"Oh, don't, Neale!" begged Agnes, faintly.
"Why shouldn't we drive back that way?" asked Ruth, surprised at her sister's manner and words. Ruth did not know all about Agnes' trouble over the raid on the farmer's strawberry patch. "But let's drive direct to the chestnut woods now."
"All right," said Neale, turning the horses. "Go 'lang! We'll have to stop at Billet's house and ask permission. He is choice of his woods, for there's a lot of nice young timber there and the blight has not struck the trees. He's awfully afraid of fire."
"Isn't that Mr. Billet rather an odd stick?" asked Ruth. "You know, we never were up this way but once. We saw him then. He was lying under a wall with his gun, watching for a chicken hawk. His wife said he'd been there all day, since early in the morning. _She_ was chopping wood to heat her water for tea," added Ruth with a sniff.
Neale chuckled. "Lycurgus ought to have been called 'Nimrod,'" he said.
"Because he is a mighty hunter. And that is really all he does take any interest in. I bet he'd lie out under a stone wall for a week if he thought he could get a shot at a snowbird! And he'd shoot it, too, if he had half a chance. He never misses, they say."
"Such shiftlessness!" sniffed Ruth again. "And his wife barefooted and his children in rags and tatters."
"That girl was a bright-looking girl," Agnes interposed. "You know--the one with the flour-sack waist on. Oh, Neale!" she added, giggling, "you could read in faint red marking, 'Somebody's XXXX Flour,' right across the small of her back!"
"Poor child," sighed Ruth. "That was Sue--wasn't that her name? Sue Billet."
"A scrawny little one with a tip-tilted nose, and running bare-legged, though she must be twelve," said Neale. "I remember her."
There were other things to arouse the oldest Corner House girl's sympathy about the Billet premises when the picnicking party arrived there. Two lean hounds first of all charged out from under the house to attack Tom Jonah.
"Oh!" cried Dot. "Stop them! They'll eat poor Tom Jonah up, they are so hungry."
Tess, too, was somewhat disturbed, for the hounds seemed as savage as bears. Tom Jonah, although slow to wrath, knew well how to acquit himself in battle. He snapped once at each of the hounds, and they fled, yelping.