As long as there was daylight enough left to see that cub, did George Birt stand and stare at the little beast. Then he clattered home on old Sorrel in the closing darkness, looking like a very small pin on the top of a large pincushion.
At home, he found the elders unreasonable,—as elders usually are considered. Supper had been waiting an hour or so for the lack of meal for dodgers. He “caught it” considerably, but not sufficiently to impair his appetite for the dodgers. After all this, he was ready enough for bed when a small boy’s bedtime came. But as he was nodding before the fire, he heard a word that roused him to a new excitement and stimulated his memory.
“These hyar chips air so wet they won’t burn,” said his mother. “I’ll take my tur-r-key whing an’ fan the fire.”
“Law!” he exclaimed. “Thar, now! Ethan Tynes never gimme that thar wild tur-r-key’s whings like he promised.”
“Whar did ye happen ter see Ethan?” asked Pete, interested in his friend.
“Seen him in the woods, an’ he promised me the tur-r-key whings.”
“What fur?” inquired Pete, a little surprised by this uncalled-for generosity.
“Waal,”—there was an expression of embarrassment on the important freckled face, and the small red head nodded forward in an explanatory manner,—“he fell off’n the bluffs arter the tur-r-key whings—I mean, he went down to the ledge arter the tur-r-key, and the vines bruk an’ he couldn’t git up no more. An’ he tole me that ef I’d tell ye ter fotch him a rope ter pull up by, he would gimme the whings. That happened a—leetle—while—arter dinner-time.”
“Who got him a rope ter pull up by?” demanded Pete.
There was again on the important face that indescribable shade of embarrassment. “Waal,”—the youngster balanced this word judicially,—“I forgot ’bout’n the tur-key whings till this minute. I reckon he’s thar yit.”