“Will you take them—­to Dick?” she faltered.

He looked at her in amazement.  For a moment neither spoke, but her eyes made the silence eloquent; they told the secret that her lips dared not utter.  There are times when explanations are superfluous.  Redding threw discretion to the winds, and, regardless of Wiggses and consequences, took the “Christmas Lady” in his arms, and kissed away the year of grief and separation.

It was not until Mrs. Wiggs saw their trap disappear in the twilight that she recovered her speech.

“Well, it certainly do beat me!” she exclaimed, after a fruitless effort to reconstruct her standard of propriety.  “I ’ve heard of ‘painters’ colic,’ but I never knowed it to go to the head before!”

CHAPTER XI

THE BENEFIT DANCE

    “Those there are whose hearts have a slope
    southward, and are open to the whole
    noon of Nature.”

Notwithstanding the fact that calamities seldom come singly, it was not until the Fourth of July that the Cabbage Patch was again the scene of an accident.

Mrs. Wiggs had been hanging out clothes, and was turning to pick up the empty basket, when Billy precipitated himself into the yard, yelling wildly: 

“Chris Hazy’s broke his leg!”

Mrs. Wiggs threw up her hands in horror.  “Good lands, Billy!  Where’s he at?”

“They ‘re bringin’ him up the railroad track.”

Mrs. Wiggs rushed into the house.  “Don’t let on to Miss Hazy till we git him in,” she cautioned, snatching up a bundle of rags and a bottle of liniment.  “Pore chile!  How it must hurt him!  I’ll run down the track an’ meet ’em.”

She was breathless and trembling from excitement as she turned the corner at Mrs. Schultz’s.  A crowd of boys were coming up the track, trundling a wheelbarrow, in which sat Chris Hazy, the merriest of the lot, waving a piece of his wooden leg in the air.

Mrs. Wiggs turned upon Billy;

“I never lied, ma!  I said he broke his leg,” the boy gasped out as best be could for laughing, “an’ you never ast which one.  Oh, boys!  Git on to the rags an’ arniky!”

Such a shout went up that Mrs. Wiggs laughed with the rest, but only for a moment, for she spied Miss Hazy tottering toward them, and she hastened forward to relieve her anxiety.

“It’s his peg-stick!” she shouted.  “P-e-g-stick!”

This information, instead of bringing relief to Miss Hazy, caused a fresh burst of tears.  She sat down on the track, with her apron over her face, and swayed backward and forward.

“Don’t make much difference which one ’t was,” she sobbed; “it would be ’bout as easy to git another sure-’nough leg as to git a new wooden one.  That las’ one cost seven dollars.  I jes’ sewed an’ saved an’ scrimped to git it, an’ now it’s—­busted!”

The boys stood around in silent sympathy, and when nobody was looking Chris wiped his eyes on his coat sleeve.  Miss Hazy’s arrival had changed their point of view.