“Good night,” said Delia, briefly, and vanished without warning, as at the sound of any other taps. Soon after, the others also disappeared; and I crept up on the porch and lay down in the hammock.
“What’s she been doing now?” somebody instantly asked me.
For a moment I thought of telling; but not seriously.
Evidently they had not expected an answer, for they went on talking.
“... yes, I had looked forward to it for a long while. Of course we had all counted on it. It was a great disappointment.”
Somewhere in me the words echoed a familiar and recent emotion. So! They too had their disappointments ... even as we. Of course whatever this was could have been nothing like losing a fortune in melted snow. Still, I felt a new sympathy.
Mother turned to me.
“We are going to ask Grandma Bard to come to live with us,” she said. “Will you like that?”
I sat up in the hammock. “All the time?” I joyfully inquired.
“For the rest of the time,” Mother said soberly. “It seems as if one ought to take a child,” she added to the others, “when one takes anybody....”