“That’s what I call a good job, my little girl,” he said heartily, but Jessie, glancing at the proof of my housewifely skill, as evidenced by the coat, laughed.
“‘A tear may be the accident of a moment,’” she quoted, “‘but a patch is premeditated poverty.’ And such a patch! You could see it a mile away. Really, Leslie, it looks like Jeremiah Porlock’s cattle brand.”
I felt my face crimsoning with indignation, but was happily prevented from making the retort that sprang to my lips, as father murmured ruefully:
“Dear, dear, what a pity that Joe left the spade! It will just about spoil my whole forenoon to be obliged to stop and bring it down. However, there’s no help for it.”
“Yes, there is, papa,” I cried, springing to my feet. “I’ll go up with you and bring it back.”
It was characteristic of father’s gentleness toward us his motherless young daughters, that he had not once thought of the possibility of either of us acting, in this instance, as his substitute.
“It’s a long walk,” he objected, looking at me doubtfully.
“Long! Why, papa, I’ve taken longer walks than that, lots of times. It isn’t above a mile and a half; I could run every step of the way!”
“Me, too,” proclaimed Ralph, descending from his high chair in such haste that he fell sprawling on the floor. Disdaining, on this occasion, to weep for an accident that, under ordinary circumstances, would have opened the flood-gates of woe, he scrambled to his feet: “Me do wiv ’oo, ’Essie!” A battered old hat of Joe’s was hanging on the wall, within reach of his chubby hand; he snatched it down and set it quickly on his head, pulling down the wide brim until his brown curls and the upper part of his rosy little face were completely extinguished. “Me ready, ’Essie,” he said. He was a comical little figure. Papa took him in his arms and kissed him. Then he set him gently on his feet again; “You can’t go with sister to-day, my boy.”