"Who
brought you?" She looked closely at the man on the driver's seat and
recognized Gideon Himes.
"Why, Pap!" she exclaimed. "I'll never forget you for this. It was
mighty good of you."
The door swung open, letting out a path of light.
"Aunt Mavity!" cried the girl. "Mother and the children have come down
to see me. Isn't it fine?"
Mavity Bence made her appearance in the doorway, her faded eyes so
reddened with weeping that she looked like a woman in a fever. She
gulped and stared from her father, where in the shine of her upheld lamp
he sat blinking and grinning, to Laurella Consadine in a ruffled
pink-and-white lawn frock, with a big, rose-wreathed hat on her dark
curls, and Johnnie Consadine with the children clinging about her.
"Have ye told her?" she gasped. And at the tone Johnnie turned quickly,
a sudden chill falling upon her glowing mood.
"What's the matter?" she asked, startled, clutching the baby tighter to
her, and conning over with quick alarm the tow-heads that bobbed and
surged about her waist. "The children are all right--aren't they?"
Milo looked up apprehensively. He was an old-faced, anxious-looking,
little fellow, already beginning to have a stoop to his thin
shoulders--the bend of the burden bearer.
"I--I done the best I could, Sis' Johnnie," he hesitated apologetically.
"You wasn't thar, and Unc' Pros was gone, an' I thest worked the farm
and took care of mother an' the little 'uns best I knowed how.
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