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"She doesn't care about the entertainment at all, but she won't let us have the barn, and here I've been and asked Effie and Tessie and Mike, and they all promised to take part. Oh, dear! I did want that money so bad!" "Are you sure Gail won't care if you give the entertainment?"
Gail stared up at him, and all the life went out of her face. "Oh, surely!" she said with bitterness. "Surely! That's right! We can't afford it! I don't know about you or the rest of the world, but I'm going to hate myself all the rest of my life!" Soames, remembering Rex, got two puppies for the children next morning. He was inside the cottage when Captain Moggs turned up.
The five sisters ran to meet her, and into Gail's hand she thrust a crumpled, green scrap. "Ten dollars!" gasped the astonished girl, examining the dingy bill with excited curiosity. "Someone must have lost it " "And pinned it to the gatepost so's we could find it?" demanded Peace. "Well, I guess not! Bet that tramp left it. He surely must be a prince. What shall you do with it, Gail?"
There, Allee, your dress is done. Fasten up your shoes while I put on my stockings. We'll have to hurry like mischief, 'cause I don't think Gail will go back to sleep again." There was a subdued rustling for a moment or two beyond the dense hedge, and then the listening man heard the sound of hurrying footsteps in the road, and the children vanished without his having caught a glimpse of them.
I have some of the most splendid plans for what we shall do when I have my six girls at home with me. What beautiful times we shall have, mother!" "How can we ever thank them?" whispered bright-eyed Gail to Mrs. Strong, under cover of the lively conversation at the other end of the table.
As soon as he was out of sight Peace slid from her perch to the ground below, deserting the corncob doll she had been dressing, and scurried away to the barn loft to face the new and undreamed-of situation. A licking or pay for the damage done! Why had she been so thoughtless and mean? She might have known that Gail would be the one to suffer.
For a long time, it seemed to them, they sat jogging back and forth in the warm kitchen, mournfully dabbing their eyes and sniffing tearfully. Then Peace sat up, drew a deep, quivering breath, and said decisively, "I'm going to take that cake over to Mrs. Grinnell's " "Gail said we had to stay here until noon," quavered Allee. "She said we had to sit in these chairs till then," Peace corrected.
But he smiled approvingly at her as he said it, and she knew that he liked her having done it. She knew well enough the long hours he spent with his charity patients, and all the things he did for the people in the village things he never spoke of. She thought with a pang that was not a selfish one of John's lot, if he did finally marry Gail.
Gail stood beside Soames, her eyes bright. She exclaimed, "Brad! It isn't cold here!" The children looked at her interestedly. One of the girls spoke politely, in wholly unintelligible syllables. The girls might be thirteen or thereabouts. The boys were possibly a year older, sturdier and perhaps more muscular than most boys of that age. All four were wholly composed.
That vision stayed with me until, one morning, fifty years ago, on the rim of the Grand Cañon you looked into my eyes again and I knew my life dream had come true." I rose and, bending over my wife's cloud of beautiful silvery hair, I kissed her gently on each fair cheek. "Gail, why not take the old trail for our golden-wedding anniversary a long journey, clear to the mountains?" Eloise suggested.
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