“Oh! Haven’t they, Aunty Rose?” queried Carolyn May with sudden earnestness.
“I should say not, child! Holding hands in there like a pair of—Well, do you know what it means, Carolyn May?”
“That they love each other,” the child said boldly. “And I’m so glad for them!”
“So am I,” declared the woman, still in a whisper. “But it means changes here. Things won’t be the same for long. I know Joseph Stagg for what he is.”
“What is he, Aunty Rose?” asked Carolyn May in some trepidation, for the housekeeper seemed to be much moved.
“He’s a very determined man. Once he gets set in a way, he carries everything before him. Mandy Parlow is going to be made Mrs. Joseph Stagg so quick that it’ll astonish her. Now, you believe me, Carolyn May.”
“Oh!” was the little girl’s comment.
“There’ll be changes here very sudden. ‘Two’s company, three’s a crowd,’ Carolyn May. Never was a truer saying. Those two will want just each other—and nobody else.”
“Oh, Aunty Rose!” murmured the little girl faintly. She had stopped eating the bread and milk. The housekeeper was too deeply interested in her own cogitations to notice how the child was being affected by her speech.
“I’ve told him a thousand times he should be married,” concluded Aunty Rose. “And if Mandy Parlow’s the woman for him, then it’s all right. Whether she is or not, he’ll marry her. Jedidiah or a thousand others couldn’t stop Joseph Stagg now. I know what it means with him when he once makes up his mind.