I told Leon I thought she had enough.
+
+"No such thing!" said Leon.  "You distinctly heard mother tell me
+to give her `all she would eat.'  She's eating, isn't she?  Go
+bring another ear!"
+
+So she was, but I was doubtful about more.
+
+Leon said I better mind or he would tell mother, so I got it. 
+She didn't begin on it with any enthusiasm.  She stuck her bill
+higher, stretched her neck longer, and she looked so funny when
+she did it, that we just shrieked.  Then Leon reached over, took
+her by the bill, and stripped her neck to help her swallow, and
+as soon as he let go, she began to eat again.
+
+"You see!" said Leon, "she's been starved.  She can't get enough.
+I must help her!"
+
+So he did help her every little bit.  By that time we were
+interested in seeing how much she could hold; and she looked so
+funny that Leon sent me for more corn; but I told him I thought
+what she needed now was water, so we held her to the trough, and
+she tried to drink, but she couldn't swallow much.  We set her
+down beside the corn, and she went to eating again.
+
+"Go it, old mill-hopper!" cried Leon.
+
+Right then there was an awful commotion in the barn, and from the
+squealing we knew one of the horses was loose, and fighting the
+others.  We ran to fix them, and had a time to get Jo back into
+his stall, and tied.  Before we had everything safe, the supper
+bell rang, and I bet Leon a penny I could reach the house while
+he shut the door and got there.  We forgot every single thing
+about the goose.
+
+At supper mother asked Leon if he fed the goose all she would
+eat, and I looked at him guilty-like, for I remembered we hadn't
+put her back.  He frowned at me cross as a bear, and I knew that
+meant he had remembered, and would slip back and put her inside
+when he finished his supper, so I didn't say anything.
+
+"I didn't feed her ALL she would eat!" said Leon.  "If I had,
+she'd be at it yet.  She was starved sure enough!  You never saw
+anything like the corn she downed."
+
+"Well I declare!" said mother.  "Now after this, take her out
+alone, for a few days, and give her as much as she wants."
+
+"All right!" chuckled Leon, because it was a lot of fun to see
+her run her bill around, and gobble up the corn, and stick up her
+head.
+
+The next day was Saturday, so after breakfast I went with Leon to
+drive the sheep and geese to the creek to water; the trough was
+so high it was only for the horses and cattle; when we let out
+the geese, the blue one wasn't there.
+
+"Oh Leon, did you forget to come back and put her in?"
+
+"Yes I did!" he said.  "I meant to when I looked at you to keep
+still, and I started to do it, but Sammy Deam whistled, so I went
+down in the orchard to see what he wanted, and we got to planning
+how to get up a fox chase, and I stayed until father called for
+night, and then I ran and forgot all about the blame old goose."
+
+"Oh Leon!  Where is she?  What will mother say? 'Spose a fox got
+her!"
+
+"It wouldn't help me any if it had, after I was to blame for
+leaving her outside.  Blast a girl!  If you ever amounted to
+anything, you could have put her in while I fixed the horses.  At
+least you could have told me to."
+
+I stood there dumblike and stared at him.  He has got the
+awfulest way of telling the truth when he is scared or provoked. 
+Of course I should have thought of the goose when he was having
+such a hard fight with the horses.  If I'd been like he was, I'd
+have told him that he was older, mother told HIM to do it, and it
+wasn't my fault; but in my heart I knew he did have his hands
+full, and if you're your brother's keeper, you ought to HELP your
+brother remember.  So I stood gawking, while Leon slowly turned
+whiter and whiter.
+
+"We might as well see if we can find her," he said at last, so
+slow and hopeless like it made my heart ache.  So he started
+around the straw stack one way, and I the other, looking into all
+the holes, and before I had gone far I had a glimpse of her, and
+it scared me so I screamed, for her head was down, and she didn't
+look right.  Leon came running and pulled her out.  The swelled
+corn rolled in a little trail after her, and the pigs ran up and
+began to eat it.  Pigs are named righter than anything else I
+know.
+
+"Busted!" cried Leon in tones of awe; about the worst awe you
+ever heard, and the worst bust you ever saw.
+
+From bill to breast she was wide open, and the hominy spilling. 
+We just stood staring at her, and then Leon began to kick the
+pigs; because it would be no use to kick the goose; she would
+never know.  Then he took her up, carried her into the barn, and
+put her on the floor where the other geese had stayed all night. 
+We stood and looked at her some more, as if looking and hoping
+would make her get up and be alive again.  But there's nothing in
+all this world so useless as wishing dead things would come
+alive; we had to do something.
+
+"What are you going to tell mother?"
+
+"Shut up!" said Leon.  "I'm trying to think."
+
+"I'll say it was as much my fault as yours.  I'll go with you. 
+I'll take half whatever they do to you."
+
+"Little fool!" said Leon.  "What good would that do me?"
+
+"Do you know what they cost?  Could you get another with some of
+your horse money?"
+
+I saw it coming and dodged again, before I remembered the
+Crusaders.
+
+"All right!" I said.  "If that's the way you are going to act,
+Smarty, I'll lay all the blame on you; I won't help you a bit,
+and I don't care if you are whipped until the blood runs."
+
+Then I went out of the barn and slammed the door.  For a minute I
+felt better; but it was a short time.  I SAID that to be mean,
+but I did care.  I cared dreadfully; I was partly to blame, and I
+knew it.  Coming around the barn, I met Laddie, and he saw in a
+flash I was in trouble, so he stopped and asked:  "What now,
+Chicken?"
+
+"Come into the barn where no one will hear us," I said.
+
+So we went around the outside, entered at the door on the
+embankment, and he sat in the wheelbarrow on the threshing floor
+while I told him.  I thought I felt badly enough, but after I saw
+Laddie, it grew worse, for I remembered we were short of money
+that fall, that the goose was a fine, expensive one, and how
+proud mother was of her, and how she'd be grieved, and that was
+trouble for sure.
+
+"Run along and play!" said Laddie, "and don't tell any one else
+if you can help it.  I'll hide the goose, and see if I can get
+another in time to take the place of this one, so mother won't be
+worried."
+
+I walked to the house slowly, but I was afraid to enter.  When
+you are all choked up, people are sure to see it, and ask fool
+questions.  So I went around to the gate and stood there looking
+up and down the road, and over the meadow toward the Big Woods;
+and all at once, in one of those high, regular bugle calls, like
+they mostly scream in spring, one of Pryors' ganders split the
+echoes for a mile; maybe farther.
+
+I was across the road and slinking down inside the meadow fence
+before I knew it.  There was no thought or plan.  I started for
+Pryors' and went straight ahead, only I kept out of line with our
+kitchen windows.  I tramped through the slush, ice, and crossed
+fields where I was afraid of horses; but when I got to the top of
+the Pryor backyard fence, I stuck there, for the bulldogs were
+loose, and came raving at me.  I was going to be eaten alive, for
+I didn't know the word Laddie did; and those dogs climbed a fence
+like a person; I saw them the time Leon brought back Even So.  I
+was thinking what a pity it was, after every one had grown
+accustomed to me, and had begun loving me, that I should be
+wasted for dog feed, when Mr. Pryor came to the door, and called
+them; they didn't mind, so he came to the fence, and crossest you
+ever heard, every bit as bad as the dogs, he cried:  "Whose brat
+are you, and what are you doing here?"
+
+I meant to tell him; but you must have a minute after a thing
+like that.
+
+"God of my life!" he fairly frothed.  "What did anybody send a
+dumb child here for?"
+
+"Dumb child!"  I didn't care if Mr. Pryor did wear a Crown of
+Glory.  It wasn't going to do him one particle of good, unless he
+was found in the way of the Lord.  "Dumb child!"  I was no more
+dumb than he was, until his bulldogs scared me so my heart got
+all tangled up with my stomach, my lungs, and my liver.  That
+made me mad, and there was nothing that would help me to loosen
+up and talk fast, like losing my temper.  I wondered what kind of
+a father he had.  If he'd been stood against the wall and made to
+recite, "Speak gently," as often as all of us, perhaps he'd have
+remembered the verse that says:
+
+            "Speak gently to the little child;
+                Its love be sure to gain;
+             Teach it in accents soft and mild;
+                It may not long remain."
+
+
+I should think not, if it had any chance at all to get away!  I
+was so angry by that time I meant to tell him what I thought. 
+Polite or not polite, I'd take a switching if I had to, but I
+wasn't going to stand that.
+
+"You haven't got any God in your life," I reminded him, "and no
+one sent me here.  I came to see the Princess, because I'm in
+awful trouble and I hoped maybe she could fix up a way to help
+me."
+
+"Ye Gods!" he cried.  He would stick to calling on God, whether
+he believed in Him or not.  "If it isn't Nimrod!  I didn't
+recognize you in all that bundling."
+
+Probably he didn't know it, but Nimrod was from the Bible too! 
+By bundling, he meant my hood and coat.  He helped me from the
+fence, sent the bulldogs rolling--sure enough he did kick them,
+and they didn't like it either--took my hand and led me straight
+into the house, and the Princess was there, and a woman who was
+her mother no doubt, and he said:  "Pamela, here is our little
+neighbour, and she says she's in trouble, and she thinks you may
+be of some assistance to her.  Of course you will be glad if you
+can."
+
+"Surely!" said the Princess, and she introduced me to her mother,
+so I bowed the best I knew, and took off my wet mitten, dirty
+with climbing fences, to shake hands with her.  She was so
+gracious and lovely I forgot what I went after.  The Princess
+brought a cloth and wiped the wet from my shoes and stockings,
+and asked me if I wouldn't like a cup of hot tea to keep me from
+taking a chill.
+
+"I've been much wetter than this," I told her, "and I never have
+taken a chill, and anyway my throat's too full of trouble to
+drink."
+
+"Why, you poor child!" said the Princess.  "Tell me quickly!  Is
+your mother ill again?"
+
+"Not now, but she's going to be as soon as she finds out," I
+said, and then I told them.
+
+They all listened without a sound until I got where Leon helped
+the goose eat, and from that on Mr. Pryor laughed until you could
+easily see that he had very little feeling for suffering
+humanity.  It was funny enough when we fed her, but now that she
+was bursted wide open there was nothing amusing about it; and to
+roar when a visitor plainly told you she was in awful trouble,
+didn't seem very good manners to me.  The Princess and her mother
+never even smiled; and before I had told nearly all of it, Thomas
+was called to hitch the Princess' driving cart, and she took me
+to their barnyard to choose the goose that looked most like
+mother's, and all of them seemed like hers, so we took the first
+one Thomas could catch, put it into a bag in the back of the
+cart, and then we got in and started for our barn.  As we reached
+the road, I said to her:  "You'd better go past Dovers', for if
+we come down our Little Hill they will see us sure; it's baking
+day."
+
+"All right!" said the Princess, so we went the long way round the
+section, but goodness me! when she drove no way was far.
+
+When we were opposite our barn she stopped, hitched her horse to
+the fence, and we climbed over, and slipping behind the barn,
+carried the goose around to the pen and put it in with ours.  She
+said she wanted the broken one, because her father would enjoy
+seeing it.  I didn't see how he could!  We were ready to slip
+out, when our geese began to run at the new one, hiss and scream,
+and make such a racket that Laddie and Leon both caught us.  They
+looked at the goose, at me, the Princess, and each other, and
+neither said a word.  She looked back a little bit, and then she
+laughed as hard as she could.  Leon grew red, and he grinned
+ashamed-like, so she laughed worse than ever.  Laddie spoke to
+me:  "You went to Mr. Pryor's and asked for that goose?"
+
+"She did not!" said the Princess before I could answer.  "She
+never asked for anything.  She was making a friendly morning call
+and in the course of her visit she told about the pathetic end of
+the goose that was expected to lay the golden egg--I mean stuff
+the Bishop's pillow--and as we have a large flock of blue geese,
+father gave her one, and he had the best time he's had in years
+doing it.  I wouldn't have had him miss the fun he got from it
+for any money.  He laughed like home again.  Now I must slip away
+before any one sees me, and spoils our secret.  Leon, lad, you
+can go to the house and tell your little mother that the feeding
+stopped every pain her goose had, and hereafter it looks to you
+as if she'd be all right."
+
+"Miss Pryor," said Leon, "did you care about what I said at you
+in church that day?"
+
+"`Thou art all fair, my love.  There is no spot in thee.'  Well,
+it was a little pointed, but since you ask a plain question, I
+have survived it."
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," said Leon.  "Of course I never would, if I'd
+known you could be this nice."
+
+The Princess looked at Laddie and almost gasped, and then both of
+them laughed.  Leon saw that he had told her he was sorry he said
+she was "fair, and no spot in her."
+
+"Oh I don't mean that!" he said.  "What I do mean is that I thank
+you awful much for the goose, and helping me out like such a
+brick of a good fellow, and what I wish is, that I was as old as
+Laddie, and he'd hump himself if he got to be your beau."
+
+The Princess almost ran.  Laddie and I followed to the road,
+where he unhitched the horse and helped her in.  Then he stood
+stroking its neck, as he held the bridle.
+
+"I don't know what to say!" said Laddie.
+
+"In such case, I would counsel silence," advised the Princess.
+
+"I hope you understand how I thank you."
+
+"I fail to see what for.  Father gave the goose to Little Sister.
+Her thanks and Leon's are more than enough for him.  We had great
+sport."
+
+"I insist on adding mine.  Deep and fervent!"
+
+"You take everything so serious.  Can't you see the fun of this?"
+
+"No," said Laddie.  "But if you can, I am glad, and I'm thankful
+for anything that gives me a glimpse of you."
+
+"Bye, Little Sister," said the Princess, and when she loosened
+the lines the mud flew a rod high.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Keeping Christmas Our Way
+
+            "I remember, I remember
+                How my childhood fleeted by,--
+             The mirth of its December,
+                And the warmth of its July."
+
+When dusk closed in it would be Christmas eve.  All day I had
+three points--a chair beside the kitchen table, a lookout melted
+through the frost on the front window, and the big sitting-room
+fireplace.
+
+All the perfumes of Araby floated from our kitchen that day. 
+There was that delicious smell of baking flour from big snowy
+loaves of bread, light biscuit, golden coffee cake, and cinnamon
+rolls dripping a waxy mixture of sugar, butter, and spice, much
+better than the finest butterscotch ever brought from the city. 
+There was the tempting odour of boiling ham and baking pies.  The
+air was filled with the smell of more herbs and spices than I
+knew the names of, that went into mincemeat, fruit cake, plum
+pudding, and pies.  There was a teasing fragrance in the spiced
+vinegar heating for pickles, a reminder of winesap and rambo in
+the boiling cider, while the newly opened bottles of grape juice
+filled the house with the tang of Concord and muscadine.  It
+seemed to me I never got nicely fixed where I could take a sly
+dip in the cake dough or snipe a fat raisin from the mincemeat
+but Candace would say:  "Don't you suppose the backlog is halfway
+down the lane?"
+
+Then I hurried to the front window, where I could see through my
+melted outlook on the frosted pane, across the west eighty to the
+woods, where father and Laddie were getting out the Christmas
+backlog.  It was too bitterly cold to keep me there while they
+worked, but Laddie said that if I would watch, and come to meet
+them, he would take me up, and I might ride home among the
+Christmas greens on the log.
+
+So I flattened my nose against the pane and danced and fidgeted
+until those odours teased me back to the kitchen; and no more did
+I get nicely located beside a jar of pudding sauce than Candace
+would object to the place I had hung her stocking.  It was my
+task, my delightful all-day task, to hang the stockings.  Father
+had made me a peg for each one, and I had ten feet of mantel
+front along which to arrange them.  But it was no small job to do
+this to every one's satisfaction.  No matter what happened to any
+one else, Candace had to be pleased: for did not she so manage
+that most fowls served on mother's table went gizzardless to the
+carving?  She knew and acknowledged the great importance of
+trying cookies, pies, and cake while they were hot.  She was
+forever overworked and tired, yet she always found time to make
+gingerbread women with currant buttons on their frocks, and pudgy
+doughnut men with clove eyes and cigars of cinnamon.  If my own
+stocking lay on the hearth, Candace's had to go in a place that
+satisfied her--that was one sure thing.  Besides, I had to make
+up to her for what Leon did, because she was crying into the
+corner of her apron about that.
+
+He slipped in and stole her stocking, hung it over the
+broomstick, and marched around the breakfast table singing to the
+tune of--
+
+            "Ha, ha, ha, who wouldn't go--
+                 Up on the housetop click, click, click?
+             Down through the chimney,
+                 With good Saint Nick----"
+
+words he made up himself.  He walked just fast enough that she
+couldn't catch him, and sang as he went:
+
+            "Ha, ha, ha, good Saint Nick,
+                 Come and look at this stocking, quick!
+
+             If you undertake its length to fill,
+                 You'll have to bust a ten-dollar bill.
+             Who does it belong to?  Candace Swartz.
+                 Bring extra candy,--seven quarts----"
+
+
+She got so angry she just roared, so father made Leon stop it,
+but I couldn't help laughing myself.  Then we had to pet her all
+day, so she'd cheer up, and not salt the Christmas dinner with
+her tears.  I never saw such a monkey as Leon!  I trotted out to
+comfort her, and snipped bites, until I wore a triangle on the
+carpet between the kitchen and the mantel, the mantel and the
+window, and the window and the kitchen, while every hour things
+grew more exciting.
+
+There never had been such a flurry at our house since I could
+remember; for to-morrow would be Christmas and bring home all the
+children, and a house full of guests.  My big brother, Jerry, who
+was a lawyer in the city, was coming with his family, and so were
+Frank, Elizabeth, and Lucy with theirs, and of course Sally and
+Peter--I wondered if she would still be fixing his tie--and
+Shelley came yesterday, blushing like a rose, and she laughed if
+you pointed your finger at her.
+
+Something had happened to her in Chicago.  I wasn't so sure as I
+had been about a city being such a dreadful place of noise, bad
+air, and wicked people.  Nothing had hurt Shelley.  She had grown
+so much that you could see she was larger.  Her hair and face--
+all of Shelley just shone.  Her eyes danced, she talked and
+laughed all the time, and she hugged every one who passed her. 
+She never loved us so before.  Leon said she must have been
+homesick and coming back had given her a spell.  I did hope it
+would be a bad one, and last forever.  I would have liked for all
+our family to have had a spell if it would have made them act and
+look like Shelley.  The Princess was not a speck lovelier, and
+she didn't act any nicer.
+
+If I could have painted, I'd have made a picture of Shelley with
+a circle of light above her head like the one of the boy Jesus
+where He talked with the wise men in the temple.  I asked father
+if he noticed how much prettier and nicer she was, and he said he
+did.  Then I asked him if he thought now, that a city was such a
+bad place to live in, and he said where she was had nothing to do
+with it, the same thing would happen here, or anywhere, when
+life's greatest experience came to a girl.  That was all he would
+say, but figuring it out was easy.  The greatest experience that
+happened to our girls was when they married, like Sally, so it
+meant that Shelley had gone and fallen in love with that lawyer
+man, and she liked sitting on the sofa with him, and no doubt she
+fixed his ties.  But if any one thought I would tell anything I
+saw when he came they were badly mistaken.
+
+All of us rushed around like we were crazy.  If father and mother
+hadn't held steady and kept us down, we might have raised the
+roof.  We were all so glad about getting Leon and the money back;
+mother hadn't been sick since the fish cured her; the new blue
+goose was so like the one that had burst, even father never
+noticed any difference; all the children were either home or
+coming, and after we had our gifts and the biggest dinner we ever
+had, Christmas night all of us would go to the schoolhouse to see
+our school try to spell down three others to whom they had sent
+saucy invitations to come and be beaten.
+
+Mother sat in the dining-room beside the kitchen door, so that
+she could watch the baking, brewing, pickling, and spicing.  It
+took four men to handle the backlog, which I noticed father
+pronounced every year "just a little the finest we ever had," and
+Laddie strung the house with bittersweet, evergreens, and the
+most beautiful sprays of myrtle that he raked from under the
+snow.  Father drove to town in the sleigh, and the list of things
+to be purchased mother gave him as a reminder was almost a yard
+long.
+
+The minute they finished the outdoor work Laddie and Leon began
+bringing in baskets of apples, golden bellflowers, green pippins,
+white winter pearmains, Rhode Island greenings, and striped
+rambos all covered with hoarfrost, yet not frozen, and so full of
+juice you had to bite into them carefully or they dripped and
+offended mother.  These they washed and carried to the cellar
+ready for use.
+
+Then they cracked big dishes of nuts; and popped corn that popped
+with the most resounding pops in all my experience--popped a
+tubful, and Laddie melted maple sugar and poured over it and made
+big balls of fluff and sweetness.  He took a pan and filled it
+with grains, selected one at a time, the very largest and
+whitest, and made an especial ball, in the middle of which he put
+a lovely pink candy heart on which was printed in red letters: 
+"How can this heart be mine, yet yours, unless our hearts are
+one?"  He wouldn't let any of them see it except me, and he only
+let me because he knew I'd be delighted.
+
+It was almost dusk when father came through the kitchen loaded
+with bundles and found Candace and the girls still cooking.
+
+We were so excited we could scarcely be gathered around the
+supper table, and mother said we chattered until she couldn't
+hear herself think.  After a while Laddie laid down his fork and
+looked at our father.
+
+"Have you any objection to my using the sleigh to-morrow night?"
+he asked.
+
+Father looked at mother.
+
+"Had you planned to use it, mother?"
+
+Mother said:  "No.  If I go, I'll ride in the big sled with all
+of us.  It is such a little way, and the roads are like glass."
+
+So father said politely, as he always spoke to us:  "Then it will
+give me great pleasure for you to take it, my son."
+
+That made Leon bang his fork loudly as he dared and squirm in his
+chair, for well he knew that if he had asked, the answer would
+have been different.  If Laddie took the sleigh he would harness
+carefully, drive fast, but reasonably, blanket his horse, come
+home at the right time, and put everything exactly where he found
+it.  But Leon would pitch the harness on some way, race every
+step, never think of his steaming horse, come home when there was
+no one so wild as he left to play pranks with, and scatter the
+harness everywhere.  He knew our father would love to trust him
+the same as he did Laddie.  He wouldn't always prove himself
+trustworthy, but he envied Laddie.
+
+"You think you'll take the Princess to the spelling bee, don't
+you?" he sneered.
+
+"I mean to ask her," replied Laddie.
+
+"Maybe you think she'll ride in our old homemade, hickory
+cheesebox, when she can sail all over the country like a bird in
+a velvet-lined cutter with a real buffalo robe."
+
+There was a quick catch in mother's breath and I felt her hand on
+my chair tremble.  Father's lips tightened and a frown settled on
+his face, while Laddie fairly jumped.  He went white to the lips,
+and one hand dropped on the table, palm up, the fingers closing
+and unclosing, while his eyes turned first to mother, and then to
+father, in dumb appeal.  We all knew that he was suffering.  No
+one spoke, and Leon having shot his arrow straight home, saw as
+people so often do in this world that the damage of unkind words
+could not easily be repaired; so he grew red in the face and
+squirmed uncomfortably.
+
+At last Laddie drew a deep, quivering breath.  "I never thought
+of that," he said.  "She has seemed happy to go with me several
+times when I asked her, but of course she might not care to ride
+in ours, when she has such a fine sleigh of her own."
+
+Father's voice fairly boomed down the length of the table.
+
+"Your mother always has found our sleigh suitable," he said.
+
+The fact was, father was rarely proud of it.  He had selected the
+hickory in our woods, cut it and hauled it to the mill, cured the
+lumber, and used all his spare time for two winters making it. 
+With the exception of having the runners turned at a factory and
+iron-bound at a smithy, he had completed it alone with great
+care, even to staining it a beautiful cherry colour, and fitting
+white sheepskins into the bed.  We had all watched him and been
+so proud of it, and now Leon was sneering at it.  He might just
+as well have undertaken to laugh at father's wedding suit or to
+make fun of "Clark's Commentaries."
+
+Laddie appealed to mother:  "Do you think I'd better not ask
+her?"
+
+He spoke with an effort.
+
+"Laddie, that is the first time I ever heard you propose to do
+any one an injustice," she said.
+
+"I don't see how," said Laddie.
+
+"It isn't giving the Princess any chance at all," replied mother
+"You've just said that she has seemed pleased to accompany you
+before, now you are proposing to cut her out of what promises to
+be the most delightful evening of the winter, without even giving
+her the chance to say whether she'd go with you or not.  Has she
+ever made you feel that anything you offered her or wanted to do
+for her was not good enough?"
+
+"Never!" exclaimed Laddie fervently.
+
+"Until she does, then, do you think it would be quite manly and
+honourable to make decisions for her?  You say you never thought
+of anything except a pleasant time with her; possibly she feels
+the same.  Unless she changes, I would scarcely let a boy's
+foolish tongue disturb her pleasure.  Moreover, as to the matter
+of wealth, your father may be as rich as hers; but they have one,
+we have many.  If what we spend on all our brood could be
+confined to one child, we could easily duplicate all her
+luxuries, and I think she has the good sense to realize the fact
+as quickly as any one.  I've no doubt she would gladly exchange
+half she has for the companionship of a sister or a brother in
+her lonely life."
+
+Laddie turned to father, and father's smile was happy again. 
+Mother was little but she was mighty.  With only a few words she
+had made Leon feel how unkind and foolish he had been, quieted
+Laddie's alarm, and soothed the hurt father's pride had felt in
+that he had not been able to furnish her with so fine a turnout
+as Pryors had.
+
+Next morning when the excitement of gifts and greetings was over,
+and Laddie's morning work was all finished, he took a beautiful
+volume of poems and his popcorn ball and started across the
+fields due west; all of us knew that he was going to call on and
+offer them to the Princess, and ask to take her to the spelling
+bee.  I suppose Laddie thought he was taking that trip alone, but
+really he was surrounded.  I watched him from the window, and my
+heart went with him.  Presently father went and sat beside
+mother's chair, and stroking her hand, whispered softly:  "Please
+don't worry, little mother.  It will be all right.  Your boy will
+come home happy."
+
+"I hope so," she answered, "but I can't help feeling dreadfully
+nervous.  If things go wrong with Laddie, it will spoil the day."
+
+"I have much faith in the Princess' good common sense," replied
+father, "and considering what it means to Laddie, it would hurt
+me sore to lose it."
+
+Mother sat still, but her lips moved so that I knew she was
+making soft little whispered prayers for her best loved son.  But
+Laddie, plowing through the drift, never dreamed that all of us
+were with him.  He was always better looking than any other man I
+ever had seen, but when, two hours later, he stamped into the
+kitchen he was so much handsomer than usual, that I knew from the
+flush on his cheek and the light in his eye, that the Princess
+had been kind, and by the package in his hand, that she had made
+him a present.  He really had two, a beautiful book and a
+necktie.  I wondered to my soul if she gave him that, so she
+could fix it!  I didn't believe she had begun on his ties at that
+time; but of course when he loved her as he did, he wished she
+would.
+
+It was the very jolliest Christmas we ever had, but the day
+seemed long.  When night came we were in a precious bustle.  The
+wagon bed on bobs, filled with hay and covers, drawn by Ned and
+Jo, was brought up for the family, and the sleigh made spick-and-
+span and drawn by Laddie's thoroughbred, stood beside it.  Laddie
+had filled the kitchen oven with bricks and hung up a comfort at
+four o'clock to keep the Princess warm.
+
+Because he had to drive out of the way to bring her, Laddie
+wanted to start early; and when he came down dressed in his
+college clothes, and looking the manliest of men, some of the
+folks thought it funny to see him carefully rake his hot bricks
+from the oven, and pin them in an old red breakfast shawl.  I
+thought it was fine, and I whispered to mother:  "Do you suppose
+that if Laddie ever marries the Princess he will be good to her
+as he is to you?"
+
+Mother nodded with tear-dimmed eyes, but Shelley said:  "I'll
+wager a strong young girl like the Princess will laugh at you for
+babying over her."
+
+"Why?" inquired Laddie.  "It is a long drive and a bitter night,
+and if you fancy the Princess will laugh at anything I do, when I
+am doing the best I know for her comfort, you are mistaken.  At
+least, that is the impression she gave me this morning."
+
+I saw the swift glance mother shot at father, and father laid
+down his paper and said, while he pretended his glasses needed
+polishing:  "Now there is the right sort of a girl for you.  No
+foolishness about her, when she has every chance.  Hurrah for the
+Princess!"
+
+It was easy to see that she wasn't going to have nearly so hard a
+time changing father's opinion as she would mother's.  It was not
+nearly a year yet, and here he was changed already.  Laddie said
+good-bye to mother--he never forgot--gathered up his comfort and
+bricks, and started for Pryors' downright happy.  We went to the
+schoolhouse a little later, all of us scoured, curled, starched,
+and wearing our very best clothes.  My! but it was fine.  There
+were many lights in the room and it was hung with greens.  There
+was a crowd even though it was early.  On Miss Amelia's table was
+a volume of history that was the prize, and every one was looking
+and acting the very best he knew how, although there were cases
+where they didn't know so very much.
+
+Our Shelley was the handsomest girl there, until the Princess
+came, and then they both were.  Shelley wore one of her city
+frocks and a quilted red silk hood that was one of her Christmas
+gifts, and she looked just like a handsome doll.  She made every
+male creature in that room feel that she was pining for him
+alone.  May had a gay plaid frock and curls nearly a yard long,
+and so had I, but both our frocks and curls were homemade; mother
+would have them once in a while; father and I couldn't stop her.
+
+But there was not a soul there who didn't have some sort of gift
+to rejoice over, and laughter and shouts of "Merry Christmas!"
+filled the room.  It was growing late and there was some talk of
+choosers, when the door opened and in a rush of frosty air the
+Princess and Laddie entered.  Every one stopped short and stared.
+
+There was good reason.  The Princess looked as if she had
+accidentally stepped from a frame.  She was always lovely and
+beautifully dressed, but to-night she was prettier and finer than
+ever before.  You could fairly hear their teeth click as some of
+the most envious of those girls caught sight of her, for she was
+wearing a new hat!--a black velvet store hat, fitting closely
+over her crown, with a rim of twisted velvet, a scarlet bird's
+wing, and a big silver buckle.  Her dress was of scarlet cloth
+cut in forms, and it fitted as if she had been melted and poured
+into it.  It was edged around the throat, wrists, and skirt with
+narrow bands of fur, and she wore a loose, long, silk-lined coat
+of the same material, and worst of all, furs--furs such as we had
+heard wealthy and stylish city ladies were wearing.  A golden
+brown cape that reached to her elbows, with ends falling to the
+knees, finished in the tails of some animal, and for her hands a
+muff as big as a nail keg.
+
+Now, there was not a girl in that room, except the Princess, an
+she had those clothes, who wouldn't have flirted like a peacock,
+almost bursting with pride; but because the Princess had them,
+and they didn't, they sat stolid and sullen, and cast glances at
+each other as if they were saying:  "The stuck-up thing!" 
+"Thinks she's smart, don't she?"
+
+Many of them should have gone to meet her and made her welcome,
+for she was not of our district and really their guest.  Shelley
+did go, but I noticed she didn't hurry.
+
+The choosers began at once, and Laddie was the first person
+called for our side, and the Princess for the visitors'.  Every
+one in the room was chosen on one side or the other; even my name
+was called, but I only sat still and shook my head, for I very
+well knew that no one except father would remember to pronounce
+easy ones for me, and besides I was so bitterly disappointed I
+could scarcely have stood up.  They had put me in a seat near the
+fire; the spellers lined either wall, and a goodly number that
+refused to spell occupied the middle seats.  I couldn't get a
+glimpse of Laddie or the home folks, or worst of all, of my
+idolized Princess.
+
+I never could bear to find a fault with Laddie, but I sadly
+reflected that he might as well have left me at home, if I were
+to be buried where I could neither hear nor see a thing.  I was
+just wishing it was summer so I could steal out to the cemetery,
+and have a good visit with the butterflies that always swarmed
+around Georgiana Jane Titcomb's grave at the corner of the
+church.  I never knew Georgiana Jane, but her people must have
+been very fond of her, for her grave was scarlet with geraniums,
+and pink with roses from earliest spring until frost, and the
+bright colours attracted swarms of butterflies.  I had learned
+that if I stuck a few blossoms in my hair, rubbed some sweet
+smelling ones over my hands, and knelt and kept so quiet that I
+fitted into the landscape, the butterflies would think me a
+flower too, and alight on my hair, dress, and my hands, even. 
+God never made anything more beautiful than those butterflies,
+with their wings of brightly painted velvet down, their bright
+eyes, their curious antennae, and their queer, tickly feet. 
+Laddie had promised me a book telling all about every kind there
+was, the first time he went to a city, so I was wishing I had it,
+and was among my pet beauties with it, when I discovered him
+bending over me.
+
+He took my arm, and marching back to his place, helped me to the
+deep window seat beside him, where with my head on a level, and
+within a foot of his, I could see everything in the whole room. 
+I don't know why I ever spent any time pining for the beauties of
+Georgiana Jane Titcomb's grave, even with its handsome headstone
+on which was carved a lamb standing on three feet and holding a
+banner over its shoulder with the fourth, and the geraniums,
+roses, and the weeping willow that grew over it, thrown in.  I
+might have trusted Laddie.  He never had forgotten me; until he
+did, I should have kept unwavering faith.
+
+Now, I had the best place of any one in the room, and I smoothed
+my new plaid frock and shook my handmade curls just as near like
+Shelley as ever I could.  But it seems that most of the ointment
+in this world has a fly in it, like in the Bible, for fine as my
+location was, I soon knew that I should ask Laddie to put me
+down, because the window behind me didn't fit its frame, and the
+night was bitter.  Before half an hour I was stiff with cold; but
+I doubt if I would have given up that location if I had known I
+would freeze, because this was the most fun I had ever seen.
+
+Miss Amelia began with McGuffey's spelling book, and whenever
+some poor unfortunate made a bad break the crowd roared with
+laughter.  Peter Justice stood up to spell and before three
+rounds he was nodding on his feet, so she pronounced "sleepy" to
+him.  Some one nudged Pete and he waked up and spelled it, s-l-e,
+sle, p-e, pe, and because he really was so sleepy it made every
+one laugh.  James Whittaker spelled compromise with a k, and
+Isaac Thomas spelled soap, s-o-a-p-e, and it was all the funnier
+that he couldn't spell it, for from his looks you could tell that
+he had no acquaintance with it in any shape.  Then Miss Amelia
+gave out "marriage" to the spooniest young man in the district,
+and "stepfather" to a man who was courting a widow with nine
+children; and "coquette" to our Shelley, who had been making
+sheep's eyes at Johnny Myers, so it took her by surprise and she
+joined the majority, which by that time occupied seats.
+
+There was much laughing and clapping of hands for a time, but
+when Miss Amelia had let them have their fun and thinned the
+lines to half a dozen on each side who could really spell, she
+began business, and pronounced the hardest words she could find
+in the book, and the spellers caught them up and rattled them off
+like machines.
+
+"Incompatibility," she gave out, and before the sound of her
+voice died away the Princess was spelling:  "I-n, in, c-o-m, com,
+in com, p-a-t, pat, incompat, i, incompati, b-i-l, bil,
+incompatibil, i, incompatibili, t-y, ty, incompatibility."
+
+Then Laddie spelled "incomprehensibility," and they finished up
+the "bilities" and the "alities" with a rush and changed
+McGuffey's for Webster, with five on Laddie's side and three on
+the Princess', and when they quit with it, the Princess was
+alone, and Laddie and our little May facing her.
+
+From that on you could call it real spelling.  They spelled from
+the grammars, hyperbole, synecdoche, and epizeuxis.  They spelled
+from the physiology, chlorophyll, coccyx, arytenoid, and the
+names of the bones and nerves, and all the hard words inside you.
+
+They tried the diseases and spelled jaundice, neurasthenia, and
+tongue-tied.  They tried all the occupations and professions, and
+went through the stores and spelled all sorts of hardware, china
+and dry goods.  Each side kept cheering its own and urging them
+to do their best, and every few minutes some man in the back of
+the house said something that was too funny.  When Miss Amelia
+pronounced "bombazine" to Laddie our side cried, "Careful,
+Laddie, careful! you're out of your element!"
+
+And when she gave "swivel-tree" to the Princess, her side
+whispered, "Go easy!  Do you know what it is?  Make her define
+it."
+
+They branched over the country.  May met her Jonah on the
+mountains.  Katahdin was too much for her, and Laddie and the
+Princess were left to fight it out alone.  I didn't think Laddie
+liked it.  I'm sure he never expected it to turn out that way. 
+He must have been certain he could beat her, for after he
+finished English there were two or three other languages he knew,
+and every one in the district felt that he could win, and
+expected him to do it.  It was an awful place to put him in, I
+could see that.  He stood a little more erect than usual, with
+his eyes toward the Princess, and when his side kept crying,
+"Keep the prize, Laddie!  Hold up the glory of the district!" he
+ground out the words as if he had a spite at them for not being
+so hard that he would have an excuse for going down.
+
+The Princess was poised lightly on her feet, her thick curls,
+just touching her shoulders, shining in the light; her eyes like
+stars, her perfect, dark oval face flushed a rich red, and her
+deep bosom rising and falling with excitement.  Many times in
+later years I have tried to remember when the Princess was
+loveliest of all, and that night always stands first.
+
+I was thinking fast.  Laddie was a big man.  Men were strong on
+purpose so they could bear things.  He loved the Princess so, and
+he didn't know whether she loved him or not; and every
+marriageable man in three counties was just aching for the chance
+to court her, and I didn't feel that he dared risk hurting her
+feelings.
+
+Laddie said, to be the man who conquered the Princess and to whom
+she lifted her lips for a first kiss was worth life itself.  I
+made up my mind that night that he knew just exactly what he was
+talking about.  I thought so too.  And I seemed to understand why
+Laddie--Laddie in his youth, strength, and manly beauty, Laddie,
+who boasted that there was not a nerve in his body--trembled
+before the Princess.
+
+It looked as if she had set herself against him and was working
+for the honours, and if she wanted them, I didn't feel that he
+should chance beating her, and then, too, it was beginning to be
+plain that it was none too sure he could.  Laddie didn't seem to
+be the only one who had been well drilled in spelling.
+
+I held my jaws set a minute, so that I could speak without Laddie
+knowing how I was shivering, and then I whispered:  "Except her
+eyes are softer, she looks just like a cardinal."
+
+Laddie nodded emphatically and moving a step nearer laid his
+elbow across my knees.  Heavens, how they spelled!  They finished
+all the words I ever heard and spelled like lightning through a
+lot of others the meaning of which I couldn't imagine.  Father
+never gave them out at home.  They spelled epiphany, gaberdine,
+ichthyology, gewgaw, kaleidoscope, and troubadour.  Then Laddie
+spelled one word two different ways; and the Princess went him
+one better, for she spelled another three.
+
+They spelled from the Bible, Nebuchadnezzar, Potiphar, Peleg,
+Belshazzar, Abimelech, and a host of others I never heard the
+minister preach about.  Then they did the most dreadful thing of
+all.  "Broom," pronounced the teacher, and I began mentally, b-r-
+o-o-m, but Laddie spelled "b-r-o-u-g-h-a-m," and I stared at him
+in a daze.  A second later Miss Amelia gave out "Beecham" to the
+Princess, and again I tried it, b-e-e-c-h, but the Princess was
+spelling "B-e-a-u-c-h-a-m-p," and I almost fell from the window.
+
+They kept that up until I was nearly crazy with nervousness; I
+forgot I was half frozen.  I pulled Laddie's sleeve and whispered
+in his ear:  "Do you think she'll cry if you beat her?"
+
+I was half crying myself, the strain had been awful.  I was torn
+between these dearest loves of mine.
+
+"Seen me have any chance to beat her?" retorted Laddie.
+
+Miss Amelia seemed to have used most of her books, and at last
+picked up an old geography and began giving out points around the
+coast, while Laddie and the Princess took turns snatching the
+words from her mouth and spelling them.  Father often did that,
+so Laddie was safe there.  They were just going it when Miss
+Amelia pronounced, "Terra del Fuego," to the Princess.  "T-e-r-r-
+a, Terra, d-e-l, del, F-i-e-u-g-o," spelled the Princess, and sat
+down suddenly in the midst of a mighty groan from her side,
+swelled by a wail from one little home district deserter.
+
+"Next!" called Miss Amelia.
+
+"T-e-r-r-a, Terra, d-e-l, del, F-e-u-g-o," spelled Laddie.
+
+"Wrong!" wailed Miss Amelia, and our side breathed one big groan
+in concert, and I lifted up my voice in that also.  Then every
+one laughed and pretended they didn't care, and the Princess came
+over and shook hands with Laddie, and Laddie said to Miss Amelia:
+
+"Just let me take that book a minute until I see how the thing
+really does go."  It was well done and satisfied the crowd, which
+clapped and cheered; but as I had heard him spell it many, many
+times for father, he didn't fool me.
+
+Laddie and the Princess drew slips for the book and it fell to
+her.  He was so pleased he kissed me as he lifted me down and
+never noticed I was so stiff I could scarcely stand--and I did
+fall twice going to the sleigh.  My bed was warm and my room was
+warm, but I chilled the night through and until the next
+afternoon, when I grew so faint and sleepy I crept to Miss
+Amelia's desk, half dead with fright--it was my first trip to ask
+an excuse--and begged:  "Oh teacher, I'm so sick.  Please let me
+go home."
+
+I think one glance must have satisfied her that it was true, for
+she said very kindly that I might, and she would send Leon along
+to take care of me.  But my troubles were only half over when I
+had her consent.  It was very probable I would be called a baby
+and sent back when I reached home, so I refused company and
+started alone.  It seemed a mile past the cemetery.  I was so
+tired I stopped, and leaning against the fence, peeped through at
+the white stones and the whiter mounds they covered, and wondered
+how my mother would feel if she were compelled to lay me beside
+the two little whooping cough and fever sisters already sleeping
+there.  I decided that it would be so very dreadful, that the
+tears began to roll down my cheeks and freeze before they fell.
+
+Down the Big Hill slowly I went.  How bare it looked then!  Only
+leafless trees and dried seed pods rattling on the bushes, the
+sand frozen, and not a rush to be seen for the thick blanket of
+snow.  A few rods above the bridge was a footpath, smooth and
+well worn, that led down to the creek, beaten by the feet of
+children who raced it every day and took a running slide across
+the ice.  I struck into the path as always; but I was too stiff
+to run, for I tried.  I walked on the ice, and being almost worn
+out, sat on the bridge and fell to watching the water bubbling
+under the glassy crust.  I was so dull a horse's feet struck the
+bridge before I heard the bells--for I had bells in my ears that
+day--and when I looked up it was the Princess--the Princess in
+her red dress and furs, with a silk hood instead of her hat, her
+sleigh like a picture, with a buffalo robe, that it was whispered
+about the country, cost over a hundred dollars, and her
+thoroughbred mare Maud dancing and prancing.  "Bless me!  Is it
+you, Little Sister?" she asked.  "Shall I give you a ride home?"
+
+Before I could scarcely realize she was there, I was beside her
+and she was tucking the fine warm robe over me.  I lifted a pair
+of dull eyes to her face.
+
+"Oh Princess, I am so glad you came," I said.  "I don't think I
+could have gone another step if I had frozen on the bridge."
+
+The Princess bent to look in my face.  "Why, you poor child!" She
+exclaimed, "you're white as death!  Where are you ill?"
+
+I leaned on her shoulder, though ordinarily I would not have
+offered to touch her first, and murmured:  "I am not ill,
+outdoors, only dull, sleepy, and freezing with the cold."
+
+"It was that window!" she exclaimed.  "I thought of it, but I
+trusted Laddie."
+
+That roused me a little.
+
+"Oh Princess," I cried, "you mustn't blame Laddie!  I knew it was
+too cold, but I wouldn't tell him, because if he put me down I
+couldn't see you, and we thought, but for your eyes being softer,
+you looked just like a cardinal."
+
+The Princess hugged me close and laughed merrily.  "You darling!"
+she cried.
+
+Then she shook me up sharply:  "Don't you dare go to sleep!" she
+said.  "I must take you home first."
+
+Once there she quieted my mother's alarm, put me to bed, drove
+three miles for Dr. Fenner and had me started nicely on the road
+to a month of lung fever, before she left.  In my delirium I
+spelled volumes; and the miracle of it was I never missed a word
+until I came to "Terra del Fuego," and there I covered my lips
+and stoutly insisted that it was the Princess' secret.
+
+To keep me from that danger sleep on the road, she shook me up
+and asked about the spelling bee.  I thought it was the grandest
+thing I had ever seen in my life, and I told her so.  She
+gathered me close and whispered:  "Tell me something, Little
+Sister, please."
