Bobby and the Big Road  by Maud Lindsay

The Secret

F ATHER and Mother had a secret from Bobby. They told him about it one morning at the breakfast table.

Father said with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Oh, Father, what is it?" asked Bobby; but Father would not say another word.

"Do you know, Mother?" asked Bobby.

"Yes," said Mother, "but it is a secret."

"Shall I ever know?" asked the little boy.

"Oh, yes," said Father. "If you will go and sit on the stone by the gate, and look toward town at about twelve o'clock, I think you will see the secret coming up the Big Road."

Dear me, how long it was before twelve o'clock! All the morning Bobby kept asking his mother, "Is it nearly twelve o'clock, Mother? Is it nearly twelve?"

And when at last she said, "Only half an hour to wait," he went right out and sat down on the stone to watch.

Almost everybody who passed spoke to him, for by this time he knew many of the people who traveled up and down the Big Road.

He knew a little old lady and gentleman who drove a fat dappled pony. One day when a rug had fallen from their carriage, he had run a long way to give it back to them.

He knew the farmer whose wagon made such a rumble-jumble on the Big Road. Once Bobby had helped the farmer pick up some potatoes that had jolted from his wagon.

And Bobby was great friends with the milkman who came every day with cans of fresh milk. He gave the milkman water to drink when the weather was hot.

As for the rest of the travelers, he nodded and smiled at all of them, so it was no wonder that they had something to say to him.

"Good-morning, Bobby. What is making you so glad to-day?" called a young gentleman, who rode by on a sleek black horse.

"Better come and help me make hay. I need an extra hand," said the farmer from his high wagon-seat.

"Keep your ears open, and you'll hear the partridge calling 'Bob White' in the fields pretty soon," said a merry-faced man, who liked to walk on the Big Road as much as Bobby and Father and Mother did.

But though Bobby had so many friends to talk to him the half-hour dragged by very slowly.

"Surely it must be twelve o'clock now," he thought; and he went to the house to ask his mother the time. No, it was still ten minutes before twelve.

"I will come out and tell you when it is twelve," promised Mother.

So Bobby went back to the stone to watch. He counted up to a hundred to pass the time away, and said all the Mother Goose rhymes he knew, and was beginning on his A B C's when Mother came out.

"Twelve o'clock," said she, "and if I am not mistaken, the secret is coming up the road."

"Why that's just a horse and buggy," said Bobby.

"But who is in the buggy?" asked Mother.

Bobby looked again. Why, it was Father driving up the road all by himself! What did it mean?

"I guess the secret was too heavy to carry," said Bobby, "and he had to get a buggy to bring it in."

But when Father drove up to the gate what do you think he said?

"Well, Bobby, how do you like our horse and buggy?"