Presently, the Crittenden house woke, so to speak, with one eye, and
took on the aspect of a house in which someone is astir. First came the
fox-terrier, inevitable precursor of his little master, and then,
stepping around Touclé as though she were a tree or a rock, came his
little partner Paul, his freckled face shining with soap and the
earliness of the hour. Mr. Welles was apt to swallow hard again, when
he felt the child's rough, strong fingers slip into his.
"Hello, Mr. Welles," said Paul.
"Hello, Paul," said Mr. Welles.
"I thought sure I'd beat you to it for once, this morning," was what
Paul invariably said first. "I can't seem to wake up as early as you and
Touclé."
Then he would bring out his plan for that particular morning walk.
"Maybe we might have time to have me show you the back-road by Cousin
Hetty's, and get back by the men's short-cut before breakfast, maybe?
Perhaps?"
"We could try it," admitted Mr. Welles, cautiously. It tickled him to
answer Paul in his own prudent idiom. Then they set off, surrounded and
encompassed by the circles of mad delight which Médor wove about them,
rushing at them once in a while, in a spasm of adoration, to leap up and
lick Paul's face.
Thus on one of these mornings in April, they were on the back-road to
Cousin Hetty's, the right-hand side solemn and dark with tall pines,
where the ground sloped up towards the Eagle Rocks; jungle-like with
blackberry brambles and young pines on the left side where it had been
lumbered some years ago. Paul pointed out proudly the thrifty growth of
the new pines and explained it by showing the several large trees left
standing at intervals down the slope towards the Ashley valley. "Father
always has them do that, so the seeds from the old trees will seed up
the bare ground again. Gosh! You'd ought to hear him light into the
choppers when they forget to leave the seed-pines or when they cut under
six inches butt diameter."
Mr. Welles had no more notion what cutting under six inches butt
diameter meant than he had of the name of the little brown bird who sang
so sweetly in his elm; but Paul's voice and that of the nameless bird
gave him the same pleasure. He tightened his hold of the tough, sinewy
little fingers, and looked up through the glorious brown columns of the
great pines towards where the sky-line showed, luminous, far up the
slope.