CHAPTER XXIX.
“WHERE’S GASTON?”
“FAITH, Faith! Phoena! Marygold! Oh! Somebody come and release me, I can’t, I can’t bear this any longer! Oh! oh! how can you all leave me here alone? How can you, how can you?”
These dolorous plaints, repeated at very short intervals and interlarded with despairing howls, were kept up by Andrew, with praiseworthy persistency.
But so far as any visible result was concerned, he might as well have held his peace. His cries fell apparently only on the apple trees around him, and the grass at his feet.
“Oh! do somebody help me, do somebody help me,” he implored afresh, as the clock struck twelve, “I’ve been here for such hours.”
He had been there for nearly two whole ones. For it was a little past ten when Mr. Busson, with his assistant Ned—who had thoroughly enjoyed the job—had completed the new sort of bee-hive, and gone in search of spectators.
This time, Andrew bellowed so loudly that he did bring Mr. Busson on to the scene.
“Now look here, sonny,” he said, “I told you to keep quiet, didn’t I? What do you mean then by carrying on this way? Chances are I’d have let you out, if you’d behaved yourself, but I shan’t now, you’ll have to bide there, till sun-down or moon-rise, may be, if I hear any more of that hollering.”
Nevertheless, when he had turned his back on the orchard, Busson went straight to the back-door, and called for Libbie.
“She ain’t here, Master,” said Polly, the odd girl.