ctoria--absorbed in her thoughts--driving over
a wood road of many puddles that led to the Four Corners, near Avalon.
The road climbed the song-laden valley of a brook, redolent now with
scents of which the rain had robbed the fern, but at length Victoria
reached an upland where the young corn was springing from the black
furrows that followed the contours of the hillsides, where the big-eyed
cattle lay under the heavy maples and oaks or gazed at her across the
fences.

Victoria drew up in front of an unpainted farm-house straggling beside
the road, a farm-house which began with the dignity of fluted pilasters
and ended in a tumble-down open shed filled with a rusty sleigh and
a hundred nondescript articles--some of which seemed to be moving.
Intently studying this phenomenon from her runabout, she finally
discovered that the moving objects were children; one of whom, a little
girl, came out and stared at her.

"How do you do, Mary?" said Victoria. "Isn't your name Mary?"

The child nodded.

"I remember you," she said; "you're the rich lady, mother met at the
party, that got father a job."

Victoria smiled. And such was the potency of the smile that the child
joined in it.

"Where's brother?" asked Victoria. "He must be quite grown up since we
gave him lemonade."

Mary pointed to the woodshed.

"O dear!" exclaimed Victoria, leaping out of the runabout and hitching
her horse, "aren't you afraid some of those sharp iron things will
fall on him?" She herself rescued brother from what seemed untimely and
certain death, and set him down in safety in the middle of the grass
plot. He looked up at her with the air of one whose dignity has been
irretrievably injured, and she laughed as she reached down and pulled
his nose. Then his face, too, became wreathed in smiles.

"Mary, how old are you?"

"Seven, ma'am."

"And I'm five," Mary's sister chimed in.

"I want you to promise me," said Victoria, "that you won't let brother
play in that shed. And the very next time I come I'll bring you both the
nicest thing I can think of."

Mary began to dance.

"We'll promise, we'll promise!" she cried for both, and at this juncture
Mrs. Fitch, who had run from the washtub to get into her Sunday waist,
came out of the door.

"So you hain't forgot me!" she exclaimed. "I was almost afeard you'd
forgot me."

"I've been away," said Victoria, gently taking the woman's hand and
sitting down on the doorstep.

"Don't set there