Mr. Freeman looked a little puzzled when he heard the girls calling Mrs. Pierce “Aunt Anne Rose,” and when Mrs. Pierce told him that was really her name he thought, as the girls had, that it was almost like discovering a relative. Mr. Pierce had insisted that they should borrow the black colt for the remainder of their journey, and they were ready to start at an early hour the next morning.

Rose was tying the ribbons to her pretty hat, while Anne watched her a little wistfully, wishing that she had a hat—almost any kind of a hat, she thought—so that she might not look like “a little wild girl,” as she had overheard some one call her at the Sandwich tavern. Just then she felt something placed gently on her head and saw two broad brown ribbons falling each side of her face.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, looking up in wonder.

Mrs. Pierce stood beside her. “There!” she exclaimed. “What kind of a milliner do you think I should make for the fine ladies in Boston?” and she lifted the hat from Anne’s head, holding it up for the girls to see.

It was a round flat hat, plaited of straw. It had no trimming save a pretty bow and strings of brown ribbon, but Anne thought it was a beautiful hat.

“It’s one I plaited last year,” continued Mrs. Pierce, putting the hat back on Anne’s head, and tying the brown ribbon under her chin. “I did it evenings, just to keep busy. I do wish I had a prettier ribbon for it.”

“Is it for me?” asked Anne, almost afraid that it was almost too much good fortune to expect.

“Of course it is. ’Twill serve to remind you of your Aunt Anne,” and the friendly woman smiled down at Anne’s happy face.

“We will write you a letter, Aunt Anne Rose,” said Rose, as they walked down the path to where the chaise awaited them, “and you will come and visit my mother in Boston, will you not?”

“Mr. Pierce has already promised that they will both come,” said Mr. Freeman.

“And, Anne,” and Mrs. Pierce patted the little hand she was holding so closely, “you tell your father that you have found another aunt, and that he must let you come and stay with me for a long long visit.”

Then good-byes were said, and they were again started on their journey.

“No stops this time—except to ask for news of Lady—until I reach my own house,” declared Mr. Freeman. “’Tis a good cool morning and we ought to get home by midday.”

“Perhaps we shall find Lady,” suggested Rose. But Mr. Freeman shook his head.

“I’m afraid it will be a long time before we get any news of her,” he said soberly. “I only hope the thief will not abuse her.” The brown horse had always been petted and made much of, and neither Mr. Freeman nor Rose could bear to think of her in the hands of people who would not be kind to her.

Every now and then Anne would take off the plaited straw hat and look at it with admiring eyes. “I shall not have to buy a hat now, Rose,” she said.

“But you will want a prettier one than that,” responded her friend.

“A prettier hat!” Anne’s tone seemed to say that she could not imagine a prettier hat, and she shook her head. “I sha’n’t ever want any other hat,” she declared. “I mean to keep this always because Aunt Anne Rose gave it to me.”

The black colt sped along as if it was nothing but play to pull the big chaise. The girls told Mr. Freeman of all that Aunt Anne Rose had said about the big farm, and of her own loneliness when her husband and sons were away. Rose noticed that, although her father listened, his glance traveled sharply over the pastures as they went along; and that now and then he leaned out for a clearer view of some horse feeding near the road, and she realized that he was keeping an outlook for Lady.

But there was no sign of the pretty brown horse, and Mr. Freeman’s inquiries at houses and in villages along the way did not give him any news of Lady. There was so much for Anne to see and think about that she hardly realized what a serious loss had befallen her good friends. But as they drove down Long-acre Street, past Boston Common, and turned into the street where the Freemans’ house stood, she saw that Rose and Mr. Freeman both looked very downcast.

“What will mother say?” Rose half whispered, as if to herself.

Mrs. Freeman was at the door to welcome them.

“And here is our little maid from Province Town,” she said, putting her arm about Anne. “You are indeed welcome, dear child; and it is a fine time for a little girl to visit Boston.”

Mr. Freeman had expected his wife to ask what had become of Lady, and was surprised that she did not. He led the colt toward the stable, which stood in a paved yard back of the house, and Frederick ran ahead to open the stable door.

