"You may bring me a big bunch of daisies," Jacqueline told her, in granting permission for the afternoon out. "Since you came I have almost lost Jerry. But then, he was so very good, I am sure he should have been given a vacation."
The little grocery wagon did not have to delay for its passenger when next afternoon Prank, with a clean blouse and his cap at exactly the right tilt, called to deliver goods and "collect" Tessie.
Starting out along the broad avenue, Gyp, the brown horse, jauntily drew the light yellow wagon, holding his head up quite as proudly as any flashy cob that passed with the fancy equipage in turn-out for the lovely afternoon driving. Presently, from the fashionable thoroughfare Frank turned into the "Old Road," that wended along railroad and river lines out Flosston way.
"You can drive here," he conceded, handing the reins to Tessie. "I don't have to make another stop for half a mile."
"I used to drive long ago, when I was a little girl with pigtails," she answered, taking the lines. "Gyp is gentle, isn't he?"
"Yep, mostly he is. But he scares up, once in a while. Doesn't like an umbrella shot up under his nose, and I've seen him dance at a postal card flaring up with the wind."
Entering Flosston, Tessie felt more emotion than she expected to experience. That last night in the town, when she and Dagmar waited at the station; their dispute over the road they should take; the finding of the badge, and the return of the girl scouts in search of it: all this surged over her like a cloud, covering the bright sunshine that danced through the trees. Frank evidently observed her preoccupation, for he made frantic efforts to be especially entertaining.
Once, when the post-office clerk emerged from the drug-store, Tessie pulled her hat down until the pin at back tugged viciously in her coil of black hair. That clerk might recognize her, and her folks surely called for mail occasionally. But the clerk never raised his head, as Gyp sauntered along, and it was a relief to make sure that her new and different outfit was a complete disguise. No one would now recognize her as Tessie Wartliz, of Fluffdown Mills.
"I have to get Miss Douglass some daisies. See that lovely field over there! Could we stop long enough for me to gather a bunch?" she asked Frank presently.
"Sure thing!" replied the boy merrily. "I only have to turn in a few more boxes, and then my time's my own. Sometimes I take my sister Bessie when I come out here, and once mother came. But she wanted to knit. Can you beat that: knitting on a grocery wagon?"