"Now, Robert, who said anything that sounded like that?" demanded Happie reproachfully. "I was merely stating facts. Do you think that I could weary of doing as well as we do there? Do you realize that with your promotion and your five dollars more a week, and our tea room, we are making up the other half of dearest motherum's salary which she wasn't strong enough to earn this winter? We clear twenty dollars a week at the worst, and Margery and I are laying by money to give—or to offer to give—Aunt Keren for rent, besides. We don't feel comfortable knowing we aren't paying our own rent, especially as she can't afford to do it."
"Rather a ticklish matter to pay back a Christmas present," remarked Bob.
"Not to Aunt Keren," said Happie. "She will know just how we mean it, and she'll see a business ought to pay its own expenses, if it can."
"That's one of the nicest things about Auntie Keren," said Margery. "She never misunderstands one, always takes everything precisely as one says it, and construes it by her experience of what one is likely to mean. She may be brusque, and I suppose people who don't know her think she is too much so, but I think there's more real amiability under her even-tempered bluntness than there is in sweetness that doesn't hold out."
"A good deal," agreed Happie emphatically. "I think people who get hurt and offended easily have the worst of hard dispositions, for they always pride themselves on their sensitiveness, and blame everybody else."
"And I think," said Gretta quietly, "that this day is one of those pleasant things you are talking about, that can't be depended upon to hold out."
"Going to be a change?" drawled Bob, imitating the accent of Jake Shale, who had worked for the Scollards the previous summer on the farm.
"I guess," retorted Gretta in like accent. "There's such an east wind blowing. What fur a ring is that round the sun? Storm, say not?"
The three Scollards laughed aloud with such enjoyment that two or three passers-by smiled in sympathy. The dialect of Madison County sounded odd and pleasant, bringing the picture of the Ark in its green fields into handsome Fifth Avenue.