The pinches must have fallen a little short of the tail, or else the wary song sparrow had another engagement, and couldn’t wait, for when the breathless little messengers returned, they found the state of things quite changed, for the sparrow on his airy perch, on a neighboring tree-top, was pouring out a defiant little song, and the elder brother and sister quite out of sight. The little Salt Hunters agreed,—
“Best thing to do was just to pile up the pinches under this plantain leaf, and maybe the birds’ tails will get in ’out their knowing it, and they’ll be just catched same as Artie and Daisy would have done, if they had did it.”
Daisy just now approaches, with an anxious face, and a sad tale she has to tell,—
“Artie had come across a French boy, who could not speak any American words but bad ones, whose father was dressed in dirty shirt-sleeves and no stockings, hoeing corn, and the French boy had a long branch, and he said he was going to de duck-pond for thrash it to scare de bull frogs.”
Artie had immediately seized the idea, and a long stick, too, and said he would indeed go in for such a “jolly lark,” and when the little Frenchman had explained that after the poor bull-frogs had been driven, from very fright, out upon the duck-pond’s banks, they were to have their “back legs” chopped off at the wood-pile to make a savory supper for the young Frenchman and his “dirty shirt-sleeved” Father; then Daisy hesitated no longer to warn Artie against such shameful, cruel sport. Master Artie had naughtily retorted,—
“He should do as he liked, and not be tied to a girl’s apron-string,”—which was insulting, indeed, as Daisy’s dress was made with a Polonaise, and aprons, she had long laid aside. Now, Daisy was hurrying on to Charlotte, and trying not to hear some odious words, the soft breezes were wafting across that sweet meadow from a young rebel’s mouth, words which sounded very much, I am sorry to say, like—
“Tell-tale, tell-tale; hurry home before your shoes wear out.”
The welcome sound of a loud bugle’s clear notes, which told of a waiting supper, rescued Artie from the Tempter’s snare, saved the duck-pond its “thrashing,” and the poor little bull-frogs their back legs. The young rebel runs off his ill-humor, and overtaking his little sister-monitor, links his arm in hers, and hurries with her to the old farm-house porch. Clean towels and spring water brought to light a group of merry young faces, around the table, spread under the old Elm, whilst Papa, and the good Farmer and his Wife, look “happy as happy can be.”
Bear says, “It is a funny dining-room, it is papered with blue, and got a green carpet on, and live crickets to put our feet on.”
Then the wee folk clapped their hands loudly. Mrs. Brown looked admiringly toward Aunt Emma, and Farmer Brown “thought he should have died,” but did not, or he would have lost many a little joke from the younger folk, and some so big from Papa, that even solemn Hugh was obliged to lean against the tree to hold himself together, whilst the tea-cups he carried on a waiter rattled out faint applause. There was something besides joking to be done, for Celia had provided for country appetites, and some Fairy’s wand had changed Mrs. Brown’s promised “molasses cake and milk” into glass bowls of strawberries, with creamy cottage cheese, and blocks of currant cake.