Rosamund looked up with troubled eyes. "There must be some house near by," she said, "where we could take him. I don't believe he ought to be carried very far. Do you live near here?" she asked the girl.
"Laws, no! We live in the city, him an' me. We ain't any kin, y'understand; he's a tubercler, an' my eyes give out, and we're just visitin' Mother Cary."
Flood was becoming impatient. "Well, where does the Cary woman live?" he demanded. "We don't need your family history, my girl."
Instantly the girl's black eyes flashed, and her chin went up. "Well, an' you ain't goin' to get it, my man!" she returned. "I know the likes of you; seen you by the million!"
She glared up at him belligerently, but Rosamund laid her hand on her shoulder. "Don't," she said quietly. "Where is this place where you're staying?"
"It's just back of the woods there. The road's on up a piece, about two squares; yer can't miss it, 'cause it's the only one there is."
So they lifted the child, and laid him carefully, on the broad back seat. They decided that Mrs. Maxwell and Pendleton should wait beside the road, while Rosamund and Flood saw to the boy's safety, and the girl rode with the chauffeur to point the way. She seemed but little impressed by the accident, and greatly pleased at the motor ride.
"Laws, but I wish the girls at the factory could see Yetta Weise settin' up here," she remarked as she took her place.
As she had told them, the house was not far; and notwithstanding her anxiety for the injured boy, Rosamund looked at it in amazement, so unlike was it to anything she had ever seen, so quaintly pretty, so tidy, so homelike.
It stood on the hillside, a few yards back from the road. From a little red gate set in the middle of the whitest of tiny fences a narrow brick path led straight to the front door. The upper story of the house overhung the lower, making a shady space beneath that was paved with bricks and made cheery and comfortable with wooden benches piled with crocks and bright tin milk pans set out to air; and all about the little white farm-buildings wound narrow brick paths bordered with flowers—geraniums, nasturtiums, pansies, with, here and there, groups of house plants in tin cans and earthen pots, set outside for their summer holiday. Unaccustomed though she was to such ingenuous simplicity of decoration, Rosamund could not but recognize it as a haven of peace, a little home where love and time had impressed their indelible marks of beauty.