Consequence number two, our heroine was actually adopted, to the extent of being formally requested to call the old man “Uncle,” which she shyly but joyfully proceeded to do. It was one more milestone on her long and often lonely road to “some really true relations.”
Now among the strictly home-bred stock on the Wolcott acres was a small herd of deer, as jealously guarded and almost as tame as if they had adorned the stately park of some English earl. Stella heard with intense, though undemonstrative, interest of this unexpected renaissance of wild life among the New England hills.
“Why, Mother Waring,” she confided, “you know they’re almost gone from our Dakota prairies, where there used to be so many. Think how hard it is for the women to get any deerskin for moccasins! And how can there be deer here where white people have lived for hundreds of years?”
“There weren’t any when I was a little girl,” Mrs. Waring observed. “I believe they have come back because for many years now they have been protected; that means, you know, that nobody is allowed to kill them. Seems to me I’ve heard that there are supposed to be several thousand in this State; and now a law has been passed that for one week this fall they may be shot,” she added, doubtfully.
“Uncle Si won’t have his shot,” insisted Stella. “He has printed signs up all over his woods, with something about ‘the penalty of the law.’ Mother, I do so want to see a deer! and he says there are three that come to drink at the Cold Spring almost every evening. We’ve seen their tracks—a buck, a doe, and a dear little fawn,” the sweet voice pleaded. “But we always have to come home early so’s to be in time for tea.”
“So you do, darling,” assented her foster-mother, her gentle, puzzled gaze upon Stella’s earnest face. She knew by instinct that the child had a special favor to ask—she who had always found it hard to ask favors.
Out it came at last. “Cynthia is just as wild about the deer as I am; and—and—Mother dear—Uncle Si says we can come some Saturday and he’ll show them to us if we can keep quiet enough; and Dr. Brown has promised to drive us out there and back—Doris too, though Doris is a teeny bit afraid of the old buck’s horns—if you’re willing, and don’t mind my being out after dark just this once.” She was quite breathless, now.
“Why, yes, I think so—if the Doctor is kind enough to take charge of you—” Mrs. Waring got no further, for the sentence was interrupted at this point with a strangling hug.
After Stella had actually seen the deer, which happened before many weeks, the four friends had an earnest discussion upon the subject of the coming week of slaughter.