Cricket

CHAPTER II. THE QUARREL.

Now, Hilda was a good deal of a tease, in a quiet way. The little fellow looked so funny as he lay there with closely shut eyes, and wide-open mouth, that, quick as a flash, came the impulse to throw something in it. She turned to the washstand close by, where was still standing some water in which they had just washed their hands. Nurse’s big thimble was on the washstand also, and Hilda snatched it up, and emptied a thimbleful of the water right down the poor baby’s throat.

There was a gurgle, a howl, a choke, and Kenneth lay gasping and struggling for breath, for the water had gone down his little windpipe. The audience from the hall, and nurse from an adjoining room, came rushing in. Poor little Kenneth was purple in the face. Nurse snatched him up and patted his back, and blew in his mouth, to make him catch his breath.

Hilda stood frightened at the mischief she 23had unthinkingly done. Cricket turned upon her, in a sudden blind fury of rage, for almost the first time in her life.

“You mean, mean, horrid girl! To treat my baby so! I hate you, there! You’re always doing mean things, and you always take the biggest of everything, and you’ve made baby cry before.”

“You are mean,” chimed in Eunice; “I’ve seen you rub out Cricket’s sums, and I always meant to tell everybody, when I got a good chance.”

“And I know who ate up all my candy,” added Edith.

“You tooked my dolly and hided her, and I cried!” put in Zaidee, joining the attacking force.

“And I know who’s a sneak, and told on Mabel Wilson, when none of the other girls would!” cried Eunice.

“You’re the selfishest, meanest old thing!” it was Cricket’s turn again. She had gotten hold of Kenneth now, and he was clinging with both arms around the neck of his favourite sister.

“To pour that horrid, dirty water down his throat, just to tease him,” went on Cricket, 24furiously. “I’ll never forgive you, and I won’t play with you any more, forever ’n’ ever, ’n’ I wish you’d go home this moment, Hilda Mason, there!”

Hilda stared helplessly, as the unexpected words rained around her. Could they be really talking to her? Was it her little Cricket who was blazing like a little fury, and actually telling her to go home? She was quite too frightened to speak, at first, as the angry group around her all talked at once.

“I didn’t mean,” she faltered, at last; then she, too, burst into angry tears. “You’re horrid, rude girls to say such things to company,” she sobbed. “I’m going straight home to tell mamma how you treated me, and she’ll never let me come here again.”

“You’d better go right away, Miss Hilda,” said nurse, dryly, and she brought the little girl’s hat and put on her sacque. Hilda had never been at all a favourite with her, for she had often seen her slyly tease the little ones.

Hilda marched off abused, excited and angry. The idea—the very idea of such language to her, to Hilda Mason, whom everybody called so good, and who was used to being held up as the model child of the neighbourhood.

25

HILDA BY THE BROOK.

27And Cricket, her dear Cricket, whom she really loved heartily, had told her she hated her, and would never forgive her, and wouldn’t ever play with her any more.

What had she done to deserve all this? Why, nothing at all; only poured a little water down the baby’s throat, when he looked so funny, lying there with his eyes squeezed shut, and his mouth wide open. She didn’t know it would choke him so; of course she didn’t mean to hurt him. Such a fuss about nothing. Then, suddenly, they all flew at her, and said dreadful things, right before nurse. Hilda did not realize that such an outbreak is seldom as sudden as it seems, and that many grievances will often smoulder for a long time, till some trifle fires the flame.

She walked along, miserable enough, half-crying, half-indignant. The rain had ceased, and the sky had cleared, so she stopped by the brook in the grassy lane, which the children used as a short cut, and sat down by the little bridge. She was ashamed to go on into the village street while she was crying.

Here she and Cricket had spent many happy hours, and had never, never quarrelled before. 28She did not stop to think, then, to whom the credit of this belonged. Cricket certainly always did as Hilda wished, but she was sure she was equally ready to do as Cricket wished, wasn’t she? She began to think. Cricket always liked to keep on through the woods to Hilda’s house, while she liked to strike off into the village street. How seldom they went through the woods, although it was nearer, and Cricket liked it so well! Cricket loved marsh-mallows, while Hilda was devoted to chocolate-creams; but when they spent their weekly pennies together for candy, as they always did, how was it they so rarely bought marsh-mallows? Hilda’s conscience pricked her faintly.

“Well, I am always willing she should buy them, if she’d just say she would, any way,” she reflected, uneasily.

But then, Cricket never did say she “would, anyway.”

What a delight it was to her little friend to be out in the fields and woods, searching out the earliest wild-flowers, exploring for the first chestnuts, perfectly happy if she were simply out-of-doors. She, herself, preferred quiet, indoor sports and dolls, excepting when the weather 29just suited her, and was neither too warm nor too cold. Did they ever stay out when she did not wish to?

And she did rub out Cricket’s examples, often and often.

“Cricket was so quick,” she argued, with her conscience, “and she could do them right over, and she didn’t like to get behind herself. Cricket was such a silly, not to guess it.” And why shouldn’t she take the biggest of anything? One of them had to have it, and she was the oldest. Still, she remembered, with another faint sting of conscience, she didn’t like it when Eunice took things for the same reason, and Cricket had to yield to them both.

Had Cricket ever been heard telling the twins they must do certain things because they were younger?

Hilda began to feel very queerly. She was so used to praise and petting, that the plain speeches she had heard had almost taken her breath away, true though they were. Cricket was always being lectured, because she was careless and disorderly, and heedless and forgetful, and Hilda had always felt superior. 30But was she really horrid? was she hateful? was she selfish? was she a sneak?

“Mamma doesn’t think so, anyway,” she said, with a little sob. But it was that very morning, when she asked permission to go and see Cricket, that her mother had hesitated, and said,—

“I thought perhaps you would be willing to stay at home this morning, darling. My head aches badly, and poor, sick grandmamma says she has scarcely seen her little girl this week.”

But Hilda looked so abused that her mother hastened to add,—

“Never mind, dear, go on and have a good time, but I would like you to come home to lunch;” and the little girl had neglected her mother’s words, as of no importance.

It was a very sober, subdued Hilda, who, much later, slipped quietly into the house.

Her mother had been in bed all day, with one of her worst headaches, the maid said, and she herself had been sitting with grandmamma, and reading to her, for the old lady felt very lonely. Hilda winced as she thought of that hard, rasping voice reading to an invalid.

Mrs. Mason heard her little girl’s voice and 31spoke to her, and Hilda crept quietly into her mother’s room. She knew, well enough, that her little soft fingers had magic power to drive away mamma’s nervous headaches, but usually it was “such a bother” to sit in the darkened room, that often, as she now guiltily remembered, she had slipped away, when she knew mamma had a headache, lest she should be asked to do it. Oh, she was a selfish, selfish Hilda!

That night, when her head was better, mamma and Hilda had a long talk. The whole story came out, and Hilda confessed that she believed that she was the horridest, selfishest girl in the whole town. And her mother’s tears fell quietly and fast, as she realized, for the first time, how she had been spoiling her darling. Because her little daughter was dainty and orderly, and sweet and polite, she had been ruining her with too much praise, and letting her grow up selfish and inconsiderate.

“We will both begin again, my little girl,” she said, holding Hilda close. “And to begin with, do you know you ought to tell Cricket you are sorry?”

“Oh, mamma, I can’t—oh, I can’t! I shouldn’t know anything what to say.”

32“It is the only honourable thing to do, darling. You have been much to blame. I will tell Cricket for you, if you like. She is a dear little girl, and I’m sure she will forgive you and love you just the same.” Nevertheless, Hilda could not quite make up her mind, that night, to take this step.

The next Monday she started off, very soberly and unhappily, for school. As she turned into the lane, however, she saw a familiar little red dress fluttering by the hedge, and in a moment Cricket came in view. Both little girls stopped and looked at each other shyly for a moment. Cricket spoke first.

“Mamma says I was very rude to you,” she began, very soberly, but Hilda ran up to her, impulsively, and threw both her arms around her neck.

“I was rude and horrid, Cricket, and I did rub out your sums, and I’ve teased the children, and I’ve torn up your jography questions often and often; and I should think you’d hate me.” Hilda said all this in a breath.

Cricket looked too astonished to speak.

“Oh, please, Cricket, forgive me, and love me just the same, and we’ll always buy marsh-mallows, 33for I like them pretty well, and it doesn’t make any difference if I don’t!” finished Hilda, very much mixed up, but very much in earnest.

But Cricket, while she did not quite understand all Hilda meant, was, nevertheless, only too glad to kiss and make friends, and so their quarrel was made up.

CHAPTER III. DAMMING THE BROOK.

One bright May morning three little maids sat perched on the topmost rail of an old fence down by the brook. It was very pleasant just at that particular spot, where the tiny stream babbled along gayly in its wide, deep bed. There was only a ribbon of water there now, though early in the spring the current ran full and strong. The trees in the neighbouring woods waved and nodded their heads in cordial welcome to their constant little visitors.

This was a favourite spot with these little people, for they were well out of sight of the rest of the world. The lane curved around the hill which was behind them, wound over the rustic bridge, and lost itself in the green woods on the other side. Below them were the meadows, where loads of “roosters”—as country children call the sweet little white violets—grew in abundance.

There sat the three little maids, I say, swinging 35their black-stockinged legs, and nodding their three heads, black, brown and golden, keeping time to the clatter of their busy tongues.

There was so much to talk about, you see, for Hilda’s mamma had promised her that she might have all her little friends come to supper next week, to celebrate her eleventh birthday. Of course they had to arrange about the invitations and the amusements.

At last Cricket’s active body tired of being still so long, and she began to look around for exercise, for she had been sitting there for quite fifteen minutes. She edged along on her somewhat unsteady seat, when suddenly the treacherous rail turned completely over, and laid her on her back in the soft meadow grass. Hilda and Eunice shouted with laughter, for such an accident was so like Cricket; but the little girl, not in the least troubled, picked herself up. To be sure, there was a jagged tear in her fresh, blue gingham, and a great grass-stain on it, as well, but these were every-day affairs.

She jumped over the fence and sat down on the end of the wooden bridge, which crossed the road, with her feet hanging over the water, idly 36dropping pebbles down. Presently this inspired her with a new idea.

“Oh, girls!” she exclaimed, “let’s dam up the brook!”

This proposal immediately met with the greatest favor. Hilda and Eunice jumped briskly down, and Cricket jumped briskly up. The stone wall along the road supplied them with material, and they fell energetically to work.

Back and forth they went like little beavers, carrying stones instead of wood. They stood at the end of the bridge, and dropped the stones down, splash, just in the right place. It was great fun, tugging at the stones from the wall, finding the loose ones they could take, without leaving too large a space; or pulling out the wrong one, and bringing half a dozen more rattling about their feet, so that they had to jump, screaming, out of the way. Then they must tug and strain to roll them up the bank to the lane, and then on to the bridge, and over into the stream.

Being, as I said, a lonely, out-of-the-way place, it happened that no one passed to notice the mischief the children were doing. So they worked away undisturbed.

37They lifted stones that were twice the size of their own heads, quite scorning the little ones, excepting to fill in with. When they presently paused to take breath and to survey their work, the stones lay closely packed together from side to side, and the water was deepening fast. Panting and quite tired out, they threw themselves on the grassy bank to rest.

“I’m glad,” sighed Cricket, “that I’m not a dammer by trade.”

“If you were,” said Eunice, wisely, “you would be a strong man, and then it would not be hard work.”

“What are you going to do, girls, when you’re grown-up?” asked Hilda.

“I know,” answered Cricket, promptly; “I thought of it last night. I’m going to write hymns for the missionaries, and p’raps I’ll be a missionary myself. Anyway, I’d like to go to Africa and have all the bananas I could eat, for once.”

“I won’t be a missionary,” returned Hilda, with decision. “I don’t want to go to Africa. Horrid old skeeters and things, and cannibals to eat you up.”

“I’d convert them. That’s what missionaries are for,” answered Cricket, serenely.

38“But you wouldn’t get a chance,” persisted Hilda. “They’d catch you and kill you and eat you up just as quick. You’d be in somebody’s stomach before you could say Jack Robinson.”

“But hymns, Cricket,” said Eunice, who had been meditating over the word, rather overcome by the ambition of her younger sister. “Would you write hymns like those in the hymnbook?”

“Yes. Of course they might not be quite so good just at first, but I could practise. I made up one last night. Do you want to hear it? It’s rather long.”

“Yes, indeed,” cried both the others, much impressed.

And Cricket cleared her throat, and began:——

“Oh, it’s lovely!” exclaimed both little girls, as Cricket finished her very rapid recitation.

“Cricket! how could you make that all up?”

“Some parts of it were hard,” answered Cricket, modestly. “I couldn’t get the rhymes right at first, and I had to change it some. I wanted to say——

but I couldn’t think of another rhyme to match it.”

“Well, it’s beautiful,” said Eunice, drawing a long breath of admiration.

40“Aren’t you rested now?” asked Cricket, jumping up. “Let’s dump some more stones over. Oh—oh! look at the brook!”

They had been resting for half an hour, under a tree, with their backs to the brook. Now, as they approached it, they were amazed to see how much their work had deepened the water. Instead of a narrow trickle that they could easily jump over, it had widened to a deep pool just above the stones.

“Oh-h!” squealed the children, in delight. Cricket plunged forward to plug up a tiny little hole in their dam. Of course she stopped on an insecure stone, and of course, in attempting to get her balance, she stumbled forward, and stepped into the water up to her knees.

“There; I knew Cricket would do that,” said Hilda, calmly.

Cricket scrambled out.

“My feet are wet,” she remarked, with much surprise. Both the other girls shouted with laughter.

“Did you think the water wasn’t wet?” asked Hilda.

Going home for dry stockings and shoes never occurred to Cricket. It would have been 41altogether too much trouble. She pulled off her soaked shoes and stockings, and spread them on a sunny stone to dry, and danced around in her little bare feet.

But the stones hurt her tender skin, and the hot sand blistered it. So she sat down on the bank, further up, and dabbled her feet in the clear, running water. The others immediately desired to follow suit, when Cricket “set the Psalm,” as their old nurse used to say, and in a few minutes six little bare feet were paddling about.

“It’s very strange,” said Cricket, at last, after a brief fit of silence, “that Eunice never falls in the water, nor tears her clothes, nor anything. I b’lieve my mother’d just think herself in luck if she had two like you, ’stead of me. I’m the most misfortunate girl always.”

Eunice was a careful little girl, and not nearly so much of a romp as Cricket was. She seldom did have the accidents that so constantly befel her heedless little sister.

“You do so many more things than I do,” Eunice hastened to explain. “You do things that I’m afraid to do.”

“I’m afraid this minute,” remarked Hilda.

“Afraid! why, what of?” exclaimed both the others, in chorus.

42“’Fraid we’ve got to go home. It’s twelve o’clock, for there’s the whistle.”

“Oh, is that all! I thought you must have seen a snake, at least,” laughed Cricket, drawing on her damp stockings and stiff shoes. “Ugh! these stockings feel just like frogs.”

“We must come back to-morrow,” said Hilda, as they trudged off, “and see how deep this water is, and we will get some boards and make a raft, and have piles of fun.”

CHAPTER IV. THE CONSEQUENCES.

But both Monday and Tuesday were unfavourable for nautical adventures, for they brought a driving, pouring rain. Wednesday was too damp for them to go to the meadows at all, and on Thursday came the famous birthday party. So it happened that their dam was forgotten till Saturday, when they turned their steps brookward.

“Oh, look at the water!” they cried, in one breath, as they came around the curve. They could hardly believe their eyes, for a wide, deep stream filled the bed from side to side. The combination of the heavy rains with their dam had worked wonders.

“See the water roll over the dam, girls! it’s just like the mill-dam,” exclaimed Cricket. “Let’s roll more stones down and make a bigger one still.”

So, with eager hands, they got great stones again, lugging them from their places in the 44stone wall with infinite toil. They balanced them on the edge of the bridge, and counting, “One,—two,—three,—go!” They each pushed over one, jumping and screaming with delight, at the tremendous splashes, as the water flew up, spattering them well.

“Ow—ow! there goes my hat!” It was Cricket’s wail of anguish, of course. Her next-to-her-best white Leghorn, it was too, for her every-day hat had come to grief through Dixie’s chewing off her ribbons, and was laid up for repairs. There lay the pretty broad-brim, caught right on one of those big stones, with the water lapping all around it. Vainly they ran down to the side of the bridge and tried to reach it. It was too near the middle. The water was already so deep and black that they hesitated to wade in for it.

“Perhaps we can get a stick and reach it,” suggested Hilda. They accordingly broke long sticks from the bushes near by, and then Cricket lay flat down on the bridge, with her head and arms hanging over, and tried to reach the unfortunate hat.

“I can’t quite do it,” she panted. “You hold on to my legs, Eunice, while I lean over a little 45further, and, Hilda, you catch it with your stick at the side, when I poke it over there.”

So Eunice clung to Cricket’s legs with all her might, while Cricket, fully half over the bridge, made desperate lunges; at last she was successful.

“There it goes! now, catch it, Hilda!” triumphant and breathless.

Just at this critical moment there rose suddenly a tremendous shout from the woods.

“Hi! hi! I’ve caught ye, ye young rogues! I’ll teach ye a lesson, a-dammin’ up my brooks and a-swampin’ my medders, and a-drownin’ my caows! I’ll hev the law on ye!”

Fright and terror! What awful words were these? Cricket hung, paralyzed, over the bridge, and Eunice clung to her black-stockinged legs, with fingers that made black and blue spots in the tender flesh. Hilda, poised on two uncertain stones, stood like a small Colossus, and all of them were white with terror, for an awful, great, big, blue-bloused man was getting over the fence, with, oh, horror, a gun on his shoulder, and a slovenly bull-dog tagging at his heels!

“I’ve been a-watchin’ for ye, since a long 46time back,” the man said, leisurely coming nearer, seeing that the children were too frightened to run away. “I’m not a-goin’ to eat yer, but I want to know what in thunder you’re allers up to mischief for. Yer’s the doctor’s gal,” he went on, addressing Cricket, “and yer a limb.”

Cricket drew herself up on to the bridge. They recognized the man now as a farmer in the neighbourhood, a gruff old fellow, whom all the children feared. They quaked still more with fright.

“Now I’ll tell yer, young uns, I could hev the law on ye all for this flew-doodle-um of yourn, and I ain’t sure,—I—ain’t—sure, I ain’t a-goin’ ter. Now, what hev ye got to say fer yourselves why I shouldn’t?”

“We didn’t know we were doing any mischief,” faltered Cricket, really conscience-smitten, as well as frightened.

“Mischief!” growled the farmer, “when ain’t ye young ’uns in mischief? I’m goin’ to hev ye all in the lock-up.”

“Oh, please, please, Mr. Trante,” cried Cricket, in mortal terror. “If we’ve done any mischief, please ask my father to pay you for it, but oh, don’t put us in the lock-up!”

47“Wal, I dunno but I re’lly orter,” said Mr. Trante, enjoying their terror.

“See all the damage ye’ve done. Las’ Sunday I was a-strollin’ round my medder, up yander”—pointing up beyond where the white violets grew—“an’ I see it was all soft an sorter soggy, by the bank, and the brook was a considderbal wider. I kinder wondered at that, seein’ as we hadn’t hed no rain for quite a spell then. Ev’ry night this week the caows kep’ a-comin’ home all wet to their knees, an’ las’ night the boy brung ’em in, and says he, ‘the medder’s all a-swimming, and the caows has stayed up into the woods all day.’ It didn’t seem nateral that the rain could ha’ did all thet, so this mornin’ I sot out to explore, an’ I found this big dam o’ yourn. I hed a big mornin’s work, so I hed to leave it till this afternoon. I re’lly orter make ye take ’em out yerselves.”

“I don’t believe we could,” answered Cricket, doubtfully. Then she brightened up.

“But I’ll ask papa to send Thomas to-morrow morning to help you. I’m so sorry about the cows, Mr. Trante, and getting the meadow so wet. We never thought. Will it ever dry up again?” she asked, anxiously.

48“Wall, I guess the medder’ll dry up, if you give it a chance,” the farmer answered, grimly. “How did you young rogues roll up all them big stones, tearin’ down my stone walls? Look at them big holes!”

Three shamefaced children looked more downcast than ever at this new view of their mischief.

“I’ll ask papa to pay you for all the trouble we’ve made,” repeated Cricket.

“Wal, I dunno how I could put a money vally on it, skursely,” growled the man, “but I’ll see your pa. An’ about the lock-up. Ef you’ll promise me not to go a-dammin’ up no more streams, not even little dribblin’ things like that ’un there was, mebbe I’ll let ye off this time.”

“Oh, we promise!” cried the three, fervently, while their hearts danced jigs of joy at their escape.

“An’ tell yer pa to send Thomas over in the morning at seven o’clock sharp, an’ I an’ he’ll work at them stuns a spell. Looks like it would be considerable of a chore to hist ’em out,” said Mr. Trante, looking at the stones, through one eye.

“Come, Bruiser,” he went on, “you an’ me’s 49a-goin fur the caows now. Ye kin go home, young ’uns, and don’t do no more damage than ye kin help a-doin’, while ye’re going thar;” and three very subdued-looking children immediately took advantage of his permission to disappear around the curve.

The next day Thomas told Dr. Ward that he had had the hardest half-day’s work he had done in one while.

“Them crazy young ’uns will be the death o’ me,” he grumbled. “Me an’ Dan’el Trante worked up’ards of half a day to ease them stuns up. An’ the next time they go to dammin’ up creeks, I ’low they better do suthin’ else with the time.”

And the children concluded they would.

CHAPTER V. FOURTH OF JULY.

Of course, with such a troop of children as there was at Kayuna, Fourth of July was a wildly exciting time. They were always up at unearthly hours in the morning, and used up, before breakfast, an immense supply of giant torpedoes and fire-crackers, by way of opening the day. Later, they were allowed free range of the back-kitchen, in order that they might carry out, all by themselves, the grand performance of the day. This was making and freezing a great can of ice-cream, with no interference, even to the extent of a suggestion, from the cook. This was always eaten by the assembled family, on the piazza, at five in the afternoon.

In the evening all the people in the neighbourhood gathered on the piazza and lawn, to see the display of a great quantity of fireworks, which Dr. Ward always had sent out from town. So they wound up the Glorious Fourth in a very patriotic manner.

51It was really very good-natured of Dr. Ward to allow the display on his grounds, for it always took Thomas and one of the other men all the next day to take away the débris, clear up the lawn, and restore things to their usual trim order.

This particular Fourth really began the night before.

Hilda Mason had been invited to come and spend the night with Cricket and Eunice, in order to be on hand in the morning. It was barely dark when the three children decided it was quite time to go to bed, in order to shorten the long hours that stretched before to-morrow morning. Nurse had put up a cot in Cricket’s room for Hilda, close beside the larger bed, so it was quite like sleeping all together.

They were far too much excited to settle down very soon, especially as it was earlier than their usual bedtime, so they frolicked and built tents of the sheets, and ended up with a game of tag around the foot-board. But this speedily brought Eliza to the scene, with a very peremptory order “to go to sleep, and not disturb everybody in the house with their jim-jams.”

Thus commanded, and being tired by this 52time, they were quite ready to subside, and very soon, after numberless “good-nights” and “don’t you wish it was to-morrows,” they settled down.

Cricket woke first. The room was already beginning to grow light.

“Oh, girls, girls!” she cried, scrambling out of bed. “We’ve overslept, I know. There’s the sun rising now.” There certainly was light behind the trees, as she looked from the east windows.

“Funny we don’t hear the boys,” said Eunice, sitting up and trying to rub the sleep out of her eyes. “I’m awful sleepy—seems as if we’d just gone to bed.”

“I should say it did. How quiet everything seems. Hilda, wake up! it’s morning.”

“I don’t care,” returned Hilda, sleepily, turning over.

“But it’s Fourth of July! Do get up! We want to get ahead of the boys.” For two boy cousins, Will and Archie Somers, were visiting them.

“Oh, dear!” yawned Hilda, who was always a sleepy head. “I think I’d rather not have any Fourth of July.”

53“But the Fourth’s here, and we’ve got to have it!” said Cricket, pulling the sheet from under Hilda. “Get up, you lazy girl. I’m all dressed.” For Cricket dressed as she did everything else, “like a streak of greased lightning,” as Donald said.

“Oh, I’m getting up!” and Hilda turned out reluctantly.

“I’m going to the boys’ door, while you’re finishing,” said Cricket. “I’ll be back in a minute.” She slipped out into the hall, as still as a mouse. It was very dark out there, and she had to feel her way along.

Suddenly, ahead of her, came a glimmer of light, and a tall, white figure appeared, that startled Cricket so that she turned, with a scream, to run back. It was only Eliza, who, aroused by the children’s voices, was coming from the nursery to see what was the matter, but Cricket was blinded by the sudden light, so that she did not recognize her. She lost her bearings, turned to the left instead of the right, and the next moment she was plunging head-foremost down the stairs, with a crash that in two minutes assembled a white-clad household.

54“What is the matter?” asked everybody, hurriedly, of everybody else.

Doctor Ward sprang down the staircase to investigate. At the bottom lay a little heap.

“Cricket!” he exclaimed, with his heart in his mouth.

“I guess I’m all right, papa,” came a scared little voice from the heap, “but I don’t know, ’xactly, where I am.”

Her father lifted her up, and felt of her arms and legs.

“No bones broken. Is your back all right? and your head? In the name of common-sense, child, what are you doing around the house, all dressed, at midnight?”

“Why, it’s morning,” said Eunice and Hilda together, who, with the others, had gathered at the foot of the stairs, everybody asking questions and talking at once.

“It’s morning, and it’s the Fourth of July,” explained Eunice, “and we got up, and Cricket was going to wake the boys, and get a rise out of them. Is Cricket hurt?”

The doctor was still feeling Cricket’s back, and her mamma was rubbing her hands anxiously, but they all laughed at Eunice’s explanation.

55“Morning, dear child? It’s just ten minutes of twelve,” she answered, looking at the tall hall clock. “Just midnight.”

“Midnight!” cried all the three girls, incredulously. “We saw the sun rising, anyway,” said Hilda, bewildered.

“The moon, you mean,” said the doctor, laughing.

“You’re sure you’re not hurt, darling?” he added. “Well, since Cricket is not killed, it proves to be a good joke.”

“She must be hurt somewhere,” persisted mamma, still anxiously. “How could a child go head-foremost down stairs and not be hurt?”

“Nobody could but Cricket,” said her father, kissing her; “but I am coming to the conclusion that this young woman is not built of ordinary human material, but on the principle of indestructible dolls. She always comes right side up with care.”

“I thought I was killed just at first,” said Cricket, sitting up straight on her father’s knee, and still looking bewildered, “for the house seemed just to open and let me down, and the first thing I knew, papa was calling ‘Cricket.’”

“But now,” said mamma, “since nobody is 56seriously injured, you children may go back to bed and sleep quietly—if you can—the rest of the night. And remember that you must not one of you get up in the morning till you are called. That’s the only safe way. Eliza will call you at five o’clock, and you must not stir till then.”

In view of the circumstances, the children were quite willing to promise this, and soon quiet reigned again.

It was broad daylight in good earnest when the children opened their eyes next, in response to Eliza’s call. Their night’s experience seemed very far away in the light of day. The boys were already up and out, and were firing torpedoes at the girls’ windows. Cricket felt a little stiff and lame at first, but that soon wore off. She really did seem to be of some material unlike other children, for her constant accidents rarely disabled her, and she seldom had even a bad scar. When she nearly cut her finger off in the hay-cutter once, so that it hung by a thread of skin, she clapped it on and ran to her father, and it grew together like two pieces of melted wax. Deep cuts healed as if made in soft pitch. She had fallen from innumerable trees, and would come crashing through the branches, and land on the ground, stunned for a moment, perhaps, but with no further injuries. She was very slightly built, without an ounce of superfluous flesh on her slender bones, and she was very agile and flexible. She used to amuse her sisters by sitting on the ground and twisting both legs around her neck, like a clown in the circus. When she fell, she fell as a baby does, without making the slightest effort to save herself, and probably this was the reason why she escaped serious injury.

57

CELEBRATING THE FOURTH OF JULY.

59When the girls appeared, the boys were ready with a fire of jokes concerning the midnight adventures. Archie suggested that it would be a good plan to pin a big label to the moon, so they need not mistake it again for the sun. Will chanted,—

Fortunately, Cricket did not mind teasing, else her life would have been a burden.

60By breakfast they had fired off dozens of packages of giant torpedoes and an unlimited number of fire-crackers, and went trooping into the house, feeling, they said, as if they had been up for at least six weeks.

CHAPTER VI. MAKING ICE-CREAM.

After breakfast there came a little lull in the excitement. The edge had been taken off of the enjoyment of torpedoes, by this time, and the delights of fire-crackers palled.

To be sure, little Kenneth was still all agog. In his small brain this day was hopelessly confused with April-Fool’s-Day, which was the latest special occasion in his narrow experience. He ran around from one to another, crying excitedly, “Look a-hind you!” and then shrieked in great glee, “Apple-fool!” enjoying to the full the unfailing surprise of each person, however often he tried it.

By ten o’clock, however, came the great excitement of the day, making ice-cream in the back-kitchen. Will and Archie, and even seventeen-year-old Donald, pounded the ice which Thomas had already put there, in a big tub, while Marjorie measured the cream and milk and put in the sugar.

62It seemed to be part of the programme regularly to forget the flavouring till the cream was in the can and the dasher adjusted. Then, at the last moment, it would suddenly be remembered, and off must come the cover, to the boys’ disgust, with imminent danger of a deposit of salt within, while the flavouring was added. Then they would find that they could not put back the dasher in its place without taking out the can. So out would come the can, and the cream must be poured out, the dasher slipped in place, all the ice and salt taken out of the freezer, in order to put the can back, and the whole thing repacked. All this served to “vary the monotony,” Donald remarked.

To-day, however, Marjorie, who was chief-cook, had the flavouring in her mind from the beginning, and she gave the cream a liberal supply of lemon extract.

“Will you stir this for a moment, please, Eunice,” she said, as Eunice came into the pantry just then, where Marjorie stood. “I want to speak to cook.”

Eunice gave it a stir, as Marjorie went out, and then bethought herself of the flavouring.

“We won’t forget it this time,” she thought. 63“I know Marjorie has not remembered it. She never does.” She surveyed the extract-bottles for a moment.

“I believe bitter-almond ice-cream would be nice,” she thought. “I’ve never tasted any, but it makes a nice flavour for frosting and cake. I wonder how much it takes? I guess half a bottle, certainly, for all this cream,” and in went the bitter-almond, for Eunice had not the vaguest idea of the necessary quantity.

“Oh, Marjorie,” she called, “I’ve just put in—”

“Do come here, Eunice, I don’t think the boys have chopped this ice fine enough, and they say it will do,” interrupted Marjorie. “Cricket, you go and stir the cream.”

Eunice ran out, thinking to herself,—

“I won’t tell her, after all, and she’ll think she’s forgotten it, as usual.”

Cricket took her turn at the spoon.

