Page:Cornelia Meigs--The Pool of Stars.djvu/62

 with my uncle who owns the place on the east side of this hill. He is farming a great part of it this year and finds labor so difficult to get that I am working for him for the spring and summer. And I think old Dobbin will be wondering where I have gone and will be dragging his plow all across the field. You have a wonderful thing here, this machine. I—I would like to come and see it run again."

He was out of the door and across the road before a word could be said to thank him. Elizabeth, still feeling rather dazed with the suddenness of the whole affair, returned to her forgotten errand of fetching the lettuce seeds, which Miss Miranda would surely be needing by now. However, on coming back to the garden, she found that her long absence had been scarcely noticed. The brown ducklings had escaped again and even Michael had been obliged to put down his spade and go in pursuit of them.

"Shoo, ye varmints," he was saying, as the fat balls of down, their lemon-colored bills wide open in faint baby quackings, went scuttling in a dozen different directions from between his feet. "You might know they would be wild creatures, they were hatched out in a thunderstorm!"

The afternoon had been cheerful, but the evening was long and lonely, with Anna plunged into one of