"Papa! papa! Billy; come! come!"

The shrieks came from the direction of the creek.

"Oh, my G.o.d! he's fallen into the creek!" cried Mrs. March, as she tried to run towards the spot. Long Billy dashed past her, with his great strides, and said, as he pa.s.sed:--

"Don't be skeered, mum; in the mud, most likely."

The cries came feebler and feebler, and stopped altogether,--then a loud burst of laughter from Billy, which brought the life back to Mrs. March. She was clinging to the fence, nearly senseless with terror; Nelly stood close by, her face white, and tears rolling down her cheeks: when they heard Billy's laugh, they looked at each other in amazement and relief.

"He can't be in the creek, mamma," said Nelly: "Billy wouldn't laugh."

Then they heard Mr. March laugh, and say:--

"Hold on, Rob: don't be frightened; we'll get a rail."

Then Billy came striding back out of the bushes, still laughing.

When he saw Mrs. March's and Nelly's agonized faces, his own sobered instantly.

"'Twas too bad, mum," he exclaimed, "to give ye such a skeer. He's in the slough, thet's all; he's putty well in, too; he'll be a sight to see when we get him fished out. He's in putty well nigh up to his arms."

Mrs. March could not help laughing; but Nelly only cried the more.

"Poor dear Rob!" she said: "how he will feel!" And she began to climb the fence.

"Oh, Lor'! don't any more on ye come over here," cried Billy: "it's all we can do to get round. The creek's overflowed: 'n' it's all quakin' tussocks here; that's the way he went in, a jumpin' from one to another."

While Billy was speaking he was tearing off two of the top rails from the fence. He seemed to be as strong as a giant. In a very few minutes, he had two rails over his shoulder, and had plunged back among the bushes. In a few minutes more, out they all came; Rob being led between Mr. March and Billy. He was indeed, as Billy had said he would be, "a sight to behold." Up to his very arms he was plastered with black, slimy mud.

"Oh, mamma, it smells horrid," was his first remark. "I wouldn't mind if it didn't smell so."

Nelly ran up as close to him as she dared.

"Oh, Rob," she said, "how could you go in such a place! Why didn't you stay with us?"

"I wanted to see if there were any grapes yet," said Rob; "and you couldn't have told yourself, Nell, that it wouldn't bear. Ugh!

What'll I do, mamma?"

"I'm sure I don't know, Rob," said Mrs. March: she was at her wits'

end. She looked helplessly at Billy: Billy was rubbing his left cheek with his right forefinger,--his invariable gesture when he was perplexed. Mr. March also stood looking at Rob with a despairing face.

"I wish you wouldn't all look so at me," cried Rob, half crying: "it's horrid to be stared at. What'll I do, mamma?"

It was indeed a dilemma. Rob's trousers and jacket were dripping wet, and coated thick with the muddy slime; his shoes were full of it; as he walked about it made a gurgling noise, and spurted up; his face was spattered with it; his hands were black; even his hair had not escaped.

"There's lots o' hay in the barn," said Billy; "we might rub a good deal off on him with that. Me 'n' you'd better take him," said Billy, nodding to Mr. March. "No, mum, ye stay where ye be; we'll manage better without ye, this time," continued Billy, waving Mrs.

March back, as she set out to follow them.

Poor Rob looked back, as Billy led him off towards the barn; the tears ran down in the mud on his cheeks, and made little white tracks all the way.

"I think you're real mean to laugh, mamma," he said.

Mrs. March was sorry to hurt his feelings, but she could not help laughing. Nelly did not laugh, however: she looked almost as wretched as Rob did. It seemed an age before any one came back from the barn. Then Mr. March and Billy came out alone: Mr. March carried Rob's trousers on a stick, and Billy carried the jacket and stockings and shoes.

"Why, what have you done with the child!" exclaimed Mrs. March: "he will take cold, without any clothes on."

Mr. March's eyes twinkled.

"Well, he has some clothes on, such as they are," he said. "Billy raised a contribution for him: my under-drawers and vest, and Billy's coat; he's all rolled up in the hay, and you'd better go and sit by him now."

