“It does look so smooth and nice before it is cut up. If Dick could only see it all whole!”
Jimmy seemed to be talking to himself, rather than to his mother, and Mrs. Dunlee did not answer him. But she recalled the remark afterwards, indeed that very evening, after something had happened of which I am about to tell you.
“I must go up-stairs now to change my dress,” said she.
Jimmy followed her out of the pantry, and she shut the door.
“Where are you going, my son?” asked papa a little later, coming home from his ride, and meeting Jimmy running off at full speed.
“To Gilly Irwin’s, papa; mamma said I might.”
Jimmy was in a hurry,—Mr. Dunlee observed it,—in an unusual hurry. And, as he rushed away like a whirlwind, he paused an instant to pick up a basket which stood under the large pepper-tree.
“I wonder what scheme the boy has in hand now,” said Mr. Dunlee to himself. “There’s not a man in town who carries on so much business as our James.”
Mrs. Dunlee came down-stairs fresh and smiling in her new cambric dress with lace trimmings, and sat with her husband in the shaded study. While she sewed, he read aloud, or sometimes he dropped his book, and they had a little chat.
It seemed very still, they both said. Not a sound, even of Vendla stepping about the kitchen, for Vendla was up-stairs sewing.