Tabitha's Vacation, page 9 by Ruth Alberta Brown
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ter her packing unmolested," suggested Gloriana, letting her keen gray eyes sweep the steep, rocky incline for some sign of the youthful McKittricks, but with no better result.
"That must be it," concluded Tabitha, "though I should have thought--why, Mercedes, Susie! What is the matter?"
Coming suddenly around the corner of a huge boulder where the children often played house, the two girls almost tumbled over a row of the most woe-begone, utterly miserable looking figures they had ever seen,--Mercedes, Susie, Inez, Irene, Rosslyn and Janie, all seated on a broad, flat rock as stiff as marble statues, and with faces almost as stony and staring.
"Why, children!" echoed Gloriana, equally amazed. "What are you doing here? What has happened?"
"Mamma is crying again," whispered Mercedes, dabbing savagely at a tear which suddenly brimmed over and splashed down the end of her nose.
"She says she won't go and leave us alone with Mercy," gulped Susanne, striving hard to keep the telltale quiver out of her voice.
"And there ain't money enough to go and take us all," supplemented Inez, who had earned the title of "Susie's shadow," because she preferred the society of her older sister to that of her quiet twin.
"Miss Davis has gone away and won't be back until it's too late," mourned gentle Irene, gazing sorrowfully down toward the low station house on the flats below.
"Mrs. Goodale's gone, too, and there ain't nobody else to housekeep for us," Rosslyn added plaintively, "'cept Mercy."
"But we'd be ist as dood as anjils wiv Mercy," lisped little Janie dejectedly, seeming to comprehend the tragedy of the situation as well as did the older children.
Slowly Tabitha turned toward her companion. Gloriana's gray eyes bravely met the questioning glance of the black ones. "Would your father----"
"Our father," Tabitha mechanically corrected her.
"Our father let you--us, I mean?"
"All summer, if he thought we wanted to; but it