Madge Morton's Trust

by Amy D. V. Chalmers

As for Madge, she decided never to speak to David again; he was insufferable.

About five o'clock on the same afternoon Madge, Phyllis, Lillian and Miss Betsey were out on the lawn eating watermelon. Eleanor stood at her front window gazing down wistfully at her friends. Miss Jenny Ann was reading to amuse her, but it was really more fun to look down at the girls. Nellie was getting dreadfully tired of being confined to one room, and yet she did not feel well enough to go downstairs.

David Brewster drove back into the yard. Inside his cart Madge noticed a square, wooden box, which she had not seen when David left the farm. Without saying a word to any one, the boy lifted the box and carried it into the house. A little later he came out on the lawn to where Miss Betsey and the girls were sitting and approached Madge rather diffidently.

"Miss Morton," David's voice was unusually gentle, "don't you think I might carry your cousin, Miss Butler, downstairs? I saw her at the window as I drove into the yard. She looks lonely. Perhaps she would like to be down here."

Madge blew a kiss up to Eleanor. She, too, had caught her cousin's wistful expression. The little captain's heart melted toward David. "I don't know," she answered doubtfully. "I'll go upstairs and ask Miss Jenny Ann what she thinks."

"I'd be awfully careful," urged David. "I know I could carry Miss Butler without hurting her shoulder. We could bring a steamer chair out here on the lawn for her when I get her down."

Madge hurried away. A few seconds later David saw her at the open window waving her hand and nodding her head energetically. "Yes; do come up," she called. "Eleanor is so anxious to have you carry her down into the yard, and Miss Jenny Ann is willing that you should try."

The girls busied themselves with arranging Nellie's chair in the shadiest spot on the lawn, under a great horse-chestnut tree, and piling the chair with sofa cushions and a pale pink shawl, and in cutting the "heart" out of the choicest watermelon to bestow on the invalid and her cavalier.

David bore Nellie as comfortably as though she were a baby. She had her well arm about his neck and the other, the bandaged one, rested comfortably in her lap. David's face had completely lost its sullen look. He was actually smiling at Eleanor as she apologized for being "so heavy."

Then he sat down on the ground in the midst of the bevy of laughing girls. Lillian passed him his piece of watermelon in her prettiest fashion. David accepted it as gracefully as Tom Curtis might have done. When the watermelon feast was over David helped the three girls to clear away the dishes. When he came back he dropped down at Miss Betsey's side and began to wind her ball of yarn.