"Well, I'd like to believe it," 'Possum said, drawing a long breath. "But I've known Dad a long time!"
"You'll know him much better when you have accustomed him to a well-turned-out daughter. And think of the children, 'Possum. How do you expect Bertha and Polly to be dainty and fresh if you don't set them the example?"
"Well, I seem to have been making a mighty lot of mistakes," 'Possum said ruefully. "I thought I was doin' the best for those kids, but I suppose I'm all wrong."
"I think you're wrong in one or two things, and just a wonder in everything else," said Aileen warmly. "And they love you just as if you were their mother, 'Possum. Now you have got to make them very proud of you."
So they worked at the new frocks together: Aileen patient in explaining, and swift at planning, while 'Possum grasped her needle as if it were a bradawl, and drove it through the stuff with much muscular effort, producing stitches of a size truly majestic. "Blest if I can handle the silly little thing!" said she, laboriously unpicking: "ploughin's a jolly sight easier!" But in time her natural deftness came to her aid, and when Aileen had succeeded in making her forget the methods by which she had "clamped" together the garments of her family, and inducing her to use a needle less thick than a skewer, she arrived at creditable results. The finished pile of dresses contained plenty of her work, and she gloated over them proudly, though most of her pride was reserved for the frocks for the little girls, and the cool suits for the boys, that had been "managed" out of the stock of material.
"We put 'em all on for tea," she told Aileen on the day following the great occasion of the finishing of the work. "I had the kitchen very dossy, an' a vawse o' flowers on the table, an' there we were when Dad came in. He just looked at us careless-like, an' then he seemed to take notice, an' he stared an' stared. An' of course the kids giggled. Then he said, 'Well!' just like that, an' stopped, like as if he hadn't any more ideas. An' he kep' on starin'. At last he says, 'I suppose this is Mrs. Macleod's doin'?' An' I says, 'Yes.' 'Who made 'em all?' he says. An' I told him. An' he says, 'Well, I'm proud of you, 'Poss—an' all my kids!' An' he got up an' went out. An' presently he come back—an' if you'll b'lieve me, Missus, he'd acshally gorn an' put on a clean shirt!"
CHAPTER XVI
A LITTLE BOY
"What are you going to do with the old boat, Dad?"
"Why, I really don't know that she's worth bothering about," Torn Macleod answered, looking up from the dinghy he was examining. "She's very ancient and leaky: I suppose Gordon used her before he got the new skiff. He was apparently quite satisfied to let her go to pieces, and I don't think I'll interfere with his intentions."