The abandoned farm, and Connie's mistake

Those who have lived on the mountain roads between Springfield and Albany, have heard of The 4 Corners, famous for the sign-post with its white lettering on a black background, the figure “4” large and conspicuous in the centre, instead of the word itself. Why it was painted thus no one knows. It has been there since the oldest inhabitant can remember, and when a high wind blew the post down and broke it another was put in its place and the old board retained. It is a reminder of past glories, and gives the Corners a kind of distinction, the people think, and they are very proud of their figure “4” and the sign-post, although few come there now inquiring the way to Albany, or other towns whose names are upon the board. Should you wish to visit “The 4 Corners” on a summer morning, take a Boston and Albany train for the way station, Millville, a town hemmed in by hills which look like mountains, and mountains which seem no higher than the hills. There is no daily public conveyance there now for The Corners two miles away, for the glory of the place was crushed beneath the wheels of the first locomotive which climbed the steep grade of the mountains and consigned stage coaches and the goodly cheer of the wayside inns to oblivion. Very few except those who live in the vicinity of The 4 Corners visit it, but sometimes you will find behind the station an old sorrel horse and a buggy, the latter with its square box seat telling of many years of service, and the former, the horse, sleek and fat and lazy, and untrammeled by check rein of any kind, seemingly asleep and paying no heed to the rush and roar and smoke of the train as it dashes by. But in his younger days, when he first saw and heard it, he started off at break-neck speed towards his home, which he reached with a broken thill and three wheels, the fourth having been left by the big gate as he entered the yard. Possibly Dr. Stannard may be there with one or the other of his horses, Pro and Con, named to suit a fancy of his. Failing old Sorrel and Pro and Con, there is a livery stable across the broad common where a conveyance can be had, and within fifteen minutes after you signify your wish to go to The 4 Corners, you will be driving along a road as smooth as an asphalt pavement, unless the wheels of your vehicle run into a rut full of stones washed down from the hills or up from the earth by some heavy fall of rain.

It is one of the pleasantest bits of road in all that section of country, winding up and up, with level stretches like plateaus between the ascents, and with delightful views of wooded hills, green in their summer dress, and mountains, purple with the haze which rests upon them when in the valley below the air is quivering with the heat of July and August. To your right you get glimpses of a pond where the white lilies grow in abundance, and whose waters help to turn the machinery of the manufacturing town at the foot of the hill. It is not a large place, but with its white houses and green blinds it makes a pretty picture, and you keep looking back at it as you bowl along the smooth road between hedges of blackberry bushes and low alders and red sumachs. Suddenly, at a turn in the road and a rise steeper than any before it, you reach a level plain, which seems to stretch away mile upon mile in every direction, and you look off upon farmhouses dotting the landscape, some red, some white and more brown and weather beaten. The doors and windows are flung open wide to admit the sunshine and the air, and the inmates are busy, some in the fields, some indoors, while others, in the early morning, when the whistle blew in the valley below, took their tin pails and hurried away to the great factory, whose chimney and roof and upper windows can be seen from the plateau.

“This is The 4 Corners. Where will you get out and shall I wait for you?” Jehu asks, and as your errand is not to any particular place, you tell him to put you down by the steps of the little church, the first building you come to. “Fifty cents,” he says, when you ask his price, and you pay it with alacrity and think it cheap when you remember the hills you have come up and look at the moist state of the horse, panting under the elm tree, with his head low down. “Allus in a chronic tucker,” Jehu says, when you call his attention to the animal, and suggest that he must at some time have been overworked or he would not tire so easily. “Mebby so. Bought him of a pedlar,” he says. “But now he’s in clover. It’s the marster’s religion to be good to hosses. I b’lieve he’ll go ridin’ into Heaven behind the finest span on the road. None of your yanked up heads, with straight checks and cut-off tails for him. No, marm. He says the Lord made a hosses’ tail like a woman’s hair, for ornament, and to brush off the flies, and if a hoss wants to see what is goin’ on behind him he’s goin’ to let him have a chance to see. Henriet ain’t abused. She’s had nervous prostration and is kep’ for short runs, that’s all,” and with his shirt sleeve he wipes the white drops from the neck of the horse, who rubs against him with a little whinny which no horse gives except he is well cared for and content.

