"No fear, mother. There's one who will stick by the old birds, and keep their nest warm and dry for them," he said gruffly, and stirred by an unusual emotion he strolled off to the farm and solaced himself with a pipe.
Meanwhile no explanations were necessary with Clarissa. She just glanced at the smiling faces, saw the clasped hands, and burst into a laugh.
"So it's settled at last," she said, her own hands closing over their clasped ones, "but the wonder to me is why you have been so long about it, for you've known your own minds long enough. Betty, my dear, you're a lucky woman."
"As if I didn't know it," protested Betty, as Clarissa kissed her.
"But I remember your telling me almost the first night I came that you should like a sister just like Betty," Tom grumbled.
"So I did, so I do, but all the same I call her a lucky sister in marrying you," and with that assertion Betty was well content.
"Shall you tell the children?" Clarissa asked later.
"Oh yes," Betty said. "I never see the use of making mysteries out of things that are clear and true as daylight, and to Jack it will make no difference. He claimed Tom as his uncle long ago. Where are they, Clarissa? Jack rushed off here in great excitement to tell the news of his going to school, and I have not seen him since."
"They are in the garden, I think. Eva is full of lamentation that she was not born a boy, so that she might go to school with Jack, but he comforts her by reminding her that she would be in a lower form, and would see little of him!"
"He's a little beyond himself; he'll come back to his bearings directly," Tom said. "It's the first event of importance that has come to him. Come, Betty; we will find them."