That Mr. Parlow might have a selfish reason for desiring to keep his daughter and Joseph Stagg apart did not enter the little girl’s mind. She was too young to appreciate such a situation as that might suggest.
After that Sunday walk, however, Carolyn May was never so much afraid of her uncle as before. Why, he had even called Prince “good dog”! Truly, Mr. Joseph Stagg was being transformed—if slowly.
He could not deny to himself that, to a certain extent, he was enjoying the presence of his little niece at The Corners. If he only could decide just what to do with the personal property of his sister Hannah and her husband down in the New York apartment. Never in his life had he been so long deciding a question. He could not bring himself to the point of writing the lawyer either to sublet the furnished apartment or to sell the furniture in it. Nor could he decide to go down himself to sort over Hannah’s little treasures, put the remainder in an auction room, and close up the apartment.
He had really loved Hannah. He knew it now, did Joseph Stagg, every time he looked at the lovely little child who had come to live with him at The Corners. Why! just so had Hannah looked when she was a little thing. The same deep, violet eyes, and sunny hair, and laughing lips——
Mr. Stagg sometimes actually found a reflection of the cheerful figure of “Hannah’s Car’lyn” coming between him and the big ledger over which he spent so many of his waking hours.
Once he looked up from the ledger—it was on a Saturday morning—and really did see the bright figure of the little girl standing before him. It was no dream or fancy, for old Jimmy, the cat, suddenly shot to the topmost shelf, squalling with wild abandon. Prince was nosing along at Carolyn May’s side.
“Bless me!” croaked Mr. Stagg. “That dog of yours, Car’lyn May, will give Jimmy a conniption fit yet. What d’you want down here?”
Carolyn May told him. A man had come to the house to buy a cow, and Aunty Rose had sent the little girl down to tell Mr. Stagg to come home and “drive his own bargain.”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Stagg, locking the ledger in the safe, “I’ll hustle right out and tend to it. Don’t see why the man couldn’t have waited till noontime. Hey, you, Chet!”
Chet Gormley was not down in the cellar on this occasion. He appeared, wearing a much soiled apron, and with very black hands, having been sorting bolts.