Part 9 (2/2)

”There now!” said Nan, jumping up quickly and going around the table to her mother's side. ”You poor dear! I won't say anything more to hurt and trouble you. I'm a selfish thing, that's what I am.”

Momsey wound her arms about her. Papa Sherwood still looked grave. ”We get no nearer to the proper solution of the difficulty,” he said. ”Of course, Nancy, the orphan asylum is out of the question.”

”I'll stay here, of course,” Nan said, with some difficulty keeping her voice from quavering.

”Not alone in the house, honey,” Momsey said quickly.

”With Mrs. Joyce?” suggested Nan tentatively.

”No,” Mr. Sherwood said. ”She is not the person to be trusted with you.”

”There's Mrs. Grimes' boarding house around the corner?” suggested Nan.

Momsey shuddered. ”Never! Never! My little girl in a boarding house. Oh, Papa Sherwood! We must find somebody to care for her while we are away, who loves Nan.”

And it was just here that a surprisingly gruff voice took up the matter and decided it in a moment.

”That's me,” said the voice, with conviction. ”She's just the sort of little girl I cotton to, sister Jessie. And Kate'll be fairly crazy about her. If you're going anywhere for a long spell, just let me take her up to Pine Camp. We have no little girls up there, never had any.

But I bet we know how to treat 'em.”

”Hen!” shouted Mr. Sherwood, stumbling up from the table, and putting out both hands to the big man whom Mrs. Joyce had ushered in from the kitchen so unexpectedly.

”Henry Sherwood!” gasped Momsey, half rising herself in her surprise and delight.

”Why!” cried Nan, ”it's the bear-man!” for Mr. Henry Sherwood wore the great fur coat and cap that he had worn the evening before when he had come to Nan's aid in rescuing the boy from Norway Pond.

Afterward Nan confessed, naively, that she ought to have known he was her Uncle Henry. n.o.body, she was quite sure, could be so big and brawny as the lumberman from Michigan.

”She's the girl for me,” proclaimed Uncle Henry admiringly. ”Smart as a whip and as bold as a catamount. Hasn't she told you what she did last night? Sho! Of course not. She don't go 'round blowing about her deeds of valor, I bet!” and the big man went off into a gale of laughter that seemed to shake the little cottage.

Papa Sherwood and Momsey had to learn all the particulars then, and both glowed with pride over their little daughter's action. Gradually, after numerous personal questions were asked and answered on both sides, the conversation came around to the difficulty the little family was in, and the cause of it.

Henry Sherwood listened to the story of the Scotch legacy with wide-open eyes, marveling greatly. The possibility of his brother's wife becoming wealthy amazed and delighted his simple mind. The fact that they had to take the long journey to Scotland to obtain the money troubled him but little. Although he had never traveled far himself, save to Chicago from the Michigan woods, Mr. Henry Sherwood had lived in the open so much that distances did not appall him.

”Sure you'll go,” he proclaimed, reaching down into a very deep pocket and dragging to light a long leather pouch, with a draw-string of home-cured deer skin. ”And if you are short, Bob, we'll go down into this poke and see what there is left.

”I came down to Chicago to see about a piece of timber that's owned by some sharps on Jackson Street. I didn't know but I might get to cut that timber. I've run it careless-like, and I know pretty near what there is in it. So I said to Kate:

”'I'll see Bob and his wife, and the little nipper-----”

”Goodness!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Nan, under her breath.

Uncle Henry's eyes twinkled and the many wrinkles about them screwed up into hard knots. ”Beg pardon!” he exclaimed, for his ears were very sharp. ”This young lady, I should have said. Anyhow, I told Kate I'd see you all and find out what you were doing.

”Depending on mills and such for employment isn't any very safe way to live, I think. Out in the woods you are as free as air, and there aren't so many bosses, and you don't have to think much about 'the market' and 'supply and demand,' and all that.”

”Just the same,” said Mr. Robert Sherwood, his own eyes twinkling, ”you are in some trouble right now, I believe, Hen?”

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