"Thee'd better write to father about Dorothy, mother. Perhaps Hannah Husbands would like to know what she thinks about her preachin'."
"Well, now, be quiet, all of you. Here's something about Dorothy: 'I know that my dear daughter Dorothy is faithful and loving, albeit somewhat quick of speech and restive under obligation. I would have thee remind her that an unwillingness to accept help from others argues a want of Christian Meekness. Entreat her from me not to conceal her needs from our neighbors, if so be she find her work oppressive. We know them to be of kindly intention, though not of our way of thinking in all particulars. Let her receive help from them, not as individuals, but as instruments of the Lord's protection, which it were impiety and ingratitude to deny.'"
"There!" cried Shep. "That means thee is to let Luke Jordan finish the sheep-washing. Thee'd better have done it in the first place. We shouldn't have the old ewe to pick if thee had."
Dorothy was dimpling at the idea of Luke Jordan in the character of an instrument of heavenly protection. She had not regarded him in that light, it must be confessed, but had rejected him with scorn.
"He may, if he wants to," she said; "but you boys shall drive them over. I'll have nothing to do with it."
"And shear them too, Dorothy? He asked to shear them long ago."
"Well, _let_ him shear them and keep the wool too."
"I wouldn't say that, Dorothy," said Rachel Barton. "We need the wool, and it seems as if over-payment might not be quite honest, either."
"Oh, mother, mother! What a mother thee is!" cried Dorothy laughing and rumpling Rachel's cap-strings in a tumultuous embrace.
"She's a great deal too good for _thee_, Dorothy Barton."
"She's too good for all of us. How did thee ever come to have such a graceless set of children, mother?"
"I'm very well satisfied," said Rachel. "But now do be quiet and let's finish the letter. We must get to bed some time to-night!"
The wild clematis was in blossom now; the fences were white with it, and the rusty cedars were crowned with virgin wreaths; but the weeds were thick in the garden and in the potato patch. Dorothy, stretching her cramped back, looked longingly up the shadowy vista of the farm-lane that had nothing to do but ramble off into the remotest green fields, where the daisies' faces were as white and clear as in early June.