"Yes!" said the little boys together.
"'Member the beautiful lady, ridin' on a horse, and standin' on one foot?"
"Yes!" the others cried, breathlessly.
"Well," said Ellen slowly and solemnly, "when I get to be a big girl, that's what I'm going to be. I'm tired of catechism, and church, and those long blessings father asks, but most of catechism, so I'm going to run away, and be a circus."
"Father'll catch you," said Jim; but Bobby, with envious depreciation, added,—
"How do you know but what circuses have catechism?"
Ellen did not notice the lack of sympathy. "And I'm going to begin to practice now," she said.
Then, while her brothers watched her, deeply interested, she took off her shoes, and in her well-darned little red stockings climbed deliberately upon the grindstone.
"This is my horse," she said, balancing herself, with outstretched arms, on the stone, and making it revolve in a queer, jerky fashion by pressing her feet on it as though it were a treadmill, "and it is bare-backed!"
The iron handle came down with a thud, and Ellen lurched to keep from falling; the boys unwisely broke into cheers.