"After all," he confided to Almida, "she's only a poor city child: what can you expect? I don't mind seeing to her."
"Laws, no," said Almida, with a matronly air. "And if her father's gone to Europe, and every day is baking, or washing, or mending, or something, who is there besides you and me for her to look to, I'd like to know? Only you needn't think you're going to have more than just your own half of the care-taking, Will Handly."
The mother looked on in silence, and understood perfectly the very things which her children thought she had not noticed.
"At first I was troubled lest Will and Almy wouldn't notice the child," she said, one afternoon, to Mrs. Stethaway, as they watched the three children crossing the opposite field. "Next I thought they would tyrannize over her, and that Will would tease her to death."
"And now," said Mrs. Stethaway, "it looks as if they would neglect everything just to follow her bidding. What are you going to do about that?"
"Well," said Mrs. Handly, smiling after the children as they disappeared among the daisies, "it isn't always that old folks know the best turn to take. I'm going to see what the little one's course will be. It seems very much as if my own two children were in the way of getting some lessons in gentleness and self-forgetfulness from the poor little motherless child, which I don't know so well as she does how to teach them."
The children went through the field, the orchard, and over the bars into the lane, through which Ria Bell was just driving the cows.
"Quick! quick! Oh! oh!" screamed Marianne, as soon as she saw the cows.
"Not that way; you're running right into the face of the enemy, Ranna," said Will, laughing, and taking hold of her as she was trying to climb the bars.
But Ranna struggled, crying, "Get me over! get me over! I ain't 'fraid of tows; it's the birds;" and was so excited that Will on one side and Almida on the other lifted her into the lane as quickly as possible.