Country homes -- Fiction; Orphans -- Fiction; Siblings -- Fiction
Josephine caught her hand. "It's on your land, Sally dear," she said. "Do
you mind?"
"Did it ever strike you," said Jarvis, quickly, in Max's ear, "that this
_is_ Sally's land, and Alec's, and Bob's, quite as much as yours?"
Mrs. Burnside came out to greet the party, and Sally tumbled into her
welcoming arms, hugging her frantically, and pulling away from her again
to look about her. She seemed a different girl from the limp and languid
one who had climbed into the carriage an hour before.
"Isn't it absolutely enchanting?" she exclaimed, gazing eagerly into the
big tent, the open flaps of which showed an outer room arranged with
rugs, chairs, couch, and table. Other open flaps at the corners of this
outer enclosure invited exploration, and Sally promptly obeyed the
summons. She found four smaller rooms, securely partitioned by high,
tightly stretched canvas walls. She came back beaming.
"What does it all mean?" she begged. "Are we to stay here to-night? Was
there ever anything so inviting as those beds and cots? I could hardly
keep from falling into one of them."
"You may fall into one as soon as you choose," said Josephine,
gleefully. "The one on the southeast corner is yours, the one with the
blue Japanese rug on the floor and the wicker chair with the blue
cushion. We've sent a telephone message to the rest of your family, so
they won't expect you back."
Jarvis, returning with Max from the bestowal of his horses in the barn,
found his mother and the two girls sitting in a row upon a rustic seat
at a little distance from the tent, their faces toward the camp fire, now
a mere flicker, which nobody had taken the trouble to revive. It was too
hot a night for camp fires, except as welcoming beacons.
"Well?" questioned Jarvis, standing before the three, upon whom the
bright midsummer moonlight streamed so luminously that the white figures
were visible in every detail.
"Well?" responded Josephine.
"Very well, I think," added Mrs. Burnside.
"More than well!" And Sally clasped her hands in a way both
characteristic and eloquent. "A dozen tonics couldn't have made me feel
so much stronger as the notion of sleeping in that big white tent. I
wish I knew just what the thermometer says it is in the flat at home.
Oh, poor Uncle Timmy, and Bob and Alec! How I wish they were here--don't
you, Max?"
It would have taken a harder heart than that which beat wearily in Max's
breast to allow him to answer his sister sullenly.
"You like it, Sally?" he asked, taking a position where the moonlight did
not illumine his face.
"Like it!" she exclaimed. "Jo says we're to stay if you are willing--live
in this tent, and have the others out, and Mary Ann Flinders! We won't
need Mary Ann long. I'll be strong enough myself to cook in another week.
Oh, wasn't it dear and kind of these people to plan this for us?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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