CHAPTER VI
A LOCAL SNOW STORM
After Caro reached home she began to be afraid that Trolley would not come back and the thought made her rather unhappy, but just as the lunch bell rang he came trotting across the lawn. She was watching at the window and ran to open the door, giving him such a warm welcome that the president who saw it, remarked to Aunt Charlotte, “I don’t know what Caro would do without that cat.”
That very day Dr. Barrows left town on seminary business and was gone several weeks. Hard times had effected the seminary, an effort must be made to increase its funds, and this was the task the president had before him. In this way it happened that he heard nothing of the visit to Walter Grayson.
Caro missed him very much, for although she and Aunt Charlotte were beginning to understand each other, they would never be the intimate friends she and her grandfather were.
When Marjorie heard the story she exclaimed, “Why Caro! You had better not let Aunt Charlotte know; she’ll scold you like everything.”
Caro was puzzled. Her grandfather had said he was sorry for the Graysons and wished he could do something for them. She had thought of something—surely this couldn’t be wrong, and yet she felt Marjorie was probably right when she said Aunt Charlotte would not approve.
About this time the little girls began to have lessons together every morning, sitting in small chairs on either side of the cutting table in their aunt’s bedroom. They read from a small green volume called “Little Annie’s Third Book,” a favorite of Aunt Charlotte’s, from which she had taught the children of the family for the last forty years. Caro privately thought it rather silly, but accepted it because mamma had read in it when she was little.
Caro meant to try very hard while grandpa was away, to be a pleasure and not an annoyance to her aunt and Jane, so she might have a good report for him when he returned. During the first week she succeeded so well that Aunt Charlotte remarked to her sister-in-law, Marjorie’s mother, that she had never known two better children than those little girls.
Alas! it was not long before she was compelled to change her opinion.