Miss Dean liked a little fun, and she did want her hens fed. So she showed me where she kept her “chicken clothes”—as she called them,—a short brown skirt and a square plaid shawl that she wore over her head and shoulders. The skirt was long for me and the shawl made my head dreadfully hot. But we both laughed over it, and Miss Dean said she was glad to know how she looked. Then she told me not to flop my arms around, because that would frighten the hens. So, with a pail of water and two quarts of corn, I made my way to the hen-house, which was just beyond a little shed. By the time I arrived, I had forgotten not to flop my arms, and the hens grew rather excited and lively, but they were too hungry and thirsty to care much who fed them. After that, I hunted around and found over a dozen white eggs, some of them quite warm, I remember. I tripped upon the brown skirt, going back, and let one egg fall out of the corn measure.
“The dolls’ shoes are all blacked,” exclaimed Ben, rising suddenly and stretching himself, boy-fashion. “May I take a sofa pillow and lie down in front of the fire?” he asked, coming toward Miss Ruth.
“Make yourself comfortable, Ben,” she answered readily; which Ben accordingly did.
“Excuse my interrupting,” he said, in a low tone; “and please go on.”
Miss Dean told me that breaking the egg did not matter,—that she often broke more than one, though I knew she said this just to make me feel better. “I have brought something out for you,” she said, after I had taken off the brown skirt and the stifling plaid shawl, and she was counting the eggs. I saw on the kitchen table a black-and-gold lacquered box, neither large nor small. It looked so interesting that I wanted to open it at once, but Miss Dean began talking about the hens.
I happened to see by the kitchen clock that it was almost three o’clock, and I knew that I ought to be going, for, though I sometimes stayed to lunch with Miss Dean, grandmother always said for me to come home immediately.
You may imagine how much I wanted to see what was in that beautiful lacquered box; but I said that I must go home. I hurried into the bedroom for my coat and Miss Dean followed me. I saw that she had dressed Susie in the blue-and-white gingham frock while I had been out feeding the hens.
“I will come over to-morrow,” I said, as Miss Dean helped me on with my coat. She noticed me looking at Susie,—although I was not thinking of the doll just then.
“Do you mind, dear, not telling any one about Susie?” Miss Dean asked in a timid voice.
“I will not tell anybody at all,” I remember I said, slowly, as I went, slowly also, out of the front door, hoping that Miss Dean would call me back to give me that box.