“I don't want my hand pinched off, Bobaday Padgett!” whispered aunt Corinne, jerking away and thus breaking the circuit of comfort and protection which was supposed to flow from his jacket.
“But listen,” hissed Robert.
“I don't want to listen,” whispered aunt Corinne; “I want to go back to our camp-fire.”
“Nobody can hurt us,” whispered her nephew, gathering boldness. “You stay here and let me creep through the bushes to that wagon. I want to see what it was.”
“If you stay a minute I'll go and leave you,” remonstrated aunt Corinne. “Ma Padgett don't want us off here by ourselves.”
But Robert's hearing was concentrated upon the object toward which he moved. He used Indian-like caution. The balls of his large eyes became so prominent that they shone with some of the lustre of a cat's in the dark.
Corinne took hold of the bushes in his absence.
The wind was breathing sadly through the trees far off. What if some poor little child, lost in the woods, should come patting to her, with all the wildness of its experience hanging around it? Oh, the woods was a good play-house, on sunshiny days, but not the best of homes, after all. That must be why people built houses. When the snow lay in a deep cake, showing only the two thumb-like marks at long intervals made by the rabbit in its leaping flight, and when the air was so tense and cold you could hear the bark of a dog far off, Bobaday used to say he would love to live in the woods all the time. He would chop to keep himself warm. He loved to drag the air into his lungs when it seemed frozen to a solid. Corinne remembered how his cheeks burned and his eyes glittered during any winter exertion. And what could be prettier, he said, than the woods after it sleeted all night, and hoar frost finished the job! Every tree would stand glittering in white powder, as if dressed for the grandest occasion, the twigs tipped with lace-work, and the limbs done in tracery and all sorts of beautiful designs. Still this white dress was deadly cold to handle. Aunt Corinne had often pressed her fingers into the velvet crust upon the trunks. She did not like the winter woods, and hardly more did she like this rain-soaked place, and these broad, treacherous leaves that poured water down her neck in the humid dark.
Bobaday pounced upon her with such force when he appeared once more, that she was startled into trying to climb a bush no higher than herself.
He had not a word to say, but hitched his aunt to his jacket and drew her away with considerable haste. They floundered over logs and ran against stumps. Their own smouldering fire, and wagon with the hoops standing up like huge uncovered ribs, and the tents wherein their guardian slept after the fatigue of the day, all appeared wonderfully soon, considering the time it had taken them to reach their exploring limit.