You say you will walk back to the station, and when Jehu and Henriet disappear you seat yourself upon the steps of the church and begin to look about you, wondering if this is not the place in which to lay the first scene in the story you are going to write. The church seems very old, and looking over the door you see the date 1820, and begin to speculate upon the number of people who have gone in and out and worshipped inside its walls since its doors were thrown open to the public. There is a graveyard behind it, and you know that many of the worshippers are sleeping there, for the yard is full and the road leading into it is grass-grown like a lawn, showing that few wheels enter there now. There is a little red schoolhouse not far away, and near the schoolhouse is a small building, which serves the treble purpose of a dry-goods store, grocery and post-office, but there are no customers at this hour of the day, and there will not be many until afternoon, when Jehu and Henriet bring up the mail, then the proprietor will for a time be very busy, and sugar and tea and tobacco will be given out with the evening papers and the few letters which find their way to that office. From where you sit you can see the broad roads which cross each other at right angles and make The 4 Corners, one going north and south and the others continuing on towards Albany in one direction and towards Boston in another. This last was the great thoroughfare over which the stages came from the east and the west, before the limited express or fast mail or engine of any kind thundered through the peaceful country, bringing the mountaineers rather unwillingly into closer proximity with the outer world. When the surveyors first appeared in the vicinity of The 4 Corners, there was a council of war among the inhabitants. They didn’t want a railroad cutting up their farms and gardens and ruining Stannard’s Inn, which was famed as the best kept house in the State. But the railroad came two miles from Stannard’s Inn, which gradually became a thing of the past. The stage coaches came no more, for the cars carried the people where they wished to go and “The 4 Corners were nowhere,” the boy Ephraim Stannard said, as he saw the last stage that would ever stop at his father’s door roll down the hill, the driver blowing a farewell blast on the bugle with which he was wont to announce his approach.

A few changes were made, and then what had been Stannard’s Inn was transformed into the comfortable farmhouse which you see to your right in the southeast angle of The 4 Corners as you sit on the steps of the church. It is very large, with a wide hall in the centre and a big fireplace at the end, the glory and pride of the family, who would almost as soon part with an arm or foot as have the great chimney removed, with its fireplaces in so many rooms and its link with the olden time before stoves were in fashion or furnaces had been thought of. It was built by a Stannard some years before the church, and has been owned by the Stannards ever since. They are a thrifty race, and the Stannard farm is the finest in the neighborhood. Ephraim Stannard, the boy who watched with a swelling heart the last stage roll away is the owner, and a deacon in the church on whose steps you are sitting while you inspect The 4 Corners and the house which was once Stannard’s Inn.

Diagonally across the corner on the northwest angle is another and far more pretentious house, with gables and a bay window and a conservatory and a terraced garden down the hill behind it. This was once the Morris place, and Mrs. Morris and Mrs. Stannard were sisters, and both came, in their young womanhood, as brides to The 4 Corners, one as the wife of plain, honest-hearted Ephraim Stannard, a farmer, the other the wife of reckless, good-for-nothing Charles Morris, who broke her heart in two years and buried her in the yard behind the church and raised a tall monument to her memory, ran a wild career for a time and then died suddenly, leaving his only son, Charles Harold, to the care of his aunt, Mrs. Ephraim Stannard. For a while the Morris house was rented, but as time passed on and the village around the station grew in importance, few, who could afford to pay the rent, cared to live at The 4 Corners, and it was at last untenanted, while the decay of time crept over it until it would cost more to repair it than Ephraim Stannard, who had it in charge, felt warranted in putting upon it. The repairs, however, were made later on with a lavish hand, and you wonder that so much money should have been expended upon the place, and who the owners are. The windows and blinds are open, and a turbaned negress is sweeping the piazza. Otherwise you see no sign of life, and you hear later that the family are at the sea-shore. Around the farmhouse everything is quiet, except the motherly hen clucking to her brood of chickens and wandering unmolested through the yard. It seems a lonely place, but the view is so fine in every direction, the air so pure and the sky so blue, that you decide at last that no better spot can be found for the first scene of your story, which is to open years prior to the July morning when Henriet and Jehu took you up the old stage hill to The 4 Corners.

From the day when Mrs. Stannard took home her sister’s little boy, Charles Harold, or Harry, as he was usually called, she gave him a mother’s care equally with her own son, Kenneth, who was nearly the same age as his cousin, but as unlike him as one boy can be unlike another. “He is his father all over and can’t help it,” Mrs. Stannard would say, as an excuse for Harry’s faults, which, without his father, she would have condoned for the sake of his mother and because of his handsome face and affectionate, winning ways. At a very early age he began to assume an air of superiority over his associates, because of the money left him by his father, who, he said, was a gentleman and not a farmer, and came of a family which never had to work. And Harry wouldn’t work. Why should he? he said, when his board was paid and he was not beholden in any way to the uncle and aunt who cared for him. They could charge what they liked, he didn’t care. He should still have quite a fortune when he was twenty-one, after which he intended to travel and see the world and have a good time generally.

