“Easy! Easy! Don't go too fast. It wouldn't pay her a fortune, 'cause fortunes ain't found like hazel nuts, growing on bushes. But it ought to pay her pretty tolerable. I'm sure enough about the boy;” and a sad look came into the conductor's eyes. “He hasn't any mother, you see, and it's pretty hard for the little chap.”
“Is he your boy?” asked Glory, putting her little hand on the conductor's sleeve and looking sympathetically up into the grave eyes.
The conductor nodded. “He's mine, and his grandmother says he ought to be learning things—poor Dan! That girl over there wouldn't be a very bad one to help him get hold, now would she?”
“Oh! Oh! Oh! What will she say? Why, if I had a little boy and he couldn't go out into the sunshine, and he wanted to learn, I'd rather have Diantha's little finger to help him with than the whole of some folks. You don't know Di.”
The conductor laughed. “I guess I haven't been watching you two this winter without finding out something,” he said, his eyes holding a twinkle. Then the old, gruff manner came back to him and he added brusquely, “But there, don't you go to countin' the chickens before they're hatched. I'll have to talk with grandma first; maybe she'd rather have a sort of circumspect person.”
“But your Danny wouldn't—you said his name was Dan,” said Glory, her face one sea of dimples, and her eyes like diamonds. “'Most seems as if a little boy who couldn't go out in the sunshine ought to have the one he'd like best with him. He wouldn't care much for a—a circumspect person, would he?” asked Glory, a merry twinkle in her eyes.
“There now, you go along!” said the conductor, laughing in spite of himself.
But Glory did not “go along” until she had caught the big hand and squeezed it between her soft little palms as it was extended to help her down to the Douglas platform.
That night Glory could hardly wait to get to Aunt Hope.
“Oh, auntie, won't it be splendid if she gets that place!” she cried when she had unfolded the beautiful plan at which the conductor had hinted.