a lot, too, Phoebe, ain't they?"

She giggled, then laughed merrily. "Ach," she said, "you say funny
things. You just make me laugh all the time. But it's mean, now, that
you are so dumb to forget and have to go back. I thought I'd have nice
company all the ways in, but mebbe I'll see you in Greenwald."

"Mebbe. Goo'bye," said the boy and turned to the hill again.

Phoebe stood a moment and looked after him. "My," she said to herself,
"but David Eby is a vonderful nice boy!" Then she started down the road,
a quaint, interesting little figure in her brown chambray dress with its
full, gathered skirt and its short, plain waist. But the face that
looked out from the blue sunbonnet was even more interesting. The blue
eyes, golden hair and fair coloring of the cheeks held promise of an
abiding beauty, but more than mere beauty was bounded by the ruffled
sunbonnet. There was an eagerness of expression, an alert understanding
in the deep eyes, a tender fluttering of the long lashes, an ever
varying animation in the child face, as though she were standing on
tiptoe to catch all the sunshine and glory of the great, beautiful world
about her.

Phoebe went decorously down the road, across the wooden bridge over the
Chicques, then she began to skip. Her full skirt fluttered in the light
wind, her sunbonnet slipped back from her head and flapped as she hopped
along the half mile stretch of country road bordered by green fields and
meadows.

"There's no houses here so I dare skip," she panted gleefully. "Aunt
Maria don't think it looks nice for girls to skip, but I like to do it.
I could just skip and skip and skip----"

She stopped suddenly. In a meadow to her right a tangle of bulrushes
edged a small pond and, perched on a swaying reed, a red-winged
blackbird was calling his clear, "Conqueree, conqueree."

"Oh, you pretty thing!" Phoebe cried as she leaned on the fence and
watched the bird. "You're just the prettiest thing with them red and
yellow spots on your wings. And you ain't afraid of me, not a bit. I
guess mebbe you know you got wings and I ain't. Such pretty wings you
got, too, and the rest of you is all black as coal. Mebbe God made you
black all over like a crow and then got sorry for you and put some
pretty spots on your wings. I wonder now"--her face sobered--"I just
wonder now why Aunt Maria says still that it's bad to fix up pretty with
curls and things like that and to wear fancy dresses. Why, many of the
b