Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/327

Rh sisters than anything else. She 's a good girl, if I am her mother; and I 'd have liked first-rate to bring her out to your place if we could have fetched it about; but we could n't nohow. It 's a lonesome place here for a girl. "Yours with respect, ".

"P. S. If you should ever be traveling in these parts, which I don't suppose is any ways likely, we should be glad to see you in our house; and a room ready for you, and welcome, if you could get along with the water."

When Joe first read Mrs. Bennet's letter, he said "Whew!" then he read the letter over, and said again louder than before,— "Whew! Did n't I put my foot in it that time. I don't wonder the girl got her mother to write for her! She must have thought me monstrous impudent to write her to come out here visiting,—a woman—as old as I am, pretty nearly. By jingoes, I don't know what to do now. I 'd like to see what sort of a girl she is, anyhow. I don't care!—that letter of hers did sound just like a child's letter! I expect she 's a real innocent kind of a woman, and that 's the kind I like."

At last, out of the honesty of his nature came the solution of the dilemma; he told the exact truth, and it had a gracious and civil sound, even in Joe's unvarnished speech.