“Come, my little pet, there’s naught to fear now!”
And, trusting her, the colt followed tractably enough as she led him up two stone steps into the kitchen and took the bandage from his eyes.
Then she hurried out, closing the door tight.
An awful crash, a sudden greater roar, then ominous silence—the barn roof had fallen in!
“Alas, my poor mother!” groaned True.
The rattling of a tin pan at his side made him turn; to his everlasting joy he saw Gipsey, safe and sound as himself, shut up in the kitchen.
Gipsey was an excitable mare, and began to prance about the place in an unseemly way, switching kettles and pewter pots off the table with her nervous tail and knocking them to the floor with a monstrous racket.
Finally she pushed the cover from the swinging pot on the crane. Luckily the fire had been out some time and the delicious contents of the pot barely warm, else she would have had her nose burned. The odor of the mash proved very enticing and she was greedily, or maybe thoughtlessly, about to drink it all, when True pushed her one side, as if to remind her of her manners, and finished it himself—little dreaming, either one of them, it was the Whitman’s frugal supper.
During their feast the uproar outside had subsided, and in a little while Silas and his wife came in, saying it was all over with poor old Ceph.
The noses of the two rescued horses were gray and greasy with the rich mash, but in the thankfulness of their escape the Whitmans cared nothing for that. Mistress Whitman put her cheek against True’s soupy face and sobbed in a very womanish way for joy at his being spared to them.