It was almost two hours later that she came in sight of the Place. She knew it in a moment, even though she had had but the one brief description of it from Bonny-Gay’s lips, and she felt as if she had come into a new and wonderful world.
“How big and still and—and—finished it looks! And, oh! how tired I am. My arms ache like they never did before, and I can hardly hold my crutches. I’ll get to that low stone round the monument—that’s where she sits with the Gray Gentleman—and I’ll get rested. Then I’ll look all around and pick out her house. I shall know it because she said it was all covered with vines and there was a big yard behind, with trees and things. Oh! how good it is to sit down.”
So good, indeed, that before she knew it the exhausted little maid had dropped her head upon the curbing and fallen fast asleep.
There Mr. Weems discovered her and would have roused her to send her home. But a second glance at her convinced him that this was no child of that locality, and that she seemed a very weary little girl, indeed. So he simply folded his own jacket and placed it under her head and left her to recover herself.
She awoke after a little time and sat up, confused and rather frightened. Till she suddenly remembered where she was and, seeing a gardener at work upon a grass-plot near, decided at once that he must be the owner of Max. She saw, too, the coat which had formed her pillow and knew that he must have placed it there. With a glad cry she caught up her crutches and swung herself toward the keeper:
“Oh! sir, I thank you. I was so tired and the coat was lovely soft. And I know you. You’re Mr. Weems, the gardener, and I’ve seen Max. He’s at our house, I mean he was—last night. And he will be again, ’cause he’s with father, who’ll fetch him back. Father just loves dogs and animals. And say, please, which is Bonny-Gay’s house?”
“Bless my soul! You don’t say? Then you must belong around here, though I didn’t think it. You’ve seen Max, and you ask for our Bonny-Gay! Well, you’ve struck trouble both times. He’s in trouble enough, but she in worse. That’s her home, yonder, on the west corner. The green house I call it; with those doctors’ carriages in front of it.”
“It is? Why, how funny. What’s all that straw for?”
The gardener shook his head, sadly, and hastily flicked away at his eyes.
“That’s to deaden all the noise. Bonny-Gay is a very, very sick little girl and there’s about one chance in a thousand, folks think, for her to get well. She was in an accident, yesterday. Got thrown out a carriage. The gentleman that took her driving is almost crazy with grief about it and—What’s that? What’s that you say? You was with her? You? And that’s her hat—Upon my word, it is. She showed it to me, the very first day she had it, while she was out here waiting to go driving with her folks. And she’s the only one they’ve got. I reckon her poor father would give all his millions of dollars and not stop a minute to think about it, if he could make her well by doing it. Poor man, I pity him!”