Chapter II: Part 2

“Charlie and I didn’t mind being left alone at all. We thought it was great fun. For a while we played we were pioneers. Then Charlie got tired of that and wanted to play Indian, so we played Indian for a long time. But we had been out all day in the cold, and after a while we got sleepy and decided to go to bed. I went to the window to see if Belle and the boys were coming. There was a moon, and I could see the trees with their spouts and the buckets under them. I looked closely. At one of the buckets was a black shadow. I looked and looked at it and just then it moved a little.

“‘Charlie,’ I cried excitedly, ‘Brierly’s old black dog is out there drinking up our sap!’

“Charlie gave one hurried glance out the window, then he picked up a stick of firewood and opened the door.

“‘I bet I give that dog a good scare,’ he said, and rushed out the door and made straight for the black shadow. He raised the stick and brought it down ker-plunk on the back of what we thought was Brierly’s dog. But it wasn’t Brierly’s dog at all, nor anybody’s dog. It was a bear! I don’t know which was the most surprised, Charlie or the bear. Charlie darted back to the cabin, and when he reached the door he threw his stick with all his might and hit the bear on the nose. The nose is the bear’s tenderest point, you know. Charlie must have hurt him, for he gave a growl, backed away from the sap bucket, and scampered up the nearest tree. Maybe he meant to wait a while and come back for more sap, I don’t know. Anyway, up the tree he stayed while Charlie and I watched him through the window.

“‘If we could only keep him up the tree till the boys come home from Strangs’ one of them could get a gun and kill him,’ said Charlie, ‘and we’d get the money for his pelt.’

“‘Father says wolves won’t come near a fire,’ I remarked, and that gave Charlie an idea. He would build a fire and keep the bear treed until the boys came.

“At first I wouldn’t agree to help him. I was too afraid. But Charlie coaxed and threatened and was getting ready to do it himself. So I helped him carry out the first burning log from the fireplace in the cabin. After that my part was to watch the bear and warn Charlie if he moved while Charlie built up the fire. Once as the fire grew warmer and the smoke got thicker and thicker the bear snorted and moved to a limb higher up.

“Charlie kept a roaring fire going, and it wasn’t long until Belle and the boys came rushing up all out of breath from running. They were nearly scared to death because they had seen the smoke and thought the cabin was on fire.

“At first they wouldn’t believe we had a bear treed. Truman said, ‘Whoever heard of a bear climbing a tree like that?’ But Stanley said nobody knew what a bear might do, and Charlie said that there was the bear all right, they could see for themselves.

“Truman went home and got his gun and shot the bear. It turned out to be a young bear. Father sold the pelt and divided the money between Charlie and me.

“Now, let me see, what shall I tell you about tomorrow night? Oh, I know! I’ve thought of something, but I won’t tell. No, indeed, not a word till tomorrow night.”

THE NEW CHURCH ORGAN

Grandma had been to church Sunday morning and heard for the first time the wonderful new pipe organ, and in the evening she was talking about it—how beautiful the music was, how solemn, how sacred.

“And when I think,” she said, “of the opposition there was to the first little organ we had in our church and of the trouble we had getting it—well, well, times certainly have changed.

“It was like this. Some of our people were bitterly opposed to organ music in church and right up till the last minute did everything they could to keep us from getting an organ. This made it very hard to raise money for the organ, but after a long time we got enough—all but about forty dollars. It was decided to have a box social to raise this.

“At a box social each girl or woman took a box containing enough supper for two people. Then the boxes were auctioned off, and the men and boys bought them and ate supper with the girl whose box they got.

“Aggie and Belle trimmed their boxes with colored tissue paper and flowers and ribbon, but Mother just wrapped hers in plain white tissue paper and fastened a bunch of pinks out of the garden on top so Father would know it when it was put up to be sold. Father was going to buy Mother’s box, and I was going to eat with them. Charlie had money to buy a box for himself, and he said he meant to buy Aunt Livvy Orbison’s box because she always had so much to eat.

“Every one in the family was going, and there was a great rush and bustle to get ready. Mother cut Charlie’s hair and oiled it and curled mine. She scrubbed us till we shone, and at last, dressed in our best clothes, we started.

“Father and Mother and Belle and Aggie and I went in the surrey. All the boys walked over the hill, except Joe, who had gone to Clayville on business for Father that morning and was to stop at the church on his way home.

“It was a lovely warm evening, and there was a large crowd at the church when we got there, though it was early. The girls took their boxes in and then came right out again. Every one was having a splendid time, talking and laughing and visiting around.

“I was with Father. After a while I got tired hearing the men talk about the crops and the price of wool and the election, and I went to hunt Mother. I looked all around and I couldn’t find her. I thought maybe she had gone into the church, so I went in there to look for her, but there was no one in the church at all. The boxes had been piled on the pulpit and covered with a sheet so that no one could see them. Just as I was going out the door I noticed that the sheet was lying on the floor and the boxes were nowhere to be seen. I went on out and presently I found sister Belle. She was talking to John and Isabel Strang and Will Orbison.

