Hildegarde's Neighbors Read online

  "My tom, my tom, my tommy-hawk, With thee I'll make the pale-face squawk: With thee I'll make them cry 'Oh, lawk!' My tom, my tom, my tommy-hawk."

  Circling round a great tree, he came full upon Hilda, flying inthe other direction, and made a snatch at her green wreath.

  "Pale-face squaw shall lose her hat, Medicine-man will see to that,"

  he cried.

  "Will he, indeed?" cried Hildegarde. "Catch me if you can, youodious redskin! I defy you in every withering term that a Coopermaiden ever invented!"

  "Ho! if you are a Cooper maiden, you are nothing but a female!"said Gerald. "Aha! she turns, she flies! she feels the scalp a-wr-r-r-r-r-iggling on her head! she fears she'll soon be a femaledead! Ho, ho! Medicine-man! Big Injin! Ho!"

  Flying breathless now, Hildegarde darted hither and thither,hiding under the leaves, dodging behind the tree trunks. Finally,seeing her foe pausing for an instant behind the bole of a hugenut-tree, she rushed upon him, and seizing him, shook himviolently. Then she let go her hold and screamed, for it was notGerald that she was shaking.

  Roger Merryweather stepped forward, unable to keep from smiling ather face of horror. He felt a little "out of it," perhaps, andtwenty-four seemed a long way from seventeen; but he should nothave watched the girls, he told himself with some severity,without letting them know he was there. Now this pretty childregarded him as a double eavesdropper and spy. But his apology wasdrowned in the shouts of the boys.

  "Hi! here's Roger! hurrah! Roger, Roger! my scientific codger,come and play Big Injin! The pale-faces are uncommonly game, butwe shall have them all the same. Hi! there goes Dropsy!"

  Indeed, at this moment Gertrude tripped over a tree root and fellheadlong; as she fell she caught at Phil's ankle, just as he wasin the act of grasping Bell by the flying tail of her gown;another moment, and all three were on the ground together in aconfused heap.

  "Anybody hurt?" asked Roger, going to pick them up.

  "Oh no!" said Bell, sitting up and shaking the pine needles fromher hair. "Toots was underneath, and she makes a noble cushion.All right, Toots? and how do you come here, Professor?" The threefallen ones righted themselves, and sat up and panted; seeingwhich, the others came and sat down, too, and for a space no onespoke, for no one had any breath save Roger, and he was laughing.

  "I have been botanizing," he said at last. "I was coming quietlyalong, when suddenly Bedlam broke loose, and I have been standingby to go about ever since. No extra lunatics seemed to be needed,or I should have been charmed to assist."

  By this time Hildegarde had recovered her composure. It was herfate, she reflected, to run into people, and be found in trees,and be caught playing "Sally Waters;" she could not help her fate.But her hair was all down her back, and she could help that. Shebegan to knot it up quietly, but Gerald raised a cry of protest.

  "What, oh what is she doing that for? Don't, Miss Hildegarde,please! I was just thinking how jolly it looked, let alone thechances for scalping."

  "Thank you!" said Hildegarde, as she wound up the long locks andfastened them securely. "I have no fancy for playing Absalom allthe way home. Have you hurt your foot, Phil?" for Phil was rubbinghis ankle vigorously, and looking rather uncomfortable.

  "I stumbled over Dropsy's nose," he said, ruefully. "When she felldown, her nose reached all the way round the tree, and tripped meup. I wish you would keep your nose in curl-papers, Dropsy."

  Dropsy beat him affectionately, and helped rub his ankle. Theywere silent for a moment, being too comfortable to speak, each onethought to himself. The sunbeams flickered through the leaves; thepine needles, tossed into heaps by the hurrying feet, gave outtheir delicious fragrance; overhead the wind murmured low in thebranches. It was a perfect time, and even Gerald felt the charmand was silent, throwing acorns at his sisters.

  "Sing, Roger," said Bell, at length, softly. "Sing 'Robin Hood!'"

  So Roger sang, in a noble baritone voice, that joyous song of theforest, and the woods rang to the chorus:

  "So, though bold Robin's gone, Yet his heart lives on, And we drink to him with three times three."