it was Mother who planned them,” responded Berry.
“O-ooh!” exclaimed Mollie; but before she49 could say anything more a bell in the sitting-room tinkled sharply.
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“School! Father is waiting!” Berry exclaimed laughingly, and putting her arm about the blue-clad little figure she drew Mollie toward the door.
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CHAPTER IV A CABIN PARTY
There was nothing in the Arnolds’ sitting-room that January morning to remind Berry of a schoolroom unless it was the little brass bell that stood on the table beside which Mr. Arnold sat. Berry was so much in advance of Mollie in the usual school lessons that her father realized it would be difficult to teach the two little girls at the same time. The slate Berry had used in the village school in Vermont, and a box of slate pencils lay on the table, and a large atlas, opened at a good-sized map of the United States, was spread out beside it. While Mr. Arnold intended that Berry should have a proper knowledge of grammar and mathematics, he felt that she should understand something of the government under which she lived; and this morning he called the girls to look at the map of the United States, thinking it a good plan for both the girls to learn the names and location of the various states of the Union.
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“Where’s Shiloh?” questioned Mollie, gazing wonderingly at the brightly colored spaces on the map which Mr. Arnold pointed out as the different states of the Union.
“Poor little Shiloh isn’t even a village, Mollie; it is only the name of a log church on a mountain ridge in Tennessee,” he responded. But before the year 1862 ended Shiloh was known all through the country as the name of the place of one of the most terrific battles of the Civil War and had become an historic spot.
“Here is Tennessee,” continued Mr. Arnold; “and this blue line is the Tennessee River. Along here,” and with a pencil he pointed out the course of the broad stream, “it sweeps for many miles along the boundary line of Alabama, then turns northerly, in this great curve, and flows past Fort
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