Mrs. Motherwell felt bitterly grieved with Polly for failing her just when she needed her the most; “after me keepin’ her and puttin’ up with her all summer,” she said. She began to wonder where she could secure help. Then she had an inspiration!

The Watsons still owed ten dollars on the caboose. The eldest Watson girl was big enough to work. They would get her. And get ten dollars’ worth of work out of her if they could.

The next Saturday night John Watson announced to his family that old Sam Motherwell wanted Pearlie to go out and work off the caboose debt.

Mrs. Watson cried, “God help us!” and threw her apron over her head.

“Who’ll keep the dandrew out of me hair?” Mary said tearfully, “if Pearlie goes away?”

“Who’ll make me remember to spit on me warts?” Bugsey asked.

“Who’ll keep house when ma goes to wash?” wee Tommy wailed dismally.

Danny’s grievance could not be expressed in words. He buried his tousy head in Pearl’s apron, and Pearl saw at once that her whole house were about to be submerged in tears, idle tears.

“Stop your bleatin’, all of yez!” she commanded in her most authoritative voice. “I will go!” she said, with blazing eyes. “I will go, I will wipe the stain off me house once and forever!” waving her arm dramatically toward the caboose which formed the sleeping apartment for the boys. “To die, to die for those we love is nobler far than wear a crown!” Pearl had attended the Queen Esther cantata the winter before. She knew now how poor Esther felt.

On the following Monday afternoon everything was ready for Pearl’s departure. Her small supply of clothing was washed and ironed and neatly packed in a bird-cage. It was Mary who thought of the bird-cage “sittin’ down there in the cellar doin’ nothin’, and with a handle on it, too.” Mary was getting to be almost as smart as Pearl to think of things.

Pearl had bidden good-bye to them all and was walking to the door when her mother called her back to repeat her parting instructions.

“Now, mind, Pearlie dear, not to be pickin’ up wid strangers, and speakin’ to people ye don’t know, and don’t be showin’ yer money or makin’ change wid anyone.”

Pearl was not likely to disobey the last injunction. She had seventeen cents in money, ten cents of which Teddy had given her, and the remaining seven cents had come in under the heading of small sums, from the other members of the family.

She was a pathetic little figure in her brown and white checked dress, with her worldly effects in the bird-cage, as she left the shelter of her father’s roof and went forth into the untried world. She went over to Mrs. Francis to say good-bye to her and to Camilla.

Mrs. Francis was much pleased with Pearl’s spirit of independence and spoke beautifully of the opportunities for service which would open for her.

“You must keep a diary, Pearl,” she said enthusiastically. “Set down in it all you see and feel. You will have such splendid opportunities for observing plant and animal life-the smallest little insect is wonderfully interesting. I will be so anxious to hear how you are impressed with the great green world of Out of Doors! Take care of your health, too, Pearl; see that your room is ventilated.”

While Mrs. Francis elaborated on the elements of proper living, Camilla in the kitchen had opened the little bundle in the cage, and put into it a pair of stockings and two or three handkerchiefs, then she slipped in a little purse containing ten shining ten-cent pieces, and an orange. She arranged the bundle to look just as it did before, so that she would not have to meet Pearl’s gratitude.

Camilla hastily set the kettle to boil, and began to lay the table. She could hear the velvety tones of Mrs. Francis’s voice in the library.

“Mrs. Francis speaks a strange language,” she said, smiling to herself, “but it can be translated into bread and butter and apple sauce, and even into shoes and stockings, when you know how to interpret it. But wouldn’t it be dreadful if she had no one to express it in the tangible things of life for her. Think of her talking about proper diet and aids to digestion to that little hungry girl. Well, it seems to be my mission to step into the gap-I’m a miss with a mission”-she was slicing some cold ham as she spoke-“I am something of a health talker, too.”

Camilla knocked at the library door, and in answer to Mrs. Francis’s invitation to enter, opened the door and said:

“Mrs. Francis, would it not be well for Pearl to have a lunch before she starts for her walk into the country; the air is so exhilarating, you know.”

“How thoughtful you are, Camilla!” Mrs. Francis exclaimed with honest admiration.

Thus it happened that Pearlie Watson, aged twelve, began her journey into the big unknown world, fully satisfied in body and soul, and with a great love for all the world.

At the corner of the street stood Mrs. McGuire, and at sight of her Pearl’s heart stopped beating.

“It’s bad luck,” she said. “I’d as lief have a rabbit cross me path as her.”

But she walked bravely forward with no outward sign of her inward trembling.

“Goin’ to Sam Motherwell’s, are ye?” the old lady asked shrilly.

“Yes’m,” Pearl said, trembling.

