An understanding glance from her mother, full of approval and tender appreciation, flashed on her as she drew her chair up to the stove, but all she said was, "I'm sure you had an amusing interview." Then Mary proceeded to recount it, giving a graphic and laughable description of her half hour in the gray cottage. But all the time she was talking and mimicking she was looking forward to the moment when she could escape to a corner of the kitchen, and calculate with pencil and paper what she could never do in her head, the height of prosperity to which this tidal wave of a salary would lift them.
CHAPTER IX
AT THE BARNABY RANCH
Three alert and expectant little figures sat in a row on the steps of the gray cottage, and watched for Mary's coming the next afternoon. Brud, sawing his hatchet blade up and down on the edge of the step below him, made deep notches in the paint while he waited. Little Sister, fuming with impatience, sat with one arm around the young hunting dog which squatted beside her, and made dire threats as to her conduct, in case the new teacher should refuse to let him go with them.
He was a brown English pointer, with a white vest, and the silver plate on his collar bore the name by which he was registered among the aristocracy of dogs. The name was "Uncle August." Strangers always laughed when they read that on his collar, but as Brud usually began to explain about that time that he was a "peggydreed" dog, his sister thought that they were laughing at the way he pronounced pedigreed. Therefore, she would gravely correct him and add the information that one of his great gram'pas was the King of Kent and another was Rip-rap; that he was the finest bird-dog in the United States,—her pappy said so,—and that he had been to a dog college and learned all that there was for a dog to know.
The moment Mary appeared, the usual formula was gone through with before they gave her a chance for more than a bare word of greeting, and she never knew how much her reception of Uncle August counted in her favor with the two watching children.
Like everybody else, she laughed when she heard his name, and put out her hand to shake the brown paw which he gravely offered. But when he continued to hold it out to her, and plainly showed by every way in a dog's power that he liked her and wanted to emphasize his friendliness, she took his silky ears in her hands, and looking down into his wistful eyes, praised and petted him till he wriggled all over for joy.