Little Homespun by Ruth Ogden — Read

Between one happy time and another the summer passed on at Little Homespun. Not that there was not occasionally an unhappy time -- if everything had moved perfectly smoothly for three whole months together, in a house where there were four irrepressible children, with many of the faults common to the average child the world over, it simply would have been a miracle outright. No, indeed; there were times now and then when Courage quite lost her patience and would have liked to box and ship those four little Bennetts straight back to their mother, and there were days when even good-natured Mary Duff lost her patience completely, and declared she would chastise the first one of them that dared to cross the threshold of the kitchen; but then, to be quite fair, I have more than a glimmering notion that Courage and Mary Duff had their naughty moods too, as well as the children. You can't feel perfectly right, you know, and always behave just as you should every minute simply because you happen to be grown up. It would be very fine if you could, and there is no doubt that with both grown-ups and children, trying hard to get the best of the naughty moods will in time accomplish wonders.

But taken as a whole the unhappy times at Homespun were nothing more than motes in the Homespun sunshine. Most of the time merry, happy voices rang through and about the house from dawn till sunset. Peals of happy laughter, that made any one laugh who heard them, echoed everywhere. Bits of childish song floated down stairs and up stairs or came in at the open windows -- "I'se a little Alabama Coon" always the burden of the refrain when Brevet was down for the day. Then, toward twilight, or more often a little later, when it had really grown quite dark, the same dear childish voices blended in a sweet evening hymn would float out at the open windows, and the little people whose whole minds had been given to play the long summer day through, would quiet down and then go contentedly off to bed, their childish hearts full of a sweet peace that they hardly understood, and which was not strange at all, for it was simply the peace that "passeth all understanding. " But not all the days by any manner of means were spent in or about Little Homespun. Joe's Fourth of July dinner had been a great success, and there had followed several all-day excursions carefully planned in all their details by Uncle Harry, and every one of them voted a great success.