“Could they have seen?” she demanded.
He looked over upon the sunlit field. “No, poor things, they missed it!”
But Molly moved away and seated herself upon a venerable little horse-hair trunk whose bald spots were numerous and of considerable extent. Brass-headed nails, now black with age, studded all its edges and formed at each end the initials of Josiah Judd.
“Tell me, little Amos, what happened to you as a child, that you should consider yourself a fairy prince.”
The trunk was short for two, but Amos, by a little pushing and crowding, managed to sit beside her.
“Well, in the first place, I was always too wise and too amiable for an ordinary mor—”
“No, no! Be serious.”
“Well, almost everything I remember seems to point in that direction. For instance, there was a separate seat for me on swell occasions; a sort of throne, I should say, and all the other people stood up. In the big hall I told you about where the fight took place, I used to sit in an ivory chair with gold ornaments on it, cocked up on a platform apart from other people. And that afternoon I was walking across the hall toward it when the fierce-looking chap with the beard caught me up and passed me along.”
“Gracious! This is very exciting! Go on.”
“I could give you this sort of stuff by the yard if the conditions were favorable. The conditions now are unfavorable.”