"Well, I just guess I could," returned Mrs. Crane, heartily. "After all, it was just as much my fault as it was yours—maybe more."
"No, I never thought that, Sarah. I was the one to blame."
When the door opened a moment later to admit the finger-bowls and all four of the girls, who had licked the ice-cream platter and had nothing more to do in the kitchen since everything had been served—there, to the housekeepers' unbounded amazement, were Mr. Black and Mrs. Crane, with their arms stretched across the little table, holding each other's middle-aged hands in a tight clasp, and both had tears in their eyes.
The girls looked at them in consternation.
"Was—was it the dinner?" ventured Mabel, at last. "Was it as bad as—as all that?"
"Well," said Mr. Black, rising to go around the table to place an affectionate arm across Mrs. Crane's plump shoulders, "it was the dinner, but not its badness—or even its very goodness."
"I guess you'd better tell 'em all about it, Peter," suggested Mrs. Crane, whose eyes were shining happily. "It's only fair they should know about it—bless their little hearts."
"Well, you see," said Mr. Black, who, as the girls had quickly discovered, was once more their own delightfully jolly friend, "once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a black-eyed girl named Sarah, and a two-years-younger boy, who looked a good deal like her, named Peter, and they were brother and sister. They were all the brothers and sisters that each had, for their parents died when this boy and girl were very young. Peter and Sarah used to dream a beautiful dream of living together always, and of going down hand-in-hand to a peaceful, plentiful old age. You see, they had no other relative but one very cross grandmother, who scolded them both even oftener than they deserved—which was probably quite often enough. So I suspect that those abused, black-eyed, half-starved children loved each other more than most brothers and sisters do."
"Yes," agreed Mrs. Crane, nodding her head and smiling mistily, "they certainly did. The poor young things had no one else to love."
"That," said Mr. Black, "was no doubt the reason why, when the headstrong boy grew up and married a girl that his sister didn't like, and the equally headstrong girl grew up and married a man that her brother couldn't like—a regular scoundrel that—"