“I just love him,” said Cassy.
“I think he’s a brick,” said Jerry. “Haven’t you always lived in that house?”
“No, indeed, only for a few years. It really belongs to old Mr. Dallas, but he and his wife are obliged to go south every year, and so when my mother and Mr. Heath Dallas were married, his father wanted them to take the place and keep it from running down. So that suited everybody, and we’ve been living there two years. Mother loves it and so do I, and I believe John McClure does, too.”
“I should think he would,” Cassy remarked fervently.
“Father would like to build a little house in the corner of the garden for John, but he says, no, he has no one to keep house for him and that some day he will have a place of his own; I think he means to be a florist and have greenhouses and such things; he reads about gardens and plants, and all that sort of thing, all the time.”
“I should think that would be the finest business,” said Jerry. “I tell you flowers sell for a big price sometimes.”
“I know they do, especially in midwinter. Anyhow everything John puts in the ground seems to grow, and I should think he’d make a success of that business, for he’s what father calls a ‘canny Scot,’ though he’s not a bit stingy. By the way, I heard my father ask if you had any relatives; I suppose you haven’t, have you?”
“No,” Jerry told him, “at least not very near ones. Father had no brothers or sisters, and mother’s people lived in England. Her father and mother died when she was little, and she came over here with her aunt.”
“Oh, I see,” said Rock. He had wondered why Mrs. Law had been left with no one to give her a helping hand.
THE SUMMER LONG