The four Corners

by Amy Ella Blanchard

In this mood Jack was not companionable, as Jean knew to her sorrow, and so, after a look of virtuous reproach at her sister, and a lifting of her head in scorn, she walked off with switching skirts, pounding down her heels very hard and calling back: "I'll tell Aunt Sarah too."

"She hasn't come yet," called Jack in return.

"You don't know whether she has or not," came the reply in fainter tones.

"I do so. The train doesn't get in till eleven. Ba-ah!" Then Jean indignantly pursued her way to pour forth her grievance in Nan's ear.

"She was sitting on the steps of the old Southall house," she reported, "and she wouldn't come when I said you wanted her. She said 'Ba-ah!' too, and she told me she'd come when she was ready."

Nan knew Jack's eccentricities of old, and that she should choose to be sitting on the steps of the Southall house was not a matter of surprise, though she wondered why Jack preferred to be there to enjoying her own home garden on a holiday. But she did not think it wise to try to force an obedience which very likely would not be given, so she said: "Well, never mind, let her stay there if she likes it. Perhaps she is waiting for some one. Isn't that Mitty coming? It looks like her yellow hat."

"It is Mitty," Jean assured her, "but her hat looks funny and she's got on an old calico wrapper."

Mitty entered rather shamefacedly. She had a tale of woe to tell. She had been caught in the rain and her clothes had suffered. She had gone to the "fessible," however, but it rained so hard that she, with most of the others, had to stay all night. There was a fight which scared her nearly to death, and there was no place to sleep, for the older persons took up all the floor space. She had walked home when daylight came, and had gone to bed at her mother's, but she was "clean tuckered out." And, indeed, at intervals during the rest of the day, one or another of the girls came upon her sound asleep over her work.

At eleven o'clock came Aunt Sarah, accompanied by Jack, who had met her at the train. Ordinarily Nan would not have been so overjoyed to see Aunt Sarah. There were too frequent passages of arms between them for the girl to look forward to her great aunt's visit with unalloyed pleasure, but this time Miss Dent was given an exuberant welcome, not only by Nan, but by the others. "We thought you would never get here," said Nan.