Mrs. Hunter stood still with amazement.
“Who sent you here?” said she. “Why don’t they call the doctor?”
“I don’t know. She’s going to scald me to death, and I s’pose you know I’m sick,” whined Flaxie, sinking down on the doormat, where the light of the lamp shone full upon her, and Mrs. Hunter saw—what she might have seen before, if she had not been so nervous—that the little girl wore a checked flannel nightie, and her feet were done up in poultices.
Of course she must have come away without any one’s knowing it, that cold night, with the snow falling too! It was she that was crazy, instead of Aunt Charlotte.
“How could the child have got out of the house?” thought Mrs. Hunter.
But the question was now, how to get her back again?
“Come, Flaxie,” said she, in a soothing tone, “let me wrap you up in a shawl and take you home pickaback,—there’s a good girl!”
“But I don’t want auntie to scald me.”
“She shan’t, dear. If she has got the tea-kettle, I’ll take it away from her.”
“Honest?” asked Flaxie, piteously.