 CHAPTER 11 When the dusk closed in it would be Christmas Eve. All day I had three points, a chair beside the kitchen table, a lookout melted through the frost on the front window, and the big sitting-room fireplace. All the perfumes of Arabi floated from our kitchen that day. There was that delicious smell of baking flour from big snowy loaves of bread, light biscuit, golden coffee-cake, and cinnamon rolls dripping a waxy mixture of sugar, butter, and spice, much better than the finest butterscotch ever brought from the city. There was the tempting odor of boiling ham and baking pies. The air was filled with a smell of more herbs and spices than I knew the names of, that went into mincemeat, fruit-cake, plum pudding, and pies. There was a teasing fragrance in the spiced vinegar heating for pickles, a reminder of wine sap and rambo in the boiling cider, while the newly opened bottles of grape juice filled the house with a tang of concord and muscadine. It seemed to me I never got nicely fixed where I could take a slide-dip in the cake-dough or snipe a fat raisin from the mincemeat, but Candice would say, Don't you suppose the backlog is half-way down the lane? Then I hurried to the front window where I could see through my melted outlook on the frosted pane across the west 80 to the woods, where Father and Ladi were getting out the Christmas backlog. It was too bitterly cold to keep me there while they worked, but Ladi said that if I would watch and come to meet them he would take me up, and I might ride home among the Christmas greens on the log. So I flattened my nose against the pane and danced and fidgeted until those odors teased me back to the kitchen. And no more did I get nicely located beside a jar of pudding-sauce than Candice would object to the place I had hunkered stocking. It was my task, my delightful all-day task, to hang the stockings. Father had made me a peg for each one, and I had ten feet of mantel-front along which to arrange them. But it was no small job to do this to everyone's satisfaction. No matter what happened to anyone else, Candice had to be pleased. For did she not manage that most fowls served on Mother's Table went gizzardless to the carving? She knew and acknowledged the great importance of trying cookies, pies, and cake while they were hot. She was forever overworked and tired, yet she always found time to make gingerbread woman with current buttons on their frocks, and pudgy doughnut men with clove eyes and cigars of cinnamon. If my own stocking lay on the hearth Candice's had to go in a place that satisfied her. That was one sure thing. Besides, I had to make up to her for what Leanne did, because she was crying into the corner of her apron about that. He slipped in and stole her stocking, hung it over the brumstick, and marched around the breakfast-table, singing to the tune of, Ha, ha, ha, who wouldn't go? Up on the housetop, click, click, click, down through the chimney with Good St. Nick. Words he made up himself. He walked just fast enough that she couldn't catch him, and saying as he went, Ha, ha, ha, Good St. Nick, come and take a look at the stocking quick. If you undertake its length to fill, you'll have to bust a ten-dollar bill. Who does it belong to, Candice Swartz? Bring extra candy, seven quarts. She got so angry she just roared, so father made Leanne stop it, but I couldn't help laughing myself. Then we had to pet her all day, so she'd cheer up, and not salt the Christmas dinner with her tears. I never saw such a monkey as Leanne. I trotted out to comfort her, and snipped bites, until I wore a triangle on the carpet between the kitchen and the mantel, the mantel in the window, and the window in the kitchen, while every hour things grew more exciting. There never had been such a flurry at our house since I could remember, for tomorrow would be Christmas, and bring home all the children, and a house full of guests. My big brother, Jerry, who was a lawyer in the city, was coming with his family, and so were Frank, Elizabeth, and Lucy with theirs, and of course Sally and Peter. I wondered if she would still be fixing his tie, and Shelly came yesterday, blushing like a rose, and she laughed if he pointed your finger at her. Something had happened to her in Chicago. I wasn't so sure as I had been about a city being such a dreadful place of noise, bad air, and wicked people. Nothing had hurt Shelly. She had grown so much that you could see she was larger. Her hair and face, all of Shelly just shone. Her eyes danced, she talked and laughed all the time, and she hugged everyone who passed her. She never loved us so before. Leon said she must have been homesick, and coming back had given her a spell. I did hope it would be a bad one, and last forever. I would have liked for all her family to have had a spell, if it would have made them act and look like Shelly. The princess was not a speck lovelier, and she didn't act any nicer. If I could have painted, I'd have made a picture of Shelly, with a circle of light above her head, like the one of the boy Jesus, where he talked with the wise men in the temple. I asked Father if he noticed how much prettier and nicer she was, and he said he did. Then I asked him if he thought now that a city was such a bad place to live in, and he said where she was had nothing to do with it. The same thing would happen here, or anywhere, when life's greatest experience came to a girl. That was all he would say, but figuring it out was easy. The greatest experience that happened to our girls was when they married, like Shelly. So it meant that Shelly had gone and fallen in love with that lawyer man, and she liked sitting on the sofa with him, and no doubt she fixed his ties. But if anyone thought I would tell anything I saw when he came, they were badly mistaken. All of us rushed around like we were crazy. If Father and Mother hadn't held steady and cupped us down, we might have raised the roof. We were also glad about getting Leon and the money back. Mother hadn't been sick since the fish cured her. The new blue goose was so like the one that had burst, even Father never noticed any difference. All the children were either home or coming, and after we had our gifts and the biggest dinner we ever had, Christmas night all of us would go to the schoolhouse to see our school try to spell down three others to whom they had sent saucy invitations to come and be beaten. Mother sat in the dining room beside the kitchen door so that she could watch the baking, brewing, pickling, and spicing. It took four men to handle the backlog, which I noticed Father pronounced every year just a little the finest we ever had, and Lady strung the house with bittersweet evergreens and the most beautiful sprays of myrtle that he raked from under the snow. Father drove to town in the sleigh, and the list of things to be purchased Mother gave him as a reminder was almost a yard long. The minute they finished the outdoor work, Lattie and Leon began bringing in baskets of apples, golden bell flowers, green pippins, white winter pair mains, Rhode Island greenings, and striped rambos all covered with whorefrost, yet not frozen, and so full of juice you had to bite into them carefully, or they dripped and offended Mother. These they washed and carried to the cellar ready for use. Then they cracked big dishes of nuts, and popped corn that popped with the most resounding pops in all my experience, popped a tubful, and Lattie melted maple sugar and poured over it, and made big balls of fluff and sweetness. He took a pan and filled it with grains, selected one at a time, the very largest and whitest, and made in a special ball, in the middle of which he put a lovely pink candy heart on which was printed in red letters. How can this heart be mine, yet yours, unless our hearts are one? He wouldn't let any of them see it except me, and he only let me because he knew I'd be delighted. It was almost dusk when Father came through the kitchen, loaded with bundles, and found Candice in the girls still cooking. We were so excited we could scarcely be gathered around the supper table, and Mother said we chattered until she couldn't hear herself think. After a while, Lattie laid down his fork and looked at our Father. Have you any objection to my using this lay tomorrow night? He asked. Father looked at Mother. Had you planned to use it, Mother? Mother said, No, if I go, I'll ride in the big sled with all of us. It is such a little way, and the roads are like glass. So Father said politely, as he always spoke to us. Then it will give me great pleasure for you to take it, my son. That made Leon bang his fork loudly as he dared, and squirm in his chair. For while he knew that if he had asked, the answer would have been different. If Lattie took the sleigh, he would harness carefully, drive fast but reasonably, blanket his horse, come home at the right time, and put everything exactly where he found it. But Leon would pitch the harness on some way, race every step, never think of his steaming horse, come home when there is no one so wild as he left to play pranks with, and scatter the harness everywhere. He knew our Father would love to trust him the same as he did Lattie. He wouldn't always prove himself trustworthy, but he envied Lattie. You think you'll take the princess to the spelling bee, don't you? He sneered. I mean to ask her, replied Lattie. Maybe you think she'll ride in our old homemade hickory cheese box when she can sail all over the country like a bird in a velvet-lined cutter with a real buffalo robe. There was a quick catch in Mother's breath, and I felt her hand on my chair tremble. Father's lips tightened, and a frown settled on his face, while Lattie fairly jumped. He went white to the lips, and one hand dropped on the table, palm up, the fingers closing and unclosing, while his eyes turned first to Mother, and then to Father, in dumb appeal. We all knew that he was suffering. No one spoke, and Leon, having shot his arrow straight home, saw as people so often do in this world that the damage of unkind words could not easily be repaired, so he grew red in the face, and squirmed uncomfortably. At last Lattie drew a deep, quivering breath. I never thought of that, he said. She has seemed happy to go with me several times when I asked her, but of course she might not care to ride in ours when she has such a fine sleigh of her own. Father's voice fairly boomed down the length of the table. Your mother always has found our sleigh suitable, he said. The fact was, Father was rarely proud of it. He had selected the hickory in our woods, cut it and hauled it to the mill, cured the lumber, and used all his spare time for two winters making it. With the exception of having the runners turned at a factory and ironbound at a smithy, he had completed it alone with great care, even sustaining it a beautiful cherry color and fitting white sheepskins into the bed. We had all watched him and been so proud of it, and now Leon was sneering at it. He might just as well have undertaken to laugh at Father's wedding-suit or to make fun of Clark's commentaries. Lattie appealed to Mother. Do you think I'd better not ask her? He spoke with an effort. Lattie, that is the first time I ever heard you propose to do any one an injustice, she said. I don't see how, said Lattie. It isn't giving the Princess any chance at all, replied Mother. You've just said that she has seemed pleased to accompany you before. Now you are proposing to cut her out of what promises to be the most delightful evening of the winter, without even giving her the chance to say whether she'd go with you or not. Has she ever made you feel that anything you offered her or wanted to do for her was not good enough? Never, exclaimed Lattie fervently. Until she does, then, do you think it would be quite manly and honorable to make decisions for her? You say you never thought of anything except a pleasant time with her. Possibly she feels the same. Unless she changes, I would scarcely let a boy's foolish tongue disturb her pleasure. Moreover, as to the matter of wealth, your father may be as rich as hers, but they have one. We have many. If what we spend on all our brood could be confined to one child, we could easily duplicate all her luxuries. And I think she has the good sense to realize the fact as quickly as anyone. I've no doubt she would gladly exchange half she has for the companionship of a sister or a brother in her lonely life. Lattie turned to father, and father's smile was happy again. Mother was little, but she was mighty. With only a few words she had made Leanne