But Berry and her mother were sure that was not the reason that kept Mollie away.
“May I go down and find out why she did not come?” asked Berry, as she sat down at the dinner table.
“No, I’m not willing for you to go down the trail to-day,” said Mrs. Arnold quickly. “Perhaps Mollie will appear this afternoon.”
“Perhaps she will,” agreed Berry hopefully; “and I guess she will be surprised to see Lily,” and she smiled at the silent Lily, who stood in one corner of the kitchen with her eyes fixed wonderingly upon her new friends.
CHAPTER VII
A SURPRISE
When the third day passed without Mollie appearing at the Arnolds’ cabin Mrs. Arnold gave Berry permission to go and find out the reason. There were not to be any lessons that morning, as Mr. Arnold had not been well for several days, and it was Lily who cared for the cow, brought the milk to the cabin, the wood from the shed, and did all the chores that Berry’s father usually did about the cabin.
“Isn’t it lucky I found Lily?” Berry asked soberly, as she made ready for her tramp over the ridge to the Braggs’ cabin.
“Lily is a great help,” Mrs. Arnold replied, but she did not tell Berry that the fact of having the fugitive slave girl in the house might prove a great danger to the Yankee household on the Tennessee mountain ridge.
“Do not say a word about Lily to Mollie or to Mr. and Mrs. Bragg,” Mrs. Arnold added, and Berry promised, thinking that whatever Mollie’s secret was it could not be more wonderful than the discovery of Lily.
“It’s like spring,” thought Berry as she strode along the leaf-covered path. “I smell it in the air.” For it was one of the days of late January when, among the ravines and valleys of the Tennessee mountains, spring seems close at hand. The sun shone warmly down, and wrens, nuthatches and cardinals flitted about the forest. “It won’t be long before the sap begins to run and we can make maple-sugar,” thought Berry. For there was a grove of sugar maples not two miles distant from the cabin, and Berry recalled the previous spring when she and her father had tapped the trees, boiled down the sap and made maple-sugar. “And that’s what we’ll do this year,” she decided happily, as she left the path for a moment to watch a scurrying partridge as it fluttered over the rough ground.