“Oh!” cried Sam, horrified.
“Please,” begged the girl.
So Sam brought it and the three laid the rolls of bills neatly within it.
“It will comfort father,” said Annie Laurie quaintly, “but to-morrow I’m going to put it in the bank.”
CHAPTER XVII
AZALEA’S PARTY
Baby Jonathan had just been stung by one of Pa McBirney’s bees.
“I don’t like the way he kisseth,” he screamed, standing beside the clump of golden glow. “I don’t like it a bit.”
“I should think not, indeed, mamma’s own honey-bird,” soothed Mrs. Barbara, dashing for him and gathering him into her arms. “He thought you were a flower, son-son, and just lighted on you.”
“He kisseth too hard,” sobbed Jonathan, plunging his golden head into the hollow of his mother’s arm. “I don’t want to play with him any more, ever.”
“What a shame that he should be stung at his first party,” said his mother indignantly, as she carried him to the seat at the McBirney outlook where she had been sitting with young Richard Heller, Sam Disbrow’s friend—the one who had spoken the cruel-kind words of truth to him which had sent him away from the Rutherford Academy without so much as putting his name on the register. They had been talking about Sam now, and when Mrs. Summers had plastered clay over the wounded cheek of her son, and had soothed him with many kisses, they resumed their conversation.