The Able McLaughlins
with him, and Harvey Stowe's name was written first and largest. That minute she had buttoned the bit of paper into Andy's shirt pocket, and sent him fifteen miles down the creek to tell the Stowes to take off their mourning, and the clan, hearing the news from the mad-riding Andy had gathered to rejoice with her. And now that the exciting Wully was home again, they brought him wild turkeys, and the choice of the wild plums, an apple or two, first fruit of their new orchards, and whatever else their poverty afforded. Mrs. Stowe came to see him, bringing a package of sugar. But the Stowes were well-to-do. The others were exclusively what Allen had dubbed "the ragged lairds of the Waupsipinnikon."
Not that their creek was really the Waupsipinnikon. Allen had only crossed that chuckling stream on his first journey with his father, but he had delighted in a name so whimsical, so rollicking, and had used it largely. Pigs and chickens of his christening bore it unharmed. And he put it into the song he used to sing sometimes, when the prairie's youth and beauty were tired of dancing to his fiddle. All the neighbors were mentioned in it:
The Gillicuddies, the McElhineys, the McDowells,
The Whannels, the McTaggerts, the Strutheres,
The Stevensons, the McLaughlins, and the Sprouls.
In his pronunciation the meter was perfect, and Sprouls and McDowells rhymed perfectly, both of
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