He had a pretty good time as a boy, Kenneth thought, when he stayed in bed till breakfast was ready on cold winter mornings, while he, Kenneth, was up before light, helping his father with the fires and chores, and sometimes hanging out the Monday’s washing for his mother, when the wind was so sharp as to penetrate through her mittens and the thick hood upon her head. Kenneth was decidedly a mother’s boy, an unselfish, helpful boy, doing for every one whatever his hands found to do, and never dreaming that any necessary labor was beneath him. Every dumb beast on the place, from Sorrel, the horse, and the big rooster who ruled the hen-yard, down to the lambs feeding in the sheep pasture, knew him and came at his call as readily as the watch dog, Chance, or the house cat, Fan, with her family of six kittens just opening their eyes, and six more gambolling about the premises and getting their daily rations from the trough Kenneth had scooped out from a log, and into which, morning and night, he always poured a part of old Limeback’s milk. She was the cow set apart for the cats, and Kenneth saw that they had their rights religiously, and bore meekly Harry’s jeers at what he called Ken’s soft-heartedness for dogs and cats and animals generally. Sometime he meant to have a blooded horse and put him on the racecourse with large bets behind him, but as for farm animals, they were like country people, and he hated them, and the only serious quarrel he and Kenneth ever had was when he tied two kittens together by their hind legs and then set a rat terrier belonging to a neighbor to worry them. The dog was dealt a blow with a hoe which sent him yelping home, the little cats were untied, and then Harry had a thrashing such as he never forgot. His lip was cut and swollen, his eyes black for a week, but he bore no malice against Kenneth for the castigation. On the contrary, he rather respected him for it.

“Upon my word, I didn’t s’pose you had so much grit, or could strike so hard; there’s some strength in your big, rough hands. I b’lieve you’ll be a prize fighter yet,” he said good-naturedly, when Kenneth tried to apologize, saying he must have hit harder than he meant to, he was so mad. “Never mind, Ken, I deserved to have my eyes and teeth knocked out. I’m a kind of blackguard anyway,” he added, while the two boys shook hands, and Harry never again tried the experiment of tieing cats together and setting the dog upon them.

He was a very handsome boy, with soft dark eyes and a winsome smile and white hands, which never did any harder work than to run the mower over the lawn, tie up a rose bush or shell peas for his aunt when she was in a hurry. For the rest of the time, when not in school, he read novels mostly, or books of travel and adventure. He had a boat on the pond which he named “Ken” for his cousin, who rarely found time to go out in it, so busy was he with the many duties devolving upon him as a farmer’s son.

Kenneth liked books for the books’ sake, and unlike Harry, was always glad when school commenced and sorry when it ended. Some day he meant to go to the Academy in Millville, and perhaps to the dancing-school opened there every winter, and learn some of the manners which were natural to Harry; then, if he worked hard and saved a great deal, he might possibly go to college, and afterwards study medicine with Dr. Catherin, the famous physician at Rocky Point. It surely must be a grand thing to alleviate pain, only he could never bear to lose a patient and witness the grief of friends. That would be dreadful and unnerve him for days, he thought. Kenneth was very sympathetic, and showed it in every act. Weak as water, Harry said, and laughed when he cried because old blind Roan, who had been in the family for years, broke his legs and had to be shot. He did not look very weak with his broad shoulders and chest and sinewy arms, which could handle Harry as if he were a child.

“Wait till I have been through all the athletic sports in college; then see if I can’t lick you,” Harry said, when a boy of fifteen, he was about to start for Andover, where he was to begin his preparatory course for college and the sports which would enable him to lick his cousin, Kenneth.

His fortune was sufficient to give him Andover and college, for neither of which he cared a straw except as they might advance him in the career he had marked out for himself in the future.

“No more rough farming for me,” he said, on the morning when he was leaving for Andover, forgetting that he had never so much as hoed a row of potatoes or weeded a garden bed, let alone what he called rough farming. “I am going to have a good time after I am through college, and perhaps shall fix up the old house and spend a few weeks there in the summer with some high bloods, whose acquaintance I shall make. That will be a tony thing to do. Or, I may bring a wife there for the summer,—a rich one, if I have any; none of your poor country girls for me. I leave them to you. Maybe I shall fancy that Connie, What’s-her-name?—your father’s ward, you know. How much do you s’pose she’s worth?”

He was sitting on the kitchen table, swinging his legs back and forth and watching Kenneth strapping his trunk by the door, and paying very little attention to him until Connie What’s-her-name was mentioned. Then Kenneth looked up quickly, and said: “Do you mean Connie Elliott? Why, she’s only a little girl, five or six years old, and you are nearly fifteen.”

“Phoo! Nine years’ difference is nothing if you fancy the girl and she has the ready,” Harry replied. “Father was ten years older than mother. It’s the thing to do. But, halloo, there’s Sorrel and the buggy. I s’pose it’s time to go. Good-by, Ken. You are a good sort of fellow after all, and I shall miss you awfully. Good-by, Aunt Mary. You have always been nice to me. I’m sorry I have not been a better boy, more like Ken. Good-by.”

There were tears in his dark eyes as he kissed his Aunt Mary and shook hands with Kenneth, both of whom, under the spell he cast over them, would have forgiven far more than they had to forgive in the handsome boy, who, as long as they could see him, stood up in the buggy and waved his hat and hands to them as they stood watching him in the door, and thinking, not of his faults, but how lonely they should he without him. In Kenneth’s heart there was no feeling of envy. It had always seemed right that the good things should come to Harry and the bad things, if there were any, should come to himself. This arose partly from his unselfishness, and partly because Harry claimed everything as his right. Kenneth would have liked Andover, but as it did not seem within his reach, he was content with the Millville Academy, where he soon became the most popular boy, as well as the first in his class. At the dancing-school, which he attended every Saturday afternoon, he did not succeed quite as well. His movements were a little clumsy, but he learned many things which he had heard Harry say were essential to the manners of a gentleman, and felt himself quite accomplished, though of course not equal to Hal, who always seemed to know the right thing to say and do.

