CHAPTER XVII
VAN THE RESCUER
IT was a June morning; the air was soft, still, and windless. Betsy came out on the honeysuckle porch carrying a basket of lunch. Van lay there in the sweet sunshine.
“School is over and vacation has begun, Vanny-Boy, and Aunt Kate says we may have a picnic, if you’ll take good care of me. We’re going up to the Reservoir, and we’re going for a whole day. We are going to have the time of our lives. Now, what do you think of that?”
With a bark of joy he began dancing around her, and all the way past the buildings he measured the rods with little yelps of delight. Freedom was his once more, and gladness radiated from him in every direction. Eastward, up Bow Lane they turned, Van always in the lead, while straying cats and chickens no longer needed to flee at his approach.
A sleepy, winding road was Bow Lane, making a great curve past meadows and farmhouses, till it lost itself in the hills. A golden glow filled all the valley ahead of them, and the hills rose out of the mist like dreams, barely outlined in delicate amethyst against the glory of the sky. Down into a ravine they went, where a brook sang its morning song far below the bridge that spanned it. Here Van leaped from rock to rock down the steep bank to the very edge of the little stream, and lapped his fill of the sweet water. Across the brook he bounded, never wetting his feet, then up the other side as if he were a winged thing, till he joined Betsy once more.
Up the brook a little way, on a boulder, sat a tramp, who started as he saw the dog, and then looked up to watch the little girl as she crossed the bridge. But Betsy did not see him, and Van only gave a contemptuous bark in his direction.
On and on they went, up the brown road that unwound itself out of the mist between two lines of velvety green. The country swam higher and higher out of the vapor, and resolved itself into fields of standing corn, wheat, or clover, that spread everywhere, dew-pearled. The rainbow ropes that bound earth to sky spun themselves up, up, till the dreaming hills turned from amethyst to sapphire, then emerald.
Out of the fog that veiled the upland, sprang an army of tall, thin cedar trees, standing like soldiers, singly or in groups. They appeared to be marching up the hill in a happy-go-lucky way, as if it were not necessary to keep rank and step when armies go on a holiday. Betsy saluted gayly as she passed, and it almost seemed as if they returned the salute and presented arms, so friendly did the whole world appear that lovely morning.
Now Betsy and Van plunged through a grove of chestnuts and beeches, where the road looked like a tunnel of green, opening into fairyland. Beyond lay a fallow field. Here they left the road, and waded knee-deep through grass and flowers hung from tip to tip with filmy fairy garments, tended by spidery washerwomen.
Betsy laughed at her soaked shoes, and shook defiance at the dew with her short skirts. Van cared for nothing except to race hither and yonder, covering ten feet of distance to Betsy’s one, until he was halted by a mass of rock too high and steep for him to clamber over. He looked back to see what his mistress would do in the face of such an obstacle. But Betsy knew the secret, and instead of trying to climb, she simply skirted the foot of the rocks until she came to an opening, where a narrow, grassy path led around the barrier, and there before them lay the miracle!