Grace laughed aloud.
"Why, Horace Clifford, you'd make the room look like everything; you know you would! O, auntie, you ought to see how he musses up my cabinet! I have to hide the key; I do so!"
Horace took the room which was given him, but he left his sister without his usual good-night kiss, and when he repeated his prayer, I am afraid he was thinking all the while about the green chamber.
The next morning the children had intended to go into the garden bright and early. Grace loved flowers, and when she was a mere baby, just able to toddle into the meadow, she would clip off the heads of buttercups and primroses, hugging and kissing them like friends.
Horace, too, had some fancy for flowers, especially flaring ones, like sunflowers and hollyhocks. Dandelions were nice when the stems would curl without bothering, and poppies were worth while for little girls, he thought, because, after they are gone to seed, you can make them into pretty good teapots.
He wanted to go out in the garden now for humming-birds, and to see if the dirt-colored toad was still living in his "nest," in one of the flower-beds.
But the first thing the children heard in the morning was the pattering of rain or the roof. No going out to-day. Grace was too tired to care much. Horace felt cross; but remembering how many messages his grandmother had sent to her "good little grandson," and how often aunt Madge had written about "dear little Horace, the nephew she was so proud of," he felt ashamed to go down stairs scowling. If his good-morning smile was so thin that you could see a frown through it, still it was better than no smile at all.
The breakfast was very nice, and Horace would have enjoyed the hot griddle-cakes and maple sirup, only his aunt Louise, a handsome young lady of sixteen, watched him more than he thought was quite polite, saying every now and then,—
"Isn't he the image of his father? Just such a nose, just such a mouth! He eats fast, too; that is characteristic!"
Horace did not know what "characteristic" meant, but thought it must be something bad, for with a child's quick eye he could see that his pretty aunt was inclined to laugh at him. In fact, he had quite an odd way of talking, and his whole appearance was amusing to Miss Louise, who was a very lively young lady.