At first there were a few homesick letters from Hal, as he began to find his level and didn’t like it.

“Andover is not what it is cracked up to be,” he wrote to Kenneth. “Some of the fellows don’t know a gentleman when they see him. Think of their trying to make me a fag. Not much! I wish you were here to whale ’em.”

After a few weeks the letters were more cheerful in tone. The boys had found out that he was somebody, and he had made the acquaintance of a real nice chap,—rich, too. He laid great stress on rich, as if that were the main thing in favor of Tom Haynes, who lived in Kentucky near where Harry’s father was born.

“He has heard of the Morrises, and knows they are a tip-top family,” he wrote. “A little fast, maybe, as one of them once ran a bowie knife into somebody who called him a liar. But that’s nothing. That shows grit, Tom says, and he knows. We have a long vacation at Christmas and New Year’s, nearly two weeks, and Tom has hinted pretty broadly that he’d like to spend it with me at The 4 Corners. You see, I’ve done some tall bragging about my house, the Morris Place, and have spoken of Aunt Mary as the housekeeper, and so on. You know the blacks south are all uncles and aunts, and somehow Tom has got it into his head that Aunt Mary and Uncle Ephraim came from Kentucky with my father, and are like,—well, like his Aunt Dinah and Uncle Sam he talks so much about. I never meant him to think so, for I am not quite a cad; but when I saw that he had the idea, and that because of it he thought more of me and stood for me against the wretches who were going to toss me in a blanket I couldn’t tell him. How could I? He’d like to see the Morris Place, and says he’d have such fine times with sleigh rides and skating and eating Aunt Mary’s pones. I wonder what they are! I told him she made No. 1 fried cakes, but I never said a word about pones! He has a colored boy at home, who comes into his room every cold morning and makes a fire before he is up, and brushes his clothes and blacks his shoes. My eye! What would he think of that blizzardy north chamber, where we sleep and nearly shake the teeth out of our heads with the cold, as we dress and hurry downstairs to wash in a tin basin and wipe on a roller-towel! No, sir! I could not have him at the farmhouse, and so I had to make up some yarn about Aunt Mary’s having the rheumatism and Uncle Ephraim the gout, and nobody to do anything but a boy, Kenneth! And I honestly believe he thinks you black with the rest, although I never hinted such a thing. Why, you are as white as the driven snow compared to me, a liar and blackguard. But what was there left for me but to lie, and I can do that easy, you know,—that is, I can blarney a fellow till he don’t know whether he is himself or someone else. I blarneyed Tom till he wrote to his mother, who has invited me to spend the holidays at Cedar Bank, and I have accepted. Won’t it be jolly? And, by the way, I wish Uncle Ephraim would add a little to my allowance. Tom thinks me a kind of millionaire, and it won’t do to go empty-handed. I’d like to see you all, of course, but you will keep, and the invitation to Cedar Bank won’t. Give my love to Aunt Mary and kiss her for me, and Uncle Ephraim, too, if he will let you. Give old Chance a pat on the head. I think a good deal of him as a dog. Tom knows about him and the dozen cats,—I think I said two dozens,—who eat out of the trough. He wants to see them awfully. He is nearly as great on cats as you are.

Kenneth read this letter twice, with a swelling in his heart as if it would burst. For himself he did not care, but he did not like to have his father and mother mistaken for darkies. It was humiliating, and it hurt him. He didn’t like the way Harry spoke of the house, as if he were ashamed of it, but more than all he was disappointed. He had anticipated Harry’s coming home, and wanted to show him his standing in the Millville Academy, and to compare notes as to which knew the most of Latin, and to show off his dancing steps and bows, and possibly get Hal to coach him a little, he was so well posted on such matters. Then there were so many things to make Harry’s home coming pleasant. Quantities of walnuts and butternuts and chestnuts, which he had gathered during the autumn, when he had a leisure hour, were ranged in rows on the ball-room floor. The finest clusters of grapes had been wrapped in paper bags, and put away where they would not freeze, for Harry was fond of grapes, and apples, too, and the largest and best of Baldwins and Kings were on the top of the barrels in the cellar ready for him, while over and above all was the present Kenneth had bought for him with money saved from his own rather scanty allowance, a pearl-handled pocket knife with three blades, for which he had given a dollar. There were the soft wool mittens his mother had knit and the skates his father had bought, all waiting for Hal, who was not coming to claim them, and whose friend, Tom Haynes, thought them all negroes and the Morris Place a palace! It was hard, and Kenneth swallowed and winked a good many times before he could force back the tears from his eyes and the lump from his throat.

