over Hemlock Mountain by this time, and the big slope above her was all deep blue shadow.  The mountain looked much higher now as the dusk began to fall, and loomed up bigger and bigger as though it reached to the sky.  It was no wonder houses looked small from its top.  Betsy ate the last of her sugar, looking up at the quiet giant there, towering grandly above her.  There was no lump in her throat now.  And, although she still thought she did not know what in the world Cousin Ann meant by saying that about Hemlock Mountain and her examination, it’s my opinion that she had made a very good beginning of an understanding.

She was just picking up her cup to take it back to the sap-house when Shep growled a little and stood with his ears and tail up, looking down the road.  Something was coming down that road in the blue, clear twilight, something that was making a very queer noise.  It sounded almost like somebody crying.  It was somebody crying!  It was a child crying.  It was a little, little girl. ...  Betsy could see her now ... stumbling along and crying as though her heart would break.  Why, it was little Molly, her own particular charge at school, whose reading lesson she heard every day.  Betsy and Shep ran to meet her.  “What’s the matter, Molly?  What’s the matter?” Betsy knelt down and put her arms around the weeping child.  “Did you fall down?  Did you hurt you?  What are you doing ’way off here?  Did you lose your way?”

“I don’t want to go away!  I don’t want to go away!” said Molly over and over, clinging tightly to Betsy.  It was a long time before Betsy could quiet her enough to find out what had happened.  Then she made out between Molly’s sobs that her mother had been taken suddenly sick and had to go away to a hospital, and that left nobody at home to take care of Molly, and she was to be sent away to some strange relatives in the city who didn’t want her at all and who said so right out ... .

Oh, Elizabeth Ann knew all about that! and her heart swelled big with sympathy.  For a moment she stood again out on the sidewalk in front of the Lathrop house with old Mrs. Lathrop’s ungracious white head bobbing from a window, and knew again that ghastly feeling of being unwanted.  Oh, she knew why little Molly was crying!  And she shut her hands together hard and made up her mind that she would help her out!

[Illustration:  “What’s the matter, Molly?  What’s the matter?”]

Do you know what she did, right off, without thinking about it?  She didn’t go and look up Aunt Abigail.  She didn’t wait till Uncle Henry came back from his round of emptying sap buckets into the big tub on his sled.  As fast as her feet could carry her she flew back to Cousin Ann in the sap-house.  I can’t tell you (except again that Cousin Ann was Cousin Ann) why it was that Betsy ran so fast to her and was so sure that everything would be all right as soon as Cousin Ann knew about it; but whatever the reason was it was a good one,