“Well! I should say so,” came the answer with an honest smile.
But the boy scouts were hardly noticing Dave Baldwin: Owls, Foxes, and Seals, they were gazing in transfixed amusement at their hero-in-chief, Captain Andy, owner of this half-cleared land.
He, who in his seagoing days had been known by such flattering titles as the Grand Bank Horse, the Ocean Patrol, and the like, was seated in the midst of a half-acre of pasture land, holding on like grim death to one end of a twenty-foot rope coiled round his hand, the hemp’s other extremity being hitched to the leg of a very lively red cow which presently dragged him the entire length of the pasture and then across and across it, in obedience to her feminine whims.
“She’ll be the death o’ me, boys!” he shouted comically to the convulsed scouts. “Great Neptune! I’d rather take a vessel through the breakers on Sable Island Bar than to be tied to her heels for one day.”
“For pity’s sake! Hold on to her, Cap!” Dave Baldwin paused in his energetic tree-felling. “Yesterday, she got into that little plowed field that I’d just seeded down with winter rye, and thrashed about there!”
“Ha! I’ll t’ink you go for be good habitant—farmer—Dave,” broke in Toiney suddenly and genially. “I’ll t’ink you get dere after de w’ile, engh?”
It was plain to each member of the troop that so far as Dave himself was concerned he was already “getting there,”—reaching the goal of an honest, industrious manhood.
The triple responsibility of starting a farm, directing the energies of his benefactor, and combating the cow, was rapidly making a man of him.
They heard the virile blows of his axe against the tree-trunk as they marched on their woodland way. And their song floated back to him:—