+
+The minx!  She knew I thought that a far finer title than hers.
+
+"Would Laddie care?" I questioned.
+
+"Not in the least!"
+
+"Well then, I will."
+
+"Can Laddie spell `Terra del Fuego?'" she whispered.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"I have heard him do it over and over for father."
+
+The Princess forgot I was so sick, forgot her horse, forgot
+everything.  She threw her head back and her hands up, until her
+horse stopped in answer to the loosened line, and she laughed and
+laughed.  She laughed until peal on peal re-echoed from our Big
+Woods clear across the west eighty.  She laughed until her
+ringing notes set my slow pulses on fire, and started my numbed
+brain in one last effort.  I stood up and took her lovely face
+between my palms, turning it until I could see whether the
+thought that had come to me showed in her eyes, and it did.
+
+"Oh you darling, splendid Princess!" I cried.  "You missed it on
+purpose to let Laddie beat!  You can spell it too!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+The Horn of the Hunter
+
+            "The dusky night rides down the sky,
+                 And ushers in the morn:
+             The hounds all join in glorious cry,
+                 The huntsman winds his horn."
+
+Leon said our house reminded him of the mourners' bench before
+any one had "come through."  He said it was so deadly with Sally
+and Shelley away, that he had a big notion to marry Susie Fall
+and bring her over to liven things up a little.  Mother said she
+thought that would be a good idea, and Leon started in the
+direction of Falls', but he only went as far as Deams'.  When he
+came back he had a great story to tell about dogs chasing their
+sheep, and foxes taking their geese.  Father said sheep were only
+safe behind securely closed doors, especially in winter, and
+geese also.  Leon said every one hadn't as big a barn as ours,
+and father said there was nothing to prevent any man from
+building the sized barn he needed to shelter his creatures in
+safety and comfort, if he wanted to dig in and earn the money to
+put it up.  There was no answer to that, and Mr. Leon didn't try
+to make any.  Mostly, he said something to keep on talking, but
+sometimes he saw when he had better quit.
+
+I was having a good time, myself.  Of course when the fever was
+the worst, and when I never had been sick before, it was pretty
+bad, but as soon as I could breathe all right, there was no pain
+to speak of, and every one was so good to me.  I could have Bobby
+on the footboard of my bed as long as I wanted him, and he would
+crow whenever I told him to.  I kept Grace Greenwood beside me,
+and spoiled her dress making her take some of each dose of
+medicine I did, but Shelley wrote that she was saving goods and
+she would make her another as soon as she came home.  I made
+mother put red flannel on Grace's chest and around her neck,
+until I could hardly find her mouth when she had to take her
+medicine, but she swallowed it down all right, or she got her
+nose held, until she did.  She was not nearly so sick as I was,
+though.  We both grew better together, and, when Dr. Fenner
+brought me candy, she had her share.
+
+When I began to get well it was lovely.  Such toast, chicken
+broth, and squirrels, as mother always had.  I even got the
+chicken liver, oranges, and all of them gave me everything they
+had that I wanted--I must almost have died to make them act like
+that!
+
+Laddie and father would take me up wrapped in blankets and hold
+me to rest my back.  Father would rock me and sing about "Young
+Johnny," just as he had when I was little.  We always laughed at
+it, we knew it was a fool song, but we liked it.  The tune was
+smooth and sleepy-like and the words went:
+
+            "One day young Johnny, he did go,
+             Way down in the meadow for to mow.
+        Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+             He scarce had mowed twice round the field,
+             When a pesky sarpent bit him on the heel,
+         Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+             He threw the scythe upon the ground,
+             An' shut his eyes, and looked all round,
+         Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+             He took the sarpent in his hand,
+             And then ran home to Molly Bland,
+         Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+             O Molly dear, and don't you see,
+             This pesky sarpent that bit me?
+         Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+             O Johnny dear, why did you go,
+             Way down in the meadow fot to mow?
+         Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!
+
+             O Molly dear, I thought you knowed
+             'Twas daddy's grass, and it must be mowed,
+         Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-n an-incty, noddy O!
+
+             Now all young men a warning take,
+             And don't get bit by a rattlesnake.
+         Li-tu-di-nan-incty, tu-di-nan-incty, noddy O!"
+
+
+
+All of them told me stories, read to me, and Frank, one of my big
+gone-away brothers, sent me the prettiest little book.  It had a
+green cover with gold on the back, and it was full of stories and
+poems, not so very hard, because I could read every one of them,
+with help on a few words.  The piece I liked best was poetry.  If
+it hadn't been for that, I'm afraid, I was having such a good
+time, I'd have lain there until I forgot how to walk, with all of
+them trying to see who could be nicest to me.  The ones who
+really could, were Laddie and the Princess, except mother. 
+Laddie lifted me most carefully, the Princess told the best
+stories, but after all, if the burning and choking grew so bad I
+could scarcely stand it, mother could lay her hand on my head and
+say, "Poor child," in a way that made me work to keep on
+breathing.  Maybe I only THOUGHT I loved Laddie best.  I guess if
+I had been forced to take my choice when I had the fever, I'd
+have stuck pretty tight to mother.  Even Dr. Fenner said if I
+pulled through she'd have to make me.  I might have been lying
+there yet, if it hadn't been for the book Frank sent me, with the
+poetry piece in it.  It began:
+
+        "Somewhere on a sunny bank, buttercups are bright,
+         Somewhere 'mid the frozen grass, peeps the daisy white."
+
+
+I read that so often I could repeat it quite as well with the
+book shut as open, and every time I read it, I wanted outdoors
+worse.  In one place it ran:
+
+
+       "Welcome, yellow buttercups, welcome daisies white,
+        Ye are in my spirit visioned a delight.
+        Coming in the springtime of sunny hours to tell,
+        Speaking to our hearts of Him who doeth all things well."
+
+
+That piece helped me out of bed, and the blue gander screaming
+opened the door.  It was funny about it too.  I don't know WHY it
+worked on me that way; it just kept singing in my heart all day,
+and I could shut my eyes and go to sleep seeing buttercups in a
+gold sheet all over our Big Hill, although there never was a
+single one there; and meadows full of daisies, which were things
+father said were a pest he couldn't tolerate, because they spread
+so, and he grubbed up every one he found.  Yet that piece filled
+our meadow until I imagined I could roll on daisies.  They might
+be a pest to farmers, but sheets of them were pretty good if you
+were burning with fever.  Between the buttercups and the daisies
+I left the bed with a light head and wobbly legs.
+
+Of course I wasn't an idiot.  I knew when I looked from our south
+window exactly what was to be seen.  The person who wrote that
+piece was the idiot.  It sang and sounded pretty, and it pulled
+you up and pushed you out, but really it was a fool thing, as I
+very well knew.  I couldn't imagine daisies peeping through
+frozen grass.  Any baby should have known they bloomed in July. 
+Skunk cabbage always came first, and hepatica.  If I had looked
+from any of our windows and seen daisies and buttercups in March,
+I'd have fallen over with the shock.  I knew there would be
+frozen brown earth, last year's dead leaves, caved-in apple and
+potato holes, the cabbage row almost gone, puddles of water and
+mud everywhere, and I would hear geese scream and hens sing.  And
+yet that poem kept pulling and pulling, and I was happy as a
+queen--I wondered if they were for sure; mother had doubts--the
+day I was wrapped in shawls and might sit an hour in the sun on
+the top board of the back fence, where I could see the barn,
+orchard, the creek and the meadow, as you never could in summer
+because of the leaves.  I wasn't looking for buttercups and
+daisies either.  I mighty well knew there wouldn't be any.
+
+But the sun was there.  A little taste of willow, oak and maple
+was in the air.  You could see the buds growing fat too, and you
+could smell them.  If you opened your eyes and looked in any
+direction you could see blue sky, big, ragged white clouds, bare
+trees, muddy earth with grassy patches, and white spots on the
+shady sides where unmelted snow made the icy feel in the air,
+even when the sun shone.  You couldn't hear yourself think for
+the clatter of the turkeys, ganders, roosters, hens, and
+everything that had a voice.  I was so crazy with it I could
+scarcely hang to the fence; I wanted to get down and scrape my
+wings like the gobbler, and scream louder than the gander, and
+crow oftener than the rooster.  There was everything all ice and
+mud.  They would have frozen, if they hadn't been put in a house
+at night, and starved, if they hadn't been fed; they were not at
+the place where they could hunt and scratch, and not pay any
+attention to feeding time, because of being so bursting full. 
+They had no nests and babies to rejoice over.  But there they
+were!  And so was I!  Buttercups and daisies be-hanged!  Ice and
+mud really!  But if you breathed that air, and shut your eyes,
+north, you could see blue flags, scarlet lilies, buttercups,
+cattails and redbirds sailing over them; east, there would be
+apple bloom and soft grass, cowslips, and bubbling water, robins,
+thrushes, and bluebirds; and south, waving corn with wild rose
+and alder borders, and sparrows, and larks on every fence rider.
+
+Right there I got that daisy thing figured out.  It wasn't that
+there were or ever would be daisies and buttercups among the
+frozen grass; but it was forever and always that when this FEEL
+came into the air, you knew they were COMING.  THAT was what
+ailed the gander and the gobbler.  They hadn't a thing to be
+thankful for yet, but something inside them was swelling and
+pushing because of what was coming.  I felt exactly as they did,
+because I wanted to act the same way, but I'd been sick enough to
+know that I'd better be thankful for the chance to sit on the
+fence, and think about buttercups and daisies.  Really, one old
+brown and purple skunk cabbage with a half-frozen bee buzzing
+over it, or a few forlorn little spring beauties, would have set
+me wild, and when a lark really did go over, away up high, and a
+dove began to coo in the orchard, if Laddie hadn't come for me, I
+would have fallen from the fence.
+
+I simply had to get well and quickly too, for the wonderful time
+was beginning.  It was all very well to lie in bed when there was
+nothing else to do, and every one would pet me and give me
+things; but here was maple syrup time right at the door, and the
+sugar camp most fun alive; here was all the neighbourhood crazy
+mad at the foxes, and planning a great chase covering a circuit
+of miles before the ground thawed; here was Easter and all the
+children coming, except Shelley--again, it would cost too much
+for only one day--and with everything beginning to hum, I found
+out there would be more amusement outdoors than inside.  That was
+how I came to study out the daisy piece.  There was nothing in
+the silly, untrue lines: the pull and tug was in what they made
+you think of.
+
+I was still so weak I had to take a nap every day, so I wasn't
+sleepy as early at night, and I heard father and mother talk over
+a lot of things before they went to bed.  After they mentioned
+it, I remembered that we hadn't received nearly so many letters
+from Shelley lately, and mother seldom found time to read them
+aloud during the day and forgot, or her eyes were tired, at
+night.
+
+"Are you worrying about Shelley?" asked father one night.
+
+"Yes, I am," answered mother.
+
+"What do you think is the trouble?"
+
+"I'm afraid things are not coming out with Mr. Paget as she
+hoped."
+
+"If they don't, she is going to be unhappy?"
+
+"That's putting it mildly."
+
+"Well, I was doubtful in the beginning."
+
+"Now hold on," said mother.  "So was I; but what are you going to
+do?  I can't go through the world with my girls, and meet men for
+them.  I trained them just as carefully as possible before I
+started them out; that was all I could do.  Shelley knows when a
+man appears clean, decent and likable.  She knows when his
+calling is respectable.  She knows when his speech is proper, his
+manners correct, and his ways attractive.  She found this man all
+of these things, and she liked him accordingly.  At Christmas she
+told me about it freely."
+
+"Have you any idea how far the thing has gone?"
+
+"She said then that she had seen him twice a week for two months.
+
+He seemed very fond of her.  He had told her he cared more for
+her than any girl he ever had met, and he had asked her to come
+here this summer and pay us a visit, so she wanted to know if he
+might."
+
+"Of course you told her yes."
+
+"Certainly I told her yes.  I wish now we'd saved money and you'd
+gone to visit her and met him when she first wrote of him.  You
+could have found out who and what he was, and with your
+experience you might have pointed out signs that would have
+helped her to see, before it was too late."
+
+"What do you think is the trouble?"
+
+"I wish I knew!  She simply is failing to mention him in her
+letters; all the joy of living has dropped from them, she merely
+writes about her work; and now she is beginning to complain of
+homesickness and to say that she doesn't know how to endure the
+city any longer.  There's something wrong."
+
+"Had I better go now?"
+
+"Too late!" said mother, and I could hear her throat go wrong and
+the choke come into her voice.  "She is deeply in love with him;
+he hasn't found in her what he desires; probably he is not coming
+any more; what could you do?"
+
+"I could go and see if there is anything I could do?"
+
+"She may not want you.  I'll write her to-morrow and suggest that
+you or Laddie pay her a visit and learn what she thinks."
+
+"All right," said father.
+
+He kissed her and went to sleep, but mother was awake yet, and
+she got up and stood looking down at the church and the two
+little white gravestones she could see from her window, until I
+thought she would freeze, and she did nearly, for her hands were
+cold and the tears falling when she examined my covers, and felt
+my face and hands before she went to bed.  My, but the mother of
+a family like ours is never short of a lot of things to think of!
+
+I had a new one myself.  Now what do you suppose there was about
+that man?
+
+Of course after having lived all her life with father and Laddie,
+Shelley would know how a man should look, and act to be right;
+and this one must have been right to make her bloom out in winter
+the way other things do in spring; and now what could be wrong? 
+Maybe city girls were prettier than Shelley.  But all women were
+made alike on the outside, and that was as far as you could see. 
+You couldn't find out whether they had pure blood, true hearts,
+or clean souls.  No girl could be so very much prettier than
+Shelley; they simply were not made that way.  She knew how to
+behave; she had it beaten into her, like all of us.  And she knew
+her books, what our schools could teach her, and Groveville, and
+Lucy, who had city chances for years, and there never was a day
+at our house when books and papers were not read and discussed,
+and your spelling was hammered into you standing in rows against
+the wall, and memory tests--what on earth could be the matter
+with Shelley that a man who could make her look and act as she
+did at Christmas, would now make her unhappy?  Sometimes I wanted
+to be grown up dreadfully, and again, times like that, I wished
+my bed could stay in mother's room, and I could creep behind
+father's paper and go to sleep between his coat and vest, and
+have him warm my feet in his hands forever.
+
+This world was too much for me.  I never worked and worried in
+all my life as I had over Laddie and the Princess, and Laddie
+said I, myself, never would know how I had helped him.  Of course
+nothing was settled; he had to try to make her love him by
+teaching her how lovable he was.  We knew, because we always had
+known him, but she was a stranger and had to learn.  It was
+mighty fine for him that he could force his way past the dogs,
+Thomas, the other men, her half-crazy father, and through the
+locked door, and go there to try to make her see, on Sunday
+nights, and week days, every single chance he could invent, and
+he could think up more reasons for going to Pryors' than mother
+could for putting out an extra wash.
+
+Now just as I got settled a little about him, and we could see
+they really wanted him there, at least the Princess and her
+mother did, and Mr. Pryor must have been fairly decent or Laddie
+never would have gone; and the Princess came to our house to
+bring me things to eat, and ask how mother was, and once to learn
+how she embroidered Sally's wedding chemise, and social things
+like that; and when father acted as if he liked her so much he
+hadn't a word to say, and mother seemed to begin to feel as if
+Laddie and the Princess could be trusted to fix it up about God;
+and the old mystery didn't matter after all; why, here Shelley
+popped up with another mystery, and it belonged to us.  But
+whatever ailed that man I couldn't possibly think.  It had got to
+be him, for Shelley was so all right at Christmas, it made her
+look that pretty we hardly knew her.
+
+I was thinking about her until I scarcely could study my lessons,
+so I could recite to Laddie at night, and not fall so far behind
+at school.  Miss Amelia offered to hear me, but I just begged
+Laddie, and father could see that he taught me fifty things in a
+lesson that you could tell to look at Miss Amelia, she never
+knew.  Why, he couldn't hear me read:
+
+            "We charged upon a flock of geese,
+                 And put them all to flight
+             Except one sturdy gander
+                 That thought to show us fight,"--
+
+without teaching me that the oldest picture in all the world was
+made of a row of geese, some of which were kinds we then had--the
+earth didn't seem so old when you thought of that--and how a
+flock of geese once wakened an army and saved a city, and how far
+wild geese could fly without alighting in migration, and
+everything you could think of about geese, only he didn't know
+why eating the same grass made feathers on geese and wool on
+sheep.  Anyway, Miss Amelia never told you a word but what was in
+the book, and how to read and spell it.  May said that father was
+very much disappointed in her, and he was never going to hire
+another teacher until he met and talked with her, no matter what
+kind of letters she could send.  He was not going to help her get
+a summer school, and O my soul!  I hope no one does, for if they
+do, I have to go, and I'd rather die than go to school in the
+summer.
+
+Leon came in about that time with more fox stories.  Been in
+Jacob Hood's chicken house and taken his best Dorking rooster,
+and father said it was time to do something.  He never said a
+word so long as they took Deams', except they should have barn
+room for their geese, but when anything was the matter at Hoods'
+father and mother started doing something the instant they heard
+of it.  So father and Laddie rode around the neighbourhood and
+talked it over, and the next night they had a meeting at our
+schoolhouse; men for miles came, and they planned a regular old-
+fashioned foxchase, and every one was wild about it.
+
+Laddie told it at Pryors' and the Princess wanted to go; she
+asked to go with him, and if you please, Mr. Pryor wanted to go
+too, and their Thomas.  They attended the meeting to tell how
+people chase foxes in England, where they seem to hunt them most
+of the time.  Father said:  "Thank God for even a foxchase, if it
+will bring Mr. Pryor among his neighbours and help him to act
+sensibly."  They are going away fifteen miles or farther, and
+form a big circle of men from all directions, some walking in a
+line, and others riding to bring back any foxes that escape, and
+with dogs, and guns, they are going to rout out every one they
+can find, and kill them so they won't take the geese, little
+pigs, lambs, and Hoods' Dorking rooster.  Laddie had a horn that
+Mr. Pryor gave him when he told him this country was showing
+signs of becoming civilized at last; but Leon grinned and said
+he'd beat that.
+
+Then when you wanted him, he was in the wood house loft at work,
+but father said he couldn't get into mischief there.  He should
+have seen that churn when it was full of wedding breakfast!  We
+ate for a week afterward, until things were all moulded, and we
+didn't dare anymore.  One night I begged so hard and promised so
+faithfully he trusted me; he did often, after I didn't tell about
+the Station; and I went to the loft with him, and watched him
+work an hour.  He had a hollow limb about six inches through and
+fourteen long.  He had cut and burned it to a mere shell, and
+then he had scraped it with glass inside and out, until it shone
+like polished horn.  He had shaved the wool from a piece of
+sheepskin, soaked, stretched, and dried it, and then fitted it
+over one end of the drumlike thing he had made, and tacked and
+bound it in a little groove at the edge.  He put the skin on damp
+so he could stretch it tight.  Then he punched a tiny hole in the
+middle, and pulled through it, down inside the drum, a sheepskin
+thong rolled in resin, with a knot big enough to hold it, and not
+tear the head.  Then he took it under his arm and we slipped
+across the orchard below the Station, and went into the hollow
+and tried it.
+
+It worked!  I almost fell dead with the first frightful sound. 
+It just bellowed and roared.  In only a little while he found
+different ways to make it sound by his manner of working the
+tongue.  A long, steady, even pull got that kind of a roar.  A
+short, quick one made it bark.  A pull half the length of the
+thong, a pause, and another pull, made it sound like a bark and a
+yelp.  To pull hard and quick, made it go louder, and soft and
+easy made it whine.  Before he had tried it ten minutes he could
+do fifty things with it that would almost scare the livers out of
+those nasty old foxes that were taking every one's geese, Dorking
+roosters, and even baby lambs and pigs.  Of course people
+couldn't stand that; something had to be done!
+
+Even in the Bible it says, "Beware of the little foxes that spoil
+the vines," and geese, especially blue ones, Dorking roosters,
+lambs, and pigs were much more valuable than mere vines; so Leon
+made that awful thing to scare the foxes from their holes that's
+in the Bible too, about the holes I mean, not the scaring.  I
+wanted Leon to slip to the back door and make the dumb-bell--
+that's what he called it; if I had been naming it I would have
+called it the thunder-bell--go; but he wouldn't.  He said he
+didn't propose to work as he had, and then have some one find
+out, and fix one like it.  He said he wouldn't let it make a
+sound until the night before the chase, and then he'd raise the
+dead.  I don't know about the dead; but it was true of the
+living.  Father went a foot above his chair and cried:  "Whoo-
+pee!"  All of us, even I, when I was waiting for it, screamed as
+if Paddy Ryan raved at the door.  Then Leon came in and showed
+us, and every one wanted to work the dumb-bell, even mother. 
+Leon marched around and showed off; he looked "See the conquering
+hero comes," all over.  I never felt worse about being made into
+a girl than I did that night.
+
+I couldn't sleep for excitement, and mother said I might as well,
+for it would be at least one o'clock before they would round-up
+in our meadow below the barn.  All the neighbours were to shut up
+their stock, tie their dogs, or lead them with chains, if they
+took them, so when the foxes were surrounded, they could catch
+them alive, and save their skins.  I wondered how some of those
+chasing people, even Laddie, Leon, and father--think of that!
+father was going too--I wondered how they would have liked to
+have had something as much bigger than they were, as they were
+bigger than the foxes, chase them with awful noises, guns and
+dogs, and catch them alive--to save their skins.  No wonder I
+couldn't sleep!  I guess the foxes wouldn't either, if they had
+known what was coming.  Maybe hereafter the mean old things would
+eat rabbits and weasels, and leave the Dorking roosters alone.
+
+May, Candace, and Miss Amelia were going to Deams' to wait, and
+when the round-up formed a solid line, they planned to stand
+outside, and see the sport.  If they had been the foxes, maybe
+they wouldn't have thought it was so funny; but of course, people
+just couldn't have even their pigs and lambs taken.  We had to
+have wool to spin yarn for our stockings, weave our blankets and
+coverlids, and our Sunday winter dresses of white flannel with
+narrow black crossbars were from the backs of our own sheep, and
+we had to have ham to fry with eggs, and boil for Sunday night
+suppers, and bacon to cook the greens with--of course it was all
+right.
+
+Before it was near daylight I heard Laddie making the kitchen
+fire, so father got right up, Leon came down, and all of them
+went to the barn to do the feeding.  I wanted to get up too, but
+mother said I should stay in bed until the house was warm,
+because if I took more cold I'd be sick again.  At breakfast May
+asked father about when they should start for Deams' to be ahead
+of the chase, and he said by ten o'clock at least; because a fox
+driven mad by pursuit, dogs, and noise, was a very dangerous
+thing, and a bite might make hy----the same thing as a mad dog. 
+He said our back barn door opening from the threshing floor would
+afford a fine view of the meet, but Candace, May, and Miss Amelia
+wanted to be closer.  I might go with them if they would take
+good care of me, and they promised to; but when the time came to
+start, there was such a queer feeling inside me, I thought maybe
+it was more fever, and with mother would be the best place for
+me, so I said I wanted to watch from the barn.  Father thought
+that was a capital idea, because I would be on the east side,
+where there would be no sun and wind, and it would be perfectly
+safe; also, I really could see what was going on better from that
+height than on the ground.
+
+The sun was going to shine, but it hadn't peeped above Deams'
+strawstack when father on his best saddle horse, and Laddie on
+Flos, rode away, their eyes shining, their faces red, their blood
+pounding so it made their voices sound excited and different. 
+Leon was to go on foot.  Father said he would ride a horse to
+death.  He just grinned and never made a word of complaint. 
+Seemed funny for him.
+
+"I was over having a little confidential chat with my horse, last
+night," he said, "and next year we'll be in the chase, and we'll
+show you how to take fences, and cut curves; just you wait!"
+
+"Leon, DON'T build so on that horse," wailed mother.  "I'm sure
+that money was stolen like ours, and the owner will claim it! I
+feel it in my bones!"
+
+"Aw, shucks!" said Leon.  "That money is mine.  He won't either!"
+
+When they started, father took Leon behind him to ride as far as
+the county line.  He said he would go slowly, and it wouldn't
+hurt the horse, but Leon slipped off at Hoods', and said he'd go
+with their boys, so father let him, because light as Leon was,
+both of them were quite a load for one horse.  Laddie went to
+ride with the Princess.  We could see people moving around in
+Pryors' barnyard when our men started.  Candace washed, Miss
+Amelia wiped the dishes, May swept, and all of them made the
+beds, and then they went to Deams', while I stayed with mother. 
+When she thought it was time, she bundled me up warmly, and I
+went to the barn.  Father had the east doors standing open for
+me, so I could sit in the sun, hang my feet against the warm
+boards, and see every inch of our meadow where the meet was to
+be.  I was really too warm there, and had to take off the scarf,
+untie my hood, and unbutton my coat.
+
+It was a trifle muddy, but the frost had not left the ground yet,
+the sparrows were singing fit to burst, so were the hens.  I
+didn't care much for the music of the hen, but I could see she
+meant well.  She liked her nest quite as much as the red velvet
+bird with black wings, or the bubbly yellow one, and as for baby
+chickens, from the first peep they beat a little naked, blind,
+wobbly tree bird, so any hen had a right to sing for joy because
+she was going to be the mother of a large family of them.  A hen
+had something was going to be the mother of a large family of
+them.  A hen had something to sing about all right, and so had
+we, when we thought of poached eggs and fried chicken.  When I
+remembered them, I saw that it was no wonder the useful hen
+warbled so proudlike; but that was all nonsense, for I don't
+suppose a hen ever tasted poached eggs, and surely she wouldn't
+be happy over the prospect of being fried.  Maybe one reason she
+sang was because she didn't know what was coming; I hardly think
+she'd be so tuneful if she did.
+
+Sometimes the geese, shut in the barn, raised an awful clatter,
+and the horses and cattle complained about being kept from the
+sunshine and fresh air.  You couldn't blame them.  It was a
+lovely day, and the big upper door the pleasantest place.  I
+didn't care if the fox hunters never came, there was so much to
+see, hear, and smell.  Everything was busy making signs of
+spring, and one could become tired of ice and snow after a while,
+and so hungry for summer that those first days which were just
+hints of what was coming were almost better than the real thing
+when it arrived.  Bud perfume was stronger than last week, many
+doves and bluebirds were calling, and three days more of such
+sunshine would make cross-country riding too muddy to be
+pleasant.  I sat there thinking; grown people never know how much
+children do think, they have so much time, and so many bothersome
+things to study out.  I heard it behind me, a long, wailing,
+bellowing roar, and my hood raised right up with my hair.  I was
+in the middle of the threshing floor in a second, in another at
+the little west door, cut into the big one, opening it a tiny
+crack to take a peep, and see how close they were.
+
+I could see nothing, but I heard a roar of dreadful sound
+steadily closing in a circle around me.  No doubt the mean old
+foxes wished then they had let the Dorking roosters alone. 
+Closer it came and more dreadful.  Never again did I want to hear
+such sounds coming at me; even when I knew what was making them. 
+And then away off, beyond Pryors', and Hoods', and Dovers', I
+could see a line of tiny specks coming toward me, and racing
+flying things that must have been people on horses riding back
+and forth to give the foxes no chance to find a hiding place.  No
+chance!  Laddie and the Princess, Mr. Pryor and father, and all
+of them were after the bad old foxes; and they were going to get
+them; because they'd have no chance--Not with a solid line of men
+with raving dogs surrounding them, and people on horseback racing
+after them, no! the foxes would wish now that they had left the
+pigs and lambs alone.  In that awful roaring din, they would
+wish, Oh how they would wish, they were birds and could fly!  Fly
+back to their holes like the Bible said they had, where maybe
+they LIKED to live, and no doubt they had little foxes there,
+that would starve when their mammies were caught alive, to save
+their skins.
+
+To save their skins!  I could hear myself breathe, and feel my
+teeth click, and my knees knock together.  And then!  Oh dear! 
+There they came across our cornfield.  Two of them!  And they
+could fly, almost.  At least you could scarcely see that they
+touched the ground.  The mean old things were paying up for the
+pigs and lambs now.  Through the fence, across the road, straight
+toward me they came.  Almost red backs, nearly white beneath,
+long flying tails, beautiful pointed ears, and long tongues, fire
+red, hanging from their open mouths; their sleek sides pulsing,
+and that awful din coming through the woods behind them.  One
+second, the first paused to glance toward either side, and threw
+back its head to listen.  What it saw, and heard, showed it.  I
+guess then it was sorry it ever took people's ham, and their
+greens, and their blankets; and it could see and hear that it had
+no chance--to save its skin.
+
+"Oh Lord!  Dear Lord!  Help me!" I prayed.
+
+It had to be me, there was no one else.  I never had opened the
+big doors; I thought it took a man, but when I pushed with all my
+might--and maybe if the hairs of our heads were numbered, and the
+sparrows counted, there would be a little mercy for the foxes--I
+asked for help; maybe I got it.  The doors went back, and I
+climbed up the ladder to the haymow a few steps and clung there,
+praying with all my might:  "Make them come in!  Dear Lord, make
+them come in!  Give them a chance!  Help them to save their
+skins, O Lord!"
+
+With a whizz and a flash one went past me, skimmed the cider
+press, and rushed across the hay; then the other.  I fell to the
+floor and the next thing I knew the doors were shut, and I was
+back at my place.  I just went down in a heap and leaned against
+the wall and shook, and then I laughed and said:  "Thank you,
+Lord!  Thank you for helping with the door!  And the foxes!  The
+beautiful little red and white foxes!  They've got their chance! 
+They'll save their skins!  They'll get back to their holes and
+their babies!  Praise the Lord!"
+
+I knew when I heard that come out, that it was exactly like my
+father said it when Amos Hurd was redeemed.  I never knew father
+to say it so impressively before, because Amos had been so bad,
+people really were afraid of him, and father said if once he got
+started right, he would go at it just as hard as he had gone at
+wrongdoing.  I suppose I shouldn't have said it about a fox, when
+there were the Dorkings, and ham, and white wool dresses, and all
+that, but honestly, I couldn't remember that I cared particularly
+whether Amos Hurd was redeemed or not; he was always lovely to
+children; while I never in all my life had wanted anything worse
+than I wanted those foxes to save their skins.  I could hear them
+pant like run out dogs; and I could hear myself, and I hadn't
+been driven from my home and babies, maybe--and chased miles and
+miles, either.
+
+Then I just shook.  They came pounding, roaring and braying right
+around the barn, and down the lane.  The little door flew open
+and a strange man stuck in his head.
+
+"Shut that door!" I screamed.  "You'll let them in on me, and
+they bite!  They're poison!  They'll kill me!"
+
+I hadn't even thought of it before.
+
+"See any foxes?" cried the man.
+
+"Two crossed our barnyard headed that way!" I cried back,
+pointing east.  "Shut the door!"
+
+The man closed it and ran calling as he went:  "It's all right! 
+They crossed the barnyard.  We've got them!"
+
+I began to dance and beat my hands, and then I stopped and held
+my breath.  They were passing, and the noise was dreadful.  They
+struck the sides of the barn, poked around the strawstack, and
+something made me look up, and at the edge of the hay stood a fox
+ready to spring.  If it did, it would go from the door, right
+into the midst thereof.  Nothing but my red hood sailing straight
+at it, and a yell I have, drove it back.  No one hit the barn
+again, the line closed up, and went on at a run now, they were so
+anxious to meet and see what they had.  Then came the beat of
+hoofs and I saw that all the riders had dropped back, and were
+behind the line of people on foot.  I watched Laddie as he flew
+past waving to me, and I grabbed my scarf to wave at him.  The
+Princess flashed by so swiftly I couldn't see how she looked, and
+then I heard a voice I knew cry:  "Ep!  Ep!  Over Lad!"  And I
+almost fell dead where I stood.  Mr. Pryor sailed right over the
+barnyard fence into the cornfield, ripping that dumb-bell as he
+went, and neck and neck, even with him, on one of his finest
+horses, was our Leon.  His feet were in the stirrups, he had the
+reins tight, he almost stood as he arose, his face was crimson,
+his head bare, his white hair flying, the grandest sight you ever
+saw.  At the top of my voice I screamed after them, "Ep!  Ep! 
+Over lad!" and then remembered and looked to see if I had to
+chase back the foxes, but they didn't mind only me, after what
+they had been through.  Then I sat down suddenly again.
+
+Well!  What would father think of that!  Leon kill a horse of
+ours indeed!  There he was on one of Mr. Pryor's, worth as much
+as six of father's no doubt, flying over fences, and the creek
+was coming, and the bank was steep behind the barn.  I was up
+again straining to see.
+
+"Ep!  Ep!  Over!" rang the cry.
+
+There they went!  Laddie and the Princess too.  I'll never spend
+another cent on paper dolls, candy, raisins, or oranges.  I'll
+give all I have to help Leon buy his horse; then I'm going to
+begin saving for mine.
+
+The line closed up, a solid wall of men with sticks, clubs and
+guns; the dogs ranged outside, and those on horseback stopped
+where they could see best; and inside, raced back and forth, and
+round and round, living creatures.  I couldn't count they moved
+so, but even at that distance I could see that some were poor
+little cotton tails.  The scared things!  A whack over the head,
+a backward toss, and the dogs were mouthing them.  The long
+tailed, sleek, gracefully moving ones, they were foxes, the foxes
+driven from their holes, and nothing on earth could save their
+skins for them now; those men meant to have them.
+
+I pulled the doors shut suddenly.  I was so sick I could scarcely
+stand.  I had to work, but at last I pushed the west doors open
+again.  I don't think the Lord helped me any that time, for I
+knew what it took--before, they just went.  Or maybe He did help
+me quite as much, but I had harder work to do my share, because I
+felt so dizzy and ill.  Anyway, they opened.  Then I climbed the
+upright ladder to the top beam, walked it to the granary, and
+there I danced, pounded and yelled so that the foxes jumped from
+the hay, leaped lightly to the threshing floor, and stood looking
+and listening.  I gave them time to hear where the dreadful
+racket was, and then I jumped to the hay and threw the pitchfork
+at them.  It came down smash! and both of them sprang from the
+door.  When I got down the ladder and where I could see, they
+were so rested they were hiking across the cornfield like they
+never had raced a step before; and as the clamour went up behind
+me, that probably meant the first fox had lost its beautiful red
+and white skin, they reached our woods in safety.  The doors went
+shut easier, and I started to the house crying like any
+blubbering baby; but when mother turned from the east window, and
+I noticed her face, I forgot the foxes.
+
+"You saw Leon!" I cried.
+
+"That I did!" she exulted, rocking on her toes the same as she
+does at the Meeting House when she is going to cry, "Glory!" any
+minute.  "That I did!  Ah! the brave little chap!  Ah! the fine
+fellow!"
+
+Her cheeks were the loveliest pink, and her eyes blazed.  I
+scarcely knew her.
+
+"What will father say?"
+
+"If his father isn't every particle as proud of him as I am this
+day, I've a big disappointment coming," she answered.  "If Mr.
+Pryor chose to let him take that fine horse, and taught him how
+to ride it, father should be glad."
+
+"If he'd gone into the creek, you wouldn't feel so fine."
+
+"Ah! but he didn't!  He didn't!  He stuck to the saddle and
+sailed over in one grand, long sweep!  It was fine!  I hope--to
+my soul, I hope his father saw it!"
+
+"He did!" I said.  "He did!  He was about halfway down the lane. 
+He was where he could see fine."
+
+"You didn't notice----?"
+
+"I was watching if Leon went under.  What if he had, mother?"
+
+"They'd have taken him out, and brought him to me, and I'd have
+worked with all the strength and skill God has given me, and if
+it were possible to us, he would be saved, and if it were not, it
+would be a proud moment for a woman to offer a boy like that to
+the God who gave him.  One would have nothing to be ashamed of!"
+
+"Could you do it, like you are now, and not cry, mother?" I asked
+wonderingly.
+
+"Patience no!" said she.  "Before long you will find out, child,
+that the fountain head of tears and laughter lies in the same
+spot, deep in a woman's heart.  Men were made for big things! 
+They must brave the wild animals, the Indians, fight the battles,
+ride the races, till the fields, build the homes.  In the making
+of a new country men must have the thing in their souls that
+carried Leon across the creek.  If he had checked that horse and
+gone to the ford, I would have fallen where I stood!"
+
+"Father crossed the ford!"
+
+"True!  But that's different.  He never had a chance at a horse
+like that!  He never had time for fancy practice, and his nose
+would have been between the pages of a book if he had.  But
+remember this!  Your father's hand has never faltered, and his
+aim has never failed.  All of us are here, safe and comfortable,
+through him.  It was your father who led us across the
+wilderness, and fended from us the wildcat, wolf, and Indian.  He
+built this house, cleared this land, and gave to all of us the
+thing we love.  Get this in your head straight.  Your father rode
+a plow horse; he never tried flourishes in riding; but no man can
+stick in the saddle longer, ride harder, and face any danger with
+calmer front.  If you think this is anything, you should have
+seen his face the day he stood between me and a band of Indians,
+we had every reason to think, I had angered to the fighting
+point."
+
+"Tell me!  Please tell me!" I begged.
+
+All of us had been brought up on that story, but we were crazy to
+hear it, and mother loved to tell it, so she dropped on a chair
+and began:
+
+"We were alone in a cabin in the backwoods of Ohio.  Elizabeth
+was only nine months old, and father always said a mite the
+prettiest of any baby we ever had.  Many of the others have
+looked quite as well to me, but she was the first, and he was so
+proud of her he always wanted me to wait in the wagon until he
+hitched the horses, so he would get to take and to carry her
+himself.  Well, she was in the cradle, cooing and laughing, and I
+had my work all done, and cabin shining.  I was heating a big
+poker red-hot, and burning holes into the four corners of a board
+so father could put legs in it to make me a bench.  A greasy old
+squaw came to the door with her papoose on her back.  She wanted
+to trade berries for bread.  There were berries everywhere for
+the picking; I had more dried than I could use in two years.  We
+planted only a little patch of wheat and father had to ride three
+days to carry to mill what he could take on a horse.  I baked in
+an outoven and when it was done, a loaf of white bread was by far
+the most precious thing we had to eat.  Sometimes I was caught,
+and forced to let it go.  Often I baked during the night and hid
+the bread in the wheat at the barn.  There was none in the cabin
+that day and I said so.  She didn't believe me.  She set her
+papoose on the floor beside the fireplace, and went to the
+cupboard.  There wasn't a crumb there except cornbread, and she
+didn't want that.  She said:  `Brod!  Brod!'
+
+"She learned that from the Germans in the settlement.  I shook my
+head.  Then she pulled out a big steel hunting knife, such as the
+whites traded to the Indians so they would have no trouble in
+scalping us neatly, and walked to the cradle.  She took that
+knife loosely between her thumb and second finger and holding it
+directly above my baby's face, she swung it lightly back and
+forth and demanded:  `Brod!  Brod!'
+
+"If the knife fell, it would go straight through my baby's head,
+and Elizabeth was reaching her little hands and laughing.  There
+was only one thing to do, and I did it.  I caught that red-hot
+poker from the fire, and stuck it so close her baby's face, that
+the papoose drew back and whimpered.  I scarcely saw how she
+snatched it up and left.  When your father came, I told him, and
+we didn't know what to do.  We knew she would come back and bring
+her band.  If we were not there, they would burn the cabin, ruin
+our crops, kill our stock, take everything we had, and we
+couldn't travel so far, or so fast, that on their ponies they
+couldn't overtake us.  We endangered any one with whom we sought
+refuge, so we gripped hands, knelt down and told the Lord all
+about it, and we felt the answer was to stay.  Father cleaned the
+gun, and hours and hours we waited.
+
+"About ten o'clock the next day they came, forty braves in war
+paint and feathers.  I counted until I was too sick to see, then
+I took the baby in my arms and climbed to the loft, with our big
+steel knife in one hand.  If your father fell, I was to use it,
+first on Elizabeth, then on myself.  The Indians stopped at the
+woodyard, and the chief of the band came to the door, alone. 
+Your father met him with his gun in reach, and for a whole
+eternity they stood searching each other's eyes.  I was at the
+trapdoor where I could see both of them.
+
+"To the depths of my soul I enjoyed seeing Leon take the fence
+and creek: but what was that, child, to compare with the timber
+that stood your father like a stone wall between me and forty
+half-naked, paint besmeared, maddened Indians?  Don't let any
+showing the men of to-day can make set you to thinking that
+father isn't a king among men.  Not once, but again and again in
+earlier days, he fended danger from me like that.  I can shut my
+eyes and see his waving hair, his white brow, his steel blue
+eyes, his unfaltering hand.  I don't remember that I had time or
+even thought to pray.  I gripped the baby, and the knife, and
+waited for the thing I must do if an arrow or a shot sailed past
+the chief and felled father.  They stood second after second,
+like two wooden men, and then slowly and deliberately the chief
+lighted his big pipe, drew a few puffs and handed it to father. 
+He set down his gun, took the pipe and quite as slowly and
+deliberately he looked at the waiting band, at the chief, and
+then raised it to his lips.
+
+"`White squaw brave!  Heap much brave!' said the chief.
+
+"`In the strength of the Lord.  Amen!' said father.
+
+"Then he reached his hand and the chief took it, so I came down
+the ladder and stood beside father, as the Indians began to file
+in the front door and out the back.  As they passed, every man of
+them made the peace sign and piled in a heap, venison, fish, and
+game, while each squaw played with the baby and gave me a gift of
+beads, a metal trinket, or a blanket she had woven.  After that
+they came often, and brought gifts, and if prowling Gypsies were
+pilfering, I could look to see a big Indian loom up and seat
+himself at my fireside until any danger was past.  I really got
+so I liked and depended on them, and father left me in their care
+when he went to mill, and I was safe as with him.  You have heard
+the story over and over, but to-day is the time to impress on you
+that an exhibition like THIS is the veriest child's play compared
+with what I have seen your father do repeatedly!"
+
+"But it was you, the chief said was brave!"
+
+Mother laughed.
+
+"I had to be, baby," she said.  "Mother had no choice.  There's
+only one way to deal with an Indian.  I had lived among them all
+my life, and I knew what must be done."
+
+"I think both of you were brave," I said, "you, the bravest!"
+
+"Quite the contrary," laughed mother.  "I shall have to confess
+that what I did happened so quickly I'd no time to think.  I only
+realized the coal red iron was menacing the papoose when it drew
+back and whimpered.  Father had all night to face what was coming
+to him, and it was not one to one, but one to forty, with as many
+more squaws, as good fighters as the braves, to back them.  It
+was a terror but I never have been sorry we went through it
+together.  I have rested so securely in your father ever since."
+
+"And he is as safe in you," I insisted.
+
+"As you will," said mother.  "This world must have her women
+quite as much as her men.  It is shoulder to shoulder, heart to
+heart, business."
+
+The clamour in the meadow arose above our voices and brought us
+back to the foxes.
+
+"There goes another!" I said, the tears beginning to roll again.
+
+"It is heathenish business," said mother.  "I don't blame you! 
+If people were not too shiftless to care for their stuff, the
+foxes wouldn't take their chickens and geese.  They never get
+ours!"
+
+"Hoods aren't shiftless!" I sobbed.
+
+"There are always exceptions," said mother, "and they are the
+exception in this case."
+
+The door flew open and Leon ran in.  He was white with
+excitement, and trembling.
+
+"Mother, come and see me take a fence on Pryor's Rocket!" he
+cried.
+
+Mother had him in her arms.
+
+"You little whiffet!" she said.  "You little tow-haired whiffet!"
+
+Both of them were laughing and crying at the same time, and so
+was I.
+
+"I saw you take one fence and the creek, Weiscope!" she said,
+holding him tight, and stroking his hair.  "That will do for to-
+day.  Ride the horse home slowly, rub it down if they will allow
+you, and be sure to remember your manners when you leave.  To
+trust such a child as you with so valuable a horse, and for Mr.
+Pryor to personally ride with you and help you, I think that was
+a big thing for a man like him to do."
+
+"But, mother, he's been showing me for weeks, or I couldn't have
+done it to-day.  It was our secret to surprise you.  When I get
+my horse, I'll be able to ride a little, as well as Mr. Laddie."
+
+"Leon, don't," said mother, gripping him tighter.
+
+"You must bear in mind, word about that money may come any day."
+
+"Aw, it won't either," said Leon, pulling away.  "And say,
+mother, that dumb-bell was like country boys make in England.  He
+helped me hunt the wood and showed me, and I couldn't ride and
+manage it, so he had it all day, and you should have heard him
+make it rip.  Say, mother, take my word, he was some pumpkins in
+England.  I bet he ordered the Queen around, when he was there!"
