“Not without her supper?” he asked in alarm, dropping his own knife and fork.
“No-o,” she admitted. “I couldn’t do that.”
Mr. Stagg chuckled. “I reckon children are children,” he observed. “I don’t know as Hannah’s Car’lyn is any different from the rest.”
“I know one thing, Joseph Stagg,” said Aunty Rose severely. “If you ever have children of your own they will be utterly spoiled.”
But Mr. Stagg still seemed amused.
“If you had anything to do with ’em, I’d have plenty of help in spoiling ’em, Aunty Rose,” he declared.
Carolyn May took the matter somewhat seriously. She tried to make it up to Amos Bartlett by lending him her sled, giving him candy when she had it, and otherwise petting him.
“For he might have been poisoned,” she stated; “and then he’d be dead, and would never grow up to fit his nose.”
Carolyn May’s acquaintance broadened constantly. She made friends wherever she went, and the wintry weather did not often keep her in the house. Uncle Joe would not hear of her going into the woods again, unless he was with her, but she could go where she pleased among the neighbours.
At Sunrise Cove there were many people who loved Carolyn May Cameron. Her most faithful knight, however, was homely, optimistic Chetwood Gormley. Mr. Stagg declared that when Chet saw “Hannah’s Car’lyn” approaching he “grinned so wide that he was like to swallow his own ears.”