Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/132

114 pecan shell, which the eater learns so carefully to avoid. In outward appearance the nut is a pig-nut pure and simple, the reader being supposed to be enough of a countryman to know that pig-nuts, like wild fruits in general, vary interminably in size, shape, and goodness.

Pretty butter-and-eggs still bloomed beside the stone wall, and the "folksy mayweed" was plentiful about a barnyard. Out from the midst of it scampered a rabbit as I approached the fence to look over. He disappeared in the cornfield, his white tailtip showing last, and I wondered where he belonged, as there seemed to be neither wood nor shrubbery within convenient distance.

Just beyond this point (after noticing a downy woodpecker in a Balm-o'-Gilead tree, if the careful compositor will allow me that euphonious Old Colony contraction), I had stopped to pick up a shagbark when five children, the oldest a girl of nine or ten, came down the road together.

"Out of school, so early?" said I.

"No," was the instantaneous response; "we 've got the whooping cough."