“I know,” said Hannah with a sigh, “but I wish Mother could be here all the same.”
“But she can’t, you know,” said hopeful Maysie, “so what’s the use of fretting about what can’t be helped?”
“Maysie is right,” said Hannah, after a moment’s silence, for she began to see into what an unhappy mood they were drifting. “The best thing we can do is to get as strong and well as we can, and then we can help Mother more when we get home.”
“That’s so,” replied Johnny, once more cheerful; “and it’s the pocketful of shells and nice stones I’ll take home to her,—those the boy told us of.”
“And the day we go home we’ll take her a big bunch of the flowers the fields is full of,” said Hannah.
“And the kitten the boy promised me!” said Maysie.
“I don’t believe Father would let us keep a kitten,” said Johnny. “You know about the little dog!”
“Kittens isn’t dogs,” replied Maysie, confidently. “I know he wouldn’t send a kitten out on us.”
“I guess he wouldn’t mind a kitten,” said Hannah, “because they keep the mice away. I heard him tell Mother one day that she ought to get a cat or the mice would eat us out of house and home.”
So they agreed that it would be safe to introduce a kitten into their home, and in talking over the pleasant surprises they intended to give Mother they were soon their old cheerful selves.