"Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Ellen, when it was settled, "for now there'll be somebody to play with when my head aches too hard to go to school. I hope she'll bring a lot of dolls; and, Walter, you won't ink their faces and break their legs as you did that cob baby Aunt Debby made for me?"
When thus appealed to, Walter was reading for himself the letter which had fallen at his grandfather's feet, and his clear hazel eyes were moist with tears, as he read the postscript:
"I have as yet heard nothing from Seth, poor fellow! I hoped he would come back ere this. It may be I shall meet him in my travels."
"He isn't so bad a man after all," thought Walter, and with his feelings softened toward the father, he was more favorably disposed toward the daughter's dolls, and to Ellen's question he replied, "Of course I shan't bother her if she lets me alone and don't put on too many airs."
"I can't see to write as well as I used to," said the deacon, after everything had been arranged, "and Walter must answer the letter."
"Walter won't do any such thing," was the mental comment of the boy, whose animosity began to return toward one who he fancied had done his father a wrong.
After a little, however, he relented, and going to his room wasted several sheets of paper before he was at all satisfied with the few brief lines which were to tell Mr. Graham that his daughter Jessie would be welcome at Deerwood. Great pains he took to spell her name according to his views of orthography, making an extra flourish to the "y" with which he finished up the "Jessy."
"Now, that's sensible," he said. "I wonder Aunt Debby don't spell her name b-i-e-by. She would, I dare say, if she lived in New York."
Walter's ideas of city people were formed entirely from the occasional glimpses he had received of his proud Boston relatives, who had been highly indignant at his mother's marriage with a country youth, the most of them resenting it so far as to absent themselves from her funeral. His lady grandmother, they told him, had been present, and had held him for a moment upon her rich black mourning dress, but from that day she had not looked upon his face. These things had tended to embitter Walter toward his mother's family, and judging all city people by them, it was hardly natural that he should be very favorably disposed toward little Jessie. Still, as the time for her arrival drew near, none watched for her more vigilantly or evinced a greater interest in her coming than himself, and on the day when she was expected, it was observed by his cousin Ellen that he took more than usual pains with his toilet, and even exchanged his cowhide boots for a lighter pair, which would make less noise in walking; then as he heard the whistle in the distance, he stationed himself by the gate, where he waited until the gray horses which drew the village omnibus appeared over the hill. The omnibus itself next came in sight, and the head of a little girl was thrust from the window, a profusion of curls falling from beneath her brown straw hat, and herself evidently on the lookout for her new home.
"Curls, of course," said Walter. "See if I don't cut some of 'em off," and he involuntarily felt for his jack-knife.