For his part, he drove on slowly past the Thacher farmhouse, looking carefully about him, and sending a special glance up the lane in search of the invalid turkey.  “I should like to see how she managed it,” he told himself half aloud.  “If she shows a gift for such things I’ll take pains to teach her a lesson or two by and by when she is older....  Come Major, don’t go to sleep on the road!” and in a few minutes the wagon was out of sight, if the reader had stood in the Thacher lane, instead of following the good man farther on his errand of mercy and good fellowship.

At that time in the morning most housekeepers were busy in their kitchens, but Mrs. Thacher came to stand in her doorway, and shaded her forehead and eyes with her hand from the bright sunlight, as she looked intently across the pastures toward the river.  She seemed anxious and glanced to and fro across the fields, and presently she turned quickly at the sound of a footstep, and saw her young grand-daughter coming from the other direction round the corner of the house.  The child was wet and a little pale, though she evidently had been running.

“What have you been doin’ now?” asked the old lady fretfully.  “I won’t have you gettin’ up in the mornin’ before I am awake and stealin’ out of the house.  I think you are drowned in the river or have broken your neck fallin’ out of a tree.  Here it is after ten o’clock.  I’ve a mind to send you to bed, Nanny; who got you out of the water, for in it you’ve been sure enough?”

“I got out myself,” said the little girl.  “It was deep, though,” and she began to cry, and when she tried to cover her eyes with her already well-soaked little apron, she felt quite broken-hearted and unnerved, and sat down dismally on the doorstep.

“Come in, and put on a dry dress,” said her grandmother, not unkindly; “that is, if there’s anything but your Sunday one fit to be seen.  I’ve told you often enough not to go playin’ in the river, and I’ve wanted you more than common to go out to Jake and Martin’s to borrow me a little cinnamon.  You’re a real trial this summer.  I believe the bigger you are the worse you are.  Now just say what you’ve been about.  I declare I shall have to go and have a talk with the doctor, and he’ll scold you well.  I’m gettin’ old and I can’t keep after you; you ought to consider me some.  You’ll think of it when you see me laying dead, what a misery you’ve be’n.  No schoolin’ worth namin’;” grumbled Mrs. Thacher, as she stepped heavily to and fro in the kitchen, and the little girl disappeared within the bed-room.  In a few minutes, however, her unusual depression was driven away by the comfort of dry garments, and she announced triumphantly that she had found a whole flock of young wild ducks, and that she had made a raft and chased them about up and down the river, until the raft had proved unseaworthy, and she had fallen through into the water.  Later in the day somebody came from the Jake and Martin homesteads to