“I wish it had stayed,” Anne said aloud, for there had been nothing to make her afraid of wild creatures, and Jimmie’s stories of a big wolf ranging about the outskirts of the settlement had not suggested to her that a wolf was anything which would do her harm, and she continued her search for beach-plums, her mind filled with the thought of many pleasant things.
“I do think, Mistress Stoddard, that I have plums enough for a pie,” she exclaimed, as she reached the kitchen door and held up her basket for Mistress Stoddard’s inspection.
“’Twill take a good measure of molasses, I fear,” declared Mrs. Stoddard, “but you shall have the pie, dear child. ’Twill please Captain Enos mightily to have a pie for his supper when he gets in from the fishing; and I’ll tell him ’twas Anne who gathered the plums,” and she nodded smilingly at the little girl.
“And what think you has happened at the spring this morning?” she went on, taking the basket from Anne, who followed her into the neat little kitchen. “Jimmie Starkweather and his father near captured a big gray wolf. The creature walked up to the spring to drink as meek as a calf, and Mr. Starkweather ran for his axe to kill it, but ’twas off in a second.”
“But why should he kill it?” exclaimed Anne. “I’m sure ’Tis a good wolf. ’twas no harm for it to drink from the spring.”
“But a wolf is a dangerous beast,” replied Mrs. Stoddard; “the men-folk will take some way to capture it.”
Anne felt the tears very near her eyes. To her, the gray wolf had not seemed dangerous. It had looked kindly upon her, and she had already resolved that if it ever were possible she would like to stroke its soft fur.
“Couldn’t the wolf be tamed?” she questioned. “I went to sleep near the marsh this morning and dreamed that Jimmie Starkweather had a tame wolf.” But for some reason, which Anne herself could not have explained, she did not tell her good friend of the wild creature which had come so near to her when she slept, and toward whom she had so friendly a feeling, and Mrs. Stoddard, busy with her preparations for pie-making, did not speak further of the wolf.
There was a good catch of fish that day, and Captain Enos came home smiling and well pleased.
“If we could hope that the British ships would keep out of harbor we could look forward to some comfort,” he said, “but Starkweather had news from an Ipswich fisherman that the ‘Somerset’ was cruising down the cape, and like as not she’ll anchor off the village some morning. And from what we hear, her sailors find it good sport to lay hands on what they see.”