Conversions by Gail Hamilton

Author:Gail Hamilton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: road to avonlea, gail hamilton
Publisher: Davenport Press

Chapter Seven

Unfortunately, runaway buggies are noisy things, and inside Rose Cottage, Alec, Hetty and Olivia were immediately alarmed.

“What is it now?” Hetty demanded.

Alec, closest to the window, sprang up out of his chair.

“The bloody horse has run off!”

All of the grown-ups ran out the door just in time to see the children dashing onto the road and Peter shouting, “Blackie, wait!” at the top of his lungs.

“What in Heaven’s name is going on?” cried Hetty, as though the situation weren’t perfectly clear, even to an idiot.

Uncle Alec headed out onto the road himself after the horse. His head was full of the terrible trouble a horse and buggy on their own could get into.

“Don’t worry I’ll get her back.”

Olivia, too, picked up her skirts and started to run after them. Aunt Hetty was more interested in the culprit responsible for the calamity, and she picked him out immediately.

“Peter Craig, you come back here at once!”

Hetty’s whipping command stopped Peter right in the middle of a step, even though he was well down the road after the buggy. Positively quaking in his boots, he turned back.

“Yes, ma’am,” he panted out in a very small, very miserable voice. He knew he was finished now for sure.

“Who left that horse untied?”

“I guess I’m to blame, ma’am,” Peter admitted.

Even in the midst of disaster, it never occurred to Peter to try to pin the blame on anyone else, as a less honest boy might have done. Yet honesty didn’t make up for the accident or prevent Hetty from raking over Peter’s failings.

“Can’t you do the simplest thing? The horse could break a leg.”

Peter hung his head even lower. He wished the ground would open right then and there and swallow him up.

“I’m sorry.”

Hetty probably wished the ground would swallow him too. Since it refused to oblige, she saw she would have to deal with Peter herself. When Hetty truly got worked up over a thing, she often spoke before she could think. Her cheeks were quivering with fury as she waved one arm towards the house.

“I’ve had enough. You’re going back where you belong. Go on, now—inside, pack your bag. Go on.”

As though there weren’t already enough people streaming down the road to catch ten horses, Hetty, too, set out after Blackie, leaving poor Peter standing alone in horrified dismay. As he slowly made his way up the steps of Rose Cottage, the other children and Olivia came run- fling back just in time to meet Hetty.

“Uncle Alec caught the mare,” Sara announced, panting for breath and infinitely relieved that neither horse nor buggy had come to harm, “cause she stopped for a drink down by the stream. Where’s Peter?”

Peter’s whereabouts no longer concerned Hetty. She turned a severe eye on Sara herself.

She had worked up a good head of steam over Peter and needed one more child to expend it upon.

“I can’t tell you the times I’ve told you to leave that boy alone, Sara Stanley.”

With that, Hetty turned and marched towards the house.

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