Teddy came whistling down the pasture, the notes of his tune blowing across the Blair Water like elfin drops of sound, vaulted the graveyard fence and perched his lean, graceful body irreverently on the “Here I stay” of Great-Grandmother Murray’s flat tombstone.
“What’s the matter?” he said.
“Everything’s the matter,” said Emily, a little crossly. Teddy had no business to be looking so cheerful. She was used to more sympathy from Teddy and it aggravated her not to find it. “Don’t you know Lofty John is going to begin cutting down the bush Monday?”
Teddy nodded.
“Yep. Ilse told me. But look here, Emily, I’ve thought of something. Lofty John wouldn’t dare cut down that bush if the priest told him not to, would he?”
“Why?”
“Because the Catholics have to do just what their priests tell them to, haven’t they?”
“I don’t know—I don’t know anything about them. We are Presbyterians.”
Emily gave her head a little toss. Mrs. Kent was known to be an “English Church” woman and though Teddy went to the Presbyterian Sunday School, that fact gave him scanty standing among bred-in-the-bone Presbyterian circles.
“If your Aunt Elizabeth went to Father Cassidy at White Cross and asked him to stop Lofty John, maybe he’d do it,” persisted Teddy.
“Aunt Elizabeth would never do that,” said Emily positively. “I’m sure of it. She’s too proud.”
“Not even to save the bush?”
“Not even for that.”
“Then I guess nothing can be done,” said Teddy rather crest-fallen. “Look here—see what I’ve made. This is a picture of Lofty John in purgatory, with three little devils sticking red-hot pitch forks into him. I copied some of it out of one of mother’s books—Dante’s Infer-
