Varina shrugged her shoulders. There was always an eerie flavor about the child's strictures. "She cares for them all when they are here. Oh, gracious! Suppose they should all come together!" and she laughed. "But she'd rather take them one by one, and have a good time. That's the way I mean to do. You have more good times."
"Annis isn't a bit like you!" the boy flung out hotly. He could not understand; it had not come time for analysis or fine gradations; he only suffered, without the power of reasoning.
"Annis is a girl; and girls are all alike. And there's Mr. Carrington alone. I wonder if Jacky's been cross to him. I shall go and walk with him."
She ran down the little side path. Mr. Carrington had started with the intention of finding Charles and comforting him, for it had been with him as Varina surmised, but the talk between them had arrested him. Was it true that a girl found pleasure in variety rather than constancy? He was amused at Varina's wisdom, and yet it had in it a savor of sad truth. Annis' little winsome face as Louis caught her came back to him.
"The Sabine women learned to love their husbands," he mused, when Varina called to him. He had to exercise some ingenuity to parry the child's curiosity, since he was by far too gentlemanly to take advantage of it.
Charles was a little sullen that evening, and took no notice of the timid little olive branch Annis held out. Presently, warm as the night was, he went off to his books.
"Louis, you tease him too much," said his father.
"It's high time someone took him in hand. He is getting to be a regular little prig! You ought to send him away to school."
"He doesn't seem quite the boy for that. We'll see as he gets older. But I won't have any quarreling about Annis. Annis belongs to me, don't you, little girl? And we'll marry off all the rest of them, and you and I and mother will live together the remainder of our lives," kissing her with tenderness.
When they all went away—and she loved them all—how lonesome it would be!