“You and I will drive over with some work for them this afternoon, Lulu,” said the captain; “and call at Fairview and Ion on our way home, so that you can have the pleasure of telling your little friends, Evelyn and Rosie, about the trip you are expecting to take. Here, give me that bundle; it is a trifle heavy for you to carry, and I’ll go with you to the sewing-room.”
“Oh, you’re just the goodest papa!” she returned merrily, readily yielding up the package, putting her hand into his, and dancing along by his side as he led her to the sewing-room; “you’re always contriving something to give me pleasure. It’ll be fun to tell the girls, and I’m in ever such a hurry to have a chance.”
“Yes, my daughter Lulu is very apt to be in a hurry,” he said, smiling down indulgently upon her, “and it is well not to dilly dally when there is anything to be done, yet sometimes wisest to make haste slowly.”
“Papa, don’t tell Alma or Susan that, please,” she whispered, in a merry aside—for they were nearing the open door of the sewing-room—“because I want them to make haste fast this time.”
“No, only that they must be deliberate enough to make sure of doing the work right; for otherwise it would but be the ‘more haste the less speed.’”
“Yes, sir; I remember that old saw, and how I’ve sometimes found it true.”
In the neat living-room of their cottage home Mrs. Allen and Susan sat that bright June afternoon, the mother busily plying her needle, the daughter running a sewing-machine.
The little garden was gay with flowers and the vines over the porch were in full bloom; the drowsy hum of the bees came pleasantly in at the open door and window, accompanied by the sweet scents of the flowers, and now and then from an adjacent field or wood the cheery bird call, “Bob White! Bob White!”
“How delightful it is here,” remarked Susan, stopping her machine for a moment to readjust her work; “the air is so sweet; the sounds are too. I like to hear that bird calling out so cheerily.”
“Yes,” rejoined her mother, “it is a very agreeable change from the old sounds of scolding, quarrelling, screaming, and crying that used to assail our ears in our former abode.”