"Red-heads, all three of them," said David. "With tempers to match, so I am told. You wouldn't know their mother. She has broken terribly."
"Who can wonder at it? I'd like to ride around that way, if you don't mind: by the school-house and the spring, and by what was the Fogg place, and see the short-cut we used to take coming home from school. Heigho! How long ago it all seems!"
She said "Heigho" again, and with a sadder intonation, in crossing the bridge from which she had been shot. No other picture of the past haunted her so persistently to-day as the vision of the "Miss Em'ly" of her childish adoration. They visited the empty school-house, disused for two years. The shingles were warping and loosening like neglected teeth; the door hung by one hinge; the steps were rotting into holes. Flea rode up close to the door and looked into the deserted room. Benches were gone, and the teacher's desk and chair. She had seen Miss Emily there but once, yet she recalled more vividly than any other image that of the pretty girl in her blue riding-habit and cap, and how she had befriended the forlorn little victim of a tyrant's temper.
Since the incident of the arbor she had not spoken or thought of Miss Emily when she could help it. Memories such as those that visited her now took the sting out of what had happened there, and made her gentler in judgment. Far down in her heart the old-time tenderness awoke and stirred.
"You say she has changed very much?" she puzzled David very much by asking, as the horses turned in at the branch of the main road leading to the overseer's house.
David stared for a moment.
"Who is 'she'? Oh, you mean Mrs. Tayloe! More than anybody can believe without seeing her. Maybe we will see her as we go by."
"I hope not," said Flea, nervously. "I'd rather recollect her as she was at her best."
Nevertheless she brought the horse down to a slow walk in passing the gate; her eyes lingered wistfully upon house and grounds. The dwelling had been raised to two full stories; it was painted white and had green blinds; a porch covered with vines ran across the front and two sides. The turf of the yard was like green velvet, and three little negroes, two girls and a boy, dressed as for company, were picking up leaves and twigs about the front steps.
"Look at that, will you?" exclaimed David. "He is training them to be house servants. They are scrubbed within an inch of their lives, and put into their best clothes every morning, and put through a sort of drill out there. They mustn't speak, unless when spoken to, while they are there, and if they overlook a single straw or get their clothes dirty they are whipped. Will you look at the poor little rascals, now?"