the yelping Stumpy’s caresses. Gladly he suffered them, letting the excited dog lick his hands and even his face; for, after all, Stumpy was the best and dearest member of the Family. Then, to steady him, he gave him his bundle to carry up to the cabin, and proudly Stumpy trotted on ahead with it. MacPhairrson’s voice trembled as he tried to thank the Boy for bringing Stumpy back to him–trembled and choked.
“I can’t help it!” he explained apologetically as soon as he got his voice again. “I love Stumpy best, of course! You kept the best fer me! But, Jiminy Christmas, Boy, how I miss the rest on ’em!”
“I didn’t keep Stumpy!” explained the Boy as the two went up the path. “It was Mike Sweeny took care of him for you. He brought him round this morning because he had to get off to the woods cruising. I took care of Bones–we’ll find him on his box inside–and of cross old Butters. Thunder, how Butters has missed you, MacPhairrson! He’s bit me twice, just because I wasn’t you. There he is, poking his nose out of his barrel.”
The old woodchuck thought he had heard MacPhairrson’s voice, but he was not sure. He came out and sat up on his fat haunches, his nostrils quivering with expectation. Then he caught sight of the familiar limping form. With a little squeal of joy he scurried forward and fell to clutching and clawing at his master’s legs till MacPhairrson picked him up. Whereupon he expressed his delight by striving to crowd his nose into MacPhairrson’s neck. At this moment the fox appeared from hiding behind the cabin, and sat up, with ears cocked shrewdly and head to one side, to take note of his master’s return.
“Lord, how Carrots has growed!” exclaimed MacPhairrson, lovingly, and called him to come. But the fox yawned in his face, got up lazily, and trotted off to the other side of the island. MacPhairrson’s face fell.
“He’s got no kind of a heart at all,” said the Boy, soothing his disappointment.
“He ain’t no use to nobody,” said MacPhairrson. “I reckon we’d better let him go.” Then he hobbled into the cabin to greet Bones, who ruffled up his feathers at his approach, but recognized him and submitted to being stroked.
Presently MacPhairrson straightened up on his crutches, turned, and gulped down a lump in his throat.
“I reckon we’ll be mighty contented here,” said he, “me an’ Stumpy, an’ Butters, an’ Bones. But I wisht as how I might git to have Ananias-an’-Sapphira back along with us. I’m goin’ to miss that there bird a lot, fer all she was so ridiculous an’ cantankerous. I s’pose, now, you don’t happen to know who’s got her, do you?”
“I know she’s got a good home!” answered the Boy, truthfully. “But I don’t know that I could tell you just where she is!”
At just this minute, however, there came a jangling of the gate bell, and screeches of–
“Oh, by Gee! Jumpin’ Jiminy! Oh, Boy! I want Pa!”
MacPhairrson’s gaunt and grizzled face grew radiant. Nimbly he hobbled to the door, to see the Boy already on the bridge, opening the gate. To his amazement, in strode Black Angus the Boss, with the bright green glitter of Ananias-and-Sapphira on his shoulder screeching varied profanities–and whom at his heels but Ebenezer and the little ring-tailed raccoon. In his excitement the old woodsman dropped one of his crutches. Therefore, instead of going to meet his visitors, he plumped down on the bench outside his door and just waited. A moment later the quaint procession arrived. MacPhairrson found Black Angus shaking him hugely by the hand, Ebenezer, much grown up, rooting at his knees with a happy little squeal, and Ananias-and-Sapphira, as of old, clambering excitedly up his shirt-front.
“There, there, easy now, old pard,” he murmured to the pig, fondling the animal’s ears with one hand, while he gave the other to the bird, to be nibbled and nipped ecstatically, the raccoon meanwhile looking on with bright-eyed, non-committal interest.
“Angus,” said the old woodsman presently, by way of an attempt at thanks, “ye’re a wonderful hand with the dumb critters–not that one could rightly call Ananias-an’-Sapphira dumb, o’ course–’n’ I swear I couldn’t never have kep’ ’em lookin’ so fine and slick all through the summer. I reckon–”
But he never finished that reckoning. Down to his bridge was coming another and a larger procession than that of Black Angus. First, and even now entering through the gate, he saw Jimmy Wright leading a lank young moose cow, whom he recognized as Susan. Close behind was old Billy Smith with the two white cats, Melindy and Jim, in his arms; and then Baldy Fallen, with a long blanket bundle under his arm. Behind them came the rest of the mill hands, their faces beaming welcome. MacPhairrson, shaking all over, with big tears in his eyes, reached for his fallen crutch and stood up. When the visitors arrived and gave him their hearty greetings, he could find no words to answer. Baldy laid his bundle gently on the ground and respectfully unrolled it. Out stepped the lordly James Edward and lifted head and wings with a troubled honk-a, honka. As soon as he saw MacPhairrson, he came up and stood close beside him, which was as much enthusiasm as the haughty gander could bring himself to show. The cats meanwhile were rubbing and purring against their old master’s legs, while Susan sniffed at him with a noisy, approving snort. MacPhairrson’s throat, and then his whole face, began to work. How different was this home-coming from what he had expected! Here, wonder of wonders, was his beloved Family all gathered about him! How good the boys were! He must try to thank them all. Bracing himself with one crutch, he strove to express to them his immeasurable gratitude and gladness. In vain, for some seconds, he struggled to down the lump in his throat. Then, with a titanic effort, he blurted out: “Oh, hell, boys!” and sat down, and hid his wet eyes in Stumpy’s shaggy hair.
On Big Lonely
It was no doubt partly pride, in having for once succeeded in evading her grandmother’s all-seeing eye, that enabled Mandy Ann to carry, at a trot, a basket almost as big as herself–to carry it all the way down the hill to the river, without once stumbling or stopping to take breath. The basket was not only large, but uneasy, seeming to be troubled by internal convulsions, which made it tip and lurch in a way that from time to time threatened to upset Mandy Ann’s unstable equilibrium. But being a young person of character, she kept right on, ignoring the fact that the stones on the shore were very sharp to her little bare feet.
At last she reached the sunshiny cove, with shoals of minnows flickering about its amber shallows, which was the goal of her flight. Here, tethered to a stake on the bank, lay the high-sided old bateau, which Mandy Ann had long coveted as a perfectly ideal play-house. Its high prow lightly aground, its stern afloat, it swung lazily in the occasional puffs of lazy air. Mandy Ann was only four years old, and her red cotton skirt just came to her dimpled grimy little knees, but with that unfailing instinct of her sex she gathered up the skirt and clutched it securely between her breast and the rim of the basket. Then she stepped into the water, waded to the edge of the old bateau and climbed aboard.
The old craft was quite dry inside, and filled with a clean pungent scent of warm tar. Mandy Ann shook out her red skirt and her yellow curls, and set down the big covered basket on the bottom of the bateau. The basket continued to move tempestuously.
“Oh, naughty! naughty!” she exclaimed, shaking her chubby finger at it. “Jest a minute, jest a teenty minute, an’ we’ll see!”
Peering over the bow, Mandy Ann satisfied herself that the bateau, though its bottom grated on the pebbles, was completely surrounded by water. Then sitting down on the bottom, she assured herself that she was hidden by the boat’s high flaring sides from the sight of all interfering domestic eyes on shore. She felt sure that even the eyes of her grandmother, in the little grey cottage back on the green hill, could not reach her in this unguessed retreat. With a sigh of unutterable content she made her way back into the extreme stern of the bateau,
