ays
doing the right thing, so she just laughed, and so did all of us.
Going home it was wilder yet, for all of them raced and showed how they
could ride.

At the house people were hungry again, so the table was set and they
ate up every scrap in sight, and Leon and I ate with them that time and
saved ours. Then one by one the carriages, spring wagons, and
horseback riders went away, all the people saying Sally was the
loveliest bride, and hers had been the prettiest wedding they'd ever
seen, and the most good things to eat, and Laddie and the Princess went
with them. When the last one was gone, and only the relatives from
Ohio were left, mother pitched on the bed, gripped her hands and cried
as if she'd go to pieces, and father cried too, and all of us, even
Mrs. Freshett, who stayed to wash up the dishes. She was so tickled to
be there, and see, and help, that mother had hard work to keep her from
washing the linen that same night. She did finish the last dish, scrub
the kitchen floor, black the stove, and pack all the borrowed china in
tubs, ready to be taken home, and things like that. Mother said it was
a burning shame for any neighbourhood to let a woman get so starved out
and lonesome she'd act that way. She said enough was enough, and when
Mrs. Freshett had cooked all day, and washed dishes until the last
skillet was in place, she had done as much as any neighbour ought to
do, and the other things she went on and did were a rebuke to us.

I felt sore, weepy, and tired out. It made me sick to think of the
sage bag in the cracked churn, so I climbed my very own catalpa tree in
the corner, watched up the road for Laddie, and thought things over.
If I ever get married I want a dress, and a wedding exactly like that,
but I would like a man quite different from Peter; like Laddie would
suit me better. When he rode under the tree, I dropped from a limb
into his arms, and went with him to the barn. He asked me what was
going on at the house, and I told him about Mrs. Freshett being a
rebuke to us; and Laddie said she was, and he didn't believe one word
against her. When I told him mother was in bed crying like anything,
he said: "I knew that had to come when she kept up so bravely at the
station. Thank the Lord, she showed her breeding by holding in until
she got where she had a right to cry if she pleased."

Then I whispered for fear Leon might be around: "Did he set the dogs
on you?"

"He did not," sa