"I feel as if they were my own relatives," she said, "and oh, Uncle John, isn't it different from the way it was when I lived here with Aunt Judith. Then I felt so very poor, because I had only one person that was really my own and SHE didn't,—need a little girl. Now I have Aunt Rose and Aunt Lois and you, and you ALL want me."
"We need you, dear little Rose, and especially do I need you."
"And you said perhaps, just PERHAPS, you could—" She paused.
"I said I should try to arrange things so that I could be with you a part of each year.
"I think I can manage it, little Rose, if you say nothing about it until
I tell you that you may."
"I'll keep it," said Rose, "you'll see how I'll keep it!"
On the way down the avenue they stopped at Aunt Judith's cottage.
Repeated raps at the door brought no response, however, and just as they turned to go, Gyp, the ever present Gyp, howled a bit of news from his perch on the roof of the hen coop.
"Say! 'Taint no use ter pound on that 'ere door. She ain't to home, 'cause she's somewhere else! I seen her go out. She had a basket on her head, an' a bunnit on her arm! No, a bunnit on her, oh—pshaw! I do'no' how ter say it! Heigh-o-dingerty-dingty-dum!"
He had done the usual thing. Whenever embarrassed Gyp took to the woods.