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“Well, if that isn’t John Drew all over! I suspected he was at the bottom of it as soon as I laid my eyes on that animal. John Drew is a cousin of mine. He’s been living out at Poplar Valley and he writes me that he has gone out west, and wants me to take ‘old Nap.’ I suppose that is the horse. He says that Nap is getting old and not much use for work and he couldn’t bear the thought of shooting him or selling him to someone who might ill-treat him, so he wants me to take him and be kind to him for old times’ sake. John and I were just like brother and sister when we were children. If this isn’t like him nothing ever was. He was always doing odd things and thinking they were all right. And now he’s off west and here is the horse. If it were a cat or a dog–but a horse!”

“Your four-acre field will come in handy now,” said Cynthia Ann jestingly.

“So it will.” Miss Cordelia spoke absently. “The very thing! Yes, I’ll put him in there.”

“But you don’t really mean that you’re going to keep the horse, are you?” protested Cynthia Ann. “Why, he is no good to you–and think of the expense of feeding him!”

“I’ll keep him for a while,” said Miss Cordelia briskly. “As you say, there is the four-acre field. It will keep him in eating for a while. I always knew that field had a mission. Poor John Drew! I’d like to oblige him for old times’ sake, as he says, although this is as crazy as anything he ever did. But I have a plan. Meanwhile, I can’t feed Nap on geraniums.”

Miss Cordelia always adapted herself quickly and calmly to new circumstances. “It is never any use to get in a stew about things,” she was wont to say. So now she untied Nap gingerly, with many rueful glances at her geraniums, and led him away to the field behind the house, where she tied him safely to a post with such an abundance of knots that there was small fear of his getting away.

When the mystified Cynthia Ann had returned home Miss Cordelia set about getting her tea and thinking over the plan that had come to her concerning her white elephant.

“I can keep him for the summer,” she said. “I’ll have to dispose of him in the fall for I’ve no place to keep him in, and anyway I couldn’t afford to feed him. I’ll see if I can borrow Mr. Griggs’s express wagon for Saturday afternoons, and if I can those poor factory children in my grade shall have a weekly treat or my name is not Cordelia Herry. I’m not so sure but that John Drew has done a good thing after all. Poor John! He always did take things so for granted.”

* * * * *

All the point pleasant people soon knew about Miss Cordelia’s questionable windfall, and she was overwhelmed with advice and suggestions. She listened to all tranquilly and then placidly followed her own way. Mr. Griggs was very obliging in regard to his old express wagon, and the next Saturday Point Pleasant was treated to a mild sensation–nothing less than Miss Cordelia rattling through the village, enthroned on the high seat of Mr. Griggs’s yellow express wagon, drawn by old Nap who, after a week of browsing idleness in the four-acre field, was quite frisky and went at a decided amble down Elm Street and across the bridge. The long wagon had been filled up with board seats, and when Miss Cordelia came back over the bridge the boards were crowded with factory children–pale-faced little creatures whose eyes were aglow with pleasure at this unexpected outing.