Miss Harper led Alice away to her boarding-place across the fields.  Scarcely taking time to taste the different kinds of jams, jellies, grape-butter, and other sauces set out by the hostess in special honor of the young visitor, Alice hastily dispatched her dinner and was soon back at the playground, where she found a bevy of girls seated on a big grapevine which one of the larger girls was swinging backward and forward amid shouts of glee.  Nearby two gingham sunbonnets bobbed up and down as their owners bent their heads to watch a speckled lady-bug crawl up a twig.

  “Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home,
  Your house is on fire, your children will roam,”

repeated Esther in a low monotone.

“See, it’s going now.  I wonder whether it really understands us?”

“Of course it does,” replied her companion positively.  “Daddy-long-legs are real smart too.  I caught one last night and I said over three times, ’Tell me which way our cow goes or I will kill you,’ and it pointed in the direction of our pasture lot every time.”

“You wouldn’t really have killed the poor thing, though,” exclaimed Alice, who had drawn near to look at the crimson lady-bug.  “A daddy-long-legs is such a harmless creature.  It has a right to live as well as we have.”

“Oh, Caleb, did you catch it?” interrupted Matilda.  “Bring it here!” and she beckoned to a small boy who was busy near a large beech tree some distance away.  “He’s been after a tree-frog,” she explained.  “There’s one up in that tree that sings the cutest every evening and morning.  I hear him when I am gathering bluebells.”

“It’s pretty near dead,” said the boy bringing his trophy.  “I guess I squeezed it too hard.  We might as well kill it.”

“No, no! that would be cruel; the poor little thing will soon be all right if you put it back on its tree.  We’ll go with you and help you put it up,” replied Alice.  “Come on, girls.”

“It ain’t hardly worth the trouble,” and the boy looked at the frog disdainfully.  “It’s uglier than a toad, if anything.  But I never kill toads; I know better’n to do that.”

“I am glad to hear it,” said the visitor from town as they turned toward the elm tree.  “Toads enjoy life and it’s wicked to molest ’em.”

“Oh, I don’t know about their enjoyin’ life.  The reason I let ’em alone is, coz if you kill a toad, your cow’ll give bad milk.”

Alice did not dispute this wise statement.  She could not help wishing that the same law of retaliation protected all birds, beasts, and insects.

After seeing the frog deposited in safety in a hole in one of the big boughs, she with Matilda and Esther scampered back to the swing expecting to find the others there.  To their surprise the big grapevine was unoccupied, and the shouts and screams issuing from the schoolhouse led them too, to hurry on to see what was the matter.

“Maybe Jim Stubbs has got a mus’rat, or somethin’ in there a-scarin’ the children,” suggested Esther, as they entered the door.