"Sybil's in New York by this time!" answered Mrs. Lawton. "I have been too ill to be able to tell you before! So, hurry your hat on and start at once!"
"Dear mamma, Lena can get the drops—she knows where the store is—and then we need not trouble Mr. Bulkley."
"No trouble!—no trouble at all!" pompously declared that gentleman.
"Lena has an oven full of bread to watch!" snapped the suffering one, whose head seemed surprisingly clear, by spells, at least.
"Then," despairingly cried Dorothy, "I will run for it myself! I can go very quickly, mamma, and perhaps Mr. Bulkley will be so good as to keep you company till I return!"
"Dorothy," cried Mrs. Lawton, "are you so utterly heartless that you can deliberately lengthen out this period of suffering, simply to gratify some whim of your own? O—o—o—h!" she groaned, dismally.
While Mr. Bulkley remonstrated: "Really, now, my dear little girl, while we have no right to—er—er, to expect logic from a lovely creature like yourself—you'll pardon me, Miss Dorrie, but you really don't show your usual good sense in this instance! It is quite absurd, your idea of walking when you can reach the village and return in less than a third of the time by driving, and—and you know the poor lady's comfort should be our first thought, so toss on your hat and let us start at once!"
With a lump big and hard in her throat the girl turned and left the room, and half way up the stairs she was almost sure that she heard a low laugh from the room she had left. "Oh," she thought, "if only papa was back from his long walk, or if my Syb were here! How I wish Leslie had arrived before this dreadful old man, who quite wears himself out pretending to be a young man! Oh, dear! oh, dear! if Leslie should happen to see me out with Mr. Bulkley—on the very day he was to call! Oh, mamma, mamma! you are not playing fair!" and she dried two big tears from her eyes before pulling down her veil, and then, all ungloved, she ran down, and scrambling unassisted—to Mr. Bulkley's annoyance—into the trap, sat there clutching the empty bottle, whose various labels told plainly of visits to more than one chemist's shop, and so overheard, though imperfectly, the groom making some suggestion about the horse, "the chin-strap (mumble, mumble), curb, pretty severe (mumble, mumble), tender mouth."
Mr. Bulkley's domineering tones answered: "Let it alone, I tell you! I know what I'm about! I don't want my arms pulled out! Stay here till I come back!" And, without the comforting presence of even a groom, they started toward Yonkers.
The mounted police of those days found little to do on Broadway, and even less on the quiet length and breadth of Riverdale Avenue, and many of them, from very weariness and ennui, made pets of their horses, sometimes teaching them simple tricks. Most of the men walked a good deal, and, with bridles hanging loosely over their arms, allowed the horses to browse the grass at the roadside. But one man had fallen into the habit of leaving his horse entirely free, to follow him like a dog. This animal was the big black, whose swollen leg Mr. Lawton had been interested in, in the spring. His name was Napoleon. He had been on the force for years, and was famous for his speed in short dashes. He had become well acquainted with the Lawtons, and would beg from the girls in the most barefaced manner whenever he met them; while he had established apron-nibbling relations with Lena, who talked much to the policeman of her "mash-man," who was his friend, while Napoleon meditatively sampled the gingham she wore.