"Why would I want to set the house afire?" Timothy asked wonderingly. "Well, I don't know 's you would want to, but I thought you might get to playin' with matches, though I've hid 'em all." "Play with matches!" exclaimed Timothy, in wide-eyed astonishment that a match could appeal to anybody as a desirable plaything. "Oh, no, thank you; I shouldn't have thought of it." "I don't know as we ought to have left 'em alone," said Vilda, looking back, as Samantha urged the moderate Maria over the road; "though I don't know exactly what they could do." "Except run away," said Samantha reflectively. "I wish to the land they would! It would be the easiest way out of a troublesome matter. Every day that goes by will make it harder for us to decide what to do with 'em; for you can't do by those you know the same as if they were strangers." There was a long main street running through the village north and south. Toward the north it led through a sweet-scented wood, where the grass tufts grew in verdant strips along the little-traveled road. It had been a damp morning, and, though now the sun was shining brilliantly, the spiders' webs still covered the fields; gossamer laces of moist, spun silver, through which shone the pink and lilac of the meadow grasses. The wood was a quiet place, and more than once Miss Vilda and Samantha had discussed matters there which they would never have mentioned at the White Farm. Maria went ambling along serenely through the arcade of trees, where the sun went wandering softly, "as with his hands before his eyes;" overhead, the vast blue canopy of heaven, and under the trees the soft brown leaf carpet, "woven by a thousand autumns." "I don't know but I could grow to like the baby in time," said Vilda, "though it's my opinion she's goin' to be dreadful troublesome; but I'm more 'n half afraid of the boy. Every time he looks at me with those searchin' eyes of his, I mistrust he's goin' to say something about Marthy,--all on account of his giving me such a turn when he came to the door." "He'd be awful handy round the house, though, Vildy; that is, if he _is_ handy,--pickin' up chips, 'n' layin' fires, 'n' what not; but, 's you say, he ain't so takin' as the baby at first sight. She's got the same winnin' way with her that Marthy hed!" "Yes," said Miss Vilda grimly; "and I guess it's the devil's own way."