The cookies were bought and eaten, mistress and dog resting awhile at the little shop that sold simple drugs, etc., and eleven o’clock saw Brooke climbing the upper road toward home. She had gone but half of the way when, missing Tatters, she turned about to look for him. Whistling and waiting a moment, she saw his head appearing slowly over the last upward roll in the road, and noticed that he was limping painfully. She hurried back to where he had paused, as soon as he knew that he was in no danger of being deserted, and he began to lick one of his front paws, which had been cut by a sharp, jagged piece of ice, and which was bleeding profusely. Kneeling in the road beside him, Brooke moistened her handkerchief by the slow process of holding snow in her hands until it melted, and, after cleansing the cut as well as she could, wound the handkerchief tight around it.
“You can’t hobble a mile in this plight, neither can I carry you. Will you lie up there on that dry moss in the spot where the snow has melted, and wait until I can send Adam for you?” and Brooke took a few steps uphill to illustrate what she meant while waiting for his answer.
No, Tatters emphatically declined to wait, for as soon as she had moved a step he began to hobble on three legs, while at the same time the leaden sky shed a few big snowflakes, as if to show casually what might be expected at any time before night. So his mistress halted and began to look about as if for a possible suggestion.
Presently the head of a meek, ginger-colored horse began to rise above a steep “thank-you-ma’am.” A stout body and four legs followed, next a covered wagon, such as milk pedlers use, with a glass front, through which a man’s face looked out. The sight was such a relief to Brooke that she made no pretence of concealing the fact, but waited until the team came alongside, when she read the legend “Mrs. Banks’ Homemade Pies,” printed in elaborately shaded letters on the side of the canopy.
The horse stopped of its own accord on the small plateau, the driver dropped his window and looked out, smiling cheerfully. It was anything but a handsome face,—that of a man who was probably sixty but might be less, weathered and somewhat sharp; small gray eyes, but with a merry twinkle, peered from under shaggy, sandy eyebrows, that matched a half-starved mustache. The hair of the head was gray, and from it at right angles two very sizable ears stuck out with somewhat startling effect. Yet, in spite of these details, the whole was a face to inspire trust.