By this time Gracie had lugged her heavy basket to the door, and was stamping the snow off her little feet, which were so numb that she needed to stamp to be quite sure that they were yet there. Aunt Mehetabel’s shrewd face was the first who greeted her as the door opened.
“Gracie—what upon ’arth!—wipe your nose, child; your hands are frozen. Where alive is Dick? and what’s kept you out all this time? and where is your bonnet?”
Poor Gracie, stunned by this cataract of questions, neither wiped her nose nor gave any answer; but sidled up into the warm corner, where grandmamma was knitting, and began quietly rubbing and blowing her fingers, while the tears silently rolled down her cheeks, as the fire made their former ache intolerable.
“Poor little dear!” said grandmamma, taking her hands in hers; “Hitty shan’t scold you. Grandma knows you’ve been a good girl; the wind blew poor Gracie’s bonnet away;” and grandmamma wiped both eyes and nose, and gave her, moreover, a stalk of dried fennel out of her pocket, whereat Gracie took heart once more.
“Mother always makes fools of Roxy’s children,” said Mehetabel, puffing zealously under the tea-kettle. “There’s a little maple sugar in that saucer up there, mother, if you will keep giving it to her,” she said, still vigorously puffing. “And now, Gracie,” she said, when, after a while, the fire seemed in tolerable order, “will you answer my question?—Where is Dick?”
“Gone over in the lot to get my bonnet.”
“How came your bonnet off?” said Aunt Mehetabel. “I tied it on firm enough.”
“Dick wanted me to take it off for him to throw up for Liberty,” said Grace.
“Throw up for fiddlestick! Just one of Dick’s cut-ups, and you were silly enough to mind him!”
“Why, he put up a flag-staff on the wood-pile, and a flag to Liberty, you know, that papa’s fighting for,” said Grace more confidently, as she saw her quiet, blue-eyed mother, who had silently walked into the room during the conversation.