She looked up with a start. The new man had come back to the arbor, but he did not look like play. He looked queer, so queer that Ariadne’s sensitive lower lip began to tremble and the corners of her mouth to draw down. She could not remember having done anything naughty. She was frightened by the way he looked. And yet, he picked her up quite gently, and held her on his knee, and asked her if Muvver could walk about the house yet.
“Oh, yes,” she told him, “and came down to dinner last night.”
The new man put her down, and asked her with a “please” and “I’d be much obliged” as though she were a grown-up herself, if she would do something for him—go to Muvver and ask her if she felt strong enough to come down into the grape-arbor to see him. Tell her he had something very special to say to her.
Ariadne went, skipping and hopping in pleasurable excitement at her own importance, and returned triumphantly to say that Muvver said she would come. She wondered if he felt too grown-up for cob houses himself. He hadn’t built it any higher when she was gone. He looked as if he hadn’t even winked. While she stood wondering at his silence, his face got very white. He stood up looking toward the house. Muvver was coming out, very slowly, leaning on the railing to the steps—Muvver in the nightgowny dress Aunt Julia had made her, only it wasn’t really nightgowny, because it was all over lace—Muvver with her hair in two braids over her shoulders and all mussed up where she’d been lying down. Ariadne wondered that she hadn’t smoothed it a little. She knew what people would say to her if she came around with her hair looking like that.
The man went forward to meet Muvver, and gave her his hand, and they neither of them smiled or said how do you do, but came back together toward the arbor. And when they got there Muvver sat down quick, as though she were tired, and laid her head back against the chair. The man lifted Ariadne up and kissed her—he had never done that before. Now she knew how his beard felt—very soft. She felt it against her face for a long time. And he told her to go into the house to ’Stashie.
So she went. Ariadne always did as she was told. ’Stashie was trying to make some ginger cookies, and the oven “jist would not bake thim,” she said. They were all doughy when they came out, very much as they were when they went in; but the dough was deliciously sweet and spicy. ’Stashie and Ariadne ate a great deal of it, because ’Stashie knew very well from experience that the grown-ups have an ineradicable prejudice against food that comes out of the oven “prezackly” the way it went in.
After that they had to wash their hands, all sticky with dough, and after that ’Stashie took Ariadne on her lap and told her Irish fairy stories, all about Cap O’Rushes and the Leprechaun, till they were startled by the boiling over of the milk ’Stashie had put on the stove to start a pudding. ’Stashie certainly did have bad luck with her cooking, as she herself frequently sadly admitted.
But, oh! wasn’t she darling to Ariadne! It made the lonely little girl warm all over to be loved the way ’Stashie loved her. Sometimes when Ariadne woke up with a bad dream it was ’Stashie who came to quiet her, and she just hugged her up close, close, so that she could feel her heart go thump, thump, thump. And she always, always had time to explain things. It was wonderful how much time ’Stashie had for that—or anything else Ariadne needed.
She was putting more milk on the stove when in dashed Uncle Marius, his mouth wide open and his hands jumping around. “Where’s your mother? Where’s Mrs. Hollister?” he cried.
“Out in the arbor,” said Ariadne.