ay with the rain spattering through the leaves
right into his face.

"I was so surprised I thought I'd run back, but just at that moment he
saw me. And of course, the way I always do when I shouldn't, I began
to laugh. And he laughed, too, though he _was_ embarrassed.

"I am sure he didn't want me to find out that he had made the seat.
But for a hired man he met the situation with ease. He simply asked me
to stand there while he drove one more nail; then, he said, his work
would be complete. When he'd finished he held out his hand and invited
me to climb into the nest. All this with the rain spattering on us!
Of course I had to tell him that it was perfectly lovely and had been
such a jolly surprise and that I had thought Webb had made it. And now
comes the funny part. He explained in a sort of sheepish way that he
thought _I was a little girl_! Jonathan had told him that Miss
Sabrina's little niece was coming to Happy House. When he caught a
glimpse of me in the stage (he dared to say this) he thought I looked
like a 'jolly sort of a kid.' Then that very afternoon he saw me turn
a handspring in the orchard--and climb the tree! He said he got to
thinking what a sort of dull place Happy House would be for any
youngster, and that it would be fun for him to do some little thing to
make it jollier for her. He admitted, to use his own words, that he
was flabbergasted to find that I wasn't a kid after all! I'm glad, in
a 'close-up' I _do_ look my years!

"But can't you see that that explains _everything_ and that he _wasn't_
impertinent, after all?

"Of course, living in cities all my life, I've always had an impression
that hired men were just big, clumsy, dirty looking creatures who ate
with knives and always smelled horsey. This Peter Hyde isn't that way
at all. He's tanned copper-color but his face and hands look clean and
except for his clothes, he doesn't look much different from any one
else. And now that he knows I am quite grown-up (at least in years) he
treats me very nicely.

"We're going to do all sorts of nice things for Davy Hopworth, who is a
very nice, bright youngster, but, just because he's a Hopworth, the
other boys get punished for playing with him and that makes both Peter
Hyde and me indignant.

"Isn't the world funny, Claire, how the sins of the fathers and the
grandfathers are visited upon the children--at least in places like
this? Of course my beloved Finnegans are too busy ju