dozen as long as these; Solomon thought you meant
to pull his tail out by the roots, didn't you, Boy?"

"I didn't mean to hurt him," apologized the somewhat abashed Sarah.
"What's a ram?"

"His other name is Mr. Sheep," said Richard, handing her half a dozen
long black wiry hairs. "And he's old and cross and has been known to
butt people. I don't think he'd hurt you, but he might frighten you."

"I wouldn't be afraid," boasted Sarah, stuffing her horse hairs
carefully into the pocket of her middy blouse. "Shirley might, but I
wouldn't. Shall I bring you a sweet apple, Rich?"

"If you find any," he said, swinging the cultivator back into place and
clucking to Solomon to go ahead. "I can't eat green rocks, you know,
and you shouldn't."

Sarah, in spite of warnings and orders, insisted on trying to eat
everything in the shape of an apple that tumbled to the ground under
the orchard trees. No fruit was too green for her palate, no round,
bullet-like sphere too hard for her small white teeth.

She crawled through the fence now, waved a farewell to Richard, who was
well on his way to the corner of the cornfield, and trotted off to
search the orchard for spoils.

Sarah amused herself without much trouble--"though as much can't be
said for the rest of us," Winnie had once remarked when Sarah's efforts
to entertain herself had involved the entire family in explanations
with nervous neighbors who objected to tame white mice--and the life at
Rainbow Hill suited her exactly. She not only visited the horses and
cows and pigs regularly, made friends with the flock of sheep and
claimed to know every fowl in the poultry yard by name and sight, but
she had a tender word for every bug, spider and grasshopper she met.
Little water snakes were Sarah's delight and not even the ants and
worms were beneath her notice and affection. Truly, as Doctor Hugh
said, Sarah was certainly intended to live in the country.

"I'd like to see a ram," she said to herself as she scrambled up the
bank to the orchard. "I never saw one. It wouldn't do any harm to go
around the upper pasture and look in."

But she had a number of things to do in the orchard first. Sarah was
noted for her thoroughness in whatever she undertook and now her heart
was set on finding an apple soft enough for Richard Gilbert to eat--and
just a plain apple for Miss Sarah Willis. Alas, Mrs. Hildreth had been
out earlier in the day and had carefully picked up every