"O Granny! best mother in the world, do not feel troubled about me. We are a family of geniuses, and I am the duckling that can't stay brooded under mother-wings. It's my one love, and I should be a miserable fish if you kept me on dry land. I have been offered a nice position to go to Charleston; and as I am not rich, and have not the gout, I can't afford to retire on a crust. But you'll see me every little while; and you'll be proud enough of me when I get to be a captain."
Granny felt that she could not be any prouder of him if he was a king.
There was a great thinning-out again. Kit bemoaned the lonesomeness of the place; but Dot's housewifely soul was comforted with the hope of a good clearing-up time.
In two days Joe returned.
"Florence is as elegant as a queen," he reported; "not the grandest or richest, but every thing in lovely style. Charlie went wild over the pictures. And there are great mirrors, and marble statues, and carpets as soft as spring-hillsides. You never imagined, Granny, that one of us would attain to such magnificence, did you?"
Granny listened in wide-eyed wonder, and bobbed her little curls.
"And Darol's a splendid fellow! Flossy always did have the luck!"
That night Hal and Joe slept in the old room, which Joe declared seemed good.
"We had a long talk about you, Hal. Mr. Paul Darol is wonderfully interested in you. He is just as good and generous as he can be, and has two beautiful rooms at a hotel. You know, in the old dream, it was Flossy who was to meet with a benevolent old gentleman: instead, it has been Charlie, the queer little midget. What a youngster she has been!"
"She is as good as gold."