"I have paid its full value, and you don't own a thread of its wool, Mister," said Tom, feeling the engine throb under him now. "I'm going to start——"
"You wait! I ain't got through with you——"
Just then the car started. The man had been holding to the end of the seat. He foolishly tried to continue his hold.
The car sprang ahead suddenly, the farmer was swung around like a top, and the last they saw of him he was sitting in the middle of the dusty road, shaking both fists after the car, and yelling at the top of his voice. Just what he said, it was perhaps better that they did not hear!
"Wasn't he a mean old thing?" cried Tom, when the car was purring along steadily.
"And wasn't Ruth smart to see that he had no right to this poor little sheep?" said Helen, admiringly.
"What you going to do with it, Ruthie?" demanded Tom, glancing back at the lamb. "Going to sell it to a butcher in Littletop? That's where Fred Larkin's folk live, you know."
"Sell it to a butcher!" exclaimed Ruth, in scorn. "That's what the farmer would have done—butchered it."
"It is the fate of most sheep to be turned into mutton," returned Tom, his eyes twinkling.
"And then the mutton is turned into boys and girls," laughed Ruth. "But if I have my way, this little fellow will never become either a Cameron, or a Fielding."