“Hal does not care for us; he thinks we are dirt, and is ashamed to bring his fine friend here,” he said, as he handed the letter to his mother, who was scarcely less hurt and disappointed. “Yes, he’s ashamed of us,” Kenneth repeated to himself that night, as he went up to the blizzardy north room, which never seemed to him quite so cold as it did now in the light of Harry’s criticism. “’Tis cheerless, that’s a fact,” Kenneth thought, as the wind went screaming past the house, driving before it a cloud of snow, some of which sifted in upon the bare floor through the shaky window. “Yes, ’tis cheerless and cold, and after all I don’t much blame Hal for wanting to go where a nigger makes a fire in the morning before he is up, but, by golly! he needn’t let ’em think father and mother are nigger aunties and uncles, and if I live I’ll show him somebody he nor forty Tom Hayneses won’t be ashamed of! Yes, I will!”

The last words were said sleepily, for Kenneth’s head was on the pillow, and his last glimmer of consciousness was that he was to make something of himself of which his cousin would not be ashamed.

When Deacon Stannard was in the army, the colonel of his regiment was Mark Elliott, whom, at the battle of Gettysburg, he found lying on his face among the dead and dying. At the risk of his own life he took him to a place of safety, and stayed by him till consciousness returned and he was able to be removed to a greater distance from the field of carnage. This act the colonel never forgot, and he became Ephraim’s fast friend, corresponding with him and visiting him once or twice at The 4 Corners. Then both men married and their lives drifted apart. The city man was busy on Wall Street, in New York, and Ephraim was busy on the farm which had come to him at his father’s death. Years went by and they heard nothing of each other, until there came to Ephraim, who was now a deacon, a letter from his friend, written in St. Augustine, where he had gone for his health.

“Florida cannot help me, and I am dying,” he wrote. “I shall never go back again. Since the death of my wife, two years ago, I have had no wish to live except for my little girl, Constance. She is in New York with my sister Mrs. Hart, who is a widow with no children, and would like to take charge of her. She is a good woman and will be kind to Connie, but she thinks a great deal of society and is rather extravagant in her tastes. I’d like you to be joint guardian with Mrs. Hart of my child. I shall leave her some money, and I wish you to see to it. I can trust you, and know that anything placed in your hands will be safe. If you think my present investments are not good, and some of them are shaky, make others to suit you. I shall instruct my sister to take Connie to the farmhouse on a visit, and if the child likes the country better than the city, she is to stay with you as much as you care to have her. I want her to be brought up a good and sensible woman rather than a fashionable one. She will be beautiful, like her mother. She will be sought after, and God only knows what her future will be. I wish I could see you once more. A sight of your honest face would do me good, and I could talk to you of Connie and the money. I scarcely dare hope it, but if you can come, every expense will be paid. I am too tired to write more. My hands shake and there is a sound in my ears like the distant noise of the battles we fought together. Well, they are over now, and the battle of life is nearly ended.

Deacon Stannard received this letter in January, and two days later he was on his way to St. Augustine, which he reached the day before the colonel’s death, and in time to hear his verbal instructions with regard to Connie and the money left to her. As there was no one else to do it, he went with the body to New York, and saw Connie, and offered to take her home with him at once, if she wished to go.

But Mrs. Hart said: “No, she belongs to me rather than to you, to whom, according to my brother’s wishes, I must look for money when she needs it. I have promised to bring her to your house, and shall do so, but naturally her place is with me.”

Evidently she did not like being made joint guardian with this plain country farmer. “He is such a codger,” she said before Connie, who opened wide her great blue eyes and asked: “What is a codger?”

Her aunt did not reply. She was wondering if the deacon would stay after the funeral, and how she could keep him in the background if he did. In his honest soul he felt that perhaps he ought to stay a few days and see to things and chirk her up a bit, he said, when apologizing for not doing so, and saying that he “s’posed Mary and the boys wanted him at home.”

There was a proud toss of the lady’s head as she thanked him and said he was very kind, but there was no need for him to stay on her account, as she had friends and was accustomed to manage her own affairs.

“Well, I guess then I’ll go to-night,” the deacon said, with a faint glimmering that “his room was better than his company,” and bidding the lady good-by, he started for The 4 Corners, which he reached two weeks after he left them.

It was like a journey round the world, that trip to St. Augustine and New York, and he talked of it for days, his voice trembling as he spoke of Colonel Elliott, and his manner becoming eloquent when he told them of Connie and described Mrs. Hart’s beautiful home and the number of servants employed.

“I didn’t s’pose anybody but the Queen lived that way; did you, Hal?” Kenneth said.

“Pshaw! yes. That’s nothing, and it’s the way I mean to live some time,” Harry answered, with the air of superior knowledge which always made Kenneth feel small and ignorant.

