Well, not quite everybody, it seems, because if that was so Letty wouldn’t be crying.

Now let me tell you why poor Letty Bascombe, with her sunny temper, cried on this day while she was making pies.

You see, she was only fifteen, and when one is fifteen, and there is fun going on that one can’t be in, it is very trying, to say the least.  Not that tears help it the least in the world, no, indeed.  In fact, tears at such times always make matters worse.

Well, she was only fifteen, as I was saying, and, instead of going with the family into town, she had to stay home and make pies.

Now the family were no relation to her.  She was only Mrs. Mason’s “help.”  Eighteen months ago Letty’s mother (a widow) had died.  Her brother had gone away off to a large city, and she had come to Mrs. Mason’s to live.  Mrs. Mason was as kind as she could be to her, but you know one must feel “blue” at times when one has lost all but one relative in the world, and that one is a dear brother who is way, way off, even if one is surrounded by the kindest friends.

So now, tell me, don’t you think Letty had something to shed tears about?

“I j-just c-can’t help it.  I’m not one bit ‘thankful’ this Thanksgiving, and I’m not going to pretend I am.  So there.  And here I am making nasty pies, when everybody else has gone to town having a good time.  No, I’m not one bit thankful, so there, and I feel as if turkey and cranberries and pumpkin pie would choke me.”

But after Letty “had her cry out” she felt better, and in a little while her nimble fingers had finished her work and she was ready for a little amusement.  This amusement she concluded to find by taking a little walk to the end of the garden.  The garden ended abruptly in a ravine, and it was a source of unfailing delight to go down there and, from a secure position, see the trains go thundering by.

In fifteen minutes the train would be along and then she would go back.  Idly gazing down from her secure height, her eye was suddenly caught by something creeping along the ground.  Letty’s keen sight at once decided this to be a man—­a man with a log in his hand.  This log he carefully adjusted across the track.

“What a very curious—­” began Letty.  But her exclamation was cut short by the awful intuition that the man meant to wreck the on-coming train.

All thought of private sorrow fled in an instant.  What could she do?  What must she do, for save the train she must, of course.  Who else was there to do it?  And oh, such a little time to do it in.  To go around by the path would take a half-hour.  To climb down the side of the ravine would be madness.  Suddenly her mind was illuminated.  Yes, she could do that, and like the wind she was up at the house and back again, only this time she steered for a spot a hundred rods up, just the other side of the curve.

In a trice she had whipped off her scarlet balmoral, the balmoral she hated so, and had attached to it one end of the hundred feet of rope she had brought from the house.