"Well, let him shear them, and keep the wool too."
"I wouldn't say that, Dorothy!" said Rachel Barton. "We need the wool, and it seems as if over-payment might not be quite honest either."
"Oh! mother, mother! What a mother thee is!" cried Dorothy laughing, and rumpling her cap-strings in a tumultuous embrace.
"She's a great deal too good for thee, Dorothy Barton."
"She's too good for all of us! How did thee ever come to have such a graceless set of children, mother?"
"I'm very well satisfied," said Rachel. "But now do be quiet, and let's finish the letter. We must get to bed some time to-night!"
The wild clematis was in blossom now—the fences were white with it, and the rusty cedars were crowned with virgin wreaths, but the weeds were thick in the garden and in the potato patch. Dorothy, stretching her cramped back, looked longingly up the shadowy vista of the farm-lane, which had nothing to do but ramble off into the remotest green fields, where the daisies' faces were as white and clear as in early June.
One hot August night she came home late from the store. The stars were thick in the sky; the katydids made the night oppressive with their rasping questionings, and a hoarse revel of frogs kept the ponds from falling asleep in the shadow of the hills.
"Is thee very tired to-night, Dorothy?" her mother asked, as she took her seat on the low step of the porch. "Would thee mind turning old John out thyself?"
"No, mother, I'm not tired. But why—oh, I know!" cried Dorothy, with a quick laugh. "The dance—at Slocum's barn. I thought those boys were uncommonly helpful."