Besides, it would be some satisfaction to get the better of that scheming Mr. Parker. Let him take his own medicine, and see how he liked it. And besides, when you really came down to it, what would she, Miss Sophia, do without her light-handed and swift-footed little attendant? Poor Lucy was gone, and Stella was the only one, now, who knew all their ways. Must she be at the mercy of a Mrs. Maloney in her old age? So for hours she sat and thought till her old head fairly spun, and the subject was broached to a subdued and red-eyed Stella that very evening.
“Oh, Jibby darling! to think of your really and truly coming to live with us! Oh, isn’t Daddy the very nicest man that ever lived? He never refused me anything; not if I had set my heart on it, you know. And I told him that if you didn’t graduate, then I wouldn’t, either; and the very day I was eighteen I was going out to Dakota to join you on your own land, and run that ranch we always talked about. He only said: ‘Tut, tut, daughter; we’ll do better than that.’
“And even mother’s glad, because I do bother her sometimes when she has a headache, and now she can play bridge all day, if she likes. You and me’ll see to everything, won’t we, Jibby? You are coming, aren’t you, darling dear?”
Thus Cynthia in one breath, flinging herself upon her friend’s neck the next morning, in the prim garden of the old Spellman homestead, among the old-fashioned posies, day-lilies and bleeding-heart and wonderful rose-hued peonies, while Scotty, with the demonstrative jealousy of his kind, stood upon his gaunt hind legs and thrust his cold nose between the loving pair.
Doris, prettier than ever in all the dignity of her ankle-long skirts and “Psyche knot” of honey-colored hair, noted Stella’s hesitating silence and cannily began, feeling her way:
“You know, Jibby, Grandma is getting old and feeble, and she does like you better’n ’most any one. She won’t let even me do for her as she will you, Stella Waring! I don’t see how you manage to bewitch everybody the way you do.
“Uncle Si says, dummed if he wouldn’t like nothing better than for you to come out there and be his little housekeeper. Think of that! He never forgot that breakfast you got for him the day Cynthia was chased by the bull; and he says that for nobody else in this endurin’ world would he have hitched up the critters long after bed-time of a wet night. I don’t know when he’s been out after eight o’clock ’cept that night he took you home. Well, aren’t you ever going to speak? We all want you, Stella; now which is it going to be?”
Yellow Star faced her two friends with almost a tragic gesture of out-flung arms, and the rare tears in her soft, black eyes.
“Darlings,” she cried, “you are all too sweet for anything, and I shall never forget it as long as I live. To think that I have such friends! But do you know, the most wonderful part of it all is, Miss Sophia wants me too!
“She’s getting old, you see, and she isn’t used to doing for herself, and she really does need me, girls. Don’t look like that, Cynthia; she’s my dear, dear Mother Waring’s only sister—the only near kin she had in this world—so she used to say. Girls, I know I should be perfectly happy with either of you, but I can’t leave Miss Sophia—she’s folks. I know I can take care of her, and here is where I belong.”