“Uncle Joe,” said the little girl, taking her courage in both hands, “will you do something for me?” Then, as he stared down at her from under his bushy brows, she added: “I don’t mean that you aren’t always doing something for me—letting me sleep here at your house, and eat with you, and all that. But something special.”
“What is the ‘something special’?” asked Mr. Stagg cautiously.
“Something I want you to do to-day. You always go off to your store after dinner, and when you come home it’s too dark.”
“Too dark for what?”
“For us to take a walk,” said the little girl very earnestly. “Oh, Uncle Joe, you don’t know how dreadful I miss taking Sunday walks with my papa! Of course, we took ’em in the morning, for he had to go to work on the paper in the afternoon, but we did just about go everywhere.
“Sometimes,” pursued Carolyn May in reminiscence, “we went to a very, very early morning service in a church. It was held pertic’lar for folks that worked at night. It wasn’t like our church where I went to Sunday-school, for there were boys in long dresses, and they swung little dishes on chains, with something burning in ’em that smelled nice, and the minister did all the talking——”
“Humph!” snorted Mr. Stagg, who was just as startled as was the Reverend Mr. Driggs by any new idea.
“And then we walked,” sighed Carolyn May. “Of course, we had often to take a ride first before we could get a place to walk in—not on pavement. On real dirt and grass! Under the trees! Where the birds sang! And the flowers lived! Oh, Uncle Joe! do you know how pretty the woods are now? The trees and bushes are all such lovely colours. I don’t dare go very far alone—not even with Prince. I might get lost, Aunty Rose says.
“But if you would go with me,” the little girl added wistfully, “just this afternoon, seems to me I wouldn’t feel so—so empty.”
That “empty” feeling from which the little girl suffered when she thought of her parents and her old life she did not often speak of. Mr. Stagg looked down at her earnest face and saw that the blue eyes were misty. But Carolyn May was brave.