Goo'bye," said the boy and turned to the hill again.

Phœbe stood a moment and looked after him. "My," she said to herself, "but David Eby is a vonderful nice boy!" Then she started down the road, a quaint, interesting little figure in her brown chambray dress with its full, gathered skirt and its short, plain waist. But the face that looked out from the blue sunbonnet was even more interesting. The blue eyes, golden hair and fair coloring of the cheeks held promise of an abiding beauty, but more than mere beauty was bounded by the ruffled sunbonnet. There was an eagerness of expression, an alert understanding in the deep eyes, a tender fluttering of the long lashes, an ever varying animation in the child face, as though she were standing on tiptoe to catch all the sunshine and glory of the great, beautiful world about her.

Phœbe went decorously down the road, across the wooden bridge over the Chicques, then she began to skip. Her full skirt fluttered in the light wind, her sunbonnet slipped back from her head and flapped as she hopped along the half mile stretch of country road bordered by green fields and meadows.

"There's no houses here so I dare skip," she panted gleefully. "Aunt Maria don't think it looks nice for girls to skip, but I like to do it. I could just skip and skip and skip——"

She stopped suddenly. In a meadow to her right a tangle of bulrushes edged a small pond and, perched on a swaying reed, a red-winged blackbird was calling his clear, "Conqueree, conqueree."

"Oh, you pretty thing!" Phœbe cried as she leaned on the fence and watched the bird. "You're just the prettiest thing with them red and yellow spots on your wings. And you ain't afraid of me, not a bit. I guess mebbe you know you got wings and I ain't. Such pretty wings you got, too, and the rest of you is all black as coal. Mebbe God made you black all over like a crow and then got sorry for you and put some pretty spots on your wings. I wonder now"—her face sobered—"I just wonder now why Aunt Maria says still that it's bad to fix up pretty with curls and things like that and to wear fancy dresses. Why, many of the birds are vonderful fine in gay feathers and the flowers are fancy and the butterflies—ach, mebbe when I'm big I'll understand it better, or mebbe I'll dress up pretty then too."

With that cheering thought she turned again to the road and resumed her walk, but the skipping mood had fled. She pulled her sunbonnet to its proper place and walked briskly along, still enjoying thoroughly, though less exuberantly, the beauty of the June morning.

The scent of pink clover mingled with the odor of grasses and the delicate perfume of sweetbrier. Wood sorrel nestled in the grassy corners near the crude rail fences, daisies and spiked toad-flax grew lavishly among the weeds of the roadside. In the meadows tall milkweed swayed its clusters of pink and lavender, marsh-marigolds dotted the grass with discs of pure gold, and Queen Anne's lace lifted its parasols of exquisite loveliness. Phœbe reveled in it all; her cheeks were glowing as she left the beauty of the country behind her and came at last to the little town of Greenwald.

CHAPTER II

OLD AARON'S FLAG

Greenwald is an old town but it is a delightfully interesting one. It does not wear its antiquity as an excuse for sinking into mouldering uselessness. It presents, rather, a strange mingling of the quaint, romantic and historic with the beautiful, progressive and modern. Though it clings reverently to honored traditions it is ever mindful of the fact that the welfare of its inhabitants is dependent upon reasonable progress in its religious, educational and industrial life.

The charming stamp of its antiquity is revealed in its great old trees; its wide Market Square from which narrower streets branch to the east, west, north and south; its numerous houses of the plain, substantial type of several generations ago; its occasional little, low houses which have withstood the march of modern building and stand squarely beside houses of more elaborate and later design; but chiefly in its old-fashioned gardens. All the old-time flowers are favorites there and refuse to be displaced by any newcomer. Sweet alyssum and candytuft spread carpets of bloom along the neat garden walks, hollyhocks and dahlias look boldly out to the streets, while the old-fashioned sweet-scented roses grow on great bushes which have been undisturbed for three or more generations.

To Phœbe Metz, Greenwald, with its two thousand inhabitants, its several churches, post-office and numerous stores, seemed a veritable city. She delighted in walking on its brick sidewalks, looking at its different houses and entering its stores. How many attractions these stores held for the little country girl! There was the big one on the Square which had in one of its windows a great lemon tree on which grew real lemons. Another store had a large Santa Claus in its window every Christmas—not that Phœbe Metz had ever been taught to believe in that patron saint of the children—oh, no! Maria Metz would have considered it foolish, even sinful, to lie to a child about any mythical Santa Claus coming down the chimney Christmas Eve! Nevertheless, the smiling, rotund face of the red-habited Santa in the store window seemed so real and so emanative of cheer that Phœbe delighted in him each year and felt sure there must be a Santa Claus somewhere in the world, even though Aunt Maria knew nothing about him.

Most little towns can boast of one or more persons like Granny Hogendobler, well-nigh community owned, certainly community appropriated. Did any one need a helper in garden or kitchen or sewing room, Granny Hogendobler was glad to serve. Did a housewife remember that a rose geranium leaf imparts to apple jelly a delicious flavor, Granny Hogendobler was able and willing to furnish the leaf. Did a lover of flowers covet a new phlox or dahlia or other old-fashioned flower, Granny Hogendobler was ready to give of her stock. Should a young wife desire a recipe for crullers, shoo-fly pie, or other delectable dish, Granny had a wealth of reliable recipes at her tongue's end. This admirable desire to serve found ample opportunities for exercise in the constant demands from her friends and neighbors. But Granny's greatest joy lay in the fond ministrations for her husband, Old Aaron, as the town people called him, half pityingly, half accusingly. For some said Old Aaron was plain shiftless, had always been so, would remain so forever, so long as he had Granny to do for him. Others averred that the Confederate bullets that had shattered his leg into splinters and necessitated its amputation must have gone astray and struck his liver—leastways, that was the kindest explanation they could give for his laziness.

Granny stoutly refuted all these charges—gossip travels in circles in small towns and sooner or later reaches those most concerned—"Aaron lazy! I-to-goodness no! Why, he's old and what for should he go out and work every day, I wonder. He helps me with the garden and so, and when I go out to help somebody for a day or two he gets his own meals and tends the chickens still. Some people thought a few years ago that he might get work in the foundry, but I said I want him at home with me. He gets a pension and we can live good on what we have without him slaving his last years away, and him with one leg lost at Gettysburg!" she ended proudly.

So Old Aaron continued to live his life as pleased his mate and himself. He pottered about the house and garden and spent long hours musing under the grape arbor. But there was one day in