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“I don’t believe that little thing can carry three pounds of raisins,” Mrs. Lennox said to Aunt Maria. She was becoming more and more uneasy about Fidelia’s going.

“Let her take her little wagon an’ drag ’em; that’ll be just the thing,” said Aunt Maria, complacently.

So Fidelia started down the road, trundling behind her the little squeaking cart. It was a warm July day, and it was very dusty. Directly Fidelia started she forgot her mother’s injunctions about stubbing her toes; she disappeared in a small cloud of dust, for she walked in the middle of the road, and flirted it up with great delight.

In the course of the mile Fidelia met one team. It was an old rocking chaise and a white horse, and an old farmer was driving. He drove slower when he came alongside of Fidelia. When he had fairly passed her he stopped entirely, twisted about in his seat, and raised his voice.

“Whose little gal air you?” he asked.

Fidelia was a little frightened. Instead of giving her father’s name, she gave her own with shy precision–“Fidelia Ames Lennox,” she said, retiring into her Shaker bonnet.

“You ain’t runnin’ away, be you?”

Fidelia’s pride was touched. “I’m going to the store for my mother,” she announced, in quite a shrill tone. Then she took to her heels, and the little wagon trundled after, with a wilder squeak than ever.

Fidelia kept saying over to herself, “Three pounds of your best raisins, and Mr. Lennox will come in and pay you.” Her mother and Aunt Maria wished after she had gone that they had written it out on a piece of paper; they had not thought of that. But Aunt Maria said she knew that such a bright child as Fidelia would remember three pounds of raisins when she had been told over and over, and charged not to come home without them.

Fidelia had started about ten o’clock in the morning, and her mother and Aunt Maria had agreed that they would not worry if she should not return until one o’clock in the afternoon. That would allow more than an hour for the mile walk each way, and give plenty of time for a rest between; for Fidelia had been instructed to go into the store and sit down on a stool and rest a while before starting upon her return trip. “Likely as not Mis’ Rose will give her a cooky or something,” Aunt Maria had whispered to Mrs. Lennox.

So when noon came the two women pictured Fidelia sitting perched upon a stool in the store, being fed with candy and cookies, and made much of, or even eating dinner with the Rose family. “Mis’ Rose made so much of her when you took her there before that I shouldn’t wonder a mite if she’d kept her to dinner,” said Aunt Maria. She promulgated this theory the more strenuously when one o’clock came and Fidelia had not appeared. “Of course that’s what ’tis,” she kept repeating. “It would take ’em a good hour to eat dinner. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if she didn’t get here before two o’clock. I think you’re dreadful silly to worry, Jane.”

For poor Mrs. Lennox was pushing her chair every few minutes over to the door, where she would stand, her face all one anxious frown, straining her eyes for a glimpse of the small figure trudging up the road. She had made the blueberry dumpling that Fidelia loved for dinner, and it was keeping warm on the back of the stove. Neither she nor Aunt Maria had eaten a mouthful.

When two o’clock came Mrs. Lennox broke down entirely. “Oh dear!” she wailed; “oh dear! I ought to have known better than to let her go.”

Aunt Maria was now pacing heavily between her chair and the door, but she still maintained a brave front. “For goodness’ sake, Jane, don’t give up so,” said she. “I don’t see anything to worry about, for my part; they’re keepin’ her.”