“She’s a tarter; she’s a skinner; she’s a damner; that’s what she is. She’s my own first cousin and I know her. Sass her; that’s the only way to get along with her. Tell her I said so. Here, child, rub yer j’ints with this when ye git stiff.” She handed Pearl a black bottle of home-made liniment.

Pearl thanked her and hurried on, but at the next turn of the street she met Danny.

Danny was in tears; Danny wasn’t going to let Pearlie go away; Danny would run away and get lost and runned over and drownded, now! Pearl’s heart melted, and sitting on the sidewalk she took Danny in her arms, and they cried together. A whirr of wheels aroused Pearl and looking up she saw the kindly face of the young doctor.

“What is it, Pearl?” he asked kindly. “Surely that’s not Danny I see, spoiling his face that way!”

“It’s Danny,” Pearl said unsteadily. “It’s hard enough to leave him widout him comin’ afther me and breakin’ me heart all over again.”

“That’s what it is, Pearl,” the doctor said, smiling. “I think it is mighty thoughtless of Danny the way he is acting.”

Danny held obstinately to Pearl’s skirt, and cried harder than ever. He would not even listen when the doctor spoke of taking him for a drive.

“Listen to the doctor,” Pearl commanded sternly, “or he’ll raise a gumboil on ye.”

Thus admonished Danny ceased his sobs; but he showed no sign of interest when the doctor spoke of popcorn, and at the mention of ice-cream he looked simply bored.

“He’s awful fond of ‘hoo-hung’ candy,” Pearlie suggested in a whisper, holding her hand around her mouth so that Danny might not hear her.

“Ten cents’ worth of ‘hoo-hung’ candy to the boy that says good-bye to his sister like a gentleman and rides home with me.”

Danny dried his eyes on Pearl’s skirt, kissed her gravely and climbed into the buggy beside the doctor. Waterloo was won!

Pearl did not trust herself to look back as she walked along the deeply beaten road.

The yellow cone-flowers raised their heads like golden stars along the roadside, and the golden glory of the approaching harvest lay upon everything. To the right the Tiger Hills lay on the horizon wrapped in a blue mist. Flocks of blackbirds swarmed over the ripening oats, and angrily fought with each other.

“And it not costin’ them a cent!” Pearl said in disgust as she stopped to watch them.

The exhilaration of the air, the glory of the waving grain, the profusion of wild flowers that edged the fields with purple and yellow were like wine to her sympathetic Irish heart as she walked through the grain fields and drank in all the beauties that lay around, and it was not until she came in sight of the big stone house, gloomy and bare, that she realised with a start of homesickness that she was Pearl Watson, aged twelve, away from home for the first time, and bound to work three months for a woman of reputed ill-temper.

“But I’ll do it,” Pearl said, swallowing the lump that gathered in her throat, “I can work. Nobody never said that none of the Watsons couldn’t work. I’ll stay out me time if it kills me.”

So saying, Pearl knocked timidly at the back door. Myriads of flies buzzed on the screen. From within a tired voice said, “Come in.”

Pearl walked in and saw a large bare room, with a long table in the middle. A sewing machine littered with papers stood in front of one window.

The floor had been painted a dull drab, but the passing of many feet had worn the paint away in places. A stove stood in one corner. Over the sink a tall, round-shouldered woman bent trying to get water from an asthmatic pump.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” she said in a tone so very unpleasant that Pearl thought she must have expected someone else.

“Yes’m,” Pearl said meekly. “Who were ye expectin’?”

Mrs. Motherwell stopped pumping for a minute and looked at Pearl.

“Why didn’t ye git here earlier?” she asked.

“Well,” Pearl began, “I was late gettin’ started by reason of the washin’ and the ironin’, and Jimmy not gettin’ back wid the boots. He went drivin’ cattle for Vale the butcher, and he had to have the boots for the poison ivy is that bad, and because the sugar o’ lead is all done and anyway ma don’t like to keep it in the house, for wee Danny might eat it-he’s that stirrin’ and me not there to watch him now.”

“Lord! what a tongue you have! Put down your things and go out and pick up chips to light the fire with in the morning.”

Pearl laid her bird-cage on a chair and was back so soon with the chips that Mrs. Motherwell could not think of anything to say.

“Now go for the cows,” she said, “and don’t run them home!”

“Where will I run them to then, ma’am?” Pearl asked innocently.

“Good land, child, have I to tell you everything? Folks that can’t do without tellin’ can’t do much with, I say. Bring the cows to the bars, and don’t stand there staring at me.”

When Pearl dashed out of the door, she almost fell over the old dog who lay sleepily snapping at the flies which buzzed around his head. He sprang up with a growl which died away into an apologetic yawn as she stooped to pat his honest brown head.

