“_I_ like it,” said Demi, as if his approval was all that was necessary.
“It is the dearest play ever made!” cried Daisy, hugging her little dish-tub as she proposed to wash up the cups. “I just wish everybody had a sweet cooking stove like mine,” she added, regarding it with affection.
“This play ought to have a name,” said Demi, gravely removing the syrup from his countenance with his tongue.
“Oh, what?” asked both children, eagerly.
“Well, I think we will call it Patty pans,” and Aunt Jo retired, satisfied with the success of her last trap to catch a sunbeam.
“Please, ma’am, could I speak to you? It is something _very_ important,” said Nat, popping his head in at the door of Mrs. Bhaer’s room.
It was the fifth head which had popped in during the last half-hour; but Mrs. Jo was used to it, so she looked up, and said briskly,--
Nat came in, shut the door carefully behind him, and said in an eager, anxious tone,--
“He’s a boy I used to know when I fiddled round the streets. He sold papers, and he was kind to me, and I saw him the other day in town, and told him how nice it was here, and he’s come.”
“But, my dear boy, that is rather a sudden way to pay a visit.”
“Oh, it isn’t a visit; he wants to stay if you will let him!” said Nat, innocently.
“Well, but I don’t know about that,” began Mrs. Bhaer, rather startled by the coolness of the proposition.
“Why, I thought you liked to have poor boys come and live with you, and be kind to ’em as you were to me,” said Nat, looking surprised and alarmed.
“So I do, but I like to know something about them first. I have to choose them, because there are so many. I have not room for all. I wish I had.”
“I told him to come because I thought you’d like it, but if there isn’t room he can go away again,” said Nat, sorrowfully.
The boy’s confidence in her hospitality touched Mrs. Bhaer, and she could not find the heart to disappoint his hope, and spoil his kind little plan, so she said,--
“I don’t know any thing, only he hasn’t got any folks, and he’s poor, and he was good to me, so I’d like to be good to him if I could.”
“Excellent reasons every one; but really, Nat, the house is full, and I don’t know where I could put him,” said Mrs. Bhaer, more and more inclined to prove herself the haven of refuge he seemed to think her.