"O mother!" cried Sammy: "you've got flour now; and won't you make some berry-pies, and a pigeon-pie with crust, for me, 'cause I'm wounded and can't go? Won't you, ma'am?"
"Yes; but I don't feel, I can't feel, it's what ought to be, for all these children to go into the woods, even if the men do go. Three of 'em can't have their eyes everywhere, and watch so many; and they may shoot each other, so many guns in children's hands."
Mrs. Sumerford sat down to her loom in a frame of mind far from quiet.
"We wanted Scip to go," said Jim Grant, "and Mr. Blanchard said he might: he was dying to go, but he was so scared of the Indians! but if Mr. Holdness, Harry, and Nat go, he won't be. I'll go and get him, and come after with him and the men."
Whatever Mrs. Sumerford's opinion might be in respect to the capabilities of the children, she knew very well that Harry would not come home empty-handed. So after an early dinner, she got out the sieve (a moose-hide punched full of holes with a burning-iron) and flour, and mixed the dough ready for use when needed.
First came the girls, with their pails full of berries; then the boys, each with a load of pigeons slung on his gun; finally Harry came with as many as he could carry, saying he believed there were half as many pigeons in the woods as leaves on the trees.
Sammy wanted all of them to stay to supper, especially Scip. Mrs. Sumerford, who could never have too many children round her, was as desirous to have them stop as was Sammy; but she said it would never do, because they would want to stop and play a while after supper, and their parents would think the Indians had carried them off. Didn't Mr. Crawford go out to shoot pigeons, and come within one of being shot by an Indian, and would have been, hadn't the hog took at the Indian?
The children wanted so much to stay, and Sammy was so anxious to have them, that Nat Cuthbert, who came in with Harry, said he would get on the horse and take some pigeons (as there were ten times as many as they could eat), and give to the families around, and tell them the children were safe.
"Well, Scip," said Mrs. Sumerford, "if you are going to stop, you may make the pigeon-pie, and I'll make the berry ones."