“Don’t you wish you could?  You needn’t wait for me; I’ll come when I’m ready,” answered Ben, dodging round the chaise, bound not to mind Pat, if he spent the night by the road-side in consequence.

“Bedad, and I wont then.  It’s lively ye are; but four legs is better than two, as ye’ll find this night, me young mon!”

With that he whipped up and was off before Bab could say a word to persuade Ben to humble himself for the sake of a ride.  She lamented and Pat chuckled, both forgetting what an agile monkey the boy was, and as neither looked back, they were unaware that Master Ben was hanging on behind among the straps and springs, making derisive grimaces at his unconscious foe through the little glass in the leathern back.

At the lodge gate Ben jumped down to run before with whoops of naughty satisfaction, which brought the anxious waiters to the door in a flock; so Pat could only shake his fist at the exulting little rascal as he drove away, leaving the wanderers to be welcomed as warmly as if they were a pair of model children.

Mrs. Moss had not been very much troubled after all; for Cy had told her that Bab went after Ben, and Billy had lately reported her safe arrival among them, so, mother-like, she fed, dried, and warmed the runaways, before she scolded them.

Even then, the lecture was a mild one, for when they tried to tell the adventures which to them seemed so exciting, not to say tragical, the effect astonished them immensely, as their audience went into gales of laughter, especially at the wheelbarrow episode, which Bab insisted on telling, with grateful minuteness, to Ben’s confusion.  Thorny shouted, and even tender-hearted Betty forgot her tears over the lost dog to join in the familiar melody when Bab mimicked Pat’s quotation from Mother Goose.

“We must not laugh any more, or these naughty children will think they have done something very clever in running away,” said Miss Celia, when the fun subsided, adding soberly, “I am displeased, but I will say nothing, for I think Ben is already punished enough.”

“Guess I am,” muttered Ben, with a choke in his voice as he glanced toward the empty mat where a dear curly bunch used to lie with a bright eye twinkling out of the middle of it.

CHAPTER XV.

BEN’S RIDE.

Great was the mourning for Sancho, because his talents and virtues made him universally admired and beloved.  Miss Celia advertised, Thorny offered rewards, and even surly Pat kept a sharp look-out for poodle dogs when he went to market; but no Sancho or any trace of him appeared.  Ben was inconsolable, and sternly said it served Bab right when the dog-wood poison affected both face and hands.  Poor Bab thought so, too, and dared ask no sympathy from him, though Thorny eagerly prescribed plantain leaves, and Betty kept her supplied with an endless succession of them steeped in cream and pitying tears.  This treatment was so successful that the patient soon took her place in society as well as ever, but for Ben’s affliction there was no cure, and the boy really suffered in his spirits.