"Well?" exclaimed Dorry, impatiently, at last.
"Well," repeated Don, in a different tone, "the fact is, it is trying for you, Dorry, and I can't make it out."
Meanwhile Lydia, down stairs, was working herself into what she called "a state" on this very matter. "It isn't Christian," she thought to herself, "though if ever a man was a true, good Christian, Mr. G. is; but he's amazin' odd. The fact is, he doesn't know his own mind in this business from one day to the next, and he thinks, Jack and I are stone blind—Mercy! If here don't come those precious children!"
Surely enough, the precious children were on their way down the kitchen stairs. They did not go into that cheerful, well-scrubbed apartment, however, but trudged directly into the adjoining room, in which Liddy, guarded by the faithful old dog, Nero, was now seated, peeling apples. It had been fitted up for Lydia years before when, from a simple housemaid, she was "promoted," as she said, "to have eyes to things and watch over the D's."
"You may think it strange," she had said, grandly, that very morning, to Jack, looking around at the well-polished, old-fashioned furniture, and the still bright three-ply carpet, "that I should have my sitting-room down here, and my sleeping apartment up stairs, but so it is. The servants need watching more than the children, as you know, Mr. Jack, and I've had to have eyes to things ever since the D's first came. Master Donald says I ought to call it 'having an eye,' but sakes! what would one eye be in a house like this? No, it's eyes I want, both eyes, and more too, with the precious D's wild as young hawks, and Mr. G. as he is of late, and the way things are."
Lydia looked up when Donald and Dorothy entered, with a "Sakes! You've not been fretting again, Miss Dorry?"
"No—not exactly fretting, Liddy; that is, not very much. We just came down to—to— Give me an apple?"
"Steady! St-e-a-dy!" cried Liddy, as after her hearty "help yourselves," the brother and sister made a simultaneous dash at the pan on her ample lap, playfully contesting for the largest. "One would think you were starving."
"So we are, Liddy," said Dorothy, biting her apple as she spoke; "we are starving for a story."