“Worried enough! That end of the pond isn’t the safest place, particularly after dark.”
Kitty subsided. When Jim, who was her staunch ally, used that tone towards her, matters must be pretty serious.
Never had the lights of the village, blinking at them through the snow, seemed more friendly or more welcome to the two nestled under the buffalo robes in the bottom of the Parker box sleigh.
Jim was blowing the horn he had brought, three good blasts.
“That means we’re found!” Kitty’s voice was trembling; some realization of what those blasts meant to those here at home had come to her.
Blue Bonnet roused herself. “Kitty, didn’t it almost seem—out there—in the snow—”
“Don’t!” Kitty dropped her face on Blue Bonnet’s shoulder.
It was not at all the sort of welcome they should have received, Dr. Clark declared afterwards; but then, as Kitty pointed out, he was the first to reach the sleigh—having heard the news on his way home—taking her into his own cutter, and on home to an exceedingly anxious mother, while Jim turned into the Clyde drive.
There Solomon met them, scrambling into the sleigh, and diving in among the robes, licking his mistress’ face, her ears—only stopping, momentarily, to bark in most ungrateful manner at Jim in his great fur coat.
“Here we are! All safe and sound!” Jim said, cheerily, as Mrs. Clyde came forward from the open doorway, just within which, Delia and Katie hovered excitedly. It was Delia’s and Katie’s firm conviction that “that Kitty” was to blame for the whole affair, it being “just like her.”