So he scrambled out of bed, found his shoes, and hastily put on some of the clothes which Mary had just taken off and folded up. There was no one on the piazza to note the little figure as it sped down the slope. Everybody was off enjoying the moonlight in some way or other.
It was, indeed, as Ned had suspected. Dick of the freckles had gone fishing and forgotten Cloud altogether. The moon shone full through the eastern windows of the store, making it almost as light as day, and Ned had no trouble in finding the hay and the water-pail. He watched the pony as he hungrily champed and chewed the sweet-smelling heap and sucked up the water, then he brushed out his stall, and scattered straw, and then sat down "for a minute," as he told himself, to rest and watch Cloud go to sleep. It was very pleasant in the old store, he thought.
Presently Cloud lay down on the straw too, and cuddled close up to Ned, who patted and stroked him. Ned thought he was asleep, he lay so still. But after a little while Cloud stirred and got up, first on his forelegs and then altogether. He stood a moment watching Ned, who pretended to be sleeping, then he opened the slatted door of his stall, moved gently across the floor and went in behind the old blue counter.
"What is he going to do?" thought Ned. "I never saw anything so funny. Constance will never believe when I tell her about it."
What Cloud did was to take one of the glass jars from the shelf in his teeth, and set it on the counter. It was the one which held the gingersnap crumbs. Cloud lifted off the lid. Just then a clatter of hoofs was heard outside, and another horse came in. Ned knew the horse in a minute. It was the yellow one which Mr. Gale drove in his buckboard.
The yellow horse trotted up to the counter, and he and Cloud talked together for a few minutes. It was in pony language, and Ned could not understand what they said; but it had to do with the gingersnaps, apparently, for Cloud poured part of them out on the counter, and the buckboard horse greedily licked them up. Then he gave Cloud something by way of payment. Ned could not see what, but it seemed to be a nail out of his hind shoe, and then tiptoed out of the store and across the road to the field where the horses grazed, while Cloud opened a drawer at the back of the counter and threw in the nail, if it was one. It sounded like a nail.
He had scarcely done so when more hoofs sounded, and two other horses came in. Horse one was the bay which went with the yellow in the buckboard, the other Mr. Gale's sorrel colt, which he allowed no one to drive except himself. Cloud seemed very glad to see them. And such a lively chorus went on across the counter of whinnies and snorts and splutters, accompanied with such emphatic stamps, that Ned shrank into a dark corner, and did not dare to laugh aloud, though he longed to as he peeped between the bars.
The sorrel colt seemed to want a great many things. He evidently had the shopping instinct. Cloud lifted down all the jars, one by one, and the colt sampled their contents. The cream-of-tartar he did not like at all; but he ate all the brown sugar and the cracker crumbs, tasted an olive and let it drop with a disgusted neigh, and lastly took a bite of the mouldy cheese in the red trap, and expressed his opinion of it by what seemed to be a "swear-word." Then he and the bay-horse and Cloud went to the end of the store where a rusty old stove without any pipe stood, sat down on their haunches before it, put their forelegs on its top, and began, as it seemed, to discuss politics; at least, it sounded wonderfully like the conversation that had gone on in that very corner in Mr. Harrison's day, when the farmers collected to predict the defeat of the candidate on the other side, whoever he might be.
They talked so long that Ned grew very sleepy, and lay down again on the straw. He felt that he ought to go home and to bed, but he did not quite dare. The strange horses might take offence at his being there, he thought; still, he had a comfortable feeling that as Cloud's friend they would not do him any real harm. Even when, as it seemed, one of them came into the stall, took hold of his shoulder, and began to shake him violently, he was not really frightened.
"Don't!" he said sleepily. "I won't tell anybody. Cloud knows me. I'm a friend of his."