It was evident that the old farmer thought a good deal of the backwoods' child. Lycurgus said no further word. He walked over to the eagle and looked down at it.
"He's a whopper!" he observed, smiling in his weak way at the Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil.
Ruth only nodded coolly. Agnes turned her back on him, while the little girls stared as wonderingly at Lycurgus Billet as they would had he been a creature from another world.
Bob Buckham and little Sissy, as he called her, were having a talk at one side. Something that shone brightly passed from the farmer's hand into the child's grimed palm.
"Come on, Pap!" said Sue, bruskly. "Let's go home. These folks don't want us here."
"Lazy, shiftless, inconsequential critter," growled Bob Buckham, coming back to the dead eagle, as Lycurgus and his daughter moved slowly away across the field.
But then the old man's face cleared up quickly, though he sighed as he spoke.
"That only goes to show ye! Some folks never have no chick nor child and others has got 'em so plentiful that they kin afford ter use 'em for eagle bait."
His lips took a humorous twist at the corners, his eyes sparkled, and altogether his bewhiskered countenance took on a very pleasant expression. The Corner House girls—at least, Ruth and Tess and Dorothy—began to like the old farmer right away.
"Got to take that critter home," declared Mr. Bob Buckham, as enthusiastic as a boy over his good luck. "Don't know how I come to lug my old gun along to-day when I started down this way. I never amounted to much as a hunter before. Always have left that to fellers like Lycurgus."