"Ach, Mom, you _are_ a good mom." Amanda leaned over the mother,
who was pinning the hem in the new dress, and pressed a kiss on the top
of the white-capped head. "When I grow up I want to be like you. And
when I'm big and you're old, won't you be the nicest granny!"
Aunt Rebecca suddenly looked sad and meek. Perhaps a partial
appreciation of what she missed by being childless came to her. What
thrills she might have known if happy children ran to her with shouts
of "Granny!" But she did not carry the thread of thought far enough to
analyze her own actions and discover that, though childless, she could
attract the love of other people's children if she chose. The tender
moment was fleet. She looked at Amanda and Philip and saw in them only
two children prone to evil, requiring stern disciplining.
"Now don't go far from the house," said Mrs. Reist later, "for your
other dress is soon ready to fit. As soon as Aunt Rebecca gets the
pleats basted in the skirt."
"I'll soon get them in. But it's foolishness to go to all that bother
when gathers would do just as good and go faster."
Amanda turned away and a moment later she and Phil were seated on the
long wooden settee in the kitchen. The boy had silently agreed to a
temporary truce so that the game of counting might be played. He would
pay back his sister some other time. Gee, it was easy to get her goat--
just a little thing like a caterpillar dropped down her neck would make
her holler!
"Gee, Manda, I thought of a bully thing!" the boy whispered. "If that
old crosspatch Rebecca says 'My goodness' thirty times till four
o'clock I'll fetch a tobacco worm and put it in her bonnet. If she
don't say it that often you got to put one in. Huh? Manda, ain't that a
peachy game to play?"
"All right," agreed the girl. "I'll get paper and pencil to keep
count." She slipped into the other room and in a few minutes the two
settled themselves on the settee, their ears straining to hear every
word spoken by the women in the next room.
"My goodness, this thread breaks easy! They don't make nothin' no more
like they used to," came through the open door.
"That's one," said Phil; "make a stroke on the paper. Jiminy Christmas,
that's easy! Bet you we get that paper full of strokes!"