THE IRON WOMAN

CHAPTER I

"Climb up in this tree, and play house!" Elizabeth Ferguson
commanded. She herself had climbed to the lowest branch of an
apple-tree in the Maitland orchard, and sat there, swinging her
white-stockinged legs so recklessly that the three children whom
she had summoned to her side, backed away for safety. "If you
don't," she said, looking down at them, "I'm afraid, perhaps,
maybe, I'll get mad."

Her foreboding was tempered by a giggle and by the deepening
dimple in her cheek, but all the same she sighed with a sort of
impersonal regret at the prospect of any unpleasantness. "It
would be too bad if I got mad, wouldn't it?" she said
thoughtfully. The others looked at one another in consternation.
They knew so well what it meant to have Elizabeth "mad," that
Nannie Maitland, the oldest of the little group, said at once,
helplessly, "Well."

Nannie was always helpless with Elizabeth, just as she was
helpless with her half-brother, Blair, though she was ten and
Elizabeth and Blair were only eight; but how could a little girl
like Nannie be anything but helpless before a brother whom she
adored, and a wonderful being like Elizabeth?--Elizabeth! who
always knew exactly what she wanted to do, and who instantly "got
mad," if you wouldn't say you'd do it, too; got mad, and then
repented, and hugged you and kissed you, and actually cried (or
got mad again), if you refused to accept as a sign of your
forgiveness her new slate-pencil, decorated with strips of red-
and-white paper just like a little barber's pole! No wonder
Nannie, timid and good-natured, was helpless before such a sweet,
furious little creature! Blair had more backbone than his sister,
but even he felt Elizabeth's heel upon his neck. David Richie, a
silent, candid, very stubborn small boy, was, after a momentary
struggle, as meek as the rest of them. Now, when she commanded
them all to climb, it was David who demurred, because, he said,
he spoke first for Indians tomahawking you in the back parlor.