May was a careful little soul, and always watched what she was
doing, so she walked up a short way, chose a good place, and when I
sang the line, she was almost birdlike, she dipped and faded so
gracefully. Then we laughed like dunces, and then May began to sway
and swing, and drone through her nose for me, and I was so excited I
never looked. I just dipped and faded on the spot. I faded all right
too, for I couldn't jump nearly across, and when I landed in pure clay
that had been covered with water for three weeks, I went down to my
knees in mud, to my waist in water, and lost my balance and fell
backward.

A man passing on horseback pried me out with a rail and helped me home.
Of course he didn't know how I happened to fall in, and I was too
chilled to talk. I noticed May only said I fell, so I went to bed
scorched inside with red pepper tea, and never told a word about
dipping and fading. Leon whispered and said he bet it was the last
time I would play that, so as soon as my coat and dress were washed and
dried, and I could go back to school, I did it again, just to show him
I was no cowardy-calf; but I had learned from May to choose a puddle I
could manage before I faded.

CHAPTER IX

"Even So"

"All things whatsoever ye would
That men should do to you,
Do ye even so to them."

Our big girls and boys always made a dreadful fuss and said we would
catch every disease you could mention, but mother and father were set
about it, just like the big rocks in the hills. They said they,
themselves, once had been at the mercy of the people, and they knew how
it felt. Mother said when they were coming here in a wagon, and she
had ridden until she had to walk to rest her feet, and held a big baby
until her arms became so tired she drove while father took it, and when
at last they saw a house and stopped, she said if the woman hadn't
invited her in, and let her cook on the stove, given her milk and eggs,
and furnished her a bed to sleep in once in a while, she couldn't have
reached here at all; and she never had been refused once. Then she
always quoted: "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to
you, do ye EVEN SO to them."

Father said there were men who made a business of splitting hairs, and
of finding different meanings in almost everything in the Bible. I
would like to have seen any one split hairs about that, or it made to
mean something else. Of all the things in the Bible that