"Thank you, Mayrose!" said the boy, who was very happy to be so well received.
"Now tell me all about father and mother."
"They have had nothing but hardship ever since you went away," said Mayrose. "The horse has been a costly care all summer, for he has stood in the stable the whole time and not earned his feed. Your father is too soft-hearted to shoot him and he can't sell him. It was on account of the horse that both Star and Gold-Lily had to be sold."
There was something else the boy wanted badly to know, but he was diffident about asking the question point blank. Therefore he said:
"Mother must have felt very sorry when she discovered that Morten
Goosey-Gander had flown?"
"She wouldn't have worried much about Morten Goosey-Gander had she known the way he came to leave. She grieves most at the thought of her son having run away from home with a goosey-gander."
"Does she really think that I stole the goosey-gander?" said the boy.
"What else could she think?"
"Father and mother must fancy that I've been roaming about the country, like a common tramp?"
"They think that you've gone to the dogs," said Mayrose. "They have mourned you as one mourns the loss of the dearest thing on earth."