The Brentons | Page 6

all.
The critical stranger removed her pink countenance from the crack between the front-fence pickets, and pushed the gate open just a very little way. Seen through the larger crack, she stood revealed to Scott, a slim little damsel of perhaps six years, her pink calico frock starched until it stood out stiffly above her knees, and her topmost curl tied up with a mammoth bow of green gauze ribbon, obviously culled from some box of ancestral finery. She was a pretty child; but, even at that tender age, the decision of her little mouth and chin was too pronounced, the lift of her small head a trifle too self-satisfied.
"What's the matter, cry-baby?" she inquired, as Scott's interest in her appearing was punctuated with a fresh gulp of woe.
"I've been spanked."
The critical light faded from her eyes, to be replaced by another light, this time of interest.
"What for?"
"I was playing Indian in mother's jam."
Most damsels of that age would have asked for further particulars. Instead,--
"Hh!" she sniffed, and the sniff spoke volumes as to the quality of her young imagination.
Scott felt it lay upon him to defend himself from all which the sniff implied.
"'Twas fun, too," he asserted suddenly, as, with a final wipe of his fist across his eyes, he dismissed the outward traces of his grief. "You get things to eat to take with you, and the bed's the camp, and you live there for years and always, all alone. And then they smell the things you're eating and--"
"Who's they?" the small girl demanded.
"Oh, wolves and Indians and things, and they come around and growl awfully. But you aren't afraid. You take your gun, and crawl in under the blankets and go on eating, sure they won't come in after you--"
"What do you eat?"
Had Scott been a few years older, he doubtless would have answered,--
"Pemmican."
As it was, however, he responded glibly,--
"Snake meat."
"Hh!" Again there came the sniff. "Snakes don't have meat. They only wiggle."
Scott glared at her, during a moment of speechless hostility. Then suddenly he fired upon her with what was to be the favourite weapon of his later life.
"Prove it!" he ordered her defiantly.
But his defiance fell upon a surface quite impenetrable to its shaft.
"Sha'n't!"
"'Fraid cat!" he retorted curtly.
"Ain't!"
And then, for a short while, there was a silence. Out of the corner of her eye, the little girl was watching Scott. Scott, his head ostentatiously averted, was gazing at something he had dug up out of his trouser pocket, something concealed within the curve of his smudgy hand. Young as he was, his theories did not fail him. The silence prolonged itself for minutes which seemed to them both like hours. Then the eternal feminine yielded to the sting of curiosity.
"What you got?" she asked him, as the gate swung open just a little wider.
Scott was too canny to yield one whit of his advantage. His hand shut into a fist.
"That's telling."
The gate swung open wider yet, and the small girl marched through the opening.
"Tell me," she said imperiously. "I want to see it."
Scott still held himself aloof, still held his trophy concealed from her curious eyes. She tried to grasp his hand, missed it, then succeeded. Then she tried to pry open the tight-shut fingers.
"Show me!" she ordered.
He shook his head, smiling derisively at her, while her strong little fingers did their best to pluck open his hard little fist.
Without another word, she bent above his hand. An instant later, the hand flew open, and the ball of the opening thumb showed the prints of small, sharp teeth.
"What is it?" she asked once more.
Scott's voice dropped to a murmur which was charged with mystery.
"It's a back tooth of the whale that swallowed Jonah."
Instantly she struck his hand a blow that sent his trophy flying off into the thick grass beside the step.
"It is not," she said shrilly. "It's nothing but a dirty old chicken bone, so there!"
And then, to the unspeakable astonishment of Scott, she seated herself upon the bottom step, smoothed her calico skirt across her little knees, and prepared to await further developments in tranquil comfort. It was thus that Scott Brenton first learned the lesson that the feminine mind only gains the fullest comfort in having the last word, when it is able to sit by and watch that word sink in and be digested. Later on in his life, the lesson was repeated again and again, with an increasing list of corollaries. Oddly enough, too, it was always given to him by the selfsame teacher, sometimes with mildness, sometimes with spiritual floggings.
This time, however, she appeared to be contented with the form her teaching had taken, contented, too, with its effect upon himself. Accordingly, she made no effort to continue the discussion. She merely sat there, silent, in the place whence she