“And I said no home could be complete without a cat,” returned his wife laughing. “You are two dear children to supply our wants so soon,” she said to the little girls.
“We think it is going to be lovely here,” said Adele eagerly.
“Max and Walter are coming here to school,” Jessie announced. “Are you glad to be our neighbors, Miss Eloise?”
“My dear, I am delighted. I didn’t realize what a charming old place this really was. What have you all been doing to it?” She looked around upon a well ordered garden, upon a smoothly cut lawn, upon a freshly painted porch where boxes of flowers stood, and then she caught sight of the group within doors who were standing to welcome her. “You dear people,” she said holding out her hands. “How good you are to us, and how the whole place is changed. What fairy work is this?”
“You must ask these little girls,” said Mrs. Loomis, smiling down at Jessie and Adele. “They put it into our heads, and said it was a shame for you to come home to a dingy old house, to a neglected lawn and a flowerless garden, and so we thought, too. Therefore we have all taken turns in seeing that things were done as they should be. And now come in to supper.”
“Supper?” Mrs. Davis looked at her husband. “And we looked forward to an empty house with a still emptier larder. We said we should have to picnic for days till we could get the house in running order.” Still holding the kitten, she put her free arm around both little girls, and they wondered why her eyes should be full of tears. “We shall never feel like strangers here, Fred,” she said to Mr. Davis.
“Indeed, I should say not,” he replied. “This is a true home-coming.”
All summer long work went on in the big white house till fall found it ready with classrooms, with a new gymnasium, with pretty sleeping rooms for the boarding pupils. And every room was filled, while the day scholars were not a few.
Jessie and Adele started off together. Max and Walter had already gone on ahead. Adele was unusually thoughtful on the way. “What are you thinking of?” Jessie asked her. “You are so quiet.”
“I was thinking about a lot of things,” was the reply. “I was thinking suppose papa had not found the yellow house for us to live in, then I should never have known you, Miss Eloise would never have found ‘The Beeches,’ and I might have been far away somewhere, just as lonely as I was before.”