No one else
joined in, though Miss Ribbone smiled a little. When Joe recovered he
held out his plate.

"More pumpkin, Dad."

"If--what, sir?" Dad was prompting him in manners.

"IF?" and Joe laughed again. "Who said 'if'?--I never."

Just then Miss Ribbone sprang to her feet, knocking over the box she
had been sitting on, and stood for a time as though she had seen a
ghost. We stared at her. "Oh," she murmured at last, "it was the dog!
It gave me such a fright!"

Mother sympathised with her and seated her again, and Dad fixed his eye
on Joe.

"Did n't I tell you," he said, "to keep that useless damned mongrel of
a dog outside the house altogether--eh?--did n't I? Go this moment and
tie the brute up, you vagabond!"

"I did tie him up, but he chewed the greenhide."

"Be off with you, you--" (Dad coughed suddenly and scattered fragments
of meat and munched pumpkin about the table) "at once, and do as I tell
you, you----"

"That'll do, Father--that'll do," Mother said gently, and Joe took
Stump out to the barn and kicked him, and hit him against the
corn-sheller, and threatened to put him through it if he did n't stop
squealing.

He was a small dog, a dog that was always on the watch--for meat; a
shrewd, intelligent beast that never barked at anyone until he got
inside and well under the bed. Anyway, he had taken a fancy to Miss
Ribbone's stocking, which had fallen down while he was lying under the
table, and commenced to worry it. Then he discovered she had a calf,
and started to eat THAT. She did n't tell US though--she told Mrs.
Macpherson, who imparted the secret to mother. I suppose Stump did n't
understand stockings, because neither Mother nor Sal ever wore any,
except to a picnic or somebody's funeral; and that was very seldom.
The Creek was n't much of a place for sport.

"I hope as you'll be comfortable, my dear," Mother observed as she
showed the young lady the back-room where she was to sleep. "It ain't
s' nice as we should like to have it f' y'; we had n't enough spare
bags to line it all with, but the cracks is pretty well stuffed up with
husks an' one thing an' 'nother, and I don't think you'll find any wind
kin get in. Here's a bear-skin f' your feet, an' I've nailed a bag up
so no one kin see-in in the morning. S' now, I think you'll be pretty
snug."

The schoolmistress cast a distressed look at the waving bag-door and
said:

"Th-h-ank you-very much."

What a voice! I've he