Leaping to her feet, though still feeling a little dazed from having so suddenly awakened, Dixie opened the door, to see on the path the kindly banker from Genoa. At once there was panic in the heart of the girl. Why was he coming in the middle of the month, or indeed why was he coming at all? For the past year he had sent the money the first of every month by Ira Jenkins, who did his banking over at Genoa, and was glad, in his gruff way, to do a good turn for his little neighbors, the Martins.
Samuel Clayburn climbed out of the buggy and smiled at the girl. She invited him to enter the cabin with a dignified little manner that she had inherited from Pine Tree Martin, who had stood as straight and erect as one of the trees that he so admired.
“Won’t you be seated, Mr. Clayburn?” Dixie asked, wondering why her knees were shaking so that she could hardly stand.
“I can’t stop but two jiffs, little girl, but I thought I’d rather tell you myself than write; seemed like a more humane thing to do, as I am a father myself.”
“Oh, Mr. Clayburn,” the child leaned forward eagerly. “Has something happened to the money? Is it all gone?”
Dixie was sitting on the very edge of a straight-backed chair, and her folded hands were tightly clenched. Mr. Clayburn was plainly at a loss to know how to begin. He had not supposed it would be so hard to tell a small girl that—
“Little Miss Dixie,” he suddenly exclaimed, after having tried in vain to think of some way to lead gradually up to the matter of business upon which he had come, “please don’t take what I am going to say too much to heart.” Then his kind, florid face brightened as an inspiration came to him. “I have a fine plan,” he assured her, “a very fine plan which will make it all right in the end. I am sure of that.”
“In the end, Mr. Clayburn? The end of what?” Poor little Dixie remembered, just then, that that was what had been said when Grandmother Piggins was dying—“It’s near the end now.”
She gave a little dry sob, and the good man took out his big red handkerchief and mopped his brow. Then, coughing to clear his throat, he began on a new tack. “Dixie, my wife has taken a great liking to little Carol. She saw her last month over at the county fair, and she said then that she’d like to adopt her to grow up twins with our little Sylvia. It’s bad for a child to be brought up alone, you know,—makes them selfish,—and we’re afraid our little daughter is beginning to be spoiled, and so we’ve had it in mind for some time to adopt another little girl if we could find a real nice one who needed adopting.”
For a moment the listener sat as one dazed. She could hardly comprehend what the kind man was saying, but, when he paused to mop his brow again, Dixie exclaimed: “Oh, but Mr. Clayburn, I couldn’t give up my little sister, Carol. She surely wouldn’t want to leave Ken and Jimmy-Boy and me”; but even as she spoke, Dixie feared that she was wrong. Carol would be eager to go, probably, and what right had Dixie to keep her pretty younger sister in a log cabin when she might be living in that fine big white-pillared house in Genoa that was surrounded with a wide lawn and beautiful gardens?