“I tugged at Belle’s dress and pulled her to one side.

“‘What did they do with the boxes?’ I asked her.

“‘Why, they put them in the church, and after a while they will sell them,’ she said. ‘You run and find Mother now, like a good girl.’

“‘But the boxes aren’t on the pulpit,’ I whispered. ‘I was in the church hunting Mother, and the boxes are all gone and the sheet is lying on the floor.’

“Belle told the others, and they all went hurrying into the church, I following after. The boxes were gone, sure enough. The pulpit windows, which faced a strip of woods, were open. The boys said the boxes could have been taken out that way as the crowd was in front of the church. There was no place in the church to hide them. There was a loft, but it was entered through a hole in the ceiling and there was no ladder. Belle placed two chairs with their seats touching and covered them with the sheet so that no one could tell the boxes were not there.

“‘It looks as if some of the people who don’t want the organ have spoiled this box supper,’ said John Strang, ‘and they will keep us from having our organ for a while, too.’

“‘But that isn’t the worst of it,’ put in Isabel. ‘It’ll cause no end of trouble and hard feelings.’

“‘It may have been some of the boys who did it for a joke,’ said Belle. ‘Let us raise the money anyway and get ahead of them.’

“‘But how,’ Isabel asked anxiously, ‘with no boxes?’

“Then they thought out their plan. It was that John and Will were to go out and explain quietly to the boys in favor of the organ what had happened and get them to give the money they meant to spend on their boxes to John. Brother Joe had bought a new pair of shoes in town. They would put his shoe box up for sale just as if all the rest of the boxes were still under the sheet. Will was to bid against John and run the box up to the amount they had collected.

“Isabel stayed in the church to see that no one disturbed the sheet, and John and Will and Belle went outside to carry out their plan. I found Mother, and pretty soon we went into the church. The lamps had been lit, and I thought how nice it looked. The girls had come up the day before and swept the floor and dusted the benches and shined the tin reflectors on the lamps, and put great bunches of flowers and ferns over the doors and windows and covered the two big round stoves with boughs of evergreen. There was a short program first, and then Stanley, who was to auction off the boxes, stepped to the front of the pulpit and held up a plain white box tied with stout string.

“‘How much am I offered for this box?’ he said.

“The bidding started at twenty-five cents. At first there were lots of bids, but finally every one dropped out but John and Will. There wasn’t a sound in the church as the bidding went higher and higher—thirty dollars for that plain, white box, thirty-five dollars, forty dollars, forty-one dollars. Will stopped bidding and the box went to John for forty-one dollars.

“Some one called out, ‘Open the box!’ and that started things. ‘Open the box!’ they shouted. ‘Open it!’ ‘Let’s see what’s in it!’ ‘Open, open, open!’

“When they quieted down a little, Stanley explained about the boxes disappearing and everything. Then he untied the string, took the lid off the box, and held up a pair of men’s shoes number ten. Then that crowd went wild. They clapped and shouted and yelled. Stanley said he thought the boxes had been taken for a joke and suggested that they be returned.

“‘We have enough money for the organ,’ he said. ‘Now let us have our suppers and some fun.’

“One of the boys on the side opposing the organ got up and said that the boxes had been taken for a joke and would immediately be returned. And you couldn’t guess where those boxes were hidden! Right in the big round stoves there in the church! Of course everybody laughed again and laughed and laughed. Such a good-humored crowd you never saw.

“They handed out the boxes first to the people who had paid in their money, and sold the others. There weren’t enough boxes to go around, but each had plenty in it for three or four people. Every one divided, and there was not a person in the church who did not get something to eat. People who had been in favor of the organ ate out of the same boxes with those who had been against it and forgot that they had ever disagreed. And when the organ came and sister Aggie played it that first Sunday, why, it sounded sweeter to me than that beautiful big organ in your church did this morning.

“And now, ‘’night, ’night,’ everybody, and next time I think—yes. I’m pretty sure—next time we’ll have something about my school.”

SCHOOL DAYS

“All my brothers and sisters had liked to go to school,” Grandma began the next evening, “and in the sitting room, after supper, Father would hear their lessons while Mother knitted or sewed or darned. Father had read books and papers aloud to us as long as I could remember, and he always told us how important education was. So as soon as I got to be six years old I was anxious to start to school.

“I was small for my age, and as we lived two miles from the schoolhouse and the snow in winter was often two or three feet deep, Mother did not want me to go until I was seven or eight years old. She said she and Father could teach me at home for a couple of years yet, but I coaxed and coaxed to go. At last Mother said I could go as long as the weather was good.

“So on the very first day—it was along toward the last of October—I started down the road with a brand new primer under my arm and a lunch basket of my very own and shiny new shoes. Mother stood at the front gate to watch me out of sight and wave when I came to the turn in the road.

“Our schoolhouse wasn’t like yours. It was just a little frame building painted red. There were no globes or books or maps or pictures to make learning interesting. Just rough, scarred benches, a water bucket and a dipper on a shelf in one corner, and a big round stove in the center of the room, and of course the teacher’s desk and chair on the platform up in front.

“The teacher was usually a man, but that winter it was a woman—Miss Amma Morton. Miss Amma was a tall, bony woman with snapping, black eyes that saw everything, and thin gray hair combed straight back from her face. She wore a brown alpaca dress with a very full gathered skirt and black and white calico aprons and a little black shoulder shawl fastened with a gold brooch.

“She lived with a married sister who had a very large family. In those days all the stockings and socks were knitted at home, and Miss Amma did the knitting for her sister’s family. She did it in school. She would sit at the stove or at her desk and knit and knit on long gray stockings or on red mittens. She would knit all day while she heard our lessons. The only time she couldn’t knit was when she set our copies. We had no copy books, and the teacher had to write the copies out for us.

“I liked to go to school. It was fun to peep into my lunch basket at recess to see what Mother had put in and maybe slip out a piece of pie or cake to eat. I liked to make playhouses on the big flat rocks with Annie Brierly and the other little girls, and hunt soft, green moss to furnish them with, and smooth pebbles down at the run. I loved to learn my A B C’s and listen to the older children recite, and at noon and recess to play ‘Prisoners’ Base’ and ‘Copenhagen.’ But school wasn’t always so pleasant.

“One day not long after I started there was a heavy wind and rain storm. We couldn’t recite our lessons, the rain made so much noise on the roof. Through the windows we could see the trees swaying this way and that in the wind.

“At afternoon recess Annie and I ran out to see if our playhouses had been spoiled by the rain. When we came back the girls were standing around in little excited groups. They told us that the roof had blown off Bowser’s house—they lived about half a mile down the road—and that most of the boys had gone to see it.

“‘Did Charlie go?’ I asked eagerly.

“‘I reckon he did,’ one of the girls answered. ‘He was with the other boys and they went that way. I wouldn’t be in their boots for anything. They won’t be back before books, and Teacher’ll whip them if they’re late.’

“I drew Annie away. ‘I’m going after Charlie,’ I told her. ‘I’m going to take the short cut across the hill and catch up to him and bring him back.’

“Annie said she would go with me, and we started. The ground was wet and it was hard walking. We slipped at every step. After I thought about it a little, I was not at all sure that Charlie would thank me for coming. Maybe he’d sooner take a whipping than miss seeing a house without a roof. Boys are so different from girls that way.

“We got clear to Bowser’s without seeing a sign of a single boy, and the roof wasn’t off at all—just a little corner of it. Mr. Bowser was nailing it up as fast as ever he could. He said none of the boys had been there, so we started back.

“That was the longest walk I ever took. I thought we’d never get to the schoolhouse. My feet were wet and my legs ached and I was so tired I could hardly move. When we got to the top of the hill and looked down at the schoolhouse, there was no one in sight. Recess was over! We reached the door at last and stood trembling outside, afraid to open it and go in and afraid not to. Annie had been to school the winter before and was not so scared as I was. She took my hand reassuringly.

“‘Don’t let on you’re frightened,’ she whispered. ‘Maybe Miss Amma hasn’t missed us and we can slip into our seats without being seen.’

“Annie opened the door just as easy, and we slid in without a sound. But alas! alas! Miss Amma was hearing the advanced arithmetic class and she stood facing the door, so the second we stepped in she saw us.

“She stopped explaining a problem long enough to order Annie and me to stand in opposite corners up on the platform where everybody could see us.

“No one had had to stand in the corner since I had started to school, so instead of facing the corner as I should have done I stood with my face toward the school. I looked to see if Charlie was in his place. When he saw me looking at him, he began making motions. I thought he meant for me to stand tight in the corner, so I pushed as close as I could to the wall. All over the room pupils were smiling at me and pointing and shaking their heads. I wondered what they meant. I looked across at Annie. She was laughing and she made a motion, too. Then I thought of what she had said—not to let on I was frightened. Maybe I looked scared. I looked at Annie again. She stuck her head into the corner, looked at me, frowned, put her head in the corner again. What did she mean? It was too funny the way they were all acting. Then I laughed, too, right out loud, before I knew it. I laughed and laughed. I couldn’t stop.

“Teacher gave me a long, severe look.

“‘Turn around and face the corner, Sarah,’ she said, ‘and you may remain after school.’

“Then I knew what Charlie and Annie and the others had been trying to tell me. I stood there in the corner until the scholars had all gone home and Miss Amma had swept the floor and cleaned the blackboard and emptied the water bucket.

“Finally she called me, and I went over to her desk. When she asked me why I had run off at recess and then disturbed the whole school by laughing, I told her all about it, and she said she would forgive me that time and helped me on with my cape and hood.

“Charlie was waiting for me down the road a piece. He hadn’t even thought of going to see Bowser’s house, but had been down in the meadow watching the big boys dig out a woodchuck.

