stood dancing in the barn door. Tobe stood close behind him and small
Peggy and Jennie pressed close to Rose Mary's side, eager but not
daring to hasten Stonie's dramatic way of making Rose Mary guess the
news they were all so impatient to impart to her.

"Oh, what? Tell me quick, Stonie," pleaded Rose Mary with the
eagerness she knew would be expected of her. Even in her darkest
hours Rose Mary's sun had shone on the General with its usual
radiance of adoration and he had not been permitted to feel the
tragedy of the upheaval, but encouraged to enjoy to the utmost all its
small excitements. In fact the move over to the store had appealed to
a fast budding business instinct in the General and he had seen
himself soon promoted to the weighing out of sugar, wrapping up
bundles and delivering them over the counter to any one of the
admiring Swarm sent to the store for the purchase of the daily
provender.

"It were a tree squirrel and three little just-hatched ones in a
bunch," Stonie answered with due dramatic weight at Rose Mary's plea.
"Mis' Rucker thought it were a rat and jumped on the bed and hollowed
for Tobe to ketch it, and Peg and Jennie acted just like her, too,
after Tobe and me had ketched that mouse in the barn just last week
and tied it to a string and let it run at 'em all day to get 'em used
to rats and things just like boys." And the General cast a look of
disappointed scorn at the two pigtailed heads, downcast at this
failure of theirs to respond to the General's effort to inoculate
their feminine natures with masculine courage.

"I hollered 'fore I knewed what at," answered the abashed Jennie in a
very small voice, unconsciously making further display of the force of