"As fo' you, Paige, you are certainly a ve'y rare kind of Honey-bird, and I reckon Mr. Ba'num will sho'ly catch you some day fo' his museum. Who ever heard of a shif'less Yankee girl except you and Marye?"
"O mother, how can we mend everything we tear? It's heartless to ask us!"
"You don't have to try to mend _ev'y_thing. Fo' example, there's
Jimmy Lent's heart——"
A quick outbreak of laughter swept them—all except Paige, who flushed furiously over her first school-girl affair.
"That poor Jimmy child came to me about it," continued their mother, "and asked me if I would let you be engaiged to him; and I said, 'Certainly, if Paige wants to be, Jimmy. I was engaiged myse'f fo' times befo' I was fo'teen——'"
Another gale of laughter drowned her words, and she sat there dimpled, mischievous, naively looking around, yet in her careful soul shrewdly pursuing her wise policy of airing all sentimental matters in the family circle—letting in fresh air and sunshine on what so often takes root and flourishes rather morbidly at sixteen.
"It's perfectly absurd," observed Ailsa, "at your age, Paige——"
"Mother was married at sixteen! Weren't you, dearest?"
"I certainly was; but I am a bad rebel and you are good little Yankees; and good little Yankees wait till they're twenty odd befo' they do anything ve'y ridiculous."
"We expect to wait," said Paige, with a dignified glance at her sister.