“Bless you, child! The man has sense, hasn’t he? Even dumb creatures know enough to go in when it rains. But tell me fast, darling, all that’s happened to you since you went away. My heart! this has been the longest day I ever knew! have you had anything to eat? What made you so late? How came you to be riding home in such grand style? and where got you this basket?”
“It’s the baby’s, mother. Bonny-Gay sent it to him;” cried the happy girl, running to seize that crowing infant from his trundle-bed and to cover his face with kisses. Then she dropped her crutches and herself upon the floor, drew the baby to her lap, and from that lowly position began a swift, but rather mixed history of events since she had said good-by and hopped away in the morning.
The mother listened, losing never a word, and deftly simplifying matters now and then by a leading question, while at the same time she explored the big basket. It had evidently been filled in haste, and by the direction of Bonny-Gay, herself.
“This is for the baby, is it?” laughingly demanded Mrs. Bump, lifting out a great loaf of rich cake, carefully wrapped in waxed paper. “Fine food for a year-old, that is. And this? and this? My heart, but whoever filled this basket had a generous streak!”
A fine roasted chicken, mate to that of which Mary Jane had already partaken, it might be, followed the cake. Then came a picture-book, a jumble of toys, a box of candy, and an odd mixture of the things nearest at hand, and of which the sick child could think.
But crowning all these gifts, and the only one packed with any attempt at care, was the beautiful leghorn hat, with its nodding ostrich plumes and its general air of elegance.
“The darling, the darling! She did mean me to keep it, then!” cried Mary Jane, so delightedly that the baby immediately pat-a-caked with noisy vigor.
Of course, even though they had long since enjoyed their ordinary supper, the watchful children were not to be put off without at least a taste of the baby’s good things; so the mother cut and divided with exact equality; and after a feast so hilarious that it brought Joe Stebbins in from next door to see what was the matter, everybody was sent to bed; even the tired Mary Jane, whose heart seemed brim full of both joy and anxiety.
She had explained to her mother how she had chattered to Mr. McClure, hiding nothing, even her unwise statement of William Bump’s animosity toward the other, happier father.
Mrs. Bump had listened quietly, and she had pooh-poohed the little girl’s regrets! but her heart sank. Mr. McClure was the name of the head of the Company. She knew that, though Mary Jane did not; and she realized that her husband’s last chance of reinstatement in the Company’s employ had been ruined by the very one who would have sacrificed her very self to do him good.