Laddie - Stratton-Porter Gene

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had no business in our woods; you could see that they had plenty of their own. She went straight to the door of the willow room and walked in as if she belonged there. What if she found the hollow and took Laddie's letter! Fast as I could slip over the leaves, I went back. She was on the moss carpet, on her knees, and the letter was in her fingers. It's a good thing to have your manners soundly thrashed into you. You've got to be scared stiff before you forget them. I wasn't so afraid of her as I would have been if I had known she WAS the princess, and have Laddies letter, she should not. What had the kind of girl she was, from a home like hers, to teach any one from our house about making sunshine? I was at the willow wall by that time peering through, so I just parted it a little and said: "Please put back that letter where you got it. It isn't for you."

      She knelt on the mosses, the letter in her hand, and her face, as she turned to me, was rather startled; but when she saw me she laughed, and said in the sweetest voice I ever heard: "Are you so very sure of that?"

      "Well I ought to be," I said. "I put it there."

      "Might I inquire for whom you put it there?"

      "No ma'am! That's a secret."

      You should have seen the light flame in her eyes, the red deepen on her cheeks, and the little curl of laughter that curved her lips.

      "How interesting!" she cried. "I wonder now if you are not Little Sister."

      "I am to Laddie and our folks," I said. "You are a stranger."

      All the dancing lights went from her face. She looked as if she were going to cry unless she hurried up and swallowed it down hard and fast.

      "That is quite true," she said. "I am a stranger. Do you know that being a stranger is the hardest thing that can happen to any one in all this world?"

      "Then why don't you open your doors, invite your neighbours in, go to see them, and stop your father from saying such dreadful things?"

      "They are not my doors," she said, "and could you keep your father from saying anything he chooses?"

      I stood and blinked at her. Of course I wouldn't even dare try that.

      "I'm so sorry," was all I could think to say.

      I couldn't ask her to come to our house. I knew no one wanted her. But if I couldn't speak for the others, surely I might for myself. I let go the willows and went to the door. The Princess arose and sat on the seat Laddie had made for the Queen's daughter. It was an awful pity to tell her she shouldn't sit there, for I had my doubts if the real, true Princess would be half as lovely when she came—if she ever did. Some way the Princess, who was not a Princess, appeared so real, I couldn't keep from becoming confused and forgetting that she was only just Pamela Pryor. Already the lovely lights had gone from her face until it made me so sad I wanted to cry, and I was no easy cry-baby either. If I couldn't offer friendship for my family I would for myself.

      "You may call me Little Sister, if you like," I said. "I won't be a stranger."

      "Why how lovely!" cried the Princess.

      You should have seen the dancing lights fly back to her eyes. Probably you won't believe this, but the first thing I knew I was beside her on the throne, her arm was around me, and it's the gospel truth that she hugged me tight. I just had sense enough to reach over and pick Laddie's letter from her fingers, and then I was on her side. I don't know what she did to me, but all at once I knew that she was dreadfully lonely; that she hated being a stranger; that she was sorry enough to cry because their house was one of mystery, and that she would open the door if she could.

      "I like you," I said, reaching up to touch her curls.

      I never had seen her that I did not want to. They were like I thought they would be. Father and Laddie and some of us had wavy hair, but hers was crisp—and it clung to your fingers, and wrapped around them and seemed to tug at your heart like it does when a baby grips you. I drew away my hand, and the hair stretched out until it was long as any of ours, and then curled up again, and you could see that no tins had stabbed into her head to make those curls. I began trying to single out one hair.

      "What are you doing?" she asked.

      "I want to know if only one hair is strong enough to draw a drowning man from the water or strangle an unhappy one," I said.

      "Believe me, no!" cried the Princess. "It would take all I have, woven into a rope, to do that."

      "Laddie knows curls that just one hair of them is strong enough," I boasted.

      "I wonder now!" said the Princess. "I think he must have been making poetry or telling Fairy tales."

      "He was telling the truth," I assured her. "Father doesn't believe in Fairies, and mother laughs, but Laddie and I know. Do you believe in Fairies?"

      "Of course I do!" she said.

      "Then you know that this COULD be an Enchanted Wood?"

      "I have found it so," said the Princess.

      "And MAYBE this is a Magic Carpet?"

      "It surely is a Magic Carpet."

      "And you might be the daughter of the Queen? Your eyes are 'moonlit pools of darkness.' If only your hair were stronger, and you knew about making sunshine!"

      "Maybe it is stronger than I think. It never has been tested. Perhaps I do know about making sunshine. Possibly I am as true as the wood and the carpet."

      I drew away and stared at her. The longer I looked the more uncertain I became. Maybe her mother was the Queen. Perhaps that was the mystery. It might be the reason she didn't want the people to see her. Maybe she was so busy making sunshine for the Princess to bring to Laddie that she had no time to sew carpet rags, and to go to quiltings, and funerals, and make visits. It was hard to know what to think.

      "I wish you'd tell me plain out if you are the Queen's daughter," I said. "It's most important. You can't have this letter unless I KNOW. It's the very first time Laddie ever trusted me with a letter, and I just can't give it to the wrong person."

      "Then why don't you leave it where he told you?"

      "But you have gone and found the place. You started to take it once; you would again, soon as I left."

      "Look me straight in the eyes, Little Sister," said the Princess softly. "Am I like a person who would take anything that didn't belong to her?"

      "No!" I said instantly.

      "How do you think I happened to come to this place?"

      "Maybe our woods are prettier than yours."

      "How do you think I knew where the letter was?"

      I shook my head.

      "If I show you some others exactly like the one you have there, then will you believe that is for me?"

      "Yes," I answered.

      I believed it anyway. It just SEEMED so, the better you knew her. The Princess slipped her hand among the folds of the trailing pale green skirt, and from a hidden pocket drew other letters exactly like the one I held. She opened one and ran her finger along the top line and I read, "To the Princess," and then she pointed to the ending and it was merely signed, "Laddie," but all the words written between were his writing. Slowly I handed her the letter.

      "You don't want me to have it?" she asked.

      "Yes," I said. "I want you to have it if Laddie wrote it for you—but mother and father won't, not at all."

      "What makes you think so?" she asked gently.

      "Don't you know what people say about you?"

      "Some of it, perhaps."

      "Well?"

      "Do you think it is true?"

      "Not that you're stuck up, and hateful and proud, not that you don't want to be neighbourly with other people, no, I don't

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