'Please, sir, will you—would you buy a pincushion?' stammered Ada. The pincushion factory was all very well, but the selling part did not seem so pleasant, now that she had come to the point.
'And what should I want with a pincushion?' said some one far above their heads, so gruffly that Ada longed to run away, and May, somehow, found that tears were very near.
'And what may you be doing here alone with your pincushions?' went on this terrible voice; but it was not so gruff this time. There was something in it which they thought they had heard before. Looking up, who should it be but their father's Irish friend, Mr. O'Brien, whom they were trying to capture for their first customer!
'Oh!' cried Ada, 'it's you!' and the whole story came tumbling out in such a confused way that Mr. O'Brien had nearly taken them back to Grove Villa before he quite understood it.
Mother, too, was very much puzzled. 'No, I don't say it was naughty, my dears, but you had better not have surprises out of doors again,' she said. 'But what made you think of it at all, Ada?'
'But Grannie and Grandfather could live here if they wanted to, only the country is better for them,' she explained, when the little girls had told her the reason of their 'factory.' 'Yes, you do hear me say we can't afford things, but they are things we don't really need. You always have all you want, don't you? Don't worry your little heads about money, then, and promise me one thing—never to go a step farther than I send you when you go out alone! You might have been lost if Mr. O'Brien hadn't met you!'
'Indeed we will not, Mother darling!' cried the two in one breath.
'And I think,' said May, soberly, 'we will tell Jane or somebody about our next surprise, and then we shall know whether it is all right.'
E. S. S.