“Does your granddaughter live here with you?” Carol asked.
The old gentleman shook his head sadly. “No,” he replied. “Evelyn’s parents are dead and I have placed her in a good boarding-school, but she is very, very lonely. Her mother left her only a few weeks ago.”
“Poor Evelyn!” Carol said and there were tears in her eyes. “I did so want to go to boarding-school myself, but I would far rather have my mother.”
Mr. Dartmoor went to the door with Carol and the twins raced from the fountain to meet her. They went shyly up the wide stone steps when the old gentleman called to them. True, he had shaggy grey eyebrows but the blue eyes underneath them were twinkling.
When the children were again on the highway, David exclaimed, “I don’t believe that Mr. Dartmoor is an ogre at all. He looks so kind and jolly. I think he is Santa Claus.”
“Maybe so!” Carol laughingly replied, and then she told the twins about the old gentleman’s beautiful granddaughter Evelyn, who was in a boarding-school near Buffalo.
Suddenly Dorothy asked, “Carol, don’t you feel awfully sorry ’cause you can’t go away to boarding-school like you expected to?”
Carol smiled down at the pretty upturned face of her little sister as she replied, “Yes, dear, I am very sorry.”
“Then why don’t you cry?” asked David. “Dorothy always cries when she can’t have what she wants.”
“I don’t always, so now!” exclaimed his small twin, stamping her foot and flashing her eyes. “You cried yourself when your stupid old balloon burst.”