Part 12 (1/2)
”Yes,” replied Janey, ”and she mopped his floors, washed and clean-papered the shelves, and wanted to scrub the old gray horse.”
”Pennyroyal,” exclaimed Barnabas gravely, ”I wonder you ain't waterlogged!”
”Pennyroyal'd rather be clean than be President,” averred David.
”Where's M'ri?” demanded Pennyroyal, ignoring these thrusts.
”On the west porch, entertaining company,” remarked Barnabas.
”Who?”
Pennyroyal never used a superfluous word. Joe Forbes said she talked like telegrams.
Barnabas removed his pipe from his mouth, and paused to give his words greater dramatic force.
”Mart Thorne!”
The effect was satisfactory.
Pennyroyal stood as if petrified for a moment. Than she expressed her feelings.
”Hallelujah!”
Her tone made the exclamation as impressive as a benediction.
M'ri visited the bedside of each of her charges that night. Jud and Janey were in the land of dreams, but David was awake, expecting her coming. There was a new tenderness in her good-night kiss.
”Aunt M'ri,” asked the boy, looking up with his deep, searching eyes and a suspicion of a smile about his lips, ”did you and Judge Thorne talk over my education? He said that he was going to speak to you about it.”
Her eyes sparkled.
”David, the Judge is coming to dinner Sunday. We will talk it over with you then.”
”Aunt M'ri,” a little note of wistfulness chasing the bantering look from his eyes, ”you aren't going to leave us now?”
”Not for a year, David,” she said, a soft flush coming to her face.
”He's waited seven,” thought David, ”so one more won't make so much difference. Anyway, we need a year to get used to it.”
After all, David was only a boy. His flights of romantic fancy vanished in remembrance of the blissful certainty that there would be ice cream for dinner on Sunday next and on many Sundays thereafter.
CHAPTER IX
The little trickle of uneven days was broken one morning by a message which was brought by the ”hired man from Randall's.”
”We've got visitors from the city tew our house,” he announced. ”They want you to send Janey over tew play with their little gal.”
Befitting the honor of the occasion, Janey was attired in her blue-sprigged muslin and allowed to wear the turquoises. David drove her to Maplewood, the pretentious home of the Randalls, intending to call for her later. When they came to the entrance of the grounds at the end of a long avenue of maples a very tiny girl, immaculate in white, with hair of gold and eyes darkly blue, came out from among the trees. She regarded David with deep, grave eyes as he stepped from the wagon to open the gate.