The Able McLaughlins
delightedly. It would have been a choice morning for any baby whose mother wasn't sitting frozen. Wee Johnnie made the best of it. He kicked, and giggled, and squirmed about.
The horses failed of their own accord to take their proper pace again. Wully had to speak to them. He slapped them lightly with the lines.
"Get up, Nellie!" he exclaimed. "What's the matter of you?"
Wee Johnnie moved his arms exactly as Wully had done.
"Get up, Nellie!" he said. "What's the matter of you?"
He said all that, plainly, if not perfectly, and before he knew what was happening, his mother had seized him, and was hugging him up against her, in the good old way, kissing him.
"Get up, Nellie!" he cooed. "What's the matter of you!"
She had been so surprised, so delighted with her son's first sentence that she had turned, even kissing him, to Wully, no joy complete unless he shared it.
"Did you hear that!" she cried triumphantly, her face blossoming towards him. "Say it again, Lammie!"
And almost before Wully could smile in return, he stopped. He turned around. He thought he heard a groan from his load. He couldn't even smile at her with that man possibly spying upon them. He looked—and from the end of the wagon
262