feel how unkind and foolish he had been. Quieted Lattie's alarm, and soothed the hurt father's pride had felt and that he had not been able to furnish her with so fine a turnout as priors had. Next morning, when the excitement of gifts and greetings was over, and Lattie's morning work was all finished, he took a beautiful volume of poems and his popcorn ball, and started across the fields, due west. All of us knew that he was going to call on and offer them to the princess, and asked to take her to the spelling-bee. I suppose Lattie thought he was taking that trip alone, but really he was surrounded. I watched him from the window, and my heart went with him. Presently, father went and sat beside mother's chair, and stroking her hand, whispered softly, Please don't worry, little mother, it will be all right. Your boy will come home happy. I hope so, she answered, but I can't help feeling dreadfully nervous. If things go wrong with Lattie, it will spoil the day. I have much faith in the princess's good common sense, replied father, and considering what it means to Lattie, it would hurt me soar to lose it. Mother sat still, but her lips moved so that I knew she was making soft little whispered prayers for her best loved son. But Lattie, plowing through the drift, never dreamed that all of us were with him. He was always better looking than any other man I ever had seen. But when, two hours later, he stamped into the kitchen, he was so much handsomer than usual, that I knew from the flush on his cheek and the light in his eyes that the princess had been kind, and by the package in his hand, that she had made him a present. He really had, too, a beautiful book and a necktie. I wondered to my soul if she gave him that so she could fix it. I didn't believe she had begun on his ties at that time. But, of course, when he loved her as he did, he wish she would. It was the very jolliest Christmas we ever had, but the day seemed long. When night came, we were in a precious bustle. The wagon bed on Bob's, filled with hay and covers, drawn by Ned and Joe, was brought up for the family, and the sleigh made spick and span, and drawn by Lattie's thoroughbred, stood beside it. Lattie had filled the kitchen oven with bricks, and hung up a comfort at four o'clock to keep the princess warm. Because he had to drive out of the way to bring her, Lattie wanted to start early, and when he came down dressed in his college clothes, and looking the manliest of men, some of the folks thought it funny to see him carefully rake his hot bricks from the oven, and pin them in an old red breakfast shawl. I thought it was fine, and I whispered to mother, Do you suppose that if Lattie ever marries the princess, he will be good to her as he is to you? Mother nodded, with tear-dimmed eyes, but Shelly said, I'll wager a strong young girl like the princess will laugh at you for babying over her. Why, inquired Lattie, it is a long drive and a bitter night, and if you fancy the princess will laugh at anything I do, when I am doing the best I know for her comfort, you are mistaken. At least, that is the impression she gave me this morning. I saw the swift glance mother shot at father, and father laid down his paper and said, while he pretended his glasses needed polishing. Now there is the right sort of girl for you, no foolishness about her, when she has every chance. Hurrah for the princess! It was easy to see that she wasn't going to have nearly so hard a time changing father's opinion, as she would mother's. It was not nearly a year yet, and here he was changed already. Lattie said goodbye to mother. He never forgot. Gathered up his comfort and bricks, and started for priors downright happy. We went to the schoolhouse a little later. All of us scoured, curled, starched, and wearing our very best clothes. My, but it was fine. There were many lights in the room, and it was hung with greens. There was a crowd even though it was early. On Miss Amelia's table was a volume of history that was the prize, and everyone was looking and acting the very best he knew how, although there were cases where they didn't know so very much. Our Shelly was the handsomest girl there, until the princess came, and then they both were. Shelly wore one of her city frocks, and a quilted red silk hood that was one of her Christmas gifts, and she looked just like a handsome doll. She made every male creature in that room feel that she was pining for him alone. May had a gay plaid frock, and curls nearly a yard long, and so had I, but both our frocks and curls were homemade. Mother would have them once in a while. Father and I couldn't stop her. But there was not a soul there who didn't have some sort of gift to rejoice over, and laughter and shouts of Merry Christmas filled the room. It was growing late, and there was some talk of choosers. When the door opened, and in a rush of frosty air the princess and laddie entered. Everyone stopped short and stared. There was good reason. The princess looked as if she had accidentally stepped from a frame. She was always lovely and beautifully dressed. But tonight she was prettier and finer than ever before. You could fairly hear their teeth click as some of the most envious of those girls caught sight of her. For she was wearing a new hat, a black velvet store hat, fitting closely over her crown, with a rim of twisted velvet, a scarlet bird's wing, and a big silver buckle. Her dress was of scarlet cloth cut in forms, and it fitted as if she had been melted and poured into it. It was edged around the throat, wrists, and skirt, with narrow bands of fur, and she wore a loose, long, silk-lined coat of the same material. And worst of all, furs, furs such as we had heard wealthy and stylish city ladies were wearing. A golden brown cape that reached to her elbows, with ends falling to the knees, finished in the tails of some animal, and for her hands a muff as big as a nail-keg. Now there was not a girl in that room except the princess, and she had those clothes, who wouldn't have flirted like a peacock, almost bursting with pride. But because the princess had them, and they didn't, they sat stolid and stolen, and cast glances at each other as if they were saying, the stuck-up thing, think she's smart, don't she? Many of them should have gone to meet her, and make her welcome, for she was not of our district and really their guest. Shelly did go, but I noticed she didn't hurry. The choosers began at once, and Lattie was the first person called for our side, and the princess for the visitors. Everyone in the room was chosen on one side or the other. Even my name was called, but I only sat still and shook my head, for I very well knew that no one except father would remember to pronounce easy ones for me, and besides I was so bitterly disappointed I could scarcely have stood up. They had put me in a seat near the fire, the spellers lined either wall, and a goodly number that refused to spell occupied the middle seats. I couldn't get a glimpse of Lattie or the home folks, or worst of all, of my idolized princess. I never could bear to find a fault with Lattie, but I sadly reflected that he might as well have left me home if I were to be buried where I could neither hear nor see a thing. I was just wishing it was summer so I could steal out to the cemetery and have a good visit with the butterflies that always swarmed around Georgiana Jane's tick-combs grave at the corner of the church. I never knew Georgiana Jane, but her people must have been very fond of her, for her grave was scarlet with geraniums and pink with roses from earliest spring until frost, and the bright colors attracted swarms of butterflies. I had learned that if I stuck a few blossoms in my hair, rubbed some sweet-smelling ones over my hands, and knelt, and kept so quiet that I fitted into the landscape, the butterflies would thank me a flower too, and a light on my hair, my dress, and my hands even. God never made anything more beautiful than those butterflies, with their wings of brightly painted velvet down, their bright eyes, their curious antenna, and their queer tickly feet. Ladi had promised me a book telling all about every kind there was the first time he went to a city. So I was wishing I had it and was among my pet beauties with it when I discovered him bending over me. He took my arm and marching back to his place helped me to the deep window seat beside him, where with my head on a level and within a foot of his I could see everything in the whole room. I don't know why I ever spent any time pining for the beauties of Georgiana Jane Titcombe's grave, even with its handsome headstone on which was carved a lamb standing on three feet and holding a banner over its shoulder with a fourth, and the geraniums, roses, and the weeping willow that grew over it thrown in. I might have trusted Ladi. He never had forgotten me. Until he did I should have kept unwavering faith. Now I had the best place of any one in the room, and I smoothed my new plaid frock and shook my handmade curls just as near like Shelly as ever I could. But it seems that most of the ointment in this world has a fly in it, like in the Bible. For fine as my location was, I soon knew that I should ask Ladi to put me down, because the window behind me didn't fit its frame, and the night was bitter. Before half an hour I was stiff with cold, but I doubt if I would have given up that location if I had known I would freeze, because this was the most fun I had ever seen. Miss Amelia began with McGuffie's spelling book, and whenever some poor unfortunate made a bad break, the crowd roared with laughter. Peter Justus stood up to spell, and before three rounds he was nodding on his feet. So she pronounced sleepy to him. Someone nudged Pete, and he waked up and spelled it. S-L-E-S-L-E-P-E-P, and because he was really so sleepy it made everyone laugh. James Whitaker spelled compromise with a K, and Isaac Thomas spelled soap S-O-A-P-E, and it was all the funnier that he couldn't spell it, for from his looks you could tell that he had no acquaintance with it in any shape. Then Miss Amelia gave out marriage to the spooniest young man in the district, and stepfather to a man who was courting a widow with nine children, and coquette to our Shelley, who had been making sheep's eyes at Johnny Myers. So it took her by surprise, and she joined the majority, which by that time occupied seats. There was much laughing and clapping of hands for a time, but when Miss Amelia had let them have their fun and thin the lines to half a dozen on each side who could really spell, she began business, and pronounced the hardest word she could find in the book, and the spellers caught them up and rattled them off like machines. Incompatibility, she gave out, and before the sound of her voice died away, the princess was spelling I-N-N-C-O-M-C-M-N-C-M-P-A-T Pat, Incompat, I, Incompata, B-I-L, Bill, Incompatabil, I, Incompatibilla, T-Y-T, Incompatibility. Then Lattie spelled incomprehensibility, and they finished up the billities and the elities with a rush and changed MacGuffie's for Webster, with five on Lattie's side and three on the princess's, and when they quit with it the princess was alone, and Lattie and our little May facing her. From that on you could call it real spelling. They spelled from the grammars, hyperbole, synecdoche, and epizouis. They spelled from the physiology, chlorophyll, cossacks, ardenoid, and the names of the bones and nerves and all the hard words inside you. They tried the diseases and spelled jaundice, neurasthenia, and tongue-tide. They tried all the occupations and professions and went through the stores and spelled all sorts of hardware, china, and dry goods. Each side kept cheering its own and urging them to do their best, and every few minutes some man in the back of the house said something that was too funny. When Miss Amelia pronounced bombazine to Lattie, our side cried, careful, Lattie, careful, you are out of your element. And when she gave swivel tree to the princess, her side whispered, go easy, do you know what it is? Make her define it. They branched over the country. May met her Jonah on the mountains. Katahdin was too much for her, and Lattie and the princess were left to fight it out alone. I didn't think Lattie liked it. I'm sure he never expected it to turn out that way. He must have been certain he could beat her. For after he finished English there were two or three other languages he knew, and everyone in the district felt that he could win and expected him to do it. It was an awful place to put him in. I could see that. He stood a