"Nonsense!" said aunt Judith. "You'd get sick of any kind of Eden that didn't need a fireplace for six months in the year."
Corry's ears were beginning to feel better, and his opinion of the weather he was accustomed to improved as the tingling subsided. Still he was quite willing to discuss a little more fully the wonder of tropical and semi-tropical lands. Even after chores were attended to, and supper was eaten, and the whole family gathered in the sitting-room, they all seemed to feel more like talking than any thing else. Of course the knitting went on as usual, and Pen asserted that her next undertaking in yarn was to be a pair of stockings for Porter Hudson. It seemed as if they had just got fairly settled, before the front-gate opened with a great frosty creak, as if it pained the hinges to be swung upon in such cold weather, and the sound of a well-known voice came faintly to the door.
"If it isn't Mrs. Stebbins!" exclaimed Pen; and her mother said,—
"Glad she's come. It isn't far, but it's neighborly for her to look in on such a night as this."
"Hope Vosh is with her," said Corry as he stepped towards the door; and so he was. But they both had come upon something more than a mere neighborly call. Hardly was Mrs. Stebbins inside of the door, before she exclaimed sharply,—
"Joshaway Farnham, it's a wolf, I know it is! I heard it twice; and, if I don't know a wolf when he howls, it's because the whole country wasn't full on 'em when I was a gal. I've known a man that a'most made his livin' off the bounty they sot on wolf-skelps, till they found out that he was raisin' of 'em at a place he had away back under Sawbuck Mountain; and they paid as much for pups' ears as they did for growed-up wolves, and"—
"Angeline Stebbins!" almost shouted aunt Judith, "what do you mean? There hasn't been a wolf down so far as this, these three years and more; and then they never came nigh any house except Josiah Rogers's hog-pen."
"Fact, though, now, I guess," said Vosh. "I listened hard, and I believe I heard one howl."
"Shouldn't wonder at all," said Mr. Farnham; "what between the deep snow, and the hard, cold snap. It isn't so much because they can't run down the deer so well, I believe, as because they somehow get bolder, and sort of crazy, in bitter frost. Did you hear more than one, Vosh?"
"Can't say, unless the same one howled several times. I heard it first when I was out at the barn, and it sounded just in the edge of the woods."