The last word and the final tug were concurrent and the moss gave way; so did Budge, and with a terrific scream, for a little snake had made his home under the moss, and was expressing indignation, in his own way, at being disturbed.
“I won’t never do nothin’ for nobody again,” screamed Budge. “I’ll see that snake every time I shut my eyes, now.”
“You poor, dear little fellow,” said Mrs. Burton, caressing him tenderly. “I wish Aunt Alice could do something to make you forget it.”
“Well, you can’t, unless—unless, maybe, a piece of pie would do it. It wouldn’t do any harm to try, I s’pose?”
Mrs. Burton hurried to unpack a pie, as her husband remarked that Budge was born to be a diplomatist. Looking suspiciously about, for fear that Toddie might espy Budge’s prescription, and devise some ailment which it would exactly suit, she discovered that Toddie was out of sight.
“Oh, he’s gone, Harry! Hurry and find him. Perhaps he’s gone above the Falls. I do wish we had gone further down the river!”
Mr. Burton took a lively double-quick up and along the bank of the river, but could see nothing of his nephew.
After two or three minutes, however, above the roar of the falling water, he heard a shrill voice singing over and over again a single line of an old Methodist hymn,
“Roar—ing riv—ers, migh—ty fountains!”
Following the sound, he peered over the bank, and saw Toddie in a sunny nook of rocks just below the Falls, and in a very ecstasy of delight. He would hold out his hands as if to take the fall itself; then he would throw back his head and render his line with more force; then he would dance frantically about, as if his little body was unable to comfortably contain the great soul within it.