"Oh, hang it all! Simply go!"
Ben was thinking of the old man—he must have been quite young then—who was in prison through that awful Reign of Terror. He undressed slowly. He was not such a fly-away as Jim. But Jim was asleep before he was ready for bed.
Mrs. Underhill had not really meant to take the boys home with her. She was quite sure the city was a bad place for boys. And the country was so much healthier in the summer. But they coaxed. And somehow, the old home had changed already. The air of brisk cheerfulness was gone. Aunt Crete had her face tied up most of the time, or a little shawl over her head. Retty was undeniably careless. Barton Finch played cards with the hired man. Uncle Faid had some queer ideas about farming.
"I'd like wonderful well to have the boys stay," he said. "They're worth their keep. A boy 'round's mighty handy. I'd have to hire one."
Somehow she wasn't quite willing to have her boys put in the place of a hired one, or one bound out from the county house. And Jim had been her baby for so long. The little girl pleaded also. She told them finally they might come down and try. But if they were the least bit bad or disobedient they would be sent back at once.
Mrs. Underhill was half-cured of her homesickness. She had thought she could never be content in New York; why, she was almost content already.
She and Hanny took a walk the last day of their stay up on the knoll where the new house was to be built.
"When all the children are married and father and I get to be old people, we will come back here. I shall want you, Hanny," and she held the little girl's hand in a tight clasp.
Hanny wondered if she would be stout and have full red cheeks and look like Retty? And oh, she did hope her mother wouldn't have tic douloureux and wear shawls over her head. When all the children were married—oh, how lonesome it would be!
But she had been quite a little heroine and gone to school one day to see the girls and boys. And one girl said: "I s'pose it's city fashion to wear pantalets that way, but my! doesn't it look queer!"