Abide with Me

"Auntie Charlotte, you stole Minister away from us in a no-fair way,"
stormed Charlotte as she came around the young larches and wild swamp
root that had formed the world apart for the dangerous Jaguar and me.
"Mother Spurlock can't sing to any good and Sue is so little we gets the
key away from her. Let him come right back!" As she made this peremptory
demand for the release of my prisoner, my name-daughter stood her ground
with her cohorts, who had been scrambling around and over and through
the shrubbery, massed behind her. There were Mikey of the red head,
small James, the musical wee Susan, Maudie Burns and Jennie Todd,
besides several more of the Burns family, a few Sprouls and Paynes and a
very ragged young Jones, and they all looked at me with hostile and
accusing eyes as Charlotte hurled a final invective at me. "You are
wicked and the devil will burn you up," she threatened.

"He won't neither, at all. Hush up!" came a defense and a command in a
very imperious young voice, and the Stray followed the voice from around
the large trunk of the oldest graybeard. He had arrived late on the
scene of action because his impedimenta had been the wriggling puppy of
brindle hue, which he immediately released as he came over and stood
between the Reverend Mr. Goodloe and me, with my hand in his own small
paddie and defiance and defense to the limit in his high-held young head
with its black crest and snapping violet eyes. At last I felt Charlotte
had met her match and I trembled for the result.