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The paint was almost gone from the clap-boards, the window-panes were broken and patched with rags, and the garden was a poisonous tangle of nettles, burdocks and tall swamp-weeds over which big blue-bottles hummed. At the sound of wheels a child with a tow-head and pale eyes like Liff Hyatt's peered over the fence and then slipped away behind an out-house.
"He was charmed by that pretty girl, an old sweetheart of his from Massachusetts." Tillhurst was speaking. "You ought to have seen him with her, couldn't even leave when the rest of us did." There was a sudden silence. Marjie was across the room from me, but I could see her face turn white. My own face flamed, but I controlled myself. And Bud, the blessed old tow-head, came to my rescue.
The tow-headed one drew from the corner of the fence a turtle which he had captured and tied, scooped a red-hot coal from the fire with a piece of board and placed it on the turtle's back. The poor creature, tortured by the burning coal, started in a scramble trying to run from the fire. The tow-head roared with laughter. The Boy flushed with sudden rage, sprang forward and knocked the coal off.
"Then you'll stay with us until it's safe for you to go North and I won't have to worry about you any more?" exclaimed Rose Mary, delighted, as she beamed up over Pete's tow-head that had dropped with repletion on her breast.
The distance was not more than a hundred feet, but the current swept him down so much more rapidly than he expected that he was barely able to catch one of the very last of the tow-head saplings and cling to it. While his own progress was thus checked, that of the skiff was not, and in a second the painter was jerked from his hand.
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