A Loyal Little Red-Coat by Ruth Ogden — Read

ERHAPS you think that is a queer title for a chapter. You would not think it queer at all if you had known her, for that is exactly what she was, and now and then it is just as well to call people by their right names. She was not old, however, in the sense of being wrinkled and white-haired and thin. Sometime, when somebody has been very kind to you, and has done you a "good turn" in real reliable fashion, haven't you just rushed up to them and exclaimed, "You dear old thing," as if any mere young thing would be quite incapable of such a deed of loving-kindness? Well, in just the sense of being very kind and very reliable, Aunt Frances was old, and in no other. To be sure, she was nearing her fiftieth birthday, and there was a generous sprinkling of gray hair on her temples, but the gray hair only made her face softer and sweeter, and her heart was no older than bonny Kate's.

Well, Aunt Frances sat knitting in a high-backed rocker on the wide step in front of the Van Vleet's door, a step that was made from one great unhewn stone, but whose roughnesses had been rounded down by the rains and storms of a hundred summers and winters. On the edge of the step, with his back against one of the large tubs of hydrangea which flanked the wide door-step on either side, sat Harry Avery. He had been silent for a long while. He was trying to get his courage up to say something to Aunt Frances, something that he knew it would grieve her to hear, and she had had so much to bear lately, he could not easily bring himself to it. "Aunt Frances," he said, at last, "I know you'll be sorry about it, but I think I shall have to go away to-morrow."