Chip would be with them, and he would bring the Kid home safely, and--the limitations of dooryard play no longer sufficed; her fledgling had found what his wings were for, and the nest was too little, now.
"We'll take care of him," Andy promised her understandingly.

"If Chip don't come up, this afternoon, I'll bring him home myself.

Don't you worry a minute about him." "I'd tell a man she needn't!" added the Kid patronizingly.
"I suppose he's a lot safer with you boys than he is here at the ranch--unless one of us stood over him all the time, or we tied him up," she told Andy gamely.

"I feel like a hen trying to raise a duck! Go on, Buck--but give mother a kiss first." The Kid kissed her violently and with a haste that betrayed where his thoughts were, in spite of the fact that never before had his mother called him Buck.
To her it was a supreme surrender of his babyhood--to him it was merely his due.

The Little Doctor sighed and watched him ride away beside Andy.