Left to themselves the two little girls talked till Mrs. Law called them. They found Martha on hand, Mr. Dallas having very thoughtfully sent for her.
“You will have too much of a houseful, Mrs. Law,” he said, “and if we are all to be looked after you will need more than one pair of hands. Besides, you and your brother will have much to say to each other. I am sorry I must lose the best man we ever had, but I am glad for you all.”
Such an exciting time never was. All this houseful of people, an old friend suddenly appearing as an unknown and unlooked for uncle, and besides this all that about the money that had been that day received. Any one of these things would be enough to excite any child, but take them all together and it was too much for one of Cassy’s imaginative temperament. Long after every one else in the house was fast asleep she lay with wide open eyes.
Finally she decided that she would get up and go out on the porch which led from the room. She put on her shoes and stockings and wrapping a blanket around her, for the September night was chill, she crept out on the porch. The moon was on the wane and was not shining very brightly. In the trees the insects were keeping up a noisy chirping. Cassy looked down into the shadowy depths of the garden. The large white moon-flowers shone out of the green around her and sent up a faint sweet odor.
“You ought to be called night-glories,” Cassy whispered to them. “That is what I should call you.”
Presently she saw down in the garden below her a man’s figure, pacing up and down the long walk.
“It is Uncle John,” she said, “and he can’t sleep either. I wonder what he is thinking about, and if he is lonely down there.” She thought she would like to go down to him, but she was a little afraid to grope her way through the dark house, so she leaned over the railing of the porch and when he came near she called him softly.
He came and stood under where she was.
“What are you doing up this time of night, you little witch?” he asked.
“I couldn’t sleep and I thought I’d like to see how the world looked in the night-time; ’way in the night like this.”