A borrowed sister

After this, the darning-class became the chief feature in the week, and the children were sure never to miss a lesson. The book grew more and more interesting, and so did the darning, as they learned to be less clumsy with their needles; and when the third Saturday came, the little girls were most eager to know who were to have the prizes. Anne was still the best worker, but Ellen had high hopes of getting the first prize, because she had improved so much.

“She said, you know, the one who had improved the most was to get it,” Ellen remarked to Lois, as they were walking, arm in arm, up the Drapers’ avenue. “Now my work was perfectly horrid at first, and I do it a lot better now.”

“So do I,” said Lois. Lois had no hope of getting the first prize, as she could see that Anne and Jessie were better workers than she, but she had a faint hope that her marked improvement would entitle her to the second.

“Anne and Jessie are so much older than we are that I don’t think it is fair,” said Ellen.

“Isn’t it fun that we are really to have the prizes given to-day?” said Lois. “I think this is a red letter day.” This expression, which she had met for the first time in Mr. Morgan’s verse, had fascinated her.

“I don’t think it will be unless we get a prize,” said Ellen.

It was a very exciting meeting, for the two prizes were in full view while they worked, and the strawberry had never looked so red and enticing, and the little needle-book seemed daintier than ever. They could now darn more than one hole in the hour, and their weekly meeting was a real godsend to Mrs. Morgan and Mrs. Page. The children were hard at work, bending over their stockings with flushed faces, when Judge Draper rushed out on the piazza like a large tornado, stumbling over Ellen’s Boston bag, and catching at the sofa to prevent his falling.

“Connie, Leonard says it is going to rain to-morrow, and that the wind is playing the deuce in the hill orchard. I must get in the apples to-day. I’ve come to ask you to drive up there with me this afternoon.”

“I told you I had an engagement,” said Mrs. Draper, glancing at the children.

The judge looked at them as if they were of no more importance than flies, and could be as easily brushed aside.

“But I want you, do you understand? The apples must be picked this afternoon.”

“And unfortunately I have an engagement.” The more vehement he was, the quieter she became. “You don’t need me to help you pick apples.”

“But I want your company on the trip.”

The children’s hearts sank while this dialogue was going on. It was so hard to be in sight of the emery bag and the little needle-book, so aggravating to be within an hour of solving the great mystery as to whom they should belong, and then to have the decision postponed for a whole week. It would be a disappointment that would be almost unbearable.

“Come, Connie, there is no time to lose. We must start in a quarter of an hour.”

“I am very sorry, children,” began Mrs. Draper, “but you see the judge wants me to go so much.” Just then a bright idea struck her. “Harry, why shouldn’t we all go?” she asked. “The children could ride in the wagon with the barrels, and they could help pick the apples.”

Suddenly the judge seemed to become aware that the little girls were not flies to be brushed aside, but human beings with desires and capacities. He saw four young faces, and three of them glanced up with different degrees of eager anticipation shining in their eyes. Ellen and Jessie looked as if they could hardly keep back an exclamation, while if Lois was more subdued, there was a wistful expression on her countenance that was almost more appealing. It was the “this-is-too-good-to-be-true, and-so-I-must-not-think-of-it” expression. Anne alone sat serene and quiet. It was Anne, however, who settled the fate of the others. She was so very pretty, as she sat there demurely looking down at her work, that the judge wanted to take her along with him, and he was also curious to see if it would be possible to ruffle that calm exterior.

“Children, I believe I will take you.”

A chorus of exclamations followed. “Oh, Judge Draper, how perfectly lovely!” from Jessie. “How perfectly great!” from Ellen, and “Didn’t I say it was going to be a red letter day?” in low tones from Lois. Anne alone said nothing, but she began quietly to fold up her work.

“I will take some of you, anyway,” the judge went on, with a twinkle in his eye.

A sudden terrible suspense came over the company.

