It was very cool there on the north door-step. Before it lay the wide north yard full of tall waving gra.s.s, with some little cinnamon rose-bushes sunken in it. Hardly anybody used the north door, so there was no path leading to it.

It was nearly four o'clock. Hannah Maria bent her sober freckled face over the sheet, and sewed and sewed. Her mother had gone to the next town to do some shopping, and bidden her to finish the seam before she returned. Hannah Maria was naturally obedient; moreover, her mother was a decided woman, so she had been very diligent; in fact the seam was nearly sewed.

It was very still--that is, there were only the sounds that seem to make a part of stillness. The birds twittered, the locusts shrilled, and the tall clock in the entry ticked. Hannah Maria was not afraid, but she was lonesome. Once in a while she looked around and sighed. She placed a pin a little way in advance on the seam, and made up her mind that when she had sewed to that place she would go into the house and get a slice of cake. Her mother had told her that she might cut a slice from the one-egg cake which had been made that morning. But before she had sewed to the pin, little Mehitable Lamb came down the road. She was in reality some years younger than Hannah Maria, but not so much younger as Hannah Maria considered her. The girl on the door-step surveyed the one approaching down the road with a friendly and patronizing air.

"Holloa!" she sang out, when Mehitable was within hailing distance.

"Holloa!" answered back Mehitable's little, sweet, deferential voice.

She came straight on, left the road, and struck across the gra.s.sy north yard to Hannah Maria's door-step. She was a round, fair little girl; her auburn hair was curled in a row of neat, smooth "water curls" around her head. She wore a straw hat with a blue ribbon, and a blue-and-white checked gingham dress; she also wore white stockings and patent leather "ankle-ties." Her dress was low-necked and short-sleeved, like Hannah Maria's, but her neck and arms were very fair and chubby.

Mehitable drew her big china doll in a doll's carriage. Hannah Maria eyed her with seeming disdain and secret longing. She herself had given up playing with dolls, her mother thought her too big; but they had still a fascination for her, and the old love had not quite died out of her breast.

"Mother said I might come over and stay an hour and a half," said Mehitable.

Hannah Maria smiled hospitably. "I'm keepin' house," said she. "Mother's gone to Lawrence."

Mehitable took her doll out of the carriage with a motherly air, and sat down on the door-step with it in her lap.

"How much longer you goin' to play with dolls?" inquired Hannah Maria.

"I don't know," replied Mehitable, with a little shamed droop of her eyelids.

"You can't when you get a little bigger, anyhow. Is that a new dress she's got on?"

"Yes; Aunt Susy made it out of a piece of her blue silk."

"It's handsome, isn't it? Let me take her a minute." Hannah Maria took the doll and cuddled it up against her shoulder as she had used to do with her own. She examined the blue silk dress. "My doll had a real handsome plaid silk one," said she, and she spoke as if the doll were dead. She sighed.

"Have you given her away?" inquired Mehitable, in a solemn tone.

"No; she's packed away. I'm too old to play with her, you know. Mother said I had other things to 'tend to. Dolls are well 'nough for little girls like you. Here, you'd better take her; I've got to finish my sewin'."

Hannah Maria handed back the doll with a resolute air, but she handed her back tenderly; then she sewed until she reached the pin. Mehitable rocked her doll, and watched.

When Hannah Maria reached the pin she jumped up. "I'm comin' back in a minute," said she, and disappeared in the house. Presently Mehitable heard the dishes rattle.

"She's gone after a cooky," she thought. Cookies were her usual luncheon.

But Hannah Maria came back with a long slice of one-egg cake with blueberries in it. She broke it into halves, and gave the larger one to Mehitable. "There," said she, "I'd give you more, but mother didn't tell me I could cut more'n one slice."

Mehitable ate her cake appreciatively; once in a while she slyly fed her doll with a bit.

Hannah Maria took bites of hers between the st.i.tches; she had almost finished the over-and-over seams.

Presently she rose and shook out the sheet with a triumphant air.

"There," said she, "it's done."

"Did you sew all that this afternoon?" asked Mehitable, in an awed tone.

"My! yes. It isn't so very much to do."

Hannah Maria laid the sheet down in a heap on the entry floor; then she looked at Mehitable. "Now, I've nothin' more to do," said she. "S'pose we go to walk a little ways?"

"I don't know as my mother'd like to have me do that."

"Oh yes, she would; she won't care. Come along! I'll get my hat."

Hannah Maria dashed over the sheet into the entry and got her hat off the peg; then she and Mehitable started. They strolled up the country road. Mehitable trundled her doll-carriage carefully; once in a while she looked in to see if the doll was all right.

"Isn't that carriage kind of heavy for you to drag all alone?" inquired Hannah Maria.

"No; it isn't very heavy."

"I had just as lief help you drag it as not."

Hannah Maria reached down and took hold by one side of the handle of the doll-carriage, and the two girls trundled it together.

There were no houses for a long way. The road stretched between pasture-lands and apple-orchards. There was one very fine orchard on both sides of the street a quarter of a mile below Hannah Maria's house.

The trees were so heavily loaded with green apples that the branches hung low over the stone walls. Now and then there was among them a tree full of ripe yellow apples.

"Don't you like early apples?" asked Hannah Maria.

Mehitable nodded.

"Had any?"

"No."

"They don't grow in your field, do they?"

Mehitable shook her head. "Mother makes pies with our apples, but they're not mellow 'nough to eat now," she replied.

"Well," said Hannah Maria, "we haven't got any. All our apples are baldwins and greenin's. I havn't had an early apple this summer."

The two went on, trundling the doll-carriage. Suddenly Hannah Maria stopped.

"Look here," said she; "my aunt Jenny and my uncle Timothy have got lots of early apples. You just go along this road a little farther, and you get to the road that leads to their house. S'pose we go."

"How far is it?"

"Oh, not very far. Father walks over sometimes."

"I don't believe my mother would like it."

"Oh yes, she would! Come along."

But all Hannah Maria's entreaties could not stir Mehitable Lamb. When they reached the road that led to Uncle Timothy's house she stood still.