“Captain Enos was well pleased with the pie, Anne,” said Mrs. Stoddard the next morning, as the little girl stood beside her, carefully wiping the heavy ironware.[1] “And what does thee think! The captain loves thee so well, child, that it would please him to have thee call him Uncle Enos. That is kind of him, is it not, Anne?” and Mistress Stoddard smiled down at the eager little face at her elbow.
“It is indeed, Mistress Stoddard,” replied Anne happily; “shall I begin to-night?”
“Yes, child, and I shall like it well if you call me ‘Aunt’; ’twill seem nearer than ‘Mistress Stoddard,’ and you are same as our own child now.”
Anne’s dark eyes looked up earnestly into Mistress Stoddard’s kind face. “But I am my father’s little girl, too,” she said.
“Of course you are,” answered her friend. “Captain Enos and I are not asking you to forget your father, child. No doubt he did his best for you, but you are to care for us, too.”
“But I do, Aunt Martha; I love you well,” said Anne, so naturally that Mrs. Stoddard stopped her work long enough to give her a kiss and to say, “There, child, now we are all settled. ’twill please your Uncle Enos well.”
As soon as the few dishes were set away Anne wandered down the hill toward the spring. She no longer feared the Cary children, and she hoped to see some of the Starkweather family and hear more of the gray wolf, and at the spring she found Jimmie with two wooden buckets filled and ready for him to carry home to his waiting mother.
“You missed the great sight yesterday, Anne,” he said, as she approached the spring. “What think you! A wolf as big as a calf walked boldly up and drank, right where I stand.”
“’twas not as big as a calf,” declared Anne; “and why should you seek to kill a wild creature who wants but a drink? ’Tis not a bad wolf.”
Jimmie looked at her in surprise, his gray eyes widening and shining in wonder. “All wolves are bad,” he declared. “This same gray wolf walked off with Widow Bett’s plumpest hen and devoured it before her very eyes.”