“Oh yes, yes. Uncle, I should like it ever so much.”
During this conversation, Mrs. Carlton had been looking out at the window. The snow was dripping from the eaves, and from the trees. It looked soft and soggy in the path, and she feared the walking would be too sloppy for her daughter. So she said:
“It is hardly fit for Jessie to go out walking, Brother. The slosh will be over her sandals, and she will get wet feet.”
“Do you think so, Ma? Well, I’m sorry. But if I only had a pair of rubber-boots, like Carrie Sherwood’s, I could go in spite of the slosh. Never mind,”—here Jessie’s sigh showed how disappointed she felt,—“never mind, uncle will have to take his walk alone.”
Some misses would have fretted over such a disappointment as this. But Jessie seldom fretted. She had too much good sense, and too much good nature to fret. Perhaps this was one reason why she was loved so well.
When Mrs. Carlton had expressed her view of the bad walking, Uncle Morris left the room, so that he did not hear all that Jessie said in reply. He now returned, bearing in his hands a good-sized parcel, neatly tied and addressed in his own handwriting, to “Miss Jessie Carlton.” Giving it to his niece, he said:
“Open Sesame! Perhaps you may find a talisman within this parcel, which will incline your mamma to change her opinion about the fitness of your walking out with me this morning.”
Jessie untied the string, and on opening her parcel, looked up with eyes full of pleasure, and exclaimed:
“A pair of rubber-boots!”
Then dropping the parcel, she ran to her uncle, and gave him, I don’t know how many warm kisses. After this, she took up the boots, and looking at them admiringly, said: