“Yes; and I could tell you stories while you were working.  How would that do?”

“Why, it would be splendid!” said the little girl.  “There comes Mollie, I guess, by the noise.  Won’t she be glad?  Say, Mollie!—­why, what a looking object!”

This exclamation was called forth by the appearance of the little girl, who had been heard running at full speed the length of the piazza, and now presented herself at the door of Miss Ruth’s room, her face flushed, her hair in the wildest confusion, and the skirt of her calico frock quite detached from the waist, hanging over her arm.

“Wasn’t it lucky that the gathers ripped?” she cried, holding up the unlucky fragment.  “If they hadn’t, mamma, I should be hanging, head down, from the five-barred gate in the lower pasture, and no body to help me but the cows.  You see, I set out to jump, and my skirt got caught in a nail on the post.”

“O Mollie!” said her mother, “what made you climb the five-barred gate?”

“’Cause she’s a big tom-boy,” said Lovina Tibbs, who had come from the kitchen to call the family to supper.  “Ain’t yer ’shamed of yerself, Mary Elliot?—­a great girl like you, most ten years old, walkin’ top o’ rail fences and climbin’ apple-trees in the low pastur’!”

“No, I’m not!” said Mollie, promptly.

“Hush, Mollie,” said Mrs. Elliot.  “Lovina, that will do.  Wash your face and hands, Mollie, and make yourself decent to come to supper.”

An hour later, seated in the hammock, the girls discussed their aunt’s plan.

“We’ll have the Jones girls,” said Susie, “and Grace Tyler, and Nellie Dimock, she’s such a dear little thing; and I suppose we must ask Fan Eldridge, because she lives next door, though I dread to have her come, she gets mad so easy; but mamma wouldn’t like to have us leave her out; and then, let’s see—­oh! we’ll ask Florence Austin, the new girl, you know.”

“Would you?” said Mollie, doubtfully.  “We don’t know her very well, and she dresses so fine and is kind of citified, you know.  Ar’n’t you afraid she’ll spoil the fun?”

“No,” said Susie, decidedly.  “Mamma said we were to be good to her because she’s a stranger; and I think she’s nice, too—­not a bit proud, though her father is so rich.”

“Well,” Mollie assented, who, though thirteen months older than her sister, generally yielded to Susie’s better judgment; “let her come, then.  That makes six besides us, and Aunt Ruth said half a dozen would be plenty.  Sue, I think it’s going to be real jolly, don’t you?”

CHAPTER III.

The story of Dinah diamond.

Miss Ruth Elliot was the minister’s sister.  And two years before, when she came to live in the parsonage, an addition of two rooms was built for her on the ground floor because she was an invalid, and lame, and could not climb the stairs.