little more erect than usual, with his eyes toward the princess. And when his side kept crying, keep the prize, Lattie, hold up the glory of the district. He ground out the words as if he had a spite at them for not being so hard that he would have an excuse for going down. The princess was poised lightly on her feet, her thick curls just touching her shoulders, shining in the light, her eyes like stars, her perfect dark oval face flushed a rich red, and her deep bosom rising and falling with excitement. Many times in later years I have tried to remember when the princess was loveliest of all, and that night always stands first. I was thinking fast, Lattie was a big man, men were strong on purpose so they could bear things. He loved the princess so, and he didn't know whether she loved him or not. And every marriageable man in three counties was just aching for the chance to court her. And I didn't feel that he dared risk hurting her feelings. Lattie said to be the man who conquered the princess, and to whom she lifted her lips for a first kiss was worth life itself. I made up my mind that night that he knew just exactly what he was talking about. I thought so too. And I seemed to understand why Lattie, Lattie in his youth, strength, and manly beauty, Lattie who boasted that there was not a nerve in his body, trembled before the princess. It looked as if she had set herself against him and was working for the honors. And if she wanted them, I didn't feel that he should chance beating her. And then too it was beginning to be plain that it was none too sure he could. Lattie didn't seem to be the only one who had been well drilled in spelling. I held my jaws set a minute so that I could speak without Lattie knowing how I was shivering, and then I whispered. Except her eyes are softer, she looks just like a cardinal. Lattie nodded emphatically and moving a step nearer, laid his elbow across my knees. Heavens how they spelled! They finished all the words I ever heard and spelled like lightning through a lot of others, the meaning of which I couldn't imagine. Father never gave them out at home. They spelled Epiphany, Gabardine, Ictheology, Juga, Kaleidoscope, and Trubidor. Then Lattie spelled one word two different ways, and the princess went him one better for she spelled another three. They spelled from the Bible, Nebuchadnezzar, Potiphar, Peleg, Belchazar, Abimelech, and a host of others I never heard the minister preach about. Then they did the most dreadful thing of all. Broom, pronounced the teacher, and I began mentally, B-R-O-O-M, but Lattie spelled B-R-O-U-G-H-A-M, and I stared at him in a daze. A second later Miss Amelia gave out Beecham to the princess, and again I tried it, B-E-E-C-H, but the princess was spelling B-E-A-U-C-H-A-M-P, and I almost fell from the window. They kept that up until I was nearly crazy with nervousness. I forgot I was half frozen. I pulled Lattie's sleeve and whispered in his ear, Do you think she'll cry if you beat her? I was half crying myself. The strain had been awful. I was torn between these dearest loves of mine. Seeing me have any chance to beat her retorted Lattie. Miss Amelia seemed to have used most of her books, and at last picked up an old geography and began giving out points around the coast, while Lattie and the princess took turns snatching the words from her mouth and spelling them. Father often did that, so Lattie was safe there. They were just going it when Miss Amelia pronounced Tara del Fugo to the princess. T-E-R-R-A, Tara, D-E-L, del, F-I-E-U-G-O, spelled the princess, and sat down suddenly in the midst of a mighty groan from her side, swelled by a whale from one little home district deserter. Next, called Miss Amelia, T-E-R-R-A, Tara, D-E-L, del, F-E-U-G-O, spelled Lattie. Wrong, wailed Miss Amelia, and our side breathed one big groan in concert, and I lifted up my voice in that also. Then everyone laughed and pretended they didn't care, and the princess came over and shook hands with Lattie, and Lattie said to Miss Amelia, just let me take that book a minute until I see how the thing really does go. It was well done, and satisfied the crowd, which clapped and cheered. But as I had heard him spell it many, many times for father, he didn't fool me. Lattie and the princess drew slips for the book, and it fell to her. He was so pleased, he kissed me as he lifted me down, and never noticed I was so stiff I could scarcely stand, and I did fall twice going to the sleigh. My bed was warm, and my room was warm, but I chilled the night through, and until the next afternoon, when I grew so faint and sleepy, I crept to Miss Amelia's desk, half dead with fright. It was my first trip to ask an excuse, and bagged, oh teacher, I'm so sick, please let me go home. I think one glance must have satisfied her that it was true, for she said very kindly that I might, and she would send Liana along to take care of me. But my troubles were only half over when I had her consent. It was very probable I would be called a baby, and sent back when I reached home, so I refused company, and started alone. It seemed a mile past the cemetery. I was so tired I stopped, and leaning against the fence, peeped through at the white stones, and the whiter mounds they covered, and wondered how my mother would feel if she were compelled to lay me beside the two little whooping cough and fever sisters already sleeping there. I decided that it would be so very dreadful that the tears began to roll down my cheeks, and freeze before they fell. Down the big hill slowly I went. How bare it looked then, only leafless trees and dried seed pods rattling on the bushes, the sand frozen, and not a rush to be seen for the thick blanket of snow. A few rads above the bridge was a footpath, smooth and well worn, that led down to the creek, beaten by the feet of children who raced it every day, and took a running slide across the ice. I struck into the path as always, but I was too stiff to run, for I tried. I walked on the ice, and being almost worn out, sat on the bridge, and fell to watching the water bubbling under the glassy crust. I was so dull a horse's feet struck the bridge before I heard the bells, for I had bells in my ears that day, and when I looked up it was the princess, the princess in her red dress and furs, with a silk hood instead of her hat, her sleigh like a picture, with a buffalo robe, that it was whispered about the country, cost over a hundred dollars, and her thoroughbred mare mod, dancing and prancing. Bless me, is it you little sister? she asked. Shall I give you a ride home? Before I could scarcely realize she was there, I was beside her, and she was tucking the fine, warm robe over me. I lifted a pair of dull eyes to her face. Oh, princess, I am so glad you came, I said. I don't think I could have gone another step if I had frozen on the bridge. The princess bent to look in my face. Why, you poor child, she exclaimed, your whitest death, where are you ill? I leaned on her shoulder, though ordinarily I would not have offered to touch her first, and murmured, I am not ill outdoors, only dull, sleepy, and freezing with the cold. It was that window, she exclaimed, I thought of it, but I trusted laddie. That roused me a little. Oh, princess, I cried. You mustn't blame laddie, I knew it was too cold, but I wouldn't tell him, because if he put me down, I couldn't see you. And we thought, but for your eyes being softer, you looked just like a cardinal. The princess hugged me close, and laughed merrily. You darling, she cried. Then she shook me up sharply. Don't you dare go to sleep, she said. I must take you home first. Once there she quieted my mother's alarm, put me to bed, drove three miles for Dr. Fenner, and had me started nicely on the road to a month of lung fever before she left. In my delirium I spelled volumes, and the miracle of it was I never missed a word until I came to Terra del Fugo, and there I covered my lips and stoutly insisted that it was the princess's secret. To keep me from that danger sleep on the road, she shook me up and asked about the spelling bee. I thought it was the grandest thing I had ever seen in my life, and I told her so. She gathered me close, and whispered, Tell me something, little sister, please. The minx, she knew I thought that a far finer title than hers. Would Lattie care, I questioned. Not in the least. Well, then I will. Can Lattie spell Terra del Fugo, she whispered. I nodded. Are you sure? I have heard him do it over and over for father. The princess forgot I was so sick, forgot her horse, forgot everything. She threw her head back and her hands up, until her horse stopped and answered to the loosen line, and she laughed and laughed. She laughed until peel on peel re-echoed from our big woods clear across the West 80. She laughed until her ringing notes set my slow pulses on fire, and started my numbed brain in one last effort. I stood up and took her lovely face between my palms, turning it until I could see whether the thought that had come to me showed in her eyes, and it did. Oh, you darling, splendid princess, I cried. You missed it on purpose to let Lattie beat. You can spell it too. End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Part 1 of Lattie This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Bridget Gage. Lattie by Jean Stratton Porter. Chapter 12 Part 1 The Horn of the Hunter The dusky night rides down the sky, and ushers in the morn. The hounds all join in glorious cry. The huntsman wins his horn. Leanne said our house reminded him of the mourner's bench before anyone had come through. He said it was so deadly, with Sally and Shelley away, that he had a big notion to marry Susie Fall and bring her over to liven things up a little. Mother said she thought that would be a good idea, and Leanne started in the direction of Falls, but he only went as far as deems. When he came back, he had a great story to tell about dogs chasing their sheep, and foxes taking their geese. Father said sheep were only safe behind securely closed doors, especially in winter, and geese also. Leanne said everyone hadn't as big a barn as ours. And Father said there was nothing to prevent any man from building the sized barn he needed to shelter his creatures in safety and comfort, if he wanted to dig in and earn the money to put it up. There was no answer to that, and Mr. Leanne didn't try to make any. Mostly he said something to keep on talking, but sometimes he saw when he had better quit. I was having a good time myself. Of course, when the fever was the worst, and when I never had been sick before, it was pretty bad. But as soon as I could breathe all right, there was no pain to speak of, and everyone was so good to me. I could have Bobby on the footboard of my bed as long as I wanted him, and he would crow whenever I told him to. I kept Grace Greenwood beside me, and spoiled her dress making her take some of each dose of medicine I did. But Shelly wrote that she was saving goods, and she would make her another as soon as she came home. I made Mother put red flannel on Grace's chest and around her neck, until I could hardly find her mouth when she had to take her medicine. But she swallowed it down all right, or she got her nose held until she did. She was not nearly as sick as I was, though. We both grew better together. And when Dr. Fener brought me candy, she had her share. When I began to get well, it was lovely. Such toast, chicken broth, and squirrels, as Mother always had. I even got the chicken liver, oranges, and all of them gave me everything they had that I wanted. I must almost have died to make them act like that. Laddie and Father would take me wrapped up in blankets, and hold me to rest my back. Father would rock me, and sing about, young Johnny, just as he had when I was little. We always laughed at it. We knew it was a full song, but we liked it. The tune was smooth and sleepy-like, and the words went, One day young Johnny he did go, way down in the meadow, four to mow. The two didn't anecdee, two didn't anecdee noddy-o. He scarcely had mowed twice round the field, when a pesky serpent bit him on the heel. The two didn't anecdee, two didn't anecdee noddy-o. He threw the scythe upon the ground, and shut his eyes, and looked all around. The two didn't anecdee looked two didn't anecdee noddy-o. He took the serpent in his hand, and then ran home to Molly Bland. The two didn't anecdee, two didn't anecdee noddy-o. Oh, Molly dear, and don't you see, this pesky serpent that bit me. The two didn't anecdee, two didn't anecdee noddy-o. Oh, Johnny dear, why did you go, way