n't. But I think it's nice to have lots and lots of
flowers. When I have a garden once I'll have it full----"

"Talk of that some other day," said her aunt. "Get ready now for town
once. You go to the store and ask 'em to send out twenty pounds of
granulated sugar. Jonas, one of the clerks, comes out this way still
when he goes home and he can just as good fetch it along on his home
road. Your pop is too busy to hitch up and go in for it and I have no
time neither to-day and I want it early in the morning, and what I have
is almost all. And then you can buy three spools of white thread number
fifty. And when you're done you dare look around a little in the store
if you don't touch nothing. On the home road you better stop in the
post-office and ask if there's anything. Nobody was in yesterday."

"All right--and--Aunt Maria, dare I wear my hat?"

"Ach, no. Abody don't wear Sunday clothes on a Wednesday just to go to
Greenwald to the store. Only when you go to Lancaster and on a Sunday
you wear your hat. You're dressed good enough; just get your sunbonnet,
for it's sunny on the road."

Phoebe took a small ruffled sunbonnet of blue checked gingham from a
hook behind the kitchen door and pressed it lightly on her head.

"Ach, bonnets are vonderful hot things!" she exclaimed. "A nice parasol
like Mary Warner's got would be lots nicer. Where's the money?" she
asked as she saw a shadow of displeasure on her aunt's face.

"Here it is, enough for the sugar and the thread. Don't lose the
pocketbook, and be sure to count the change so they don't make no
mistake."

"Yes."

"And don't touch things in the store."

"No." The child walked to the door, impatient to be off.

"And be careful crossin' over the streets. If a horse comes, or a
bicycle, wait till it's past, or an automobile----"

"Ach, yes, I'll be careful," Phoebe answered.

A moment later she went down the boardwalk that led through the yard to
the little green gate at the country road. There she paused and looked
back at the farm with its old-fashioned house, her birthplace and home.

The Metz homestead, erected in the days of home-grown flax and
spinning-wheels, was plain and unpretentious. Built of gray, rough-hewn
quarry stone it hid like a demure Quakeress behind tall evergreen trees
whose branches touched and interlaced in so many places that the
traveler on the country road caught but mere glimpses of the big gray
house.

The old home stood facing th