"
Down stairs the quick feet pattered to the hall-closet where the little
sun hat hung, always ready for the garden. Soon she was back, and held
her chin up with great composure for grandma to tie the strings.
The dear grandmother quietly laid her fine sewing down beside her on the
sofa. "_Is_ my little girl going away off by herself in the woods?"
"Yes, miles and _mileses_!"
"And what will you do when you get hungry?"
"Why, I'm going to take all my money," forthwith going to a drawer in
the old-fashioned book-case, and taking out a diminutive porte-monnaie,
which contained her whole fortune, three silver three-cent pieces, and
hanging it on her fat little hand, "and I can go to some g'ocery in the
woods, and buy lots of butter crackers."
I, sitting in an easy chair, just recovered from a long illness,
suggested, "But, Zay, you might want something besides crackers. I know
a little girl who is very fond of 'drum-sticks' and 'wish-bones'!"
"I can eat bears and wolves. I can make gravy, and," she added, "I'm
going to take grandpa's gun wif me."
"Very well," answered her mamma, going to grandfather's closet and
bringing out the gun, which was twice as large as the child.
There she stood before us--a little blue-eyed girl with a demure sun-hat
shading a very resolute and, as yet, untroubled face, the gun held up
tight against her with one fat dimpled hand, while from the other
dangled the little purse.
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