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"I will not put it on," said she, "until you apologise for the things you have been saying to me, and the manner of your saying them." "My dear child, I do apologise humbly, if I have said what I shouldn't. Perhaps I have; but I thought we were past the need for reserves and for weighing words, you and I. And really, Debbie, you know " "Hush!"
Then the passing in through the gates, the familiar faces, the glad greetings; Zachary white-haired, but still rosy and stalwart at the foot of the steps; and, in the doorway, just where loneliness might have gripped her, old Debbie, looking as if she had never been away, waiting with open arms.
"What people?" inquired Rose faintly. "Those Breen people those DRAPERS. They have had the cheek to come and call on us to call and leave their cards, 'First and third Wednesday', as if they expected us to call back again!" "Who came?" "Mrs and Miss with half the shop upon their backs. Debbie" Deb was coming in behind her "you are NOT going to return the call of those people, I TRUST?"
She had not far to go, however, for Debbie was just lumbering, like a good-natured elephant, through the hall to greet her master and mistress. As soon as the greetings were over she lumbered back again to make the necessary tea. Billie and Chet controlled their impatience, answering the questions their mother had to ask them about all that had happened while they had been away, for Mrs.
"My lady," he said, "it is not safe nor well that you should ride alone. A few moments' delay will suffice Beaumont to saddle a horse and be ready to attend you." She mounted before she made answer. She kept her imperious temper well in hand, striving to remember that to old Debbie and Zachary she seemed but the child they had loved and watched over from infancy, of a sudden grown older.
"Prob'ly he stole 'em," sputtered Mistress Grasshopper. "I should think Dinah Skunk would wallop those little Skunks forty times a day. They are a mean crowd." "And poor Debbie Field-Mouse's home is in ruins, all because of little Skunk's cigarette. Sniff! sniff! sniff!" cried Mother Graymouse. "A Lake full of water and no way to put out a fire," scolded Aunt Squeaky.
And while he stood to gaze at them, picturing what within he could not see, he heard the piano Debbie playing. And so she had an appreciative audience, although she did not know it. Below her windows, out of the light, Jim poor old Jim! sat like a statue, his head thrown back, his eyes uplifted, tears running down his hairy, weather-beaten face.
One day, Mother Graymouse put on her gray bonnet with the blue ribbons on it, and hunted around for the candy bag. She was going shopping. When at last she found the bag, there was a hole in one corner. "I have not used it since the day we visited Cousin Debbie Field-Mouse," she remembered. "That naughty Baby Squealer must have chewed a hole in it on the way home.
The rest of that day went off beautifully, and Billie was beginning to feel very confident when suddenly Debbie threw a suggestion bomb-like in the midst of her contentment.
For, Debbie" turning to look into the dark, troubled eyes "I'm clean now I never thought to be again to know anything so exquisitely sweet, either in earth or heaven I'm clean, body and soul, day and night, inside and outside, at last." "Oh, POOR girl!" Deb moaned, with tears, when she realised what this meant. "Rich," corrected Mary "rich, dear, with just a roof and a crust of bread."
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