"Good-by, deary. Keep right on rubbing, and don't go to walking 'round. There's some cookies left in the cooky-crock, and a pie or two on the shelf to kind of set you going. Take good care o' yourselves."
"And Amelia," whispered the girl, drawing the old face down to her. "We'll take good care of Amelia."
It was a little lonely after the old stage rumbled away. The Talented One turned whimsically to Amelia for company. She tried to imagine her, as the little old woman did, but in vain. She could not conjure up the sweet, elusive face, the hair, the eyes, the grave little mouth of Amelia. The little old woman had taken away with her love, the key. She must have taken Amelia away with her, too, the girl thought, smiling at her own fancy. So, for company, she must wait until Loraine and Billy and Laura Ann came, on the further edge of the day. She lay in the cool grass, and made beatific plans for all the long, lazy days to come. No hurrying, or worrying—each one for herself, happy in her own way. Only themselves to think of for the space of a golden summer!
"I am glad she took Amelia," the girl in the grass laughed softly. "We'd never be able to keep to the Compact with Amelia 'round—Amelia would never have signed a 'Wicked Compact'!" Which, in the event of gentle, unsinning Amelia ever having been born, might or might not have been true. It would have been harder work, reflected the girl in the grass, for Amelia to have been unsinning and gentle, if she had been born.
Jane Cotton's Sam came lounging down the road, cap over one eye, face surlily defiant. T.O. watched him with displeasure. So that was the kind of a boy that gave up? Poor kind of a boy! Why didn't he try it again, especially when his poor mother's heart was breaking? Didn't he know that giving up was worse than failing in his examinations? Somebody ought to tell him—why, he was stopping at Mrs. Camp's little front gate! He was coming in!
The girl lying in the long grass under the tree sat up hurriedly. Quick, quick! what was his name? Oh, yes, Sam!
"Good-morning, Sam," she said pleasantly. But the boy, with a mere nod of his splendidly-modeled head, hurried away toward the tiny barn. The girl had seen the dark flush that mounted upward from his neck over his pink and white cheeks.
"Poor thing! He knows I know that he didn't pass—that is the only 'out' about living in the country: everybody knows everything. Well, if it makes him blush, then his mother needn't break her heart yet. I like the looks of that boy, if he does go 'round scowling." Whereupon the Talented One promptly dismissed Jane Cotton's Sam from her meditations. It did not occur to her to question his right to be on Mrs. Camp's premises. She lay back in the grass and took up again the interrupted thread of her musings. By gentle degrees odd fancies took possession of her.
