"Yes, but they weren't there, and I was. _Try_ to have a _little_ sense, John! as for the children on Saturday mornings--Yes! I saw you look at us, you snobbish John; you were coming out of Adams's: you gave us a Gorgon glare, and I was ashamed of you! As for the children, they are my joy and delight. I wouldn't miss the Saturday morning drive for _anything_, John Tucker. The lambs! didn't you see how they were enjoying it?" "I saw they was awful dirty! Took me 'most an hour to get the wagon clean, all the mud they tracked in." "They had been playing in the mud. What should they be doing on Saturday morning? I don't suppose you noticed," she added demurely, "that one of the boys was named Tucker, did you, John?" "I did," said John Tucker grimly. "I told him I'd lick him out of his boots, if ever he took such a liberty again." "Are you sure it was Jimmy who took the liberty, John?" Kitty spoke very quietly, but there was a ring of steel in her voice. "There!" said John Tucker, describing the scene to Sarepta that night. "If it wasn't her Pa, lookin' straight at me, and lettin' me have it between the eyes, call me a juggins!" "I will!" said Sarepta. "It's what you are! The idea!" Kitty's vexation passed like summer lightning before John Tucker's abject penitence. "I know!" she said, cheering and soothing him at once. "I know, dear John! It's all your goodness and faithfulness, and I love you for it. But don't you see, I cannot 'sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam, and feast upon strawberries, sugar and cream.' That is what blessed Mother would have liked for me, because she _could_, you know, and because I was her baby, and--oh, I understand so well! But I am a different kind, you see, John. I am mostly Ross, I suppose, at least, so Aunt Johanna says; and I don't like cushions, and I'm afraid I am not _very_ fond of sewing fine seams. When one isn't driving or walking, it seems rather terrible not to be reading, don't you think?" "Yes, Miss!" said John Tucker, submissively. His reading was confined to the _State Farmer_, but never again would he differ from his idol in any particular. "And as for what is lovely, and so on--" Kitty's eyes and voice softened to the look and tone that were specially for her mother--"I think--John, would it be good for Pilot to live entirely on oats, and to trot always on a perfectly level State road? No? I thought not! And if he never did anything but speed in a trotting sulky, you wouldn't say he was being of any great use in the world? No, I thought not! And now it is half-past ten, John Tucker, and if you don't put Pilot into the beach wagon, I must." CHAPTER XVIII OLD LOVE AND NEW