“See it run,” cried Tessa. “Isn’t it a perfect little creature? If you will come and stay a week with me, we will take a walk every day.”
“I can’t—now,” Sue stumbled over her words. “Say, Tessa, Mr. Gesner has given me a set of pearls. I can wear pearls in mourning, can’t I?”
“With your mourning, you can wear any thing.”
“Can I? I didn’t know it. It’s awful lonesome at home; lonesomer than it ever was.”
“I would come and stay a week with you, but I do not like to leave father; he is not so strong as he was last summer.”
“You wouldn’t let Mr. Gesner come and spend the evening; I haven’t asked him, but I’m going to ask him the next time I see him.”
Dr. Greyson called for Sue late in the evening. “I have the comfort of my old age hard and fast,” he said; “she will never want to run away from me again, will you, Susie?”
“I don’t know,” said Sue, with a hard, uncomfortable laugh; “you must keep a sharp lookout. I may be in Africa by this time next year.”
XXVII.—SUNSET.
“Father is very feeble,” said Mrs. Wadsworth one day in June. “I shall persuade him to take a vacation. Lewis Gesner told him yesterday that he must take a rest; do you notice how he spends all his evenings on the sofa? I think that if Gus would come and play chess as he used to that it would rouse him.”