Part 23 (1/2)
”G.o.d bless Harry,” was the imperturbable rejoinder to this pleading.
”Don't you want your poor mother to have some supper, Harry?” inquired Susan severely.
”Harry wants supper,” answered the innocent.
”I suppose I'll have to let him go,” said Virginia, distractedly, ”but Oliver will be horrified. He says I don't reason with them enough.
Harry,” she concluded sternly, ”don't you understand that it is naughty of you to behave this way and keep mamma away from poor little Jenny?”
”Bad Jenny,” said Harry.
”If you don't say your prayers this minute, you shan't have any preserves on your bread to-morrow.”
”Bad preserves,” retorted Harry.
”Well, if he won't, I don't see how I can make him,” said Virginia.
”Come, then, get into bed, Harry, and go to sleep. You have been a bad boy and hurt poor mamma's feelings so that she is going to cry. She won't be able to eat her supper for thinking of the way you have disobeyed her.”
Jumping into bed with a bound, Harry dug his head into the pillows, gurgled, and then sat up very straight.
”G.o.d bless dear papa, G.o.d bless dear mamma, G.o.d bless dear grandmamma, G.o.d bless dear grandpapa, G.o.d bless dear Lucy, G.o.d bless dear Jenny, G.o.d bless our dear friends everywhere,” he repeated in a resounding voice.
”Oh, you precious lamb!” exclaimed Virginia. ”He couldn't bear to hurt poor mamma, could he?” and she kissed him ecstatically before hastening to the slumbering Jenny in the adjoining room.
”I like the little scamp,” said Susan, when she reported the scene to John Henry on the way home, ”but he manages his mother perfectly.
Already his sense of humour is better developed than hers.”
”I can't get over seeing Virginia with children,” observed John Henry, as if the fact of Virginia's motherhood had just become evident to him.
”It suits her, though. She looked happier than I ever saw her--and so, for that matter, did Aunt Lucy.”
”It made me wonder how Mrs. Pendleton had lived away from them for seven years. Why, you can't imagine what she is--she doesn't seem to have any life at all until you see her with Virginia's children.”
”It's a wonderful thing,” said John Henry slowly, ”and it taught me a lot just to look at them. I don't know why, but it seemed to make me understand how much I care about you, Susan.”
”Hadn't you suspected it before?” asked Susan as calmly as he had spoken. Emotionalism, she knew, she would never find in John Henry's wooing, and, though she could not have explained the reason of it to herself, she liked the brusque directness of his courts.h.i.+p. It was part of that large sincerity of nature which had first attracted her to him.
”Of course, in a way I knew I cared more for you than for anybody else--but I didn't realize that you were more to me than Virginia had ever been. I had got so in the habit of thinking I was in love with her that it came almost as a surprise to me to find that it was over.”
”I knew it long ago,” said Susan.
”Why didn't you make me see it?”
”Oh, I waited for you to find it out yourself. I was sure that you would some day.”
”Do you think you could ever care for me, Susan?”
A smile quivered on Susan's lips as she looked up at him, but with the reticence which had always characterized her, she answered simply: