Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/43

 had the first impression of the O'Malley family been changed by the discovery that, pending the re-shingling of their house, they were camping out in the front yard, cheerfully and contentedly, under the smoke-stained canvas of the very tent which had once stood amid the subarctic snows of Twenty Mile Creek.

All this Lonely had seen and resented. So as he caught sight of the barefooted, reckless band, that bright Saturday morning, and heard their telltale whistles and shouts and cat-calls, he had a little battle of his own to fight out. He wondered, in a moment of weakness, if it would not be better to hide Alaska Alice. He remembered the odium attaching to the boy who openly "minded the baby." An avocation so servile and effeminate branded one, he was fully aware, as with the brand of Cain. Yet he took his own joy, he knew, in the company of Alaska Alice. He even had a sneaking love for toting her about. And he was n't going back on her. Animal-like, he pugnaciously claimed the right to stand by his own.

He saw the band stop in front of the Preacher's house, and in buttery and gleeful