“I declar’, Jerry,” he exclaimed cordially, his big bass voice booming amidst the trilling treble laughter, “we-uns’ll hev ter steal this hyar leetle gal from ye.” And Jerry, demurely disconsolate, replied, “I reckon I couldn’t spare her, right handy.” Presently Ike began to notice that it was very difficult for Rosamondy to get enough of a joke. She refused to descend from the gigantic mountaineer’s shoulder, and when he tried to put her down clung to his collar, around his neck, indeed she did not scruple to clutch his hair. Hiram Guyther had not for a long time taken such active exercise—for in this region men of his age assume all the privileges and ailments of advanced years—as during the time that he trotted up and down the floor with the little girl on his shoulder, playing he was a horse. A hard driver he had, to be sure, and he was obliged to stamp, and shy, and jump, and spurt, smartly. He did not look quite sensible Ike thought in unfilial surprise. The whole domestic routine was upset. His mother and aunt Jemima had left the clearing away of the dishes and applied themselves to pulling out the old trundle-bed—long ago too short for any of the family—and they arranged it with loving care and much precaution against the cold and draughts. “I’m fairly feared she mought roll out, an’ git her spine bruk, or her neck,” said aunt Jemima, knitting her wrinkled brows in affectionate alarm as she looked at the trundle-bed that was about two feet from the floor. “I reckon not,” said Jerry meekly as he inoffensively watched the arrangement of the cosy nest. “She never fell off ’n the top o’ the kyart—an’ sometimes she napped ef the sun war hot.” “An’ ye air the only man in Tennessee ez would hev sot the leetle critter up thar—an’ her tender bones so easy ter break,” said aunt Jemima, tartly. “Waal, I done the bes’ I could fur her,” drawled Jerry in his tearful voice, looking harried and woeful. And remembering how kind and gentle he had seemed to his little daughter, Ike wondered that he did not feel sorry for Jerry when aunt Jemima intimated that he was heedless of her safety and neglected her. But watching the man Ike was even more disapproving of the wholesale adoration which the family seemed disposed to lay at the feet of the little girl and of her adoption into a solicitude and love that was almost parental. He believed that Jerry had an inimical appreciation of all the slighting consideration of him, but offered no objection to the authority they had assumed over Rosamondy, thinking it well that she should get all she could out of them. Her hilarity seemed to increase as the hour waxed later, and when aunt Jemima finally took her, squirming and wriggling and shouting with laughter, from Hiram Guyther’s shoulder and tucked her into the trundle-bed with a red quilt drawn up close under her dimpled white chin and her long yellow hair, Ike expected to see the whole bed paraphernalia rise up while she resurrected herself.