A NEEBOR LADDIE.
Little Roose was up by times next morning, and thought it grand fun to help Mrs Crowdie to milk, to feed the poultry, and to get breakfast ready. Everything was new to her, and enjoyed with such a zest as to show that it was her first taste of country-life. To keep her company, Mrs Crowdie had sent word to her neighbors to let their son come and play with her, and by-and-by Johnnie made his appearance, and the two had a rare time of it. It was in the afternoon, when, tired with play, and to rest and enjoy the pieces Mrs Crowdie gave each of them, they snuggled down behind a clump of bushes in the orchard.
“When I’m a man, Roose, I’ll have sugar on my bread like this all the time.”
“When you’re a man, will you have a horse?”
“Yes; two of them and whiskers too.”
“And a farm like this?”
“A bigger farm than this, an’ a big house an’ a buggy, an’ pigs an’ sheep an’ hens.”
“And may I come to see you?”
“You’ll milk the cows and make butter.”
“Will it be long time ’fore you’re a man?”
“When I’m growed; two or three year; I’m six now.”
“How do cows make butter?”
“My, don’t you know? It ain’t the cows that make the butter, it’s the girls.”
“And will you show me when I’m big?”
“Yes, an lots o’ things.”
“My mama has no cows.”
“Ain’t she! Why, my dad has lots o’ em and a bull, too.”
“I’d be ’fraid.”
“O, you are not a man like me. I could fire a gun an shoot a bear.”
“Has God cows?”
“Why, He makes em, an the horses, an the elephants, an every thing. Don’t you go to Sabbath school?”
“No.”
“My! I went when littler than you, an learnt heaps o’ things, an got raisins and candy at Christmas.”
“Without a penny?”
“Gimme for nothing.”
“My.”
“I was to have spoke a piece but got afraid.”
“I wouldn’t be ’fraid.”
“Oh, that’s nothing; you’re a girl.”
Here the conference was broken by Johnnie’s offering to show where the ground hogs kept house, and off he and his companion trotted to a remote stone-pile, and did not turn up till supper time, when they burst in upon Mrs Crowdie with the appetite of hawks, and the girl so full of the wonders she had seen that her tongue never rested until she became sleepy. When laid away for the night, Mrs Crowdie sat in the gathering gloom to think over what she should do. The day had passed without any one coming to enquire for a lost girl, which very much surprised her. So far as her own inclinations went, she would rather nobody ever came, but she knew that somewhere a poor mother’s heart was in agony over the loss, and she resolved that, next morning, after breakfast she would drive to Huntingdon to find out if there had been any enquiries.