Rollingly the shadow named "Bob" struggled to its very real feet.

"Here, Bob!" she ordered. "Come help Mr. Barton. He's pretty badly
off. We got sort of struck by lightning. And two of us--got killed. Go
help him up-stairs. Do anything he wants. But don't make any fuss.
He'll be all right in the morning."

Gravely she put out her hand to Barton, and nodded to the boy.

"Good night!" she said. "And good night, Bob!"

Shrewdly for a moment she stood watching them out of sight, shivered a
little at the clatter of a box kicked over in some remote shed, and
then swinging round quickly, ripped the hot saddle from the big gray's
back, slipped the bit from his tortured tongue, and, turning him loose
with one sharp slap on his gleaming flank, yanked off her own
riding-boots and went scudding off in her stocking-feet through
innumerable doors and else till, reaching the great empty office, she
caromed off suddenly up three flights of stairs to her own apartment.

Once in her room her little traveling-clock told her it was a quarter
of three.

"Whew!" she said. Just "Whew!" Very furiously at the big porcelain
washbowl she began to splash and splash and splash. "If I've got to
make four hundred muffins," she said, "I surely have got to be whiter
than snow!"

Roused by the racket, her father came irritably and stood in the
doorway.