Sister had dropped back, shyly, behind Hiram, when he descended the tree. She had aided each girl ashore; but only Lettie had thanked her. Now she tugged at Hiram's sleeve.
“Take 'em home in our wagon,” she whispered.
“I can take you to Scoville—or to Miss Bronson's—in the farm wagon,” Hiram said, smiling. “You can sit on straw in the bottom and be comfortable.”
“Oh, a straw ride!” cried Lettie. “What fun! And he can drive us right to St. Beris—And think what the other girls will say and how they'll stare!”
The idea seemed a happy one to all the girls save the cry-baby, Myra Carroll. And her complaints were drowned in the laughter and chatter of the others.
Hiram picked up the tools, Sister got the string of fish, and they set out for the Atterson farmhouse. Lettie chatted most of the way with Hiram; but to Sister, walking on the other side of the young farmer, the Western girl never said a word.
At the house it was the same. While Hiram was cleaning the wagon and putting a bed of straw into it, and currying the horse and gearing him to the wagon, Mrs. Atterson brought a crock of cookies out upon the porch and talked with the girls from St. Beris. Sister had run indoors and changed her shabby and soiled frock for a new gingham; but when she came down to the porch, and stood bashfully in the doorway, none of the girls from town spoke to her.
Hiram drove up with the farm-wagon. Most of the girls had accepted the adventure in the true spirit now, and they climbed into the wagon-bed on the clean straw with laughter and jokes. But nobody invited Sister to join the party.
The orphan looked wistfully after the wagon as Hiram drove out of the yard. Then she turned, with trembling lip, to Mother Atterson: “She—she's awfully pretty,” she said, “and Hiram likes her. But she—they're all proud, and I guess they don't think much of folks like us, after all.”
“Shucks, Sister! we're just good as they be, every bit,” returned Mrs. Atterson, bruskly.