Page:Mistress Madcap (1937).pdf/76



T WAS Saturday morning and a gray, dismal day as to weather. But inside the Condits' big kitchen Mehitable's clear voice could be heard singing cheerily from the buttery where she was churning, the huge fire crackled and hissed in the fireplace, the teakettle bubbled joyfully beneath its crane, and even Charity, much as she disliked the lesson task her mother had set her, smiled every now and then to herself as though she had a delightful secret. Charity must needs learn to read and write and acquire the simple rudiments of arithmetic at home, for the nearest school was far across the swamps, in Newark, and that only for boys. Dame schools had not as yet come into existence in many of the New Jersey colonies.

Finally Mehitable's singing stopped abruptly and she spoke through the buttery door, which stood ajar, above the clop-clop of her churn.

"What, think you, Cherry, ever became of that wounded Indian that day? 'Twas so strange that when Father and Mother came home at dusk there should be not a trace of him!"

"It was indeed strange, Hitty!" Charity looked up gravely from book. Her eyes became dreamy.