“Where is Jimmy this afternoon? I hope he hasn’t been cutting up, Randy,” said the father, questioningly.
“Oh, no, but we’ve company at home that I left him to entertain. Guess who?”
“No, Father John, and only think of it, he’s going to stay two days before he goes up to the Hasletons’ for his usual August visit. On hearing of it, Mrs. Hasleton brought me some flowers and fruit this afternoon, and when she had seen the house, asked me if I would let her John and little Helen come to me of mornings this winter and learn to read and spell with Jimmy. She said that she knew I had taught school in the old-fashioned way, and that she preferred it to kindergarten methods for the boy. Think of my being able to teach the Hasletons’ children anything. Isn’t it splendid, Jim? How pleased Ma will be.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Jim Bradley, closing one hand over those that held the reins, “but I know something, or rather somebody, else that is splendid, even if she couldn’t just at first make up her mind which end of the line she’d live at.”
Miranda Bradley, not one whit abashed, laughed softly. “It wasn’t really a matter for me to decide which end, was it, Jim, since Hasleton Manor Station happens to be almost in the middle?”
Thus it came about that neither the remote hamlet of Hattertown nor a bleak February day was without influence on vital things.
“How can you ask me to invite her?” I said, looking up from a letter Evan had a moment before handed me to read, and blinking at him reproachfully; for I had been driving about with father all the afternoon with the brightening March sun reflected by ice-coated March snow in my eyes, until the lids seemed to be controlled by rusty wires and everything was enveloped in rainbow-hued mist through which black spots danced.
“Is it possible that you have read the letter? Hear what she writes: ‘Terry says that you live in the country and that you wouldn’t leave your home for anything in the world. I want to live in the country because I was born in the West and lived on a ranch until I was well grown, and I haven’t yet found a city big enough to give me elbow-room, much less a comb in a twelve-story beehive, which in New York it seems is the only available shelter for people like Terry and myself. Besides, I want room for a riding horse and pasture to turn him out.