Randy and Her Friends

Excerpt

THROUGH THE FIELDS

The sunniest place upon the hillside was the little pasture in which the old mare was grazing, moving slowly about and nipping at the short grass as if that which lay directly under her nose could not be nearly as choice as that which she could obtain by constant perambulation.

A blithe voice awoke the echoes with a fragment of an old song. The mare looked up and gave a welcoming whinny as Randy Weston, Squire Weston's daughter, crossed the pasture, her pink sunbonnet hanging from her arm by its strings.

"Glad to see me, Snowfoot?" asked Randy as she laid a caressing hand upon the mare's neck and looked into the soft eyes which seemed to express a world of love for the girl who never allowed a friendly whinny to pass unnoticed.

"My! but this August sun is hot," said Randy, vigorously wielding her sunbonnet for a fan.

"And before we can turn 'round it will be September, and then there'll be lessons to learn, yes, and plenty of work to be done if I mean to keep the promise I made myself when I won the prize in June.

"A five dollar gold piece for being the best scholar, Snowfoot, and to think that I haven't yet decided what to do with it!

"I've spent it, in my mind a dozen times already, and to-day I'm no nearer to knowing just what I'd rather do with it than on the day it was given me. Did you ever know anything so silly?"

The horse sneezed violently, as if in derision, and Randy laughed gaily at having her plainly expressed opinion of herself so forcibly confirmed.

Leaving Snowfoot to crop the grass and clover, Randy crossed the field and followed a well trodden foot-path which led to a little grove and there in the cool shade she paused to look off across the valley, and again her thoughts reverted to the shining gold piece. Once more she wondered what it could buy which would give lasting satisfaction.

"If I were in the city," she mused, "I should probably see something which I'd like to have in the first store I came to, and I could buy it at once."

A moment later she laughed softly as it occurred to her that in the large city stores of which she had heard it would be more than probable that a dozen pretty things would attract her, and her bewilderment would thus be far greater than it had been at home with only a choice of imaginary objects.

"If old Sandy McLeod who gave the prize could know what a time I've had deciding what to do with it, I believe he would laugh at me and say in that deep voice of his,

"'Hoot, lass! Since the gold piece troubles ye, I wonder if ye're glad ye won it?'"

Randy in her pink calico gown, her sunbonnet still hanging from her arm, her cheeks flushed by the hot summer breeze, and the short ringlets curling about her forehead, made a lovely picture as she stood at the opening of the little grove and looked off across the valley to the distant hills.

She was thinking of the school session which would open so soon, when with her classmates she would be eagerly working to gain knowledge; of her longing for more than the "deestrict" school could give, of her father's promise that she should have all the education she wished for, and the light of enthusiasm shone in her merry gray eyes....