“I wanted to hear of my mother. I hoped she would be coming soon,” returned Agnes, evading a direct answer. “Perhaps she will be here before long; this letter was long on the way and might well have been outrun by one travelling more swiftly than the bearer who stopped often along the way. Now your news, Nancy. Were you harmed by the freshet? and isn’t it marvellous that Jimmy O’Neill should have come back?” “It is marvellous, and he is marvellous, the same old roystering Jimmy, for all his adventures. And it is so strange to see him with no hair on his head after being used to that bushy poll of his. Polly is so happy that she is noisier than ever; indeed, Jeanie, betwixt Polly and Jimmy and the bairns there is little quiet to be had anywhere unless one goes off into the woods.” “But do you like quiet?” “Sometimes.” “Then what’s come over you, Nancy Kennedy? You were a regular hoyden when last I saw you, and you to be talking of liking quiet.” And Jeanie laughed. “Did you hear about Honey?” Agnes asked, not noticing the laugh. “What Honey? Whose Honey?” “Muirhead’s Honey, the little child who was saved from the flood.” “Law, no; at least I did hear some such tale, but it passed out of my mind at the news of Jimmy’s return.” “It was Jimmy O’Neill who saved the baby and Parker Willett who rescued them both. He is so brave.” Agnes spoke softly and with a far-away look upon her face. “That was brave; tell me about it.” “He took a little skiff and ventured out upon that swift, raging water, when it was as much as one’s life was worth to go a rod from shore, and all in among those tree-tops along by the run, he steered the boat till he reached a place where Jimmy could be taken in the boat, and the child, too; the baby, you know, was tucked away in an old hollow stump and was sailing downstream that way. It was Jimmy who first saw him and got him aboard his raft; but they could not have reached shore but for Parker, and he lets Jimmy take all the credit, and will not listen to a word about his own part in it.” Agnes’s cheeks glowed, and she talked excitedly. Jeanie looked at her in surprise. “I thought you did not like Mr. Willett, the man who tried to rob you of your home.” “We do like him.” Agnes wisely adopted the plural. “He didn’t know that the house belonged to us, you know that. It was Muirhead who misled him.” “Muirhead again; he is a disagreeable uncle to have. Was the baby really his? What a strange thing! Is it a nice baby, Agnes, or disagreeable like his father?”