They had not been an hour on their way before something curious happened. There was a rushing in the bushes beside the road which startled the horses and made Thomas McBirney take the whip out of its socket to be ready for anything that might arise. And the queer part of it was that the creature that was making the noise, was running along, trying to keep pace with the wagon.
“If it was one of the hounds broken loose, it would set up a cry,” said pa. “And it ain’t leaping and jumping like an animal, nohow.”
Azalea’s heart beat hard. She thought that perhaps it was, after all, a wild animal, and that maybe they would be attacked. She was used to being on the road, but this part of the Blue Ridge was wilder than that through which she usually had traveled. However, there was not much time in which to be frightened, for before any one could realize what was happening, Jim had leaped over the wagon wheel and plunged into the bushes.
“Hold on there, boy,” yelled his father. “You don’t know what you’ll be running into.” A shout of laughter reached him.
“Well, I’ll be lammed!” cried Jim. “I’ll be shingled, if it ain’t Hi!”
“High!” cried pa. “How high? What high? What you talking about, son?”
“Oh, it’s Hi! it’s Hi!” Azalea chorused, and in a flash she too was over the wagon wheel and in the brush.
Pa turned an angry face around on his wife. “Be them two children crazy?” he demanded.
At that moment three children instead of two shot their heads up above the dark green of the wild gooseberry bushes. There was Jim’s freckled, grinning phiz, Azalea’s long, lovely face, smiling, too, and the dark, odd little face of the show boy, Hi Kitchell.
“Well, what do you think of that?” groaned pa.