Bob.”
“Plucky little chap, ain’t he!” and Harry giggles too. “Divert his mind! ha, ha! But you don’t know anything about how it burns. I got my hand peppered that way once, and went into the cellar where it was cool, and walked the floor for three hours. I didn’t want any one to find out about it, for fear of a scolding, for I expect I was old enough to know better.”
But Marie, who has been quietly meditating meanwhile, suddenly breaks forth with, “I wish I had lived in the time of the Revolution! Then I would have had a chance to do something brave.”
“You!” laughs Harry. “I’ll warrant it would scare you half to death to hear a mouse nibble in the wall at night.” Which Marie, blushing guiltily, cannot deny.
“Well, anyhow, I’m going over home to find out if I haven’t got a great-great-grandmother, or something.”
IN THE WOODS.
“Do you think there are any places in heaven like this?”
It is little Bessie who whispers the question, as she lies in the grass at Kate’s feet, looking up at the glimpses of sky among the branches—glimpses as blue as her eyes.
Kate looks up, too. Feathery-fine are those branches, swaying lazily in the sunlight; lower down they grow darker and heavy with green, till, here where she sits beneath, everything is in shadow. She glances around. Long, leafy avenues lead down the glens into blackness, and up the slopes into blackness, and away, away into blackness—the blackness of massed foliage that shuts out the world beyond. Can the grand old cathedrals they tell of compare with this—nature’s temple? Here are the lofty columns—not hewn by hands, indeed; here are the airy arches, rich with leaf-work tracery—not carved by hands, ’tis true. This velvety turf—can any mosaic pavement surpass it in beauty? Hardly can windows of stained glass let in a light more mellow than this which enters from above. She listens. Here and there a tiny rill tinkles along the ledges; thousands of little birds are flitting to and fro, caroling and calling one another; and, like the sound, when heard far off, of billows surging on the beach, she hears the never-ceasing sough of the wind among the trees. Ah, this wind, how cool it is, how fragrant! stooping to finger her hair. And there is the sultry, breathless August down in the city below.