What a relief it was to hear the dreaded subject spoken of so lightly. Pennie felt as though a great heavy weight had been suddenly lifted off her mind, and she was so glad and happy that after she had left Ambrose’s room she could not possibly walk along quietly. So she hopped on one leg all down a long passage, and at the top of the stairs she met Nurse hastening up to her patient:
“You look merry, Miss Pennie,” said she. “I hope you haven’t been exciting Master Ambrose.”
“Why, yes,” Pennie couldn’t help answering. “Father and I have both excited him a good deal; but he’s much better, and now he’ll get quite well.”
And Pennie was right, for from that night Ambrose improved steadily, though it was some time before he became quite strong and lost his nervous fears.
The first visit he paid, when he was well enough to be wheeled into the garden in a bath-chair, escorted by the triumphant children, was to see his new pet, the owl. There he was, hanging in his cage in the darkest corner of the barn. Ambrose looked up at him with eyes full of the fondest affection.
“What shall we call him, Pennie?” he said. “I want some name which has to do with a goblin.”
Pennie considered the subject with her deepest frown.
“Would ‘Goblinet’ do?” she said at length; “because, you see, he is so small.”
“Beautifully,” said Ambrose.
So the owl was called “Goblinet.”