Happie ran over the grass and seized Gretta's shoulders, herself unseen. Gretta screamed and then hailed Happie joyfully.
"My, but you scared me!" she cried. "Margery gone?"
Happie nodded. "And I want you to come up this afternoon and get in hay with us—we want to make it a frolic, and beside, you really do know how to load a wagon as well as any farmer, so Rosie says. But it's not for work I want you; you know that. Come over, Gretta, and help us be merry, for I'm afraid we miss Margery."
"I guess," assented Gretta. "I'll come, if I can get my clothes in, and folded to iron in the morning. And now Margery's gone I want to tell you that I know how you stayed here and let her go in your place—Rosie Gruber told us. You said you'd stay here, even if you got a chance to go, but I couldn't believe it. Still, I know how bad you wanted to go, so I guess I was half way right, after all. Never mind," she added hastily, as Happie showed symptoms of interrupting her. "That's all right; I don't blame you. All I wanted to try and tell you was that I guess you haven't an idea of how glad I am you stayed. I don't seem to know how to say it, so I haven't let you know how much good you're doing me. If it's any comfort to you, you can be sure of one thing—I'd have been miserable if you'd gone. I didn't know the difference you were making, not rightly know it, till I heard from Rosie that I might have lost you. It took my breath away. You like to make folks happy, so don't be sorry you let Margery go, Happie dear."
Happie had never before heard a speech of one third this length from Gretta; she saw that the girl was trying to break through her reticence to comfort her for the regret which she fancied Happie must feel.
"Why, you dear Gretta!" she cried. "I do know you need me, and I do see you're happier and more girlish since I found you—found you in the paint pot, like 'the little husband no bigger than my thumb' of Mother Goose fame. You are quite, quite wrong if you think I am sorry that I could not go instead of Margery. At first I did want to go; that's true, not because I don't like Crestville, but because any girl would jump at such a chance as that—at first. But I'm delighted that it's Margery and not I, who is on the train, and I'm glad for my own sake, not for hers alone. So be satisfied that I am satisfied, and come over to help us be happy in this lovely country life."
"I'll come—unless I can't," said Gretta, and Happie ran homeward after Laura.
By three o'clock Gretta's fresh starched pink sunbonnet appeared down the road, bobbing up and down under the trees. The Scollards were all out in the field with Ralph, all save Happie, who had come in to watch for Gretta and to take her out with her. But Gretta did not seem to know that she was shy; her foot was on her native heath, she carried her own pitchfork, and in hay-making it was not she, but the city children who were at a disadvantage.
"You'd better let me load," she said, nodding at Peter Kuntz who had taken Jake Shale's place that afternoon. It always surprised the inmates of the Ark that there was, apparently, no inequality of age in Crestville. Everybody knew everybody else with the intimacy of first names and identical ages, even if one were eight and the other eighty.
"Glad to git you to load, Gretta," responded Pete heartily. And Gretta swung herself up on the back of the hay wagon, taking her stand on the thin layer of hay already scattered over its floor, resting on her pitchfork like a youthful Bellona.