father, and ask his advice before you telephoned to Mr. Hicks?"

"That's a sensible thing for you to say," retorted Kit, hotly, "after
you've all warned me not to worry Dad about anything. And I did not act
upon the impulse of the moment," very haughtily. "I made certain logical
deductions from certain facts. How was I to know he was hunting gypsy
moths and other winged beasts when I saw him bending over bushes in our
berry patch? Anyhow it would simplify matters if Dad would let us know
when he expected illustrious visitors. Did you see old Hannibal's face and
Evie's, too? They were so disappointed at not having a prisoner in tow to
exhibit to the Gilead populace on the way over to the jail."

Mrs. Gorham glanced up over her spectacles at the circle of faces around
the sitting-room table. The girls had volunteered to help her pick over
berries for canning the following day. It was a sacrifice to make, too,
with the midsummer evening calling to them in all its varied orchestral
tones: Katydids and peep frogs, the swish of the wind through the big
Norway pines on the terraces, and the scrape of Shad's old fiddle from the
back porch. It was Friday evening, and Mr. and Mrs. Robbins had driven
over to the Judge's to attend a community meeting, the latter being one of
Cousin Roxy's innovations in Gilead.

"Land alive," she had been wont to say. "Here we are all living on the
same hills and valleys and never meeting 'cept on Sundays when we have to,
or now and again when there happens to be a funeral. I declare if I
didn't drive about all the time behind Ella Lou, I'd never know how folks
were getting on. So every two weeks the Judge and I are going to hold an
old-time social, only we call it a community meeting so as to try to give
it the new spirit. It's just as well for us to remember that we ain't all
dead yet by a long shot, 'though I do think there's a whole lot that ain't