“No, Alice, it is not right to tell untrue things expecting to be believed—­of course not.”

“Well, she isn’t believed.  Nobody s’poses her mamma made a bushel of currant wine last summer, unless it’s a baby, that doesn’t know any better.”

“I knows better.  I’se a goorl, and can walk,” said little Katie, bridling.

“I didn’t say you were a baby, you precious Flyaway!  Who’s cunning?”

“I’m is,” replied the child, settling back upon the seat with a sigh of relief.  She was very sensitive on the point of age, and, like Dotty, could not abide the idea of being thought young.

“How far are we going?” asked Mr. Parlin.

“I do not know exactly,” replied Mrs. Clifford; “but I will tell you how far Mr. Skeels, one of our oldest natives, calls it.  He says ’he reckons it is three screeches.’”

“How far is a ‘screech,’ pray?”

“The distance a human voice can be heard, I presume.”

“Let us try it,” said Dotty Dimple; and she instantly set up a scream so loud that the birds in the trees took to their wings in alarm.  Katie chimed in with a succession of little shrieks about as powerful as the peep of a little chicken.

“I have heard that they once measured distances by ‘shoots,’” said Mrs. Clifford, laughing; “but I hope it will not be necessary to illustrate them by firing a gun.”

They next passed on old and weatherworn graveyard.

“This,” said Mrs. Clifford, “was once known, in the choice language of the backwoodsmen, as a ‘briar-patch;’ and when people died, it was said they ‘winked out.’”

“‘Winked out,’ Aunt ’Ria? how dreadful!”

“Wing tout,” echoed Katie; “how defful!”

“O, what beautiful, beautiful grass we’re riding by, auntie!  When the wind blows it, it winks so softly!  Why, it looks like a green river running ever so fast.”

“That is a sort of prairie land, dear, and very rich.  Look on the other side of the road, and tell me what you think of those trees.”

“O, Aunt ’Ria, I couldn’t climb up there, nor a boy either!  It would take a pretty spry squirrel—­wouldn’t it, though?”

“A pitty sp’y squirrel, I fink,” remarked Katie, who did not consider any of Dotty’s sentences complete until she herself had added a finishing touch.

“They are larger than our trees, Alice.”

“O, yes, papa.  They look as if they grew, and grew, and forgot to stop.”

“Velly long trees, tenny rate,” said Katie, throwing up her arms in imitation of branches, and jumping so high that her mother was obliged to take her in her lap in order to keep her in the carriage.

“And, O, papa, it is so smooth between the trees, we can peep like a spy-glass, right through!  Why, it seems like a church.”

“I don’t see um,” said Katie, stretching her neck and looking in vain for a church.