So Randy hurried on her own clothing, and Prue amused herself while waiting by counting the buttons on Randy’s best gingham dress as it hung on the first hook in the closet, and this is the way she half said and half sung it:—
“Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer,—Randy, what’s a lawyer? Your last button is a lawyer.”
“I don’t know,” said Randy; “ask father;” but when they had reached the lowest stair and entered the kitchen Prue had forgotten her question and asked another.
“Father,” she cried, “have you read the book yet? Are you going to let Randy read it? the fairy book, I mean?”
“Two questions in one,” said Mr. Weston, laughing. “Why, yes, I guess I’ll have to let her read it, if she wants to,” said he.
“Going to let Randy read those outlandish tales?” said Mrs. Weston coming out of the closet with a pie in her hand, which she placed upon the table. “Why there wasn’t a word of truth in them.”
“I know it,” said her husband, smiling, “but I didn’t see anything wrong about them, and the yarns that are in the book are so big that no sensible girl, like our Randy, would s’pose she was expected to believe them a minute. I looked it over last night after I’d thought over that piece of medder land of Jason Meade’s that he wants to swap for my little pasture, and cal-lated ’bout what the bargain was worth. I just took down that fairy book from behind the clock, and I thought I’d just look it over to see if it was all right for Randy and Prue, and, if you’d believe me, ’fore I knew it, I was ’most as interested as the children was. As you say, there ain’t any sense in it, but it reads kinder fine, I must say.”
Mrs. Weston laughed, and said that she was willing enough to let them have it if the book was all right.
“Right enough,” rejoined her husband, “only kind of foolish,” and smiling at the children’s eager faces he said kindly, “Read it if you like, only don’t let it make you forget to help mother, Randy.”