Then with quiet swiftness the girl heated water, washed the wounds in Aleck's head, and hastened to boil the corn-meal mush and the coffee, which formed the best breakfast she was able to give. Meanwhile she told how she had passed the night, making her story so bright, and bustling about so cheerily, that she did more to restore the tired boys than, in her absence, all their pulling off of soaked boots and stretching upon soft mattresses of springy boughs would have done.
"After waiting a long, long time—it must have been until after midnight," Katy began the story of her night, "I had dropped asleep in my chair before the fire, when I was waked up by something scratching at the door. I knew in a minute it was those dreadful dogs, and I was awfully scared."
"After we beat them off they must have come directly here," Tug remarked. "Were there more than two?"
"No, but two were quite enough," Katy replied; and then continued her narrative:
"I should have liked to have got under the bed, only there wasn't any bed, and so I—what do you suppose?—I got the butcher-knife and a big stick, and climbed up into the top berth. They growled and grumbled around the door, and scratched and butted at it, and every little while one or both of them would stand upon their hind-legs and look in at the window with their horrible green eyes. Ugh! I don't want to go through another such a night!"
"Nor I!" exclaimed all three of her listeners, in chorus, each thinking of his own separate experience.
"Passed unanimously!" cried Katy. "Now come to breakfast."