Tabitha at Ivy Hall

by Ruth Brown MacArthur

Tom laughed ironically. "Hm, what satisfaction would it be to me to thrash someone that you have licked, Puss?" he asked.

"Please, Tom, don't touch Sneed," she begged, crying harder than ever; and to still her sobs, he promised, though in his heart he vowed vengeance.

"How did you happen to go blackberrying without me?" he asked to divert her attention from her anxiety over him. "I thought you wanted me to go with you."

"Why, you're so busy at the store that we don't have time to get more than a handful at night when you can go, and the bushes were just loaded with them just below Pomeroy's pasture. I never thought about Joe's being there to tease me. I did want the berries so much, for Aunt Maria said she would make some jelly and some jam if I would pick the berries. She won't gather 'em 'cause the thorns tear her hands so. I got the pail full—heaped up so they kept tumbling off—and now they are all spoiled and I've scratched my hands to pieces all for nothing."

Tom expected a fresh wail would follow this statement, for though Tabitha was not ordinarily a cry-baby, the day of trials had been too much for her; but he was surprised when after a moment of silence in which he was vainly trying to think of something consoling to say, she remarked, "Well, I don't know's I care much about the berries, 'cause we're going to move, and I s'pose if we had a lot of jelly put up, Dad would say it wasn't any use to take it with us, and we would have to leave it along with the rest of the truck they've been sorting out today."

"Move?" the boy interrupted, as the realization of what she was saying dawned upon him. "Who says we're going to move? What do you mean? They never told me!"

"I heard Dad tell Aunt Maria we would leave the last of the week for the place where he has just come from, and they have been packing all the afternoon."

Tom was silent and in the darkness Tabitha could not see his face, but she seemed to understand how he felt about it, and after a moment she slipped a thorn-scratched little hand into his, as she said,

"You don't like it, do you, Tommy? I'm sorry, too. I wanted to stay here. The people who have moved in the big red house by the pond have two of the nicest children. They are cousins and have the prettiest names—Rosalie Meywood and Rosslyn Fennimore—and they are almost my age. I hated to tell them my name, but they didn't laugh a bit, Tom. They didn't even look queer at each other, and Rosslyn said they had a kitten they called Tabby and it was the smartest cat they ever saw. They have taught it tricks and Rosalie invited me over to see it. I met them down in the blackberry patch. They were picking just for fun and they helped me a little—not much, 'cause they were so slow. Neither of them knows how to pick berries and they took only those out in sight, while the very best ones are most always way in under the vines. We are all in the same classes in school and we planned such nice times together when lessons begin again. I never get to knowing any nice people but we move away. Do you s'pose we will ever have any friends, Tom?"

Tom's thoughts were very busy, and he only half heard the child's lively chatter. In the dim long ago, when he was only six years old, one morning a white-aproned woman with a gentle face had called him to her and led him into a room where lay his own dear mother with a little white bundle on her arm, and when the covers were turned down he had looked into a tiny, red, wrinkled face with blinking, black eyes and was told that this was a baby sister come to be a playmate for him. Then the nurse went away and left them for a little while and his mother talked to him in her soft voice that he could remember best in the little lullaby she used to sing to him: