"Hey, Bud! Come on, Ivy!" he called cheerfully. Nobody answered. It was
a part of the programme, whenever John Jay was punished, for the little
brother and sister to run and hide under the back-door step. There they
cowered, with covered heads, until the danger was over. Old Sheba had
never frowned on the four-year-old Bud, or baby Ivy, but they scuttled
out of sight like frightened mice at the first signal of her gathering
wrath.

Ivy lay still with her thumb in her mouth, but Bud began solemnly
crawling out from between the steps. Everything that Bud did seemed
solemn. Even his smiles were slow-spreading and dignified. Some people
called him Judge; but John Jay, wise in the negro lore of their
neighborhood Uncle Remus, called him "Brer Tarrypin" for good reasons of
his own.

"Wot we all gwine do now?" drawled Bud, with a turtle-like stretch of
his little round head as he peered through the steps.

[Illustration: 'Wot we all gwine do now?']

John Jay scanned the horizon on all sides, and thoughtfully rubbed his
ear. His quick eyes saw unlimited possibilities for enjoyment, where
older sight would have found but a dreary outlook; but older sight is
always on a strain for the birds in the bush. It is never satisfied with
the one in the hand. Older sight would have seen only a poor shanty set
in a patch of weeds and briers, and a narrow path straggling down to
the dust of the public road. But the outlook was satisfactory to John
Jay. So was it to the neighbor's goat, standing motionless in the warm
sunshine, with its eyes cast in the direction of a newly-made garden. So
was it to the brood of little yellow goslings, waddling after their