and critic; and he can see that the claque does not get drowsy and slack: it never does—in this case!
The child now threw back her round winter-rose of a face and started along the path with a fresh outburst of speed and pride. Access of impertinence seemed to have released in her access of vitality. Perhaps it had. Perhaps it always does. Perhaps life itself at the full is sheer audacity.
The lad scrambled roughly along, and merely repeated the words that sufficed for him:—
"Father knows."
Suddenly he gave a laughing outcry, and stood still.
"Look!" he called out, with amusement at his plight.
He had run into some burdock, and the nettles had stuck to his yarn stockings like stinging bees—a cluster of them about his knees and calves. He drew off his gloves, showing the strong, overgrown hands of boyhood: they, like his voice, seemed impatiently reaching out for maturity.
When he overtook his companion, who had not stopped, he had transferred a few of the burrs to his skull cap. He had done this with crude artistry—from some faint surviving impulse of primitive man to decorate his body with things around him in nature: especially his head (possibly he foresaw that his head would be most struck at). The lad was pleased with his caper; and, smiling, thrust his head across her path, expecting her to take sympathetic notice. He had reason to expect this, because on dull rainy days at home he often amused her with the things he did and the things he made: for he was a natural carpenter and toy-maker. But now she took only the contemptuous notice of disapproval. This morning her mind was intent on playthings of positive value: she was a little travelling ten-toed pagoda of holiday greed. Every Christmas she prepared for its celebration with a balancing eye to what it would cost her and what it would bring in: she always calculated to receive more than she gave: for Elsie, the Nativity must be made to pay!
He resented her refusal to approve his playfulness by so much as a smile, and he came back at her by doing worse:—
"Why didn't I think to bring all the burrs along and make a Christmas basket for Elizabeth? Now what will I give her?"
This drew out a caustic comment quickly enough:—
"Poor Elizabeth!"
A child resents injustice with a blow or rage or tears: the old have learned to endure without a sign—waiting for God's day of judgment (or their first good opportunity!).
He was furious at the way she said "Poor Elizabeth"—as though Elizabeth's hands would be empty of gifts from him.
"You know I have bought my presents for Elizabeth, Elsie!" he exclaimed. "But Elizabeth thinks more of what I make than of what I buy," he continued hotly. "And the less it is worth, the more she values it. But you can't understand that, Elsie! And you needn't try!"
The little minx laughed with triumph that she had incensed him.
"I don't expect to try!" she retorted blithely. "I don't see that I'd gain anything, if I did understand. You and Elizabeth are a great deal too—"
He interrupted overbearingly:—
"Leave Elizabeth out! Confine your remarks to me!"
"My remarks will be wholly unconfined," said Elsie, as she trotted forward.
He scrambled alongside in silent rage. Perhaps he was thinking of his inability to reach protected female license. He may obscurely have felt that life's department of justice was being balked at the moment by its department of natural history—a not uncommon interference in this too crowded world. At least he put himself on record about it:—
"If you were a boy, Elsie, you'd get taken down a buttonhole!"
"Don't you worry about my buttonholes!" chirped Elsie. "My buttonholes are where they ought to be!"
It was not the first time that he had made something of this sort for Elizabeth. One morning of the May preceding he had pulled apart the boughs of a blooming lilac bush in the yard, and had seen a nest with four pale-green eggs. That autumn during a ramble in the woods and fields he had taken burrs and made a nest and deposited in it four pale-green half-ripe horse chestnuts.
Elizabeth, who did not amount to much in this world but breath and a soft cloud of hair and sentiment, had loyally carried it off to her cabinet of nests. These were duly arranged on shelves, and labelled according to species and life and love: "The Meadow Lark's"—"The Blue-bird's"—"The Orchard Oriole's"—"The Brown Thrasher's"; on and on along the shelves. At the end of a row she placed this treasured curiosity, and inscribed it, "An Imitation by a Young Animal."
Elizabeth's humor was a mild beam.
Do country children in that part of the world make such playthings now? Do they still look to wild life and not wholly to the shops of cities for the satisfying of their instincts for toys and games and fancies?
Do alder stalks still race down dusty country lanes as thoroughbred colts, afterwards to be tied in their stalls in fence corners with halters of green hemp? Does any little rustic instrument-maker now draw melodies from a homegrown corn-stalk? Across rattling window-panes of old farm-houses—between withered sashes—during long winter nights does there sound the æolian harp made with a hair from a horse-tail? Do boys still squeeze the red juice of poke-berries on the plumage of white barnyard roosters, thus whenever they wish bringing on a cock-fight between old far-squandered Cochins, who long previously had entered into a treaty as to their spheres of influence in a Manchuria of hens? Do the older boys some wet night lead the youngest around the corner of the house in the darkness and show him, there! rising out of the ground! the long expected Devil come at last (as a pumpkin carved and candle-lighted) for his own particular urchin? When in autumn the great annual ceremony of the slaughter of the swine takes place on the farms at the approach of the winter solstice,—a festival running back to aboriginal German tribes before the beginnings of agriculture, when the stock that had been fattened on the mast and pasturage of the mountains was driven down into the villages and perforce killed to keep it from starving,—when this carnival of flesh recurs on Kentucky farms, do boys with turkey-quills or goose-quills blow the bladders up, tie the necks and hang them in smoke-houses or garrets to dry; and then at daybreak of Christmas morning, having warmed and expanded them before the fire, do they jump on them and explode them—a primitive folk-rite for making a magnificent noise ages older than the use of crackers and cannon?
Do children contrive their picture-frames by glueing October acorns and pine-cones to ovals of boards and giving the mass a thick coat of varnish? On winter nights do little girls count the seeds of the apples they are eating and pronounce over them the incantation of their destinies—thus in another guise going through the same charm of words that Marguerite used as she scattered earthward the petals of trust and ruin? Do they, sitting face to face bareheaded on sun-hued meadows, pluck the dandelion when its seed are clustered at the top like a ball of gauze, and with one breath try to blow these off: for the number of seed that remain will tell the too many years before they shall be asked in marriage? Do they slit the stems and cast them into the near brook and watch them form into ringlets and floating hair—as of a water spirit? Do they hold buttercups under each other's chins to see who likes butter—that is, mind you, good butter! Romping little Juliets of Nature's proud courtyards—with young Montagues watching from afar! Sane little Ophelias of the garland at the water's brink—secure for many years yet from all sad Hamlets! Do country children do such things and have such notions now?
Perhaps once in a lifetime, on some summer day when the sky
