By this time the carriage was so near that he vacated his post, lest the strangers should think he was waiting for them, and returning to the house, looked out of the west window, whistling indifferently, and was apparently quite oblivious of the people alighting at the gate, or of the chubby form tripping up the walk, and with sunny face and laughing round bright eyes, winning at once the hearts of the four who, unlike himself, had gone out to receive her.
[CHAPTER II.—MR. GRAHAM AND JESSIE.]
She was a little fat, black-eyed, black-haired girl, with waist and ankles of no Lilliputian size, and when at last Walter dared to steal a look at her, she had already divested herself of her traveling habiliments, and with the household cat in her arms, was looking about for a chair which suited her. She evidently did not fancy the high, old-fashioned ones which had belonged to Deacon Marshall's wife, for, spying the one which was never used, and into which even Ellen dared not climb, she unhesitatingly wheeled it from its place, and seated herself in its capacious depths, quite as a matter of course.
A good deal shocked, and somewhat amused, Walter watched her proceedings, thinking to himself:
"By and by I'll tell her that is father's chair, and then she won't want to sit in it; but she's a stranger now, so I guess I'll let her alone."
By this time the cat, unaccustomed to quite so hard a squeeze as Jessie gave it, escaped from her lap, and jumping down, Jessie ran after it, exclaiming:
"Oh, boy, boy, stop her!"
A peculiar whistle from Walter sent the animal flying faster from her, and shaking back her curls, Jessie's black eyes flashed up into his face, as she said:
"You're the meanest boy, and I don't like you a bit."
"Jessie," said the stern voice of her father, and for the first time since his entrance, Walter turned to look at him, and as he looked he felt the bitterness gradually giving way, for the expression of Mr. Graham's face was not proud and overbearing as he had fancied it to be.