"Those little fellows ain't a mouthful for a good-sized man!" he declared. "'Twould keep you eating all day."
We had fried pork besides, and it was wonderfully good. There was "long sweetenin'," a thick sort of molasses. Sometimes we had a kind of maple sugar syrup. Ruth and I baked, and then we sat down to eat, and told over the funny sayings that we could recall. It was very jolly.
The wood was piled up in a sort of lean-to at the side of the house, so I brought in a supply of that. We went out in the street again and a few pedestrians were snowballing each other. A sort of drag with four oxen came along to break the road a little. The town looked like a nest of small white beehives. The snow had blown off the trees, and they stood bare and black against the sky, the finer branches as if traced by a pencil.
I thought I would venture down to the warehouse, but I had not gone far when I met one of the clerks, who reported everything "stiller'n the grave," so I turned about. We played high low Jack, and then I took up "fox and geese" with Ruth, who couldn't see why I should beat whether I was fox or geese. So to her great delight I let her pen up the poor fox, while her father sat by and smoked his corn cob pipe. Then we shelled a lot of corn, and had a late dinner of fried chicken, at which Mr. Gaynor tried his hand, and it was excellent. I thought I should like to see my father undertake to cook!
Afterward I declared I must go home.
"Oh, why do you?" asked Ruth pleadingly.
"I don't want to wear my welcome out, I want to come again."
"He ain't likely to, is he, Sis? Seems to me his folks might spare one boy when they have so many. Let's toss up a cent to see which one. This is for Homer."
"But I don't want Homer," with pretty petulance.
"Ben or Chris?" He was twirling the penny in his fingers.