Janie shivered. “Oh Daddy, how perfectly awful. Couldn’t someone do something for him, so he wouldn’t have to live in a chicken coop?” Dad smiled. “Folks have tried to help him,” he said, “but the old fellow is proud and touchy, and he wants to be left alone.”
“He sure does,” exclaimed Billy. “I’ll never forget how he chased us out of there.”
“Keep out of his way,” Daddy said. “That’s the best way to get along with him.” He picked Davey up and carried him to bed. Janie looked at Mom and drew her brows together.
“Mom,” she said. “Do you suppose that’s one of Dad’s stories, or do you suppose that’s really true?”
Mom cut off the end of her thread. “As far as I know,” she said, “that was all absolutely true.”
After a while they wandered back to see how Grandma and Aunt Claire were getting settled. Janie blinked for a moment. The mountainous load was gone and everything was in place.
“Grandma, you’re a wonder,” she exclaimed. “How did you get everything put away so fast?”
Grandma was sitting in her rocking chair, crocheting. The bowl of pansies stood on the table beside her, and her canary chirped over her head. “Petey helped me,” she said, nodding at the canary, “and Aunt Claire helped too.”
Aunt Claire was puzzled about the glass of lemonade beside her bed, and Jane explained.
“Well, it was like this. I picked the pansies for Grandma’s bedside because she likes them so much, and Davey felt that he wanted to do something too. He fixed a glass of lemonade for beside your bed, so that you would have a welcoming present too. I think by now it should be quite stale, but he was happy about it.”