ur sperience with the sharp things an'
bitter ones don't do them no sarvice. Naw, leetle darter--naw! Ye mought
ez well gin a message o' kindness ter a wolf, an' expec' him ter kerry
it ter some lonesome, helpless thing a-wounded by the way-side, ez gin
it ter a Kittredge."

"I never will speak ter one o' 'em agin ez long ez I live," she cried,
with a fresh gust of tears.

"Waal," exclaimed the old man, reassuringly, and chirping high, "hyar
we all be agin, jes' the same ez we war afore. Don't cry, Eveliny; it's
jes' the same."

A sudden babbling intruded upon the conversation. The youthful
Kittredge, as he sat upon the wide flat stones of the hearth, was as
unwelcome here in the Cove as a Quimbey had been in the cabin on the
mountain. The great hickory fire called for his unmixed approval, coming
in, as he had done, from the gray wet day. He shuffled his bare pink
feet--exceedingly elastic and agile members they seemed to be, and he
had a remarkable "purchase" upon their use--and brought them smartly
down upon their heels as if this were one of the accepted gestures of
applause. Then he looked up at the dark frowning faces of his mother's
brothers, and gurgled with laughter, showing the fascinating spectacle
of his two front teeth. Perhaps it was the only Kittredge eye that they
were not willing to meet. They solemnly gazed beyond him and into the
fire, ignoring his very existence. He sustained the slight with an
admirable cheerfulness, and babbled and sputtered and flounced about
with his hands. He grew pinker in the generous firelight, and he looked
very fat as he sat in a heap on the floor. He seemed to have threads
tightly tied about his bolster-shaped limbs in places where elder people
prefer joints--in his ankles and wrists and elbows--for his arms were
bare, and although his frock of pink calico hung decorously high on one
shoulder, it drooped quite off from the other, showing a sturdy chest.

His mother took slight notice of him; she was beginning to look about
the room with a certain critical disfavor at the different arrangement
of the household furniture adopted by her father's deaf and widowed old
sister who presided here now, and who, it chanced, had been called away
by the illness of a relative. Evelina got up presently, and shifted the
position of the spinning-wheels, placing the flax-wheel where the large
wheel had been. She then pushed out the table from the corner. "What
ailed her ter sot it hyar?