For the horse standing in the furrow, just unharnessed from the plow, was the big white Dobbin and the plowman was David Warren. He came pushing through the hedge at once and, before a word was said, took the heavy parcel from her. “You and Dick seem to be rather far from home,” he observed cheerfully. “Be careful, it’s eggs!” she warned as he thrust the bundle under his arm. “Dobbin and I were just going home,” he said. “Wait until I can drive him around by the gate and he’ll be proud to carry you. He’s not much of a saddle horse. His back is more like a seat in a Pullman car.” He was quite right, for weary Betsey, once perched on the wide back, thought it the most luxurious spot on earth. The gentle old horse seemed entirely willing and, even when Dick came fluttering up to perch on one of the brass knobs of the heavy harness, he merely looked around with an expression of mild wonder to see what new sort of rider this might be. While they moved slowly up the lane, Elizabeth gave an account of the crow’s misadventures. “Dick, you old rascal, if you ever give so much trouble again I will wring your neck,” the boy said severely, whereat the black bird cocked his eye and seemed to chuckle silently over the manifest untruth of such a threat. There followed a little pause in their talk as they moved onward up the slope with Dobbin’s great feet rustling in the high weeds and his long shadow slipping so quietly ahead of them across the grass. The dropping sunlight was falling on David’s uncovered head and turning it from red-brown to coppery gold. They reached the crest of the slope where an opening in the trees afforded a wide view of that same stretch of valley across which Betsey had sat gazing that day she was caught by the shower before her first visit to Miss Miranda. Here, without a word of bidding the big horse came to a stop. David laughed, and laid an affectionate hand on his neck. “Dobbin always knows where I like to stand and look over the valley,” he said. “We stop here so often that now he never goes by. I like to look at those college towers and wonder how I can go there some day.” “Oh, are you going there?” cried Betsey with an excited wriggle that nearly unseated her; “so am I—if nothing happens.” She thought of the geometrical and historical difficulties in the way and sighed. “A great deal will have to happen before I get there,” David remarked light-heartedly, “but I mean to manage it somehow. Perhaps only Dobbin knows how much I think about it while I work here in my uncle’s fields.” “Is that your uncle’s house?” questioned Betsey, looking up at the big chimneys above the trees.