Mrs. Holmes kept the secret; so did Persis. Even Lisa did not hear of it, although she wondered why Mellicent did not go to Audrey Vane’s for a whole month, a punishment the little girl felt sorely, but which she accepted meekly. “I suppose they’ve had some fuss,” Lisa concluded.
Persis brooded in a motherly way over Mellicent in her period of penitence, and Basil dealt so unsparingly with his brother that the younger boy felt ashamed of himself, and began to see, even though dimly, a glimmering of higher principle and finer honor than had yet appeared to him.
CHAPTER X.
MORE ABOUT ANNIS.
All this time Persis had been having sundry confidences with Annis, who in her quiet way was happier than she had ever been in her life, and her devotion to Persis grew as her cause for gratitude became more and more evident to her.
“Mamma and I have such a good time making plans,” she said to Persis. “We are going to have a cunning little house all our own, and, Persis, I hope you will help me to make my room cosey and pretty. We want to have a little garden if we can get a house with ground enough around it.”
“Then you will have to come over in our neighborhood,” returned Persis, well pleased, “for all the houses over our way have little garden plots. Let’s go house-hunting ourselves, this very afternoon. I believe I know just the house for you—it is so ugly.”
Annis looked shocked, and Persis laughed merrily. “That sounded funny, didn’t it? but, of course, you couldn’t see inside my mind,” she explained. “It is just this way: the house is very cosey and convenient inside, but outside it looks blank and uninteresting. Still, I’ve often thought what a pretty place it could be made; at least, Basil called my attention to it once when we were out on our wheels. You know he is going to be an architect, and his eyes are always wandering over buildings. He said that if the house were painted another color, and had a porch around it, with a better-looking approach to the door-way, it would be so much more attractive that it would be snapped up in a minute. There is a lovely place for a garden in front, and quite a piece of ground in the rear, but the house is a hideous color, and has been idle a long time, for no one will take it as it stands, and the owner will do nothing to it. I think it could be bought at a very low price.”
Annis was listening attentively. “Let us go right away,” she exclaimed, when Persis concluded. And they set off, forthwith, getting the keys of the house and exploring it from garret to cellar with Basil, who joined them at Persis’s suggestion.
“It is just the place,” Annis decided. “I know mamma will think so. There is such a lovely view of the west, and it is so near you all, Persis. Oh, I’d so much rather have a house like this, to contrive and plan for, than a spick and span, nippy little affair, all gingerbread work outside and fussiness inside.”