“Will you go with Leone?” The little girl did not say that she would or wouldn’t, but she was courteous and did not draw back. “You’ll be all right! _You’ll_ have a good time! Oh, I guess Uncle Dave didn’t tell these kids who you were, did he? This is Patricia.” “Can you say that?” Mrs. Sieverson asked--doubting if _she_ could. Vila drew shyly back, with one shoulder higher than the other; but Leone laughed in delight. “I can say it!” She nodded. She squeezed Patricia’s hand. “You can say it, can you? All right, then. Well, now, you kids can show this little girl what good times you can have on the farm. That so? All right then, Henry.” Mrs. Sieverson went into the house to get back to her baking. She had a lot to do to-day. She wasn’t at all worried about leaving their little visitor so long as Leone was with her. But she turned to call back to the children, who were still silently grouped about Patricia in the driveway: “You better stay in the yard with her. Mr. Lindsay won’t like it if she gets her dress dirty. Leone! You hear me?” “I heard. Do you want to come into the yard, Patricia? You do, don’t you?” Leone asked coaxingly. Patricia went soberly with her. Her eyes, gray with threads of violet in the clear iris, were looking all about silently. Her little hand lay quiet but with confidence in Leone’s. The other children followed, the boys lagging behind, but coming all the same. “There, now! Here’s just the nicest shady place, and Patricia can sit here, can’t she, and just be so nice?” Leone placed Patricia in the round patterned shade of an apple tree, and spread out her linen dress, making it perfectly even all around, and carefully drew out her little legs straight in front of her with the shiny black slippers close together. “There!” she said proudly. “See?” She sat down on one side of Patricia, and then Vila shyly and with a sidelong confiding smile sat down on the other. The boys hung back together. “Leone!” Mrs. Sieverson called from the house. “Ain’t you got something to entertain her with? Why don’t you get your dolls?” “Do you want to see our dolls, Patricia?” So far Patricia had been consenting but silent. “You go in and get them, Vila,” Leone ordered, and when Vila whined, “I don’t want to!” she said, “Yes, you have to. I can’t leave her. I have to take care of her. Don’t I, Patricia?” But when Vila came back with the scanty assortment of dolls Patricia looked at them and then reached out her hand for the funny cloth boy doll in the knitted sweater suit. The boys laughed proudly and looked at each other, the way they had done when the swan in the park at Swea City took the piece of sandwich they put on the water for it. “Isn’t that doll cute, Patricia?” Leone begged eagerly. Patricia touched its black-embroidered eyes, and its red-embroidered lips--done in outline stitch--and then looked up at the eager, watching children and smiled with that gleam of mischief.