"Let's make a tucked-in for dinner," said Rob. "It's the only way I can express my joy."
A "tucked-in" was Rob's name for a fruit-pudding, into which one tucked whatever fruit might chance to be in season at its making.
"Blueberry!" cried Prue, enthusiastically. "I'll go back to the store and get them—they had beauties this morning when I went for the mail."
"What a lovely day!" said Wythie, but, though she gazed afar over the tree-tops as she spoke, they knew that she did not refer to the weather, nor the fleckless sky above them.
"I feel as though an inexpressible weight had been lifted from my shoulders; I'm very happy, dear," said Mrs. Grey. But though she laid her hand on her husband's arm as she spoke, and looked at him, only Rob, who loved him so protectingly, understood that over and above the relief of having the means to provide necessities for her family, her mother rejoiced that her husband, for whose sake her sensitive pride was always up in arms, had aroused himself to give them to her.
Dinner was scarcely over when Prue, looking out of the window, called to her sisters: "Here comes Battalion B." This was Rob's final christening of the three Rutherfords, who rarely appeared separately. The friendship between them and the girls had progressed sufficiently for the Greys not to mind being caught by "Battalion B" in their uniforms, and Rob leaned out of the window now to hail them with wild wavings of a dish-towel.
"How are you, Grey ladies?" cried Basil, as they entered. "We have come to demand of you an afternoon in the orchard, beneath whose spreading appletrees the village chestnut wishes to paint Prue's portrait."
"My portrait?" cried Prue, starting up in a rapture.
"Who, may I ask, is the village chestnut?" inquired Wythie.
"Bartlemy Rutherford, whose talents as an artist are great, though unrecognized," said Bruce.