Peggy Stewart, Navy Girl at Home | Page 6

nestled his head against her face, trembling and quivering with a terror he could not understand. Peggy raised one arm to clasp it around the little creature's warm neck. The Empress tried to nicker an answer to her baby but the effort cost her last breath and heart-throb. It ended in a fluttering sigh and her head lay still and at rest upon Peggy's lap. The splendid animal, which had so often carried Peggy upon her back, the mother of Shashai, and many another splendid horse whose fame was widely known, lay lifeless. Her little son nestled closer to the one he knew and loved best as though begging her protection. Peggy held him close, sobbing upon his warm neck.
"You'd better get up, Miss Peggy," said Shelby kindly.
Peggy bent and kissed the great silky head. "Good-bye, Empress. I'll care for your baby," she said. Shelby lifted the splendid head from the girl's lap and helped her to her feet. The little colt still huddled close to her.
"Have you any orders, miss, about her?" asked Shelby, nodding toward the dead mare.
"She shall be buried in the circle and shall have a monument. We owe her much. Her foal shall be my charge."
"And I reckon mine, too. If we raise him now it will be a miracle. He's going to miss his dam's milk."
"I think I can manage," answered Peggy. "Bud, come with me. I wish you to go down to Annapolis with a note to Doctor Feldmeyer. He will understand what I wish to do. Ride in on Nancy Lee. Come, little one," and with the little colt's neck beneath her circling arm Peggy walked slowly back to the paddock from which barely three hours before the splendid mare, now lying lifeless in the pasture, had dashed, leaving a trail of her life's blood behind her to guide those who came too late. It was all the outcome of one person's disregard of orders: One of the hands had quit his work to gossip, leaving his great hedge shears hanging carelessly across the gate, and the gate unfastened. The Empress, gamboling with her foal, had rushed upon them, cut herself cruelly, then maddened by the pain and terrified by the flowing blood, had dashed away as only a frightened horse can, running until she fell from exhaustion.
Peggy went back to the inclosure in which the Empress, as the most honored of the brood mares, had lived with her foal. The little stable, a very model of order and appointment, stood at one end of it. She opened the gate, intending to leave the colt in the inclosure, but he huddled closer and closer to her side.
"Why Roy, baby, what is it!" asked Peggy, as she would have spoken to a child. The little thing could only press closer and nicker its baby nicker. Peggy hesitated a moment, then said: "It will never do to leave you now. You are half starved, you poor little thing. Eight weeks are NOT many to have lived. Come." And as though he understood every word and was comforted, the baby horse nickered again and walked close by her side. She went straight to the house, circling the garden, rich in early spring blossoms, to enter a little inclosure around which the servants' quarters were built, one building, a trifle more pretentious than the rest, evidently that of some upper servant. As Peggy and her four-footed companion drew near, a trim little old colored woman looked out of the door. She was immaculate in a black and white checked gingham, a large white apron and a white turban, suggestive of ante-bellum days. Instantly noting signs of distress upon her young mistress' face she hurried toward her, crying softly in her melodious voice:
"Baby! Honey! What's de matter? 'What's done happen? What fo' yo' bring Roy up hyer? Where de Empress at?"
"Oh Mammy, Mammy, the Empress is dead. She--"
"What dat yo' tellin' me, baby? De Empress daid? Ma Lawd, wha' Massa Neil gwine do to we-all when he hyar DAT? He gwine kill SOMEBODY dat's sartin suah. What kill her?"
Peggy told the story briefly, Mammy Lucy, who had been mammy to her and her father before her, listening attentively, nodding her head and clicking her tongue in consternation. Such news was overwhelming.
But Mammy Lucy had not lived on this estate for over sixty years without storing up some wisdom for emergencies, and before Peggy had finished the pitiful tale she was on her way to the great kitchen at the opposite end of the inclosure where Aunt Cynthia ruled as dusky goddess of the shining copper kettles and pans upon the wall.
"Sis Cynthy, we-all in trebbilation and we gotter holp dis hyer pore chile. She lak fer ter breck her heart 'bout de Empress and she sho will