“Same age as our Doris, ain’t she? When I was young, gals was women at fourteen, an’ expected to quit playin’ with the boys, wear their dresses to their shoe-tops an’ be pretty-behaved.”
“I wish mother’d let me wear my dresses to the tops of my shoes,” put in Doris, demurely. “I’m three months older than Cynthia, anyway.” She had opened the sitting-room door just in time to hear the last speech, but was careful not to commit herself to the rest of her grandma’s program.
“You all going out to your uncle’s place again to-day, Doris?” asked her mother, indulgently. “I see Cynthia’s here, but where are the others?”
“Oh, Stella had her Saturday work to do, and couldn’t get ’round before two o’clock, she said. It’s most that, now,” and she turned again to the window. No one was in sight except Cynthia and Scotty, who were joyously running races up and down the yard.
Here Mother Brown disappeared into the pantry, possibly to put up a bag of her fat, brown cookies, and Doris hunted in the hall closet for her white sweater, while Grandma commented shrewdly:
“That gal’s more of a woman than any the rest of ye, if she is an Injun.”
“Wolcott’s Woods” had become a favorite resort since that Thanksgiving ramble which had brought the three friends closer together, and the fact that the woods belonged to Doris’ Uncle Si, together with the further consideration that the “new teacher” usually went with the girls, had satisfied their respective mothers of their safety on these excursions. There was talk of snow-shoes and skis, and later of fishing-rods and flower-baskets, but just what went on in Wolcott’s Woods no one knew exactly, for the “Clover-Leaf” was a secret society of three, with Ethan Honey, Miss Morrison and Uncle Si as honorary members.
Presently Stella and her teacher appeared, and the four set out at once—or five, counting in the irrepressible Sir Walter, whose care-free bark voiced the adventurous spirit of the holiday party. It was a warm Saturday in April—one of the few days when our New England spring really opens her heart to the wayfarer, and from time to time they were overtaken by country teams whose occupants gazed curiously, even pityingly, upon them. Once a farmer returning homeward with an empty lumber wagon offered the whole party “a lift,” which proposal was gracefully evaded by Miss Morrison. It always amused her to note that the “natives” evidently could not conceive of any one’s walking for pleasure, or indeed walking at all, unless he were frankly too poor to ride.