ie, by dint of many
questions, had discovered why the Methodist minister's wife was buried
in the churchyard with a slice of marble set up on top of her, and why
the blacksmith's bob-tailed cat lacked the major portion of her left
ear. If ever there was a gossip in the making, it was Catie Harrison.
More than that, her accumulated gossip was sorted out and held in
reserve, ready to be applied to any end that suited her small
convenience. Scott Brenton found that fact out to his cost, when the
story of his camp and his subsequent spanking came back upon him by way
of the man that sold the hens' eggs, in retaliation for his refusal to
ask that he himself and Catie should be allowed to have a ride in the
egg-man's wagon. Catie might be but six years and nine months old; but
already her infant brain had fathomed the theory of effectual relation
between the crime and the punishment. Her ideal Gehenna would be made
up of countless little assorted hells, not of one vast and
indiscriminate lake of flaming brimstone. Perchance this very fact had
its own due share of influence upon the later theology of Scott
Brenton.

That there would be influence, no one who watched the children could
deny. After the first day's squabbles, perhaps even on account of them,
they became inseparable. When they were not together, either Catie was
looking for Scott, or Scott for Catie, save upon the too frequent
occasions when discipline fell upon the two of them simultaneously and
forced them into a temporary captivity. When they were held apart, they
spent their time planning up new things to do together, once the
parental ban was off their intercourse. When they were together, it was
Scott who supplied the imagination for the pair of them. Catie's share
lay in the crafty outworking of the plan. When their plans came to
disaster, as often happened by reason of the boldness of Scott's young
conceptions, Catie took the disappointment with the temper of a little
vixen, kicked against the pricks and openly defied the Powers that Be.
Scott, on the other hand, shut his teeth and accepted the penalty,
already intent upon the question as to what he should undertake another
time.

And so the days wore on. To the adult mind, they would have seemed to
pass monotonously. The quicker child perceptions, though, the
magnifying point of view that makes a mountain out of every mole hill,
caused them to seem charged with an infinite amount of variety and
incident