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them a little land at the edge of our place somewhere. Perhaps one of our neighbors on the other side would contribute a little, too, and then all of the neighbors could get together and help build them a house. We could make a sort of raising bee out of it.”
    “A raising bee!” repeated Mrs. Woodlawn, her eyes beginning to shine. “Yes, we could do that.”
    “Oh, Father,” cried Caddie, forgetting that she had not been included in the conversation so far, “that would be lots of fun! And I’ll tell you the very place for the house.”
    “You will?” laughed her father. “So you’ve already picked the site?”
    “Yes, I have! It’s that corner down by the swamp. Emma loves the smell and the redwing blackbirds, and they could get all the cranberries and wild rice they needed and maybe they could sell what they didn’t need, and they could make willow baskets out of the willow shoots and sell those too.”
    “Willow baskets?” asked her father. “Sell willow baskets? You’re going a little too fast for me, daughter. I’m lost in the swamp.”
    “Oh, wait!” cried Caddie. She was in one of her eager moods when ideas came too fast to be expressed. She flew out of the room and returned in a moment with Emma’s basket in her hands. “Look! Wouldn’t you pay money for a big basket, if it were as nicely made as that?”
    Her mother took the basket in her own slender hands and looked it over carefully.”
    “Yes, I would,” she said. “I believe a lot of people would. We’ve never had anyone around here who could make baskets.”
    “Well, we have now,” said Caddie. “Can’t we set the McCantrys up in business?”
    “Where’s my bonnet?” cried Mrs. Woodlawn. “I’m going to call on the neighbors!”
    Dancing with excitement, Caddie ran for her mother’s tasteful gray bonnet.
    “Thank Kind Providence, it doesn’t have purple pansies on it,” said Mrs. Woodlawn as she went to the barn for a horse.
    There was nothing like another’s need to rally the pioneers of that day. Dr. Nightingale joined Mr. Woodlawn in donating a good-sized strip of land at the edge of the swamp. Another man, who had plenty of timber on his farm, offered enough logs to build a cabin if others would cut and haul them. Men and boys who had nothing to give but their time gladly did the cutting and hauling. One neighbor offered a pig, another a cow, and a third the use of his horse and plow to break a garden spot.
    On the day of the “raising,” men and boys on horsebackarrived early from all the country around and went to work on the cabin. The women and girls came along later in the morning with covered dishes and jars of pickles and preserves.
    Mrs. Woodlawn and Mrs. McCantry, with the help of the children, had made tables by putting long planks on sawhorses near the site of the new house. Over an open fire were great pots of coffee and stone jars full of Mrs. Woodlawn’s choice baked beans.
    It was not often that the neighbors came together for a common purpose. They were a settled community now, and it had been a long time since one of them had had a raising for himself. There had been the time of the Indian “Massacree Scare,” when they had all come together under the Woodlawns’ roof for several days; but then they had been filled with fear and distrust. Now they came together in a spirit of friendship and helpfulness.
    The children raced about playing tag and “Blindman’s Buff” and “I Spy,” while the men laid up stones for a fireplace and hewed and raised the logs one upon another to make the McCantrys’ walls. The women unpacked baskets and laughed and chattered as they spread the feast. They were seeing friends and neighbors they had not seen for weeks, perhaps for months or years.
    There was one thing which Mrs. Woodlawn and Mrs. McCantry had in common: they both loved a party. With happy, flushed faces they moved about among the neighbors, shaking hands, filling coffee cups, and urging more