Stella was thinking hard. No one knew how she wanted the waif for her own; and she felt sure that dear Mother Waring would not—could not refuse her. The question was, did Stella want her to pay the price?
They were all waiting for her to speak, and at last her clear voice broke the silence.
“The fawn is something like me,” it began, pitifully. “You see, don’t you? It’s wild; it hasn’t any relations. I know just how a wild orphan feels, and I’m afraid it wouldn’t want to live in Miss Sophia’s chicken-coop and have her all the time wishing it wasn’t there. Uncle Si, if you would only be willing to let the fawn stay in the barn-yard with the calves, and if I could just _call_ it mine, and come and feed it sometimes?”
There was a soft brightness in the black eyes, as if tears were not far off, and everybody began talking at once, trying to drown the thought of the two “wild orphans” clinging together, and the utter hopelessness of an appeal to Miss Sophia.
“Think the critter’d be most as unpop’lar as Ethan’s rattlesnakes, hey?” chuckled Uncle Si.
“_What?_” screamed Doris and Cynthia, together, and the boy blushed to the roots of his hair.
“Well, you know, that was a long time ago,” he muttered, but Uncle mercilessly continued:
“Said they wa’n’t dangerous at all, _if ye knew how to handle ’em_—pick ’em up by the scruff o’ the neck, like blind kittens; wa’n’t that it, Ethan? Studied a heap on the subjick, he had. ‘Uncle,’ says he, ‘they don’t need to eat a thing fer six months to a year;’ an’ I says, ‘There orter be a good bit o’ profit in boarding ’em,’ says I. But Ethan, he says as how he can get five dollars apiece from a _mu_seum; and he has a pair o’ boots made to come up to his waist, pretty nigh; an’ he tramps over to Rattlesnake Gulch one mornin’ afore daylight, so as to ketch ’em crawlin’ out o’ their holes, most likely.”
Every eye was fixed upon the speaker, except that of his victim, who wriggled uneasily and vainly tried to break into the conversation.
“Ethan allers did go in fer makin’ money, ye know,” pursued Uncle, enjoying his success. “Wouldn’t take along any whisky fer bites, though I offered him all I had left, sayin’ as how it was a wuss pizen than the snake’s an’ not accordin’ to modern methods. Wal, along about dark Ethan comes back pretty well tuckered out, carryin’ a gunny-sack over his shoulder on the end of a stick. Didn’t need to tell me there was a live rattler in that there gunny-sack! I could hear his tail a-goin’ like an alarm-clock, an’ every now an’ then he’d strike out kinder vicious an’ set the thing to wavin’ back an’ forth.”