“Oh, is that so? And is it going to be hard to get acquainted with me?” asked the housekeeper curiously.
“Oh, no!” cried Carolyn May, snuggling up to the good woman and patting her plump, bare arm. “Why, I’m getting ’quainted with you fast, Aunty Rose! You heard me say my prayers, and when you laid me down on the couch just now you kissed me.”
Aunty Rose actually blushed. “There, there, child!” she exclaimed. “You’re too noticing. Eat your dinner, that I’ve saved warm for you.”
“Isn’t Prince to have any dinner, Aunty Rose?” asked the little girl.
“You may let him out, if you wish, after you have had your own dinner. You can feed him under the tree. But stand by and keep the hens away, for hens haven’t any more morals than they have teeth, and they’ll steal from him. I don’t want him to snap any of their heads off before they’re ready for the pot.”
“Oh, Aunty Rose,” said Carolyn May seriously, “he’s too polite. He wouldn’t do such a thing. Really, you don’t know yet what a good dog Prince is.”
Carolyn May was very much excited about an hour later when a rusty, closed hack drew up to the front gate of the Stagg place and stopped. She and Prince were then playing in the front yard—at least, she was stringing maple keys into a long, long chain (a delight heretofore unknown to the little city girl), and the dog was watching her with wrinkling nose and blinking eyes.
An old man with a square-cut chin whisker and clothing and hat as rusty as the hack itself held the reins over the bony back of the horse that drew the ancient equipage.
“I say, young’un, ain’t ye out o’ yer bailiwick?” queried Tim, the hackman, staring at the little girl in the Stagg yard.
Carolyn May stood up quickly and tried to look over her shoulder and down her back. It was hard to get all those buttons buttoned straight.