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'Twas quite enough to entice me beyond my power: after that, I kept watch, all in a shiver of dread, for some signal; and when she had swept her father's shorn hair from the floor, and when my sister had gone with Tom Tot's wife to put the swarm of little Tots to bed, and when Tom Tot had entered upon a minute description of the sin at Wayfarer's Tickle, from which his daughter, fearing sudden death and damnation, had fled, Mary beckoned me to follow: which I did.
"What's gone amiss?" Skipper Tommy entreated, touching Tom Tot's shaking hand. "It come in the fall o' the year, Tom, lad. But what's gone amiss along o' you?" "She've been waitin' since then? Oh, a wretched father, I!" "Tom, lad, tell me what 'tis all about." "'Tis from she Mary! 'Tis from my lass," Tom Tot cried.
And, as they stood there, the river's murmur seemed like the murmur of the river of death, and the white fog, beginning to rise, like the folds of a little child's shroud; and Tot's mamma threw up her hands again and fell among all the unfeeling stones and pebbles.
And Mammy resumed her work, but all the time grumbling, and muttering something about "ole maids" and "po' white folks." "I don't like her, nohow," said Dumps, "an' I'm glad me an' Tot's too little ter go ter school; I don't want never to learn to read all my life. An', Mammy, can't you go an' turn Diddie erloose?" "No, I can't," answered Mammy.
Big and little, and half size; white and yellow, and brown and gray. Here was richness at last. All in a minute Tot's little, nibbling, crunching teeth went on edge on a perverse, grating pebble that sternly refused to be nibbled or crunched. Another and another and another she tried. "Pwobably," she thought, "they has to be cwacked dus 'ike nuts."
Then they made a tiny fire with birch rind and billets from Tom Tot's pack and the fire crackled and blazed in a fashion the most heartening and the smutty tin kettle bubbled as busily as in the most immaculate of kitchens: and presently the tea and hard-bread were doing such service as rarely, indeed, save in our land, it is their good fortune to achieve.
And she tickled tiny tot's two cheeks to make him forget and played here's the lord mayor, here's his two horses, here's his gingerbread carriage and here he walks in, chinchopper, chinchopper, chinchopper chin. But Edy got as cross as two sticks about him getting his own way like that from everyone always petting him. I'd like to give him something, she said, so I would, where I won't say.
And clutched in each and every tiny tot's chubby hand is a bag of peanuts, five-cent size or ten-cent size, but mostly five-cent size. As Emily sees 'em coming, she smiles until she looks in the face like one of these here old-fashioned red-brick Colonial fireplaces, with an overgrown black Christmas stocking hanging down from the centre of the mantel.
Down over the blue orbs drifted the snowy lids. Tired little Tot. Where was dwandma and the rest all this time? In trouble and confusion. Calling and searching, searching and calling: "Tot, Tot, Tot, little Tot! Where are you?" Grandpapa and grandmamma, and Uncle Will and Tot's mamma.
And she proceeded to crack, not the stones, but her own little, eager, blundering fingers, instead. O stony, stony-hearted stones and pebbly-hearted pebbles! Tot's cup of bitterness seemed to flow over. She stood up, sobbing. A sudden sense of desolation oppressed her. "I wis' I was at home wiv dwandma. I wis, oh, I wis' I hadn't tum!" she sobbed. Her only thought, now, was to get home.
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