Page:Hopkinson Smith--Tom Grogan.djvu/29

 cabbage. “There, we'll be after puttin' it where Stumpy can't be rubbin' his nose in it”—setting the pail, as she spoke, on a rough anchor-stone.

Here the goat moved up, rubbing his head in the boy's face, and then reaching around for the pail.

“Look at him, Patsy! Git out, ye imp, or I'll hurt ye! Leave that kiver alone!” She laughed as she struck at the goat with her empty gauntlet, and shrank back out of the way of his horns.

There was no embarrassment over her informal dinner, eaten as she sat squat in a fence-corner, an anchor-stone for a table, and a pile of spars for a chair. She talked to Babcock in an unabashed, self-possessed way, pouring out the smoking coffee in the flask cup, chewing away on the pigs' feet, and throwing the bones to the goat, who sniffed them contemptuously. “Yes, he's the youngest of our children, sir. He and Jennie—that's home, and 'most as tall as meself—are all that's left. The other two went to heaven when they was little ones.”

“Can't the little fellow's leg be straightened?” asked Babcock, in a tone which