It wasn't until the strap gave another and firmer reminder to Laura Mae. Martha had warned Phillip that he and Eugene had better leave girl's books alone, that Laura Mae had been whipped for letting the boys walk her home from school wither her.

Eli had gone to the hills for the day to choose and cut some cedar posts for the fence he was going to make around the new piece of land he had just plowed, so Clara was free, for one day, to do as she pleased. As it was Saturday, the girls were out of school. Martha was taking music lessons from Minnie Waller, three miles away, so she saddled her horse and rode to take her lesson.

Clara had not forgotten which kind of cookies Everett Whitmer like best from the days when they used to share their lunches at school, so many years ago. She had just baked and filled a large earthen jar with them. She called Laura Mae and asked, "Have you heard Eugene say how Maria Beckman is since her sick spell?"

"Why, yes, Mother, I asked him yesterday and he said that she is much better. She is able to do the housework again. Everything is so handy in the Mansion—I wish Pa would fix- "

Clara cut her off by asking, "Do you think Maria would like a taste of these fresh baked cookies, dear?"

"I'm sure she would. I will take some over to her if you want me to." Laura Mae knew if she took some to the Whitmer Mansion, Eugene and Everett would be given a good share of them too. Her gay little mind did not realize that her mother was sure of the very same thing. She hurried down the lane to the crossroads, then went west to the Whitmer Mansion with a lard bucket full of cookies.

The Whitmer Mansion always fascinated her. There was the one big room that seemed to be Everett Whitmer's one. It was adorned with souvenirs of all of his hunting days. There was a large elk head on the wall, the branching horns, of which, served as a rack for his rifles. In the room were many mounted birds, and in a glass case, was a beautiful collection of rocks and a piece of shale, with some unpolished garnets in it. Then, there were the rugs, three beauties. Two were made from the skins of black bears and the other was a glossy deer hide. The large room was Eugene's favorite too. He liked to stretch out on one of the soft rugs and read stories of Buffalo Bill and Kit Carson, or just read plain Indian stories.

When Laura Mae reached the elegant home, she handed the bucket to Maria Beckman who met her at the door. "Mother sent you a taste of her cookies. I hope you will like them."

"T'anks, t'anks, your mudder is so totful. How is she?"

"She is well, thank you," Laura Mae said with a smile, partly because the brogue always amused her.

"Come in," the kind Scandinavian woman invited.

"Thanks, but I will have to hurry right back home today. I wish I could stay and play. Mother said to come straight home."

"Den I will empty your bucket." Maria hurried into the pantry and brought the empty bucket back, smiling as she handed it to the little girl. She closed the door softly as the child skipped down the walk to the front gate. Eugene was gathering worms near the gate and he stopped Laura Mae as she was ready to leave the yard.

"Come, try fishing with me, Laura Mae, they ought to bite well today," he said, with a boyish radiance.

"Thank you, Eugene, but I will have to hurry home."

"Ah, come on, please," he begged. "We'll hurry around the bends on Cotton Creek, throwing the line in as we go. It won't take very long to fish to the crossroads. I have plenty of bait already caught."

"Well, all right, then, if we hurry. Father will soon be home with his new fence posts ad I want to be there when he comes." Eugene did not understand the full meaning of those last words, but he hurried for his fishing pole. When he came back, he offered it to his little friend, but she chose to watch for grasshoppers to use with the angle worms, while Eugene did the fishing.

They fished in the Whitmer field to the "Big Hole" in the bend that swung out almost to the road. They looked up and saw a boy on horseback driving a heifer toward the crossroads. He rode by, pretending not to have seen the girl and boy fishing. They recognized him as Phillip Dreyer, but neither spoke. Laura Mae knew that the boys did not like each other very well, so she made no comment on the way he had passed without even as much as saying, "Hello."

Eugene had caught nearly six large trout, by the time they reached the dividing fence, near the crossroads. He begged the girl to take them home for supper, but she refused to. They would have made her father suspicious and angry for he knew that their fishing rod had not yet been made ready for summer use. Laura Maw went to her home with a light and happy heart after she told Eugene goodbye. She was willing to do anything to help her mother, who was an angel in her eyes.

She had been home only a few minutes when Martha rode through the big gate to put her horse away. Martha began practicing on the organ as soon as she was in the house and had removed her hat and jacket. Her father had promised her a piano if she learned to play well on the old organ. It aggravated her to think, that after she had played her lesson through a few times, with much study and leave the organ, Laura Mae could sit down on the stool and hum the new tune through, then start pumping and play it all by ear, with more melody and rhythm, than Martha could acquire by the time she was ready to go and taker her next lesson. It was such things that made her delight in seeing her sister punished by her father.

Eli Porter was not in very good humor after having spent a day working hard in the cedars. At the supper table, he was sullen. Martha, always ready to make a scene, apparently by innocence, remarked, "Gee, I am getting tired of bacon and smoked ham, why didn't you bring home some of the fish?" Laura Mae glared at her sister with a mingling of anger and fear.

"Some of what fish?" the father demanded.

"When I was coming home from Minnie Waller's place, I met Phillip Dreyer driving a heifer that Mr. Luden had sent him out to find and he said he had seen Maura Mae and Eugene Whitmer with a good willow of fish at the Big Hole. Wouldn't they have tasted good?" Martha asked.

Eli Porter was furious! He trusted Martha's words without a doubt. Jumping up from his chair, he seized the strap as he had done the night the boys had carried her books home, and administered a beating to Maura Mae, that caused the mother to throw herself between the strap and the child.

"Keep out of this!" he snarled. "I will teach her to go a hunting for boys to fish with! Bah, boys at her age!"

Laura Mae was completely exhausted and broken in spirit, as well, when her father had finished treating her so cruelly. She would never tell him or Martha how she happened to meet Eugene that day, for she knew her father would be angrier than ever if he knew of the cookies she had taken to the Whitmer Mansion, he did not approve of her mother giving away any of the food that he worked so hard to buy. She went to her room to cry alone. When her mother went in to comfort her, she was shaking violently in a chill. Clara put her under warmed covers and put a hot water bottle to her foot. Soon the little girl was burning up with fever, how the stripes smarted that had made on her back! The next mornings he did not get out of bed, and when Eli and Martha had gone to church, Clara called old Doctor Wenks on the phone and asked him to come and examine her little girl.

Dr. Wenks hitched up his horse and buggy and drove to the Porter farm as fast as his horse could trot. Clara showed him to her girl's bedroom. He felt Laura Mae's pulse and took her temperature, then he examined her stomach for soreness. He turned to Clara, looking over his glasses and patting the child's hand, while he spoke, "She has had a quite severe attack of indigestion. Has she eaten something that she should not have?"

"No, I do not remember of her having eaten anything wrong," Clara said, but the mother instinct in her told her the answer. The beating Eli had given the child just at meal time turned the that she had eaten into an indigestible mass.

"Something was wrong but she will be all right now Mrs. Porter," the doctor assured the woman as he picked up his hat and grip ready to leave the room. "Her fever is already spent or I would have left some calomel for her to take. Just be careful of what she eats today and tomorrow."

Clara followed the doctor from the room. "What do I owe you, Doctor Wenks?" she asked, with her purse in hand.

"Not a cent, not a cent, Mrs. Porter," he answered with a smile. "I have not forgotten the day I brought that little red-faced baby girl into this world. I think lots of her. Goodbye." He put on his hat and hurried out to where his horse was tied to the fence.

Clara stood in the doorway, watching him as he turned his buggy around and drove out of the yard and down the lane. There was a big lump in her throat and tears rolled one by one down her palled cheeks.