"Better, are you, dear?" asked a voice at his side, and he twisted his head, to see a woman, not yet middle-aged, with a kindly face which matched her voice.
"Have I been bad?" he asked in a wondering tone, and then, suddenly remembering, he called out anxiously: "Why, where are the others?"
"Who are the others, dear? You were lying alone on the road when we found you; and when we first picked you up we thought that you were dead," said the woman.
"Just my luck!" cried Rumple, with a groan. "I sat at the back of the wagon—on the rack behind, you know—so that I might have some quiet, because I was turning out a little poem. Then I remember that I got sleepy, and I suppose that I fell off; only I wonder that it did not wake me up."
"We think that you must have stunned yourself with the fall, and we should have sent for a doctor, only he lives fifteen miles away, and we had no horse that could do the journey just then, and we had to wait for a few hours to see if you would be better," said the woman; and then she asked again: "But who were you with, dear, and how was it they went on and left you lying all alone in the road, you poor child?"
"Why, that was because they did not know that I had fallen off, of course," said Rumple hastily, for there was so much reproach for the rest of the family in her tone that he was instantly on the defensive on their behalf.
"Then I expect that your mother will be in a fine state of mind about you," said his hostess, who was fussing round him much after the fashion in which a motherly hen would fuss round a brood of chickens.
Rumple hastily explained then that he had no mother, and detailed the journeyings of his family, while the good woman stood with her hands uplifted in horrified amazement to think that a lot of irresponsible children should be left to wander about the world in such an unprotected fashion.
"We are used to looking after ourselves, and Nealie is nearly grown up. She does not have her hair hanging down her back now, because it makes her look so much more responsible, now that she wears it in a bunch on the top of her head," explained Rumple.
"And you say that you have one of Peek & Wallis's wagons? Why, they are most dreadful particular sort of people, and they always want money down and no end of security besides; no blame to them either, seeing how bad some people are about paying their just debts," said the woman, with so much surprise in her tone that Rumple felt it necessary to explain a little further.