“I want to go somewhere where I can wear an old gown, and lie in a hammock all day.”
Little Mary was listening very intently to this conversation, and seeing her interest, I listened too.
“I am tired from this winter's gaieties,” Mrs. Denville was saying, “and, in addition to that, a quieter place will be better for Mary.”
“We will go to my old home up in Maine,” said Mr. Denville decidedly. “I have not spent a summer there since I was a boy, and you and Mary have never been there.”
Mrs. Denville looked doubtful. “It is rather primitive, is it not?” she asked.
Little Mary let me slip to the floor and walked toward her father.
“Oh, dear papa, would you take us to the old farm-house?”
He nodded his head.
“And I could see the cows and the other things—I have never lived on a farm—oh, do let us go.”
Just now the conversation began to appeal to me personally. This was talk about leaving Boston, the place I had been brought up in. What was going to become of me if the Denvilles went away?