+
+"No doubt!" laughed mother, kissing him and pushing him from the
+door.
+
+Some people are never satisfied.  After that splendid riding and
+the perfect day, father, Leon, and Laddie came home blaming every
+one, and finding fault, and trying to explain how it happened,
+that the people from the east side claimed two foxes, and there
+was only one left for the west side, when they had seen and knew
+they had driven three for miles.  They said they lost them in our
+Big Woods.
+
+I didn't care one speck.  I would as lief wear a calico dress,
+and let the little foxes have their mammies to feed them; and I
+was willing to bet all my money that we would have as much ham,
+and as many greens next summer as we ever had.  And if the foxes
+took Hoods' Dorkings again, let them build a coop with safe
+foundations.  The way was to use stone and heap up dirt around it
+in the fall, to be perfectly sure, and make it warmer.
+
+We took care of our chickens because we had to have them.  All
+the year we needed them, but most especially for Easter.  Mother
+said that was ordained chicken time.  Turkeys for Thanksgiving,
+sucking pigs for Christmas, chickens for Easter, goose, she
+couldn't abide.  She thought it was too strong.  She said the egg
+was a symbol of life; of awakening, of birth, and the chickens
+came from the eggs, first ones about Easter, so that proved it
+was chicken time.
+
+I am going to quit praying about little things I can manage
+myself.  Father said no prayer would bring an answer unless you
+took hold and pulled with all your being for what you wanted.  I
+had been intending for days to ask the Lord to help me find where
+Leon hid his Easter eggs.  It had been the law at our house from
+the very first, that for the last month before Easter, aside from
+what mother had to have for the house, all of us might gather
+every egg we could find and keep them until Easter.  If we could
+locate the hiding place of any one else, we might take all
+theirs.  The day before Easter they were brought in, mother put
+aside what she required, and the one who had the most got to sell
+all of them and take the money.  Sometimes there were two
+washtubs full, and what they brought was worth having, for sure. 
+So we watched all year for safe places, and when the time came we
+almost ran after the hens with a basket.  Because Laddie and Leon
+were bigger they could outrun us, and lots of hens laid in the
+barn, so there the boys always had first chance.  Often during
+the month we would find and take each other's eggs a dozen times.
+
+We divided them, and hid part in different places, so that if
+either were found there would still be some left.
+
+Laddie had his in the hopper of the cider press right on the
+threshing floor, and as he was sure to get more than I had
+anyway, I usually put mine with his.  May had hers some place,
+and where Leon had his, none of us could find or imagine.  I
+almost lay awake of nights trying to think, and every time I
+thought of a new place, the next day I would look, and they
+wouldn't be there.  Three days before Easter, mother began to
+cook and get the big dinner ready, and she ran short of eggs. 
+She told me to go to the barn and tell the boys that each of them
+must send her a dozen as quickly as they could.  Of course that
+was fair, if she made both give up the same number.  So I went to
+the barn.
+
+The lane was muddy, and as I had been sick, I wore my rubbers
+that spring.  I thought to keep out of the deep mud, where horses
+and cattle trampled, I'd go up the front embankment, and enter
+the little door.  My feet made no sound, and it so happened that
+the door didn't either, and as I started to open it.  I saw Leon
+disappearing down the stairway, with a big sack on his back.  I
+thought it was corn for the horses, and followed him, but he went
+to the cow stable door and started toward the lane, and then I
+thought it was for the pigs, so I called Laddie and told him
+about the eggs.  He said he'd give me two dozen of his, and Leon
+could pay him back.  We went together to get them, and there was
+only one there.
+
+Wasn't that exactly like Leon?  Leave ONE for the nest egg!  If
+he were dying and saw a joke or a trick, he'd stop to play it
+before he finished, if he possibly could.  If he had no time at
+all, then he'd go with his eyes twinkling over the thoughts of
+the fun it would have been if he possibly could have managed it. 
+Of course when we saw that one lonely egg in the cider hopper,
+just exactly like the "Last Rose of Summer, left to pine on the
+stem," I thought of the sack Leon carried, and knew what had been
+in it.  We hurried out and tried to find him, but he was
+swallowed up.  You couldn't see him or hear a sound of him
+anywhere.
+
+Mother was as cross as she ever gets.  Right there she made a new
+rule, and it was that two dozen eggs must be brought to the house
+each day, whether any were hidden or not.  She had to stop baking
+until she got eggs.  She said a few times she had used a goose
+egg in custard.  I could fix that.  I knew where one of our gray
+geese had a nest, and if she'd cook any goose egg, it would be a
+gray one.  Of course I had sense enough not to take a blue one. 
+So I slipped from the east door, crossed the yard and orchard
+corner, climbed the fence and went down the lane.  There was the
+creek up and tearing.  It was half over the meadow, and the
+floodgate between the pasture and the lane rocked with the rush
+of water; still, I believed I could make it.  So I got on the
+fence and with my feet on the third rail, and holding by the top
+one, I walked sidewise, and so going reached the floodgate.  It
+was pretty wobbly, but I thought I could cross on the run.  I
+knew I could if I dared jump at the other end; but there the
+water was over the third rail, and that meant above my head.
+
+It was right at that time of spring when you felt so good you
+thought you could do most anything, except fly--I tried that
+once--so I went on.  The air was cold for all the sun shone, the
+smell of catkin pollen, bursting buds, and the odour of earth
+steaming in the sun, was in every breath; the blackbirds were
+calling, and the doves; the ganders looked longingly at the sky
+and screamed a call to every passing wild flock, and Deams'
+rooster wanted to fight all creation, if you judged by the
+boasting he was doing from their barnyard gate.  He made me think
+of eggs, so I set my jaws, looked straight ahead, and scooted
+across the floodgate to the post that held it and the rails of
+the meadow fence.  I made it too, and then the fence was easy,
+only I had to double quite short, because the water was over the
+third rail there, but at last it was all gone, and I went to the
+fence corner and there was the goose on the nest, laying an egg. 
+She had built on a little high place, among puddles, wild rose
+bushes, and thorns, and the old thing wouldn't get off.  She just
+sat there and stuck out her head and hissed and hissed.  I never
+noticed before that geese were so big and so aggravating.  I
+wasn't going to give up, after that floodgate, so I hunted a big
+stick, set it against her wing, pushed her off and grabbed three
+eggs and ran.  When I got to the fence, I was in a pickle for
+sure.  I didn't know what in the world to do with the eggs.
+
+At last I unbuttoned my coat, put them in my apron front,
+gathered it up, and holding it between my teeth, started back.  I
+had to double more than ever on account of the eggs, and when I
+reached the floodgate it rocked like a branch in the wind; but I
+had to get back, so I rested and listened to the larks a while. 
+That was a good plan.  They were calling for mates, and what they
+said was so perfectly lovely, you couldn't think of anything
+else; and the less you thought about how that gate rocked, and
+how deep and swift the water ran, the better for you.  At last
+one lark went almost from sight and he rang, twisted and trilled
+his call, until my heart swelled so big it hurt.  I crossed on
+the jump with no time to think at all.  That was a fine plan, for
+I made it, but I hit the post so hard I broke the middle egg.  I
+was going to throw it away, but there was so much starch in my
+apron it held like a dish, and it had been clean that morning,
+now the egg soiled it anyway, so I ran and got home all right.
+
+Mother was so pleased about the eggs she changed the apron and
+never said a word, except to brag on me.  She said she couldn't
+keep house without me, and I guess that was a fact.  I came in
+handy a lot of times.  But at dinner when she scolded the boys
+about the eggs, and told them I brought the goose eggs for her
+custard, else there would have been no pie, father broke loose,
+and I thought he was going to whip me sure.  He told mother all
+about the water and the gate, and how I had to cross, and he
+said, `it was a dispensation of Providence that we didn't have a
+funeral instead of celebrating Easter,' so I said:
+
+"Well, if you think I came so near drowning myself, when you
+rejoice because Christ is risen from the dead, you can be glad I
+am too, and that will make it all the better."
+
+The boys laughed, but father said it was no laughing matter.  I
+think that speech saved me from going on the threshing floor, for
+he took me on his lap when I thought I'd have to go, and told me
+never, never to do anything like that again, and then he hugged
+me until I almost broke.  Gracious!  He should have seen us going
+to school some days.  Why, we even walked the top rail when it
+was the only one above water, and we could cross the bridge if we
+wanted to.  At least when Laddie or Miss Amelia was not around,
+we did.
+
+Leon was so bursting full he scarcely could eat, and Laddie
+looked pretty glum when he had to admit he had no eggs; so Laddie
+had to hand over the whole two dozen.  Leon didn't mind that, but
+he said if he must, then all of us should stay in the dining-room
+until he brought them, because of course he couldn't walk
+straight and get them in broad daylight with us watching, and not
+show where they were.  Father said that was fair, so Leon went
+out and before so very long he came back with the eggs.
+
+I thought until my skull almost cracked, about where he COULD
+have gone, and I was almost to the place where the thing seemed
+serious enough that I'd ask the Lord to help me find Laddie's
+eggs, when mother sent me to the garret for red onion skins.  She
+had an hour to rest, and she was going to spend it fixing
+decorations for our eggs.  Of course there were always red and
+black aniline ones, and yellow and blue, but none of us ever like
+them half so well as those mother coloured, herself.
+
+She took the dark red skins and cut boys, girls, dogs, cats,
+stars, flowers, butterflies, fish, and everything imaginable, and
+wet the skins a little and laid them on very white eggs that had
+been soaked in alum water to cut the grease, and then wrapped
+light yellow skins over, and then darker ones, and at last layer
+after layer of cloth, and wet that, and roasted them an hour in
+hot ashes and then let them cool and dry, before unwrapping. 
+When she took them out, rubbed on a little grease and polished
+them--there they were!  They would have our names, flowers,
+birds, animals, all in pale yellow, deep rich brown, almost red,
+and perfectly beautiful colours, while you could hunt and hunt
+before you found everything on one egg.  And sometimes the onion
+skins slipped, and made things of themselves that she never put
+on.
+
+I was coming from the bin with an apron full of skins and I
+almost fell over.  I couldn't breathe for a long time.  I danced
+on my toes, and held my mouth to keep from screaming.  On the
+garret floor before me lay a little piece of wet mud, and the
+faintest outline of a boot, a boot about Leon's size.  That was
+all I needed to know.  As soon as I could hold steady, I took the
+skins to mother, slipped back and hunted good; and of course I
+had to find them--grainsacks half full of them--carried in the
+front door in the evening, and up the front stairs, where no one
+went until bedtime, unless there were company.  Away back under
+the eaves, across the joists, behind the old clothing waiting to
+be ripped, coloured and torn for carpet rangs and rugs, Mr. Leon
+had almost every egg that had been laid on the place for a month.
+
+NOW he'd see what he'd get for taking Laddie's!
+
+Then I stopped short.  What I thought most made me sick, but I
+didn't propose to lie in bed again for a year at least, for it
+had its bad parts as well as its good; so I went straight and
+whispered to Laddie.  He never looked pleased at all, so I knew I
+had been right.  He kissed me, and thanked me, and then said
+slowly:  "It's mighty good of you, Little Sister, but you see it
+wouldn't be FAIR.  He found mine himself, so he had a right to
+take them.  But I don't dare touch his, when you tell me where
+they are.  I never in a month of Sundays would have looked for
+them in the house.  I was going to search the wood house and
+smoke house this afternoon.  I can't take them.  But thank you
+just as much."
+
+Then I went to father and he laughed.  How he did laugh!
+
+"Laddie is right!" he said at last.  "He didn't find them, and he
+mustn't take them.  But you may!  They're yours!  That front door
+scheme of Leon's was fairly well, but it wasn't quite good
+enough.  If he'd cleaned his feet as he should, before he crossed
+mother's carpet and climbed the stairs, he'd have made it all
+right.  `His tracks betrayed him,' as tracks do all of us, if we
+are careless enough to leave any.  The eggs are yours, and to-
+night is the time to produce them.  Where do you want to hide
+them?"
+
+Well of all things! and after I had stumbled on them without
+pestering the Lord, either!  Just as slick as anything!  Mine!  I
+never ever thought of it.  But when I did think, I liked it.  The
+more I thought, the funnier it grew.
+
+"Under mother's bed," I whispered.  "But I never can get them. 
+They're in wheat sacks, and full so high, and they'll have to be
+handled like eggs."
+
+"I'll do the carrying," laughed father.  "Come show me!"
+
+So we took all those eggs, and put them under mother's bed.
+
+Of course she and Candace saw us, but they didn't hunt eggs and
+they'd never tell.  If ever I thought I'd burst wide open!  About
+dusk I saw Leon coming from the barn carrying his hat at his
+side--more eggs--so I ran like a streak and locked the front
+door, and then slipped back in the dining-room and almost
+screamed, when I could hear him trying it, and he couldn't get
+in.  After a while he came in, fussed around, and finally went
+into the sitting-room, and the key turned and he went upstairs. 
+I knew I wouldn't dare look at him when he came down, so I got a
+reader and began on a piece I just love:
+
+            "A nightingale made a mistake;
+                 She sang a few notes out of tune:
+             Her heart was ready to break,
+                 And she hid away from the moon."
+
+
+When I did get a peep, gracious but he was black!  Maybe it
+wasn't going to be so much fun after all.  But he had the money
+last year, and the year before, and if he'd cleaned his feet
+well--I was not hunting his eggs, when I found them.  "His tracks
+betrayed him," as father said.  I was thankful supper was ready
+just then, and while it was going on mother said:  "As soon as
+you finish, all bring in your eggs.  I want to wrap the ones to
+colour to-night, and bury them in the fireplace so they will
+colour, dry, and be ready to open in the morning."
+
+No one said a word, but neither Laddie nor Leon looked very
+happy, and I took awful bites to keep my face straight.  When all
+of us finished May brought a lot from the bran barrel in the
+smoke house, but Laddie and Leon only sat there and looked silly;
+it really was funny.
+
+"I must have more eggs than this?" said mother.  "Where are they
+to come from?"
+
+Father nodded to me and I said:  "From under your bed!"
+
+"Oh, it was you!  And I never once caught you snooping!" cried
+Leon.
+
+"Easy son!" said father.  "That will do.  You lost through your
+own carelessness.  You left wet mud on the garret floor, and she
+saw it when mother sent her for the onion skins.  You robbed
+Laddie of his last egg this morning; be a good loser yourself!"
+
+"Well, anyway, you didn't get 'em," said Leon to Laddie.
+
+"And she only found them by accident!"
+
+Then we had a big time counting all those eggs, and such another
+heap as there was to sell, after mother filled baskets to cook
+with and colour.  When the table was cleared, Laddie and Leon
+made tallow pencils from a candle and wrote all sorts of things
+over eggs that had been prepared to colour.  Then mother boiled
+them in copperas water, and aniline, and all the dyes she had,
+and the boys polished them, and they stood in shining black, red,
+blue and yellow heaps.  The onion ones would be done in the
+morning.  Leon had a goose egg and mother let him keep it, so he
+wrote and wrote on it, until Laddie said it would be all writing,
+and no colour, and he boiled it in red, after mother finished,
+and polished it himself.  It came out real pretty with roses on
+it and lots of words he wouldn't let any of us read; but of
+course it was for Susie Fall.
+
+Next morning he slipped it to her at church.  When we got home,
+all of us were there except Shelley, and we had a big dinner and
+a fine time and Laddie stayed until after supper, before he went
+to Pryors'.
+
+"How is he making it?" asked Sally.
+
+You could see she was making it all right; she never looked
+lovelier, and mother said Peter was letting her spend away too
+much money on her clothes.  She told him so, but Peter just
+laughed and said business was good, and he could afford it, and
+she was a fine advertisement for his store when she was dressed
+well."
+
+"All I know is," said mother, "that he goes there every
+whipstitch, and the women, at least, seem glad to have him.  He
+says Mr. Pryor treats him decently, and that is more than he does
+his own family and servants.  He and the girl and her mother are
+divided about something.  She treats her father respectfully, but
+she's in sympathy with mother."
+
+"Laddie can't find out what the trouble is?"
+
+"I don't think that he tries."
+
+"Maybe he'd feel better not to know," said Peter.
+
+"Possibly!" said mother.
+
+"Nonsense!" said father.
+
+"You seem to be reconciled," said Elizabeth.
+
+"That girl would reconcile a man to anything," said father.
+
+"Not to the loss of his soul, I hope," said mother stiffly.
+
+"Souls are not so easy to lose," said father.  "Besides, I am
+counting on Laddie saving hers."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+The Garden of the Lord
+
+            "With what content and merriment,
+             Their days are spent, whose minds are bent
+             To follow the useful plow."
+
+That spring I decided if school didn't stop pretty soon, I'd run
+away again, and I didn't in the least care what they did to me. 
+A country road was all right and it was good enough, if it had
+been heaped up, leveled and plenty of gravel put on; and of
+course our road would be fine, because father was one of the
+commissioners, and as long as he filled that office, every road
+in the county would be just as fine as the law would allow him to
+make it.  I have even heard him tell mother that he "stretched it
+a leetle mite," when he was forced to by people who couldn't seem
+to be made to understand what was required to upbuild a nation. 
+He said our language was founded on the alphabet, and to master
+it you had to begin with "a".  And he said the nation was like
+that; it was based on townships, and when a township was clean,
+had good roads, bridges, schoolhouses, and churches, a county was
+in fine shape, and when each county was in order, the state was
+right, and when the state was prosperous, the nation could
+rejoice in its strength.
+
+He said Atlas in the geography book, carrying the world on his
+back, was only a symbol, but it was a good one.  He said when the
+county elected him to fill an important office, it used his
+shoulder as a prop for the nation, so it became his business to
+stand firmly, and use every ounce of strength and brains he had,
+first of all to make his own possessions a model, then his
+township, his county, and his state, and if every one worked
+together doing that, no nation on earth had our amount of
+territory and such fine weather, so none of them could beat us.
+
+Our road was like the barn floor, where you drove: on each side
+was a wide grassy strip, and not a weed the length of our land. 
+All the rails in the fences were laid straight, the gates were
+solid, sound, and swung firmly on their beams, our fence corners
+were full of alders, wild roses, sumac, blackberry vines, masses
+of wild flowers beneath them, and a bird for every bush.  Some of
+the neighbours thought that to drive two rails every so often,
+lay up the fences straight, and grub out the shrubs was the way,
+but father said they were vastly mistaken.  He said that was such
+a shortsighted proceeding, he would be ashamed to indulge in it. 
+You did get more land, but if you left no place for the birds,
+the worms and insects devoured your crops, and you didn't raise
+half so much as if you furnished the birds shelter and food.  So
+he left mulberries in the fields and fence corners and wild
+cherries, raspberries, grapes, and every little scrub apple tree
+from seeds sown by Johnny Appleseed when he crossed our land.
+
+Mother said those apples were so hard a crane couldn't dent them,
+but she never watched the birds in winter when the snow was
+beginning to come and other things were covered up.  They swarmed
+over those trees until spring, for the tiny sour apples stuck
+just like oak leaves waiting for next year's crop to push them
+off.  She never noticed us, either.  After a few frosts, we could
+almost get tipsy on those apples; there was not a tree in our
+orchard that had the spicy, teasing tang of Johnny Appleseed's
+apples.  Then too, the limbs could be sawed off and rambo and
+maiden's-blush grafted on, if you wanted to; father did on some
+of them, so there would be good apples lying beside the road for
+passers-by, and they needn't steal to get them.  You could graft
+red haws on them too, and grow great big, little haw-apples, that
+were the prettiest things you ever saw, and the best to eat. 
+Father said if it didn't spoil the looks of the road, he wouldn't
+care how many of his neighbours straightened their fences.  If
+they did, the birds would come to him, and the more he had, the
+fewer bugs and worms he would be troubled with, so he would be
+sure of big crops, and sound fruit.  He said he would much rather
+have a few good apples picked by robins or jays, than untouched
+trees, loaded with wormy falling ones he could neither use nor
+sell.  He always patted my head and liked every line of it when I
+recited, sort of tearful-like and pathetic:
+
+            "Don't kill the birds! the happy birds,
+             That bless the field and grove;
+             So innocent to look upon,
+             They claim our warmest love."
+
+
+The roads crossing our land were all right, and most of the
+others near us; and a road is wonderful, if it is taking you to
+the woods or a creek or meadow; but when it is walking you
+straight to a stuffy little schoolhouse where you must stand up
+to see from a window, where a teacher is cross as fire, like Miss
+Amelia, and where you eternally HEAR things you can't see, there
+comes a time about the middle of April when you had quite as soon
+die as to go to school any longer; and what you learn there
+doesn't amount to a hill of beans compared with what you can find
+out for yourself outdoors.
+
+Schoolhouses are made wrong.  If they must be, they should be
+built in a woods pasture beside a stream, where you could wade,
+swim, and be comfortable in summer, and slide and skate in
+winter.  The windows should be cut to the floor, and stand wide
+open, so the birds and butterflies could pass through.  You ought
+to learn your geography by climbing a hill, walking through a
+valley, wading creeks, making islands in them, and promontories,
+capes, and peninsulas along the bank.  You should do your
+arithmetic sitting under trees adding hickory-nuts, subtracting
+walnuts, multiplying butternuts, and dividing hazelnuts.  You
+could use apples for fractions, and tin cups for liquid measure. 
+You could spell everything in sight and this would teach you the
+words that are really used in the world.  Every single one of us
+could spell incompatibility, but I never heard father, or the
+judge, or even the Bishop, put it in a speech.
+
+If you simply can't have school THAT way, then you should be shut
+in black cells, deep under the ground, where you couldn't see, or
+hear a sound, and then if they'd give you a book and candle and
+Miss Amelia, and her right-hand man, Mister Ruler, why you might
+learn something.  This way, if you sat and watched the windows
+you could see a bird cross our woods pasture to the redbird swamp
+every few minutes; once in a while one of my big hawks took your
+breath as he swept, soared, sailed, and circled, watching the
+ground below for rabbits, snakes, or chickens.  The skinny old
+blue herons crossing from the Wabash to hunt frogs in the cowslip
+swale in our meadow, sailed so slow and so low, that you could
+see their sharp bills stuck out in front, their uneven, ragged
+looking feathers, and their long legs trailing out behind.  I bet
+if Polly Martin wore a blue calico dress so short her spindle-
+shanks showed, and flew across our farm, you couldn't tell her
+from a heron.
+
+There were so many songs you couldn't decide which was which to
+save you; it was just a pouring jumble of robins, larks, doves,
+blackbirds, sparrows, everything that came that early; the red
+and the yellow birds had not come yet, or the catbirds or
+thrushes.  You could hear the thumping wings of the roosters in
+Sills' barnyard nearest the schoolhouse, and couldn't tell which
+was whipping, so you had to sit there and wonder; and worst of
+all you must stand Miss Amelia calmly telling you to pay
+attention to your books or you would be kept in, and all the time
+you were forced to bear torments, while you watched her walk from
+window to window to see every speck of the fight.  One day they
+had thumped and fought for half an hour; she had looked from
+every window in the room, and at last there was an awful
+whacking, and then silence.  It grew so exciting I raised my
+hand, and almost before she nodded permission, "Which whipped?" I
+asked.
+
+Miss Amelia turned red as a beet.  Gee, but she was mad!
+
+"I did!" she said.  "Or at least I will.  You may remain for it
+after school is dismissed."
+
+Now if you are going to be switched, they never do it until they
+are just so angry anyway, and then they always make it as hard as
+they dare not to stripe you, so it isn't much difference HOW
+provoked they are, it will be the same old thrashing, and it's
+sure to sting for an hour at least, so you might as well be
+beaten for a little more as hardly anything at all.  At that
+instant from the fence not far from my window came a triumphant
+crow that fairly ripped across the room.
+
+"Oh, it was the Dorking!" I said.  "No wonder you followed clear
+around the room to see him thrash a Shanghai three times his
+size!  I bet a dollar it was great!"
+
+Usually, I wouldn't have put up more than five cents, but at that
+time I had over six dollars from my Easter eggs, and no girl of
+my age at our school ever had half that much.  Miss Amelia
+started toward me, and I braced my feet so she'd get a good jolt
+herself, when she went to shake me; she never struck us over the
+head since Laddie talked to her that first day; but John Hood's
+foot was in the aisle.  I thought maybe I'd have him for my beau
+when we grew up, because I bet he knew she was coming, and stuck
+out his foot on purpose; anyway, she pitched, and had to catch a
+desk to keep off the floor, and that made her so mad at him, that
+she forgot me, while he got his scolding; so when my turn came at
+last, she had cooled down enough that she only marched past to
+her desk, saying I was to remain after school.  I had to be
+careful after that to be mighty good to May and Leon.
+
+When school was out they sat on the steps before the door and
+waited.  Miss Amelia fussed around and there they sat.  Then her
+face grew more gobblerish than usual, and she went out and told
+them to go home.  Plain as anything I heard May say It:  "She's
+been awful sick, you know, and mother wouldn't allow it."  And
+then Leon piped up:  "You DID watch the roosters, all the time
+they fought, and of course all of us wanted to see just as badly
+as you did."
+
+She told them if they didn't go right home she'd bring them back
+and whip them too; so they had to start, and leave me to my sad
+fate.  I was afraid they had made it sadder, instead of helping
+me; she was so provoked when she came in she was crying, and over
+nothing but the plain truth too; if we had storied on her, she'd
+have had some cause to beller.  She arranged her table, cleaned
+the board, emptied the water bucket, and closed the windows. 
+Then she told me I was a rude, untrained child.  I was rude, I
+suppose, but goodness knows, I wasn't untrained; that was hard on
+father and mother; I had a big notion to tell them; and then, she
+never whipped me at all.  She said if I wanted her to love me, I
+mustn't be a saucy, impudent girl, and I should go straight home
+and think it over.
+
+I went, but I was so dazed at her thinking I wanted her to love
+me, that I hardly heard May and Leon calling; when I did I went
+to the cemetery fence and there they lay in the long grass
+waiting.
+
+"If you cried, we were coming back and pitch into her," said
+Leon.
+
+There was a pointer.  Next time, first cut she gave me, I decided
+to scream bloody murder.  But that would be no Crusader way. 
+There was one thing though.  No Crusader ever sat and heard a
+perfectly lovely fight going on, and never even wondered which
+whipped.
+
+May and Leon stepped one on each side, took a hand, and we ran
+like Indians, and slid down the hill between the bushes, climbed
+the fence, crossed the pasture back of the church, and went to
+the creek.  There we sat on a log, I told them, and we just
+laughed.  I didn't know what I could do to pay them, for they
+saved me sure as fate that time.
+
+I wished we lived in the woods the way it was when father and
+mother were married and moved to Ohio.  The nearest neighbours
+were nine miles, and there wasn't a dollar for school funds, so
+of course the children didn't have to go, and what their fathers
+and mothers taught them was all they knew.  That would not have
+helped me much though, for we never had one single teacher who
+knew anything to compare with what father and mother did, and we
+never had one who was forever reading books, papers, and learning
+more things that help, to teach other people.  I wished father
+had time to take our school.  It would have been some fun to go
+to him, because I just knew he would use the woods for the room,
+and teach us things it would do some good to know about.
+
+I began debating whether it was a big enough thing to bother the
+Lord with: this being penned up in the schoolhouse droning over
+spelling and numbers, when you could smell tree bloom, flower
+bloom, dozens of birds were nesting, and everything was beginning
+to hum with life.  I couldn't think for that piece about "Spring"
+going over in my head:
+
+            "I am coming, I am coming:
+                 Hark! the little bee is humming:
+             See! the lark is soaring high,
+                 In the bright and sunny sky;
+             All the birds are on the wing:
+                 Little maiden, now is spring."
+
+
+I made up my mind that it was of enough importance to call for
+the biggest prayer I could think of and that I would go up in the
+barn to the top window, stand on a beam, and turn my face to the
+east, where Jesus used to be, and I'd wrestle with the Lord for
+freedom, as Jacob wrestled with the Angel on the banks of the
+Jabbok in the land of Ammon.  I was just getting up steam to pray
+as hard as ever I could; for days I'd been thinking of it, and I
+was nearly to the point where one more killdeer crying across the
+sky would have sent me headlong from the schoolhouse anywhere
+that my feet were on earth, and the air didn't smell of fried
+potatoes, kraut, sweat, and dogs, like it did whenever you sat
+beside Clarissa Polk.  When I went to supper one night; father
+had been to Groveville, and he was busy over his papers.  After
+he finished the blessing, he seemed worried, at last he said the
+funds were all out, and the county would make no appropriation so
+school would have to close next week.
+
+Well that beats me!  I had faith in that prayer I was going to
+make, and here the very thing I intended to ask for happened
+before I prayed.  I decided I would save the prayer until the
+next time I couldn't stand anything another minute, and then I
+would try it with all my might, and see if it really did any
+good.  After supper I went out the back door, spread my arms
+wide, and ran down the orchard to the fence in great bounds, the
+fastest I ever went in my life.  I climbed my pulpit in the
+corner and tried to see how much air my lungs would hold without
+bursting, while I waved my arms and shouted at the top of my
+voice:  "Praise ye the Lord!  Praised be His holy name!"
+
+"Ker-awk!" cried an old blue heron among the cowslips below me. 
+I had almost scared it to death, and it arose on flapping wings
+and paid me back by frightening me so I screamed as I dodged its
+shadow.
+
+"What is all this?" asked father behind me.
+
+"Come up and take a seat, and I'll try to tell you," I said.
+
+So he stepped on my pulpit and sat on the top rail, while I stood
+between his knees, put my arms around his neck, took off his hat
+and loosened his hair so the wind could wave it, and make his
+head feel cool and good.  His hair curled a little and it was
+black and fine.  His cheeks were pink and his eyes the brightest
+blue, with long lashes, and heavier brows than any other man I
+ever have seen.  He was the best looking--always so clean and
+fresh, and you never had to be afraid of him, unless you had been
+a bad, sinful child.  If you were all right, you would walk into
+his arms, play with his hair, kiss him all you pleased, and there
+wasn't a thing on earth you couldn't tell him, excepting a secret
+you had promised to keep.
+
+So I explained all this, and more too.  About how I wanted to
+hunt for the flowers, to see which bloomed first, and watch in
+what order the birds came, and now it was a splendid time to
+locate nests, because there were no leaves, so I could see
+easily, and how glad mother would be to know where the blue goose
+nested, and her white turkey hen; because she wanted her geese
+all blue, and the turkeys all white, as fast as she could manage.
+
+Every little thing that troubled me or that I wanted, I told him.
+
+He sat there and he couldn't have listened with more interest or
+been quieter if I had been a bishop, which is the biggest thing
+that ever happened at our house; his name was Ninde and he came
+from Chicago to dedicate our church when it was new.  So father
+listened and thought and held his arms around me, and--
+
+"And you think the Lord was at the bottom of the thing that makes
+you happy?"
+
+"Well, you always go to Him about what concerns you, and you say,
+`Praise the Lord,' when things go to please you."
+
+"I do indeed!" said father.  "But I had thought of this running
+short of school funds as a calamity.  If I had been praying about
+it, I would have asked Him to show me a way to raise money to
+continue until middle May at least."
+
+"Oh father!"
+
+I just crumpled up in his arms and began to cry; to save me I
+couldn't help it.  He held me tight.  At last he said:  "I think
+you are a little overstrained this spring.  Maybe you were sicker
+than we knew, or are growing too fast.  Don't worry any more
+about school.  Possibly father can fix it."
+
+Next morning when I wakened, my everyday clothes lay across the
+foot of the bed, so I called mother and asked if I should put
+them on; she took me in her arms, and said father thought I had
+better be in the open, and I needn't go to school any more that
+spring.  I told her I thought I could bear it a few more days,
+now it was going to be over so soon; but she said I might stay at
+home, father and Laddie would hear me at night, and I could take
+my books anywhere I pleased and study when I chose, if I had my
+spelling and reading learned at evening.  NOW, say the Lord
+doesn't help those who call on Him in faith believing!
+
+Think of being allowed to learn your lessons on the top of the
+granary, where you could look out of a window above the treetops,
+lie in the cool wind, and watch swallows and martins.  Think of
+studying in the pulpit when the creek ran high, and the wild
+birds sang so sweetly you seemed to hear them for the first time
+in all your life, and hens, guineas, and turkeys made prime music
+in the orchard.  You could see the buds swell, and the little
+blue flags push through the grass, where Mrs. Mayer had her
+flowerbed, and the cowslips greening under the water of the swale
+at the foot of the hill, while there might be a Fairy under any
+leaf.  I was so full, so swelled up and excited, that when I got
+ready to pick up a book, I could learn a lesson in a few minutes,
+tell all about it, spell every word, and read it back, front, and
+sideways.  I never learned lessons so quick and so easy in all my
+life; father, Laddie, and every one of them had to say so.  One
+night, father said to Laddie:  "This child is furnishing evidence
+that our school system is wrong, and our methods of teaching far
+from right."
+
+"Or is it merely proof that she is different," said Laddie, "and
+you can't run her through the same groove you could the rest of
+us?"
+
+"A little of both," said father, "but most that the system is
+wrong.  We are not going at children in a way to gain and hold
+their interest, and make them love their work.  There must be a
+better way of teaching, and we should find different teachers. 
+You'll have to try the school next year yourself, Laddie."
+
+"I have a little plan about a piece of land I am hoping to take
+before then," answered Laddie.  "It's time for me to try my wings
+at making a living, and land is my choice.  I have fully decided.
+I stick to the soil!"
+
+"Amen!" cried father.  "You please me mightily.  I hate to see
+sons of mine thriving on law, literally making their living out
+of the fruit of other men's discord.  I dislike seeing them
+sharpen their wits in trade, buying at the lowest limit,
+extorting the highest.  I don't want their horizons limited by
+city blocks, their feet on pavements, everything under the sun in
+their heads that concerns a scheme to make money; not room for an
+hour's thought or study in a whole day, about the really vital
+things of life.  After all, land and its products are the basis
+of everything; the city couldn't exist a day unless we feed and
+clothe it.  In the things that I consider important, you are a
+king among men, with your feet on soil you own."
+
+"So I figure it," said Laddie.
+
+"And you are the best educated man I have reared," said father. 
+"Take this other thought with you: on land, the failure of the
+bank does not break you.  The fire another man's carelessness
+starts, does not wipe out your business or home.  You are not in
+easy reach of contagion.  Any time you want to branch out, your
+mother and I will stand back of you."
+
+"Thank you!" said Laddie.  "You backed none of the others.  They
+would resent it.  I'll make the best start I can myself, and as
+they did, stand alone."
+
+Father looked at him and smiled slowly.
+
+"You are right, as always," he said.  "I hadn't thought so far. 
+It would make trouble.  At any rate, let me inspect and help you
+select your land."
+
+"That of course!" said Laddie.
+
+I suspect it's not a very nice thing for me to tell, but all of
+us were tickled silly the day Miss Amelia packed her trunk and
+left for sure.  Mother said she never tried harder in all her
+days, but Miss Amelia was the most distinctly unlovable person
+she ever had met.  She sympathized with us so, she never said a
+word when Leon sang:
+
+
+        "Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
+             Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,
+         Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms,
+             Like fairy-gifts fading away,
+         Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art,
+             Let thy loveliness fade as it will,
+         And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
+             Would entwine itself verdantly still--"
+
+while Miss Amelia drove from sight up the Groveville road.
+
+As he sang Leon stretched out his arms after her vanishing form. 
+"I hope," he said, "that you caught that touching reference to
+`the dear ruin,' and could anything be expressed more beautifully
+and poetically than that `verdantly still?'"
+
+I feel sorry for a snake.  I like hoptoads, owls, and shitepokes.
+I envy a buzzard the way it can fly, and polecats are beautiful;
+but I never could get up any sort of feeling at all for Miss
+Amelia, whether she was birdlike or her true self.  So no one was
+any gladder than I when she was gone.
+
+After that, spring came pushing until you felt shoved.  Our
+family needed me then.  If they never had known it before, they
+found out there was none too many of us.  Every day I had to
+watch the blue goose, and bring in her egg before it was chilled,
+carrying it carefully so it would not be jarred.  I had to hunt
+the turkey nests and gather their eggs so they would be right for
+setting.  There had to be straw carried from the stack for new
+nests, eggs marked, and hens set by the dozen.  Garden time came,
+so leaves had to be raked from the beds and from the dooryard. 
+No one was busier than I; but every little while I ran away, and
+spent some time all by myself in the pulpit, under the hawk oak,
+or on the roof.
+
+Coming from church that Sunday, when we reached the top of the
+Big Hill, mother touched father's arm.  "Stop a minute," she
+said, and he checked the horses, while we sat there and wondered
+why, as she looked and looked all over the farm, then, "Now drive
+to the top of the Little Hill and turn, and stop exactly on the
+place from which we first viewed this land together," she said. 
+"You know the spot, don't you?"
+
+"You may well believe I know it," said father.  "I can hit it to
+the inch.  You see, children," he went on, "your mother and I
+arranged before the words were said over us"--he always put it
+that way--I never in my life heard him say, "when we were
+married"; he read so many books he talked exactly like a book--
+"that we would be partners in everything, as long as we lived. 
+When we decided the Ohio land was not quite what we wanted, she
+sent me farther west to prospect, while she stayed at home and
+kept the baby.  When I reached this land, found it for sale, and
+within my means, I bought it, and started home happy.  Before I'd
+gone a mile, I turned to look back, and saw that it was hilly,
+mostly woods, and there was no computing the amount of work it
+would require to make it what I could see in it; so I began to
+think maybe she wouldn't like it, and to wish I had brought her,
+before I closed the deal.  By the time I returned home, packed
+up, and travelled this far on the way back with her, there was
+considerable tension in my feelings--considerable tension,"
+repeated father as he turned the horses and began driving
+carefully, measuring the distance from Hoods' and the bridge.  At
+last he stopped, backed a step, and said:  "There, mommy, did I
+hit the spot?"
+
+"You did!" said mother, stepping from the carriage and walking up
+beside him.  She raised one hand and laid it on the lamp near
+him.  He shifted the lines, picked up her hand, and held it
+tight.  Mother stood there looking, just silently looking.  May
+jabbed me in the side, leaned over and whispered:
+
+            "Could we but stand where Moses stood,
+                 And view the landscape o'er,
+             Not our Little Creek, nor dinner getting cold,
+                 Could fright us from that shore."
+
+
+I couldn't help giggling, but I knew that was no proper time, so
+I hid my head in her lap and smothered the sound the best I
+could; but they were so busy soft-soddering each other they
+didn't pay a bit of attention to us.
+
+It was May now, all the leaves were fresh and dustless,
+everything that flowered at that time was weighted with bloom,
+bees hummed past, butterflies sailed through the carriage, while
+birds at the tops of their voices, all of them, every kind there
+was, sang fit to split; friendly, unafraid bluebirds darted
+around us, and talked a blue streak from every fence rider.  Made
+you almost crazy to know what they said.  The Little Creek flowed
+at our feet across the road, through the blue-flag swamp, where
+the red and the yellow birds lived.  You could see the sun flash
+on the water where it emptied into the stream that crossed
+Deams', and flowed through our pasture; and away beyond the Big
+Hill arose, with the new church on top, the graveyard around it,
+the Big Creek flashing at its base.  In the valley between lay
+our fields, meadows, the big red barn, the white house with the
+yard filled with trees and flowering shrubs, beyond it the
+garden, all made up, neat and growing; and back of it the orchard
+in full bloom.
+
+Mother looked and looked.  Suddenly she raised her face to
+father.  "Paul," she said, "that first day, did you ever dream it
+could be made to look like this?"
+
+"No!" said father.  "I never did!  I saw houses, barns, and
+cleared fields; I hoped for comfort and prosperity, but I didn't
+know any place could grow to be so beautiful, and there is
+something about it, even on a rainy November day, there is
+something that catches me in the breast, on the top of either of
+these hills, until it almost stifles me.  What is it, Ruth?"
+
+"The Home Feeling!" said mother.  "It is in my heart so big this
+morning I am filled with worship.  Just filled with the spirit of
+worship."
+
+She was rocking on her toes like she does when she becomes too
+happy at the Meeting House to be quiet any longer, and cries,
+"Glory!" right out loud.  She pointed to the orchard, an immense
+orchard of big apple trees in full bloom, with two rows of peach
+trees around the sides.  It looked like a great, soft, pinkish
+white blanket, with a deep pink border, spread lightly on the
+green earth.
+
+"We planted that way because we thought it was best; how could we
+know how it would look in bloom time?  It seems as if you came to
+these hilltops and figured on the picture you would make before
+you cleared, or fenced a field."
+
+"That's exactly what I did," said father.  "Many's the hour, all
+told, that I have stopped my horse on one of these hilltops and
+studied how to make the place beautiful, as well as productive. 
+That was a task you set me, my girl.  You always considered
+BEAUTY as well as USE about the house and garden, and wherever
+you worked.  I had to hold my part in line."
+
+"You have made it all a garden," said mother.  "You have made it
+a garden growing under the smile of the Master; a very garden of
+the Lord, father."
+
+Father drew up her hand and held it tight against his heart.
+
+"Your praise is sweet, my girl, sweet!" he said.  "I have tried,
+God knows I have tried, to make it first comfortable, then
+beautiful, for all of us.  To the depths of my soul I thank Him
+for this hour.  I am glad, Oh I am so glad you like your home,
+Ruth!  I couldn't endure it if you complained, found fault and
+wished you lived elsewhere."
+
+"Why, father!" said my mother in the most surprised voice.  "Why,
+father, it would kill me to leave here.  This is ours.  We have
+made it by and through the strength of the Lord and our love for
+each other.  All my days I want to live here, and when I die, I
+want to lie beside my blessed babies and you, Paul, down by the
+church we gave the land for, and worked so hard to build.  I love
+it, Oh I love it!  See how clean and white the dark evergreens
+make the house look!  See how the big chestnuts fit in and point
+out the yellow road.  I wish we had a row the length of it!"
+
+"They wouldn't grow," said father.  "You mind the time I had
+finding the place those wanted to set their feet?"
+
+"I do indeed!" said mother, drawing her hand and his with it
+where she could rub her cheek against it.  "Now we'll go home and
+have our dinner and a good rest.  I'm a happy woman this day,
+father, a happy, happy woman.  If only one thing didn't worry
+me----"
+
+"Must there always be a `fly in the ointment,' mother?"
+
+She looked at him with a smile that was like a hug and kiss, and
+she said:  "I have found it so, father, and I have been happy in
+spite of it.  Where one has such wide interests, at some point
+there is always a pull, but in His own day, in His own way, the
+Lord is going to make everything right."
+
+"`Thy faith hath made thee whole,'" quoted father.
+
+Then she stepped into the carriage, and he waited a second, quite
+long enough to let her see that he was perfectly willing to sit
+there all day if she wanted him to, and then he slowly and
+carefully drove home, as he always did when she was in the
+carriage.  Times when he had us children out alone, he went until
+you couldn't see the spokes in the wheels.  He just loved to
+"speed up" once in a while on a piece of fine road to let us know
+how going fast felt.
+
+Mother sat there trembling a little, smiling, misty-eyed.  I was
+thinking, for I knew what the "fly in the ointment" was.  She had
+a letter from Shelley yesterday, and she said there wasn't a
+reason on earth why father or Laddie should spend money to come
+to Chicago, she would soon be home, she was counting the hours,
+and she never wanted to leave again.  In the start she didn't
+want to go at all, unless she could stay three years, at the very
+least.  Of course it was that dreadful man, who had made her so
+beautiful and happy, and then taken away all the joy; how COULD a
+man do it?  It was the hardest thing to understand.
+
+Next morning mother was feeling fine, the world was lovely, Miss
+Amelia was gone, May was home to help, so she began housecleaning
+by washing all the curtains.  She had been in the kitchen to show
+Candace how.  I had all my work done, and was making friends with
+a robin brooding in my very own catalpa tree, when Mr. Pryor rode
+up, tied his horse, and started toward the gate.  I knew he and
+father had quarrelled; that is, father had told him he couldn't
+say "God was a myth" in this house, and he'd gone home mad as
+hops; so I knew it would be something mighty important that was
+bringing him back.  I slid from the tree, ran and opened the
+gate, and led the way up the walk.  I opened the front door and
+asked him in, and then I did the wrong thing.  I should have
+taken his hat, told him to be seated, and said I would see if I
+could find father; I knew what to do, and how to do it, but
+because of that about God, I was so excited I made a mistake.  I
+never took his hat, or offered him a chair; I just bolted into
+the dining-room, looking for father or mother, and left the door
+wide open, so he thought that wasn't the place to sit, because I
+didn't give him a chair, and he followed me.  The instant I saw
+mother's face, I knew what I had done.  The dining-room was no
+place for particular company like him, and bringing him in that
+way didn't give her time to smooth her hair, pull shut her dress
+band at the neck, put on her collar, and shiny goldstone pin, her
+white apron, and rub her little flannel rag, with rice flour on
+it, on her nose to take away the shine.  I had made a mess of it.
