Val wished her father had not been too tired to come to supper. She had observed that she was never so much corrected in his presence.
The full moon was shining in the gloaming as they passed the open veranda door coming from their belated meal.
"Let's go out a minute," said Val to Emmie, in a whisper.
And she dragged her little sister off. But they stayed out only a few minutes.
"Gamma, she made me fall down on the g'avel."
Val, without explanation or apology, flushed angrily and ran up-stairs. She knocked at her father's door.
"Come in," he said, and she went over in the dim candlelight and stood by his bed.
"Little tired," he answered. "Are you come to say good-night?"
She perched on the side of his bed. She had come in with the express intention of making complaints. Some vague notion of sparing him because he was ill kept her tongue-tied.
"Isn't this a nice old house?" he said, presently.
"In the daytime you'll see what capital places there are for you and Emmie to play in."
"Is it true I mustn't swing on the gate?"
"Emmie says so. Is it true I mustn't roll down the terraces?"
"Emmie says so. What are terraces for, anyhow? I thought," she added, with a sigh--"I thought it was going to be like the country."
"Oh, wait till you see it by daylight. It's a great deal more like the country than New York."
"But there isn't a single smallest kind of a dog here. There isn't," she wound up, tremulously--"there isn't even a chicken."
"You just wait till to-morrow, and I'll show you heaps of nice things. There isn't a finer tulipifera rhododendron in the world than the one out by the back veranda. And there's a beautiful old crooked catalpa on the terrace you can make a house in."
"Emmie says she only lets cousin Ethan climb trees."
"Oh-a, well--a--I dare say there are plenty of other things. Aren't the peaches nearly ripe?"
"Have you seen my Indian arrowheads and stone hatchets down-stairs in the cabinet?"
"And to-morrow I must show you the great slab of stone at the back door. The oldest inhabitant of this place told me when I first came to New Plymouth that he remembered cracking nuts there at recess in 1800, when he went to school here. There aren't many little girls who have such a wonderful old house to live in."