"Not yet," said Sandy cheerily. Whatever he felt himself, he was not going to let the babes be unhappy, if he could help it. "On'y pioneers to-night. Beds have to be made."
"Nur' did maked Ross's bed—see'd her—mornin'," announced Ross in a dissatisfied tone; and he brought his brows together, and signified generally that he was disgusted.
"No barf?" inquired Orme, planting himself by his elder brother in a similar revolutionary attitude.
"Bar?" echoed Barbara, unwilling to be kept out of whatever anarchy might be going. "Barbedie's bar?" she inquired of Sandy; and it said much for Sandy's ability in translating languages that he quite understood what she was demanding.
David turned out his pockets, in the hope of finding enough string to let down a basket, or a letter describing their distressed condition. But the utmost length they could attain, when every pocket had been ransacked, and all their ties, and hat ribbons, and pocket-handkerchiefs tied together, was about midway down the long windows. No hope that way, even if the darkness of the summer night had not by this time settled down upon the land. David gave it up at last.
David and Sandy pushed with all their might.
"Somebody'll p'r'aps remember us," he said with a catch in his voice. "Mother——"; and then, for the sake of his manhood, he stopped short. No one remembered having ever seen a tear from David.
"We'd best put the fam'ly to bed," suggested Sandy at this period.
"They'll be awful cold," responded David.