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 a strange child—sometimes it will take her ten minutes to get across the road, and then another time she will be as quick as a flash. I'll see where she is."

But even as the boards squeaked above her head, Caroline had fled, and Henry D. Thoreau, smarting from the indignity of her brown, berry-stained hand circling his muzzle, was expressing his feelings to the yellow birches and ground pine.

"Oh shut up, won't you, Henry D.?" she urged him indignantly, "do you want to take that fat old tiresome lady around our nice mountain? I don't b'lieve you do. You can be called 'girlie' if you want to—I don't. She is so hot and she creaks so when she walks! I had to hold your nose."

Henry D., who had only wanted an explanation, subsided, and they trudged on in silence, Indian file, along the narrow trail.

The early afternoon sun filtered down through the birch and beech leaves on Caroline's brown head and Henry D.'s brindled back, pine needles crunched under their feet, thick glossy moss