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Updated: June 14, 2025
Hortense shook them vigorously to awaken them. "You're a pretty pair," she said. "Thank you," said Lowboy, "Our beauty is due to contrast. We set each other off. He is tall and graceful, and I am short, and round like a ball. Some think me handsomer than he." Hortense turned her back upon him. "I'm out of patience with you," she said disgustedly.
The Owl flew away and Andy and Hortense started to run across the strawberry field, stopping now and then to eat the ripe, sweet berries. In the middle of the field they noticed something black. Its presence frightened them, and they feared to go close to it. However, it did not move for some moments, and cautiously they drew nearer. It was Lowboy, fast asleep.
Nor when she spoke to Highboy did he answer; he was not there. Only a dead thing of wood stood where Highboy had been. "Dear me," thought Hortense, "I suppose it is the same with Lowboy. How then, will Grandmother get at her knitting?" She hastily dressed in the clothes she had worn the day before. Breakfast was over, and Hortense begged Aunt Esmerelda for a bite in the kitchen.
"I didn't suppose you had it in you." "It isn't in me," said Lowboy. "If it were in me, you couldn't have heard it." "It was in you or it couldn't have come out," said Ember. Hortense stamped her foot. "Oh do hush, all of you," she said. "The trouble with you all is that you talk and talk and do nothing. Only Malay Kris says little and acts." "And look what happens to him," said Owl.
"Now we're ready for the next part of the game," said Hortense, getting up. "No running or anything like that," said Lowboy. "I can't do it." "You'll only have to walk a short way, and after that it will be easy." But Hortense had forgotten that to people as small as they had become, it was a long walk down the hall, and the stairs, and through the house.
Andy and Hortense, with open mouths, watched the horses and riders grow smaller and smaller against the moon, and finally disappear. "Did you ever!" Hortense gasped at last. Hortense and Andy crawled out from under their sacks and found the rest of their band. Highboy and Lowboy, hand in hand, were leaning against the wall, fast asleep, and had seen nothing at all.
"We'll lay our breastplates and helmets to hand and slip them on when we hear him coming." Thereupon silence ensued, and Hortense and Andy lay still. It was evident, Hortense was thinking, that Highboy and Lowboy had been ordered back to court, and to help them escape would be difficult, for how dared she and Andy go near it, escaped prisoners as they were?
Hortense found it quite difficult to hide all her companions in the barn. Owl, because his eyes were so bright, was made to go up in the loft and look down through a knot hole in the floor; Highboy and Lowboy, hand in hand, stood behind a door; Coal and Ember crouched in a corner, and Hortense told them that if they growled she would never take them out again.
Highboy and Lowboy, however, had no armor. "Oh, my nice coat of varnish!" Highboy moaned as Jeremiah's claws reached him. "I shall no longer be a polished person," said Lowboy. Hortense and Andy kept in front of the two in so far as they could, but with Jeremiah in front and Grater at one side they were hard-pressed.
They reached the entrance of the tunnel and hurried in, expecting every moment to see Jeremiah reappear, and now, without the protection of the raspberry bushes, they feared his great claws. Safely they crossed the dripping cave and were halfway through the tunnel on the other side when they perceived Jeremiah hot after them. "Grater!" shrieked Lowboy.
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