CHAPTER I


Young Mrs. Herbert Cary picked up her work basket and slowly crossed the
grass to a shady bench underneath the trees. She must go on with her
task of planning a dress for Virgie. But the prospect of making her
daughter something wearable out of the odds and ends of nothing was not
a happy one. In fact, she was still poking through her basket and
frowning thoughtfully when a childish voice came to her ears.

"Yes, Virgie! Here I am. Out under the trees."

Immediately came a sound of tumultuous feet and Miss Virginia Houston
Cary burst upon the scene. She was a tot of seven with sun touched hair
and great dark eyes whose witchery made her a piquant little fairy. In
spite of her mother's despair over her clothes Virgie was dressed, or
at least had been dressed at breakfast time, in a clean white frock, low
shoes and white stockings, although all now showed signs of strenuous
usage. Clutched to her breast as she ran up to her mother's side was
"Susan Jemima," her one beloved possession and her doll. Behind Virgie
came Sally Ann, her playmate, a slim, barefooted mulatto girl whose
faded, gingham dress hung partly in tatters, halfway between her knees
and ankles. In one of Sally Ann's hands, carried like a sword, was a
pointed stick; in the other, a long piece of blue wood-moss from which
dangled a bit of string.

"Oh, Mother," cried the small daughter of the Carys, as she came up
flushed and excited, "what do you reckon Sally Ann and me have been
playing out in the woods!"