Page:The children in the little old red house (IA childreninlittle00doug).pdf/17

Rh “Why, there must be at least half a dozen of you!”

“There ain’t only four. Prim an’ Goldie’s picking beans, an’ Linn’s down to the Briggs’s, an’ Rilla’s gone to the store.”

“Great Scott! How many in all?”

“There’s eight and mother. But she’s gone away, an’ if she shouldn’t ever come back——”

There was another wail.

He laughed, it seemed so very funny. He was a rather stout, fresh-looking man with a decidedly jolly face, clean-shaven, and what seemed to make it merrier was a big dimple in one cheek. His eyes had a laugh in them, too, and were a sort of grayish-green.

“Whew! ‘How many—Seven in all, she said,’” quoting from Wordsworth.

“I said eight, and I ain’t a she—I’m a boy. And my name’s Tip;” indignantly.

He raised himself from a pile of heads. The tears had made rivulets down a dirty face, but the eyes were still lustrous with them.

“And where has your mother gone?”

“She went to a fun’ral. Somebody died—they always do at a fun’ral. She was comin’ home at noon and here it’s ’most night. An’ what if she should die an’ never come back!”