Warren opened his eyes wide. The idea of Miss Recompense saying "my dear" to a child.
It had slipped out in a curiously unpremeditated fashion. There was something about the little girl—perhaps it was the fact of her having come so far, and being an orphan—that moved Recompense Gardiner.
"I didn't know any real little girls," answered Doris modestly, "except the farmer's children. They worked out of doors in the summer in the fields."
"And I was the youngest of five sisters," said Miss Recompense. "There were three boys."
"It would be so nice to have a sister of one's very own. There were Sallie and Helen Jewett on the vessel."
"I think I like the sisters to be older," said Betty archly. "There are the weddings and the nieces and nephews. And they are always begging you to visit them."
"And I had no sisters," said Uncle Win, as if he would fain console Doris for her loneliness.
She glanced up with sympathetic sweetness. He was a little puzzled at the intuitive process.
"Fix up the fire, Warren. Your mother and father will be cold when they get in."
Warren gave the burned log a poke, and it fell in two ends, neither dropping over the andirons. Then he pushed them a little nearer and a shower of sparks flew about.