“I don't either.” Then Letitia whispered very violently, “There is a little green door here, and I know where the key is, with a green ribbon, but I am afraid.”
“That's very funny—just like me,” said Josephus.
“Well, I may make up my mind to take the chance anyhow, and if I do you had better. Say, if you hear I've gone, you just go through your little green door, will you?”
“Maybe,” whispered Letitia doubtfully, and then her Great-great-grandmother Letitia came back. “There isn't a sign of an Injun here,” said she, “and I am 'most froze. I'm going to start the fire, and you boy, you had better come too. You can sleep on the floor by the fire to-night and go home in the morning. Father and mother are coming. I heard their horses. Mother's is a little lame, and favors one foot, and I know. They're right here, and they'll be cold, and I've got to start up the fire.”
“I'll help,” cried Josephus.
“You'd better,” said the elder Letitia; “if I had a brother as big as you, he'd have to work instead of hunting rabbits.”
Josephus flew about the kitchen dragging heavy logs, and poking the fire, and Letitia quite admired him, but her great-great-grandmother simply scolded. “You are a most unhandy boy,” said she. “You can have had little training in making hearth fires.”
However, the flames leaped high into the great chimney mouth, when Captain John Hopkins and his wife entered.
“How pleasant it is, and how thankful we ought to be to have a good warm room to enter,” said Great-great-great-grandmother Letitia Hopkins, although she looked very grave. The sick neighbor was very sick unto death, it was feared, and she was a good woman and a good neighbor.
Josephus Peabody stayed all night and slept wrapped up in a homespun blanket beside the fire, but the next morning it was hardly daylight before Goodman Cephas Holbrook came for him. Cephas Holbrook was a very stern man, and he believed in the rod. Before Josephus left he had just one chance and he improved it. It was while Mr. Holbrook was partaking of a glass of something warm and spicy which Great-great-great-grandmother Letitia Hopkins mixed for him. It was a cordial of her own compounding and a good thing for the stomach on a bitter morning, and this morning was very bitter.