Samuel hobbled onward, his brow knit with angry resentment. Did ever a half-mile seem so long, and had he actually been only twenty-three hours from home and Blossy? Oh, oh! his back and his feet! Oh, the weight of that bag! How much he needed sleep! How good it would be to have Blossy tuck him under the covers, and give him a hot lemonade with a stick of ginger in it!
If only he had hold of Abe Rose now to tell him his opinion of him! Well, he reflected, you have to summer and winter with a person before you can know them. This one December day and night with Abe had been equal to the revelations of a dozen seasons. The next time Samuel tried to do good to anybody more than sixty-five, he'd know it. The next time he was persuaded into leaving his wife for over night, he'd know that, too. Various manuals for the young husband, which he had consulted, to the contrary notwithstanding, the place for a married man was at home.
Samuel sat down on a fallen tree which marked the half-way point between his place and the bay. The last half of the journey would seem shorter, and, at the end, there would be Blossy smiling a welcome, for he never doubted but that Blossy would be glad to see him. She thought a good deal of him, nor had she been especially anxious for that week of separation.
His face smoothed its troubled frowns into a look of shining anticipation—the look that Samuel's face had worn when first he ushered Blossy into his tidy, little home and murmured huskily:
"Mis' Darby, yew're master o' the vessel naow; I'm jest fo'castle hand."
Forgetting all his aches, his pains, his resentments, Samuel took a peppermint-lozenge out of his pocket, rolled it under his tongue, and walked on. Presently, as he saw the light of the clearing through the trees, he broke into a run,—an old man's trot,—thus proving conclusively that his worry of lumbago and chilblains had been merely a wrongly diagnosed case of homesickness.
He grinned as he pictured Abe's dismay on returning to the Station to find him gone. Still, he reflected, maybe Abe would have a better time alone with the young fellows; he had grown so plagued young himself all of a sudden. Samuel surely need not worry about him.
More and more good-natured grew Samuel's face, until a sociable rabbit, peeping at him from behind a bush, decided to run a race with the old gentleman, and hopped fearlessly out into the open.
"Ah, yew young rascal!" cried Samuel. "Yew're the feller that eat up all my winter cabbages."
At this uncanny reading of his mind, Mr. Cottontail darted off into the woods again to seek out his mate and inform her that their guilt had been discovered.