"So the telegraphic report said. Not a bone broken of anybody but the pig that got in the way."
"But how I wish he would come!" groaned Annie. "Have you any idea, papa, how he can get home?"
"Not clearly," said her father, "but you can trust Ford not to miss any opportunity. He's just the boy to look out for himself in an emergency."
Ford Foster's father took very strongly after the son in whose ability he expressed so much confidence. He had just such a square, active, bustling sort of body, several sizes larger, with just such keen, penetrating, greenish-gray eyes. Anybody would have picked him out, at a glance, for a lawyer, and a good one.
That was exactly what he was, and if any one had become acquainted with either son or father, there would have been no difficulty afterward in identifying the other.
It required a good deal more than the telegraphic report of the accident or even her husband's assurances, to relieve the motherly anxiety of good Mrs. Foster, or even to drive away the shadows from the face of Annie.
No doubt if Ford himself had known the state of affairs, they would have been relieved earlier; for even while they were talking about him he was already in the house. It had not so much as occurred to him that his mother would hear of the accident to the pig and the railway train until he himself should tell her, and so, he had made sure of his supper down-stairs, before reporting himself.[Page 561] He might not have done it, perhaps, but he had come in through the lower way, by the area door, and that of the dining-room had stood temptingly wide open with some very eatable things ready on the table.
That had been too much for Ford, after his car-ride and his smash-up and his long walk. But now, at last, up he came, brimful of new and wonderful experiences, to be more than a little astonished by the manner and enthusiasm of his welcome.
"Why, mother!" he exclaimed, when he got a chance for a word, "you and Annie couldn't have said much more if I'd been the pig himself."
"The pig?" said Annie.