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"Oh, we can mount alone," said Miss Moppet, who had by this time recovered her spirits, "but you must come home with us; you are dripping wet yourself; and if you like, you may ride my pony. He has carried double before now, and I am but a light weight, as my father says." "Will you not come home with us?" asked Betty wistfully.
"Hood!" echoed Miss Moppet disdainfully, shaking her yellow curls over her shoulders until they danced almost of themselves; "I do not need to be muffled up as if I were a little girl, Miss Bidwell. You forget I was twelve years old yesterday," and she waltzed around the room, spreading her short skirt in a courtesy, to Miss Bidwell's admiring gaze.
Oliver disappeared in haste, and Josiah, with an apology to Miss Euphemia, followed him; while General Wolcott, casting off his hat and gloves, seated himself with Moppet on his knee, and Miss Bidwell appeared from the kitchen with fresh reinforcements of breakfast for the newcomers.
"We were on one of the hillocks overlooking the pond, and somehow it all happened so swiftly that I cannot tell how but Moppet must have ventured too near the edge, for the treacherous soil gave way, and down she pitched into the water before I could put out hand to stay her.
"But we pressed him, Aunt Euphemia," put in Moppet, "and I told him my pony could carry double. And I do not know how we will return his cape; do you?" "You must come indoors at once and get dry clothing," said her aunt, "and I will tell Chloe to make you a hot posset lest you get a chill; run quickly, Moppet, and do not stand a moment longer in those wet clothes.
"What does a little maid like you know of looks?" said Betty reprovingly, "and what would Aunt Euphemia say to such comments, I wonder?" "You'll never tell tales of me," said Moppet, with the easy confidence of a spoiled child. "Do you think he was a soldier perhaps an officer from Fort Trumbull, like the one Oliver brought home last April?" "Very likely," said Betty. "Are you cold, Moppet?
"Our little Moppet has come perilously near death," said Miss Euphemia, following Pamela into the house. "She has been rescued from drowning in Great Pond by a gentleman whom Betty had never seen before. She describes him as a fine personable youth, and I think it maybe Oliver's friend, young Otis, who in expected at the Tracys' on a visit from Boston."
Moppet, sitting up in bed, welcomed her sister with open arms, and drank the milk thirstily, as Betty told her that all was safe, and that Captain Yorke was now well on his way.
"Never have I heard such words as to-day." "I would not be seen in the street with that scarecrow," murmured Giles. "If my mother could have guessed that he was to be set over me, I had never come here." "Surely you knew that he was foreman." "Yea, but not that I should be under him I whom old Giles vowed should be as his own son I that am to wed yon little brown moppet, and be master here!
The mother's fainting heart caught eagerly at this suggestion; and Charley felt so much relieved by it that he was on the point of saying he was sure it must have been either Moppet or a dogs' town-meeting that lured Willie from the path he had pointed out to him. But everybody looked too serious for jesting; and memory of his own fault quickly repressed the momentary elasticity.
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