He drew his head in the dormer casement, and was making ready to go down
to the breakfast he smelled cooking below, when his own name was
pronounced in the garden, and he stopped and listened.
"You lie!" exclaimed the old woman's voice. "I'll mash you to the
ground!"
"He said so, grandma, indeed he did."
Levin had a peep from the depths of the garret, and he saw that Mrs.
Cannon was standing with the hoe she had been using raised over Hulda's
head, while a demoniac expression of rage distorted her not unpleasing
features.
Levin walked at once to the window and whistled, as if to the bird in
the tree. The older woman immediately dropped her hoe, and cried out to
Levin:
"Heigh, son! ain't you most a-starved fur yer breakfast? It's all ready
fur ye, an' Huldy's waitin' fur ye to come down."
Levin at once went down the short, winding stairs to a table spread in
the kitchen end, and the old woman blew a tin horn towards Johnson's
Cross-roads, as if summoning other boarders, and then she said to Levin,
with a very pleasing countenance:
"Son, these yer no-count people will be askin' you questions to bother
you, and I don't want no harm to come to you, Levin; so you tell
everybody you see yer that Levin Cannon is your name, and they'll think
you's juss one o' my people, and won't ask you no more."
Hulda slightly raised her eyes, which Levin took to mean assent, and he
said:
"Cannon's good enough for a body pore as me.
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