"Montgomery Sturtevant! You come right down out that mow this minute! Here's Squire Pettijohn after you!"
CHAPTER IX.
SQUIRE PETTIJOHN
Katharine should have grown familiar, by this time, with Monty's spasmodic disappearances, but this last was the most amazing of all. It seemed that at the sound of "Pettijohn" the hay had opened and swallowed him. There had been no other summons and she had heard only a faint swish of something sliding, then found herself alone.
"But he'll come back, of course," she reflected, "after he's seen that gentleman. Must have been somebody he liked or he wouldn't have hurried so. Anyway, I don't mind being here a little while by myself to think things out all clear, and a hay-mow is the loveliest place in the world for dreaming."
It proved such in reality for Katharine, who, burrowing herself a fresh, chair-like "nest" in the sweet-scented hay, laid her head back and fixed her gaze upon the clouds floating above the slatted window. Soon her lids dropped and she fell fast asleep.
When she awoke the loft was dusky in twilight and she was very cold. The wind had risen, and little tufts of the hay about her blew here and there, clinging to her clothing and lodging among her short curls. Montgomery had not returned, and after lying still a moment longer, till she was fully awake, she grew frightened, thinking:
"I never heard such a moaning and whistling as the wind does make up here. I wonder if it is always so in a barn, and how I am to get down. It was hard enough coming up, but in the dark, like this, and I not remembering just where that ladder was; and if I don't find it—what shall I do? Yet how silly to be afraid of things, a big girl like me; and how impolite of that boy to go away and forget me. No matter how much he likes Squire Pettijohn, he shouldn't forget his manners; especially since it is I, not that gentleman, who is going to cure him of stuttering. And what a stupid I am not to call him! If he's forgotten I must remind him."