"Oh! yes," said Mary "give her my love and tell her I am coming over."
"Look out for breakers," said Aunt Hildy, when she saw the child, "this house'll be a bedlam now, but then we were all as leetle as that once, I spos'e," and her duty evidently spoke at that moment, saying, "You must bear with it." But she was not troubled.
Allie never troubled us, she was as sweet and sunny as a May morning all through, and even went to meeting and behaved herself admirably. She never said a word till the service ended, when she uttered one single "goo" as if well pleased. Aunt Hildy said at the supper-table she didn't believe any such thing ever happened before in the annals of our country's history,
"She's the best baby I ever see. Wish she'd walk afore you leave."
"She has never deigned to creep," said Mary; "the first time I tried to have her, she looked at me and then at her dress as if to say, "That isn't nice," and could not be coaxed to crawl. She hitches along instead, and even that is objectionable. I imagine some nice morning she will get right up and walk." At that moment Allie threw back her head of dainty yellow rings, and laughed heartily, as if she knew what we said.
Mrs. Goodwin claimed the trio for one-half of the six weeks allotted to their stay, and she said afterward:
"They were three beautiful weeks with three beautiful folks."
Louis at this time was working hard with the brush of his active goodness, and had before him much canvas to work upon. The days were placing it in his view, and we both dreamed at night of the work which had come and was coming.
It was a sunny day in June when he said: "Will my Emily go with me to-day? The colors are waiting on the pallet of the brain, and our hands must use them to-day."
"Your Emily is ready," I replied, "and Gipsy (our horse) will take us, I guess."