“Miss Anne, now, hasn’t said she wants to go, and perhaps it is too undignified a trip for her. Miss Anne, would you rather be left behind?”

“No, sir,” said Anne, in her sweet, low voice. “I’d like to go very much, but there are lots of things I can do at home, if you haven’t room for me.”

“I guess there’ll be room all right.”

They all went home in a great hurry to get wraps; and the emery bag and the needle-book, once the envy of all eyes, were left on the table quite forgotten.

Mrs. Draper and the judge started on ahead in the buggy, leaving the four children to follow them.

It was great fun scrambling into the wagon, and Ellen immediately perched herself on top of a barrel.

“There are four barrels, one for each of us,” she said gayly.

Jessie climbed in next and took her place on a barrel, but Lois hesitated. The barrel looked like a dizzy height to her, and the seat seemed very insecure.

“Come, Lois, jump in!” Ellen cried impatiently. Lois stood first on one foot and then on the other. She did not dare to sit on the barrel, and neither did she dare to say that she was afraid.

“I am going to sit in front with Leonard,” said Anne. “It will be ever so much more comfortable. Won’t you sit there with me, Lois?”

And this was how it happened that as they drove through the village street there were two vacant seats in what Ellen named “the orchestra circle.”

“Hullo! where are you going?” Reuben demanded, as he and Amyas passed the wagon.

“To pick apples in Judge Draper’s orchard. Don’t you want to come?” Ellen asked, with suspicious sweetness.

“You bet!”

“Well, you can’t, you know, for you weren’t invited to this theatre party.”

“I guess we can get admission tickets at the door,” he retorted, and he and Amyas swung themselves into the wagon without further ceremony.

Lois looked straight ahead, and did not once turn to speak to them. Ever since she had thanked Reuben for his present, she had crossed the street whenever she saw him approaching. The pleasure had all gone out of the trip for Lois. Why had those boys insisted upon coming to spoil the afternoon?

And here was Jessie evidently finding an added zest in the occasion, for she greeted them most cordially and talked with the greatest ease.

Anne turned every now and then to put in a word, and Lois was the only silent member of the party.

“I wish I had stayed at home,” she thought. “Nobody wants me. Nobody speaks to me.”

They were all laughing and joking together, and she felt very dull and dumb.

It was a beautiful October afternoon. The sky was even more cloudless than when they had gone to Brierfield to gather mayflowers, and the world was quite as beautiful, in a different way. Color flashed at them all along the road. There were flaming scarlet sumachs, and yellow maples and red ones, and every now and then a solitary oak sedate in russet brown. Suddenly they came upon some blue gentians shyly looking up at them from the roadside. They were so exquisite with their fringed petals that Lois forgot herself and said, “Look at those beautiful gentians.” Then, abashed by the sound of her voice, she was silent.

“Let’s get out and pick some,” said Ellen.

“They’ll fade,” said Anne; “we’d better wait until we are coming home.”

The judge and Mrs. Draper were waiting in the orchard to receive their guests.

“Good Lord! Who invited you to come?” the judge asked, when he saw the boys.

“We invited ourselves, sir,” said Amyas, with a pleasant smile. “We thought that ‘Many hands make light work.’”

“Well, as you are here, you may as well stay, but I trust many mouths won’t make light work.”

They all began picking apples, but Lois stopped every now and then out of pure joy in the October sunshine and the splendor of the autumn coloring. At the foot of the hill the yellows and reds of the trees blended together softly, while in the apple orchard the bright red of the apples made many little spots of vivid color. Anne in her blue gown and white sweater looked very graceful as she raised her arm to pick the apples, and Ellen in her red sweater darted about the field sampling each tree, but never staying long anywhere.

“You look like a scarlet tanager, Ellen,” said Lois.

“Do I? I would rather look like that than like a blue jay, like Anne.”

Suddenly Lois gave a loud scream. A black snake had wriggled along the grass and placed himself just at her feet.

