Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville
"Miss Ethel, sir; the school-ma'am."
"Oh. A city girl?"
"No, sir. Crazy Will Thompson's granddaughter. She lives 'bout nine mile
away."
"Is she here now?"
"Went home this mornin', sir. It were a great pleasure to her, she said,
an' she hoped as how you'd like everything, an' be happy here."
Undo John nodded.
"We must call on that girl," he remarked. "We owe her a good deal, I
imagine, and she's entitled to our grateful thanks."
CHAPTER VI.
PEGGY PRESENTS HIS BILL.
Millville waited in agonized suspense for three days for tangible
evidence that "the nabob was in their midst," as Nib Corkins poetically
expressed it; but the city folks seemed glued to the farm and no one of
them had yet appeared in the village. As a matter of fact, Patsy and
Uncle John were enthusiastically fishing in the Little Bill, far up in
the pine woods, and having "the time of their lives" in spite of their
scant success in capturing trout. Old Hucks could go out before
breakfast and bring in an ample supply of speckled beauties for Mary to
fry; but Uncle John's splendid outfit seemed scorned by the finny folk,
and after getting her dress torn in sundry places and a hook in the
fleshy part of her arm Patsy learned to seek shelter behind a tree
whenever her uncle cast his fly. But they reveled in the woods, and
would lie on the bank for hours listening to the murmur of the brook and
the songs of the birds.
The temper of the other two girls was different. Beth De Graf had
brought along an archery outfit, and she set up her target on the ample
green the day following her arrival. Here she practiced persistently,
shooting at sixty yards with much skill. But occasionally, when Louise
tired of her novel and her cushions in the hammock, the two girls would
play tennis or croquet together--Beth invariably winning.
Such delightful laziness could brook no interference for the first days
of their arrival, and it was not until Peggy McNutt ventured over on
Monday morning for a settlement with Mr.
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In a village there lived two men who had the self-same name. Both were named Claus. But one of them owned four horses, and the other owned only one horse; so to distinguish between them people called the man who had four horses Big Claus, and the man who had only one horse Little Claus. Now I'll tell you what happened to these two, for this is a true story.
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