"Davy—Davy, dear—we thought you had been drowned!" she cried.
Here, then, was the reason for this great gathering. What a commotion for so small a reason—as though a boy's chief end were to tumble into the water, as though he never were to be trusted out of his mother's sight? I dropped the reins; my eyes and my mouth opened wide with astonishment.
"Your father's dragging the mill-dam for you this very minute." She was at the gate. "Where—where have you been?"
She did not let me answer. She lifted her hands and caught me in her embrace, and Penelope's arms were clutching me about the neck as she was swung with me from Nathan's back.
My mother was crying, from gladness I took it, for there certainly was joy in her eyes when she held me off and looked down at me. Then came astonishment, and she lowered her spectacles from the top of her head to make sure that she saw aright.
"But who—who is this?" she said.
For answer I took Penelope's hand and faced the whole company; faced Mr. Pound and the squire, old Mr. Smiley and Miss Spinner, Mrs. Pound, and a score of others of the great folk of the valley. I faced them with defiance in my eyes, for were not they the authors of the Professor's troubles and was I not his only friend?
"It's Penelope Blight," I said, "and I promised the Professor to take care of her."
"What?" cried Mr. Pound. "The Professor's daughter—the man who almost killed Constable Lukens? Dav-id!"
"Yes, sir," I said. Penelope's hand was tightening in mine, and I glanced to my side, to see her standing very straight, and the blue ribbon was tilted as proudly as on that morning when we met by the mountain brook.