"If
you persist in this plan of running away to be a boy, some boy,
growing up anxiously, somewhere, will never forgive you! Take my
advice, and wait--will you? Say 'Yes, Peter.'"
"Yes, Peter," Caroline murmured, drowsily.
"Good girl! Then I'll take you home with my little donkey. I don't
believe they've missed you yet. You've come four miles, though, you
little gypsy!"
He disappeared behind the trees, and Caroline nodded. Later she woke
sufficiently to find herself and Rufus on the blue blanket on the
bottom of a little donkey cart; Peter stood by the gentle,
long-eared head.
"Thank you, Peter," she murmured, half asleep, "and you'll see Aunt
Edith, won't you?"
"I don't believe so," he said, very low. "Not yet. Tell her Peter
brought you back. Just Peter. But he can't come yet. Get up, Jenny!"
They wound out by an old wood road. A cool spiciness flowed though
the green aisles, and as the tiny donkey struck into a dog trot, the
man striding easily at her head, a far-away cock crowed shrilly and
the dawn gleamed white.
IX
THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
"Caroline!" Henry D. Thoreau cocked one brindled ear cannily and
rapped sharply with his tail on the piazza floor, but there was no
other answer to the call.
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