Sometimes dogs barked at him, but he was not afraid of watch dogs. He did not venture into the yards or up the private lanes. He had bought enough crackers and cheese to make another meal when he should want it. And there were sweet springs beside the road, or in the pastures where the cattle grazed.
Few vehicles passed him in either direction. It was the time of the late hay harvest and everybody was at work in the fields—and usually when he saw the haymakers at all, they were far from the road.
He met no pedestrians at all. Being quite off the line of the railroad, there were no tramps on this road, and of course there was nothing else to harm the boy. His mother, in her anxiety, peopled the world with those that would do Sammy harm. In truth, he was never safer in his life!
But adventure? Why, the world was full of it, and Sammy Pinkney expected to meet any number of exciting incidents as he went on.
“Sammy,” Dot Kenway once said, “has just a wunnerful ’magination. Why! if he sees our old Sandyface creeping through the grass after a poor little field mouse, Sammy can think she’s a whole herd of tigers. His ’magination is just wunnerful!”
CHAPTER VII—THE BRACELET AGAIN TO THE FORE
While Sammy’s sturdy, if short, legs were leaving home and Milton steadily behind him, Dot and Tess were driving Scalawag, the calico pony, to Penny & Marchant’s store, and later to Mr. Howbridge’s house to deliver the note Ruth had entrusted to them.
Their guardian had always been fond of the Kenway sisters—since he had been appointed their guardian by the court, of course—and Tess and Dot could not merely call at Mr. Howbridge’s door and drive right away again.
Besides, there were Ralph and Rowena Birdsall. The Birdsall twins had of late likewise come under Mr. Howbridge’s care, and circumstances were such that it was best for their guardian to take the twins into his own home.
Having two extremely active and rather willful children in his household had most certainly disturbed Mr. Howbridge out of the rut of his old existence. And Ralph and Rowena quite “turned the ‘ouse hupside down,” to quote Hedden, Mr. Howbridge’s butler.