"There was a Fairy Princess told me
the other day that your girl felt like a stranger, and that to be a
stranger was the hardest thing in all the world. She sat a little way
from the others, and she looked so lonely. I pulled my mother's sleeve
and led her to your girl and made them shake hands, and then mother HAD
to ask her to come to dinner with us. She always invites every one she
meets coming down the aisle; she couldn't help asking your girl, too.
She said she was expected at home, but she'd come some day and get
acquainted. She needn't if you object. My mother only asked her
because she thought she was lonely, and maybe she wanted to come."

He sat there staring straight ahead and he seemed to grow whiter, and
older, and colder every minute.

"Possibly she is lonely," he said at last. "This isn't much like the
life she left. Perhaps she does feel herself a stranger. It was very
kind of your mother to invite her. If she wants to come, I shall make
no objections."

"No, but my father will," I said.

He straightened up as if something had hit him. "Why will he object?"

"On account of what you said about God at our house," I told him. "And
then, too, father's people were from England, and he says real
Englishmen have their doors wide open, and welcome people who offer
friendliness."

Mr. Pryor hit his horse an awful blow. It reared and went racing up
the road until I thought it was running away. I could see I had made
him angry enough to burst. Mother always tells me not to repeat
things; but I'm not smart enough to know what to say, so I don't see
what is left but to tell what mother, or father, or Laddie says when
grown people ask me questions.

I went home, but every one was too busy even to look at me, so I took
Bobby under my arm, hunted father, and told him all about the morning.
I wondered what he would think. I never found out.

He wouldn't say anything, so Bobby and I went across the lane, and
climbed the gate into the orchard to see if Hezekiah were there and
wanted to fight. He hadn't time to fight Bobby because he was busy
chasing every wild jay from our orchard. By the time he got that done,
he was tired, so he came hopping along on branches above us as Bobby
and I went down the west fence beside the lane.

If I had been compelled to choose the side of our orchard I liked best,
I don't know which I would have selected. The west side--that is, the
one behind the dooryard--w