t a 'spy' is?"

"A spy? and why do you wish to know, Anne?" responded her friend; "who has
been talking to you of spies?"

"Is it an ill-seeming word?" questioned the child anxiously. "The Cary
children did call it after me yesterday when I went to the spring."

"Did they that!" exclaimed Mrs. Stoddard angrily, "and what reply did you
make, Anne?"

The little girl shook her head. "I said nothing. I knew not what they
might mean. Does it mean an orphan child, Mistress Stoddard?" and the
little girl lifted her dark eyes appealingly.

"I will tell you its meaning, Anne, and then you will see that it has
naught to do with little girls. A 'spy' is like this: Suppose some one
should wish to know if I kept my house in order, and what I gave the
captain for dinner, and could not find out, and so she came to you and
said, 'Anne Nelson, if you will tell me about the Stoddard household, and
open the door that I may come in and see for myself, I will give thee a
shilling and a packet of sweets'; then, if you should agree to the
bargain, then you could be called a spy."

"But I would not do such a thing!" declared Anne, a little flash of
resentment in her dark eyes. "Do the Cary children think me like that? I
will throw water on them when next we meet at the spring--aye, and sand."

"Nay, Anne," reproved Mrs. Stoddard, but she was not ill-pleased at the
child's spirit. "Then you would be as bad as they. It does not matter what
they may say; that is neither here nor there. If you be an honest-thinking
child and do well they cannot work harm against you."

As they talked they had walked on and now heard a low "Moo!" from behind a
bunch of wild cherry trees.

"There's Brownie!" exclaimed Anne, "but I do wish she would not 'moo' like
that, Mistress Stoddard. The British might hear her if they come up this
far from shore."

"'Tis only to remind me that it is time she was milked," said Mrs.
Stoddard. "You can play about here, child, till I have finished."

Anne did not wander far. There was something else she wished to know, and
when the bucket was filled with foamy, fragrant milk, of which Mrs.
Stoddard bade the child drink, she said:

"'Tis near a month since my father went. The Cary children also called
after me that my father was a 'traitor'; is that an ill-seeming word?"

"The little oafs!" exclaimed Mrs. Stoddard, "and what else did they say?"

"'Twill not make you dislike me, Mistress Stoddard?" questioned the child.