Nature made no difference; nevertheless there was a barrier. My was effectually severed from the rest of the village, but he himself had not recognized that yet, and the next time Myron looked up she saw My had gone through the fence and had seated himself beside the others.
They had taken their places in an irregular row among the buttercups, jostling and nudging each other, saying "Gimme elbow room," and "Quit pushin'," as they settled themselves comfortably to the business of the moment.
This was the time-honored trial to decide which of them liked butter, ascertained by holding a spray of buttercups against the throat, so that the reflection was cast upon the uptilted chin. The taste for butter is proportionate to the yellowness of the reflection.
Little Jenny Muir was judge and the rest jury, craning their necks forward to look as she passed from one to the other, holding a bunch of buttercups against their chests whilst they tilted their chins far back. The dull blues, washed-out reds, and russet browns of the children's frocks enhanced the brilliant yellow of the flowers. The shadows of the big pear tree, glossy of leaf but barren of fruit, modulated the sunshine, so that the whole group showed in a soft, subdued glow, an idyl of child life not unlovely, for the heads in the row were not yet bent to the dust to search for money, nor lifted to heaven in self-righteous conceit. Time had not dulled the childish gold to brown, nor deadened the flaxen heads to lustreless drab.
My placed himself at the end of the row, his head a golden period at the end of the human sentence that spoke of life's beginnings. With unembarrassed childish mimicry, he emulated the gestures and laughter of the others.
Myron's heart lightened. She wondered for a moment if My might not in time merge his life with those others and be no longer solitary. The hope soon vanished. Looking out again, she saw My sitting alone, his head tilted far back as he waited for his turn. Just disappearing down the slight decline to the school-house, she saw the other children, their hands held over their mouths, their faces red with suppressed laughter, stepping with elaborate pretence of quiet, and turning now and then to look over their shoulders at My, sitting alone, his face patiently uptilted to the sun, unconscious of his loneliness. Beside him lay the bunch of buttercups, flung down as Jenny Muir clapped her hands over her mouth and fled across the soft sward.
In a moment Myron was out of the house, running down the path to the fence side. Ere she reached it, My's tired little neck relaxed, and he looked about him wonderingly, the light fading from his face. His eyes were filled with tears, and his lips quivered when his mother called him. There was a hasty scramble over the ditch, a struggle through the fence, and My was back on his mother's side of the barrier. That straggling fence was, after all, not so easily crossed.
My had forgotten the whole affair ten minutes after, as he excitedly chased grasshoppers along the paths; but all day long the laughter of the playing children smote Myron's heart like the crack of a whip that stings.
After that day it became a matter of conscience for Myron to play the "buttercup game" with My, and a feverish eagerness fairly consumed her to get away from a place where even the children were cruel. She began to scrimp and save every penny she could, hoarding her meagre gatherings in the bottom of the old clock-case that stood on the shelf beside the window.
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