as she
told herself, she liked to scour, but because she liked to see the
pans shine.

Aunt Jessica liked to see them shine, too. She paused on her way
through the kitchen. "What beautiful pans! I can see my face in every
one of them."

A glow of elation struck through Elliott. Aunt Jessica was loving and
sweet, but she did not lavish commendation in quarters where it was
not due. Elliott knew her pans were beautiful, but Aunt Jessica's
praise made them doubly so.

It was then, as she hung up her towels, that she made the remark about
walking up to the hill meadow. She had a notion she would like to see
the knives put into that unbroken expanse of tall grass for which she
continued to feel a curious responsibility. A mere appearance at the
field could not commit her to anything.

"If you are going up," said Aunt Jessica, "perhaps you will take some
of these cookies I have just baked. Gertrude has made lemonade."

That was one of the delightful things about Aunt Jessica, Elliott
thought: she never probed beneath the surface of one's words, she
never even looked curiosity, and she gave one immediately a reason for
doing what one wished to do. Lemonade and cookies made an appearance
in the hay-field the most natural thing in the world.

The upper meadow proved a surprise. Not its business--Elliott had
expected business, but its odd mingling of jollity with activity. They
all seemed to be having such a good time about their work. And yet the
jollity did not in the least interfere with the business, which
appeared to be going forward in a systematic and efficient way that
even an untrained girl could not fail to notice. Elliott's advent
would have occasioned little disturbance, she suspected, had it not
been for the cookies. She was used by now to having no fuss made over
her. Laura waved a hand from her seat behind the horses; the boys
swung their hats; Priscilla darted over to display a ground-sparrow's
nest that the scythes had disclosed.

It was Priscilla who discovered the cookies and sent a squeal of
delight across the meadow. But even then the workers did not pause.
Priscilla had to dance out across the mown grass and squeal again and
wave both hands, a cooky in one, a cup in the other, and add a shrill
little yelp, "Come on! Come on, peoples! You don't know what we've got
here," before they straggled over to what Henry called "the
refreshment booth."

Then they were ready enough to notice Elliott. Uncle R