FullReads

“There!” cried Shep. “That means thee’s to let Luke Jordan finish the sheep-washing. Thee’d better have done it in the first place. We wouldn’t have the old ewe to pick if thee had!”

Dorothy was dimpling at the idea of Luke Jordan in the character of an instrument of heavenly protection. She had not regarded him in that light, it must be confessed, and had rejected him with scorn.

“He may if he wants to,” she said; “but you boys shall drive them over. I’ll have nothing to do with it.”

“And shear them too, Dorothy? He asked to shear them long ago.”

“Well, let him shear them, and keep the wool too.”

“I wouldn’t say that, Dorothy!” said Rachel Barton. “We need the wool, and it seems as if over-payment might not be quite honest either.”

“Oh! mother, mother! What a mother thee is!” cried Dorothy laughing, and rumpling her cap-strings in a tumultuous embrace.

“She’s a great deal too good for thee, Dorothy Barton.”

“She’s too good for all of us! How did thee ever come to have such a graceless set of children, mother?”

“I’m very well satisfied,” said Rachel. “But now do be quiet, and let’s finish the letter. We must get to bed some time to-night!”

The wild clematis was in blossom now–the fences were white with it, and the rusty cedars were crowned with virgin wreaths, but the weeds were thick in the garden and in the potato patch. Dorothy, stretching her cramped back, looked longingly up the shadowy vista of the farm-lane, which had nothing to do but ramble off into the remotest green fields, where the daisies’ faces were as white and clear as in early June.

One hot August night she came home late from the store. The stars were thick in the sky; the katydids made the night oppressive with their rasping questionings, and a hoarse revel of frogs kept the ponds from falling asleep in the shadow of the hills.

“Is thee very tired to-night, Dorothy?” her mother asked, as she took her seat on the low step of the porch. “Would thee mind turning old John out thyself?”

“No, mother, I’m not tired. But why–oh, I know!” cried Dorothy, with a quick laugh. “The dance–at Slocum’s barn. I thought those boys were uncommonly helpful.”

“Yes, dear, it’s but natural they should want to see it. Hark! we can hear the music from here.”

They listened, and the breeze brought across the fields the sound of fiddles and the rhythmic tramp of feet, softened by the distance. Dorothy’s young pulses leaped.

“Mother, is it any harm for them just to see it? They have so little fun except what they get out of teasing and shirking.”

“My dear, thy father would never countenance such a scene of frivolity, or permit one of his children to look upon it.”

Through our eyes and ears the world takes possession of our hearts.

“Then I’m to spare the boys this temptation, mother? Thee will trust me to pass the barn?”

“I would trust my boys, if they were thy age Dorothy. But their resolution is tender, like their years.”

It might be questioned whether the frame of mind in which the boys went to bed that night, under their mother’s eye,–for Rachel could be firm in a case of conscience,–was more improving than the frivolity of Slocum’s barn.

“Mother,” called Dorothy, looking in at the kitchen window, where Rachel was stooping over the embers in the fireplace, to light a bedroom candle, “I want to speak to thee.”

Rachel came to the window, screening the candle with her hand.

“Will thee trust me to look at the dancing a little while? It is so very near.”

“Why, Dorothy, does thee want to?”

“Yes, mother, I believe I do. I’ve never seen a dance in my life. It cannot ruin me to look just once.”