"Who's here?" both in a breath.
"That's nothin' to you. Do as I tell you."
"There air three of the noisiest boys in all Chicago. Dan, he's quiet and grouty like when things don't go to suit, but he's smart. This here boy's slow an' easy like, an' not given to tantrums, an' I guess we'll have to make a 'pason' out of him. Then there's Homer an' Ben 'n Chris, an' they'd tear the house down if they got at the underpinnin'. Norman here should have been a gal! My! but I was disappointed when he come. I'd jes' set my heart on a gal. Then I got kinder hardened and didn't care. Boys!"
She went out again and presently there was a giggling and a scuffling off. There was an outside covered stairs leading to the attic over this end of the house and the boys slept there.
I had been watching the Little Girl. I had no word for it then, but I knew afterward it was daintiness that enveloped her. She sat up so straight and ate so quietly, even in drinking her glass of milk she made no noise. Then she looked up at mother and smiled.
"It was such a good supper," she said, and her eyes shone with dewy softness. Then she turned a little and glanced at me, and I felt my cheek burn from some unwonted cause. Not but what girls had looked at me before, and I had romped with them.
"I'm wonderfully obliged, ma'am," and Mr. Gaynor rose from the table. "The beasts, too, are thankful no doubt. Hoping presently you'll be better paid, though I take it that kindness isn't ever made quite straight with money, and I'm glad enough to be so near my journey's end. What sort of a place is Towner's?"
Mother looked at me. "You can tell best, Norme," she said with a nod.
"It's just a little 'tother side of the river. The log house isn't much. There's quite a garden spot, then it runs out on the prairie, and up the lake. He cut some of it up in blocks and sold, but I heard pop say he had to take it back."
"Is it the town proper?"