“Oh, I want Davie; we shall both need him,” said Mrs. Pepper.
“You can come,” said Joel patronizingly, and striding off, clinging to Mrs. Pepper’s hand.
Davie lifted his face that had become quite downcast with this dreadful trouble coming to Mamsie, and then, too, not being wanted to help, and trotted after.
The farmer’s wife not having heard the word “burglar,” grasped Phronsie’s hand tighter yet. “Come, child,” she said, “an’ you an’ me’ll find out what’s ben goin’ on.”
“We’ll find out,” Phronsie cried with a little gurgle of delight, skipping along by the clumsy footsteps, “and I’ll show you my little brown house.”
“So you shall, you sweet lamb, you,” exclaimed Mrs. Brown, yet with a heavy heart against the hour when she and the farmer would be in the big wagon and on the Maybury road, going home, just those two.
Once in the old kitchen, the story came out, with many jerks from Joel, as he often stopped to bemoan the loss of a chance to capture the burglar, and the positive assurance that he could have beaten him to nothing if he had only been there.
“My senses!—your gold beads!” exclaimed the farmer’s wife. She had sat down in Mrs. Pepper’s calico-covered rocking chair, and now she lifted both hands in dismay. “How you can, Mis Pepper, take it so easy!”
“Just think, all the children are well,” said Mrs. Pepper with a smile.
“I know,” said Mrs. Brown, “but gold beads is gold beads.”