What Katy Did. Susan Coolidge

and always sat in the rocking-chair when there was one. It was no matter where she sat, Miss Petingill told people, but Tom was delicate, and must be made comfortable. A big family Bible always came too, and a special red merino pin-cushion, and some “shade pictures” of old Mr. and Mrs. Petingill and Peter Petingill, who was drowned at sea, and photographs of Mrs. Porter, who used to be Marcia Petingill, and Mrs. Porter’s husband, and all the Porter children. Many little boxes and jars came also, and a long row of phials and bottles filled with home-made physics and herb teas. Miss Petingill could not have slept without having them beside her, for, as she said, how did she knew that she might not be “took sudden” with something, and die for want of a little ginger-balsam or pennyroyal?

      The Carr children always made so much noise, that it required something unusual to make Miss Petingill drop her work, as she did now, and fly to the window. In fact there was a tremendous hubbub, hurrahs from Dorry, stamping of feet, and a great outcry of shrill glad voices. Looking down, Miss Petingill saw the whole six—no seven, for Cecy was there too—stream out of the wood-house door—which wasn’t a door, but only a tall open arch—and rush noisily across the yard. Katy was at the head, bearing a large black bottle without any cork in it, while the others carried in each hand what seemed to be a cookie.

      “Katherine Carr! Kather-ine!” screamed Miss Petingill, tapping loudly on the glass. “Don’t you see that it’s raining? You ought to be ashamed to let your little brothers and sisters go out and get wet in such a way!” But nobody heard her, and the children vanished into the shed, where nothing could be seen but a distant flapping of pantalettes and frilled trousers, going up what seemed to be a ladder, farther back in the shed. So, with a dissatisfied cluck, Miss Petingill drew back her head, perched the spectacles on her nose, and went to work again on Katy’s plaid alpaca, which had two immense zigzag rents across the middle of the front breadth. Katy’s frocks, strange to say, always tore exactly in that place.

      If Miss Petingill’s eyes could have reached a little farther, they would have seen that it wasn’t a ladder up which the children were climbing, but a tall wooden post, with spikes driven into it about a foot apart. It required quite a stride to get from one spike to the other; in fact, the littler ones couldn’t have managed it at all had it not been for Clover and Cecy pushing very hard from below, while Katy, making a long arm, clawed from above. At last they were all safely up, and in the delightful retreat which I am about to describe.

      Imagine a low, dark loft without any windows, and with only a very little light coming in through the square hole in the floor, to which the spiky post led. There was a strong smell of corn-cobs, though the corn had been taken away; a great deal of dust and spider-web in the corners, and some wet spots on the boards, for the roof always leaked a little in rainy weather.

      This was the place, which for some reason I have never been able to find out, the Carr children preferred to any other on rainy Saturdays, when they could not play out-doors. Aunt Izzie was as much puzzled at this fancy as I am. When she was young (a vague, far-off time, which none of her nieces and nephews believed in much), she had never had any of these queer notions about getting off into holes and corners and poke-away places. Aunt Izzie would gladly have forbidden them to go the loft, but Dr. Carr had given his permission, so all she could do was to invent stories about children who had broken their bones in various dreadful ways by climbing posts and ladders. But these stories made no impression on any of the children except little Phil, and the self-willed brood kept on their way, and climbed their spiked posts as often as they liked.