“Father, you will take the boy, won’t you?”
“My dear child, you don’t know what you are talking about. I have not set eyes on him yet, and perhaps when I come to see him he will appear to me to be a bad, or stupid, or lazy boy, and then you yourself would not want me to take him.”
“No, father; but if you like the looks of him, and Peter likes the looks of him, ‘cause if Peter likes him Bertie and I shall, will you take him then?”
“I’ll think about it, my little girl, and now get into your bed and cuddle down and go to sleep.”
Instead of that, however, she crept to the other side of the bed, hid her face in her mother’s bosom and sobbed herself to sleep.
Notwithstanding the entreaties of the children, their father remained firm in his purpose, but, at the time he had set, started, taking Peter with him, as the lad was to have a pair of new shoes. He was also to buy the cloth to make Bertie a go-to-meeting suit, as the cloth for the best clothes was bought, and made up by their mother who wove all the cloth for every-day wear. He was also to buy a new shawl for Maria, and get a bonnet for her that her mother had selected some days before. In the mean time Peter had received the most solemn charges from both Bertie and Maria, “to tease and tease and tease their father to take the boy.” Just as they were starting Maria clambered up to the seat of the wagon and whispered in his ear,—
“If father won’t take him, you cry; cry like everything.”
Peter promised faithfully that he would.
When the sound of wagon wheels had died away in the distance, Bertie and Maria endeavored to extract some consolation by interrogating their mother, and Bertie asked if she expected their father would bring home the boy.
“Your father, children, will do what he thinks to be his duty, and for the best, but there is an unseen hand that guides matters of this kind. I shall not be very much surprised if the boy should come with them.”