charming
Fairy, not clever Lark nor conscientious Connie, could rival the
"naughty twin" in Mount Mark's affections. And in spite of her odd curt
speeches, and her openly-vaunted vanity, Mount Mark insisted she was
"good." Certainly she was willing! "Get Carol Starr,--she'll do it," was
the commonest phrase in Mount Mark's vocabulary. Whatever was wanted,
whatever the sacrifice involved, Carol stood ready to fill the bill. Not
for kindness,--oh, dear no,--Carol staunchly disclaimed any such
niceness as that. She did it for fun, pure and simple. She said she
liked to show off. She insisted that she liked to feel that she was the
pivot on which little old Mount Mark turned. But this was only when she
was found out. As far as she could she kept her little "seeds of fun"
carefully up her sleeve, and it was only when the indiscreet adoration
of her friends brought the budding plants to light, that she laughingly
declared "it was a circus to go and gloat over folks."

Once in the early dusk of a summer evening, she discovered old Ben
Peters, half intoxicated, slumbering noisily on a pile of sacks in a
corner of the parsonage barn. Carol was sorry, but not at all
frightened. The poor, kindly, weak, old man was as familiar to her as
any figure in Mount Mark. He was always in a more or less helpless state
of intoxication, but also he was always harmless, kind-hearted and
generous. She prodded him vigorously with the handle of the pitch-fork
until he was aroused to consciousness, and then guided him into the
woodshed with the buggy whip. When he was seated on a chunk of wood she
faced him sternly.

"Well, you are a dandy," she said. "Going into a parsonage barn, of all
places in the world, to sleep off an odor like yours! Why didn't you go
down to Fred Greer's harness shop, that's where you got it. We're such
an awfully temperance town, you know! But the parsonage! Why, if the
trustees had happened into the barn and caught a whiff of that smell,
father'd have lost his job. Now you just take warning from me, and keep
away from this parsonage until you can develop a good Methodist odor.
Oh, don't cry about it! Your very tears smell rummy. Just you hang on to
that chunk of wood, and I'll bring you some coffee."

Like a thief in the night she sneaked into the house, and presently
returned with a huge tin of coffee, steaming hot. He drank it eagerly,
but kept a wary eye on the haughty twin, who stood above him with the
whip in her