“What is the matter?” the others cried.

“It is a snake! I am so afraid of them!”

She felt disgraced in having given way to her fears, and yet she could not help it.

Anne, who was picking apples near Lois, ran back in fright, while Jessie and Ellen boldly came over with the boys to look at the snake.

“I think he’s the poisonous kind,” Jessie said. “We’ve had them at Brierfield.”

Leonard, who was on the other side of the orchard, picked up a big stick, and started to come over; but Reuben, who always liked to be the leading spirit whenever there was anything to be done, dashed in ahead.

“I guess he’s done for now,” he said, as he gave the snake some blows with a stick. “You needn’t be afraid of him any more,” he added to Lois.

Lois still felt ashamed of having screamed. She wished she were brave, like Jessie and Ellen.

It seemed strange that Reuben should be so much nicer to her after she had screamed and he had killed the snake. She had supposed her silly terror would put the finishing touch to his contempt for her.

When they had picked all the apples on the low branches, it was proved a fortunate thing that the judge had brought so many children with him, for they climbed up into the higher branches and gathered the fruit that grew there.

“Come up here where I am, Lois; it’s lots more fun,” Ellen called out.

Lois climbed a little higher, but it made her feel dizzy to look down, so she clung to a branch, and said she would rather stay where she was.

“You are afraid of everything,” said Ellen. “First you were afraid to sit on a barrel, and then you were afraid of the snake, and now you are afraid of an apple-tree.”

“You shut up, Ellen Morgan,” said Reuben. “If you were afraid of a few more things, you would be a lot pleasanter to live in the house with.”

“So would you,” Ellen returned. “I wish you were a little afraid of me, and then you wouldn’t say such rude things.”

Most of the time Mrs. Draper had been sitting on the carriage cushion, which the judge had taken out and put on the top of the stone wall. Now she went over to the carriage and took out a basket of provisions.

“I was going to have an extra feast to-day on account of giving the prizes,” she said.

The prizes! Only a few hours before, the children had felt as if they could not live in peace without knowing who were to receive them, and not one of them had thought of the prizes since she left the Drapers’ house; for life is full of variety, and the unexpected things that happen in each day make its charm.

They gathered around Mrs. Draper, and she took out, not only the customary wafer ginger cookies and a bottle of lemonade, but also some sandwiches and some nut cake.

“I did not know we were going to have quite such a large company when I put up the lunch,” she said.

“Never mind,” said Amyas, “I am sure Ellen will be perfectly delighted to give me her share.”

After the feast was over, they went back to the apple-trees and picked apples until the sun went down into a bank of clouds almost as golden as he was himself. The red letter day was coming to an end; but there is this peculiar charm about red letter days, that while other days fade into a blur of forgetfulness, the red letter days are ours forever; and Lois would always remember the autumn foliage, the golden sunset, Jessie, Anne, and Ellen, as they flitted about the field, Mrs. Draper, the restful spot in the picture as she sat and watched them, and the handsome, graceful Amyas; even the snake and Reuben’s kindness would not be forgotten.

When they came to the gentians once more, as they were driving downhill, Reuben jumped out of the wagon and began to pick some. He was quickly followed by Amyas.

“Get enough for me too, Reuben,” Ellen called out.

“You can get some for yourself, if you want any,” he returned ungraciously.

“I guess I will,” and she sprang out of the wagon and joined them.

Reuben bunched his gentians together clumsily and held them out awkwardly to Lois without a word. “I must be sure to thank him,” she thought. “Thank you very much. I am sorry you had so much trouble,” she said shyly.

“That’s no matter.”

Amyas brought a bouquet of gentians, most daintily arranged, to Jessie, which he handed her with his accustomed grace. He then presented his sister Anne with another.

Lois looked down at the flowers in her lap. Anne’s and Jessie’s had a value which hers did not possess.

“I wish Amyas had given me some,” she thought.