Mrs. Buckham's mellow laughter rang out and she hugged the smallest Corner House girl close to her side.
"Never mind, honey," she said. "If you want to make up a new word, you shall—so there!"
Meanwhile Agnes had followed the farmer out into the big kitchen. The old man sat in a low chair and pulled Tom Jonah tenderly between his huge knees, till the dog laid his muzzle in his lap, looking up at the man confidingly out of his big, brown eyes.
Mr. Buckham had put on a pair of silver-bowed spectacles and had the salve-box in his hand. He laid the badly torn ear carefully upon his knee and began to apply the salve with a gentle, if calloused, forefinger.
"This'll take the pizen out, old feller," said the farmer, crooningly.
Tom Jonah whined, but did not move. The application of the salve hurt the dog, but he did not pull away from the man's hand.
"He sure is a gentleman, jest as the little gal says," chuckled Bob Buckham.
He looked so kindly and humorously up at Agnes standing before him, that the troubled Corner House girl almost broke out into weeping. She gripped her fingers into her palms until the nails almost cut the tender flesh. Her heart swelled and the tears stung her eyelids when she winked them back. Agnes was a passionate, stormy-tempered child. This was a crisis in her young life. She had always been open and frank, but nobody will ever know what it cost her to blurt out her first words to Mr. Bob Buckham.
"Oh, Mr. Buckham! do you hate anybody who steals from you?"
"Heh?" he said, startled by her vehemence. "Do I hate 'em?"