wed that he was not in his usual reckless mood.

"It's a lie!" he burst out in a vindictive undertone, as the mare swung
into her long gait. "It's a lie! I thought 't was somebody's wash! I
ain't an enemy!"

While the crowd at the raising dispersed in happy family groups to
their picnics in the woods; while the Goddess of Liberty, Uncle Sam,
Columbia, and the proud States lunched grandly in the Grange Hall with
distinguished guests and scarred veterans of two wars, the lonely man
drove, and drove, and drove through silent woods and dull, sleepy
villages, never alighting to replenish his wardrobe or his stock of
swapping material.

At dusk he reached a miserable tumble-down house on the edge of a pond.

The faithful wife with the sad mouth and the habitual look of anxiety
in her faded eyes came to the door at the sound of wheels and went
doggedly to the horse-shed to help him unharness. "You did n't expect
to see me back to-night, did you?" he asked satirically; "leastwise not
with this same horse? Well, I'm here! You need n't be scairt to look
under the wagon-seat, there ain't nothin' there, not even my supper, so
I hope you're suited for once! No, I guess I ain't goin' to be an angel
right away, neither. There wa'n't nothin' but flags layin' roun' loose
down Riverboro way, 'n' whatever they say, I ain't sech a hound as to
steal a flag!"

It was natural that young Riverboro should have red, white, and blue
dreams on the night after the new flag was raised. A stranger thing,
perhaps, is the fact that Abner Simpson should lie down on his hard bed
with the flutter of bunting before his eyes, and a whirl of
unaccustomed words in his mind.

"For it is your star, my star, all our stars together."

"I'm sick of goin' it alone," he thought; "I guess I'll try the other
road for a spell;" and with that he fell asleep.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Flag-raising, by Kate Douglas Wiggin

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