“Yes, but you needn’t go in if you don’t want to, Alfy dear. I shall stay only just long enough to bid her welcome home and invite her for Saturday.”
“Oh! I shouldn’t mind. I’d just as lief. Fact, I’d admire, only if I put on my best dress to go callin’ in the morning what’ll I have left to wear to the Party? And Ma Babcock says them Montaignes won’t have folks around that ain’t dressed up;” said the girl, so frankly that Molly laughed and Dorothy hastened to assure her:
“That’s a mistake, Alfy, dear, I think. They don’t care about a person’s clothes. It’s what’s inside the clothes that counts with sensible people, such as I believe they are. But, I’ll tell you. It’s not far from The Towers’ gate to the old smithy and I must see Mr. Seth. I must. I’m so thankful that he didn’t leave the mountain, too, with all the other grown-ups. So you can drop me at Helena’s; and then you and Molly can drive around to all the other people we’ve decided to ask and invite them in my stead. You know where all of them live and Molly will go with you.”
“Can Alfy drive—safe?” asked Molly, rather anxiously.
Dolly laughed. “Anybody can drive gentle Portia and Alfy is a mountain girl. But what a funny question for such a fearless rider as you, Molly Breckenridge!”
“Not so funny as you think. It’s one thing to be on the back of a horse you know and quite another to be behind the heels of another that its driver doesn’t know! Never mind, Alfy. I’ll trust you.”
“You can,” Alfaretta complacently assured her; and the morning’s drive proved her right. A happier girl had never lived than she as she thus acted deputy for the new little mistress of Deerhurst; whose story had lost none of its interest for the mountain folk because of its latest development.
But it was not at all as a proud young heiress that Dorothy came at last to the shop under the Great Balm Tree and threw herself impetuously upon the breast of the farrier quietly reading beside his silent forge.
“O, Mr. Seth! My darling Mr. Seth! I’m in terrible trouble and only you can help me!”
His book went one way, his spectacles another, dashed from his hands by her heedless onrush; but he let them lie where they had fallen and putting his arm around her, assured her: