“‘You hold the sieve,’ says Buck, ‘and I’ll drain the water into it; if she ’scapes from the bucket we’ll have her in the sieve.’ And he pours the wather out of the bucket as gentle as if it was crame out of a jug. When all the wather was out he turns the bucket bottom up, and shook it.
“‘Ran dan the thing!’ he cries, ‘she’s gone again;’ an’ wid that he flings the bucket into the pond, and the sieve afther the bucket, when up comes his old mother hobbling on her stick.
“‘Where’s me bucket?’ says she.
“‘In the pond,’ say Buck.
“‘And me sieve?’ says she.
“‘Gone afther the bucket.’
“‘I’ll give yiz a bucketin’!’ says she; and she up with the stick and landed him a skelp, an’ driv him roarin’ and hobblin’ before her, and locked him up in the cabin, an’ kep’ him on bread an’ wather for a wake to get the moon out of his head; but she might have saved her thruble, for that day month in it was agin—— There she comes!”
The moon, argent and splendid, was breaking from the water. She was full, and her light was powerful almost as the light of day. The shadows of the children and the queer shadow of Mr Button were cast on the wall of the caboose hard and black as silhouettes.
“Look at our shadows!” cried Dick, taking off his broad-brimmed straw hat and waving it.
Emmeline held up her doll to see its shadow, and Mr Button held up his pipe.