“Bless me!” gasped the hardware dealer. “What do you know about this child’s feeling that way, Mandy?”
“I am afraid we have been selfish, Joe,” the woman said, sighing. “And that is something that Carolyn May has never been in her life!”
“I dunno—I dunno,” said Uncle Joe ruefully, and looking at the little, flowerlike face of the child. “How about Aunty Rose? How d’you s’pose she feels about Hannah’s Car’lyn running away?”
“Oh!” ejaculated the little girl.
“It may be that ‘two’s company and three’s a crowd,’ but you and Aunty Rose would be two likewise, wouldn’t you, Car’lyn May?”
“I—I never thought of that, Uncle Joe,” the child whispered.
“Why, your running away from The Corners this way is like to make both Mandy and me unhappy, as well as Aunty Rose. I—I don’t b’lieve Mandy could get married at all if she didn’t have a little girl like you to carry flowers and hold up her train. How about it, Mandy?”
“That is quite true, Carolyn May,” declared Miss Amanda, hugging the soft little body of the child tightly again.
“Why, I—I——”
Carolyn May was, for once, beyond verbal expression. Besides, there was a noise in the outer hall and on the stairway. The door had been left open by the surprised janitor.