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Then, lighting a candle, and shading it, as her habit was, from the sleeping child, she slipped on her dressing-gown and opened the door. On the threshold she paused to look at her watch. Only half-past five! She thought with compunction of the unkindness of breaking in on Junie Fulmer's slumbers; but such scruples did not weigh an ounce in the balance of her purpose.
Junie Fulmer, with her strangely mature perception of the case, and seemingly of every case that fate might call on her to deal with, sat for a moment motionless in Susy's hold. Then she freed her wrists with an adroit twist, and leaning back against the pillows said judiciously: "You'll never in the world bring up a family of your own if you take on like this over other people's children."
She paused, and a sudden inspiration illuminated her. "But why shouldn't we take them with us?" she exclaimed. Her husband's arms fell away from her, and he stood dumfounded. "Take them with us?" "Why not?" "All five of them?" "Of course I couldn't possibly separate them. And Junie and Nat will help us to look after the young ones." "Help us!" he groaned. "Oh, you'll see; they won't bother you.
But what shall I be expected to read to you?" she had gaily questioned; and Junie had answered, after one of her sober pauses of reflection: "The little ones like nearly everything; but Nat and I want poetry particularly, because if we read it to ourselves we so often pronounce the puzzling words wrong, and then it sounds so horrid."
Poor Junie would have to oversleep herself on Sunday, that was all. Susy stole into the passage, opened a door, and cast her light on the girl's face. "Junie! Dearest Junie, you must wake up!" Junie lay in the abandonment of youthful sleep; but at the sound of her name she sat up with the promptness of a grown person on whom domestic burdens have long weighed.
Pomfrette's face was pitiful to see drawn, staring. "Junie!" he said hoarsely. Her eyes were red with weeping, her face was very pale. "M'sieu' le Cure" she said, "you must listen to me" the Cure's face had become forbidding "sinner though I am. You want to be just, don't you? Ah, listen! I was to be married to Luc Pomfrette, but I did not love him then.
But when, between laughter and embraces, his identity, and his right to be where he was, had been made clear to them, Junie dismissed the matter by asking him in her practical way: "Then I suppose we may talk about you to Susy now?" and thereafter all five addressed themselves to the vision of their imminent holiday. From that moment the little house became the centre of a whirlwind.
There was hardly any appeal from her verdict; yet each of her subjects revolved in his or her own orbit of independence, according to laws which Junie acknowledged and respected; and the interpreting of this mysterious charter of rights and privileges had not been without difficulty for Susy. Besides this, there were material difficulties to deal with.
Melrose wants to take him, to pay all the expenses again-well she shan't. I'll pay them." Her worn cheek flushed with triumph. "And you'll see what wonders will come of it.... Only there's the problem of the children. Junie quite agrees that we can't take them...." Thereupon she had unfolded her idea.
Pomfrette trembled so that Parpon and the Little Chemist made him sit down, and he leaned against their shoulders, while Junie went on: "I gave him Luc's money to go and give to Parpon here, for I was too ashamed to go myself. And I wrote a little note to Luc, and sent it with the money. I believed in John Dicey, of course.
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