After she had gone away, Flaxie wandered drearily about the house, saying, “Oh dear! what shall I do without my twin cousin?”
You would have thought she had enough left to make her happy. Dr. Gray’s house stood on a hill facing the river, with a green yard in front, and a stable and two gardens behind it. It was all beautiful, and Flaxie enjoyed the stable as well as the fruit and flower gardens, for she was very fond of the horses, Whiz and Hiawatha, and the cows and the hens. You needn’t tell anybody, but I do pity children who never hunted for hens’ nests: it is such capital fun! And then there was the handsome dog, Tantra-Bogus, one of Flaxie’s best friends.
In the house she had her “splendid Dr. Papa;” her dear brother Preston, who could whittle all sorts of things with a penknife; her darling Grandma Gray, an old lady with white hair, white cap, and white ribbons; and last, but not least, she had the “beautifullest baby” Philip, who could stand on his head “just as cunning,” and “hug grizzly”—that is, like a grizzly bear. Flaxie loved him with her whole heart, but there were moments when she felt half ashamed of him, for he was eighteen months old, and hadn’t a sign of a tooth; wasn’t it awful?
“Perhaps he’ll cut one before your mother and Julia come home; I keep hoping so,” said grandma, feeling in baby’s mouth with her finger, which baby bit hard, like an old rogue as he was.
“Will they give him some gold teeth, if his don’t ever cut?” asked Flaxie anxiously. “Preston says they will.”
“No,” replied Mrs. Prim, who sat by the window, with her little ebony work-box on a stand beside her. “Your brother Preston says very absurd things merely in sport; but you must not be so foolish as to believe them.”
Down dropped Flaxie’s head in grandma’s lap, her hair falling over grandma’s black silk apron in a golden shower.
Mrs. Prim looked surprised. She did not know that Flaxie really had believed in those gold teeth, and had been comforted by thinking how Phil would outshine everybody by-and-by! And now the poor little girl was crying because it was all a mistake, and because Mrs. Prim had said she was “foolish.”
“Run and let in the cat,” said grandma; “don’t you hear her mewing?”
When Kitty Gray was let in, she came bringing a mouse, and Flaxie laughed to see her run right up to grandma and rub against her dress.