down in the meadow, four to mow? The two didn't anecdee, two didn't anecdee noddy-o. Oh, Molly dear, I thought you nod, twas daddy's grass, and it must be mowed. The two didn't anecdee, two didn't anecdee noddy-o. Now all young men, a warning take, and don't get bit by a rattlesnake. The two didn't anecdee, two didn't anecdee noddy-o. All of them told me stories, read to me, and Frank, one of my big, gone-away brothers, sent me the prettiest little book. It had a green cover, with gold on the back, and it was full of stories and poems, not so very hard, because I could read every one of them, with help on a few words. The piece I liked best was poetry. If it hadn't been for that, I'm afraid, I was having such a good time, I'd have lain there, until I forgot how to walk, with all of them trying to see who could be nicest to me. The ones who really could were Laddie and the Princess, except Mother. Laddie lifted me most carefully. The Princess told the best stories. But after all, if the burning and choking grew so bad, I could scarcely stand it. Mother could lay her hand on my head, and say, poor child, in a way that made me work to keep on breathing. Maybe I only thought I loved Laddie best. I guess if I had been forced to take my choice when I had the fever, I'd have stuck pretty tight to Mother. Even Dr. Fenner said, if I pulled through, she'd have to make me. I might have been lying there yet, if it hadn't been for the book Frank sent me, with the poetry piece in it. It began. Somewhere on a sunny bank, butter cups are bright. Somewhere mid the frozen grass, peeps the daisy white. I read that so often, I could repeat it quite as well with the book shot as open. And every time I read it, I wanted outdoors worse. In one place, it ran. Welcome, yellow butter cups, welcome daisies white. Ye are in my spirit, vision day delight. Coming in the springtime of sunny hours to tell, speaking to our hearts of him who doeth all things well. That piece helped me out of bed, and the blue gander screaming opened the door. It was funny about it, too. I don't know why it worked on me that way. It just kept singing in my heart all day, and I could shut my eyes and go to sleep seeing butter cups in a gold sheet all over our big hill, although there never was a single one there. And meadows full of daisies, which were things father said were a pest, he couldn't tolerate because they spread so, and he grubbed up every one he found. Yet that piece filled our meadow until I imagined I could roll on daisies. They might be a pest of farmers, but sheets of them were pretty good if you were burning with fever. Between the butter cups and the daisies, I left the bed with a light head and wobbly legs. Of course I wasn't an idiot. I knew when I looked from our south window exactly what was to be seen. The person who wrote that piece was the idiot. It sang and sounded pretty, and it pulled you up and pushed you out, but really it was a full thing, as I very well knew. I couldn't imagine daisies peeping through frozen grass. Any baby should have known they bloomed in July. Skunk cabbage always came first, and hepatica. If I had looked from any of our windows and seen daisies and butter cups in March, I'd have fallen over with the shock. I knew there would be frozen brown earth, last year's dead leaves, caved in apple and potato holes. The capitro almost gone, puddles of water and mud everywhere, and I would hear geese scream and hen sing. And yet that poem kept polling and polling, and I was happy as a queen. I wondered if they were for sure. Mother had doubts. The day I was wrapped in shells and might sit an hour in the sun on the top board of the back fence, where I could see the barn, the orchard, the creek, and the meadow, as you never could in summer because of the leaves. I wasn't looking for butter cups and daisies either. I mighty well knew there wouldn't be any. But the sun was there. A little taste of willow, oak, and maple was in the air. You could see the buds growing fat too, and you could smell them. If you opened your eyes and looked in any direction, you could see blue sky, big ragged white clouds, bare trees, muddy earth with grassy patches, and white spots on the shady sides where unmelted snow made the icy feel in the air, even when the sun shone. You couldn't hear yourself think for the clatter of the turkeys, ganders, roosters, hens, and everything that had a voice. I was so crazy with it I could scarcely hang to the fence. I wanted to get down and scrape my wings like the gobbler, and scream louder than the gander, and crow oftener than the rooster. There was everything all mud and ice. They would have frozen if they hadn't been put in a house at night, and starved if they hadn't been fed. They were not at the place where they could hunt and scratch, and not pay any attention to feeding time, because of being so bursting full. They had no nests and babies to rejoice over. But there they were, and so was I. Butter cups and daisies be hanged. Ice and mud really. But if you breathed that air and shut your eyes, north you could see blue flags, scarlet lilies, buttercups, cattails, and redbirds selling over them. East there would be apple bloom and soft grass, cow slips and bubbling water, robins, thrushes, and bluebirds, and south waving corn with wild rows and alder borders, and sparrows, and larks on every fence-rider. Right there I got that daisy thing figured out. It wasn't that there were, or ever would be, daisies and buttercups among the frozen grass. But it was forever and always that when this feel came into the air you knew they were coming. That was what ailed the gander and the gobbler. They hadn't a thing to be thankful for yet, but something inside them was swelling and pushing because of what was coming. I felt exactly as they did, because I wanted to act the same way. But I'd been sick enough to know that I'd better be thankful for the chance to sit on the fence and think about buttercups and daisies. Really, one old brown and purple skunk cabbage with a half-frozen bee buzzing over it, or a few four-lorn little spring beauties, would have set me wild. And when a lark really did go over, away up high, and a dove began to coo in the orchard, if Lattie hadn't come for me I would have fallen from the fence. I simply had to get well, and quickly too, for the wonderful time was beginning. It was all very well to lie in bed when there was nothing else to do, and everyone would pet me and give me things. But here was maple syrup-time right at the door, and the sugar camp most fun alive. Here was all the neighborhood crazy mad at the foxes, and planning a great chase covering a circuit of miles before the ground thawed. Here was Easter, and all the children coming, except Shelly. Again, it would cost too much for only one day. And with everything beginning to hum, I found out there would be more amusement outdoors than inside. That was how I came to study out the daisy-piece. There was nothing in the silly untrue lines. The pole and tug was in what they made you think of. I was still so weak I had to take a nap every day, so I wasn't sleepy as early at night. And I heard father and mother talk over a lot of things before they went to bed. After they mentioned it, I remembered that we hadn't received nearly so many letters from Shelly lately, and mother seldom found time to read them aloud during the day, and forgot, or her eyes were tired at night. Are you worrying about Shelly, asked father one night? Yes, I am, answered mother. What do you think is the trouble? I'm afraid things are not coming out with Mr. Padgett as she hoped. If they don't, she is going to be unhappy. That's putting it mildly. Well, I was doubtful in the beginning. Now, hold on, said mother. So was I, but what are you going to do? I can't go through the world with my girls and meet men for them. I trained them just as carefully as possible before I started them out. That was all I could do. Shelly knows when a man appears clean, decent, and likable. She knows when his calling is respectable. She knows when his speech is proper, his manner's correct, and his way's attractive. She found this man all of these things, and she liked him accordingly. At Christmas she told me about it freely. Have you any idea how far the thing has gone? She said then that she had seen him twice a week for two months. He seemed very fond of her. He had told her he cared more for her than any girl he ever had met, and he had asked her to come here this summer and pay us a visit, so she wanted to know if he might. Of course you told her yes. Certainly I told her yes. I wish now we'd saved money and you'd gone to visit her and met him when she first wrote of him. You could have found out who and what he was, and with your experience you might have planted out signs that would have helped her to see before it was too late. What do you think is the trouble? I wish I knew. She simply is failing to mention him in her letters. All the joy of living has dropped from them. She merely writes about her work, and now she is beginning to complain of homesickness, and to say that she doesn't know how to endure the city any longer. There's something wrong. Had I better go? Too late, said Mother, and I could hear her throat go wrong, and the choke come into her voice. She is deeply in love with him. He hasn't found in her what he desires. Probably he is not coming any more. What could you do? I could go and see if there's anything I could do. She may not want you. I'll write her to-morrow, and suggest that you or Letty pay her a visit, and learn what she thinks. All right, said Father. He kissed her and went to sleep. But Mother was awake yet, and she got up, and stood looking down at the church, and the two little white gravestones she could see from her window, until I thought she would freeze. And she did, nearly, for her hands were cold, and the tears falling when she examined my covers, and felt my face in hands before she went to bed. My, but the Mother of a family like ours is never short of a lot of things to think of. I had a new one myself. Now what do you suppose there was about that man? Of course, after having lived all her life with Father and Letty, Shelly would know how a man should look, and act to be right. And this one must have been right to make her bloom out in winter, the way other things do in spring. And now what could be wrong? Maybe city girls were prettier than Shelly. But all women were made alike on the outside, and that was as far as you could see. You couldn't find out whether they had pure blood, true hearts, or clean souls. No girl could be so very much prettier than Shelly. They simply were not made that way. She knew how to behave. She had it beaten into her, like all of us. And she knew her books, what our schools could teach her, and Groveville, and Lucy, who had city chances for years. And there never was a day at our house when books and papers were not read and discussed, and your spelling was hammered into you standing in rows against the wall, and memory tests. What on earth could be the matter with Shelly, that a man who could make her look and act as she did at Christmas, would now make her unhappy? Sometimes I wanted to be grown up dreadfully, and again, times like that, I wished my bed could stay in mother's room, and I could creep behind father's paper, and go to sleep between his coat and vest, and have him warm my feet in his hands forever. This world was too much for me. I never worked and worried in all my life as I had over Lattie and the Princess. And Lattie said I, myself, never would know how I had helped him. Of course nothing was settled. He had to try to make her love him by teaching her how lovable he was. We knew because we always had known him, but she was a stranger and had to learn. It was mighty fine for him that he could force his way past the dogs, Thomas, the other men, her half-crazy father, and through the locked door, and go there to try to make her see, on Sunday nights, and weekdays, every single chance he could invent. And he could think up more reasons for going to priors than mother could for putting out an extra wash. Now just as I got settled a little about him, and we could see they really wanted him there, at least the Princess and her mother did. And Mr. Pryor must have been fairly decent, or Lattie never would have gone. And the Princess came to our house to bring me things to eat, and ask how mother was, and once to learn how she embroidered Sally's wedding chemise, and social things like that. And when father acted as if he liked her so much he