pursed her lips and made a ludicrous ineffectual attempt to whistle, but
she did not smile. Jane Cotton's Sam clicked the gate, going out, but
she did not notice. When she did at last look up, and her gaze wandered
over the little yard aimlessly, she suddenly uttered a little note of
surprise.

"Why!" she cried.




CHAPTER IV.


For the pump was a blue pump! A miracle had been wrought while she mused
in the grass and listened to Old '61. The little old brown pump had
blossomed out gayly, brilliantly.

"Why!" Then a subdued chuckle reached her from some nearby ambush out
beyond the fence. She put two and two together--the pump, the laugh, and
Jane Cotton's Sam. Six! Jane Cotton's Sam, while she was day-dreaming
and Marching through Georgia with Old '61, had painted the brown pump
blue! That was his business on Mrs. Camp's premises. Mrs Camp had
remembered--the dear, oh, the dear!--that she wanted a blue pump, and
had got the boy to come and make one. And now, down behind the fence
somewhere, the boy was laughing at her amazement. Well, let him laugh--
she laughed, too! Suddenly she began to clap her hands by way of
applause to her hidden audience.

The pump itself was distinctly a disappointment. In gay-hued pictures,