“Oh, I can’t walk, Randy, my foot aches just drefful, and I can’t have any shoes on, ’cause my foot has grown big.”
Randy blamed herself for the mishap. “I ought to have been taking care of Prue instead of thinking of fine clothes,” thought Randy. “It ought to have been me that got hurt instead of little Prue. ’Twould have served me right for being real silly, almost vain, I do believe.” And thus she berated herself.
Poor, repentant Randy! Careless she had been, but surely not wicked. She was utterly at a loss to know what to do. “Don’t you think you could walk slowly, Prue, if I put my hands under your arms to help you?” she asked coaxingly.
“Randy, how can I walk when this foot is most twice as big as my other foot?” said Prue.
Randy thought a moment. Then she said: “There’s only one thing to do, Prue. You can look right down the road and see the store from here. You sit still where you are, and I’ll run and get the sugar; it won’t take but a few minutes, and when I get back I’ll carry you home in my arms. You can hold the sugar and I’ll carry you.”
Prue tried bravely to stop crying, and although she declared that her foot felt “worser,” she promised to be patient until Randy should return. The store was in the front part of a farm-house but a short distance from where the two sat upon the wall, and Randy rushed off down the road and in at the open door, in such evident haste that Silas Barnes looked at the girl in amazement.
“In a kind of hurry, ain’t ye?” said he, as in his usual deliberate manner he weighed the sugar.
“Yes, oh, yes,” answered Randy, as she almost snatched the bundle and darted out of the door and ran up the road to where Prue sat upon the wall, a most disconsolate little heap, trying very hard to be brave, but sobbing in spite of all endeavor.
“Now, you carry the sugar—just think what a sweet bundle—and I’ll take you. My arms are real strong, so I believe I can carry you easily.”
Prue hugged the parcel, and taking her little sister in her arms Randy stepped out bravely toward home. It seemed to her that she could not remember such intense heat as she that day experienced. They had taken off their sunbonnets as they sat upon the wall, and in their haste they had started for home, leaving them where they had dropped them, so that their heads were unprotected from the scorching rays of the sun, which was now directly overhead.