It was a mild September day, and as Mary knew that Sal would take care of Alice, she determined not to hurry, but to follow the course of the stream, fancying she should find it to be the same which ran through the clothes-yard at home.  She had not gone far, when she came suddenly upon a boy and two little girls, who seemed to be playing near the brook.  In the features of the boy she recognized Henry Lincoln, and remembering what Billy had said of him, she was about turning away, when the smallest of the girls espied her, and called out, “Look here, Rose, I reckon that’s Mary Howard.  I’m going to speak to her.”

“Jenny Lincoln, you mustn’t do any such thing.  Mother won’t like it,” answered the girl called Rose.

But whether “mother would like it,” or not, Jenny did not stop to think, and going towards Mary she said, “Have you come to play in the woods?”

“No,” was Mary’s reply.  “I came to call the folks to dinner.”

“Oh, that was you that screamed so loud.  I couldn’t think who it was, but it can’t be dinner time?”

“Yes ’tis; it’s noon.”

“Well we don’t have dinner until two, and we can stay here till that time.  Won’t you play with us?”

“No, I can’t, I must go back and work,” said Mary.

“Work!” repeated Jenny.  “I think it’s bad enough to have to live in that old house without working, but come and see our fish-pond;” and taking Mary’s hand, she led her to a wide part of the stream where the water had been dammed up until it was nearly two feet deep and clear as crystal.  Looking in, Mary could see the pebbles on the bottom, while a fish occasionally darted out and then disappeared.

“I made this almost all myself,” said Jenny.  “Henry wouldn’t help me because he’s so ugly, and Rose was afraid of blacking her fingers.  But I don’t care Mother says I’m a great,—­great,—­I’ve forgotten the word, but it means dirty and careless, and I guess I do look like a fright, don’t I?”

Mary now for the first time noticed the appearance of her companion, and readily guessed that the word which she could not remember, was “slattern.”  She was a fat, chubby little girl, with a round, sunny face and laughing blue eyes, while her brown hair hung around her forehead in short, tangled curls.  The front breadth of her pink gingham dress was plastered with mud.  One of her shoe strings was untied, and the other one gone.  The bottom of one pantalet was entirely torn off, and the other rolled nearly to the knee disclosing a pair of ankles of no Liliputian dimensions.  The strings of her white sun-bonnet were twisted into a hard knot, and the bonnet itself hung down her back, partially hiding the chasm made by the absence of three or four hooks and eyes.  Altogether she was just the kind of little girl which one often finds in the country swinging on gates and making mud pies.

Mary was naturally very neat; and in reply to Jenny’s question as to whether she looked like a fright, she answered, “I like your face better than I do your dress, because it is clean.”