The Greatest Children's Books - Gene Stratton-Porter Edition. Stratton-Porter Gene

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СКАЧАТЬ turned to the trail.

      “Please wait a minute,” called the Angel. “What's your name? I want to think about you while you are gone.” Freckles lifted his face with the brown rift across it and smiled quizzically.

      “Freckles?” she guessed, with a peal of laughter. “And mine is——”

      “I'm knowing yours,” interrupted Freckles.

      “I don't believe you do. What is it?” asked the girl.

      “You won't be getting angry?”

      “Not until I've had the water, at least.”

      It was Freckles' turn to laugh. He whipped off his big, floppy straw hat, stood uncovered before her, and said, in the sweetest of all the sweet tones of his voice: “There's nothing you could be but the Swamp Angel.”

      The girl laughed happily.

      Once out of her sight, Freckles ran every step of the way to the cabin. Mrs. Duncan gave him a small bucket of water, cool from the well. He carried it in the crook of his right arm, and a basket filled with bread and butter, cold meat, apple pie, and pickles, in his left hand.

      “Pickles are kind o' cooling,” said Mrs. Duncan.

      Then Freckles ran again.

      The Angel was on her knees, reaching for the bucket, as he came up.

      “Be drinking slow,” he cautioned her.

      “Oh!” she cried, with a long breath of satisfaction. “It's so good! You are more than kind to bring it!”

      Freckles stood blinking in the dazzling glory of her smile until he scarcely could see to lift the basket.

      “Mercy!” she exclaimed. “I think I had better be naming you the 'Angel.' My Guardian Angel.”

      “Yis,” said Freckles. “I look the character every day—but today most emphatic!”

      “Angels don't go by looks,” laughed the girl. “Your father told us you had been scrapping. But he told us why. I'd gladly wear all your cuts and bruises if I could do anything that would make my father look as peacocky as yours did. He strutted about proper. I never saw anyone look prouder.”

      “Did he say he was proud of me?” marveled Freckles.

      “He didn't need to,” answered the Angel. “He was radiating pride from every pore. Now, have you brought me your dinner?”

      “I had my dinner two hours ago,” answered Freckles.

      “Honest Injun?” bantered the Angel.

      “Honest! I brought that on purpose for you.”

      “Well, if you knew how hungry I am, you would know how thankful I am, to the dot,” said the Angel.

      “Then you be eating,” cried the happy Freckles.

      The Angel sat on a big camera, spread the lunch on the carriage seat, and divided it in halves. The daintiest parts she could select she carefully put back into the basket. The remainder she ate. Again Freckles found her of the swamp, for though she was almost ravenous, she managed her food as gracefully as his little yellow fellow, and her every movement was easy and charming. As he watched her with famished eyes, Freckles told her of his birds, flowers, and books, and never realized what he was doing.

      He led the horse to a deep pool that he knew of, and the tortured creature drank greedily, and lovingly rubbed him with its nose as he wiped down its welted body with grass. Suddenly the Angel cried: “There comes the Bird Woman!”

      Freckles had intended leaving before she came, but now he was glad indeed to be there, for a warmer, more worn, and worse bitten creature he never had seen. She was staggering under a load of cameras and paraphernalia. Freckles ran to her aid. He took all he could carry of her load, stowed it in the back of the carriage, and helped her in. The Angel gave her water, knelt and unfastened the leggings, bathed her face, and offered the lunch.

      Freckles brought the horse. He was not sure about the harness, but the Angel knew, and soon they left the swamp. Then he showed them how to reach the chicken tree from the outside, indicated a cooler place for the horse, and told them how, the next time they came, the Angel could find his room while she waited.

      The Bird Woman finished her lunch, and lay back, almost too tired to speak.

      “Were you for getting Little Chicken's picture?” Freckles asked.

      “Finely!” she answered. “He posed splendidly. But I couldn't do anything with his mother. She will require coaxing.”

      “The Lord be praised!” muttered Freckles under his breath.

      The Bird Woman began to feel better.

      “Why do you call the baby vulture 'Little Chicken'?” she asked, leaning toward Freckles in an interested manner.

      “'Twas Duncan began it,” said Freckles. “You see, through the fierce cold of winter the birds of the swamp were almost starving. It is mighty lonely here, and they were all the company I was having. I got to carrying scraps and grain down to them. Duncan was that ginerous he was giving me of his wheat and corn from his chickens' feed, and he called the birds me swamp chickens. Then when these big black fellows came, Mr. McLean said they were our nearest kind to some in the old world that they called 'Pharaoh's Chickens,' and he called mine 'Freckles' Chickens.'”

      “Good enough!” cried the Bird Woman, her splotched purple face lighting with interest. “You must shoot something for them occasionally, and I'll bring more food when I come. If you will help me keep them until I get my series, I'll give you a copy of each study I make, mounted in a book.”

      Freckles drew a deep breath.

      “I'll be doing me very best,” he promised, and from the deeps he meant it.

      “I wonder if that other egg is going to hatch?” mused the Bird Woman. “I am afraid not. It should have pipped today. Isn't it a beauty! I never before saw either an egg or the young. They are rare this far north.”

      “So Mr. McLean said,” answered Freckles.

      Before they drove away, the Bird Woman thanked him for his kindness to the Angel and to her. She gave him her hand at parting, and Freckles joyfully realized that this was going to be another person for him to love. He could not remember, after they had driven away, that they even had noticed his missing hand, and for the first time in his life he had forgotten it.

      When the Bird Woman and the Angel were on the home road, she told of the little corner of paradise into which she had strayed and of her new name. The Bird Woman looked at the girl and guessed its appropriateness.

      “Did you know Mr. McLean had a son?” asked the Angel. “Isn't the little accent he has, and the way he twists a sentence, too dear? And isn't it too old-fashioned and funny to hear him call his father 'mister'?”

      “It sounds too good to be true,” said the Bird Woman, answering the last question first. “I am so tired of these present-day young СКАЧАТЬ