“Did she tell you,” asked the tall man, gazing very hard at the landscape without the open window, “to give these flowers to some one who needed them?”
There was a perilous little pause. Then there flashed from the boy to the man a gaze of comprehension.
“She picked them for you,” was the response, simply spoken.
The Judge carefully selected a blossom for his buttonhole, and then proceeded to draw David out. Under the skillful, schooled questioning, David grew communicative.
“She’s always on the west porch after supper.” He added naïvely: “That’s the time when Uncle Barnabas smokes on the east porch, Jud goes off with the boys, and I play with Janey in the lane.”
“Thank you, David,” acknowledged the 92 Judge gratefully. “You are quite a bureau of information, and,” in a consciously casual tone, “will you take a note to your aunt? I think I will ride out to the farm to-night.”
David’s young heart fluttered, and he went back to the farm invested with a proud feeling of having assisted the fates. The air was filled with mystery and an undercurrent of excitement that day. After David had delivered the auspicious note, a private conference behind closed doors had been held between M’ri and Barnabas in the “company parlor.” David’s shrewd young eyes noted the weakening of the lines of finality about M’ri’s mouth when she emerged from the interview. Throughout the long afternoon she performed the usual tasks in nervous haste, the color coming and going in her delicately contoured face.
When she appeared at the supper table she was adorned in white, brightened by touches of blue at belt and collar. David’s young eyes surveyed her appraisingly and approvingly, and later he effected a thorough effacing of the family. He obtained from Barnabas permission for 93 Jud to go to town with the Gardner boys. His next diplomatic move was to persuade Pennyroyal to go with himself and Janey to Uncle Larimy’s hermit home. When she wavered, he commented on the eclipse of Uncle Larimy’s windows the last time he saw them. That turned the tide of Pennyroyal’s resistance. Equipped with soft linen, a cake of strong soap, and a bottle of ammonia, she strode down the lane, accompanied by the children.
The walk proved a trying ordeal for Pennyroyal. She started out at her accustomed brisk gait, but David loitered and sauntered, Janey of course setting her pace by his. Pennyroyal, feeling it incumbent upon herself to keep watch of her young companions, retraced her steps so often that she covered the distance several times.
At Uncle Larimy’s she found such a fertile field for her line of work that David was quite ready to return when she pronounced her labors finished. She was really tired, and quite willing to walk home slowly in the moonlight.