Family -- Juvenile fiction; Sisters -- Juvenile fiction
Then a large--a very large--black ant hurrying up the trunk of a young
pear tree, caught her eye and she stopped to study him. She thought
for a moment of writing her name and address on a piece of paper and
tying it to him so that at some distant date, say a hundred years
ahead, another little girl might find the ant and read that Sarah had
also known him.
"If a turtle lives sixty years, why can't an ant live a hundred?" Sarah
asked the black crow who sat on a branch and stared at her. "Only, I
haven't any paper or pencil or thread to tie it on with--so I'll wait."
With this sensible conclusion she turned her attention to the swing
Warren had put up for her and Shirley on a conveniently low limb of an
apple tree. Sarah did not swing sedately--she must do that as she did
everything else, fast and furiously. She took out the notched board
that served as a seat and stood up in the loop, jerking herself forward
and backward until she attained the desired speed. Swooping down in
one of these mad rushes, she caught sight of something moving in the
next field.
"There's the ram!" she thought. "I'll go see what he looks like"; and
jumping out of the swing she ran over to the wire fence that enclosed
the orchard on three sides.
"He doesn't look cross--you're not, are you?" said Sarah, addressing
the Roman-nosed wooly creature that stood gravely regarding her.
The flock of sheep were up at the other end of the field and the ram
stood alone. Perhaps he had glimpsed the flashing of Sarah's frock
through the trees as she swung and had come down to see what made the
fluttering. Sarah was quite enchanted with him and thought he looked
lonely.
She dropped to her knees and crawled through the fence, holding back
the heavy wire strands with difficulty, and sat down on the grass to
pull up her socks, brush her hair out of her eyes and tuck in a handful
of gathers at her waistline where her skirt had torn loose from the
band.
Having made herself neat for the introduction, Sarah advanced
fearlessly to greet the ram. To her surprise he came toward her with
lowered head, and something in his wicked little eyes made her uneasy.
The next thing she knew, she felt a terrific impact against her legs
and down she went with a thud. She had presence enough of mind to roll
over and she kept rolling, in a frantic instinct to get out of the way
of that powerful head. Dizzy and shaken--for she had fallen
heavily--she scrambled to her feet and began to run, the ram coming
after her valiantly.
"Rosemary! Mother! Rich--Rich! Warren!" screamed poor Sarah, running
as she had never run before, "Rich! Rich!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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