had an a word to say, and mother seemed to begin to feel, as if Lattie and the Princess could be trusted to fix it up about God, and the old mystery didn't matter after all. Why, here Shelly popped up with another mystery, and it belonged to us. But whatever ailed that man I couldn't possibly think. It had got to be him, for Shelly was so all right at Christmas, it made her look that pretty we hardly knew her. I was thinking about her until I scarcely could study my lessons, so I could recite to Lattie at night, and not fall so far behind at school. Miss Amelia offered to hear me, but I just begged Lattie, and father could see that he taught me fifty things in a lesson, that you could tell to look at Miss Amelia she never knew. Why, he couldn't hear me read. We charged upon a flock of geese, and put them all to flight, except one sturdy gander, that thought to show us fight. Without teaching me that the oldest picture in all the world was made of a row of geese, some of which were kinds we had then. The earth didn't seem so old when you thought of that, and how a flock of geese once wakened an army, and saved a city, and how far wild geese could fly without a lighting and migration, and everything you could think of about geese. Only he didn't know why eating the same grass made feathers on geese and wool on sheep. Anyway, Miss Amelia never told you a word, but what was in the book, and how to read and spell it. May said that father was very much disappointed in her, and he was never going to hire another teacher until he met and talked with her, no matter what kind of letters she could send. He was not going to help her get a summer school. And oh, my soul, I hope no one does, for if they do I have to go, and I'd rather die than to go to school in the summer. Leon came in about that time with more fox stories. Ben and Jacob Hood's chicken house and taken his best dorking rooster, and father said it was time to do something. He never said a word so long as they took deems, except they should have barn room for their geese. But when anything was the matter at Hood's, father and mother started doing something the instant they heard of it. So father and laddie rode around the neighborhood and talked it over. And the next night they had a meeting at our school house. Men for miles came, and they planned a regular old-fashioned fox chase, and everyone was wild about it. Laddie told it at priors, and the princess wanted to go. She asked to go with him. And if you please, Mr. Pryor wanted to go too, and their Thomas. They attended the meeting to tell how people chase foxes in England, where they seem to hunt them most of the time. Father said, Thank God for even a fox chase, if it will bring Mr. Pryor among his neighbors, and help him to act sensibly. They are going away fifteen miles or farther, and form a big circle of men from all directions, some walking in a line, and others riding to bring back any foxes that escape. And with dogs and guns, they are going to route out every one they can find, and kill them so they won't take the geese, little pigs, lambs, and hoods dorking rooster. Laddie had a horn that Mr. Pryor gave him, when he told him this country was showing signs of becoming civilized at last. But Leon grinned, and said he'd beat that. Then when you wanted him, he was in the woodhouse, loft at work. But Father said he couldn't get into mischief there. He should have seen that turn when it was full of wedding breakfast. We ate for a week afterward, until things were all molded, and we didn't dare any more. One night I begged so hard, and promised so faithfully he trusted me. He often did, after I didn't tell about the station. And I went to the loft with him, and watched him work an hour. He had a hollow limb, about six inches through, and fourteen long. He had cut and burned it to a mere shell, and then he had scraped it with glass, inside and out, until it shone like polished horn. He had shaved the wool from a piece of sheepskin, soaked, stretched, and dried it, and then fitted it over one end of the drum-like thing he had made, and tacked and bound it in a little groove at the edge. He put the skin on damp, so he could stretch it tight. Then he punched a tiny hole in the middle, and pulled through it. Down inside the drum, a sheepskin thong rolled in resin, with a knot big enough to hold it, and not tear the head. Then he took it under his arm, and we slipped across the orchard below the station, and went into the hollow and tried it. It worked. I almost fell dead with the first frightful sound. It just bellowed and roared, and only a little while he found different ways to make it sound by the manner of working the tongue. A long, steady, even pull got that kind of a roar. A short, quick one made it bark. A pull half the length of the thong, a pause and another pull, made it sound like a bark and a yelp. To pull hard and quick made it go louder, and soft and easy made it whine. Before he had tried it ten minutes he could do fifty things with it that would almost scare the livers out of those nasty old foxes that were taking everyone's geese, dorking roosters, and even baby lambs and pigs. Of course people couldn't stand that, something had to be done. Even in the Bible it says, beware of the little foxes that spoil the vines. And geese, especially blue ones, dorking roosters, lambs and pigs, were much more valuable than mere vines. So Leon made that awful thing to scare the foxes from their holes, that's in the Bible too, about the holes I mean, not the scaring. I wanted Leon to slip in the back door and to make the dumbbell. That's what he called it. If I had been naming it I would have called it the Thunderbell. Go, but he wouldn't. He said he didn't propose to work as he had, and then have someone find out and fix one like it. He said he wouldn't let it make a sound until the night before the chase, and then he'd raise the dead. I don't know about the dead, but it was true of the living. Father went a foot above his chair and cried, Whoopee! All of us, even I, when I was waiting for it, screamed as if Patty Ryan raved at the door. Then Leon came in and showed us, and everyone wanted to work the dumbbell, even mother. Leon marched around and showed off. He looked, see the conquering hero comes, all over. I never felt worse about being made into a girl than I did that night. I couldn't sleep for excitement, and mother said I might as well, for it would be at least one o'clock before they would round up in our meadow below the barn. All the neighbors were to shut up their stock, tie their dogs, or lead them with chains if they took them, so when the foxes were surrounded they could catch them alive and save their skins. I wondered how some of those chasing people, even Lattie, Leon, and Father, think of that Father was going to. I wondered how they would have liked to have had something as much bigger than they were, as they were bigger than the foxes, chase them with awful noises, guns and dogs, and catch them alive to save their skins. No wonder I couldn't sleep. I guess the foxes wouldn't either, if they had known what was coming. Maybe hereafter the mean old things would eat rabbits and weasels, and leave the dorking roosters alone. May, Candice, and Miss Amelia were going to Deems to wait, and when the roundup formed a solid line they planned to stand outside and see the sport. If they had been the foxes, maybe they wouldn't have thought it was so funny. But of course, people just couldn't have even their pigs and lambs taken. We had to have wool to spin yarn for our stockings, weave our blankets and cover lids, and our Sunday winter dresses of white flannel with narrow black crossbars were from the backs of our own sheep, and we had to have ham to fry with eggs, and boil for Sunday night suppers, and bake and to cook the greens with. Of course it was all right. Before it was near daylight I heard Laddie making the kitchen fire, so father got right up. Leon came down, and all of them went to the barn to do the feeding. I wanted to get up too, but mother said I should stay in bed until the house was warm, because if I took more cold I'd be sick again. At breakfast May asked father about when they should start for the deems to be ahead of the chase, and he said by ten o'clock at least, because a fox driven mad by pursuit, dogs, and noise was a very dangerous thing, and a bite might make high the same thing as a mad dog. He said our back barn door opening from the threshing floor would afford a fine view of the meat, but Candice May and Miss Amelia wanted to be closer. I might go with them if they would take good care of me, and they promised to, but when the time came to start there was such a queer feeling inside me. I thought maybe it was more fever, and with mother would be the best place for me, so I said I wanted to watch from the barn. Father thought that was a capital idea, because I would be on the east side, where there would be no sun and wind, and it would be perfectly safe. Also I really could see what was going on better from that height than on the ground. The sun was going to shine, but it hadn't peeped above Deem's straw stack when Father on his best saddle horse, and Laddie on Floss, rode away, their eyes shining, their faces red, their blood pounding, so it made their voices sound excited and different. Leon was to go on foot. Father said he would ride a horse to death. He just grinned, and never made a word of complaint. Seemed funny for him. I was over having a little confidential chat with my horse last night, he said, and next year we'll be in the chase, and we'll show you how to take fences and cut curves. Just you wait. Leon, don't build so on that horse, wailed mother. I'm sure that money was stolen like ours, and the owner will claim it. I feel it in my bones. Ah shucks, said Leon, that money is mine. He won't either. When they started, Father took Leon behind him to ride as far as the county line. He said he would go slowly, and it wouldn't hurt the horse. But Leon slipped off at hoods, and said he'd go with their boys, so Father let him. Because light as Leon was, both of them were quite a load for one horse. Let he went to ride with the princess. We could see people moving around in prior sparnyard when our men started. Candice washed, Miss Amelia wiped the dishes, May swept, and all of them made the beds, and then they went to deems while I stayed with Mother. When she thought it was time, she bundled me up warmly, and I went to the barn. Father had the East door standing open for me, so I could sit in the sun, hang my feet against the warm boards, and see every inch of our meadow where the meat was to be. I was really too warm there, and had to take off the scarf, untie my hood, and unbutton my coat. It was a trifle muddy, but the frost had not left to the ground yet. The sparrows were singing fit to burst, so were the hens. I didn't care much for the music of the hen, but I could see she meant well. She liked her nest quite as much as the red velvet bird with black wings, or the bubbly yellow one, and as for baby chickens, from the first peep they beat a little naked blind wobbly tree bird. So any hen had a right to sing for joy because she was going to be the mother of a large family of them. A hen had something to sing about all right, and so had we, when we thought of poached eggs and fried chicken. When I remembered them, I saw that it was no wonder the useful hen warbled so proudly, but that was all nonsense, for I don't suppose a hen ever tasted poached eggs, and surely she wouldn't be happy over the prospect of being fried. Maybe one reason she sang was because she didn't know what was coming. I hardly think she'd be so tuneful if she did. Sometimes the geese, shut in the barn, raised an awful clatter, and the horses and cattle complained about being kept from the sunshine and fresh air. You couldn't blame them. It was a lovely day, and the big upper door the pleasantest place. I didn't care if the fox hunters never came. There was so much to see, hear, and smell. Everything was busy making signs of spring, and one could become tired of ice and snow after a while, and so hungry for summer, that those first days, which were just hints of what was coming, were almost better than the real thing when it arrived. Bud perfume was stronger than last week. Many doves and bluebirds were calling. And three days more of such sunshine would make cross-country riding too muddy to be pleasant. I sat there thinking. Grown people never know how much children do think. They have so much time, and so many bothersome