le schoolhouse among the birches when the snow almost buried the
little village, and on sparkling mornings after the storms his oxen would
stop to breathe in front of the store, a cluster of laughing children
clinging to the snow-plough and tumbling over good-natured Moses in their
frolics. Cynthia became a country girl, and grew long and lithe of limb,
and weather-burnt, and acquired an endurance that spoke wonders for the
life-giving air of Coniston. But she was a serious child, and Wetherell
and Jethro sometimes wondered whether she was ever a child at all. When
Eben Hatch fell from the lumber pile on the ice, it was she who bound the
cut in his head; and when Tom Richardson unexpectedly embraced the
schoolhouse stove, Cynthia, not Miss Rebecca Northcutt, took charge of
the situation.

It was perhaps inevitable, with such a helpless father, that the girl
should grow up with a sense of responsibility, being what she was. Did
William Wetherell go to Brampton, Cynthia examined his apparel, and he
was marched shamefacedly back to his room to change; did he read too late
at night, some unseen messenger summoned her out of her sleep, and he was
packed off to bed. Miss Millicent Skinner, too, was in a like mysterious
way compelled to abdicate her high place in favor of Cynthia, and
Wetherell was utterly unable to explain how this miracle was
accomplished. Not only did Millicent learn to cook, but Cynthia, at the
age of fourteen, had taught her. Some wit once suggested that the
national arms of the United States should contain the emblem of crossed
frying-pans, and Millicent was in this respect a true American. When
Wetherell began to suffer from her pies and doughnuts, the revolution
took place--without stampeding, or recriminations, or trouble of any
kind. One evening he discovered Cynthia, decked in an apron, bending over
the stove, and Millicent looking on with an expression that was (for
Millicent) benign.

This was to some extent explained, a few days later, when Wetherell found
himself gazing across the counter at the motherly figure of Mrs. Moses
Hatch, who held the well-deserved honor of being the best cook in
Coniston.

"Hain't had so much stomach trouble lately, Will?" she remarked.

"No," he answered, surprised; "Cynthia is learning to cook."

"Guess she is," said Mrs. Moses. "That gal is worth any seven grown-up
women in town. And she was four nights settin' in my kitchen before I
knowed what she was up to.