“I guess they were too excited to remember them. Maybe they thought we’d come back quicker than we did.”
The boys rested for awhile at the barn, and then, with their bags of nuts on their shoulders, set out on the roadway once again.
“Tired out, are ye,” said Mrs. Dugan, on seeing them. “Where are the others?”
They told their story, to which she listened with many a nod of her head.
“The ould b’y take that mare!” she cried. “Sure an’ didn’t she run away wid me wance an’ nearly scare me to death, so she did. Andy must trade her th’ furst chanct he gits.”
She had prepared a hot supper and invited the boys to sit down, which they did willingly, for, as Harry expressed it, “they were hollow clear down to their shoes.”
The meal was just finished when one of the little children, who was at the window gazing into the oncoming darkness, set up a shout:
“There’s Kitty now!”
“Who’s Kitty?” asked Joe.
“Sure an it’s the mare. She’s walkin’ in the yard just as if nothin’ had happened at all!”