Caddie Woodlawn's Family Read Online Free PDF Page A

fighting is something which even the smallest scholars can take pleasure in. Hetty and the little Hankinson half-breeds and all of the younger boys and girls armed themselves with cattails and began to beat Obediah and Ashur and their sympathizers over the head with them. The air was hazy with flying fur, and a most enjoyable howling and yammering and sneezing arose to the blue spring heavens.
    In vain Miss Parker clapped her hands and rang her bell. Her efforts only added to the general pandemonium.
    At last Obediah and his fellows turned tail and ran, followed by a few persistent boys and by a trail of cattail fur. Some of the more enthusiastic members of the victorious party began beating one another over the head with cattails just for the pure delight of the sport, and because they hated to see a good thing come to an end. But fortunately the supply of cattails which the girls had cut was presently exhausted. The shouting began to subside, although the sneezing continued for some time. The children looked at one another and gradually their savagery gave place to laughter.
    “Look at you!”
    “Say, but you’re a sight!”
    “What’ll your Ma say, anyhow!”
    Miss Parker’s neat and tidy scholars had turned intofurry beasts. The cattail fuzz was stuck all over their woolen garments as securely as if it had grown there.
    “All we need is tails,” said Caddie.
    Warren picked up a discarded cattail reed and began to wag it behind him like a tail.
    “Look! Look! I’ve got one!” he shouted. “Look! I’ve got a tail!”
    Victorious and pleased with themselves, the good children of school all caught up tails and began to wag them joyously behind them. In twos and threes and fours they took their various ways homeward, all of them prancing and capering, barking or yowling, and wagging their tails behind them.
    So school dispersed that year, and the uncomprehending mothers of Dunnville welcomed home strange beasts whose sturdy homespun garments were coated for weeks with a mysterious fur which defied all brushing and shaking and hanging in the wind.
    Wagging and prancing contentedly between Tom and George, Caddie suddenly remarked, “You know, Tom, cattails were my idea.”
    “It wasn’t bad,” said Tom. “I might have thought of it myself, only I didn’t get around to it.”
    “I think it was pretty good,” said George admiringly. “I think we’d ought to let her in on our side, Tom—honest I do.”
    “Well—” said Tom, his voice more friendly than his words, “I don’t see how we’re going to keep her out. It looks like she’s in already.”
    Caddie gave her cattail tail an extra wag. She had noidea what Mother would say at the appearance of her coat, but she knew that any punishment she might have to endure would be a small matter beside the satisfaction of seeing the fur fly around Obediah’s ears and of hearing Tom say, “It looks like she’s in already!”

FOUR

The Willow Basket
    “T HEY ’ RE SHIFTLESS —that’s what they are!” said Mrs. Woodlawn decidedly.
    Shiftless was a terrible word in pioneer Wisconsin. Caddie, Tom, and Warren exchanged discouraged glances. They had been delighted to see the McCantrys come back—even if the father, mother, and four children
had
returned on foot, wheeling all of their possessions in a wheelbarrow.
    Mr. and Mrs. McCantry and the four children were standing in the road now, casting wistful glances at the Woodlawns’ cozy white house while they waited for Tom and Caddie to inform their parents of their old neighbors’ return.
    “But, Mother,” said Caddie, “Emma is so nice, and all they’ve got left is what they can carry in a wheelbarrow.”
    “They had just as good a chance here as the rest of us,” said Mrs. Woodlawn severely. “They had a farm, but they must needs sell it for what they could get and go on to something finer. And now, it seems, they are back with nothing but a wheelbarrow.”
    “We must not judge people too