"Aunty, they must be pretty rich," he said.
"They are," said Miss Lydia.
"I guess if they had a boy they'd give him a pony," Johnny said, sighing.
"Very likely," Miss Lydia told him. And she, too, watched the opening up of the big house with her frightened blue eyes.
"Lydia, you're losing flesh," Mrs. Barkley said in an anxious bass. Indeed, all Old Chester was anxious about Miss Sampson's looks that summer. "What is the matter?" said Old Chester.
But Miss Lydia, although she really did grow thin, never said what was the matter.
"I do dislike secretiveness!" said Mrs. Drayton; "I call it vulgar."
"I wonder what she calls curiosity?" Doctor Lavendar said when this remark was repeated to him.
Miss Lydia may have been vulgar, but her vulgarity did not save her from terror. When Mary drove past the little house, the Grasshopper's heart was in her mouth! Would Johnny's mother stop?—or would Mrs. Robertson go by? There came, of course, the inevitable day when the mother stopped. . . . It was in June, a day of white clouds racing in a blue sky, and tree tops bending and swaying and locust blossoms showering on the grass. Johnny was engaged in trying to lure his cat out of a pear tree, into which a dog had chased her.
"Stop!" Mary Robertson called to the coachman; then, leaning forward, she tried to speak. Her breath came with a gasp. "Are you the—the boy who lives with Miss Sampson?"