Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/316

 "Think we ain't spry enough?"

"I ain't known a bed of sickness this twenty-eight years past, Silas Steiner!" retorted the other. Cap'n Steiner, what with his rheumatism and his mid-winter bronchitis, could make no such boast. But his spirit was indomitable.

"Then let 's git after them young rapscallions!"

"A purt-e-e-ee hot day, ain't it, Silas?" was the other's last feeble objection, as Cap'n Steiner linked an arm through his own and the two hobbled hastily and yet secretively across the Common, and with numerous sly diggings of ribs and holding of sides crept down Thames Street.

Once inside Cap'n Steiner's front gate, they circled cautiously through the shadowy orchard, like two guilty children, dodging from tree to tree and finding it no easy matter to sneak past the coldly inquisitive eye of Miss Arabella, busy gathering a mess of butter-beans for the Widow Starbottle, from the Captain's trim little garden.

Just at the foot of this garden, which sloped gently down to the river's edge, the old