unch. Now, get on your leggin's and thick shoes, and
your coat and cap and mittens, and eat some cakes before you start, so
as not to take theirs when you get there."

"I wouldn't do that, neither; not if I never had any," replied Roxie, a
little resentfully, and then she pulled her squirrel-skin cap well over
her ears, tied her pretty scarlet tippet around her neck, and held up
her face for a good-bye kiss. The mother gave it with unusual fervor,
and said, kindly:

"Good-bye to you, little girl. Take good care of yourself, and come
safe home to mother."

"Yes, Ma. But I may wait and come with them, mayn't I? They'll let me
ride on old Rob, you know."

"Why, yes, you might as well, I suppose, though I'll be lonesome
without you all day, baby. But it would be better for you to ride home,
so stay."

It was a lovely day in the latter part of March, and although the
ground was covered with snow, and the brooks and rivers were still fast
bound in ice, there was something in the air that told of
spring,--something that set the sap in the maple-trees mounting through
its million little channels toward the buds, already beginning to
redden for their blooming, and sent the blood in little Roxie's veins
dancing upward too, until it blossomed in her cheeks and lips fairer
than in any maple-tree.

"How pleasant it is to be alive!" said the little girl aloud, while a
squirrel running up the old oak-tree overhead stopped, and curling his
bushy tail a little higher upon his back, chattered the same idea in
his own language. Roxie stopped to listen and laugh aloud, at which
sound the squirrel frisked away to his hole, and the little girl,
singing merrily, went on her way, crossed the river on the ice, and on
the other bank stopped and looked wistfully down a side path leading
into the denser forest away from her direct road.

"I really believe the checkerberries must have started, it is so
springy," she thought; "I've a mind to go down and look in what Jake
calls 'Bear-berry Pasture,' though I told him they were not
bear-berries, but real checkerberries." So, saying to herself Roxie ran
a few steps down the little path, stopped, stood still for a minute,
then slowly turned back, saying:

"No, I wont, either, for may be I wouldn't get to the camp with the
nut-cakes before noon, and then they would have eaten all their cheese.
No, I'll go right on, and not stay there any time at all, but come back
and get the checkerberries; b