course of the mile Fidelia met one team. It was an old rocking
chaise and a white horse, and an old farmer was driving. He drove slower
when he came alongside of Fidelia. When he had fairly passed her he
stopped entirely, twisted about in his seat, and raised his voice.

"Whose little gal air you?" he asked.

Fidelia was a little frightened. Instead of giving her father's name,
she gave her own with shy precision--"Fidelia Ames Lennox," she said,
retiring into her Shaker bonnet.

"You ain't runnin' away, be you?"

Fidelia's pride was touched. "I'm going to the store for my mother," she
announced, in quite a shrill tone. Then she took to her heels, and the
little wagon trundled after, with a wilder squeak than ever.

Fidelia kept saying over to herself, "Three pounds of your best raisins,
and Mr. Lennox will come in and pay you." Her mother and Aunt Maria
wished after she had gone that they had written it out on a piece of
paper; they had not thought of that. But Aunt Maria said she knew that
such a bright child as Fidelia would remember three pounds of raisins
when she had been told over and over, and charged not to come home
without them.

Fidelia had started about ten o'clock in the morning, and her mother and
Aunt Maria had agreed that they would not worry if she should not return
until one o'clock in the afternoon. That would allow more than an hour
for the mile walk each way, and give plenty of time for a rest between;
for Fidelia had been instructed to go into the store and sit down on a
stool and rest a while before starting upon her return trip. "Likely as
not Mis' Rose will give her a cooky or something," Aunt Maria had
whispered to Mrs. Lennox.

So when noon came the two women pictured Fidelia sitting perched upon a
stool in the store, being fed with candy and cookies, and made much of,
or even eating dinner with the Rose family. "Mis' Rose made so much of
her when you took her there before that I shouldn't wonder a mite if
she'd kept her to dinner," said Aunt Maria. She promulgated this theory
the more strenuously when one o'clock came and Fidelia had not appeared.
"Of course that's what 'tis," she kept repeating. "It would take 'em a
good hour to eat dinner. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if she didn't
get here before two o'clock. I think you're dreadful silly to worry,
Jane."

For poor Mrs. Lennox was pushing her chair every few minutes over to the
door, where she would stand, her face all one anx