At about the same time a shout went up from the party on the bridge and Cyrus and I heard it, as we were distractedly climbing old “Blue” forcing our way into thickets and peering down the sides of precipitous rocks.
When we were certain that they were safe, Cyrus, I regret to say, became a little cross.
“One might think it was enough to be the burden that they are without making themselves a constant plague!” he said.
“She is such a sensitive little thing,” I murmured apologetically.
“Sensitiveness is very apt to be only another name for vanity and selfishness,” said Cyrus sharply.
“Cyrus, they are only children,” I said indignantly. But Cyrus was wiping his near-sighted eyes that smarted from the strain and the exposure to the unusually hot September sun, and would not listen to me. He strode off to the shipyard without waiting to hear where the wanderers had been or how it had fared with them.
Grandma kissed them and cried over them and insisted upon giving them flaxseed tea and cough-drops. Loveday gave them their breakfast with a face of stern displeasure—but she made the griddle-cakes that they loved, which was just like Loveday.
“We had to, we were such a trouble and we didn’t belong here.” That was the only explanation that Estelle vouchsafed to give, and that was only to me.
“We went to find aliens, like us,” she said. That was when I had her all to myself in the seclusion of the orchard. “I was afraid they were something like Indians, but Dave said they must be some kind of French, because we were born in France. Dave didn’t want to go but I made him. Then he would come back. Sometimes he is a very stubborn person.” The little transparent brow wrinkled itself anxiously over this astonishing peculiarity of Dave’s—whom, although he was nearly two years her senior, she had always kept in leading-strings.
After a pause Estelle continued: “We were going to the Port to find a ship to take us to France, but when we came in sight of Uncle Horace’s house there was a light in Rob’s window. It was after eleven o’clock—it is so long before Leander stops snoring,” and it was our hired man’s boast that while he snored he was never sound asleep but could hear every footfall in the house—“so we knew that Rob must be having one of his bad times with asthma. Dave feels orfly when Rob has those, you know, and Rob always wants him to tell him pirate stories. It’s queer that Rob never reads those stories himself nor ones about giants; but when he has the asthma he wants Dave to tell him about pirates and giants and about the old witch that had three elegant daughters. I told Dave that story myself. Well, Dave wouldn’t go on. When we got so near that we could hear Rob’s horrid, hard breathing through his open window, Dave just blubbered. He ran up and pounded on the door and Uncle Horace himself let him in and said he was orfly glad he had come. Uncle Horace doesn’t like us, either; I suppose because we’re aliens.