welcome her when she comes? She promised to show me how to make
sunshine on dark days."

"Tell father and he can have Leon help him."

"But it is a secret with the Princess, and it's HERS as much as
mine. If I tell, she may not like it, and then she won't make me
her Prince and send me on her errands."

"Then you don't dare tell a breath," I said.

"Will you go in my place, and carry her a letter to explain why
I'm not coming, Little Sister?"

"Of course!" I said stoutly, and then my heart turned right over;
for I never had been in our Big Woods alone, and neither mother
nor father wanted me to go. Passing Gypsies sometimes laid down
the fence and went there to camp. Father thought all the wolves
and wildcats were gone, he hadn't seen any in years, but every
once in a while some one said they had, and he was not quite sure
yet. And that wasn't the beginning of it. Paddy Ryan had come
back from the war wrong in his head. He wore his old army
overcoat summer and winter, slept on the ground, and ate whatever
he could find. Once Laddie and Leon, hunting squirrels to make
broth for mother on one of her bad days, saw him in our Big Woods
and he was eating SNAKES. If I found Pat Ryan eating a snake, it

would frighten me so I would stand still and let him eat me, if
he wanted to, and perhaps he wasn't too crazy to see how plump I
was. I seemed to see swarthy, dark faces, big, sleek cats