Zaidee picked herself up with added respect for her little guest.
“I did not mean to hurt you,” she said, standing at a little distance. “Do you want to play house with us? Let’s build him a new house, Helen. Come, boy, you get some stones.”
The excitement of building the new house soon made the children friends, and they played together happily, though Brown-Eyes did not grow talkative.
At last the little ones grew hungry, and they started for the house, taking their new playmate with them.
“Where shall we keep him?” asked Helen, as they trudged up the lane and across the green lawn.
“We’d better shut him up for awhile, till he gets used to us,” was Zaidee’s advice. “That’s the way we did with kitty.”
“We can put him in the laundry,” suggested Helen. “We put kitty there.”
As the house stood on the hillside which sloped gently back to the brook, the kitchen and laundry were down stairs. No one noticed the children as they went in at the lower door. Cricket and Eunice were off for a long scamper on their ponies, and Donald and his cousins were away fishing, while Marjorie had gone into town for the day.
The laundry, a large, light room, which was on one side of the lower hall, chanced to be deserted when they went in.
“Stay here, boy,” said Helen, “and we’ll bring you something to eat, if you’re good.”