Country homes -- Fiction; Orphans -- Fiction; Siblings -- Fiction
Sally looked at her friend for a minute, thinking as she did so that
for a rich girl Josephine Burnside possessed the sweetest common sense
ever owned by anybody. Then she dropped her rake and pulled at
Josephine's hand.
"Come!" she cried. "Let's go back and look at the west wing. And the
bedrooms over it are the nicest in the house. I haven't used them only
because they were so big. But you won't care how many acres of straw
matting have to be used to cover them."
"Do you think Max will be willing for us to come?" Josephine asked with
some anxiety, as they went in. "You remember, about the tent--"
"Oh, he's anxious now to get Jarvis on the ground. And he's spoken more
than once about the desirability of our renting some of our unused space,
only of course I wouldn't hear of it, before, to strangers."
Josephine plunged into details. They would bring Joanna for the season,
that paragon of cooks. She should assist Mary Ann--
At which Sally laughed, and said that if incompetent little Mary Ann
could assist dignified, competent Joanna, it would be a matter for
congratulation.
"We'll all dine together every night in the big dining-room, with all the
windows also open, and more flowers on the table."
Josephine would have gone on to further details, but as they crossed the
hall to the west wing, the knocker on the front door banged with a
decisive sound, and Sally opened to find Donald Ferry on the threshold.
"I came on a matter of business," said he, when he had shaken hands, "if
you can call asking a favour business. Shall I plunge into it?--A certain
storage house in a city near our old home has gone out of commission, and
we are notified that everything my mother has had stored there since we
left the home must be moved at once. Now that my sister and her friend
are to be here with us through the summer we should like to have my
sister's piano where she could use it. But"--he spread out his arms with
a gesture conveying the idea of great proportions--"the piano is a
grand--and not a miniature grand at that--concert size. We couldn't
possibly put it in our little house. Would it be asking too much of you
to allow it to stand in one of your rooms through the summer, where Janet
could do some practising on it? I assure you her practising is of the
nature of a morning musicale," he added--as if Sally might need assurance
in the matter.
Sally turned to Josephine. "It's a special providence," said she
solemnly, "to keep me from envying you your matting and willow furniture.
Will you have a concert grand in the west wing? I trow not."
Then she answered to her questioner. "Of course we shall be delighted,"
she told him. "And as I say, it will have a chastening effect on the
Burnside family, who are thinking of furnishing our west wing and
spending the summer with us. I'm sure they won't think of bringing a
grand piano out here."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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