“Thank you, Mrs. Cook, but I don’t like to do that. They are so lovely and look so happy in this beautiful garden, I’d hate to. We shall be going, I’m told, and they’ll only be ruined for nothing. But, if you please, I’d like to sit down on these steps and enjoy them. Wouldn’t you, Molly? While your father talks with Mrs. Cook.”
The steps belonged to a sort of lean-to, or outdoor kitchen. The little addition was covered with vines in leaf and more sweet-peas clambered about its base. Behind it was the living-room with its open door and table already set for dinner. A savory odor issued thence and set the girls to thinking how remarkably hungry they were, despite their late and substantial breakfast. Also, to wondering if Nova Scotia air was to whet their appetites this way all the time.
Thought Molly, in especial: “If it is I shall buy me a little bag to wear at my waist, as Auntie does, and fill it with crackers.”
Then, thinking of food, she “pricked up her ears,” hearing her hostess inviting:
“But, Judge Breckenridge, I would take it the highest honor if you would share our dinner with us. Of course, it isn’t what I’d have liked to have, had I known. But my husband used to say, ‘Welcome is the best sauce.’ Besides, if you’re to leave so soon I’ll be glad to talk over that matter of which I just spoke. I am really so perplexed as to what is best. You’ve been so kind to my brother-in-law, Ephraim, that—”
She interrupted herself to laugh and observe:
“Yet that’s presumptuous of me, too. The fact that you’ve been a kind adviser to one of the family doesn’t form a precedent for all the rest of us. But, business aside, cannot you and your daughters join us?”
“Thank you. We will be most happy; though I must set you right on that point—of relationship. One is my daughter, the blonde, not the flower-lover; and one is my temporarily ‘adopted.’ Molly and Dolly their names; and two dearer little maids you’ll travel far to find.”
“Aye, they’re fair bonny, and so unlike. Now, sit you down, please, while I dish up; and tell me, if you will, how does the man, Ephraim? He was ever in fear of his health but a better one never lived. After my sister died—the pair of us married brothers—he grew lost and finical. Nought we could do for him just suited the man. It was the grief, I knew. So, after he’d mumbled along more years than he’d ought, fending for himself, he crossed over to the States and drifted south to Richmond and you. ’Twas a sad pity he’d neither son nor daughter to cheer him in his widower life, but so was his Providence. Mine has been better. Son is my hope and—and my anxiety. He’s not found his right niche yet, poor lad. There’s a love of the sea in him, like his sailor father; but he’s never got over that tragedy of his father’s death.”
“Where did that happen, Mrs. Cook? Ephraim told me he was drowned,” asked the visitor, sympathetically.