Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/52



"'Sh!"

The boy put up a warning hand.

"She's fast asleep," he whispered. "Are you goin' to take her home?"

The man stared.

"Oh, I'm no child-stealer," said the boy lightly. "Here, just lift her soft with me, and I'll bet we can put her in without waking her up at all."

Without a word, the man slipped his hands under Caroline's shoulders, the boy lifted her dusty boots, and gently unloosing her arm from the dog, they carried her lax little body carefully to the wagon and laid her on the clean straw in the bottom, her head on a folded coat. She stirred and half opened her eyes, murmured broken words, and sank yet deeper into her dream.

The man pointed to a book on the seat.

"That's her lesson-book," he whispered hoarsely. It was the despised geography.

"Her folks think a heap of her, I tell you," he added, still eying the boy uncertainly. "She's about as bright as they make 'em, I guess."

"I guess she is," said the lad simply. "She'd ought to have been a boy. She'd have made a fine one."