"Peter!" warned Mrs. Crane.
"Well," said Mr. Black, hastily, "it's all over now, and perhaps we had better leave that part of it out. It isn't a pretty story, and we'll never mention it again, Sarah. But anyway, girls, this foolish brother and sister quarreled, and the brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law and even the grandmother, who was old enough to know better, quarreled, until finally all four of those hot-tempered young persons were so angry that the brother named Peter said he'd never speak to his sister again, and the sister named Sarah said she'd never speak to her brother again—and they haven't until this very day. Just a pair of young geese, weren't they, Sarah?"
"Old geese, too," agreed Mrs. Crane, "for they've both been fearfully lonely ever since and they've both been too proud to say so. One of them, at least, has wished a great many times that there had never been any quarrel."
"Two of 'em. But now this one," said Mr. Black, placing his forefinger against his own broad chest, "is going to ask this one—" and he pointed to Mrs. Crane—"to come and live with him in his own great big empty house, so he'll have a sister again to sew on his buttons, listen to his old stories, and make a home for him. What do you say, Sarah?"
"I say yes," said Mrs. Crane; "yes, with all my heart."
"And here," said Mr. Black, smiling into four pairs of sympathetic eyes, "are four young people who will have to pretend that they truly belong to us once in a while, because we'd both like to have our house full of happy little girls. You never had any children, Sarah?"
"No, and you lost your only one, Peter."
"Yes, a little brown-eyed thing like Bettie here—she'd be a woman now, probably with children of her own."
"It's—it's just like a story," breathed Bettie, happily. "We've been part of a real story and never knew it! I'm so glad you let us have Dandelion Cottage, so glad we invited you to dinner, and that nothing happened to keep either of you away."
"Peter and I are glad, too," said Mrs. Crane, who indeed looked wonderfully happy.