David handed Barnabas his pipe and gave Jud a letter which he opened wonderingly, uttering a cry of pleasure when he realized the contents.

"It's an order on Harkness to let me pick out any rifle in his store.

How did he know? Did you tell him, Dave?"

"Yes," was the quiet reply.

"Thank you, Dave. I'll ride right down and get it, and we'll go to the woods this afternoon and shoot at a mark."

"All right," agreed David heartily.

The atmosphere was now quite cleared by the proposed expenditure of ammunition, and M'ri experienced the sensation as of one beholding a rainbow.

David then turned his undivided attention to his own big package, which contained twelve books, his name on the fly-leaf of each.

Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, Andersen's Fairy Tales, Arabian Nights, Life of Lincoln, Black Beauty, Oliver Twist, A Thousand Leagues under the Sea, The Pathfinder, Gulliver's Travels, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Young Ranchers comprised the selection. His eyes gleamed over the enticing t.i.tles.

"You shall have some book shelves for your room, David," promised M'ri, "and you can start your library. Joe has made a good foundation for one."

His eyes longed to read at once, but there were still the two packages, marked "Uncle Larimy" and "Miss Rhody," to deliver.

"I can see that Uncle Larimy has a fishing rod, but what do you suppose he has sent Rhody?" wondered M'ri.

"A black silk dress. I told him she wanted one."

"Take it right over there, David. She has waited almost a lifetime for it."

"Let me take Uncle Larimy's present," suggested Jud, "and then I'll ask him to go shooting with us this afternoon."

David amicably agreed, and went across fields to Miss Rhody's.

"Land sakes!" she exclaimed, looking at the parcel. "M'ri ain't a-goin' to hev another dress so soon, is she?"

"No, Miss Rhody. Some one else is, though."

"Who is it, David?" she asked curiously.

"You see Joe Forbes sent some presents from Chicago, and this is what he sent you."

"A calico," was her divination, as she opened the package.

"David Dunne!" she cried in shrill, piping tones, a spot of red on each cheek. "Just look here!" and she stroked lovingly the l.u.s.trous fold of shining silk.

"And if here ain't linings, and thread, and sewing silk, and hooks and eyes! Why, David Dunne, it can't be true! How did he know--David, you blessed boy, you must have told him!"

Impulsively she threw her arms about him and hugged him until he ruefully admitted to himself that she had Jud "beat on the clutch."

"And say, David, I'm a-goin' to wear this dress. I know folks as lets their silks wear out a-hangin' up in closets. Don't get half as many cracks when it hangs on yourself. I b'lieve as them Episcopals do in lettin' yer light shine, and I never wuz one of them as b'lieved in savin' yer best to be laid out in. Oh, Lord, David, I kin jest hear myself a-rustlin' round in it!"

"Maybe you'll get a husband now," suggested David gravely.

"Mebby. I'd orter ketch somethin' with this. I never see sech silk.

It's much handsomer than the one Homer Bisbee's bride hed when she come here from the city. It's orful the way she wastes. Would you b'lieve it, David, the fust batch of pies she made, she never p.r.i.c.ked, and they all puffed up and bust. David, look here! What's in this envylope? Forever and way back, ef it hain't a five-doller bill and a letter. I hain't got my gla.s.ses handy. Read it."

"Dear Miss Rhody," read the boy in his musical voice, "silk is none too good for you, and I want you to wear this and wear it out. If you don't, I'll never send you another. I thought you might want some more tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, so I send you a five for same. Sincerely yours, Joe."

"I don't need no trimmin's, excep' fifty cents for roochin's."

"I'll tell you what to do, Miss Rhody. When you get your dress made we'll go into town and you can get your picture taken in the dress and give it to Joe when he comes back."

"That's jest what I'll do. I never hed my likeness took. David, you've got an orful quick mind. Is Joe coming home? I thought he callated to go West."

"Not until fall. He's going to spend the summer in his shanty boat on the river."

"I'll hurry up and get it made up afore he comes. Tell me what he sent all your folks."

"Joe's a generous boy, like his ma's folks," she continued, when he had enumerated their gifts. "I am glad fer him that his pa and his stepmother was so scrimpin'. David, would you b'lieve it, in that great big house of the Forbeses thar wa'n't never a tidy on a chair, and not a picter on the wall! It was mighty lucky for Joe that his stepmother died fust, so he got all the money."

David hastened home and sought his retreat in the orchard with one of his books. M'ri, curious to know what his selection had been, scanned the t.i.tles of the remaining eleven volumes.

"Well, who would have thought of a boy's preferring fairy tales!"

David read until dinner time, but spent the afternoon with Uncle Larimy and Jud in the woods, where they received good instruction in rifle practice. After supper he settled comfortably down with a book, from which he was recalled by a plaintive little wail.

"I haven't had a bit of fun to-day, Davey, and it's Sat.u.r.day, and you haven't played with me at all!"

The book closed instantly.

"Come on out doors, Janey," he invited.

The sound of childish laughter fell pleasantly on M'ri's ears. She recalled what Joe Forbes had said about her own children, and an unbidden tear lingered on her lashes. This little s.p.a.ce between twilight and lamplight was M'ri's favorite hour. In every season but winter it was spent on the west porch, where she could watch the moon and the stars come out. Maybe, too, it was because from here she had been wont to sit in days gone by and watch for Martin's coming. The time and place were conducive to backward flights of memory, and M'ri's pictures of the past were most beguiling, except that last one when Martin Thorne, stern-faced, unrelenting, and vowing that he would never see her again, had left her alone--to do her duty.

When the children came in she joined them. Janey, flushed and breathless from play, was curled up on the couch beside David. He put his arm caressingly about her and began to relate one of Andersen's fairy tales. M'ri gazed at them tenderly, and was weaving a future little romance for her two young charges when Janey said petulantly: "I don't like fairy stories, Davey. Tell a real one."

M'ri noted the disappointment in the boy's eyes as he began the narrating of a more realistic story.

"David, where did you read that story?" she asked when he had finished.

"I made it up," he confessed.

"Why, David, I didn't know you had such a talent. You must be an author when you are a man."

Late that night she saw a light shining from beneath the young narrator's door.

"I ought to send him to bed," she meditated, "but, poor lad, he has had so few pleasures and, after all, childhood is the only time for thorough enjoyment, so why should I put a feather in its path?"

David read until after midnight, and went to bed with a book under his pillow that he might begin his pastime again at dawn.

After breakfast the next morning M'ri commanded the whole family to sit down and write their thanks to Joe. David's willing pen flew in pace with his thoughts as he told of Miss Rhody's delight and his own revel in book land. Janey made most wretched work of her composition.

She sighed and struggled with thoughts and pencil, which she gnawed at both ends. Finally she confessed that she couldn't think of anything more to say. M'ri came to inspect her literary effort, which was written in huge characters.