She went back to the clown after dinner, to find that he had been served with a great tray of food by Linda, and lay back among his pillows, happy and content.
Mrs. MacCall had insisted upon looking at his ankle. She bandaged it and anointed it with balsam.
“These folks are mighty good people, Barnabetta,” said Asa Scruggs. “I never knowed there were such good folks outside the circus business.”
“I don’t know what to make of ’em,” confessed the girl.
“Don’t have to make nothin’ of ’em,” said her father, with a sigh of content. “This is somethin’ to be mighty thankful for. Feel the warm air comin’ from that open register, Barnabetta? And I thought we’d haf to scrouge down over a whisp of fire to-night in the open. Oh, my!” and he gave an ecstatic wriggle under the bed clothes.
He seemed ready for sleep, and the girl tiptoed out of the room after turning the gas low. It was while she was in the hall, and before opening the door of her own room, that she heard a sudden subdued hullabaloo below stairs. Listen! what had happened?
Startled, Barnabetta crept along the hall to the front stairway. Somebody had entered by the door from the side porch, bringing in a great breath of keen air that drifted up the stairway to her. The Corner House girls were conducting this new arrival into the sitting room.
“Oh, Neale! you mean thing!” cried Agnes’ voice. “Where have you been? Come in and tell us all about it!”
“And what have you done with that old album Agnes let you take?” was Ruth’s anxious question.
Barnabetta strained her ears to distinguish the boy’s reply.