there wa’n’t no such good news.  She told how she’d be’n up into Jake an’ Martin’s oaks, trying to catch a little screech owl.  She belongs with wild creatur’s, I do believe,—­just the same natur’.  She’d better be kept to school, ‘stead o’ growin’ up this way; but she keeps the rest o’ the young ones all in a brile, and this last teacher wouldn’t have her there at all.  She’d toll off half the school into the pasture at recess time, and none of ’em would get back for half an hour.”

“What’s a tick-tack?  I don’t remember,” asked the doctor, who had been smiling now and then at this complaint.

“They tie a nail to the end of a string, and run it over a bent pin stuck in the sash, and then they get out o’ sight and pull, and it clacks against the winder, don’t ye see?  Ain’t it surprisin’ how them devil’s tricks gets handed down from gineration to gineration, while so much that’s good is forgot,” lamented Mrs. Meeker, but the doctor looked much amused.

“She’s a bright child,” he said, “and not over strong.  I don’t believe in keeping young folks shut up in the schoolhouses all summer long.”

Mrs. Meeker sniffed disapprovingly.  “She’s tougher than ellum roots.  I believe you can’t kill them peaked-looking young ones.  She’ll run like a fox all day long and live to see us all buried.  I can put up with her pranks; ‘t is of pore old Mis’ Thacher I’m thinkin’.  She’s had trouble enough without adding on this young ’scape-gallows.  You had better fetch her up to be a doctor,” Mrs. Meeker smilingly continued, “I was up there yisterday, and one of the young turkeys had come hoppin’ and quawkin’ round the doorsteps with its leg broke, and she’d caught it and fixed it off with a splint before you could say Jack Robi’son.  She told how it was the way you’d done to Jim Finch that fell from the hay-rigging and broke his arm over to Jake an’ Martin’s, haying time.”

“I remember she was standing close by, watching everything I did,” said the doctor, his face shining with interest and pleasure.  “I shall have to carry her about for clerk.  Her father studied medicine you know.  It is the most amazing thing how people inherit”—­but he did not finish his sentence and pulled the reins so quickly that the wise horse knew there was no excuse for not moving forward.

Mrs. Meeker had hoped for a longer interview.  “Stop as you come back, won’t you?” she asked.  “I’m goin’ to pick you some of the handsomest poppies I ever raised.  I got the seed from my sister-in-law’s cousin, she that was ’Miry Gregg, and they do beat everything.  They wilt so that it ain’t no use to pick ’em now, unless you was calc’latin’ to come home by the other road.  There’s nobody sick about here, is there?” to which the doctor returned a shake of the head and the information that he should be returning that way about noon.  As he drove up the hill he assured himself with great satisfaction that he believed he hadn’t told anything that morning which would be repeated all over town before night, while his hostess returned to her house quite dissatisfied with the interview, though she hoped for better fortune on Dr. Leslie’s return.