“I really think the sun is going to shine on us at last, little girls,” she said.
[142]
]CHAPTER XIII
MOONDI-MOONDI
“With fire and fierce drought on her tresses
Insatiable summer oppresses
Sere woodland and sad wildernesses,
And faint flocks and herds.”
Moondi-Moondi, Sunnymeade yclept, lay parched and panting beneath the sun of another summer. Dr. Wise’s cottage showed little change; perhaps the walls were dirtier, certainly there were more pencillings, and the amateur scribblings of small fingers upon the verandah posts and fences. You still fell over small boys in whatever part of the house you essayed to walk, and Human Buds, and our Responsibilities in the Grafting of Them, still stood in its now well-worn cover in a place on the book-shelves convenient for reference.
Mrs. Wise had gone out for the day—a very rare occurrence. She had driven off in the old buggy with the doctor and her youngest baby to a station twenty miles away, to see some one who was staying there, and had been at school with her.
[143]
]She had left Clif with strict injunctions to take good care of Alf and Richie, for it was Lizzie’s washing-day, and who else was there to put to the task?
But quite early in the morning Teddie came rushing back to the house with round eyes and a most red, excited face.