At that moment a tall, muscular woman strode from the crowd, caught hold of one of the ankles of the boy above the bare foot, and jerked so hard that seemingly elongated by the energetic pull, he came bumping from his seat and struck the ground so hard that it made him grunt.
“I’ll teach you how to play the fool, Josiah Bilkins! The idee! You sailing up into the sky! What are you thinkin’ of yourself? Do you hear me? Take that!”
By this time Josiah had struggled to his feet, and with his hands over his ears to ward off the cuffs that were rained upon them, and amid the jeers of his acquaintances, he started on a run across the open space. But his mother was fleeter than he and kept up her castigation as they passed out of sight around the corner of a house.
None laughed harder than Harvey at the scene, and when the turmoil had subsided he said to those remaining:
“If any one would like to take a ride, I shall be glad to give it to him.”
To his surprise, a middle-aged man, likewise without coat or waistcoat, wearing a dilapidated straw hat with his trousers tucked into the tops of his cowhide boots came forward. When Harvey looked into his tanned, grinning face, and noted the yellow tuft of chin whiskers, and the fast-working jaws, he recalled Uncle Tommy Waters, the weather prophet of Chesterton. Encouraging shouts were uttered by the man’s friends, but they quickly ceased to allow him to talk with the visitor to their town.
“Sure the blamed thing won’t kick up its heels?” asked the stoop-shouldered man, whom his neighbors called “Gin’ral.”
“It never has done so.”
“How fur have you kim?”
“From beyond the city of New York.”