He was. If any one doubted the effect of plenty of food and care, Don Dolor Bonaparte, could he have met the sceptic, would have converted him by the most eloquent of preaching—personal example. In that one week he had become another horse. He had put on flesh, he had begun to get glossy, he held up his head as hope awoke in his equine breast, and he showed unmistakable symptoms of returning to the beauty that had once been his. Bob was devoted to him; he had hard work to tear himself from him long enough to perform his tasks on the farm, which were many and irksome, and took a great deal of time.
When they had leisure, Bob and Ralph took their books into the orchard where they allowed the don to graze while they read, prostrate in the long grass. Poor Don Dolor appreciated the kindness to which he was not accustomed. Sometimes when Bob was deep in his plot, the don would come up and nose him caressingly as one who would say: "You can't imagine how different all this is, nor how I thank you!"
So he was entirely able to go to the village in pursuit of his mistress' rattle and dog, and Happie was only too glad of the chance to borrow Gretta and take the drive. She had found the drive up from the station almost too much for her on that April night when she had first taken it, but how pleasant it was now to go slowly along the shaded road, hearing the quail whistling in the fields, and the catbird warbling his June ecstasy!
"Somehow I feel as if I had never seen the country till this year," said Happie looking about her with ineffable content as she and Gretta wound carefully down the steep hill. "It's queer, because I used to go away every summer till the last two, but I feel as if something had awakened in me this year; it all seems different and lovelier."
"That's because you had a hard time before you came. It makes people see and feel to have a hard time—unless it's a hard enough time to dull them," said Gretta. "That's one reason, and the other is that you have a home here this year. I never was away from here, but I'm pretty sure no other place ever looks the way home does. You wouldn't see this road as you do if you didn't feel your home was at one end of it."
Happie turned in her seat to look at Gretta. She considered her clever, but she was perpetually surprised at the insight this girl betrayed, now that she dared reveal herself.
"I see that's true when you say it, Gretta," she cried. "But I don't believe I should have found it out for myself. How do you know things like that?"
"I've been alone 'most all the time," said Gretta. "That makes a body think; I always thought more than I talked. Then not having any real home of my own makes a difference. I always felt I'd love my own home, because I love Crestville so, even if I can't love Eunice's house much. I guess it's because I've had hard times myself that I know what hard times teaches people."
"Teach, dear, when there are more than one thing of which you are speaking," said Happie, with a pat of apology for the correction.
But Gretta did not mind being corrected. "Teach, then," she said. "But it seems queer to take off an s on one word, when you put it on the other. I'll never learn."