irandy.

"You'll sit there all day, likely's not," said Eliza. "What do you
s'pose mother'll say? I'm a-going to tell her."

"She'll send me right back again if I don't stay," said Mirandy.

And there was some show of reason in what she said. It was indeed quite
probable that Mrs. Josiah Thayer would send Mirandy straight back again
to confess her sins and get the bucket.

"I don't know but mother would send her back," said Eliza; and Daniel
nodded in assent.

"I'll stay with you," said Mary Ann, although she was still trembling
with fear of the dog.

"Don't want anybody to stay," protested Mirandy.

Finally she sat on Cap'n Moseby's door-step, and watched them all
straggle out of sight. The creak of Jonathan's wagon grew fainter and
fainter, until she could hear it no longer. The dog was quiet now.
Mirandy sat up straight in front of the panelled door.

She waited and waited; the time went on, and it was high noon. She heard
a dinner-horn in the distance. She wondered vaguely if Cap'n Moseby
didn't have any dinner because he lived alone. She began to feel hungry
herself. There was not a sound in the house. She wanted to cry, but she
would not. She sat perfectly still. Once in a while she said over to
herself the questions she had learned from the catechism, and she
reflected much upon the two boys in the _Pilgrim's Progress_. She had
eaten a few of the Cap'n's berries as she filled her bucket, and she
wondered that they did not make her ill, as the fruit did the boys.

Nobody passed the house, the insects rasped in her ears, she thought her
forlorn childish thoughts, and it was an hour after noon. She did not
see a curtain trimmed with white balls in a window overhead pulled
cautiously to one side, and a grizzled head thrust out; but this
happened several times.

About two o'clock there was a sudden puff of cool wind on her back; she
glanced around, trembling, and there stood Cap'n Moseby in the open
door, with his great black dog at his heels. His old face was the color
of tanned leather, and full of severe furrows; his shaggy brows frowned
over sharp black eyes. He leaned upon a stout oak staff, for he had been
lamed by a British musket-ball.

"Who's this?" he asked, in a grim voice.

Mirandy arose and stood about, and courtesied. She could not find her
tongue yet.

"Hey?" said Cap'n Moseby.

"Mirandy Thayer," she answered then, in a shaking voice that had yet a
touch of defiance in it.

"Mirandy