All this time not a word which an outsider could have understood had been spoken; and as this thought flashed over Bonny she laughed again. “Dear Mr. Brook, I thought at first that you were ‘not quite yourself’ this morning! Beg pardon, but I did. And now I am as bad. Maybe, after all, we are not talking about the same thing.”
“Maybe not! Oh! I dare say not,” replied the merry old gentleman, pacing rapidly back and forth.
“And quite difficult for me, I think!” added Miss Joanna, smiling too.
“Will you please tell me your thought, Mr. Brook?” asked Beatrice, eagerly.
“With pleasure. I would have done so long ago, only you didn’t ask it. I think the scheme I have formulated—”
“But I have not heard it in words, Brother!”
“The scheme I have formulated, Joanna, will keep this growing girl out of doors, as she should be, and make a wise recreation after her hours of labor here. It will teach her more of real natural history than I can preach to her, and will make her far more interested in my work. It will fill her small pocket with some needed extra cash. Last, but not least, it will give that unquiet small brother of hers a chance to get rid of his surplus energy in a legitimate way. He can do all the tree-climbing, for which I should, if I were a girl with such an irrepressible relative, give him a small share in the business. It— Go on, Miss. How can you wish to interrupt such a flow of argument?”
As if he had been the grandfather he had himself suggested, Bonny crossed swiftly to her employer’s side and laid her hand upon his shoulder. “Because I thank you for showing me how to help myself. The one word which will tell my thought is—”
At that moment Mr. Dolloway’s solemn face appeared above Miss Joanna’s own with such suddenness that Bonny’s “word” waited for his. He had evidently come freighted with ill news.
“Oh, sir, what is it? Is my mother—”