"I know it hurts. A pinched finger hurts a whole lot. You just cry a while and by that time it will stop hurting." She began to croon to the child the words of an old rhyme she had picked up somewhere long ago: "Hurt your finger, little lassie? Just you cry a while! For some day your heart will hurt And then you'll have to smile. Time enough to be a stoic In the coming years; Blessed are the days when pain Is washed away by tears." By the time the verse was ended the child's attention had been diverted from the finger to the song and the smiles came back to the little face. "Now," said Amanda, "we'll bathe it in the water at the trough and it will be entirely well." "And it won't turn into a pig's foot?" "Mercy, no!" "Charlie said it would if I didn't stop cryin'." "But you stopped crying, you know, before it could do that. Charlie'll pump water and we'll wash all nice and clean and go in to Mother." Water from the watering trough in the barn-yard soon effaced the traces of tears and a happy trio entered the big yard near the house. An older boy and Katie Landis came running to meet them. "Oh, Amanda," said Katie, "did you come once! Just at a good time, too! We're gettin' company for supper and Mom was wishin' you'd come so she could ask you about settin' the table. We're goin' to eat in the room to-night,'stead of the kitchen like we do other times. And we're goin' to have all the good dishes and things out and a bouquet in the middle of the table when we eat! Ain't that grand? But Pop, he told Mom this morning that if it's as hot to-night as it was this dinner he won't wear no coat to eat, not even if the Queen of Sheba comes to our place for a meal! But I guess he only said that for fun, because, ain't, the Queen of Sheba was the one in the Bible that came to visit Solomon?" "Yes." "Well, she ain't comin' to us, anyhow. It's that Isabel from Lancaster, Martin's girl, that's comin'." "Oh!" Amanda halted on her way across the lawn. "What time is she coming?" she asked in panicky way, as though she would flee before the visitor arrived. "Ach, not for long yet! We don't eat till after five. Martin brings her on the trolley with him when he comes home from the bank." "Then I'll go in to see your mother a while." A great uneasiness clutched at the girl's heart. Why had she come on that day? But Mrs. Landis was glad to see her. "Well, Amanda," she called through the kitchen screen, "you're just the person I said I wished would come. Come right in. "Come in the room a while where it's cool," she invited as Amanda and several of the children entered the kitchen. "I'm hot through and through! I just got a short cake mixed and in the stove. Now I got nothin' special to do till it's done. I make the old kind yet, the biscuit dough. Does your mom, too?" "Yes." "Ach, it's better, too, than this sweet kind some people make. I split it and put a lot of strawberries on it and we eat it with cream."