things to study out. I heard it behind me, a long wailing, bellowing roar, and my hood raised right up with my hair. I was in the middle of the threshing floor in a second, in another at the little west door, cut into the big one, opening it a tiny crack to take a peep and see how close they were. I could see nothing, but I heard a roar of dreadful sound steadily closing in a circle around me. No doubt the mean old foxes wished then they had let the dorking roosters alone. Closer it came and more dreadful. Never again did I want to hear such sounds coming at me, even when I knew what was making them. And then, a way off, beyond priors and hoods and dovers. I could see a line of tiny specks coming toward me and racing flying things that must have been people on horses riding back and forth to give the foxes no chance to find a hiding place. No chance. Ladding in the princess, Mr. Pryor and father, and all of them were after the bad old foxes, and they were going to get them, because they'd have no chance, not with a solid line of men with raving dogs surrounding them, and people on horseback racing after them. No. The foxes would wish now that they had left the pigs and lambs alone. In that awful roaring din they would wish, oh how they would wish, they were birds and could fly, fly back to their holes like the Bible said they had, where maybe they liked to live, and no doubt they had little foxes there that would starve when their mammies were caught alive to save their skins. To save their skins I could hear myself breathe and feel my teeth click and my knees knock together. And then, oh dear, there they came across our cornfield, two of them, and they could fly almost, at least you could scarcely see that they touched the ground. The mean old things were paying up for the pigs and lambs now. Through the back fence across the road, straight toward me they came, almost red backs, nearly white beneath, long flying tails, beautiful pointed ears, and long tongues, fire red, hanging from their open mouths, their sleek sides pulsing, and the awful din coming through the woods behind them. One second, the first pause to glance toward either side, and through back its head to listen. What it saw and heard showed it. I guess then it was Saria ever took people's ham and their greens, and their blankets, and it could see and hear that I had no chance to save its skin. Oh Lord, dear Lord, help me, I prayed. It had to be me, there was no one else. I never had opened the big doors. I thought it took a man, but when I pushed with all my might, and maybe if the hairs of our heads were numbered, and the sparrows counted, there would be a little mercy for the foxes. I asked for help. Maybe I got it. The doors went back, and I climbed up the ladder to the haymow a few steps and clung there, praying with all my might. Make them come in, dear Lord, make them come in. Give them a chance. Help them to save their skins, oh Lord. With a whiz and a flash one went past me, skimmed the cider-press and rushed across the hay, then the other. I fell to the floor, and the next thing I knew the doors were shut and I was back at my place. I just went down in a heap and leaned against the wall and shook, and then I laughed and said, Thank you for helping with the door. And the foxes, the beautiful little red and white foxes, they've got their chance. They'll save their skins. They'll get back to their holes and their babies. Praise the Lord. I knew when I heard that come out that it was exactly like my father said it when Amos Herd was redeemed. I never knew Father to say it so impressively before, because Amos had been so bad, people really were afraid of him. And Father said if once he got started right, he would go at it just as hard as he had gone at wrongdoing. I suppose I shouldn't have said it about a fox, when there were the dorkings and ham and white wool dresses and all that. But honestly, I couldn't remember that I cared particularly whether Amos Herd was redeemed or not. He was always lovely to children. While I never in all my life had wanted anything worse than I wanted those foxes to save their skins, I could hear them pant like run-out dogs, and I could hear myself, and I hadn't been driven from my home and babies maybe, and chased miles and miles, either. End of Chapter 12 Part 1 Chapter 12 Part 2 of Laddie. This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Bridget Gage. Laddie, by Gene Stratton Porter. Chapter 12 Part 2 The Horn of the Hunter Then I just shook. They came pounding, roaring, and braying right around the barn and down the lane. The little door flew open, and a strange man stuck in his head. Shut that door, I screamed. You'll let them in on me, and they bite. They're poison. They'll kill me. I hadn't even thought of it before. See any foxes? cried the man. Two cross-star barnyard headed that way. I cried back, pointing east. Shut the door. The man closed it, and ran calling as he went. It's all right. They crossed the barnyard. We've got them. I began to dance and beat my hands, and then I stopped and held my breath. They were passing, and the noise was dreadful. They struck the sides of the barn, poked around the straw stack, and something made me look up, and at the edge of the hay stood a fox ready to spring. If it did, it would go from the door, right into the midst thereof. Nothing but my red hood selling straight at it, and a yell I have drove it back. No one hit the barn again. The line closed up, and went on at a run now. They were so anxious to meet, and see what they had. Then came the beat of hoofs, and I saw that all the writers had dropped back, and were behind the line of people on foot. I watched Laddie as he flew past, waving to me, and I grabbed my scarf to wave at him. The princess flashed by so swiftly. I couldn't see how she looked. And then I heard a voice, I knew, cry. Ep, ep, over, Ladd. And I almost fell dead where I stood. Mr. Pryor sailed right over the barnyard fence into the cornfield, ripping that dumbbell as he went, and neck and neck, even with him, on one of his finest horses, was our Leon. His feet were in the stirrups. He had the reins tight. He almost stood as he arose. His face was crimson, his head bare, his white hair flying. The grandest sight you ever saw. At the top of my voice I screamed after them. Ep, ep, over, Ladd. And then remembered, and looked to see if I had to chase back the foxes. But they didn't mind only me, after what they had been through. Then I sat down suddenly again. Well, what would father think of that? Leon killed a horse of ours indeed. There he was on one of Mr. Pryor's, worth as much as six of father's, no doubt. Flying over fences, and the creek was coming, and the bank was steep behind the barn. I was up again, straining to see. Ep, ep, over, rang the cry. There they went, laddie and the princess, too. I'll never spend another cent on paper dolls, candy, raisins, or oranges. I'll give all I have to help Leon buy his horse. Then I'm going to begin saving for mine. The line closed up. A solid wall of men with sticks, clubs, and guns. The dogs ranged outside, and those on horseback stopped where they could see best, and inside raced back and forth, and round and round living creatures. I couldn't count they moved so, but even at that distance I could see that some were poor little cottontails. The scared things. A whack over the head, a backward toss, and the dogs were mouthing them. The long-tailed, sleek, gracefully moving ones. They were foxes, the foxes driven from their holes, and nothing on earth could save their skins for them now. Those men meant to have them. I pulled the doors shut suddenly. I was so sick I could scarcely stand. I had to work, but at last I pushed the west doors open again. I don't think the Lord helped me any that time, for I knew what it took, before they just went. Or maybe he did help me quite as much, but I had harder work to do my share, because I felt so dizzy and ill. Anyway, they opened. Then I climbed the upright ladder to the top beam, walked it to the granary, and there I danced, pounded, and yelled, so that the foxes jumped from the hay, leaped lightly to the threshing floor, and stood looking and listening. I gave them time to hear where the dreadful racket was, and then I jumped to the hay, and threw the pitchfork at them. It came down smash, and both of them sprang from the door. When I got down the ladder, and where I could see, they were so rested, they were hiking across the cornfield, like they never had raced a step before. And as the clamor went up behind me, that probably meant the first fox had lost its beautiful red and white skin. They reached our woods in safety. The doors went shut easier, and I started to the house, crying like any blubbering baby. But when mother turned from the east window, and I noticed her face, I forgot the foxes. You saw Leon, I cried. That I did, she exalted, rocking on her toes, the same as she does at the meeting-house, when she is going to cry, glory any minute. That I did, ah, the brave little chap, ah, the fine fellow. Her cheeks were the loveliest pink, and her eyes blazed. I scarcely knew her. What will father say? If his father isn't every particle as proud of him as I am this day, I have a big disappointment coming, she answered. If Mr. Pryor chose to let him take that fine horse, and taught him how to ride it, father should be glad. If he'd gone into the creek, you wouldn't feel so fine. Ah, but he didn't. He didn't. He stuck to the saddle, and sailed over in one grand, long sweep. It was fine. I hope, to my soul, I hope his father saw it. He did, I said, he did. He was about halfway down the lane. He was where he could see fine. You didn't notice. I was watching if Leon went under. What if he had mother? They'd have taken him out, and brought him to me, and I'd have worked with all the strength and skill God has given me. And if it were possible to us, he would be saved. And if it were not, it would be a proud moment for a woman to offer a boy like that to the God who gave him. One would have nothing to be ashamed of. Could you do it like you are now, and not cry, mother? I asked, wonderingly. Patience, no, said she. Before long he will find out, child, that the fountain-head of tears and laughter lies in the same spot, deep in a woman's heart. Men were made for big things. They must brave the wild animals, the Indians, fight the battles, ride the races, till the fields build the homes. In the making of a new country, men must have the thing in their souls that carried Leon across the creek. If he had checked that horse, and gone to the Ford, I would have fallen where I stood. Father crossed the Ford? True, but that's different. He never had a chance at a horse like that. He never had time for fancy practice, and his nose would have been between the pages of a book if he had. But remember this, your father's hand has never faltered, and his aim has never failed. All of us are here, safe and comfortable, through him. It was your father who led us across the wilderness, and fended us from the wild cat, wolf, and Indian. He built this house, cleared this land, and gave to all of us the thing we love. Get this in your head straight. Your father rode a plow horse. He never tried flourishes in riding. But no man can stick in the saddle longer, ride harder, and face any danger with calm or front. If you think this is anything, you should have seen his face the day he stood between me and a band of Indians. We had every reason to think. I had angered to the fighting point. Tell me, please tell me, I begged. All of us had been brought up on that story, but we were crazy to hear it, and Mother loved to tell it, so she dropped on a chair and began. We were alone in a cabin in the backwoods of Ohio. Elizabeth was only nine months old, and Father always said a might the prettiest of any baby we ever had. Many of the others have looked quite as well to me, but she was the first, and he was so proud of her, he always wanted me to wait in the wagon until he hitched the horses, so he would get to take and to carry her himself. Well, she was in the cradle, cooing and laughing, and I had my work all done, and cabin shining. I was heating a big poker, red hot, and burning holes into the four corners of a board, so Father could put legs in it to make me a bench. A greasy old squaw came to the door with her papoose on her back. She wanted to trade berries for bread. There were berries everywhere for the picking. I had more dried than I could use in two years. We planted only a little patch of wheat, and Father had