see why you get angry so quick," said Amanda. "You get angry at
everything. I'd just as soon play with you, if you are a waif."

"I wouldn't play with you anyway," said Anne; "I have an errand to do, and
if I had not I would rather never play than play with such a hateful,
ill-speaking child as you are," and Anne hurried on her way toward the
Starkweathers' low-built, weather-beaten house near the shore.

"I shall be glad indeed to get rid of some of my scarlet yarn," declared
Mrs. Starkweather, "and you can take home a skein or two of it and tell
Mistress Stoddard that her little girl does an errand very prettily. I
could wish my boys were as well-mannered."

Anne smiled, well pleased at the pleasant words.

"Uncle Enos says there is no better boy than Jimmie," she responded. "He
says he is a smart and honest lad,--a 'real Starkweather,' he calls him,"
she responded.

"Does he so?" and the woman's thin face flushed with pleasure at this
praise of her eldest son. "Well, we do prize Jimmie, and 'Tis good news to
know him well thought of, and you are a kindly little maid to speak such
pleasant words. Mistress Stoddard is lucky indeed to have you."

"I call her Aunt Martha now," said Anne, feeling that Mrs. Starkweather
was nearly as kind as Mrs. Stoddard, and quite forgetting the trouble of
Brownie's loss or of Amanda's teasing in the good woman's pleasantness.

"That is well," replied Mrs. Starkweather. "You will bring her much
happiness, I can well see. I could wish you had come to me, child, when
your father went; but the Stoddards can do better for you."

"Should I have called you 'Aunt'?" Anne asked a little wistfully.

"Indeed you should, and you may now if Mistress Stoddard be willing. Say
to her that I'd like well to be Aunt Starkweather to her little maid."

So Anne, with her bundle of scarlet yarn, started toward home, much
happier than when she had rapped at Mrs. Starkweather's door.

Amanda was still sitting at the spring. "Anne," she called shrilly, "may I
go up to your house and play with you?"

Anne shook her head, and without a backward look at the child by the
spring kept on her way toward home. She had much to tell her Aunt Martha,
who listened, well pleased at her neighbor's kind words.

"And Amanda Cary said that their cow was lost, and the Starkweathers' cow,
too. Amos Cary and Jimmie are off searching for them now, and do fear the
Indians have driven them off," said Anne.

"'twill be ba