“I expected them all to laugh at the breakfast-table, and told my story rather sheepishly; but when I got through, and looked round, the folks had anything but smiling faces, and two of them passed me the doughnuts, both at once. Mother cried outright.
“‘If he hadn’t taken the right direction,’ she said, ‘or had kept going in a circle’—
“Then she stopped; and so will I.”
“Ah,” said Kittie, drawing a long breath, “that was a narrow escape. It makes me feel stifled just to think of it.”
“Was it this very barn, Uncle?”
“Yes, Tom; and that further mow on the other side, where Kittie found the man last winter, and had such a fright.”
The trimming was nearly completed, but it still needed to be brought into better shape, and a special yard or two of smaller leaves made for the looking-glass, Bess said. “And can’t you tell us one more hay-mow story, uncle Will.”
“Let me speak to Tim a minute,” said Mr. Percival. “After I’ve given him some directions, I’ll see if I can remember one.
“It was a warm day in the early part of April,” he began, as soon as he returned. “The air was mild, the sky was blue, with sunlight, and the gentle spring breezes were full of all sorts of nice smells of fresh earth and green, growing turf. The turf was in the moist places on the sunny side of the old wall; above it, in their willow-baskets, pussies were beginning to stretch out their little gray paws sleepily, as they awoke one by one from their long nap.
“As Zip spattered along the muddy roadside on his way home from Sunday-school, he thought the world a pretty nice place to live in, on the whole. ‘Zip,’ by the way, was short for ‘Zephaniah,’ which was his long name. Folks only called him that when they were full of fun or very cross; indeed, you could generally tell which by their tone.