A group of red calves stood at the bars of a small field plaintively calling for their supper. It was not just an ordinary bawl, but a double-jointed hyphenated appeal, indicating a very exhausted condition indeed.

Pearl looked at them in pity. The old dog, wrinkling his nose and turning away his head, did not give them a glance. He knew them. Noisy things! Let ’em bawl. Come on!

Across the narrow creek they bounded, Pearl and old Nap, and up the other hill where the silver willows grew so tall they were hidden in them. The goldenrod nodded its plumy head in the breeze, and the tall Gaillardia, brown and yellow, flickered unsteadily on its stem.

The billows of shadow swept over the wheat on each side of the narrow pasture; the golden flowers, the golden fields, the warm golden sunshine intoxicated Pearl with their luxurious beauty, and in that hour of delight she realised more pleasure from them than Sam Motherwell and his wife had in all their long lives of barren selfishness. Their souls were of a dull drab dryness in which no flower took root, there was no gold to them but the gold of greed and gain, and with it they had never bought a smile or a gentle hand pressure or a fervid “God bless you!” and so it lost its golden colour, and turned to lead and ashes in their hands.

When Pearl and Nap got the cows turned homeward they had to slacken their pace.

“I don’t care how cross she is,” Pearl said, “if I can come for the cows every night. Look at that fluffy white cloud! Say, wouldn’t that make a hat trimming that would do your heart good. The body of the hat blue like that up there, edged ’round with that cloud over there, then a blue cape with white fur on it just to match. I kin just feel that white stuff under my chin.”

Then Pearl began to cake-walk and sing a song she had heard Camilla sing. She had forgotten some of the words, but Pearl never was at a loss for words:

The wild waves are singing to the shore
As they were in the happy days of yore.

Pearl could not remember what the wild waves were singing, so she sang what was in her own heart:

She can’t take the ripple from the breeze,
And she can’t take the rustle from the trees;
And when I am out of the old girl’s sight
I can-just-do-as-I-please.

“That’s right, I think the same way and try to act up to it,” a man’s voice said slowly. “But don’t let her hear you say so.”

Pearl started at the sound of the voice and found herself looking into such a good-natured face that she laughed too, with a feeling of good-fellowship.

The old dog ran to the stranger with every sign of delight at seeing him.

“I am one of the neighbours,” he said. “I live over there”-pointing to a little car-roofed shanty farther up the creek. “Did I frighten you? I am sorry if I did, but you see I like the sentiment of your song so much I could not help telling you. You need not think it strange if you find me milking one of the cows occasionally. You see, I believe in dealing directly with the manufacturer and thus save the middleman’s profit, and so I just take what milk I need from So-Bossie over there.”

“Does she know?” Pearl asked, nodding toward the house.

“Who? So-Bossie?”

“No, Mrs. Motherwell.”

“Well, no,” he answered slowly. “You haven’t heard of her having a fit, have you?”

“No,” Pearl answered wonderingly.

“Then we’re safe in saying that the secret has been kept from her.”

“Does it hurt her, though?” Pearl asked.

“It would, very much, if she knew it,” the young man replied gravely.

“Oh, I mean the cow,” Pearl said hastily.

“It doesn’t hurt the cow a bit. What does she care who gets the milk? When did you come?”

“To-night,” Pearl said. “I must hurry. She’ll have a rod in steep for me if I’m late. My name’s Pearl Watson. What’s yours?”

“Jim Russell,” he said. “I know your brother Teddy.”

Pearl was speeding down the hill. She shouted back:

“I know who you are now. Good-bye!” Pearl ran to catch up to the cows, for the sun was throwing long shadows over the pasture, and the plaintive lowing of the hungry calves came faintly to her ears.

A blond young man stood at the bars with four milk pails.

He raised his hat when he spoke to Pearl.

“Madam says you are to help me to milk, but I assure you it is quite unnecessary. Really, I would much prefer that you shouldn’t.”

“Why?” Pearl asked in wonder.

“Oh, by Jove! You see it is not a woman’s place to work outside like this, don’t you know.”

“That’s because ye’r English,” Pearl said, a sudden light breaking in on her. “Ma says when ye git a nice Englishman there’s nothing nicer, and pa knowed one once that was so polite he used to say ‘Haw Buck’ to the ox and then he’d say, ‘Oh, I beg yer pardon, I mean gee.’ It wasn’t you, was it?”

“No,” he said smiling, “I have never driven oxen, but I have done a great many ridiculous things I am sure.”

“So have I,” Pearl said confidentially, as she sat down on a little three-legged stool to milk So-Bossie. “You know them fluffy white things all made of lace and truck like that, that is hung over the beds in rich people’s houses, over the pillows, I mean?”

