"Come in, and put on a dry dress," said her grandmother, not unkindly;
"that is, if there's anything but your Sunday one fit to be seen. I've
told you often enough not to go playin' in the river, and I've wanted
you more than common to go out to Jake and Martin's to borrow me a
little cinnamon. You're a real trial this summer. I believe the bigger
you are the worse you are. Now just say what you've been about. I
declare I shall have to go and have a talk with the doctor, and he'll
scold you well. I'm gettin' old and I can't keep after you; you ought
to consider me some. You'll think of it when you see me laying dead,
what a misery you've be'n. No schoolin' worth namin';" grumbled Mrs.
Thacher, as she stepped heavily to and fro in the kitchen, and the
little girl disappeared within the bed-room. In a few minutes,
however, her unusual depression was driven away by the comfort of dry
garments, and she announced triumphantly that she had found a whole
flock of young wild ducks, and that she had made a raft and chased
them about up and down the river, until the raft had proved
unseaworthy, and she had fallen through into the water. Later in the
day somebody came from the Jake and Martin homesteads to say that
there must be no more pulling down of the ends of the pasture fences.
The nails had easily let go their hold of the old boards, and a stone
had served our heroine for a useful shipwright's hammer, but the
young cattle had strayed through these broken barriers and might have
done great damage if they had been discovered a little later,--having
quickly hied themselves to a piece of carefully cultivated land.
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