hat scrap of a man--he's her
husband--well, she told Mrs. Grinnell once that I was possessed of seven
devils. I asked mother what that meant, and she was dreadfully mad. It
takes a lot to make mother mad, too. When we first moved here to Parker,
Mrs. Wardlaw thought I was the cutest little girl she had ever seen--she
told me so lots of times--but she doesn't any more. Now she says I am a
hoy-ena--no, that isn't the word. It means tomboy, anyway. That is what
Mr. Hardman calls me, too. He's the _imbecile_ who lives on the farm
next to our place."

"The wh--at?"

"Well, he is! He says so himself. He doesn't b'long to any church, and
hardly ever goes, and he says r'ligion is all tommyrot."

"Oh, you mean infidel," suggested the pastor, trying hard not to laugh
again.

"Maybe. His name is really Hartman. I nicknamed him 'cause he won't let
us have the hazelnuts in his pasture, and he stole my pet
chicken,--leastwise, he let it stay in his flock so now I can't coax it
back; and he chased us out of his apple trees one day when we were just
climbing after one pretty red one way up high out of reach. We did knock
off quite a few, but we never meant to carry them off with us. He
doesn't like girls, and says if he had a family of six like us, he'd--"

"Are you six girls all there are?"

"Isn't that enough? Seems to me it's a pretty big family. When I was
little, Cherry and me used to pray that the angels would never bring any
more babies to our family, 'cause the pieces of pie were getting awfully
little, and, of course, they got littler every time there was another
baby. But they brought us Allee anyway. That was just after mother's
onliest uncle died and left her some money, and she made papa take it
and buy our farm and bring us out here to live after he had been sick a
long, long time with _tryfoid_ fever, and had lost all his pretty
hair."

"Didn't you say your papa was a minister?"

"I said he used to be."

"What is he now?"

"An angel."

"Oh!"

"You see, papa went right on acting like a preacher even after the bad
people in Pendennis made him sick; and when Old Skinflint--I mean Mr.
Skinner--most folks call him deacon, but I guess it's just 'cause he is
so different from a truly deacon, and is always blaming the Lord for
everything that happens--well, when he got cold and had pneumonia, papa
helped take care of him. The deacon is so ugly that hardly anyone else
would have anything to do with him; and one r