Dixie Martin, the Girl of Woodford's Cañon

BY GRACE MAY NORTH
ILLUSTRATED BY ELISABETH B. WARREN
BOSTON LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
Copyright, 1924, By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.
PRINTED IN U. S. A. Norward Press BERWICK & SMITH CO. NORWOOD, MASS.
Dedicated to IVERS ASHLEY My long-ago school-mate who was so like little Dixie Martin
“Carolina Martin, you get up this instant. Do you hear me? I’ve called you sixteen times already, if ’tisn’t twenty, and this the morning the new teacher starts at the old log schoolhouse over at Woodford’s. You don’t want us all to be late, do you, and have her think we’re shiftless, like the poor white folks our mother used to tell about, in the mountains down in Tennessee. We, with the bluest blood in our veins that flows in the whole South! Carolina, are you up ?”
This conversation was carried on in a high-pitched voice by a thin, homely, freckled-faced little girl whose straight brick-red hair had not a wave in it, and whose long, skinny legs, showing beneath the gingham dress two years too short for her, made her appear as ungainly as a colt.
There was no one else present in the big living-room of the log cabin, but the voice carried well, and was heard in the loft above, where, in a large four-posted bed, another small girl sleepily replied, “Oh, Dixie, I wish folks never did have to get up, nor go to school, nor—” The voice trailed off drowsily, and Carolina had just turned over for another little nap when she heard her sister climbing the ladder which led from the room below to the loft where the two girls slept.
Instantly the culprit leaped to the floor. When the red head of Dixie appeared at the square opening of the trap-door, the small girl was making great haste to don her one piece of all-over underwear.
She smiled her sweetest at her irate sister, whose wrath softened, for little Carolina was so like their beautiful mother. Even at eight years of age she had the languid manner of the South, and spoke with a musical drawl.