Laddie | Page 5

followed the road. Laddie held
one of my hands tight, and in the other I gripped the letter in my pocket.
So long as Laddie could see me, and the lane lay between open fields, I
wasn't afraid. I was thinking so deeply about our woods being
Enchanted, and a tiny Fairy growing big as our Sally, because she was
in them, that I stepped out bravely.
Every few days I followed the lane as far back as the Big Gate. This
stood where four fields cornered, and opened into the road leading to
the woods. Beyond it, I had walked on Sunday afternoons with father
while he taught me all the flowers, vines, and bushes he knew, only he
didn't know some of the prettiest ones; I had to have books for them,
and I was studying to learn enough that I could find out. Or I had
ridden on the wagon with Laddie and Leon when they went to bring
wood for the cookstove, outoven, and big fireplace. But to walk! To go
all alone! Not that I didn't walk by myself over every other foot of the
acres and acres of beautiful land my father owned; but plowed fields,
grassy meadows, wood pasture, and the orchard were different. I played
in them without a thought of fear.
The only things to be careful about were a little, shiny, slender snake,
with a head as bright as mother's copper kettle, and a big thick one with
patterns on its back like those in Laddie's geometry books, and a whole
rattlebox on its tail; not to eat any berry or fruit I didn't know without
first asking father; and always to be sure to measure how deep the
water was before I waded in alone.
But our Big Woods! Leon said the wildcats would get me there. I sat in
our catalpa and watched the Gypsies drive past every summer. Mother
hated them as hard as ever she could hate any one, because once they
had stolen some fine shirts, with linen bosoms, that she had made by
hand for father, and was bleaching on the grass. If Gypsies should be in
our west woods to-day and steal me, she would hate them worse than
ever; because my mother loved me now, even if she didn't want me
when I was born.

But you could excuse her for that. She had already bathed, spanked,
sewed for, and reared eleven babies so big and strong not one of them
ever even threatened to die. When you thought of that, you could see
she wouldn't be likely to implore the Almighty to send her another, just
to make her family even numbers. I never felt much hurt at her, but
some of the others I never have forgiven and maybe I never will. As
long as there had been eleven babies, they should have been so
accustomed to children that they needn't all of them have objected to
me, all except Laddie, of course. That was the reason I loved him so
and tried to do every single thing he wanted me to, just the way he
liked it done. That was why I was facing the only spot on our land
where I was in the slightest afraid; because he asked me to.
If he had told me to dance a jig on the ridgepole of our barn, I would
have tried it.
So I clasped the note, set my teeth, and climbed over the gate. I walked
fast and kept my eyes straight before me. If I looked on either side, sure
as life I would see something I never had before, and be down digging
up a strange flower, chasing a butterfly, or watching a bird. Besides, if I
didn't look in the fence corners that I passed, maybe I wouldn't see
anything to scare me. I was going along finely, and feeling better every
minute as I went down the bank of an old creek that had gone dry, and
started up the other side toward the sugar camp not far from the Big
Woods. The bed was full of weeds and as I passed through, away! went
Something among them.
Beside the camp shed there was corded wood, and the first thing I knew,
I was on top of it. The next, my hand was on the note in my pocket. My
heart jumped until I could see my apron move, and my throat went all
stiff and dry. I gripped the note and waited.
Father believed God would take care of him. I was only a little girl and
needed help much more than a man; maybe God would take care of me.
There was nothing wrong in carrying a letter to the Fairy Princess. I