"I know it." Tom bobbed his head at her. "We've always been, ma'am."
"An' boys are good for nothing, an' lazy, an' thieves—yes, I wouldn't trust 'em." So she kept on as they hurried back over the rocky path.
"That's a tiger for you!" ejaculated Tom. Then he stopped and looked back a little anxiously. "Aren't you afraid to leave Polly with her?"
"No," said Jasper; "it would trouble Polly to have us stay." Yet he stopped and looked anxious too. "We will wait here."
And after a while, down came the two searchers—the old woman quite beside herself now, and scolding every bit of the way,—"that she didn't see what bright eyes were for when they couldn't find anything—an' now that Pa'd gone sliding down that mountain, they might as well give up, she an' Car'line"—when a sudden turn in the path brought the boys into view waiting behind the rocks. Then all her fury burst upon them.
"See here, now," cried Tom, suddenly squaring up to her and looking at the face between the nodding cap-frills, "we are ready to take a certain amount of abuse, my friend and I, but we won't stand more, I can tell you."
"Oh, don't," began Polly, clasping her hands. "Oh, Tom, please keep still. She doesn't know what she's saying, for she's lost her pin with her father on."
"Hey?" cried Jasper. "Say it again, Polly," while Tom shouted and roared all through Polly's recital.
"Was it an old fright with a long nose in a blue coat and ruffles, and as big as a turnip?" he asked between the shouts. While Polly tried to say, "Yes, I guess so," and Miss Car'line's sister so far overcame her aversion to boys as to seize him by the arm, Tom shook her off like a feather. "See here, old party," he cried, "that ancient pin of yours is reposing in the hotel office at this blessed moment. Jasper and I," indicating his friend, "ran across it on the rocks up there more than an hour ago, and—"
"Oh, Pa's found!" exclaimed the old woman, in a shrill scream of delight, beginning to trot down to the hotel office.