“I wike you. I wish you wived here.”
“But I do live here, with Miss Rindy Crump.”
Just here came a summons from the house. Lucilena was calling: “You Billy, you Billy! Whar is yuh? I ’clar yuh is de mos’ git-out-o’-de-wayes chile uver I did see. Come in an’ git yo’ suppah fo’ I bus’es yo’ haid open.”
Without a word of farewell Billy galloped off, or rather took flight as he flapped his arms, wing fashion, in his own estimation. “I’se comin’. I’se flyin’ fas’ like an angel.”
Ellen could not determine whether it was the prospect of supper or Lucilena’s terrible threat which urged to promptness on Billy’s part, but she went smiling into the kitchen with her bunch of parsley. “Isn’t it funny,” she said, “that I’ve made two acquaintances to-day, one each side the garden?” And she told of her interview with Billy.
“He’s a funny little tyke,” declared Miss Rindy. “What with the notions he gets from Lucilena and the ones his own imagination supplies he is as full of fancies as an egg is of meat. He is left to Lucilena a great deal, for his mother is forever on the gad. A flyaway sort of somebody she is, sweet as honey and kind as can be, but no housekeeper. Everything goes by sixes and sevens in that house, meals at any time, feast one day, famine the next. I don’t see how Barry stands it, or Lucilena either, but they all get along as comfortably as a basket of puppies. It’s none of my business, though my fingers do itch sometimes to get at those rooms and put them in order. You’ll like Marietta Hale, you can’t help it, and I don’t know but I’d rather than not that she played the part of a fearful example to you.”
Ellen laughed. “Do you think I require that she should?”
Miss Rindy smiled in her queer one-sided way. “I can’t tell yet; you’re a new broom. Now, suppose you come here and see how I make this gravy, then look at the biscuits in the oven. There’s nothing I like better for supper than fried tomatoes and hot biscuits.”
Not long after supper the bell rang. Miss Rindy went to the door. “Why, Jeremy!” Ellen heard her exclaim. “What brought you here? Come right in. Glad to see you.”
Mr. Todd, with a violin under his arm, limped in.