Laddie: A True Blue Story

by Gene Stratton-Porter

I was coming from the bin with an apron full of skins and I almost fell over. I couldn't breathe for a long time. I danced on my toes, and held my mouth to keep from screaming. On the garret floor before me lay a little piece of wet mud, and the faintest outline of a boot, a boot about Leon's size. That was all I needed to know. As soon as I could hold steady, I took the skins to mother, slipped back and hunted good; and of course I had to find them—grainsacks half full of them—carried in the front door in the evening, and up the front stairs, where no one went until bedtime, unless there were company. Away back under the eaves, across the joists, behind the old clothing waiting to be ripped, coloured and torn for carpet rangs and rugs, Mr. Leon had almost every egg that had been laid on the place for a month.

NOW he'd see what he'd get for taking Laddie's!

Then I stopped short. What I thought most made me sick, but I didn't propose to lie in bed again for a year at least, for it had its bad parts as well as its good; so I went straight and whispered to Laddie. He never looked pleased at all, so I knew I had been right. He kissed me, and thanked me, and then said slowly: "It's mighty good of you, Little Sister, but you see it wouldn't be FAIR. He found mine himself, so he had a right to take them. But I don't dare touch his, when you tell me where they are. I never in a month of Sundays would have looked for them in the house. I was going to search the wood house and smoke house this afternoon. I can't take them. But thank you just as much."

Then I went to father and he laughed. How he did laugh!

"Laddie is right!" he said at last. "He didn't find them, and he mustn't take them. But you may! They're yours! That front door scheme of Leon's was fairly well, but it wasn't quite good enough. If he'd cleaned his feet as he should, before he crossed mother's carpet and climbed the stairs, he'd have made it all right. 'His tracks betrayed him,' as tracks do all of us, if we are careless enough to leave any. The eggs are yours, and to-night is the time to produce them. Where do you want to hide them?"

Well of all things! and after I had stumbled on them without pestering the Lord, either! Just as slick as anything! Mine! I never ever thought of it. But when I did think, I liked it. The more I thought, the funnier it grew.

"Under mother's bed," I whispered. "But I never can get them. They're in wheat sacks, and full so high, and they'll have to be handled like eggs."

"I'll do the carrying," laughed father. "Come show me!"

So we took all those eggs, and put them under mother's bed.

Of course she and Candace saw us, but they didn't hunt eggs and they'd never tell. If ever I thought I'd burst wide open! About dusk I saw Leon coming from the barn carrying his hat at his side—more eggs—so I ran like a streak and locked the front door, and then slipped back in the dining-room and almost screamed, when I could hear him trying it, and he couldn't get in. After a while he came in, fussed around, and finally went into the sitting-room, and the key turned and he went upstairs. I knew I wouldn't dare look at him when he came down, so I got a reader and began on a piece I just love: