CHAPTER III
PRINCESS
As the wagons creaked slowly along over the burning, dusty prairies the little stranger cried more quietly, while the children stared at her with growing interest and wonder.
They had never seen any one quite like her before.
Living as they had in the quiet Friends settlement on their farm in Ohio, they had seen but little of the outside world, and that little had contained nobody in the least like this fairy-like creature, with her dainty clothing, her delicate features and coloring and her sunny golden hair.
"Say," whispered Sam, who was a great devourer of juvenile literature; "she looks just exactly like the fairy princesses you read about in story-books, don't she? Look at her little feet, and her little teenty white hands, and how her hair curls, and how little and white her neck is!"
Lige looked and nodded. "An' look at her clothes, too! City folks' clothes. Wonder why her mother let her wear clothes like that in the wagon? Our mother wouldn't let Sara and Ruth."
"You bet she wouldn't. She makes 'em wear calico aprons."
They glanced again at the little figure on the seat in front of them; at the dainty white dress, the little lace-trimmed petticoat that showed below its edge, the white stockings, the dainty little kid slippers, and then at each other and their own rough clothes and rough red hands.
"Makes you feel kind of like a tramp, don't it?" muttered Lige, and privately resolved to get out his second-best suit and put it on in the morning.