"Whose little gal air you?" he asked.
Fidelia was a little frightened. Instead of giving her father's name,
she gave her own with shy precision--"Fidelia Ames Lennox," she said,
retiring into her Shaker bonnet.
"You ain't runnin' away, be you?"
Fidelia's pride was touched. "I'm going to the store for my mother," she
announced, in quite a shrill tone. Then she took to her heels, and the
little wagon trundled after, with a wilder squeak than ever.
Fidelia kept saying over to herself, "Three pounds of your best raisins,
and Mr. Lennox will come in and pay you." Her mother and Aunt Maria
wished after she had gone that they had written it out on a piece of
paper; they had not thought of that. But Aunt Maria said she knew that
such a bright child as Fidelia would remember three pounds of raisins
when she had been told over and over, and charged not to come home
without them.
Fidelia had started about ten o'clock in the morning, and her mother and
Aunt Maria had agreed that they would not worry if she should not return
until one o'clock in the afternoon. That would allow more than an hour
for the mile walk each way, and give plenty of time for a rest between;
for Fidelia had been instructed to go into the store and sit down on a
stool and rest a while before starting upon her return trip. "Likely as
not Mis' Rose will give her a cooky or something," Aunt Maria had
whispered to Mrs.
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