“Yes, but a year is so long. Why, Father Cameron, a year is three hundred and sixty-five whole days long and I don’t know how many hours and minutes and—and seconds. The seconds are awful! Daddles darling, I never could support life away from you in a perfectly strange family for all those interminable seconds!”
“Your own cousins, chicken; and they 10 wouldn’t seem strange long. I’ve a notion they’d help make time hustle. Better read the letter. It’s a good letter.”
“I will—when I don’t have you to talk to. What’s the matter?”
“Bless me, I forgot to tell Miss Reynolds! Nell’s coming to-night. Wired half an hour ago.”
“Aunt Nell? Oh, jolly!” The slender hands clapped in joyful pantomime. “But don’t worry about Miss Reynolds. I will tell Anna to make a room ready. Now we can settle things talking. It’s so much more satisfactory than writing.”
The man laughed. “Can’t say no, so easily, eh, chicken?”
She joined in his laugh. “There is something in that, of course, but it isn’t very polite of you to insinuate that any one would wish to say no to me.”
“I stand corrected of an error in tact. No, I can’t quite see Elinor turning you down.”
That was the joy of these two; they were such boon companions, like brother and sister together instead of father and daughter.