“And, now, an apple all around and good night.”

A BIRTHDAY PARTY

“Mm! Isn’t it beautiful?” exclaimed Grandma as she stood with Bobby and Alice and Pink admiring the table decorated for Pink’s birthday party. Everything was pink and white. The lovely white-frosted cake had pink candles in pink rose-holders—seven, one for each year and one to grow on. There were pink candies and pink flowers and pink caps for the little girls and boys to wear.

“‘And the ice cream is to be pink,’ Alice explained, ‘pink ice cream shaped like animals—dogs and bunnies and kittens.’

“My, but isn’t that fine!” said Grandma. “Now my first party wasn’t a bit like this. Maybe tonight if you are not too tired I’ll tell you about my party.”

And that night after they had told Grandma about Pink’s party she told them about hers.

“We didn’t have many parties when I was little,” Grandma began, “and we never had regular little girls’ parties. Everyone, big and little, came, and they were generally surprise parties and the guests would bring the refreshments with them. One evening going home from school, the girls were wishing that some one would get up a surprise party, when suddenly Annie Brierly said, ‘Why don’t we get up a party for Sarah, girls? Friday is her birthday. Do you think your Mother would care, Sarah?’

“‘We’d both help her,’ Callie Orbison put in before I could answer. ‘You don’t need to do much getting ready for a surprise party. We could have it Friday night, and Saturday we’d both come over and help clean up the house.’

“‘Not a soul but Callie and me would know you knew anything about it,’ urged Annie, ‘and we could have just loads of fun.’

“I promised to think about it, and the more I thought about it the better I liked the idea of having a party of my very own. It didn’t take much persuasion the next day to make me consent. Annie and Callie were delighted and immediately fell to making plans, but they agreed that nothing should be said to Mother until Thursday evening, the date set for the party being Friday night.

“The days that followed were full of mingled pleasure and pain for me. I was happy at the idea of having a real party, but it didn’t seem fair to deceive Mother. Once I thought of telling her all about it just as I told her about everything else. But I was afraid she would say I was too young to have a party, and I had never been to a party in my life. Sister Aggie was visiting Aunt Louisa in Clayville, and Mother had no one to help her except for what I could do mornings and evenings. But I would be at home all day Saturday, and Annie and Callie had said that they would help.

“Thursday morning Annie told me that she had baked a cake and put my initials on top in little red candies, and Callie said her mother was going to bake an election cake with spices and raisins in it. All day Thursday I kept thinking about the party. It wasn’t off my mind a minute. I couldn’t study for thinking about it, and I missed a word in spelling—the first word I’d missed that term—and had to go to the foot of the class.

“But by the time we had started home I had made up my mind to one thing, that if I could not have a party with everything open and above board I did not want one at all. And so I told the girls that I had changed my mind and did not want them to have a surprise party for me. They coaxed and argued and teased, but I was firm. I was sorry that Annie had baked a cake and I hated to disappoint them, but I did not want a party. The girls were cross with me, and I felt miserable when Annie turned in her gate without saying good-by.

“Aggie had come home from Clayville that afternoon, and she was so busy telling Mother the news and describing the latest fashions, and showing the things she had bought, that no one noticed me much. Not a word was said all evening about my birthday being so near. Even Charlie didn’t tease me about what he would do, such as ducking me in the rain barrel, as he always did, and I thought everyone had forgotten all about my birthday.

“But Friday morning just before I started to school Aggie gave me a plain little handkerchief that she had hemstitched before she went away, and then I knew for sure that she had not brought me anything from Clayville. And when Mother gave me a pair of common home-knit stockings, I thought I should cry right out before everybody instead of waiting until I got started to school.

“Annie and Callie were in a good humor again and as pleasant as could be, but I felt so unhappy that day that I didn’t notice that the girls at school seemed unusually happy and excited. When I finally did notice it, I was afraid that Annie and Callie had gone ahead with plans for the party. I accused them of this, but they denied it.

“‘No, no, we didn’t do another thing about the party,’ they declared. But they looked at each other and laughed when they said it, and I didn’t believe them.

“‘You did,’ I said, ‘you know you did.’

“‘Cross my heart and hope to die if we did,’ Callie insisted.

“‘Here’s some of the cake that I baked for your party that we didn’t have,’ said Annie. ‘Now will you believe us? I brought you girls each a piece, but it was a sin to cut that cake—it was such a beautiful cake.’ And she handed us each a slice of delicious, yellow sponge cake decorated with red candies.

“Mother had given me an errand to do at the store on my way home, so it was later than usual when, hungry and tired, I opened the kitchen door. Mother met me and took my bundles and books.

“‘Take your wraps off here, Sarah,’ she said. ‘Aggie has company in the sitting room.’ I didn’t hear anyone talking, but I took off my coat. Then Aggie called me and I went into the sitting room, but I stopped in amazement just inside the door.

