“Archie has brought us a nest of bowls,” said Agnes. “Where did you put them, Archie?” He produced them from where he had laid them behind a hollow stump, and they were duly admired. A nest of such bowls as Archie could make from knots of the ash tree was something of a possession, and his art in making them gave him quite a name for cleverness, for few had his accomplishment of turning them.
“I’ve put up a fine sweep at our place,” Archie told them, “and you’ll be bringing your corn over, won’t you, Agnes? All the neighbors are at it, and keep it going steadily, but you shall have your turn, and I will grind all you need.”
“How good and kind you are,” Agnes returned. “When the corn gets hard, it is pretty heavy work for us. The grater does well enough now while the corn is tender, for you made us such a good one. You remember, father, it was Archie who made our grater, and now he has made a sweep at his father’s, and will grind our corn for us if we take it over.”
Her father nodded thoughtfully, not being quite sure of himself. He remembered the grater in daily use to prepare the meal for the family, but the maker of the crude little implement was not so familiar an object.
Carrying the bowls and Fergus Kennedy’s hoe, Archie strode along by the side of the two, Agnes secretly admiring his fine appearance, though she did not intend to let him know it. He, meanwhile, thought no one could look as pretty as Agnes; her soft auburn hair curled around her neck, and though she was rosy from sunburn and a crop of little freckles freely besprinkled her nose and cheeks, her forehead was purely white, and her throat, too. She carried her sunbonnet in her hand, and her feet, scratched and brown, were minus shoes and stockings. In the cold weather she had her shoepacks and moccasins, but now in the summer she must go barefooted like the rest of her friends. She was thankful that she was wearing, at the time their first cabin was burned, the only pair of shoes she had brought from home. These were saved for great occasions, and she thought of them with satisfaction, as she remembered that she could wear them to church the next day.
“There is a newcomer in the neighborhood,” Archie told them all at the table, between his mouthfuls of mush and milk—“gape and swallow,” Polly called it.
“And who is the stranger?” Agnes asked.
“A young man, David Campbell.”
“And what is he like? Where has he come from? Where will he settle?”
“Hear the lass’s questions,” laughed Polly. “Ye’ll be takin’ them wan be wan, Archie. Firstly, what is he like? Under this head come his features, his hair and eyes—”