"Sure's y're born!" replied Mrs. Burdon. "She'd rather go with you than to stay an' fool with the young uns; that's what she's tryin' to say." "Do y' wan' to go?" asked Ans again, opening his arms. She sprang toward him, raising her eager little hands as high as she could, and when he lifted her she twined her arms around his neck. "Poor little critter! she ain't got no pap ner mam now," the old woman explained to the ring of children, who still stared silently at the stranger almost without moving. "Ain't he her pa-a-p?" drawled one of the older girls, sticking a finger at Anson. "He is now," laughed Ans, and that settled the question over which he had been pondering for days. It meant that as long as she wanted to stay she should be his Flaxen and he would be her "pap." "And you can be Uncle Bert, hey?" he said to Bert. "Good enough," said Bert. CHAPTER V. FLAXEN BECOMES INDISPENSABLE TO THE TWO OLD BACHELORS. They never found any living relative, and only late in the spring was the fate of the poor father revealed. He and his cattle were found side by side in a deep swale, where they had foundered in the night and tempest. As for little Flaxen, she soon recovered her cheerfulness, with the buoyancy natural to childhood, and learned to prattle in broken English very fast. She developed a sturdy self-reliance that was surprising in one so young, and long before spring came was indispensable to the two "old baches." "Now, Bert," said Ans one day, "I don't wan' to hear you talk in that slipshod way any longer before Flaxen. You know better; you've had more chance than I have--be'n to school more. They ain't no excuse for you, not an ioty. Now, I'm goin' to say to her, 'Never mind how I talk, but talk like Bert does.'" "Oh, say, now, look here, Ans, I can't stand the strain. Suppose she'd hear me swearin' at ol' Barney or the stove?" "That's jest it. You ain't goin' to swear," decided Anson; and after that Bert took the education of the little waif in hand, for he was a man of good education; his use of dialect and slang sprang mainly from carelessness. But all the little fatherly duties and discipline fell to Anson, and much perplexed he often got. For instance, when he bought her an outfit of American clothing at the store they were strange to her and to him, and the situation was decidedly embarrassing when they came to try them. "Now, Flaxie, I guess this thing goes on this side before, so's you can button it. If it went on so, you couldn't reach around to button it, don't you see? I guess you'd better try it so. An' this thing, I judge, is a shirt, an' goes on under that other thing, which I reckon is called a shimmy. Say, Bert, shouldn't you call that a shirt?" holding up a garment. "W-e-l-l, yes" (after a close scrutiny). "Yes: I should." "And this a shimmy?"