“‘The witch’?” murmured the amazed Jessie.
“Yep. That’s me. Spotted Snake, the witch. That’s cause I’m so freckled. It’s a great game.”
“I should say it was,” marveled Jessie, and immediately Amy began to laugh again. “I don’t see how you can, Amy,” Jessie complained. “I think it is really terrible.”
“I don’t mind it,” said Henrietta complacently. 129 “It keeps ’em busy and out from under their mothers’ feet.”
“But they shriek and yell so.”
“That don’t hurt ’em. And there’s plenty of outdoors here to yell in. Where we moved from in town, folks complained of the Foleys because they made so much noise. But nobody ever complains here in Dogtown.”
As Amy said, when she could keep from laughing, it was a great introduction to Henrietta’s home. They went ashore, and Henrietta, who seemed to have a good deal of influence with the children, ordered two of the boys to watch the canoe and allow nobody to touch it. Then she proudly led the way to one of the largest and certainly the most decrepit looking of all the hovels in Dogtown.
Mrs. Foley, however, was a cheerful disappointment. She was, as Amy whispered, a “bulgy” person, but her calico wrapper was fairly clean; and although she sat down and took up her youngest to rock to sleep while she talked (being too busy a woman to waste any time visiting) she impressed the girls from Roselawn rather favorably.
“That child is the best young one in the world,” Mrs. Foley confessed, referring to “Spotted Snake, the Witch.” “Sometimes I rant at her like a good one. But she saves me a good bit, 130 and if ever a child earned her keep, Hen earns hers.”
Jessie asked about the missing cousin, Bertha.