When Adele told their errand, Mrs. Quigley exclaimed, “Well, now, won’t Pa Quigley be pleased! It’s a long time since we were asked to a party.” Then, turning to Adele, she took her hands and said: “And so you’re Daniel Doring’s granddaughter. Daniel was mighty good to my man and me, and he’d be sorry if he knew that we had lost our little home. But there—” she smiled quickly through her tears. “I tell Pa Quigley, when he’s wishing we had our little home once more, where we could sit by the fireplace evenings, like we used to love to do,—I tell him that we must count our blessin’s. Things might be worse. One of us might be dead, and then how lonely the other of us would be!”
“That’s true,” Adele said as she arose, and then, stooping, she impulsively kissed the wrinkled cheeks as she added, “Mrs. Quigley, you belong to our Sunnyside Club, don’t you?”
“Maybe so,” said the little old lady, rising. “Once I read somewhere, ‘Every cloud has a silver lining; let’s wear our clouds with the linings on the outside.’ I try to do that. It makes it pleasanter for other folks, and I don’t know but it’s cheerier even for the person who is wearing the cloud.”
“I’m going to remember that,” Gertrude said as she pressed the wrinkled hand which she held. Then Adele exclaimed, “Now, Mrs. Quigley, a week from Saturday we’ll call for you at two, so you be ready and watching.”
When the girls were driving down the country road, Adele exclaimed earnestly, “Gertrude, those Quigleys are going to have a home together if it lies within my power to get it.”
“Isn’t it queer, Adele,” the other remarked reflectively, “how different people are. There are some women who have everything that money can buy, and yet they are discontented and fretful. If they could have heard dear old Mrs. Quigley just now, it might have done them more good than a whole book full of sermons.”
They were driving along a pleasant street in the village, and Adele soon drew rein in front of a neat white cottage with green blinds. “There is Grandfather Dally under the apple-tree,” she remarked as she hitched Firefly to a post.
“Well! Well!” the old man exclaimed, as he peered over his spectacles at the two girls. “If it ain’t Tudy and Dellie! ’Taint often I have a call from two nice little girls, but there, more’n likely you’ve come to call on my daughter, but she’s out somewheres, a-wheelin’ the baby.”
The girls assured him that they had called on purpose to see him, as they wished to invite him to a party. The old man was as pleased as a boy when he heard this. Then he added with a chuckle, “I’ve heerd that you little girls have turned the cabin out in the meadows into a sort of a play-house. Ain’t you skeered that the miser’ll come back some time and ketch you there?”
“Miser!” Adele and Gertrude exclaimed in one breath. “What miser, Grandpa Dally? We never heard of one!”