im, her tongue going, as he
used to declare "like a trip-hammer." She was a wide-awake,
quick-motioned creature and said such droll things that the doctor used
to shout with laughter, until the dappled gray horse which he drove
sometimes stopped short and looked round at the two in the chaise as if
to say: "Whatever in the world does all this mean?"

But when the time drew near for Dorothea to go back home, she always
looked sober enough. One day she burst out: "Oh, Grandpa, I almost
_hate_ tracts!"

Doctor Dix glanced down at her in his kind way and answered: "I don't
know as I blame you, Child!"

You see, Joseph Dix, Dorothea's father, was a strange man. He had fine
chances to make money because the doctor had bought one big lot of land
after another and had to hire agents to look after these farms and
forests. Naturally he sent his own son to the pleasantest places, but
the only thing Joseph Dix, who was very religious in the gloomiest sort
of a way, really wanted to do, was to repeat hymns and write tracts. To
publish these dismal booklets, he used nearly all the money he earned,
so that the family had small rations of food, cheap clothing, and no
holidays.

Besides having to live in such sorry fashion, the whole household were
forced to stitch and paste these tracts together. Year after year Mrs.
Dix, Dorothea, and her two brothers sat in the house, doing this
tiresome work. No matter whether, as agent, Mr. Dix was sent to Maine,
New Hampshire, Vermont, or Massachusetts; no matter whether their
playmates in the neighborhood were berrying, skating, or picnicking; no
matter how the birds sang, the brooks sparkled, the nuts and fruit
ripened; the wife and children of Joseph Dix had no outdoor pleasures,
no, they just bent over those old tracts, pasting and sewing till they
fairly ached.

When Dorothea was twelve, she decided to stand such a life no longer.
Fortunately the family was then living in Worcester, near Boston, and it
did not cost much to get there. Doctor Dix was dead, but Dorothea ran
away to her grandmother, who still lived at Orange Court (now it is
called Dix Place), and although Madam Dix was very strict, life was
better there than with the tract-maker.

At Orange Court, Dorothea was allowed no time to play. She was taught to
sew and cook and knit and was sometimes punished if the tasks were not
well done. "Poor thing," she said in after life, "I never had any
childhood!" But she went to school