"Don't worry, child! Just do the best you can," was the advice of the housekeeper, when Alene, kneeling on a chair at the window next morning, viewed the forbidding, rain-soaked grounds.
"But I depended on the garden to help me out," said she, giving a reproachful glance at the soggy grass and dripping trees. "The girls could swing and run about in the grass, and now we'll all have to stay cooped together in the house! I wouldn't mind it a bit with Laura and Ivy. We could do lots of things inside—but the Ramsey girls!"
"There's the tower room and the wide halls. Surely you can play some games there! It does seem unfortunate how things turn out sometimes, but we must just bear it!" said Mrs. Major.
"That's what makes it so much harder, we must bear it! Ivy says if we could take our burdens just because we wanted to for a noble cause, like some of the martyrs did, it wouldn't be half so hard as when they are put on one!" grumbled Alene. "But there, I'm not going to cry about it!"
"I wouldn't, either," cried Kizzie, broom in hand, her face glowing from an attack on the upstairs carpets. "It would only make things damper!"
The smiling visage of the plump little maid seemed to have captured some of the sunshine hidden away by the clouds; it radiated from her blue eyes, her yellow hair, her round rosy cheeks; Alene, turning from the depressing outside where the rain was steadily falling, felt an answering glow when she met that sunny gaze, and retorted gaily:
"Does she mean to be profane or funny, or only puny!"
"I mean to tell you what I was thinkin' about! Wouldn't it be fun for you and the girls to make taffy this afternoon?"
Alene clapped her hands.
"Oh, Kizzie, the very thing! And please, please let me be chief cook—I think it would be lovely to potter round the pans and things!"