“Reckon you might as well,” answered the old man, giving a final close scrutiny before handing it to the boy.  “It might lie here all week in case none of them happened to come to the store, and it looks as if it might be important.”

Jake slipped the letter into the band of his broad-brimmed straw hat and slouched lazily out of the store.  An old blaze-faced sorrel horse whinnied as he stepped up to untie it.  Jake mounted and rode off slowly, his bare feet dangling far below the stirrups.  It was two miles to the Appleton farm, down a hot, dusty road, and he took his time in going.  Well for little Betty that she did not know what wonderful surprise was on its way to her, or she would have been in a fever of impatience for the letter to arrive.

It had been a tiresome day for the child.  Up before five, in her bare little room in the west gable, busy with morning chores until breakfast was ready, she had earned a rest long before the Little Colonel’s day had begun.  Afterward she had helped with the breakfast dishes and had taken her turn at the butter-making in the spring-house, thumping the heavy dasher up and down in the cedar churn until her arms ached.  But it was cool and pleasant down in the spring-house with the water trickling out in a ceaseless drip-drip on the cold stones.  She dabbled her fingers in the spring for a long time when the churning was done, wishing she had nothing to do but sit there and listen to the secrets it was trying to tell.  Surely it must have learned a great many on its underground way among the roots of things, and all else that lies hidden in the earth.

But she could not loiter long.  There was the dinner-table to set for the hungry farm-hands, and after the dinner was over more dishes to wash.  Then there were some towels to iron.  It was two o’clock before her work was all done, and she had time to go up to her little room in the west gable.

The sun poured in through the shutterless windows so fiercely that she did not stay long,—­only long enough to put on a clean apron and brush her curly hair, as she stood in front of the little looking-glass.  It was such a tiny mirror that she could see only a part of her face at a time.  When her big brown eyes, wistful and questioning as a fawn’s, were reflected in it, there was no room for the sensitive little mouth.  Or if she stood on tiptoe so that she could see her plump round chin, dimpled cheeks, and white teeth, the eyes were left out, and she could see no more of her inquisitive little nose than lay below the big freckle in the middle of it.

Hastily tying back her curls with a bow of brown ribbon, she slipped on her apron, and ran down-stairs, buttoning it as she went.  She was free now to do as she pleased until supper-time.  Once out of the house, she walked slowly along through the shady orchard, swinging her sunbonnet by the strings.  After the orchard came the long leafy lane, with its double rows of cherry-trees, and then the gate at the end, leading into the public highway.