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Lydia nodded discreetly.

“An’, Lyddy, don’t you loiter comin’ home from school, an’ don’t play out late, an’ get ’em fussy, when it comes cold weather. And you tell Susy Draper,”–the boy’s voice sounded unconcerned, but Lydia glanced at him quickly,–“you tell Susy Draper that I was awful sorry she was over to her aunt’s, so I couldn’t say good-by.”

Lydia’s heart was the heart of a woman, and she comprehended. Lydia nodded again, more sagely than before.

“See here,” said the boy suddenly. “I’m goin’ to let my old woodchuck out.”

Lydia’s face was blank with surprise. “I thought you promised to sell him to big Jim Hooper.”

“I did, but I don’t care for big Jim Hooper; you just tell him I let my wood-chuck go.”

The brother and sister went to their favorite playground between the ledges, not far from the small old barn. Here was a clumsy box with wire gratings, behind which an untamed little wild beast sat up and chittered at his harmless foes. “He’s a whopping old fellow,” said Elisha admiringly. “Big Jim Hooper sha’n’t have him!” and as he opened the trap, Lydia had hardly time to perch herself high on the ledge, before the woodchuck tumbled and scuttled along the short green turf, and was lost among the clumps of juniper and bayberry just beyond.

“I feel just like him,” said the boy. “I want to get up to Boston just as bad as that. See here, now!” and he flung a gallant cart-wheel of himself in the same direction, and then stood on his head and waved his legs furiously in the air. “I feel just like that.”

Lydia, who had been tearful all the morning, looked at him in vague dismay. Only a short time ago she had never been made to feel that her brother was so much older than herself. They had been constant playmates; but now he was like a grown man, and cared no longer for their old pleasures. There was all possible difference between them that there can be between fifteen years and twelve, and Lydia was nothing but a child.

“Come, come, where be ye?” shouted the old grandfather, and they both started guiltily. Elisha rubbed some dry grass out of his short-cropped hair, and the little sister came down from her ledge. At that moment the real pang of parting shot through her heart; her brother belonged irrevocably to a wider world.

“Ma’am Stover has sent for ye to come over; she wants to say good-by to ye!” shouted the grandfather, leaning on his two canes at the end of the bam. “Come, step lively, an’ remember you ain’t got none too much time, an’ the boat ain’t goin’ to wait a minute for nobody.”

“Ma’am Stover?” repeated the boy, with a frown. He and his sister knew only too well the pasture path between the two houses. Ma’am Stover was a bedridden woman, who had seen much trouble,–a town charge in her old age. Her neighbors gave to her generously out of their own slender stores. Yet with all this poverty and dependence, she held firm sway over the customs and opinions of her acquaintance, from the uneasy bed where she lay year in and year out, watching the far sea line beyond a pasture slope.

The young people walked fast, sometimes running a little way, light-footed, the boy going ahead, and burst into their neighbor’s room out of breath.

She was calm and critical, and their excitement had a sudden chill.

“So the great day’s come at last, ‘Lisha?” she asked; at which ‘Lisha was conscious of unnecessary aggravation.

“I don’t know’s it’s much of a day–to anybody but me,” he added, discovering a twinkle in her black eyes that was more sympathetic than usual. “I expected to stop an’ see you last night; but I had to go round and see all our folks, and when I got back ‘t was late and the tide was down, an’ I knew that grandsir couldn’t git the boat up all alone to our lower landin’.”