"He didn't quite understand," said Mrs. Scollard gently, as Bob turned away to conceal the broad grin spreading over his face as he caught their new acquisition's meaning, and Happie bolted from the room.
Peculiarities of dialect did not affect the relish of the dinner which this hardy Rose served at thirteen minutes after twelve. Everything did taste so good to the hungry, weary and lonely Scollards! Margery and Happie renewed their duets of old Patty-Pan days as they dried Rosie's dishes, and their mother sat down to write Miss Bradbury of her coming, and to tell her that she might return at once to the bosom of a greatly cheered family, for the maid they wanted had found them, and search for her on their side was no longer necessary.
The storm cleared away in the night, and the glorious sunrise of the morning ushered in the spring. With it came soft brooding days in which the grass and leaves wakened to life, the birds dropped down from the warm sky in daily increasing kinds and numbers, and the flowers of early May lifted up their delicate little faces. Polly and Penny came home daily with wilting hepatica and anemones and violets in their warm little hands, while the older children sought and found on their rambles the arbutus whose sweetness the winds bore into the chambers of the Ark, past the dainty new curtains.
Rosie proved a comfort in spite of angularity of form and peculiarities of speech. She was such a balm to perturbed minds and weary muscles that the children privately referred to her as "the Dove," for her coming had been the harbinger of peace to the Ark. She evidently regarded the entire family as helpless infants, needing her unceasing care and vigilance, and she gave them no less than she deemed they needed, piloting them through the waters of inexperience.
Miss Bradbury wrote that she was coming back. Margery and Happie speculated on the effect of Rosie and her employer on each other, but Happie felt sure that they would get on together, for each was in her way a character, and their sterling honesty was of much the same pattern.
Aunt Keren was going to bring them something that they would enjoy, "a species of toy," so she wrote, yet something that she hoped to make useful. They must get Jake to bring his three-seated wagon to the station if the young Scollards came to meet her, as she hoped they would.
They did, or at least Margery, Happie and Bob did, consumed with curiosity as to what they should find encumbering Miss Bradbury.
When she stepped briskly off the car on the steps which the grade of the track at Crestville compelled the porter to place for passengers, the Scollards saw her encumbrance, and hailed it with a shout. There, dismounting behind Miss Keren-happuch, so thoroughly laden that there seemed no question that lady was already making him useful, his cheerful face one mass of smiles, came Ralph Gordon!
Happie and Bob dashed at him regardless of a man with a fishing-pole, come up for trout, and collided violently with the combination. The brief mishap, though it left the traveler furious, did not dampen Happie's ardor. She shook both Ralph's hands so hard, and exclaimed: "Well, I never did!" so emphatically, and so many times, that there was no doubt of her pleasure at seeing her former neighbor. Bob slapped him on the back with such abandon that Ralph swallowed whole the durable black licorice drop with which he had been beguiling the last moments of the journey, and choked over it so violently that he had no breath to reply to the questions his friends hurled at him in rapid succession.
"I thought that you might like a guest, a crumb from your Patty-Pans, so to speak," said Miss Bradbury, surveying the effect of her surprise with much satisfaction. "Ralph has had a cold, and has been working too hard," she explained. "I need a boy to help Bob, so I took this one. I shall expect you to keep him hard at work, allowing no time for talk or play. How's your Charlotte-mother?"