f time in searching for them--as
now. At last he suddenly remembered the corner of the cow's manger,
where he felt sure he had left it. But the key was not there.

"You can't have eaten it, you silly old cow," said he, striking Dolly on
the nose as she rubbed herself against him--she was an affectionate
beast. "Nor you, you stupid old hen!" kicking the mother of the brood,
who, with her fourteen chicks, being shut out of their usual
roosting-place--Jess's stable--kept pecking about under Dolly's legs.
"It can't have gone without hands--of course it can't." But most
certainly the key was gone.

What in the world should Bill do? Jess kept on making a pitiful
complaining. No wonder, as she had not tasted food since morning. It
would have made any kind-hearted person quite sad to hear her, thinking
how exceedingly hungry the poor pony must be.

Little did Bill care for that, or for anything, except that he should be
sure to get into trouble as soon as he was found out. When he heard
Gardener coming into the farmyard, with the children after him, Bill
bolted over the wall like a flash of lightning, and ran away home,
leaving poor Jess to her fate.

All the way he seemed to hear at his heels a little dog yelping, and
then a swarm of gnats buzzing round his head, and altogether was so
perplexed and bewildered, that when he got into his mother's cottage he
escaped into bed, and pulled the blanket over his ears to shut out the
noise of the dog and the gnats, which at last turned into a sound like
somebody laughing. It was not his mother, she didn't often laugh, poor
soul!--Bill bothered her quite too much for that, and he knew it.
Dreadfully frightened, he hid his head under the bedclothes, determined
to go to sleep and think about nothing till next day.

Meantime Gardener returned, with all the little people trooping after
him. He had been rather kinder to them than usual this day, because he
knew their mother had gone away in trouble, and now he let them help him
to roll the gravel, and fetch up Dolly to be milked, and watch him milk
her in the cow-shed--where, it being nearly winter, she always spent the
night now. They were so well amused that they forgot all about their
disappointment as to the ride, and Jess did not remind them of it by
her whinnying. For as soon as Bill was gone she grew silent.

At last one little girl, the one who had cried over Jess's being left
hungry, remembered the poor pony, and, peeping thro