“In the center of the room was a table set with Mother’s best linen and china and silver, and while I gazed at it, out from the hall rushed Annie and Callie and seven other little girls all near my own age dressed up in their Sunday frocks and each one thrusting some sort of package toward me.

“I couldn’t say a word—I just burst into tears. I went upstairs with Mother to wash my face and put on my best dress. She told me Aggie had written invitations on cards she had bought in Clayville, and Charlie had carried them to the girls that morning. Then I told Mother all about the party we had planned to have, and she said not to think any more about it but that she was glad I had told her.

“We played games—‘Pussy wants a corner’ and ‘Button, button, who’s got the button’ and ‘Hide the thimble’—and asked riddles and had a good time.

“Then we had supper. There were cold roast chicken, tiny hot biscuits and peach preserves, three kinds of cake, and hot chocolate that Aggie had learned to make in Clayville and none of us had ever tasted before.

“Mother and Aggie had given me those presents in the morning just to fool me. Aggie had brought me a lovely story book, and Mother had a string of pretty pink beads for me. Charlie gave me a little basket he had whittled out of a peach seed, and from Father I got a silver dollar.

“And now good night, pleasant dreams.”

THE LOCUSTS

“Grandma,” said Bobby one evening, “did you ever see a locust—a seventeen-year locust? And why are they called seventeen-year locusts?”

“Oh, yes, I’ve seen locusts and heard them, too,” answered Grandma, taking up her knitting. “They are called seventeen-year locusts because they come every seventeen years. They lay their eggs in a tree. These eggs hatch tiny worms, called larvae, which fall to the ground and stay there for seventeen years changing slowly until they have turned into locusts. They live only about thirty days, but they often do a great deal of damage in this time. One year when I was a little girl all our fruit was eaten by the locusts and many of the trees were killed. They ate the garden stuff, the potato tops, and even the flowers, so it must have been somewhat as it was in Pharaoh’s time.

“You remember Pharaoh was the king of Egypt who refused to let the children of Israel go. For this God sent the plagues on Pharaoh and the people of Egypt. One of these plagues was the locusts. God caused a strong east wind to blow all day and all night, and this wind brought the locusts. They were every place—all over the ground, in Pharaoh’s house, and in the houses of his people. They ate all the vegetables and fruits, even the leaves on the trees, so there was nothing green left in all the land. The noise they made must have been awful. When Pharaoh repented, the Lord sent a strong west wind which blew the locusts away, and they were drowned in the Red Sea. Ever since that time people have thought the locusts say ‘Pharaoh.’

“I believe I’ll tell you tonight about the first time I ever heard a locust. Mother wondered one day at dinner whether there were any blackberries ripe yet. She said she wished she had enough for a few pies. So that afternoon I took a pail and started for the blackberry field. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going, for I wanted to surprise Mother. I was afraid that if she knew she mightn’t let me go alone, for she was timid about snakes. Sure enough, I saw a snake nearly the first thing, but it was a harmless little garter snake and scuttled away into the bushes as soon as it heard me.

“There were lots and lots of red berries, but only a few ripe ones here and there. I wandered on and on, thinking every minute I should come to a patch of ripe berries where I could fill my pail in a few minutes. It wasn’t much fun blackberrying all by myself. I scratched my hands and face and tore my dress on the briars and wished many times that I was back home, but I kept on picking until my pail was full.

“I did not realize how far I had gone nor how long I had been out until I noticed that the sun was going down. Then I started to hurry home as fast as I could. But I was tired and my bucket grew heavier with every step, so I often sat down to rest. I rested a long time under a chestnut tree, and then after I had walked miles, it seemed to me, I found myself back under this same tree. I knew it was the same tree because Charlie had cut my initials on it the summer before. I had been going around in a circle! I started out again. I looked to the right and to the left and straight ahead, but I couldn’t find the path.

“I was lost—lost in that great blackberry patch over a mile from home. Night was coming on, and no one knew where I had gone. I wondered where I should sleep if no one found me before it got dark, and what I should eat. Of course I could climb a tree, but I might go to sleep and fall out of it. I shouldn’t starve, for I could eat blackberries, but the very thought of eating any more blackberries made me feel sick.

“I hurried this way and that, trying to find my way out and growing more frightened every minute.

“Then suddenly I heard some one calling to me.

“‘Sa—rah! Sa—rah!’ I heard as plain as plain could be, and I answered them. I screamed at the top of my voice, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’ But the voices—there seemed to be a great many of them—only kept on saying over and over again, ‘Sa—rah! Sa—rah!’

“I ran, stumbling and falling through the bushes, still holding to my precious pail of berries, but I didn’t seem to get any nearer to the folks who were calling me. All the neighbors must be out helping hunt for me, I thought to myself. That was queer, too, for it wasn’t really dark and Mother was used to having me play for hours at a time down by the run or on the hill under the oak trees.

