"It ain't a 'it', boys," said Milt Hayes, "it's a him."
"Three cheers!" shouted Dex Coleman; "how did the old lady take it?"
"Oh, carried it kind of easy, in a shawl so clean-white it pretty near blinded you," replied Milt Hayes, staring; "why, how did you suppose she'd take it? By the scruff of the neck?"
"I don't mean the baby," explained Dex Coleman, "I mean the news."
"It wasn't no news to her," responded the other vaguely, "she brung him downstairs herself, I'm tellin' you."
"Oh, go to blazes!" exclaimed Dex Coleman, jumping off the oat-box, "boys, I'm goin' up to the house. I'll get in, sir, if I have to massacree that city doctor to do it."
"Ast how Daise is," called Jim Burns after Coleman as he went out, "we don't care about whether the old lady likes the baby or lumps it."
It was not long till tall, good-looking and still somewhat "nervy" Dex Coleman came whooping back to the barn with the word, "I bunted past the doctor, fellows—never even let on I knew he was there—and spoke right up to Lady Frances herself. She says all you boys may come right up and have a look at the baby."
"I guess we may," said Jim Burns, as he followed the speaker out through the door; "it's Daise's baby, not hers."
"I had one look at him," commented Milt Hayes, as he brought up the rear of the procession, "but I guess I can stand another."