She waited and waited; the time went on, and it was high noon. She heard a dinner-horn in the distance. She wondered vaguely if Cap'n Moseby didn't have any dinner because he lived alone. She began to feel hungry herself. There was not a sound in the house. She wanted to cry, but she would not. She sat perfectly still. Once in a while she said over to herself the questions she had learned from the catechism, and she reflected much upon the two boys in the Pilgrim's Progress. She had eaten a few of the Cap'n's berries as she filled her bucket, and she wondered that they did not make her ill, as the fruit did the boys.
Nobody passed the house, the insects rasped in her ears, she thought her forlorn childish thoughts, and it was an hour after noon. She did not see a curtain trimmed with white balls in a window overhead pulled cautiously to one side, and a grizzled head thrust out; but this happened several times.
About two o'clock there was a sudden puff of cool wind on her back; she glanced around, trembling, and there stood Cap'n Moseby in the open door, with his great black dog at his heels. His old face was the color of tanned leather, and full of severe furrows; his shaggy brows frowned over sharp black eyes. He leaned upon a stout oak staff, for he had been lamed by a British musket-ball.
"Who's this?" he asked, in a grim voice.
Mirandy arose and stood about, and courtesied. She could not find her tongue yet.
"Hey?" said Cap'n Moseby.
"Mirandy Thayer," she answered then, in a shaking voice that had yet a touch of defiance in it.
"Mirandy Thayer, hey? Well, what do you want here, Mirandy Thayer?"
Mirandy dropped another courtesy. "My bucket."
"Your bucket! What have I got to do with your bucket?"