'Old Peter took her off with him to his cottage, and his wife gave her some hot breakfast, and then he borrowed a cart and drove Maggie home—straight home to Muirness, not to Oldbiggins. It was home Maggie wanted to go, you may be sure, and when Peter heard the story, he declared her granny deserved a good fright for not looking after her better.
"P'raps she thought I'd run off to mother and the boys," said Maggie.
'And that was just what it turned out to be.
'The old lady, instead of being frightened, was very angry. She had stayed talking to some friend at the church door, and somehow her daughter and the boys had fancied she and Maggie had driven off, not seeing them about. Maggie's mother was in a hurry to get home to the one that was ill, and just thought the little girl had gone back quietly with her grandmother till the next morning. And when the granny had missed the child, she thought Maggie had run off to her mother—for some one called out that Mistress Gray and her children had driven off,—and was too offended to send to Muirness to ask!
'And at home they hadn't missed her of course. So, after all, Maggie wasn't made much of a heroine of, for all she'd been so brave and sensible.
'But I'm sure she never minded that, so glad was she to be in her own dear home again, safe and sound. And you may be sure her mother petted her enough to make up all she could for the poor little thing's disagreeable adventure. It was talked of through the country-side for many a day after that. Maybe it is still.'
'And I hope they never let her go back to that horrid old grandmother again,' said Anne.
'Nay, my dear, she wasn't so bad as that. But old people have their ways.'
'I think our gran is much nicer than that,' said Maud in her clear little voice.
And I'm sure we all agreed with her.