"Please go on, Stonie, and leave him with me--he's just a baby,"
pleaded Rose Mary.
"All right," answered the General, "Tobe don't care about him; he'd
just make us go slow," and thus dropping young Peter into the category
of impedimenta, the General departed at top speed, surrounded, as he
came, by the loyal Swarm. On the day of his birth Aunt Viney's choice
for a name for the General had balanced for some hours between that
of the redoubtable Abner the Valiant, of old Testament fame, and her
favorite modern hero, Jackson of the stonewall nature. And in her
final choice she had seemed so to impress the infant that he had
developed more than a little of the nature of his patron commander. At
all times Stonie commanded the Swarm, and also at all times was
strictly obeyed.
Then seeing herself thus deserted by her companions, Shoofly began a
low, musical hum of a wail and walled large eyes up at Everett, at
whose feet she was seated. In instant sympathetic response he applied
the toe of his shoe to the small of the whimpering tot's back and
proceeded awkwardly, though with the best intentions in the world, to
follow the General's directions as to pacification. Rose Mary laughed
as she took a tin-cup from a nail in the wall, and filling it with
milk from one of the crocks, she knelt at the side of the deserted one
and held the brim to the red lips of Shoofly's generous mouth. With a
series of gurgles and laps the consoling draft was quickly consumed
and the whimperer left by this double ministration in a state of
placid contentment.
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