“Won’t you come and talk to me?” she said in a forlorn little voice. “I’m all alone. I can’t go to Peter’s room, and I can’t find Sirius, and Aunt Sophia doesn’t want me. Don’t you think if somebody was named for you, you’d like to have ’em in your room when you were unpacking?”
“Indeed I should!” said Madison, seating himself in the parlor, while Sophy took another chair and prepared to entertain him, after the manner, as she thought, of her elder sisters when they had visitors.
“And Aunt Sophia is unpacking,” she continued, “and unpacking is such a very interesting thing to watch. I think she is asking questions, too. Aunt Sophia asks a great many questions. When I do, the girls say I’m curious, but they can’t say that to Aunt Sophia.”
“No, scarcely!” said Mr. Madison, who was greatly amused with his small hostess, but preserved a perfectly straight face.
“She thinks we ought to live with her, but we don’t want to. We would rather work for our living, and so we teach school and give music lessons and sell mushrooms and violets, and once Vic went to Boston and sold some gold things and some—oh, but I forgot! The girls told me not to tell anybody that.”
“No,” said Roger, gravely; “you had better not.”
“Perhaps when we get to know you very well, we’ll tell you all about what the man said to Vic, the young man—”
“Do you think I can see one of your sisters?” asked he, interrupting her. “I want to speak about Peter, and—well, to explain to them how I happened to find him. Will you call one of them? Tell them not to come if it isn’t convenient, though.”
Sophy, going upon this errand, met Victoria on the stairs.
“I am going to look for Sirius, Sophy,” said she, quite unconscious that some one was in the parlor. “It is strange that he isn’t about anywhere. Have you seen him?”