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I knew a boy who used to make animals out of heather roots. Wherever he could find four legs, he was pretty sure to find a head and a tail. His beasts were a most comic menagerie, and right fruitful of laughter. But they were not so grotesque and extravagant as Lina and her followers. One of them, for instance, was like a boa constrictor walking on four little stumpy legs near its tail.
When sitting, she appeared to be of more than average height; when she stood, you saw that she had her father's stumpy legs. Intellectually, and by the solidity of her character, she was better fitted to be Shelley's mate than any other woman he ever came across. It was natural that she should be interested in this bright creature, fallen as from another world into their dingy, squabbling family.
"I daresay I shall go some time," she said; then seeing the concern in his eyes: "Don't worry about me, Stumpy dear. I don't sleep a great deal, you know; but I rest." He took her arm and drew her gently outside the room. "I want you to take care of yourself now that she is safe," he said. "Will you try?" The smile still lingered in her eyes. She bent her stately neck to kiss him.
Gladly he suffered them, letting the excited dog lick his hands and even his face; for, after all, Stumpy was the best and dearest member of the Family. Then, to steady him, he gave him his bundle to carry up to the cabin, and proudly Stumpy trotted on ahead with it. MacPhairrson's voice trembled as he tried to thank the Boy for bringing Stumpy back to him trembled and choked.
They were long, low vessels, entirely decked over, and fitted to pull some twenty oars; they had thick stumpy masts, and long tapering yards, for lateen sails, now stowed fore and aft in the boats. The sails were bent, the oars being placed along the thwarts, and they wore an air which showed they would be ready for sea at a moment's notice.
It was now the season of incipient preparation for dinner. Dinah, who required large intervals of reflection and repose, and was studious of ease in all her arrangements, was seated on the kitchen floor, smoking a short, stumpy pipe, to which she was much addicted, and which she always kindled up, as a sort of censer, whenever she felt the need of an inspiration in her arrangements.
We knew her intimately from stem to stern, her several decks, her cabins, lockers, holds; we had counted all her ribs over and over again, and paced her quarter-deck, and gazed up at her stumpy masts she had been well-nigh dismantled, and given sailing orders to our fellows amidships in the very ecstasy of circumnavigation.
Among the settlers in the Adirondacks, forty or fifty years ago, was Henry Clymer, from Brooklyn, who went up to Little Black Creek and tried to make a farm out of the gnarly, stumpy land; but being a green hand at that sort of thing, he soon gave it up and put up the place near Northwood, that is locally referred to as the haunted mill.
Back of them again lay the town, its stumpy, half-graded streets terminating in the forest like the warty feelers of a stranded octopus. Everywhere was hurry and confusion, and over all was the ever-present shroud of mist which thickened into showers or parted reluctantly to let the sun peep through.
I shall not forget this fortitude when I have done with the schooner." "Flare close aboard!" roared Stumpy; then: "Seize my soul if I see the boat, though, mistress. Satan! Now the flare's gone out!" "Whereaway?" cried Dolores shrilly. Big Milo was out there in the blackness. "Right under the bows!" bellowed the lookout. "Luff, or bear away; ye'll run him down!"