It was Gyp herself, sitting on the floor and contentedly playing with the cat and her family, perfectly unconscious of the alarm and suffering she had caused.
Too much exhausted to speak, now the stimulus of their anxiety was gone, the boys sank into the hard kitchen chairs, while Gyp ran up to them, with four or five squirming kittens gathered up in the skirt of her little apron.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, pausing to survey them doubtfully. “Are you cold, or only just tired?”
There was a moment of silence. Then Louis bent forward and caught the child in his arms, with her warm cheek against his cold one. The drops on his face were not all from the melted snow, and his lips were quivering; but he only said,—
But fortunately boy strength and spirits are both elastic, and by the time the lads had taken off their overcoats and drawn their chairs up to the stove, they had rallied and were themselves again. While their plump hostess and her rosy daughter trotted up and down, setting out a bountiful supper for the unexpected guests, the older woman told them of Gyp’s coming.
“We was sitting here by the fire,” she explained, as she brought out a great mince pie to adorn the feast, “when we heard a little knock, low down on the door. It was storming so that I was some surprised, for I didn’t expect I’d see anybody to-day. I went straight to the door, and there stood this little shape, looking for all the world like a great big snowball. We pulled her in and give her some dinner and got her all het up, sos’t she shouldn’t take cold. She told us she was Dr. Flemming’s little girl; but there wasn’t anybody to take her home, for our men-folks all went off after cattle, this morning. But heart alive! did you walk up here in all this storm?”
“So’d I,” put in Gyp; “at least, it didn’t storm till I was ’most at Jerry’s. I meant to go home again; but I was mixed up and came here instead. I’m glad I did, though, for now I’ve seen the kitties.”
“What time did you start, Gyp?” asked Harry, taking her on his knee, while she helped herself to his pie, unrebuked.
“Just when papa went up to school,” answered Gyp. “I wanted to get to Jerry’s in time for dinner; but he didn’t give me any. I had lots of fun with the crow, anyway.”