because Mr. Carter was not there to attend to them.

There came a day when the buds were fresh on the twigs, and the
grass was very green, and the birds that had been gone for a long
time were singing again in the trees, and it was not raining. So he
went down the road to play in Minda's yard. He called to her, but
she did not appear. No one appeared. The house was silent. "Auntie"
Rachel was not there. Even the dogs were gone, and Mr. Carter's
horses and his wagon. He could not understand. Only yesterday he
had played in the barn with Minda.

Then his grandma came hurrying through the trees from his own home,
where she had been with grandpa and Uncle Fred and Uncle Dan since
breakfast time. She took him up in her arms and told him that Minda
was gone. He had never seen his grandma look so stern and angry.
Biddy Shay had been there all morning too, and several of the
neighbours. He wondered if it could be the Sabbath, and yet that
did not seem possible, because it was only two days since he went
to Sunday school, and yesterday his mother had done the washing.
She always washed on Monday and ironed on Tuesday. This must be
Tuesday, but maybe he was wrong about that. She was not ironing,
so it could not be Tuesday. He was very much bewildered.

His mother was in the bedroom with grandpa and Aunt Hettie, and he
was not allowed to go in to see her. Uncle Fred and Uncle Dan were
very solemn and scowling so terribly that he was afraid to go near
them.

He remembered that his mother had cried while she was cooking
breakfast, and sat down a great many times to rest her head on her