“Miss Hooker says I am to read it at the Scout meeting next week and then we will give out the parts and let them be learning them.”
“All right, sweetness; get after them,” said Uncle Robert, kissing Rosanna, and Helen, too, “for luck” he said, and going off whistling.
“I think the play is making Uncle Robert very happy,” said Rosanna as the front door slammed and she heard a merry whistle outside. “He is a changed person these last few days.”
“That is what often happens,” said Helen. “Probably he did not have anything to occupy his mind after business hours, so he was unhappy. Mother says it is a serious condition to allow oneself to be in. Now that he has our play to think about, he feels altogether different. I do myself. Do you know it is time to start for school? Let’s be off so we won’t have to hurry, and we will have time to stop for Elise.”
Elise was ready and the three girls sauntered down the street together.
As they passed a great imposing stone house, Elise said, “It is a château—what you call castle, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Rosanna, “and a cross old ogre lives in it. He and his sister live there all alone, with lots of maids and men to serve them, and he is so growly-wowly that Minnie says even the grocer boys are afraid of him. That is his car in front of the door. Did you ever see anything so large?”
“Or so lovely?” added Elise. “If he was not so ze what you just call growlee-wowlee, he might carry us to school; not?”
“There he comes,” said Rosanna. “Does he look as though he would carry any little girls anywhere unless he carried them off to eat?”
The great carved door opened and an old gentleman came down the steps. He walked with a cane and to the children he seemed very old indeed with his snow-white hair and fierce mustache. He scowled as he came and stopped to switch with his cane at a vine that had straggled up the step. He noticed the three girls approaching, and scowled at them so fiercely that they involuntarily stopped to let him pass. But he was in no hurry to do so. When he had looked them over sufficiently, he looked past them and snorted loudly at something he saw up the street, but when the girls looked around to see what was the matter, there was only a little baby girl playing with a little woolly dog; so they all looked back again at the old gentleman. He seemed to fascinate them.