But he had had other troubles to encounter.  All at once, as he rode through Boston streets, with his little charge behind him, after leaving his friend’s house, he felt a vicious little twitch at his hair, which he wore in a queue tied with a black ribbon after the fashion of the period.  Twitch, twitch, twitch!  The water came into Samuel Wales’ eyes, and the blood to his cheeks, while the passers-by began to hoot and laugh.  His horse became alarmed at the hubbub, and started up.  For a few minutes the poor man could do nothing to free himself.  It was wonderful what strength the little creature had:  she clinched her tiny fingers in the braid, and pulled, and pulled.  Then, all at once, her grasp slackened, and off flew her master’s steeple-crowned hat into the dust, and the neat black ribbon on the end of the queue followed it.  Samuel Wales reined up his horse with a jerk then, and turned round, and administered a sounding box on each of his apprentice’s ears.  Then he dismounted, amid shouts of laughter from the spectators, and got a man to hold the horse while he went back and picked up his hat and ribbon.

He had no further trouble.  The boxes seemed to have subdued Ann effectually.  But he pondered uneasily all the way home on the small vessel of wrath which was perched up behind him, and there was a tingling sensation at the roots of his queue.  He wondered what Polly would say.  The first glance at her face, when he lifted Ann off the horse at his own door, confirmed his fears.  She expressed her mind, in a womanly way, by whispering in his ear at the first opportunity, “She’s as black as an Injun.”

After Ann had eaten her supper, and had been tucked away between some tow sheets and homespun blankets in a trundle-bed, she heard the whole story, and lifted up her hands with horror.  Then the good couple read a chapter, and prayed, solemnly vowing to do their duty by this child which they had taken under their roof, and imploring Divine assistance.

As time wore on, it became evident that they stood in sore need of it.  They had never had any children of their own, and Ann Ginnins was the first child who had ever lived with them.  But she seemed to have the freaks of a dozen or more in herself, and they bade fair to have the experience of bringing up a whole troop with this one.  They tried faithfully to do their duty by her, but they were not used to children, and she was a very hard child to manage.  A whole legion of mischievous spirits seemed to dwell in her at times, and she became in a small and comparatively innocent way, the scandal of the staid Puritan neighborhood in which she lived.  Yet, withal, she was so affectionate, and seemed to be actuated by so little real malice in any of her pranks, that people could not help having a sort of liking for the child, in spite of them.

She was quick to learn, and smart to work, too, when she chose.  Sometimes she flew about with such alacrity that it seemed as if her little limbs were hung on wires, and no little girl in the neighborhood could do her daily tasks in the time she could, and they were no inconsiderable tasks, either.