“Presently I came to an open space. There was a group of trees at the far edge, and there under those trees, to my great surprise, stood Mother’s little Jersey cow. I ran toward her, and when she saw me she gave a weak ‘moo.’ But when she tried to move I saw that she was caught fast by the horns in a wild grapevine that grew around the tree. I tried to free her, but I couldn’t. The wild grapevine is very tough and strong, and Jersey was securely fastened by it. I petted her and talked to her and forgot to be afraid any more. Then I happened to think that if she had been there very long she must be thirsty. She was not giving any milk and had been turned out to graze in the pasture field that joined the berry patch and had probably come through a bad place in the fence. I remembered having passed a spring a little way back, and I emptied my berries carefully in a pile on the ground and ran back and filled my bucket with water. But I couldn’t reach Jersey’s mouth, and though she tried frantically to get at the water she couldn’t get her head down to it. I dragged two pieces of old log over and built up a platform. Then I climbed up on it with my bucket of water, and my, how glad Jersey was to get that cool drink!

“Then I sat down on a log to wait for some one to come. To keep from getting lonely I began to say over my memory verses for the next Sunday. I was committing the Twenty-third Psalm and I had just reached the line beginning, ‘He restoreth my soul,’ when I heard them calling again.

“‘Sa—rah! Sa—rah!’ they said just as before. I jumped up and cried out as loud as I could, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’ I was determined to make them hear me this time, and I said it over and over until I was hoarse, and the more I answered the louder the voices seemed to call.

“Then to my joy came a voice I knew. ‘Where are you and what are you doing here?’ it said, and crashing through the bushes came my big brother Stanley. I rushed crying into his arms, and the funny part was that Stanley did not know I was lost. He was on his way home from work on the upper place and had come down to see if the berries were ripe so he could tell Mother. He had heard me calling and had come to find me.

“With his pocket knife he cut the vines that held Jersey, and we drove her slowly back to the pasture field after he had helped me pick up the berries.

“When Stanley and I got home Mother was just starting Charlie out to look for me. She was pleased to get the berries and glad I had found Jersey. Father said Jersey might have starved before he would have missed her, but Mother made a rule that I was never again to go farther away than the oak trees or the run without asking her.

“‘Who was calling me?’ I asked. ‘Some one was calling me. They still are. Listen!’ and there it was again.

“‘Sa—rah! Sa—rah!’

“They all looked puzzled. Then Mother laughed.

“‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I know what she means. Why, that isn’t anyone calling you, dear. That’s the locusts and they say, ‘Pha—raoh! Pha—raoh!’ But it does sound like ‘Sa—rah,’ doesn’t it? And I am very glad you thought they said ‘Sa—rah’ and answered them or Stanley wouldn’t have found you and you might have been up in the berry patch all night.’

“There, that was a long story, wasn’t it? Hurry to bed now, for you know,

“Early to bed and early to rise,
Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

ONE FOURTH OF JULY

Grandma had promised the children a Fourth of July story, and Bobby and Alice and Pink drew up their stools and waited eagerly for her to begin.

“Father was going to take us to Clayville to the Fourth of July celebration,” Grandma began. “We were all going except Mother and Nanny Dodds, who was helping us over hay harvest. I had been to Clayville once before.

“‘But that time it was on just a common everyday day,’ as I told Nanny. ‘This will be different.’

“We were to start early—early in the morning—for Clayville was twelve miles away and we did not want to miss a single thing.

“First there would be a parade with two brass bands, then ‘speaking’ on the courthouse steps, and after that an ox roast. In the afternoon there were to be horse races and games. Father promised that we should have supper at the hotel and stay for the fireworks in the evening. I had never seen even a firecracker, and I looked forward to seeing the skyrockets most of all.

“I was to wear a new light calico dress with a little blue flower in it and a blue sash and my ruffled white sunbonnet that was kept for Sundays. I talked so much about going that Mother and my sisters and every one else except Nanny grew dreadfully tired listening to me and begged me to talk of something else.

“Nanny was twenty and bashful and as homely as could be, but I loved her very much. When she made cookies she put a raisin in the center of some of them, and others she sprinkled with sugar. And she made gingerbread men with currant eyes and baked saucer pies and let me scrape the cake bowl. She sewed for my doll and bound up my hurt fingers tenderly and told the nicest stories. There was no end to the things Nanny did for me, but I liked the stories best of all.

“The day before the Fourth, when I sat on the edge of the kitchen table watching Nanny beat eggs for the sponge cake and talking about what I should see the next day, Nanny said in a wistful voice, ‘I’ve never been to Clayville. I always thought I’d like to go, but I never had a chance.’

“This set me thinking. Soon I slid off the table and went in search of Mother. I found her at the spring-house churning.

“‘Mother,’ I said, ‘let’s take Nanny with us tomorrow.’

“‘I’m afraid there isn’t room,’ Mother answered regretfully. ‘There are already five of you, and the surrey is old and not strong.’

“‘Nanny doesn’t weigh much,’ I argued.

