After the morning’s work was finished Posey was sent out to pick currants for jelly; and a little later Mr. Hagood might have been seen slipping, with all the caution of a criminal, along behind the screening grapevine trellis towards the end of the garden where were the currant bushes, and half hidden among them Posey shedding hot and bitter tears over her task. “I’m real sorry you couldn’t go, Posey,” he said in a voice lowered as if fearful it might reach the keen ears of his wife, “for I know how you’d been a-lottin’ on it; but Mrs. Hagood knows what’s best fer you.” Loyalty was a strong element in Elnathan Hagood’s nature. Whatever his private thought might be, not a complaining word of her had he ever been heard to utter. And child though she was, Posey instinctively recognized and respected this feeling, but now carried away by her disappointment and grief she exclaimed passionately, “I don’t know whether she does or not! At any rate I don’t believe she ever was a little girl in her life.” “Well, you know the real trouble is,” explained Mr. Hagood, “that she never had any little girl of her own.” For it was one of his favorite theories that a child, especially a little daughter, would have softened all the asperity of that somewhat flinty nature, rendering it at once sweet and tender. “Besides,” he continued, “a picnic isn’t anything really so wonderful. I wouldn’t give a single cent to go to one myself; though to be sure I’m gettin’ oldish and a bit stiff for swingin’, and rowin’ on the lake, and racin’ through the woods, an’ all that sort of thing I used to enjoy so when I was your age.” He checked himself with the sudden realization that this was hardly the way to impress upon her what undesirable affairs picnics were, and busied himself in extracting a paper parcel from his coat pocket. “Now don’t cry any more,” he urged; “see here, I’ve brought you some nuts and candy.” “Oh, Mr. Hagood,” cried Posey impulsively jumping up and throwing her arms around his neck, to his great astonishment, and hardly less confusion, “you are the very best man in all the world!” “Well, now, Honey,” his wrinkled face flushing with pleasure at the caress, to him something so unwonted and unexpected, and giving her hand an awkward stroke by way of return, “you be a good girl and mebby you and I will go somewhere and have a picnic by ourselves some day. I’ll see if I can’t fix it.” Then Mr. Hagood, in the same stealthy manner with which he had come, returned to his shop. And Posey behind the currant bushes forgot to breathe out threatenings and slaughter against Mrs. Hagood, as she munched her candy, so much the sweeter for the sympathy that had accompanied it, and found herself more cheered than an hour before she would have believed it possible she ever could be again. CHAPTER V THE PICNIC “Elnathan, I’m out of flour; you must go to mill to-day,” said Mrs. Hagood one morning a little later.