Page:Carroll Rankin--Dandelion Cottage.djvu/111

 Rh  "Mr. Black," said Bettie, dreamily, "has enough things but I don't believe he really cares about anything in the world but his roses—his face is different when he talks about them, kind of soft all about the corners and not so—not so"

"y," supplied Jean, understandingly.

"It must be pretty lonely for him without any family," agreed Miss Blossom. "I don't know what would become of father if he didn't have me to keep him cheered up—we're wonderful chums, father and I."

"Oh," mourned tender-hearted Bettie, "I wish I could make Mrs. Crane rich enough so she wouldn't need to mend all the time, and that I could provide Mr. Black with some really truly relatives to love him the way you love your father."

"O Bettie! Bettie!" cried Mabel, suddenly beginning, in her excitement, to bounce up and down on the one chair that possessed springs, "I know exactly how we