“Carolina Martin, you get up this instant. Do you hear me? I’ve called you sixteen times already, if ’tisn’t twenty, and this the morning the new teacher starts at the old log schoolhouse over at Woodford’s. You don’t want us all to be late, do you, and have her think we’re shiftless, like the poor white folks our mother used to tell about, in the mountains down in Tennessee. We, with the bluest blood in our veins that flows in the whole South! Carolina, are you up?”

This conversation was carried on in a high-pitched voice by a thin, homely, freckled-faced little girl whose straight brick-red hair had not a wave in it, and whose long, skinny legs, showing beneath the gingham dress two years too short for her, made her appear as ungainly as a colt.

There was no one else present in the big living-room of the log cabin, but the voice carried well, and was heard in the loft above, where, in a large four-posted bed, another small girl sleepily replied, “Oh, Dixie, I wish folks never did have to get up, nor go to school, nor—” The voice trailed off drowsily, and Carolina had just turned over for another little nap when she heard her sister climbing the ladder which led from the room below to the loft where the two girls slept.

Instantly the culprit leaped to the floor. When the red head of Dixie appeared at the square opening of the trap-door, the small girl was making great haste to don her one piece of all-over underwear.

She smiled her sweetest at her irate sister, whose wrath softened, for little Carolina was so like their beautiful mother. Even at eight years of age she had the languid manner of the South, and spoke with a musical drawl.

But there was no envy in the heart of the older girl. She was passionately glad that one of them was so like that adored mother who had died soon after the birth of her youngest child, who now was four years old.

The father, an honest, hardy Nevada mountaineer, had been killed in a raid two years later, and since then Dixie, aged twelve, had been little mother and home-maker for the other three children.

Before Dixie could rebuke the younger sister, a door below opened and a baby voice called shrilly, “Oh, Dix, do come quick! Suthin’s a-runnin’ over on the stove.”

“It’s the porridge.” The older girl sniffed the air, which conveyed to her the scent of something burning. Down the ladder she scrambled.

“Well, lucky stars!” she exclaimed a moment later as she removed the kettle and gave the contents a vigorous stirring.

“’Tisn’t stuck to the bottom, that’s one comfort.” Then, whirling about, she caught the little four-year-old boy in her arms as she exclaimed, “And so our Jimmikins is going to school to-day for the very first time.”

The small head, covered with sunny curls, nodded, and his eyes twinkled as he proudly prattled: “I’ll stan’ up front and I’ll spell c-a-t, and ever’thin’, won’t I, Dixie?”

“Of course you will, pet lamb, and maybe the teacher will ask you to recite, and won’t she be surprised to find that you know seven speaking pieces?”

While Dixie talked she was dishing up the porridge. She glanced at the ladder and sighed. Would she have to climb it again? What could be keeping Carolina? But just then a foot appeared and slowly there descended the member of the family who was always late. She had been brushing her soft golden-brown curls in front of their one mirror. A pretty circling comb held them in place.

Carol wore a faded gingham dress which was buttoned in the front, that she might fasten it herself.

There was a discontented expression in her violet eyes.

“I just hate this ol’ dress,” she began fretfully. “Jessica Archer doesn’t believe we have any blue blood at all, or we’d want to dress like the Southern ladies do in the pictures.”

Dixie sighed, and the younger girl, who thought only of herself, continued, “If my beautiful mother had lived, she wouldn’t have let me

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قراءة كتاب Dixie MartinThe Girl of Woodford's Cañon

Dixie MartinThe Girl of Woodford's Cañon

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DIXIE MARTIN

CHAPTER ONE
DIXIE

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