er I thought anything in my life; the night before
my mother died 'twas in that same room and against that same winder
there came two or three raps, and my sister Drew and me we looked at
each other, and turned cold all over, and mother set right up in bed
the next night and looked at that winder and then laid back dead. I
was all sole alone the other evenin',--Wednesday it was,--and when I
heard them raps I mustered up, and went and put my head out o' the
door, and I couldn't see nothing, and when I went back, knock--knock,
it begun again, and I went to the door and harked. I hoped I should
hear somebody or 'nother comin' along the road, and then I heard
somethin' a rus'lin' amongst the sunflowers and hollyhocks, and then
there was a titterin', and come to find out 'twas that young one. I
chased her up the road till my wind give out, and I had to go and set
on the stone wall, and come to. She won't go to bed till she's a mind
to. One night I was up there this spring, and she never come in until
after nine o'clock, a dark night, too; and the pore old lady was in
distress, and thought she'd got into the river. I says to myself there
wa'n't no such good news. She told how she'd be'n up into Jake an'
Martin's oaks, trying to catch a little screech owl. She belongs with
wild creatur's, I do believe,--just the same natur'. She'd better be
kept to school, 'stead o' growin' up this way; but she keeps the rest
o' the young ones all in a brile, and this last teacher wouldn't have
her there at all. She'd toll off half the school into the pasture at
recess time, and none of 'em would get back for half an hour."

"What's a tick-tack? I don't remember," asked the doctor, who had been
smiling now and then at this complaint.

"They tie a nail to the end of a string, and run it over a bent pin
stuck in the sash, and then they get out o' sight and pull, and it
clacks against the winder, don't ye see? Ain't it surprisin' how them
devil's tricks gets handed down from gineration to gineration, while
so much that's good is forgot," lamented Mrs. Meeker, but the doctor
looked much amused.

"She's a bright child," he said, "and not over strong. I don't believe
in keeping young folks shut up in the schoolhouses all summer long."

Mrs. Meeker sniffed disapprovingly. "She's tougher than ellum roots. I
believe you can't kill them peaked-looking young ones. She'll run like
a fox all day long and live to see us all buried. I can put up with
her