"An' the first thing't ever I knew, I went down kerslump into a big compost heap, an'--"
"What's a compost heap?" asked Davie, getting up to stand in the wagon back of them.
"Oh, manure an' sich, all gone to rot," said Abram's mother.
"O dear me!" said Davie.
"An' that cow--'twas a bull, I forgot to tell you, Jane's husban' told me afterwards--he kept right on over my head, couldn't stop, you know, an' he went bang up against a tree on t'other side, an' it knocked him flat."
"Did it hurt him?" asked Phronsie, in a sorry tone.
"I s'pose so," said Abram's mother, "for he didn't know nothin', an' th' men folks came who'd seen me runnin' an' heard Jane hollerin' an' took him off before he came to, which he did after a spell, as lively as a cricket. An' they dragged me up, more dead'n alive, an' I hain't run a step since."
Phronsie drew a long breath of relief that no one was killed. Davie gazed at Abram's mother in great satisfaction. "Tell us some more," he said.
"An' I might as well have flung off that red shawl," she went on, ignoring his request, "if I could a' got out that pin, for it was all smutched up, fallin' in that mess, an' I couldn't put it on my back. It beats all how you never know what's best to do; but then, says I, you've no call to worry afterwards, if you decide in a hurry. Sho now, go easy, you!" And at last they drew up at Mrs. Beebe's door.
There she stood in the doorway, in a cap with new pink ribbons, and old Mr. Beebe just a little back, smiling and rubbing his hands, and in the little window where the shoes and rubbers and slippers were hanging was a big round face plastered up against the small panes of glass.