Here Maggie's blue eyes grew full of tears.
"Never mind, Mag," replied her little cousin soothingly; "it is very odd, and I don't understand it a bit, but mother says things are sure to come right, and you know Uncle John wished us to trust him."
"But the time is going on," said Maggie; "the summer days will go, and Jo won't have seen the lovely country where the grass is green. Oh! Ralph, we must do something."
"If only Mrs. Aylmer were the new laundress!" began Ralph. "You can't think what a nice cottage that is, Mag—four lovely rooms, and such a nice, nice kitchen, with those dear little lattice panes of glass in the window, and lots of jasmine and Virginia creeper peeping in from outside, and a green field for the laundress to dry her clothes in, just beyond. Poor laundress! she will like that field awfully, and it would be very unkind of us to wish to take it away from her and give it to Mrs. Aylmer, for of course Mrs. Aylmer knows nothing about it, and the new laundress has probably arrived, and set her heart on it by this time; and she may be a widow, too, with lots and lots of little children."
"But none of the children could be like Jo," said Maggie.
"Well, perhaps not," answered Ralph. "Oh, here comes mother; let's run to meet her. Mother darling, has the new laundress come?"
"Yes, Ralph, she and her family arrived about an hour ago; they are settling down nicely into the cottage, and seem to be respectable people. They all think the cottage very comfortable."
"And are you going to see them again to-night, Auntie Violet?" asked Maggie with rather a sorrowful look on her little face.
"Why, yes, Maggie; they are all strangers here, you know, and I fancy they rather feel that, so it might be nice to walk up presently and take a cup of tea with them. There are some children, so you and Ralph might come too."
"Didn't I tell you how mother considered the poor?" here whispered Ralph, poking the little princess rather violently in the side. "Oh, yes, mother, we'd like to go to tea with the little laundresses. Is there anything we could take them—anything they would like, to show that we sympathize with them for having come so far, and having left their old home?"