Silas White's. She had the old blue jacket
tucked under her arm. When she reached the house, she spied Mr. White
just coming out of the back door with a milking pail. He carried a
lantern, too, for it was hardly light.
He stopped and stared when Ann ran up to him.
"Mr. White," said she, all breathless, "here's--something--I guess yer
didn't see yesterday."
Mr. White set down the milk pail, took the blue jacket which she
handed him, and scrutinized it sharply by the light of the lantern.
"I guess we didn't see it," said he finally. "I will put it down--it's
worth about three pence, I judge. Where"--
"Silas, Silas!" called a shrill voice from the house. Silas White
dropped the jacket and trotted briskly in, his lantern bobbing
agitatedly. He never delayed a moment when his wife called; important
and tyrannical as the little man was abroad, he had his own tyrant at
home.
Ann did not wait for him to return; she snatched up the blue jacket
and fled home, leaping like a little deer over the hoary fields. She
hung up the precious old jacket behind the shed door again, and no one
ever knew the whole story of its entrance in the inventory. If she had
been questioned, she would have told the truth boldly, though. But
Samuel Wales's Inventory had for its last item that blue jacket,
spelled after Silas White's own individual method, as was many another
word in the long list.
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