CHAPTER I
John's Girl
A little girl in a short-sleeved, blue ruffled nightgown flung herself across the foot of Grandmother Swift's great guest-chamber bed, and sobbed as if her heart would break.
Downstairs, each in an old-fashioned, valanced rocking chair before one of the living-room windows, Grandfather and Grandmother Swift were discussing the newcomer.
"I think she seems real glad to be here," Grandmother was saying. "She looks a little pale and peaked, but we'll soon have her fed up and as brown as a berry."
"I never see any brown berries. All the berries I ever had anything to do with was red or blue, but there must be berries that is brown, if you say so, Mother."
Grandmother's amber needles flew.
"She seemed real pleased at the things I had cooked up for her," she said, "especially the chocolate cake. She didn't more than sample the lemon pie."
"I thought she seemed a little high-toned about her vittles. She kinder turned up her nose at your ginger tea, Mother. She was used to having her dinner at night, she said, and drunk nothing but a demi-tassy after it."
"You hadn't ought to have begun your teasing before she was fairly in the house, Father—it made her feel strange. She hasn't been here for four years, and four years, when a child is just getting into her teens, is a long while."