And just then something happened. Ted slipped from the fence, and, as he fell, he stretched out his arms toward the calf in front of him and down below him. Then Ted fell astraddle right on the calf’s back, just as if he intended to take a bareback gallop.
The next minute he was having a queer ride, for Janet, with a cry of surprise, had let go her end of the rope, and the calf, with Ted on his back, was running across the field.
CHAPTER XV
GRANDPA IS WORRIED
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” cried Janet, and she was so surprised that she almost fell off the fence. “Oh, The-o-dore Martin, what are you doing?”
Janet did not really mean to ask that question, for she could see plainly what her brother was doing. He was riding a very much frightened calf around the pasture, though Ted, himself, did not want to do that at all. And though the calf had not been very much frightened when Ted lassoed it by tossing the rope around its neck, the animal was frightened now. Never before, in all its short life, had anyone ridden on its back.
“Jan! Jan!” cried Ted. “Go and get grandpa and——”
That was all Ted’s sister heard, for, just then, the calf turned and ran the other way and the wind carried Ted’s voice away from Jan.
“I wonder what he wants grandpa to do?” thought Janet. “I guess Ted wants him to stop the calf from running away. For it is running away!”
The calf certainly was! Of course it was not running out of the field, for the pasture was a large one with a fence all around it, and the calf could not climb over the fence nor break it down. But it was running here and there—all about—and poor Ted was on its back, clinging with both arms around the calf’s neck so he would not fall off.
Excited as she was, Jan managed to hold on to the fence, and look across Cherry Farm to where she had last seen her grandfather coming toward the pasture. But he had turned aside and was now going toward the cherry grove. He did not appear to have seen Jan and Ted, nor anything of what had happened.