“Me too!” cried the Little Colonel, tying on her white sunbonnet.  “But the first part of it was lovely,—­just like flyin’.”

Jonesy ran back to give the man his key, and was kept answering questions so long that he did not catch up with the other children until they were in sight of the barn.

“After all,” said Keith, as the three trudged along together, “maybe we’d better not tell how near we came to being run over.  Grandmother and Aunt Allison would be dreadfully worried if they should hear of it.  They are always worrying for fear something will happen to us.”

“Mothah would be wild” exclaimed the Little Colonel, “if she knew I had been in any dangah.  Maybe she wouldn’t let me out of her sight again to play all summah.”

“Then let’s don’t tell for a long, long time,” proposed Keith.  “It’ll be our secret, just for us three.”

“All right,” the others agreed.  They dropped the subject then, for the barn was just ahead of them, and the gay picnickers came running out, demanding to know where they had been so long.

The Little Colonel often spoke of her experience afterward to the two boys, however, and in Keith’s day-dreams a home for Jonesy began to crowd out all other hopes and plans.

CHAPTER VII.

A GAME OF INDIAN.

Keith was stiff for a week after his race on the hand-car, but did his groaning in private.  He knew what a commotion would be raised if the matter came to his grandmother’s ears.  She had lived all winter in constant dread of accidents.  Malcolm had been carried home twice in an unconscious state, once from having been thrown from his bicycle, and once from falling through a trap-door in the barn.  Keith had broken through the ice on the pond, sprained his wrist while coasting, and walked in half a dozen times with the blood streaming from some wound on his head or face.

Virginia had never been hurt, but her hair-breadth escapes would have filled a volume.  An amusing one was the time she lassoed a young calf, Indian fashion, to show the boys how it should be done.  Its angry mother was in the next lot, but Virginia felt perfectly safe as she swung her lariat and dragged the bleating calf around the barn-yard.  She did not stop to consider that if a cow with lofty ambitions had once jumped over the moon, one which saw its calf in danger might easily leap a low hedge.  Malcolm’s warning shout came just in time to save her from being gored by the angry animal, who charged at her with lowered horns.  She sprang up the ladder leading to the corn-crib window, where she was safe, but she had to hang there until Unc’ Henry could be called to the rescue.

It was with many misgivings that Mrs. MacIntyre and Miss Allison started to the city one morning in April.  It was the first time since the children’s coming that they had both gone away at once, and nothing but urgent business would have made them consent to go.