“Upon my soul!” exclaimed Mr. Freeman, for there in her own comfortable stall was Lady, munching her noonday meal as if everything was just as usual.

“The man got here last night with Lady,” explained Frederick; “he was in a great hurry to get a boat, and he told me—for mother was at a neighbor’s—that you’d be coming on to-day. Was he taking a message to American troops? Mother said that must be his business; that you’d lend Lady for no other reason,” and the boy looked at his father questioningly.

“I hope that may have been his errand,” said Mr. Freeman, “but I fear he was on other business. The Tories are more anxious than Americans for boats just now,” and he told the boy how Lady had been stolen. “But who ever it was must have known me and where I live,” he concluded; “’tis not every thief who leaves the horse in its owner’s stable.”

“But your name is on the little brass plate on Lady’s bridle,” Frederick reminded him, “so ’twould be easy if the man were honest.”

Mr. Freeman cautioned them not to tell any one but Rose’s mother of their discovery of the shingled house in the woods where Bill Mains had the hidden stores.

“No one knows just whom to trust these days,” he said, “and if such news was known to those who sympathize with the English they’d soon be after his guns and powder.”

“I think we will have a sewing-bee,” Mrs. Freeman said, when Rose had told her the story of Anne’s flight from Province Town, and that the little girl had no clothing, but had two golden guineas to spend. “You and Anne will have to be busy with your needles for a part of each day until she has proper clothes. And early to-morrow morning we will walk up to Mistress Mason’s shop on Cornhill and get her some shoes.”

The little room that opened from Rose’s chamber had a broad window which looked toward the harbor. There were white curtains at this window, tied back with crocheted bands of white cotton. The floor was painted a soft grayish brown, and there were strips of rag carpet spread beside the white covered bed, and in front of the mahogany bureau. There was a looking-glass hung over this bureau. By standing on tiptoe Anne could see herself in it. In one corner of the room was a wash-stand with a blue china bowl and pitcher. Near the window was a low table and a rocking-chair.

It was a very neat and pleasant room, and to Anne it seemed beautiful. That it opened directly into the big square chamber where Rose slept made her feel very much at home. She wished that Aunt Martha Stoddard could see it, and she went to the window and looked off across the blue waters of the harbor wishing that she could see Aunt Martha and tell her all the wonderful things that had befallen her.

It was decided that Anne was to have a pair of slippers with straps fastening around the in-step and a pair of shoes for every-day wear. Mrs. Freeman had a good store of white stockings which Rose had outgrown and from these a number were selected for Anne. When she was dressed ready to go to the shops with Mrs. Freeman and Rose the latter exclaimed:

“Mother, mayn’t I open the parlor shutters so that Anne can see herself in the long mirror?”

“Why, yes; but be very careful to close them that the sun may not strike on the carpet,” replied Mrs. Freeman, a little reluctantly; for the Freemans’ parlor was a very grand room and opened only when company was asked to tea, or when some distinguished person came to call.

Rose turned the brass knob, pushed open the white-paneled door and tiptoed into the shadowy room. “Come in, Anne!” she called, and Anne followed. She had not seen this room when she had visited the Freemans with Uncle Enos two years before.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, half fearfully, as her feet sank into the soft carpet. Then she stood quite still until Rose had opened the paneled inside shutters at one of the large windows. She looked about her in wonder. Directly opposite the door was a fireplace with a high white mantel and over the mantel was the portrait of a very old lady who seemed to be smiling straight at Anne.

“Come in,” Rose repeated, with a little laugh of pleasure at Anne’s evident admiration, and she led her little visitor toward the front of the room where a long mirror, from ceiling to floor, was fastened against the wall between the two windows. “Look at yourself, Anne. You can see the room afterward,” she said, and Anne looked into the mirror and smiled, for she saw a little dark-eyed girl with smoothly braided hair, wearing a hat of plaited straw with a brown ribbon, and a dress of brown linen with a pretty frill at the neck. She looked down admiringly at her white stockings and new shoes, and then twisted her head in the hope of seeing the back of this neat little girl. She quite forgot the soft carpet, and the shining tables and cushioned chairs.

“I do wish Amanda could see me,” she said; “she’d be real glad I had these fine things.”