Then in the kitchen there was a broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced woman, named Tempy Ann Crawford, whom I always see, with my mind's eye, roasting coffee and stirring it with a pudding-stick, or rolling out doughnuts, which she called crullers, and holding up a fried image, said to be a little sailor boy with a tarpaulin hat on,—only his figure was injured so much by swelling in the lard kettle that his own mother wouldn't have known him; still he made very good eating.
There was a little bound girl in the family, Ann Smiley, who often led me into mischief, but always before Madam Allen looked as demure as a little gray kitten.
Fel and I were uncommonly forward about learning our letters, and wished very much to go to school and finish our education; but were told that the "committee men" would not let us in till we were four years old. My birthday came the first of May, and very proud was I when mother led me up to a lady visitor, and said, "My little girl is four years old to-day." I thought the people "up street" would ring bells and fire cannons, but they forgot it. I looked in the glass, and could not see the great change in my face which I had expected. I didn't look any "diffunt." How would the teacher know I was so old?
"O, will they let me in?" I asked. "For always when I go to school, then somebody comes that's a teacher, and tells me to go home, and says I musn't stay."
"You will have to wait till the school begins," said my mother, "and that is all the better, for then little Fel can go too." I was willing to wait, for Fel was the other half of me. In three weeks she was as old as I was, and in the rosy month of June we began to go to the district school.
Your grandfather lived a little way out of town, and Squire Allen much farther; so every morning Ruphelle and her brother Augustus called for me, and we girls trudged along to school together, while Gust followed like a little dog with our dinner baskets. This was one of the greatest trials in the whole world; for, do you see, he had a pair of ears which heard altogether too much, and when we said anything which was not remarkably wise, he had a habit of crying "Pooh!" which was very provoking. We went hand in hand, Fel and I, and counted the steps we took, or hopped on one foot like lame ducklings, and "that great Gust" would look on and laugh. I had so much to say to Fel that I couldn't help talking, though I knew he was there to hear.
"I'd like to be a skurrel once," said I.
"O, pooh!" said Gust.
"I'd like to be 'em once, Gust Allen. I'd like to be 'em long enough to know how they feel. Once there was a boy, and he was turned into a skurrel, and his name was Bunny."
"That's a whopper, miss!"