NOBODY could have started out with better intentions than did Teddy Brockway that bright spring morning. It is true it was only March, but Teddy lived so far South that the month of March meant spring; he was dressed in a neat spring suit, had his little sister Margaret by the hand, and Sally Amelia, her dollie, under his special care, and was started for a trip all by themselves to old Auntie Blaikslee’s, almost a half-mile away!
“Aren’t you afraid to let those two babies go off alone?” Grandmamma asked, looking up from her knitting with a somewhat troubled face.
Mrs. Brockway smiled as she answered: “O, no! what could harm them? Teddy knows every foot of the way as well as I do, and every neighbor along the road; and everybody knows him. Besides, he is seven years old, and I must begin to trust him.” However, she went to the door and called after them: “Remember, Teddy, I trust Margaret to you. It isn’t every little boy of your age who can be depended upon to take care of his sister. And, Teddy, remember you are not to ride with any strange person who may ask you.”
“Course not!” said Teddy, with dignity; “not unless he is Uncle Ben or Deacon West. I can ride with Deacon West—can’t we, muvver?”
“O, yes!” said Mrs. Brockway, smiling. “He is not much more likely to meet Deacon West on this road than he is to meet the man in the moon,” she said laughingly to grandma, “but he has to provide for all the possibilities.”
Two hours afterwards Teddy and Margaret, with Sally Amelia somewhat the worse for being handled by all the grandchildren of old Auntie Blaikslee, were trudging back in triumph. The errand entrusted to them had been carefully done, and Teddy had said over the message he was to give his mother until he knew it by heart, and had bravely resisted two invitations from good-natured teamsters to have a ride. He was almost within sight of the corner where they turned into their own grounds, and Margaret had been good and minded beautifully. Truth to tell, Teddy’s heart was swelling with importance; he had never before been sent on so long a trip with only Margaret for company. He felt at least ten years old. At the top of the hill he came to a halt. There, just in front of them, jogging comfortably along, was Jake Winchell, Judge Aker’s hired man. Everybody knew Jake and his old horse and cart, but nobody, or at least Teddy, had ever happened to meet him in that direction before; his road always lay the other way.
“Halloo!” he said, getting out to fix something about the harness, and spying the children as he did so, “here’s luck; an almost empty cart and two nice passengers to have a ride in it down the hill. Don’t you want to jump in?”
Teddy never wanted anything worse. For a small minute he hesitated. What was that “muvver” had said? “You are not to ride with any strange person who may ask you.” “Course not!” said Teddy again, indignant with himself; “just as though Jake was a strange person.” But even while his heart said the words, a voice away down deep contradicted it: “Teddy Brockway, don’t you know she meant anybody you are not used to riding with? And you never had a ride with Jake.”
“What of that?” said Teddy’s other thought, still impatiently; “that’s because he never comes the way we live; but I’ve talked with him, and muvver said she thought he was kind to boys, and patient with them, and everything. Just as if she would care for Margaret and me to ride down hill to the gate! We’re most there; and it is a bad hard hill for Margaret; and she has had a long walk.”
“Yes, sir, thank you,” he said aloud to Jake, smiling and bowing like a gentleman. “I should like to ride ever so much, for Margaret’s sake; she is tired.”