Neale chuckled. "Lycurgus ought to have been called 'Nimrod,'" he said.
"Why?" demanded Agnes.
"Because he is a mighty hunter. And that is really all he does take any interest in. I bet he'd lie out under a stone wall for a week if he thought he could get a shot at a snowbird! And he'd shoot it, too, if he had half a chance. He never misses, they say."
"Such shiftlessness!" sniffed Ruth again. "And his wife barefooted and his children in rags and tatters."
"That girl was a bright-looking girl," Agnes interposed. "You know—the one with the flour-sack waist on. Oh, Neale!" she added, giggling, "you could read in faint red marking, 'Somebody's XXXX Flour,' right across the small of her back!"
"Poor child," sighed Ruth. "That was Sue—wasn't that her name? Sue Billet."
"A scrawny little one with a tip-tilted nose, and running bare-legged, though she must be twelve," said Neale. "I remember her."
"Poor child," Ruth said again.
There were other things to arouse the oldest Corner House girl's sympathy about the Billet premises when the picnicking party arrived there. Two lean hounds first of all charged out from under the house to attack Tom Jonah.
"Oh!" cried Dot. "Stop them! They'll eat poor Tom Jonah up, they are so hungry."