Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/297



Her face buried in sweet clover, she panted, prone on the grass.

"Let's go right on, Rufus, and run away, and do just as we please!" she whispered to the nestling cat. "If I can't do like the boys do, I don't want to stay home—the fellows laugh at me! I'd rather be whipped than sent to bed like a girl. I won't be a young lady—I won't!"

Rufus purred approvingly.

"If I only had some trousers!" she mourned, softly; "a boy can do anything!"

Across the quiet night there cut a thin, shrill cry: a little, fretful pipe that brought instantly before the mind some hushed, white room with a shaded light and a tiny basket bed. Caroline sat up and stared about her: such cries did not come from open fields. Hardly a stone's throw from her there was a small knoll, and behind it what might have been a large, projecting boulder suddenly flashed into red light and showed itself for a dormer window; a cottage had evidently hidden behind the little hill. Curiously Caroline approached it and walked softly up the knoll.

Almost on the top she paused and peered into