“Tate,” said she, sweetly, “are you willing Johnny should go too? For I spect you want to; don’t you, Johnny?”
It was a small sacrifice, and Dotty thought she was well repaid, when her cousin, with the greatest good humor, whipped a paper bag out of his pocket, and began to scatter about figs, and candy, and jujube paste.
“Yes, I’ll go to school with you,” said Johnny; “but who is Mrs. Piper? Peter’s wife?”
“He’s dead, her husband is,” replied Tate. “I don’t know what his name was.”
CHAPTER XII.
“THE DEAR LITTLE SCHOOL.”
Mrs. Piper lived in a white cottage which nestled all summer under a woodbine; but there was no woodbine now, and the strips of red leather, which had held it up, were left sticking here and there by nails, and looked frightfully like caterpillars. There was a yard before the house, and in it were two or three hen-coops, half buried in snow.
“She keeps ’em in the back room, in the winter,” said Tate, referring to the chickens.