Will merely laughed and replied good naturedly to the taunts, and Annabel tossed her tawny head half in pride and half in defiance and told the other girls they were jealous. So it was not long before their comrades tired of teasing them and they were left to do as they pleased.
When spring came on and the weather grew warmer, Will Carden not only walked home from school with Annabel, but came every morning across lots to meet her at the corner of the street near the big house and accompany her to the school. Sometimes Mary Louise or Theodore joined them, but more often they were left to themselves, the boys growling that “Will wasn’t half as much fun as he used to be,” and the girls wondering what he could see in “that freckled-faced Nan Williams” to interest him so greatly.
But the truth was that the two had grown very congenial, and liked to be together. Annabel had learned all about Will’s life and ambitions and understood him as no other companion had ever been able to do. He was sure of her sympathy whenever anything went wrong, and knew she would share his joy when he was “in luck.”
It was Annabel who advised him to “make a nest-egg” of the forty-three dollars which the doctor paid him in dividends the first of the year, and the girl planned shrewdly in many ways to encourage him and give him confidence in his future. In addition to this, she was more clever in her studies than Will, and often she was of great assistance to him in explaining the lessons, when his slower mind failed to grasp the details.
I can’t pretend to explain how so much real wisdom came to lurk in Annabel’s childish head; but people said she was more like her father than any of the other children. During the months that followed her rescue from the icy pond she grew much more sedate in demeanor than before, and more considerate of her brothers and sisters, so that they soon came to look upon her as their mentor, in a degree, and asked her advice about many of the little trials of their daily lives.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DAWN OF PROSPERITY.
In April Mrs. Williams, whose health had been poor during all the winter, failed so rapidly that the doctor who came from the city to examine her declared she needed an European trip, with a residence abroad of at least a year, in Spain or Italy.