Instead of being scolded for her escapade Molly found herself a sort of heroine. Nothing could exceed the tenderness of her thankful father, nor the interest of all the campers. The signal shots had brought them all back to the camp, and there the two lads went immediately to work to cook for the girl the most wonderful of suppers. Monty had caught some of Melvin’s deftness at the task and was most ambitious to show Molly his newly acquired skill. Also, at the first opportunity, when the Judge had for a moment released his darling’s hand to rise and greet Farmer Grimm coming through the woods, the boy proudly pulled from his pocket a few small coins and displayed them upon his palm.
“See them, Miss Molly? Hmm. Those are mine. My own. I—earned—them—myself!”
He paused so long to let this amazing statement sink into her mind that Melvin called:
“Come on, Mont! No loafing! Fetch another bit of wood and get on your hurry-up step! Merimée covered this fire so snug he nigh put it out, but wise enough, too. A fire in the forest isn’t a laughing matter. Look out! Don’t poke it, you clumsy, else you’ll tip over that coffee-pot. First time we’ve had a lady to visit us don’t want to act the blunder-head, do you?”
“Oh! hush, Bugle! No call to bulldoze a fellow just because you happened to be first on the spot! What made you think of carrying that thing, anyway?”
Molly herself drew near to hear the answer. She was wondering at the fact of their jolly comradeship, which was now so evident; and at Monty’s pride over a little money—he who had cared so little for it once. She was wondering at many things, and when Melvin did not at once reply she repeated Monty’s question.
“Melvin, how did you happen to take the bugle?”
“Why—why—I don’t know, but I fancy my mother would say that Providence put it into my mind. My mother believes that Providence has a Hand in everything, don’t you know? Anyhow, I’m glad I did take it. Without it and you hearing it we might have wandered right past that very place—one spot looks so much like another in the woods at night.”
“Melvin, would you sell me that bugle? It was that saved my life, maybe, if the animals I thought about had come or if—Would you?” asked Molly, softly, and with a pathetic clasping of her hands, which trembled again now, as she recalled past perils.
“No, Molly, I won’t sell it to you. I’ll give it to you, if you’ll take it that way, and only wish it were a better one. It’s the cheapest made. It had to be, don’t you know?”