Rose of Old Harpeth | Page 4

to stay right by him until he's dug up, 'cause we all sicked him on that polecat and we ought in honor!"
Stonie looked at the Swarm for confirmation of this worthy sentiment, and it arose in a murmur. The Swarm was a choice congregation of small fry that trailed perpetually at the heels of Stonewall Jackson, and at the moment was in a state of seething excitement. Jennie Rucker's little freckled face was pale under its usual sunburn, as a result of being too near the disastrous encounter, and her little nose, turned up by nature in the outset, looked as if it were in danger of never again assuming its normal tilt. She held small Pete by one chubby hand, and with a wry face he was licking out an absurd little red tongue at least twice each moment, as if uncertain as to whether his olfactory or gustatory nerves had been offended. Billy was standing with the nonchalant unconcern of one strong of stomach, and the four other little Poteets, ranging in size from Shoofly, on the floor, to Tobe, the buried, were shuffling their bare feet in the dust with evident impatience to be off to gloat over the prostrated but important member of the family. They rolled their wide eyes at almost impossible angles, and small Peggy sniffed audibly into a corner of her patched gingham apron.
"Yes, Stonie," answered Rose Mary judicially, while Everett's shoulders shook with mirth that he felt it best not to give way to in the face of the sympathetic Swarm, "you all must stay with Tobe, if he has to be buried, and go right back as fast as you can. Troubles must make us stay close by our friends."
"If I get much closer to him I'll throw up," sniffed Jennie, and her protest was echoed by a groan from Peggy into the apron, while the area which showed above its folds turned white at the prospect of being obliged to draw near to this brother in affliction.
"Yes, but you sicked Tobe, with the rest of us, and in this girls don't count. You've got to go back, smell or no smell, sick or no sick," announced the General firmly, in the decisive tones of one accustomed to be obeyed.
"Yes, Stonie," came in a meek and muffled tone from the apron, "we'll go back with you."
"Can't we just set on the fence of the lot--it ain't so far?" pleaded Jennie in almost a wail. "I'm afraid Pete will cry from the smell if we go any closter. He's most doing it now."
"Yes, General, let the girls sit on the fence," pleaded Everett, with his eyes dancing, but a bit of mockery in his voice, "after all they are--girls, you know."
"Oh, well, yes, they can," answered Stonewall Jackson in a magnanimously disgusted tone of voice. "They always get girls when they don't want to do anything. Come on, Tobe'll be crying if we don't hurry. Billy, you help Jennie drag Pete, so he can go fast!"
But during the conference the disgusted toddler had been pondering the situation, and at this mention of his being dragged back to the scene of offense he had made a quick sally across the plank that spanned the spring branch and with masculine intuition as to the safe place in time of danger, he had plunged head foremost into Rose Mary's skirts, so that only his small fat back showed to the enemy.
"Please go on, Stonie, and leave him with me--he's just a baby," pleaded Rose Mary.
"All right," answered the General, "Tobe don't care about him; he'd just make us go slow," and thus dropping young Peter into the category of impedimenta, the General departed at top speed, surrounded, as he came, by the loyal Swarm. On the day of his birth Aunt Viney's choice for a name for the General had balanced for some hours between that of the redoubtable Abner the Valiant, of old Testament fame, and her favorite modern hero, Jackson of the stonewall nature. And in her final choice she had seemed so to impress the infant that he had developed more than a little of the nature of his patron commander. At all times Stonie commanded the Swarm, and also at all times was strictly obeyed.
Then seeing herself thus deserted by her companions, Shoofly began a low, musical hum of a wail and walled large eyes up at Everett, at whose feet she was seated. In instant sympathetic response he applied the toe of his shoe to the small of the whimpering tot's back and proceeded awkwardly, though with the best intentions in the world, to follow the General's directions as to pacification. Rose Mary laughed as she took a tin-cup from a nail in the wall, and filling it with milk