Carolyn of the Corners Part 17

The jays screamed at the party as they wheeled swiftly through the wood.

Once Prince jumped a rabbit from its form, and Uncle Joe actually urged the excited dog in his useless chase of the frightened creature. But Carolyn May could not approve of that.

"You see," she said gravely, "although it's lots of fun for Prince, we don't know just how the rabbit feels about it. Maybe he doesn't want to run so hard. There! Prince has given it up. I'm glad."

She did not mind the dog's chasing and barking at the squirrels. They were well out of reach. One excited squirrel leaped from a tree top into the thick branches of another tree, sailing through the air "just like an aeroplane." Carolyn May had seen aeroplanes and thought she would like to go up in one.

"Of course," she explained, "not without somebody who knew all about coming down again. I wouldn't want to get stuck up there."

Here and there they stopped to pick up the glossy brown chestnuts that had burst from their burrs. That is, Carolyn May and her uncle did.

Prince, after a single attempt to nose one of the p.r.i.c.kly burrs, left them strictly alone.

"You might just as well try to eat Aunty Rose's strawberry needle cushion, Princey," the little girl said wisely. "You'll have a sorer nose than Amos Bartlett had when he tried to file it down with a wood rasp."

"Hum!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Stagg, "whatever possessed that Bartlett child to do such a fool trick?"

"Why, you know his nose _is_ awfully big," said Carolyn May. "And his mother's always worried about it. She must have worried Amos, too, for one day last week he went over to Mr. Parlow's shop, borrowed a wood rasp, and tried to file his nose down to a proper size. And _now_ he has to go with his nose all greased and shiny till the new skin grows back on it."

"Bless me, what these kids will do!" muttered Mr. Stagg.

"Now, _I've_ got big feet," sighed Carolyn May. "I know I have. But I hope I'll grow up to them. I wouldn't want to try to pare them off to make them smaller. If they have got such a long start ahead of the rest of me, I really believe that the rest of me will catch up to my feet in time, don't you?"

"Nothing like being hopeful," commented Mr. Stagg drily.

It was just at that moment that the little girl and the man, becoming really good comrades on this walk, met with an adventure. At least, to Carolyn May it was a real adventure, and one she was not to forget for a long, long time.

Prince suddenly bounded away, barking, down a pleasant glade, through the bottom of which flowed a brook. Carolyn May caught a glimpse of something brown moving down there, and she called shrilly to the dog to come back.

"But that's _some_body, Uncle Joe" Carolyn May said with a.s.surance, as the dog slowly returned. "Prince never barks like that, unless it's a person. And I saw something move."

"Somebody taking a walk, like us. Couldn't be a deer," said Mr. Stagg.

"Oh," cried Carolyn May a moment later, "I see it again. That's a skirt I see. Why, it's a lady!"

Mr. Stagg suddenly grew very stern-looking, as well as silent. All the beauty of the day and of the glade they had entered seemed lost on him.

He went on stubbornly, yet as though loath to proceed.

"Why," murmured Carolyn May, "it's Miss Amanda Parlow! That's just who it is!"

The carpenter's daughter was sitting on a bare brown log by the brook.

She was dressed very prettily, all in brown. Carolyn May had seen her that day in church in this same pretty dress.

For some weeks Miss Amanda had been away "on a case." Carolyn May knew that she was a trained nurse and was often away from home weeks at a time. Mr. Parlow had told her about it.

The little girl wanted to speak to the pretty Miss Amanda, but she looked again into Uncle Joe's countenance and did not dare.

CHAPTER XI-A CANINE INTERVENTION

Carolyn May wanted _awfully_ to speak to Miss Amanda. The brown lady with the pretty roses in her cheeks sat on the log by the brook, her face turned from the path Joseph Stagg and his little niece were coming along. She must have known they were coming down the glade and who they were, for n.o.body could mistake the ident.i.ty of Prince, and the dog would not be out in the woods with anybody but his little mistress.

Miss Parlow, however, kept her face steadily turned in the opposite direction. And Uncle Joe was quite as stubborn. He stared straight ahead down the path without letting the figure on the log get into the focus of his vision.

Carolyn May did not see how it was possible for two people who loved each other, or who ever had loved each other, to act so. They must have thought a great deal of each other once upon a time, for Chet Gormley's mother had said so. The very fact that they now acted as they did proved to the observant child that the situation was not normal.

She wanted to seize Uncle Joe's hand and whisper to him how pretty Miss Amanda looked. She wanted to run to the lady and talk to her. Thus far she had found little opportunity for knowing Miss Amanda Parlow well, although Carolyn May and the old carpenter were now very good friends.

Hanging to Uncle Joe's hand, but looking longingly at the silent figure on the log, Carolyn May was going down to the stepping-stones by which they were to cross the brook, when, suddenly, Prince came to a halt right at the upper end of the log and his body stiffened.

"What is it, Prince?" whispered his little mistress. "Come here."

But the dog did not move. He even growled-not at Miss Amanda, of course, but at something on the log. And it was just then that Carolyn May wanted to scream-and she could not!

For there on the log, raising its flat, wicked head out of an aperture, its lidless eyes glittering, and its forked tongue shooting in and out of its jaws, was a snake, a horrid, silent, writhing creature, the look of which held the little girl horror-stricken and speechless.

Uncle Joe glanced down impatiently, to see what made her hold back so.

The child's feet seemed glued to the earth. She could not take another step.

Writhing out of the hole in the log and coiling, as it did so, into an att.i.tude to strike, the snake looked to be dangerous, indeed. The fact that it was only a large blacksnake and non-poisonous made no difference at that moment to the dog or to the little girl-nor to Joseph Stagg when he saw it.

It was coiled right at Miss Amanda's back. She did not see it, for she was quite as intent upon keeping her face turned from Mr. Stagg as he had been determined to ignore her presence.

After all, it is the appearance of a snake that terrifies some people.

They do not stop to question whether it is furnished with a poison sac or not. The very look of the creature freezes their blood.

Carolyn May was shaking and helpless. Not so Prince. He repeated his challenging growl and then sprang at the vibrating head. Miss Amanda uttered a stifled scream and jumped up from the log, whirling to see what was happening behind her.

Joseph Stagg dropped Carolyn May's hand and leaped forward with his walking-stick raised to strike. But the mongrel dog was there first. He wisely caught the blacksnake behind the head, his strong, sharp teeth severing its vertebrae.

"Good dog!" shouted Mr. Stagg excitedly. "Fine dog!"

"Oh, Miss Amanda!" shrieked Carolyn May. "I-I thought he was going to sting you-I did!"

She ran to the startled woman and clung to her hand. Prince nosed the dead snake. Mr. Stagg looked exceedingly foolish. Miss Amanda recovered her colour and her voice simultaneously.

"What a brave dog yours is, little girl," she said to Carolyn May. "And I do so despise snakes!" Then she looked directly at Mr. Stagg and bowed gravely. "I thank you," she said, but so coldly, so Carolyn May thought, that her voice might have come "just off an iceberg."

"Oh, I didn't do anything-really I didn't," stammered the man. "It was the dog."

"Oh!" said Miss Amanda.

"Yes," repeated Mr. Stagg, "it was the dog."

Both looked very uncomfortable. Joseph Stagg began to pick up the scattered chestnuts from the overturned basket. The lady stooped and whispered to Carolyn May:

"Come to see me, my dear. I want to know you better."