“Yes, of course it will. It’s nice and clean, and we’ll all help to tidy it up and make things as nice as possible. And it’s the only thing to do—to ask him here, and let him see for himself how Mamma and Dadda have to work while he’s tripping round.”
“Yes, while he’s tripping round,” echoed Eva.
“He’ll have to be very hard-hearted if he sees us like this, and does not help us,” went on Mollie. “We’ll pay him back when we grow up. We don’t want to be common beggars, but we do want money now.”
“Oh, Mollie! and I never thought you used to think like this,” declared Eileen, in a low voice. “I never thought you wanted to be rich like I do——”
“It’s not for myself so much as others,” cried Mollie. “I’m not going to see Mother toiling from daylight to dark, and trying to keep nice and pleasant, and Father and Frank nearly too tired to talk when they come in of a night, and nothing but loneliness staring us in the face, when all the time we might be able to make things a little better. We’ll write that letter and post it by next mail,” she went on in a low voice. “Mother is going to see Mrs. Smith to-morrow, so we’ll write it then. But we must keep it a great big secret.”
“Well, this has been a wonderful evening,” said Eileen, “and I’m dying for to-morrow to come.”
“It’s been a wonderful, bootiful evenin’,” bubbled Doris, clasping her fat hands. “Bad luck and good together.”
“I hope it will be good luck,” said Mollie as she flew inside to set the table, for away across the distance she saw the men returning slowly from their day’s toil, while Eileen and Eva hurried off to feed the lambs, and the two toddlers trudged off to the creek to meet Mamma.
“If only we can manage it! If only we can manage it!” was the thought that filled Mollie’s mind as she hurried hither and thither from the kitchen to the dining-room. “If only Uncle gets that letter and comes straight away and fixes up things and gives us all a fresh start. If only we can manage it!”
Outside in the gathering darkness Eileen and Eva fed and petted the lambs while they laughed and talked, for a gleam of new hopes and anticipations had come to them.