+
+There she came right in the door, just as she was from the tub. 
+Her hair was damp and crinkled around her face, her neckband had
+been close in stooping, so she had unfastened it, and tucked it
+back in a little V-shaped place to give her room and air.  Her
+cheeks were pink, her eyes bright, her lips red as a girl's, and
+her neck was soft and white.  The V-shaped place showed a little
+spot like baby skin, right where her neck went into her chest. 
+Sure as father kissed her lips, he always tipped back her head,
+bent lower and kissed that spot too.  I had seen hundreds of them
+go there, and I had tried it myself, lots of times, and it WAS
+the sweetest place.  Seeing what I had done, I stopped
+breathless.  You have to beat most everything you teach a child
+right into it properly to keep it from making such a botch of
+things as that.  I hardly dared to peep at mother, but when I
+did, she took my breath worse than the mistake I had made.
+
+Caught, she stood her ground.  She never paused a second. 
+Straight to him she went, holding out her hand, and I could see
+that it was red and warm from pressing the lace in the hot suds. 
+A something flashed over her, that made her more beautiful than
+she was in her silk dress going to town to help Lucy give a
+party, and her voice was sweet as the bubbling warbler on the
+garden fence when he was trying to coax a mate into the privet
+bush to nest.
+
+Mother asked him to be seated, so he took one of the chairs
+nearest him, and sat holding his hat in one hand, his whip in the
+other.  Mother drew a chair beside the dining table, dropped her
+hands on each other, and looking in his eyes, she smiled at him. 
+I tell the same thing over about people's looks, but I haven't
+told of this smile of mother's; because I never saw exactly how
+it was, or what it would do to people, until that morning.  Then
+as I watched her--for how she felt decided what would happen to
+me, after Mr. Pryor was gone I saw something I never had noticed
+until that minute.  She could laugh all over her face, before her
+lips parted until her teeth showed.  She was doing it now.  With
+a wide smile running from cheek to cheek, pushing up a big dimple
+at each end, her lips barely touching, her eyes dancing, she sat
+looking at him.
+
+"This IS the most blessed season for warming up the heart," she
+said.  "If you want the half of my kingdom, ask quickly.  I'm in
+the mood to bestow it."
+
+How she laughed!  He just had to loosen up a little, and smile
+back, even though it looked pretty stiff.
+
+"Well, I'll not tax you so far," he said.  "I only want Mr.
+Stanton."
+
+"But he is the whole of the kingdom, and the King to boot!" she
+laughed, dimpled, and flamed redder.
+
+Mr. Pryor stared at her wonderingly.  You could even see the
+wonder, like it was something you could take hold of.  I suppose
+he wondered what could make a woman so happy, like that.
+
+"Lucky man!" he said.  "All of us are not so fortunate."
+
+"Then it must be you don't covet the place or the title," said
+mother more soberly.  "Any woman will crown the man she marries,
+if he will allow her.  Paul went farther.  He compelled it."
+
+"I wonder how!" said Mr. Pryor, his eyes steadily watching
+mother's face.
+
+"By never failing in a million little things, that taken as a
+whole, make up one mighty big thing, on which he stands like the
+Rock of Ages."
+
+"Yet they tell me that you are the mother of twelve children," he
+said, as if he marvelled at something.
+
+"Yes!" cried mother, and the word broke right through a bubbling
+laugh.  "Am I not fortunate above most women?  We had the grief
+to lose two little daughters at the ages of eight and nine, all
+the others I have, and I rejoice in them."
+
+She reached out, laid a hand on me, drew me to her, and lightly
+touched my arm, sending my spirits sky-high.  She wasn't going to
+do a thing to me, not even scold!  Mr. Pryor stared at her like
+Jacob Hood does at Laddie when he begins rolling Greek before
+him, so I guess what mother said must have been Greek to Mr.
+Pryor.
+
+"I came to see Mr. Stanton," he said suddenly, and crosslike as
+if he didn't believe a word she said, and had decided she was too
+foolish to bother with any longer; but he kept on staring.  He
+couldn't quit that, no matter how cross he was.  The funniest
+thing came into my mind.  I wondered what on earth he'd have done
+if she'd gone over, sat on his lap, put her arms around his neck,
+took his face between her hands and kissed his forehead, eyes,
+lips, and tousled his hair, like she does father and our boys. 
+I'll bet all I got, he'd have turned to stonier stone than
+Sabethany.  You could see that no one ever served HIM like that
+in all his old, cold, hard, cross, mysterious, shut-in life.  I
+was crazy to ask, "Say, did anybody ever kiss you?" but I had
+such a close escape bringing him in wrong, I thought it would be
+wise not to take any risks so soon after.  It was enough to stand
+beside mother, and hear every word they said.  What was more, she
+wanted me, because she kept her hand on mine, or touched my apron
+every little while.
+
+"I'm so sorry!" she said.  "He was called to town on business. 
+The County Commissioners are sitting to-day."
+
+"They are deciding about the Groveville bridge, and pike?"
+
+"Yes.  He is working so hard for them."
+
+"The devil you say!  I beg pardon!  But it was about that I came.
+
+I'm three miles from there, and I'm taxed over sixty pounds for
+it."
+
+"But you cross the bridge every time you go to town, and travel
+the road.  Groveville is quite a resort on account of the water
+and lovely country.  Paul is very anxious to have the work
+completed before the summer boarders come from surrounding
+cities.  We are even farther from it than you; but it will cost
+us as much."
+
+"Are you insane?" cried Mr. Pryor, not at all politely; but you
+could see that mother was bound she wouldn't become provoked
+about anything, for she never stopped a steady beam on him. 
+"Spend all that money for strangers to lazy around on a few weeks
+and then go!"
+
+"But a good bridge and fine road will add to their pleasure, and
+when they leave, the improvements remain.  They will benefit us
+and our children through all the years to come."
+
+"Talk about `the land of the free'!" cried Mr. Pryor.  "This is a
+tax-ridden nation.  It's a beastly outrage!  Ever since I came,
+it's been nothing but notice of one assessment after another.  I
+won't pay it!  I won't endure it.  I'll move!"
+
+Mother let go of me, gripped her hands pretty tight together on
+the table, and she began to talk.
+
+"As for freedom--no man ever was, or is, or will be free," she
+said, quite as forcibly as he could speak.  "You probably knew
+when you came here that you would find a land tax-ridden from a
+great civil war of years' duration, and from newness of vast
+territory to be opened up and improved.  You certainly studied
+the situation."
+
+"`Studied the situation'!"  His whip beat across his knee. 
+"`Studied the situation'!  My leaving England was--er--the result
+of intolerable conditions there--in the nature of flight from
+things not to be endured.  I had only a vague idea of the
+States."
+
+"If England is intolerable, and the United States an outrage, I
+don't know where in this world you'll go," said mother softly.
+
+Mr. Pryor stared at her sharply.
+
+"Madame is pleased to be facetious," he said sneeringly.
+
+Mother's hands parted, and one of them stretched across the table
+toward him.
+
+"Forgive me!" she cried.  "That was unkind.  I know you are in
+dreadful trouble.  I'd give--I'd almost give this right hand to
+comfort you.  I'd do nearly anything to make you feel that you
+need bear no burden alone; that we'd love to help support you."
+
+"I believe you would," he said slowly, his eyes watching her
+again.  "I believe you would.  I wonder why!"
+
+"All men are brothers, in the broader sense," said mother, "and
+if you'll forgive me, your face bears marks of suffering almost
+amounting to torture."
+
+She stretched out the other hand.
+
+"You couldn't possibly let us help you?"
+
+Slowly he shook his head.
+
+"Think again!" urged mother.  "A trouble shared is half over to
+start with.  You lay a part of it on your neighbours, and your
+neighbours in this case would be glad, glad indeed, to see you
+care-free and happy as all men should be."
+
+"We'll not discuss it," he said.  "You can't possibly imagine the
+root of my trouble."
+
+"I shan't try!" said mother.  "But let me tell you this:  I don't
+care if you have betrayed your country, blasphemed your God, or
+killed your own child!  So long, as you're a living man, daily a
+picture of suffering before me, you're a burden on my heart. 
+You're a load on my shoulders, without your consent.  I have
+implored God, I shall never cease to implore Him, until your brow
+clears, your head is lifted, and your heart is at rest.  You
+can't prevent me!  This hour I shall go to my closet and beg Him
+to have mercy on your poor soul, and when His time comes, He
+will.  You can't help yourself, or you would have done so, long
+ago.  You must accept aid!  This must end, or there will be
+tragedy in your house."
+
+"Madame, there has been!" said Mr. Pryor, shaking as he sat.
+
+"I recognize that," said mother.  "The question is whether what
+has passed is not enough."
+
+"You simply cannot understand!" he said.
+
+"Mr. Pryor," she said, "you're in the position of a man doubly
+bereft.  You are without a country, and without a God.  Your face
+tells every passer-by how you are enjoying that kind of life. 
+Forgive me, if I speak plainly.  I admire some things about you
+so much, I am venturing positive unkindness to try to make you
+see that in shutting out your neighbours you will surely make
+them think more, and worse things, than are true.  I haven't a
+doubt in my mind but that your trouble is not one half so
+dreadful as you imagine while brooding over it.  We will pass
+that.  Let me tell you how we feel about this road matter.  You
+see we did our courting in Pennsylvania, married and tried Ohio,
+and then came on here.  We took this land when it was mostly
+woods.  I could point you to the exact spot where we stopped; we
+visited it yesterday, looked down the hill and selected the place
+where we would set this house, when we could afford to build it. 
+We moved into the cabin that was on the land first, later built a
+larger one, and finally this home as we had planned it.  Every
+fruit tree, bush, vine, and flower we planted.  Here our children
+have been born, lived, loved, and left us; some for the graveyard
+down yonder, some for homes of their own.  Always we have planned
+and striven to transform this into the dearest, the most
+beautiful spot on earth.  In making our home the best we can, in
+improving our township, county, and state, we are doing our share
+toward upbuilding this nation."
+
+She began at the a b c's, and gave it to him straight: the whole
+thing, just as we saw it; and he listened, as if he were a
+prisoner, and she a judge telling him what he must do to gain his
+freedom.  She put in the birds to keep away the worms, the trees
+to break the wind, the creeks to save the moisture.  She whanged
+him, and she banged him, up one side, and down the other.  She
+didn't stop to be mincy.  She shot things at him like a man
+talking to another man who had plenty of sense but not a particle
+of reason.  She gave him the reason.  She told him exactly why,
+and how, and where, and also just WHAT he must do to feel RIGHT
+toward his neighbours, his family, and his God.  No preacher ever
+talked half so well.  Yea verily, she was as interesting as the
+Bishop himself, and far pleasanter to look at.  When she ran
+short of breath, and out of words, she reached both hands toward
+him again.
+
+"OH DO PLEASE THINK OF THESE THINGS!" she begged.  "Do try to
+believe that I am a sensible person, and know what I am talking
+about."
+
+"Madame," said Mr. Pryor, "there's no doubt in my mind but you
+are the most wonderful woman I ever have met.  Surely I believe
+you!  Surely I know your plan of life is the true, the only right
+way.  It is one degree added to my humiliation that the ban I am
+under keeps me from friendly intercourse with so great a lady."
+
+"`Lady'?" said my mother, her eyes widening.  "`Lady'?  Now it is
+you who are amused."
+
+"I don't understand!" he said.  "Certainly you are a lady, a very
+great lady."
+
+"Goodness, gracious me!" cried my mother, laughing until her
+dimples would have held water.  "That's the first time in all my
+life I was ever accused of such a thing."
+
+"Again, I do not comprehend," said Mr. Pryor, as if vexed about
+all he would endure.
+
+Mother laughed on, and as she did so she drew back her hands and
+studied them.  Then she looked at him again, one pink dimple
+flashing here and there, all over her face.
+
+"Well, to begin at the root of the matter," she said, "that is an
+enormous big word that you are using lightly.  Any one in
+petticoats is not a lady--by no means!  A lady must be born of
+unsullied blood for at least three generations, on each side of
+her house.  Think for a minute about where you are going to
+fulfil that condition.  Then she must be gentle by nature, and
+rearing.  She must know all there is to learn from books, have
+wide experience to cover all emergencies, she must be steeped in
+social graces, and diplomatic by nature.  She must rise unruffled
+to any emergency, never wound, never offend, always help and
+heal, she must be perfect in deportment, virtue, wifehood and
+motherhood.  She must be graceful, pleasing and beautiful.  She
+must have much leisure to perfect herself in learning, graces and
+arts----"
+
+"Madame, you draw an impossible picture!" cried Mr. Pryor.
+
+"I draw the picture of the only woman on earth truly entitled to
+be called a lady.  You use a good word lightly.  I have told you
+what it takes to make a lady--now look at me!"
+
+How she laughed! Mr. Pryor looked, but he didn't laugh.
+
+"More than ever you convince me that you are a lady, indeed," he
+said.
+
+Mother wiped her eyes.
+
+"My dear man!" she cried, "I'm the daughter of a Dutch miller,
+who lived on a Pennsylvania mountain stream.  There never was a
+school anywhere near us, and father and mother only taught us to
+work.  Paul Stanton took a grist there, and saw me.  He married
+me, and brought me here.  He taught me to read and write.  I
+learned my lessons with my elder children.  He has always kept
+school in our house, every night of his life.  Our children
+supposed it was for them; I knew it was quite as much for me. 
+While I sat at knitting or sewing, I spelled over the words he
+gave out.  I know nothing of my ancestors, save that they came
+from the lowlands of Holland, down where there were cities,
+schools, and business.  They were well educated, but they would
+not take the trouble to teach their children.  As I have spoken
+to you, my husband taught me.  All I know I learn from him, from
+what he reads aloud, and places he takes me.  I exist in a
+twenty-mile radius, but through him, I know all lands,
+principalities and kingdoms, peoples and customs.  I need never
+be ashamed to go, or afraid to speak, anywhere."
+
+"Indeed not!" cried Mr. Pryor.
+
+"But when you think on the essentials of a real lady--and then
+picture me patching, with a First Reader propped before me;
+facing Indians, Gypsies, wild animals--and they used to be bad
+enough--why, I mind one time in Ohio when our first baby was only
+able to stand beside a chair, and through the rough puncheon
+floor a copperhead stuck up its gleam of bronzy gold, and shot
+its darting tongue within a foot of her bare leg.  By all
+accounts, a lady would have reached for her smelling salts and
+gracefully fainted away; in fact, a lady never would have been in
+such a place at all.  It was my job to throw the first thing I
+could lay my hands on so straight and true that I would break
+that snake's neck, and send its deadly fangs away from my baby. 
+I did it with Paul's plane, and neatly too!  Then I had to put
+the baby on the bed and tear up every piece of the floor to see
+that the snake had not a mate in hiding there, for copperheads at
+that season were going pairs.  Once I was driven to face a big
+squaw, and threatened the life of her baby with a red-hot poker
+while she menaced mine with a hunting knife.  There is not one
+cold, rough, hard experience of pioneer life that I have not
+endured.  Shoulder to shoulder, and heart to heart, I've stood
+beside my man, and done what had to be done, to build this home,
+rear our children, save our property.  Many's the night I have
+shivered in a barn doctoring sick cattle and horses we could ill
+afford to lose.  Time and again I have hung on and brought things
+out alive, after the men gave up and quit.  A lady?  How funny!"
+
+"The amusement is all on your part, Madame."
+
+"So it seems!" said mother.  "But you see, I know so well how
+ridiculous it is.  When I think of the life a woman must lead in
+order to be truly a lady, when I review the life I have been
+forced to live to do my share in making this home, and rearing
+these children, the contrast is too great.  I thank God for any
+part I have been able to take.  Had I life to live over, I see
+now where I could do more; but neighbour, believe me, my highest
+aspiration is to be a clean, thrifty housekeeper, a bountiful
+cook, a faithful wife, a sympathetic mother.  That is life work
+for any woman, and to be a good woman is the greatest thing on
+earth.  Never mind about the ladies; if you can honestly say of
+me, she is a good woman, you have paid me the highest possible
+tribute."
+
+"I have nothing to change, in the face of your argument," said
+Mr. Pryor.  "Our loved Queen on her throne is no finer lady."
+
+That time mother didn't laugh.  She looked straight at him a
+minute and then she said:  "Well, for an Englishman, as I know
+them, you have said the last word.  Higher praise there is none. 
+But believe me, I make no such claim.  To be a good wife and
+mother is the end toward which I aspire.  To hold the respect and
+love of my husband is the greatest object of my life."
+
+"Then you have succeeded.  You stand a monument to wifehood; your
+children prove your idea of motherhood," said Mr. Pryor.  "How in
+this world have you managed it?  The members of your family whom
+I have seen are fine, interesting men and women, educated above
+the average.  It is not idle curiosity.  I am deeply interested
+in knowing how such an end came to be accomplished here on this
+farm.  I wish you would tell me just how you have gone about
+schooling your children."
+
+"By educating ourselves before their coming, and with them
+afterward.  Self-control, study, work, joy of life, satisfaction
+with what we have had, never-ending strife to go higher, and to
+do better--Dr. Fenner laughs when I talk of these things.  He
+says he can take a little naked Hottentot from the jungle, and
+educate it to the same degree that I can one of mine.  I don't
+know; but if these things do not help before birth, at least they
+do not hinder; and afterward, you are in the groove in which you
+want your children to run.  With all our twelve there never has
+been one who at nine months of age did not stop crying if its
+father lifted his finger, or tapped his foot and told it to. 
+From the start we have rigorously guarded our speech and actions
+before them.  From the first tiny baby my husband has taught all
+of them to read, write and cipher some, before they went to
+school at all.  He is always watching, observing, studying: the
+earth, the stars, growing things; he never comes to a meal but he
+has seen something that he has or will study out for all of us. 
+There never has been one day in our home on which he did not read
+a new interesting article from book or paper; work out a big
+problem, or discuss some phase of politics, religion, or war. 
+Sometimes there has been a little of all of it in one day, always
+reading, spelling, and memory exercises at night.  He has a
+sister who twice in her life has repeated the Bible as a test
+before a committee.  He, himself, can go through the New
+Testament and all of the Old save the books of the generations. 
+He always says he considers it a waste of gray matter to learn
+them.  He has been a schoolmaster, his home his schoolroom, his
+children, wife and helpers his pupils; the common things of life
+as he meets them every day, the books from which we learn.
+
+"I was ignorant at first of bookish subjects, but in his
+atmosphere, if one were no student, and didn't even try to keep
+up, or forge ahead, they would absorb much through association. 
+Almost always he has been on the school board and selected the
+teachers; we have made a point of keeping them here, at great
+inconvenience to ourselves, in order to know as much of them as
+possible, and to help and guide them in their work.  When the
+children could learn no more here, for most of them we have
+managed the high school of Groveville, especially after our
+daughter moved there, and for each of them we have added at least
+two years of college, music school, or whatever the peculiar bent
+of the child seemed to demand.
+
+"Before any daughter has left our home for one of her own, she
+has been taught all I know of cleanliness about a house, cookery,
+sewing, tending the sick, bathing and dressing the new born.  She
+has to bake bread, pie, cake, and cook any meat or vegetable we
+have.  She has had her bolt of muslin to make as she chose for
+her bedding, and linen for her underclothing.  The quilts she
+pieced and the blankets she wove have been hers.  All of them
+have been as well provided for as we could afford.  They can
+knit, darn, patch, tuck, hem, and embroider, set a hen and plant
+a garden.  I go on a vacation and leave each of them to keep
+house for her father a month, before she enters a home of her
+own.  They are strong, healthy girls; I hope all of them are
+making a good showing at being useful women, and I know they are
+happy, so far at least."
+
+"Wonderful!" said Mr. Pryor.
+
+"Father takes the boys in hand and they must graduate in a
+straight furrow, an even fence, planting and tending crops,
+trimming and grafting trees, caring for stock, and handling
+plane, auger and chisel.  Each one must select his wood, cure,
+fashion, and fit his own ax with a handle, grind and swing it
+properly, as well as cradle, scythe and sickle.  They must be
+able to select good seed grain, boil sap, and cure meat.  They
+must know animals, their diseases and treatment, and when they
+have mastered all he can teach them, and done each thing
+properly, they may go for their term at college, and make their
+choice of a profession.  As yet I'm sorry to say but one of them
+has come back to the land."
+
+"You mean Laddie?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He has decided to be a farmer?"
+
+"He is determined to make the soil yield his living."
+
+"I am sorry--sorry indeed to hear it," said Mr. Pryor.  "He has
+brain and education to make a brilliant figure at law or
+statesmanship; he would do well in trade."
+
+"What makes you think he would not do well on land?"
+
+"Wasted!" cried Mr. Pryor.  "He would be wasted!"
+
+"Hold a bit!" said mother, her face flushing as it did when she
+was very provoked.  "My husband is, and always has been, on land.
+He is far from being wasted.  He is a power in this community. 
+He has sons in cities in law and in trade.  Not one of them has
+the friends, and the influence on his time, that his father has. 
+Any day he says the word, he can stand in legislative halls, and
+take any part he chooses in politics.  He prefers his home and
+family, and the work he does here, but let me tell you, no son of
+his ever had his influence or opportunity, or ever will have."
+
+"All this is news to me," said Mr. Pryor.
+
+"You didn't expect us to come over, force our way in and tell
+you?"
+
+It was his turn to blush and he did.
+
+"Laddie has been at our house often," he said.  "He might have
+mentioned----"
+
+Mother laughed.  She was the gayest that morning.
+
+"He `might,' but he never would.  Neither would I if you hadn't
+seemed to think that the men who do the things Mr. Stanton
+REFUSES to do are the ones worth while."
+
+"He could accomplish much in legislative halls."
+
+"He figures in the large.  He thinks that to be a commissioner,
+travel his county and make all of it the best possible, to stand
+in primaries and choose only worthy men for all offices, is doing
+a much bigger work than to take one place for himself, and strive
+only for that.  Besides, he really loves his land, his house, and
+family.  He says no man has a right to bring twelve children into
+the world and not see personally to rearing and educating them. 
+He thinks the farm and the children too much for me, and he's
+sure he is doing the biggest thing for the community at large, to
+go on as he does."
+
+"Perhaps so," said Mr. Pryor slowly.  "He should know best. 
+Perhaps he is."
+
+"I make no doubt!" said mother, lifting her head proudly.  "And
+as Laddie feels and has fitted himself, I look to see him go head
+and shoulders above any other son I have.  Trade is not the only
+way to accumulate.  Law is not the only path to the legislature. 
+Comfort, independence, and freedom, such as we know here, is not
+found in any city I ever have visited.  We think we have the best
+of life, and we are content on land.  We have not accumulated
+much money; we have spent thousands; we have had a big family for
+which to provide, and on account of the newness of the country,
+taxes always have been heavy.  But we make no complaint.  We are
+satisfied.  We could have branched off into fifty different
+things after we had a fair start here.  We didn't, because we
+preferred life as we worked it out for ourselves.  Paul says when
+he leaves the city, and his horses' hoofs strike the road between
+our fields, he always lifts his head higher, squares his
+shoulders, and feels a man among men.  To own land, and to love
+it, is a wonderful thing, Mr. Pryor."
+
+She made me think of something.  Ever since I had added to my
+quill and arrow money, the great big lot at Easter, father had
+shared his chest till with me.  The chest stood in our room, and
+in it lay his wedding suit, his every Sunday clothes, his best
+hat with a red silk handkerchief in the crown, a bundle of
+precious newspapers he was saving on account of rare things in
+them he wanted for reference, and in the till was the wallet of
+ready money he kept in the house for unexpected expense, his
+deeds, insurance papers, all his particular private papers, the
+bunches of lead pencils, slate pencils, and the box of pens from
+which he supplied us for school.  Since I had grown so rich, he
+had gone partners with me, and I might lift the lid, open the
+till and take out my little purse that May bought from the
+huckster for my last birthday.  I wasn't to touch a thing, save
+my own, and I never did; but I knew precious well what was there.
+
+If Mr. Pryor thought my father didn't amount to much because he
+lived on land; if it made him think more of him, to know that he
+could be in the legislature if he chose, maybe he'd think still
+more----
+
+I lifted the papers, picked it up carefully, and slipping back
+quietly, I laid it on Mr. Pryor's knee.  He picked it up and held
+it a minute, until he finished what he was saying to mother, and
+then he looked at it.  Then he looked long and hard.  Then he
+straightened up and looked again.
+
+"God bless my soul!" he cried.
+
+You see when he was so astonished he didn't know what he was
+saying, he called on God, just as father says every one does.  I
+took a side look at mother.  Her face was a little extra flushed,
+but she was still smiling; so I knew she wasn't angry with me,
+though of course she wouldn't have shown the thing herself.  She
+and father never did, except as each of us grew big enough to be
+taught about the Crusaders.  Father said he didn't care the snap
+of his finger about it, except as it stood for hardihood and
+bravery.  But Mr. Pryor cared!  He cared more than he could say. 
+He stared, and stared, and over and over he wonderingly repeated:
+
+"God bless my soul!"
+
+"Where did you get the crest of the Earl of Eastbrooke, the
+master of Stanton house?" he demanded.  "Stanton house!" he
+repeated.  "Why--why, the name!  It's scarcely possible, but----"
+
+"But there it is!" laughed mother.  "A mere bauble for show and
+amounting to nothing on earth save as it stands a mark for brave
+men who have striven to conquer."
+
+"Surgere tento!" read Mr. Pryor, from the little shield.  "Four
+shells!  Madame, I know men who would give their lives to own
+this, and to have been born with the right to wear it.  It came
+to your husband in straight line?"
+
+"Yes," said mother, "but generations back.  He never wore it.  He
+never would.  He only saves it for the children."
+
+"It goes to your eldest son?"
+
+"By rights, I suppose it should," said mother.  "But father
+mentioned it the other night.  He said none of his boys had gone
+as he tried to influence them, unless Laddie does now in choosing
+land for his future, and if he does, his father is inclined to
+leave it to him, and I agree.  At our death it goes to Laddie I
+am quite sure."
+
+"Well, I hope--I hope," said Mr. Pryor, "that the young man has
+the wit to understand what this would mean to him in England."
+
+"His wit is just about level with his father's," said mother. 
+"He never has been in England, and most probably he never will
+be.  I don't think it means a rap more to Laddie than it does to
+my husband.  Laddie is so busy developing the manhood born in
+him, he has no time to chase the rainbow of reflected glory, and
+no belief in its stability if he walked in its light.  The child
+of my family to whom that trinket really means something is
+Little Sister, here.  When Leon came in with the thief, I thought
+he should have it; but after all, she is the staunchest little
+Crusader I have."
+
+Mr. Pryor looked me over with much interest.
+
+"Yes, yes!  No doubt!" he said.  "But the male line!  This
+priceless treasure should descend to one of the male line!  To
+one whose name will remain Stanton!  To Laddie would be best, no
+doubt!  No doubt at all!"
+
+"We will think about it," said mother serenely as Mr. Pryor arose
+to go.
+
+He apologized for staying so long, and mother said it hadn't been
+long, and asked him the nicest ever to come again.  She walked in
+the sunlight with him and pointed out the chestnuts.  She asked
+what he thought of a line of trees to shade the road, and they
+discussed whether the pleasure they would give in summer would
+pay for the dampness they would hold in winter.  They wandered
+around the yard and into the garden.  She sent me to bring a
+knife, trowel, and paper, so when he started for home, he was
+carrying a load of cuttings, and roots to plant.
+
+When father came from town that evening, at the first sight of
+him, she went straight into his arms, her face beaming; she had
+been like a sun all that day.  Some of it must have been joy
+carried over from yesterday.
+
+"Praise God, the wedge is in!" she cried.
+
+Father held her tight, stroked her hair, and began smiling
+without having the least idea why, but he very well knew that
+whatever pleased her like that was going to be good news for him
+also.
+
+"What has happened, mother?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Pryor came over about the road and bridge tax, and oh Paul! 
+I've said every word to him I've been bursting to say from the
+very start.  Every single word, Paul!"
+
+"How did he take it?"
+
+"Time will tell.  Anyway, he heard it, all of it, and he went
+back carrying a load of things to plant.  Only think of that! 
+Once he begins planting, and watching things grow, the home
+feeling is bound to come.  I tell you, Paul, the wedge is in!  Oh
+I'm so happy!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+The Crest of Eastbrooke
+
+            "Sow;--and look onward, upward,
+                 Where the starry light appears,--
+             Where, in spite of coward's doubting,
+                 Or your own heart's trembling fears,
+             You shall reap in joy the harvest
+                 You have sown to-day in tears."
+
+Any objections to my beginning to break ground on the west eighty
+to-day?" asked Laddie of father at breakfast Monday morning.
+
+"I had thought we would commence on the east forty, when planning
+the work."
+
+"So had I," said Laddie.  "But since I thought that, a very
+particular reason has developed for my beginning to plow the west
+eighty at once, and there is a charming little ditty I feel
+strongly impelled to whistle every step of the way."
+
+Father looked at him sharply, and so, I think, did all of us. 
+And because we loved him deeply, we saw that his face was a
+trifle pale for him; his clear eyes troubled, in spite of his
+laughing way.  He knew we were studying him too, but he wouldn't
+have said anything that would make us look and question if he had
+minded our doing it.  That was exactly like Laddie.  He meant it
+when he said he hated a secret.  He said there was no place on
+earth for a man to look for sympathy and love if he couldn't find
+it in his own family; and he never had been so happy since I had
+been big enough to notice his moods as he had been since all of
+us knew about the Princess.  He didn't wait for father to ask why
+he'd changed his mind about the place to begin.
+
+"You see," he said, "a very charming friend of mine expressed
+herself strongly last night about the degrading influence of
+farming, especially that branch of agriculture which evolves
+itself in a furrow; hence it is my none too happy work to plow
+the west eighty where she can't look our way without seeing me;
+and I have got to whistle my favourite `toon' where she must stop
+her ears if she doesn't hear; and then it will be my painful
+task, I fear, to endeavour to convince her that I am still clean,
+decent, and not degraded."
+
+"Oh Laddie!" cried mother.
+
+"Abominable foolishness!" roared father like he does roar once in
+about two years.
+
+"Isn't it now?" asked Laddie sweetly.  "I don't know what has got
+into her head.  She has seen me plowing fifty times since their
+land has joined ours, and she never objected before."
+
+"I can tell you blessed well!" said mother.  "She didn't care two
+hoots how much my son plowed, but it makes a difference when it
+comes to her lover."
+
+"Maw, you speak amazing reckless," said Laddie, "if I thought
+there was anything in THAT feature of the case, I'd attempt a
+Highland fling on the ridgepole of our barn."
+
+"Be serious!" said father sternly.  "This is no laughing matter."
+
+"That's precisely why I am laughing," said Laddie.  "Would it
+help me any to sit down and weep?  I trow not!  I have thought
+most of the silent watches--by the way they are far from silent
+in May--and as I read my title clear, it's my job to plow the
+west eighty immejit."
+
+Father tried to look stern, but he just had to laugh.
+
+"All right then, plow it!" he said.
+
+"What did she say?" asked mother.
+
+"Phew!" Laddie threw up both hands.  "She must have been bottled
+some time on the subject.  The ferment was a spill of
+considerable magnitude.  The flood rather overwhelmed me, because
+it was so unexpected.  I had been taking for granted that she
+accepted my circumstances and surroundings as she did me.  But
+no, kind friends, far otherwise!  She said last night, in the
+clearest English I ever heard spoken impromptu, that I was a man
+suitable for her friend, but I would have to change my occupation
+before I could be received on more than a friendly footing."
+
+"`On more than a friendly footing'?" repeated mother.
+
+"You have her exact words," said Laddie.  "Kindly pass the ham."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"Nothing!  I am going to plow the answer.  Please don't object to
+my beginning this morning."
+
+"You try yourself all winter to get as far as you have, and then
+upset the bowl like this?" cried mother.
+
+"Softly, mummy, softly!" said Laddie.  "What am I to do?  I've
+definitely decided on my work.  I see land and life, as you and
+father taught me, in range and in perspective far more than
+you've got from it.  You had a first hand wrestle.  The land I
+covet has been greatly improved already.  I can do what I choose
+with it, making no more strenuous effort than plowing; and I am
+proud to say that I LOVE to plow.  I like my feet in the soil.  I
+want my head in the spring air.  I can become almost tipsy on the
+odours that fill my nostrils.  Music evolved by the Almighty is
+plenty good enough for me.  I'm proud of a spanking big team,
+under the control of a touch or a word.  I enjoy farming, and I
+am going to be a farmer.  Plowing is one of the most pleasing
+parts of the job.  Sowing the seed beats it a little, from an
+artistic standpoint, either is preferable to haying, threshing,
+or corn cutting: all are parts of my work, so I'm going to begin.
+
+Mother, I hope you don't mind if I take your grays.  I'll be very
+careful; but the picture I present to my girl to-day is going to
+go hard with her at best, so I'd like to make it level best."
+
+He arose, went around and knelt beside mother.  He took her,
+chair and all, in his arms:
+
+            "Best of mothers! on my breast
+             Lean thy head, and sink to rest."
+
+
+She quoted.  Mother laughed.
+
+"Mammy," he asked bending toward her, "am I clean?"
+
+"You goose!" she said, putting her arms around him and holding
+him tight.
+
+"Gander love," said Laddie, turning up his face for a kiss. 
+"Honest mother, you have been through nigh unto forty years of
+it, tell me, can a man be a farmer and keep neat enough not to be
+repulsive to a refined woman?"
+
+"Your father is the answer," said mother.  "All of you know how
+perfectly repulsive he is and always has been to me."
+
+"`Repulsive,"' said father.  "That's an ugly word!"
+
+"There are a whole lot of unpleasant things that peep around
+corners occasionally," said Laddie.  "But whoever of you dear
+people it was that showed Mr. Pryor the Crest of Eastbrooke,
+brought out this particular dragon for me to slay."
+
+"Tut, tut!  Now what does that mean?" said father.  "Have we had
+a little exhibition of that especial brand of pride that goes
+before a fall?"
+
+"We have! and I take the tumble," said Laddie.  "Watch me start! 
+`Jack fell down and broke his crown.'  Question--will `Jill come
+tumbling after?'"
+
+My heart stopped and I was shaking in my bare feet, because I
+wore no shoes to shake in.  Oh my soul!  No matter how Laddie
+jested I knew he was almost killed; the harder he made fun, the
+worse he was hurt.  I opened my mouth to say I did it, I had to,
+but Leon began to talk.
+
+"Well, I think she's smart!" he cried.  "If she was going to give
+you the mitten, why didn't she do it long ago?"
+
+"She had to find out first whether there were a possibility of
+her wanting to keep it," said Laddie.
+
+"You're sure you are all signed, sealed, and delivered on this
+plowing business, are you?" asked Leon.
+
+"Dead sure!" said Laddie.
+
+"All right, if you like it!" said Leon.  "None for me after
+college!  But say, you can be a farmer and not plow, you know. 
+You go trim the trees, and work at cleaner, more gentlemanly
+jobs.  I'll plow that field.  I'd just as soon as not.  I plowed
+last year and you said I did well, didn't you, father?"
+
+"Yes, on the potato patch," said father.  "A cornfield is a
+different thing.  I fear you are too light."
+
+"Oh but that was a year ago!" cried Leon.
+
+He pushed back his chair and went to father.
+
+"Just feel my biceps now!  Most like steel!" he boasted.  "A
+fellow can grow a lot in a year, and all the riding I've been
+doing, and all the exercise I've had.  Cert' I can plow that
+meadow."
+
+"You're all right, shaver," said Laddie.  "I'll not forget your
+offer; but in this case it wouldn't help.  Either the Princess
+takes her medicine or I take mine.  I'm going to live on land:
+I'm going to plow in plain sight of the Pryor house this week, if
+I have to hire to Jacob Hood to get the chance.  May I plow, and
+may I take the grays, father?"
+
+"Yes!" said father roundly.
+
+"Then here goes!" said Laddie.  "You needn't fret, mother.  I'll
+not overheat them.  I must give a concert simultaneous with this
+plowing performance, and I'm particular about the music, so I
+can't go too fast.  Also, I'll wrap the harness."
+
+"Goodness knows I'm not thinking about the horses," said mother.
+
+"No, but if they turned up next Sunday, wind-broken, and with
+nice large patches of hair rubbed from their sides, you would be!
+If you were me, would you whistle, or vocalize to start on?"
+
+Mother burst right out crying and laid her face all tear-wet
+against him.  Laddie kissed her, and wiped away the tears, teased
+her, and soon as he could he bolted from the east door; but I was
+closest, so I saw plainly that his eyes were wet too.  My soul
+and body!  AND I HAD DONE IT!  I might as well get it over.
+
+"I showed Mr. Pryor the trinket," I said.
+
+"How did you come to do that?" asked father sternly.
+
+"When he was talking with mother.  He told her Laddie would be
+`wasted' farming----"
+
+"Wasted?"
+
+"That's what he said.  Mother told him you had always farmed and
+you were a `power in this community.'  She told him about what
+you did, because you wanted to, and what you COULD do if you
+chose, about holding office, you know, and that seemed to make
+him think heaps more of you, so I thought it would be a good
+thing for him to know about the Crusaders too, and I ran and got
+the crest.  I THOUGHT it would help----"
+
+"And so it will," said mother.  "They constantly make the best
+showing they can, we might as well, too.  The trouble is they got
+more than they expected.  They thought they could look down on
+us, and patronize us, if they came near at all; when they found
+we were quite as well educated as they, had as much land, could
+hold prominent offices if we chose, and had the right to that
+bauble, they veered to the other extreme.  Now they seem to
+demand that we quit work----"
+
+"Move to the city, `sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,'"
+suggested father.
+
+"Exactly!" said mother.  "They'll have to find out we are running
+our own business; but I'm sorry it fell to Laddie to show them. 
+You could have done it better.  It will come out all right.  The
+Princess is not going to lose a man like Laddie on account of how
+he makes his money."
+
+"Don't be too confident," said father.  "With people of their
+stripe, how much money a man can earn, and at what occupation,
+constitute the whole of life."
+
+She wasn't too confident.  Yesterday she had been so happy she
+almost flew.  To-day she kept things going, and sang a lot, but
+nearly every time you looked at her you could see her lips draw
+tight, a frown cross her forehead, and her head shake.  Pretty
+soon we heard a racket on the road, so we went out.  There was
+Laddie with the matched team of carriage horses and a plow.  Now,
+in dreadfully busy times, father let Ned and Jo work a little,
+but not very much.  They were not plow horses; they were
+roadsters.  They liked to prance, and bow their necks and dance
+to the carriage.  It shamed them to be hitched to a plow.  They
+drooped their heads and slunk along like dogs caught sucking
+eggs.  But they were a sight on the landscape.  They were lean
+and slender and yet round too, matched dapple gray on flank and
+side, with long snow-white manes and tails.  No wonder mother
+didn't want them to work.  Laddie had reached through the garden
+fence and hooked a bunch of red tulips and yellow daffodils.  The
+red was at Jo's ear, and the yellow at Ned's, and they did look
+fine.  So did he!  Big, strong, clean, a red flower in his floppy
+straw hat band; and after he drove through the gate, he began a
+shrill, fifelike whistle you could have heard a half mile:
+
+      "See the merry farmer boy, tramp the meadows through,
+       Swing his hoe in careless joy, while dashing off the dew.
+       Bobolink in maple high, trills a note of glee,
+       Farmer boy in gay reply now whistles cheerily."
+
+
+The chorus was all whistle, and it was written for folks who
+could.  It went up until it almost split the echoes, and Laddie
+could easily sail a measure above the notes.  He did it too.  As
+for me, I kept from sight.  For a week Laddie whistled and
+plowed.  He wore that tune threadbare, and got an almost
+continuous pucker on his lips.  Leon said if he didn't stop
+whistling, and sing more, the girls would think he was doing a
+prunes and prisms stunt.  So after that he sang the words, and
+whistled the chorus.  But he made no excuse to go, and he didn't
+go, to Pryors'.  When Sunday came, he went to Westchester to see
+Elizabeth, and stayed until Monday morning.  Not once that week
+did the Princess ride past our house, or her father either.  By
+noon Monday Laddie was back in the field, and I had all I could
+bear.  He was neither whistling nor singing so much now, because
+he was away at the south end, where he couldn't be seen or heard
+at Pryors'.  He almost scoured the skin from him, and he wore his
+gloves more carefully than usual.  If he soiled his clothing in
+the least, and it looked as if he would make more than his share
+of work, he washed the extra pieces at night.
+
+Tuesday morning I hurried with all my might, and then I ran to
+the field where he was.  I climbed on the fence, sat there until
+he came up, and then I gave him some cookies.  He stopped the
+horses, climbed beside me and ate them.  Then he put his arms
+around me and hugged me tight.
+
+"Laddie, do you know I did it?" I wailed.
+
+"Did you now?" said Laddie.  "No, I didn't know for sure, but I
+had suspicions.  You always have had such a fondness for that
+particular piece of tinware."
+
+"But Laddie, it means so much!"
+
+"Doesn't it?" said Laddie.  "A few days ago no one could have
+convinced me that it meant anything at all to me, or ever could. 
+Just look at me now!"
+
+"Don't joke, Laddie!  Something must be done."
+
+"Well, ain't I doing it?" asked Laddie.  "Look at all these acres
+and acres of Jim-dandy plowing!"
+
+"Don't!" I begged.  "Why don't you go over there?"
+
+"No use, Chicken," said Laddie.  "You see her exact stipulation
+was that I must CHANGE MY OCCUPATION before I came again."
+
+"What does she want you to do?"
+
+"Law, I think.  Unfortunately, I showed her a letter from Jerry
+asking me to enter his office this fall."
+
+"Hadn't you better do it, Laddie?"
+
+"How would you like to be shut in little, stuffy rooms, and set
+to droning over books and papers every hour of the day, all your
+life, and to spend the best of your brain and bodily strength
+straightening out other men's quarrels?"
+
+"Oh Laddie, you just couldn't!" I cried.
+
+"Precisely!" said Laddie.  "I just couldn't, and I just won't!"
+
+"What can you do?"
+
+"I might compromise on stock," he said.  "I could follow the same
+occupation as her father, and with better success.  Neither he
+nor his men get the best results from horses.  They don't
+understand them, especially the breeds they are attempting to
+handle.  Most Arab horsemen are tent dwellers.  They travel from
+one oasis to another with their stock.  At night their herds are
+gathered around them as children.  As children they love them,
+pet them, feed them.  Each is named for a divinity, a planet or a
+famous ruler, and the understanding between master and beast is
+perfect.  Honestly, Little Sister, I think you have got to
+believe in the God of Israel, in order to say the right word to
+an Arabian horse; and I know you must believe in the God of love.
+A beast of that breed, jerked, kicked, and scolded is a fine
+horse ruined.  If I owned half the stock Mr. Pryor has over
+there, I could put it in such shape for market that I could get
+twice from it what his men will."
+
+"Are Thomas and James rough with the horses?"
+
+"`Like master, like man,' " quoted Laddie.  "They are!  They are
+foolish with the Kentucky strain, and fools with the Arab; and
+yet, that combination beats the world.  But I must get on with
+the P.C. job."
+
+He slid from the fence, took a drink from his water jug, and
+pulled a handful of grass for each horse.  As he stood feeding
+them, I almost fell from the top rail.
+
+"Laddie!" I whispered.  "Look!  Mr. Pryor is halfway across the
+field on Ranger."
+
+"So?" said Laddie.  "Now I wonder----"
+
+"Shall I go?"
+
+"No indeed !" said Laddie.  "Stay right where you are.  It can't
+be anything of much importance."
+
+At first it didn't seem to be.  They talked about the weather,
+the soil, the team.  Laddie scooped a handful of black earth, and
+holding it out, told Mr. Pryor all about how good it was, and
+why, and he seemed interested.  Then they talked about
+everything; until if he had been Jacob Hood, he would have gone
+away.  But just at the time when I expected him to start, he
+looked at Laddie straight and hard.
+
+"I missed you Sabbath evening," he said.
+
+Then I looked at him.  He had changed, some way.  He seemed more
+human, more like our folks, less cold and stern.
