At once, following those joyful barks, that both hearers would have recognized anywhere, came the leaping, springing dogs; dangling their broken chains and the freshly gnawed and broken ropes – with which old Ephraim had unwisely reckoned to restrain them from the sweets of a once tasted liberty.
But even amid her sudden rejoicing where had been profound sorrow, the doting mistress of the troublesome Great Danes felt a sharp tinge of jealousy.
"They're safe, the precious creatures! But – they went to that farm boy first!"
CHAPTER V
AN ACCIDENT AND AN APPARITION
The screams of Dorothy and Alfaretta brought Mrs. Chester hurrying back to them and as she saw what had happened her alarm increased, for it seemed impossible that a helpless person, like her husband, should go through such an accident and come out safe.
For a moment her strength left her and she turned giddy with fear, believing that she had brought her invalid here only to be killed. The next instant she was helping the girls to free themselves from the tangle of wheels, briars, and limbs; and then all three took hold of the heavy chair to lift it from the prostrate man.
"John! John! Are you alive? Speak – do speak if you love me!" cried poor mother Martha, frantic with anxiety.
But for a time, even after they had lifted him to the bank above, Mr. Chester lay still with closed eyes and no sign of life about him. There was a bruise upon his forehead where he had struck against a rock in falling; and, seeing him so motionless, poor Dorothy buried her face in her hands and sobbed aloud:
"Oh! I've killed him! I've killed my precious father!"
"There is a bridge across the ditch just yonder! – Why didn't you see it! How could you – " began Mrs. Chester; yet got no further in her up-braidings, for father John opened his eyes and looked confusedly about him.
Either the sound of voices or the liberal dash of cold water, which thoughtful Alfaretta had rushed away to bring and throw upon him, had restored him to consciousness, and his beclouded senses rapidly became normal. It had been a great shock but, more fortunately than his frightened wife at first dared to believe, there were no broken bones, and it was with intense thankfulness that she now picked up his crutches and handed them to him at his demand.
"Well, I reckon wooden feet are safest, after all! I've never – I'll never go without them. Good thing I brought them – No, thank you! Walking's good!" he cried, with all his usual spirit though in a weak voice.
They had managed to get the chair into position and found it as uninjured as its owner. A few scratches here and there marred the polish of the frame and one cushion had sustained an ugly rent. It had been a very expensive purchase for the donors and an ill-advised one. A lighter, cheaper chair would have been far more serviceable; and, as father John tried to steady himself upon his crutches, he regarded it with his familiar, whimsical smile that comforted them all more readily than words:
"The boys might as well have given me an automobile! Wouldn't have been much more clumsy – nor dangerous!" he declared, trying to swing himself forward from the spot where he stood, striving to steady himself upon his safer "wooden feet."
"O John! how can you joke? You might be – be dead!" wailed mother Martha, weeping and unnerved for the first time, now that all danger was past.
"And that's the best 'joke' of all. I might be but I'm not. So let's all heave – heave away! for that pleasant shore of a wide lounge and a – towel! With the best intentions – I've been ducked pretty wet!"
"That was my fault! I'm awful sorry but – but – that time John Babcock he fell off the barn roof ma she flung a whole pail of water right out the rain-barrel onto him and that brung him to quicker'n scat. So I remembered and I'm real sorry now," explained Alfaretta, more abashed than ordinarily: and in her own heart feeling that the guilt of carelessness which caused the accident had been more hers than Dorothy's. "And nobody needn't scold Dolly C. 'Cause she didn't know about the bridge over an' I did, and – "
"No, no! My fault, my very own!" interposed Dorothy hastily.
"Let nobody blame nobody! All's well that ends well! Alfaretta mustn't regret her serviceable memory nor my drenching, for she's a wise little maid and I owe my 'coming to,' to her 'remembering.' As for you, Dolly darling, let me see another tear in your eye and I will 'scold' in earnest. Now, Martha, wife, I'll give it up. I'm rather shaky on my pins yet and the chair it must be, if I'm to put myself in connection with that lounge. I shan't need the towel after all. I've just let myself 'dreen,' as my girl used to do with the dishes, sometimes!"
He talked so cheerily and so naturally that he almost deceived them into believing that he was not a whit the worse for his tumble, and as they helped him to be seated and began to push him up the slope toward the cottage, he whistled as merrily as he had used to do upon his postal route.
"And you ain't goin' to the gold mine after all?" asked Alfy, much disappointed. It was a spot she had hitherto shunned on account of its ghostly reputation, but was eager to visit now in company with these owners of it, who scoffed at the "haunt." She wanted to show them she was right and see what they would say then.
"Gold mine? Trash! If there had been such a thing on this farm, a man as clever as my uncle Simon Waterman would have used some of the 'gold' to keep things in better shape. I don't want to hear any more of that nonsense, nor to have you, Dorothy, go searching for the place. Our first trip to hunt for gold has been a lesson to us all," said mother Martha, with such sharpness that Alfaretta stared and the others, who knew her better, realized that this was a time to keep silence.
More than once that day was the good housewife tempted to send the three visiting Babcocks home, but was too courteous to do so. She longed to have her daughter to herself, and to discuss with her not only the happenings of the past but plans for the future. Besides this desire, she also saw, at last, how badly shaken by his fall her husband was and that he needed perfect quiet – a thing impossible to procure with Alfaretta Babcock in the cottage.
However, the day wore away at length. The girl showed herself as useful in the dinner-getting and clearing away as she had done at breakfast time; also, she and her sisters brought to it as keen an appetite, so that, after all, the clearing away was not so great a matter as might be.
Dorothy kept the smaller girls out of doors, helping them to make a playhouse with bits of stones, to stock it with broken crockery and holly-hock dolls, and to entrance them with her store of fairy tales to such a degree that Baretta decided:
"I'm comin' again, Dorothy Chester. I'm comin' ever' single day they is."
"Oh, no! You mustn't do that!" gasped the surprised young hostess. "I will have to work a great deal to help my mother and I shan't have time for visiting."
"Me come, too, Do'thy Chetter," lisped Claretta. "Me like playhouth futh-rate. Me come to-mowwow day, maybe."
Dorothy said no more, but found a way to end their plans by getting a book for herself, and becoming so absorbed in it that they ceased to find her interesting and wandered off by themselves to rummage in the old barn; and, finally, to grow so tired of the whole place that they began to howl with homesickness.
Dorothy let them howl. She had recently been promoted to the reading of Dickens, and enthralled by the adventures of Barnaby Rudge she had wandered far in spirit from that mountain farm and the disgruntled Babcocks. Curled up on the grass beneath a low-branched tree she forgot everything, and for a long time knew nothing of what went on about her.
Meantime, to keep Alfaretta's tongue beyond reach of her husband's ears, Mrs. Chester had gone down into the cellar of the cottage which, her visitor informed her, had once been the "dairy." Until now, since her coming to Skyrie, the housemistress had occupied herself only in getting the upper rooms cleaned and furnished with such of her belongings as she had brought with her, and in attendance upon father John. She had not attempted any real farm work, though she had listened to his plans with patient unbelief in his power to accomplish any of them.
"If Dorothy should be found," had been his own conclusion of all his schemes,