A hopeful smile crept over the tired face of the woman. “Life would be very beautiful if my Charles Augustus could run and play and ride a wheel like other boys,” she said.
Virginia found her cousin and the lad in the midst of a great romp. He beamed at Helen, of whom he had become a great admirer, regardless of her sentimental tendencies. “We didn’t miss your cousin one bit, did we?” he announced, and then, “I don’t see anything in that to laugh at,” when the girls gave vent to their merriment.
“We are going now, Charles Augustus,” Helen told him. “Kiss me good bye.”
Regardless of his earlier attitude, the lad succumbed to the allure of a beautiful woman as has man since the beginning of things.
“Are you coming again soon?” he demanded.
“Yes,” Virginia answered. She was very serious and thoughtful as she followed the lad and the gay and talkative Helen another way to the pond. As she passed the mail box, she raised her eyes and upon it read the name, “Curtis.”
“I knew it,” she whispered. “Joe has his mother’s eyes.”
CHAPTER XVIII
AUNT KATE LENDS A HAND
The next morning Virginia wrote Mrs. Henderson about the case of Charles Augustus. She wrote also to Joe Curtis, but in her letter she did not refer to her meeting with his mother and lame brother or to her visit to his home. Afterwards she went out and sat in the hammock. Swinging gently, she gazed with serious eyes at the landscape; but her thoughts gave but little heed to the beautiful scenery which lay before her.