“Perhaps it will be when I can go to her, but I can’t yet. You see, she is probably away from home, and if I started without knowing all about it, I might get to her house and find no one there, and then what should I do in a strange place?” Harold was fast growing more communicative.
“That would be dreadful,” agreed his companion, overcome by his lonely condition. “I tell you what I wish you’d do,” she hastened to say: “I wish you’d come over with me. We haven’t any boys at our house, and I’ve always wanted awfully to be a boy. You see it would be fine if I were, for now I’m just nothing. Alice is the oldest, so she’s some importance, and Louie is the baby, so she’s the pet, and I’m in the middle where I can’t be anything, and I don’t have anyone to play with, for Alice is fourteen and Louis is only two.”
“Your mother wouldn’t want me, maybe,” said Harold, though his eyes looked wistful.
“Oh, yes she would,” returned Mabel, confidently; “I’m sure she would. She lets me have my school friends come, and sometimes they stay all night.”
“But I’m a boy.”
“Well, never mind, we can’t help that. You can pretend you are a girl, if you want to, and I’ll lend you one of my frocks.”
This brought the first approach to a laugh which Harold had shown, and he consented to go and hunt up Drake, and Mabel went with him.
Drake, himself, was not to be found, but his wife was, and to her Mabel made known her request.
“Well, I just wish he would go,” declared Mrs. Drake. “He’s been moping around ever since his father went away, and we two old people can’t cheer him up like you could. Go along, Harold, if you like, and stay as long as you want to.”
So Harold followed his new friend across the street, and when the situation was explained, true enough, he was given a warm welcome by Mrs. Ford. An hour later the two children, with little Louie, were playing in the laundry, having great times, with a tub of water and some very primitive fishing lines.