+
+"I sincerely hope it was unanimous," said Laddie.
+
+Mr. Pryor had to laugh.
+
+"It was a majority, at any rate."
+
+Laddie stared dazed.  You see that was kind of a joke.  An easy
+one, because I caught it; but we were not accustomed to expecting
+a jest from Mr. Pryor.  Not one of us dreamed there was a joke
+between his hat crown and his boot soles.  Then Laddie laughed;
+but he sobered quickly.
+
+"I'm mighty sorry if Mrs. Pryor missed me," he said.  "I thought
+of her.  I have grown to be her devoted slave, and I hoped she
+liked me."
+
+"You put it mildly," said Mr. Pryor.  "Since you didn't come when
+she expected you, we've had the worst time with her that we have
+had since we reached this da--ah--er--um--this country."
+
+"Could you make any suggestion?" asked Laddie.
+
+"I could!  I would suggest that you act like the sensible fellow
+I know you to be, and come as usual, at your accustomed times."
+
+"But I'm forbidden, man!" cried Laddie.
+
+Ugh!  Such awful things as Mr. Pryor said.
+
+"Forbidden!" he cried.  "Is a man's roof his own, or is it not? 
+While I live, I propose to be the head of my family.  I invite
+you!  I ask you!  Mrs. Pryor and I want you!  What more is
+necessary?"
+
+"TWO things," said Laddie, just as serenely.  "That Miss Pryor
+wants me, and that I want to come."
+
+"D'ye mean to tell me that you DON'T want to come, eh?  After the
+fight you put up to force your way in!"
+
+Laddie studied the sky, a whimsy smile on his lips.
+
+"Now wasn't that a good fight?" he inquired.  "I'm mighty proud
+of it!  But not now, or ever, do I wish to enter your house
+again, if Miss Pryor doesn't want, and welcome me."
+
+Then he went over, took Mr. Pryor's horse by the head, and began
+working with its bridle.  It didn't set right some way, and Mr.
+Pryor had jerked, spurred, and mauled, until there was a big
+space tramped to mortar.  Laddie slid his fingers beneath the
+leather, eased it a little, and ran his hands over the fretful
+creature's head.  It just stopped, stood still, pushed its nose
+under his arm, and pressed against his side.  Mr. Pryor arose in
+one stirrup, swung around and alighted.  He looped an arm through
+the bridle rein, and with both hands gripped his whipstock.
+
+"How the devil do you do it?" he asked, as if he were provoked.
+
+"First, the bridle was uncomfortable; next, you surely know, Mr.
+Pryor, that a man can transfer his mental state to his mount."
+
+Laddie pointed to the churned up earth.
+
+"THAT represents your mental state; THIS"--he slid his hand down
+the neck of the horse--"portrays mine."
+
+Mr. Pryor's face reddened, but Laddie was laughing so heartily he
+joined in sort of sickly-like.
+
+"Oh I doubt if you are so damnably calm!" he cried.
+
+"I'm CALM enough, so far as that goes," said Laddie.  "I'm not
+denying that I've got about all the heartache I can conveniently
+carry."
+
+"Do you mind telling me how far this affair has gone?"
+
+"Wouldn't a right-minded man give the woman in the case the first
+chance to answer that question?  I greatly prefer that you ask
+Miss Pryor."
+
+If ever I felt sorry for any one, I did then for Mr. Pryor.  He
+stood there gripping the whip with both hands and he looked
+exactly as if the May wind might break him into a thousand tiny
+pieces, and every one of them would be glass.
+
+"Um--er----" he said at last.  "You're right, of course, but
+unfortunately, Pamela and her mother did not agree with my
+motives, or my course in coming to this country; and while there
+is no outward demonstration er--um--other than Mrs. Pryor's
+seclusion; yet, er--um!--I am forced to the belief that I'm NOT
+in their confidence."
+
+"I see!" said Laddie.  "And of course you love your daughter as
+any man would love so beautiful a child, and when she is all he
+has----"  I thought the break was coming right there, but Mr.
+Pryor clenched his whip and put it off; still, any one watching
+with half an eye could see that it was only put off, and not for
+long at that,--"It has been my idea, Mr. Pryor, that the proper
+course for me was to see if I could earn any standing with your
+daughter.  If I could, and she gave me permission, then I
+intended coming to you the instant I knew how she felt.  But in
+such a case as this, I don't think I shall find the slightest
+hesitation in telling you anything you want to know, that I am
+able."
+
+"You don't know how you stand with her?"
+
+Laddie took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. 
+His feet were planted widely apart, and his face was sober enough
+for any funeral now.  At last he spoke.
+
+"I've been trying to figure that out," he said slowly.  "I
+believe the situation is as open to you as it is to me.  She was
+a desperately lonely, homesick girl, when she caught my eye and
+heart; and I placed myself on her horizon.  In her case the women
+were slow in offering friendship, because, on account of Mrs.
+Pryor's seclusion, none was felt to be wanted; then Miss Pryor
+was different in dress and manner.  I found a way to let her see
+that I wanted to be friends, and she accepted my friendship, and
+at the same time allowed it go only so far.  On a few rare
+occasions, I've met her alone, and we've talked out various
+phases of life together; but most of our intercourse has taken
+place in your home, and in your presence.  You probably have seen
+her meet and entertain her friends frequently.  I should think
+you would be more nearly able to gauge my standing with her than
+I am."
+
+"You haven't told her that you love her?"
+
+"Haven't I though?" cried Laddie.  "Man alive!  What do you think
+I'm made of?  Putty?  Told her?  I've told her a thousand times. 
+I've said it, and sung it and whistled it, and looked it, and
+lived it.  I've written it, and ridden it, and this week I've
+plowed it!  Your daughter knows as she knows nothing else, in all
+this world, that she has only to give me one glance, one word,
+one gesture of invitation, to find me before her six feet of the
+worst demoralized beefsteak a woman ever undertook to handle. 
+Told her?  Ye Gods!  I should say I've told her!"
+
+If any of Pryors had been outdoors they certainly could have
+heard Mr. Pryor.  How he laughed!  He shook until he tottered. 
+Laddie took his arm and led him to the fence.  He lifted a broad
+top rail, pushed it between two others across a corner and made a
+nice comfortable seat for him.  After a while Mr. Pryor wiped his
+eyes.  Laddie stood watching him with a slow grin on his face.
+
+"And she hasn't given the signal you are waiting for?" he asked
+at last.
+
+Laddie slowly shook his head.
+
+"Nary the ghost of a signal!" he said.  "Now we come to Sunday
+before last.  I only intimated, vaguely, that a hint of where I
+stood would be a comfort--and played Jonah.  The whale swallowed
+me at a gulp, and for all my inches, never batted an eye.  You
+see, a few days before I showed her a letter from my brother
+Jerry, because I thought it might interest her.  There was
+something in it to which I had paid little or no attention, about
+my going to the city and beginning work in his law office; to cap
+that, evidently you had mentioned before her our prize piece of
+family tinware.  There was a culmination like a thunder clap in a
+January sky.  She said everything that was on her mind about a
+man of my size and ability doing the work I am, and then she said
+I must change my occupation before I came again."
+
+"And for answer you've split the echoes with some shrill,
+abominable air, and plowed, before her very eyes, for a week!"
+
+Then Laddie laughed.
+
+"Do you know," he said; "that's a good one on me!  It never
+occurred to me that she would not be familiar with that air, and
+understand its application.  Do you mean to crush me further by
+telling me that all my perfectly lovely vocalizing and whistling
+was lost?"
+
+"It was a dem irritating, challenging sort of thing," said Mr.
+Pryor.  "I listened to it by the hour, myself, trying to make out
+exactly what it did mean.  It seemed to combine defiance with
+pleading, and through and over all ran a note of glee that was
+really quite charming."
+
+"You have quoted a part of it, literally," said Laddie.  "`A note
+of glee'--the cry of a glad heart, at peace with all the world,
+busy with congenial work."
+
+"I shouldn't have thought you'd have been so particularly
+joyful."
+
+"Oh, the joy was in the music," said Laddie.  "That was a whistle
+to keep up my courage.  The joy was in the song, not in me!  Last
+week was black enough for me to satisfy the most exacting
+pessimist."
+
+"I wish you might have seen the figure you cut!  That fine team,
+flower bedecked, and the continuous concert!"
+
+"But I did!" cried Laddie.  "We have mirrors.  That song can't be
+beaten.  I know this team is all right, and I'm not dwarfed or
+disfigured.  That was the pageant of summer passing in review. 
+It represented the tilling of the soil; the sowing of seed,
+garnering to come later.  You buy corn and wheat, don't you? 
+They are vastly necessary.  Much more so than the settling of
+quarrels that never should have taken place.  Do you think your
+daughter found the spectacle at all moving?"
+
+"Damn you, sir, what I should do, is to lay this whip across your
+shoulders!" cried Mr. Pryor.
+
+But if you will believe it, he was laughing again.
+
+"I prefer that you don't," said Laddie, "or on Ranger either. 
+See how he likes being gentled."
+
+Then he straightened and drew a deep breath.
+
+"Mr. Pryor," he said, "as man to man, I have got this to say to
+you--and you may use your own discretion about repeating it to
+your daughter:  I can offer her six feet of as sound manhood as
+you can find on God's footstool.  I never in my whole life have
+had enough impure blood in my body to make even one tiny eruption
+on my skin.  I never have been ill a day in my life.  I never
+have touched a woman save as I lifted and cared for my mother,
+and hers, or my sisters.  As to my family and education she can
+judge for herself.  I offer her the first and only love of my
+heart.  She objects to farming, because she says it is dirty,
+offensive work.  There are parts of it that are dirty.  Thank
+God, it only soils the body, and that can be washed.  To delve
+and to dive into, and to study and to brood over the bigger half
+of the law business of any city is to steep your brain in, and
+smirch your soul with, such dirt as I would die before I'd make
+an occupation of touching.  Will you kindly tell her that word
+for word, and that I asked you to?"
+
+Mr. Pryor was standing before I saw him rise.  He said those
+awful words again, but between them he cried:  "You're right! 
+It's the truth! It's the eternal truth!"
+
+"It IS the truth," said Laddie.  "I've only to visit the offices,
+and examine the business of those of my family living by law, to
+KNOW that it's the truth.  Of course there's another side!  There
+are times when there are great opportunities to do good; I
+recognize that.  To some these may seem to overbalance that to
+which I object.  If they do, all right.  I am merely deciding for
+myself.  Once and for all, for me it is land.  It is born in me
+to love it, to handle it easily, to get the best results from
+stock.  I am going to take the Merriweather place adjoining ours
+on the west, and yours on the south.  I intend to lease it for
+ten years, with purchase privilege at the end, so that if I make
+of it what I plan, my work will not be lost to me.  I had thought
+to fix up the place and begin farming.  If Miss Pryor has any use
+whatever for me, and prefers stock, that is all right with me. 
+I'll go into the same business she finds suitable for you.  I can
+start in a small way and develop.  I can afford a maid for her
+from the beginning, but I couldn't clothe her as she has been
+accustomed to being dressed, for some time.  I would do my best,
+however.  I know what store my mother sets by being well gowned. 
+And as a husband, I can offer your daughter as loving
+consideration as woman ever received at the hands of man. 
+Provided by some miracle I could win her consent, would you even
+consider me, and such an arrangement?"
+
+"Frankly sir," said Mr. Pryor, "I have reached the place where I
+would be----" whenever you come to a long black line like that,
+it means that he just roared a lot of words father never said,
+and never will--"glad to!  To tell the truth, the thing you
+choose to jestingly refer to as `tinware'--I hope later to
+convince of the indelicacy of such allusion--would place you in
+England on a social level above any we ever occupied, or could
+hope to.  Your education equals ours.  You are a physical
+specimen to be reckoned with, and I believe what you say of
+yourself.  There's something so clean and manly about you, it
+amounts to confirmation.  A woman should set her own valuation on
+that; and the height of it should correspond with her knowledge
+of the world."
+
+"Thank you!" said Laddie.  "You are more than kind! more than
+generous!"
+
+"As to the arrangements you could make for Pamela," said Mr.
+Pryor, "she's all we have.  Everything goes to her, ultimately. 
+She has her stipulated allowance now; whether in my house or
+yours, it would go with her.  Surely you wouldn't be so callous
+as to object to our giving her anything that would please us!"
+
+"Why should I?" asked Laddie.  "That's only natural on your part.
+
+Your child is your child; no matter where or what it is, you
+expect to exercise a certain amount of loving care over it.  My
+father and mother constantly send things to their children absent
+from home, and they take much pleasure in doing it.  That is
+between you and your daughter, of course.  I shouldn't think of
+interfering.  But in the meantime, unless Miss Pryor has been
+converted to the beauties of plowing through my continuous
+performance of over a week, I stand now exactly where I did
+before, so far as she is concerned.  If you and Mrs. Pryor have
+no objection to me, if you feel that you could think of me, or
+find for me any least part of a son's place in your hearts, I
+believe I should know how to appreciate it, and how to go to work
+to make myself worthy of it."
+
+Mr. Pryor sat down so suddenly, the rail almost broke.  I thought
+the truth was, that he had heart trouble, himself.  He stopped
+up, choked on things, flopped around, and turned so white.  I
+suppose he thought it was womanish, and a sign of weakness.  and
+so he didn't tell, but I bet anything that he had it--bad!
+
+"I'll try to make the little fool see!" he said.
+
+"Gently, gently!  You won't help me any in that mood," said
+Laddie.  "The chances are that Miss Pryor repeated what she heard
+from you long ago, and what she knows you think and feel, unless
+you've changed recently."
+
+"That's the amount of it!" cried Mr. Pryor.  "All my life I've
+had a lot of beastly notions in my head about rank, and class,
+and here they don't amount to a damn!  There's no place for them.
+Things are different.  Your mother, a grand, good woman, opened
+my eyes to many things recently, and I get her viewpoint--
+clearly, and I agree with her, and with you, sir!--I agree with
+you!"
+
+"I am more than glad," said Laddie.  "You certainly make a friend
+at court.  Thank you very much!"
+
+"And you will come----?"
+
+"The instant Miss Pryor gives me the slightest sign that I am
+wanted, and will be welcomed by her, I'll come like a Dakota
+blizzard!  Flos can hump herself on time for once."
+
+"But you won't come until she does?"
+
+"Man alive!  I can't!" cried Laddie.  "Your daughter said
+positively exactly what she meant.  It was unexpected and it hit
+me so hard I didn't try to argue.  I simply took her at her word,
+her very explicit word."
+
+"Fool!" cried Mr. Pryor.  "The last thing on earth any woman ever
+wants or expects is for a man to take her at her word."
+
+"What?" cried Laddie.
+
+"She had what she said in her mind of course, but what she wanted
+was to be argued out of it!  She wanted to be convinced!"
+
+"I think not!  She was entirely too convincing herself," said
+Laddie.  "It's my guess that she has thought matters over, and
+that her mind is made up; but I would take it as a mighty big
+favour if you would put that little piece of special pleading
+squarely up to her.  Will you?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Pryor, "I will.  I'll keep cool and do my best,
+but I am so unfortunate in my temper.  I could manage slaves
+better than women.  This time I'll be calm, and reason things out
+with her, or I'll blow out my brains."
+
+"Don't you dare!" laughed Laddie.  "You and I are going to get
+much pleasure, comfort and profit from this world, now that we
+have come to an understanding."
+
+Mr. Pryor arose and held out his hand.  Laddie grasped it tight,
+and they stood there looking straight at each other, while a lark
+on the fence post close by cried, "Spring o' ye-ar !" at them,
+over and over, but they never paid the least attention.
+
+"You see," said Mr. Pryor, "I've been thinking things over
+deeply, deeply! ever since talking with your mother.  I've cut
+myself off from going back to England, by sacrificing much of my
+property in hasty departure, if by any possibility I should ever
+want to return, and there is none, not the slightest!  There's no
+danger of any one crossing the sea, and penetrating to this
+particular spot so far inland; we won't be molested!  And
+lately--lately, despite the rawness, and the newness, there is
+something about the land that takes hold, after all.  I should
+dislike leaving now!  I found in watching some roots your mother
+gave me, that I wanted them to grow, that I very much hoped they
+would develop, and beautify our place with flowers, as yours is. 
+I find myself watching them, watching them daily, and oftener,
+and there seems to be a sort of home feeling creeping around my
+heart.  I wish Pamela would listen to reason!  I wish she would
+marry you soon!  I wish there would be little children.  Nothing
+else on earth would come so close to comforting my wife, and me
+also.  Nothing!  Go ahead, lad, plow away!  I'll put your special
+pleading up to the girl."
+
+He clasped Laddie's hand, mounted and rode back to the gate he
+had entered when he came.  Laddie sat on the rail, so I climbed
+down beside him.  He put his arm around me.
+
+"Do I feel any better?" he asked dubiously.
+
+"Of course you do!" I said stoutly.  "You feel whole heaps, and
+stacks, and piles better.  You haven't got him to fight any more,
+or Mrs. Pryor.  It's now only to convince the Princess about how
+it's all right to plow."
+
+"Small matter, that!" said Laddie.  "And easy!  Just as simple
+and easy!"
+
+"Have you asked the Fairies to help you?"
+
+"Aye, aye, sir," said Laddie.  "Also the winds, the flowers, the
+birds and the bees!  I have asked everything on earth to help me
+except you, Little Sister.  I wonder if I have been making a
+mistake there?"
+
+"Are you mad at me, Laddie?"
+
+"'Cause for why?"
+
+"About the old crest thing!"
+
+"Forget it!" laughed Laddie.  "I have.  And anyway, in the long
+run, I must be honest enough to admit that it may have helped. 
+It seems to have had its influence with Mr. Pryor, no doubt it
+worked the same on Mrs. Pryor, and it may be that it was because
+she had so much more to bank on than she ever expected, that the
+Princess felt emboldened to make her demand.  It may be, you
+can't tell!  Anyway, it's very evident that it did no real harm. 
+And forget my jesting, Chicken.  A man can't always cry because
+there are tears in his heart.  I think quite as much of that
+crest as you do.  In the sum of human events, it is a big thing. 
+No one admires a Crusader more than I.  No one likes a good fight
+better.  No Crusader ever put up a stiffer battle than I have in
+the past week while working in these fields.  Every inch of them
+is battlefield, every furrow a separate conflict.  Gaze upon the
+scene of my Waterloo!  When June covers it with green, it will
+wave over the resting place of my slain heart!"
+
+"Oh Laddie!" I sobbed.  "There you go again!  How can you?"
+
+"Whoo-pee!" cried Laddie.  "That's the question!  How can I?  Got
+to, Little Sister!  There's no other way."
+
+"No," I was forced to admit, "there isn't.  What are we going to
+do now?"
+
+"Life-saver, we'll now go to dinner," said Laddie.  "Nothing
+except the partnership implied in `we' sustains me now.  YOU'LL
+FIND A WAY TO HELP ME OUT, WON'T YOU, LITTLE SISTER?"
+
+"OF COURSE I WILL!" I promised, without ever stopping a minute to
+think what kind of a job that was going to be.
+
+Did you ever wish with all your might that something would
+happen, and wait for it, expect it, and long for it, and nothing
+did, until it grew so bad, it seemed as if you had to go on
+another minute you couldn't bear it?  Now I thought when Mr.
+Pryor talked to her, maybe she'd send for Laddie that very same
+night; but send nothing!  She didn't even ride on our road any
+more.  Of course her father had made a botch of it!  Bet I could
+have told her Laddie's message straighter than he did.  I could
+think it over, and see exactly how he'd do.  He'd talk nicely
+about one minute, and the first word she said, that he didn't
+like, he'd be ranting, and using unsuitable words.  Just as like
+as not he told her that he'd lay his whip across her shoulders,
+like he had Laddie.  Any one could see that as long as she was
+his daughter, she might be slightly handy with whips herself; at
+least she wouldn't be likely to stand still and tell him to go
+ahead and beat her.
+
+Sunday Laddie went to Lucy's.  He said he was having a family
+reunion on the installment plan.  Of course we laughed, but none
+of us missed the long look he sent toward Pryors' as he mounted
+to start in the opposite direction.
+
+Everything went on.  I didn't see how it could, but it did.  It
+even got worse, for another letter came from Shelley that made
+matters concerning her no brighter, and while none of us talked
+about Laddie, all of us knew mighty well how we felt; and what
+was much worse, how he felt.  Father and mother had quit worrying
+about God; especially father.  He seemed to think that God and
+Laddie could be trusted to take care of the Princess, and I don't
+know exactly what mother thought.  No doubt she saw she couldn't
+help herself, and so she decided it was useless to struggle.
+
+The plowing on the west side was almost finished, and some of the
+seed was in.  Laddie went straight ahead flower-trimmed and
+whistling until his face must have ached as badly as his heart. 
+In spite of how hard he tried to laugh, and keep going, all of us
+could see that he fairly had to stick up his head and stretch his
+neck like the blue goose, to make the bites go down.  And you
+couldn't help seeing the roundness and the colour go from his
+face, a little more every day.  My! but being in love, when you
+couldn't have the one you loved, was the worst of all.  I wore
+myself almost as thin as Laddie, hunting a Fairy to ask if she'd
+help me to make the Princess let Laddie go on and plow, when he
+was so crazy about it.  I prayed beside my bed every night, until
+the Lord must have grown so tired He quit listening to me, for I
+talked right up as impressively as I knew how, and it didn't do
+the least bit of good.  I hadn't tried the one big prayer toward
+the east yet; but I was just about to the place where I intended
+to do it soon.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Laddie, the Princess, and the Pie
+
+            "O whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad."
+
+Candace was baking the very first batch of rhubarb pies for the
+season and the odour was so tempting I couldn't keep away from
+the kitchen door.  Now Candace was a splendid cook about chicken
+gizzards--the liver was always mother's--doughnuts and tarts, but
+I never really did believe she would cut into a fresh rhubarb
+pie, even for me.  As I reached for the generous big piece I
+thought of Laddie poor Laddie, plowing away at his Crusader
+fight, and not a hint of victory.  No one in the family liked
+rhubarb pie better than he did.  I knew there was no use to ask
+for a plate.
+
+"Wait--oh wait!" I cried.
+
+I ran to the woodshed, pulled a shining new shingle from a bale
+stacked there, and held it for Candace.  Then I slipped around
+the house softly.  I didn't want to run any one's errands that
+morning.  I laid the pie on the horseblock and climbed the
+catalpa carefully, so as not to frighten my robins.  They were
+part father's too, because robins were his favourite birds; he
+said their song through and after rain was the sweetest music on
+earth, and mostly he was right; so they were not all my robins,
+but they were most mine after him; and I owned the tree.  I
+hunted the biggest leaf I could see, and wiped it clean on my
+apron, although it was early for much dust.  It covered the pie
+nicely, because it was the proper shape, and I held the stem with
+one hand to keep it in place.
+
+
+If I had made that morning myself I couldn't have done better. 
+It was sunny, spring air, but it was that cool, spicy kind that
+keeps you stopping every few minutes to see just how full you can
+suck your lungs without bursting.  It seemed to wash right
+through and through and make you all over.  The longer you
+breathed it the clearer your head became, and the better you
+felt, until you would be possessed to try and see if you really
+couldn't fly.  I tried that last summer, and knocked myself into
+jelly.  You'd think once would have been enough, but there I was
+going down the road with Laddie's pie, and wanting with all my
+heart to try again.
+
+Sometimes I raced, but I was a little afraid the pie would shoot
+from the shingle and it was like pulling eye teeth to go fast
+that morning.  I loved the soft warm dust, that was working up on
+the road.  Spat!  Spat!  I brought down my bare feet, already
+scratched and turning brown, and laughed to myself at the velvety
+feel of it.  There were little puddles yet, where May and I had
+"dipped and faded" last fall, and it was fun to wade them.  The
+roadsides were covered with meadow grass and clover that had
+slipped through the fence.  On slender green blades, in spot
+after spot, twinkled the delicate bloom of blue-eyed grass. 
+Never in all this world was our Big Creek lovelier.  It went
+slipping, and whispering, and lipping, and lapping over the
+stones, tugging at the rushes and grasses as it washed their
+feet; everything beside it was in masses of bloom, a blackbird
+was gleaming and preening on every stone, as it plumed after its
+bath.  Oh there's no use to try--it was just SPRING when it
+couldn't possibly be any better.
+
+But even spring couldn't hold me very long that morning, for you
+see my heart was almost sick about Laddie; and if he couldn't
+have the girl he wanted, at least I could do my best to comfort
+him with the pie.  I was going along being very careful the more
+I thought about how he would like it, so I was not watching the
+road so far ahead as I usually did.  I always kept a lookout for
+Paddy Ryan, Gypsies, or Whitmore's bull.  When I came to an
+unusually level place, and took a long glance ahead, my heart
+turned right over and stopped still, and I looked long enough to
+be sure, and then right out loud some one said, "I'll DO
+something!" and as usual, I was the only one there.
+
+For days I'd been in a ferment, like the vinegar barrel when the
+cider boils, or the yeast jar when it sets too close to the
+stove.  To have Laddie and the Princess separated was dreadful,
+and knowing him as I did, I knew he never really would get over
+it.  I had tried to help once, and what I had done started things
+going wrong; no wonder I was slow about deciding what to try
+next.  That I was going to do something, I made up my mind the
+instant Laddie said he was not mad at me; that I was his partner,
+and asked me to help; but exactly WHAT would do any good, took
+careful thought.
+
+Here was my chance coming right at me.  She was far up the road,
+riding Maud like racing.  I began to breathe after a while, like
+you always do, no matter how you are worked up, and with my brain
+whirling, I went slowly toward her.  How would I manage to stop
+her?  Or what could I say that would help Laddie?  I was shaking,
+and that's the truth; but through and over it all, I was watching
+her too.  I only wish you might have seen her that morning.  Of
+course the morning was part of it.  A morning like that would
+make a fence post better looking.  Half a mile away you could see
+she was tipsy with spring as I was, or the song sparrows, or the
+crazy babbling old bobolinks on the stakes and riders.  She made
+such a bright splash against the pink fence row, with her dark
+hair, flushed cheeks, and red lips, she took my breath.  Father
+said she was the loveliest girl in three counties, and Laddie
+stretched that to the whole world.  As she came closer, smash!
+through me went the thought that she looked precisely as Shelley
+had at Christmas time; and Shelley had been that way because she
+was in love with the Paget man.  Now if the Princess was gleaming
+and flashing like that, for the same reason, there wasn't any one
+for her to love so far as I knew, except Laddie.
+
+Then smash! came another thought.  She HAD to love him!  She
+couldn't help herself.  She had all winter, all last summer, and
+no one but themselves knew how long before that, and where was
+there any other man like Laddie?  Of course she loved him!  Who
+so deserving of love?  Who else had his dancing eyes of deep
+tender blue, cheeks so pink, teeth so white, such waving chestnut
+hair, and his height and breadth?  There was no other man who
+could ride, swim, leap, and wrestle as he could.  None who could
+sing the notes, do the queer sums with letters having little
+figures at the corners in the college books, read Latin as fast
+as English, and even the Greek Bible.  Of course she loved him! 
+Every one did!  Others might plod and meander, Laddie walked the
+tired, old road that went out of sight over the hill, with as
+prideful a step as any king; his laugh was as merry as the song
+of the gladdest thrush, while his touch was so gentle that when
+mother was in dreadful pain I sometimes thought she would a
+little rather have him hold her than father.
+
+Now, he was in this fearful trouble, the colour was going from
+his face, his laugh was a little strained, and the heartache
+almost more than he could endure--and there she came!  I stepped
+squarely in the middle of the road so she would have to stop or
+ride over me, and when she was close, I stood quite still.  I was
+watching with my eyes, heart, and brain, and I couldn't see that
+she was provoked, as she drew rein and cried:  "Good morning,
+Little Queer Person!"
+
+I had supposed she would say Little Sister, she had for ages,
+just like Laddie, but she must have thought it was queer for me
+to stop her that way, so she changed.  I was in for it.  I had
+her now, so I smiled the very sweetest smile that I could think
+up in such a hurry, and said, "Good morning," the very politest I
+ever did in all my life.  Then I didn't know what to do next, but
+she helped me out.
+
+"What have you there?" she asked.
+
+"It's a piece of the very first rhubarb pie for this spring, and
+I'm carrying it to Laddie," I said, as I lifted the catalpa leaf
+and let her peep, just to show her how pie looked when it was
+right.  I bet she never saw a nicer piece.
+
+The Princess slid her hand down Maud's neck to quiet her
+prancing, and leaned in the saddle, her face full of interest.  I
+couldn't see a trace of anything to discourage me; her being on
+our road again looked favourable.  She seemed to think quite as
+much of that pie as I did.  She was the finest little
+thoroughbred.  She understood so well, I was sorry I couldn't
+give it to her.  It made her mouth water all right, for she drew
+a deep breath that sort of quivered; but it was no use, she
+didn't get that pie.
+
+"I think it looks delicious," she said.  "Are you carrying it for
+Candace?"
+
+"No!  She gave it to me.  It's my very own."
+
+"And you're doing without it yourself to carry it to Laddie, I'll
+be bound!" cried the Princess.
+
+"I'd much rather," I said.
+
+"Do you love Laddie so dearly?" she asked.
+
+My heart was full of him right then; I forgot all about when I
+had the fever, and as I never had been taught to lie, I told her
+what I thought was the truth, and I guess it WAS:  "Best of any
+one in all this world!"
+
+The Princess looked across the field, where she must have seen
+him finishing the plowing, and thought that over, and I waited,
+sure in my mind, for some reason, that she would not go for a
+little while longer.
+
+"I have been wanting to see you," she said at last.  "In fact I
+think I came this way hoping I'd meet you.  Do you know the words
+to a tune that goes like this?"
+
+Then she began to whistle "The Merry Farmer Boy." I wish you
+might have heard the flourishes she put to it.
+
+"Of course I do," I answered.  "All of us were brought up on it."
+
+"Well, I have some slight curiosity to learn what they are," she
+said.  "Would you kindly repeat them for me?"
+
+"Yes," I said.  "This is the first verse:
+
+"`See the merry farmer boy tramp the meadows through,
+  Swing his hoe in careless joy while dashing off the dew.
+  Bobolink in maple high----'
+
+"Of course you can see for yourself that they're not.  There
+isn't a single one of them higher than a fence post.  The person
+who wrote the piece had to put it that way so high would rhyme
+with reply, which is coming in the next line."
+
+"I see!" said the Princess.
+
+        "`Bobolink in maple high, trills a note of glee
+          Farmer boy a gay reply now whistles cheerily.'
+
+
+"Then you whistle the chorus like you did it."
+
+"You do indeed!" said the Princess.  "Proceed!"
+
+"`Then the farmer boy at noon, rests beneath the shade,
+  Listening to the ceaseless tune that's thrilling through
+                            the glade.
+  Long and loud the harvest fly winds his bugle round,
+  Long, and loud, and shrill, and high, he whistles back
+                            the sound.'"
+
+
+"He does!  He does indeed!  I haven't a doubt about that!" cried
+the Princess.  "`Long, and loud, and shrill, and high,' he
+whistles over and over the sound, until it becomes maddening.  Is
+that all of that melodious, entrancing production?"
+
+"No, evening comes yet.  The last verse goes this way:
+
+"`When the busy day's employ, ends at dewy eve,
+  Then the happy farmer boy, doth haste his work to leave,
+  Trudging down the quiet lane, climbing o'er the hill,
+  Whistling back the changeless wail, of plaintive               
+
+              whip-poor-will,'--
+
+and then you do the chorus again, and if you know how well enough
+you whistle in, `whip-poor-will,' 'til the birds will answer you.
+Laddie often makes them."
+
+"My life!" cried the Princess.  "Was that he doing those bird
+cries?  Why, I hunted, and hunted, and so did father.  We'd never
+seen a whip-poor-will.  Just fancy us!"
+
+"If you'd only looked at Laddie," I said.
+
+"My patience!" cried the Princess.  "Looked at him!  There was no
+place to look without seeing him.  And that ear-splitting thing
+will ring in my head forever, I know."
+
+"Did he whistle it too high to suit you, Princess?"
+
+"He was perfectly welcome to whistle as he chose," she said, "and
+also to plow with the carriage horses, and to bedeck them and
+himself with the modest, shrinking red tulip and yellow
+daffodil."
+
+Now any one knows that tulips and daffodils are NOT modest and
+shrinking.  If any flowers just blaze and scream colour clear
+across a garden, they do.  She was provoked, you could see that.
+
+"Well, he only did it to please you," I said.  "He didn't care
+anything about it.  He never plowed that way before.  But you
+said he mustn't plow at all, and he just had to plow, there was
+no escaping that, so he made it as fine and happy as possible to
+show you how nicely it could be done."
+
+"Greatly obliged, I'm sure!" cried the Princess.  "He showed me! 
+He certainly did!  And so he feels that there's `no escaping'
+plowing, does he?"
+
+Then I knew where I was.  I'd have given every cent of mine in
+father's chest till, if mother had been in my place.  Once, for a
+second, I thought I'd ask the Princess to go with me to the
+house, and let mother tell her how it was; but if she wouldn't
+go, and rode away, I felt I couldn't endure it, and anyway, she
+had said she was looking for me; so I gripped the shingle, dug in
+my toes and went at her just as nearly like mother talked to her
+father as I could remember, and I'd been put through memory
+tests, and descriptive tests, nearly every night of my life, so I
+had most of it as straight as a string.
+
+"Well, you see, he CAN'T escape it," I said.  "He'd do anything
+in all this world for you that he possibly could; but there are
+some things no man CAN do."
+
+"I didn't suppose there was anything you thought Laddie couldn't
+do," she said.
+
+"A little time back, I didn't," I answered.  "But since he took
+the carriage horses, trimmed up in flowers, and sang and whistled
+so bravely, day after day, when his heart was full of tears, why
+I learned that there was something he just COULDN'T DO; NOT TO
+SAVE HIS LIFE, OR HIS LOVE, OR EVEN TO SAVE YOU."
+
+"And of course you don't mind telling me what that is?" coaxed
+the Princess in her most wheedling tones.
+
+"Not at all!  He told our family, and I heard him tell your
+father.  The thing he can't do, not even to win you, is to be
+shut up in a little office, in a city, where things roar, and
+smell, and nothing is like this----"
+
+I pointed out the orchard, hill, and meadow, so she looked where
+I showed her--looked a long time.
+
+"No, a city wouldn't be like this," she said slowly.
+
+"And that isn't even the beginning," I said.  "Maybe he could
+bear that, men have been put in prison and lived through years
+and years of it, perhaps Laddie could too; I doubt it! but anyway
+the worst of it is that he just couldn't, not even to save you,
+spend all the rest of his life trying to settle other people's
+old fusses.  He despises a fuss.  Not one of us ever in our lives
+have been able to make him quarrel, even one word.  He simply
+won't.  And if he possibly could be made to by any one on earth,
+Leon would have done it long ago, for he can start a fuss with
+the side of a barn.  But he can't make Laddie fuss, and nobody
+can.  He NEVER would at school, or anywhere.  Once in a while if
+a man gets so overbearing that Laddie simply can't stand it, he
+says:  `Now, you'll take your medicine!'  Then he pulls off his
+coat, and carefully, choosing the right spots, he just pounds the
+breath out of that man, but he never stops smiling, and when he
+helps him up he always says:  `Sorry! hope you'll excuse me, but
+you WOULD have it.'  That's what he said about you, that you had
+to take your medicine----"
+
+I made a mistake there.  That made her too mad for any use.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "I do? I'll jolly well show the gentleman!"
+
+"Oh, you needn't take the trouble," I cried.  "He's showing you!"
+
+She just blazed like she'd break into flame.  Any one could fuss
+with her all right; but that was the last thing on earth I wanted
+to do.
+
+"You see he already knows about you," I explained as fast as I
+could talk, for I was getting into an awful mess.  "You see he
+knows that you want him to be a lawyer, and that he must quit
+plowing before he can be more than friends with you.  That's what
+he's plowing for!  If it wasn't for that, probably he wouldn't;
+be plowing at all.  He asked father to let him, and he borrowed
+mother's horses, and he hooked the flowers through the fence. 
+Every night when he comes home, he kneels beside mother and asks
+her if he is `repulsive,' and she takes him in her arms and the
+tears roll down her cheeks and she says:  `Father has farmed all
+his life, and you know how repulsive he is.'"
+
+I ventured an upward peep.  I was doing better.  Her temper
+seemed to be cooling, but her face was a jumble.  I couldn't find
+any one thing on it that would help me, so I just stumbled ahead
+guessing at what to say.
+
+"He didn't WANT to do it.  He perfectly HATED it.  Those fields
+were his Waterloo.  Every furrow was a FIGHT, but he was FORCED
+to show you."
+
+"Exactly WHAT was he trying to show me?"
+
+"I can think of three things he told me," I answered.  "That
+plowing could be so managed as not to disfigure the
+landscape----"
+
+"The dunce!" she said.
+
+"That he could plow or do dirtier work, and not be repulsive----"
+
+"The idiot!" she said.
+
+"That if he came over there, and plowed right under your nose,
+when you'd told him he mustn't, or he couldn't be more than
+friends; and when you knew that he'd much rather die and be laid
+beside the little sisters up there in the cemetery than to NOT be
+more than friends, why, you'd see, if he did THAT, he couldn't
+help it, that he just MUST.  That he was FORCED----"
+
+"The soldier!" she said.
+
+"Oh Princess, he didn't want to!" I cried.  "He tells me secrets
+he doesn't any one else, unless you.  He told me how he hated it;
+but he just had to do it."
+
+"Do you know WHY?"
+
+"Of course!  It's the way he's MADE!  Father is like that!  He
+has chances to live in cities, make big business deals, and go to
+the legislature at Indianapolis; I've seen his letters from his
+friend Oliver P. Morton, our Governor, you know; they're in his
+chest till now; but father can't do it, because he is made so he
+stays at home and works for us, and this farm, and township, and
+county where he belongs.  He says if all men will do that the
+millennium will come to-morrow.  I 'spose you know what the
+millennium is?"
+
+"I do!" said the Princess.  "But I don't know what your father
+and his friend Oliver P. Morton have to do with Laddie."
+
+"Why, everything on earth!  Laddie is father's son, you see, and
+he is made like father.  None of our other boys is.  Not one of
+them loves land.  Leon is going away as quick as ever he finishes
+college; but the more you educate Laddie, the better he likes to
+make things grow, the more he loves to make the world beautiful,
+to be kind to every one, to gentle animals--why, the biggest
+fight he ever had, the man he whipped 'til he most couldn't bring
+him back again, was one who kicked his horse in the stomach. 
+Gee, I thought he'd killed him!  Laddie did too for a while, but
+he only said the man deserved it."
+
+"And so he did!" cried the Princess angrily.  "How beastly!"
+
+"That's one reason Laddie sticks so close to land.  He says he
+doesn't meet nearly so many two-legged beasts in the country. 
+Almost every time he goes to town he either gets into a fight or
+he sees something that makes him fighting mad.  Princess, you
+think this beautiful, don't you?"
+
+I just pointed anywhere.  All the world was in it that morning. 
+You couldn't look right or left and not see lovely places, hear
+music, and smell flowers.
+
+"Yes!  It is altogether wonderful!" she said.
+
+"Would you like to live among this all your life, and have your
+plans made to fix you a place even nicer, and then be forced to
+leave it and go to a little room in the city, and make all the
+money you earned off of how much other men fight over business,
+and land and such perfectly awful things, that they always have
+to be whispered when Jerry tells about them?  Would you?"
+
+"You little dunce!" she cried.
+
+"I know I'm a fool.  I know I'm not telling you a single thing I
+should!  Maybe I'm hurting Laddie far more than I'm helping him,
+and if I am, I wish I would die before I see him; but oh! 
+Princess, I'm trying with all my might to make you understand how
+he feels.  He WANTS to do every least thing you'd like him to. 
+He will, almost any thing else in the world, he would this-- he
+would in a minute, but he just CAN'T.  All of us know he can't! 
+If you'd lived with him since he was little and always had known
+him, you wouldn't ask him to; you wouldn't want him to!  You
+don't know what you're doing!  Mother says you don't!  You'll
+kill him if you send him to the city to live, you just will!  You
+are doing it now!  He's getting thinner and whiter every day. 
+Don't!  Oh please don't do it!"
+
+The Princess was looking at the world.  She was gazing at it so
+dazed-like she seemed to be surprised at what she saw.  She acted
+as if she'd never really seen it before.  She looked and she
+looked.  She even turned her horse a full circle to see all of
+it, and she went around slowly.  I stepped from one foot to the
+other and sweat; but I kept quiet and let her look.  At last when
+she came around, she glanced down at me, and she was all melted,
+and lovely as any one you ever saw, exactly like Shelley at
+Christmas, and she said:  "I don't think I ever saw the world
+before.  I don't know that I'm so crazy about a city myself, and
+I perfectly hate lawyers.  Come to thing of it, a lawyer helped
+work ruin in our family, and I never have believed, I never will
+believe----"
+
+She stopped talking and began looking again.  I gave her all the
+time she needed.  I was just straining to be wise, for mother
+says it takes the very wisest person there is to know when to
+talk, and when to keep still.  As I figured it, now was the time
+not to say another word until she made up her mind about what I
+had told her already.  If Pryors didn't know what we thought of
+them by that time, it wasn't mother's fault or mine.  As she
+studied things over she kept on looking.  What she saw seemed to
+be doing her a world of good.  Her face showed it every second
+plainer and plainer.  Pretty soon it began to look like she was
+going to come through as Amos Hurd did when he was redeemed. 
+Then, before my very eyes, it happened!  I don't know how I ever
+held on to the pie or kept from shouting, "Praise the Lord!" as
+father does at the Meeting House when he is happiest.  Then she
+leaned toward me all wavery, and shining eyed, and bloomful, and
+said:  "Did you ever hurt Laddie's feelings, and make him angry
+and sad?"
+
+"I'm sure I never did," I answered.
+
+"But suppose you had!  What would you do?"
+
+"Do?  Why, I'd go to him on the run, and I'd tell him I never
+intended to hurt his feelings, and how sorry I was, and I'd give
+him the very best kiss I could."
+
+The Princess stroked Maud's neck a long time and thought while
+she studied our farm, theirs beyond it, and at the last, the far
+field where Laddie was plowing.  She thought, and thought, and
+afraid to cheep, I stood gripping the shingle and waited. 
+Finally she said:  "The last time Laddie was at our house, I said
+to him those things he repeated to you.  He went away at once,
+hurt and disappointed.  Now, if you like, along with your
+precious pie, you may carry him this message from me.  You may
+tell him that I said I am sorry!"
+
+I could have cried "Glory!" and danced and shouted there in the
+road, but I didn't.  It was no time to lose my head.  That was
+all so fine and splendid, as far as it went, but it didn't quite
+cover the case.  I never could have done it for myself; but for
+Laddie I would venture anything, so I looked her in the eyes,
+straight as a dart, and said:  "He'd want the kiss too,
+Princess!"
+
+You could see her stiffen in the saddle and her fingers grip the
+reins, but I kept on staring right into her eyes.
+
+"I could come up, you know," I offered.
+
+A dull red flamed in her cheeks and her lips closed tight.  One
+second she sat very still, then a dancing light leaped sparkling
+into her eyes; a flock of dimples chased each other around her
+lips like swallows circling their homing place at twilight.
+
+"What about that wonderful pie?" she asked me.
+
+I ran to the nearest fence corner, and laid the shingle on the
+gnarled roots of a Johnny Appleseed apple tree.  Then I set one
+foot on the arch of the Princess' instep and held up my hands. 
+One second I thought she would not lift me, the next I was on her
+level and her lips met mine in a touch like velvet woven from
+threads of flame.  Then with a turn of her stout little wrist,
+she dropped me, and a streak went up our road.  Nothing so
+amazing and so important ever had happened to me.  It was an
+occasion that demanded something unusual.  To cry, "Praise the
+Lord!" was only to repeat an hourly phrase at our house; this
+demanded something out of the ordinary, so I said just exactly as
+father did the day the brown mare balked with the last load of
+seed clover, when a big storm was breaking--"Jupiter Ammon!"
+
+When I had calmed down so I could, I climbed the fence, and
+reached through a crack for the pie.  As I followed the cool,
+damp furrow, and Laddie's whistle, clear as the lark's above the
+wheat, thrilled me, I was almost insane with joy.  Just joy! 
