Two or three more days passed, and still Miss Ann was hindered from keeping her mysterious appointment, until Tiny and Johnny, growing desperate, marched into the kitchen one afternoon, at four o’clock, and appealed to Mrs. Allen, who was sitting in the old green rocking-chair, knitting a stocking, while Miss Ann, her round face flushed with heat, stood by the stove, waiting for her third and last kettleful of blackberries to be ready to go into the jars.
“Mrs. Allen,” said Johnny, solemnly, “we’ve been trying for one week to catch Miss Ann; we want her up in the haymow for something very particular, and every day something happens, and we’ve never seen her sit down once since we’ve been here, and you’re her mother, and we thought perhaps you’d not mind telling her she must come!”
Mrs. Allen laughed heartily, but she did something better, too; she put down her knitting, and, marching up to Miss Ann, took the spoon out of her hand, saying with good-natured authority,—
“There! you go right along with the children, and don’t show your head in this kitchen till tea’s ready! Because you’re a willing horse, is no reason you should be drove to death, and I’m quite as able to finish up these blackberries as you are!”
So, in spite of her laughing protests, the children dragged their victim off in triumph, and never let go of her until they had throned her in state upon a pile of hay.
CHAPTER XX.
THE TIN MUG.
“Now, Miss Ann,” said Johnny, taking charge of the meeting, and quite forgetting to ask “if she would mind telling,” “we want you to please tell us how you manage always to seem to like what you are doing, and to want to do what everybody wants you to do and not to—not have any yourself at all!”