"I wouldn't let her," said Dedy. "What did she call you?"

"O, monkeys, and lammies, and pinkies, and things. Don't you s'pose she's 'most an _April fool_?"

After watching Prudy to the child's vexation for about two hours, Ruth forgot all about her, and it so happened that the little thing strayed off with Horace and his friend Gilbert, whom he called "Gra.s.shopper,"

to a little clearing in the wood.

It is a sad fact that "Gra.s.shopper" had a bunch of matches in his pocket, and the boys meant to build a fire. Horace gathered the dry sticks and crossed them, so all Gra.s.shopper had to do was to strike a match, and the fire was soon crackling briskly.

"How it pops!" said Prudy, "just like corn."

"I reckon this is _popple_ wood," said Horace, "and they call it so because it pops in the fire."

Prudy did not doubt it. She never doubted any thing Horace said. She stood looking on, with dumb surprise, as he took out of the inside pocket of his raglan three small fishes.

"Now," said he, "if we can cook these for our supper, won't we go a-flyin'?"

"Be they minnies?" asked Prudy. "O, I know; it's mack fishes!"

"She means _mackerel_, you see," said Horace, with a wise look at Gra.s.shopper. "No, Prudy, these are chubbs, nice chubbs, too; I caught 'em myself."

How to cook a fish, Horace had no idea, but he was not a boy to give up at trifles.

"If I put 'em into the fire they'll burn up," said he; "but if I hold 'em over the fire they'll cook;--now won't they?"

"Your hand will cook, too, I guess," said lazy Gra.s.shopper, sitting down and looking on.

Horace said no more, but went quietly to work and whittled some long splinters, on which he stuck the fish and set them to roasting. True, they got badly scorched and dreadfully smoked, but that was not all that happened. A spark flying out caught Prudy's gingham dress, and set it in flames in a second.

Whether the boys would have known what to do, I can't say; but just then Sam Walker, a good-natured colored man, came up and put out the flames before Prudy fairly knew there were any. Then he brought water from a spring and drowned the bonfire, and gave the boys "a piece of his mind."

All the while poor Prudy was running off into the thickest part of the wood, crying bitterly. Sam ran after her, and caught her up, as if she had been a stray lamb; and though she struggled hard, he carried her to the picnic ground, where the large girls were just spreading the table for supper.

"You'd better look out for these here young ones," said Sam. "This one would have been roasted sure, if I hadn't a-happened along in the nick of time."

Ruth Gray dropped the paper of candy she was untying, and turned very pale. She had been too busy playing games to remember that she had the care of any body.

"O, you little ducky darling," cried she, seizing Prudy in her arms, "don't you cry, and you shall have a pocket full of candy. You didn't get burnt a mite, did you, honey?"

"No'm, I ain't cryin'," sobbed Prudy. "I ain't crying any thing about that;" and every word seemed to be shaken out, as if there was a little earthquake at her heart--"_there--is--black folks!_ O, he is just as--_black_!"

"Is that all," said Grace, stroking Prudy's hair. "Didn't she ever see any negroes--any nice black negro men before, Susy?"

"I thought she had; why, we have 'em in the streets at Portland, lots and lots of 'em."

After much soothing, and a good deal of candy, Prudy was comforted, and the supper went off famously. The children were all polite and well-behaved, "even the boys," as Ruth said; and though they all had keen appet.i.tes, n.o.body was greedy.

By and by, when it would not do to stay any longer, they all started for home, happy and tired.

Ruth held Prudy's little hand in a firm grasp, and wished she had held it so all the afternoon; "for," as she said, to herself, "she's a very _slippery_ child."

This had been a trying day for Prudy, and when aunt Madge put her to bed, her sweet blue eyes wouldn't stay shut.

"Where do they grow, auntie?" said she, "them black folks. Be _they_ the jispies?"

"O, they grow any where," replied aunt Madge, laughing; "just like any body. They are not gypsies, but negroes."

"I should think they'd wash their faces."

"O, they do, but our Heavenly Father made them black."

"Did he?" cried Prudy, raising her head from the pillow. "And did he know how they was goin' to look when he made 'em? That man that catched me up, why, how he must feel!"

"He was very kind," said aunt Madge, trembling as she thought of the child's danger. "O Prudy, did you thank him?"

"No, I didn't," replied Prudy. "I didn't know as he could hear any thing. O, mayn't I go up to the jispy Pines to-morrow and thank him?"

"We'll see; but now it's time you went to sleep."

"Well, I will," said Prudy, "I'll go in a minute; but, auntie, he's good, ain't he? He ain't black _all_ through?"

"He's quite a good man," answered aunt Madge, trying not to smile, "and has had a great deal of trouble. I can't stop to tell you, and you wouldn't understand; but I dare say he has cried ever so much, Prudy, and felt worse than you can think, all because he is black; and some people don't like black men."

"I should think they'd be ashamed," cried the child. "Why, _I_ love him, 'cause he can't wash it off! Mayn't I put him in my prayer?"

Then Prudy had to get out of bed and kneel down and say her prayer over again. It followed the Lord's Prayer, and was in her own words:--

"O G.o.d, please bless every body. Bless all the big children, and the little children, and the little mites o' babies. And bless all the men and ladies that live in the whole o' the houses."

And now she added,--

"And won't you please to bless that black man that catched me up, and bless all the black folks, forever, amen."

CHAPTER XIV

THE ANGEL-BABY

The beautiful summer was pa.s.sing away very fast. Only a few days more till autumn. A little longer, and the cousins must separate; so, for the time that was left, they clung all the more closely together.

I have called it a beautiful summer; so it was, but there is one sorrowful thing I have not said much about. There was one trouble which always made the children feel sad when they stopped to think of it.

While they were playing in the hay-field, or taking supper "up in the trees," now and then they would hear the tired cry of the darling sick baby.

Then Grace would clasp her hands together in her quick way, and say,--