"I think so," exclaimed Lovell, giving a quick glance backward in the direction of his gun. "Certainly, ahem! I think so. I do."
"Lookin' for game? Eh, Lovell?" inquired Grandpa.
"Pa," said Grandma, solemnly: "I wish you'd put another stick of wood in the stove."
Grandpa was awake now, and a youthful and satanic gleam shone from under his shaggy eyebrows; he glanced at me, too, as was his habit on such occasions, as though I had a sort of sympathy for and fellowship with him in his bold iniquities of speech.
But the guileless Lovell interpreted not the deeper meaning of Grandpa's words.
"I think some of it, Cap'n," he answered unsmilingly, and then continued: "It's been—ahem!—it's been a very mild winter on the—ahem!—I should say on the Cape. It's been a very mild winter on the Cape, Miss Hungerford."
Lovell's nervous glance falling again on his gun, took me in wildly on the way.
I had been directing some letters that I expected to have an opportunity to send that morning.
"I beg your pardon," I said, looking up. "Yes, you don't often have such mild winters on the Cape, Mr. Barlow!"
"No'm, we don't," said Lovell, "not very often, ahem!" He moved his chair a peg nearer the gun. "Quite a—ahem!—quite a little fall of snow we had last night, Miss Hungerford."