“But I don't want to look at the landscape, Uncle Peter,” Buddy complained. “I want to go with you.”
“It ain't much of a landscape, and that's a fact,” said Peter, glancing at the bare clay bank across the creek, “and if it wasn't very important that I should speak to your Aunt Jane first I wouldn't ask you to wait here. I know just how a boy feels about waiting. My goodness! Did I see a squirrel over there? A little gray squirrel with a big bushy tail?”
“No,” said Buddy.
“Well, you just keep a sharp eye on that clay bank, and maybe you will. Maybe you'll see a little jumpy rabbit.”
“I don't want to see a rabbit. I want to go with you,” said Buddy.
Peter looked at the house. It was hardly more than a weather-beaten shanty. Its fence, once an army of white pickets, was now but a tumble-down affair of rotting posts and stringers with a loose picket here and there, and the door yard was cluttered with tin cans and wood ashes. The woodshed, as free from paint as the house, was well filled with stove wood, for Peter had filled it in the early fall. Beyond the woodshed the garden—Peter worked it for his sister each spring—was indicated by the rows of cabbage stalks with their few frozen leaves still clinging to them. The whole place was run down and slip-shod, but it was a house, and it held a woman.
“Goodness me!” said Peter. “Of course you don't want to look for rabbits! I've got that jack-knife I bought for you right here in my pocket, and now I guess you'll want to wait here for Uncle Peter! You will if Uncle Peter opens the big blade and gets you a stick to whittle.”
“I want to whittle,” said Buddy promptly. “I want to whittle a funny cat.”
Peter looked about for a stick.
“There!” he said. “There's a stick, but if I was you I'd make a funny snake out of it. That stick don't look like it would make a cat. You make a snake, and if it don't turn out to be a snake, maybe it'll be a sword. Now, you stay right here, and Uncle Peter won't be gone very long. I'm going to put you right back in among these bushes, and don't you move.”