Two healthy, happy New England girls had been hunting for May-flowers all the morning. They had found them growing so pink and in such quantities that they were too busy filling their hands to notice the sudden shadow sweeping over the sky. Percy Shipley in her brown calico, her dark blue apron, and her log-cabin sun-bonnet, Reba Bradford in her gray calico, her red apron, and a sun-bonnet to match Percy's, knelt breathless on the warm turf, bewitched—and no wonder—by the pink and white beauties that smiled up at them from among the dead leaves, like babies just awakening in their pillowed cradles. So the dash of impetuous rain fell, without any warning, smartly on the two log-cabin sun-bonnets; but they only laughed merrily at it, sprang up, and ran for the nearest pine-tree. Reba pulled off her "blinders," as she called the sun-bonnet, while she ran. How black the cloud was growing! and against the cloud stood out all the more distinctly a low white steeple.
"Percy! Percy! run for the old church," cried Reba, wheeling about.
Away they flew, dashing through the alders, dodging under the birches, never minding the clinging blackberry vines, the low huckleberry bushes, the bit of bosky swamp. The rain, as if it were running after them, pattered faster and faster. It was in a delightful panic of haste and heat that they brought up finally on the narrow stone steps of the old church, and drew a long breath under the ugly little portico with half its supporting pillars fallen out. Not another house was in sight; the road in front had ridges of grass through the very middle, saucily making themselves at home where it was plain horses did not often claim right of way nowadays. Ever since Reba and Percy could remember—indeed, long before that—the old church had stood just so, only growing more forlorn year by year, seeming to be forgotten by everybody. As the new village sprang up among the valley mills, the new churches were built there, and the low-roofed houses one by one crumbled away, which the Shipleys and Bradfords of fifty years ago had known in their prime.
"Let's get in if we can," said Reba, boldly.
"It don't look as if we could," Percy answered, doubtfully.
AT THE DOOR OF THE OLD CHURCH.—Drawn by Jessie Curtis Shepherd.
But nobody cared now to lock the disused door. At the united eager push of the two girls, it opened in a rusty, rheumatic way, not widely, but far enough for them to squeeze in.
"There!" said Reba. She pushed forward, sank on the pulpit stairs, and shook the water from her sun-bonnet.