“You used to hand me water in a tin dipper,” he said.
She nodded. “Yes, that was for a reward, when I was good,” she said seriously. “I could hand the water to the big boys. I was very proud of it. You drank a great deal.”
He chuckled. “I was born thirsty,” he acknowledged. “By George, how it comes back! I can see it now, that school-house! Funny little red thing--remember how it looked? Big shelf around the sides for a desk, and another under that for the books? Bench all round the room to sit on, and we just whopped our legs over and faced round to recite? And carved--Lord! I don't believe there was an inch of the wood, all told, that was clear! I nearly cut my thumb off there, one day.”
“One of the big girls fainted away,” she added, “and they laid her on the floor and told me to bring a dipper of water; but my hand shook so I spilled it all over my apron, and she came to before we got more. I was very timid.”
“Did you have two pigtails? And striped stockings?” he inquired, his eyes fixed reminiscently on the hedge.
“And played some game with stones? I can't just remember--”
“It was houses,” she reminded him. “We little girls used to make little houses--just marked out with stones in squares on the ground; and if you boys felt like it, you'd bring us big flat stones to eat our dinner on.”
“Ah, yes!” It all came back to him. “And then you'd race off to get flag-root or something, and--”
“And gobble our dinner as we ran. It was fun, all the same,” she added.
“But what a mite you were, to be in school!” he said wonderingly. “What under heaven did you study?”
“I don't remember at all,” she confessed. “But I suppose I spelled. Do you remember the spelling-matches? And how you big ones wanted to 'leave off head'?”
He chuckled. “I should say I did! And sometimes the greatest idiot would 'leave off head' because there wasn't any more time. It was maddening!”
He munched in silence for a while, and she did not dream of interrupting.
“In the winter, though--George! but it was cold! We used to positively swim through the drifts. I tell you, there aren't any such snows now! How did you get there?”
“I only went in the summer,” she said; “and I used to come in all stained with the berries I ate along the way. It was dreadful”--she grew stern, as if addressing the little girl in striped stockings and pigtails--“the way I ate berries! I used to eat the bushes clean on the way to school!”