A Little Maid of Province Town

by Alice Turner Curtis

“Well, the poor creature was hungry. We eat plump hens, when we can get them,” answered Anne.

Jimmie laughed good-naturedly. “Wait till you see the beast, Anne,” he answered. “Its eyes shine like black water, and its teeth show like pointed rocks. You’d not stand up for it so boldly if you had but seen it.”

Anne made no answer; she was not even tempted to tell Jimmie that she had seen the animal, had been almost within arm’s reach of it.

“I must be going,” she said, “but do not harm the wolf, Jimmie,” and she looked at the boy pleadingly; “perhaps it knows no better than to take food when it is hungry.”

“I’d like its skin for a coat,” the boy answered, “but ’Tis a wise beast and knows well how to take care of itself. It’s miles away by this time,” and picking up the buckets he started toward home, and Anne turned away from the spring and walked toward the little pasture where Brownie fed in safety.

She stopped to speak to the little brown cow and to give her a handful of tender grass, and then wandered down the slope and along the edge of the marsh.

“Maybe ’twill come again,” she thought, as she reached the little oak tree and sat down where she had slept the day before. “Perhaps if I sit very still it will come out again. I’m sure ’Tis not an unfriendly beast.”

The little girl sat very still; she did not feel sleepy or tired, and her dark eyes scanned the marsh hopefully, but as the summer morning drifted toward noon she began to realize that her watch was in vain.

“I s’pose Jimmie Starkweather was right, and the gray wolf is miles away,” she thought, as she decided that she must leave the shadow of the oak and hurry toward home so that Aunt Martha would not be anxious about her.

“I wish the wolf knew I liked him,” the little girl said aloud, as she turned her face toward home. “I would not chase him away from the spring, and I would not want his gray fur for a coat,” and Anne’s face was very sober, as she sent a lingering look along the thick-growing woods that bordered the marsh. She often thought of the wolf, but she never saw it again.