Barbara Ladd

rough the sparser leafage. Barbara's face was westward, and her prow, as the nervous cunning of her paddle urged it forward, threw off the water on either side in long, polished, fluted fur

t did credit to her canoe-craft. In a few minutes her parting pangs were all forgotten, and she was absorbed in racing, as it were, against herself. She knelt low, wo

eam-like shape of a blue heron. Nearer and nearer slipped the canoe, till Barbara could discern the round, unwinking jewel of the great bird's eye, watching her

the lake. Alders, osiers, and thick-starred draperies of clematis came down over either bank. The stream was not twenty paces wi

rowed shrilly. The stream rounded to a wider stretch, and its western bank, flooded with sunshine, showed a grassy clearing of perhaps two acres in extent, at the back of which, close against the primeval trees, huddled a low, gray cabin, with wide eaves and a red door. A hop-vine covered one end of the cabin and sprawled over the roof. Along the base ran a "banking" about two feet high, of rough boards with the bark on, supported by stakes and filled in with earth-a protection to the cellar against winter frosts. Leaned up to the sun, along the banking

shoulders and a cap of greenish-yellow linen on her head,-the soft dye of the "yaller-weed" juice. She was busy cutting coloured rags into str

ue-known to Barbara and to all the village of Second Westings as 'old Debby'-dropped her knitting on the stoop, snatched up a stout stick that lea

ow to indulge her inclination for a gossip with old Debby. She rested in silence, one brown hand on the gunwale of the punt, her full,

aggressively, with a gray-bristled wart at one side of its obtrusive vigour. A lean and iron-gray wisp of hair, escaped from under her hat, straggled down upon her red neck. But her shrewd, hard, pale-blue, dauntless old eyes

o take this letter for me to Aunt Hitty. I didn't dare to leave it in my room, for fear she'd find it and know where I'd gone, and send after me before I'd got a good start. I don't like Aunt Hitty, you know, De

indeed the most ordinary, thing in the world for a little girl of fourteen years to do when she found aunts and environments uncongenial. Old Debby's smile, at this moment, had just the right degree of sy

ly; but at the same time, scheming to prolong the interview, and knowing that if once Barbara started off again there would

ent on, coaxingly. "I'd give a sight to

She wanted to try it on old Debby, in whom she felt sure of a eulogistic critic. Without a word she untied

n't be worried about me, for I will be all right. And I thank you for all the trouble you have taken about me. I don't want any of my old clothes except what I have brought with me, so please give them to Mercy Chapman, because she is poor and just about my size, and always kind to animals, and I like her. I have taken your nice basket you got from the squaw last Saturday, to carry my kittens in; but I know you won't mind, because you offered to give it to

r ni

ARA L

nxious, and eager for commendation.

ctor Jim couldn't 'a' done no better. I reckon Aunt Hitty'll understand ye now, a sight be

lse she sprang up, skipped ashore, thrust the letter

re's a dear. I was too excited to eat before I left. And do give my kittens a drop o

o time to talk. She sat on the edge of the big four-post bed, swinging her slim legs, and kicking her heels against the dingy, gay patchwork quilt whose ample folds hung to the floor. The hidden space under the bed was a place of piquant mystery to Barbara, containing, as it did, boxes on boxes of many-coloured rags, out of which, earlier in the season, old Debby would bring forth precious goose-eggs, duck-eggs, turkey-eggs, and the specially prized eggs of certain pet and prolific hens, gathered against the time of setting. While Barbara broke her fast, old Debby refrained from questions, having shrewdly grasped the whole situation. She knew that Mr. Robert Glenowen, Barbara's uncle, had lately come north on an errand which nobody seemed to understand, and had taken a house at Stratford. Of a nomadic spirit in her younger days, Debby had moved much here and there throug

s by their own, and who are therefore apt to be at fault in their interpretation of another's motives. This gave her, even in childhood, a strangeness, an aloneness of personality, which she, as well as those who lov

on, leaning childishly for a moment u

ch carried conviction. "Ye hain't got no lovinger nor faithfulle

ding of the stream. Old Debby stood for some minutes gazing after this meteor-like-and very Barbara-like-exit. There was amusement now, unhindered, on her hard old face, but a kind of fierce devotion withal. When the stern of the canoe had vanished behind the leafage, she muttered to herself: "Well! Well! Well! was ever sech a child! When ye set yer finger onto her, she ain't there! I recko

lwart stick in her right hand, she limped with massive alertness down to the waterside, shoved off the punt, climbed into it with a nicety o