“Let’s try,” said Hannah. “It is going to be awfully cold to-night. Maysie can tell her, because she lets her do so many more things than she does the rest of us.”
This was true. Little Maysie, the baby of the family, had been indulged and petted more than the rest, because she had not been so rugged as they were. When they all had the measles and whooping-cough, Maysie it was who had them the hardest. Maysie, too, had been very ill with pneumonia. Thus they had gotten into the habit of letting her have her way whenever any important question was at hand. So it was not strange that Maysie, in spite of a happy and generous nature, had taken advantage of the situation and become a little wilful. It is quite natural it should be so, when she so often heard Mother say, “Oh, give it to Maysie, she has been so sick, you know;” or, “Let Maysie do it, because she isn’t so strong as you are.”
So, when Hannah proposed that Maysie should be the one to tell Mother that they had been keeping a dog for the last week, and ask her to let them take it into the house to live, Maysie answered confidently,—
“That will settle my business,” said Toby to himself, as the children trooped up the dark and narrow stairways of the tenement-house. “No chance for me now to slip my collar. So here I shall have to stay, and good-bye to the fields I love so much.”
The children went up to the very top tenement of the house, and stopped a moment before opening the door.
“Give her the cakes before you tell her about the dog, Maysie,” said Johnny in a loud whisper.
“Of course I shall,” replied Maysie, shrewdly. “Don’t I know she will be more likely to give in after she sees the beautiful cakes?”
They found the table set for the simple supper, and their mother busily sewing. The father of the family worked in a machine-shop, and in busy seasons the work went on by night as well as by day; so the children saw little of their father, who, when he worked nights, was obliged to sleep part of the day.
The mother looked up as the children entered the room. Care and hard work had left their impress on her face, for it was thin and worn, but it brightened as her eyes fell on the faces of the happy children.
“I was afraid that something had happened to you,” said the mother. “What kept you so long?”