A few more rapid steps, and the gate was reached and barred, while Maggie tottered into the house, still carrying the child, and in the reaction of the fearful excitement, fell fainting on the floor.
Maggie's fainting fit, however, did not last long; and she was fully restored, and had told her grandmother the whole story, before Jack arrived, half an hour later.
He, too, had something to recount. On his way home from the landlord's grounds, where he had been working, he was overtaken by a young woman, who seemed in a great state of alarm. She told Jack that she was the nursery maid, and that while that afternoon she was sitting at work beneath one of the trees, with the children playing around her, one of them--little Gertrude, a child about six years old--must have slipped away from her brother and sisters unobserved; and when tea time came, and the nurse rose to bring the children home, she was nowhere to be found. The nurse had taken the other three little ones home, and had now come in search of Gertrude, fearful lest she should fall into danger of any kind.
Jack would not stop to eat his supper, after telling his own story and hearing Maggie's, but announced his intention of at once carrying the little truant lady back to her home.
So the kind-hearted youth took Gertrude in his arms, and soon conveyed her safely to the landlord's house, where she astonished every one by the childish recital of her own danger and Maggie's courage.
The next morning Gertrude's mother came down to the cottage to thank Maggie for the preservation of her darling's life, and to bring a message from her husband.
This message consisted of his grateful acknowledgments, and of the promise that Jack should be promoted to the office of assistant gardener as soon as that post was vacant (which would be in the course of a few weeks). But, best of all, the promise included also this, namely, that the widow and her grandchildren should hold the cottage rent free for the remainder of their lives.
Thus was averted, by means wholly unforeseen, the trial of poverty and want so dreaded by the old widow in her thoughts of the future; and never again was she heard to repine, or even to express a fear for herself or for those whom she loved.