On one point they were agreed, and that was Connie, the little girl who was soon coming to visit them. Mrs. Stannard hoped she would stay a long time, and in her mind were visions of the little room next her own and the little bed she would fit up for her, while Kenneth thought of the sled he had seen in Millville and on which he would take her up and down the long hill and out upon the pond and everywhere. Harry thought of nothing except that it would be rather nice to have a little girl in the house, especially as she belonged to a swell family and had money. He was always thinking of money and swell people, and boasting of the Morrises, who belonged to that class. “Bred in his bone; takes it from his father, the proudest man I ever saw,” was Mrs. Stannard’s explanation, when her husband wondered where Hal got such notions.

For a time he was quite interested in Connie and her expected visit with her aunt. “Mrs. Hart can’t fail to see that I am a kick above the rest of ’em here, and I shall tell her who father was,” he thought, while Kenneth was planning how he could make it pleasant for the little girl.

It was decided at last that she was not to come that winter, and Kenneth, who had bought the sled at a reduced rate, put it away in the garret and began to plan for the summer, when the country would be so pleasant and the pond lilies so thick, and Hal would take her out in his boat and he would make her a swing in the barn and a teater in the fence.

The summer went by and autumn came and Hal went away to Andover and Kenneth to Millville, and Connie did not come, and they had ceased to expect her until a wild day in December, when a western blizzard was careering over the hills. Kenneth, who had been to the office, brought home a letter from Mrs. Hart, saying that, if convenient, she would spend the holidays at the farmhouse. She did not add that she had recently met with some losses, and had given up a trip to the south which she had intended taking, and as the visit to The 4 Corners must be made, she had decided to have it off her mind. That Connie should wish to stay in the country any length of time was preposterous, nor was it at all desirable for herself that she should. She was fond of the child and meant to keep her with her. She had promised her brother to take her to the farmhouse and let her see country life, and she must keep her promise, but would do it in her own way. None knew better than herself the beauties of the country in summer. She could see the fresh green grass and foliage and smell the new-mown hay and the lilies in the pond and the roses in the garden, and hear the hum of happy insect life, and knew these things would appeal to Connie, who might insist upon staying longer than she cared to have her, for if Connie stayed she must stay, too, and see that she did not contract habits hard to be rid of. So she decided to go in the winter, guessing what accommodations she would find, and knowing what the cold would be up there in the hills. She would not take her maid, who would be out of place. Connie must wait upon herself, and if she found it a hardship all the better, as she would sooner tire of the country and never care to visit it again.

Connie was delighted with the prospect of seeing her Guardy, as she called Deacon Stannard, and talked of the trip constantly.

“You will find things quaint and old-fashioned,” her aunt said to her, “but you must be very nice, no matter what you see. Deacon Stannard manages your money, and if you are not nice it may be harder to get all you want. And don’t you tell that I gave twenty-five dollars for your doll-house. He is something of a hunks, and would not like it.”

Connie nodded her little wise head, wiser in some respects than her aunt suspected. She was wondering what the old-fashioned things were she was to see, and what quaint and hunks meant. She liked to know the meaning of things, and hunted for the words in a dictionary. She missed hunks, but found quaint, the multiplicity of whose definitions bewildered her. She fixed, however, upon two, odd and antique. She knew what the latter meant. Her aunt had a craze for antiques, and gave a great price for them. Perhaps she could buy some at the farmhouse out of her pocket money, and give her aunt for a Christmas present. Hers, bought in advance, was the doll-house, for which twenty-five dollars had been paid. She was rather sorry to leave it, but a trip in the cars was always delightful to her, and it was a very happy child who, on the day before Christmas, started for The 4 Corners.

Meantime, at the farmhouse there had been a good deal of excitement on the receipt of Mrs. Hart’s letter.

“What shall we do with ’em if it stays as cold as it is now, and nothing but a fireplace in the best room and guest chamber? They’ll freeze to death. I wish they had come in the summer,” Mrs. Stannard said, while Kenneth took a more hopeful view of the situation.

He would much rather they had come in the summer, but would make the best of it and try to keep them warm, he said. If there was any work Kenneth hated it was splitting wood. Now, however, he put aside his dislike, and, remembering how cold the parlor and guest chamber were, he employed his leisure time when out of school in sawing and splitting wood, until his mother said he had enough “to roast an ox.” There were two piles, the parlor pile and the upstairs pile, the latter finer and of a kind which would kindle quickly.

“If Mrs. Hart doesn’t mind I shall creep into her room before she is wake and make a roaring fire. That’s the way Tom Haynes’ niggers do, and he thinks we are niggers,” Kenneth said to his mother, with some bitterness in his tone, for Harry’s letter rankled a little.

And still he wished his cousin was coming home to see Connie. But Harry was off for Kentucky, and did not know of Connie’s expected visit until it was too late to change his plan, if he had cared to do so. There were only a few days between Mrs. Hart’s letter and the day before Christmas, when she was expected, but in that time the house was put in perfect order, although where the disorder before was the deacon could not guess. But his wife knew, and went through a regular cleaning process, even to the big ball-room over the stable, which she swept and mopped and dusted, looking askance at the piles of butternuts and walnuts on the floor and wondering what Mrs. Hart would think of such litter should she chance to go in there. Fires were built in the parlor and guest chamber, with a view to thaw them out, when, fortunately, the weather changed, and the day before Christmas was ushered in with a warm rain, which threatened to take away all the snow. It cleared, however, in the afternoon, and Kenneth was at the station when the New York train came in, and a tall lady in black alighted, with a little girl, in blue cloak and hood trimmed with swan’s down, her lovely face looking out from the hood, and her blue eyes laughing up at Kenneth as he took her in his arms, while Mrs. Hart picked her way through the melting snow and slush.