+Pure joy!  Oh what a good world it was!--most of the time!  Most
+of the time!  Of course, there WERE Paget men in it.  But anyway,
+THIS couldn't be beaten.  I had a message for Laddie from the
+Princess that would send him to the seventh heaven, wherever that
+was; no one at our house spent any time thinking farther than the
+first one.  I had her kiss, that I didn't know what would do to
+him, and I also had a big piece of juicy rhubarb pie not yet
+entirely cold.  If that didn't wipe out the trouble I had made
+showing the old crest thing, nothing ever could.  I knew even
+then, that men were pretty hard to satisfy, but I was quite
+certain that Laddie would be satisfied that morning.  As I
+hurried along I wondered whether it would be better to give him
+my gift first, or the Princess'.  I decided that joy would keep,
+while the pie was cold enough, with all the time I had stopped;
+and if I told him about her first, maybe he wouldn't touch it at
+all, and it wasn't so easy as it looked to carry it to him and
+never even once stick in my finger for the tiniest lick--joy
+would keep; but I was going to feed him; so with shining face, I
+offered the pie and stood back to see just how happy I could get.
+
+"Mother send it?" asked Laddie.
+
+People were curious that morning, as if I had a habit of stealing
+pie.  I only took pieces of cut ones from the cellar when mother
+didn't care.  So I explained again that Candace gave it to me,
+and I was free to bring it.
+
+"Oh I see!" said Laddie.
+
+After nearly two weeks of work, the grays had sobered down enough
+to stand without tying; so he wound the lines around the plow
+handle, sat on the beam, and laid aside his hat, having a fresh
+flower in the band.  Once he started a thing, he just simply
+wouldn't give up.  He unbuttoned his neckband until I could see
+his throat where it was white like a woman's, took out his knife
+and ate that pie.  Of course we knew better than to use a knife
+at the table, but there was no other way in the field.  He ate
+that pie, slowly and deliberately, and between bites he talked. 
+I watched him with a wide grin, wondering what in this world he
+WOULD say, in a minute.  I don't think I ever had quite such a
+good time in all my life before, and I never expect to again.  He
+was saying:  "Talk about nectar and ambrosia!  Talk about the
+feasts of Lucullus!  Talk about food for the Gods!"
+
+I put on his hat, sat on the ground in front of him, and was the
+happiest girl in the world, of that I am quite sure.  When the
+last morsel was finished, Laddie looked at me steadily.
+
+"I wonder," he said, "I wonder if there's another man in the
+world who is blest with quite such a loving, unselfish little
+sister as mine?"  Then he answered himself:  "No!  By all the
+Gods, ant half-Gods, I swear it--No!"
+
+It was grand as a Fourth of July oration or the most exciting
+part when the Bishop dedicated our church.  I couldn't hold in
+another second, I could hear my heart beat.
+
+"Oh Laddie!" I shouted, jumping up, "that pie is only the
+beginning of the good things I have brought you.  I have a
+message, and a gift besides, Laddie!"
+
+"A message and a gift?" Laddie repeated.  "What!  More?"
+
+"Truly I have a message and a gift for you," I cried, "and
+Laddie--they are from the Princess!"
+
+His eyes raised to mine now, and slowly he turned Sabethany-like.
+
+"From the Princess!" he exclaimed.  "A message and a gift for me,
+Little Sister?  You never would let Leon put you up to serve me a
+trick?"
+
+That hurt.  He should have KNOWN I wouldn't, and besides, "Leon
+feels just as badly about this as any of us," I said.  "Have you
+forgotten he offered to plow, and let you do the clean, easy
+work?"
+
+"Forgive me!  I'm overanxious," said Laddie, his arms reaching
+for me.  "Go on and tell carefully, and if you truly love me,
+don't make a mistake!"
+
+Crowding close, my arms around his neck, his crisp hair against
+my lips, I whispered my story softly, for this was such a fine
+and splendid secret, that not even the shining blackbirds, and
+the pert robins in the furrows were going to get to hear a word
+of it.  Before I had finished Laddie was breathing as Flos does
+when he races her the limit.  He sat motionless for a long time,
+while over his face slowly crept a beauty that surpassed that of
+Apollo in his Greek book.
+
+"And her gift?"
+
+It was only a breath.
+
+"She helped me up, and she sent you this," I answered.
+
+Then I set my lips on his, and held them there a second, trying
+my level best to give him her very kiss, but of course I could
+only try.
+
+"Oh, Laddie," I cried.  "Her eyes were like when stars shine down
+in our well!  Her cheeks were like mother's damask roses!  She
+smelled like flowers, and when her lips touched mine little
+stickers went all over me!"
+
+Then Laddie's arms closed around me and I thought sure every bone
+in my body was going to be broken; when he finished there wasn't
+a trace of that kiss left for me.  Remembering it would be all
+I'd ever have.  It made me see what would have happened to the
+Princess if she had been there; and it was an awful pity for her
+to miss it, because he'd sober down a lot before he reached her,
+but I was sure as shooting that he wouldn't be so crazy as to
+kiss her hands again.  Peter wasn't a patching to him!
+
+That night Laddie rode to Pryors'.  When he brought Flos to the
+gate you could see the shadow of your face on her shining flank;
+her mane and tail were like ravelled silk, her hoofs bright as
+polished horn, and her muzzle was clean as a ribbon.  I broke one
+of those rank green sprouts from the snowball bush and brushed
+away the flies, so she wouldn't fret, stamp, and throw dust on
+herself.  Then Laddie came, fresh from a tubbing, starched linen,
+dressed in his new riding suit, and wearing top hat and
+gauntlets.  He looked the very handsomest I ever had seen him;
+and at the same time, he seemed trembling with tenderness, and
+bursting with power.  Goodness sake!  I bet the Princess took one
+good look and "came down" like Davy Crockett's coon.  Mother was
+on his arm and she walked clear to the gate with him.
+
+"LADDIE, ARE YOU SURE ENOUGH TO GO?" I heard her ask him whisper-
+like.
+
+"SURE AS DEATH!" Laddie answered.
+
+Mother looked, and she had to see how it was with him; no doubt
+she saw more than I did from having been through it herself, so
+she smiled kind of a half-sad, half-glad smile.  Then she turned
+to her damask rose bush, the one Lucy brought her from the city,
+and that she was so precious about, that none of us dared touch
+it, and she searched all over it and carefully selected the most
+perfect rose.  When she borrowed Laddie's knife and cut the stem
+as long as my arm, I knew exactly how great and solemn the
+occasion was; for always before about six inches had been her
+limit.  She held it toward him, smiling bravely and beautifully,
+but the tears were running straight down her cheeks.
+
+"Take it to her," she said.  "I think, my son, it is very like."
+
+Laddie took her in his arms and wiped away the tears; he told her
+everything would come out all right about God, and the mystery,
+even.  Then he picked me clear off the ground, and he tried to
+see how near he could come to cracking every bone in my body
+without really doing it, and he kissed me over and over.  It
+hadn't been so easy, but I guess you'll admit that paid.  Then he
+rode away with the damask rose waving over his heart.  Mother and
+I stood beside the hitching rack and looked after him, with our
+arms tight around each other while we tried to see which one
+could bawl the hardest.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+The Homing Pigeon
+
+            "A millstone and the human heart,
+             Are ever driven round,
+             And if they've nothing else to grind,
+             They must themselves be ground."
+
+It seemed to me that my mother was the person who really could
+have been excused for having heart trouble.  The more I watched
+her, the more I wondered that she didn't.  There was her own
+life, the one she and father led, where everything went exactly
+as she wanted it to; and if there had been only themselves to
+think of, no people on earth could have lived happier, unless the
+pain she sometimes suffered made them trouble, and I don't think
+it would, for neither of them were to blame for that.  They
+couldn't help it.  They just had it to stand, and fight the
+stiffest they could to cure it, and mother always said she was
+better; every single time any one asked, she was better.  I hoped
+soon it would all be gone.  Then they could have been happy for
+sure, if some of us hadn't popped up and kept them in hot water
+all the time.
+
+I can't tell you about Laddie when he came back from Pryors'.  He
+tore down the house, then tore it up, and then threw around the
+pieces, and none of us cared.  Every one was just laughing,
+shouting, and every bit as pleased as he was, while I was the
+Queen Bee.  Laddie said so, himself, and if he didn't know, no
+one did.  Pryors had been lovely to him.  When mother asked him
+how he made it, he answered:  "I rode over, picked up the
+Princess and helped myself.  After I finished, I remembered the
+little unnecessary formality of asking her to marry me; and she
+said right out loud that she WOULD.  When I had time for them, I
+reached Father and Mother Pryor, and maybe it doesn't show, but
+somewhere on my person I carry their blessing, genially and
+heartily given, I am proud to state.  Now, I'm only needing
+yours, to make me a king among men."
+
+They gave it quite as willingly, I am sure, although you could
+see mother scringe when Laddie said "Father and Mother Pryor."  I
+knew why.  She adored Laddie, like the Bible says you must adore
+the Almighty.  From a tiny baby Laddie had taken care of her.  He
+used to go back, take her hand, and try to help her over rough
+places while he still wore dresses.  Straight on, he had been
+like that; always seeing when there was too much work and trying
+to shield her; always knowing when a pain was coming and fighting
+to head it off; always remembering the things the others forgot,
+going to her last at night, and his face against hers on her
+pillow the first in the morning, to learn how she was before he
+left the house.  If you were the mother of a man like that, how
+would you like to hear him call some one else mother, and have
+the word slip from his tongue so slick you could see he didn't
+even realize that he had used it?  The answer would be, if you
+were honest, that you wouldn't have liked it any more than she
+did.  She knew he had to go.  She wanted him to be happy.  She
+was as sure of the man he was going to be as she was sure of the
+mercy of God.  That is the strongest way I know to tell it.  She
+was unshakably sure of the mercy of God, but I wasn't.  There
+were times when it seemed as if He couldn't hear the most
+powerful prayer you could pray, and when instead of mercy, you
+seemed to get the last torment that could be piled on.  Take
+right now.  Laddie was happy, and all of us were, in a way; and
+in another we were almost stiff with misery.
+
+I dreaded his leaving us so, I would slip to the hawk oak and cry
+myself sick, more than once; whether any of the others were that
+big babies I don't know; but anyway, THEY were not his Little
+Sister.  I was.  I always had been.  I always would be, for that
+matter; but there was going to be a mighty big difference.  I had
+the poor comfort that I'd done the thing myself.  Maybe if it
+hadn't been for stopping the Princess when I took him that pie,
+they never would have made up, and she might have gone across the
+sea and stayed there.  Maybe she'd go yet, as mysteriously as she
+had come, and take him along.  Sometimes I almost wished I hadn't
+tried to help him; but of course I didn't really.  Then, too, I
+had sense enough to know that loving each other as they did, they
+wouldn't live on that close together for years and years, and not
+find a way to make up for themselves, like they had at the start.
+
+I liked Laddie saying I had made his happiness for him; but I
+wasn't such a fool that I didn't know he could have made it for
+himself just as well, and no doubt better.  So everything was all
+right with Laddie; and what happened to us, the day he rode away
+for the last time, when he went to stay--what happened to us,
+then, was our affair.  We had to take it, but every one of us
+dreaded it, while mother didn't know how to bear it, and neither
+did I.  Once I said to her:  "Mother, when Laddie goes we'll just
+have to make it up to each other the best we can, won't we?"
+
+"Oh my soul, child!" she cried, staring at me so surprised-like. 
+"Why, how unspeakably selfish I have been!  No little lost sheep
+ever ran this farm so desolate as you will be without your
+brother.  Forgive me baby, and come here!"
+
+Gee, but we did cry it out together!  The God she believed in has
+wiped away her tears long ago; this minute I can scarcely see the
+paper for mine.  If you could call anything happiness, that was
+mixed with feeling like that, why, then, we were happy about
+Laddie.  But from things I heard father and mother say, I knew
+they could have borne his going away, and felt a trifle better
+than they did.  I was quite sure they had stopped thinking that
+he was going to lose his soul, but they couldn't help feeling so
+long as that old mystery hung over Pryors that he might get into
+trouble through it.  Father said if it hadn't been for Mr.
+Pryor's stubborn and perverted notions about God, he would like
+the man immensely, and love to be friends; and if Laddie married
+into the family we would have to be as friendly as we could
+anyway.  He said he had such a high opinion of Mr. Pryor's
+integrity that he didn't believe he'd encourage Laddie to enter
+his family if it would involve the boy in serious trouble. 
+Mother didn't know.  Anyway, the thing was done, and by fall, no
+doubt, Laddie would leave us.
+
+Just when we were trying to keep a stiff upper lip before him,
+and whistling as hard as ever he had, to brace our courage, a
+letter came for mother from the head of the music school Shelley
+attended, saying she was no longer fit for work, so she was being
+sent home at once, and they would advise us to consult a
+specialist immediately.  Mother sat and stared at father, and
+father went to hitch the horses to drive to Groveville.
+
+There's only one other day of my life that stands out as clearly
+as that.  The house was clean as we could make it.  I finished
+feeding early, and had most of the time to myself.  I went down
+to the Big Hill, and followed the top of it to our woods.  Then I
+turned around, and started toward the road, just idling.  If I
+saw a lovely spot I sat down and watched all around me to see if
+a Fairy really would go slipping past, or lie asleep under a
+leaf.  I peeked and peered softly, going from spot to spot,
+watching everything.  Sometimes I hung over the water, and
+studied tiny little fish with red, yellow, and blue on them,
+bright as flowers.  The dragonflies would alight right on me, and
+some wore bright blue markings and some blood red.  There was a
+blue beetle, a beautiful green fly, and how the blue wasps did
+flip, flirt and glint in the light.  So did the blackbirds and
+the redwings.  That embankment was left especially to shade the
+water, and to feed the birds.  Every foot of it was covered with
+alders, wild cherry, hazelbush, mulberries, everything having a
+berry or nut.  There were several scrub apple trees, many red
+haws, the wild strawberries spread in big beds in places, and
+some of them were colouring.
+
+Wild flowers grew everywhere, great beds were blue with calamus,
+and the birds flocked in companies to drive away the water
+blacksnakes that often found nests, and liked eggs and bird
+babies.  When I came to the road at last, the sun was around so
+the big oak on the top of the hill threw its shadow across the
+bridge, and I lay along one edge and watched the creek bottom, or
+else I sat up so the water flowed over my feet, and looked at the
+embankment and the sky.  In a way, it was the most peculiar day
+of my life.  I had plenty to think of, but I never thought at
+all.  I only lived.  I sat watching the world go past through a
+sort of golden haze the sun made.  When a pair of kingbirds and
+three crows chased one of my hawks pell-mell across the sky, I
+looked on and didn't give a cent what happened.  When a big
+blacksnake darted its head through sweet grass and cattails, and
+caught a frog that had climbed on a mossy stone in the shade to
+dine on flies, I let it go.  Any other time I would have hunted a
+stick and made the snake let loose.  To-day I just sat there and
+let things happen as they did.
+
+At last I wandered up the road, climbed the back garden fence,
+and sat on the board at the edge of a flowerbed, and to-day, I
+could tell to the last butterfly about that garden: what was in
+bloom, how far things had grown, and what happened.  Bobby flew
+under the Bartlett pear tree and crowed for me, but I never
+called him.  I sat there and lived on, and mostly watched the
+bees tumble over the bluebells.  They were almost ready to be cut
+to put in the buttered tumblers for perfume, like mother made for
+us.  Then I went into the house and looked at Grace Greenwood,
+but I didn't take her along.  Mother came past and gave me a
+piece of stiff yellow brocaded silk as lovely as I ever had seen,
+enough for a dress skirt; and a hand-embroidered chemise sleeve
+that only needed a band and a button to make a petticoat for a
+Queen doll, but I laid them away and wandered into the orchard.
+
+I dragged my bare feet through the warm grass, and finally sat
+under the beet red peach tree.  If ever I seemed sort of lost and
+sorry for myself, that was a good place to go; it was so easy to
+feel abused there because you didn't dare touch those peaches. 
+Fluffy baby chickens were running around, but I didn't care;
+there was more than a bird for every tree, bluebirds especially;
+they just loved us and came early and stayed late, and grew so
+friendly they nested all over the wood house, smoke house, and
+any place we fixed for them, and in every hollow apple limb. 
+Bobby came again, but I didn't pay any attention to him.
+
+Then I heard the carriage cross the bridge.  I knew when it was
+father, every single time his team touched the first plank.  So I
+ran like an Indian, and shinned up a cedar tree, scratching
+myself until I bled.  Away up I stood on a limb, held to the tree
+and waited.  Father drove to the gate, and mother came out, with
+May, Candace, and Leon following.  When Shelley touched the
+ground and straightened, any other tree except a spruce having
+limbs to hold me up, I would have fallen from it.  She looked
+exactly as if she had turned to tombstone with eyes and hair
+alive.  She stopped a second to brush a little kiss across
+mother's lips, to the others she said without even glancing at
+them:  "Oh do let me lie down a minute!  The motion of that train
+made me sick."
+
+Well, I should say it did!  I quit living, and began thinking in
+a hooray, and so did every one else at our house.  Once I had
+been sick and queened it over them for a while, now all of us
+strained ourselves trying to wait on Shelley; but she wouldn't
+have it.  She only said she was tired to death, to let her rest,
+and she turned her face to the wall and lay there.  Once she said
+she never wanted to see a city again so long as she lived.  When
+mother told her about Laddie and the Princess to try to interest
+her, she never said a word; I doubted if she even listened. 
+Father and mother looked at each other, when they thought no one
+would see, and their eyes sent big, anxious questions flashing
+back and forth.  I made up my mind I'd keep awake that night and
+hear what they said, if I had to take pins to bed with me and
+stick myself.
+
+Once mother said to Shelley that she was going to send for Dr.
+Fenner, and she answered:  "All right, if you need him.  Don't
+you dare for me!  I'll not see him.  All I want is a little peace
+and rest."
+
+The idea!  Not one of us ever had spoken to mother like that
+before in all our born days.  I held my breath to see what she
+would do, but she didn't seem to have heard it, or to notice how
+rude it had been.  Well, THAT told about as plain as anything
+what we had on our hands.  I wandered around and NOW there was no
+trouble about thinking things.  They came in such a jumble I
+could get no sense from them; but one big black thought came
+over, and over, and over, and wouldn't be put away.  It just
+stood, stayed, forced you, and made you look it in the face.  If
+Shelley weren't stopped quickly she was going up on the hill with
+the little fever and whooping cough sisters.  There it was!  You
+could try to think other things, to play, to work, to talk it
+down in the pulpit, to sing it out in a tree, to slide down the
+haystack away from it--there it stayed!  And every glimpse you
+had of Shelley made it surer.
+
+There was no trouble about keeping awake that night; I couldn't
+sleep.  I stood at the window and looked down the Big Hill
+through the soft white moonlight, and thought about it, and then
+I thought of mother.  I guess NOW you see what kind of things
+mothers have to face.  All day she had gone around doing her
+work, every few minutes suggesting some new thing for one of us
+to try, or trying it herself; all day she had talked and laughed,
+and when Sarah Hood came she told her she thought Shelley must be
+bilious, that she had travelled all night and was sleeping: but
+she would be up the first place she went, and then they talked
+all over creation and Mrs. Hood went home and never remembered
+that she hadn't seen Shelley.  She worked Mrs. Freshett off the
+same way, but you could see she was almost too tired to do it, so
+by night she was nearly as white as Shelley, yet keeping things
+going.  When the house was still, she came into the room, and
+stood at the window as I had, until father entered, then she
+turned, and I could see they were staring at each other in the
+moonlight, as they had all day.
+
+"She's sick?" asked father, at last.
+
+"Heartsick!" said mother bitterly.
+
+"We'd better have Doc come?"
+
+"She says she isn't sick, and she won't see him."
+
+"She will if I put my foot down."
+
+"Best not, Paul!  She'll feel better soon.  She's so young!  She
+must get over it."
+
+They were silent for a long time and then father asked in a harsh
+whisper:  "Ruth, can she possibly have brought us to shame?"
+
+"God forbid!" cried mother.  "Let us pray."
+
+Then those two people knelt on each side of that bed, and I could
+hear half the words they muttered, until I was wild enough to
+scream.  I wished with all my heart that I hadn't listened.  I
+had always known it was no nice way.  I must have gone to sleep
+after a while, but when I woke up I was still thinking about it,
+and to save me, I couldn't quit.  All day, wherever I went, that
+question of father's kept going over in my head.  I thought about
+it until I was almost crazy, and I just couldn't see where
+anything about shame came in.
+
+She was only mistaken.  She THOUGHT he loved her, and he didn't. 
+She never could have been so bloomy, so filled with song,
+laughter, and lovely like she was, if she hadn't truly believed
+with all her heart that he loved her.  Of course it would almost
+finish her to give him up, when she felt like that; and maybe she
+did wrong to let herself care so much, before she was sure about
+him; but that would only be foolish, there wouldn't be even a
+shadow of shame about it.  Besides, Laddie had done exactly the
+same thing.  He loved the Princess until it nearly killed him
+when he thought he had to give her up, and he loved her as hard
+as ever he could, when he hadn't an idea whether she would love
+him back, even a tiny speck; and the person who wasn't foolish,
+and never would be, was Laddie.
+
+The more I thought, the worse I got worked up, and I couldn't see
+how Shelley was to blame for anything at all.  Love just came to
+her, like it came to Laddie.  She would hardly have knelt down
+and beseeched the Lord to make her fall in love with a man she
+scarcely knew, and when she couldn't be sure what he was going to
+do about it--not the Lord, the man, I mean.  You could see for
+yourself she wouldn't do that.  I finished my work, and then I
+tried to do things for her, and she wouldn't let me.  Mother told
+me to ask her to make Grace Greenwood the dress she had promised
+when I was so sick; so I took the Scotch plaid to her and
+reminded her, and she pushed me away and said:  "Some time!"
+
+I even got Grace, and showed Shelley the spills on her dress, and
+how badly she needed a new one, but she never looked, she said: 
+"Oh bother!  My head aches.  Do let me be!"
+
+Mother was listening.  I could see her standing outside the door.
+
+She motioned to me to come away, so I went to her and she was
+white as Shelley.  She was sick too, she couldn't say a word for
+a minute, but after a while she kissed me, I could feel the
+quivers in her lips, and she said stifflike:  "Never mind, she'll
+be better soon, then she will!  Run play now!"
+
+Sometimes I wandered around looking at things and living dully. 
+I didn't try to study out anything, but I must have watched
+closer than I knew, for every single thing I saw then, over that
+whole farm, I can shut my eyes and see to-day; everything, from
+the old hawk tilting his tail to steer him in soaring, to a snake
+catching field mice in the grass, lichens on the fence, flowers,
+butterflies, every single thing.  Mostly I sat to watch something
+that promised to become interesting, and before I knew it, I was
+back on the shame question.  That's the most dreadful word in the
+dictionary.  There's something about it that makes your face
+burn, only to have it in your mind.
+
+Laddie said he never had met any man who knew the origin of more
+words than father.  He could even tell every clip what
+nationality a man was from his name.  Hundreds of time I have
+heard him say to stranger people, "From your name you'd be of
+Scotch extraction," or Irish, or whatever it was, and every time
+the person he was talking with would say, "Yes."  Some day away
+out in the field, alone, I thought I would ask him what people
+first used the word "shame," and just exactly what it did mean,
+and what the things were that you could do that would make the
+people who loved you until they would die for you, ashamed of
+you.
+
+Thinking about that and planning out what it was that I wanted to
+know, gave me another idea.  Why not ask her?  She was the only
+one who knew what she had done away there in the city, alone
+among strangers; I wasn't sure whether all the music a girl could
+learn was worth letting her take the chances she would have to in
+a big city.  From the way Laddie and father hated them, they were
+a poor place for men, and they must have been much worse for
+girls.  Shelley knew, why not ask HER?  Maybe I could coax her to
+tell me, and it would make my life much easier to know; and only
+think what was going on in father's and mother's heads and
+hearts, when I felt that way, and didn't even know what there was
+to be ashamed about.  She wouldn't any more than slap me; and
+sick as she was, I made up my mind not to get angry at her, or
+ever to tell, if she did.  I'd rather have her hit me when she
+was so sick than to have Sally beat me until she couldn't strike
+another lick, just because she was angry.  But I forgave her
+that, and I was never going to think of it again--only I did.
+
+Mother kept sending Leon to the post-office, and she met him at
+the gate half the time herself and fairly snatched the letters
+from his hands.  Hum!  She couldn't pull the wool over my eyes. 
+I knew she hoped somehow, some way, there would be a big fat one
+with Paget, Legal Adviser, or whatever a Chicago lawyer puts on
+his envelopes.  Jerry's just say:  "Attorney at Law."
+
+No letter ever came that had Paget in the corner, or anything
+happened that did Shelley any good.  Far otherwise!  Just before
+supper Leon came from Groveville one evening, and all of us could
+see at a glance that he had been crying like a baby.  He had
+wiped up, and was trying to hold in, but he was killed, next.  I
+nearly said, "Well, for heaven's sake, another!" when I saw him. 
+He slammed down a big, long envelope, having printing on it,
+before father, and glared at it as if he wanted to tear it to
+smithereens, and he said:  "If you want to know why it looks like
+that, I buried it under a stone once; but I had to go back, and
+then I threw it as far as I could send it, into Ditton's gully,
+but after a while I hunted it up again!"
+
+Then he keeled over on the couch mother keeps for her in the
+dining-room, and sobbed until he looked like he'd come apart.
+
+Of course all of us knew exactly what that letter was from the
+way he acted.  Mother had told him, time and again, not to set
+his heart so; father had, too and Laddie, and every one of us,
+but that little half-Arab, half-Kentucky mare was the worst
+temptation a man who loved horses could possibly have; and while
+father and mother stopped at good work horses, and matched
+roadsters for the carriage, they managed to prize and tend them
+so that every one of us had been born horse-crazy, and we had
+been allowed to ride, care for, and taught to love horses all our
+lives.  Treat a horse ugly, and we'd have gone on the thrashing
+floor ourselves.
+
+Father laid the letter face down, his hand on it, and shook his
+head.  "This is too bad!" he said.  "It's a burning shame, but
+the money, the exact amount, was taken from a farmer in Medina
+County, Ohio, by a traveller he sheltered a few days, because he
+complained of a bad foot.  The description of the man who robbed
+us is perfect.  The money was from the sale of some prize cattle.
+It will have to be returned."
+
+"Just let me see the letter a minute," said Laddie.
+
+He read it over thoughtfully.  He was long enough about it to
+have gone over it three times; then he looked at Leon, and his
+forehead creased in a deep frown.  The tears slid down mother's
+cheeks, but she didn't know it, or else she'd have wiped them
+away.  She was never mussy about the least little thing.
+
+"Father!" she said.  "Father----!"
+
+That was as far as she could go.
+
+"The man must have his money," said father, "but we'll look into
+this----"
+
+He pushed back the plates and tablecloth, and cleared his end of
+the table.  Mother never budged to stack the plates, or
+straighten the cloth so it wouldn't be wrinkled.  Then father
+brought his big account book from the black walnut chest in our
+room, some little books, and papers, sharpened a pencil and began
+going up and down the columns and picking out figures here and
+there that he set on a piece of paper.  I never had seen him look
+either old or tired before; but he did then.  Mother noticed it
+too, for her lips tightened, she lifted her head, wiped her eyes,
+and pretended that she felt better.  Laddie said something about
+doing the feeding, and slipped out.  Just then Shelley came into
+the room, stopped, and looked questioningly at us.  Her eyes
+opened wide, and she stared hard at Leon.
+
+"Why what ails him?" she asked mother.
+
+"You remember what I wrote you about a man who robbed us, and the
+money Leon was to have, provided no owner was found in a
+reasonable time; and the horse the boy had planned to buy, and
+how he had been going to Pryors'--Oh, I think he's slipped over
+there once a day, and often three times, all this spring!  Mr.
+Pryor encouraged him, let him take his older horses to practise
+on, even went out and taught him cross-country riding
+himself----"
+
+"I remember!" said Shelley.
+
+Leon sobbed out loud.  Shelley crossed the room swiftly, dropped
+beside him and whispered something in his ear.  Quick as a shot
+his arm reached out and went around her.  She hid her head deep
+in the pillow beside him, and they went to pieces together. 
+Clear to pieces!  Pretty soon father had to take off his glasses
+and wipe them so he could see the figures.  Mother took one long
+look at him, a short one at Leon and Shelley, then she arose, her
+voice as even and smooth, and she said:  "While you figure,
+father, I'll see about supper.  I have tried to plan an extra
+good one this evening."
+
+She left the room.  NOW, I guess you know about all I can tell
+you of mother!  I can't see that there's a thing left.  That was
+the kind of soldier she was.  Talk about Crusaders, and a good
+fight!  All the blood of battle in our family wasn't on father's
+side, not by any means!  The Dutch could fight too!
+
+Father's pencil scraped a little, a bee that had slipped in
+buzzed over the apple butter, while the clock ticked as if it
+used a hammer.  It was so loud one wanted to pitch it from the
+window.  May and I sat still as mice when the cat is near. 
+Candace couldn't keep away from the kitchen door to save her, and
+where mother went I hadn't an idea, but she wasn't getting an
+extra good supper.  Shelley and Leon were quieter now.  May
+nudged me, and I saw that his arm around her was gripping her
+tight, while her hand on his head was patting him and fingering
+his hair.
+
+Ca-lumph!  Ca-lumph! came the funniest sound right on the stone
+walk leading to the east door, then a shrill whicker that made
+father drop his pencil.  Leon was on his feet, Shelley beside
+him, while at the door stood Laddie grinning as if his face would
+split, and with her forefeet on the step and her nose in the
+room, stood the prettiest, the very prettiest horse I ever saw. 
+She was sticking her nose toward Leon, whinnying softly, as she
+lifted one foot, and if Laddie hadn't backed her, she would have
+walked right into the dining-room.
+
+"Come on, Weiscope, she's yours!" said Laddie.  "Take her to the
+barn, and put her in one of the cow stalls, until we fix a place
+for her."
+
+Leon crossed the room, but he never touched the horse.  He threw
+his arms around Laddie's neck.
+
+"Son!  Son!  Haven't you let your feelings run away with you? 
+What does this mean?" asked father sternly.
+
+"There's nothing remarkable in a big six-footer like me buying a
+horse," said Laddie.  "I expect to purchase a number soon, and
+without a cent to pay, in the bargain.  I contracted to give five
+hundred dollars for this mare.  She is worth more; but that
+should be satisfactory all around.  I am going to earn it by
+putting five of Mr. Pryor's fancy, pedigreed horses in shape for
+market, taking them personally, and selling them to men fit to
+own and handle real horses.  I get one hundred each, and my
+expenses for the job.  I'll have as much fun doing it as I ever
+had at anything.  It suits me far better than plowing, even."
+
+Mother entered the room at a sweep, and pushed Leon aside.
+
+"Oh you man of my heart!" she cried.  "You man after my own
+heart!"
+
+Laddie bent and kissed her, holding her tight as he looked over
+her head at father.
+
+"It's all right, of course?" he said.
+
+"I never have known of anything quite so altogether right," said
+father.  "Thank you, lad, and God bless you!"
+
+He took Laddie's hand, and almost lifted him from the floor, then
+he wiped his glasses, gathered up his books with a big, deep
+breath of relief, and went into his room.  If the others had
+looked to see why he was gone so long, they would have seen him
+on his knees beside his bed thanking God, as usual.  Leon
+couldn't have come closer than when he said, "The same yesterday,
+to-day, and forever," about father.
+
+Leon had his arms around the neck of his horse now, and he was
+kissing her, patting her, and explaining to Shelley just why no
+other horse was like her.  He was pouring out a jumble all about
+the oasis of the desert, the tent dwellers, quoting lines from
+"The Arab to His Horse," bluegrass, and gentleness combined with
+spirit, while Shelley had its head between her hands, stroking it
+and saying, "Yes," to every word Leon told her.  Then he said: 
+"Just hop on her back from that top step and ride her to the
+barn, if you want to see the motion she has."
+
+Shelley said:  "Has a woman ever been on her back?  Won't she shy
+at my skirts?"
+
+"No," explained Leon.  "I've been training her with a horse
+blanket pinned around me, so Susie could ride her!  She'll be all
+right."
+
+So Shelley mounted, and the horse turned her head, and tried to
+rub against her, as she walked away, tame as a sheep.  I wondered
+if she could be too gentle.  If she went "like the wind," as Leon
+said, it didn't show then.  I was almost crazy to go along, and
+maybe Leon would let me ride a little while; but I had a question
+that it would help me to know the answer and I wanted to ask
+father before I forgot; so I waited until he came out.  When he
+sat down, smiled at me and said, "Well, is the girl happy for
+brother?"  I knew it was a good time, and I could ask anything I
+chose, so I sat on his knee and said:  "Father, when you pray for
+anything that it's all perfectly right for you to have, does God
+come down from heaven and do it Himself, or does He send a man
+like Laddie to do it for him?"
+
+Father hugged me tight, smiling the happiest.
+
+"Why, you have the whole thing right there in a nutshell, Little
+Sister," he said.  "You see it's like this: the Book tells us
+most distinctly that `God is love.'  Now it was love that sent
+Laddie to bind himself for a long, tedious job, to give Leon his
+horse, wasn't it?"
+
+"Of course!" I said.  "He wouldn't have been likely to do it if
+he hated him.  It was love, of course!"
+
+"Then it was God," said father, "because `God is love.'  They are
+one and the same thing."
+
+Then he kissed me, and THAT was settled.  So I wondered when you
+longed for anything so hard you really felt it was worth
+bothering God about, whether the quickest way to get it was to
+ask Him for it, or to try to put a lot of love into the heart of
+some person who could do what you wanted.  I decided it all went
+back to God though, for most of the time probably we wouldn't
+know who the right one was to try to awaken love in.  I was
+mighty sure none of us ever dreamed Laddie could walk over to
+Pryors', and come back with that horse, in a way perfectly
+satisfactory to every one, slick as an eel.
+
+You should have seen Leon following around after Laddie, trying
+to do things for him, taking on his work to give him more time
+with the horses, getting up early to finish his own stunts, so he
+could go over to Pryors' and help.  Mother said it had done more
+to make a man of him than anything that ever happened.  It helped
+Shelley, too.  Something seemed to break in her, when she cried
+so with Leon, because he was in trouble.  Then he was so crazy to
+show off his horse he had Shelley ride up and down the lane,
+while he ran along and led, so she got a lot of exercise, and it
+made her good and hungry.  If you don't think by this time that
+my mother was the beatenest woman alive, I'll prove it to you. 
+When the supper bell rang there was strawberry preserves instead
+of the apple butter, biscuit, fried chicken, and mashed potatoes.
+
+She must have slapped those chickens into the skillet before they
+knew their heads were off.  When Shelley came to the table, for
+the first time since she'd been home, had pink in her cheeks, and
+talked some, and ate too, mother forgot her own supper.  She
+fumbled over her plate, but scarcely touched even the livers, and
+those delicious little kidneys in the tailpiece like Leon and I
+had at Sally's wedding.  When we finished, and it was time for
+her to give the signal to arise, no one had asked to be excused,
+she said:  "Let us have a word with the Most High."  Then she
+bowed her head, so all of us did too.  "O Lord, we praise Thee
+for all Thy tender mercies, and all Thy loving kindness.  Amen!"
+
+Of course father always asked the blessing to begin with, and
+mostly it was the same one, and that was all at meal time, but
+this was a little extra that mother couldn't even wait until
+night to tell the Almighty, she was so pleased with Him.  Maybe I
+haven't told everything about her, after all.  Father must have
+thought that was lovely of her; he surely felt as happy as she
+did, to see Shelley better, for he hugged and kissed her over and
+over, finishing at her neck like he always did, and then I be-
+hanged, if he didn't hug and kiss every last one of us--tight,
+even the boys.  Shelley he held long and close, and patted her a
+little when he let her go.  It made me wonder if the rest of us
+didn't get ours, so he'd have a chance at her without her
+noticing it.  One thing was perfectly clear.  If shame came to
+us, they were going to love her, and stick tight to her right
+straight through it.
+
+Now that everything was cleared up so, Shelley seemed a little
+more like herself every day, although it was bad enough yet; I
+thought I might as well hurry up the end a little, and stop the
+trouble completely, so I began watching for a chance to ask her. 
+But I wanted to get her away off alone, so no one would see if
+she slapped me.  I didn't know how long I'd have to wait.  I
+tried coaxing her to the orchard to see a bluebird's nest, but
+she asked if bluebirds were building any different that year, and
+I had to admit they were not.  Then I tried the blue-eyed Mary
+bed, but she said she supposed it was still under the cling peach
+tree, and the flower, two white petals up, two blue down, and so
+it was.  Just as I was beginning to think I'd have to take that
+to the Lord in prayer, I got my chance by accident.
+
+May and Candace were forever going snake hunting.  You would
+think any one with common sense would leave them alone and be
+glad of the chance, but no indeed!  They went nearly every day as
+soon as the noon work was finished, and stayed until time to get
+supper.  They did have heaps of fun and wild excitement.  May was
+gentle, and tender with everything else on earth; so I 'spose she
+had a right to bruise the serpent with her heel--really she used
+sticks and stones--if she wanted to.  I asked her how she COULD,
+and she said there was a place in the Bible that told how a snake
+coaxed Eve to eat an apple, that the Lord had told her she
+mustn't touch; and so she got us into most of the trouble there
+was in the world.  May said it was all the fault of the SNAKE to
+begin with, and she meant to pay up every one she could find,
+because she had none of the apple, and lots of the trouble. 
+Candace cried so much because Frederick Swartz had been laid in
+the tomb, that mother was pleased to have her cheer up, even
+enough to go snake hunting.
+
+That afternoon Mehitabel Heasty had come to visit May, so she
+went along, and I followed.  They poked around the driftwood at
+the floodgate behind the barn, and were giving up the place. 
+Candace had crossed the creek and was coming back, and May had
+started, when she saw a tiny little one and chased it.  We didn't
+know then that it was a good thing to have snakes to eat moles,
+field mice, and other pests that bother your crops; the Bible had
+no mercy on them at all, so we were not saving our snakes; and
+anyway we had more than we needed, while some of them were too
+big to be safe to keep, and a few poison as could be.  May began
+to bruise the serpent, when out of the driftwood where they
+hadn't found anything came its mammy, a great big blacksnake,
+maddest you ever saw, with its pappy right after her, mad as ever
+too.  Candace screamed at May to look behind her, but May was
+busy with the snake and didn't look quick enough, so the old
+mammy struck right in her back.  She just caught in the hem of
+May's skirt, and her teeth stuck in the goods--you know how a
+snake's teeth turn back--so she couldn't let go.  May took one
+look and raced down the bank to the crossing, through the water,
+and toward us, with the snake dragging and twisting, and trying
+her best to get away.  May was screaming at every jump for
+Candace, and Mehitabel was flying up and down crying:  "Oh
+there's snakes in my shoes!  There's snakes in my shoes!"
+
+That was a fair sample of how much sense a Heasty ever had.  It
+took all Mehitabel's shoes could do to hold her feet, for after
+one went barefoot all week, and never put on shoes except on
+Sunday or for a visit, the feet became so spread out, shoes had
+all they could do to manage them, and then mostly they pinched
+until they made one squirm.  But she jumped and said that, while
+May ran and screamed, and Candace gripped her big hickory stick
+and told May to stand still.  Then she bruised that serpent with
+her whole foot, for she stood on it, and swatted it until she
+broke its neck.  Then she turned ready for the other one, but
+when it saw what happened to its mate, it decided to go back. 
+Even snakes, it doesn't seem right to break up families like
+that; so by the time Candace got the mammy killed, loose from
+May's hem, and stretched out with the back up, so she wouldn't
+make it rain, when Candace wasn't sure that father wanted rain, I
+had enough.  I went down the creek until I was below the orchard,
+then I crossed, passed the cowslip bed, climbed the hill and
+fence, and stopped to think what I would do first; and there only
+a few feet away was Shelley.  She was sitting in the shade, her
+knees drawn up, her hands clasped around them, staring straight
+before her across the meadow at nothing in particular, that I
+could see.  She jumped as if I had been a snake when she saw me,
+then she said, "Oh, is it you?" like she was half glad of it.  My
+chance had come.
+
+I went to her, sat close beside her and tried snuggling up a
+little.  It worked.  She put her arm around me, drew me tight,
+rubbed her cheek against my head and we sat there.  I was
+wondering how in the world I could ask her, and not get slapped. 
+I was growing most too big for that slapping business, anyway. 
+We sat there; I was looking across the meadow as she did, only I
+was watching everything that went on, so when I saw a grosbeak
+fly from the wild grape where Shelley had put the crock for sap,
+it made me think of her hair.  She used to like to have me play
+with it so well, she'd give me pennies if I did.  I got up, and
+began pulling out her pins carefully.  I knew I was getting a
+start because right away she put up her hand to help me.
+
+"I can get them," I said just as flannel-mouthed as ever I could,
+like all of us talked to her now, so I got every one and never
+pulled a mite.  When I reached over her shoulder to drop them in
+her lap, being so close I kissed her cheek.  Then I shook down
+her hair, spread it out, lifted it, parted it, and held up
+strands to let the air on her scalp.  She shivered and said: 
+"Mercy child, how good that does feel!  My head has ached lately
+until it's a wonder there's a hair left on it."
+
+So I was pleasing her.  I never did handle hair so carefully.  I
+tried every single thing it feels good to you to have done with
+your hair, rubbed her head gently, and to cheer her up I told her
+about May and the snake, and what fool Mehitabel had said, and
+she couldn't help laughing; so I had her feeling about as good as
+she could, for the way she actually felt, but still I didn't
+really get ahead.  Come right to the place to do it, that was no
+very easy question to ask a person, when you wouldn't hurt their
+feelings for anything; I was beginning to wonder if I would lose
+my chance, when all at once a way I could manage popped into my
+mind.
+
+"Shelley," I said, "they told you about Laddie and the Princess,
+didn't they?"
+
+I knew they had, but I had to make a beginning some way.
+
+"Yes," she said.  "I'm glad of it!  I think she's pretty as a
+picture, and nice as she looks.  Laddie may have to hump himself
+to support her, but if he can't get her as fine clothes as she
+has, her folks can help him.  They seem to have plenty, and she's
+their only child."
+
+"They're going to.  I heard Mr. Pryor ask Laddie if he'd be so
+unkind as to object to them having the pleasure of giving her
+things."
+
+"Well, the greenhorn didn't say he would!"
+
+"No.  He didn't want to put his nose to the grindstone quite that
+close.  He said it was between them."
+
+"I should think so!"
+
+"Shelley, there's a question I've been wanting to ask some one
+for quite a while."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Why, this!  You know, Laddie was in love with the Princess, like
+you are when you want to marry folks, for a long, long time,
+before he could be sure whether she loved him back."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, now, 'spose she never had loved him, would he have had
+anything to be ashamed of?"
+
+"I can't see that he would.  Some one must start a courtship, or
+there would be no marrying, and it's conceded to be the place of
+the man.  No.  He might be disappointed, or dreadfully hurt, but
+there would be no shame about it."
+
+"Well, then, suppose she loved him, and wanted to marry him, and
+he hadn't loved her, or wanted her, would SHE have had anything
+to be ashamed of?"
+
+"I don't think so!  If she was attracted by him, and thought she
+would like him, she would have a right to go to a certain extent,
+to find out if he cared for her, and if he didn't, why, she'd
+just have to give him up.  But any sensible girl waits for a man
+to make the advances, and plenty of them, before she allows
+herself even to dream of loving him, or at least, I would."
+
+Now I was getting somewhere!
+
+"Of course you would!" I said.  "That would be the WAY mother
+would, wouldn't it?"
+
+"Surely!"
+
+"If that Paget man you used to write about had seemed to be just
+what you liked, you'd have waited to know if he wanted you,
+before you loved him, wouldn't you?"
+
+"I certainly would!" answered Shelley.  "Or at least, I'd have
+waited until I THOUGHT sure as death, I knew.  It seems that
+sometimes you can be fooled about those things."
+
+"But if you thought sure you knew, and then found out you had
+been mistaken, you wouldn't have anything to be ASHAMED of, would
+you?"
+
+"Not-on-your-life-I-wouldn't!" cried Shelley, hammering each word
+into her right knee with her doubled fist.  "What are you driving
+at, Blatherskite?  What have you got into your head?"
+
+"Oh just studying about things," I said, which was exactly the
+truth.  "Sally getting married last fall, and Laddie going to
+this, just started me to wondering."
+
+Fooled her, too!