“There,” she thought, “the girls never said a word about the flavouring, and I just s’pose they’ve gone and forgotten it, as usual. I’ll put it in myself, and just as they think they’ve got to take the can out, I’ll tell them. Let me see. We always have lemon or vanilla. Essence 64of wintergreen. Wintergreen candy is lovely. I’ll just put in some wintergreen,” and she took the bottle hastily, after turning for a spoon.

“Oh! oh! it’s peppermint I’ve got,” she exclaimed, in dismay, as the first spoonful went into the mixture. “Bah! I don’t like peppermint, I’ll just put in an extra amount of wintergreen to cover it up. Cook says she often mixes flavours.” And in went plenty of wintergreen. By this time the whole pantry had a strong odour of essences, principally peppermint.

“What a strong smell!” said Marjorie, coming back. “What’s the peppermint bottle doing down here with the cork out?” But Cricket vanished, and Marjorie, concluding that the cook had come in and used it, corked it up, and put it back.

“How horribly strong that peppermint is,” she said, as she stirred her cream. “That bottle, just open for a moment, has scented everything, or perhaps some of it was spilled.”

Archie appeared now to carry out the cream to pour in the can.

“Whew! peppermint!” he whistled.

65“Yes; cook has been using some here, and left the bottle uncorked. Awful, isn’t it?”

“Thing flavoured this time?”

“Yes, Master Archie, it is. I flavoured it myself, and it’s all right.”

“Good girl. I shall be glad to have some properly flavoured cream of our manufacture for once. Last year, seems to me, we didn’t get any in.”

The freezing of the cream went rapidly forward now. The three girls made no remarks about the flavouring, each thinking to surprise the others by the fact the flavouring had not been forgotten, after all.

Taking the can out, when the cream was frozen, removing the dasher, and the accompanying tastings, were all important features of the operation. To-day, however, as the critical moment drew near, mamma came out, and said there were two wandering minstrels in Highland dress and with Scottish bag-pipes, in front of the house. Of course they all wanted to go and see them, so they gave the cream into cook’s charge and all rushed off. When they returned half an hour later, they found, much to their disappointment, that the ice-cream 66was all frozen and packed in the moulds, to stand till the afternoon.

Making ice-cream had been such a long process that, by the time everything was put away, a point mamma always insisted on, it was time to dress for dinner.

The afternoon was rather uninteresting. Some one says that very early risers are apt to be conceited all the morning and stupid all the afternoon, and so the children found it. Year after year they had the same experience, but the twelve months between destroyed the recollection of everything but the excitement of early morning.

By half-past four, however, they began to brighten up again, for ice-cream time approached.

This was the children’s day, and the rule was for them to wait on themselves, so for some time they were busy bringing out plates and spoons and doylies, and arranging cakes and crackers on the table on the piazza, where the feast was always served. Cook took the ice-cream out of the moulds for them, and put it on the ice-cream platter, and when the grown-up people were all assembled and the party was ready, Maggie, smiling broadly, appeared 67with it. The children all sat around with eyes expectant and mouths watering, for this was their especial and particular feast, and entirely unlike the ice-cream that was served every Sunday for dessert.

The cream had certainly been beautifully frozen, and looked very tempting on this hot afternoon. Marjorie officiated at the platter, and distributed the dainty with a liberal hand.

Mamma tasted her dish, and set it down suddenly. Auntie, after one trial, laid down her spoon, and coughed behind her hand as she caught mamma’s eye. Two or three other guests present toyed with their spoons.

“This is for you, papa,” Marjorie said then, “and it’s a particularly big dish, because you are so fond of it. There! isn’t that nice?”

“What under the canopy!” hastily exclaimed the doctor, eyeing his dish in great surprise, after his first mouthful.

“What is it? isn’t it good?” inquired Cricket, anxiously, with a sudden pang, as she remembered the peppermint.

“Good? it’s—it’s delicious. Only, why didn’t you flavour it?”

“Flavour it?” cried Marjorie and Eunice 68and Cricket, in a breath, “I did!” Then each looked at the other.

“I put plenty of lemon in,” said Marjorie.

“I thought bitter-almond might be good,” began Eunice, looking bewildered.

“I thought Marjorie had forgotten,” broke in Cricket, rapidly, “so I thought I’d s’prise her, and I meant to put in some wintergreen, ’cause wintergreen candy is very good, ’n’ I got in the peppermint, by mistake, so I put in plenty of wintergreen afterwards, to cover it up.” She confessed this all in a breath, looking very unhappy.

There was a shout.

“There’s no doubt, then, it is thoroughly flavoured; it must have been my taste,” said the doctor, dryly. “I’m almost sorry I have been told, for there is such a charm about the unknown. Do you remember what cook said about her pumpkin pie, when your mother asked her receipt? ‘Shure, there’s milk, an’ there’s eggs an’ there’s some punkin, but after all, it’s principally ingrejiencies.’ Your ice-cream is really delicious, but if I were asked my candid opinion I should say it was principally ingrejiences.”

69“May Zaidee and I have it all, then, mamma,” asked Helen, eagerly, “if no one else wants it?” The twins had been eating up mamma’s and auntie’s cream with great relish. “We think it’s good.”

“Let them have all they want,” the doctor answered, laughing. “I’m sure the amount of peppermint and wintergreen will counteract any possible ill effect of so much cold.”

The older children were much disappointed, but bore it very well. The combination of lemon extract and bitter-almond might have been endured, but Cricket’s generous addition was altogether too much.

Archie and Will put their heads together for a few minutes, and then Archie mounted a hassock and asked for attention.

“Now, mamma,” interrupted Eunice, “I know he is going to say something horrid. Make him stop.”

“It isn’t horrid, ma’am, it’s poetic genius, that’s all.”

70“There! I knew he would,” said Eunice, resignedly.

Will took up the strain:

“Be still, you wretch!” cried Eunice, attacking him in the rear with a cushion.

“Come on, if you want to fight,” said Will. “It’s Archie’s turn, now.”

And both boys gave vent to a prolonged howl of anguish.

“Oh, do go on!” cried Cricket, clapping her hands. “It’s splendid.”

Both boys continued in concert:

Fortunately just here the supper-bell rang, and they all trooped in.

CHAPTER VII. MOPSIE.

It was on the very next day that Mopsie saved Eunice’s life. Why, I haven’t said a word yet about Mopsie, have I? and the dear little fellow ought to have a whole chapter all to himself.

The pets at Kayuna were quite as important, in the children’s eyes, at least, as they were themselves, and equalled them in number. There was Donald’s great St. Bernard, stately and dignified, Kaiser William by name. He was a splendid fellow, but would follow no one but his master. The pigeons, lovely, soft, fluttering things, belonged to Marjorie, who fed them faithfully. They would come at her call in troops and light on her shoulders, and peck at bits of bread which she held between her teeth.

Eunice’s pet was a beauty, for it was a snow-white pony, which her godmother had given her the summer before. It carried her in the saddle beautifully, or was harnessed to the little light 72cart which held two. Fine times the children had with Charcoal, named so, on Donald’s advice, because it wasn’t black.

The twins owned between them the cunningest and brightest little Scotch terrier, named Duster, from his feathery tail, which, of course, he always carried straight up in the air. Another dog, named Dixie, of no particular breed, but of very social nature, belonged to the family in general, though Cricket laid claim to him, until she had Mopsie.

And who was Mopsie? It is rather a humiliating fact, but I may as well confess it at once—Mopsie was, or had been, nothing but a poor little circus pony.

Cricket, at first, was rather ashamed of Mopsie’s past history, considering that Eunice had her beautiful Charcoal, who had been born and brought up in a gentleman’s stable. The boys teased her about her “aristocratic pony,” till she would say, rather indignantly, “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter a bit what a person does, if he does it just the best he can, mamma says so. And it’s just the same with a pony. I know my Mopsie was the nicest horse in the circus, for the men said so. There!”

73But after this particular day no one ever teased her again.

If Mopsie could have spoken, he could have told them many stories of his circus life. He was, certainly, a very bright, sweet-tempered little creature, and knew no end of tricks, more indeed, than the children ever suspected, for there was no one to tell him to do them, or who knew what he could do. He could sit up like a dog, and hop around on his hind legs, keeping time to music,—this had been called dancing on the programme,—and jump through hoops, and many other things.

For a long time the children wondered why, as soon as the cart, to which he was harnessed, stopped, he would try to turn himself around beside the wheels. But this was a trick he had been taught. The clown in the circus would drive him round and round the ring, and as soon as he stopped, it was pony’s business to turn himself directly around, for the front wheels were low enough to slip under the cart. Then the clown would pretend he couldn’t find him, because the pony was no longer in front, and he would pretend to look down in the sawdust for him, and in his pocket, saying, “Now, where is 74Alexander the Great gone?” for that was pony’s name before he was Mopsie.

Another thing he had been trained to do was to pick up and carry really heavy things in his teeth, and run away with them, while the clown ran after him, shouting “Stop!” but the little fellow knew he must not stop till he heard his name as well.

All these, and many more tricks Mopsie had been in the habit of doing before great crowds every afternoon and evening.

At last came one afternoon that Mopsie little thought was to be his last in the circus. The circus had come to Wellsboro’, and Mike, Doctor Ward’s groom, had gone to see it. He was so fond of horses that he was always hanging around the tents where they were kept, and making friends with the hostlers.

Suddenly a great commotion arose. One of the big horses, which was always ugly, got perfectly wild, from the bites of horse-flies, it was afterward thought, and began kicking furiously right and left, plunging and rearing till the frightened men could not hold him. Poor little Alexander the Great was being groomed and harnessed for the ring; as the maddened horse 75broke loose, pony and groom were kicked by those great, heavy hoofs, till the life was almost crushed out of both of them.

In the confusion, after the horse was secured, nobody noticed poor little Alexander, who lay moaning and quivering in agony. The man beside him was lifted and taken away, and then somebody bent over the pony.

“He’s done for, poor little fellow,” the man said, pityingly. “I’ll put him out of his misery,” and he drew a pistol.

Then Mike came forward. “Don’t shoot him yit. Lemme look at the loikes of ’im.”

Mike was a born horse-doctor, and to his practised eye the pony was not so seriously hurt but that there was hope of saving him.

“Will you let me have him?” he asked, after feeling the pony all over very carefully. “He’ll take a sight o’ doctorin’, ’n’ he won’t be no good in a cirkis agin.”

“Take him, and welcome,” the manager said, hastily. “We’ve no time for sick horses,” and he swore again at the horse who had done all the mischief.

So Mike got an old door, and one of the men helped him lift poor little suffering Alexander 76on it. Then he hired a cart somewhere, and so the pony came to Kayuna.

This had been about the first of May. The children were not allowed to see the new arrival for a week or two, for he was not a very pleasant object. His legs were bound up, and his poor sides were all covered with “splarsters,” as Zaidee announced once, in great excitement, when she had taken a stolen peep.

At last the little visitor was in a condition to be seen, for, thanks to Mike’s good care, he mended fast. The “splarsters” were taken off, though his legs were still in splints, and Mike groomed his shaggy, uneven coat as best he could.

Cricket and Eunice saw him first, and were perfectly delighted with him. He was even smaller than their dear Charcoal. After that they were his constant visitors, feeding him with apples and sugar, and petting him till poor little Alexander must have wondered if he had died and gone to the horse-heaven.

Then came the exciting day when the last splinter and bandage were removed, and pony, a little weak and uncertain as to his hoofs, but very frisky as to his head, was brought out into the yard.

77Mike, meantime, had had a private interview with papa, and following that, one with Cricket.

The result was, that a very happy little girl raced down to the barn, with Eunice and Dixie close behind.

“Oh, you dear, darling old Mopsie,” Cricket cried out, flinging her arms about his rough little head. “You’re my ownty-donty pony. Eunice has Charcoal, and now I have you,” and she hugged him again and again.

When she released him, what did that cunning pony do but offer her his front hoof to shake!

“Oh, you dear, dear, thing!” she shrieked. “Mike! Mike! see that! he wants to shake hands,” for the pony sociably offered his other hoof.

“Yis, miss,” said proud Mike, grinning from ear to ear. “He’s been a cirkis-pony, and knows a deal o’ tricks, I dessay.”

Eunice dived into the stables, and in a moment reappeared, leading her little snowy Charcoal. The two ponies were a decided contrast—the one so clean, and well-groomed and white, and the other, rough and black, with shaggy, uneven coat.

78“Yours is awfully cute,” said Eunice, with an arm over her pony’s neck, “but he can’t compare with my Charcoal. He’s nothing but a circus-pony, after all.”

That was not like Eunice, and she did not mean to hurt Cricket’s feelings. It was only that her own pony looked so fresh and dear to her. But Cricket fired up at once.

“You’re my own Mopsie,” she cried, hugging her black pony again, “and no other pony could be half so cunning and smart. Charcoal isn’t a bit smart, Eunice, you know he isn’t.”

A quarrel seemed close at hand, right over those dear ponies, which stood rubbing noses in the friendliest way. But Eunice was too generous to hurt Cricket’s feelings knowingly, and she said, quickly,

“Mopsie does look awfully bright, Cricket, and I think that’s a good name for him. I wonder what his name really was?”

But Mike did not know, so Mopsie was christened thus on the spot, and Mopsie he remained to the end of the chapter.

“When can I ride him, do you think, Mike?” asked Cricket, eagerly, as she fed him sugar.

“Shure, Miss Scricket, an’ I’m thinkin’ it’ll 79be next week ye’ll be afther ridin’ him, if he kapes on a’mendin’.”

After this, Cricket hated any mention of the fact that Mopsie was, or had been, a circus-pony, though she stoutly insisted that it “didn’t make a bit of difference, so long as he circused as well as he could.”

Mike took the best of care of him, and a month made a wonderful difference with the little fellow. Constant and careful grooming made his rough hair smoother, and with the vaseline and other things that Mike knew of, his uneven coat began to lose the marks of scars and “splarsters.”

CHAPTER VIII. WHAT MOPSIE DID.

It was a proud day for Cricket when the saddle was first put on the back of her very own pony, and Mike mounted her. Not that she needed to be mounted, as a rule, for she was quite equal to grasping the shaggy mane, and scrambling up into the saddle herself, but this was such an important occasion that ordinary methods would not do.

Mike was quite as proud as Cricket was, of the black pony. To think that but for his kindness and devoted care poor little Mopsie’s bones would now be whitening in some field! And not only that, but to think his favourite Miss “Scricket” now had a pony of her own, all owing to him. He had polished up Mopsie to the last degree, and now that the pony had its pretty little saddle on, just like Charcoal’s, the two did not make a bad pair.

All the younger fry gathered to watch this first mounting. Dr. Ward was there, also, for 81he did not know whether Mopsie had ever carried a little girl before, and he wanted to make sure that everything was right. The children cantered up and down the avenue to the gates and back, and even Charcoal seemed to think that two ponies were much more fun than one. Mopsie was a bit stiff at first, but he soon grew more limber, and at last papa said that they might ride down the road, outside the gates.

“Hurrah! get up, Mopsie!” cried Cricket, bringing the whip lightly down on Mopsie’s black flank, and tightening the rein a little. To her great surprise Mopsie began to rise on his hind legs, till his front feet waved in the air, and then he gravely stalked away on the two legs, with Cricket wildly clutching his mane.

“Get down, Mopsie,” she shrieked. “Why, I’m falling off. Get down this minute.”

Papa and Mike both ran to the rescue, but knowing little Mopsie seemed to feel that, after all, this was not what was expected of him, so he slowly lowered his front feet, and stood quietly waiting for further orders.

Mike was full of apologies for his pet.

“It’s the way ye drew the line, Miss Scricket,” he said, anxiously. “It’s only wan 82of thim cirkis-tricks. See! he don’t mane no harm, at all, at all.”

“Oh, it’s lots of fun,” cried Cricket, excitedly, when she discovered that Mopsie evidently thought he was only doing his duty. “I wish I could make him do it again.” But just what pull of the rein was necessary to tell him to rear she could not find out, though she jerked the patient pony’s head this way and that.

“But I’m afraid to have you go out of the yard, my little girl,” said papa, “for Mopsie might rear like that any time and throw you.”

“Oh, no, papa, really,” pleaded Cricket, “for he goes up so slowly, that now that I know what’s coming, I’m not a bit afraid, and he comes right straight down.”

However, papa would not consent to Cricket’s making a circus-rider of herself till she understood Mopsie a little better, so there were two or three weeks of riding within the grounds. At last there came a day when papa said that he thought Mopsie was now enough accustomed to a little girl’s riding him to go straight along the road.

It was the day after Fourth of July when the 83children took their first ride out into the country. Dr. Ward, mounted on his big gray horse, went with them for some distance, and then gave them permission to ride along the lake-road and so home, while he rode further on, on some business.

It was lovely riding along by the lake-road, where it was all cool and shady, on that hot morning. The edge of the road sloped rather steeply to the lake, but most of the way there was an old fence along there. In some places it was broken down. Now and then a fire-cracker in the distance made both ponies jump a little. Charcoal, especially, was very nervous about fire-crackers, for once some one had fired off a whole package right under his nose, and he had been dreadfully frightened.

Presently the little girls came to a place where some lovely, rare flowers were growing by the lake side, and Cricket jumped off her pony to get them. It was one of the places where the fence was broken down, so she slipped down the bank to pick the flowers, leaving Mopsie cropping a tuft of grass above.

As she did so, three small boys, who were in hiding in the bushes, suddenly jumped up and 84fired off a whole pack of crackers, flash! bang! right under Charcoal’s sensitive nose.

There was a scream from Eunice, Charcoal jumped sideways, and in a moment Charcoal, Mopsie and Eunice rolled down the steep bank, and were struggling in the water, while Cricket stood horrified on the bank. The water was very deep there, even close to the shore, and the force of the fall carried all three some distance out. Cricket and the very frightened small boys set up shriek after shriek, but the road was very lonely, and no houses were near. No one was in sight to render aid.

Charcoal was nearest the shore, and swam to the bank; he scrambled up like a dog, and stood shivering on the brink, much too frightened to do anything but stand still.

Here, in this strait, Mopsie’s circus-training came to the front. As he and Eunice both rose to the surface, she struggling and screaming, the knowing little pony caught her dress in his teeth, and began to swim slowly towards the shore with his burden. Fortunate, now, that he had learned to carry heavy things in his teeth like a dog. It was only a short distance he had to swim, and in a few minutes 85he was near enough for Cricket, steadying herself by an overhanging branch, to reach forward and help draw Eunice in. Mopsie scrambled up as Charcoal had done, and stood quietly shaking himself, like a big Newfoundland dog.

For a few minutes the children could do nothing but hug each other and cry. Then Cricket exclaimed, “Oh, you dear, darling old Mopsie! you saved my Eunice’s life,” and hugged her brave little pony tightly around its wet neck. Then Eunice put her dripping arms around it, too.

“You dearest Mopsie,” she half-sobbed, “I’m so glad you were a circus-pony, for just a plain horse mightn’t have been able to hold my dress so, and I’m going to love you just as much as I do Charcoal.”

Two very funny-looking children rode into the yard a little later. Great was the excitement when the story was told, and Mopsie had enough petting and praise and sugar to turn an ordinary horse’s head. Doctor Ward said that, without doubt, Eunice would have drowned but for Mopsie’s training to catch and hold things in his teeth, and besides that, he said 86that the little fellow’s circus life had probably done for him what education does for people generally—made him readier and quicker.

After that Cricket had the best of it when anybody teased her about riding a circus-pony, for she would exclaim, “I don’t care if he was. He saved Eunice’s life, for papa said so. And a plain horse wouldn’t have known how.”

And Eunice would add: “We love him all the better for it, because he had to learn how to be an every-day pony, and he’s learned it so well.”

CHAPTER IX. THE KITTENS.

“Now, what do you s’pose those children are up to?” asked Cricket, with much interest.

“Those children,” referred to in that particular tone, always meant the twins, Zaidee and Helen.

Cricket and Eunice sat in an apple-tree, on a low, gnarled limb, munching harvest apples. It was after dinner, and they had not yet decided what to do with their afternoon. It was too hot to ride, and besides, they had been out on their ponies all the morning.

Trooping along the lane beneath them went the nursery party, Zaidee and Helen, with their nurse, Eliza, who held little Kenneth by the hand. With them was their little playmate, Sylvie Craig, with her nurse, who was wheeling Baby Craig in his carriage.

Zaidee and Sylvie swung between them a good-sized covered basket, which did not seem to be heavy, although they carried it with 88great care. All were chattering and laughing in high glee.

“Did you ever do it?” the girls heard Sylvie ask. “It’s the dratest fun. Zey all swim round, and you pote ’em wiv a stit.”

“Does they squeal?” queried Zaidee, earnestly.

“No-o, I don’t zink so,” returned Sylvie, doubtfully.

“I sawed Thomas cut off a chicken’s head once,” piped up Helen.

“I’ve seen lots of chiten’s heads tut off,” said Sylvie, in a superior way.

“What are they going to do?” wondered the girls in the apple-tree, as the group passed down the lane.

“They’re going to the brook,” said Cricket, peering after them. “Let’s go and see.”

“Don’t let them see us,” cautioned Eunice. “I b’lieve they’re up to some mischief. Keep behind the hedge.”

Eunice and Cricket followed the group at a little distance.

89

EUNICE AND CRICKET WATCHING THE OTHER CHILDREN.

91The children stopped by the brook and the older girls watched their proceedings with much interest from behind the hedge. The two nurses, both young girls, sat down on the grassy slope and began to talk, without noticing the little ones much. The brook was wide just there, and quite deep with recent rains. Overhanging willows lined its banks, and made it cool and shady.

The children opened their basket.

“What have they got there?” whispered Eunice, craning her neck, as Sylvie suddenly said,—

“Don’t open it yet. We must det some stits.”

Sticks abounded, and each child armed herself with a stout one. Then Sylvie lifted the cover, and took out four little squirming, week-old kittens, with their eyes still shut.

“Now,” directed Sylvie, eagerly, “you frow one in so. Oh, see it bob! frow in anovver one, Zaidee, and pote ’em down when zey turn up,”—and suiting the action to the word, she poked down the helpless little bobbing head of the unfortunate kitten.

“I’m afraid it hurts them,” said tender-hearted Helen.

“Oh, no, it doesn’t,” insisted Sylvie. “’Tause I heard mamma tell Dennis to drown zem her own self. Doesn’t hurt, really.”

92And Helen, thus reassured, threw in the wretched little black kitten she held, and stood ready with her stick.

“Let me frow one in,” cried three-year-old Kenneth, much excited, picking up one helpless little straggler, and pitching it eagerly into the water. “Pote it down, Zaidee!”

Eunice and Cricket were so much amazed at this blood-thirsty sight, that at first they simply stared. But when little Kenneth pushed down the heads of the helpless victims, Eunice recovered herself and rushed to the rescue.

“Why, you naughty, naughty children,” she said, in her severest tones, “to drown the poor little kittens! How would you like me to poke you down under the water like that, Kenneth?”

“Sylvie says it doesn’t hurt ’em,” said Kenneth, opening his big blue eyes.

“Of course it hurts to be thumped on the head,” said Eunice. “Eliza, you ought not let them do so.”

“Oh, law! them kittens don’t mind,” said the nurse, carelessly. “They’ll never know what killed ’em.”

“Mamma told Dennis to drown zem, her own self, she did,” objected Sylvie, clinging to her stick.

93“Dennis doesn’t drown them that way, goosie,” explained Eunice. “He ties them up in a bag, and puts a stone in it, and they all drown so fast that they never know it. It’s cruel to hit them that way, you naughty little things, and you must promise never to do it again.”

The children, subdued by Eunice’s sharp words and older-sister authority, duly promised, very gravely, though Sylvie could not resist a last sly rap. The little, helpless, bobbing things by this time floated quietly on the surface, and one by one the little bodies drifted beyond reach of the children’s sticks.

Then Kenneth, who was only a baby, began to whimper.

“I didn’t mean to hurt ze tittens,” he sobbed. “Would it have hurted ’em wivvout we poted ’em, Tritet?”

“I guess not,” said Cricket, comforting her pet. “P’rhaps it didn’t hurt them so very much this time, only remember, you must never do it again.”

“No, me won’t ever pote ’em aden,” promised Kenneth.

Then, this part of the afternoon’s programme 94being over, the children ran away further along the stream to play, while Cricket and Eunice sat down on the bank, skipping stones. Baby Craig slept peacefully in his carriage, and the nurses gossiped and crocheted together.

Presently the girls went a little distance down the bank, and crossed on the stepping-stones. Lovely cardinal flowers grew in abundance further up, and they picked big bunches of them. Faintly, from some distance up the stream, came the children’s voices, but they were out of sight of the older ones, on account of the overhanging bushes that bordered the stream above them, on both sides. An hour of the sultry afternoon slipped by. The girls still sat idly by the brookside, for it was far too hot for the least exertion. At last, Eliza, who was not usually so careless, suddenly bethought herself of her neglected charges.

“Miss Eunice,” she called across the stream, coming up opposite to where the girls sat, “have you seen the children?”

“They went up the brook, I think, ’Liza, and I have not thought of them since. I hope nothing has happened to them,” said Eunice, anxiously.

95“Oh, I guess not,” returned Eliza, but she set off rapidly up the stream. Some distance beyond there was a tiny cottage, where there lived a poor widow, a young Scotchwoman, with several little children. Eliza had sometimes taken the twins there, and it occurred to her that they might have wandered there now by themselves.

But in another minute the little ones came in sight, running in great excitement.

“Elspeth falled in the water,” shrieked Helen, while still far off. Elspeth was the Scotchwoman’s two-year-old baby. “We sawed her fall in.”

Cricket and Eunice were across the stepping-stones in a moment, and flew to meet the children.

“What do you mean?” they cried, while Mary Ann left Baby Craig in his carriage to join them.

“She falled in,” repeated Zaidee, breathlessly.

“And we didn’t pote her wiv a stit,” struck in Sylvie, virtuously.

“But who pulled her out?” asked Eliza.

“Nobody pulled her out, ’Liza. She’s all in the water.”

96“Now! In the water now? Is she drowned?” cried the others, horrified.

“I dess her’s drownded dead,” said Sylvie, cheerfully. “But me didn’t pote her, truly. Her dust fell in.”

“I sawed her fall in,” put in Kenneth. “It was all deep.”

“And she kicked in the water,” added Helen, “and by ’n’ by she sailed up to the top, just like the kitties.”

CHAPTER X. ELSPETH.

Eunice and Cricket exchanged frightened glances.

“Where is she now?” repeated Mary Ann, also looking scared.

“In ze water, ’tourse,” returned little Sylvie, impatiently. “Her sailed down ze water all zis way, an’ zen ze bushes taught her, an’ her touldn’t sail any more.”

“Listen! what’s that?” cried Eunice, with white lips.

A distant cry was becoming nearer and louder.

“My bairn! my bairn!” rang a wailing voice.

Around the curve of the brook ran a wild-eyed woman, wringing her hands.

Across the fields, attracted by her cries, two men came hurrying.

“She drowned! my bairn is drowned!” the hapless mother cried, pushing back her falling hair.

“I sawed her fall in!” cried Zaidee.

98The questioning men and the half-crazed mother stopped at the child’s words, and gathered around the little ones. They grew frightened and incoherent at the storm of questions that assailed them.

Evidently a tragedy had taken place under the children’s very eyes. They had seen little Elspeth, when they were way up the bank, they said, chasing yellow butterflies. She had run towards the brook, through the tall grass, and she must have plunged straight into the water. This was the main stream of the Kayuna, and the current ran swift and deep there.

The children saw her, and ran to the spot, but they never thought of giving the alarm, for they had no idea what drowning really is. As they said, “the baby kicked in the water, and then it sailed up to the top.” Their chief idea was that they must not poke it with a stick.

They had watched the little creature “sailing” down the brook, and had run along the bank beside it.

“Zere it is,” Sylvie suddenly broke off, pointing to the curve above.

“It’s under the bushes,” Zaidee said, beginning to cry with nervousness and fright. The 99excited group around, all talking and asking questions at once, the frantic mother catching first at one child and then at another, Mary Ann crying and groaning in true Irish fashion, completely bewildered the little ones, who had not the faintest idea of the importance of what they had seen.

As Zaidee pointed, one of the men sprang into the water, knee deep.

“I see it!” he cried, and pressed forward through the water.

The poor mother was plunging after him when the other man forcibly held her back.

“Let me go to my bairn,” she cried, struggling.

“We’ll bring your bairn,” he said, motioning to the two nurses to hold her back, while he tore up the bank.

The brushes grew thick there, and the baby had been caught underneath in such a way that it could not be seen from the steep bank. Excepting that the children had known where it had stopped, it would have been much longer before it was found.

The man on the bank plunged down through the bushes and both men were lost to view.

100Five minutes of breathless waiting passed, while even the poor mother only moaned brokenly, and then they reappeared, one of them bearing the little drowned baby.

“Run for your pa, children,” cried Eliza, but Cricket’s swift feet were already flying along to the house.

The group stood in awed silence as the bearer tenderly deposited the dripping little burden on the grass. It looked as if it were asleep. The golden curls clung to its white forehead, and the little face was still rosy.

The poor mother cast herself down beside it in a perfect abandonment of grief, kissing its lips, and clasping the lifeless little form to her breast, as she cried, ceaselessly,—

“Oh, my bairn! my bairn!”

Running at full speed down the lane came Dr. Ward, with blankets, and close behind him followed his wife, with a whiskey-flask. In a moment he was among them, and had caught the child from the mother. He tore off its clothes and put his ear to its heart.

“There is hope, I think,” he said, quickly, and with that, although the baby had been so long under water, there began a desperate 101fight for the little life. The doctor worked with an intensity that would not yield to despair, rubbing and working the little round, white limbs.

The minutes wore on, and the helpless onlookers could only stand by in breathless silence. The doctor gave brief, quick orders which willing hands executed. He carried the baby into the direct glare of the scorching August sun, which beat down with fierce intensity on his unprotected head. But no one heeded the sickening heat. The poor mother sat by, passively now, like a stone, her hands clasped round her knees, in dull despair. Her long hair, yellow as the baby’s own, rolled in a rough mass down her back, torn and tangled by the bushes, and her wild eyes watched the doctor’s every movement.

The work of rubbing the tiny, white body, and working the little arms up and down, went steadily on, one relieving another, but thus far with no avail.

Half an hour passed. The doctor worked on with set lips.

“Better give it up, sir,” one of the men ventured at last, stopping to wipe his streaming 102forehead. The doctor’s face was dark purple, and every vein was swelling. At the suggestion of stopping their efforts, the mother uttered a low moan, and stretched out her hands imploringly.

“Work on,” the doctor made answer, briefly. “Work its arms steadily, Johnson. Rub evenly, Emily,” he said, bending again to breathe into the baby’s parted lips. He raised his head suddenly, then bent his ear again to its heart.

“Thank God!” he breathed. A thrill of life ran through the baby’s frame. There was a faint quiver of its eyelashes, a gasp for breath,—another—and the baby stirred. Elspeth was saved.

