wanted her to go out and play on the ice after school. They had no
skates, but it was rare fun to slide. Ann went home and asked Mrs.
Polly's permission with a beating heart; she promised to do a double
stint next day, if she would let her go. But her mistress was
inexorable--work before play, she said, always; and Ann must not
forget that she was to be brought up to work; it was different with
her from what it was with Hannah French. Even this she meant kindly
enough, but Ann saw Hannah go away, and sat down to her spinning with
more fierce defiance in her heart than had ever been there before. She
had been unusually good, too, lately. She always was, during the three
months' schooling, with sober, gentle little Hannah French.

She had been spinning sulkily a while, and it was almost dark, when
a messenger came for her master and mistress to go to Deacon Thomas
Wales', who had been suddenly taken very ill.

Ann would have felt sorry if she had not been so angry. Deacon Wales
was almost as much of a favorite of hers as his wife. As it was, the
principal thing she thought of, after Mr. Wales and his wife had gone,
was that the key was in the desk. However it had happened, there it
was. She hesitated a moment. She was all alone in the kitchen, and her
heart was in a tumult of anger, but she had learned her lessons from
the Bible and the New England Primer, and she was afraid of the sin.
But at last she opened the desk, found the indentures, and hid them
in the little pocket which she wore tied about her waist, under her
petticoat.

Then Ann threw her blanket over her head, and got her poppet out of
the chest. The poppet was a little doll manufactured from a corn-cob,
dressed in an indigo-colored gown. Grandma had made it for her, and