“I don’t mean the way I put it. You know that. I mean that the rule is against smoking. It does say, though, that young ladies who have the habit are requested to go elsewhere.”
“Look, Jannet, she’s beckoning to us,” Nell interrupted.
Jannet noticed that Jan and Chick felt in their pockets. “I’ve got enough change, Chick,” said Jan. “The poor old woman sees a chance to make a little money, and it’s kind of nice of her to ask us in out of the rain.”
“Gracious!” Nell exclaimed. “It will smell of stale tobacco smoke and I don’t know what else, in there,—but all right, if you boys want to. A fire would feel pretty good, as wet as we are, and I know that they will have one.”
Jannet did not know that she cared to try it, but she would not make any objection, she thought. She would do what the rest did, though she did not want her fortune told,—she could get out of that.
The boys saw that the horses were firmly hitched to the posts of the shed and presently all of them dashed across the yielding, puddly grass and ground to the little stoop of the house. A plump woman of past middle age had come to the door by this time, while the old lady hobbled back to a chair by the fire. She was moving aside to make room for the guests when they entered.
“Come right in,” pleasantly said the younger woman. “You got caught in one of the worst storms we’ve had yet. I’ll hang up your raincoats in the kitchen and you can dry out a little before the fire. That rain would go through anything!”
“It’s around the edges that we are wettest,” said Nell, going on to explain about their picnic and inquiring about the health of the family and the grandmother in particular.
The grand-daughter, in the kitchen door, noting that her grandmother’s back was turned to her, shook her head and tapped it with her fingers, to indicate that the old lady’s mind was not just what it should be, but answered cheerfully, “Oh, Grandma is coming on all right. She can hear as well as anybody, see well enough to read the paper, and she’ll be ninety-three to-morrow.”
“If that’s so, we’ll have to send her something to-morrow,” said kindly Nell, “and wish her many happy returns.”