"What do you
s'pose mother'll say? I'm a-going to tell her."
"She'll send me right back again if I don't stay," said Mirandy.
And there was some show of reason in what she said. It was indeed quite
probable that Mrs. Josiah Thayer would send Mirandy straight back again
to confess her sins and get the bucket.
"I don't know but mother would send her back," said Eliza; and Daniel
nodded in assent.
"I'll stay with you," said Mary Ann, although she was still trembling
with fear of the dog.
"Don't want anybody to stay," protested Mirandy.
Finally she sat on Cap'n Moseby's door-step, and watched them all
straggle out of sight. The creak of Jonathan's wagon grew fainter and
fainter, until she could hear it no longer. The dog was quiet now.
Mirandy sat up straight in front of the panelled door.
She waited and waited; the time went on, and it was high noon. She heard
a dinner-horn in the distance. She wondered vaguely if Cap'n Moseby
didn't have any dinner because he lived alone. She began to feel hungry
herself. There was not a sound in the house. She wanted to cry, but she
would not. She sat perfectly still. Once in a while she said over to
herself the questions she had learned from the catechism, and she
reflected much upon the two boys in the _Pilgrim's Progress_. She had
eaten a few of the Cap'n's berries as she filled her bucket, and she
wondered that they did not make her ill, as the fruit did the boys.
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