“Yes, dear old fellow,” said Mrs. Burton.
“One fing nysh about dem little boysh,” said Toddie, “ish dat, when their papas an’ mammas is sick, dere isn’t anybody to tell ’em not to get deir shoes dusty. Dzust see how dey walksh along in the middle of the street, kickin’ up de dust, an’ nobody to say ‘Don’t!’s to ’em, an’ nobody skrong enough to spynk ’em for it when dey gets home. I wiss I was a musicker.”
“Well, they’re gone now,” sighed Budge, “’an we want something else to make us happy. Say, Aunt Alice, why don’t you have a horse an’ carriage like mamma, so that you could take us out ridin’?”
“Uncle Harry isn’t rich enough to keep good horses and carriages,” said Mrs. Burton, “and he doesn’t like poor ones.”
“Why, how much does good horses cost? I think Mr. Blanner’s horses are pretty good, but papa says they’d be dear at ten cents apiece.”
“I suppose a good horse costs three or four hundred dollars,” said Mrs. Burton.
“My—y—y!” exclaimed Budge. “That’ more money than it costs our Sunday-school to pay for a missionary! Which is goodest—horses or missionaries?”
“Missionaries, of course,” said Mrs. Burton, leaving the piazza, with a dim impression that she had, during the morning, answered a great many questions with very slight benefit to any one.
The boys cared for themselves until luncheon, and then returned with rather less appetite than was peculiar to them. The new siege of questioning which their aunt had anticipated was postponed; each boy’s mind seemed to be in the reflective, rather than the receptive, attitude.
After luncheon they hastily disappeared, without any attempt on the part of their aunt to prevent them, for Mrs. Burton had arranged to make, that afternoon, one of the most important of calls. Mrs. Congressman Weathervane had been visiting a friend at Hillcrest, and Mrs. Weathervane’s mother and Mrs. Burton’s grandmother had been schoolday acquaintances, and Mrs. Mayton would have come from the city to pay her respects to the descendant of the old friend of the family, but some of the infirmities of age prevented. And Mrs. Mayton instructed her daughter to call upon Mrs. Weathervane as a representative of the family, and Mrs. Burton would have lost her right hand or her new spring hat rather than disregard such a command. So she had hired a carriage and devised an irreproachable toilet, and recalled and tabulated everything she had ever heard about the family of the lady who had become Mrs. Weathervane.