There was a moment of intense silence, and then the mother threw herself forward and clasped her baby to her bosom with a hungry cry of joy that no one present ever forgot.

Papa’s feelings when he learned that his own little ones had seen the accident may be imagined, and then and there he gave the children a few instructions that even the youngest ones never forgot.

The mother had missed her baby, but she 103thought nothing of it at first, for the little thing often strayed some distance from the house. At last, growing anxious, she went out again and looked around. Down the bank she saw a little child in a pink dress, which she thought was her little one. It was really a glimpse of Helen in her little pink frock. The mother went back, thinking the child was safe.

After a time she went out to call it home, when, to her horror, she saw her baby’s sunbonnet caught on a low, overhanging branch, with nothing else to be seen; and then knowing the baby must have fallen in, she had rushed, screaming for help, down the bank in search of it.

Little Elspeth, wrapped in blankets, was carried to the doctor’s house to be cared for further, and the next day she was playing about, as round and rosy as ever.

CHAPTER XI. IN THE GARRET.

The garret of the old stone house was a mine of wealth to the children. It was a huge place, extending over the whole house. It had many unexpected angles and sudden little descents of two or three steps in different places, over the rambling additions.

Four generations of Wards had lived at Kayuna, and so there was a most delightful accumulation in the garret. Of course there were lines of old trunks, piled with ancient dresses and quaint bonnets dating from the beginning of the century. There were stacks of old furniture in various stages of going to pieces. There were piles of musty books, in strange-smelling leather bindings. There were big bundles of closely-tied up feather-beds, like huge, soft cannon-balls. These made magnificent barricades when the children played that they were bombarding forts.

It was as hot as mustard up there in the 105summer-time, of course, but the children never minded the heat. Then there were the long, rainy days that came occasionally, when it was a simple delight to scamper up there directly after breakfast, to hear the rain pelting cheerfully on the roof, and the wind whistling through the window-casings, “like a boy with his hands in his pockets,” Cricket said.

The whole troop had been there one day. It had rained early in the morning, and though it cleared up before eleven, the children played on until they had quite exhausted their resources.

They had sailed across the ocean in search of America, in a huge old sofa turned upside down. They had been shipwrecked, owing to a sudden parting of the back and sides of their bark, and then they were chased by cannibals, represented by Hilda and Edith Craig and an imaginary host.

Little Kenneth, the usual victim on these occasions, had been caught and prepared for a feast, till rescued by Cricket and Hilda in a valiant charge.

They had played the Chariot Race in Ben-Hur, with Zaidee and Helen as horses, harnessed 106to an old wheel-chair, with Edith as charioteer, while Cricket drove a dashing pair, consisting of Eunice and Sylvie Craig. Hilda and Kenneth were occupants of the amphitheatre, and cheered on the contestants, as they raced around the great chimney in the centre of the house.

That naturally suggested the burning of Rome, with Nero, personated by Eunice, fiddling, as she sat on a very high and very insecure tower, built of trunks and chairs and three-legged tables, while the inhabitants of the city tore around to save their property.

Then they tied themselves up in bags, drawn over their feet and around their waists, for tails, and played they were mermaids, disporting themselves among the rocks and seaweeds, represented by boxes and old drapery, properly arranged on one of the lower levels of the floor.

This lasted until Kenneth, trying to imitate the older girls in diving off a bowlder on to a feather bed beneath, missed his balance and fell entangled in the bag that served him for a tail. He bumped his poor little head and made his nose bleed, and was borne off shrieking, by Eliza, who just then appeared on the scene.

107Then the Craigs and Hilda had to go home to dinner, and the twins went out to play.

After dinner, Cricket and Eunice wandered up stairs to the garret again.

“What let’s do now?” asked Eunice, as they sat among the ruins of Rome.

“Why, let’s—” Cricket looked vaguely around. “Let’s dress up in those clothes up there.”

Some old clothes of Dr. Ward’s, and of Donald’s, hung up on the wall.

“Oh, that will be fun,” cried Eunice, jumping down. “We haven’t dressed up this summer, once.”

They slipped out of their gingham dresses and petticoats, and with much giggling and merriment got themselves into the boys’ clothes.

The trousers were so long that they had to cut off the legs, to allow their feet to come out at all, and the vests and coats were anything but a tight fit.

“This coat is too fat for me,” Cricket said, dubiously, studying the effect.

Eunice caught up a small pillow and stuffed it up behind Cricket’s back under the coat.

“But now I look hump-backed,” objected 108Cricket, twisting herself double to get a rear view.

“Never mind, we’ll play you are hump-backed,” returned Eunice, always ready of resource, as she patted the pillow into a nice, round hump. “We’ll play that we’re Italians, and you can be that poor little Pickaninny, or whatever his name was, that mamma read us about last night.”

“Then we’ll be tramps. Oh, let’s go out doors, and go round to the kitchen and scare cook!”

This proposal was received with applause by Eunice.

“Wait till I slip down stairs into papa’s office, Eunice,” Cricket suggested next, “and I’ll get some court-plaster to patch up our faces, and no one will ever know us. We’ll have piles of fun!”

Cricket was gone a long time, and came back giggling and breathless.

“I heard some one in the hall,” she said, “so I didn’t dare go down stairs, and I just got out of the bath-room window on to the office roof, and I climbed down the trellis and went in the office window, and just as I found the court-plaster 109case, I heard some one coming, so I had to run like fury, and I just flew out the window, and didn’t I skip up the trellis lively!” gasped Cricket, taking breath.

“Then I heard some one in the hall, so I had to stay in the bath-room ever so long, and I thought they’d never go. And here’s the whole case,” she said, producing it.

“But suppose that papa wants the case before we can get it back?” asked Eunice, selecting a big piece.

“Hope to goodness he won’t, or I’ll get a wiggin,” said Cricket, calmly, applying, as she spoke, a good-sized strip over one eye, while the corner of Eunice’s mouth disappeared under a black patch.

“Oh, Cricket, how funny you look!” Eunice exclaimed, when she had completed her own face. Cricket’s left eye had vanished, and two long strips on the other side, right over her dimples, completely disguised her. She had stuck a broad-brimmed, ragged hat on the back of her curly head, and streaked what was visible of her face and her hands with soot from the chimney.

“You are the funniest girl!” Eunice cried, 110fairly doubling up with laughter, as Cricket extricated a little black paw from her voluminous coat sleeve, and said, in a whining voice,—

“Please, ma’am, I’m a poor widdy, and I have seven small children, and my wife is dead, and I’m blind and deaf and dumb, and I can’t talk on account of my bad rheumatics, and will you give me some ice-cream and a cup of coffee?”

After they had laughed themselves sore, they concluded that they were ready to set out, so they stole cautiously down. Eunice had bundled her long braid on top of her head under a battered old felt hat, jammed well over her ears, and nobody would have known the two dirty little wretches that crept quietly over the stairs. It was the middle of the afternoon, and as everybody was napping, the coast was clear. They slipped out the side door into the shrubbery, and through that to the road, climbing the low stone fence. Then they came up the lane to the back door.

Cook was nodding on the shady back piazza, as the grotesque little figures stole up the steps. Cricket crept softly up and laid a grimy little finger on the end of cook’s unconscious nose.

111Cook opened her eyes with a start.

“Howly Moses!” she howled, thinking she had the nightmare. “Get away wid yer.”

“I’m a poor widdy,” whined Cricket, holding out her hand. “I’ve got seven small children, and my back is so lame that I can’t talk.”

“He means he can’t work,” struck in Eunice. “He doesn’t understand English very well, and he’s so deaf anyway, he can’t hear what he’s saying,” she explained to cook, who sat staring.

“Please, mum, if you’ve any very nice chocolate pudding, I feel as if I could eat a little,” said Cricket, with a remembrance of dessert. “I had a very light breakfast,” folding her hands over the pit of her stomach.

“I’ll light-breakfast yer, yer young imperence,” growled cook, quite awake now. “Git off these premises in the shake o’ a dyin’ lamb’s tail, or I’ll know the raison whoy.” Cook was a large woman, and as she slowly rose out of her chair, she towered like a mountain above the children, who instinctively dodged her threatening hand.

“Git out of this, immijit! Shure I’ll have no tramps here.”

112“We’re not tramps,” said Eunice, changing base. “We’re selling things.”

“It’s selling things ye are, are ye? and shure, where’s the things ye’re afther sellin’?”

“We’re selling post-holes,” said Cricket, promptly, as her eye fell on a particularly large hole near by, that had been freshly dug for a clothes-post. “We’ve brought some with us.”

“Post-holes, is it?” cried cook, enraged, and suspecting a joke; “we’ll see how yer like post-holes, drat yer imperence,” and before Cricket could dodge, she had swung her by the shoulders off the steps, and jammed her very forcibly into the hole.

“Sell post-holes again, will yer? I’ll sell yer post-holes for yer!” cried cook, angrily.

“Stop, cook!” screamed Eunice, hanging on her arm; “it’s Cricket, cook, and it’s me.”

Cook paused with uplifted arm, and Cricket, decidedly the worse for wear, took the opportunity to scramble out of the hole, exclaiming, “We’re only pretending, cook, and we truly didn’t mean to scare you so badly.”

Cook looked down on the little figures, about a third as large as herself, and laughed grimly.

“Scare me, is it? Shure, I think the shoe’s 113on the other fut. But you’re always up to your tricks.”

“Oh, you didn’t really scare me,” said Cricket, “only you did hurt me a little when you grabbed me by the nape of the arm. But I wouldn’t have told if Eunice hadn’t.”

“But I didn’t want you to get hurt, Cricket. Come on, let’s go into the orchard and get some harvest apples. Good-by, cook,” and the little tramps ran off, hand in hand.

CHAPTER XII. THE TRAMPS.

Once in the orchard, they felt as if their feet were on their native heath, and they were up, in a twinkling, among the branches of their favourite tree.

In the munching of apples they quite forgot that they were tramps, until Cricket remarked that her hump made a most convenient pillow for her to lean back against.

“These clothes are getting awfully hot, Cricket,” said Eunice. “I wouldn’t be a boy for anything I can think of, to wear such things all the time.”

“I think girls are nicer than boys, anyway,” remarked Cricket, thoughtfully. “Girls are always smarter, and I think it makes boys mad.”

“Will always says if anything isn’t just right that we do, that it’s just like a girl,” returned Eunice, in an aggrieved tone.

“Yes, boys are just so funny, but I don’t mind,” said Cricket, philosophically.

115“I’ve about made up my mind,” pursued Eunice, “that I sha’n’t get married when I grow up. Husbands are such a ’sponsibility. Mamma, you know, always fixes papa’s cravats for him, and he never, never goes to the right drawer for his clean shirts. It’s so funny! Shall you get married, Cricket?”

Cricket considered the question.

“I think,” she said, after some reflection, “that if I don’t go to Africa as a missionary, that I’d rather be a widow with an only son.”

“But Cricket,” exclaimed Eunice, “you’d have to be married first if you were a widow.”

“Why, so I should!” returned Cricket, much surprised. “I didn’t think of that. You see, Aunt Kate and Harry have such nice times travelling round together, and there’s Aunt Helen and Max, too. I was thinking of them, and I forgot they were ever married.”

“I think I’ll be a doctor, like papa,” went on Eunice, “or else I’d like to be a stage-driver. Whoa! get up there! So, boy!” she said, slapping imaginary reins, for Eunice was a born horsewoman.

“These clothes are awfully hot, Eunice,” said Cricket, returning to the original topic.

116“Let’s go and take them off now.”

Eunice was quite willing, so they clambered down, chattering and laughing still.

At a little distance stood old Thomas, attracted by their voices. He had been coming through the orchard, and he saw up in the tree what he thought were two ragamuffins, stealing apples, and he was lying in wait for their descent. As they slipped down, and swung off from a low branch, he darted forward, and caught one of them in his arms. Of course, it chanced to be Cricket.

“I’ve caught ye now, ye young rascal! I’ll teach yer to steal our apples!”

“Why, Thomas!” cried Cricket, “don’t you know me?”

“Yer bet I know yer. I’ve been watchin’ for yer this long time back. I ’low I’ll give yer a trouncin’ that yer’ll remember for one while, yer young scallawags!” Thomas cried, holding the struggling child by the shoulder, and bringing his stick whack across her back. The big pillow saved her from the blow, and Eunice again flew to the rescue. She managed to get hold of the stick, and clung to it with both her strong little hands.

117“Don’t you know us, Thomas?” both children cried. “We’re not stealing apples; they’re ours.”

“Yourn, be they? I’ll teach yer if they’re yourn, yer young impidence!” Thomas cried, angrily, drowning the children’s protests in his loud tones. “I’ve been on the lookout fer ye, stealin’ my apples and melins, and garden truck. I’ll hev ye up before the doctor. He said he saw two strange boys scootin’ round the orchard ’sarternoon; and now I’ve caught yer, I’ll teach yer to steal apples and sich,” shaking her till her teeth knocked together, and her arms flew about like a wind-mill.

Then he tightened his clutch upon the unfortunate Cricket, who was quite overcome by this second attack, and grasping Eunice by the arm, he started off, dragging the protesting children.

“Let us alone, Thomas,” screamed Cricket, at the top of her lungs. “We—’re—not—boys—at—all.”

“Yer don’t come none o’ yer stuff over me,” was all the answer Thomas vouchsafed, still dragging them on with relentless hands.

“But it’s Cricket,” cried that victim, despairingly.

118Thomas dropped his hold so suddenly that Cricket sat down very unexpectedly. Eunice pulled off her battered felt hat, and her long braid fell down her back.

Thomas, who had been completely taken in, stared at them.

“Why didn’t ye say so before?” he said, at length. “Gittin’ yerselves up in such rigs that yer own mar wouldn’t ha’ knowed ye. Kep’ a sayin’ ‘We’re not boys, we’re not boys,’ when anyone with half an eye could see ye was. Henderin’ me outer half an arternoon’s work,” and Thomas went off, disgusted.

The children looked at each other and burst out laughing. Their disguise had been altogether too successful. Cricket rubbed her shoulder comically.

“I guess Thomas’s fingers are tipped with steel,” she said. “I know I’m all black and blue.”

“Poor Cricket,” said Eunice, sympathetically. “First you were jammed into a hole and then you were shaken to jelly. I don’t see why he didn’t grab me.”

“It’s a peculiar concidence,” said Cricket, meaning coincidence. “No matter who’s 119around, I always am grabbed. Let’s go and get some plums.”

There were some choice early plums near the front of the house, and the children gathered a good supply and retired into a little rustic arbour to eat them. Presently a carriage full of callers rolled up the avenue.

“Dear me; it’s the Saunders,” said Cricket, peeping out, “and there’s Irene Saunders. Gracious, Eunice, mamma’ll be looking for us in a minute! Let’s skip round to the side-door as soon as they’re in the house.”

But to their dismay, they heard the ladies say to the maid,—

“It’s so charming on this lovely piazza, that we will wait here for Mrs. Ward.”

The piazza was a delightful place, twelve feet broad, and supplied with lounging chairs of every description, a table, magazines, hammocks, cushions and rugs, and sufficiently shaded by vines to soften the sunlight. But the arbour where the children were was in full view.

“Shall we go, anyway?” asked Eunice, but before they could get out, Dr. Ward came round the house, and greeted the guests on the piazza.

120“Now, what shall we do?” said Cricket, in despair. “If papa sees us he’ll certainly think we are tramps, too. I heard him tell Thomas, the other day, that tramps were getting so thick, he might have to set the dog on some of them. I don’t think I could stand any more knocking round.”

“Well, let’s wait,” said Eunice, for there seemed to be nothing else to do.

Just then Mrs. Ward appeared, and after a moment there were inquiries for Cricket and Eunice. The children were near enough to hear every word.

“I want my sister to see your little flock, Mrs. Ward,” said Mrs. Saunders, graciously, “for you know we all think they are the show-children of the neighbourhood.” Mrs. Saunders was a woman of much means and little cultivation, who had lately taken a summer home in Wellsboro.

Accordingly the twins and Kenneth were soon produced, for they were fresh from the nurse’s hands.

“And Cricket?” said Mrs. Saunders, again, presently. “She is such a charming child—so original and interesting.”

121“Oh!” groaned Cricket, in the arbour.

“Children,” said Mrs. Ward to the twins, “you may go, please, and see if you and Eliza can’t find Cricket and Eunice. Kenneth, you take Irene down to the flower-beds, and you may pick a big bunch of nasturtiums.”

The nasturtium bed was dangerously near the arbour. Cricket and Eunice scarcely breathed. The little ones picked the flowers and chatted together.

“What a pretty little house,” said Irene, presently, noticing the arbour. “Is it your house, Kenneth? What’s in it?” She pushed apart the vines and peeped through the lattice.

The next moment the grown people were startled by the little ones’ cries of terror. Frightened by the unexpected sight of the queer-looking creatures in the arbour, they ran screaming toward the house.

“There!” said Cricket, desperately. “We might as well go out. Children are the curiousest things.”

“There’s dretful things there!” screamed Irene, flying to her mother.

Dr. Ward came quickly down the steps to investigate.

122Then he stopped and stared in astonishment; and so did everybody else, as the grotesque little figures came slowly out of the arbour.

“It’s only me, papa,” Cricket said, dejectedly; “we have been dressing-up.”

By this time they were veritable scare-crows. Cricket’s hump was well wedged up under one shoulder, and soot, dirt and court-plaster, combined with the effects of the heat, made a little black-a-moor of her. Her hat hung over one ear, and her curly crop was all on end. Eunice’s long hair was loosened from its braid, and hung over her back in a rough, black mass.

Cutting off the trousers to make them short enough had left the upper part of them so very long that walking was difficult, except by a constant hitching up of the band, and their slender little legs looked like very small clappers in very big bells.

The doctor kept his gravity with difficulty, and the guests looked on in polite astonishment at the remarkable apparitions, for a moment, and then everybody laughed.

Mrs. Ward recovered herself immediately.

“Mrs. Saunders,” she said, resignedly, “this is 123Cricket, my charming and original child, if you will pardon my repeating your words. But I am sure this is a case when distance will lend enchantment to your opinion of her. You may go, Cricket.”

And the shamefaced children gladly fled.

CHAPTER XIII. MAMIE HECKER.

According to the children’s ideas, one of the funniest things about living in the country was that eggs could be used as money.

It was such a delightfully simple way of getting candy. One could go to the barns, find two eggs, and, with one in each hand, march off to the corner grocery-store and get their value in chocolate-sticks, if you liked chocolate. If not, why, four marsh-mallows, rather stale and floury, to be sure, but just as nice for toasting, could be had for one egg.

It always seemed remarkably like getting candy for nothing, and “egg-candy,” as they called it, was certainly much more delicious than that for which one paid just ordinary, every-day pennies.

There were many errands to be done in so large a family, and as mamma believed that every child should be brought up to be useful, Cricket and Eunice were very apt to be the 125“leggers,” as they called it. They usually sold their services for an egg or two apiece.

“Well, young women,” said Dr. Ward, one morning, “I am in search of a pair of messengers of just about your size.”

“All right, papa. You can have them on the usual terms,” answered Cricket, importantly.

“You’re a regular pair of Jews, you two,” laughed papa, teasingly. “You do nothing for nothing. Don’t you think you ought to run on errands for love? I work for your board and clothes, and certainly you should do errands for me.”

“No, I shouldn’t,” returned Cricket, hugging him. “I love you in return for that, and I cut your magazines for you, too. That’s plenty of pay. The errands are my persquisites. Cook says everybody ought to have persquisites.”

“Oh, that’s it. On the ground of persquisites, then, I’m perfectly willing to pay.”

“And then, of course,” went on Cricket, “I would be willing to do an errand for nothing, very socionally”—she meant occasionally—“just to be obliging, you know.”

“That’s very kind of you, I’m sure,” laughed papa. “Now, then, I want you to go to Mr. 126Henry Barnes, and give him this note, and wait for an answer. It’s important. Then, when you come back, you can go to the barns and get two eggs apiece, and go to the store if you want to. When you come back, mind. I want the note carried directly.”

“All right, sir,” answered Cricket, taking the note, and away scampered the little “leggers” for their broad-brimmed hats.

It goes without saying that Cricket’s could not be found, and at last she recollected she had dropped it yesterday, down into the dry well in the lower pasture, and had forgotten to get it again.

“Can’t I wear my best one, mamma?” she begged.

“No, my dear, certainly not,” answered mamma, not knowing it was necessary that the note should be taken immediately. “You know that is the rule always. If you will be careless and leave your things about, you must find them.”

So the children ran down to the lower pasture after the hat. It took some time to recover it, and then they had forgotten that there was any necessity for haste.

127“Let’s take the ponies,” said Eunice, as they came back from the pasture, “and ride around the lake-road home. I haven’t been there since I fell in.”

“We can’t,” said Cricket. “Mike said yesterday that Charcoal’s shoe was loose, and he must take him to the blacksmith’s this morning. I saw him going right after breakfast, and he isn’t home yet.”

“Oh, bother! then we’ll have to walk,” said Eunice. But the walk looked very inviting, as they turned out of the avenue into the shady road. It wound down the hill, over the Kayuna, and swept around the curve out of sight.

Just over the bridge was the farmer’s house, a low, white building, half hidden in the trees. As the two little girls passed, they saw a frowzyheaded child of seven swinging on the gate.

“H’lo!” she called. “Where you goin’?”

“Somewhere to make little girls ask questions,” replied Eunice, teasingly.

“I’m goin’, too,” cried the child, scrambling down off the gate.

Now Mamie Hecker, the farmer’s little daughter, always wanted to “go too,” whenever she saw the children pass. She was a whining, dirty, 128disagreeable little thing, and always made herself very unpleasant. She stuck to the children like a burr, and oftentimes they would go far out of their way, if they saw her in the distance, to avoid her tagging after them. So when she now got off the gate and came up, chewing her sunbonnet string, as usual, the two little girls exchanged vexed glances.

“You can’t come, too,” said Cricket, decidedly.

“Yes, I can, too, you’re goin’ to the store to get some candy an’ I want some, too,” cried Mamie, dancing around them.

“No, we’re not, either. We’re going for a long walk, and you can’t come one step,” said Eunice, looking very determined, as they walked on.

“I will come, too! I will!” cried Mamie, catching hold of her dress, and trotting along.

“Don’t you dare touch my dress with your dirty little fingers,” cried Eunice, pulling her fresh gingham frock indignantly out of Mamie’s hands.

Mamie Hecker was one of those disagreeable children that give everyone a desire to box their ears, no matter what they do. Truth to tell, she 129generally deserved it, for her mother spoiled her. She was almost the only person that upset Cricket’s sweet temper, and Cricket now looked as if she could bite her.

“Oh, Cricket!” exclaimed Eunice, stopping short. “Have you papa’s note?”

“No, I thought you had,” said Cricket, in dismay.

“We must have left it by the dry well, then,” said Eunice, turning. “We must go and find it. Now, we’re going home again,” she added to Mamie, “so you needn’t tag any more. Horrid little tag-tail, anyway.”

Cricket and Eunice ran back up the road, jumped over the fence, and raced across to the pasture. Much to their relief, the white envelope still lay where they had left it.

Cricket picked it up, and put it safely in her pocket this time, and then the children walked more deliberately back.

“Let’s get our eggs now,” Eunice said, as they passed near the barn, “and skip around to the store the back way and get some candy, so we’ll have it to eat on the way. I’m awfully hungry.”

“All right, and Mamie Hecker won’t see us, 130either,” assented Cricket, entirely forgetting her father’s order to do the errand first. So they turned towards the barns. They had to search some little time for eggs, for the hens were late about their usual duties.

“Plaguey things,” said Cricket, “and there’s lots of hens standing ’round doing nothing.”

“Oh, here’s a nest,” called Eunice, “with two eggs in it, and here’s a hen on—”

Cricket unceremoniously slipped her hand under the hen and whisked her off. A warm white egg lay in the nest.

“She was just going to cluck, anyway,” said Cricket, as the hen clucked indignantly. “Say, cut-a-cut-ca-da-cut, if you want to, and don’t scold so. Your egg is all right. Here’s another in this nest. That’s four. Come on.”

They went out the side-door of the barn, intending to run across the orchard and into the back door of the store, and then to take a cut over the fields to the main road again. This would bring them out below the Heckers’ house.

To their great disgust, however, just outside the barnyard, they found Mamie Hecker lurking.

131“I seen yer,” she said, triumphantly. “You’ve got some eggs, and you’re a-goin’ to the store to swap them for some candy. I’m a-goin’, too.”

“Now, Mamie Hecker,” said Eunice, stopping angrily, “you can go straight home. You shan’t go one step with us.”

Mamie squinted up her impish little black eyes, provokingly.

“Road’s mine as much as yours,” she said, dancing around, in a way peculiar to herself. “You can’t help my walkin’ in it.”

“You shan’t come with us,” said Eunice, stubbornly, ignoring that point.

“I’ll come as far as my father’s fence, any way,” said Mamie, walking backwards in front of them.

“You’re a horrid, mean, little copy-cat,” said Cricket, wrathfully. “I shouldn’t think you’d like to come where you’re not wanted.”

“I don’t keer,” returned Mamie, carelessly. “I want some candy.”

“We’ve given you candy, and we’ve given you candy,” said Cricket, “and the more we give you, the more you want. You shall not go one step with us to-day.”

132“I’ll go as far as my pa’s fence goes, anyway,” repeated Mamie, skipping along, “’n’ I’ll go further if I wanter.”

“Mamie Hecker,” said Eunice, stopping suddenly, “if you go one step further than your father’s fence,—I’ll spank you.”

CHAPTER XIV. LYNCH-LAW.

Mamie looked considerably startled. Provoking little imp as she was, the girls had never actually touched her.

“You dassent,” she said, unbelievingly, after a moment. “You dassent tetch me.”

“Yes, I do dare, and I will,” said Eunice, firmly.

The children had been walking on through the orchard, during the dispute, Mamie keeping along by the fence. They were close to the corner now, where a gate opened.

“Don’t you follow us one step beyond that gate.” Eunice looked so determined that Mamie thought she had better try to make terms.

“If I don’t go no further,” she said, hanging on to the gate, “will you give me candy when you come back?”

“No, I won’t. We’re not coming back this way.”

134“Then I’ll come, too,” said Mamie, suddenly deciding to risk it.

Cricket and Eunice went slowly through the gate. Eunice looked like a high executioner.

Mamie hesitated a moment, then slowly followed after.

“I’m a-comin’,” she called, rashly, bringing her fate on her own head.

Eunice turned around very promptly.

“Cricket, please hold my eggs for me. Now, Mamie Hecker, if you step over that stick,—you’ll see.”

Mamie immediately took a step forward, keeping her eye on Eunice, intending to dodge at the last moment. Eunice stood perfectly still. She was a tall, strongly-built girl, for her age, and quite capable of carrying out her threat. Mamie Hecker had always been a thorn in her flesh, and there were a thousand provoking things in the past to punish her for.

Mamie took another step. Eunice looked indifferent. Another stop, and she stood by the stick that was her Rubicon. Eunice looked up at the sky. Mamie put her foot cautiously over the stick, ready to fly at Eunice’s first movement. Eunice seemed not to see her. Mamie took another step and was fairly over.

135

CRICKET AND EUNICE THREATEN TO PUNISH MAMIE.

137Eunice swooped down upon her like a hawk, and grabbed her skirt, as the child dodged, shrieking. She caught her, struggling, and, with a deft sweep of her arm, a trick learned in playing foot-ball with the boys, she brought Mamie into approved spanking position, and then and there gave her a punishment which she always richly deserved, but which it was her mother’s place, not Eunice’s, to give her.

Mamie shrieked at the top of her lungs, “Eunice is killin’ me! Eunice is killin’ me!”

“Do hold her mouth, Cricket,” said Eunice, spanking on. “Horrid little thing! I’ll give her something to cry for, for once.”

Cricket came nearer, with her eggs still in her hand. Mamie’s wildly kicking feet gave her a vigorous thump in the stomach, that unexpectedly doubled her up like a jack-knife, crushing her eggs which she still held in her hand.

“Children!” suddenly came a well-known voice behind them. “What does this disgraceful scene mean?”

There stood Doctor Ward and Archie. Eunice’s 138hand dropped instantly, and she released her kicking victim. Mamie righted herself, and flew at her, screaming. Cricket rose slowly out of the dust, pushing back her hair, with egg-stained hands, that left a yellow plaster on her curly pate. Her blue cambric was smeared from neck to hem with rivers of egg. Eunice’s hat was off, her hair streaming wildly over her shoulders, her cheeks scarlet, and her eyes flashing. Mamie had torn her dress badly, and both girls were a spectacle.

Doctor Ward caught Mamie by the shoulder, with a strong hand.

“Be quiet, child,” he said, sternly. “Girls, what does all this mean? Have you been to Mr. Barnes?”

“No, papa,” faltered Cricket, suddenly conscience-smitten. In her excitement, she had entirely forgotten that they had been sent on an important errand.

“Not yet? And I sent you two hours ago. Where is the note?”

“Here it is,” and Cricket produced from her pocket a very crumpled envelope, which looked as if it had seen hard service.

“This? Do you mean to tell me that this is 139the note I gave you? I certainly can’t send this. Archie, will you go to Mr. Barnes for me, and tell him—no, I must write him again. He should have had this an hour ago, for he will be gone to town, and he should have had it before he left. Cricket, you have put me in a very unpleasant position.”

“Oh, papa, I am so sorry!” said Cricket, miserably. “First we forgot this note, and had to go back.”

“That’s a baby trick. I thought you were getting over that. Go on.”

“Then we thought we’d get the eggs and go to the store first, so as to have the candy to eat on the way; and Mamie said she’d go, and I said she shouldn’t, and Eunice said she’d spank her if she did,—horrid little thing; and she did, and Eunice spanked her, and she kicked me and broke my eggs,” finished Cricket, rapidly.

Doctor Ward’s mouth twitched a little under his moustache, although he was seriously annoyed that the note had not reached its destination in time. He knew very well what a torment Mamie was to everyone, and he did not in his heart blame the girls for taking the law into their own hands. However, he said:

140“You have disobeyed me, children. I told you to go directly with the note, and get your candy afterwards. Your disobedience is the cause of your very unladylike display of temper. You can both go to the house. Mamie, you may go home also. See that hereafter you do not follow or tease the girls, and I will see that they never touch you again.”

Cricket and Eunice walked soberly up to the house, meek enough in appearance, but really deeply indignant. To be sent away in disgrace before that horrid little Mamie Hecker! She was dancing around at a safe distance, calling after them, jeeringly,—

“Oh, ho! Who’s caught it now! Spank me again, will yer?”

Dr. Ward marched the two little girls into the house, and ordered them both off to be made presentable again, and then to come to the library.

Fifteen minutes later, two clean, but very solemn-looking children presented themselves at the library door.

