"Say, ain't dem some o' de critters you was showin' de fellers t'other night?"
And Michael fell upon them eagerly. They happened to be rare specimens, and he knew from college experience that such could be sold to advantage to the museums. He showed Sam how to remove them without injuring them. A little further on they came to a wild growth of holly, crazy with berries and burnished thorny foliage, and near at hand a mistletoe bough loaded with tiny white transparent berries.
"Ain't dem wot dey sell fer Chris'sum greens?" Sam's city eyes picked them out at once.
"Of course," said Michael delighted. "How stupid of me not to have found them before. We'll take a lot back with us and see if we can get any price for it. Whatever we get we'll devote to making the house liveable. Holly and mistletoe ought to have a good market about now. That's another idea! Why not cultivate a lot of this stuff right in this tract of land. It seems to grow without any trouble. See! There are lots of little bushes. We'll encourage them, Sam. And say, Sam, if you hadn't come along I might never have thought of that. You see I needed you."
Sam grunted in a pleased way.
When they came to the house it looked to Michael still more desolate in the snowy stretch of setting than it had when the grass was about it. His heart sank.
"I don't know as we can ever do anything with the old shack," he said, shaking his head wistfully. "It looks worse than I thought."
"'Tain't so bad," said Sam cheerfully. "Guess it's watertight." He placed a speculative eye at the dusty window pane he had wiped off with his coat sleeve. "Looks dry inside. 'Twould be a heap better'n sleepin' on de pavement fer some. Dat dere fire hole would take in a big lot o' wood an' I guess dere's a plenty round de place without robbin' de woods none."
Michael led him to the seashore and bade him look. He wanted to see what effect it would have upon him. The coast swept wild and bleak in the cold December day, and Sam shivered in his thin garments. A look of awe and fear came into his face. He turned his back upon it.
"Too big!" he said sullenly, and Michael understood that the sea in its vastness oppressed him.
"Yes, there's a good deal of it," he admitted, "but after all it's sort of like the geranium flower."