Charlie thereupon brightened perceptibly. "I'll go if you want me to."
Cousin Martha smiled and turned to Sally, who accepted. "Although," she said, "I want to write a letter. But I suppose there'll be plenty of time after we get back. We've just been talking with the funniest pair of twins. They stutter."
Miss Hazen sighed. "I know. I heard them banging on the fence. They are the Carling twins. Their names are Henry and Horace."
"Harry and Horry," cried Sally. "But which is older?"
"Mercy! I don't know," Cousin Martha answered. "I can't tell them apart. One is just as bad as the other."
"I've an idea," Sally remarked, "that they aren't going to be so bad."
Cousin Martha looked curiously at Sally, but she said nothing and just then the carriage came.
Miss Hazen seemed to find especial delight in Charlie's society on that drive. She talked to him more and more while she went to do her errands. Charlie, on the whole, was not an especially attractive child. He was a handsome boy, but he was apt to be dissatisfied and discontented, which gave his face the kind of expression which such a disposition always gives. He seemed to be developing some of the characteristics of his father. Not that Sally was aware of the characteristics Charlie was developing. Charlie was Charlie, that was all. She saw too much of him—had had the care of him too continuously—to realize the little resemblances which might be evident to one who had less to do with him. It is not unlikely that Miss Hazen realized those resemblances, although she may not have been conscious of it, and that it was just that which was endearing him to her.
Whatever the reason, Cousin Martha got to taking him with her at every opportunity. Charlie was in school every morning, for one of Miss Hazen's errands, on that first day, had been to arrange for school for both Sally and Charlie. Charlie, being at school every morning except Saturday, could not accompany Cousin Martha on her drives in the mornings. Consequently, Cousin Martha changed her habit of more than twenty years' standing and drove in the afternoon. Her father smiled when he heard of it and looked from Charlie to Sally.
"I know of no reason, Patty," he observed quietly, "why the afternoon is not as good a time for driving as the morning. Doesn't this little girl go?"