aid) "helped me on with this rig. She is as
close as wax, and you never tell tales,--Oh, yes! I know--" as I opened
my mouth eagerly--"you would have your tongue pulled out by the roots
before you would get me into trouble. And there would be all sorts of
trouble if I were found out."

She tied my sunbonnet, made of the same pink gingham as my frock, under
my chin, and we set forward gleefully upon our spree. To begin with, we
jumped over the yard palings, so that we should not have to pass in
sight of the house and kitchen, in order to get into the lane leading to
the public road. We called it "a lane." Now it would be an avenue, or
drive. The finest Lombardy poplars in Powhatan County bordered it; sheep
mint, pennyroyal, sweetbrier, and wild thyme grew up close to the
wheel-track and gave out a goodly smell as we brushed by and trod upon
them. I was in a high gale of spirits, and prattled as fast as my
tongue could run, flattered beyond expression by the choice of myself as
an accomplice in the frolic.

"It's a pity you _can't_ change places with Cousin Burwell!" I
regretted. "You'd be a heap handsomer gentleman than he is. And it must
be just fine not to have to hold up your frocks when you want to run
fast, and to climb trees and jump fences. Would it be sure-enough
wrong--I don't mean not lady-like--but would it be _sinful_ for you to
dress that way all the time?"

"People seem to think so, Namesake. They think so so much that it is
against the law for a woman to wear a man's clothes, or for a man to
wear a woman's. Though why any man with a grain of sense in his head
should ever want to put on _skirts_, I can't see. If I were to meet a
magistrate while I have on these--_things_,"--flicking her trousers with
a switch she had cut from a hickory sapling,--"he would have a right to
put me in jail."

"Oh, Cousin Molly Belle!" squeezing her hand hard. "S'pose we should!"

"I'm Cousin Burwell until we get home. No 's'pose,' you little goosie!
If we did, we'd take to the woods, and outrun him. Or, we'd climb a
tree."

We were in the highroad, striding the ruts and skipping over stones like
two boys on the way home from school. There was pleasanter walking in
bridle-paths and wood-roads branching off from the thoroughfare every
few rods. I think the madcap chose the rutty and mud-holey route because
there was, at least, a chance that we might have to plunge into the
bushes to hide, or to brave the scrutiny of strang