to ride three days to carry to mill what he could take on a horse. I baked in an out-oven, and when it was done, a loaf of white bread was by far the most precious thing we had to eat. Sometimes I was caught and forced to let it go. Often I baked during the night, and hid the bread in the wheat at the barn. There was none in the cabin that day, and I said so. She didn't believe me. She set her papoose on the floor beside the fireplace, and went to the cupboard. There wasn't a crumb there, except cornbread, and she didn't want that. She said, brood, brood. She learned that from the Germans in the settlement. I shook my head. Then she pulled out a big steel hunting knife, such as the whites traded to the Indians, so they would have no trouble in scalping us neatly, and walked to the cradle. She took that knife loosely between her thumb and second finger, and holding it directly above my baby's face. She swung it lightly back and forth, and demanded, brood, brood. If the knife fell, it would go straight through my baby's head, and Elizabeth was reaching her little hands and laughing. There was only one thing to do, and I did it. I caught that red hot poker from the fire, and stuck it so close her baby's face that the papoose drew back and whimpered. I scarcely saw how she snatched it up and left. When your father came, I told him, and we didn't know what to do. We knew she would come back and bring her band. If we were not there, they would burn the cabin, ruin our crops, kill our stock, take everything we had. And we couldn't travel so far, or so fast, that on their ponies they couldn't overtake us. We endangered anyone with whom we sought refuge, so we gripped hands, knelt down, and told the Lord all about it. And we felt the answer was to stay. Father cleaned the gun, and hours and hours we waited. About ten o'clock the next day they came, forty braves in war-paint and feathers. I counted until I was too sick to see. Then I took the baby in my arms and climbed to the loft, with our big steel knife in one hand. If your father fell, I was to use it, first on Elizabeth, then on myself. The Indians stopped at the woodyard, and the chief of the band came to the door, alone. Your father met him with his gun in reach, and for a whole eternity they stood searching each other's eyes. I was at the trap door, where I could see both of them. To the depths of my soul I enjoyed seeing Leon take the fence and creak. But what was that child, to compare with the timber that stood your father like a stone wall, between me and forty half-naked, paint-be-smeared, maddened Indians? Don't let any showing the men of today can make set you to thinking that father isn't a king among men. Not once, but again and again in earlier days, he fended danger from me like that. I can shut my eyes and see his waving hair, his white brow, his steel blue eyes, his unfaltering hand. I don't remember that I had time or even thought to pray. I gripped the baby and the knife, and waited for the thing I must do if an arrow or a shot sailed past the chief and felled farther. They stood second after second, like two wooden men. And then slowly and deliberately the chief lighted his big pipe, drew a few puffs, and handed it to father. He sat down his gun, took the pipe, and quite as slowly and deliberately he looked at the waiting band, at the chief, and then raised it to his lips. White squab brave, heap much brave, said the chief. In the strength of the Lord, amen, said father. Then he reached his hand and the chief took it, so I came down the ladder and stood beside father, as the Indians began to file in the front door and out the back. As they passed, every man of them made the peace sign, and piled in a heap, venison, fish, and game, while each squaw played with the baby, and gave me a gift of beads, a metal trinket, or a blanket she had woven. After that they came often, and brought gifts, and if prowling gypsies were pilfering, I could look to see a big Indian loom up, and see himself at my fireside until any danger was passed. I really got so I liked, and depended on them, and father left me in their care when he went to the mill. And I was safe as with him. You have heard the story over and over, but today is the time to impress on you, that an exhibition like this is the various child's play, compared with what I have seen your father do repeatedly. But it was you that chief said was brave. Mother laughed. I had to be baby, she said. Mother had no choice. There's only one way to deal with an Indian. I had lived among them all my life, and I knew what must be done. I think both of you were brave, I said. You the bravest. Quite the contrary, laughed mother. I shall have to confess that what I did happened so quickly, I had no time to think. I only realized the coal-red iron was menacing the papoose, when it drew back and whimpered. Father had all night to face what was coming to him, and it was not one to one, but one to forty, with as many more squas, as good fighters as the braves, to back them up. It was a terror, but I have never been sorry we went through it together. I have rested so securely in your father ever since. And he is as safe in you, I insisted. As you will, said mother, this world must have her woman quite as much as her men. It is shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart business. The clamor in the meadow arose above our voices, and brought us back to the foxes. There goes another, I said, the tears beginning to roll again. It is heathenish business, said mother. I don't blame you. If people were not too shiftless to care for their stuff, the foxes wouldn't take their chickens and geese. They never get ours. Hoods aren't shiftless, I sobbed. There are always exceptions, said mother, and they are the exception in this case. The door flew open, and Leon ran in. He was white with excitement and trembling. Mother, come and see me take a fence on Pryor's rocket, he cried. Mother had him in her arms. You little whiff-it, she said. You little toe-haired whiff-it. Both of them were laughing and crying at the same time, and so was I. I saw you take one fence and the creek, why scope, she said, holding him tight and stroking his hair. That will do for today. Ride the horse home slowly, rub it down if they allow you, and be sure to remember your manners when you leave. To trust such a child as you with so valuable a horse, and for Mr. Pryor to personally ride with you and help you, I think that was a big thing for a man like him to do. But mother, he's been showing me for weeks, or I couldn't have done it today. It was our little secret to surprise you. When I get my horse, I'll be able to ride a little, as well as Mr. Lattie. Leon don't, said mother, gripping him tighter. You must bear in mind, word about that money may come any day. Ah, it won't either, said Leon, pulling away. And say, mother, that dumbbell was like country boys make in England. He helped me hunt the wood and showed me. And I couldn't ride and manage it, so he had it all day, and you should have heard him make it rip. Say, mother, take my word. He was some pumpkins in England. I bet he ordered the queen around when he was there. No doubt, laughed mother, kissing him and pushing him from the door. Some people are never satisfied. After that splendid riding and the perfect day, father, Leon, and Lattie came home blaming everyone, and finding fault, and trying to explain how it happened, that the people from the east side claimed two foxes, and there was only one left for the west side, when they had seen and knew they had driven three for miles. They said they lost them in our big woods. I didn't care one speck. I would as leaf wear a calico dress, and let the little foxes have their mammies to feed them. And I was willing to bet all my money, that we would have as much ham, and as many greens next summer as we ever had. And if the foxes took hoods dorkings again, let them build a coop with safe foundations. The way was to use stone and heap up dirt all around it in the fall, to be perfectly sure and make it warmer. We took care of our chickens because we had to have them, all the year we needed them, but most especially for Easter. Mother said that was ordained chicken time. Turkeys for Thanksgiving, sucking pigs for Christmas, chickens for Easter, goose she couldn't abide. She thought it was too strong. She said the egg was a symbol of life, of awakening, of birth, and the chickens came from the eggs, first ones about Easter, so that proved it was chicken time. I am going to quit praying about little things I can manage myself. Father said no prayer would bring an answer, unless you took hold and pulled with all your being for what you wanted. I had been intending for days to ask the Lord to help me find where Leon hid his Easter eggs. It had been a lot our house from the very first, that for the last month before Easter, aside from what Mother had to have for the house, all of us might gather every egg we could find and keep them until Easter. If we could locate the hiding place of anyone else, we might take all theirs. The day before Easter they were brought in, Mother put aside what she required, and the one who had the most got to sell all of them and take the money. Sometimes there were two wash tubs full, and what they brought was worth having for sure. So we watched all year for safe places, and when the time came, we almost ran after the hens with a basket. Because Lattie and Leon were bigger, they could outrun us, and lots of hens laid in the barn, so there the boys always had first chance. Often during the month we would find and take each other's eggs a dozen times. We divided them and hid part in different places, so that if either were found there would still be some left. Lattie had his in the hopper of the cider-press, right on the threshing floor, and as he was sure to get more than I had anyway, I usually put mine with his. May had hers some place, and where Leon had his, none of us could find or imagine. I almost lay awake of nights, trying to think, and every time I thought of a new place, the next day I would look, and they wouldn't be there. Three days before Easter, Mother began to cook and get the big dinner ready, and she ran short of eggs. She told me to go to the barn, and tell the boys that each of them must send her a dozen as quickly as they could. Of course that was fair, if she made both give up the same number, so I went to the barn. The lane was muddy, and as I had been sick I wore my rubbers that spring. I thought to keep out of the deep mud, where horses and cattle trampled. I'd go up the front embankment, and enter the little door. My feet made no sound, and it so happened that the door didn't either. And as I started to open it, I saw Leon disappearing down the stairway, with a big sack on his back. I thought it was corn for the horses and followed him. But he went to the cow's stable door, and started toward the lane, and then I thought it was for the pigs, so I called Laddie and told him about the eggs. He said he'd give me two dozen of his, and Leon could pay him back. We went together to get them, and there was only one there. Wasn't that exactly like Leon? Leave one for the nest egg? If he were dying, and saw a joke or a trick, he'd stop to play it before he finished, if he possibly could. If he had no time at all, then he'd go with his eyes twinkling, over the thoughts of the fun it would have been, if he possibly could have managed it. Of course, when we saw that one lonely egg in the cider-hopper, just exactly like the last rows of summer, left a pine on the stem, I thought of the sack Leon carried, and knew what had been in it. We hurried out and tried to find him. But he was swallowed up. You couldn't see him or hear a sound of him anywhere. Mother was as cross as she ever gets. Right there she made a new rule, and it was that two dozen eggs must be brought to the house each day, whether any were hidden or not. She had to stop baking until she got eggs. She said a few times she had used a goose egg encustered. I could fix that. I knew where one of our gray geese had a nest, and if she'd cook any goose egg, it would be a gray one. Of course I had sense enough not to take a blue one. So I slipped from the east door, crossed the yard and orchard corner, climbed the fence, and went down the lane. There was the creek up and tearing. It was half over the meadow, and the flood gate between the pasture and the lane rocked with the rush of water. Still I believed I could make it. So I got on the fence, and with my feet on the third rail, and holding by