The weather that summer was an unexpected quantity. Instead of the day after the storm being cool, it was hot. However, old Daniel, after his recovery, insisted on going out of doors with little Dan'l after breakfast. The only concession which he would make to Sarah Dean, who was fairly frantic with anxiety, was that he would merely go down the road as far as the big elm-tree, that he would sit down there, and let the child play about within sight.
“You'll be brought home agin, sure as preachin',” said Sarah Dean, “and if you're brought home ag'in, you won't get up ag'in.”
Old Daniel laughed. “Now don't you worry, Sarah,” said he. “I'll set down under that big ellum and keep cool.”
Old Daniel, at Sarah's earnest entreaties, took a palm-leaf fan. But he did not use it. He sat peacefully under the cool trail of the great elm all the forenoon, while little Dan'l played with her doll. The child was rather languid after her shock of the day before, and not disposed to run about. Also, she had a great sense of responsibility about the old man. Sarah Dean had privately charged her not to let Uncle Daniel get “overhet.” She continually glanced up at him with loving, anxious, baby eyes.
“Be you overhet. Uncle Dan'l?” she would ask.
“No, little Dan'l, uncle ain't a mite overhet,” the old man would assure her. Now and then little Dan'l left her doll, climbed into the old man's lap, and waved the palm-leaf fan before his face.
Old Daniel Wise loved her so that he seemed, to himself, fairly alight with happiness. He made up his mind that he would find some little girl in the village to come now and then and play with little Dan'l. In the cool of that evening he stole out of the back door, covertly, lest Sarah Dean discover him, and walked slowly to the rector's house in the village. The rector's wife was sitting on her cool, vine-shaded veranda. She was alone, and Daniel was glad. He asked her if the little girl who had come to live with her, Content Adams, could not come the next afternoon and see little Dan'l. “Little Dan'l had ought to see other children once in a while, and Sarah Dean makes real nice cookies,” he stated, pleadingly.
Sally Patterson laughed good-naturedly. “Of course she can, Mr. Wise,” she said.
The next afternoon Sally herself drove the rector's horse, and brought Content to pay a call on little Dan'l. Sally and Sarah Dean visited in the sitting-room, and left the little girls alone in the parlor with a plate of cookies, to get acquainted. They sat in solemn silence and stared at each other. Neither spoke. Neither ate a cooky. When Sally took her leave, she asked little Dan'l if she had had a nice time with Content, and little Dan'l said, “Yes, ma'am.”
Sarah insisted upon Content's carrying the cookies home in the dish with a napkin over it.