Far away as Laura had always been from practical, every-day matters, of late she had been miles above the heads of her family, "soaring down the milky way," Bob said, "when there were milk pails down below needing scalding." Bob had scant patience with Laura's nonsense at any time, and he was working rather hard that summer.
It was trying; for at neither work nor play was Laura any use. She had a secret. What it was nobody knew—which was not strange, considering that it is the nature of secrets not to be known—but nobody could conjecture what it was.
If her mother and Miss Keren has guessed, it is highly probable that they would have interfered with her plan, but Laura, intent on proving to the world, and to her own family in particular, her entire competence to succeed in whatever she undertook, kept her own counsel and went her mysterious way.
Up on the edge of the extreme boundary of Crestville stood a little chapel served by a well-meaning, but illiterate young "preacher," as they called him in the village. He it was whom Laura had selected as the instrument of her plan, and to it the young man lent himself with an enthusiasm most refreshing to a lady of scarce thirteen, accustomed to the ridicule of a large and unappreciative home circle.
It was an extraordinary plan for a little girl to have laid, but then Laura never did anything that one would expect from a girl of her age, and she had sufficient self-confidence to have equipped an Arctic exploring party.
The first requisite for her scheme was a place, a setting, and Laura pitched upon the little church on the edge of the woods as the best for her purpose.
So one day she had attired herself in her most becoming muslin, took a book under her arm, and a roll of music in her hand—not that she needed them, but for dramatic effect—and sallied forth to win the young preacher to her way of thinking.
He lived not far from his church; when Laura knocked at the door his girl-wife opened it with her right hand, holding her baby in the hollow of that arm, while the left hand held a yellow bowl full of potatoes which she had just fetched from the cellar.
"See Mr. Buck?" she repeated after Laura, but with a strong Pennsylvania Dutch accent that rendered the name "Book." "Yes, I guess. He's in the room. You go in through if you want. Wait a little; I'll call him."
She disappeared, leaving Laura standing just across the threshold, and returned followed by a young man with beady black eyes, who looked as if he could not have been more than twenty-two years old.