“That was much better than to pull any one else’s hair,” observed Ben under his breath to Jasper.
“And he said, ‘O my daughter Lucy Ann, if you only won’t cry any more, I’ll give you all those trees this very minute; and you may do what you want to with them.’ So Lucy Ann stopped sobbing, and wiped her eyes again, and got up from the grass, and went around and around those trees; she went around twenty-seven times before she could decide what she would do with them. And at last she said, ‘Father, I’ll have a garden up on top of them.’”
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Van.
“The minute Lucy Ann said she would have a garden up on top of the trees, her father put his fingers in his mouth, and made a perfectly awful whistle, and”—
“Oh, I know how he did it!” exclaimed Joel, springing to his feet. “Dave and I used to do it—this way;” and he clapped his fingers to his mouth, but Ben pounced on him.
“No, you don’t, Joel Pepper,” he cried.
“Oh, no, no, Joey!” exclaimed Polly too, in alarm; “now be quiet, that’s a good boy, for I’m going on with the story. Well, as soon as the whistle echoed all over the place, there came running from every direction ever so many men, and every one had an axe on his shoulder; and as soon as they reached Lucy Ann’s father and Lucy Ann, they stopped and leaned on the handles of their axes, and said, ‘Did you call us, Master?’
“‘Stop talking,’ roared Lucy Ann’s father at them; for he wanted to be cross with somebody, and he didn’t want to scold his daughter. ‘Do just as she tells you to;’ and then he picked up his own axe, and ran off as fast as his feet would carry him into the house, and shut the door and locked it.
“‘Cut off all the tops of those trees,’ commanded Lucy Ann, pointing to them, ‘every single snip of a leaf.’”
“I thought she didn’t want the trees cut down,” cried Percy abruptly.