During this interval of not many minutes, Josh had been keeping up such a dismal howl out by the front gate that Harry Cornwall had disobeyed orders—gotten out of his bed, pushed up his bandage, and was peeping out of the window to see what it all meant, when he heard Mrs. Dobson and Frank on the stairs. In his effort to hurry back into bed, he overturned a chair with his dinner-dishes on it (Frank, in boy-fashion, having put them upon the chair, instead of the table). The clatter and breakage brought Mrs. Dobson and Frank in a hurry into the room.
“I did it,” cried Harry. “I expect you’ll have to kill me, Mrs. Dobson, unless you let me get well fast, and work and earn enough to buy new dishes. I’m just as sorry as I can be; but the dog made such a fuss, I wanted to see what had happened.”
Harry hid his face under the clothes when he had made his confession, and consequently did not see Mrs. Dobson’s imperious gesture to Frank Hallock, bidding him be gone with haste. She was too intent on thinking of “Kittie, my Clover,” to care for broken crockery just then, and did not notice even that one of her mother’s precious china cups had been cracked.
“Won’t you please forgive me?” pleaded Harry, peering forth cautiously, and watching her as she gathered the pieces.
“For what?”
“Why, for breaking your dishes and being so naughty,” said Harry, in surprise.
“O, I was thinking of the swamps and Katie Hallock,” she said, hastily.
“Yes, I forgive you. Go to sleep now. I sha’n’t open this door again or let anybody come nigh you, in as much as an hour,” and with the words she closed the door. If Harry had peeped out the window two minutes later he would have seen Mrs. Dobson, in an old-fashioned gingham sunbonnet, taking her way as fast as she could, whither Josh led her, through grass and grain, straight for the salt meadow.
As for Master Frank, he had taken his way, whistling as he went, to farmer Bryan’s and told him that he guessed, maybe, his sister Kate was fast in the bog. Having heard the boy’s story, Mr. Bryan, with his “farm hand,” Dick Dawson, started in haste, and so came up to the stone wall just in time to catch a glimpse of the fluttering cape of Grandma Dobson’s sunbonnet on the farther side of the field of rye.
“There she goes, this minute! My! what a hurry she is in—just as though our Kate was a lump of salt or sugar,” exclaimed Frank, jumping cautiously into the grass from the wall, and taking especial care to get between Mr. Bryan and Dick Dawson, because he considered the position one of greater security from snakes.