“Yeah, thar is, an’ a picher card for tother young miss,” was the welcome reply.
Dories fairly pounced on the letter that was handed her. “Good, it is from Mother! I am almost sure that she will want me to come home,” she exclaimed gleefully. But when the message had been read, Dories looked up with a puzzled expression. “How queer!” she said. “Mother doesn’t say one thing about the stock; not even that she has heard about it, but she does say that she and Brother are leaving today on a business journey and that she may not write again for some time. I’ll read you what she says at the end: ‘Daughter dear, if your Aunt Jane wishes to return to Boston before you again hear from me, I would like you to remain with her until I send for you. Peter is standing at my elbow begging me to tell you that he is going to travel on a train just as you did. I judge from your letters that you and Nann are having an interesting time after all, but, of course, you would be happy, I am sure, anywhere with Nann!’” Dories looked up questioningly. “Don’t you think it is very strange that Mother should go somewhere and not tell me where or why?”
Nann laughed. “Maybe she thought that she would add another mystery to those we are trying to solve,” she suggested, but Dories shook her head. “No, that wasn’t Mother’s reason. Perhaps—O, well, what’s the use of guessing? Who was your card from?”
“Dad, of course. I judge that he will be glad when his daughter returns. O, Dori,” Nann interrupted herself to exclaim, “do look at that pair of black eyes peering at us out of that bundle!” She nodded toward the baby, wrapped in a blanket, that had been placed in a basket on the counter.
The girls leaned over the little creature, who actually tried to talk to them but ended its chatter with a cracked little crow. “He ain’t a mite like Gib,” the pleased mother told them. “The rest of us is sandy complected, but this un is black as a crow, an’ jest as jolly all the time as yo’uns see him now.”
“What is the little fellow’s name, Mrs. Strait?” Nann asked.
The woman looked anxiously toward the door; then said in a low voice: “I’m wantin’ to give the little critter a Christian name—Moses, Jacop, or the like, but his Pa is set on the notion of namin’ ’em all after geography straits, an’ I ain’t one to hold out about nothin’.” She sighed. “But it’s long past time to christen the poor little mite.”
Nann and Dories tried hard not to let their mirth show in their faces. The older girl inquired: “Why hasn’t he been christened, Mrs. Strait? Can’t you decide on a name?”
“Wall, yo’ see it’s this a-way,” the gaunt, angular woman explained. “Gib didn’t fetch home his geography books, an’ school don’t open up till snow falls in these here parts. So baby’ll have to wait, I reckon, bein’ as Gib don’t recollect no strait names.” Then, with hope lighting her plain face, the woman asked: “Do you girls know any of them geography names?”
Dories and Nann looked at each other blankly. “Why, there is Magellan,” one said. “And Dover,” the other supplemented.