Father came in soon from his rounds and greeted the visitors in his kindly hospitable way. Mr. Tucker was to have several days' holiday from his newspaper and Father said the neighborhood was in an extremely healthy condition, owing to the clear, cold weather, and he did not expect to be overworked; so the gentlemen began immediately to plan their hunts. Dum and Dee were wild at the prospect of going on the deer hunt.
"I saw Jo Winn this morning, daughter," said Father, "and he will go with us. He has a cousin from New York who is visiting him and he wants to take him."
"Well, if the cousin has no more conversation than Jo he certainly will not bore us with his chatter," I said. "Now, how about lunch, Father? We must give Mammy some warning, because she gets flustrated if we come at her too suddenly."
"To-morrow suits Jo and his kinsman, and it will suit us, too, I think. Tell Mammy how many of us there are and tell her to put up twice as much lunch as you think she should. That ought to be 'most enough. We'll want the big camping coffee pot and a skillet and some salt; also some sliced bacon, ground coffee and sugar, and a little flour to roll the rabbits in. We may make a fire and cook some if we get cold and have good luck in the morning."
I went out to the kitchen to interview Mammy, Tweedles following me, and then we had to go see the dogs. Dee approved of them and they heartily approved of her. Dum did not have the passion for them that Dee and I had, but she liked them well enough. The dogs licked her hand respectfully and then jumped up on Dee and knocked her down and had a big romp.
How delightful it was to have some companions of my own age at my beloved Bracken! The Tuckers wanted to see everything and go everywhere. We visited the horses in the stable and the cows in the pen and climbed up in the hay loft to hunt for eggs that a sly old blue hen refused to lay in the proper place.
"It's just like Grandpa Tucker's, only nicer," declared Dum. "Grandpa treats us as though we were about two years old and treats Zebedee as though he had just arrived in his teens, so when we go there, while we have splendid times, we are being told what not to do from morning till night."
"Well, nobody ever has told me not to do things," I said. "Mammy Susan grumbles when she thinks I am too venturesome, but she has always ended by letting me have my own way; and Father says he thinks my way is about as good as anybody's way."
"Well, isn't it funny you are not spoiled?" tweedled the girls.
"I believe I used to be spoiled when I was a tiny thing; but Father says if people grow up spoiled, it is because they lack sense, and he always said he knew I had sense enough to live down the spoiling that he and Mammy Susan just couldn't help giving me."