"Johnny!" she called all through the house and wood-shed. Then she missed the little coat, cap, and comforter.
"If he has gone to meet his grandpa, he'll freeze to death. Oh, why didn't I amuse him till his grandpa came," she thought. She opened the door and tried to call, but a cloud of snow beat her back. Wrapping herself comfortably, she started down the white road she thought Johnny had taken.
She called and called his name, and in her excitement expected every moment to find him frozen. She promised the wind and snow that, if they would only spare her Johnny, her dead daughter's baby, that in place of his impatient old grandma there should be one as patient as Job!
She had nearly reached the depot. She heard the evening train, she saw the glare of the great lamp on the engine though the glass that covered it was half hidden by the blinding snow. She heard a sleigh coming toward her, and said to herself, "No matter who it is, I will stop him, and he shall help me." The bells came nearer and nearer, and the sleigh stopped. "Where are you going, my good woman? It is a rough night, isn't it, for a woman to be out?"
Any other time, how grandma would have laughed!—grandpa didn't know his own wife!
"Take her in, father," said another voice. Poor grandma! It was Johnny's father who spoke.
"Oh, Johnny's lost!" she cried, as she tottered into the sleigh. "He will freeze before we can find him."
The old lady was taken home, and grandpa and Johnny's father started off, quite naturally in the wrong direction, for Johnny.
For a while, Johnny went on manfully; but soon his little fingers and toes began to beg him to go back. He refused to notice their petition, and wished grandma could see him, as the wind whirled him round and round and almost buried him in the snow. He thought he had gone about ten miles, when he heard bells. He turned to one side for the sleigh to pass, when he heard a voice he knew.