The family had gathered at the foot of the stairs waiting to see their guests depart; Eunice was already in the carriage at the door. They heard Reba calling frantically to Emmaline to stop, heard her say: "Oh, she's gone crazy! Stop her, Eunice!" They saw the little gray-haired creature, with the gorgeous blanket enveloping her, fly down the stairs and out of the front door, hotly pursued by Reba, and the walls echoed to the children's irrepressible whoop of delight.
It was too dark outside to see clearly the violence with which Emmaline threw herself into the buggy, falling on her knees and getting wound up in the blanket in her haste, but the amazed inmates of the Ark heard Eunice cry: "Git ap!" as Emmaline pulled Reba in after her with the strength of terror and saw the horse start off, probably no less surprised than the human beings behind him. Then they saw Eunice's head thrust out of the side of the buggy, and heard her voice call back in profound disgust: "I'll send the blanket back to-morrer! She thinks the house's afire!"
With that the unexpected visitors made their hasty exit, and all the young Scollards fell in a heap on the lower steps of the stairs, rolling and rocking in agonies of laughter.
[CHAPTER XV]
THE PROMISE OF THE GREEN BRANCH
When the family assembled at the breakfast table on the following morning, and had laughed their fill at the memory of the funny exit of the preceding evening, they discovered that the visitors had left a residuum of discomfort in the mind of each member of the family who was old enough to realize the full import of Eunice Neumann's story about the house.
It would be bad enough in any case to feel that their enjoyment of the Ark was the fruit of dishonesty, but when the person who suffered from that dishonesty was Gretta, Gretta of whom they had all grown so fond, and who so sorely needed justice done her, it was unbearable to feel that they might be innocently adding to her wrongs by depriving her of her property.
Therefore when they espied Gretta coming up the road with the blanket which Emmaline Gulick had carried off in her stampede from her fancied fire, Happie rushed to meet her with more than her usual eagerness, and dragged Gretta into the dining-room, completely bewildered by the flood of questions and incomprehensible explanations with which Happie was deluging her.
Miss Bradbury greeted the young girl with a hint of tenderness unlike her usual manner, and Mrs. Scollard kissed her very gently. Gretta perched herself on a chair beside the latter, fanning herself with her sunbonnet and twisting a corner of the apron which she never discarded when she came on an errand, as she never wore it when making a social call, thereby marking the difference between the two.