At first I thought it was going to be so nice, that I'd forget about everything till Aunty May came back, but by and by, though they were nice as nice can be, I began to miss Aunty May till it hurt like a toothache.
I missed Aunty Edith, too, but Aunty May and I had played most together, and next to Uncle Burt, I loved her best.
The Turners had an old ruined mill on their grounds, and we children used to hang our bathing-suits in there and use it to dress in when we went swimming in the creek.
It was very old, and all the machinery, the wheels and things, were made of wood. Up in the top there was a nice big loft, with a wide window, where nobody ever went. When I found this out, I took a broom up there and swept it by the window, and got an old chair, and one of the old barrels for a table, and when I didn't want to play with Charlotte and Grace, or when it rained, I used to get a piece of bread or cake, or an apple, and go off there, all by myself. Sometimes I read, sometimes I wrote books and drew, and sometimes I just sat and thought about Uncle Burt and Aunty May, and Aunty Edith. And it got nearer and nearer the time for Aunty May to come back.
The very day that she was to come home, I was doing this, thinking about her, I mean—a little harder than usual, because Mr. Turner had told me at breakfast that after all Aunty May wouldn't be back till to-morrow, when I heard somebody else breathing in the room. I turned around, and there was Henry, the Indian boy from the Carlisle School, sitting crouched on the floor.
He was a great big boy, fifteen or sixteen, and he helped with the work in the house in the summertime. Henry was always nice to us children, and we liked him a great deal.
I said "Hullo, Henry, what are you doing in my library?" And he showed all his teeth at me and said he was doing the same that I was doing there; he had come up to be sad and alone. Then I told him all about Aunty May, and he was sorry for me, and he told me about the school, and the teachers, and football, and his people, and I was sorry for him.
Then he told me that when he got very sorry about everything, sometimes, he just dressed himself and got out of his bed at night and walked and walked until he got tired, and then came back and slept.
He told me how lovely everything looked in the country, early in the morning, and I told him I'd like to do that, too, some morning, but how did he get up without waking people? Then he showed me how he could move in his stocking feet and no one could hear him. And it was true. If I sat with my back to Henry I would still think he was sitting back of me, when he was over by the door, really. So I practiced that, too. "Playing Indian," he called it; and he promised next time he had that feeling, he'd throw some gravel at my window, and I could come down.
