"Oh! Haven't they, Aunty Rose?" queried Carolyn May with sudden earnestness.

"I should say not, child! Holding hands in there like a pair of-Well, do you know what it means, Carolyn May?"

"That they love each other," the child said boldly. "And I'm _so_ glad for them!"

"So am I," declared the woman, still in a whisper. "But it means changes here. Things won't be the same for long. I know Joseph Stagg for what he is."

"What is he, Aunty Rose?" asked Carolyn May in some trepidation, for the housekeeper seemed to be much moved.

"He's a very determined man. Once he gets set in a way, he carries everything before him. Mandy Parlow is going to be made Mrs. Joseph Stagg so quick that it'll astonish her. Now, you believe me, Carolyn May."

"Oh!" was the little girl's comment.

"There'll be changes here very sudden. 'Two's company, three's a crowd,'

Carolyn May. Never was a truer saying. Those two will want just each other-and n.o.body else."

"Oh, Aunty Rose!" murmured the little girl faintly. She had stopped eating the bread and milk. The housekeeper was too deeply interested in her own cogitations to notice how the child was being affected by her speech.

"I've told him a thousand times he should be married," concluded Aunty Rose. "And if Mandy Parlow's the woman for him, then it's all right.

Whether she is or not, he'll marry her. Jedidiah or a thousand others couldn't stop Joseph Stagg now. I know what it means with him when he once makes up his mind.

"But there'll be no room here for anybody but those two, with their billing and cooing. 'Two's company, three's a crowd.'

"Well, Carolyn May, if you've finished your supper, we'd better go up to bed. It's long past your bedtime."

"Yes, Aunty Rose," said the little girl in a m.u.f.fled voice.

Aunty Rose did not notice that Carolyn May did not venture to the door of the sitting-room to bid either Uncle Joe or Miss Amanda good-night.

The child followed the woman upstairs with faltering steps, and in the unlighted bedroom that had been Hannah Stagg's she knelt at Aunty Rose's knee and murmured her usual pet.i.tions.

"Do bless Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda, now they're so happy," was a phrase that might have thrilled Aunty Rose at another time. But she was so deep in her own thoughts that she heard what Carolyn May said perfunctorily.

With her customary kiss, she left the little girl and went downstairs.

Carolyn May had seen so much excitement during the day that she might have been expected to sleep at once, and that soundly. But it was not so.

The little girl lay with wide-open eyes, her imagination at work.

"Two's company, three's a crowd." She took that trite saying, in which Aunty Rose had expressed her own feelings, to herself. If Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda were going to be married, _they would not want anybody else around_! Of course not!

Somewhere, somehow, in listening to older people talk, Carolyn May had obtained the impression that all couples desired to be by themselves just as soon as they were married. They had no need nor desire for other people. Her idea was that the so-called "honeymoon" extended over long, long months.

"And what will become of me?" thought Carolyn May chokingly.

All the "emptiness" of the last few months swept over the soul of the little child in a wave that her natural cheerfulness could not withstand. Her anchorage in the love of Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda was swept away.

She was going to be alone again. There would be n.o.body whose right it was to care for her. With her mother and father drowned in a foreign sea and Uncle Joe utterly taken up with the "lovely lady" he loved, who was there to care for Carolyn May?

The heart of the little child swelled. Her eyes overflowed. She sobbed herself to sleep, the pillow m.u.f.fling the sounds, more forlorn than ever before since she had come to The Corners.

CHAPTER XXVIII-THE JOURNEY

It was certainly a fact that Amanda Parlow immediately usurped some power in the household of the Stagg homestead. She ordered Joseph Stagg not to go down to his store that next day. And he did not!

Nor could he attend to business for several days thereafter. He was too stiff and lame and his burns were too painful.

Chet Gormley came up each day for instructions and was exceedingly full of business. A man would have to be very exacting indeed to find fault with the interest the boy displayed in running the store just as his employer desired it to be run.

