Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/94

 than a lisp. She also toed-in a trifle when she walked, and it had never occurred to Lonely that toeing-in could be done so fascinatingly. And then she was so dog-faithful, and never tattled! She at least filled in the time, he magnanimously decided.

He did not, however, give over all his days and thoughts to the softer sex, during this interregnum of idleness. A good deal of the time he worked secretly on his flying-machine, up in the stable hay-loft, and many days he went off on lonely excursions, towards the upper river, out past the Commons, past Blue Hollow and the brick-yards, where, beyond the bald hills and clay slopes, dwelt a barbarian and outlandish people, and where, when a stranger appeared, he was apt to be hooted at and stoned. They were a watchful and a warlike lot, these far-off barbarians, and on more than one occasion they did their best to cut off Lonely's retreat, hunting in packs like wolves, mysteriously appearing and disappearing, yet never quite able to corner the alert young intruder with the sling-shot and the freckled nose. For they had caves and fires and dug-outs, these outlanders, and they