“I!” exclaimed Annis, “I’d be ready in an hour if you and Milly would. Oh, I’m so glad, so glad! I must run and tell Elsie.”
“And don’t you hope she will be as glad as you are?” asked the doctor jocosely.
“Oh, it will be hard to leave Elsie!” she said, stopping short, with a look of distress. “I wonder if we couldn’t persuade Cousin Horace to let us take her along to spend the summer at our house.”
“Try it, Annis; there’s nothing like trying,” remarked the doctor with mock gravity. “But I advise you to extend your invitation to him; or, better still, to the whole family; you’ll have more chance of success.”
“I wish they could and would all go with us,” Mildred said.
“So do I, my dear; but I know that it wouldn’t suit Dinsmore to be absent from the plantation, just at present.”
“Then why did you advise me to invite him?” asked Annis in a piqued tone.
“Because in my opinion one might as well ask for the gift of his entire fortune as for leave to carry his little girl so far from him.”
“O Brother Charlie! didn’t father and mother let me come just as far away from them? and to stay away just as long?”
“Really, I had not thought of that!” laughed the doctor. “Well, ask Mr. Dinsmore; but if he says no, make allowance for the fact that he has but one daughter, while your father and mother rejoice in a goodly number.”