“Me?” returned Joe, with a laugh. “Well, say—I wouldn’t mind havin’ you for chief assistant when I go into the business perfessionally.”
Jarvis spent the rest of the day, more or less, in the box stall. The evening was occupied in assisting Betty to receive the entire houseful of boarders, whom the news of the accident had reached at about supper time.
At midnight, having tried without success for an hour to sleep, he got up, dressed and went out through the warm July starlight to tell the brown mare he was sorry for her. He found a man’s figure standing beside that of the animal.
“Well!” Joe greeted him. “You’re another. I can’t seem to sleep, thinkin’ about this poor critter, slung up here—sufferin’—and not understandin’. They like company—now I’m sure of it. It’s a good thing she can’t know how many days and nights she’s got to be strung here, ain’t it?”
His hand was gently stroking the mare’s shoulder, as if he thought it must ache. He looked around at Jarvis, standing in the rays of light from a lantern hanging on a peg near by.
“Go back to bed, Joe,” advised Jarvis. “You’ve plenty to do to-morrow. I’ll stay with the patient a while. I shall like to do it—I’m as bad as you, I can’t sleep for thinking of her.”
“Course you can’t,” thought Joe, going back to the house. “But you didn’t say which ‘her’ ’twas that keeps you awake. I guess it’s one’s much as ’tis t’other.”
It was about two o’clock in the morning that Jarvis, in a corner of the box stall, where the mare could see him, lying at full length upon a pile of hay, his hands clasped under his head, heard light and uneven footsteps slowly approaching across the barn floor. He was instantly alert in every sense, but he did not move.
“Betty dear,” said a soft voice. Then a slender figure came into view in the dim light, walking with a limp and painfully. A loose blue robe trailed about her, and two long brown braids, curling at the ends, hung over her shoulders. She came slowly into the stall and stood and looked at Betty. Suddenly she put both arms around the mare’s neck, laid her cheek against the animal’s face, and spoke to her.
“Poor Betty,” she said, pitifully. “Did you fall into the hands of a cruel girl, who hurt you for all the rest of your life? Can you forgive her, Betty? She didn’t mean to do it, dear. She was out of temper herself, because she couldn’t have her own way—when she didn’t want her own way—Betty—can you understand? You were doing the best you could—she made you act such a silly part. Dear little Betty—she would stand beside you all night long, just to punish herself, if she could—but——”