It seemed an age until the whistle of the locomotive was heard. The engine had to stop to take water at the creek, several hundred yards from the station, and Maria's impatience to see Si and be the first to speak to him could not brook the delay.
"Come along, Mrs. Blagdon," she called, and with the baby still in her arms, she sped down the cinder track to the pumping station, and then along the line of freight cars until she recognized her father's face looking from the caboose, which was still beyond the bridge. She shouted joyously at him.
"Maria's out there, waitin' for us, and she's got a baby in her arms. What do you suppose she thinks we want a baby for?"
"'Spect she's been practicin' on it, so's to take care o' us, Si," said Shorty. "I believe we've been more trouble to your father than we wuz to our mothers when we wuz teethin'."
"I've bin repaid for all, more'n repaid for all," said the Deacon; "especially since I'm once more back home, and out o' the reach o' the Sheriffs o' Tennessee. I'll stay away from Chattanoogy till after the Grand Jury meets down there. If it does its dooty there'll be several bills with Josiah Klegg's name entirely too conspicuous."
"I want to be able to git out to the next covenant meetin', Pap," said Si with a grin, "and hear you confess to the brethren and sisters all that you've bin up to down at Chattanoogy."
"Well, you won't git there," said the Deacon decisively. "We don't allow nobody in there who hain't arrived at the years o' discreetion, which'll keep you out for a long time yit."
The train pulled over across the bridge, and handing the baby to its mother, Maria sprang in, to recoil in astonishment at the sight of Annabel's blushing face.
"You mean thing," said Maria, "to steal a march on me this way, when I wanted to be the first to see Si. Where in the world did you come from, and how did you find out he was comin' home on this train? Si, you didn't let her know before you did us, did you?"
She was rent by the first spasm of womanly jealousy that any other woman should come between her brother and his mother and sisters.