She found him lying on the floor near the stove just as she had left him, while Dicky industriously rubbed one hand, and Molly worked away at the other.
“Is his face frost-bitten?” asked Grace, as Bertha came to kneel down by the stranger.
“No, nor yet his hands; but he appears quite unconscious still. What shall I do? Do you think that I dare leave him lying here while I go and milk? I would not be long, and then I shall not have to leave you alone with him again,” said Bertha.
“Yes, go and milk; he is quite harmless and inoffensive lying like that, but I shall want to have you here when he comes round again. Were the horses much trouble to you, dear?” asked Grace, as Bertha rapidly wound herself into her milking pinafore.
“None at all; they behaved like lambs, and walked to their places as if they were quite at home,” Bertha replied.
“Did they? What colour are they?” asked Grace, with sudden interest.
“Oh, about the ordinary. They reminded me very much in build of the horses Tom sold in the summer, after we were hailed out, only they are not skittish, as our horses were, and they are so encrusted with frost that it is not easy to say what they are like.” Bertha was moving off as she spoke, for she was in desperate haste to get her work done and reach the house again before the helpless man came to his senses.
The milking was put through at a rapid rate that night, and then, with a last look round to see that all the live creatures were comfortable for the night, she took up her pail of milk and went back to the house.
“Oh, Bertha, I am thankful that you have come!” exclaimed Grace, with a hysterical note in her voice. “That poor fellow gets on my nerves lying there, with no one but those children to look after him. I am so afraid that he will slip through our fingers.”
“No fear of that,” said Bertha cheerily, as she set the pail of milk aside and proceeded to give her very best attention to the stranger. “He is better than he was, there is more life and colour in his face; but oh, Grace, what an awful nuisance he will be, and what a pity it is that we cannot put him out in the barn to sleep with his horses!”