“But he said it when he was angry, dear. We often say things when we are angry—more’s the pity!—which we do not mean, and for which we are bitterly sorry afterwards. I am sure, Carolyn May, that your Uncle Joe has no intention of drowning your dog.” “Oh, Miss Amanda! Are you pos’tive?” “Positive! I know Joseph Stagg. He was never yet cruel to any _dumb_ creature. Go ask him yourself, Carolyn May. Whatever else he may be, he is not a hater of helpless and dumb animals.” “Miss Amanda,” cried Carolyn May, with clasped hands, “you—you are just lifting an awful big lump off my heart! I’ll run and ask him right away.” She put up her lips for Miss Amanda to kiss, but she could not wait to walk properly with her new friend to the corner. Instead, she raced with the barking Prince back to the Stagg premises. Mr. Stagg had just finished filling in with the stones the trench Prince had dug under the garden fence. “There,” he grunted. “That dratted dog won’t dig this hole any bigger, I reckon. What’s the matter with you, Car’lyn?” “Are—are you going to drownd Princey, Uncle Joe? If—if you do, it just seems to me, I—_I shall die_!” He looked up at her searchingly. “Humph! is that mongrel so all-important to your happiness that you want to die if he does?” demanded the man. “Yes, Uncle Joe.” “Humph!” ejaculated the hardware dealer again. “I believe you think more of that dog than you do of me.” “Yes, Uncle Joe.” The frank answer hit Mr. Stagg harder than he would have cared to acknowledge. “Why?” he queried. “Because Prince never said a word to hurt me in his life!” said Carolyn May, sobbing. The man was silenced. He felt in his inmost heart that he had been judged. CHAPTER IX—PRINCE AWAKENS THE CORNERS Camp-meeting time was over, and the church at The Corners was to open for its regular Sunday services. “Both Satan and the parson have had a vacation,” said Mr. Stagg, “and now they can tackle each other again and see which’ll get the strangle hold ’twixt now and revival time.” “You should not say such things, especially before the child, Joseph Stagg,” admonished Aunty Rose. Carolyn May, however, seemed not to have heard Uncle Joe’s pessimistic remark; she was too greatly excited by the prospect of Sunday-school. And the very next week-day school would begin! By this first week in September the little girl was quite settled in her new home at The Corners. Prince was still a doubtful addition to the family, both Uncle Joe and Aunty Rose plainly having misgivings about him. But in regard to the little girl herself, the hardware merchant and the housekeeper were of one opinion, even though they did not admit it to each other.