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I so sorry!" and slowly shaking her head and lightly patting the big, limp hand where it lay outside the blanket. McWha half opened his eyes, and their faint glance fell on the top of Rosy-Lilly's head as she bent over his hand. With a wry smile he shut them again, but to his surprise, he felt rather gratified. Then Jimmy Brackett came in and whisked the child away.
"He'd 'a' cuffed the kid ef he da'st, he glared at her that ugly!" "Like to see 'im try it!" responded Johnson through his teeth, with a look to which his blank eye lent mysterious menace. The time soon came, however, when McWha resumed his old seat and his old attitude on the bench. Rosy-Lilly avoided him for two evenings, but on the third the old fascination got the better of her pique.
At last Johnson stood up and shook himself. "Well," he drawled, "I s'pose we mus' be doin' the best we kin fer poor old Joe." "He ain't left us no ch'ice!" snapped McWha. "We can't leave him here in the house," continued Johnson, irresolutely. "No, no!" answered McWha. "He'd ha'nt it, an' us, too, ever after, like as not.
Tomorrow we're going to have the greatest Christmas ever was, us three!" The Gentling of Red McWha It was heavy sledding on the Upper Ottanoonsis trail. The two lumbermen were nearing the close of the third day of the hard four days' haul in from the Settlements to the camp.
On the following day McWha went to work again, but not till after breakfast, when the others had long departed. Rosy-Lilly, with one hand twisted in her little apron, was standing in the doorway as he passed out. She glanced up at him with the most coaxing smile in her whole armoury of allurements.
"Yes! the poor old shike-poke!" answered Johnson, without looking up from his task. "Heart?" queried McWha, laconically. Johnson made no reply till the flame caught the kindling and rushed inwards from the open draught with a cordial roar. Then he stood up. "Don' know about that," said he. "But he's been dead these hours and hours! An' the fire out! An' the kid most froze!
McWha saw her coming, and, growing self-conscious, he hurriedly started up a song with the full strength of his big voice. The song was a well-known one, and nothing in it to redden the ear of a maiden; but it was profane with that rich, ingenious amplitude of profanity which seems almost instinctive among the lumbermen a sort of second mother-tongue to them.
She came carrying the tin of water in both little hands, and, lifting it very carefully, she tried to hold it to his lips. Neither she nor McWha was quite successful in this, however. While they were fumbling over it, Jimmy Brackett hurried in, followed by the Boss, and Rosy-Lilly's nursing was superseded.
"Something wrong down yonder!" growled McWha, his expectations of a hot supper crumbling into dust. As he spoke, Walley Johnson sprang past him and went loping down the hill with long, loose strides like a moose. Red McWha followed very deliberately with the teams. He resented anything emotional. And he was prepared to feel himself aggrieved.
At the bright picture she made, her flax-gold hair tied in a knob on top of her head that it might not get tangled, the room fell silent instantly, and every eye was turned upon her. Nothing abashed by the scrutiny, she made her way sedately down the room and across to McWha's bench. Unable to ignore her, and angry at the consciousness that he was embarrassed, McWha eyed her with a grim stare.
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