"Easy, easy there; sho now, can't you let her get down?" Mr. Bramble roared at them, pretending to be very much put out. But they paid not the slightest attention to him.
"Oh, Mammy!" they cried, surrounding her tumultuously.
"You've got hurt," exclaimed one of the big boys, seeing her cheek, and, "Oh, I'm so hungry," said Jane, the youngest, who, since her mother had really returned, thought it just as well to mention a fact she had been steadily reiterating all the morning.
"Hush up!" shouted Mr. Bramble, "and look here, Mat, an' you too, Mark and Luke, tumble out that box. Step lively now." Again his thumb came into service over his shoulder.
"Oh, bless my buttons, I never see such a dull lot," as the whole collection of children, big boys and all, stared open-mouthed at him, without offering to stir from their tracks. "I'll pitch it out myself." And with many grunts, for his legs were rheumatic, he slowly hitched himself off his seat, and laid hold of the box.
"Give us a grip, Mat," he sang out to the oldest boy. "This box has got to go into your house, an' I know I ain't a-goin' to carry it. Come on!"
And instantly the whole swarm of children, wild with excitement, deserted their mother to crowd around Mr. Bramble and the boys.
"The baby's comin' out," screamed Elvira, with one hasty glance back at the cabin door, as she ran to the centre of attraction with the others.
The little widow turned where she had been left alone and sped frantically up to the broken steps, where little Susan, spatting her fat hands on the floor as she crawled along to see what the noise was all about, had just decided to tumble down. But instead of landing on the hard, frozen ruts, she was gathered up to her mother's thin breast and hugged and coddled.
"Oh, baby, baby." She sank down on the steps and rocked back and forth, Susan now spatting her thin cheeks and struggling to get away to where all that delightful noise was coming from. "Oh, good Lord, I can't believe it. We've got a box, Susan; we have, Susan, he says so, but I know he's made a mistake. And p'raps there's somethin' to eat in it, and I won't have to go to the selectmen an' tell 'em we'll go to the poorhouse. But 'tain't ours, I know 'tain't. O Lord, they're bringin' it in!"