“I’ll bring you some.  We’ve got the biggest plums in Little Rivers—­oh, so big!  Bigger’n Mr. Ewold’s!  I’ll bring some right away.”  She paused, however, in the doorway.  “Don’t you tell anybody I said they were bigger’n Mr. Ewold’s,” she went on.  “It might hurt his feelings.  He’s what they call the o-rig-i-nal set-tler, and we always agree that he grows the biggest of everything, because—­why, because he’s got such a big laugh and such a big smile.  Mother says sour-faced people oughtn’t to have a face any bigger’n a crab apple; but Mr. Ewold’s face couldn’t be too big if it was as big as all outdoors!  Good-by.  I reckon you won’t be s’prised to hear that I’m the dreadful talker of our family.”

“Wait!” Jack called.  “You haven’t told me your name.”

“Belvedere Smith.  Father says it ain’t a name for living things.  But mother is dreadfully set in her ideas of names, and she doesn’t like it because people call me Belvy; but they just naturally will.”

“Belvedere, did you ever hear of the three little blue mice”—­Jack was leaning toward her with an air of fascinating mystery—­“that thought they could hide in the white clover from the white cat that had two black stripes on her back?”

There was a pellmell dash across the room and her face, with wide-open eyes dancing in curiosity, was pressed close to his: 

“Why did the cat have two black stripes?  Why? why?”

“Just what I was going to tell,” said the pacifier of desperadoes.

“They were off on a tremendous adventure, with anthills for mountains and clover-stems for the tree-trunks of forests in the path.  Tragedy seemed due for the mice, when a bee dropped off a thistle blossom for a remarkable reason—­none other than that a hummingbird cuffed him in the ear with his wing—­and the bee, looking for revenge with his stinger on the first vulnerable spot, stung the cat right in the Achilles tendon of his paw, just as that paw was about to descend with murderous purpose.  The cat ran away crying, with both black stripes ridges of fur sticking up straight, while the rest of the fur lay nice and smooth; and the mice giggled so that their ears nearly wiggled off their heads.  So all ended happily.”

“He does beat all!” thought Mrs. Galway, who had overheard part of the nonsense from the doorway.  “Wouldn’t it make Pete Leddy mad if he could hear the man who took his gun away getting off fairy stuff like that!”

Mrs. Galway had brought in a cake of her own baking.  She was slightly jealous of the neighbors’ pastry as entering into her own particular field of excellence.  Jack saw that the supply of cake in the Galway pantry must be as limitless as the pigments on the Eternal Painter’s palette.

“The doctor said that I was to have a light diet,” he expostulated; “and I am stuffed to the brim.”

“I’ll make you some floating island,” said Mrs. Galway, refusing to strike her colors.