Four Girls and a Compact | Page 9

soul, if not my _sole!_" she thought, a
slave still to the punning habit. She had never been so peaceful in her
life. The little old woman who had befriended her bustled happily in
and out of the little bedroom. She bathed and rubbed the swollen ankle,
and smiled and chattered to the girl at the other end of it. Her
"lineaments" were working a cure, surely.
It had all been decided upon. The B-Hive was to be transplanted for the

summer to the little, green-painted house trailed over with
morning-glory vines and roses. Emmeline Camp had wanted, she said,
for forty years, to go upon a long journey, to visit her brother. Here was
her chance. The small sum she had at last consented to be paid for the
use of her little house would pay her traveling expenses one way, at
least, and John would be glad enough, she said, to pay her fare home, to
get rid of her! Only she was quite able to pay it herself.
"I've kind of hankered to go to see John all these years. Forty years is
quite a spell to hanker, isn't it? But I never felt like leaving the house
behind, and I couldn't take it along very conveniently, so I stayed to
home. And then--my dear, you can laugh as well as not, but I didn't like
to leave Amelia."
"But you might have taken her with--"
"No," seriously, "I couldn't 've taken Amelia. I think, deary, it might 've
killed her; she's part of the little house and the morning-glories and
roses. I'd have had to leave Amelia if I'd gone, and it didn't seem right."
"But now--"
"Now," the little, old woman laughed in her odd, tender way that "went
with" Amelia, "now she'll have plenty of young company--all o' you
here with her. I shall make believe she's coming and going with you,
and it'll be a sight of comfort. Yes, deary, I guess this is going to be my
chance to visit John."
"And our chance to have a summer in the country," completed the
Talented One. "Oh, I think you are--dear! Whatever will the other girls
say when I tell them about you!"
One day T.O. remembered the blue pump. She gazed out of the window
at the brown one in the little yard. "Who would have thought," she
sighed, "that I could be so happy without a blue pump!"
"What's that, deary?" The little, old woman was sewing patchwork near
by.

"Oh," laughed the girl, "I always did want a pump that was painted blue.
I saw a picture of one once when I was a little mite, and it impressed
me--such a lovely, bright blue! I thought it went beautifully with the
green grass! But I can get along without it, I guess."
"We have to get along without having things painted to suit us," nodded
the little, old woman philosophically. But she remembered the blue
pump. There was a can of paint out in the shed room, and there was
Jane Cotton's Sam.
Jane Cotton's Sam was a "feature" of Placid Pond--a whole set of
features, T.O. said. He was a lumbering, awkward fellow, well up to
the end of his teens, the only hope of widowed Jane. The Lord had
given him a splendid head, but the Placid Pond people were secretly
triumphing in the knowledge that Sam had failed to pass in his college
examinations, "head or no head." Jane had always boasted so of Sam's
brains, and predicted such a wonderful future for him! All her soul was
set on Sam's success--well, wasn't it time her pride had a fall? Mebbe
now she'd see Sam wasn't much different from other people's boys.
Jane's heart was reported to be broken by the boy's failure, and Sam
went about sulkily defiant. He made a great pretense of lofty
indifference, but maybe he didn't care!--maybe not! Emmeline Camp
knew in her gentle old heart that he cared. She worried about Sam.
All this the Talented One learned, little by little, in the way country
gossip is learned. She learned many other things, too, about the
neighbors--things that she lay and pondered about. It seemed queer to
find out that even a placid little place like this, set among the peaceful
hills, had its tragedies and comedies--its pitiful little skeletons behind
the doors.
"That's Old '61," Mrs. Camp said, pointing to an old figure in the road.
"See him go marching past!--he always marches, as if he heard drums
beating and he was keeping time. I tell 'em he does hear 'em. He lives
all alone up on the edge o' the woods, and folks say he spends most all
his time trying to pick march tunes out on the organ. A few