time? Last summer his head came above my
shoulder, and look at him now!"

"Does it occur to you that your shoulder may be growing above his head?"
suggested Auntie Jean, laughing. "Unless you put a brick on your head, I
am sadly afraid that you wouldn't be able to ride Charcoal next summer."

"When Eunice and Cricket are big ladies, Helen and I are going to have
the ponies. Papa said so," piped up Zaidee.

"Dear me!" said Cricket, mournfully. "I wish I could take a tuck in my
legs. I don't want them to get so long that I can't ride Mopsie. Get in,
girls. Hello, Billy! If we had any room, we'd take you, too."

Billy grinned.

"Old Billy can walk as fast as them little tikes can run," he said, with
scorn.

"All right, then, you come, too," said Edna, jumping into the cart; "you
jog along behind. Don't you want to?" And off started the little
cavalcade, with Cricket driving, because she was the smallest, and could
perch up on the others' knees, while old Billy, all beam, jogged after,
making almost as good time, with his long legs and shambling gait, as
the ponies.

Back of Marbury there are miles of level roads, almost free of
underbrush, intersected in every direction with roads and lanes, and one
can drive for hours without leaving the shelter of the stately forest
trees.

They had been riding for an hour or more, laughing and singing, and
shouting sometimes, since there was no one to be disturbed, when
suddenly one wheel went over a big stone, which Cricket, in glancing
back to see if Billy were in sight, did not notice and turn out for.

"Look out, Cricket!" warned Eunice, but too late. Thump came down the
wheel and crack went something, and in a twinkling down came one side of
the cart, while the wheel lay on the ground. The well-trained little
ponies stood still at the first "whoa!" and the children were out in a
flash.

They looked at each other in dismay. How should they get the cart home
again with only one wheel?

"And we must be twenty miles from home," said Eunice, soberly.

"Oh, no, we're not," said Edna, for as she usually spent her summers at
Marbury, she knew this country-side well. "Only two or three miles,
that's all. You see we've been driving around so much that it seems
longer, but it's not really far. This lane leads out on to the
Bainbridge road, by the old Ellison Place, and that's only two miles
from home. But, after all, nobody may come along here for hours to help
us about the c