“I should like to shake hands with you, if I could,” said Harry, whose right arm was still fast in a sling.
“O, never mind,” said Kate. “Come, I’m in a hurry to show you something—quick! before Frank comes!” and Kate hurried Harry off out of doors the very minute she had told Mrs. Dobson how glad she was to see her.
“Don’t you know,” said she to Harry (as they stepped from the veranda), “the morning you first came here? Well, when you rode past on that ugly little pony that threw you down and hurt you, I was just behind that stone wall over there. You can see it, can’t you?”
Harry said yes; that he could see it.
“Well, you must know that my brother Frank has been taking care of that cornfield ever since for you.”
Harry wondered what was coming next, but Kate gave him not the least mite of a chance to ask a question, but made haste to say, “That day the corn was Frank’s, but he ran away. Don’t you remember how he followed you to the circus grounds and stayed with you till most dinner time?”
“If he hadn’t,” interposed the lad, “I don’t believe I should ever have known you, or you me.”
“That’s just it!” responded Kate. “It makes everything we do so queer and kind of jumbled up; and yet,” she said gravely, “everything will come out right, I s’pose, if we wait long enough.”
“You don’t mean that ’twas right for Frank to run away, do you?” and Harry looked at Kate out of his clear, honest, grey eyes, very earnestly indeed.
“I don’t see why not, ’cause if he hadn’t, how could we have known you wanted somebody and a home and all?” suggested Kate.