It was the next morning, after he had been working there with a fixed, concentrated pucker between his eyes for almost three hours, that a small boy from the next house appeared.

'Say, Crosby.' he began, 'there's a lady lives up there on the hill road--you know, after you've crossed the long bridge and turned up on the hill road?' Crosby nodded. 'Well, there's a lady lives up there says she'll be glad to help you. You know, for the pony you're trying to get.

I was telling her about it yesterday, and she said she didn't know anything about the breakfast food, but she'd be glad to help you just the same.'

'But I've sent the names already,' explained Crosby, looking perplexed with fortune's almost immoderate favors.

'Well, send hers alone. Can't you do that?'

Crosby meditated. 'What house did you say she lived in?'

'It's the only house up there on the hill road. You know! The big, white house. You couldn't miss it.'

'I guess I better go up there then.'

He glanced out to the street, where the sun simmered on the white, hot road, and wiped some little beads of perspiration from his forehead.

Then he walked slowly out through the yard.

When, what seemed a long time afterwards, he dragged himself in from the simmering, white street again, his legs pulling listlessly behind him, he even forgot, for the time being, what the walk had all been about, and sat down vacantly on the cool step in the shade, his cheeks burning a deep, dull red. Then he remembered and pulled himself up again. And that evening another letter started on its way to the Pony Man.

The next morning he waked up with a confused consciousness that something important was hanging over him. Gradually it came back quite clearly. It was the twentieth. And then, for the first time, he became aware of facing a quite unheralded question of challenge. _Was there any doubt about the pony's coming?_ His long list of subscription names flashed before his eyes, his big, shining pile of money, his mother's smile, the post-office man's 'whew!' of admiration before he made out the money-order, the promises in the letter if he began 'right away' and worked--and he had worked all the time ever since! There was but one possible answer to that question. The pony would come--to-day--before night.

He stumbled gayly down the stairs as he thought of all that he was going to do that morning in the barn. It was such a strange, rickety little affair, that barn; it did seem to look so much more like a shed than anything else, that he was continually haunted by his father's words: 'Barn? I'm afraid she wouldn't recognize it.' But he could make it clean, anyway, if it wasn't new. He looked up at the battered manger, from his kneeling position on the floor, as he scrubbed with soap and water, and wondered what he could do about that. Something he was sure.

Why, there were plenty of ways to do things if you only had sense. He thought he must be mistaken when he heard his mother calling him to dinner; but then, when he stopped and looked around, he felt a tired glow of satisfaction. The walls and floor of the old stall had not changed color, as he had hoped they would by washing, but they looked damp, and clean, too. Across the battered front of the manger was tacked a shining but crooked piece of clean, brown paper, and inside was a fresh little pile of gra.s.s and three large, round ginger-cakes beside it. But Crosby's eyes traveled most lovingly to a small row of implements which hung down from the wall, at one side, from nails which he had pounded in. Of course ponies had to be groomed, and he looked up proudly at the small, clean brush, hanging by a string and suggestive no longer of the sink; at the worn whisk-broom next; at the broken comb; and finally at a little, shrunken last winter's glove, with its fingers cut off evenly, which completed the line. He would wear that glove when he did his daily grooming.

'I'll finish everything after dinner,' he meditated, and went in.

When he came back, a saucer of milk trembled dangerously in one hand, and with a faint, half-conscious smile flickering about his mouth, he put it down on the floor in the corner.

'She'll be thirsty when she gets here,' he reasoned; and then, half apologetically, he glanced down at a big, loose bunch of summer goldenrod, supported by the other hand. Standing high on his toes, he propped it very jauntily over a time-worn beam just opposite the door.

'To look nice when she comes in,' he whispered; and then he cast round a final look, sighed a tired sigh of satisfaction--and went out and closed the door.

He wandered about restlessly that afternoon, and finally, with a queer, light feeling in his head, that he a.s.sociated dimly with the long walk on the hill road the day before, he turned out of the yard and struck off across the street in the direction of the railroad station. He wanted to inquire about trains and the station was near. Besides, he knew the station-master, and he would tell him just what he wanted to know.

To be sure! The station-master was both alert and intelligent.

'A pony from New York?' he echoed. 'You're expecting a pony from New York? Well, now I hope you aren't going to be disappointed about it! You say it was to leave New York to-day? Well, there's a New York-Boston train that gets in here at half-past six. That's the last one there is.

So if there's any pony coming, she'll be on that train, won't she? Yes, if she's coming at all, she'll be on that train.'

'Half-past six? What time is it--now?' questioned Crosby.

'It's just half-past four. Now, you don't want to hang round here for two hours. No, you run home and make yourself easy. I pa.s.s your place on my way home to supper, and if you're outside I'll let you know whether there's anything for you. But I wouldn't get my hopes up too high.'

Crosby looked up gratefully. He had not even heard the last sentence. He was already making his way out of the station and back home again, wondering just how he could spend all that time.

Two hours later, his father came swinging up the walk. Crosby, sitting on the gra.s.s close to the sidewalk, hardly saw him. He thought he saw some one else--away down the walk--moving slowly towards him.

'Hullo, Crosby,' began his father cheerfully. 'What you doing? Looking at the view?'

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, pushing 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 shining, 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 shifted 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 splashing 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--hush! 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.