CHAPTER XXIX
THE NEW YEAR
Autumn with its crystalline days and frosty nights gave Betsy glorious views from her windows, but played havoc with her garden.
Hiram had long ago put up his boat, and now he began building a small launch that Irving Bruce had ordered for the following season.
With Thanksgiving Day came Rosalie. Hiram brought her home from the station in high satisfaction, and it seemed as if Betsy could never hear enough of her pleasant work in the school.
“I’m bein’ awful mean and selfish,” announced Betsy. “I haven’t asked one person to dinner with us. Seems if we couldn’t share our little girl with anybody else to-day.”
“Yes,” said Hiram, “seems if some special dispensation o’ common sense had been given Betsy, for our benefit, Rosalie. I’ll have ye know I keep an asylum. Never know any day I come home to dinner who I’ll find here. They get their Thanksgivin’ three hundred and sixty-four days a year. I maintain we deserve the sixty-fifth.”
“Don’t be such a goose, Hiram,” laughed his wife. “This is all ’cause Mrs. Pogram wanted to see you to-day, Rosalie. I told her you were comin’ for the whole Christmas vacation, and she should see you then.”
During dinner Rosalie told many things about the school and her work, and afterward the trio sat around an open fire while the first snow of the season flung its stars upon the window-panes.
“Do you hear from any o’ the Boston folks?” asked Betsy.