“Children,” began Dr. Ward, sternly, as they stood before him, “you have disobeyed me. I told you to go immediately on an errand, and you 141loitered. The fact that the note happened to be important, does not render your disobedience any more serious, remember, although it makes the consequences more serious for me. You also gave way, both of you, to a very unladylike display of temper. As a punishment, I shall keep you apart all day. You must not even speak to each other. Eunice, you may go to your mother, and she will give you something to do, and Cricket may stay here in the library till dinner-time. You may learn something to occupy your time. Let me see. You may sit down and learn your Sunday-school lesson for to-morrow.”

“Oh, papa!” groaned Cricket, at the thought of really losing that beautiful day out-of-doors. “Please, please do something to us and let us go! I’d truly rather you’d give me three hard slaps with your ruler.”

“My dear little girl,” said the doctor, “you know I could not possibly give you three hard slaps, or even one hard slap, with the ruler; for that would hurt me rather more than it would you, and I think it is you two that deserve punishment.”

“I’ll go to bed earlier to-night, then, a whole 142hour,” pleaded Cricket, “if you will only let us speak to each other. I know we were dreadfully careless about the note, but I won’t forget again, truly, at least not for a long time.”

“No, it must stand as I said, my dear. Besides, you know you lost your tempers disgracefully with that little Mamie.”

“You needn’t take the trouble to punish us for spanking that Mamie,” Cricket burst out, on this, fairly swelling with wrath at the remembrance. “She just needed it, papa, for she’s such a horrid little thing, and such a tag-tail, and her mother never spanks her.”

“And anyway, papa,” struck in Eunice, her eyes flashing still, “I don’t mind if you do punish me for that, for it was such a satisfaction.”

“Well, well,” said papa, coughing behind his hand. “I really think you won’t do that again. And the next time you think that Mamie needs punishment, don’t try lynch-law, but refer to the higher powers.”

“I will, papa. What is lynch-law?”

“Lynch-law, my dear, is the process of inflicting punishment, by private persons, for crimes or offences, without reference to law. That is, you know, that however disagreeable Mamie 143may be, and however much she annoys you, you really had no right to touch her. You should have consulted your mother or me long ago, before things came to this pass. We are the law, in this case. Instead of this, you took the law into your own hands, and the consequence is that the law now takes you in hand. However, I am willing to consider the mitigating circumstances—that means what excuse you had—and we will say that you two must remain apart till dinner-time, and meditate on the beauty of the virtue of instant obedience.”

“Oh, papa,” cried Cricket, hugging him well, willing to take her punishment now that the merited lecture was over, “next time that you send me with a note I’ll go like a little spider, you’ll see!”

But I regret to say that Cricket even after this had a very hard lesson before she learned to be perfectly trustworthy where her memory was concerned. But this story comes later.

CHAPTER XV. GOING TO THE CIDER MILL.

It was a hot, scorching afternoon in late August. All the grown people had retired to darkened rooms in the coolest depths of the great stone house, in search of what comfort could be found. Even nurse had gone to bed with a headache.

Mamma and auntie had tried to sit on the piazza, for a time, to watch the little ones, but at last they, too, had to give it up.

“What are children made of?” sighed auntie. “How can they want to stay out doors, and broil in the sun, instead of playing in that great, cool nursery? Shall we make them come in?”

But the children rebelled at the very idea.

“Why, it isn’t very hot,” said Cricket, in amazement. “Go in the house? in the daytime? when it doesn’t rain?”

So mamma charged the older ones to take good care of the twins, and impressed upon 145Cricket that she must not let Kenneth out of her sight, “and don’t go away,” she finished.

“I doesn’t want anyone to take care of me,” objected Kenneth. “I sink I’m a big man, mamma.”

But his mamma kissed him, and told him that even big men minded their sisters; and then she and auntie betook themselves to the darkened depths of their own rooms, and the coolness of cambric wrappers.

The hot hours went by. The children played contentedly for a time, then they grew tired of everything, and a little cross, too, for they were really worn out by the heat.

At last, the whole flock of six sat in a disconsolate row along the broad stone fence that surrounded the grounds. Kenneth fretted for something to do, and the twins teased each other.

“If only these children weren’t here,” said Eunice, somewhat crossly, “we might do something.”

“There’s never any fun with children round,” answered Hilda, severely.

“I don’t like to be here anyway,” whined Zaidee. “I wish nurse would come.”

146“Hark!” exclaimed Cricket. “I hear something,” as the heavy rumble of wheels was heard. The children watched the bend of the road with interest. Anything that passed was of the greatest importance in the present want of amusement.

“It’s Thomas, with the oxen,” cried Eunice. “Let’s make him take us, too—oh, bother! these children.”

The heavy team lumbered in sight, drawn by big, black oxen. Old Thomas was plodding along by their side, occasionally cracking the long lash of his goad around their patient heads. Will and Archie stood in the cart.

Thomas stopped his team in the shade and wiped his forehead with his big red bandanna.

“Ruther a warmish day,” he remarked, as if it were a new discovery.

“Where are you going?” chorused the children.

“Down to the cider mill,” answered Will, briskly. “Come, get up, Tummas.”

“Oh, dear!” grumbled Eunice, “you boys can go everywhere, and have piles of fun, and we’ve got to stay here and take care of children,”—with withering scorn.

147“Come along, all of you, if you want,” said Archie. “’Tisn’t far.”

“But Kenneth and the twins,” objected Cricket.

“Oh, let the kids come, too,” replied Archie, jumping down. The “kids” hopped around in great glee at the idea.

“Mamma told us not to go away,” began Eunice, doubtfully; but Hilda, who was less used to obedience, said quickly,—

“She only meant we were not to go away from the children, and we’re not. We’re going to take them. Put them in, Arch,” and in she scrambled, while Archie swung the little ones over the side of the cart.

“Come, Tummas, Tummas, get up the old gee-haws,” Will said, and off they started. The three little ones sat in a jubilant row on the bottom of the cart, and the girls balanced themselves on the empty cider barrels, for there was no seat. Stolen fruits are always sweet, and their rather uneasy consciences gave an additional zest to the fun.

“Gee, haw!” cried Thomas, cracking his lash around the yoke of the plodding team. Down the road they pitched and lumbered, 148screaming with merriment, across the bridge, under which the little winding Kayuna babbled, and up the rather steep hill on the other side.

At last they reached the cider mill. What fun it was to run around the apple-smelling place, and to suck, through a straw, the sickishly-sweet juice dropping from the press.

Kenneth was lost once, to be discovered leaning over one of the low vats, splashing his hands in the pale, yellow liquid with great enjoyment. Of course he was soaked to his shoulders.

“You bad boy,” scolded Eunice, fishing him out. “Look at your dress!” for it was drenched with cider and black with dirt. His face was grimy and his curls sticky and odourous.

“My! won’t ’Liza scold!” commented Zaidee, very comfortingly.

Kenneth looked aggrieved, and put up his lip.

“You bringed me, Tritet; I’m hundery, and I want my supper.”

“Come, young uns,” shouted Thomas, outside, when he had filled his barrels and loaded them up. “Git in with you now, or we won’t git to go to-night.”

149He hoisted Zaidee and Helen over the side, and gave Kenneth a tremendous swing right over into the corner. The girls scrambled over the tail-board.

“Now, where’s them rambunktious boys?” said Thomas, looking in the sheds. “Hullo! there, you fellers—I’m a-goin’.”

The boys had gone to explore the gable of the mill, and were now seen walking along the ridge-pole.

“You scallawags!” screamed Thomas, “come down here. I’m a-goin’ immijit!”

Archie sat down astride the gable.

“All right, old Thomas, we’ll be there.”

His pockets were stuffed with small green apples, as convenient missiles for any chance mark. He took one out.

“Bet you, Will, that I can hit old Judge square between the horns,” he said, taking aim. Straight away sped the bullet-like missile. It missed its mark, however, and struck old Judge a stinging blow full on his sensitive nose.

Old Judge’s temper was none of the best under any circumstances. He threw up his head with a sudden bellow of pain and rage, and then, jerking forward, to the surprise of 150everyone, he started off at a heavy lumbering run, dragging with him his astonished yokefellow.

“Whoa, thar,” cried Thomas. “Whoa, ye fool-critters! whoa, thar!”

He might as well have called to the wind. The clumsy creatures had found that they could run, and frightened by the noise of the heavy cart, lumbering at their heels, by the shrieking children, and by the shouts of the men, bewildered by their own revolt, and the unusual feeling of liberty, they covered the ground at a swinging pace.

The cart rolled and pitched and the barrels lurched unsteadily. Then a spigot, insecurely fastened, and loosened by the jolting, came out of the bung-hole, followed by a spurting deluge of cider.

CHAPTER XVI. THE RUNAWAY.

Poor little Kenneth, well-wedged into the corner, was really in danger of being seriously hurt by a reeling barrel, and gave vent to steady howls of terror. Zaidee and Helen clung to each other, and screamed in concert, as they pitched this way and that. The cart bumped and rattled along over the rough lane that led down to the mill.

Eunice and Hilda and Cricket were still sitting, with their feet swinging over the tail-board, holding on for dear life.

“Whoa! gee! haw!” shouted Eunice, steadily; but none of them realized that they were actually in any danger.

Suddenly the cart gave a tremendous lurch over a big stone, and then up a high “thank-you-ma’am.” The tail-board gave way, and the astonished girls were jerked violently forward, and then suddenly found themselves sitting in the dusty road. And on went the oxen.

152The little ones, still more frightened when they found themselves alone in the cart, redoubled their howls. They were badly bruised with the jolting, drenched with cider, and scared out of their little wits.

“Let’s jump out, too,” screamed Zaidee, wild with terror.

“I’m ’fraid to,” sobbed Helen.

“I’m ’fraid to stay here—we—could—roll—out—just—as—easy,” the words coming in jerks, as the runaway team turned a dangerously sharp corner, nearly upsetting the reeling cart.

“I’m going to say my prayers!” said Zaidee, with sudden inspiration. “Then le’s jump.”

So Zaidee steadied herself on her poor little battered knees, by the side of the cart, but she could think of nothing but her little evening prayer. At the top of her lungs, so “God could hear,” she prayed:

“Come on, Helen!”

153And before they could have said “Jack Robinson,” out they rolled, a wretched little mixed-up bundle of bewildered arms and legs and bumped heads, in the dust. And on went the oxen.

Back in the distance came Thomas’s voice.

“Whoa, thar! ye fool-critters!” his nearest approach to a “swear-word.”

Thomas, himself, came lumbering along as heavily, but much less swiftly, than the runaway pair.

Cricket and Eunice and Hilda were making the dust fly with their brisk little heels, as they, too, shouted in steady chorus, “Whoa, Judge! Whoa, Cap’n! gee! haw!”

Will and Archie came on at a steady run, adding their yells to the uproar, and making the terrified oxen sure that they were pursued by demons.

Kenneth’s steady shrieks had not lessened in volume, but he was getting hoarse, and his sobbing breaths came shorter.

The cart was firm and strong, with closely fitted boards, so the poor child was now sitting in quite a tossing sea of cider. The fast-emptying barrel reeled more and more, and the frightened baby beat it with both hands.

154Now the oxen were well on the home stretch. They had reached the short steep hill by the farmer’s house. The farmer’s wife, hearing the shrieks, had run out on the little bridge, and now saw the cart come in sight at the top of the hill.

She caught off her blue checked apron, and ran forward flourishing it, and screaming to her husband,—

“’Gustus John! ’Gustus John! Jedge and Cap’n are runnin’ away!”

’Gustus John appeared at the bars.

“Wal, ye don’t say! Here! run ’em into the brook, ’Mandy, ’n I’ll stop ’em thar.”

’Mandy—otherwise Mrs. Hecker—waved her blue banner and cried “Whoa!” “Whoa!” in shrill soprano, heading the oxen off, as they came plunging down the hill. At the sight of ’Mandy and her apron, they sheered off into the side-track through the brook; but there stood ’Gustus John, with a big stick and outstretched arms, barring their way, and shouting tremendous “Whoas!” in familiar tones.

Whether the oxen were tired with their unusual exercise, or whether they simply concluded it was time to stop, I do not know, 155but Judge and Captain brought up as suddenly as they had started, and, with quivering sides and tossing heads, they stood stock-still in the brook.

In a moment poor little dirty Kenneth was in ’Mandy’s motherly arms, and shortly after the whole excited group were gathered on the bridge.

“Nice-lookin’ passel of young uns you air,” commented ’Mandy. “I do vum! ef you children don’t beat the Dutch. Like as not them oxen would have run into the brook anyway and upsot the cart, ef I hadn’t hev ben here, and this little chap would hev ben drownded, sure.”

“Them children’s regular Jonahses,” grumbled Thomas, in short gasps for breath. “Never takes ’em nowhere thet suthin doesn’t happen onto some on ’em. I never see oxen run away but once before, and there ain’t no stoppin’ ’em.”

“Wonder is that they hain’t all killed,” said ’Gustus John. “It’s a real meracle that this ’ere little chap didn’t git his head broke with thet ’ere bar’l, a-rollin’ round like a pea in a pod.”

156“Yer ma ’n’ yer pa ’n’ ’Liza hes all ben down here, a-lookin’ fur yer everywhere,” said Mrs. Hecker. “It’s past seven, an’ they thought you was lost, sure. Here they be, now;” and down the road came an excited group of house-people.

“Oh, where have you been, you naughty, naughty children!” cried mamma, hurrying on ahead. “We have been so frightened about you.”

Papa took Kenneth from ’Mandy’s arms and held him up.

“Well, of all tough specimens! Mamma, this can’t be your young man.”

Poor Kenneth! his broad-brimmed hat hung down his back, held around his chin by a soaking wet elastic cord, which left inky stains on his throat. His sticky curls stood up stiffly in plastered masses, all over his head. His face was begrimed with dirt and cider and tears. His kilts hung in festoons from his belt. His stockings were down, dropping over his shoes. His whole attire was soaking wet, and smelling like a lager-beer saloon, his father said.

“This is not your young man,” repeated papa, holding him at arm’s length, in spite of his struggles.

157“I want my mamma!” wailed Kenneth. “I sought I was a big man, an’ I’se nossing but a little boy!”

And mamma hugged her bruised and dirty baby close to her dainty cambric dress, with a heart so filled with thankfulness as she learned of the real danger that the little fellow had been in, that she could not give the girls, then, the lecture that they certainly deserved for their disobedience, and which their father saw that they had, later.

CHAPTER XVII. GOING BLACKBERRYING.

Unusual peace and quiet reigned at Kayuna for a time after the excitement of the runaway. It was an unusually warm summer, and so even Cricket, the tireless, was somewhat subdued. Hilda Mason went away for a visit, and her little friend missed her very much, for, as she said privately to Eunice, “Hilda was so much willinger to do things than she used to be.”

Eunice and Cricket had long planned a blackberrying party when the blackberries should be in their prime, and mamma said that now would be just the time to go. The girls had been expecting their little cousin, Edna Somers, the sister of Will and Archie, to visit them for a week, and as she arrived on Monday, they decided that the next Wednesday should be the important day.

The rest of the party was to consist of Edith Craig, from the Rectory, Ray Emmons, Phil Howard, and his sister Rose, and Daisy and Harry 159Pelham. They planned to get up very early on Wednesday,—oh, by five o’clock, say,—get an early breakfast of bread and milk from the cook, have luncheon enough packed for both dinner and supper, and then start for the blackberry pasture, which was nearly three miles away.

No one of the children but the Howards and Ray Emmons had ever been there, but they were sure that they could easily find the way again. They would go through the woods to the West Road, and then they were almost there. They would arrive on the spot long before the sun grew hot, and would pick blackberries for awhile. Then, when they chose, they would find a nice place and take their luncheon. Then they would rest awhile, and after that, pick more berries till their pails were full, and then, finally, start for home, and get there just in time for another supper, after a lovely, long day.

The children were all delighted with the idea. They often had small picnics, but never any so extensive and grown-up as this.

And then the blackberries! Think of the quarts and bushels they would bring home! What visions of unlimited jam, and spiced 160blackberries without stint, floated before their eyes.

Papa teased the girls a little.

“Perhaps I had better send Thomas and the oxen to meet you at the bars? If they should happen to come home rather fast, you could have blackberry jam without any trouble,” he said, laughing. Then he suggested that they should make arrangements with some farmer to take their extra berries into Boston to sell.

“We don’t want to be swamped under blackberries, you know,” he added. Then, of course, the boys had their remarks to make.

“You’ll have to take Mopsie and Charcoal, and drive around from house to house to sell your berries,” said Will.

“Bet you they won’t bring home half a pint between them all,” said Archie.

“Better keep off Mr. Trante’s land, anyway. All the best berries grow in his pasture, and wouldn’t he like to catch you picking them!” said Donald. “He’s been lying in wait for you children, ever since you flooded his meadows. Most probably he’d put you all in the lock-up, if he caught you.”

This was a sore subject with Eunice and 161Cricket, and they turned the conversation by asking mamma what cook should put up for their luncheon.

“We want a lot,” said Cricket, decidedly. “’Cause we’ll have to have our dinner, you know, and then we must have enough left for a nice lunch before we start for home. And have a lot of supper ready, mamma, dear, ’cause we’ll be ’most starved.”

“That’s on the principle that the more you eat, the hungrier you get,” said Archie.

“For goodness’ sake, make them stop with their supper, mother,” said Donald, “else they will get so hungry they can’t stand it.”

The children were deaf to all jokes, and preparations for the important day went merrily on. An excited group of small people met after supper, on the Wards’ piazza, on the night before, to “make ’rangements.” One would have thought that they were planning at least a trip to Europe.

“We girls think we won’t go to sleep at all, to-night,” said Eunice, with much importance. “We always sit up till nine o’clock, anyway, and five o’clock will come so soon that it won’t be worth while to get undressed.”

162“Whatever you do,” called Donald from his hammock, “please see that Cricket is chained in bed till the proper time. She prefers to get up at midnight and go downstairs on her head, you know, when early rising is in question, and that wakes the rest of us up.”

“Phil’s going to wake me up,” announced Ray. “I’m going to tie a string to my big toe, and hang the end of the string out of the window, and Phil will come along and yank it.”

“Be sure you don’t go without us,” pleaded Daisy. “I’ll have to wake myself up, and Harry, too, for no one in our house ever gets up so early.”

“I’ll run over and wake you up, too,” said Phil, obligingly. “I’ll throw stones up at your window.”

They were all to meet at the bars at the entrance of the woods, for the cart-path through them was much shorter than the distance around by the road.

“And we’re not going to have any children,” finished Eunice, in the tone of unutterable scorn that always crushed the twins, who were eagerly listening to the “’rangements.”

When nine o’clock came, and Eunice and 163Cricket and Edna had gone upstairs, they decided, in spite of previous resolutions, that it might be better just to lie down for awhile, “though it was not at all worth while to go to sleep.” So they stretched themselves on the beds, all dressed, to talk over the coming day.

“Edna,” said Cricket, presently, after a suspiciously long silence, “my clothes are all wriggled up, somehow, and I b’lieve I’ll take my dress off. It won’t take long to put it on in the morning, and I’ll be more comfortable.”

“I was just thinking,” agreed Edna, sleepily, “that we’d better take off our dresses.”

“I think,” said Eunice, when their dresses were off, “I’ll take off my skirts, too. They get so twisty.”

With their skirts removed they lay down again, and began to talk with renewed zest. Presently conversation flagged again.

“Cricket,” said Edna, rousing suddenly, “I can’t stand it, and I’m going to bed, just the same as usual. I don’t think it’s a bit of fun to sit up all night. Listen! What is that striking? Only ten o’clock!”

The others, by this time, were more than willing to go to bed in ordinary fashion, and in 164ten minutes more, all three little girls were in the Land of Nod.

It proved to be a wonderfully prompt little party, for it was only half-past five o’clock when they all assembled, with well-filled luncheon-baskets, and empty pails to bring home their blackberries in.

They were all rather heavy-eyed and quiet at first, to be sure, but they soon grew wide-awake. It seemed a very new world to the little girls, who had scarcely ever been up at this hour before, though the boys, from many a fishing and nutting excursion, were more used to it.

“Doesn’t it look as if everything had been washed?” said Cricket, skipping along delightedly. “How the leaves rustle, and how the birds sing! I’m going to get up every day, after this, at five o’clock.”

“Bet you, you won’t,” said Ray, sceptically.

“You’d do it for about two days, and then you’d give it up. Girls never stick to anything.”

“Oh, Ray Emmons!” came in an indignant chorus. “Girls stick as well as boys.”

“Seems to me that Edith Craig stuck to the head of her jography class all last winter, and you boys couldn’t help it,” said Daisy Pelham, triumphantly.

165

CRICKET TRYING TO CATCH THE MINNOWS.

167“Oh, jography! I wasn’t talking about jography. Bet you I can hit that squirrel, plump,” thinking it better to change the subject.

When they came to the little brook, a deep pool below a rough bridge looked so cool and clean that they loitered to throw stones in it, and scare the minnows gliding around in its transparent depths. Further down, among the bulrushes, the frogs croaked and jumped.

“Oh, I say,” cried Harry Pelham, “let’s catch some frogs, and have frogs’ legs for lunch!”

“Oh, don’t touch the slimy things,” pleaded Daisy. “They squirm and squeak so. Do let’s go on.”

“Are minnows good to eat?” asked Cricket, who was kneeling on the bank, and looking down into the water. “I b’lieve I could catch them with my hand.”

She rolled up her cambric sleeves, and dipped her arm in the water. The minnows slipped tantalizingly near. A particularly big fellow flashed by.

“Oh, what a bouncer!” Cricket cried. She plunged forward, and of course she lost her balance 168and went head and shoulders into the water, in the endeavour to save herself. Phil, who stood nearest, pulled her up, dripping.

“Cricket Ward!” exclaimed Eunice, completely disgusted. “I never saw anything like you. I believe you’d fall into the water if there wasn’t a saucerful.”

“I b’lieve I would,” acknowledged Cricket, meekly, rubbing her short, dripping curls with the boys’ handkerchiefs.

“You’re pretty wet,” said Edith. “I’m afraid you’ve got to go home.”

“Oh, no, I won’t,” said Cricket, much surprised at this suggestion. “I’ll just go round those bushes and wring my waist out, and I’ll get dry pretty soon, I reckon. My skirt isn’t very wet.”

“You can put on my sacque, Cricket,” suggested Daisy. “Mamma made me wear it, and it’s awfully hot. Then you can hang your waist over your arm to dry, so we can go on.”

So Cricket and Daisy retired from view for a while. When they returned the rest of the party set up a shout. Daisy was much shorter than Cricket, so that the sleeves scarcely came 169below her elbow, and the bottom of the sacque hung only an inch or so below her waist.

“I don’t care,” said Cricket, comfortably. “It covers me up, and my waist will be dry soon. Do let’s go on. We won’t get to the blackberry pasture till noon. It must be pretty nearly eleven o’clock now.”

“Thanks to you, young woman,” answered Harry Pelham, who was older than the rest. “If you will waste our time falling into brooks—”

“Well,” said Cricket, “I always did fall into the water, and I ’xpect I always will. I remember sitting down in a pail of hot water once, when I was just a teenty little bit of a thing. My! how it hurt! I just cried and cried. At least the water wasn’t so very hot, for the cook was only scrubbing the floor. I had run away down to the kitchen. But the pail was deep, and I was so little, that I doubled together just like a jack-knife, and the cook laughed so that she could hardly pull me out.”

The children laughed, too. Harum-scarum Cricket always had accidents that never would happen to any one else.

“And you were nearly drowned last summer,” 170said Edna. “Don’t you remember up at Lake Clear?”

“I never heard about that. What was it?” asked Edith.

“Oh, nothing,” returned Cricket, who never looked upon her adventures as interesting. “Edna and I went out paddling in a boat. We couldn’t find but one oar. Edna could paddle, but I didn’t know how, but it looked so easy that I thought I could do it. So I stood up and took hold of the oar, and I took one paddle all right and then I put the oar over the other side, and somehow, I went right over myself. There wasn’t anybody in sight, but we hollered, at least Edna did, and I did when I came up; then I went down again and when I came up I struck the boat. It was pretty hard getting in, and I had to climb up over the end. We had lost the oar, so Edna pulled up the board in the bottom of the boat and she paddled us ashore. And that’s all, and I wasn’t drowned,” concluded Cricket, in the most matter-of-fact way.

“Whew!” whistled Harry. “That was a close call.”

“It was fortunate I hit the boat when I came up,” assented Cricket, placidly, “for Edna didn’t 171have any oar, and it was hard pulling up the board to paddle with. I ’xpect I might have been drowned, if I’d floated off, and had had to wait for her.”

They had been trudging on through the woods while they were talking, and now they came to where the cart-path forked.

“Which way do we go?” asked Eunice.

“This way,” said Rose.

“No, this way,” contradicted Phil, positively. “I remember that blasted oak.”

“Seems to me,” began Rose, doubtfully, “that the blasted oak that I remember was not at the fork, but close to the edge of the woods. I don’t think that this is the same tree. I do remember that old beech, though,” she added, pointing down the right-hand path, “and I think that that is the way.”

“No, I’m sure about that blasted oak down this path,” said Phil, “and I think this is the one to take.”

“Bet you it is!” put in Ray, supporting Phil, on principle; “I remember it, too. Come on, boys.” And the children trooped down the left-hand path, while Rose, though she still looked doubtful, followed the rest.

CHAPTER XVIII. COMING HOME.

“I don’t know how the rest of you feel, but I’m getting about starved,” announced Phil, after they had gone some little distance further. “I vote we have our grub just as soon as we get to the berry-pasture, before we pick any berries.”

This proposal was heartily approved of by the entire party.

“It must be nearly noon, I think,” said Eunice. “We wasted a lot of time by the brook, you know, and we’ve been walking for hours since.”

“Hark! there’s the twelve o’clock whistle now,” exclaimed Phil. The children listened eagerly. It certainly was the distant mill-whistle, but it was not the noon signal, but, instead, the one for seven o’clock in the morning.

“No wonder we are hungry, then,” said Harry. “We all had our breakfasts at five, and that’s six hours ago.”

“And we’re nowhere near the berry-pasture 173yet,” said Rose, hesitating and looking around. “We ought to have been out of the woods long ago. Phil Howard, I know we took the wrong turn there by that old oak.”

The other children looked at one another in despair.

“Bet you we did!” cried Ray. “I kinder thought this didn’t look right. Now we’ve got to go back.”

“Don’t let’s,” said Harry. “If we take this path off this way, it will bring us back on to the road, I know.”

“And I say, don’t let’s go another step till we’ve had our grub.”

Phil gave his advice decidedly, “We can’t get to the pasture, anyway, till afternoon, and we might as well have our lunch first.”

“There’s the brook again,” exclaimed Cricket, catching sight of her old friend, the winding Kayuna, which meandered in every known direction.

“We can get some water there. I guess I’ll put on my waist now. It’s ’bout dry,” she added, as the mention of the brook brought her mishap to her mind.

A pretty little grassy opening just there 174afforded them a fine place to sit down for their lunch. Cricket took her pail and went up the brook after water, and presently returned, arrayed again in her pink cambric waist, which was very wrinkled and streaky as to the sleeves, and very damp and sticky as to the collar.

They spread their luncheon, a very generous one, since it had been provided, as they had begged, with a view to its serving two meals. But the boys seemed to be entirely hollow.

“See here, boys,” exclaimed Edith, in dismay. “You must stop. There won’t be bread and butter enough for supper, if you keep on, and we must make it last. Now, Phil, you’ve had five pieces of cake already. You shan’t have another bit. We’ll pack the rest up now.” Edith being the eldest of the party, and unusually quiet and dignified for her age, her words always carried weight. The boys reluctantly suspended operations, and very unwillingly watched the remainder of the lunch repacked in the baskets.

They finally decided not to go back the way they had come, but to take a cart-path which crossed the one they were on, and which Harry was quite sure would bring them out on the main road that they wished to strike.

175Their lunch had refreshed them, and they went on, gayly chattering and laughing. A squirrel-hunt detained them awhile, and then a great patch of squaw-berries, as the children called the pretty partridge-vine, attracted them. Then they stumbled on some wintergreen, and stopped to gather great bunches.

“Goodness gracious!” exclaimed Cricket, at last. “Boys, I believe it’s most supper-time, and I’d like to know where that West Road’s gone to.”

“It’s gone to Melville. That’s where it always goes,” said Harry, smartly.

“Since your wits are so sharp,” laughed Edith, “perhaps they’ll help you to decide which of these two paths we ought to take now.”

Harry considered.

“We want to go west,” he said, “and there’s the sun over there, so we’ll take that path. Jove, boys! Look at that sun! it must be four o’clock. No berries yet.”

The little band began to look rather discouraged.

“We’re like Columbus discovering America,” observed Cricket, cheerfully. “The farther we go, the more it isn’t there. Let’s keep straight 176on. Papa says that the woods aren’t but two miles across, so we will certainly get out that way.”

“If once we strike that West Road,” said Harry, “I know where to go then.”

“Here are some blackberries!” cried Ray, who was in advance.

They had come to another open spot, and sure enough, there were some straggling blackberry vines.

“Let’s pick these, anyway,” said Edna, “in case we don’t find any more.”

The children hooted at this idea, but nevertheless, they fell to work. The berries were hard and dry and half-ripe, but they were—or ought to have been—blackberries. Their fingers flew, and the hard little berries rolled into their tin pails with a lively clatter.

“Ow! ow! ow!” suddenly came in squeals of terror from one of the girls. “Here’s a snake! a big black snake, and he is eating a little bird!”

The children rushed to the spot. There, among some tall weeds, lay a long, slender, whip-like object, black and shining, with raised head. In its open mouth was a poor little, 177struggling, half-fledged bird, already partially swallowed. Above it, the parent birds fluttered and screamed in agony, sweeping around in short, swift circles.

The children stood, at first, in fascinated horror. The poor little birdie slowly disappeared in the yawning mouth, and the children could see the muscles of the black body work, as the whole undigested mass slipped slowly down. Then the snake made queer, darting movements with its head, and this broke the spell for the frightened children. A wild stampede instantly followed, as they fled, screaming and shrieking. The few berries, the rest of the lunch, the napkins and the pail-covers flew in every direction, as the children sped wildly on, thinking that the snake was in full pursuit. Nor did they stop until Cricket, who, on her swift feet, led the band, went, head over heels, over a projecting root, and found herself sitting on the bank of the ever-present Kayuna.

Then they all brought up, panting and breathless, and rather shamefaced.

“Ho! what made you girls run so?” asked Phil, recovering himself first.

“Well, I like that! what made you run so 178yourself, Mr. Phil? I guess you were as frightened as anybody,” said Daisy, indignantly.

“’Fraid? I wasn’t a bit afraid. I just ran after you girls to tell you there wasn’t any danger, but you ran so fast, and I was tired—”

“Oh, tired!” chorused the girls, scornfully. “Seems to us you managed to keep pretty well ahead.”

“Jove, boys, where do you think we are?” exclaimed Phil, abruptly changing the subject.

“We’re just exactly where Cricket fell in the brook this morning.”

And so they were. Thinking it was afternoon they had turned in the direction of the sun, meaning to go west. Of course they had really gone east, since it was still morning, and here they were, not ten minutes’ walk from home.

