“Bird crouched in a black heap.”
The child did as she was told, gave her friend one grateful look, and slipped out the door without speaking, much to the relief of the others, the minister’s wife nodding caution to Mrs. Tilby who said: “Sakes alive! she scart me silly, gropin’ in that way. I do wonder how much she heard.”
Meanwhile as Bird disappeared around the house a tall boy, carrying a big bunch of red peonies, came up the track in the grass that served as a path. It was Sammy, or Lammy Lane, as he was usually called, clad in his best clothes and red with running, having only come to a full stop as he reached the kitchen door, where he stood looking anxiously in, the flowers clutched nervously in both hands.
“Lammy Lane, where’ve you bin, to go and miss the funeral and all, when I started you out close after breakfast?” asked his mother, fiercely, yet with an air of relief.
“Catchin’ fish in the brook with his eyes, I reckon,” said Mrs. Slocum, with a glittering smile, which was very trying to Mrs. Lane, for Lammy, the youngest of her three sons, was not esteemed over clever, in fact a sort of village Johnny-Look-in-the-Air, always going to do something that he never did, and lacking in courage to boot. In fact the twisting of the name of Sammy into Lammy was really a slur upon his lack of sand and the fighting spirit natural to the average boy.
It is perfectly true that Lammy at this time was not a beauty with his tousled reddish hair, freckles, and lean colt’s legs, but no one who was a judge of faces could look in his straightforward gray eyes and at the firm line of his chin without feeling that here was the makings of a man, if people did not meddle with the plan God had for his work.
Lammy’s eyes roved about, and, not seeing the object he wanted, answered his mother slowly, as if it was hard to remember exactly where he had been.
“I’ve been at Aunt Jimmy’s most all day until now,” he answered. “When I took the butter down after breakfast, she wanted me to help her fix up cause she didn’t feel smart, ’n’ then there was the chickens to feed, and Jake he didn’t go yesterday to spread the grass under the strawberries, and she said if it rained, they’d spoil, so I did that; ’n’ then I ate dinner, ’n’ dressed up again and started. Then I remembered I told Bird I’d cut her some o’ Aunt Jimmy’s red pineys for her to take along up there,” nodding his head backward toward the hillside graveyard.