"Very well," he answered; "when we decide, it shall be literally life or death."
The ant and the moth have cells for each of their young, but our little ones lie in festering heaps in homes that consume them like graves; and night by night, from the corners of our streets, rises up the cry of the homeless,--"I was a stranger and ye took me not in."
For a time they busied themselves with different things about their little home, worked in the garden, and held a round-up of their stock that they might know the extent of their wealth; and because, in a life quite apart from human beings, animals come to take their place to a greater extent than might seem possible.
It was a very pleasant time. Everything seemed so gentle, so willing to be friends, and so certain of their good-will.
"You used to be a Kipling fiend," said Adam, one morning, when they had been salting the cattle, and were resting before going home. "Didn't he write a Jungle tale about 'How Fear Came'? He ought to be here now to write another to show how Fear might go."
"It seems to me he did," Robin answered, running her fingers through the short, curly forelock of a colt that stood placidly licking her hand. "I wonder that they don't remember longer, or perhaps they know that we think they are folks. Really, I think we ought to hold a reception, a kind of salon, once a week, so as to keep acquainted with our neighbors."
"You are an absurd child," he said, laughing; "but does that mean that you have really decided to go on living?"
"I don't know," she said. "What did we determine? By the way, which side of this question are you on?"
"Oh! then we can't do like those men Cooper told about, in 'The Pioneers,' wasn't it? who argued and argued every night until at last they convinced each other, and then started in to argue it out again."
"No," he answered, "I rather think that we are answering ourselves rather than each other, anyhow. Robin, where was 'the land of Nod'?"
"That is one of the questions that I was sent to bed for asking a preacher who was visiting at our house, when I was about seven years old. They hurried me hence before he had a chance to answer, so I never found out. But I know what you are thinking of, and I have thought of it too. Perhaps there isn't any land of Nod, or any land at all. And I have thought, also, how it would be if one of us died and left the other with little children. You might take my body and jump off the rock, but you couldn't take them too, and still less could you leave them."