But Rachel, once directed, got there first, and was down on her knees on the bank, dabbling her hands in the purling little stream, half wild with delight.
And when the parson and his wife got home from Miss Bedlow's funeral, they found the three children there, perfectly absorbed in the labor of sailing boats of cabbage leaves, and guiding their uncertain craft in and out the shimmering pools and down through the tiny rapids. And they watched them unobserved.
"But I dread to-morrow, when I give her the first lesson," said the parson, as they stood unperceived in the shadow of the trees; "everything else is a splendid success."
"Let us hope the lessons will be, too, husband," said Mrs. Henderson, a happy light in her eyes.
"I hope so, but I'm afraid the child is all for play, and will be hard to teach," he said, with a sigh.
But on the morrow—well, the minister came out of his study when the lesson hour was over, with a flush on his face that betokened pleasure as well as hard work. And Rachel began to skip around for very joy. She was really to be a little student, Mr. Henderson had said. Not that Rachel really knew what that meant exactly, but the master was pleased, and that was enough, and all of a sudden, when she was putting up some dishes in the keeping-room closet, she began to sing.
Mrs. Henderson nearly dropped the dish she was wiping.
"Why, my child!" she exclaimed, then stopped, but Rachel didn't hear her, and sang on. It was a wild little thing that she had heard from the hand organs and the people singing it in the streets of the big city.
Just then old Miss Parrott's stately, ancestral coach drove up. The parson's wife hurried to the front door, which was seldom opened except for special company like the present.
"I heard," said Miss Parrott, as Mrs. Henderson ushered her in, "that you'd taken a little girl out of charity, and I want to see you and your husband about it."