A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia

by Alice Turner Curtis

As she came near Fluff he lifted his head from the water, shook himself much as a big dog would do, and whinnied with satisfaction. But as Winifred approached more closely he gave a little dancing step into the water just beyond her reach.

"Oh, Fluff! It isn't any time to play games. We must start for home before it is really dark," said Winifred. But Fluff was now rested, and free from his harness in a fragrant shadowy wood. He was sure that his little mistress must be as ready as himself for a game, so he edged along the pool until a clear space opened before him, and then he stepped out, and trotted briskly away between the tall trees.

"Fluff! Fluff!" called Winifred, running after him. "Oh! where did he go?" for the pony had disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him. Winifred ran on until her way was blocked by thickly growing underbrush. Then she turned back, but now she could not find the pool. The shadows deepened; she could hardly distinguish one tree from another, and there was no sound or sign from the gray pony.

"What shall I do?" she said, standing close to the trunk of a pine tree that rose straight and tall with wide-spreading branches. She realized that she must now be some distance from the road and the big oak tree where she had left the pony-cart, and Fluff perhaps was deep in this wilderness, unable to make his way back; and, worst of all, night was close upon her.

It was indeed a dangerous position for a little girl to be alone in a wilderness as Winifred found herself. It was a time when many wild beasts still wandered about, often coming near to the outskirts of towns and villages. Winifred remembered that only a few weeks earlier a catamount had been killed at Fair Mount, and she knew that in the early spring bears left the dens where they had slept through the winter, and wandered through the woods eating the tender young buds and leaves. She crouched closer to the tree as she remembered these things, and then suddenly she recalled the words that she had worked on her sampler: "There shall no evil befall thee. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways."

Her mother had traced the words, and Winifred had worked them in dull blue yarns on the perforated wool cloth. She said them over aloud: "No evil befall thee," and was no longer afraid. She did not think now of the beasts of the dark wood, but of a kindly presence that would shelter her.

"Perhaps Fluff will come and find me," she thought hopefully. "Anyway, Ruth will soon be back with Gilbert, and they will call my name, and I shall call back," and so comforted and encouraged Winifred sat down on the soft pine spills and leaned back against the tall tree. A pair of squirrels chattered noisily in the branches; a soft-footed little animal sped by almost touching her feet, and she could hear faint calls from nesting birds near at hand.

"For he shall give his angels charge over thee," the little girl whispered to herself, and soothed and quieted by the spring fragrance of the wood her eyes closed.

Ruth, meanwhile, was trudging along the road toward home. She was sure that she could find the way without any trouble.

"All I have to do is to turn when I come to the river road and follow it straight back to the city, and then any one can tell me how to get home," she thought, hopefully. But she began to think she should never reach the river road. Her thin shoes were scrubbed and dusty, and she wondered what Aunt Deborah would say at her untidy appearance.