“Oh, you’re a darling!” cried Isabel. “I just wish the kindergarten children could hear it told that way. If you were a grown-up girl they’d pay you for telling stories.”
“Aunt Grace can’t you bring her around and let mother hear that?” asked Willis. “My mother is so fat she hates to go out anywhere,” to Marilla. “She thinks it disgraceful! But she’s a sweet mother for all that; and now we 289 must go home. Thank you a hundred times for the story. When I have my party I shall send for you and dance with you every other time. You ought to be named Cinderella.”
She looked so bright and happy and promised to visit them if Dr. Richards did not take her home too soon.
But the Hippodrome was beyond any dream. Sometimes she held her breath with delight until she was fairly tired. Dr. Richards watched the sweet, changeful face. Yes, she should be all his—why he had never dreamed of anything half as sweet as the joy of a father.
Sunday afternoon he and Mr. Lorimer came in. The girls had gone to Sunday School. He laid his plan before the Warrens who were a good deal surprised.
“As a man grows older he begins to think of a home and the joys nothing else offers, and a doctor really needs the comfort, the satisfaction nothing else can give. I’ve never had a home though I’ve dreamed of one, but there must be another person in it. I’m not of the hermit sort. I want some one to be merry with me and to comfort me when the skies are dark and lowering.” 290
“Oh, Dr. Richards, you should marry,” exclaimed Mrs. Warren, impetuously.
“I’ve been so engrossed—and this sort of vision has come to my very door as it were, and I have let it in. For a few years Marilla will need watchful care from some one who can understand the weak points. I should get a nice, motherly woman who would be sweet and tender to her, companionable as well. For you see she must go to some one for a home.”
“And we would gladly take her in here,” said Mrs. Warren. “She has really won our hearts.”
He would do Miss Armitage full justice, at least he thought it so then. He related her kindness, her generosity, but she had been tender and sympathetic to many another child he remembered, yet he could not quite still the one cry he had heard from her.