"Do hurry up and read the letter, Dick. If she says she is coming here, I warn you in advance that Dolly can keep house. I shall go off and make some visits."
After a brief glance at the page Mr. Thorne waved the letter about his head. "Glory, glory!" he chanted. "Listen to this and think shame to your inhospitable selves.
"'My dear Nephew:—I have decided to go West and spend the summer with your great-aunt Eliza. I write to say that, as I do not care to close the cottage, I shall be pleased to have you and Mary spend two or three months in it. I recall that though your ways of keeping house in the city seemed strange to me, still Mary did have things tidy, so I am quite willing to have her here in my absence. I shall go next week, and you can come any time after that. My regards to your wife.
"'Your affectionate aunt,
"'Maria Hancock.'"
Mary beamed as she listened. "Dear old thing," she said when her husband laid down the letter; "there's a reward for all my sufferings while she was here. Dolly, she has a darling little house only an hour's ride from town; and a garden, my dear, a garden! We can have a lovely cool time all summer, and eat our own vegetables. Think of it."
"Yes, Dolly, I seem to smell the delicious, soul-satisfying odor of those onions now," said Dick, luxuriously closing his eyes. "Young ones, Dolly, strong and spicy. We shall have them for breakfast in the morning and for dinner at night, and I shall have a light lunch of them with bread and butter at bedtime; there's nothing like onions for insomnia. Sundays, of course, I shall have them four times. Dear, dear Aunt Maria!"
"Hush, Dick; don't spoil all our pleasure with such horrid suggestions. Is it really a nice place, Mary?"
"Nice! It's heavenly. Not much society, you know, just a plain little country village, but cool and lovely. We will wear our oldest gowns, and do up fruit, and have our breakfasts on the porch, and just revel."