the top one, I walked sideways, and so going reached the flood gate. It was pretty wobbly, but I thought I could cross on the run. I knew I could if I dared jump at the other end. But there was water over the third rail, and that meant above my head. It was right at that time of spring when you felt so good you thought you could do most anything, except fly. I tried that once, so I went on. The air was cold for all the sun shone, the smell of catkin pollen, bursting buds, and the odor of earth steaming in the sun was in every breath. The blackbirds were calling, and the doves. The ganders looked longingly at the sky, and screamed a call to every passing wild flock. And Deems Rooster wanted to fight all creation, if you judged by the boasting he was doing from their barnyard gate. He made me think of eggs, so I set my jaws, looked straight ahead, and scooted across the flood gate to the post that held it and the rails of the meadow fence. I made it too, and then the fence was easy. Only I had to double quite short, because the water was over the third rail there. But at last it was all gone, and I went to the fence corner, and there was the goose on the nest, laying an egg. She had built on a little high place among puddles, wild rosebushes and thorns, and the old thing wouldn't get off. She just sat there and stuck out her head, and hissed and hissed. I never noticed before that geese were so big and so aggravating. I wasn't going to give up after that flood gate, so I hunted a big stick, set it against her wing, pushed her off, and grabbed three eggs and ran. When I got to the fence I wasn't a pickle for sure. I didn't know what in the world to do with the eggs. At last I unbuttoned my coat, put them in my apron pocket, gathered it up, and holding it between my teeth started back. I had to double more than ever on account of the eggs, and when I reached the flood gate it rocked like a branch in the wind. But I had to get back, so I rested and listened to the larks a while. That was a good plan. They were calling for mates, and what they said was so perfectly lovely you couldn't think of anything else, and the less you thought about how that gate rocked and how deep and swift the water ran, the better for you. At last one lark went almost from sight, and he rang, twisted and trilled his call, until my heart swelled so big it hurt. I crossed on the jump with no time to think at all. That was a fine plan, for I made it, but I hit the post so hard I broke the middle egg. I was going to throw it away, but there was so much starch in my apron it held like a dish, and it had been clean that morning. Now the eggs soiled it anyway, so I ran and got home all right. Mother was so pleased about the eggs she changed the apron and never said a word, except to brag on me. She said she couldn't keep house without me, and I guess that was a fact. I came in handy a lot of times. But at dinner, when she scolded the boys about the eggs, and told them I brought the goose eggs for her custard, else there would have been no pie. Father broke loose, and I thought he was going to whip me shore. He told Mother all about the water and the gate, and how I had to cross. And he said, It was a dispensation of providence that we didn't have a funeral instead of celebrating Easter. So I said, Well, if you think I came so near drowning myself, when you rejoice because Christ is risen from the dead, you can be glad I am too, and that will make it all the better. The boys laughed, but Father said it was no laughing matter. I think that speech saved me from going on the threshing floor, for he took me on his lap when I thought I'd have to go. And told me never, never to do anything like that again. And then he hugged me until I almost broke. Gracious, he should have seen us going to school some days. Why we even walked the top rail, when it was only the one above water, and we could cross the bridge if we wanted to. At least when Laddie or Miss Emilia was not around, we did. Leon was so bursting full, he scarcely could eat. And Laddie looked pretty glum, when he had to admit he had no eggs. So Leon had to hand over the whole two dozen. Leon didn't mind that, but said if he must, then all of us should stay in the dining room until he brought them, because of course he couldn't walk straight, and get them in broad daylight with us watching, and not show where they were. Father said that was fair, so Leon went out, and before so very long he came back with the eggs. I thought, until my skull almost cracked, about where he could have gone, and I was almost to the place where the thing seemed serious enough that I'd ask the Lord to help me find Laddie's eggs, when Mother sent me to the garret for red onion skins. She had an hour to rest, and she was going to spend it fixing decorations for our eggs. Of course there were always red and black aniline ones, and yellow and blue, but none of us ever liked them half so well as those Mother colored herself. She took the dark red skins, and cut boys, girls, dogs, cats, stars, flowers, butterflies, fish, and everything imaginable, and wet the skins a little, and laid them on very white eggs that had been soaked in elm water to cut the grease, and then wrapped light yellow skins over, and then darker ones, and at last layer after layer of cloth, and wet that, and roasted them an hour in hot ashes, and then let them cool and dry, before unwrapping. When she took them out, rubbed down a little grease, and polished them. There they were. They would have our names, flowers, birds, animals, all in pale yellow, deep rich brown, almost red, and perfectly beautiful colors, while you could hunt and hunt before you found everything on one egg, and sometimes the onion skin slipped, and made things of themselves that she never put on. I was coming from the bin with an apron full of skins, and I almost fell over. I couldn't breathe for a long time. I danced on my toes, and held my mouth to keep from screaming. On the garret floor before me lay a little piece of wet mud, and the faintest outline of a boot, a boot about Leon's size. That was all I needed to know. As soon as I could hold steady, I took the skins to mother, slipped back and hunted good, and of course I had to find them, grain sacks half full of them, carried in the front door in the evening, and up the front stairs, where no one went until bedtime, unless there were company. A way back under the eaves, across the joists, behind the old clothing waiting to be ripped, colored, and torn for carpet rags and rugs, Mr. Leon had almost every egg that had been laid on the place for a month. Now he'd see what he'd get for taking laddies. Then I stopped short. What I thought most made me sick, but I didn't propose to lie in bed again for a year at least, for it had its bad parts, as well as its good, so I went straight and whispered to laddie. He never looked pleased at all, so I knew I had been right. He kissed me, and thanked me, and then said slowly, It's mighty good of you, little sister, but you see it wouldn't be fair. He found mine himself, so he had a right to take them. But I don't dare touch his, when you tell me where they are. I never in a month of Sundays would have looked for them in the house. I was going to search the woodhouse and smokehouse this afternoon. I can't take them, but thank you just as much. Then I went to father, and he laughed. How he did laugh. Laddie is right, he said at last. He didn't find them, and he mustn't take them. But you may, they're yours. That front door scheme of Leon's was fairly well, but it wasn't quite good enough. If he'd cleaned his feet as he should, before he crossed Mother's Carpet and climbed the stairs, he'd have made it all right. His tracks betrayed him, as tracks do all of us, if we are careless enough to leave any. The eggs are yours, and tonight is the time to produce them. Where do you want to hide them? Well, of all things, and after I had stumbled on them without pestering the Lord either. Just as slick as anything. Mine, I never ever thought of it. But when I did think, I liked it. The more I thought, the funnier it grew. Under Mother's bed, I whispered. But I never can get them. They're in wheat sacks, and full so high, and they'll have to be handled like eggs. I'll do the carrying, laughed father. Come show me. So we took all those eggs, and put them under Mother's bed. Of course she and Candice saw us, but they didn't hunt eggs, and they'd never tell. If ever I thought I'd burst wide open. About dusk, I saw Leon coming from the barn, carrying his hat at his side. More eggs. So I ran like a streak, and locked the front door. And then slipped back in the dining-room, and almost screamed, when I could hear him trying it, and he couldn't get in. After a while he came in, fussed around, and finally went into the sitting-room, and the key turned, and he went upstairs. I knew I wouldn't dare look at him when he came down, so I got a reader, and began on a piece I just love. A nightingale made a mistake. She sang a few notes out of tune. Her heart was ready to break, and she hid away from the moon. When I did get a peep, gracious, but he was black. Maybe it wasn't going to be so much fun after all. But he had the money last year, and the year before. And if he'd cleaned his feet well, I was not hunting his eggs when I found them. His tracks betrayed him, as Father said. I was thankful supper was ready just then. And while it was going on, Mother said, As soon as you finish, I'll bring in your eggs. I want to wrap the ones to color tonight, and bury them in the fireplace, so they will color, dry, and be ready to open in the morning. No one said a word, but neither Laddie nor Leon looked very happy, and I took awful bites to keep my face straight. When all of us finished, May brought a lot from the brand-barrel in the smoke-house, but Laddie and Leon only sat there and looked silly. It really was funny. I must have more eggs than this, said Mother. Where are they to come from? Father nodded to me, and I said, from under your bed. Oh, it was you, and I never once caught you snooping, cried Leon. Easy, son, said Father, that will do. You lost through your own carelessness. You left wet mud on the garret floor, and she saw it when Mother sent her for the onion skins. You robbed Laddie of his last egg this morning. Be a good loser yourself. Well, anyway, you didn't get them, said Leon to Laddie, and she only found them by accident. Then we had a big time counting all those eggs, and such another heap as there was to sell, after Mother filled baskets to cook with in color. When the table was cleared, Laddie and Leon made tallow pencils from a candle, and wrote all sorts of things over eggs that had been prepared to color. Then Mother boiled them in copperous water and aniline, and all the dye she had, and the boys polished them, and they stood in shining black, red, blue, and yellow heaps. The onion ones would be done in the morning. Leon had a goose egg, and Mother let him keep it, so he wrote and wrote on it. Until Laddie said it would be all-writing and no color, and he boiled it in red, after Mother finished, and polished it himself. It came out real pretty with roses on it, and lots of words he wouldn't let any of us read. But of course it was for Susie Fall. Next morning he slipped it to her at church. When we got home all of us were there except Shelley, and we had a big dinner and a fine time, and Laddie stayed until after supper before he went to priors. How was he making it? asked Sally. You could see she was making it all right. She never looked lovelier, and Mother said Peter was letting her spend a way too much money on her clothes. She told him so, but Peter just laughed, and said business was good, and he could afford it, and she was a fine advertisement for his store when she was dressed well. All I know is, said Mother, that he goes there every whip-stitch, and the woman at least, seem glad to have him. He says Mr. Pryor treats him decently, and that is more than he does his own family and servants. He and the girl and her mother are divided about something. She treats her father respectfully, but she is in sympathy with Mother. Laddie can't find out what the trouble is. I don't think that he tries. Maybe he'd feel better not to know, said Peter. Possibly, said Mother. Nonsense, said Father. You two seem to be reconciled, said Elizabeth. That girl would reconcile a man to anything, said Father. Not to the loss of his soul, I hope, said Mother stiffly. Souls are not so easy to lose, said Father. Besides, I am counting on Laddie, saving hers.