"It isn't so much reading," murmured Allie, rather hurt, for she was an over-sensitive child, prone to imagine slights, and, as we know, given to ready tears. "I'll tell you, people;" and she proceeded to give the amount made by Jim since he had established the peanut-stand, with its various divisions for the separate objects of his benevolence and ambition. The latter figured under the head of "For to be President;" and if her accounts, or, rather, Jim's as set down by her, were to be trusted, he had really done very well in the stand business.
"We know two deforms," quoth Daisy, solemnly, as Allie closed; "one deform is very nice and good, and the ofer is horrid and scratching. One is Captain Yorke's, and the ofer is Jim's peanut-stand girl. But we have to be good to the cross deform, 'cause God made her that way. Allie and I are going to try and make her nice and pleasant, too."
"She thinks we're proud, and only like to go to see her, and show her our nice dolls and things, to make her feel sorry," said Allie; "Tony said so. And she turns her hump at us, and makes faces at us, and won't think we want to be good to her. She thinks we're proud at her, 'cause she has to sell peanuts."
"You go and sell peanuts, then, and show her you're not too proud to do it," said Douglas, carelessly, and certainly with no thought that the suggestion would ever be acted upon.
"We needn't to have been afraid about Mrs. Yorke's fit-to-be-seenedness," said Allie, hopping delightedly around on one foot, the day after the arrival of the Yorkes, and on her return from her first visit to them. "Why, she does look so nice; just as nice as mammy in her Sunday clothes. She looks almost lady."
"Yes, she does, and it don't make any dif'ence, if she behaves lady," said Daisy; "and I fink she always behaves very lady. Mamma," with a sudden and startling change of subject, "if somebody told you you could do somefing to help somebody, oughtn't you to do it?"
"Yes, my darling, if you can," answered mother, rather oblivious, to tell the truth, of the child's earnestness in putting the question; for she was at the moment writing an answer to a note which had been just brought in.
"And it's very nice to do the kind fing, and not speak about it, isn't it?" questioned Daisy.
"Very, dear," answered mother, still only half hearing the little one, and far from thinking that she was supposed to be giving her sanction to a most unheard of proceeding.
Mrs. Yorke's attire and general appearance proved satisfactory even to fastidious Miss Allie and myself; indeed, she would have passed muster among any hundred elderly women of the respectable middle class; and there was nothing whatever about her to attract special attention, unless one turned again for a second look at the kind, motherly old face. There was a sort of natural refinement about her, too, which made her adapt herself with some ease to her unaccustomed surroundings.