“I don’t care—it is! That woman can go to ride every day of her life, and there’s Doodles—! It’s confounded mean, and I’d like to say it right to her face!” He swung himself back into the little bedroom, and the others could hear him stamping off his wrath.
When he came out, a few minute later, he was smilingly mysterious.
“Don’t you go to getting tired, old man!” he warned his brother. “We’ll make that church yet, if I can work things right!” He took up his hat.
“Oh, Blue, don’t raise his hopes again! You know you can’t—”
“I don’t know any such thing! We’re goin’, I tell you! Just see if we don’t!”
“You mustn’t do anything rash!” The mother looked troubled.
“Aw, you wait! I ain’t a fool!” He ran off laughing.
With the ringing of the church bells Doodles’s hopes began to fade. His trust in Blue did not lessen; but even the best plans do not work, and he feared that his brother’s scheme, like Mr. Gaylord’s, was going to fail.
“Maybe I’d get too tired if I went,” he observed philosophically.
“Perhaps,” his mother assented. “I’ve been a little afraid of it all along.”