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However, that afternoon she departed from her usual custom and sent Lily to the store.

She came in from the kitchen, whither she had been to baste the roasting pig.”There’s no use talkin’,” said she, “I’ve got to have some more salt. I’ve jest used the very last I had to dredge over that pig. I’ve got to go to the store.”

Sally Jinks looked at Lily.”Why don’t you send her?” she asked.

Old Woman Magoun gazed irresolutely at the girl. She was herself very tired. It did not seem to her that she could drag herself up the dusty hill to the store. She glanced with covert resentment at Sally Jinks. She thought that she might offer to go. But Sally Jinks said again, “Why don’t you let her go?” and looked with a languid eye at Lily holding her doll on the stone.

Lily was watching the men at work on the bridge, with her childish delight in a spectacle of any kind, when her grandmother addressed her.

“Guess I’ll let you go down to the store an’ git some salt, Lily,” said she.

The girl turned uncomprehending eyes upon her grandmother at the sound of her voice. She had been filled with one of the innocent reveries of childhood. Lily had in her the making of an artist or a poet. Her prolonged childhood went to prove it, and also her retrospective eyes, as clear and blue as blue light itself, which seemed to see past all that she looked upon. She had not come of the old Barry family for nothing. The best of the strain was in her, along with the splendid stanchness in humble lines which she had acquired from her grandmother.

“Put on your hat,” said Old Woman Magoun; “the sun is hot, and you might git a headache.”She called the girl to her, and put back the shower of fair curls under the rubber band which confined the hat. She gave Lily some money, and watched her knot it into a corner of her little cotton handkerchief.”Be careful you don’t lose it,” said she, “and don’t stop to talk to anybody, for I am in a hurry for that salt. Of course, if anybody speaks to you answer them polite, and then come right along.”

Lily started, her pocket-handkerchief weighted with the small silver dangling from one hand, and her rag doll carried over her shoulder like a baby. The absurd travesty of a face peeped forth from Lily’s yellow curls. Sally Jinks looked after her with a sniff.

“She ain’t goin’ to carry that rag doll to the store?” said she.

“She likes to,” replied Old Woman Magoun, in a half-shamed yet defiantly extenuating voice.

“Some girls at her age is thinkin’ about beaux instead of rag dolls,” said Sally Jinks.

The grandmother bristled, “Lily ain’t big nor old for her age,” said she.”I ain’t in any hurry to have her git married. She ain’t none too strong.”

“She’s got a good color,” said Sally Jinks. She was crocheting white cotton lace, making her thick fingers fly. She really knew how to do scarcely anything except to crochet that coarse lace; somehow her heavy brain or her fingers had mastered that.

“I know she’s got a beautiful color,” replied Old Woman Magoun, with an odd mixture of pride and anxiety, “but it comes an’ goes.”

“I’ve heard that was a bad sign,” remarked Sally Jinks, loosening some thread from her spool.

“Yes, it is,” said the grandmother.”She’s nothin’ but a baby, though she’s quicker than most to learn.

Lily Barry went on her way to the store. She was clad in a scanty short frock of blue cotton; her hat was tipped back, forming an oval frame for her innocent face. She was very small, and walked like a child, with the clapclap of little feet of babyhood. She might have been cons
idered, from her looks, under ten.