“It wasn’t a particularly lively one. However, that is all past now. Grandfather no doubt thought he was doing right. In his severe way of looking at life and his strict ideas of what a young man should do; what he called my disobedience was a very terrible thing to him. He could not understand that I was a man grown and that I had a right to marry the girl I loved.”
He gave a long sigh and rose from his chair. Jerry followed him out into the garden. There was much to learn, and Cassy, divided between her desire to go with her uncle and her wish to do her duty, by staying to help her mother, stared after the two as they went off.
She chattered like a magpie while they were washing the dishes, and she heard many things which had never been told her before. What a strange day it had been! She felt as if she were living in a story-book, but she stayed by her mother till the last dish was put away, and then she was left alone while her mother went up-stairs to write some important letters.
PLANS
CHAPTER X
PLANS
After looking out upon the garden from where she stood upon the porch, Cassy decided that she would like to be by herself for a while and think over all that had been taking place. So she stole down the long path to a little corner sheltered by trees on one side and by tall bushes on the other.
Into this little hiding-place she crept and lay down with face upturned towards the leaves and branches overhead. There was an empty nest among the branches, and there were all sorts of creeping, crawling things at hand to amuse and interest her. A fuzzy caterpillar, with a funny face, looked over the side of a leaf at her; a nimble spider spun a web from twig to twig; a busy colony of ants near by ran back and forth as if the affairs of the nation had to be settled. John had told her many things about the ants, and he had been as interested as she in a family of spiders.
“And he is my uncle. Think of it,” she said, winking her eyes at the caterpillar. “I don’t suppose you care about your relations because you have to have such lots and lots of them, but I care. You couldn’t have as nice a one as my Uncle John if you tried. Uncle John, Uncle John; how nice that sounds. What will Rock say? And Eleanor, and oh dear, there’s so much I haven’t heard about yet. I wish they’d hurry up and tell me. I wish little girls could hear every blessed thing that grown people talk about. I wonder if my mouse is at home. I think I’ll go and see.”
She jumped up and ran to the tool-house. After opening the door softly she stood inside whistling and chirruping in a gentle way, and after some patient waiting she saw a little mouse come creeping out. Then she gently opened a small tin box and took some crumbs from it; these she held in her hand, crouching on the ground as she did so, and after a little while the mouse came nearer, and finally crept upon her hand, eating the crumbs confidently and stopping once in a while to look at her with round bright eyes. She heard the whir, whir of the lawn-mower outside, and then the sound stopped and she lifted her head to listen, for she heard a voice say: “Where is Cassy? I can’t find her anywhere.”
The little mouse paused in its meal, and as a shadow darkened the door it leaped from Cassy’s hand and went scudding across the floor, but not before it was seen by some one who was entering.