Caddie Woodlawn's Family Read Online Free PDF

hastily, Harriet,” said Mr. Woodlawn mildly, from the doorway.
    “Oh, Father, we may ask them in for the night, mayn’t we?” begged Caddie.
    “Well, now,” said Mr. Woodlawn, with a pleasant wink at Caddie over his wife’s smooth dark head, “we’d better let the McCantrys go on to the next farm. The Bunns or the Silbernagles will take them in for the night, and that will let us out of any obligation.”
    Mrs. Woodlawn whirled about with a suspicious look in her eyes and was just in time to catch her husband’s smile and the tail end of his wink.
    “Go along with you!” she said, beginning to laugh. “I never intended to let them go without supper and a night’s rest, and you know that. But I do feel better for having said what I think of them!”
    Tom and Caddie and Warren raced away to invite the McCantrys in to supper and comfortable beds. They were a dispirited-looking lot as they sat along the roadside, waiting for the hospitality of a former neighbor. The bottom of Mrs. McCantry’s dress was draggled with mud and dust, and the two boys were barefoot; but Mrs. McCantry had a bonnet of the latest fashion trimmed with purple velvet pansies, and Pearly, the little girl who was next to the youngest, had a new gold ring.
    Emma, the eldest of the four and Caddie’s own age, slipped a warm brown arm through Caddie’s and gave her a squeeze. Emma didn’t have gold rings or bonnets with pansies; but she was brown and solid and comfortable, and Caddie liked her best of them all. When a bird called out in the meadow, Emma could pucker up her lips and imitate it. It was Emma who looked after the little ones as much as her mother did.

    Casting wistful glances at the Woodlawns’ house
    Now Mr. McCantry picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow, and Caddie thought that his shoulders looked rounder and more bent than they had when he went away. The wheelbarrow creaked as he trundled it up the path to the front door. Caddie could see that it contained some patchwork quilts and cooking utensils, a set of Mrs. McCantry’s hoops, and a clock which was not running.
    “Why don’t you wind your clock?” asked Caddie. “I hate to see a clock that doesn’t go.”
    “It’s broke,” said Emma. “We still carry it around, but it’s like most of the rest of our things. It won’t work any more.”
    “That’s too bad,” said Caddie, but it gave her an idea.
    Mr. and Mrs. Woodlawn met the McCantrys at the front door.
    “Well, well,” said Mr. Woodlawn heartily, shaking his former neighbor’s hand, “so you have come back to us again, McCantry? Dunnville is a pretty good place after all.”
    “It is that!” said Mr. McCantry. “I’m glad to be back. We’ve been a weary way.”
    “Now, Josiah, why do you say that?” cried Mrs. McCantry sharply.
    Caddie looked at her in surprise and saw that she had lost her discouraged look of a few moments ago and was quite the fine lady once again.
    “We have had a most edifying journey really,” she said, “and spent some months with my brother, who has a mostelegant house which puts anything you have here in Dunnville quite to shame. Of course we were most elaborately entertained, and it is only by the merest chance that you see us in these circumstances. An unforeseen accident happened to our horse and carriage, and we just thought how healthful it would be to come along on foot.”
    “Yes, yes, of course,” said Mrs. Woodlawn hastily. “Now do come in and wash yourselves for supper.”
    The two little boys went along with Tom and Warren—while Pearly was taken in charge by Caddie’s little sisters, Hetty and Minnie.
    Caddie squeezed Emma’s arm.
    “Come up to my room,” she said.
    “Wait,” said Emma, smiling mysteriously. “I’ve got a present for you, Caddie.”
    “A present for me?” Caddie was incredulous.
    “It’s not very good,” said Emma shyly, “but I made it myself. An old lady who took us in one night, when we hadn’t any money, showed