They stood looking at one another in perfect silence.

“Our whole day wasted,” said Eunice, at length, very soberly.

“It must be most supper-time, and we haven’t any lunch left,” commented Harry, surveying the melancholy collection of empty pails and baskets.

“I’m awful hungry,” sighed Phil.

179No one exactly liked to propose going home, yet what else was there to do? It was too late, they thought, to start out again in search of pastures new, and yet, how could they go home and encounter the teasing that would surely follow the tale of the day’s experience.

“If only we had some berries!” groaned Rose.

“That horrid old snake,” said Daisy, looking fearfully around. “We would have had some, anyway, excepting for his chasing us away.”

Cricket had been sitting still, where she had tumbled. Now she got up slowly and picked up her pail and basket.

“I’m going home,” she said, decidedly. “I think we’ve had a very nice day, if we didn’t get any blackberries. Papa always buys them, anyway, of that poor little girl that brings them down from the hills, and she needs the money.”

“If Cricket goes,” said Edna, jumping up with great alacrity, “of course we must all go with her. It must be most supper-time, anyway.”

The depressed looking group presently found themselves at the edge of the woods.

“Well, I do declare!” exclaimed Cricket, stopping short, “if there aren’t Thomas and the 180oxen at the bars! Papa has sent him, after all. Hollo, Thomas, did you come to meet us?”

Thomas stared as they approached.

“Wal, now, young uns, I railly thought you were off for all day. What’s drove you home at this time o’ the mornin’? Gin out arly, seems to me.”

“Why, no,” answered Cricket, surprised. “It’s the time we meant to come. Did papa send you for us?”

“Wal, no, not ’xactly. What should yer pa send for you now, fur? He kinder thought you wuz a-goin’ to stay all day.”

“I should think we had stayed all day,” said Harry. “Seems a week since this morning.”

“Wal, I rather ’low it’s mornin’ yet,” returned Thomas, equally surprised.

“Morning now?” came a chorus of voices. “Why, we’ve had our dinner, and we would have had our supper, only we lost it.”

Thomas went off in a loud guffaw.

“Ef you blessed young uns hain’t ben and come home at ten o’clock in the mornin’!”

“Ten!” faltered a voice or two. The rest were speechless.

“To be sure. Thar comes Mr. Archie now. 181He’s ben a drivin’ the doctor over to the nine-thirty train.”

Archie reined up at the sight of the group around the bars.

“Hello, you fellows!” he called. “Thought you were off for all day. Get your pails filled so soon? What! no berries!”

The children glanced shamefacedly at each other.

“Cricket fell in the brook,” began one.

“And we lost our way,” said another.

“And we ate our dinner, and lost our supper,” said a third.

“And we saw a big, black snake chewing up a little bird—”

“And we were all afraid and ran,” confessed Cricket.

“Not afraid!” cried Phil, valiantly. “The girls ran, Arch, and we fellows had to run after them to tell them there wasn’t any danger. But we lost all our supper, running,” he added hastily, to prevent contradiction to his first statement.

“And then—well,” finished Eunice, in a burst of honesty, “we thought it was supper-time, Archie; we really did, and Thomas says it’s only ten o’clock in the morning!”

Archie shouted at this.

182“So you never found the berry-pasture at all? Haven’t you got a single berry among you all? Well, by Jove, you are a fine set! Thought it was supper-time at ten in the morning!”

The children never heard the end of this joke.

CHAPTER XIX. WHAT ZAIDEE AND HELEN FOUND.

Mamma had gone away for a two weeks’ visit to grandmamma, and had taken little Kenneth with her. Zaidee and Helen felt very lonely without their small playfellow, for it was the first time they had ever been separated. The first week seemed very long. Then when nurse began to comfort them by saying that next week mamma and Kenneth would be at home again, there came a letter from mamma saying that grandmamma was not very well, and she would stay another week besides.

The twins were quite ready to cry. “Next week” seemed like saying “next year.” But auntie was staying with them still, and as she was mamma’s own sister herself, and she looked very much like her, this was a great comfort to the children, for they would try and “play” it was mamma who spoke to them. But there was no one to take little Kenneth’s place.

The twins had a favourite playground down 184by the brook. It was just below the pool where they had tried to drown the poor little kittens.

A great oak tree grew there, and the grass underneath was smooth and green. The brook was very shallow there, and there were plenty of smooth, round stones which they could easily get out of the water, without getting themselves at all wet. On the green grass they played house, marking off the rooms by these round stones. The acorns from the oak served the purpose of cups for their dolls, and bits of broken china made fine dishes. They had, at home, a beautiful, real doll’s house, with the cunningest furniture, and plenty of “really, truly” doll’s dishes, but they got much more pleasure out of this make-believe house, marked off with stones.

Since Kenneth was not at home to be looked after, Eliza often let the twins go down to the brook to play all by themselves. One morning, after breakfast, they ran down there as usual. To their great surprise they found that some one was there before them.

It was a little boy, about Kenneth’s age. He had on a linen dress and a broad-brimmed hat. He sat on the edge of the bank, poking a 185stick into the water. Where could he have come from? The children were sure they had never seen him before.

As the twins approached, he looked up at them with a pair of sober, wide brown eyes.

“Oh, Helen! what’s that!” cried Zaidee, in great amazement, stopping short.

“It’s a little boy!” exclaimed Helen, as much excited as if she had found a crocodile. “We’ve finded a little boy!”

Zaidee ran up to Brown-Eyes.

“What is your name?” she demanded, eagerly.

Brown-Eyes answered nothing. He looked at the little girls, gravely, and the little girls looked at him.

“Haven’t you any name?” persisted Zaidee.

“No,” answered Brown-Eyes, briefly.

“Where do you live?” asked Helen, running round on the other side of him.

Brown-Eyes looked all around him, into the sky, into the water, and into the woods on the other side of the brook. Then he said, “I’m here.”

“Oh, Helen!” shrieked Zaidee, in great excitement. “He hasn’t any name, and he 186doesn’t live anywhere but here, so he’s ours, cause we finded him, just like the kitty we finded, and auntie let us keep it.”

Zaidee was very much mixed up in her speech, but Helen understood. She clapped her hands with joy.

“Now we’ve got a little boy to play with, ’stead of Kenneth. Let’s keep him to play with till Kenneth comes home, and then there’ll be two of him, just the same as there’s two of us.”

“Can it talk, do you s’pose?” asked Zaidee, walking around Brown-Eyes, with much interest. For, excepting his two short answers, he had not spoken at all.

“I ’xpect he can talk,” returned Helen, “cause he’s got teeth, hasn’t he?” In her mind the only reason that a baby can’t talk is because it hasn’t any teeth. Brown-Eyes immediately showed a full set.

“Yes, he has,” said Helen, triumphantly. “He’s got some up teeth and some down teeth. Talk, boy.”

Brown-Eyes only looked at them as silently as before.

“Poke him,” said Zaidee. “Let’s see if he squeals.”

187She did not mean to hurt him, but she poked him in the stomach rather harder than she meant. Straightway Brown-Eyes’s little feet flew out like a wind-mill, and kicked Zaidee so vigorously that she lost her balance, and nearly rolled into the brook.

Brown-Eyes still said nothing.

Zaidee picked herself up with added respect for her little guest.

“I did not mean to hurt you,” she said, standing at a little distance. “Do you want to play house with us? Let’s build him a new house, Helen. Come, boy, you get some stones.”

The excitement of building the new house soon made the children friends, and they played together happily, though Brown-Eyes did not grow talkative.

At last the little ones grew hungry, and they started for the house, taking their new playmate with them.

“Where shall we keep him?” asked Helen, as they trudged up the lane and across the green lawn.

“We’d better shut him up for awhile, till he gets used to us,” was Zaidee’s advice. “That’s the way we did with kitty.”

188“We can put him in the laundry,” suggested Helen. “We put kitty there.”

As the house stood on the hillside which sloped gently back to the brook, the kitchen and laundry were down stairs. No one noticed the children as they went in at the lower door. Cricket and Eunice were off for a long scamper on their ponies, and Donald and his cousins were away fishing, while Marjorie had gone into town for the day.

The laundry, a large, light room, which was on one side of the lower hall, chanced to be deserted when they went in.

“Stay here, boy,” said Helen, “and we’ll bring you something to eat, if you’re good.”

Brown-Eyes nodded gravely. He immediately sat himself down on the floor, with his sturdy little feet straight out in front of him, and with his hands folded in his lap. “I be good,” he said, briefly. He never wasted his words.

The twins locked the laundry door and ran across to the kitchen. They intended to ask if Eliza had their luncheon ready for them upstairs, and to tell her to get something for the Boy; but cook had just taken from the oven the most distracting cookies, all in shapes of little pigs.

189“Oh-h!” squealed the children in concert.

“An’ here’s a plateful fur yer auntie,” said cook. “Be off wid yerself, an’ don’t come nigh me agin till me floor’s mopped entirely.”

Off scampered Zaidee and Helen with the cookies, in great delight, and quite forgot their little prisoner in the laundry. They found auntie on the cool, vine-covered piazza.

“What hot little girlies!” she exclaimed, putting back the curly hair from the warm, shiny little faces. “Eliza,” she called to the nurse, who passed through the hall at that moment, “take the children upstairs and wash their hands and faces. Then come back here, little ones, and auntie will read you a story while you cool off.”

The twins went very willingly, and soon came back, fresh and sweet. They perched themselves on the broad arms of auntie’s chair, munching cookies and rocking comfortably, while auntie read to them.

Suddenly a nursemaid came running up the avenue.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” she said, breathlessly. “I’m Mrs. Bennett’s nurse, and she’s lost Phelps. We can’t find him anywhere, and Mrs. Bennett’s most distracted.”

190The Bennetts were new people, who had lately come for the summer, having taken a house near by.

“Is the little boy lost?” asked Mrs. Somers, rising. “No, he has not been here. When did you miss him?”

“It’s over two hours since anyone’s seen him, ma’am. I was busy and thought he was with his ma, and she thought I had him. We didn’t miss him till about half an hour ago, and we’ve looked everywhere about the house and grounds. I just thought he might have run in here, ma’am,” said the frightened maid.

“He certainly has not been here!” said auntie, “Have you seen Phelps, children?”

“No,” they both said, positively.

They hadn’t seen Phelps. They hadn’t ever seen him.

“I’m so sorry,” said auntie. “Still he can’t have gone very far. Eliza, ask Mike or Thomas if they’ve seen the child anywhere around this morning. Have you been to the village?”

“Mrs. Bennett’s just gone up there, herself, ma’am,” returned the nurse. “And the gardener has gone the other way to look for him.”

Eliza came back and said that Mike had seen 191such a little fellow further down the road, near the farm-house, earlier in the morning.

“P’raps our man has found him, then,” said the nurse, hurrying off, while auntie sent Eliza again to tell Mike and Thomas to join in the search.

“Auntie,” broke out Zaidee, a little while later, “I forgot to tell you that we’ve got a little boy of our own, down stairs.”

“A little boy, Zaidee?” said auntie, laying down her book. “What do you mean?”

“We finded him, auntie, he’s ours,” said Zaidee, earnestly. “Come and see him.”

“We finded him down by the brook, in our play-house,” chimed in Helen. “He’s ours, auntie. He’s awful cunning. We’re going to keep him and feed him as we did the kitty that we finded once, and when Kenneth comes home they can be twins, just like us.”

“But, children,” exclaimed auntie, “it must be Phelps. Where is he? Why didn’t you speak before? You said you hadn’t seen him.”

“It isn’t Phelps,” insisted Zaidee. “He’s ours. We finded him. He hasn’t any name, only just Boy. He doesn’t live anywhere. He said so. Please let us keep him,” she pleaded. “Mamma let us keep the kitty.”

192“You ridiculous children,” said auntie. “A little boy isn’t like a cat. Tell me where he is, now.”

“He’s in the laundry, where we put the kitty. He’s getting used to us. He’s real good, and he doesn’t cry at all; he won’t be a bit of trouble!” begged Helen.

Auntie flew down stairs, the children following, and protesting all the way against his being sent off. Auntie unlocked the laundry door hastily and looked in. There sat Master Brown-Eyes, exactly as they had left him an hour before.

“Phelps are hungry,” he announced at once, looking reproachfully at the twins.

Auntie picked up the patient baby in her arms.

“You poor little soul!” she exclaimed. But Brown-Eyes resisted strongly.

“Put me down,” he said, for his dignity was much hurt.

“Oh, are you going to send him away?” asked Helen, ready to cry. “Please let us keep him just till Kenneth comes home, then. He’s lots better than the kitty was.”

“He certainly is,” said auntie, laughing, “for kitty would not have stayed there quietly for so long.”

193She was carrying struggling Phelps upstairs, while the twins tagged on behind.

“There’s Eliza and the men, now,” auntie said, when, breathless, she reached the piazza. “Run, Zaidee, and tell them that Phelps is found. Tell Mike to go to Mrs. Bennett’s and tell her.—There, my little man, eat some of these cookies and stop kicking.”

Phelps wriggled out of auntie’s lap, and preferred to eat his cookies, standing on his own two stout legs, while the twins eyed him, in deep disappointment.

Their visitor ate all the cookies there were left, and then he suddenly said, “I are doin’ home now,” and began to back down the steps in his own solemn fashion.

“Oh, Boy!” cried Helen, reproachfully; “you said you didn’t have any home.”

Brown-Eyes would not make any reply. He trudged down the avenue soberly.

“Come, twinnies,” laughed auntie, “we’ll go and look after him and see that he doesn’t lose himself again.”

“Boy,” called Zaidee, “will you come and let us find you again?”

Brown-Eyes nodded, but kept on his way. At 194the gate they saw a lady running towards them, from the direction of the village.

“I are dust comin’ home, mamma,” called Phelps, his fat legs quickening their rate to a run.

His mamma caught him in her arms, and this time he was quite content to nestle in her neck.

Auntie told her how it had all happened, and, now that the fright was over, Mrs. Bennett could laugh at the story, and she promised that her little boy should come and see the twins, even if they could not keep him as their own.

CHAPTER XX. MAMIE’S MESSAGE.

The doctor’s farmer, ’Gustus John, as everyone called him, stood at his little white gate, looking down the road. Dr. Ward was coming up from the village, with his hands full of letters, and ’Gustus wanted to speak to him.

“I say,” he drawled, as the doctor came within speaking distance, “I seen yer comin’, an’ I wanted to tell you about thet new caow o’ yourn, thet we bought over to the Fair last week. ’T ain’t no bargain, I’m thinkin’, ’n’ the critter’s all-fired cross. Nigh on to horned me out of the stable this mornin’. What do you say to fattening her up for beef straight off?”

“Just as you like,” returned the doctor, absently, for he had some important letters in his hand, which he had been glancing at as he walked. “I never like to have cross animals on the place, lest some accident might happen with so many children about.”

“Yes, thet’s another p’int. I’ve kinder been 196layin’ round for them little girls o’ yourn, to warn ’em off. They’re proper fond of junketin, round the barns, but I think p’raps they’d better make themselves skurse while this critter is in the barnyard. I hevn’t put her out with the other caows to-day. I’ve got to go to the lower medder this mornin’, and I hain’t got no more time to waste now. P’raps you’ll see them?” ’Gustus had a very soft spot in his heart for the doctor’s family, and always kept a careful lookout for the little girls.

“I’ll tell them, though it isn’t likely that they will turn up at the house before dinner,” said the doctor, laughing. “They are very busy young women, and I haven’t an idea where they are this morning. I’ll send one of the boys in search of them.”

“I know where they are,” piped up Mamie, who, as usual, was hopping around, listening with her sharp little ears. “They’re up the brook, by the stepping-stones. I seen ’em there this morning.”

“You kin tell ’em about it, then,” said her father, turning to her. “Jog along over there, an’ tell ’em that I say there’s an awful fierce cow in the barnyard, and they better keep out 197of there till I tell ’em it’s safe. Come, skedaddle.” And Mamie “skedaddled.”

The doctor watched her doubtfully as she disappeared around the house. “Will she tell them?” he asked.

“She’ll tell ’em fast enough,” answered ’Gustus John. “She’ll admire to.”

“I’ll send one of the boys, anyway,” the doctor said. “I don’t want to run any risks. Yes, do as you like with the cow, if she is really so cross. She’ll spoil the others. Fatten her for killing, certainly. I’m sorry, for she is of good stock.” Then the doctor went on up the hill, reading his letters as he went. Among them he found a note, begging him to come at once to a house at the other side of the village, on a little matter of business. So Mike being bidden to harness at once, the doctor drove off, quite forgetting the cross cow, and that he meant to send one of the boys with a special message to his little daughters.

Mamie, meantime, ran across the pasture in high spirits. How delightful to be able to tell those big girls of something which they must not do! She began screaming out their names at the top of her lungs, as soon as she came in 198sight of them. The girls sat by the brook, busily plaiting little baskets out of pliant willow twigs.

“Eunice! Cricket! my pa says you shan’t go in our barnyard to-day, so there!”

“Oh, dear me!” sighed Cricket, in deep disgust. “If there isn’t that horrid little tag-tail again.”

It was not very often that Mamie ventured on the Kayuna grounds. She had been warned off too many times, with too many threats of terrible things happening if she went beyond the farm-yard bounds. This morning her errand made her bold.

“Do you hear?” she repeated, in her shrill little voice. “Pa sez he won’t have you in the barnyard any more. I don’t b’lieve he’ll let you in the barn either, ’n’ then you can’t jump on the hay ever again.”

“Well, I like that!” exclaimed Eunice, not very elegantly it must be confessed. “As if it wasn’t, really, our father’s barn.”

“Don’t care. My pa kin boss it, ’n’ he’s goin’ to,” returned Mamie, enjoying her sense of importance, and teasingly keeping back the true reason of the message.

199“I’ll make ’em good and angry, first,” she thought, in her usual mischievous spirit. “Pa said you was allers a-junketin’ round. I heerd him,” she said, aloud.

“Well, I’d like to know,” said Cricket, angrily, “what right ’Gustus John has to say what we shall do in those barns. They are my papa’s, and he just hires your father to look after the farm, Mamie Hecker. And papa says we may play in the barns as much as we like, if we don’t ’sturb things, and ’Gustus John says we never ’sturb anything at all. I don’t b’lieve one word of it. Do you, Eunice?”

“No, I don’t. But I think,” said Eunice, very slowly and decidedly, “if you know what’s good for yourself, Mamie, you’ll get off our grounds, just as fast as you can travel, or else—you’ll see!”

“You don’t dast spank me again,” cried Mamie, holding up one knee, while she balanced herself on one foot, “cause your pa told you never to dast do that again. I ’xpect he’d whip you, if you did.”

“Whip me!” replied Eunice, scornfully. “Whippings are for bad little things like you, Mamie; you’d be better if you got a lot more of them.”

200The children never stopped to choose their words when they talked to Mamie.

“Anyway,” said Mamie, changing the subject, but with a sudden purpose of revenge for that spanking coming into her mind, “your own pa said just so. He and pa was a talkin’ by the gate, an’ pa, he said, ‘wish you’d hev them girls keep out of the barnyard, for they’re allers a-junketin’ round.’ Them’s his very words. An’ yer pa, he said, ‘I’ll tell ’em if I see ’em, but like as not I won’t’; ’n’ my pa, he said, ‘Mamie, go and tell ’em straight off this minute, that I say keep out of the barnyard;’ so I come, ’cause my pa an’ your pa, they said to, both on ’em.”

“For goodness sake, Mamie, go away with your ‘pa’s,’” said Cricket, impatiently. “You do make me so cross. I don’t believe a word of it. ’Gustus never in his life told us to keep out of the barn.” Long experience with Mamie made the girls slow to believe anything she stated for a fact.

“He said so this time, anyway,” repeated Mamie, much enjoying the girls’ anger, as she fired stones into the brook to make a splash. “He said he was a-waitin’ round to warn yer 201off.” Then she thought, “I won’t tell ’em the reason why, at all, hateful old things, ’n’ then they’ll be sorry.”

It must be remembered that rude as Cricket and Eunice now certainly were to the child, it was only that a long time of bearing Mamie’s teasing, provoking ways had brought them to speaking to her as they did. They scorned to tell tales, and the elders had no idea how tormenting Mamie always was. “Worse than skeeters,” Cricket said.

Mamie knew precisely the effect that her words would probably have. Without doubt, the girls would go to the barns sometime that day, and if they should get hooked—just a little—by that cross old cow, wouldn’t they be well paid up for spanking her that day. Of course it wouldn’t be her fault, for she had told them to keep away.

“You’ve got to keep out of our ba-arn! You’ve got to keep out of our ba-arn!” she repeated, in a sing-song voice, firing a particularly big stone into the water, having aimed it with great care close to where Eunice was sitting. The water splashed up, spattering her well.

“You mean little thing!” Eunice cried, springing 202up in a fury. Mamie had already darted away, and was flying across the meadows like a little brown spider. She rolled under the fence just as Eunice was upon her.

“You dassent tetch me now!” she gasped, panting for breath. “I’m on my pa’s land.”

“Lucky for you,” said Eunice, wrathfully. “If you come over here again I’ll take you up to my father, if Cricket and I have to drag you every step of the way. Now mind!”

“Oh, dear, very smart you are!” jeered Mamie, safe on her side of the fence. “I expect you’d like to tear me into limbs. But you’ll be sorry if you don’t keep out of my pa’s barns,” she added, edging off.

“They’re my father’s barns, and I’ll go in them just as much as I please,” answered Eunice, turning away with much dignity, now that she had driven Mamie well off the grounds.

“What can she have meant by all that nonsense, Cricket, do you think?” she said, seating herself again. “The idea of ’Gustus John telling us to keep out of the barns! He would as soon think of telling us to keep out of our own stables,” she added.

“Why, I think she just wanted to plague us, 203and couldn’t think of anything else to say,” answered Cricket. “Eunice, I do b’lieve we haven’t been down to the barns this week. Let’s go by-and-by, and jump on the hay.”

“All right. Let’s go now,” said Eunice, jumping up. “I feel just like it. I’m stiff sitting still so long.” And accordingly, down went the willow baskets, and off ran the two little maids.

CHAPTER XXI. THE NEW COW.

The warm sunshine lay full on the great barnyard, and the silence of a summer morning in the country lay over everything. The farmhands were off at work, and the wide barn-doors stood open. The air was full of the sweet, warm odour of drying hay.

The children loved the big, rambling barn, with its dark, dusky corners, and they would play there by the hour. They would climb up the steep ladders, walk fearlessly across the big beams, and, with a wild whoop, would plunge downward on the mass of soft, sweet-smelling hay beneath.

Cricket had learned to achieve a somersault while in mid-air, and was very proud of this accomplishment. Then such places for hide-and-seek, when they could coax the boys to join them, did the dim corners afford! Such a famous place it was in which to play “Indians,” for they could barricade themselves behind mounds of 205hay, and fire a scattering shot of grain at the enemy who besieged them. The front doors of the barn were level with the lane, but behind it, where the barnyard was, the ground fell sharply, so that the same floor was a second story, beneath which the cow-stables lay. At the back of the barn, opposite the front door, was another wide door, opening on the cowyard, ten feet below, so that a wagon backed up there could easily be loaded from above.

Fortunately, ’Gustus John was good-nature itself, and “admired to hev the children enjoy themselves,” as he often said. In all their capers, he had never been known to say anything stronger than, “Wal, I do vum! I never see sech goin’s-on.” It was for this reason that Eunice and Cricket did not in the least believe Mamie when she said that her father had sent her to tell them not to go into the barnyard that day. If the child had told them the reason why, they would not have thought of going, for, with all their faults, they were rarely directly disobedient. They were too well-trained for that. Dr. Ward believed in letting the children run wild all summer, while they were in the country, and there were but two things he was 206severe with: disobedience and the want of truth.

As the girls came up, the barnyard was quite deserted except for one peaceful-looking cow who stood quietly chewing her cud in a shady corner. A few stray hens and chickens clucked and scratched in the straw. Not another sound was to be heard. Even Mamie was not in sight.

“I wonder where that bad little thing is?” said Cricket, looking around, and half expecting a shower of pebbles, by way of greeting.

“Expect she’s gone to mourn for her sins,” said Eunice.

“That will take her some time,” laughed Cricket, “and so we’ll have a little peace. Isn’t that the new cow ’Gustus John bought last week at the Fair? I wonder why it isn’t in the pasture with the rest.”

“I don’t know. Oh, Cricket, what lovely boards!” exclaimed Eunice. “I suppose ’Gustus has them for his new hen-house. Let’s take one of them and see-saw.”

“Oh, goody, let’s!” and the little girls soon had one of the long new boards down from the pile. See-saw was an old amusement, and their 207favourite place to balance the board was across one of the open spaces in the barnyard fence. One little girl would go inside the yard and the other would stay outside.

“See how funny that cow stands?” said Cricket, as she unfastened the gate and went into the barnyard, in order to pull the board through as Eunice pushed it from the other side.

The cow stood with her head lowered and her tail moving restlessly, watching the children’s movements. Cricket, however, too used to cows to fear them, did not notice her further, and drew the board to the right position to balance. Then with much squealing and laughing—little-girl fashion—the two seated themselves, and the fun began.

“See-saw! see-saw! here we go up and down,” sang the children gayly, as Cricket’s head rose above the fence and Eunice went down. They did not see Mamie peeping at them from the barn-door that opened above the cowyard, and they rather wondered at her unusual absence.

“It’s just lovely to have that Mamie out of the way,” remarked Cricket, as she went up again.

“Too good to last,” returned Eunice.

208At this moment a scream came from the barn-door above them.

“Oh, Cricket, look out for the new cow!” but too late came Mamie’s warning. The new cow, frantic at the strange sight of a bright-coloured spot moving up and down before her very eyes, with a rush bolted across the yard and caught the descending board right on her horns. The next second Cricket was spinning through the air and came down against Eunice with a force that stunned them both.

A sudden peal of impish laughter rang out from the barn, changing almost instantly to a shrill cry of terror. Mamie, hopping about, as usual, on one foot, had lost her balance, and plunged downward, head-foremost.

The shrill cries still continued when Cricket, a few moments after, sat up slowly and looked around her.

“Why, what in the world—” she began, pushing back her curly mop with both hands, in the greatest bewilderment,—then she looked down at Eunice, who lay white and unconscious on the ground. The back of her head had struck sharply against a stone, for she had caught the full force of Cricket’s fall. The latter, consequently, had escaped being seriously hurt.

209

CRICKET FINDS EUNICE UNCONSCIOUS.

211“Eunice!” cried Cricket, wild with terror, “speak to me! What’s the matter, Eunice?” and she tried to lift her sister in her arms. She had never seen unconsciousness before, and for one terrible moment she thought that she was dead. Eunice, at the movement, opened her eyes and tried to speak.

Meanwhile Mamie’s cries were ringing out,—

“Ow! ow! Cricket, come take me off! she’s a-hooking my feet!”

As Eunice stirred, Cricket turned, and even in her terror and excitement she laughed at the sight she saw. Mamie had lost her balance and plunged forward, but as she went over the sill, her stout gingham frock caught on a projecting nail a few inches down, and there she still hung, arms waving and legs wildly kicking, and sending out shriek after shriek. Below, the ugly cow was lowering her head and striking at the dangling feet, every now and then hitting them. “Pull me up, Cricket!” Mamie screamed, nearly in convulsions of terror, her struggling making the matter still worse.

As Cricket rose unsteadily to her feet, and 212saw the situation, the whole thing flashed into her quick brain. Mamie had been sent to tell them to keep out of the barnyard, because the new cow was ugly, and she had purposely given only half the message. And here was Eunice half-killed as a result. Of her own bruises she never thought.

“I don’t care!” she screamed, passionately, in answer to Mamie’s shrieks. “I don’t care if you’re all hooked up! You’ve killed my Eunice, and I hope you are satisfied,” and she knelt by her sister again.

“I’ll never be bad any more,” shrieked Mamie, at the top of her lungs. “Help—me—up,—Cricket.”

“I don’t care,” repeated Cricket, angrily, but really scarcely knowing whether to run for help, or stay with Eunice, or help Mamie. “That hateful, hateful little thing! Serves her right.”

But in a moment Cricket’s better self came to the front, at Mamie’s last piercing cry,—

“Ow! ow! she’s hurt my foot awful!”

Cricket sprang up and ran around to the barn-door. Her knee was cut and bleeding, but she did not heed it. She darted across the barn floor to the door at the back. It was not 213an easy matter to decide what she was to do, for Mamie, though she was slight and small, would be a dead weight on her as she pulled her up, and then also, she suddenly discovered that her left shoulder was strained and sore. But there was no time to hesitate, for Mamie’s position was dangerous as well as absurd. Her struggles might release her dress at any moment, and those angry horns and hoofs were waiting below.

Cricket grasped a stout, wooden staple at the side of the door-frame with her right hand, and, bending far over, she slipped her left arm around Mamie’s waist. Mamie clutched her instantly.

“Stop wiggling,” said Cricket, sharply. It was no small task for her, with her strained arm, to bring Mamie up even those ten inches, but with a desperate effort she drew her up to a sitting position on the door-sill, so the child could scramble in herself. For one second she felt as if her arm was being dragged out of her body, and only long practice in swinging off limbs of trees, and drawing herself up again, had made her muscles equal to the strain.

Mamie climbed in, and then stood perfectly 214still, for once, with nothing to say, looking at Cricket out of the tail of her eye. If Cricket had fallen on her and thrashed her soundly, she would have taken it without a murmur. But Cricket, of course, had no such idea. She stood for a moment, looking at her small enemy in silence, and then raced out of the barn, back to her beloved Eunice. She found her sitting up and looking very dazed and white. She had not the least idea what had happened to them, and was too confused to ask.

“Do you feel as if you could walk home?” asked Cricket, putting her arm very tenderly around her; “or will you stay here while I go for Mike to bring you home in the carriage? Or do you want to go into the farm-house, and get ’Manda to give you something?”

“I think—I’ll—go home,” said Eunice, her nerves decidedly shaken, and her head still dizzy from the effects of the blow. “I’ll—try—to walk.”

Cricket helped her up, and put her arm about her to steady her.

CHAPTER XXII. MAMIE’S REPENTANCE.

Mamie went sneaking past them to the house and went into the kitchen where her mother was at work.

“Oh, ma!” she cried. “The girls has been in the barnyard where that cross cow is, ’n’ Cricket got knocked over the fence, and Eunice is most killed I guess, ’n’ I don’t b’lieve she kin walk home.”

“Got hooked! Law ful suz! You don’t say so!” and ’Manda hurriedly wiped her hands and ran out to the lane. The barn was not far from the house, but the kitchen was on the further side, so she had not noticed the children’s screams.

She ran to meet the girls and caught Eunice up in her strong arms. “You poor little dear,” she exclaimed. “I’ll carry you right along myself. Here, Cricket, you hang on to me too;” for Cricket was limping by this time, with her knee aching more every minute.

216’Manda was very comforting, for she was too used to the children’s mishaps even to ask how things had happened. “Come in and rest a spell,” she coaxed, “and let me put some hot water on your head, poor dear.”

