Then, to tease, he added: "Why don't you invite the girls to watch you milk this evening?"
"Well, I may at that," the younger boy said, nothing daunted by their laughter. "But just now we must hie us to our cabin. I promised to visit Mother about two." Then to Charles he suggested: "Before we eat the good lunch Sing Long will have for us, suppose we go swimming, old man, what say?"
"Agreed! It sounds good to me!" Turning to his sister, Charles took her hand lovingly. "I'll be over to spend the afternoon with you, dear?"
Harold, glancing almost shyly at the other girl, wished he could say the same thing to her. Then it was he recalled something. "Charles," he said, "Mother wanted me to bring you over to the big house this afternoon. I call it that to designate it from the cabin. She is eager to meet my new friend."
"Indeed I shall be very glad to meet your mother." Then smiling tenderly at the girl whose hand he still held, he said: "You do feel stronger today, don't you, sister?" She nodded happily, then away the two boys ran.
An hour later, refreshed and sleek-looking after their swim, they sat at a small table on the pine-sheltered side porch and ate the good lunch Sing Long had prepared for them.
"This is great!" Charles enthusiastically exclaimed. "I'd like Lenora to see it."
"Better still, in a few days, when she is able to walk this far, we will invite the girls to dine." Harold hesitated, flushed a little and added as an after thought: "Of course we'll ask my sister, too." Again he had completely forgotten Gwynette. His good resolution was going to be hard to put into effect, it would seem.
"I shall be glad to meet your mother and also your sister," Charles was saying.
An impulse came to Harold to confide in Charles. Ought he or ought he not? He knew that he could trust his new friend and his advice might be invaluable. And so he began hesitatingly: "I'm going to tell you something, Charles, which I never told to anyone else. In fact, it's only recently that Mother realized I knew about it. But now a complication has risen. We, Mother and I, don't know _what_ is best to do, and what is more, Silas and Susan Warner have to be considered."
"Don't tell me unless you are quite sure that you want to, old man," Charles said in his frank, friendly way, adding, "We make confidences, sometimes, rather on an impulse, and wish later that we had not."