“Can I have a hat with a green thcarf?” demanded Lottie.
“I’ll borrow his suit to play chess on,” added Carl.
“Hush! Carl,—don’t make fun of him,” said Mrs. Lambert, smiling in spite of herself. “He seems to be a very good-hearted young man. Here he comes now.”
All flushed and panting, Hyacinth appeared with his numerous burdens; but notwithstanding the fact that he was laden like a camel with his box, and stool and easel and umbrella, he insisted upon carrying Elise’s books, and even offered to manage the basket somehow.
Just why, each and every one of the Lamberts felt a distinct liking for the ridiculous P. Hyacinth it would be hard to say, yet that they did was evident. And on his part, he seemed upon half an hour’s acquaintance to feel as much at home with them all as if he had known them all his life.
As they rumbled and bounced back to town he chattered happily and confidingly to them all, but for Elise he reserved some of his choicest thoughts on the beauties of nature.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Lambert, when he had finally parted from them at the road that led off in a short cut to Goldsboro, after assuring them that he hoped for nothing more ardently than to renew his acquaintance with them, “a very nice young man, indeed. Where a good heart is so plainly beneath it one can forgive a small matter like a checker board waistcoat.”
Elise meantime had been thinking over not the checker-board waistcoat but the orange-colored moustache,
“But it was certainly very brave of him to frighten that bull away,” she remarked, half as if to herself. Carl shouted.
“A bull! You mean one poor old cow!”