“And it would have narrowed down our sympathy—mine and John’s,” proceeded Mrs. Caslon, shaking her head gently. “We’d have centered all our love and longin’ into them we took for keeps, just as we centered all our interest in the two little ones God lent us for a little while, long ago.
“Havin’ a number of ’em each year, and almost always different ones, has been better, I guess—better for all hands. It keeps John and me interested more, and we try to make them so happy here that each poor, unfortunate orphan will go away and remember his or her summer here for the rest of their lives.
“And they do have so little to be happy over, these orphans—and it takes so very little to make them happy.
“If I had money—much money,” continued the farmer’s wife, clasping her hands, fervently, “I’d move many orphan asylums, and such like, out of the close, hot cities, where the little ones are cramped for room and air, and put each of them on a farm—a great, big farm. City’s no place for children to grow up—’specially those that have no fathers and mothers.
“You can’t tell me but that these young ones miss their parents less here on this farm than they do back in the brick building they live in most of the year,” concluded the good woman, earnestly.
Ruth quite fell in love with the old lady—who did not appear so very old, after all. Perhaps she had kept her heart young in serving these “fresh air” orphans, year after year. And Mr. Caslon seemed a very happy, jolly sort of man, too.
The two girls stole away quite frequently to watch the youngsters play, or to teach them new means of entertaining themselves, or to talk with the farmer’s wife. But they did not wish the other girls, and the Steeles, to know where they went on these occasions.
Their host, who was the nicest kind of a man in every other way, seemed determined to look upon Caslon as his enemy; and Mr. Steele was ready to do anything he could to oust the old couple from their home.
“Pshaw! a man like Caslon can make a good living anywhere,” Mr. Steele declared. “His crops just grow for him. He’s an A-1 farmer—I’d like to find as good a one before next year, to superintend my whole place. He’s just holding out for a big price for his farm, that’s all he’s doing. These hayseeds are money-mad, anyway. I haven’t offered him enough for his old farm, that’s all.”
Ruth doubted if this were true. The Caslon place was one of the oldest homesteads in that part of the State, and the house had been built by a Caslon. Mr. Steele could not appreciate the fact that there was a sentiment attached to the farmer’s occupancy of his old home.