"They'll strangle her," Marian whispered, aghast.
"Pooh, she doesn't mind," Sally Lou whispered back. "You mustn't let them pull you to pieces, Mrs. Chrisenberry. They're as strong as little bear cubs."
"Guess I know that." Mrs. Chrisenberry shook Edward's fat grip loose from her tatting collar. "They're the living images of my own boys, thirty years ago. I hope your children bring you as good luck as mine have brought me. They've grown up as fine men as you'd find in a day's journey. Let me take 'em to see the hen yard. They'll like to play with the little chickens, I know."
Edward and Thomas Tucker were charmed with the hen yard. They fell upon a brood of tiny yellow balls with cries of ecstasy. Only the irate pecks and squawks of the outraged hen mother prevented them from hugging the fuzzy peepers to a loving death.
"They're a pretty lively team," remarked Mrs. Chrisenberry. "Let's take 'em into the house, and I'll give them some cookies and milk. I don't know much about new-fangled ways of feeding children, but I do know that my cookies never hurt anybody yet."
She led them through her shining kitchen into a big, bright sitting-room. Again Marian halted to stare. This was not the customary chill and dreary farm-house "parlor." Instead, she saw a wide, fire-lit living-room, filled with flowering plants, home-like with its books and pictures; and at the arched bay-window a beautiful upright piano.
"Land, I don't ever touch it," she said, with a dry little nut-cracker chuckle. "My oldest boy he gave it to me, for he knows I'm that hungry for music, and whenever my daughter-in-law comes to visit she plays for me by the hour, and it's something grand. And now and then a neighbor will pick out a tune for me. My, don't I wish I could keep it goin' all the time! You girls don't play, I suppose?"
Sally Lou's eyes met Marian's with a quick question. Marian's cheeks grew hot.
"I--I play a little. But I'm sure that Mrs. Burford----"
"Mrs. Burford will play some other time," interrupted Sally Lou, hastily. "Go on, that's a good girl!"
Now, it bored Marian dismally to play for strangers. She refused so habitually that few of her friends knew what a delightful pianist she really was. But dimly she realized that Sally Lou's eyes were flashing with anxious command. She opened the piano.