“This is awful. Couldn’t you have gotten nearer the track?” she said, rather crossly, to Kenneth, as she looked down at her boots covered with mud.

“Perhaps I could, but Sorrel is young and don’t like the engine very well. I’m awfully sorry,” Kenneth replied, helping her into the sleigh and taking his seat beside her, with Connie in the middle.

As they drove up the hill, Connie’s bright eyes studied Kenneth curiously, and as she usually said what was in her mind, she finally asked:

“Boy, who are you? One of Guard’s grooms?”

“Hush-sh!” came from her aunt, while Kenneth felt a twinge similar to that he had experienced when he read Hal’s letter about the darkies.

That was bad enough, but this was worse. He laughed, however, and answered:

“I am Kenneth Stannard, your guardian’s son.”

“Oh-h!” Connie said, pursing up her little mouth and moving forward so as to look at him more closely. “I’m so glad. I like boys ever so much.”

Leaning back, she nestled closer to him, and rubbed her blue hood against his shoulder in a caressing kind of way, which sent the blood tingling through his veins and made him forget the groom.

“Will we have a Christmas-tree to-night, with tapers?” she asked, as they passed a clump of pines near the top of the hill.

Kenneth looked distressed. Anything like a Christmas-tree had never come into his experience. He had heard of them at St. Jude’s at Rocky Point, but had never seen any one or knew that they had them in a private house.

“I am afraid not,” he answered. “We don’t have such things here; but if the snow does not all melt off, we’ll slide down hill to-morrow.”

To Connie, who had never slidden down hill, the prospect of doing so atoned for the absence of a Christmas-tree.

“That will be jolly. I wish it was to-morrow,” she said, just as they stopped before the farmhouse.

The short wintry day was closing now, with a prospect of more rain, and the lamps were lighted, and a bright fire was blazing in the parlor, to which Mrs. Stannard conducted her guests after kissing the rosy face under the blue hood. As she wore a big white apron and had a speck of flour on her sleeve, which she had failed to see, Connie mistook her for the cook, and the moment she was alone with her aunt she said:

“I wish we had that nice cook instead of old Thorn, who is so cross,—don’t you?”

“Hush-sh!” came a second time from Mrs. Hart. “There are no cooks here, nor grooms, nor maids. They all wait upon themselves.”

“That’s funny,” Connie replied. “Who is going to undress and dress me, and hear me say my prayers, I’d like to know? You might have brought Jean. Why didn’t you?”

Never in her life had Connie dressed or undressed herself, or said her prayers alone. Mrs. Hart, who meant to bring Connie up religiously, so far at least as ceremony was concerned, was too indolent to do anything which she could put upon another, and had given strict orders to Jean, the maid, that Connie must say her prayers every night, together with the collect for the day. Jean had performed her duty conscientiously, and had enjoined upon the little girl that to omit her prayers or the collect would be a sin. To dress and undress herself Connie did not mind so much, but to have some one keep her going when she said her prayers seemed a part of the prayer itself, and she looked rather sober till they were in their sleeping-room, to which Mrs. Hart asked to be shown. Here she became interested at once in the furniture and the high bed, wondering how she was to get into it. But what pleased her most was the fire, which went roaring up the chimney, sending out great waves of warmth into the big room.

“Oh, why don’t we have a fire like this? It’s so nice,” Connie said, sitting down upon the hearth and holding her hands to the blaze.

Mrs. Hart did not answer, for just then Kenneth came to say that supper was ready, and they were soon seated at the beautifully spread table, where Connie, who was hungry, forgot to ask questions and gave herself wholly to her supper, stopping occasionally to give a loving squeeze to the kitten she had captured, and which lay in her lap purring its content. Kenneth had told her of the dozen more cats, besides a litter of young kittens, in the barn, and the moment supper was over she asked to go and see them. But her aunt interposed. It was too late and too cold; the cats would keep till to-morrow, and she bade Connie come with her to the parlor and be quiet.

The first evening was rather dull for all the party except Connie, whom Kenneth taught how to play cat’s cradle, and told her the names of the felines she was to see in the morning. The deacon nodded over his paper, while Mrs. Stannard exchanged her white apron for a black silk one and then knit assiduously on a sock which she said was for Harry, who was at school at Andover, but spending his vacation with a friend in Kentucky.

“I didn’t know you had another son,” Mrs. Hart said, and then Mrs. Stannard told of her sister and Harry’s mother lying in the graveyard, and of his father lying in the Morris vault, somewhere in Kentucky.

