They drove away a few minutes later, Mr. Wescott holding the reins and Mary Christmas beside him, her great bundle securely tied to the back of the carriage. The children waved them up the hill and out of sight, repeating to themselves her farewell words:-- “Next year when the roads are dry and the petals fall--like this--I come again. You wait--for me?” That night every Wescott dreamed of Mary Christmas. Mr. Wescott sat quite up in bed, declaiming indignantly his very words of that morning to her stupid accusers, and aroused Mrs. Wescott, who for what seemed hours had been enduring the hardships of a Monday in an Armenian kitchen. Roger killed three monstrous Turks, alone and single-handed, to avenge the death of Mary Christmas’ husband; while John was a shepherd boy, tending his sheep in wide pastures and wearing a many-colored cap, at which all of his silly sheep laughed again and again. As for Mary and Cynthia, they spent the night in a whirl of excitement in which Methuselah and Enoch strove to enlist Mr. Longfellow’s assistance in a headlong rush against hordes of barbarians. The State of Maine bard, however, obstinately declined to be “up and doing”; indeed, he proved himself worse than useless in the heat of the encounter, although he doubtless realized more fully than ever before the earnestness and the reality of life! IV A WILD CRAB-APPLE TREE That winter, which everyone called an “old-fashioned” one because the harbor was frozen for miles toward the open sea and the snow blocked the roads in great, curving drifts, they planned and replanned the journey which Mary Christmas would make in the spring. Often in the evening, when the supper dishes were washed and put away, when Mr. Wescott was lost in the _Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan_ and the boys were popping corn over the glowing embers in the deep fireplace, Mrs. Wescott, Mary, and Cynthia would trace her way in the family atlas, which had been purchased at some sacrifice because it featured the State of Maine.