Mrs. March and Nelly hurried in. There lay Rob, all buried up in hay: only his face to be seen. He looked very jolly now, and said he felt perfectly comfortable.

"Now tell me a story, mamma! tell me a story. You've got to tell me stories as long as I stay here."

So Mrs. March sat down on one side, and Nelly on the other, and Mrs.

March told them the story of the Master Thief, out of the Brothers Grimm's "Fairy Stories of All Lands"; and, just as she got to where the Master Thief was planning to steal the bottom sheet from off the king's bed, she looked up and saw that Rob was fast asleep.

"Oh, that's good," she said; "that's the best thing that could have happened to him. Now we'll go out and look at the house again."

"But, mamma," said Nelly, "I think I'll stay here. If he should wake up, he would feel so lonely here; and he can't get out of the hay."

"Thank you, dear: that is very kind of you," replied Mrs. March.

And, as she went out of the barn, she said to herself, "What a kind, thoughtful child Nelly is. She really is like a little woman."

Mrs. March could not find her husband and Billy anywhere; so she sat down on the door-step of the house to wait for them. She looked up and down the beautiful valley: it seemed a great deal more than thirty miles long. The mountains at the south end of it looked blue and hazy; the great Sangre di Christo Mountains, which made the western wall, looked very near; the snow on them shone so brightly it dazzled Mrs. March's eyes to look at it. After a time, she got up from the door-step and walked round to the north side of the house.

"Oh, there is Nelly's mountain!" she said. There stood Pike's Peak, in full sight, to the northeast. It looked so grand and so high at first, Mrs. March did not know it. This, too, had a great deal of snow on it, and there were white clouds floating round the top; it was the grandest sight in the whole view. There were no other houses near; she could see only a few in the valley; and she could not see Rosita at all. The road down which they had come seemed to end very soon among the hills.

"We shall not have much more to do with neighbors here than in the Pa.s.s," thought Mrs. March. "But I do not care for that. One could never be lonely with these mountains to look at."

"Well, mum, here's the little feller's clo'es," said Billy, coming up at this moment, with Rob's clothes hanging in a limp wet bundle over his arm. "Now I'll jest make a rousin' fire back here, 'n'

you'll be astonished to see how quick they'll dry. I've washed 'em in about five hundred waters,--that medder mud's the meanest stuff to stick ye ever see,--but they'll be dry in no time now."

"Mamma!" called Nelly, from the barn; "Rob's awake. He wants to get up: he says he won't lie here another minute."

"I'll show him his clo'es," said Billy. "I guess that'll convince him," and Billy carried the wet bundle into the barn. Shouts of laughter followed, and in a minute more Billy came out again, shaking all over with laughter. "I jest offered 'em to him," said he, "'n' told him he could get up 'n' put 'em on ef he wanted to; but I rayther thought he'd better let 'em dry some fust."

"What did he say?" asked Mrs. March.

"He wanted to know how long it would take 'em to dry 'n' I told him the best part of an hour; 'twill be some longer'n that, but I couldn't pretend to be exact to a minnit, 'n' he laid back on the hay 'n' sez he: 'You tell my mamma to come right here 'n' finish that story she was a tellin'.'"

When Mrs. March went back into the barn, she shouted aloud as soon as she saw Rob. He had crawled out of his hay bed. It was too warm: there he sat bolt upright, with his legs straight out in front of him. Nelly had drawn the white drawer legs out to their full length, and set Rob's shoes, toes up, in the hay at the end of them, so it looked as if his legs were all that length; then Mr. March's gray waistcoat came down nearly to his knees, and Billy's old brown coat hung on his shoulders as loosely as a blanket. He looked up at his mother with a perfectly grave face, and did not speak. Nelly was laughing hard. "Isn't he too funny, mamma?" said she.

"You can laugh now if you want to, mamma," said Rob politely. "I don't mind your laughing at papa's drawers and waistcoat and Billy's old coat. That's quite different from laughing at me."

"Thank you, dear," said Mrs. March: "you're very kind; but I can get along very comfortably without laughing at you now. You're not half so funny as you were when you were covered with the mud."

It took so long to dry Rob's clothes, that it was nearly dark when they got back to Rosita.