But the woods came to an end abruptly where the trees had been cut off, and where some men with ox-carts were hauling away the long piles of cord-wood. Then there were fields of plowed ground on each side of the road, and then a long stretch of rocky hills and old pastures, and presently some houses came in sight.
Old, weather-beaten houses they were—a dozen, perhaps, in all. Two or three had once been painted red, and still displayed some dark and dingy traces of that color; but most of them were brown, and some had green moss growing on their broad, sloping roofs—roofs which were two stories high in front, but came down so low at the back that a lively boy might reach them from the ground with very little effort, only the place did not look as if anything so young or so lively as a boy had been seen there for at least twenty years.
Still, it was a pleasant place. There were thickets of lilac and mock-orange bushes around every house, and old-fashioned lilies and roses growing half-wild along the fences.
There were flagged walks leading up to all the doors, with borders of evergreen box, which had once been trim, and still was quaint and pleasing; there were old gardens, where everything was “all run out,” but where the bees and birds appeared to find congenial homes; there were gnarly old apple-trees, with bending, twisted branches that touched the ground and made the most enticing rustic seats.
Withal, there was a calm and stillness brooding on the place that filled one’s fancy with sweet thoughts of olden times and—
“Whoo-oo-oop! Hip, hip, pip, hoo-ray!”
“Good gracious!” cried Mr. Trafton, starting from his pleasant reverie, and clutching at the reins which lay loose upon his knee. “Good gracious! What’s that?”
“It’s a boy!” said Linda, with a quite disgusted accent.
Unquestionably, it was a boy—and a boy of the most aggressively modern type, clad in garments of the very latest cut, from his flannel yachting-shirt to his canvas “base-ball” shoes—a boy with a look as well as a voice, which proclaimed him all alive.
His close-cropped head was bare, and his white straw hat came spinning over the stone wall and into the middle of the road, as if impelled by steam-power, before the boy himself scrambled over, giving vent to another whoop, which would have done credit to a Comanche gone mad.