"I see!" Happie's voice echoed Bob's pleasure, and Gretta caught her breath.
"Crestville! Crestville!" shouted the guard. But the party for the Ark was on its feet before the announcement, and Penny had bolted for the door, to the dismay of careful Polly, burdened with responsibility for her successor who lacked all of her own steadiness.
Drawn up beside the station platform as the Archaics came around, was Jake Shale's team. The horses were as discouraged-looking as ever, but the children had learned that their gauntness and melancholy were rather habits than the proof of actual discomfort. They were harnessed to a bright blue wagon body, set on two sleds. The wagon was filled with straw, and Jake sat on the seat smiling helplessly, with no change of expression on his cadaverous face to indicate the pleasure that he really did feel on seeing the Scollard young folk again.
Beyond Jake stood Don Dolor, fairly shining with prosperity and grooming, harnessed to a pretty dark green sleigh with a removable second seat, which none of the newcomers had ever seen before. Mahlon Gruber held the reins. He was just as limp, just as near falling to pieces, apparently, as ever, but he grinned with inane joy as Bob shouted to him: "Hallo, Mahlon!" and responded "Hallo," with an approach to animation.
Margery and Robert, the latter because he was the guest of honor and Margery because he was largely her guest, got into the back seat of the sleigh, and Polly and Penny were tucked in beside Mahlon, with some regret for the straw-filled wagon body and the majority.
"Do they let you drive alone, Mahlon?" asked Bob, tucking in his large and his smaller sisters, and patting Don Dolor—dolorous no more—on his handsome black nose.
"Ye-e-ah!" said Mahlon in a long drawn note of triumph, ending with a staccato snap. "Yep! Yes, sirree! I kin drive that there horse anywheres. He knows me good."
"He looks fine, Mahlon. You take every bit as good care of him as I did," said Bob, turning away to join the waiting Shale party.
"I bet ye!" said the proud Mahlon emphatically, and with the thin giggle that the children remembered so well.
"She couldn't come over," said Jake Shale, turning his long vehicle with its long squeak on the frozen snow. "She sent word yesterday I'd got to be over till to-day fer the mail train. She was afraid she hadn't the dare to come, fear of cold. I didn't see how I was goin' to make it—I'm haulin' fer a man that's lumberin' a piece he's took over the other side. He's cuttin' mine props and ties. But I told him I'd have to do it a while, to oblige her, and I come. If I hadn't a went Aaron could, but I was using the team. So you was to the city, Gretta. You look good."