"Won't you take pity on me, dear?" he entreated. "I'm old and ugly to look at, I know; but I want you, Evelyn."
She would have answered him then; the words trembled upon her lips.
"Aunty Evelyn! Aunty Evelyn!"
The two shrill little voices upraised in urgent unison pierced the confused maze of her thoughts. She looked around, not without a wilful sense of relief to see the two older Brewster children running toward her brandishing a muff, which she presently recognised as one of her own cherished possessions, un-missed as yet since her brief visit with Elizabeth.
"Mother found it on the floor after you'd gone, an' she said for us to run after you an' give it to you," Carroll began, with a large sense of his own importance. "Doris wanted to carry it; but I was 'fraid she'd drop it in the wet. I didn't drop it, Aunty Evelyn; but Doris threw some snow at me, an' it got on the muff, an' I stopped to brush it off. I thought we'd never catch up."
Doris had snuggled her small person between Mr. Hickey and Miss Tripp, where she appropriated a hand of each in a friendly and impartial way.
"I guess girls know how to carry muffs better'n boys," she observed calmly. "Carroll was too fresh; that is why I threw snow at him."
"Why, Doris dear, where did you ever learn such an expression?" murmured Miss Tripp, vaguely reproving.
Doris gazed up at her mentor with an expression of preternatural intelligence.