“Nantic? Do you suppose—” Jean stopped short. Shad failed to notice her hesitancy, but went on out doors. Perhaps the boy was wondering if he could get any trace of his father down at Nantic, she thought. There was a great deal of the Motherbird’s nature in her eldest robin’s sympathy and swift, sure understanding of another’s need. She kept an eye out for Joe all day, but the afternoon passed, the girls came home from school, and supper was on the table without any sign of their Christmas waif. And finally, when Shad came in from bedding down the cows and milking, he said he was pretty sure Joe had cut and run away.
“Do you think it’s because he didn’t want to stay with us while Mother and Father were away?” asked Helen.
“No, I don’t,” Shad replied. “I think he’s just a little tramp, and he had to take to the road when the call came to him. He wasn’t satisfied with a good warm bed and plenty to eat.”
But Jean felt the responsibility of Joe’s loss, and set a lamp burning all night in the sitting room window as a sign to light his way back home. It was such a long walk down through the snow to Nantic, and when he got there, Mr. Briggs would be sure to see him, and make trouble for him. And perhaps he had wandered out into the hills on a regular tramp and got lost. Just before she went up to bed Jean called up Cousin Roxy and asked her advice.
“Well, child, I’d go to bed tonight anyway. He couldn’t have strayed away far, and there are plenty of lights in the farmhouse windows to guide him. I saw him sitting on the edge of the woodpile just when your mother was getting ready to leave, and then he slipped away. I wouldn’t worry over him. It isn’t a cold night, and the snow fall is light. If he has run off, there’s lots of barns where he can curl down under the hay and keep warm. When the Judge drives down to Nantic tomorrow I’ll have him inquire.”
But neither tomorrow, nor the day after, did any news come to them of Joe. Mr. Briggs was sure he hadn’t been around the station or the freight trains. Saturday Kit and Doris drove around through the wood roads, looking for footprints or some other signs of him, and Jean telephoned to all the points she could think of, giving a description of him, and asking them to send the wanderer back if they found him. But the days passed, and it looked as if Joe had joined the army of the great departed, as Cousin Roxy said.
Before the first letter reached them from California, telling of the safe arrival at Benita Ranch of Mr. and Mrs. Robbins, winter decided to come and stay a while. There came a morning when Shad had hard work opening the storm door of the kitchen, banked as it was with snow. Inside, from the upper story windows, the girls looked out, and found even the stone walls and rail fences covered over with the great mantle that had fallen steadily and silently through the night. There was something majestically beautiful in the sweep of the valley and its encircling hills, seen in this garb.
“You’ll never get to school today, girls,” Mrs. Gorham declared. “Couldn’t get through them drifts for love nor money. ’Twouldn’t be human, nuther, to take any horse out in such weather. Like enough the mailman won’t pull through. Looks real pretty, don’t it?”
“And, just think, Mother and Father are in summerland,” Helen said, standing with her arm around Jean at the south window. “I wish winter wouldn’t come. I’m going to follow summer all around the world some time when I’m rich.”
“Helenita always looks forward to that happy day when the princess shall come into her own,” Kit sang out, gleefully. “Meantime, ladies, I want to be the first to tell the joyous tidings. The pump’s frozen up.”