"
"That's your Cousin Ann telephoning from the Marshalls'."
She herself went and sat down heavily, and when Uncle Henry came in a
few minutes later she asked him in a rather weak voice for the ammonia
bottle. He rushed for it, got her a fan and a drink of cold water, and
hung over her anxiously till the color began to come back into her pale
face. "I know just how you feel, Mother," he said sympathetically. "When
I saw 'em standin' there by the roadside I felt as though somebody had
hit me a clip right in the pit of the stomach."
The little girls ate their supper in a tired daze, not paying any
attention to what the grown-ups were saying, until rapid hoofs clicked
on the stones outside and Cousin Ann came in quickly, her black eyes
snapping.
"Now, for mercy's sake, tell me what happened," she said, adding hotly,
"and if I don't give that Maria Wendell a piece of my mind!"
Uncle Henry broke in: "_I_'M going to tell what happened. I WANT to do
it. You and Mother just listen, just sit right down and listen." His
voice was shaking with feeling, and as he went on and told of Betsy's
afternoon, her fright, her confusion, her forming the plan of coming
home on the train and of earning the money for the tickets, he made, for
once, no Putney pretense of casual coolness. His old eyes flashed fire
as he talked.
Betsy, watching him, felt her heart swell and beat fast in incredulous
joy.
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