Very little was said of him, but the Morris family was dwelt upon at large as something to be proud of. Mrs. Hart thought she had heard of them, and said she had met a Mrs. Haynes, from Lexington, Ky., presumably the family Harry was visiting, and she found her respect rising a little for the Stannards, who were in a way connected with the Morrises, and whose nephew was a student in Andover and a guest at the Hayneses. At eight o’clock she told Connie it was time for her to go to bed, adding, “I’ll go with you, if you are afraid.”

But fear was no part of Connie’s nature. She rather liked the idea of going alone; it made her feel more womanly. She did not, however, decline Kenneth’s escort up the stairs and through the hall, but insisted upon carrying the candle he lighted, and held it at such an angle that several drops of tallow fell on her dress and on the floor before she reached the door of her room.

“Good-night, Connie. I suppose there is nothing I can do for you?” Kenneth said.

“No, thanks,” Connie replied; then, still holding her dripping candle nearly upside down, she added: “Or, yes, if you will hear me say my prayers and keep me going.”

Kenneth drew a long breath and stopped short, while she continued: “And if you will just unbutton me. I can’t reach ’em very well and hold the candle, too, and the kitten. I’ve got it, see?”

She was squeezing it under her arm, while she put her hand to the back of her dress, trying to loosen the refractory buttons.

Kenneth’s face was scarlet, but the one turned to him was innocent as a baby’s, and he began his task. He did not know anything about a child’s buttons, and his fingers felt like thumbs as he managed to undo them, while Connie hunched her shoulders and squeezed the cat, which she said she should keep all night if her aunt would let her.

“I always have a doll at home,” she said, “and I wanted to bring one with me, but auntie would not let me. I wonder why?”

Kenneth was not especially interested in dolls, and, having discharged his duty as maid, turned to go. But Connie was not through with him.

“Ar’n’t you going to hear me say my prayers and keep me going? Jean always does,—that’s my maid.”

Kenneth drew a longer breath than at first. But Connie was persistent, and made him sit down in a chair while she put the sputtering candle on the floor, and, still holding the cat, knelt beside him with her head in his lap.

“You’ll have to say them with me,—Jean does,” she said, while Kenneth felt the cold sweat trickling down his back as he replied:

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

There was a quick uplifting of the golden head, and Connie’s blue eyes looked wonderingly at him.

“Why, ‘Now I lay me,’ and ‘Our Father,’ and the collect. Auntie is particular about that.”

Kenneth sweat still more, for he had no idea what she meant by a collect. Such a thing was no part of the service in the church of The 4 Corners, or, if it was, they did not call it by that. He knew “Now I lay me” and “Our Father,” and used to say them, but had given them up, influenced by Hal, who said they were too big for such childish things. As deacon of the church, his father asked a blessing at the table, and had family prayers Sunday morning, but what the mischief a collect was Kenneth could not guess. Mrs. Hart, he knew, belonged to a church, like St. Jude’s at Rocky Point, and with the rather narrow views in which he had been educated, he fancied a collect might be something heretical, or, at least, not quite orthodox. “Now I lay me” and “Our Father” were all right, and he began to repeat them, stammeringly, but Connie’s steady voice gave him courage and he kept on to the close, when he made a motion to get up.

“Wait, there’s a lot more, and you, Kitty, keep quiet,” Connie said.

The cat kept quiet, and Kenneth waited while Connie went on: “God bless Auntie and Guardy. I put him in because he saved papa’s life.” This to Kenneth. Then she continued: “Bless Jean, and make me a good girl; bless Kenneth and make him a good boy. (I am putting you in because I like you.) Amen!”

Kenneth was sweating now like rain, not cold sweat, but hot, which stood in drops upon his face, and there were tears in his eyes as he thought what a miserable lout he was compared with this little girl, who was not through with him yet.

“Now I must say the collect, and you must begin, for it’s so long. I don’t know half of it,” she said, with a little cuff at the cat, which was trying to escape.

“I don’t believe I know it, either. Can’t you skip it?” Kenneth asked, and Connie answered:

“Skip it! No. That would be wicked. I must say it; and if you don’t know that one, we’ll say the Stir Up one. That’s short and easy. Begin.”

“Oh, Connie, I don’t know that, either, nor what you mean,” Kenneth gasped.

“That’s smart! Not know the Stir Up!” came in a muffled voice from Kenneth’s knee, which the cat was scratching by this time, trying to get away from the hands holding it so tight.

“Keep still, can’t you?” Connie said to the cat, and then began the collect for the 25th Sunday after Trinity, sometimes called “Stir Up Day.”

“There! She’s got away and gone under the table,” she exclaimed, as the kitten made a spring for liberty.

Then she went on to the end and started for the cat, while Kenneth improved the opportunity to leave the room, feeling smaller and wickeder than he had ever felt since he stole melons from a neighbor’s garden. Surely a little child was teaching him, and that night he said the neglected prayer of his childhood, kneeling in the darkness and cold of his own room, and promising himself never to omit it again if fifty Hals were there telling him it was nonsense.