“And–and I just know the dear-est, loveliest pin-ey nook,” she went on in a choir-boy sing-song; “half-way down the Pinnacle’s softer side it is, where we may build our fire. Halleluiah! I suppose I’ll have to get busy and gather fagots, as in Camp Fire rank I’m a Wood Gatherer. Oh, dear! Will you listen to old Andrew. Now what is he singing?”
The Scot, indeed, relaxing from prim silence and chauffeur ceremony here upon the Pinnacle’s height, with only two young girls to marshal instead of the mechanism of lever and brake–although the former, as he had found to his cost might prove the worse handful of the two–was alternately whistling, with lips drily pursed, and crooning in the burr-like accents which adhered like a thistle to his tongue, his version of a very old song:
| “Young lassie! Daft lassie, I tell ye the noo, I’m keepin’ some fagots, An’ a stick, too, for you! “Singing whack fol de ri do! De ri do! “A lassie, a dog, And an auld rowan tree, The mair that you thwacks ’em, The better they be!” |
“‘Thwacks ’em!’ Pshaw! he’s flinging that in my direction–having a fling at me–for sitting in the Devil’s Chair,” laughed Pem, but the laughter was bitter, two-edged. “Oh! Una,” she burst forth shakily, “as long–as long’s ever I live, I’ll wish I hadn’t done it, letting–letting that Jack at a Pinch, as he called himself, that big, boorish boy, play friend in need to me-e again. Ugh-h!”
Her stung lips quivered and were twisted, partly upon the after-taste of terror.
“Humph! forget it–oh-h! forget it,” caroled the younger girl. “See that you don’t make a trouble out of it, for trouble is a hor-rid kettle-o’-fish for the troublers–see!... But–listen! Listen! Surely that’s singing–singing from somewhere–other singing!”
She paused on tiptoe, a green dryad, one little hand, fair as a flower-petal, curled about her startled ear.
But Pem was for the moment comfort-proof.
“Bah! ’Tisn’t quite so easy to forget,” she murmured, bitterly.
Her less fragile fists were mounted one upon another under her chin as if to hold her head up. For the first time in her life she felt as if she were being asked to drink a cup of humiliation–she, Toandoah’s little pal–and she made wry faces over even a sip.