“I want to go home,” repeated Eunice, still half-crying.

“Well, so you shall, an’ I’ll carry you right up there, myself. ’Course yer ma’s yer best friend when you’re hurt. Hi! there goes the doctor now! Hi! Hi!”

Dr. Ward, returning from his call, drew up his horse as he crossed the little bridge at the sound of the cry.

“Suthin’ happened, just the same as usual, doctor,” ’Manda said, as the party came up, with Mamie well in the rear.

The doctor sprang out of his buggy, looking rather anxious. There were certainly drawbacks to having a pair of romps for daughters.

He hastily took Eunice in his arms.

“What is the matter, dear. Did you fall?”

“Not—not exactly,” said Eunice. “I don’t know exactly what happened, but somehow Cricket flew over the fence, and fell on top of me, and—and I think my head knocked into a stone, and my back hurts too.”

217“Flew over the fence? What do you mean?”

“That old cow hooked me over,” flashed out Cricket. “We were see-sawing, just peaceably, and the old thing came up behind me and boosted me right over the fence, and ’course I fell on Eunice pretty hard, and we got all mixed up with the end of the boards and some stones. Eunice is more hurt than I am, though.”

“The cow,” said the doctor, looking suddenly stern. “Did you go into the barnyard?”

“Yes, sir, we always do, you know.”

“Didn’t you get my message?”

“Yes—but—well, I didn’t really believe Mamie, ’cause she didn’t say why,” burst out Cricket, after a moment’s hesitation. “And we always go in the barns whenever we wish, and ’Gustus John never says a word. And oh, dear! I do feel as if the socket was pulled out of my arm.” And Cricket, between excitement and pain, burst out crying.

Her father had gathered enough from her story to feel sure that there had been no real disobedience, and seeing the children’s nervousness and pain, he put them both into the buggy, and as speedily as possible gave them over into the care of mamma and nurse.

218It was several days before Eunice was herself again, for she had really had a hard blow both on the back and head, and for two days she was actually willing to remain in bed. She really very seldom met with accidents, for she was not by nature nearly so much of a romp as her younger sister, and was far less rash and heedless.

Cricket was as chirpy as ever the next day. Her knee was bound up and she hobbled about, rather enjoying the attention she received. Her left arm was somewhat stiff and lame, for she had hit her left side with considerable force as she landed, although her striking Eunice had somewhat broken her fall.

The whole story had come out, and, as usual, Cricket had to undergo a fire of teasing.

“A girl with the sockets pulled out of her arms ought to go to the Dime Museum,” laughed papa, as they all sat on the piazza that evening after supper. “She’s a natural curiosity.”

“If I’m a natural curiosity, then I wish I were an unnatural one. I don’t think I’m nice a bit,” said Cricket, candidly. “Things never happen to Eunice and Hilda, if I’m not along. Just think, if I hadn’t hit Eunice she wouldn’t 219have been hurt a bit,” for Cricket took her sister’s injuries very much to heart.

“You always have such romantic accidents,” teased Donald. “Think how thrilling it is to be run away with by a raging span of oxen, and fancy the excitement of being tossed by the cow with a crumpled horn!”

“I really should think you wouldn’t care to look a piece of beef in the face,” laughed Will.

“Plant Cricket and what would she come up,” asked Archie, and Cricket herself answered, quickly,—

“Cow-slip. That’s good. Ask another one.”

“Can’t; you’re too bright.”

“I’d have given a sixpence to see Mamie Hecker dangling on that hook,” said Will. “Little imp!”

“It wasn’t very funny to fish her up,” said Cricket, seriously, “for it did pull the sockets out of my arm. Why isn’t that right to say, papa!”

“Because your arms are put in the sockets, my dear, not the sockets in your arms.”

“Oh! well, I hope it will teach Mamie a lesson; and the next time she has a message to give, I hope she’ll give it.”

“What do you think!” exclaimed Marjorie. 220“Here’s Mamie Hecker coming up the avenue now.”

Sure enough, there was Mamie in her stiffly-starched best white dress, and her Sunday hat on her head, coming very slowly up towards the house. This was very unusual, for Mamie knew her bounds. The family watched her with interest to see what she meant to do.

Cricket slipped hastily behind mamma. “I don’t want to see her,” she said, impatiently.

Mamie came awkwardly to the foot of the steps.

“Is Cricket here?” she asked, with a very unusual shyness in her manner, which was partly due to the fact that she had on her best clothes on a week-day.

Cricket came unwillingly forward in obedience to mamma’s touch.

“I want to speak to you,” Mamie said, still shyly.

Cricket came slowly down the steps, half expecting some trick, since she knew Mamie’s ways so well. But the child was in earnest this time. She stood uneasily, first on one foot and then on the other, not quite knowing how to say what she wanted to.

221“See here,” she burst out, at length. “I’ve brought you those,” holding out a brown paper bag. “Ma said I might. I bought ’em with the five cents that the minister give me. An’—an’—I’m awful sorry I didn’t tell you ’bout the cow right straight off,—an’—I’m not goin’ to tag you any more.”

Cricket took the bag that the child held toward her.

“Why, Mamie, you shouldn’t have spent your five cents for me,” began Cricket, shy in her turn, and hardly knowing what to say. “But it’s very good of you.”

“I told my ma ’n’ pa ’bout my not telling you, and they was awful took back. Pa said you might have been killed. An’ then you went and pulled me up with that lame arm of yourn,” Mamie went on, in a lower tone, putting out one finger to touch Cricket’s left arm, of which the fingers were still a little stiff and swollen. “I ain’t forgot that. I’m a-goin’ to be gooder all the time, now,” and here Mamie, quite overcome by her feelings, gave the brown paper bag in Cricket’s hand, a final pat, and, turning around, scampered away to the gates as fast as her feet could carry her.

222“Well, I say!” Donald exclaimed, as Cricket, still looking very much amazed, came up the steps. “I should call that a case of clear repentance. Real article.”

“I’ve hopes of Mamie, now,” said Marjorie.

“That certainly is very touching,” said mamma, gently.

“Cricket, you fished to some purpose when you brought up Mamie from the depths,” added Will.

“Whatever has she brought as a peace-offering?” asked Archie, curiously.

Cricket opened the bag and displayed five chocolate mice.

“If they were only cows, now,” shouted Will.

CHAPTER XXIII. WHEN MAMMA WAS A LITTLE GIRL.

The next morning rather dragged. Eunice was up and about again, though she looked a trifle pale, and did not feel in the mood even for a drive. Cricket went out for a short time with Mopsie, and took the twins with her, but she soon came back, finding that the motion of the pony-cart made her arm ache.

Mamma and auntie were sitting on the piazza under the vines, with their embroidery, and Cricket found Eunice there, also, comfortably settled in the broad Mexican hammock.

“Come here, Cricket,” Eunice called, “for mamma is going to tell us stories.”

“Goody!” cried Cricket, skipping up joyfully, in spite of her stiff knee.

Was there ever a child to whom mamma’s stories were not a mine of delight?

“Curl up in the other hammock, pet,” said mamma, “and rest while we talk. You don’t look like my Cricket, yet.”

224Cricket stopped to give mamma one of her bear-squeezes,—for she looked so cool and sweet and pretty to her little girl, as she sat in her low chair,—and then she climbed into another hammock, and settled herself comfortably to listen.

“What shall I tell you about?” asked mamma, ready to begin. “I think I’ve told you every single thing I ever did, when I was a little girl.”

“Tell us anything,” said the children, in chorus. “Never mind if you have told it before.”

“Let me see. Did I ever tell you about my first lie? Indeed, my only one, for that matter.”

“Why, mamma!” cried Cricket, in great surprise. “Did you ever tell a story? I didn’t know that little girls ever used to do that. I thought they were all so good.”

“This happened when I was a very little girl, dear. Do you remember,” mamma asked auntie, “that little lilac print dress I had when I was about five years old? It was such a pretty little dress.”

“I remember the dress very well, and what happened the first time you wore it,” laughed auntie.

225“Yes, that’s the time I mean. Well, children, I had on this little new dress, of which I was very proud. It was an afternoon in early spring, and it was the first cambric dress that I had had on that season, so I felt particularly fine in it. Auntie Jean and I ran out to play. You remember, don’t you, children, how the house and barns at your grandfather’s are, and how steep the little hill back of the barn is? It was all green and grassy, and we loved to play there. Jean’s new dress was not quite finished, so she had on her regular little afternoon frock, and I felt prouder than ever of mine. I plumed myself so much, that finally Jean wouldn’t play with me. I know I made myself very disagreeable,” added mamma, smiling.

“There were barrels and boxes back of the barn, where we used to play house. I got up on one of the boxes, after a time, when Jean left me to myself, and I began jumping off it. Jean was arranging the play-house near by. The hill, with its short, green grass, looked very inviting to me, and presently I called to Jean, ‘I dare jump off this box, and roll right down the hill over and over.’

“‘I wouldn’t,’ Jean said, very pleasantly, 226‘you might spoil your new dress.’ She really meant to advise me not to do it, but I thought that she meant that I was afraid of my new frock.

“‘Yes, I dare, too, and I will,’ I said, and off I jumped and rolled sideways down the hill, over and over. It had rained in the night, and, though the hill was dry, the water had collected in a little hollow at the foot, which I did not notice on account of the grass. Through this I rolled, splash.”

“Just like me,” remarked Cricket, with much interest. “Eunice says I’d tumble into the water, if there wasn’t a saucerful around.”

“Yes, very much like you,” returned mamma, smiling. “When I got up, my pretty little lilac frock, of course, was all draggled and stained.”

“What an object you looked!” laughed auntie, “and how angry you were!”

“Yes,” said mamma, laughing, also. “That was the funny part of it. I was so angry, but I’m sure I don’t know who with. I felt that somebody was very much to blame, but I wasn’t at all willing to say that that somebody was my naughty little self. I got up, and looked down at my dress. Then I called out angrily, ‘See 227what you’ve done, Jean Maxwell,’ as I stood at the foot of the hill. Jean looked at me as I came climbing up, scolding all the way, and then she burst out laughing. I suppose I was a very funny object, but I didn’t feel funny at all.”

“It was funny enough to hear you scold, and that was principally what I was laughing at,” said auntie.

“I dare say,” answered mamma. “By the time I reached the top of the hill I was in a great rage. I used to get into rages very easily, then.”

“You, mamma?” Eunice looked as if she could scarcely believe it.

“Yes, my dear, I wasn’t always a good little girl in those days. ‘I’m going to tell mother what a naughty girl you are, Jean,’ I half-sobbed.

“‘What a naughty girl I am? You’d better tell her what a naughty girl you are yourself, rolling down hill, and getting your dress all dirty,’ Jean said, getting angry in her turn. Then she went on with her play-house and wouldn’t speak to me any more. I ran crying towards the house. Before I got there, I had quite made up my mind that it was certainly all 228Jean’s fault, somehow, and that if it hadn’t been for what she said, I shouldn’t have rolled down the hill in the first place, and so I shouldn’t have spoiled my new dress.

“I burst into the sitting-room, where your grandmother sat sewing. You know what a lovely old lady grandma is now, children, with her white puffs and dark eyes, and she was just as lovely then, when her hair was black. She looked up, as I rushed in panting.

“‘Gently, gently, little daughter,’ she said. ‘What has happened to your new frock, my dear? oh, what a sight you are!’

“Now I knew very well that grandma wouldn’t have punished me for spoiling the dress, for after all, it was an accident. I had often rolled down that hill before, and no harm had come of it. So I don’t, in the least, know what made me say it, excepting that I was so angry, but almost before I realized it, I was saying very fast, ‘mother, Jean was angry because I had on my new frock and she hadn’t, and so, when I was just standing on a box, suddenly she came behind me, and pushed me over as hard as she could, and I rolled down the hill, and rolled right through some water, 229and so I’ve spoiled my new dress.’ I was so excited that it never occurred to mother that I was not speaking the truth. I was so little—only five years old,—and I had never told her a lie before.

“‘Why! why!’ she exclaimed, laying down her work, and getting up. ‘I am surprised that Jean should do that. Come upstairs with me, and I will change your dress.’ That was all she said to me then, for mother never scolded at one child for what another one did, as I have heard some mothers do, and of course she thought this was Jean’s fault. So she took me upstairs to the big nursery and took off my dress.

“‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘that your pretty little dress is spoiled. Now, it will have to go straight to the wash, and it won’t look so pretty again.’

“‘That naughty Jean!’ I ventured to say, growing bolder.

“‘Hush, my dear,’ said grandma, ‘I will talk to Jean. I dare say she did not mean to push you so hard.’”

“But I should think, mamma,” broke in Eunice, “that you would have thought that Jean 230would come in any minute, and say she hadn’t done it at all.”

“Of course, I was a very silly little girl not to think of that,” answered mamma, “but it shows that I wasn’t used to deceiving. I never thought of the consequences. Somehow, too, by that time, I felt quite certain that I was telling the exact truth, and I entirely forgot that Jean would soon be in to say she hadn’t touched me.

“Well, only a few minutes after that, Jean came into the house, and ran quickly upstairs to the nursery. I was still running around in my little white petticoat and under-waist, while mother went to the clothes-press, to get a dress for me. You know that big carved wardrobe that still stands by grandma’s door in the hall? The one your grandpa brought home in one of his voyages? Well, it was that very one. Grandma came back, as Jean came in singing. She looked so entirely unconcerned that I think mother was surprised.

“‘Jean,’ she said, coming in and holding out her hand to her, ‘how could you do such a naughty thing as to push your little sister so hard that she fell off the box, and rolled down the hill?’

231“I can see your look of surprise now, Jean,” said mamma, turning to auntie, “as you stopped short and said, ‘Pushed her off the box? why, I didn’t! she jumped off herself.’

“Grandma looked from one to the other of us.

“‘What is this?’ she said. ‘One or the other of you is telling me what isn’t true.’ I shall never forget her look of grieved surprise. It must have been difficult for her to decide which was the guilty one, at first, for I felt that I must stick to what I had said. All my anger came back, and I jumped up and down, screaming, ‘you pushed me off, Jean Maxwell! you pushed me off.’

“‘Mother, I didn’t!’ Jean said. ‘Please believe me, for you know I wouldn’t do such a thing.’ Really, it would have been much more like me, for I had a quick temper, and I was always losing it.

“‘Margaret,’ said mother, taking hold of my hands, ‘stand still and tell me the exact truth. Did Jean push you off the box, or did you jump?’

“‘Jean pushed,’ I began, but I could not look into mother’s eyes, and tell her a lie again. ‘Anyhow,’ I said, half-crying, ‘she wanted to push me!’

232“‘Tell me the truth, Margaret,’ mother said. ‘Did Jean touch you at all?’

“‘No,’ I said, unwillingly.

“‘Did she even say she was going to?’

“‘No!’ I cried, ‘for she would not speak to me.’

“‘Then why did you say that she wanted to push you off? Did she ever do such a thing?’

“‘No, never!’ I admitted, and then I began to feel very much ashamed of myself, for my anger never lasted long.

“Then mother said, ‘Very well, Jean, I quite understand the matter now.’ Then she sent her away, and talked to me for a long time. She questioned me closely, and learned that I was the only one to blame. She made me understand what a dreadful thing it was to tell even a little lie, and how telling little ones would lead to a habit, so that one might say what was not true in very important matters. Altogether, I was very repentant, and promised never to tell another lie about anything, and I believe I never did. The soap and water helped me remember it.”

“What was the soap and water?” asked Cricket.

233“Why, my mother said, when she had finished talking to me, that she couldn’t kiss the little mouth that had let such a dreadful thing as a lie come through it, till it was all clean again,—and the only way to clean it was to wash it out. So she really did wash my mouth out thoroughly with Castile soap and water, and all the time she made me feel that it was not so much for a punishment, as really to make my mouth clean after the lie.

“Grandma seldom punished us, but somehow we always felt the consequences of our naughty deeds. And as I said, I think I never told another story.”

CHAPTER XXIV. MAMMA’S BANK.

“How funny it is to think of your telling a lie!” exclaimed Cricket. “I never heard about that before. Tell us another one.”

“Do you remember, Margaret,” asked auntie of mamma, “how we put our money in the bank?”

“Indeed, I do,” laughed mamma. “What disappointed children we were!”

“What was that?” the children asked, eagerly.

“It isn’t much of a story, I think, only it was funny. I was about six and Jean was eight, weren’t we? Some friend of my mother’s came to visit her for a few days, and brought her little daughter with her. Do you remember that little Cecilia, Jean?”

“I should think I did! I remember her distinctly, although we never saw her again. She was such a prim little thing, with long, light curls—such cork-screw curls! She wore a silk 235dress, and didn’t like to do anything but sit in the parlour and keep herself trim.”

“But we children admired her immensely,” said mamma. “We thought that her name was beautiful—Cecilia. She said her mother found it in a book. We loved to race about and romp as much as you children do, but she didn’t know how to play anything. She was a little older than we were, and would tell us long stories about her home. One thing impressed us especially. She asked us if we had any money in the bank, and we said, ‘None at all,’ in much surprise at the question.

“‘I have three hundred dollars in the bank,’ she said, proudly, ‘and my father’s going to leave it there till I’m twenty-one, and put in one hundred more every year. It will grow to be a lot of money when I’m a young lady. Then I’m going to buy wedding clothes with it.’

“This was entirely new talk to Jean and me. We had heard of banks, of course, but we had never really thought what they were. Cecilia’s words puzzled us, for awhile, although we did not ask her any questions further about it.

“The word ‘bank’ only meant to us a literal bank,—a sand-bank. Do you remember, children, 236those long sand-banks back of the shore, on the other side of grandpa’s orchard? They are just within his fence, you know. Well, we thought that Cecilia surely meant just such a place as that. After she was gone we talked the matter over very seriously. Cecilia’s money seemed like untold wealth to us, and of course we would have nothing like that to start with, but we decided that we would take what we had and put it in the bank.

“We opened our chamois bags to count our money. We used to put in them any pennies that remained of our weekly five cents, and extra bits that would come in our way. Putting this in the bank meant, to us, digging a hole in the sand-bank, and burying the money in it. Then in some strange way, which we didn’t at all understand, the money would ‘grow,’ as Cecilia said, and by-and-by we would have a great deal more. I think we thought of its growing as the roots of a tree grow. Do you remember, Jean, how grand we felt, emptying our chamois-skin bags, and counting our pennies?”

“Indeed, yes,” said auntie. “It was getting near the County Fair time, to which we were always taken, and for which we had been saving 237our pennies eagerly. There seemed such a lot of them.”

“How many and shining they looked!” went on mamma. “We took our bags, one day, and a little shovel, and started out. We did not tell grandma, because we thought that we would like to surprise her some day with a big pile of gold dollars, which, for some reason, we had made up our minds would be our crop. How earnest and sincere we were!”

“We certainly were,” said auntie, smiling. “I wish I could remember just how I thought that the money would ‘grow’ in the bank, but I am not sure whether I thought it would spring up like a plant, and we would pick the dollars, or whether we thought it would just spread in the ground. Mother often used to say to us, when we wanted something that was very absurd, ‘I’ll buy it for you when I can pick gold dollars off the rosebush.’ Perhaps that gave us the idea.”

Then mamma took up the story again.

“We travelled off with our money-bags, and when we got to the sand-banks, we selected a nice, smooth place, and dug a deep hole. Then we laid our chamois-skin bags carefully in. Oh, 238I believe we wrapped them in newspaper first, didn’t we? We covered them all up evenly, and stuck two sticks down to mark the place, and then, feeling very rich, we trotted home.

“For a week after this we made a trip down there every day, in great excitement, and every day we came slowly back, much disappointed that there were no signs of growth. Once we dug down and uncovered our bags, to see if they had struck roots yet, but we were much discouraged to find them only mouldy and damp, but still whole. Not a root had struck out.

“Then Jean suddenly remembered that Cecilia had said that when she grew to be a lady that there would be a lot of money, so perhaps we would have to wait just as long, and let our bags lie there till then. This thought was a greater disappointment, for we had expected to surprise the family with our crop of gold dollars when your grandfather came home from his next voyage.

“By-and-by, of course, other things came up, and the bank was rather forgotten, till one day grandma said that the County Fair was to be held in a few days, and we would go, as usual. Then we looked at each other in dismay, for we 239had buried all our money. We had expected at first, you know, to reap our crop long before this important day, and here we were with a very small number of pennies, and no sign of any money sprouting yet.

“Grandma noticed our dismayed faces and at once asked us what was the matter; so we told her the whole story. How she laughed! but she explained to us very carefully what a bank really is, and how money does ‘grow’ or increase in a savings bank. Then she told us to run down and dig up our bags before they were entirely spoiled.”

“Did you get them?” asked Cricket, eagerly.

“That is the sad part of my story, dear. Two very downcast children, we went down to the sand-bank, and what do you think?”

“Had it all been taken away?” asked the children, breathlessly.

“No, but it might as well have been, for do you know, we couldn’t find it. Heavy rains had come, and had washed away our sticks. We ran up and down the sand-bank, which extends a long distance, you know, but we could not find the spot anywhere. We dug here and there, for we could not believe that we would not find 240our money, but all in vain. At last we came, crying, back to grandma, and she comforted us, as usual. She told us that little girls usually got into trouble when they did things without asking their mammas, but that next time we would both be wiser, and ask her advice first. Then she asked us how much money we had buried, and two days after, on the very morning when we were to start for the Fair, we found by our pillows, when we woke up, two pretty, new chamois-skin bags, with the same amount of money, all in bright new nickels, which grandma had taken the trouble to get for us.

“For months afterwards, we used to go down at intervals, and dig for those bags, till I think we must have pretty nearly spaded up the entire bank. But, at any rate, we did not strike just the right spot, and we never saw those bags again.”

“Are they there now,” demanded Cricket, sitting up suddenly.

“For all I know. Much of the sand-bank on the other side has been carted away for building purposes, but this side, I believe, has never been disturbed.”

“Won’t I dig for it, next time I go to grandma’s!” 241cried Cricket. “How much was there in them?”

“I think about three dollars altogether, wasn’t there, Jean? What heart-broken children we were, weren’t we, when we first realized that we couldn’t find the place!”

“Indeed we were. That was my first and last speculation,” laughed auntie.

“Isn’t it funny,” said Cricket to Eunice, “to think that mamma and auntie were ever such little geese!”

CHAPTER XXV. GOING BACK TO TOWN.

Leaving dear old Kayuna and going back to town was always a time of mourning with the Ward family. They had occasionally lived out there through the whole year, but it was not very convenient for the grown-up members of the family, and there were no good schools for the older ones.

The first of October was the usual time for the flitting. For a week before there was a great flying around among the small fry, who had to put away any of their own possessions which were not taken with them into town, for mamma insisted on their being left in perfect order. All other things must be collected in the nursery to be packed.

These things were always getting hopelessly mixed up, and some treasured article was always being rescued from the packed-away things. Cricket and Eunice had a small trunk which they were allowed to pack all by themselves, 243with their own books and treasures, and I should be afraid to mention the number of times that this trunk was packed and unpacked.

Then there were all the animals on the place to see for a final good-by. Dear little Mopsie and Charcoal had to have extra feeds of apples and sugar, to make up for the long time before they would see their little mistresses again. Mike had to be charged, over and over, not to neglect to give them enough exercise, and always to let the dogs go, too. Grinning Mike finally said that he believed “Miss Scriket thought he didn’t know a horse whin he met wan in the road,” since she gave him so many instructions.

Then the children must race down to the barns, at the farm-house, and take a last jump on the heaps of soft, dry hay. They must find some eggs to take to the store for a final exchange for candy. They must visit all their favourite haunts by the dear little brook, and say good-by to the dear old woods, now gay in their fall dress of scarlet and gold.

Hilda had already begun school, and could be with them very little now, but she was broken-hearted, as usual, at the thought of losing her 244little playfellow. She and Edith Craig spent all their spare minutes with the girls, and planned eagerly for the coming year. Mamma had last year invited both Hilda and Edith to spend the Christmas holidays in town with her little daughters, and you can imagine what fine times they had there, although it proved very different from being together in the country. Sometime I may tell you about one of these visits to town.

At last everything was ready for the departure. The furniture was all done up in linen covers, and mattings and rugs were taken up and put away. The children would race up and down the great echoing halls and rooms in high glee, enjoying the commotion of the last day. Mamma was not strong enough to bear all this confusion, and she went back in town a few days earlier, to see that everything was ready and comfortable in their town house. The servant whom they left there through the summer had the house open and in order, so mamma and Kenneth, whom she took with her, had a few days of rest and quiet all by themselves.

The house at Kayuna was shut up through the winter, though the farmer’s wife came up 245once a week to go over it and see that everything was all right.

At last came the day of departure. Since the village was within easy driving distance of the city—twelve miles—Mike always loaded up the trunks on a big cart, and drove them all in town, himself, while the family went in by train. This year there was a little change in their going.

’Gustus John, who often drove to town, found that it was necessary for him to go that very day, and ’Manda wanted to go also, for her fall shopping. In view of this,—though he had much difficulty in getting his courage up to ask such a favour,—he begged Dr. Ward that he might have the “pleasure and honour” of driving Miss Eunice and Miss Cricket in town with them.

The doctor hesitated, but Cricket and Eunice, hearing of the plan, begged so hard for permission that their father finally consented.

The start had to be an early one, in order that the farmer and his wife should get in town to do their errands, for they had to be at home by five o’clock. So eight o’clock on Wednesday morning saw the wagon drive in at the gates of 246Kayuna. ’Gustus John in his big overcoat,—for the morning was chilly,—and in his new stiff Derby hat, looked a very different figure from the ’Gustus John of every day, in his blue overalls and blouse. ’Manda rejoiced in a new fall bonnet, trimmed with red and blue feathers, and was wrapped up in a gay plaid shawl. She sat in front with her husband, and left the roomy back seat to the children.

They were all ready, and came out smiling and in good spirits. It was really much easier parting from dear old Kayuna, since the pleasure of this long drive was in prospect. Mike brought Mopsie and Charcoal around to see the start, he said,—though I think it was really an excuse to be there himself,—and the girls must stop for another hug for them, and kisses on their cold little noses.

The big farm-horses, carefully groomed and shining, held up their heads, and said, as plainly as could be, that they were delighted to get off from the farm-work for one day, as they stood, stamping the ground, impatient to be off.

’Manda had some extra shawls with which she insisted on wrapping up Cricket and Eunice, for this October morning was crisp and cool. 247The children felt like little mummies, but they were glad of the extra warmth. Eliza charged ’Manda to take off the shawls before they reached town, so “they might look like something, when they got there.”

Then ’Gustus John gathered up the reins, and the horses, tossing their fine heads, wheeled around, and went down the avenue at a brisk trot, while Eunice and Cricket waved good-by to dear old Kayuna, and threw kisses to Mopsie and Charcoal.

Gayly the horses trotted along the hard country roads, glad of a chance to show their spirits and their speed. Merrily the girls’ tongues wagged, and ’Gustus John and ’Manda on the front seat exchanged delighted glances. They were such a good-natured couple that the children always wondered how they happened to have such a spoiled child as Mamie. Really ’Manda was too good-natured and easy with her. She never could bear to correct or punish her in any way, and since Mamie was not very good to begin with, the result was a bad one, as we know. Too much of our own way is not good for any of us.

An hour of this brisk pace brought them to 248a roadside hotel, where the horses were watered at a great trough by the side of the road. It was pretty to watch the thirsty creatures, as they plunged their noses deep in the clear, running water, and then drank eagerly. Then ’Gustus John checked them up again, climbed into the light wagon, and then, gathering up the reins, he cracked his whip and they were off once more.

Just after that they had an accident that might easily have been a serious one. The back seat of the wagon could be taken out, so that ’Gustus John could use the space behind for packing jars of butter, and baskets of eggs, when he went to town with “small truck,” as he called it. When the seat was put back, two little iron pieces on the bottom slipped into two little sockets and held it fast. Even without this, the seat would rest pretty securely on the frame-work.

Now, while ’Gustus John had been harnessing that morning, he had just lifted the seat from the barn floor, to put it in place,—for the last time he had used this wagon the seat had been taken out,—when he was called away. He rested it in its place on the body of the wagon; 249then, without stopping at the moment, to notice if it was secure, went to see what was wanted. When he came back the seat looked all right, and he entirely forgot that he had not yet slipped the little irons into the sockets. It would have been safe enough, in this way, over smooth, level roads, but a jar, or a steep ascent, would have been enough to throw it off the body of the wagon.

After they left the watering-trough, the road wound up a steep hill, a very steep one. Eunice leaned forward and took hold of the back of the front seat.

“Seems to me, Cricket,” she said, “this seat rather wiggles. Hope it won’t slip off.”

“Nonsense! I don’t feel it,” said Cricket. “’Gustus John always fastens it in tight. I’ve seen him lots of times,” and by way of showing her confidence in ’Gustus John’s care, she leaned back with a little unnecessary force. The horses at that moment came to what is called, in the country, a “thank you marm,” which is a sort of mound across the road to act as a water-shed. The wagon gave a jerk as it passed over. This was too much for the seat, which had slipped a little as they climbed the 250hill, and off it went behind, bringing the two little girls with it, down into the middle of the road. At the same instant the horses sprang forward at a renewed trot, as they swept around a curve to a more level piece of road, and they were out of sight in a moment.

Cricket and Eunice, breathless with their sudden descent, sat on the seat, staring after their chariot in great bewilderment. They had gone over so suddenly, that neither of them had screamed, and ’Gustus John and ’Manda, talking busily over their errands in town, did not know that they had lost their passengers. Suddenly ’Manda, hearing a faint cry in the distance, turned around to see if the children heard it. There was nothing but emptiness behind.

“Lawful suz,” she cried, catching at the reins. “Ef we hain’t ben and gone and lost them children! Turn round, ’Gustus John! turn round, I say!”

’Gustus John’s slower brain could only take in one fact.

“Let go the lines, ’Mandy,” he said, sharply, as one of the horses reared at the sudden twitch of the reins. “Hain’t I told yer more’n five hundred times not to do that on no account?”

251“The children, ’Gustus John!” gasped ’Manda, rising in her place, and looking back. “We’ve lost the children! where can they be?”

“Lost ’em out?” ’Gustus John pulled up so suddenly that the horses fell back on their haunches. “My Gummy!” He whirled the horses around, and drove back. As they came to the curve, they saw Eunice and Cricket in the road, trying to get out of the heavy shawls, which wrapped them like mummies.

“Well, I declare for it! Are you hurt, children?” ’Manda called, eagerly.

Both little girls came up laughing.

“No, not a bit,” they declared. They had not struck their backs at all, only slipped right out, seat and all, and the thick shawls had protected them. ’Gustus John was ready to sink into the ground with mortification.

“I swan! I never did forget that ’ere seat fastenin’ before. To think I’ve been and done it this mornin’ of all mornin’s. I’m ashamed to look your pa in the face ever agin, when I’ve pretty nigh killed ye both.”

“Why, we’re not hurt the least bit,” Cricket assured him, eagerly, as he fixed the seat firmly 252in its place again. “It was lots of fun going over. It slipped off just as easy!”

