So it will be seen that even under Mrs. Hagood’s rule Posey’s life was not all shadow, the less so that Mr. Hagood touched by her pleasure managed with gentle guile and under one pretext and another to secure her for a companion now and then. Outings which it would be hard to tell which enjoyed the more, Posey for herself or Mr. Hagood for her. Occasionally, too, some matter of business would call Mrs. Hagood away for the afternoon, when she would take her towels to hem or carpet rags to sew, as the case might be, out to the little shop with its mingled odors of fresh lumber, paint, and varnish, where Mr. Hagood hummed old tunes and whistled softly to himself as he worked. And where seated on a rheumatic buggy seat in one corner, with the shaggy head of Rover resting on her knee, in watching Mr. Hagood at his work, and listening to his favorite old-time stories she would find real if unexciting enjoyment. Then again during the season of raspberries and blackberries many were the delightful hours Posey spent berrying in the “back pasture.” A field this, only a little remote from the village, but hidden from it by a bit of intervening woods, and so shut away from all outward, disturbing sight or sound that with its peaceful stillness and sunny, wind-swept solitude, it seemed as genuine a bit of nature as though the subduing hand of man had never been laid upon it, and one which the city-bred child fairly revelled in. A big, stony, thin-soiled field was the “back pasture,” affording hardly grass enough for the two or three cows which fed there, hence held in slight esteem by its owner and suffered to lapse into an almost unchecked growth of briars and undergrowth, with here and there a thicket of young and fast-growing trees, a spot where wild growths ran riot, where bittersweet hung its clusters, and the wild grape tangled its strong and leafy meshes; a spot, too, that the birds knew, where they nested and sang, for the most part unmolested and unafraid. But the crowning charm of the place to Posey was the chattering brook that with many a curve and bend, as if seeking excuse to linger, ran in a little hollow through the centre of the pasture. A clear, sparkling little stream, gurgling and hurrying through the sunlit spaces, loitering in the shadows of the willows whose green fingers bent down to meet its current, with shallow places where one could wade or cross on stepping-stones, and deep pools where minnows loved to gather and hide them under the trailing grasses of the banks. This was Posey’s first acquaintance with a brook and for her it had not only charm but almost personality; she talked to it as she would to a companion, beside it she felt a certain sense of companionship, and no matter how often she might come, always she greeted the sight of the stream with the same delight.