“Uncle Matt’s a villain. Don’t you go by your Uncle Matt, fur lan’s sake.” She rolled up the drawing fiercely, and Matt placed himself apprehensively between it and the stove.
“You said he wouldn’t be took,” he remonstrated.
Mrs. Strang sullenly placed the paper in her bosom, and the action reminded her to remove her bonnet and sacque. Harriet, drooping and listless, descended the stairs, carrying the two-year-old and marshalling the other little ones—a blinking, bewildered group of cherubs, with tousled hair and tumbled clothes. Sprat came down last, stretching himself sleepily. He had kept the same late hours as Matt, and, returning with him from the “muddin’ frolic,” had crept under his bed.
The sight of the children moved Mrs. Strang to fresh weeping. She almost tore the baby from Harriet’s arms.
“He never saw you!” she cried, hysterically, closing the wee yawning mouth with kisses. Her eyes fell on Billy limping towards the red-hot stove where the others were already clustered.
“An’ he never saw you,” she cried to him, as she adjusted the awed infant on the settle. “Or it would hev broke his heart. Kneel down and say a prayer for him, you mischeevious little imp.”
Billy, thus suddenly apostrophized, paled with nervous fright. His big gray eyes grew moist, a lump rose in his throat. But he knelt down with the rest and began bravely:
“Our Father, which art in heaven—”
“Well, what are you stoppin’ about?” jerked his mother, for the boy had paused suddenly with a strange light in his eyes.
“I never knowed what it meant afore,” he said, simply.