Carl grinned rather sheepishly. His face was badly scratched. A long strip of sticking-plaster extended from his ear to his chin, and there was a crisscross of red lines across his cheek. His hands were marked too; one thumb was tied up in a rag, and the white back of the fox-terrier showed half a dozen deep, fresh scratches.
“Oh, nothing,” he said, hastily. “Only skin-deep scratches. Nothing but a bad scare, really. Got our freight all right? Want something to eat?” he added, winking furiously at his brother as a hint to drop the subject of his wounds.
Bob took the hint, nudged Alice, and, though they were both full of curiosity, they said no more, but busied themselves with taking the load off the wagon and hauling the boxes inside the house.
“Oh, what a delightful place!” cried Alice, at the doorway. “And how frightfully dirty!”
“Dirty?” returned Carl, indignantly. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen it when I came. The whole place was full of dead leaves and rubbish. The door had stood open all winter, I guess. I’ve been cleaning it out ever since I got here, and I call it in pretty fair shape, considering. Why, the chimney was full of dead leaves and old birds’ nests. There was a family of squirrels living in the roof, and down under the floor there was—well, I’ll tell you later,” he added in a whisper.
“I don’t want to wait,” complained Alice, peering curiously about the place that was to be their home for the next few months.
The building was about twenty feet wide and thirty long, and was divided across the middle by a partition of boards. One of the rooms so formed was evidently the main living-room and kitchen; the other was subdivided into two small bedrooms. Each of these contained, by way of furniture, a rough wooden bunk and a large shelf fastened to the wall, which might serve as a dressing-table.
The large room had a big fireplace of rough stone, with a fire that Carl had lighted still smouldering. The floor was of planks, and at one point stained and splintered, as if by a gun-shot. It had been a rather well-made cabin, and the logs were chinked with lime plaster, but much of the chinking had fallen out, and the cracks yawned wide. There were two windows in the larger room, and one in each of the small ones, with a good deal of their glass remaining. A ladder ascended to a black hole in the ceiling that formed the entrance to a loft under the rafters. Dust and soot were on the log walls, and a decided odor of smoke clung about the whole place.
“Everything is all right now,” Carl assured them. “And the bees are in splendid shape. I’ve been looking at them. Now I know this man wants to start back to Morton as soon as he has rested his horses a little, so as to get home before dark, and I propose that we all have something to eat.”
“Good idea!” said Bob. “I’ll open the box that has our provisions in it.”