lat mass at
the back of her head, and surmounted by a large green-ribbon bow. Hannah
Maria kept patting the bow to be sure it was on.

It was very cool there on the north door-step. Before it lay the wide
north yard full of tall waving grass, with some little cinnamon
rose-bushes sunken in it. Hardly anybody used the north door, so there
was no path leading to it.

It was nearly four o'clock. Hannah Maria bent her sober freckled face
over the sheet, and sewed and sewed. Her mother had gone to the next
town to do some shopping, and bidden her to finish the seam before she
returned. Hannah Maria was naturally obedient; moreover, her mother was
a decided woman, so she had been very diligent; in fact the seam was
nearly sewed.

It was very still--that is, there were only the sounds that seem to make
a part of stillness. The birds twittered, the locusts shrilled, and the
tall clock in the entry ticked. Hannah Maria was not afraid, but she was
lonesome. Once in a while she looked around and sighed. She placed a pin
a little way in advance on the seam, and made up her mind that when she
had sewed to that place she would go into the house and get a slice of
cake. Her mother had told her that she might cut a slice from the
one-egg cake which had been made that morning. But before she had sewed
to the pin, little Mehitable Lamb came down the road. She was in reality
some years younger than Hannah Maria, but not so much younger as Hannah
Maria considered her. The girl on the door-step surveyed the one
approaching down the road with a friendly and patronizing air.

"Holloa!" she sang out, when Mehitable was within hailing distance.

"Holloa!" answered back Mehitable's little, sweet, deferential voice.

She came straight on, left the road, and struck across the grassy north
yard to Hannah Maria's door-step. She was a round, fair little girl; her
auburn hair was curled in a row of neat, smooth "water curls" around her
head. She wore a straw hat with a blue ribbon, and a blue-and-white
checked gingham dress; she also wore white stockings and patent leather
"ankle-ties." Her dress was low-necked and short-sleeved, like Hannah
Maria's, but her neck and arms were very fair and chubby.

Mehitable drew her big china doll in a doll's carriage. Hannah Maria
eyed her with seeming disdain and secret longing. She herself had given
up playing with dolls, her mother thought her too big; but they had
still a fascination for her, and the old