’Manda felt the children all over very carefully, to make sure that no bones were broken, she said, though, seeing how lively the children were, there was little fear of that.

“That seat’s ez tight as a drum, now,” said ’Gustus John, finally, preparing to lift the girls in.

“Wait a minute,” said ’Manda; “I must tidy them up a bit, now. Look at Cricket’s hat,” and she straightened the crooked hat, patted down the flying locks, and pulled their dresses around. “Ain’t it warm enough to take off them shawls, now? There you be!” with a final pat to each.

Then they mounted again and settled in their places, while the horses, wondering at all this delay, started off again at a swinging pace, which took them over the ground so fast that it was not long before they crossed the long bridge, and were fairly in town.

It was only a little after ten, when they turned into the home-street, and drew up before the familiar house. Mamma, seeing their arrival from an upper window, came hurrying 253down to meet them, as glad to see her little daughters as if they had been separated a year, instead of a few days.

Then after mamma had warmly thanked ’Gustus John and ’Manda for bringing such rosy-faced little maids home, Eunice and Cricket said good-by to them also, and ran in to the house, feeling now that the lovely summer at Kayuna was fairly over.

CHAPTER XXVI. CRICKET’S SHORT MEMORY.

The household settled into their town-life very quickly, and in three days’ time they almost felt as if their lovely summer had been a dream. Only the children’s sunburned faces and hands, and their overflowing health and spirits, remained as proof positive that they had not been in town all summer.

“How strange it is that Marion Blair does not call for me,” said Marjorie, one day, turning away from the window, where she had been standing in hat and coat, for half an hour. “She said she would be here at three, and it is nearly four now. I’m afraid we’ll lose the chrysanthemum show altogether.”

“Oh, Marjorie!” cried Cricket, penitently. “I’m so sorry. I met Daisy Blair on the street this morning, and she asked me to give you this note from Marion.”

Marjorie read the note hastily.

“You provoking child! She writes that she 255has a severe cold and can’t go out to-day, but wants me to call for Sallie Evarts, and go with her, and Sallie would wait for me till three. Sallie was going with us. Now, it’s too late to go way up there, and you’ve lost us the flower-show—both of us, for I’m sure Sallie wouldn’t go off alone—and it’s the last day.”

“Oh, Marjorie dear, I am so sorry,” Cricket said, looking crushed, as she always did, when her forgetfulness was in question. “I’m awfully sorry.”

“You always are awfully sorry,” returned Marjorie, impatiently, “but that does not excuse your abominable forgetfulness.” Marjorie used strong language, but really Cricket’s constant slips of memory were maddening.

Both her mother and father felt very badly over this fault of Cricket’s, knowing it might any day bring serious consequences. They had tried every possible means to help her overcome it, but thus far nothing had ever done any special good. She would remember better for a time, and then forget more than ever. One reason for her forgetfulness was an odd one. With all her high spirits and her love of active, out-door sports, Cricket was also greatly given to day-dreams. 256She had a strong imagination, and was devoted to her books, for she liked to read quite as much as she loved to run and play. When she was by herself, she was always dreaming out strange fancies, making jingles which she called poetry, or telling stories to herself about all sorts of things. When she was given an errand to do she would always set off willingly enough, and in a moment would be entirely absorbed in her own fancies as she walked along the street. She would perhaps go past the house to which she had been sent, for an entire block, then, suddenly recollecting herself, would turn quickly and go as far in the other direction. Marjorie said that one day, when she was calling at a certain house, she saw Cricket pass a house opposite four times before she remembered to go in when she came to the door.

She had frequently been known to pass her own home, if she chanced to come alone from school, and walk on for a couple of blocks. A letter intrusted to her might reach its destination any time within six months, if it went into her pocket. She never by any chance remembered a message. She even forgot, oftentimes, 257whether she had eaten her lunch or not. Indeed, the only thing she never mislaid were her school-books, and the sole things she never forgot were her lessons. Her memory for history, even for long strings of dates, was really unusual. She could commit pages of poetry, and Latin declensions, and conjugations rolled easily off her glib little tongue.

Since this was the case, I am sadly afraid that Cricket’s slips of memory were simply from lack of attention to what people told her to do. Her mind was always too full of plans and fancies of her own to notice carefully what they said. Consequently, things of that sort being laid on the top of her mind, constantly rolled off and were lost.

So long as Cricket was only a little girl, her fault was annoying but not serious. Now, as she grew older, and might have important messages and errands intrusted to her by people who did not know her failing, you may be sure mamma was in constant terror.

After Cricket’s forgetfulness in delivering the note had lost Marjorie and her friend the flower-show, mamma had a long and very serious talk with her little daughter. She 258reminded her how often she had talked to her on the same subject before, and how each time Cricket had promised to do better; how useless it was for her to say how sorry she was, and then forget the next day just the same.

“Well, you see,” Cricket said, candidly, “I say ‘I’ll never forget again,’ and then prob’ly the next day I go and do it. And then, naturally, I get discouraged. Ever is such a long time.”

“Well, little daughter,” suggested mamma, “suppose you try this way. Don’t say that you’ll never forget again, but only ‘I will try not to forget a thing I’m told to do to-day,’ and the next day say the same thing. You don’t know how quickly the habit of remembering would be formed, for I really think that your constant forgetfulness is largely a habit.”

“I might try that,” said Cricket, thoughtfully. “Couldn’t I take a day off, sometimes?” she added, quickly.

Mamma laughed

“There is no such thing as ‘taking a day off,’ when we are trying to do better, pet. Do you know, overcoming a bad habit is like rolling up a ball of string. If you drop it, you have just 259so much to do over. So if you take even one day off—”

“I see,” interrupted Cricket, with a sigh. “I’ve just got to keep winding. But, truly, I’ll try this time not to drop my ball. I really do suppose,” she added, thoughtfully, after a moment, “that I could remember better, if I didn’t tell stories to myself all the time I’m walking, but it’s such fun. I get so interested that I don’t know anything.”

“Then the stories should go, little daughter,” said mamma, “if they hinder you remembering. Now try it for one day at a time. ‘Take short views,’ as Sydney Smith says.”

“I’ll truly try,” repeated Cricket, with so serious a face that mamma felt greatly encouraged.

Really, for a week Cricket’s improvement was marvellous. She resolutely put her beloved stories and day-dreams out of her mind, if she was told to do anything, until she had done it, and she began to realize that it had been largely a lack of attention that made her forget messages so.

“I haven’t dropped my ball once this week,” Cricket confided in triumph to mamma, at the 260end of that time, as she kissed her good-night. Eunice had gone to bed early with a bad headache. “Really, do you know, remembering isn’t such hard work, if you only make up your mind that you will.”

Mamma smiled. “I am glad you find it so. Good-night, love. By-the-by, stop at the library door, as you go upstairs, and tell papa that Mr. Evans has just sent word that he will be in about nine, on some important business.”

“Yes, mamma,” said Cricket, stopping on her way out to play with Duster. Then she went out of the room and upstairs. At her room door she remembered her message.

“Just in time,” she thought. “Most dropped it that time!” and she ran down again to the library.

Mamma sat listening to see if she delivered the message. Hearing her run down stairs again, she smiled, satisfied.

“Oh, papa,” Cricket began, when her attention was attracted by a beautifully illustrated, new volume, which papa was unwrapping. “Isn’t that beautiful!” she exclaimed, in delight. She hung over papa’s shoulder, as he turned the pages and explained some of the lovely pictures.

261Suddenly he pulled out his watch and stood up in thought for a moment.

“May I see this more?” begged Cricket.

“Yes, you may take it for a few minutes,” said papa. “Be sure you put it back on my table when you are through with it. I must step over to Brewster’s for a minute;” and papa took up some papers and left the room.

Cricket did not heed him. She threw herself on the white goat-skin before the open fire, and, with her chin in her hand, she turned the leaves of the lovely volume in absorbed interest. Papa went out, and she did not even hear the door close. Mamma did, though, and stepped to the door of the parlour. The light still streamed from the library, and she went back, supposing papa was still there.

An hour passed. About nine the bell rang violently; Cricket did not hear it. A few minutes after, mamma’s repeated “Cricket” brought her to her feet.

“Where is your father?” Mrs. Ward was saying. “Didn’t you give him my message?”

“What message?” faltered Cricket, looking bewildered.

“Didn’t you tell him that Mr. Evans would call? Why, Cricket!”

262“Oh, mamma, what shall I do? I forgot all about it.”

Mr. Evans looked extremely annoyed. He was an irritable man, with small patience for any one’s short-comings. Now, he certainly had good reason to be vexed. His business was important, and he had to catch a late train for New York, and had but little time to spare.

“Well, well, then,” he said, shortly, “perhaps you can tell me where he is gone, if you did forget the message?”

Cricket grew frightened. “I think—I can’t just remember,” she faltered.

“Haven’t you any idea?” asked mamma. “He must have mentioned some place when he was going;” for it was papa’s rule always to leave word when he went out.

“It seems to me—yes, I know,” cried Cricket, brightening up. “He said he was going to the Bruces,” with a faint echo of the name that papa had spoken lingering in her ear. Unfortunately, the Bruces lived at the other end of town, and the Brewsters in the next square.

“I shall have to risk finding him there, then,” said Mr. Evans, looking at his watch. “No! I have not time. Really this is a most unfortunate 263matter,” and Mr. Evans put back his watch, looking like a thunder-cloud. Having taken the precaution to notify Dr. Ward that it was necessary to see him that night on important business, it was certainly more than vexatious to find him out. Mrs. Ward was greatly distressed.

“I will send Donald instantly to the Bruces,” she said. “Perhaps then my husband can catch you at the station before you leave, if he has not time to go to your house.” And with this Mr. Evans departed.

Mamma dragged Donald from his studies, and sent him post-haste across the city. Then she came back to Cricket.

“We won’t talk about this till after I have seen papa!” she said, gravely, and miserable Cricket went slowly off to bed.

Forlornly, she mounted the stairs. No thought of the new volume she had left on the rug came to her mind. Usually, it would have been safe enough, but to-night it chanced that Duster was in an unusually playful mood. All the older ones but mamma being out, and the younger ones in bed, Duster felt lonely, and wanted to play. He strolled into the library in search of 264amusement. The firelight played on the standing pages of the costly volume, open on the hearth-rug. Duster darted forward. With teeth and claws he worried the charming plaything, pitching it up, and shaking it vigorously, till the covers banged. He tore the leaves into fragments and chased them around, then settled down comfortably to chew up what was left.

It is but justice to Duster to say that he was generally a very well-behaved dog, and rarely did any mischief. He had his own playthings, and was expected to keep to them. Probably in the dim light, for mamma had turned down the gas, he did not realize that the new plaything was that forbidden delight, a book. However, in ten minutes the charming volume, with its beautiful pictures, and choice binding, was a wreck, and Duster trotted back to mamma, feeling perfectly virtuous, and much refreshed, as he lay down on her dress to take a nap.

But the next morning came Cricket’s reckoning with papa and mamma and the book—or rather with the remains of it.

Donald had returned the night before, saying that the Bruces had not seen papa, and mamma, 265of course, became very anxious. Donald had gone out again to two or three places where he thought his father might be, and then at the last minute had met him in the street. Dr. Ward had rushed to the station; Mr. Evans was there, hoping he might come, and they had a hurried talk, for fortunately the train was late. By this lucky chance, only, was a great amount of inconvenience saved to several people.

Then Dr. Ward came home to find mamma in the greatest anxiety; and then, to crown all, when they went into the library, there lay papa’s rare, new book, a wreck, upon the floor.

Cricket came from that interview the most wretched little girl that ever lived. It was seldom that her forgetfulness was the cause of so much mischief, and she had had a very severe lecture.

“I’m perfectly miserable,” Cricket sobbed, after papa had gone out. “I thought I was getting on so beautifully, and somehow, I felt sure that I was never going to forget again.”

“I’m afraid that was just the trouble, dear. Whenever you feel that you are most successful in overcoming a fault, then is just the time 266when you need double caution. ‘It’s always dangerous to be safe,’ you know.”

“Oh, is that what that saying means?” broke in Cricket. “I never could see how it was dangerous to be safe.”

“That’s exactly it. Now I want you never to feel safe. There is always danger of dropping your ball.”

CHAPTER XXVII. CRICKET’S BOOMERANG.

Cricket was so completely subdued by this last piece of forgetfulness, and its consequences, that for weeks afterwards her improvement was simply wonderful.

But old habits are very strong. After a time Cricket’s watchfulness over herself grew less, and the old story began. She borrowed Marjorie’s new silk umbrella in a hurry, because she could not find her own, and left it in the horsecar. The very next week she took Zaidee and Helen out to walk, and left them on a seat in the park, while she ran to speak to some little friends. They, not knowing that she had the twins with her, urged her to go down to Howlett’s for hot chocolate with them. She went off, forgetting the children, whom she had charged “not to stir till I come back.” An hour after, when she reached home, she was met by Eliza with a demand for the twins. Nurse flew off on learning where they had been left, and fifteen 268minutes later she brought in two little shivering, crying girls, who had not stirred from the seat, because Cricket had bidden them stay there. Several policemen and kind-hearted passers-by had gathered around them, and were trying to find out where they belonged.

A fine attack of croup for Helen was the result, and a slight cold for Zaidee, who was stronger, and Cricket was in disgrace again.

“I don’t like to forget,” she said, miserably, when the entire family took her to task that evening. “I never mean to forget, and then I go and do it.”

“Go and don’t do it, you mean,” said Donald.

“The trouble is, little daughter,” said papa, as he had said a hundred times before, “that you do not pay sufficient attention. You know how many times I have told you that attention is putting your mind upon a point, with a view to remembering it.”

“I expect that’s the trouble,” said Cricket, quickly. “I do fasten my mind on a point. I put it on so hard that the point sticks through, and then of course I can’t remember.”

“I should think you’d remember sometimes, by mere accident,” remarked Marjorie, looking 269up from her book. “There are exceptions to all rules.”

“Cricket is the exception to that rule,” struck in Donald.

“Now, I think I have remembered a good many things thus far, sir,” said Cricket, rather indignantly. “It was only yesterday that you told me to tell Rose Condit something, and I couldn’t think just exactly what it was, but I remembered to say that you wanted her to come and see you.”

There was a shout at this.

“You little monkey,” said Donald, getting red. “Did you tell her that? I told you to say that I’d see her to-night.”

“That’s pretty near the same, isn’t it,” asked Cricket, anxiously.

There was another shout.

“Cricket is like a little chap that I used to hear of when I was a small boy,” began papa, standing on the hearth-rug, with his hands behind his back, and smiling down at his small daughter, as she sat on the rug, clasping her knees with both hands, and staring thoughtfully into the fire. Cricket was such a lovable, winning thing, with all her trying ways, that one could not be angry with her long.

270“Who was this boy, papa?” she said, looking up. “Now, please don’t tell me about any good little boy, who never forgot.”

“This wasn’t a good little boy, ma’am,” laughed papa; “he was sent by his mother to the store for some eggs and sugar and molasses. Lest he should forget, she told him to repeat the three things on the way. So he started off, saying ‘Eggs, sugar, and molasses—eggs, sugar, and molasses.’ Suddenly he stubbed his toe, and fell headlong. As he picked himself up, he said, ‘Wax, tar, and rosin—wax, tar, and rosin—ain’t forgot yet.’ So when Cricket does remember, it is likely to be the wrong thing.”

“The trouble is that Cricket’s forgetfulness never makes any difference to herself. She isn’t the one that suffers,” said Marjorie, still feeling injured over her silk umbrella. “It’s always something of other people’s that she forgets.”

“It ought to be a boomerang arrangement,” said Donald, as he got up to go out.

“What’s a boomer-something?” asked Cricket, curiously.

“A boomerang, my dear,” returned Donald, 271“is a curved piece of wood about a yard long which is used by the Australians. They throw it straight along, and it turns a few somersaults, and presently comes back to the thrower. If a person who doesn’t understand it throws it, it’s more than likely to come back, whack, on his own head. See? Now that’s the style of thing to make you remember, Miss Scricket. A good, sharp rap on your own head, when you’re throwing your forgettings around, would be an excellent thing, wouldn’t it, little mother?” kissing his mother as he passed her chair.

Mamma smiled up at her tall son, and stroked Cricket’s curly hair.

“I’m beginning to be afraid,” she said, “that Donald is right, my little girl, and that only a ‘boomerang arrangement’ will do any lasting good.”

Cricket sighed. “It’s very hard to be such a torment to the family, when I love everybody so,” she said, plaintively. “I wish somebody would throw stones at me.”

Now, as it proved, the boomerang was not far away.

The very next week a note was brought to the school which Cricket attended, for her to 272give to her mother. She put it in her pocket, and of course it might as well have gone into a coal-mine, as far as her thinking of it again was concerned.

That was Wednesday. Cricket did not chance to wear that particular dress again till the next Wednesday, for she tore it in some way, and it was laid aside to be mended. On going home from school she chanced to put her hand in her pocket, and brought up the note.

“Where did this come from!” she thought, in bewilderment. She could not at all remember, but she concluded that some one had given it to her on her way to school, though she could not recall it.

“I’m so glad I thought of it,” she said to herself, quite proudly, and she held it in her hand all the way home lest she should forget to deliver it.

Mamma received the week-old note, and read it without any suspicion. It was dated, simply, “Wednesday morning.”

“This is from Mrs. Drayton,” she exclaimed to papa. “I’m so glad. She says that Mrs. Lynn will spend a day and night with her. She’s the famous lecturer, you know. She and 273Mrs. Drayton were school-mates. She comes very unexpectedly now, and Mrs. Drayton wants us to dine there to-night, very informally. The Camerons will be there—no one else. You can go, can’t you, dear?”

“Yes, it will suit me very well,” said papa.

After Cricket had left the room Mrs. Ward added,—

“She writes a postscript to say that she is planning a luncheon party for Emily, for her birthday on Saturday, as a surprise to her, and invites Eunice and Cricket. She is going to take the children, after, to the matinée, to see the ‘Old Homestead.’ Isn’t that just like Mrs. Drayton? Poor Eunice won’t be able to go unless her cold is very much better, but Cricket will be overjoyed. And she says not to tell the children till Friday, lest Emily should hear of it.”

Mamma was delighted at the chance of meeting Mrs. Lynn, who was a very noted woman, and she and papa went off in good season.

About half-past eight, to the surprise of the children, who were gathered in the sitting-room,—the younger ones always had permission to sit up a little later when their father 274and mother were out—the click of papa’s latchkey was heard in the door, and a moment after he and mamma entered the room.

“What is the matter? Are you ill?” came in a chorus.

“Nobody is ill,” said papa, looking queer.

“Then what is the matter?”

“Nothing much—only there was no dinner-party.”

“No dinner-party?” every one exclaimed.

Mamma took up the note which had been left on the table, and said gravely to Cricket,—

“Tell me where you got this note, my dear?”

“From my pocket,” returned Cricket, in much surprise.

“How did it get there? When did you find it?”

“Why, this,—” Cricket hesitated. “Yes, it certainly was this morning.”

“You certainly gave it to me this morning, but who gave it to you, and when?”

“It was the funniest thing,” said Cricket, eagerly. “I really don’t know. I honestly don’t remember putting it there, and yet somebody must have given it to me on the way to school.”

275“Could anybody have left it at school, for you?” asked papa.

“No, I’m sure no one did this morning. Some one left a note a long time ago, but,—” Cricket stopped suddenly, in dismay.

“Exactly, my dear,” said papa, dryly. “It was a long time ago—just one week.”

“Mamma!” cried Cricket, “didn’t I ever give you that note? Is this the same one?”

“The very same. How did you not happen to find it before?”

Cricket looked down at her dress.

“Why, Cricket!” exclaimed Eunice. “You haven’t had that dress on for a long time. You tore the ruffle last week, and you were waiting for Eliza to mend it.”

“That is it, then,” said mamma. “Now, do you know what you have done? The note was given you last Wednesday. You put it in your pocket, and did not think of it again. You found it to-day, and did not even know how it got in your pocket.”

“I thought it was queer,” murmured Cricket.

“You gave me the note this morning. It was dated simply ‘Wednesday,’ so of course I never doubted it had just been given you.”

276“Then there wasn’t any dinner-party to-night?” faltered Cricket.

“I’ll tell you what your forgetfulness has done, my dear,” answered mamma. “Mrs. Lynn was at Mrs. Drayton’s for that night only. We were anxious to meet each other, for I know her sister very well. She came very unexpectedly, and Mrs. Drayton sent the note in to you, since your school is so near her, as the quickest way of its reaching me.

“To-night, as papa and I arrived, we saw the Draytons’ carriage standing in front of their door, and of course wondered at that. As we rang the bell, the door opened, and the Draytons themselves came out, to our great amazement. They exclaimed at seeing us, and we immediately found they were invited out to dinner themselves to-night. Of course we explained, and so did they, though, as they were already late, they could only stop a few moments.

“Mrs. Drayton was greatly surprised last week, when we neither arrived nor sent any word, but supposed it was one of my sudden illnesses. Think how rude you made us appear, Cricket.”

“And then, how ridiculous you made us seem 277to-night,” added papa, “in going to dine, when there wasn’t any dinner-party.”

Cricket was much too wretched to speak. She was curled up in a corner of the couch, with her head buried in the cushions.

“But that is not all,” went on papa.

Cricket raised a tear-stained face, in added dismay. What more could there be?

“And I am not altogether sorry, my dear, that it will be a great disappointment to yourself.”

“Oh, ho!” said Donald, quickly. “Boomerang business, I see.”

“Yes, a boomerang, and no mistake. Tell her, mamma.”

“Mrs. Drayton had arranged a children’s luncheon-party for Saturday as a surprise for Emily. Six were invited, and she intended to take them to a matinée afterward, to their box, to see ‘The Old Homestead.’ She invited you and Eunice. I thought I should let you go, Cricket, even though Eunice may not be well enough.”

Cricket came to her feet with a bound. “Can I go?” she asked, eagerly. “I am dying to see ‘The Old Homestead?’ Oh, goody, goody!”

“Don’t you understand, dear?” asked mamma. 278“The matinée-party shares the fate of the dinner-party. They are both over, and we were not there. You forgot the note, you see, and it was last Saturday, you know.”

“Last Saturday! Have I lost it!” exclaimed Cricket, with eyes as large as saucers.

“Whew!” whistled Donald. “That’s a good hard whack with the boomerang, my lady. You threw it well, that time.”

“Hush, Donald,” said mamma. “Don’t tease her.”

Cricket burst into a flood of tears. To have lost one of Emily Drayton’s parties! Such beautiful parties her mamma always had for her, too. And then think of a matinée and a box! Dr. Ward did not approve of much theatre-going for little people, and the children rarely went, excepting for their Christmas treat. All Cricket’s little friends had seen ‘The Old Homestead,’ and she had been begging for weeks to go. Now by her own careless forgetfulness she had lost it. It was too dreadful. Her boomerang had struck her a “whack,” indeed.

“I’m awfully sorry for you, Cricket,” Marjorie said, “but I can’t help hoping that you’ll realize now how pleasant it is for other people 279to lose flower-shows and umbrellas and dinner-parties.”

“Make her stop, mamma!” sobbed wretched Cricket. “I’m always sorry when I forget your things, Marjorie.”

“Yes,” assented teasing Donald, though he really pitied his little sister. “It’s easy to bear another man’s misfortune like a Christian. Come, youngster, take your whacking like a man.”

“By-the-way, have you had any dinner?” asked Marjorie, of mamma.

“Oh, yes, papa and I went to the Bolingbroke and dined. Come, Cricket, it’s bedtime. I’ll go up with you.”

Cricket stumbled upstairs, blind with tears. Mamma helped her to undress, in her gentle way, and when the little girl was in bed she sat down and talked with her for a while.

“Yes, it’s very hard, little daughter,” said mamma, “but now I want you to think how often your forgetfulness has caused other people to lose as much pleasure as this of yours. I cannot tell you, for instance, how disappointed I am, not to see Mrs. Lynn. She went to New York the next day, and sailed on Saturday for 280Europe for a long stay. I may not have another chance of meeting her.

“All this is serious, but not so much so, as your forgetting old Mrs. Cummings’s message not long ago, so that her poor husband nearly died before papa could get there. It is not worse than when you forgot to tell Donald that Mr. Marsh wanted him to call at his office on business; or when you didn’t tell papa that Mr. Evans wanted to see him, or when you forgot the children, and gave poor little Helen such an attack of the croup that she is scarcely strong yet.”

“Do people always feel as badly as I do?” sobbed Cricket.

“Just as badly, my dear. Indeed, I think it’s a trifle easier when you’ve only yourself to blame. As Marjorie said, it is strange that you so seldom suffer yourself, and yet it is not strange, either. You remember the things, you see, that you are interested in. I do hope, dearie, that this will be a lesson, and that your boomerang may never hit you so hard again.”

“If boomerangs hurt other people half as much as this one has hurt me,” said Cricket, between her sobs, “they sha’n’t feel any more of my boomerangs, I am sure of that.”

281“I hope not, darling,” said mamma, kissing her good-night.

And really, I am glad to say that this was Cricket’s last serious piece of forgetfulness. She set herself with all her might and main to conquer her fault, and tried as she had never tried before. She regularly remembered to bring home both her bundle and her change when she was sent on an errand. She posted letters promptly. She remembered various messages that were given to her for her mamma; and on one occasion she even got up in the middle of the night, and went to papa with some word which had been given to her for him during the day, and which she had forgotten.

So she improved steadily. I do not mean to say that she never forgot or neglected anything again, for she certainly did; but she would usually recall the forgotten thing in time to set it straight. She understood now that no half-way trying will conquer any fault, and nothing outside will help one to do it until a person makes up his mind to do it himself.

Weeks after, there arrived for Cricket, one evening after dinner, a mysterious package. The family were all in the sitting-room, where 282they usually gathered for a time, after dinner, before they separated to their various duties or pleasures. Cricket opened it amid much wondering on the part of the others, as well as on her own.

It was a long thing, and when Cricket got it free from all its wrappings, what do you think she found? An oddly curved piece of hard wood, nearly a yard long, pointed at both ends, about four inches wide in the middle, and half an inch thick.

“What in the world is this queer-looking thing?” Cricket asked, holding it up in both hands in great amazement.

“A boomerang, my dear,” answered Donald. “For memorabil.”

“For what?”

“Memorabil. That means to remember something by. Tie it up with pretty little blue ribbons, and hang it in your room, my dear, as girls always do with their trinkets. When you look at it, you’ll remember the famous occasion when you learned not to forget, for you’re getting to be as reliable as a district messenger boy. We can give you an errand now with forty-nine chances out of a hundred that it will 283be done. Next summer I’ll teach you how to throw this. I’ve taken lessons on purpose.”

And the boomerang hangs on Cricket’s wall to this day.

CHAPTER XXVIII. KENNETH’S DAY.

Like most days, this particular day of Kenneth’s began in the morning. He slept in a crib in mamma’s large room, for the twins and Eliza had the nursery all to themselves.

Every morning, as soon as it was dawn, Kenneth would begin to stir like a little bird in his white nest, and then, half asleep as he was, he would scramble quietly out of his crib, gather up his long, white nightie, and steal softly over to the big bed across the room.

Then came the never-failing joke of clapping his little fat hands over papa’s sleepy eyes, with a chirping,—

“Dess who’s here, papa!” and papa, of course, never could guess, and always named over the whole flock, from seventeen-year-old Donald down, till the baby called out, gleefully,—

“It’s you’ Tennet, papa!” and scrambled like a little monkey into his arms. He was such a 285sunny little creature, always beaming on the world in general, with such radiant good-temper, that it was no wonder he was everybody’s pet.

This particular morning was the seventh of November, just before the Presidential election. Kenneth was astir earlier than usual, for some reason, and it was still dark when he crept with unusual caution across the floor, and stuck his little fists into papa’s eyes.

He lifted him up, without his customary frolic, saying, sleepily,—

“Be a good baby, Kenneth, and let papa have another snooze.” So the little fellow cuddled down in his father’s arms, and lay as still as a mouse, with his arms tight around papa’s neck, and his golden curls drifting across his face and getting dreadfully in his way. At last papa was aroused by a patient little sigh.

“Now, then, Kenneth,” he said, suddenly hoisting him up in the air, “do you know that papa must go and vote to-day?”

“Let Tennet do, too, papa?” he suggested, coaxingly.

“Not to-day, my little man. You’ll have to wait for eighteen years.”

“Tan I do res’day?” this was as near as his 286crooked little tongue could come to yesterday, which was his name for any indefinite period.

“We’ll see, my son. By-the-way, what are your politics?”

Kenneth sat up on papa’s chest and looked wise. He knew quite well when papa was teasing him.

“You are a Republican, I suppose, you monkey?”

Kenneth shook his head till his sunny curls fell over his eyes.

“What! not a Republican? You don’t mean to tell me you’re a Democrat, do you?”

Kenneth considered.

“Es, I is. I is a Democrack,” he said, decidedly, conquering the c’s, as he sometimes did, with a mighty effort.

“Very well, then,” said papa, with equal decision, “then you must go away from me. I can’t have any little Democracks in my bed.”

To his surprise, the baby slowly slipped from his arms and slid down to the floor without a word. Papa watched him with amusement; never thinking he would hold out.

“Change your mind, baby,” he said, coaxingly. “You’re not a Democrack now, are you?”

287Kenneth looked back, wistfully. He was half-way across the floor.

“I is a Demo-crack—” he answered, without wavering.

“Then you’ll have to get into your own crib,” said papa, teasingly.

Without a word the baby went on, climbed up on a chair and tumbled head over heels into his own nest.

Fifteen minutes later, when papa got up to dress, he found his little son cuddled down in a forlorn little ball, with his thumb tucked into his mouth, and his blue eyes grave and wide.

Kenneth hid his head on papa’s shoulder, when he lifted him up and petted him; but he had nothing to say. By-and-by he wriggled away from him and crept up to mamma, who was sitting before the dressing-table, brushing her hair, as bright as baby’s own.

“Mamma,” he whispered, very softly, “I isn’t a Demo-crack now, but I don’t want papa to see me chain my mind.”

Kenneth’s mind was destined to give him more trouble that very day, for, with all his sweetness, he was very persistent.

That afternoon he was in the library, all alone 288with mamma. The elder girls were all off, and the twins were out with Eliza, and papa was making his daily rounds among his patients, so Kenneth and mamma had the blazing wood fire—for the early autumn days were chilly—and the sunny library all to themselves.

Mamma was sewing on some dainty white material, and Kenneth was amusing himself in his usual quiet fashion. There was a lower shelf, close to the floor, where the children’s books were kept, and there stood a long line of attractive, red-bound Rollo books, fourteen of them. These always had a special fascination for Kenneth. He would pull them all out, and build houses with them, or turn over the leaves, looking at pictures, talking busily to himself all the time.

At last he tired of them, and ran away to something else.

“Put up the Rollo books, darling,” said mamma.

“’Es, I put zem up,” said Kenneth, but he kept on pursuing some belated flies.

