“Bless me! surely she’s not run away!”
The boy sprang to the gate, and quickly returned.
“She is quite snug; I thought she had given me the slip. A great girl, ma’am, ran away with her. She did not come down to the pond of her own free good will. This is as true as truth is. She pulled, and the great girl pulled; but with all her might, madam, the little lady could not get away. So then I marched up to the big girl; and asked her what business she had with the little one? So she was angry and vexed with my ragged coat; and made my face ring again: and I gave her a good hard blow in return, and ran off with little Miss. I looked up for Miss Monitrix, but could not find her; so here she is, under the rails.”
This was all a puzzle to Mrs. Adair; but she stepped into the lane with the boy, and there she saw Isabella, seated, in great trouble, upon a stone. The affair was now explained. Isabella was taken to Elizabeth, with the assurance that no one would be angry with her; but that she must not mention the affair to any person.
Mrs. Adair now proposed going with the boy to his father’s. There was an expression of honest warmth in his countenance, which, in a moment, changed her own manner; and, as they were going down the lane, she asked how far they were from his father’s house.
“‘Tis but a cottage, madam. Grandmother says we were once well off in the world; but things will go wrong some how or another: but I’ll make good what I wrote to-day.”
“And what was it, my good boy?”
“Only to work while I am able, madam; and then when I am old, I will rest from my labour. But there is our cottage. I wish you could have seen my own mother, for she was a nice woman. Don’t you see that clump of trees, and a barn with red tiles, and a little boy wheeling a barrow? That’s my own brother, ma’am, and there’s my father at the stile, looking about him.”
As they drew nearer the cottage, they saw the man and his son step over the stile into the field, followed by a female.
“Well, I declare,” said the boy, “there is mother with her bonnet! I wonder what they are all after! And there’s grandmother come to the door!”