Mrs. Thacher came to stand in her doorway, and shaded
her forehead and eyes with her hand from the bright sunlight, as she
looked intently across the pastures toward the river. She seemed
anxious and glanced to and fro across the fields, and presently she
turned quickly at the sound of a footstep, and saw her young
grand-daughter coming from the other direction round the corner of the
house. The child was wet and a little pale, though she evidently had
been running.

"What have you been doin' now?" asked the old lady fretfully. "I won't
have you gettin' up in the mornin' before I am awake and stealin' out
of the house. I think you are drowned in the river or have broken your
neck fallin' out of a tree. Here it is after ten o'clock. I've a mind
to send you to bed, Nanny; who got you out of the water, for in it
you've been sure enough?"

"I got out myself," said the little girl. "It was deep, though," and
she began to cry, and when she tried to cover her eyes with her
already well-soaked little apron, she felt quite broken-hearted and
unnerved, and sat down dismally on the doorstep.

"Come in, and put on a dry dress," said her grandmother, not unkindly;
"that is, if there's anything but your Sunday one fit to be seen. I've
told you often enough not to go playin' in the river, and I've wanted
you more than common to go out to Jake and Martin's to borrow me a
little cinnamon. You're a real trial this summer. I believe the bigger
you are the worse you are. Now just say what you've been about. I
declare I shall have to go and have a talk with the doctor, and he'll
scold you well. I'm gettin' old and I can't keep after you; you ought
to consider me some. You'll think of it when you see me laying dead,
what a misery you've be'n. No schoolin' worth namin';" grumbled Mrs.
Thacher, as she stepped heavily to and fro in the kitchen, and the
little girl disappeared within the bed-room. In a few minutes,
however, her unusual depression was driven away by the comfort of dry
garments, and she announced triumphantly that she had found a whole
flock of young wild ducks, and that she had made a raft and chased
them about up and down the river, until the raft had proved
unseaworthy, and she had fallen through into the water. Later in the
day somebody came from the Jake and Martin homesteads to say that
there must be no more pulling down of the ends of the pasture fences.
The nails had easily let go their hold of the old boards, and a st