“See, mamma!” he cried, “I dust pote ’em, so, and zey all fall down.”

“Poor flies,” said mamma, pitifully. “Don’t kill them. That is not kind.”

289“All right, I won’t,” Kenneth answered. Presently mamma, attracted by the stillness, turned around. Kenneth was still standing by the window, with his little forefinger pointed at a poor, weak fly.

“F’y, f’y,” he said, half-aloud, “does you want to do to heaven? Do zere, zen!” and down came his plump finger, crushing the fly.

“Kenneth,” said mamma, to draw off his attention, “come now and pick up the books you had.”

Kenneth, for a wonder, looked very unwilling. Sending flies to heaven was much more interesting. However, he got up slowly, and went across the room, looking at mamma from under his long lashes.

“Pick them all up, baby,” said mamma, cheerily, “and then come and sit in mamma’s lap and watch for papa. It’s almost time for him to come.”

Kenneth stood by the scattered pile of books. Somehow he felt very unwilling to put them back in their places.

“Come, little son, pick them up,” repeated mamma. To her intense surprise, Kenneth suddenly whipped his hands behind his back.

290“Tennet won’t!” he announced, standing as straight on his two fat legs as a little drummajor. If one of the pet doves had flown in her face, mamma could scarcely have been more surprised. She had never before had to tell Kenneth twice to do anything.

For a moment she scarcely knew what to do.

“See if you can’t get all the books in order, Kenneth, before papa comes,” she said, after a moment, as if she had not heard.

“Tennet won’t!” in tones more decided, as he gained courage.

“Then,” said mamma, slowly, “Kenneth must go in the corner for five minutes.”

Kenneth, looking very serious, but quite determined, immediately took up his station in the corner formed by the tall old clock and a book-case, while mamma waited while the moments ticked off. An unending time it seemed to the naughty baby, who stood gravely watching his mother, as if he were not at all concerned.

Then mamma said,—

“Will Kenneth pick up the books now?”

“Tennet won’t.”

This time there was a gleam of mischief that at once resolved mamma to sterner measures.

291“Very well, then I must spat baby’s hands hard,” and she took up one of the soft bits of velvet that served Kenneth for hands, and bestowed a decided spat upon it. Kenneth winked and swallowed. He put his reddened fingers behind his back, and promptly offered the other hand, which mamma spatted also.

Straightway he went through the same performance, producing hand number one. It was difficult to keep from laughing, for the baby was so sober and so determined. He never moved his eyes from mamma’s face.

Fully half a dozen times, mamma slapped the hands of her rebellious little man. Then, suddenly remembering baby’s speech in the nursery, she said,—

“Now, Kenneth, mamma is going into the hall for a few minutes, and there will be nobody to see you change your mind, so you can pick up the books, and—”

“Tennet won’t!” came with such determined emphasis that mamma almost jumped.

“Then, when I come back,” mamma went on, looking very grave, “I will bring a little switch with me, and whip my baby’s hands hard. Kenneth must not say ‘won’t’ to mamma.”

292Kenneth’s eyes looked very serious indeed, as his mother left the room. Such a long, long time she was gone!

Kenneth looked at the books, and then at his red fingers. Papa might come and find him in the corner. He began to want to go and put the books back now, but somehow his legs would not carry him there. Then mamma appeared, and, oh, dreadful! she had a little lilac switch, that to baby’s frightened eyes looked like a club. Very slowly she came towards her little son, looking, oh, so sad! and suddenly Kenneth’s stubbornness melted away.

“Tennet will! Tennet will!” he cried, and flew past mamma, and with breathless haste scrambled up the red-bound Rollo books, stowing them in their places with much eagerness, if not very carefully.

Mamma sat awaiting him with open arms, and as Kenneth nestled up to her shoulder, he put his arms around her neck and whispered,—

“Please don’t tell papa zat I had to chain my mind aden.”

CHAPTER XXIX. A STRAWBERRY HUNT.

The winter in town slipped by quickly. The children were counting impatiently the weeks that must pass before they should be at dear old Kayuna again, when all plans for the summer were very suddenly changed.

Mamma grew no stronger as the spring came on, and papa and other doctors thought that she ought to have a sea-voyage. Papa decided to go abroad for two or three months and see what the air in the Swiss mountains would do for her. At first mamma insisted on taking all the children, for she could not make up her mind to leave one of her dear little flock behind, but papa knew that she ought to have no care at all. Finally, after much discussion, it was settled in this way: Marjorie and Donald, who were old enough to be of some help and comfort to mamma, should go, and the other children should be sent to Marbury, a dear old seaport town, where grandmamma lived, for the summer. Mamma begged 294for Kenneth, her baby, but the doctors all said no. Eliza was perfectly devoted to him and the twins, and she promised not to let them out of her sight all summer, and besides, Auntie Jean would be at grandma’s also. So mamma had to be content.

Kayuna was to have an addition built on this summer, since they were all to be away, for, as the family grew, they needed more room, and much repairing was to be done also.

Papa and mamma were to sail the last of June. One day, about the middle of the month, papa went out to Kayuna, to give his final directions about the work to be done there.

“Children,” he said at dinner, that night, “I saw that the strawberry beds at Kayuna were in prime condition to-day. The vines are laden with fruit. Would you like to make a picnic out there in a day or two, and gather some? You won’t see Kayuna strawberries this summer, you know.”

“I don’t think they need that argument,” said mamma, smiling at the exclamations of delight that greeted this proposal.

“How shall we go, papa?” asked Marjorie, who was always practical.

295“Take the street-cars out to Porter’s Inn,” said papa, “and then walk the rest of the way. You won’t mind the two miles. Or you can go by rail, and get out at East Wellsboro’, only you can’t get there very early that way.”

The children voted for the street-cars and Porter’s Inn.

“Shall the kidlets go?” asked Eunice. This was Donald’s name for the twins, for Eunice and Cricket were the kids.

“No,” said Marjorie, decidedly. “It’s too far altogether for the twins.”

Zaidee and Helen immediately set up a wail, at being thus put aside.

“It’s really much too far for you, my pets,” said mamma. “You and Kenneth shall go to the park with Eliza and have a fine time. You can sail around the pond, and feed the swans.”

“And we’ll bring you lots of strawberries,” added Cricket, comfortingly.

“Yes, do; and be as successful as you were last summer with the blackberries,” began papa, with a twinkle, but Cricket pinched him under the table till he begged for mercy.

“Couldn’t we ask two or three boys and girls to go with us?” asked Marjorie. “I’d like to have May Chester and the Gray boys.”

296“Yes, certainly. Ask Jack Fleming, too. Cook shall put you up some luncheon, and you can take my keys and go into the house, if you like.”

“Let’s go to-morrow. Things always happen if you put things off,” said Eunice, not very clearly.

“Very well, my dear. I’m of your opinion myself,” said papa. “Marjorie, I’ll take you round to see May Chester, after dinner, and while you’re there, I’ll look up the boys.” Papa would take any amount of trouble for the happiness of his flock.

Everybody proved to be delighted with the idea. The next day was wonderfully fine, even for June. At nine o’clock the party were all gathered at the Wards’. Each little person had a wicker-basket, now containing luncheon, but which were to come home full of the biggest berries they could find. If they wished, they were to get some big pails at the farm-house, and ’Gustus John, who was coming into town with fresh vegetables, would bring them in for the children.

Papa took them himself to the street-cars, to see the merry party safely off.

297“Don’t stay too late,” cautioned papa. “On the other hand, you need not come home at noon,” with a sly glance at Cricket.

“Papa!” said that young lady, “if you say any more about that, I won’t come to-night, and then you’ll be sorry.”

Then the car came, and they were off.

“Isn’t this larks?” beamed Eunice. Picnics in the country were every-day affairs, but to start right out from town, to be gone all day, was particularly fine and grown-up.

Fortunately, when they were only half-way there, they were the only occupants of the cars, and they seemed to fill it full. Each one tried every corner, and each seat between. They read the advertisements carefully, and tried the effect of reading them backwards. Then they read a line from each one, and each reading seemed funnier than the last.

“Marjorie,” asked Cricket, who had been studying one advertisement carefully, “what does Ware mean?”

“Wear?” repeated Marjorie; “why, to put on anything—to wear it.”

“No, I don’t mean that kind of wear. Look up there. What kind of a ham is a Wareham?”

298“Where is it? oh, that!” and Marjorie went off in a fit of laughter. “That doesn’t mean a ham at all. It’s just one word—Wareham. It’s a place,—Wareham Manufactory.”

“Oh,” said Cricket, meekly. “I thought it was a new kind of ham.”

In spite of their fun, it was a long ride to Porter’s Inn, which was the end of the line. They were glad enough to scramble out and stretch their limbs. It was a warm morning, and as the white stretch of country road was unshaded for a long distance, it was a hot, tired little party that reached Kayuna. As they pushed back the heavy gates, and went up the avenue, how delicious seemed the cool, green shade of the great beech trees, and how soft to their feet was the fine turf, along which they scampered!

How strange it seemed to the Wards to look up at those shuttered windows, and see no signs of life about the house!

“Seems as if I must see Dixie come racing down to meet us,” said Cricket, “and hear his little ‘row! row!’” But Dixie had been sent to the rectory to spend the summer, and Mopsie and Charcoal had gone over to Marbury, so that the children could have them there.

299The workmen had not begun their work yet, so there were no signs of life about the place. Marjorie had been intrusted with papa’s keys. She felt very grand, drawing them from her pocket with a flourish, and inserting one in the door. It swung back with a startlingly loud clang, and a rush of close, shut-up air came out. The great, echoing hall looked so large and so lonely that for a moment the children hesitated to enter it.

Jack found his courage at the sight of the broad, smooth balustrade.

“Hooray!” he shouted. “My eye! what a boss place to slide down!”

He dashed off up the stairs, and came bolting down the balustrade again, sweeping a fine lot of dust before him. The spell was broken, and the children entered laughing. Once inside, the Wards soon lost the sense of strangeness, and raced all over the house in great delight, showing their favourite places to their friends.

“Do let’s rest,” begged May Chester, at last. “I’m nearly dead!”

“Let’s go into the library and sit down. It’s always cool and lovely there,” began Marjorie, leading the way. “Oh, I forgot! The chairs 300are all tied up, and it’s so gloomy with the shutters closed. We might sit down on the stairs.”

Dusty stairs are not very soft places to rest on, when one is really tired, however, and they soon decided to go out and sit on the grass.

In their interest in exploring the house, they had quite forgotten the strawberries, till Alex Gray suddenly remembered as they stood on the piazza.

“Hallo! where are our strawberries? I quite forgot to look and see in which of the rooms the strawberry bed is placed.”

“Don’t try to be funny,” said Marjorie, “it’s too hot.”

“I know where the strawberry bed isn’t,” said Jack, “it isn’t down cellar,” as he appeared with smutty streaks across his face, showing where he had been exploring.

“Let’s rest a few minutes longer under these lovely trees,” pleaded May. “It will be so hot out in the garden.”

“Well, I’ll show you,” said Cricket, running down the steps. “I won’t keep you in suspicion.”

“In suspense,” put in Marjorie.

301“Well, I meant suspense. It’s all the same,” said Cricket, cheerfully. “Come on, boys! Oh, you dear old trees!”

“I suppose we might as well all go, then,” said Marjorie, getting up.

The strawberry beds quite fulfilled Dr. Ward’s accounts of them. The children fell eagerly to work, their fatigue all forgotten. Such great, luscious berries as drooped their rosy faces under the leaves would make everything forgotten but themselves. For a while there were constant shouts of “Oh, what a beauty!” “My! look at this bunch!” “See these bouncers!” till beauties and bouncers were an old story.

“I couldn’t eat another berry to save my life, I do believe!” sighed Eunice, at last, looking very sad.

“Eat them, then, to save the berries,” answered Jack, popping a very big one into her mouth.

“Now for my part,” said Alex, “I was just going to inquire about luncheon.”

The girls, in chorus, protested that they couldn’t eat a mouthful.

“Well, I like that!” returned Alex. “As if we’d be filled up by a few berries.”

302“A few berries? oh!” laughed Marjorie.

“They are soft and not filling,” answered Alex. “What do you think boys are made of, ma’am?”

“I know,” answered Cricket, quickly. “They are made like accordiums—to stretch out.”

“Accordions,” corrected Marjorie, with a laugh. “Oh, Cricket, you’re the worst child about long words!”

“I don’t care,” answered Cricket, comfortably. “People know what I mean.”

“Never mind, Spider,” said Alex, “you’re my friend, I see. Come and give this accordion something to stretch on.”

“I ought to remember that boys are hollow,” said Marjorie, straightening up, “after all my experience with Donald and Will and Archie Somers. Let’s go into the orchard near the old well. It’s always so cool there.”

When lunch was all spread it looked so tempting that the girls concluded that they could manage to eat a few mouthfuls, and before long there wasn’t a morsel of anything left. After luncheon they sat awhile under the dear old apple-trees, which were of the high, old-fashioned kind, so that the grass grew thick and soft 303beneath. The sunlight flecked the grass with gold, the sky was deeply blue, and a slight breeze had sprung up. Even the boys felt the quiet, peaceful beauty of the wide, old orchard, and were quite willing to rest for an hour, while Marjorie and her sisters told merry tales of their many escapades in dear old Kayuna.

“Three o’clock,” yawned Jack Fleming, at last. “We ought to go and see if those strawberries are drying up, don’t you think?”

“We ought to be about it, if we’re going to take any home,” assented Marjorie; and they all rose slowly and strolled to the garden again. The berries were so large and so plentiful, that in a very few minutes every basket was filled to the brim.

“Eunice, you and Cricket run down to the farm-house and ask ’Manda for some big pails,” ordered Marjorie, in true, older-sisterly fashion.

“All right,” answered Eunice, obediently. “Come on, Cricket. Where is she? Crick-et!”

“Here I am,” answered a forlorn little voice.

“Here,” was in the grape arbour near by. Cricket was discovered sitting huddled up in a little bunch, with her head on her knees.

Marjorie hurried across to her.

304“Why, poor little Cricket! What is the matter?”

“Nothing, I guess, ’cept my head aches so,” Cricket replied, rather dismally. Her sunny little face was very pale and her eyes looked heavy and dark.

“Poor child!” said Marjorie, sympathetically, sitting down beside her. “It’s the hot sun, I think. Come down to the farm-house with me, and ’Manda will let you lie down for a while.”

Cricket looked doubtfully out into the sunlight. From the garden it was not very far across the field down to the farm-house, but the sun looked very hot.

“I’d rather stay here, I think, Marjorie,” she said, doubtfully, “my legs feel so wobbly.”

“What’s the matter with the kid?” asked Harold Gray, who was a big boy of fourteen, and very fond of sunny little Cricket.

“Nothing’s the matter, only my head aches so,” Cricket tried to smile, but it was a very watery attempt. She so seldom had a headache that it seemed a very serious thing to her.

“I want her to go down to the farm-house and lie down, but she doesn’t feel like walking there,” explained Marjorie.

305“Is that all? That’s easily fixed. Here, Jack, make a lady’s chair with me, to carry this young lady in. Now, Marjorie, help my lady up.”

Cricket stood up and the boys lowered their hands.

“Now, then, put your arms around our shoulders,” said Harold, as they raised the little girl gently. “That’s right. Put your head down on mine, if it ‘wobbles’” for Cricket’s throbbing head refused to stay upright, and bobbed helplessly down on Harold’s. Marjorie ran ahead.

’Manda saw them coming, and stood at the door ready to greet them.

“I do declare, I’m proper glad to see you!” she exclaimed, hospitably, to Marjorie. “’Gustus John he was up to the stables a spell ago, and he seen you all there a-pickin’ berries, ’n’ he sez when he come in, ‘’Mandy,’ sez he, ‘I ruther guess the children will be along down bime-by.’ You see yer pa stopped here yesterday, an’ he said that he ’lowed you’d kinder enjoy comin’ out here to pick them berries, an’ here ye be. La! what’s the matter with Cricket? I ’lowed she wuz bein’ carried thet way fur fun.”

306The motherly soul was warmly welcoming the children, while her kind tongue ran on.

“Cricket has a bad headache, ’Manda,” answered Marjorie; “will you let her lie down here for a while?”

“Why, for the land’s sake! Poor little dear! lie down on my sofy? why, of course she shall,” and she had Cricket in her arms in a moment. “You all sit right down here for a spell and make yourselves perfectly to home, while I fix up this poor little critter.”

“No, we won’t stay now, thank you,” said Marjorie. “Could you let us have some large pails to fill with berries? Papa says that ’Gustus John offered to bring our extra berries to town for us to-morrow.”

“Certain, sure, he did, my dear. You jest go right in the but’try and git some of them big pails a-settin’ right along side o’ the flour-barrel. You know where ’tis, I guess. An’ Miss Marjorie, git some o’ them fresh ginger-cakes I baked this mornin’, they’re on the but’try shelf, an’ find some milk, an’—”

“Oh, dear, no, thank you,” protested Marjorie, laughing, “we’ve had plenty of luncheon, and have filled up all the corners with berries. We only want some pails.”

307“Now, Madge, Madge, young lady, speak for yourself. I want to test Mrs. Hecker’s ginger-cakes and milk, for my accordion’s began to close,” said Alex.

“Dear me!” cried Marjorie, in despair. “We’ll have to feed you on dried apples and water. They’ll fill you up, if nothing else will.”

“Not any, I thank you,” returned Alex, quickly. “I’ve no desire to be a howling swell.”

’Manda, meanwhile, had bustled off with Cricket, into the cool, dark, little best-parlour, and had laid her on the slippery hair-cloth sofa, with its round, bolster-like pillow, about as downy as if it were stuffed tight with sawdust. But any place, quiet and dark, was grateful to the poor little aching head, whose temples throbbed in jerks that brought tears to the blue eyes.

Marjorie tiptoed in, presently, to see if she were comfortably fixed, before they went back for their berries.

Cricket opened her eyes in answer to Marjorie’s inquiry. ’Manda had gone out of the room for a moment.

“Where’s Mamie Hecker?” whispered Cricket.

308“Don’t worry about her, dear. She’s gone to spend a week with her Aunt Jane. You’re safe.”

“Oh!” Cricket closed her eyes in great relief, then opened them as she said, miserably, “I can’t walk a step now, and I don’t believe I could sit up in the car. I don’t see how I’m going to get home.”

“That’s all right,” said Marjorie, soothingly, “for ’Gustus John is going to drive us to Porter’s Inn, and if you’re well enough you will go then, but if you don’t feel able, ’Manda wants you to stay all night. They’ll send you to town in the morning, with ’Gustus John. You wouldn’t mind staying, would you?”

“Oh, no,” said Cricket, feeling much too badly to care about anything but lying still.

CHAPTER XXX. LEFT BEHIND.

The children’s voices died away in the distance. Presently the door opened carefully, and ’Manda came in, with a big pillow and a tumbler.

“There, now, dearie,” she said, setting down her tumbler, and slipping the big, soft pillow under Cricket’s head. “That’s a sight better. That sofy pillow, ’taint very soft. I’d hev taken you right into my room an’ put you to bed, but it’s awful hot there now, being right off the kitchen so, ’n’ upstairs is hot, too. You’re a little mite sick to your stomick, too, ain’t you? I thought so. Now drink this lemonade, an’ it will kinder stop that gnawin’ feeling quicker nor a wink.”

“Lemonade?” repeated Cricket, lifting her heavy eyes in surprise. “When I’m sick?” for she associated, naturally, any illness with medicines. “Won’t it hurt me?”

“Bless your little heart, no. It won’t hurt 310you a mite. It’ll settle your stomick wonderful, that’s all. ’Taint very sweet.”

’Manda slipped her hand under the pillow and raised the aching head so gently that Cricket scarcely felt it move. She drained the tumbler obediently, though the lemonade was rather sour. Then she nestled down into the soft pillow with a sigh of relief. ’Manda sat by her, waving a big palm-leaf fan, with a slow, even motion. The silence and the darkness soon began to soothe the throbbing pain, and Cricket at last dropped into a fitful doze, that soon became a sound sleep.

An hour passed, and ’Manda heard the children’s voices as they came across the field again. She tiptoed softly from the room,’sh-ing them all, with uplifted finger.

“She’s jest dropped asleep, poor little mite,” she said, in answer to their anxious, whispered inquiries. “Yes, Miss Marjorie, you jest leave her to-night, an’ ’Gustus John, he’ll fetch her in town in the mornin’, all right.”

“Sha’n’t I stay with her?” asked Eunice.

“There ain’t no need, Miss Eunice, I’d be proper glad to hev you, but there ain’t no need, ’less you particular wish it. I’ll jest admire to 311hev Cricket stay, and take care of her myself. La, suz! there won’t be no need of anybody’s takin’ care, I rather guess, for like’s not, when she wakes up, her headache’ll be all gone, an’ prob’bly by six o’clock she’ll be wantin’ to go after the caows. No, Miss Eunice, you kin jest as well as not go right along with the others, an’ be sure an’ tell your ma that I jest admire to hev Cricket stay.”

“I know you’ll take good care of her,” said Marjorie, hesitating. “I only hope Cricket won’t feel lonely or homesick when she wakes up.”

“Oh, law! no; don’t you worrit now, Miss Marjorie. She needs her sleep out, thet’s all. The hot sun an’ the berries was too much for her. What a sight of berries you’ve got! Never wuz a better crop than this year. Pity yer missin’ the season.”

The party looked with much satisfaction at the result of their labours. Four six-quart pails overflowing with luscious fruit stood in a row on the steps, and besides that, their lunch baskets were filled to the brim.

“I’m real sorry you told ’Gustus John that you wasn’t goin’ to stop to have a bite of 312victuals with us, for here he comes now with the team. Must you go?”

“It’s after five,” answered Marjorie, “and it will be nearly seven before we got home now. Yes, we must go. Well, we are so much obliged, ’Manda.”

“Well now, I’m sure you’ve no call to be. You dunno how I’m goin’ to miss yer all this summer. Don’t know what we’ll do without you an’ Cricket an’ all your pranks,” added ’Manda, turning to Eunice.

’Gustus John and his big wagon came round from the barn just then.

“Pile in, young folks,” he said, cheerily. “Tain’t a very handsome kerridge, but I guess you’ll find it considerable better than walkin’ over to Porter’s Inn, when you’re dead beat out. All in? Oh, ’Mandy, give us some ginger-cakes or sumthin’ to eat goin’ along, bein’ as they won’t stay to set by.”

“Yes, I’ve a basket full all ready,” said ’Manda, producing one, amid the protests of the children—even the “accordion” boys—that they couldn’t eat another mouthful of anything.

“But I can’t go without seeing Cricket,” exclaimed Marjorie, suddenly stopping.

313“Now, then, Miss Marjorie, I ain’t a-goin to hev you disturbin’ the child,” said ’Manda, hastily, who down in her heart was dreadfully afraid that Cricket might wake up and want to go home with the others, when she had set her heart on having her stay. “She’ll sleep a good spell yet, if she’s let to. You couldn’t do her no good ef you did see her, an’ it might jest spile her nap.”

“Perhaps it’s better not,” Marjorie said, reluctantly. “I suppose that she will be all right to-night anyway, though she scarcely ever had a headache before in her life. And you’ll bring her in to-morrow, ’Gustus John? I do hope that she won’t mind being left.”

“Now don’t you fuss about that,” said ’Gustus John. “’Manda, she thinks it’s a real Godsend, bein’ as Mamie’s away. ’Mandy sets great store by Cricket, you know. All ready now? Off we go!”

’Gustus John had promised to bring all the big pails of berries in town when he went in the next morning, so the children had only their little baskets with them. Everybody was in place now, and with many good-bys and thanks to ’Manda, the merry party started.

314It was after five when ’Manda went bustling back into the house to prepare supper. There was no sound from the parlour yet, and she concluded that Cricket was still sleeping.

“I’ll jest take a peek at the little dear,” she said, presently. “Like’s not she’s awake by this time, and will want some supper.”

’Manda had always been devoted to Cricket. She had lived with Mrs. Ward as nurse when Cricket was a baby, and the little girl was more than a year old when ’Manda married ’Gustus John, the doctor’s farmer. So Cricket had always been her especial pet.

She opened the parlour door gently and looked in. Cricket opened her eyes with a smile.

“Oh, ’Manda! my head is ever so much better. It doesn’t ache scarcely at all. Have the others come in from the strawberry field yet?”

“La, suz! yes, dear heart. They come and went, mebbe half an hour ago. You wuz a sleepin’ so nice that we didn’t like to wake you up.”

“Gone!” exclaimed Cricket, feeling for the first moment as if she were deserted on a desert island. “Why, what am I going to do?”

315“You’re goin’ to stay with ’Manda to-night, my pretty. That won’t be bad, will it?”

“No,” faltered Cricket, but she felt very forlorn and homesick, nevertheless.

She loved kind ’Manda dearly, and since Mamie was not there it was not quite so bad, but she scarcely ever spent a night away from home without her mother in her little life. Cricket was such a “mother child.”

She sat up, but she found that her head still felt a little faint and dizzy when she moved. Two little tears crept up into her eyes. How could she go to bed without mamma!

“I want my mother!” real sobs now.

“There, there, my pretty! don’t cry!” soothed ’Manda, much distressed, as she gathered her nursling into her motherly arms.

“Mommer ain’t here, but ’Mandy will take such good care of you, an’ it’s jest fur to-night. To-morrow mornin’, ’Gustus John, he’s got to be off real early, an’ you’ll hev to be up with the birds, I guess, an’ you’ll hev a bee-you-tiful ride in town. An’ then,” ’Mandy went on, forgetting that Cricket was not a baby, as she settled her head more comfortably on her broad bosom, “after tea, to-night, if your’s feelin’ reel 316smart, there ain’t nuthin’ to hender our takin’ a little walk down to the village to see Hilda Mason. She’s goin’ to miss you a sight this summer.”

Cricket began to feel that the situation had its advantages, after all. ’Manda’s lap was very comfortable, her shoulder very soft and plump, and her arms very loving, so that Cricket could not stay forlorn long, especially when there was the thought of seeing Hilda Mason so soon. So she obeyed ’Manda’s advice to “chirk up,” and soon felt like going out on the little front porch to sit, while ’Manda finished getting supper.

Then ’Gustus John and the two “hired men” came in, and with Sarah, the rosy-cheeked “hired girl,” they all sat down to the cosey, homely meal.

’Manda would not let Cricket sit with the others, but she had put her in state at a little square table near by, all by herself. The little table was spread with ’Manda’s best china, to do honour to her little guest, and special dainties in the way of preserves and cake were set for her. Cricket enjoyed her supper, with the “warmed-over” potatoes, great slices of fresh bread and butter, dried beef, cottage cheese and pickles, cold meat, two kinds of preserves, berries and three kinds of cake. Such a mixture, you will say; but Cricket was hungry enough now to taste a little of everything, and she enjoyed it all.

317

CRICKET AND ’MANDA.

319By seven o’clock Cricket felt quite as well as ever, and skipped and pranced, just as usual, along the road that led to Hilda’s home, while ’Manda followed, one broad smile of content.

Hilda was more than delighted to see Cricket, of course, and the little girls had a lovely time together. Hilda had been invited to go over to Marbury to stay for a week in August, with Cricket, at grandma’s, and, of course, the children were delighted to make arrangements for that important visit.

It was nine o’clock when Cricket and ’Manda returned to the farm-house, in the moonlight. It seemed odd enough not to go on up the hill when they came to the little bridge, but instead to turn in at the white gate, and Cricket felt a little spasm of homesickness, which increased when she was fairly inside the house, and ’Manda lighted the candle for her to go upstairs. How she did want mamma and Eunice! Fortunately, she was really too tired now, to think very much about anything but getting to bed.

320The funny little spare-room had a huge bedstead in it, an old-fashioned one, with four posts and curtains, and an immense feather bed on it. When ’Manda lifted her up and swung her over into it, she sank so far down, that the sides rose on each side of her like billows, and the sheet, spread across, did not touch her at all. But she was in the Land of Nod almost before she could say a sleepy “Good-night” to kind ’Manda, and she knew nothing more.

It was six o’clock, and broad daylight, of course, when ’Manda came in to awaken her. Sleepy Cricket could hardly realize that there had been any night at all. She rubbed her drowsy eyes open with much difficulty, and ’Manda helped her through her toilet. ’Gustus John had to start for town by seven o’clock, and the wagon already stood in the yard, loaded up with vegetables and things for the market. ’Gustus John, himself, and one hired man, were coming to the house with pails of foaming milk, and another man was harnessing the big, black horses to the wagon.

Breakfast was over at last. The pails of strawberries were snugly tucked away under the front seat, and everything was ready to start. 321’Manda gave her little guest many a parting hug and kiss, and said she didn’t see how she ever was going to stand it, not to have the doctor’s family at Kayuna, and the children junketin’ around, just the same as usual. Cricket hugged and kissed her in return, and then ’Gustus John swung her up on the high front seat, where she sat, holding on to the back, with her feet swinging above the pails of strawberries.

It always seemed delightfully dangerous on that front seat where there was no dash-board, and where there seemed to be nothing to prevent her lurching down on the horses’ broad backs if the wagon pitched over “thank-you-marms.” ’Gustus John, in his blue blouse and broad-brimmed hat, climbed heavily up beside her, gave a final glance over his load, cracked his whip, and off they started with a sudden jerk that brought Cricket’s toes very unexpectedly on a level with her head, and nearly sent her pitching back into the spring peas and asparagus.

It was a very different trip from the one they had taken last fall. ’Manda’s parting word to ’Gustus John was that he must be careful and not lose Cricket out, at which ’Gustus responded,—

“Sho!”

322He never liked to be reminded of that accident. The horses settled down to their farm-work jog, not in the least like the brisk trot they had when they were harnessed to the light wagon. They knew quite well that they had a load behind them and a long pull before them, and took it easily.

The air was fresh and sweet, the birds twittered and chirped, the morning dew lay like diamonds on the grass, and Cricket, who, as we know, had a special delight in rising early, drew a long breath of pleasure. She chattered gayly away, and ’Gustus John, in turn, told her exciting tales of that wonderful time of long ago—“When I was a little boy.”

It was not yet nine when the wagon clattered over the long bridge, and they were fairly in town. They had to go more slowly then. They drove to May Chester’s first to leave her strawberries, Cricket pointing out the way, then to Jack Fleming’s and the Grays’. Then they turned into the home-street and drew up before her own door. Cricket felt, as ’Gustus John lifted her down from her high perch, that she must have made a trip to Europe, for it seemed so long since she had left there, yesterday morning.

323“I’m so much obliged to you for this lovely ride, ’Gustus John,” she said, as they went up the steps, ’Gustus carrying her berries. “I’ve had the elegantest time riding in this morning and having you tell me stories.”

“Wal, now, I tell you,” said ’Gustus John, “I’d give considerbul down, ef I had yer to ride in with me every time I come to the city. We’d hev purty snug times, wouldn’t we, eh? Good-by. Remember me to yer pa and ma. Good-by.”

And Cricket, throwing him a kiss from the tips of her fingers, vanished in the house.