“Poor little cosset,” grandma would say, pityingly.  Then she would give her a simball, and tell her she must “be a good girl, and not mind if she couldn’t play jest like the others, for she’d got to airn her own livin’, when she grew up, and she must learn to work.”

Ann would go away comforted, but grandma would be privately indignant.  She was, as is apt to be the case, rather critical with her sons’ wives, and she thought “Sam’l’s kept that poor little gal too stiddy at work,” and wished and wished she could shelter her under her own grandmotherly wing, and feed her with simballs to her heart’s content.  She was too wise to say anything to influence the child against her mistress, however.  She was always cautious about that, even while pitying her.  Once in a while she would speak her mind to her son, but he was easy enough—­Ann would not have found him a hard task-master.

Still, Ann did not have to work hard enough to hurt her.  The worst consequences were that such a rigid rein on such a frisky little colt perhaps had more to do with her “cutting up,” as her mistress phrased it, than she dreamed of.  Moreover the thought of the indentures, securely locked up in Mr. Wales’ tall wooden desk, was forever in Ann’s mind.  Half by dint of questioning various people, half by her own natural logic she had settled it within herself, that at any time the possession of these papers would set her free, and she could go back to her own mother, whom she dimly remembered as being loud-voiced, but merry, and very indulgent.  However, Ann never meditated in earnest, taking the indentures; indeed, the desk was always locked—­it held other documents more valuable than hers—­and Samuel Wales carried the key in his waistcoat-pocket.

She went to a dame’s school, three months every year.  Samuel Wales carted half a cord of wood to pay for her schooling, and she learned to write and read in the New England Primer.  Next to her, on the split log bench, sat a little girl named Hannah French.  The two became fast friends.  Hannah was an only child, pretty and delicate, and very much petted by her parents.  No long hard tasks were set those soft little fingers, even in those old days when children worked as well as their elders.  Ann admired and loved Hannah, because she had what she, herself, had not; and Hannah loved and pitied Ann because she had not what she had.  It was a sweet little friendship, and would not have been, if Ann had not been free from envy and Hannah humble and pitying.

When Ann told her what a long stint she had to do before school, Hannah would shed sympathizing tears.

Ann, after a solemn promise of secrecy, told her about the indentures one day.  Hannah listened with round, serious eyes; her brown hair was combed smoothly down over her ears.  She was a veritable little Puritan damsel herself.

“If I could only get the papers, I wouldn’t have to mind her, and work so hard,” said Ann.