"That's so!" he said. "That's so! I forgot it teetotally last night."
He seated himself on the edge of the bunk and leaned over the boy, taking the small hands in his.
"I don't know if your ma had you say your prayers to her or not, Buddy," he said, "and I don't rightly remember how that 'Our Father' goes, so we'll get along the best we can 'til I go up to the farm again and I find out for sure. You just say this after Uncle Peter--'O God, make us all well and happy to-morrow: Buddy and Uncle Peter, and Aunt Jane,'"
"And Mrs. Potter," said Buddy, "and the pigs, and the horses, and the cows, and the chickens, and the turkeys."
"Well--yes!" said Peter. "I guess it won't do any harm to put them in, although it ain't customary. They might as well be well and happy as not.--Amen!"
"Uncle Peter," said the boy suddenly, "will Mama come back?"
"Oh, yes!" said Peter Lane, in his unpreparedness, and then he opened his mouth again to tell the boy the truth, but he heard the sigh of satisfaction as Buddy dropped his head on the pillow and closed his eyes.
"I got to take that lie back to-morrow," said Peter gravely, but he never did take it back, never! It stands against him to this day, but it is quite hidden in the heaped up blossoms of his gentle kindness.
"NO, siree, Buddy!" said Peter, shaking his head, "my jack-knife is one thing you can't have to play with. There's two things a man oughtn't to trust to anybody; one's his jack-knife and one's his soul. He ought to keep both of them nice and sharp and clean. If I been letting my soul get dull and rusty and all nicked up, it's no sign I'm going to let my jack-knife get that way. What I got to do is to polish up my soul, and I guess there ain't no better place to do it than down here where there ain't nobody to bother me whilst I do it. You hain't no idee what a soul is, but you will have some day, maybe. I ain't right sure I know that, myself."
The shanty-boat was moored in Rapp's slough, and had been there three days. The cold weather, which continued unabated, had sealed the boat in by spreading a sheet of ice over the surface of the slough, but Peter did not like the way the river was behaving. Between the new-formed ice and the shore a narrow strip of water appeared faster than the cold could freeze it and the ice that covered the slough cracked now and then in long, irregular lines, all telling that the river was rising, and rising rapidly. This meant that the cold snap was merely local and that up the river unseasonably warm weather had brought rains or a great thaw. There was no great danger of a long period of high water so late in the season, for cold waves were sure to freeze the North soon, but the present high water was not only apt to be inconvenient but actually dangerous for the shanty-boat. A rise of another foot would cover the lowland, and if the weather turned warm Buddy and Peter would be cut off from the hill farms by two miles of water-covered "bottom," to wade across which in Peter's thin shoes would be most unpleasant.