le she lent a hand with the dinner dishes to her butler husband.

Bud chuckled and crowed and squealed, as if he were the heart, head, and
front of the joke, while we scampered down the middle garden walk,
hidden by tall althea hedges, and gained the rail fence at the lower end
without being challenged. My accomplice made me climb over first, and
lowered her burden carefully into my arms, before she leaned her weight
upon the two hands laid on the top rail, and whirled over like an
acrobat--or a bird. She could outrun half the boys who had been her
slaves and playfellows in childhood, and outjump three-fourths of them.

We were comparatively safe now, the ground dipping abruptly below the
garden into a level stretch of "old field" where the broom straw came up
to my armpits, the yellowing waves parting before, and closing behind,
with the surge and "swish" of a gentle surf. They smelled sweet and they
felt soft, and Cousin Molly Belle let Bud down from her shoulder, and
making a hammock of her arms, swung him back and forth through the
pliant stems until he choked with ecstasy.

Beyond the old field was the Old Orchard. The new orchard, planted
nearer the house, was in full bearing, and my father made little
account of such fruit--mostly choke-pears and apples from ungrafted
limbs--as was enterprising enough to grow and ripen without tending or
harvesting. The trunks of the neglected trees were studded with knobs
like enormous wens, and the branches had a jaunty earthward cant that
made climbing the easiest sort of work, and swinging an irresistible
temptation. In the higher boughs were cosey crotches where one could
sit, and read, and even sleep, without danger of falling. I and my court
of small darkies had spent one whole July Saturday in and under the "big
sweeting," when the apples were nominally ripe. I was Elijah, and my
attendants were the ravens who plied me with sweetings in all stages of
development until I could not have swallowed another to save the
combined kingdoms of Judah and Israel. I was ill all night after the
surfeit, but I bore the sweetings no grudge for my misplaced confidence
in the human stomach.

We three runaways camped down under the brooding branches. The unshorn
and uncropped turf was thick and dry as a parlor carpet. Bud crept
lawlessly about, picking up twigs and pebbles, and trying his first four
teeth upon them. He was a discreet baby, never swallowing what he could
not bite into. H