"Dick, you old rascal, if you ever give so much trouble again I will wring your neck," the boy said severely, whereat the black bird cocked his eye and seemed to chuckle silently over the manifest untruth of such a threat.
There followed a little pause in their talk as they moved onward up the slope with Dobbin's great feet rustling in the high weeds and his long shadow slipping so quietly ahead of them across the grass. The dropping sunlight was falling on David's uncovered head and turning it from red-brown to coppery gold. They reached the crest of the slope where an opening in the trees afforded a wide view of that same stretch of valley across which Betsey had sat gazing that day she was caught by the shower before her first visit to Miss Miranda. Here, without a word of bidding the big horse came to a stop. David laughed, and laid an affectionate hand on his neck.
"Dobbin always knows where I like to stand and look over the valley," he said. "We stop here so often that now he never goes by. I like to look at those college towers and wonder how I can go there some day."
"Oh, are you going there?" cried Betsey with an excited wriggle that nearly unseated her; "so am I—if nothing happens."
