a
drink of fresh buttermilk? I churned this morning.”

Well, there are worse things than the soothing acid of that velvet drink
to wash the dust from one’s throat after a three-mile tramp. It wasn’t
many minutes before Ethan was leading the way to the woods, his pockets
sagging with apples, while Sin had stuffed her sailor blouse, and Doris’
sweater was quite knobby with the same.

There were more shrieks of rapture, naturally, when the girls spied their
ingenious shack of fresh-cut evergreen boughs, which had been thrust
into the ground in a circle and cleverly interlaced so as to make the
hut all but water-tight. There was an opening left for a door—rather
small, it is true, but still satisfactory—with another, smaller and
higher up, for a window; and so neat and careful had been the young
builder’s craftsmanshipof the bread and ham and a thick cup filled with
steaming coffee. They ate and drank, sitting upon upturned boxes and
still talking—talking in soft elisions of home and the free winds and
open skies—home and the childhood scenes that seemed already so far away.

It was dark now; eight o’clock, and the evening performance had begun.
Stella learned that the last train for Laurel would leave in an hour,
but she had no escort, not even to the station. Everybody was in the
show-tent except Blue Earth, and she could not leave the baby. Besides,
she knew even less than did our little girl of the mazes of the city
streets. She must soon set out alone to inquire her way; and with the
thought, for the first time that day, she felt a thrill of