“But he might have—refused,” she suggested.
Bobby gave her a scornful glance.
“Refused—an’ lost the chance of marryin’ at all? Not much!” he asserted with emphasis.
“Well, anyhow, I’m glad he didn’t,” sighed Margaret, as she clutched the precious paper close to her heart. “I should ‘a’ hated to have refused outright to let him marry her when mother—Bobby, mother actually seems to want to have him!”
CHAPTER VI
Margaret had been at home four weeks when the invitation for Patty, Arabella, Clarabella, and three of the Whalens to visit her, finally left her mother’s hands. There had not been a day of all those four weeks that Margaret had not talked of the coming visit. At first, to be sure, she had not called it a visit; she had referred to it as the time when “Patty and the Whalens come here to live.” Gradually, however, her mother had persuaded her to let them “try it and see how they liked it”; and to this compromise Margaret finally gave a somewhat reluctant consent.
Mrs. Kendall herself was distinctly uneasy over the whole affair; and on one pretext and another had put off sending for the proposed guests until Margaret’s importunities left her no choice in the matter. Not but that she was grateful to the two families that had been so good to Margaret in her hour of need, but she would have preferred to show that gratitude in some way not quite so intimate as taking them into her house and home for an indefinite period. Margaret, however, was still intent on “divvying up,” and Mrs. Kendall could not look into her daughter’s clear blue eyes, and explain why Patty, Arabella, Clarabella, and the Whalens might not be the most desirable guests in the world.
It had been Margaret’s intention to invite all of the Whalen family. She had hesitated a little, it is true, over Mike Whalen, the father.
“You see he drinks, and when he ain’t asleep he’s cross, mostly,” she explained to her mother; “but we can’t leave just him behind, so we’ll have to ask him, ‘course. Besides, if he’s goin’ to live here, why, he might as well come right now at the first.”
“No, certainly we couldn’t leave Mr. Whalen behind alone,” Mrs. Kendall had returned with dry lips. “So suppose we don’t take any of the Whalens this time—just devote ourselves to Patty and the twins.”