"Well, then—" said Mrs. Merrill.
"She's going to let you stay," said John. "Come on, let's go see my lamb."
He was a bit shy with his new grown-up cousin, Mrs. Merrill, but very comfortable and easy with the two girls.
"Coming along, Dad?" he called to his father as the three children slammed out of the kitchen door.
"Not for a while—got to see what's the matter with this," answered his father, who was tinkering with the automobile. "You take the girls through the barn and show them your pets. I'll join you in the pasture lot after a bit."
John needed no urging. He ran ahead to open the barn door and let his cousins in on the lower floor where his pet calf—a tiny little brown creature who looked wonderingly at her visitors—stood by her mother in a large roomy stall.
"This barn's most like grandpa's," exclaimed Mary Jane, as the sight and smell of barn things brought back to her mind the joys of the summer she spent visiting her grandparents in the country. "He had an underpart, too, where cows lived sometimes. And a stairs—have you a stairs that's most like a ladder?"
John had stairs just such as Mary Jane expected and, to tell the truth, he was a bit surprised to find that Mary Jane could run up the steep stairs as fast and as fearlessly as he could. He couldn't see how a girl who knew nothing about automobiles (when he was so used to them!) could know about anything at all.
On the main floor of the barn the children inspected all the nooks and corners, John explaining and playing host manfully.
"Now let's go to the pasture lot," he suggested. "I want to show you sumping there."