He'll get hungry and head for home--and if he don't know the way, Silver does; so he can't--" "But he may have fallen and--" "Come, now! Haven't you got any more sense than the Countess?
If you insist of thinking up horrors to scare yourself with, I don't know as anybody can stop you.

Dell! Brace up and quit worrying.

I tell you--he's--all right!" That did well enough--seeing the Little Doctor did not get a look at Chip's face, which was white and drawn, with sunken, haggard eyes staring into the dark over her head.

He kissed her hastily and told her he must go, and that he'd hurry back as soon as he could.

So he went half running down the path and passed the Countess and the Old Man without a word; piled onto his horse and went off up the hill road again.
They could not get it out of their minds that the Kid must have ridden up on the bluff to meet his mother, had been too early to meet her--for the Little Doctor had come home rather later than she expected to do--and had wandered off to visit the boys, perhaps, or to meet his Daddy Chip who was over there some where on the bench trying to figure out a system of ditches that might logically be expected to water the desert claims of the Happy Family--if they could get the water.
They firmly believed that the kid had gone up on the hill, and so they hunted for him up there.