Part 51 (2/2)

Crosby smiled faintly, but his eyes were straining away down the walk.

'You look pale, son; what's the matter? You'd better come in to supper.'

'No, it isn't going to be ready--quite yet, mother said.'

His father gave him another questioning look and went on into the house.

'What's the matter with Crosby?' he asked inside. 'He looks as if he'd been frightened half to death.'

'Oh, he's worrying himself to pieces about that pony. He's been fussing round in the barn all day long. He really thinks he's going to get it, I suppose.'

'Pony? What pony? Has he been working himself to death over _that_ business? What's he been doing in the barn?'

He walked through the house and down the back steps and crossed the yard. Then he opened the door which led directly into the old stall and stopped.

'Oh, Lord above us!' he whispered.

Never, since he was a child, a child like the one who had just looked up at him from the gra.s.s, had such an over-mastering desire swept over him to sit down, right where he was, and drop his head down into his hands--and cry.

'Oh, Lord above us!' he whispered again faintly, pus.h.i.+ng his hand up to his eyes.

It was all just as it had been left, the old walls and floor with great splinters scoured out of them everywhere; the manger with its s.h.i.+ning, crooked front of clean, brown paper; the little hanging row of grooming implements: the small brush, the worn whisk-broom, the comb, the little old glove, the pile of gra.s.s in the manger, and the three ginger-cakes, the saucer of milk in the corner--and the jaunty bunch of goldenrod nodding down upon it all from the beam just opposite the door.

He pushed his hands blindly to his eyes again; then he went out, closed the door, and walked down the yard where Crosby was sitting--no, he was standing, standing and looking dumbly after a man who was walking away and blowing his nose.

'Crosby,' began his father huskily, 'Crosby,--come into the house, come in to supper,--I want to see you.'

Crosby looked up with dry, hunted-looking eyes, and his chin trembled just perceptibly.

'I'm coming--in just a minute,' he began, with a quivering appeal in the dry, hunted eyes to be left--to be left alone--just for a minute!

His father turned and went up the steps, while Crosby's gaze s.h.i.+fted mechanically back to the man who was going on up the street. But he turned, too, slowly, and crossed the yard to the barn and opened the door and went in. He hoped no one had seen it, and he pulled off the brown paper from the manger and wrapped it round the pile of ginger-cakes. Then he reached up for the little row of grooming implements and took them down one by one.

When Crosby was three, he had tumbled down on a brick walk one day, and had sat up winking vaguely while drops of blood ran down his face--and tried to smile at his mother. It had never been just natural for Crosby to cry when he was hurt; but as he came slowly back into the old stall and stooped down to take up the saucer of milk, something dropped with a splas.h.i.+ng sound into the milk, making rings away out to the edge. He raised his arm and dragged his hand across his eyes, and then he reached up for the jaunty bunch of flowers on the beam. But that strange, light feeling in his head, dimly a.s.sociated with the hill road, seemed to confuse him again--and he could not just remember what he was going to do next. As he pushed open the door, he tripped over some scattered goldenrod, and then went stumbling along to the house.

'He said--I could have her--if I got started right off--he said--I could have her--if I got started right off--he said--he said--he said I could have her--if I got started--'

His mother met him at the door.

'Come in--Crosby--' she began brokenly, 'come in--'

'He said--_I could have her--if I got started right off!_' he shrieked out in a high, quivering, babyish wail, 'and--I _did_--get started--right--off--'

'Hush--hus.h.!.+ You have worked--so hard! You are so tired!' She looked, with frightened eyes, at his dully burning cheeks.

'Take him up to bed--let me take him up,' came a husky voice behind them; and he was lifted in his father's arms and carried upstairs.

As they undid the straining b.u.t.tons of the well-filled little waist, some papers dropped down to the floor and the man stooped and picked them up. He looked at them and put them in his pocket.

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