everlasting smirk, and his diddling walk, and take care of all the
Herricks' sisters and mothers and aunts, and the Herricks' cows and
horses and pigs--and--hens--and--and"----

But Ivy had kept her thoughts on her marriage longer than ever before
in her life; and ere she had finished the inventory of John Herricks's
personal property and real estate, the blue eyes were closed in the
sweet, sound sleep of youth and health.

Mrs. Geer, in her estimate of her daughter's attainments, was partly
right and partly wrong. Ivy had never been "finished" at Mrs. Porter's
seminary, and was consequently in a highly unfinished condition. "Small
Latin and less Greek" jostled each other in her head. German and French,
Italian and Spanish, were strange tongues to Ivy. She could not dance,
nor play, nor draw, nor paint, nor work little dogs on footstools.

What, then, could she do?

_Imprimis_, she could climb a tree like a squirrel. _Secundo_, she could
walk across the great beam in the barn like a year-old kitten. In the
pursuit of hens' eggs she knew no obstacles; from scaffold to scaffold,
from haymow to haymow, she leaped defiant. She pulled out the hay from
under the very noses of the astonished cows, to see if, perchance, some
inexperienced pullet might there have deposited her golden treasure.
With all four-footed beasts she was on the best of terms. The matronly
and lazy old sheep she unceremoniously hustled aside, to administer
consolation and caresses to the timid, quaking lamb in the corner
behind. Without saddle or bridle she could

"Ride a black horse