“‘I know, dear, but Father is afraid to load the surrey any heavier for fear you’d break down and not get to town at all. I have told Nanny she may go home to see her mother tomorrow.’

“All the rest of the morning I sat under the apple tree in the side yard, thinking. Once when Charlie came through the yard with a jug to fill with water for the men in the hayfield I called him over. Maybe he might offer to let Nanny go in his place. To be sure, I hadn’t much hope of this, but still it was worth trying.

“‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘I think Nanny would like to go to the Fourth of July celebration.’

“‘Sure, who wouldn’t?’ he replied easily. ‘I want to go myself,’ and he went on to the well.

“I tried sister Belle next. I found her picking chickens in the orchard and offered to help. Then presently I suggested to her that she could go to Clayville with the Strangs’, since their surrey would not be crowded as ours would, and then Nanny could go with us. She only laughed scornfully and made me finish picking the chicken I had started.

“I went sadly back to the apple tree.

“‘Nanny wants to go,’ I thought to myself, ‘and I want to go, too, but if I stay at home Nanny could go in my place. It would be a sacrifice,’ I sighed deeply. ‘Preacher Hill says a sacrifice is giving up something you want yourself. I want to go more than I ever wanted anything, but I have lots of things Nanny doesn’t have. I have curly hair and Nanny’s hair is straight. I can read and Nanny can’t. I’ve seen the train and had my dinner at a hotel. I’ve traveled and Nanny’s never been farther from home than Mt. Zion Church.’

“That night after I had said my prayers I put my arms around my Mother’s neck and whispered, ‘Mother, I want Nanny to go in my place tomorrow.’

“‘Why, dear!’ Mother started to protest. But after looking earnestly into my face she said, ‘Do you really want to stay at home and let Nanny go in your place? You must be very, very sure, you know.’

“‘I’m sure, Mother,’ I declared solemnly. ‘Yes, I’m sure I want her to go.’

“‘Well, sleep on it, and if you feel the same in the morning you shall stay with Mother and Nanny may go.’

“I wakened at daylight to find Mother standing beside my bed.

“‘Are you awake, Sarah?’ she asked. ‘They are all up but you.’

“I sat up in bed dazed. I could hear the girls rushing around in their room. From the kitchen came the rattle of dishes and out in the barn the boys were whistling. Suddenly I remembered. It was the Fourth of July!

“‘I haven’t changed my mind, Mother,’ I said yawning sleepily.

“Mother bent down and kissed me before going to tell Nanny. At first Nanny would not hear of it and left off getting breakfast to come and tell me so. I pretended to be too sleepy to talk, so Nanny, urged by Mother, finally went away to get ready, and Mother went down to finish getting the breakfast.

“But I wasn’t a bit sleepy a little later when I jumped out of bed to watch them start.

“Father and Aggie sat on the front seat of the surrey, and Belle, Nanny, and Charlie on the back seat, while Joe, Stanley, and Truman rode horseback. They all looked very fine and grand to me dressed in their best clothes, and I choked back a sob as they drove down the road and out of sight.

“All morning I helped Mother. I did lots of things the girls wouldn’t let me do when they were doing the work. I dried the dishes and fed the chickens and dusted the sitting room and scrubbed the walks.

“Then Mother and I had our lunch out under the apple tree in the side yard—some of everything the girls had put in their lunch basket—fried chicken and sponge cake and green-apple pie. My, but it tasted good! In the afternoon Mother made my doll a new dress, and we went together to hunt the little turkeys and get the cows.

“It was awfully late when the folks got back, but I sat up in bed to see them. Every one of them had brought me something. Spread out on the bed were a flag and a bag of peanuts, a pewter tea set from Father, a sticky popcorn ball, and a sack of peppermint lozenges, but the nicest of all was when Nanny gave me a hug and whispered, ‘I had the grandest time of my life, Sarah, and I reckon it’ll take me a month to tell you about all the things I saw.’

“Now, let me think! What in the world will I tell you about tomorrow night? Oh, I know, but I won’t tell.”

THE BEE TREE

There had been honey for supper, and afterward, before the cozy fire in her room, Grandma was telling Bobby and Alice and Pink about how the bees live in little wooden houses called hives and make the honey from a fluid taken from the heart of the flowers.

“But I knew of some bees once that did not live in a hive but in a hollow tree.” Grandma reached for her work basket and drew out her knitting. “While I put the thumb in Bobby’s mitten I’ll tell you about those bees.”

“When I was a little girl,” she began, “not many people kept bees and we could not buy honey at the store, so honey was considered a great treat. The first beehive I ever saw belonged to Mr. Brierly. The Brierly’s lived on the next farm to us, but between them and us, in a little house on Mr. Brierly’s place, lived a family named Henlen. They were very lazy and hunted and fished and worked just enough to get what money they must have. Mr. Brierly had given them a swarm of bees and helped them make a hive for it, and the Brierlys and the Henlens were the only people in our neighborhood who kept bees.