+
+"Oh well, there's no harm done," she said.  "The sooner you get
+these matters straightened out, the better able you will be to
+take care of yourself.  If you ever go to a city, you'll find out
+that a girl needs considerable care taken of her."
+
+"You could look out for yourself, Shelley?"
+
+"Well, I don't know as I made such a glorious fist of it," she
+said, "but at least, as you say, I've nothing to be ashamed of!"
+
+I almost hugged her head off.
+
+"Of course you haven't!" I cried.  "Of course you wouldn't have!"
+
+I just kissed her over and over for joy; I was so glad my heart
+hurt for father and mother.  Shame had not come to them!
+
+"Now, I guess I'll run to the house and get a comb," I told her.
+
+"Go on," said Shelley.  "I know you are tired."
+
+"I'm not in the least," I said.  "Don't you remember I always use
+a comb when I fuss with your hair?"
+
+"It is better," said Shelley.  "Go get one."
+
+As I got up to start I took a last look at her, and there was
+something in her face that I couldn't bear.  I knelt beside her,
+and put both arms around her neck.
+
+"Shelley, it's a secret," I said in a breathless half whisper. 
+"It's a great, big secret, but I'm going to tell you.  Twice now
+I've had a powerful prayer all ready to try.  It's the kind where
+you go to the barn, all alone, stand on that top beam below the
+highest window and look toward the east.  You keep perfectly
+still, and just think with all your might, and you look away over
+where Jesus used to be, and when the right feeling comes, you
+pray that prayer as if He stood before you, and it will come
+true.  I KNOW it will come true.  The reason I know is because
+twice now I've been almost ready to try it, and what I intended
+to ask for happened before I had time; so I've saved that prayer;
+but Shelley, shall I pray it about the Paget man, for you?"
+
+She gripped me, and she shook until she was all twisted up; you
+could hear her teeth click, she chilled so.  The tears just
+gushed, and she pulled me up close and whispered right in my ear:
+
+"Yes!"
+
+It was only pretend about the comb; what I really wanted was to
+get to father and mother quick.  I knew he was at the barn and he
+was going to be too happy for words in a minute.  But as I went
+up the lane, I wasn't sure whether I'd rather pray about that
+Paget man or bruise him with my heel like a serpent.  The only
+way I could fix it was to remember if Shelley loved him so, he
+must be mighty nice.  Father was in the wagon shovelling corn
+from it to a platform where it would be handy to feed the pigs,
+so I ran and called him, and put one foot on a hub and raised my
+hands.  He pulled me up and when he saw how important it was, he
+sat on the edge of the bed, so I told him:  "Father, you haven't
+got a thing in the world to be ashamed of about Shelley."
+
+"Praise the Lord!" said father like I knew he would, but you
+should have seen his face.  "Tell me about it!"
+
+I told him and he said:  "Well, I don't know but this is the
+gladdest hour of my life.  Go straight and repeat to your mother
+exactly what you've said to me.  Take her away all alone, and
+then forget about it, you little blessing."
+
+"Father, have you got too many children?"
+
+"No!" he said.  "I wish I had a dozen more, if they'd be like
+you."
+
+When I went up the lane I was so puffed up with importance I felt
+too dignified to run.  I strutted like our biggest turkey
+gobbler.  The only reason you couldn't hear my wings scrape, was
+because through mistake they grew on the turkey.  If I'd had
+them, I would have dragged them sure, and cried "Ge-hobble-
+hobble!" at every step.
+
+I took mother away alone and told her, and she asked many more
+questions than father, but she was even gladder than he.  She
+almost hugged the breath out of me.  Sometimes I get things
+RIGHT, anyway!  Then I took the comb and ran back to Shelley.
+
+"I thought you'd forgotten me," she said.
+
+She had wiped up and was looking better.  If ever I combed
+carefully I did then.  Just when I had all the tangles out, there
+came mother.  She had not walked that far in a long time.  I
+thought maybe she could comfort Shelley, so I laid the comb in
+her lap and went to see how the snake hunters were coming on.  It
+must be all right, when the Bible says so, but the African Jungle
+will do for me, and a popgun is not going to scatter families.  I
+never felt so strongly about breaking home ties in my life as I
+did then.  There was nothing worse.  It was not where I wanted to
+be, so I thought I'd go back to the barn, and hang around father,
+hoping maybe he'd brag on me some more.  Going up the lane I saw
+a wagon passing with the biggest box I ever had seen, and I ran
+to the gate to watch where it went.  It stopped at our house and
+Frank came toward me as I hurried up the road.
+
+"Where are the folks?" he asked, without paying the least
+attention to my asking him over and over what was in the box.
+
+"May and Candace are killing every snake in the driftwood behind
+the barn, Shelley and mother are down in the orchard, and father
+and the boys are hauling corn."
+
+"Go tell the boys to come quickly and keep quiet," he said.  "But
+don't let any one else know I'm here."
+
+That was so exciting I almost fell over my feet running, and all
+three of them came quite as fast.  I stood back and watched, and
+I just danced a steady hop from one foot to the other while those
+men got the big box off the wagon and opened it.  On the side I
+spelled Piano, so of course it was for Shelley.  It was so heavy
+it took all six of them, father and the three boys, the driver
+and another very stylish looking man to carry it.  They put it in
+the parlour, screwed a leg on each corner, and a queer harp in
+the middle, then they lifted it up and set it on its feet, under
+the whatnot, and it seemed as if it filled half the room.  Then
+Frank spread a beauteous wine coloured cover all embroidered in
+pink roses with green leaves over it, and the stylish man opened
+a lid, sat down and spread out his hands.  Frank said:  "Soft
+pedal!  Mighty soft!"  So he smothered it down, and tried only
+enough to find that it had not been hurt coming, and then he went
+away on the wagon.  Father and the boys gathered up every scrap,
+swept the walk, and put all the things they had used back where
+they got them, like we always did.
+
+Then Frank took a card from his pocket and tied it to the music
+rack, and it read:  "For Shelley, from her brothers in fact, and
+in law."  To a corner of the cover he pinned another card that
+read:  "From Peter."
+
+"What is that?" asked father.
+
+"That's from Peter," said Frank.  "Peter is great on finishing
+touches.  He had to outdo the rest of us that much or bust.  Fact
+is, none of us thought of a cover except him."
+
+"How about this?" asked father, staring at it as if it were an
+animal that would bite.
+
+"Well," said Frank, "it was apparent that practising her fingers
+to the bone wouldn't do Shelley much good unless she could keep
+it up in summer, and you and mother always have done so much for
+the rest of us, and now mother isn't so strong and the expenses
+go on the same with these youngsters; we know you were figuring
+on it, but we beat you.  Put yours in the bank, and try the feel
+of a surplus once more.  Haven't had much lately, have you,
+father?"
+
+"Well, not to speak of," said father.
+
+"Now let's shut everything up, ring the bell to call them, and
+get Shelley in here and surprise her."
+
+"She's not very well," said father.  "Mother thinks she worked
+too hard."
+
+"She's all right now, father," I said.  "She is getting pink
+again and rounder, and this will fix her grand."
+
+Wouldn't it though!  There wasn't one anywhere, short of the
+city.  Even the Princess had none.  Father hunted up a song book,
+opened it and set it on the rack.  Then all of us went out.
+
+"We'll write to the boys, mother and I, and Shelley also," said
+father.  "I can't express myself just now.  This is a fine thing
+for all of you to do."
+
+Frank seemed to think so too, and looked rather puffed up, until
+Leon began telling about his horse.  When Frank found out that
+Laddie, who had not yet branched out for himself, had given Leon
+much more than any one of them had Shelley, he looked a little
+disappointed.  He explained how the piano cost eight hundred
+dollars, but by paying cash all at once, the man took seven
+hundred and fifty, so it only cost them one hundred and fifty a
+piece, and none of them felt it at all.
+
+"Sometimes the clouds loom up pretty black, and mother and I
+scarcely know how to go on, save for the help of the Lord, but we
+certainly are blest with good children, children we can be proud
+of.  Your mother will like that instrument as well as Shelley,
+son," said father.
+
+Frank went out and rang the bell, tolled it, and made a big noise
+like he always did when he came unexpectedly, and then sat on the
+back fence until he saw them coming, and went to meet them.  He
+walked between mother and Shelley, with an arm around each one. 
+If he thought Shelley looked badly, he didn't mention it.  What
+he did say was that he was starved, and to fly around and get
+supper.  I thought I'd burst.  They began to cook, and the boys
+went to feed and see Leon's horse, and then we had supper.  I
+just sat and stared at Frank and grinned.  I couldn't eat.
+
+"Do finish your supper," said mother.  "I never saw anything take
+your appetite like seeing your brother.  You'll be wanting a
+piece before bedtime."
+
+I didn't say a word, because I was afraid to, but I kept looking
+at Leon and he smiled back, and we had great fun.  Secrets are
+lovely.  Mother couldn't have eaten a bite if she'd known about
+that great shining thing, all full of wonderful sound, standing
+in our parlour.  When the last slow person had finished, father
+said:  "Shelley, won't you step into the front room and bring me
+that book I borrowed from Frank on `Taxation.' I want to talk
+over a few points."
+
+All of us heard her little breathless cry, and mother said,
+"There!" as if she'd been listening for something, and she beat
+all of us to the door.  Then she cried out too, and such a time
+as we did have.  At last after all of us had grown sensible
+enough to behave, Shelley sat on the stool, spread her fingers
+over the keys and played at the place father had selected, and
+all of us sang as hard as we could:  "Be it ever so humble,
+There's no place like home;" and there WAS no place like ours, of
+THAT I'm quite sure.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+In Faith Believing
+
+            "Nor could the bright green world around
+                 A joy to her impart,
+             For still she missed the eyes that made
+                 The summer of her heart."
+
+Soon as she had the piano, Shelley needed only the Paget man to
+make her happy as a girl could be; and having faith in that
+prayer, I decided to try it right away.  So I got Laddie to
+promise surely that he'd wake me when he got up the next morning.
+
+I laid my clothes out all ready; he merely touched my foot, and I
+came to, slipped out with him, and he helped me dress.  We went
+to the barn when the morning was all gray.
+
+"What the dickens have you got in your head now, Chicken?" he
+asked.  "Is it business with the Fairies?"
+
+"No, this is with the Most High," I said solemnly, like father. 
+"Go away and leave me alone."
+
+"Well of all the queer chickens!" he said, but he kissed me and
+went.
+
+I climbed the stairs to the threshing floor, then the ladder to
+the mow, walked a beam to the wall, there followed one to the
+east end, and another to the little, high-up ventilator window. 
+There I stood looking at the top of the world.  A gray mist was
+rising like steam from the earth, there was a curious colour in
+the east, stripes of orange and flames of red, where the sun was
+coming.  I folded my hands on the sill, faced the sky, and stood
+staring.  Just stood, and stood, never moving a muscle.  By and
+by I began to think how much we loved Shelley, how happy she had
+been at Christmas the way she was now, and how much all of us
+would give in money, or time, or love, to make her sparkling,
+bubbling, happy again; so I thought and thought, gazing at the
+sky, which every second became a grander sight.  Little cold
+chills began going up my back, and soon I was talking to the Lord
+exactly as if He stood before me on the reddest ray that topped
+our apple trees.
+
+I don't know all I said.  That's funny, for I usually remember to
+the last word; but this time it was so important, I wanted it so
+badly, and I was so in earnest that words poured in a stream.  I
+began by reminding Him that He knew everything, and so He'd
+understand if what I asked was for the best.  Then I told Him how
+it looked to us, who knew only a part; and then I went at Him and
+implored and beseeched, if it would be best for Shelley, and
+would make her happy, to send her the Paget man, and to be quick
+about it.  When I had said the last word that came to me, and
+begged all I thought becoming--I don't think with His face, that
+Jesus wants us to grovel to Him, at least He looks too dignified
+to do it Himself--I just stood there, still staring.
+
+I didn't expect to see a burning bush, or a pillar of fire, or a
+cloud of flame, or even to hear a small, still voice; but I
+watched, so I wouldn't miss it if there should be anything
+different in that sunrise from any other I ever had seen, and
+there was not.  Not one thing!  It was so beautiful, and I was so
+in earnest my heart hurt; but that was like any other sunrise on
+a fine July morning.  There wasn't the least sign that Jesus had
+heard me, and would send the man; yet before I knew it, I was
+amazed to find the feeling creeping over me that he was coming. 
+If I had held the letter in my hand saying he would arrive on the
+noon train, I couldn't have grown surer.  Why, I even looked down
+the first time I moved, to see if I had it; but I was certain
+anyway.  So I looked steadily toward the east once more and said,
+"Thank you, with all my heart, Lord Jesus," then I slowly made my
+way down and back to the house.
+
+Shelley was at the orchard gate, waiting; so I knew they had
+missed me, and Laddie had told them where I was and not to call. 
+She had the strangest look on her face, as she asked:  "Where
+have you been?"
+
+I looked straight and hard at her and said, "It's all right,
+Shelley.  He's going to come soon"; but I didn't think it was a
+thing to mouth over, so I twisted away from her, and ran to the
+kitchen to see if breakfast had all been eaten.  I left Shelley
+standing there with her eyes wide, also her mouth.  She looked
+about as intelligent as Mehitabel Heasty, and it wouldn't have
+surprised me if she had begun to jump up and down and say there
+were snakes in HER shoes.  No doubt you have heard of people
+having been knocked silly; I knew she was, and so she had a
+perfect right to look that way, until she could remember what she
+was doing, and come back to herself.  Maybe it took her longer,
+because mother wasn't there, to remind her about her mouth, and I
+didn't propose to mention it.
+
+At breakfast, mother said father was going to drive Frank home in
+the carriage, and if I would like, I might go along.  I would
+have to sit on the back seat alone, going; but coming home I
+could ride beside and visit with father.  I loved that, for you
+could see more from the front seat, and father would stop to
+explain every single thing.  He always gave me the money and let
+me pay the toll.  He would get me a drink at the spring, let me
+wade a few minutes at Enyard's riffles, where their creek, with
+the loveliest gravel bed, ran beside the road; and he always
+raced like wildfire at the narrows, where for a mile the railroad
+ran along the turnpike.
+
+We took Frank to his office, stopped a little while to visit
+Lucy, and give her the butter and cream mother sent, went to the
+store to see Peter, and then to the post-office.  From there we
+could see that the veranda of the hotel across the street was
+filled with gayly dressed people, and father said that the summer
+boarders from big cities around must be pouring in fast.  When he
+came out with the mail he said he better ask if the landlord did
+not want some of mother's corn and milk fed spring chickens,
+because last year he had paid her more than the grocer.  So he
+drove across the street, stopped at the curb, and left me to hold
+the team.
+
+Maybe you think I wasn't proud!  I've told you about Ned and Jo,
+with their sharp ears, dappled sides, and silky tails, and the
+carriage almost new, with leather seats, patent leather
+trimmings, and side lamps, so shiny you could see yourself in the
+brass.  We never drove into the barn with one speck of mud or
+dust on it.  That was how particular mother was.
+
+I watched the team carefully; I had to if I didn't want my neck
+broken; but I also kept an eye on that veranda.  You could see at
+a glance that those were stylish women.  Now my mother liked to
+be in fashion as well as any one could; so I knew she'd be
+mightily pleased if I could tell her a new place to set her comb,
+a different way to fasten her collar, or about an unusual pattern
+for a frock.
+
+I got my drink at the spring, father offered to stop at the
+riffle, but I was enjoying the ride so much, and I could always
+wade at home, although our creek was not so beautiful as
+Enyard's, but for common wading it would do; we went through the
+narrows, like two shakes of a sheep's tail, then we settled down
+to a slow trot, and were having the loveliest visit possible,
+when in the bundle on my lap, I saw the end of something that
+interested me.  Mr. Agnew always made our mail into a roll with
+the Advocate and the Agriculturist on the outside, and because
+every one was so anxious about their letters, and some of them
+meant so much, I felt grown and important while holding the
+package.
+
+I was gripping it tight when I noticed the end of one letter much
+wider and fatter than any I ever had seen, so when father was not
+looking I began pushing it a little at one end, and pulling it at
+the other, to work it up, until I could read the address.  I got
+it out so far I thought every minute he'd notice, and tell me not
+to do that, but I could only see Stanton.  All of us were
+Stanton, so it might be for me, for that matter.  Jerry might be
+sending me pictures, or a book, he did sometimes, but there was
+an exciting thing about it.  Besides being fatter than it looked
+right at the end, it was plastered with stamps--lots of them,
+enough to have brought it clear around the world.  I pushed that
+end back, pulled out the other, and took one good look.  I almost
+fell from the carriage.  I grabbed father's arm and cried: 
+"Stop!  Stop this team quick.  Stop them and see if I can read."
+
+"Are you crazy, child?" asked father, but he checked the horses.
+
+"No, but you are going to be in a minute," I said.  "Look at
+that!"
+
+I yanked the letter from the bundle, and held it over.  I THOUGHT
+I could read, but I was too scared to be sure.  I thought it said
+in big, strong, upstanding letters, Miss Shelley Stanton,
+Groveville, Indiana.  And in the upper corner, Blackburn, Yeats
+and PAGET, Counsellors of Law, 37 to 39 State St., Chicago.  I
+put my finger on the Paget, and looked into father's face.  I was
+no fool after all.  He was not a bit surer that HE could read
+than I was, from the dazed way he stared.
+
+"You see!" I said.
+
+"It says Paget!" he said, like he would come nearer believing; it
+if he heard himself pronounce the word.
+
+"I THOUGHT it said `Paget,'" I gasped, "but I wanted to know if
+you thought so too."
+
+"Yes, it's Paget plain enough," said father, but he acted like
+there was every possibility that it might change to Jones any
+minute.  "It says `Paget,' plain as print."
+
+"Father!" I cried, clutching his arm, "father, see how fat it is!
+
+There must be pages and pages!  Father, it wouldn't take all that
+to tell her he didn't like her, and he never wanted to see her
+again.  Would it, father?"
+
+"It doesn't seem probable," said father.
+
+"Father don't you think it means there's been some big mistake,
+and it takes so much to tell how it can be fixed?"
+
+"It seems reasonable."
+
+I gripped him tighter, and maybe shook him a little.
+
+"Father!" I cried.  "Father, doesn't it just look HURRY, all
+over?  Can't you speed up a little?  They have all day to cool
+off.  Oh father, won't you speed a little?"
+
+"That I will!" said father.  "Get a tight hold, and pray God it
+is good word we carry."
+
+"But I prayed the one big prayer to get this," I said.  "It
+wouldn't be sent if it wasn't good.  The thing to do now is to
+thank the Lord for `all his loving kindnesses,' like mother said.
+
+Drive father!  Make them go!"
+
+At first he only touched them up; I couldn't see that we were
+getting home so fast; but in a minute a cornfield passed like a
+streak, a piece of woods flew by a dark blur, a bridge never had
+time to rattle, and we began to rock from side to side a little. 
+Then I gripped the top supports with one hand, the mail with the
+other, and hung on for dear life.  I took one good look at
+father.
+
+His feet were on the brace, his face was clear, even white, his
+eyes steely, and he never moved a muscle.  When Jo thought it was
+funny, that he was loose in the pasture, and kicked up a little
+behind, father gave him a sharp cut with the whip and said: 
+"Steady boy!  Get along there!"
+
+Sometimes he said, "Aye, aye!  Easy!" but he never stopped a
+mite.  We whizzed past the church and cemetery, and scarcely
+touched the Big Hill.  People ran to their doors, even to the
+yards, and I was sure they thought we were having a runaway, but
+we were not.  Father began to stop at the lane gate, he pulled
+all the way past the garden, and it was as much as he could do to
+get them slowed down so that I could jump out by the time we
+reached the hitching rack.  He tied them, and followed me into
+the house instead of going to the barn.  I ran ahead calling: 
+"Shelley!  Where is Shelley?"
+
+"What in this world has happened, child?" asked mother, catching
+my arm.
+
+"Her letter has come!  Her Paget letter!  The one you looked for
+until you gave up.  It's come at last!  Oh, where is she?"
+
+"Be calmer, child, you'll frighten her," said mother.
+
+May snatched the letter from my fingers and began to read all
+that was on it aloud.  I burst out crying.
+
+"Make her give that back!" I sobbed to father.  "It's mine!  I
+found it.  Father, make her let me take it!"
+
+"Give it to her!" said father.  "I rather feel that it is her
+right to deliver it."
+
+May passed it back, but she looked so disappointed, that by how
+she felt I knew how much I wanted to take it myself; so I reached
+my hand to her and said:  "You can come along!  We'll both take
+it!  Oh where is she?"
+
+"She went down in the orchard," said mother.  "I think probably
+she's gone back where she was the other day."
+
+Gee, but we ran!  And there she was!  As we came up, she heard us
+and turned.
+
+"Shelley!" I cried.  "Here's your letter!  Everything is all
+right!  He's coming, Shelley!  Look quick, and see when!  Mother
+will want to begin baking right away!"
+
+Shelley looked at me, and said coolly:  "Paddy Ryan!  What's the
+matter?"
+
+"Your letter!" I cried, shoving it right against her hands. 
+"Your letter from Robert!  From the Paget man, you know!  I told
+you he was coming!  Hurry, and see when!"
+
+She took it, and sat there staring at it, so much like father,
+that it made me think of him, so I saw that she was going to have
+to come around to it as we did, and that one couldn't hurry her. 
+She just had to take her time to sense it.
+
+"Shall I open it for you?" I asked, merely to make her see that
+it was time she was doing it herself.
+
+Blest if she didn't reach it toward me!--sort of woodenlike.  I
+stuck my finger under the flap, gave it a rip across and emptied
+what was inside into her lap.  Bet there were six or seven
+letters in queer yellow envelopes I never before had seen any
+like, and on them was the name, Robert Paget, while in one corner
+it said, "Returned Dead Letter"; also there was a loose folded
+white sheet.  She sat staring at the heap, touching one, another,
+and repeating "Robert Paget?" as she picked each up in turn.
+
+"What do you suppose it means?" she asked May.  May examined
+them.
+
+"You must read the loose sheet," she advised.  "No doubt that
+will explain."
+
+But Shelley never touched it.  She handled those letters and
+stared at them.  Father and mother came through the orchard and
+stood together behind us, so father knelt down at last, reached
+across Shelley's shoulder, picked one up and looked at it.
+
+"Have you good word, dear?" asked mother of Shelley.
+
+"Why, I don't understand at all," said Shelley.  "Just look at
+all these queer letters, addressed to Mr. Paget.  Why should they
+be sent to me?  I mustn't open them.  They're not mine.  There
+must be some mistake."
+
+"These are DEAD LETTERS," said father.  "They've been written to
+you, couldn't be delivered, and so were sent to the Dead Letter
+Office at Washington, which returned them to the writer, and
+unopened he has forwarded them once more to you.  You've heard of
+dead letters, haven't you?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Shelley.  "I don't remember just now; but
+there couldn't be a better name.  They've come mighty near
+killing me."
+
+"If you'd only read that note!" urged May, putting it right into
+her fingers.
+
+Shelley still sat there.
+
+"I'm afraid of it," she said exactly like I'd have spoken if
+there had been a big rattlesnake coming right at me, when I'd
+nothing at hand to bruise it.
+
+Laddie and Leon came from the barn.  They had heard me calling,
+seen May and me run, and then father and mother coming down, so
+they walked over.
+
+"What's up?" asked Leon.  "Has Uncle Levi's will been discovered,
+and does mother get his Mexican mines?"
+
+"What have you got, Shelley?" asked Laddie, kneeling beside her,
+and picking up one of the yellow letters.
+
+"I hardly know," said Shelley.
+
+"I brought her a big letter with all those little ones and a note
+in it, and they are from the Paget man," I explained to him. 
+"But she won't even read the note, and see what he writes.  She
+says she's afraid."
+
+"Poor child!  No wonder!" said Laddie, sitting beside her and
+putting his arm around her.  "Suppose I read it for you.  May I?"
+
+"Yes," said Shelley.  "You read it.  Read it out loud.  I don't
+care."
+
+She leaned against him, while he unfolded the white sheet.
+
+"Umph!" he said.  "This DOES look bad for you.  It begins:  `My
+own darling Girl.'"
+
+"Let me see!" cried Shelley, suddenly straightening, and reaching
+her hand.
+
+Laddie held the page toward her, but she only looked, she didn't
+offer to touch it.
+
+"`My own darling Girl:'" repeated Laddie tenderly, making it mean
+just all he possibly could, because he felt so dreadfully sorry
+for her--"  `On my return to Chicago, from the trip to England I
+have so often told you I intended to make some time soon----'"
+
+"Did he?" asked mother.
+
+"Yes," answered Shelley.  "He couldn't talk about much else.  It
+was his first case.  It was for a friend of his who had been
+robbed of everything in the world; honour, relatives, home, and
+money.  If Robert won it, he got all that back for his friend and
+enough for himself--that he could--a home of his own, you know! 
+Read on, Laddie!"
+
+"`I was horrified to find on my desk every letter I had written
+you during my absence returned to me from the Dead Letter Office,
+as you see.'"
+
+"Good gracious!" cried mother, picking up one and clutching it
+tight as if she meant to see that it didn't get away again.
+
+"Go on!" cried Shelley.
+
+"`I am enclosing some of them as they came back to me, in proof
+of my statement.  I drove at once to your boarding place and
+found you had not been there for weeks, and your landlady was
+distinctly crabbed.  Then I went to the college, only to find
+that you had fallen ill and gone to your home.  That threw me
+into torments, and all that keeps me from taking the first train
+is the thought that perhaps you refused to accept these letters,
+for some reason.  Shelley, you did not, did you?  There is some
+mistake somewhere, is there not----'"
+
+"One would be led to think so," said father sternly.  "Seems as
+if he might have managed some way----"
+
+"Don't you blame him!" cried Shelley.  "Can't you see it's all my
+fault?  He'd been coming regularly, and the other girls envied
+me; then he just disappeared, and there was no word or anything,
+and they laughed and whispered until I couldn't endure it; so I
+moved in with Peter's cousin, as I wrote you; but that left Mrs.
+Fleet with an empty room in the middle of the term, and it made
+her hopping mad.  I bet anything she wouldn't give the postman my
+new address, to pay me back.  I left it, of course.  But if I'd
+been half a woman, and had the confidence I should have had in
+myself and in him----  Oh how I've suffered, and punished all of
+you----!"
+
+"Never you mind about that," said mother, stroking Shelley's
+hair.  "Likely there isn't much in Chicago to give a girl who
+never had been away from her family before, `confidence' in
+herself or any one else.  As for him--just disappearing like
+that, without a word or even a line----  Go on Laddie!"
+
+"`Surely, you knew that I was only waiting the outcome of this
+trip to tell you how dearly I love you.  Surely, you encouraged
+me in thinking you cared for me a little, Shelley.  Only a little
+will do to begin with----'"
+
+"You see, I DID have something to go on!" cried Shelley, wiping
+her eyes and straightening up.
+
+"`No doubt you misunderstood and resented my going without coming
+to explain, and bid you good-bye in person, but Shelley, _I_
+SIMPLY DARED NOT.  You see, it was this way:  I got a cable about
+the case I was always talking of, and the only man who could give
+the testimony I MUST HAVE was dying!'"
+
+"For land's sake!  The poor boy!" cried mother, patting Shelley's
+shoulder.
+
+"`An hour's delay might mean the loss of everything in the world
+to me, even you.  For if I lost any time, and the man escaped me,
+there was no hope of winning my case, and everything, even you,
+as I said before, depended on him----'"
+
+"Good Lord!  I mean land!" cried Leon.
+
+"`If I could catch the train in an hour, I could take a boat at
+New York, and go straight through with no loss of time.  So I
+wrote you a note that probably said more than I would have
+ventured in person, and paid a boy to deliver it.'"
+
+"Kept the money and tore up the note, I bet!" said May.
+
+"`I wrote on the train, but found after sailing that I had rushed
+so I had failed to post it in New York.  I kept on writing every
+day on the boat, and mailed you six at Liverpool.  All the time I
+have written frequently; there are many more here that this
+envelope will not hold, that I shall save until I hear from
+you.'"
+
+"Well, well!" said father.
+
+"`Shelley, I beat death, reached my man, got the testimony I had
+to have, and won my case.'"
+
+"Glory!" cried mother.  "Praise the Lord!"
+
+"`Then I scoured England, and part of the continent, hunting some
+interested parties; and when I was so long finding them, and
+still no word came from you, I decided to come back and get you,
+if you would come with me, and go on with the work together.'"
+
+"Listen to that!  More weddings!" cried Leon.  He dropped on his
+knees before Shelley.  "Will you marry me, my pretty maid?" he
+begged.
+
+"Young man, if you cut any capers right now, I'll cuff your
+ears!" cried father.  "This is no proper time for your
+foolishness!"
+
+"`Shelley, I beg that you will believe me, and if you care for me
+in the very least, telegraph if I may come.  Quick!  I'm half
+insane to see you.  I have many things to tell you, first of all
+how dear you are to me.  Please telegraph.  Robert.'"
+
+"Saddle a horse, Leon!" father cried as he unstrapped his wallet.
+
+"Laddie, take down her message."
+
+"Can you put it into ten words?" asked Laddie.
+
+"Mother, what would you say?" questioned Shelley.
+
+Leon held up his fingers and curled down one with each word. 
+"Say, `Dear Robert.  Well and happy.  Come when you get ready.'"
+
+"But then I won't know when he's coming," objected Shelley.  "You
+don't need to," said Leon.  "You can take it for granted from
+that epistolary effusion that he won't let the grass grow under
+his feet while coming here.  That's a bully message!  It sounds
+as if you weren't crazy over him, and it's a big compliment to
+mother.  Looks as if she didn't have to know when people are
+coming--like she's ready all the time."
+
+"Write it out and let me see," said Shelley.
+
+So Laddie wrote it, and she looked at it a long time, it seemed
+to me, at last she said:  "I don't like that `get.'  It doesn't
+sound right.  Wouldn't `are' be better?"
+
+"Come when you are ready," repeated Laddie.  "Yes, that's better.
+
+`Get' sounds rather saucy."
+
+"Why not put it, `Come when you choose?'" suggested mother. 
+"That will leave a word to spare, so it won't look as if you had
+counted them and used exactly ten on purpose, and it doesn't
+sound as if you expected him to make long preparations, like the
+other.  That will leave it with him to start whenever he likes."
+
+"Yes! yes!" cried Shelley.  "That's much better!  Say, `Come when
+you choose!'"
+
+"Right!" said Laddie as he wrote it.  "Now I'll take this!"
+
+"Oh no you won't!" cried Leon.  "Father told me to saddle my
+horse.  She's got enough speed in her to beat yours a mile.  I
+take that!  Didn't you say for me to saddle, father?"
+
+"Such important business, I think I better," said Laddie, and
+Leon began to cry.
+
+"I think you should both go," said Shelley.  "It is so important,
+and if one goes to make a mistake, maybe the other will notice
+it."
+
+"Yes, that's the best way," said mother.
+
+"Yes, both go," said father.
+
+It was like one streak when they went up the Big Hill.  Father
+shook his head.  "Poor judgment--that," he said.  "Never run a
+horse up hill!"
+
+"But they're in such a hurry," Shelley reminded him.
+
+"So they are," said father.  "In this case I might have broken
+the rule myself.  Now come all of you, and let the child get at
+her mail."
+
+"But I want you to stay," said Shelley.  "I'm so addle-pated this
+morning.  I need my family to help me."
+
+"Of course you do, child," said mother.  "Families were made to
+cling together, and stand by each other in every circumstance of
+life--joy or sorrow.  Of course you need your family."
+
+May began sorting the letters by dates so Shelley could start on
+the one that had been written first.  Father ran his knife across
+the top of each, and cut all the envelopes, and Shelley took out
+the first and read it; that was the train one.  In it he told her
+about sending the boy with the note again, and explained more
+about how it was so very important for him to hurry, because the
+only man who could help him was so sick.  We talked it over, and
+all of us thought the boy had kept the money and torn up the
+note.  Father said the way would have been to send the note and
+pay the boy when he came back; but Shelley said Mr. Paget would
+have been gone before the boy got back, so father saw that
+wouldn't have been the way, in such a case.
+
+Next she read one written on the boat.  He told more about
+sending the boy; how he loved her, what it would mean to both of
+them if he got the evidence he wanted and won his first case; and
+how much it would bring his friend.  The next one told it all
+over again, and more.  In that he wrote a little about the ocean,
+the people on board the ship, and he gave Shelley the name of the
+place where he was going and begged her to write to him.  He told
+her if the ship he was on passed another, they were going to stop
+and send back the mail.  He begged her to write often, and to say
+she forgave him for starting away without seeing her, as he had
+been forced to.
+
+The next one was the same thing over, only a little more yet.  In
+the last he had reached England, the important man was still
+living, but he was almost gone, and Mr. Paget took two good
+witnesses, all the evidence he had, and went to see him; and the
+man saw it was no use, so he made a statement, and Robert had it
+all written out, signed and witnessed.  For the real straight
+sense there was in that letter, I could have done as well myself.
+
+It was a wild jumble, because Robert was so crazy over having the
+evidence that would win his case; and he told Shelley that now he
+was perfectly free to love her all she would allow him.  He said
+he had to stay a while longer to find his friend's people so they
+would get back their share of the money, but it was not going to
+be easy to locate them.  You wouldn't think the world so big, but
+maybe it seemed smaller to me because as far as I could see from
+the top of our house, was all I knew about it.  After Shelley had
+read the letters, and the note again, father heaved a big sigh
+that seemed to come clear from his boot soles and he said:  "Well
+Shelley, it looks to me as if you had found a MAN.  Seems to me
+that's a mighty important case for a young lawyer to be trusted
+with, in a first effort."
+
+"Yes, but it was for Robert's best friend, and only think, he has
+won!"
+
+"I don't see how he could have done better if he'd been old as
+Methuselah, and wise as Solomon," boasted mother.
+
+"But he hasn't found the people who must have back their money,"
+said May.  "He will have to go to England again.  And he wants to
+take you, Shelley.  My!  You'll get to sail on a big steamer,
+cross the Atlantic Ocean, and see London.  Maybe you'll even get
+a peep at the Queen!"
+
+Shelley was busy making a little heap of her letters; when the
+top one slid off I reached over and put it back for her.  She
+looked straight at me, and smiled the most wonderful and the most
+beautiful smile I ever saw on any one's face, so I said to her: 
+"You see! I TOLD you he was coming!"
+
+"I can't understand it!" said Shelley.
+
+"YOU KNOW I told you."
+
+"Of course I do!  But what made you think so?"
+
+"That was the answer.  Just that he was coming."
+
+"What are you two talking about?" asked mother.
+
+Shelley looked at me, and waited for me to tell mother as much as
+I wanted to, of what had happened.  But I didn't think things
+like that were to be talked about before every one, so I just
+said:
+
+"Oh nothing!  Only, I told Shelley this very morning that the
+Paget man was coming soon, and that everything was going to be
+all right."
+
+"You did?  Well of all the world!  I can't see why."
+
+"Oh something told me! I just FELT that way."
+
+"More of that Fairy nonsense?" asked father sharply.
+
+"No.  I didn't get that from the Fairies."
+
+"Well, never mind!" said Shelley, rising, because she saw that I
+had told all I wanted to.  "Little Sister DID tell me this
+morning that he was coming, that everything would be made right,
+and it's the queerest thing, but instantly I believed her. 
+Didn't I sing all morning, mother?  The first note since Robert
+didn't come when I expected him in Chicago, weeks ago."
+
+"Yes," said mother.  "That's a wonderfully strange thing.  I
+can't see what made you think so."
+
+"Anyway, I did!" I said.  "Now let's go have dinner.  I'm
+starving."
+
+I caught May's hand, and ran to get away from them.  Father and
+mother walked one on each side of Shelley, while with both hands
+she held her letters before her.  When we reached the house we
+just talked about them all the time.  Pretty soon the boys were
+back, and then they told about sending the telegram.  Leon vowed
+he gave the operator a dime extra to start that message with a
+shove, so it would go faster.
+
+"It will go all right," said Laddie, "and how it will go won't be
+a circumstance to the way he'll come.  If there's anything we
+ought to do, before he gets here, we should hustle.  Chicago
+isn't a thousand miles away.  That message can reach him by two
+o'clock, it's probable he has got ready while he was waiting, so
+he will start on the first train our way.  He could reach
+Groveville on the ten, to-morrow.  We better meet it."
+
+"Yes, we'll meet it," said mother.  "Is the carriage perfectly
+clean?"
+
+Father said:  "It must be gone over.  Our general manager here
+ordered me to speed up, and we drove a little coming from town."
+
+Mother went to planning what else should be done.
+
+"Don't do anything!" cried Shelley.  "The house is all right. 
+There's no need to work and worry into a sweat.  He won't notice
+or care how things look."
+
+"I miss my guess if he doesn't notice and care very much indeed,"
+said mother emphatically.  "Men are not blind.  No one need think
+they don't see when things are not as they should be, just
+because they're not cattish enough to let you know it, like a
+woman always does.  Shelley, wouldn't you like to ride over and
+spend the afternoon with the Princess?"
+
+"Nope!" said Shelley.  "It's her turn to come to see me. 
+Besides, you don't get me out of the way like that.  I know what
+you'll do here, and I intend to help."
+
+"Do you need one of the boys at the house?" asked father, and if
+you'll believe it, both of them wanted to stay.
+
+Father said he must have one to help wash the carriage and do a
+little fixing around the barn; so he took Leon, but he didn't
+like to go.  He said:  "I don't see what all this fuss is about,
+anyway.  Probably he'll be another Peter."
+
+Shelley looked at him:  "Oh Mr. Paget isn't nearly so large as
+Peter," she said, "and his hair is whiter than yours, while his
+eyes are not so blue."
+
+"Saints preserve us!" cried Leon.  "Come on, father, let's only
+dust the carriage!  He's not worth washing it for."
+
+"Is he like that?" asked mother anxiously.
+
+"Wait and see!" said Shelley.  "Looks don't make a man.  He has
+proved what he can do."
+
+Then all of us went to work.  Before night we were hunting over
+the yard, and beside the road, to see if we could find anything
+to pick up.  Six chickens were in the cellar, father was to bring
+meat and a long list of groceries from town in the morning.  He
+was to start early, get them before train time, put them under
+the back seat, and take them out after he drove into the lane,
+when he came back.  That made a little more trouble for father,
+but there was not the slightest necessity for making Mr. Paget
+feel that he had ridden in a delivery wagon.
+
+Next morning I wakened laughing softly, because some one was
+fussing with my hair, patting my face, and kissing me, so I put
+up my arms and pulled that loving person down on my pillow, and
+gave back little half-asleep kisses, and slept on; but it was
+Shelley, and she gently shook me and began repeating that fool
+old thing I have been waked up with half the mornings of my life:
+
+        "Get up, Little Sister, the morning is bright,
+         The birds are all singing to welcome the light,
+         Get up; for when all things are merry and glad,
+         Good children should never be lazy and sad;
+         For God gives us daylight, dear sister, that we
+         May rejoice like the lark and work like the bee."
+
+
+Usually I'd have gone on sleeping, but Shelley was so sweet and
+lovely, and she kissed me so hard, that I remembered it was going
+to be a most exciting day, so I came to quick as snap and jumped
+right up, for I didn't want to miss a single thing that might
+happen.
+
+The carriage was shining when it came to the gate, so was father.
+
+I thought there was going to be a vacant seat beside him, and I
+asked if I might go along.  He said:  "Yes, if mother says so." 
+He always would stick that in.  So I ran to ask her, and she
+didn't care, if Shelley made no objections.  I was just starting
+to find her, when here she came, all shining too, but Laddie was
+with her.  I hadn't known that he was going, and I was so
+disappointed I couldn't help crying.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Shelley.
+
+"Father and mother both said I might go, if you didn't care."
+
+"Why, I'm dreadfully sorry," said Shelley, "but I have several
+things I want Laddie to do for me."
+
+Laddie stooped down to kiss me good-bye and he said:  "Don't cry,
+Little Sister.  The way to be happy is to be good."
+
+Then they drove to Groveville, and we had to wait.  But there was
+so much to do, it made us fly to get all of it finished.  So
+mother sent Leon after Mrs. Freshett to help in the kitchen,
+while Candace wore her white dress, and waited on the table. 
+Mother cut flowers for the dining table, and all through the
+house.  She left the blinds down to keep the rooms cool, chilled
+buttermilk to drink, and if she didn't think of every single,
+least little thing, I couldn't see what it was.  Then all of us
+put on our best dresses.  Mother looked as glad and sweet as any
+girl, when she sat to rest a little while.  I didn't dare climb
+the catalpa in my white dress, so I watched from the horse block,
+and when I saw the grays come over the top of the hill, I ran to
+tell.  As mother went to the gate, she told May and me to walk
+behind, to stay back until we were spoken to, and then to keep
+our heads level, and remember our manners.  I don't know where
+Leon went.  He said he lost all interest when he found there was
+to be another weak-eyed towhead in the family, and I guess he was
+in earnest about it, because he wasn't even curious enough to be
+at the gate when Mr. Paget came.
+
+Father stopped with a flourish, Laddie hurried around and helped
+Shelley, and then Mr. Paget stepped down.  Goodness, gracious,
+sakes alive!  Little?  Towhead?  He was taller than Laddie.  His
+hair was most as black as ink, and wavy.  His eyes were big and
+dark; he was broad and strong and there was the cleanest,
+freshest look about him.  He put his arm spang around Shelley,
+right there in the road, and mother said:  "Hold there!  Not so
+fast, young man!  I haven't given my consent to that."
+
+He laughed, and he said:  "Yes, but you'ah going to!"  And he put
+his other arm around mother, so May and I crowded up, and we had
+a family reunion right between the day lilies and the snowball
+bush.  We went into the house, and he LIKED us, his room, and
+everything went exactly right.  He was crazy about the cold
+buttermilk, and while he was drinking it Leon walked into the
+dining-room, because he thought of course Mr. Paget and Shelley
+would be on the davenport in the parlour.  When he saw Robert he
+said lowlike to Shelley:  "Didn't Mr. Paget come?  Who's that?"
+
+Shelley looked so funny for a minute, then she remembered what
+she had told him and she just laughed as she said:  "Mr. Paget,
+this is my brother."
+
+Robert went to shake hands, and Leon said right to his teeth: 
+"Well a divil of a towhead you are!"
+
+"Towhead?" said Robert, bewildered-like.
+
+"Shelley said you were a little bit of a man, with watery blue
+eyes, and whiter hair than mine."
+
+"Oh I say!" cried Robert.  "She must have been stringin' you!"
+
+Leon just whooped; because while Mr. Paget didn't talk like the
+'orse, 'ouse people, he made you think of them in the way he said
+things, and the sound of his voice.  Then we had dinner, and I
+don't remember that we ever had quite such a feast before. 
+Mother had put on every single flourish she knew.  She used her
+very best dishes, and linen, and no cook anywhere could beat
+Candace alone; now she had Mrs. Freshett to help her, and mother
+also.  If she tried to show Mr. Paget, she did it!  No visitor
+was there except him, but we must have been at the table two
+hours talking, and eating from one dish after another.  Candace
+LIKED to wear her white dress, and carry things around, and they
+certainly were good.
+
+And talk!  Father, Laddie, and Robert talked over all creation. 
+Every once in a while when mother saw an opening, she put in her
+paddle, and no one could be quicker, when she watched sharp and
+was trying to make a good impression.  Shelley was very quiet;
+she scarcely spoke or touched that delicious food.  Once the
+Paget man turned to her, looking at her so fondlike, as he picked
+up one of her sauce dishes and her spoon and wanted to feed her. 
+And he said:  "Heah child, eat your dinnah!  You have nawthing to
+be fussed ovah!  I mean to propose to you, and your parents
+befowr night.  That is what I am heah for."
+
+Every one laughed so, Shelley never got the bite; but after that
+she perked up more and ate a little by herself.
+
+At last father couldn't stand it any longer, so he began asking
+Robert about his trip to England, and the case he had won.  When
+the table was cleared for dessert, Mr. Paget asked mother to have
+Candace to bring his satchel.  He opened it and spread papers all
+over, so that father and Laddie could see the evidence, while he
+told them how it was.
+
+It seemed there was a law in England, all of us knew about it,
+because father often had explained it.  This law said that a man
+who had lots of money and land must leave almost all of it to his
+eldest son; and the younger ones must go into law, the army, be
+clergymen, or enter trade and earn a living, while the eldest
+kept up the home place.  Then he left it to his eldest son, and
+his other boys had to work for a living.  It kept the big estates
+together; but my! it was hard on the younger sons, and no one
+seemed even to think about the daughters.  I never heard them
+mentioned.
