After the sun had climbed up a little way into the sky, grown blue and bluer, Tot began to accept the situation a little, and lay very still in papa’s arms (the fresh morning breeze tapping her cheek and lifting her long crimped hair with cool, gentle fingers), watching the fences running away like mad, the trees gliding gracefully by in long endless procession, little white cottages and funny little hovels, and pretty little villages hopping suddenly in and then as suddenly out of the scene, a glimpse into shady depths of woods, a glint of a blue, nestling, lily-pad-speckled pond, an emerald gleam of peaceful meadows, a sight at a snowy tethered goat, of dappled grazing cows, a roll and rush and roar through riven, dripping rocks.

Papa told his little girl all about it.  How little children in the town where Tot lived were very sick of a dangerous disease—­diptheria.  And how, coming home last evening from business and learning of several fresh cases, he had become alarmed for his darling and consulted mamma, and had succeeded in frightening her so thoroughly, that she had sat up all night to get Tot’s things ready so that she might start the very next morning, on the very first early morning train, to where grandmamma lived.

“And, there,” said papa, after they had ridden all the long forenoon, “there’s Sugar River, Tot, where I used to fish when I was a boy!”

“O!” cried Tot, and then, immediately, with a roll and a pitch, they came to a little white farmhouse and stopped again, and Tot was at grandmamma’s.

Tot didn’t like being kissed quite so much all at a time, if it was by a grandmamma.  The chickens, though, were fascinating, and as for some plushy round balls of yellow fuzz, rolling about—­little ducks just hatched—­Tot had never seen anything at all to compare with them.  But there was a dreadful and discordant procession of big ducks that struck terror to Tot’s soul, and it was very still and lonely when the night and dark crept on.  The crickets and the frogs did their best, but they only made it stiller and lonelier; and the hills gleamed against the sky, and Tot missed her mamma.  But yet, Tot was very sleepy, and the next she knew it was morning and she was at grandma’s, where Uncle Will lived, and Uncle Will was coming pretty soon, and, better than that, mamma was coming, too; and there was a little girl, a short distance up the road, whom Tot was to play with, and then there were the chickens and the ducks, and old Brindle and the pigs, and the pony and the hay cart, and—­yes, it was very delightful at grandmamma’s.

Once or twice, during the next few days, Tot asked—­preserving that singular reticence regarding her illusions, so common to children—­to be taken to Sugar River; but grandpapa was busy haying, and grandmamma said: 

“Will will come pretty soon and he will take you.”

“When is pwetty soon!” asked Tot, in hopeless tones.

One afternoon grandmamma gave Tot and Susie (that was the name of Tot’s little playmate) each a fat hot jumble, and left them playing happily in the yard while she went back to her sewing.  Susie was seven, so very safe company for little four-year-old Tot.  After a while over ran Susie’s brother, to summon her home to go with her mother to the village.