'bout the shade of a swarm of bees), single, and in bunches movin' 'bout slow and deliberate, the way bees do in the early spring.
After Nellie and me had stood there and stared about ten minutes, I clucked at her to go on, and we went round the curve of the road up towards Janses'. I'd read how some of the officers had made use of the farmers' houses round the camp for their families to live in, and I concluded as likely as not I'd find a major's wife and children settled at the Janses' 'stead of Isabel and Gram and Gramp. So when Nellie got 'round the last curve before you reach the house, and I caught the sound of men's voices and laughin', I wasn't much surprised. I guessed the major was doin' a little entertainin'.
But 'twa'n't any major that was doin' the entertainin'. 'Twas somebody I've been tellin' about. Or, leastways, it was somebody she'd turned into! I began to suspicion it before I got out of my buggy even.
There's one of them great big-trunked elm trees with long, graceful, dippin' branches, you see so often in front of New England farm-houses, near the lilac clump by the Janses'. As I drew Nellie up under it, I caught sight of a board tacked up on it, 'bout as high up as you could reach, with some printin' on it. At the top of the board there