+
+Now there was a very rich man; he had only two sons, and each of
+them married, and had one son.  The younger son died, and sent
+his boy for his elder brother to take care of.  He pretended to
+be good, but for sure, he was bad as ever he could be.  He knew
+that if his cousin were out of the way, all that land and money
+would be his when his uncle died.  So he went to work and he
+tried for years, and a lawyer man who had no conscience at all,
+helped him.  At last when they had done everything they could
+think of, they took a lot of money and put it in the pocket of
+the son they wanted to ruin; then when his father missed the
+money, and the house was filled with policemen, detectives, and
+neighbours, the bad man said he'd feel more comfortable to have
+the family searched too, merely as a formality, so he stepped out
+and was gone over, and when the son's turn came, there was the
+money on him!  That made him a public disgrace to his family, and
+a criminal who couldn't inherit the estate, and his father went
+raving mad and tried to kill him, so he had to run away.  At
+first he didn't care what he did, so he came over here.  Robert
+said that man was his best friend, and as men went, he was a
+decent fellow, so he cheered him up all he could, and went to
+work with all his might to prove he was innocent, and to get back
+his family, and his money for him.
+
+When Robert had enough evidence that he was almost ready to start
+to England, his man got a cable from an old friend of his
+father's, who always had believed in him, and it said that the
+bad man was dying--to come quick.  So Robert went all of a
+sudden, like the Dead Letters told about.  Now, he described how
+he reached there, took the old friend of the father of his friend
+with him, and other witnesses, and all the evidence he had, and
+went to see the sick man.  When Robert showed him what he could
+prove, the bad man said it was no use, he had to die in a few
+days, so he might as well go with a clean conscience, and he told
+about everything he had done.  Robert had it all written out,
+signed and sworn to.  He told about all of it, and then he said
+to father:  "Have I made it clear to you?"
+
+Leon was so excited he forgot all the manners he ever had, for he
+popped up before father could open his head, and cried: "Clear as
+mud!  I got that son business so plain in my mind, I'd know the
+party of the first part, from the party of the second part, if I
+met him promenading on the Stone Wall of China!"
+
+Father and Laddie knew so much law they asked dozens of
+questions; but that Robert man wasn't a smidgin behind, for every
+clip he had the answer ready, and then he could go on and tell
+much more than he had been asked.  He said as a Case, it was a
+pretty thing to work on; but it was much more than a case to him,
+because he always had known that his friend was not guilty; that
+he was separated from his family, suffering terribly under the
+disgrace, and they must be also.  He had worked for life for his
+friend, because the whole thing meant so much to both of them. 
+He said he must go back soon and finish up a little more that he
+should have done while he was there, if it hadn't been that he
+received no word from Shelley.
+
+"When I didn't heah from heh for so long, and wrote so many
+letters, and had no reply, I thought possibly some gay `young
+Lochinvah had come out from the west,' and taken my sweet 'eart,"
+he said, "and while I had my armour on, I made up my mind that
+I'd give him a fight too.  I didn't propose to lose Shelley, if
+it were in my powah to win heh.  I hadn't been able to say to heh
+exactly what I desiahed, on account of getting a start alone in
+this country; but if I won this case, I would have ample means. 
+When I secuahed the requiahed evidence, I couldn't wait to
+finish, so I came straight ovah, to make sure of heh."
+
+He arose and handed the satchel to father.
+
+"I notice you have a very good looking gun convenient," he said. 
+"Would you put these papahs where you consider them safe until
+I'm ready to return?  Our home, our living, and the honah of a
+man are there, and we are mighty particular about that bag, are
+we not, Shelley?"
+
+"Well I should think we are!" cried Shelley.  "For goodness sake,
+father, hang to it!  Is the man still living?  Could you get that
+evidence over again?"
+
+"He was alive when I left, but the doctors said ten days would be
+his limit, so he may be gone befowr this."
+
+Father picked up the satchel, set it on his knees, and stroked it
+as if it were alive.
+
+"Well!  Well!" he said.  "Now would any one think such a little
+thing could contain so much?"
+
+Shelley leaned toward Robert.
+
+"Your friend!" she cried, "Your friend!  What DID he say to you? 
+What did he DO?"
+
+"Well, for a time he was wildly happy ovah having the stain
+removed from his honah, and knowing that he would have his family
+and faw'tn back; but there is an extremely sad feature to his
+case that is not yet settled, so he must keep his head level
+until we work that out.  Now about that hoss you wanted to show
+me----" he turned to Leon.
+
+Mother gave the signal, and we left the table.  Father carried
+the satchel to his chest, made room for it, locked it in and put
+the key in his pocket.  Then our men started to the barn to show
+the Arab-Kentucky horse.  Mr. Paget went to Shelley and took her
+in his arms exactly like Peter did Sally before the parlour door
+that time when I got into trouble, and he looked at mother and
+laughed as he said:  "I hope you will excuse me, but I"e been
+having a very nawsty, anxious time, and I cawn't conform to the
+rules for a few days, until I become accustomed to the fawct that
+Shelley is not lost to me.  It was beastly when I reached
+Chicago, had back all my letters, and found she had gone home
+ill.  I've much suffering to recompense.  I'll atone for a small
+portion immediately."
+
+He lifted Shelley right off the floor--that's how big and strong
+he was--he hugged her tight, and kissed her forehead, cheeks, and
+eyes.
+
+"When I've gone through the fahmality of asking your parents for
+you, and they have said a gracious `yes,' I'll put the fust one
+on your lips," he said, setting her down carefully.  "In the
+meantime, you be fixing your mouth to say, `yes,' also, when I
+propose to you, because it's coming befowr you sleep."
+
+Shelley was like a peach blossom.  She reached up and touched his
+cheek, while she looked at mother all smiling, and sparkling, as
+she said:  "You see!"
+
+Mother smiled back.
+
+"I do, indeed!" she answered.
+
+Leon pulled Mr. Paget's sleeve.
+
+"Aw quit lally-gaggin' and come see a real horse," he said.
+
+Robert put his other arm around Leon, drew him to his side and
+hugged him as if he were a girl.  "I'm so glad Shelley has a
+lawge family," he said.  "Big families are jolly.  I'm so proud
+of all the brothers I'm going to have.  I was the only boy at
+home."
+
+"You haven't told us about your family," said mother.
+
+"No," said Robert, "but I intend to.  I have a family!  One of
+the finest on uth.  We'll talk about them after this hoss is
+inspected."
+
+He let Shelley go and walked away, his arm still around Leon. 
+Shelley ran to mother and both of them sobbed out loud.
+
+"NOW YOU SEE HOW IT WAS!" she said.
+
+"You poor child!" cried mother.  "Indeed I DO see how it was. 
+You've been a brave girl.  A good, brave girl!  Father and I are
+mighty proud of you!"
+
+"Oh mother!  I thought you were ashamed of me!" sobbed Shelley.
+
+"Oh my child!" said mother quavery-like.  "Oh my child!  You
+surely see that none of us could understand, as we do now."
+
+She patted Shelley, and told her to run upstairs and lie down for
+a while, because she was afraid she would be sick.
+
+"We mustn't have a pale, tired girl right now," said mother.
+
+Well!" said Shelley, but she just stood there holding mother.
+
+"Well?" said mother gripping her.
+
+"You see!" said Shelley.
+
+"Child," said mother, "I DO see!  I see six feet of as handsome
+manhood as I ever have seen anywhere.  His manner is perfect, and
+I find his speech most attractive.  I am delighted with him.  I
+do see indeed!  Your father is quite as proud and pleased as I
+am.  Now go to bed."
+
+Shelley held up her lips, and then went.  I ran to the barn,
+where the men were standing in the shade, while Leon led his
+horse up and down before them, told about its pedigree, its
+record, how he came to have it.  The Paget man stood there
+looking and listening gravely, as he studied the horse.  At last
+he went over her, and gee! but he knew horse!  Then Laddie
+brought out Flos and they talked all about her, and then went
+into the barn.  Father opened the east doors to show how much
+land he had, which were his lines; and while the world didn't
+look quite so pretty as it had in May, still it was good enough. 
+Then they went into the orchard, sat under the trees and began
+talking about business conditions.  That was so dry I went back
+to the house.  And maybe I didn't strike something interesting
+there!
+
+As I came up the orchard path to a back yard gate, I saw a
+carriage at the hitching rack in front of the house, so I took a
+peep and almost fell over.  It was the one the Princess had come
+to Sally's wedding in; so I knew she was in the house visiting
+Shelley.  I went to the parlour and there I had another shock;
+for lo and behold! in our big rocking chair, and looking as well
+as any one, so far as you could see--of course you can't see
+heart trouble, though--sat Mrs. Pryor.  The Princess and mother
+were there, all of them talking, laughing and having the best
+time, while on the davenport enjoying himself as much as any one,
+was Mr. Pryor.  They talked about everything, and it was easy to
+see that the Pryor door was OPEN so far as we were concerned,
+anyway.  Mrs. Pryor was just as nice and friendly as she could
+be, and so was he.  Shelley sat beside him, and he pinched her
+cheek and said:  "Something seems to make you especially
+brilliant today, young woman!"
+
+Shelley flushed redder, laughed, and glanced at mother, so she
+said:  "Shelley is having a plain old-fashioned case of beau. 
+She met a young man in Chicago last fall and he's here now to ask
+our consent.  All of us are quite charmed with him.  That's why
+she's so happy."
+
+Then the Princess sprang up and kissed Shelley, so did Mrs.
+Pryor, while such a chatter you never heard.  No one could repeat
+what they said, for as many as three talked at the same time.
+
+"Oh do let's have a double wedding!" cried the Princess when the
+excitement was over a little.  "I think it would be great fun; do
+let's!  When are you planning for?"
+
+"Nothing is settled yet," said Shelley.  "We've had no time to
+talk!"
+
+"Mercy!" cried the Princess.  "Go make your arrangements quickly!
+
+Hurry up, then come over, and we'll plan for the same time.  It
+will be splendid!  Don't you think that would be fine, Mrs.
+Stanton?"
+
+"I can't see any objections to it," said mother.
+
+"Where is your young man?  I'm crazy to see him," cried the
+Princess.  "If you have gone and found a better looking one than
+mine, I'll never speak to you again."
+
+"She hasn't!" cried Mrs. Pryor calmly, like that settled it.  I
+like her.  "They're not made!"
+
+"I am not so sure of that," said Shelley proudly.  "Mother, isn't
+my man quite as good looking, and as nice in every way, as
+Laddie?"
+
+"Fully as handsome, and so far as can be seen in such a short
+time, quite as fine," said mother.
+
+I was perfectly amazed at her; as if any man could be!
+
+"I don't believe it, I won't stand it, and I shan't go home until
+I have seen for myself!" cried the Princess, laughing, and yet it
+sounded as if she were half-provoked, and I knew I was.  The
+Paget man was all right, but I wasn't going to lose my head over
+him.  Laddie was the finest, of course!
+
+"Well, he's somewhere on the place with our men, this minute,"
+said Shelley, "but you stay for supper, and meet him."
+
+"When you haven't your arrangements made yet!  You surely are
+unselfish!  Of course I won't do that, but I'd love to have one
+little peep, then you bring him and come over to-morrow, so all
+of us can become acquainted, and indeed, I'm really in earnest
+about a double wedding."
+
+"Go see where the men are," said Shelley to me.
+
+I went to the back door, and their heads were bobbing far down in
+the orchard.
+
+"They're under the greening apple tree," I reported.
+
+"If you will excuse us," said Shelley to Mr. and Mrs. Pryor,
+"we'll walk down a few minutes and prove that I'm right."
+
+"Don't stay," said Mrs. Pryor.  "This trip is so unusual for me
+that I'm quite tired.  For a first venture, in such a long time,
+I think I've done well.  But now I'm beginning to feel I should
+go home."
+
+"Go straight along," said the Princess.  "I'll walk across the
+fields, or Thomas can come back after me."
+
+So Mr. and Mrs. Pryor went away, while the Princess, Shelley,
+May, and I walked through the orchard toward the men.  They were
+standing on the top of the hill looking over the meadow, and
+talking with such interest they didn't hear us or turn until
+Shelley said:  "Mr. Paget, I want to present you to Laddie's
+betrothed--Miss Pamela Pryor."
+
+He swung around, finishing what he was saying as he turned, the
+Princess took a swift step toward him, then, at the same time,
+both of them changed to solid tombstone, and stood staring, and
+so did all of us, while no one made a sound.  At last the Paget
+man drew a deep, quivery breath and sort of shook himself as he
+gazed at her.
+
+"Why, Pam!" he cried.  "Darling Pam, cawn it possibly be you?"
+
+If you ever heard the scream of a rabbit when the knives of a
+reaper cut it to death, why that's exactly the way she cried out.
+
+She covered her eyes with her hands.  He drew back and smiled,
+the red rushed into his face, and he began to be alive again. 
+Laddie went to the Princess and took her hands.
+
+"What does this mean?" he begged.
+
+She pulled away from him, and went to the Paget man slowly, her
+big eyes wild and strained.
+
+"Robert!" she cried.  "Robert! how did you get here?  Were you
+hunting us?"
+
+"All ovah England, yes," he said.  "Not heah!  I came heah to see
+Shelley.  But you?  How do you happen to be in this country?"
+
+"We've lived on adjoining land for two years!"
+
+"You moved heah!  To escape the pity of our friends?"
+
+"Father moved!  Mother and I had no means, and no refuge.  We
+were forced.  We never believed it!  Oh Robert, we never--not for
+a minute!  Oh Robert, say you never did it!"
+
+"Try our chawming cousin Emmet your next guess!"
+
+"That devil!  Oh that devil!"
+
+She cried out that hurt way again, so he took her tight in his
+arms; but sure as ever Laddie was my brother, he was hers, so
+that was all right.  When they were together you wondered why in
+this world you hadn't thought of it the instant you saw him
+alone.  They were like as two peas.  They talked exactly the
+same, only he sounded much more so, probably from having just
+been in England for weeks, while in two years she had grown a
+little as we were.  We gazed at them, open-mouthed, like as not,
+and no one said a word.
+
+At last Mr. Paget looked over the Princess' shoulder at father
+and said:  "I can explain this, Mr. Stanton, in a very few wuds. 
+I am my friend.  The case was my own.  The evidence I secuahed
+was for myself.  This is my only sisteh.  Heh people are
+mine----"
+
+"The relationship is apparent," said father.  "There is a
+striking likeness between you and your sister, and I can discern
+traces of your parents in your face, speech and manner."
+
+"If you know my father," said Robert, "then you undehstand what
+happened to me when I was found with his money on my pehson, in
+the presence of our best friends and the police.  He went raving
+insane on the instant, and he would have killed me if he hadn't
+been prevented; he tried to; has he changed any since, Pam?"
+
+The Princess was clinging to him with both hands, staring at him,
+wonder, joy, and fear all on her lovely face.
+
+"Worse!" she cried.  "He's much worse!  The longer he broods, the
+more mother grieves, the bitterer he becomes.  Mr. Stanton, he is
+always armed.  He'll shoot on sight.  Oh what shall we do?"
+
+"Miss Pamela," said Leon, "did your man Thomas know your brother
+in England?"
+
+"All his life."
+
+"Well, then, we'd better be doing something quick.  He tied the
+horses and was walking up and down the road while he waited, and
+he saw us plainly when we crossed the wood yard a while ago.  He
+followed us and stared so, I couldn't help noticing him."
+
+"Jove!" cried Robert.  "I must have seen him in the village this
+morning.  A man reminded me of him, then I remembered how like
+people of his type are, and concluded I was mistaken.  Mr.
+Stanton, you have agreed that the evidence I hold is sufficient. 
+Pam cawn tell you that while I don't deny being full of tricks as
+a boy, they weh not dirty, not low, and while father always
+taking Emmet's paht against me drove me to recklessness
+sometimes, I nevah did anything underhand or disgraceful.  She
+knows what provocation I had, and exactly what happened.  Let heh
+tell you!"
+
+"I don't feel that I require any further information," said
+father.  "You see, I happen to be fairly well acquainted with Mr.
+Pryor."
+
+"Pryor?"
+
+"He made us use that name here," explained the Princess.
+
+"WELL, HIS NAME IS PAGET!" said Robert angrily.
+
+Laddie told me long ago he didn't believe it was Pryor.
+
+"Then, if you are acquainted with my father, what would you
+counsel?  Unless I'm prepahed to furnish the central figyah of
+interest in a funeral, I dare not meet him, until he has seen
+this evidence, had time to digest it, and calm himself."
+
+Shelley caught him by the arm.  No wonder!  She hadn't been
+proposed to, or even had a kiss on her lips.  She pulled him.
+
+"You come straight to the house," she said.  "Thomas may tell
+your father he thought he saw you."
+
+That was about as serious as anything could be, but nothing ever
+stopped Leon.  He sidled away from father, repeating in a low
+voice:
+
+        "`For sore dismayed, through storm and shade
+             His child he did discover;
+          One lovely hand she stretched for aid,
+             And one was round her lover--'"
+
+
+Shelley just looked daggers at him, but she was too anxious to
+waste any time.
+
+"Would Thomas tell your father?" she asked the Princess.
+
+"The instant he saw him alone, yes.  He wouldn't before mother."
+
+"Hold one minute!" cried father.  "We must think of our mother,
+just a little.  Shelley, you and the girls run up and explain how
+this is.  Better all of you go to the house, except Mr. Paget. 
+He'll be safe here as anywhere.  Mr. Pryor will stop there, if he
+comes.  So it would be best for you to keep out of sight, Robert,
+until I have had a little talk with him."
+
+"I'll stay here," I offered.  "We'll talk until you get Mr. Pryor
+cooled off.  He can be awful ragesome when he's excited, and it
+doesn't take much to start him."
+
+"You're right about that!" agreed Robert.
+
+So we sat under the greening and were having a fine visit while
+the others went to break the news gently to mother that the Pryor
+mystery had gone up higher than Gilderoy's kite.  My! but she'd
+be glad!  It would save her many a powerful prayer.  I was
+telling Robert all about the time his father visited us, and what
+my mother said to him, and he said:  "She'd be the one to talk
+with him now.  Possibly he'd listen to her, until he got it
+through his head that his own son is not a common thief."
+
+"Maybe he'll have to be held, like taking quinine, and made to
+listen," I said.
+
+"That would be easy, if he were not a walking ahsenal," said
+Robert.  "You have small chance to reason with a half-crazy man
+while he is handling a pistol."
+
+He meant revolver.
+
+"But he'll shoot!" I cried.  "The Princess said he'd shoot!"
+
+"So he will!" said Robert.  "Shoot first, then find out how
+things are, and kill himself and every one else with remorse,
+afterward.  He is made that way."
+
+"Then he doesn't dare see you until he finds out how mistaken he
+has been," I said, for I was growing to like Robert better every
+minute longer I knew him.  Besides, there was the Princess,
+looking like him as possible, and loving him of course, like I
+did Laddie, maybe.  And if anything could cure Mrs. Pryor's heart
+trouble, having her son back would, because that was what made it
+in the first place, and even before them, there was Shelley to be
+thought of, and cared for.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+The Pryor Mystery
+
+            "And now old Dodson, turning pale,
+             Yields to his fate--so ends my tale."
+
+It didn't take me long to see why Shelley liked Robert Paget.  He
+was one of the very most likeable persons I ever had seen.  We
+were sitting under the apple tree, growing better friends every
+minute, when we heard a smash, so we looked up, and it was the
+sound made by Ranger as Mr. Pryor landed from taking our meadow
+fence.  He had ridden through the pasture, and was coming down
+the creek bank.  He was a spectacle to behold.  A mile away you
+could see that Thomas had told him he had seen Robert, and where
+he was.  Father had been mistaken in thinking Mr. Pryor would go
+to the house.  He had lost his hat, his white hair was flying,
+his horse was in a lather, and he seemed to be talking to
+himself.  Robert took one good look.  "Ye Gods!" he cried. 
+"There he comes now, a chattering madman!"
+
+"The Station," I panted.  "Up that ravine!  Roll back the stone
+and pull the door shut after you.  Quick!"
+
+He never could have been inside, before Mr. Pryor's horse was
+raving along the embankment beside the fence.
+
+"Where is he?" he cried.  "Thomas saw him here!"
+
+I didn't think his horse could take the fence at the top of the
+hill, but it looked as if he intended trying to make it, and I
+had to stop him if I could.
+
+"Saw who?" I asked with clicking teeth.
+
+"A tall, slender man, with a handsome face, and the heart of a
+devil."
+
+"Yes, there was a man here like that in the face.  I didn't see
+his heart," I said.
+
+"Which way?" raved Mr. Pryor.  "Which way?  Is he at your house?"
+
+Then I saw that he had the reins in his left hand, and a big
+revolver in his right.  So there was no mistake about whether
+he'd really shoot.  But that gun provoked me.  People have no
+business to be careless with those things.  They're dangerous!
+
+"He didn't do what you think he did," I cried, "and he can prove
+he didn't, if you'll stop cavorting, and listen to reason."
+
+Mr. Pryor leaned over the fence, dark purple like a beet now.
+
+"You tell me where he is, or I'll choke it out of you," he said.
+
+I guess he meant it.  I took one long look at his lean, clawlike
+fingers, and put both hands around my neck.
+
+"He knew Thomas saw him.  He went that way," I said, waving off
+toward the north.
+
+"Hah! striking for petticoats, as usual!" he cried, and away he
+went in the direction of his house.  Then I flew for the Station.
+
+"Come from there, quick!" I cried.  "I've sent him back to his
+house, but when he finds you're not there, he will come here
+again.  Hurry, and I'll put you in the woodshed loft.  He'd never
+think of looking there."
+
+He came out and we started toward the house, going pretty fast. 
+Almost to the back gate we met Shelley.
+
+"Does mother know?" I asked.
+
+"I just told her," she said.
+
+"Father," I cried, going in the back dining-room door.  "Mr.
+Pryor was down in the meadow on Ranger.  Thomas did see Robert,
+and his father is hunting him with a gun.  We saw him coming, so
+I hid Robert in the Station and sent Mr. Pryor back home--I guess
+I told him a lie, father, or at least part of one, I said he went
+`that way,' and he did, but not so far as I made his father
+think; so he started back home, but when he gets there and
+doesn't find Robert he'll come here again, madder than ever.  Oh
+father, he'll come again, and he's crazy, father!  Clear, raving
+crazy!  I know he'll come again!"
+
+"Yes," said father calmly.  "I think it very probable that he
+will come again."
+
+Then he started around shutting and latching windows, closing and
+locking the doors, and he carefully loaded his gun, and leaned it
+against the front casing.  Then he put on his glasses, and began
+examining the papers they had brought out again.  Robert stood
+beside him, and explained and showed him.
+
+"You see with me out of the way, the English law would give
+everything to my cousin," he said, and he explained it all over
+again.
+
+"And to think how he always posed for a perfect saint!" cried the
+Princess.  "Oh I hope the devil knows how to make him pay for
+what all of us have suffered!"
+
+"Child!  Child!" cried mother.
+
+"I can't help it!" said the Princess.  "Let me tell you, Mr.
+Stanton."
+
+Then SHE told everything all over again, but it was even more
+interesting than the way Robert explained it, because what she
+said was about how it had been with her and her mother.
+
+"It made father what he is," she said.  "He would have killed
+Robert, if our friends hadn't helped him away.  He will now, if
+he isn't stopped.  I tell you he will!  He sold everything he
+could legally control, for what any one chose to give him, and
+fled here stricken in pride, heartbroken, insane with anger, the
+creature you know.  In a minute he'll be back again.  Oh what are
+we going to do?"
+
+Father was laying out the papers that he wanted to use very
+carefully.
+
+"These constitute all the proof any court would require," he said
+to Robert.  "If he returns, all of you keep from sight.  This is
+my house; I'll manage who comes here, in my own way."
+
+"But you must be allowed to take no risk!" cried Robert.  "I
+cawn't consent to youah facing danger for me."
+
+"There will be no risk," said father.  "There is no reason why he
+should want to injure me.  As the master of this house, I am
+accustomed to being obeyed.  If he comes, step into the parlour
+there, until I call you."
+
+He was busy with the papers when he saw Mr. Pryor coming.  I
+wondered if he would jump the yard fence and ride down mother's
+flowers, but he left his horse at the hitching rack, and pounded
+on the front door.
+
+"Did any of you notice whether he was displaying a revolver?"
+asked father.
+
+"Yes father!  Yes!" I cried.  "And he's shaking so I'm afraid
+he'll make it go, when he doesn't intend to."
+
+Father picked up and levelled his rifle on the front door.
+
+"Leon," he said, "you're pretty agile.  Open this door, keep
+yourself behind it, and step around in the parlour.  The rest of
+you get out, and stay out of range."
+
+Those nearest hurried into the parlour.  Candace, May, and I
+crouched in the front stairway, but things were so exciting we
+just had to keep the door open a tiny crack so we could see plain
+as anything.  There had been nothing for Mrs. Freshett to do all
+afternoon, so she had gone over to visit an hour with Amanda
+Deam.  Now Mr. Pryor probably thought father would meet him with
+the Bible in his hand, and read a passage about loving your
+neighbour as yourself.  I'll bet anything you can mention that he
+never expected to find himself looking straight down the barrel
+of a shining big rifle when that door swung open.  It surprised
+him so, he staggered, and his arm wavered.  If he had shot and
+hit anything then, it would have been an accident.
+
+"Got you over the heart," said father, in precisely the same
+voice he always said, "This is a fine day we are having."  "Now
+why are you coming here in such a shape?"  This was a little
+cross.  "I'm not the man to cringe before you!"  This was quite
+boastful.  "You'll get bullet for bullet, if you attempt to
+invade my house with a gun."  This pinged as if father shot words
+instead of bullets.
+
+"I want my daughter to come home," said Mr. Pryor.  "And if
+you're sheltering the thief she is trying to hide, yield him up,
+if you would save yourself."
+
+"Well, I'm not anxious about dying, with the family I have on my
+hands, neighbour," said father, his rifle holding without a
+waver, "but unless you put away that weapon, and listen to
+reason, you cannot enter my house.  Calm yourself, man, and hear
+what there is to be said!  Examine the proof, that is here
+waiting to be offered to you."
+
+"Once and but once, send them out, or I'll enter over you!" cried
+Mr. Pryor.
+
+"Sorry," said father, "but if only a muscle of your trigger
+finger moves, you fall before I do.  I've the best range, and the
+most suitable implement for the work."
+
+"Implement for the work!"  Well, what do you think of father? 
+Any one who could not see, to have heard him, would have thought
+he was talking about a hoe.  We saw a shadow before we knew what
+made it; then, a little at a time, wonderingly, her jolly face a
+bewildered daze, her mouth slowly opening, Mrs. Freshett, half-
+bent and peering, stooped under Mr. Pryor's arm and looked in our
+door.  She had come back to help get supper, and because the
+kitchen was locked, she had gone around the house to see if she
+could get in at the front.  What she saw closed her mouth, and
+straightened her back.
+
+"WHY, YOU TWO OLD FOOLS!" she cried.  "IF YE AIN'T DRAWED A BEAD
+ON EACH OTHER!"
+
+None of us saw her do it.  We only knew after it was over what
+must have happened.  She had said she'd risk her life for mother.
+
+She never stopped an instant when her chance came.  She must have
+turned, and thrown her big body against Mr. Pryor.  He was tired,
+old, and shaking with anger.  They went down together, she
+gripping his right wrist with both hands, and she was strong as
+most men.  Father set the gun beside the door, and bent over
+them.  A minute more and he handed the revolver to Leon, and
+helped Mrs. Freshett to her feet.  Mr. Pryor lay all twisted on
+the walk, his face was working, and what he said was a stiff
+jabber no one could understand.  He had broken into the pieces we
+often feared he would.
+
+Robert and Laddie came running to help father carry him in, and
+lay him on the couch.
+
+"I hope, Miss Stanton," said Mrs. Freshett, "that I wa'n't too
+rough with him.  He was so shaky-like, I was 'feered that thing
+would go off without his really makin' it, and of course I
+couldn't see none of yourn threatened with a deadly weepon,
+'thout buttin' in and doin' the best I could."
+
+Mother put her arms around her as far as they would reach.  She
+would have had to take her a side at a time to really hug all of
+her, and she said:  "Mrs. Freshett, you are an instrument in the
+hands of the Lord this day.  Undoubtedly you have kept us from a
+fearful tragedy; possibly you have saved my husband for me.  None
+of us ever can thank you enough."
+
+"Loosen his collar and give him air," said Mrs. Freshett pushing
+mother away.  "I think likely he has bust a blood vessel."
+
+Father sent Leon flying to bring Dr. Fenner.  Laddie took the
+carriage and he and Robert went after Mrs. Pryor, while father,
+mother, Mrs. Freshett, the Princess, May, and I, every last one,
+worked over Mr. Pryor.  We poured hot stuff down his throat, put
+warm things around him, and rubbed him until the sweat ran on us,
+trying to get his knotted muscles straightened out.  When Dr.
+Fenner came he said we were doing all he could; MAYBE Mr. Pryor
+would come to and be all right, and maybe his left side would be
+helpless forever; it was a stroke.  Seemed to me having Mrs.
+Freshett come against you like that, could be called a good deal
+more than a stroke, but I couldn't think of the right word then. 
+And after all, perhaps stroke was enough.  He couldn't have been
+much worse off if the barn had fallen on him.  I didn't think
+there was quite so much of Mrs. Freshett; but then she was
+scared, and angry; and he was about ready to burst, all by
+himself, if no one had touched him.  He had much better have
+stayed at home and listened to what was to be said, reasonably,
+like father would; and then if he really had to shoot, he would
+have been in some kind of condition to take aim.
+
+After a long hard fight we got him limber, straightened out, and
+warm, it didn't rip so when he breathed, then they put him in the
+parlour on the big davenport.  Leon said if the sparkin' bench
+didn't bring him to, nothing would.  Laddie sat beside him and
+mother kept peeping.  She wouldn't let Dr. Fenner go, because she
+said Mr. Pryor just must come out of it right, and have a few
+years of peace and happiness.
+
+Mrs. Pryor came back with Laddie and Robert.  He carried her in,
+put her in the big rocking chair again, and he sat beside her,
+stroking and kissing her, while she held him with both hands. 
+You could see NOW why his mother couldn't sleep, walked the road,
+and held her hands over her heart.  She was a brave woman, and
+she had done well to keep alive and going in any shape at all. 
+You see we knew.  There had been only the few hours when it
+seemed possible that one of our boys had taken father's money and
+was gone.  I well remembered what happened to our mother then. 
+And if she had been disgraced before every one, dragged from her
+home away across a big sea to live among strangers, and not known
+where her boy was for years, I'm not a bit sure that she'd have
+done better than Mrs. Pryor.  Yes, she would too; come to think
+it out--she'd have kept on believing the Lord had something to do
+with it, and that He'd fix it some way; and I know she and father
+would have held hands no matter what happened or where they went.
+
+I guess the biggest thing the matter with Pryors was that they
+didn't know how to go about loving each other right; maybe it was
+because they didn't love God, so they couldn't know exactly what
+PROPER LOVE was; because God is love, like father said.
+
+Mrs. Pryor didn't want to see Mr. Pryor--I can't get used to
+calling them Paget--and she didn't ask anything about him.  I
+guess she was pretty mad at him.  She never had liked the Emmet
+cousin, and she'd had nothing but trouble with him all the time
+he had been in her family, and then that awful disgrace, that she
+always THOUGHT was all him, but she couldn't prove it, and she
+had no money.
+
+That's a very bad thing.  A woman should always have some money. 
+She works as hard as any one, and usually she has more that
+worries her, so it's only fair for her to have part of what the
+work and worry bring.  Mother always has money.  Why, she has so
+much, she can help father out when he is pushed with bills, as
+she did last fall, to start Shelley to music school.  It's no way
+to be forced to live with a man, just to get a home, food, and
+clothing.  I don't believe mother ever would do it in all this
+world.  But then mother has worked all her life, and so if father
+doesn't do as she wants him to, she'd know exactly how to go
+about taking care of herself.
+
+After all Mrs. Pryor didn't need to sit back on her dignity and
+look so abused.  He couldn't knock her down, and drag her clear
+here.  Why didn't she say right out, in the beginning, that her
+son COULDN'T be a thief, that she knew it, and she'd stay at home
+and wait for him to come back?  She could have put a piece in the
+paper saying she knew her boy was all right, and for him to come
+back, so they could go to work and PROVE it.  I bet if she'd had
+one tenth of the ginger mother has, she'd have stopped the whole
+fuss in the start.  I looked at her almost steadily, trying to
+figure out just what mother would have done in her place.  Maybe
+I'm mistaken about exactly how she would have set to work, but
+this I KNOW: she'd have stuck to the Lord; she'd have loved
+father, so dearly, he just COULDN'T have wanted her to do things
+that hurt her until it gave her heart trouble; and she never,
+never would have given up one of us, and sat holding her heart
+for months, refusing to see or to speak to any one, while she
+waited for some one else to do something.  Mother never waits. 
+She always thinks a minute, if she's in doubt she asks father; if
+he can't decide, both of them ask God; and then you ought to see
+things begin to fly.
+
+The more I watched Mrs. Pryor, the more I began to think she was
+a lady; and just about when I was sure that was what ailed her, I
+heard father say:  "Perhaps the lady would like a cup of tea."  I
+had a big notion to tell her to come on, and I would show her
+where the cannister was, but I thought I better not.  I wanted
+to, though.  She'd have felt much better if she had got up and
+worked like the rest of us.  With all the excitement, and
+everything happening at once, you'd have thought mother would be
+flat on her back, but flat nothing!  Everything was picked up and
+slid back, fast as it was torn down; she found time to flannel
+her nose and brush her hair, her collar was straight, and the
+goldstone pin shone in the light, while her starched white apron
+fluttered as she went through the doors.  She said a few words to
+Candace and Mrs. Freshett, May took out a linen cloth and began
+to set places for all the grown people, so I knew there'd be
+strawberry preserves and fried ham, but in all that, would you
+ever have thought that she'd find a second to make biscuit, and
+tea cakes herself?  Plain as preaching I heard her say to Mrs.
+Freshett:  "I do hope and pray that Mr. Pryor will come out of it
+right, so we can take him home, and teach him to behave himself;
+but if he's gone this minute, I intend to have another decent
+meal for Shelley to offer her young man; and I don't care if I
+show Mrs. Pryor that we're not hungry over here, if we do lack
+servants to carry in food on silver platters."
+
+"That I jest would!" said Mrs. Freshett.  "Even if he turns up
+his toes, 'tain't YOUR funeral, thank the Lord! an' looky here,
+I'd jest as soon set things in a bake pan an' pass 'em for you,
+myself.  I'll do it, if you say the word."
+
+Mother bit her lip, and fought her face to keep it straight, as
+she said confidential-like:  "No, I'm not going to toady to her. 
+I only want her to see that a meal really consists of food after
+all; I don't mind putting my best foot foremost, but I won't ape
+her."
+
+"Huccome they to fuss like this, peaceable as Mr. Stanton be, an'
+what's Shelley's beau to them?"
+
+"I should think you could tell by looking at Pryors," said
+mother.  "He's their mystery, and also their son.  Shelley met
+him in Chicago, he came here to see her, and ran right into them.
+I'll tell you about it before you go.  Now, I must keep these
+applications hot, for I've set my head on pulling Mr. Pryor out
+so that he can speak, and have a few decent years of life yet."
+
+"But why did the old devil--EX-cuse me, I mean the old GENTLEMAN,
+want to shoot your man?"
+
+"He didn't!  I'll tell you all about it after they're gone."
+
+"I bet you don't get shet of them the night," said Mrs. Freshett.
+
+"All right!" said mother.  "Whatever Dr. Fenner thinks.  I won't
+have Mr. Pryor moved until it can't hurt him, if he stays a week.
+I blame her quite as much as I do him; from what I know.  If a
+woman is going to live with a man, there are times when she's got
+to put her foot down--flat--most unmercifully flat!"
+
+"Ain't she though!" said Mrs. Freshett; then she and mother just
+laughed.
+
+There!  What did I tell you?  I feel as good as if father had
+patted me on the head and bragged on me a lot.  I THOUGHT mother
+wouldn't think that Mr. Pryor was ALL to blame, and she didn't. 
+I figured that out by myself, too.
+
+Every minute Mr. Pryor grew better.  He breathed easier, and
+mother tilted on her toes and waved her hands, when he moved his
+feet, threw back his head, lifted his hand to it, and acted like
+he was almost over it, and still in shape to manage himself.  She
+hurried to tell Mrs. Pryor, and I know mother didn't like it when
+she never even said she was glad, or went to see for herself.
+
+Laddie and the Princess watched him, while every one else went to
+supper.  Laddie picked up Mrs. Pryor's chair, carried her to the
+dining-room, and set her in my place beside father.  He placed
+Dr. Fenner next her, and left Robert to sit with Shelley.  I
+don't think Mrs. Pryor quite liked that, but no one asked her.
+
+I watched and listened until everything seemed to be going right
+there, and then I slipped into the parlour, where Laddie and the
+Princess were caring for Mr. Pryor.  With one hand Laddie held
+hers, the other grasped Mr. Pryor's wrist.  Laddie never took his
+eyes from that white, drawn face, except to smile at her, and
+squeeze her hand every little while.  At last Mr. Pryor turned
+over and sighed, pretty soon he opened his eyes, and looked at
+Laddie, then at the Princess, and it was nothing new to see them,
+so he smiled and dozed again.  After a while he opened them
+wider, then he saw the piano--that was an eye-opener for any
+one--and the strange room, so he asked, most as plain as he ever
+talked, why he was at our house again, and then he began to
+remember.  He struggled to sit up and the colour came into his
+face.  So Laddie let go the Princess, and held him down while he
+said:  "Mr. Pryor, answer me this.  Do you want to spend the
+remainder of your life in an invalid's chair, or would you like
+to walk abroad and sit a horse again?"
+
+He glared at Laddie, but he heard how things were plainly enough.
+
+Laddie held him, while he explained what a fight we had to unlock
+his muscles, and start him going again, and how, if we hadn't
+loved him, and wanted him so, and had left him untouched until
+the Doctor came, very likely he'd have been paralyzed all the
+rest of his life, if he hadn't died; and he said he wished he
+HAD, and he didn't THANK any one for saving him.
+
+"Oh yes you do!" said Laddie, the same as he'd have talked to
+Leon.  "You can't stuff me on that, and you needn't try.  Being
+dead is a cold, clammy proposition, that all of us put off as
+long as we can.  You know you want to see Pamela in her own home.
+
+You know you are interested in how I come out with those horses. 
+You know you want the little people you spoke of, around you. 
+You know the pain and suspense you have borne have almost driven
+you insane, and it was because you cared so deeply.  Now lie
+still, and keep quiet!  All of us are tired and there's no sense
+in making us go through this again, besides the risk of crippling
+yourself that you run.  Right here in this house are the papers
+to prove that your nephew took your money, and hid it in your
+son's clothing, as he already had done a hundred lesser things,
+before, purposely to estrange you.  Hold steady!  You must hear
+this!  The sooner you know it, the better you'll feel.  You
+remember, don't you, that before your nephew entered your home,
+you idolized your son.  You thought the things he did were
+amusing.  A boy is a boy, and if he's alive, he's very apt to be
+lively.  Mother could tell you a few pranks that Leon has put us
+through; but they're only a boy's foolishness, they are not
+unusual or unforgivable.  I've gone over the evidence your son
+brings, with extreme care, so has father.  Both of us are quite
+familiar with common law.  He has every proof you can possibly
+desire.  You can't get around it, even if your heart wasn't worn
+out with rebellion, and you were not crazy to have the loving
+sympathy of your family again."
+
+"I don't believe a word of it!"
+
+"You have got to!  I tell you it is PROOF, man!  The documents
+are in this house now."
+
+"He forged them, or stole them, as he took the money!"
+
+Laddie just laughed.
+
+"How you do long, and fight, to be convinced!" he said.  "I don't
+blame you!  When anything means this much, of course you must be
+sure.  But you'll know your nephew's signature; also your
+lawyer's.  You'll know letters from old friends who are above
+question.  Sandy McSheel has written you that he was with Robert
+through all of it, and he gives you his word that everything is
+all right.  You will believe him, won't you?"
+
+Big tears began to squeeze from under Mr. Pryor's lids, until
+Laddie and the Princess each tried to see how much of him they
+could hold to keep him together-like.
+
+"Tell me!" he said at last, so they took turns explaining
+everything plain as day, and soon he listened without being held.
+
+When they had told him everything they could think of, he asked: 
+"Did Robert kill Emmet?"
+
+"I am very happy to be able to tell you that he did not.  It
+would have been painful, and not helped a bad matter a particle. 
+Your nephew had dissipated until he was only a skeleton just
+breathing his last.  It's probable that his fear of death helped
+your son out, so that he got the evidence he wanted easier than
+he hoped to in the beginning.  I don't mean that he is dead now;
+but he is passing slowly, and loathsomely.  Robert thinks word
+that he has gone will come any hour.  Think how pleasant it will
+be to have your son!  Think how happy your home will be now! 
+Think how you will love to see Sandy, and all your old friends! 
+Think how glad you'll be to go home, and take charge of your
+estate!"
+
+"Think!" cried Mr. Pryor, pushing Laddie away and sitting up: 
+"Think how I shall enjoy wringing the last drop of blood from
+that craven's body with these old hands!"
+
+What a sight he did look to be sure!  Sick, half-crazy, on the
+very verge of the grave himself, and wanting to kill a poor man
+already dying.  Aren't some people too curious?
+
+Laddie carefully laid him down, straightened him out and held him
+again.  Mother always said he was "patient as Job," and that day
+it proved to be a good thing.
+
+"You're determined to keep yourself well supplied with trouble,"
+laughed Laddie.  I don't believe any one else would have dared. 
+"Now to an unbiased observer, it would seem that you'd be ready
+to let well enough alone.  You have your son back, you have him
+fully exonerated, you have much of your property, you are now
+ready for freedom, life, and love, with the best of us; you have
+also two weddings on your hands in the near future.  Why in the
+name of sense are you anxious for more?"
+
+"I should have thought that Sandy McSheel, if he's a real friend
+of mine----"
+
+"Sandy tells you all about it in the letter he has sent.  He went
+with Robert fully intending to do that very thing for you, but
+the poor creature was too loathsome.  The sight of him made Sandy
+sick.  He writes you that when he saw the horrible spectacle, all
+he could think of was to secure the evidence needed and get
+away."
+
+Suddenly the Princess arose and knelt beside the davenport.  She
+put her arms around her father's neck and drew his wrinkled,
+white old face up against her lovely one.
+
+"Daddy!  Dear old Daddy!" she cried.  "I've had such a hard spot
+in my heart against you for so long.  Oh do let's forget
+everything, and begin all over again; begin away back where we
+were before Emmet ever came.  Oh Daddy, do let's forget, and
+begin all over new, like other people!"
+
+He held her tight a minute, then his lips began whispering
+against her ear.  Finally he said:  "Take yourselves off, and
+send Robert here.  I want my son.  Oh I want my boy!"
+
+It was a long time before Robert came from the parlour; when he
+did, it was only to get his mother and take her back with him;
+then it was a still longer time before the door opened; but when
+it did, it was perfectly sure that they were all friends again. 
+Then Leon went to tell Thomas, and he came with the big carriage.
+
+White and shaking, Mr. Pryor was lifted into it and they went
+home together, taking Shelley with them to stay that night; so no
+doubt she was proposed to and got her kiss before she slept.
+
+That fall there were two weddings at our church at the same time.
+
+Sally's had been fine; but it wasn't worth mentioning beside
+Laddie and the Princess, and Robert and Shelley.  You should have
+seen my mother!  She rocked like a kingbird on the top twig of
+the winesap, which was the tallest tree in our orchard, and for
+once there wasn't a single fly in her ointment, not one, she said
+so herself, and so did father.  As we watched the big ve-hi-
+ackle, as Leon called it, creep slowly down the Little Hill, it
+made me think of that pathetic poem, "The Three Warnings," in
+McGuffey's Sixth.  I guess I gave Mr. Pryor the first, that time
+he got so angry he hit his horse until it almost ran away. 
+Mother delivered the second when she curry-combed him about the
+taxes, and Mrs. Freshett finished the job.  The last two lines
+read as if they had been especially written about him:
+
+            "And now old Dodson, turning pale,
+             Yields to his fate--so ends my tale."
+
+
+The end of Project Gutenberg etext of "Laddie: A True Blue Story"
+
+
+
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