“Honest.”
“Well then, let’s send the dogs home and we can go right on from here. We don’t need no provisions. I’ve got some money—”
“So have I.”
“What’s the use of delayin’ then. Let’s set off.”
So the dogs were commanded to go to their respective homes, and with lowered tails and drooping ears, they obeyed. Bike writhed along on his belly, beating the ground with his tail. He actually shed tears of humiliation and depression, but Peter, more absorbed with the discomfort in his foot, limped lamely and obediently on his way toward home.
“Pore houn’s,” sighed Hi, “they sure are cast down.”
“Ain’t it just their luck,” Jim sympathized. “Pore critters.”
Both boys were talking their worst and enjoying it. This spang-up grammar was well enough to catch on to when a fellow was talking with Mrs. Carson, or even to Azalea, but there was such a thing as letting down and enjoying oneself when the ladies were out of the way. Men must be men now and then.
So, in all the freemasonry of their kind, the two set off across the mountain. Neither one would have confessed that the “wander-thirst” was on them too. But the truth was, Mr. Carson had set a most infectious example. Mountain folks have pretty hard work staying at home. The roads call, and they long to be up and away. It always seems as if something wonderful must be waiting for them over the next hill. Jim and Hi had the gypsy mood on them this day. They actually ran for a long time, taking the cut-offs that led them over the spur of the mountain to Mulberry Valley, which lay “over-yon” and which they had seldom visited, and then always under the guidance of some grown person who insisted on pushing them along and getting home again.
Getting home seemed to them just now as the last thing in the world that a fellow would care to do. What was the use in getting home when a person could run along paths bordered with trim huckleberry bushes, or rest on a stone where lichen had woven a pale green lace? There were partridge berries peeping up between dark green leaves; here was tender wintergreen; yonder the “sweet buds” were coming out, weighting the air with their fruity odor. Dear me, why should anybody go home?