The Open Question Part 22

"Oh, we never have more'n one," admonished Emmie, gently.

Val went on calmly with her toilet. Presently Mrs. Gano looked in.

"Come to supper, little girls, as soon as you're ready."

She was going away without more words, when Emmie called out excitedly:

"Just look, gamma--two candles a-burnin', 'and no s.h.i.+p at sea!'"

Mrs. Gano smiled.

"Yes, my dear; one is enough."

She put the extinguisher over the nearest, and went down-stairs.

"Skinflint!" observed Val.

The supper was on this occasion a late and hurriedly prepared meal.

There were soft-boiled eggs. Val helped herself to two, and broke them into a tumbler; then mixed in salt, and pepper, and b.u.t.ter, and bits of bread.

"Just look at what Val's doing!" said Emmie, with innocent excitement, while her elder and more accomplished sister stirred the agreeable compound round and round.

"Never do that again," said Mrs. Gano, suddenly aware of the enormity.

"I don't like people to make puddings in their tumblers at my table."

"T'ain't puddin'," said Val.

"That will do." Mrs. Gano ended the matter according to her usual formula. "Will you have some corn bread?"

"No, thank you; I don't like it."

"It is enough to answer, 'No, thank you.' Never say you don't like anything you see on my table."

Val wished her father had not been too tired to come to supper. She had observed that she was never so much corrected in his presence.

The full moon was s.h.i.+ning in the gloaming as they pa.s.sed the open veranda door coming from their belated meal.

"Let's go out a minute," said Val to Emmie, in a whisper.

"No; it's too late. I'd catch cold."

"Oh, nonsense! Come along."

And she dragged her little sister off. But they stayed out only a few minutes.

Emmie came in crying.

"Gamma, she made me fall down on the g'avel."

Val, without explanation or apology, flushed angrily and ran up-stairs.

She knocked at her father's door.

"Come in," he said, and she went over in the dim candlelight and stood by his bed.

"How you feel, father?"

"Little tired," he answered. "Are you come to say good-night?"

"I 'spose I mustn't stay?"

"Oh, a minute or two."

She perched on the side of his bed. She had come in with the express intention of making complaints. Some vague notion of sparing him because he was ill kept her tongue-tied.

"Isn't this a nice old house?" he said, presently.

"Y--yes," she answered.

"In the daytime you'll see what capital places there are for you and Emmie to play in."

"Is it true I mustn't swing on the gate?"

"Well, I dare say--"

"Emmie says so. Is it true I mustn't roll down the terraces?"

"H'm--well--"

"Emmie says so. What are terraces for, anyhow? I thought," she added, with a sigh--"I thought it was going to be like the country."

"Oh, wait till you see it by daylight. It's a great deal more like the country than New York."

"She doesn't keep a horse?"

"No."

"Nor a cow?"

"No; there's no stable, you see."

"There isn't any pig, father!"

"Oh no; she wouldn't like a pig."

"But there isn't a single smallest kind of a dog here. There isn't," she wound up, tremulously--"there isn't even a chicken."

"You just wait till to-morrow, and I'll show you heaps of nice things.

There isn't a finer tulipifera rhododendron in the world than the one out by the back veranda. And there's a beautiful old crooked catalpa on the terrace you can make a house in."