“Pillow-shams?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s them! Well, when I stayed with Camilla one night at Mrs. Francis’s didn’t I think they were things to pull down to keep the flies off ye’r face. Say, you should have heard Camilla laugh, and ma saw a girl at a picnic once who drank lemonade through her veil, and she et a banana, skin and all.”

Pearl laughed heartily, but the Englishman only smiled faintly. Canadian ways were growing stranger all the time.

“Say,” Pearl began after a pause, “who does the cow over there with the horns bent down look like? Someone we both know, only the cow looks pleasanter.”

“My word!” the Englishman exclaimed, “you’re a rum one.”

Pearl looked disappointed.

“Animals often look like people,” she said. “We have two cows at home, one looks like Mrs. White, so good and gentle, wouldn’t say boo to a goose; the other one looks just like Fred Miller. He works in the mill, and his hair goes in a roll on the top; his mother did it that way with a hair-pin too long, I guess, and now it won’t go any other way, and I know an animal that looks like you; he’s a dandy, too, you bet. It is White’s dog, and he can jump the fence easy as anything.”

“Oh, give over, give over!” the Englishman said stiffly.

Pearl laughed delightedly.

“It’s lots of fun guessing who people are like,” she said. “I’m awful smart at it and so is Mary, four years younger’n me. Once we could not guess who Mrs. Francis was like, and Mary guessed it. Mrs. Francis looks like prayer-big bug eyes lookin’ away into nothin’, but hopin’ it’s all for the best. Do you pray?”

“I am a rector’s son,” he answered.

“Oh, I know, minister’s son, isn’t that lovely? I bet you know prayers and prayers. But it isn’t fair to pray in a race is it? When Jimmy Moore and my brother Jimmy ran under twelve, Jimmie Moore prayed, and some say got his father to pray, too; he’s the Methodist minister, you know, and, of course, he won it; but our Jimmy could ha’ beat him easy in a fair race, and no favours; but he’s an awful snoopie kid and prays about everything. Do you sing?”

“I do-a little,” the Englishman said modestly.

“Oh, my, I am glad,” Pearl cried rapturously. “When I was two years old I could sing ‘Hush my babe lie,’ all through-I love singin’-I can sing a little, too, but I don’t care much for my own. Have they got an organ here?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, “I’ve only been in the kitchen.”

“Say, I’d like to see a melodeon. Just the very name of it makes me think of lovely sounds, religious sounds, mountin’ higher and higher and swellin’ out grander and grander, rollin’ right into the great white throne, and shakin’ the streets of gold. Do you know the ’Holy City,’” she asked after a pause.

The Englishman began to hum it in a rich tenor.

“That’s it, you bet,” she cried delightedly. “Just think of you coming all the way across the ocean and knowing that just the same as we do. I used to listen at the keyhole when Mrs. Francis had company, and I was there helping Camilla. Dr. Clay sang that lots of times.”

The Englishman had not sung since he had left his father’s house. He began to sing now, in a sweet, full voice, resonant on the quiet evening air, the cows staring idly at him. The old dog came down to the bars with his bristles up, expecting trouble.

Old Sam and his son Tom coming in from work stopped to listen to these strange sounds.

“Confound them English!” old Sam said. “Ye’d think I was payin’ him to do that, and it harvest-time, too!”

When Dr. Clay, with Danny Watson gravely perched beside him, drove along the river road after saying good-bye to Pearl, they met Miss Barner, who had been digging ferns for Mrs. McGuire down on the river flat.

The doctor drew in his horse.

“Miss Barner,” he said, lifting his hat, “if Daniel Mulcahey Watson and I should ask you to come for a drive with us, I wonder what you would say?”

Miss Barner considered for a moment and then said, smiling:

“I think I would say, ’Thank you very much, Mr. Watson and Dr. Clay, I shall be delighted to come if you have room for me.’”

Life had been easier for Mary Barner since Dr. Clay had come to Millford. It was no longer necessary for her to compel her father to go when he was sent for, and when patients came to the office, if she thought her father did not know what he was doing, she got Dr. Clay to check over the prescriptions.

It had been rather hard for Mary to ask him to do this, for she had a fair share of her father’s Scotch pride; but she had done too many hard things in her life to hesitate now. The young doctor was genuinely glad to serve her, and he made her feel that she was conferring, instead of asking, a favour.

They drove along the high bank that fell perpendicularly to the river below and looked down at the harvest scene that lay beneath them. The air was full of the perfume of many flowers and the chatter of birds.

The Reverend Hugh Grantley drove swiftly by them, whereupon Danny made his presence known for the first time by the apparently irrelevant remark:

“I know who Miss Barner’s fellow is! so I do.”

Now if Dr. Clay had given Danny even slight encouragement, he would have pursued the subject, and that might have saved complications in the days to come.