Uncle Tom patted his wife on the shoulder.
“Don't borrow trouble, Mary,” he said, smiling a little. “The child is only full of spirits. But she has a good heart. It is only human that she should want things that we cannot give her.”
“I wish,” said Aunt Mary, “that she were not quite so good-looking.”
Uncle Tom laughed. “You needn't tell me you're not proud of it,” he declared.
“And I have given her,” she continued, “a taste for dress.”
“I think, my dear,” said her husband, “that there were others who contributed to that.”
“It was my own vanity. I should have combated the tendency in her,” said Aunt Mary.
“If you had dressed Honora in calico, you could not have changed her,” replied Uncle Tom, with conviction.
In the meantime Honora and Peter had mounted the electric car, and were speeding westward. They had a seat to themselves, the very first one on the “grip”—that survival of the days of cable cars. Honora's eyes brightened as she held on to her hat, and the stray wisps of hair about her neck stirred in the breeze.
“Oh, I wish we would never stop, until we came to the Pacific Ocean!” she exclaimed.