Aunt Janet, who was kneading her bread, turned round and lifted floury hands. Felicity and Cecily, who were just entering the kitchen, rosy from slumber, stopped still and stared at me.
“Uncle Blair--the Story Girl’s father, you know. He’s here.”
“Down in the orchard. He was asleep in the hammock. We found him there.”
“Dear me!” said Aunt Janet, sitting down helplessly. “If that isn’t like Blair! Of course he couldn’t come like anybody else. I wonder,” she added in a tone unheard by anyone else save myself, “I wonder if he has come to take the child away.”
My elation went out like a snuffed candle. I had never thought of this. If Uncle Blair took the Story Girl away would not life become rather savourless on the hill farm? I turned and followed Felicity and Cecily out in a very subdued mood.
Uncle Blair and the Story Girl were just coming out of the orchard. His arm was about her and hers was on his shoulder. Laughter and tears were contending in her eyes. Only once before--when Peter had come back from the Valley of the Shadow--had I seen the Story Girl cry. Emotion had to go very deep with her ere it touched the source of tears. I had always known that she loved her father passionately, though she rarely talked of him, understanding that her uncles and aunts were not whole-heartedly his friends.
But Aunt Janet’s welcome was cordial enough, though a trifle flustered. Whatever thrifty, hard-working farmer folk might think of gay, Bohemian Blair Stanley in his absence, in his presence even they liked him, by the grace of some winsome, lovable quality in the soul of him. He had “a way with him”--revealed even in the manner with which he caught staid Aunt Janet in his arms, swung her matronly form around as though she had been a slim schoolgirl, and kissed her rosy cheek.
“Sister o’ mine, are you never going to grow old?” he said. “Here you are at forty-five with the roses of sixteen--and not a gray hair, I’ll wager.”
“Blair, Blair, it is you who are always young,” laughed Aunt Janet, not ill pleased. “Where in the world did you come from? And what is this I hear of your sleeping all night in the hammock?”
“I’ve been painting in the Lake District all summer, as you know,” answered Uncle Blair, “and one day I just got homesick to see my little girl. So I sailed for Montreal without further delay. I got here at eleven last night--the station-master’s son drove me down. Nice boy. The old house was in darkness and I thought it would be a shame to rouse you all out of bed after a hard day’s work. So I decided that I would spend the night in the orchard. It was moonlight, you know, and moonlight in an old orchard is one of the few things left over from the Golden Age.”