"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.

"You"ve come to play with me," she stated in a tone of a.s.surance.

"I"ve brought Janey to play with you," he rejoined, indicating his little companion. "If you"ll get in the wagon, I"ll drive you up to the house."

She held up her slender little arms to him, and David felt as if he were lifting a doll.

"My name in Carey Winthrop. What is yours?" she demanded of Janey as they all rode up the shaded, graveled road.

"Janey Brumble," replied the visitor, gaining ease from the ingenuousness of the little girl and from the knowledge that she was older than her hostess.

"And he"s your brother?" indicating David.

"He"s my adopted brother," said Janey; "he"s David Dunne."

"I wish I had a "dopted brother," sighed the little girl, eying David wistfully.

David drove up to the side entrance of the large, white-columned, porticoed house, on the s.p.a.cious veranda of which sat a fair-haired young woman with luminous eyes and smiling mouth. The smile deepened as she saw the curiously disfigured horse ambling up to the stone step.

"Whoa, Old Hundred!" commanded David, whereupon the smile became a rippling laugh. David got out, lifted the little girl to the ground very carefully, and gave a helping hand to the nimble, independent Janey.

"Mother," cried Carey delightedly, "this is Janey and her "dopted brother David."

David touched his cap gravely in acknowledgment of the introduction.

He had never heard his name p.r.o.nounced as this little girl spoke it, with the soft "a." It sounded very sweet to him.

"I"ll drive back for you before sundown, Janey," said David, preparing to climb into the wagon.

"No," objected Carey, regarding him with apprehension, "I want you to stay and play with me. Tell him to stay, mother."

There was a regal carriage to the little head and an imperious note--the note of an only child--in her voice.

"Maybe David has other things to do than to play with little girls,"

said her mother, "but, David, if you can stay, I wish you would."

"I should like to stay," replied David earnestly, "but they expect me back, and Old Hundred is needed in the field."

"Luke can drive your horse back, and we will see that you and Janey ride home."

So Carey, with a hand to each of her new playmates, led them across the driveway to the rolling stretch of shaded lawn. The lady watched David as he submitted to be driven as a horse by the little girls and then const.i.tuted himself driver to his little team of ponies as he called them. Later, when they raced to the meadow, she saw him hold Janey back that Carey might win. Presently the lady was joined by her husband.

"Where is Carey?" he asked.

"She is having great sport with a pretty little girl and a guardian angel of a boy. Here they come!"

They were trooping across the lawn, the little girls adorned with blossom wreaths which David had woven for them.