The pacific speech further enraged the young savage. “I don’t want to know anything but what my[25] pap knew!” he shouted. “I don’t aim to do anything but what my pap did!”

[25]

“All right, son, all right! All right!” The choleric doctor was entirely good-humored, immensely entertained. “You just run and play Injun till you’re fed up on it, and then you come to me!”

Luke Manders flung himself out of the cabin, cursing and snarling, and the old crone began to weep the slow and difficult tears of age, bright drops trickling grudgingly from her hot little eyes.

“Don’t you fret yourself, Granny Manders!” Dr. Darrow took her leathery old claws in a warm and reassuring grip. “That’s a great boy, and he’ll come out all right—you mark my words!”

The great-gandmother hung her head. “I am purely shamed of my kin, for unmannerly orneryness! Shamed to my marrow bones.”

“Kid stuff, that’s all! Never you mind,” he insisted cordially. “Just crazy, hot-headed kid stuff! Showing off! I glory in his spunk!”

“I am beholden to you, sir,” the old woman said brokenly. “Hit is shorely mighty kind and mannerly. Good-by, Sis, and you coax your pappy to fotch you again! Red h’ar is purely my delight!” She reverted to her mortification. “That ary kin of mine should act so pizen mean——”

“Now, now, don’t you bother your head about that! Come along, Glen!” Chuckling, he waved[26] his daughter toward the door. “I glory in his spunk! I do, for a fact, glory in his spunk!”

[26]

They went out of the frowsy little cabin, into the frowsy dooryard, but before they had traversed the brief distance to their waiting vehicle the young savage had plunged out of a thicket and come after them.

Swooping down upon Glen, he caught up a handful of her glowing mane, halting her sharply and painfully.

“Hi, Sis,” he drawled, “run duck your head in the Branch! Didn’t you know your h’ar was a-fire?”

[27]

CHAPTER III Miss Ada Tenafee is faithful to ancestor worship, while the Darrows weave a golden legend about a golden lad.

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