“I think I have,” David answered, with a grave smile. “But Tom ran away to sea when he was about fourteen—fifteen years ago now, and we’ve not heard of him since!”
“Is it fifteen years?” they heard Flora say, in a low tone, as if to herself.
“But how romantic!” Gwen said, with round eyes. “Wouldn’t you know a wonderful old place like this,” the girl added, as in the little silence they heard the winter wind whine softly about the sealed shutters of Wastewater, “wouldn’t you know that an old place like this would have a story! So there’s a runaway son?”
“We did hear from him once, from Pernambuco, and once from Guam, David!” Gay reminded him, animatedly.
“Do get it in order,” Laura begged. “I’ve not yet fitted Sylvia in, much less Gabrielle!”
“Well,” David said, returning to his story. “So there was my mother—she was pretty, wasn’t she, Aunt Flora?”
“Beautiful!” Flora said, briefly.
“There was my mother, Uncle Roger her husband, and Tom and me,” resumed David. “Then—this was an old-fashioned household, you know—there was a sort of cousin of his”—David nodded at the picture—“whom we called Aunt John. That was my Aunt Flora’s mother, and she kept house for us all, and Aunt Flora and Aunt Lily were her daughters. Oh, yes, and then there was Uncle Roger’s younger brother Will, who used to play the banjo and sing—what was that song about the boy ‘and his sister Sue!’ The boy that ate the green apples, Aunt Flora, and ‘A short time ago, boys, an Irishman named Daugherty, was elected to the Senate by a very large majority’——”
“Oh, wonderful!” said Laura Montallen, and Gay said eagerly, “Oh, David, go on!”
“I wish I could remember it all,” David said, regretfully. “And there was another about the Prodigal Son, and one about ‘the blow almost killed Father’——”