“By the jingo!” cried Luke, in the accents of a story-paper hero. But his feelings were not at all story-paper-like, nor his further language that which would have been most approved.
“What in the name of apple-sass be ye a-doin’ thar?” demanded Abraham, as soon as he had picked himself up, and recognized the drenched persons as Luke and little Fritz.
“Why can’t ye mind yer own business?” retorted the angry Luke.
“I was. I was a-feedin’ the pigs—an’ if so be that ye belongs amongst ’em, all right. Ye’ve had yer supper.” And chuckling quietly to himself, the busy man stalked off, leaving his victims to recover their tempers and their cleanliness at their leisure.
“Jest as I was a tellin’ ye, Rosetty, ye needn’t ha’ worrited. Some kinks was a-boun’ ter happen. Thar was that lazy houn’, Luke, a settin’ in the pig-sty, an’ Fritzy alongside on him. I doused ’em both with buttermilk, an’ on your ’count I’m sorry, ’cause I s’pose ye’ll hev the youngun ter clean. But I ain’t sorry noways elst. I s’picioned that boy of mine was a readin’ them air yarns ter Fritzy, ’cause the little chap he’s full of the oddest kind o’ sayin’s ye ever heerd; an’ now I’ve kotched him. You lay it down, Luke Tewkskury won’t git no great chanst in the futur’ ter waste Mis’ Kinsolving’s time a readin’ trash, not whilst I’m his daddy! If he wants ter be sentimental, I’ll gin him a chanst ter be, a-plowin’ that ten-acre lot.”
This was all quite true, as Abraham had surmised. The disused pig-sty, shady and grass-grown, had formed a capital and unsuspected hiding-place for the fiction-loving Luke to while away an hour of time, nor did he know that it was so soon to be occupied by its natural tenants; and after Christina’s refusal to read any more of his exciting tales, he had turned to Fritz for sympathy, filling that youngster’s mind with the strangest muddle of stuff which ever floated through a little brain.
Fortunately, but a fraction of all he heard was comprehended, and a smaller fraction yet it was which remained to puzzle and excite the always excitable and, till now, carefully reared child.
A tiny seed of evil stayed,—so small that no one would have dreamed it could ever have worked him ill. It was the idea of “ghosts.” Not ghosts as they are usually considered, nor at all as they appeared to the impressible soul of Luke. A “ghost,” young Tewksbury would no sooner have tackled than a regiment of soldiers, and his own predilection was for “burglars.” Had he known it, “ghosts” and “burglars” meant, to Fritz, one and the same thing; and both he and his instructor longed for a chance to show their prowess and “have a fight with one.” Luke felt himself a hero of the deepest dye, and what Fritz thought of his own capacity to meet any and every emergency can be imagined.
Both were to have an opportunity of proving their own merits, and it came speedily on the heels of that buttermilk episode.
Luke slept in the house, though his father lodged at their own cottage, some little distance away. Sometimes Fritz was allowed to share Luke’s pleasant apartment, especially when there was a hunting trip in contemplation; for, young as he was, it had been one of Uncle Fritz’s requests that the little boy should be allowed the use of fire-arms, believing, it may be wisely, that if one is early trained to them, there is less danger of accident than when left to find out their use by lonely experiment. Luke was a “crack shot,” and game on the mountain was abundant. Fritz had already won a fair record,—for “going on nine,”—and he was ambitious of further achievements.