"Over there," said the boy. I followed the twist of his head, and glimpsed
a wooden cottage on the border of the forest, so very new that the
sheathing had not yet been covered with clapboards. I stood up in the
buckboard and saw that it was a story and a half high, and could have had
four or five rooms in it. The bare, curtainless windows were set in the
unpainted frames, but the front door seemed not to be hung yet. The people
meant to winter there, however, for the sod was banked up against the
wooden underpinning; a stovepipe stuck out of the roof of a little wing
behind. While I gazed a young-looking woman came to the door, as if she
had been drawn by our talk with the children, and then she jumped down
from the threshold, which still wanted a doorstep, and came slowly out to
us. The children ran to her with their coppers, and then followed her back
to us.
Mrs. Makely called to her before she reached us: "I hope you weren't
frightened. We didn't drive over any of them."
"Oh, I wasn't frightened," said the young woman. "It's a very safe place
to bring up children, in the country, and I never feel uneasy about them.
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