"I tell you what it is, Car'lyn," Chet drawled, in confidence. "I'm mighty sorry Mr. Stagg got hurt like he did. But lemme tell you, it's jest givin' me the chance of my life!

"Why, maw says that Mr. Stagg and Miss Mandy Parlow'll git married for sure now!"

"Oh, yes," sighed the little girl. "They'll be married."

"Well, when folks git married they allus go off on a trip. Course, _they_ will. And me-I'll be runnin' the business all by myself. It'll be great! Mr. Stagg will see jest how much value I be to him. Why, it'll be the makin' of me!" cried the optimistic youth.

Yes, Carolyn May heard it on all sides. Everybody was talking about the affair of Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda.

Every time she saw her uncle and her "pretty lady" together the observant child could not but notice that they were utterly wrapped up in each other. It is only between lovers who have been heart-hungry for long years, as these two had, that a perfectly open expression of affection is maintained.

The modest spinster and the bashful bachelor seemed to have sloughed off their former natures. They had developed a new and exceedingly strange life, as different from their former existence as the b.u.t.terfly's is from the caterpillar's.

Miss Amanda could not go past the easy chair in which the hardware dealer was enthroned without touching him. He, as bold as a boy, would seize her hand and kiss it. Her soft, capable hand would linger on his head in so tender a gesture that it might have brought tears to the eyes of a sympathetic observer.

Love, a mighty, warm, throbbing spirit, had caught them up and swept them away out of themselves-out of their old selves, at least. They had eyes only for each other-thoughts only for each other.

Even a child could see something of this. The absorption of the two made Aunty Rose's remarks very impressive to Carolyn May.

A week of this followed-a week in which the trouble in Carolyn May's heart and brain seethed until it became unbearable. She was convinced that there would soon be no room for her in the big house. She watched Aunty Rose pack her own trunk, and the old lady looked very glum, indeed. She heard whispers of an immediate marriage, here in the house, with Mr. Driggs as the officiating clergyman.

Everybody in the neighbourhood was interested in the affair and eagerly curious; but Carolyn May could not talk about it. They thought she had been instructed not to speak of the matter, but the little girl only felt that she would cry if she talked of this event that was to make her uncle and Miss Amanda so happy and herself so miserable.

"Oh, Prince!" she sobbed, clinging around the dog's neck out under their favourite tree in the back yard of the Stagg place, "n.o.body wants us. We never ought to have come here. Maybe it would have been better if we _had_ gone to the poorhouse.

"Only, I s'pose, they wouldn't have wanted you, my dear. And you are the very best friend I've got, Prince. You are! you are! _You_ wouldn't go off and get married, would you?

"And I want 'em to be happy, too. Of course I do! But-but I didn't know it was goin' to be like this. I-I wish I was back in our old home in New York. Don't you wish so, Princey?

"There we had things that were our very own. Even if my mamma and papa aren't there, it would be nice, I think. And Mr. and Mrs. Price would be kind to us-and Edna. And there's the janitor's boy-he was a real nice boy. And all the little girls we knew at school there.

"Oh!" cried Carolyn May, suddenly jumping up and dashing away her tears, "I would just _love_ to go back there. And we _could_, Princey! I've got more'n ten dollars in my bank, for Uncle Joe gave me a ten-dollar gold piece at Christmas. That's more'n enough to take us back home. Oh, it is! it is!"

The child's excitement thrilled her through and through. Her eyes brightened and the flush came into her cheeks. She knew, through Chet Gormley, that Mr. Stagg had never done anything with the furniture in the flat. Her home-just as it had been when her mother and father were alive-was back there in New York City. She had been happy at The Corners in a way. But it was not the happiness she had known in her old home.

And now she believed that she saw great changes coming. Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda would be just as Aunty Rose had hinted-so deeply engaged with each other that they would have no time or thought for a sunny-haired and blue-eyed little girl who had brought, all unknown to herself, a new creed into the lives of many of the adults of The Corners.