"I don't see anything so very funny about it," answered Brady, rather testily; "but I have no stomach for a quarrel till I have had some [Pg 56] supper—unless you sup out there," he added with a lordly wave of his hand towards the ocean in imitation of Flint's gesture. "I hope, at any rate, our evening meal is not to be of farina. The associations might be a little too strong even for my appetite."
CHAPTER IV
THE DAVITTS
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| "The short and simple annals of the poor." |
After taking leave of Flint and his companion in misfortune, Winifred quickened her pace. The lengthening shadows warned her that if she intended to return to the White House before supper was over, she had no time to lose.
"Come, Paddy!" she said, laying her hand with a light, caressing gesture on the shaggy red-brown head of the Irish setter, which had kept closer guard than ever since the meeting with the strangers in the road,—"come, Paddy! we must make a sprint for it."
The dog, glad enough to be allowed the luxury of a gallop, set off pell-mell, and Winifred followed at a gait which soon brought her, flushed and out of breath, before the unpainted house where the Davitt family made their abode. It was not characterized by great order or tidiness. Clothes-lines, hung with underwear of various shapes and sizes, decorated the side-yard, and proclaimed Mrs. Davitt's calling. A whole section [Pg 58] of the front fence had taken itself off. The gate swung aimlessly on one rusty hinge, and a brood of chickens wandered at will over the unmown grass before the house: yet the place was not wholly unattractive, for it bore evidences of human love and happiness; and, after all, these are the objects for which the most orderly and elegant mansions exist, if indeed they are so fortunate as to attain them. These are the essence of a home.