“Then early in the summer one of Mr. Brierly’s hives swarmed. That is, a swarm of bees left the old hive and wanted to set up in a hive of its own. Usually when a young swarm left the old hive Mr. Brierly gave them a new hive and they settled down contentedly and went to making honey. But this swarm flew away and lighted in a hollow tree on the edge of our woods.

“Mr. Brierly did not find them for several days. Then he told Father he would just leave them where they were, if Father did not care, and when he took the honey he would divide with us. Father told him he was welcome to leave the bees as long as he wanted to and to keep the honey. But Mr. Brierly said Father must take half of the honey or he would not leave the bees. So Father agreed and Mr. Brierly left the bees.

“Every morning when Charlie and I took the cows to pasture we would skip across the field to take a long look at the bee tree. We would watch the bees as they flew in and out the hole in the side of the tree and wondered how much honey they had made and talked about how good it would taste on hot biscuits.

“So all summer the bees worked away, and one day in the fall Mr. Brierly sent Father word that he would be over that week to take the honey. A few mornings later when I came in sight of the bee tree I stopped in amazement. The bee tree was gone! Instead of standing straight and tall like a soldier on guard, it lay flat on the ground. Chips of wood were scattered all around. The bee tree had been cut down.

“I started for home as fast as I could go to tell Father. He wasn’t at the barn, and I went to the house. Back of the house, under a sugar tree, the girls were washing and Charlie was carrying water for them. As I came up Aggie was scolding because one of the washtubs was missing. When I told them about the bee tree they were as excited as I was. Charlie ran to the wheat field where Father was ploughing to tell him, and we girls went in to find Mother.

“Belle declared that whoever stole the honey must have taken the tub to carry it away in. And since the honey was on our land and we knew it was ready to take away and the tub was ours, it would look to Mr. Brierly as if we had had something to do with it. Aggie laughed at her and said, ‘The very idea of anyone thinking we would steal!’ But Mother looked serious.

“Father came right to the house, got on a horse, and rode over to Mr. Brierly’s. Mr. Brierly came back with him, and they examined the fallen bee tree carefully. It had been chopped down. Mr. Brierly said he thought we would have heard the blows down at the house. Father replied coldly that we had heard nothing and knew nothing about it until I had taken the cows to pasture, and wouldn’t have known then if I had not run across to look at the bees. He told him about our tub being gone, too. Aggie said it wasn’t at all necessary to tell that, but Belle said Father was too honest to keep anything back.

“Father imagined that Mr. Brierly thought we knew something about the disappearance of the honey. Of course Father resented this, so the Brierlys and we ceased to be friendly. Mrs. Brierly and Mother had always helped each other to quilt and make apple butter and had exchanged recipes and loaned patterns back and forth, but all this stopped now.

“School started, and Tom and Annie Brierly did not wait for Charlie and me as they had always done. If they had not gone to school before we came along, they waited until we had passed by before they started.

“Charlie and I worried a great deal about the coldness between the two families and the unhappiness it was causing. We were always making plans to discover who took the honey and so clear things up.

“One day when Charlie was eating his dinner at school he noticed that Flora May Henlen had something on her bread that looked like honey. He told me to watch her, and the next day at noon I took my dinner and sat down near Flora May to eat it. Sure enough, it was honey she had on her bread. But then I remembered that they had bees and she had a right to have honey. Still I watched Flora May for several days, and she always had honey on her bread.

“‘Did your bees make lots of honey this year, Flora May?’ I asked her one day.

“‘Oh, yes,’ she answered, ‘every few days the boys bring in a pan of honey.’

“That evening Charlie made an excuse to stop a while with one of the Henlen boys, and in the orchard back of the house he saw their bee hive lying on the ground among some rubbish and rotting leaves.

“We told our discovery at home, and my brother Truman said the Henlens had had no bees at all for months. They had been starved or frozen out the winter before.

“The next morning Father stopped Asa and Longford Henlen as they were passing our house on the way home from mill and told them he knew they had taken the honey. At first they denied all knowledge of the honey, but when they found that in some way Father had found out about it they were scared and admitted that they had chopped down the tree and, finding more honey than they had expected, had taken our tub to carry it away in.

“Mr. Brierly and Father decided that if the boys would work out the pay for the honey and promise not to steal any more they would not tell anyone.

“Mr. Brierly apologized to Father, and Mrs. Brierly and Mother kissed the next time they met, and Tom and Annie began waiting for Charlie and me again, so that everything was all right once more.

“Get the apples, Bobby, please, and tomorrow night, if you say your prayers and go right to sleep tonight, I’ll tell you about—well, it’s an awfully good story I have for tomorrow night.”

BRAIN AGAINST BRAWN

Bobby was feeling his muscle and telling his sisters how strong he wanted to be, and Grandma, hearing him, said, “Of course it’s nice to be strong, Bobby, but strength won’t get anyone very far unless it is combined with brains. I knew a delicate looking boy once who got ahead of half a dozen big strong fellows, not because he was strong, but because he had brains and used them.