“It’s my dad! My dear, dear dad!” Leaping from the trail into the highway, Sylvia waved her red-mittened hand, laughing and shouting. The man in the rapidly-approaching sleigh looked at the small girl as though he could not think who she might be.
Then with an expression of radiant gladness, he called “Whoa!” tossed the reins to Ken and held out his arms to catch the small figure that was flying toward him.
“My Miggins!” the father’s voice was tender with emotion. “This can’t be you!”
He held her off at arm’s length to gaze at her with admiring eyes.
The small girl laughed up at him happily, her eyes bright, her cheeks as rosy as Carol’s. Then again holding her close, he said softly: “Little girl, your mother is at home now, and she wants to see you. She has been asking every day since the storm set in if I wouldn’t go and get her baby for her.” Then he added anxiously: “Are you old enough, I wonder, to see the great change that there is in your mother, and not let her know? Our loved one is very frail yet, little daughter, but I believe, when you are with her, she will be more content and will grow stronger again. We will try to help her, for she longs to get well, that she may enjoy the simple home life which, somehow, we have always missed.” Then, smiling down at the other three children, the genial banker called, “Pile in, all of you, and I’ll give you a sleigh-ride.”
Up they scrambled, stowing the shovels away as best they could. Then again the horse started, turning down the drive toward the cabin. How the sleigh-bells rang, and how the children shouted! Jimmy-Boy was most hilarious of all, and he wanted to keep on riding, even when Dixie appeared to lift him out and carry him into the warm kitchen. “I want more sleigh-ride,” the little fellow kept saying. Then Dixie had an inspiration. “Maybe big brother will be able to make a bob-sled, and maybe Pegasus will pull it, and then Jimmy can go riding.”
“Will there be a ting-a-ling?” The small boy had been about to cry, but he waited to hear his big sister’s reply. Dixie hesitated. She never liked to promise anything that she could not grant.
“What’s the matter with that little man?” the kind banker asked as he entered the kitchen.
Jimmy-Boy, from his place on Dixie’s lap, hastened to tell him. “I want ting-a-ling to put on Pegthus.”
Mr. Clayburn looked so truly mystified that Dixie had to explain that Pegasus was their burro, and that the little fellow wished they had a string of bells to put about his neck.