He smiled his familiar, whimsical smile as he said this and it reassured the girl at once. Pointing to a distant corner of the room, where some considerate person had tossed down a sofa cushion, she showed him the ill-named babies asleep with their arms about each other’s neck and their red lips parted in happy slumber.
“They’ve found their own place you see; will it do?”
“Admirable! They’re like kittens or puppies—one spot’s as good as another. Throw a rug over them and let them be. I think they’ll need nothing more to-night, but if they do they’re of the sort will make it known. Good-night, little Dorothy. Sleep well.”
After a custom which Father John had taught her, though he could not himself explain it, Dorothy “set her mind” like an alarm clock to wake her at six the next morning and it did so. She bathed and dressed with utmost carefulness and succeeded in doing this without waking anybody. Those whose business it was to be awake, as the house servants, gave her a silent nod for good-morning and smiled to think of her energy. The reason appeared when she drew a chair to a desk by the library window and wrote the following letter:
“My darling Aunt Betty:
“Good-morning, please, and I hope you’ll have a happy day. I’ve written you a post card or a letter every day since you went away but I haven’t had one back. I wonder and am sorry but I suppose you are too busy with your sick friend. I hope you aren’t angry with me for anything. I was terrible sorry about somebody—losing—stealing that money! There, it’s out! and I feel better. Sorrier, too, about it’s being him. Well, that’s gone, and as you have so much more I guess you won’t care much. Besides, we don’t need much. Dear Mr. Seth is just too splendid for words. He thinks of something nice to do all the time.
“Yesterday we went to church and so did the dogs and the twins. I haven’t told you about them for this is the first letter since they came and that was just after breakfast Sunday. A crazy man brought them and said he’d ‘passed them on.’ They’re the cutest little mites with such horrible names—Ananias and Sapphira! Imagine anybody cruel enough to give babies those names. They aren’t much bigger than buttons but they talk as plain as you do. They said ‘A-ah!’ and ‘A-A-men!’ in the middle of the sermon and stopped the minister preaching. I wasn’t sorry they did for I didn’t know what they’d do next nor Luna either. They three and Mr. Seth are the uninvited, or self-invited, ones and they’re more fun than all the rest. Mabel fell out the carriage, or jumped out, and spoiled her dress and fainted away.
“My House Party is just fine! Monty got stuck in the barn and had to be sawed apart. I mean the barn had to be, not Monty; and not one of us said a word about it.
“I’m writing this before the rest are up because afterward I shan’t have a minute’s chance. It’s a great care to have a House Party, though the Master—we call Mr. Winters that, all of us—takes the care. I don’t know what we would do without him, and what we can without that stolen money. Monty says if he had that or had some of his own, he’d be able to manage without any old Master, he would. That was when he wanted to go sailing Sunday afternoon and Mr. Seth said ‘no.’
“Monty’s real smooth outside but he has prickly tempers sometimes; and I guess he—he sort of ‘sassed’ the Master, ’cause he refused to give us any money to hire a sail boat and Monty hadn’t any left himself. But it all blew over. Mr. Seth doesn’t seem to mind Monty any more’n he does his tortoise-shell cat; and he’s a very nice boy, a very nice boy, indeed. So are they all. I’m proud of them all. So is Mabel. So is Molly B. Those two are so proud they squabble quite consid’able over which is the nicest, and the boys just laugh.