"Come on, Pap!" said Sue, bruskly. "Let's go home. These folks don't want us here."
"Lazy, shiftless, inconsequential critter," growled Bob Buckham, coming back to the dead eagle, as Lycurgus and his daughter moved slowly away across the field.
But then the old man's face cleared up quickly, though he sighed as he spoke.
"That only goes to show ye! Some folks never have no chick nor child and others has got 'em so plentiful that they kin afford ter use 'em for eagle bait."
His lips took a humorous twist at the corners, his eyes sparkled, and altogether his bewhiskered countenance took on a very pleasant expression. The Corner House girls--at least, Ruth and Tess and Dorothy--began to like the old farmer right away.
"Got to take that critter home," declared Mr. Bob Buckham, as enthusiastic as a boy over his good luck. "Don't know how I come to lug my old gun along to-day when I started down this way. I never amounted to much as a hunter before. Always have left that to fellers like Lycurgus."
"It was very fortunate for that poor little Sue that you had your rifle," Ruth said warmly.
"Oh, no, ma'am," returned Mr. Buckham. "It was that dog of yourn saved little Sissy. But I reckon I saved the dog."
"And we're awfully much obliged to you for _that_, sir," spoke up Tess. "Aren't we, Dot?"
"Oh, yes!" agreed the smallest Corner House girl. "I thought poor Tom Jonah was going to be carried right up in the air, and that the aigrets would eat him!"
"The _what_ would eat him?" demanded the farmer, paying close attention to what the little girls said, but puzzled enough at Dot's "association of ideas."
Tess explained. "She means the young eagles. She expects the nest is full of hungry little eagles. It would have been dreadful for Tom Jonah to have been carried off just like a lamb. I've seen a picture of an eagle carrying away a lamb in his claws."
"And many a one I reckon this big critter has stole," agreed the farmer. "Right out of my own flock, perhaps. But your dog was too big a load for him."
"Now, son," he added, briskly to Neale, "you give me a h'ist with the bird. I'm going to take him home across my shoulders. Don't dare leave him here for fear some varmint will git him. I'll send the carcass right to town and have it stuffed." "Goodness!" murmured the startled Tess. "You don't _eat_ eagles, do you, sir?"