There were two roads that found their way to “the West,” that is, the little village that was nearest to the homestead, and it was always a question which to choose. One led over a hill so high that it was almost a young mountain. Indeed, when Ella was smaller, she had fancied that if the road had not held it down like a strap, it would have grown into a mountain. The other road was shorter, but full of rocks, as if it had once been the bed of a river. The horse knew it well. He had learned just how to twist and turn among the rocks, and even if one wheel was a foot higher than another, there was no real danger of an overthrow, day or night.

Upward they went, past tiny villages, little blue ponds, comfortable farmhouses, usually in charge of a big dog, who came out to the road and greeted them with a friendly wag of the tail; past meadows and mowing lots; beside “sap orchards” of maple trees; through deep woods, dark and cool even that warm summer afternoon; past the tiny red schoolhouse under the maples at the crossroads. Ella had been there to school with an older cousin one day, and she thought that going to school and sitting at a desk must be the most delightful thing in the world. She had been allowed to sit, not with the little children, but, because she was company, on the high seats at the back of the room with the big girls. They were parsing in “Paradise Lost.” Ella had no idea what either “Paradise Lost” or “parsing” might be, but she was sure it must be something very agreeable. They had carried their dinner in a tin pail; and this, she thought, was a wonderfully fine thing to do, for when noon came, they ate it under the trees just as if they were on a picnic. Then they played in the brook and made playhouses, marking them out with white stones on the grass. They made wreaths of maple leaves, pinning them together with their long stems, and they pulled up long sprays of creeping Jenny to drape over their playhouses at home.

But now they were on the crossroad that led to grandmother’s, and Ella was getting much excited. “I know she will hear us when we go over the causeway,” she cried, “and she will come to the road to meet us;” and so it was, for two minutes later they could see the end of the house and the big asparagus bush standing under one of the west windows. Half a minute more, and they were at the gate, and there stood grandma and grandpa, and the uncles and the aunts and the cousins, and such a welcome as there was! Then came supper, with cottage cheese, made as no one but grandma could make it, custard pie, hot biscuit and maple syrup made from the sap of the very trees that they had just passed, and as many other good things as the table would hold.

After Ella was curled up in bed that night, she said:

“Mother, I don’t believe I want to sing on a boat. I’d rather be a little girl at her grandmother’s. Will you please take out my thick shoes? I shall be too busy to look for them in the morning.”

The mother went back to have a little talk alone with grandmother. She was sitting in her straight-backed rocking-chair. There were tears in her eyes. She looked up as the mother came in.

“The child looks more like her father every year,” said grandmother.

The mother nodded. Her eyes, too, were full of tears, and she could not speak.

CHAPTER VII
BOY COUSIN

Ella was a fortunate little girl in having so many cousins. Some were tall, some were short; some had blue eyes, and some had black; some had curly hair and some had straight hair; some lived near the grandfather’s, some lived a long drive away, and some lived many hundreds of miles away. Most of them were younger; two or three were older. When one is nine, three or four years make a great difference, and Ella looked upon these older ones as being quite mature persons. She loved them all, but her special playmate was Boy Cousin, a boy of her own age who lived nearest.