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Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville
Hev a slice."
They all felt for the slices he offered and ate the fruit without being
able to see it. But it really tasted delicious.
As the girls feasted they heard a crunching sound and inquired in low
voices what it was.
McNutt was stumping over the patch and plumping his wooden foot into
every melon he could find, smashing them wantonly against the ground.
The discovery filled them with horror. They had thought inducing the
agent to rob his own patch of a few melons, while under the delusion
that they belonged to his enemy Brayley, a bit of harmless fun; but here
was the vindictive fellow actually destroying his own property by the
wholesale.
"Oh, don't! Please don't, Mr. McNutt!" pleaded Patsy, in frightened
accents.
"Yes, I will," declared the agent, stubbornly. "I'll git even with Dan
Brayley fer once in my life, ef I never do another thing, by gum!"
"But it's wrong--it's wicked!" protested Beth.
"Can't help it; this is my chance, an' I'll make them bum fifteen-cent
mellings look like a penny a piece afore I gits done with 'em."
"Never mind, girls," whispered Louise. "It's the law of retribution.
Poor Peggy will be sorry for this tomorrow."
The man had not the faintest suspicion where he was. He knew his own
melon patch well enough, having worked in it at times all the summer;
but he had never climbed over the fence and approached it from the rear
before, so it took on a new aspect to him from this point of view, and
moreover the night was dark enough to deceive anybody.
If he came across an especially big melon McNutt would lug it to the
carriage and dump it in. And so angry and energetic was the little man
that in a brief space the melon patch was a scene of awful devastation,
and the surrey contained all the fruit that survived the massacre.
Beth unhitched the horse and they all took their places in the carriage
again, having some difficulty to find places for their feet on account
of the cargo of melons. McNutt was stowed away inside, with Louise, and
they drove away up the lane.
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There was once a king who was very powerful. He had great influence over the wild beasts and animals. Now the tortoise was looked upon as the wisest of all beasts and men. This king had a son named Ekpenyon, to whom he gave fifty young girls as wives, but the prince did not like any of them. The king was very angry at this, and made a law that if any man had a daughter who was finer than the prince's wives, and who found favour in his son's eyes, the girl herself and her father and mother should be killed.
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