as placed a soft feather bed, blankets and
pillows. Maria decided that she would drive to the station herself.

"Never do in the world," said she, "to trust them skittish young horses,
what hain't done a lick o' work since Pap went away, to that stoopid
darky. They'd surely run away and break his neck, which 'd be no great
loss, and save lots o' provisions, but they'd smash that new wagon and
break their own necks, which are worth more'n $200 apiece."

"Maria, how can you talk so?" said the gentle Mrs. Klegg reprovingly.
"It's a sin to speak so lightly o' death o' a feller-creature."

"Well, if he's a feller-creature o' mine," returned the sprightly
Maria, "the Lord made a slack-twisted job of him some dark night out o'
remnants, and couldn't find no gumption to put in him. He gave him
an alligator's appetite instid. And ain't I tryin' to save his life?
Besides, I'm nearly dead to see Si. I want to be the first to see him."

This aroused Amanda, but Maria stood on her rights as the elder sister,
had her way, as she usually did, and drove away triumphantly fully two
hours before train-time.

Upon her arrival at the station she quickly recognized that she was the
central figure in the gathering crowd, and she would have been more than
a young woman if she had not made the most of her prominence.

Other girls were there with their fathers and mothers who had brothers
who had been in the three months' service, or were now in three years
regiments, or who had been discharged on account of disability, or who
had been in this battle or that, but none of them a brother who had
distinguished himself in the terrible battle about which everybody was
now talking, who had helped capture a rebel flag, who had been wounded
almost to death, who had been reported dead, and who was now coming
home, a still living evidence of all this. No boy who had gone from Bean
Blossom Creek neighborhood had made the figure in the public eye that
Si had, and Maria was not the girl to hide the light of his achievements
under a bushel. She was genially fraternal with those girls who had
brothers still in the service, affable to those whose brothers had been
in, but were now, for any reason, out, but only distantly civil to those
whose brothers had not enlisted. Of these last was Arabella Widgeon,
whose father had been one of the earliest immigrants to the Wabash, and
was somewhat inclined to boast of his Old Virginia family. He owned
a larger farm