With Dick keeping obediently close to her side, she timidly opened the stable door and crept swiftly in.  Rob knew her well enough by this time, and only looked mildly surprised at her appearance.  He had a horse-cloth over him, fastened round him by a girth, and while he scrunched up the sugar Huldah had brought him she secured her basket on his back by the girth, as fast as her nervous fingers could manage it.  “Miss Rose can’t help seeing it there,” she thought, delightedly, “and Rob can’t harm it before she comes.”  She stood for a second gazing in sheer joy at her handiwork, the dainty basket and the big white label tied to it, with “From a grateful Brownie,” written in large letters on it.  Then, fearful of being discovered, she hurried quickly out, fastened the door behind her, and with Dick still close at her heels raced away as quietly as ever she could, and never paused until she had reached the top of Woodend Lane once more.

Stephen Lea, the groom, had been ill, and was late that morning, and Miss Rose reached the stable first.  Almost at once her eye was caught by something unusual on the pony’s back, but in the dim light of the stable she could not make out what it was.

“Why, Rob,” she exclaimed, laughing, “what have you been doing?  Where have you been to pick up a load?” Then she searched his side, and made out what the load really was.  “Oh, that dear child!” she cried, as she read the inscription written in a big round hand on a sheet of paper, and her eyes grew misty, “From a grateful Brownie.”  “Now when could she have brought that, and tied it there, I wonder.  Rob, you bad boy, why don’t you tell me all about it?  You know you have been gobbling down sugar this morning, greedy little creature that you are; but I should never have known it from you, if I hadn’t seen the crumbs.  You are the best secret-keeper I know, but I do wish you could tell me about this, Rob dear.”

She looked at the pretty basket with eyes full of tenderness and admiration.  “Dear, kind little brownie!” she whispered softly.

Later that day, Rob, still looking as though he did not know what a secret or a brownie was, trotted down Woodend Lane, and drew up as a matter of course before the cottage gate.  Indeed, his feelings would have been quite hurt if he had been told that he must not stop there, but must go further down the lane.

Huldah heard his steps, and saw him arrive, watched Miss Rose get down from the carriage and fasten Rob to the railings,—­then, in a sudden access of shyness, flew out of the back door and down to the very bottom of the garden.

There Miss Rose found her, a few minutes later.  “Huldah,” she said, smiling, her pretty blue eyes full of pleasure, and gratitude, and affection, “I found on Rob’s back this morning, left there by the brownies, a basket so pretty and so dainty that everyone who has seen it wants one like it.  It was a brownie’s basket, and as you are the only one of them that I know who can do work like it, I have come to bring you the order.”