"Get away! Don't you touch me! You go away home and sit on a table with your legs all crooked up--so; and stop playing you're a regular girl. Leave go my father's hand, I say!"
Then One came to the rescue. As soon as he could stop laughing, he explained the situation to the others, and though the incident seemed a trivial one to the younger people to the good Doctor it was weighty with reproach for the ignorance he had permitted in his own household. It also had its far-reaching results; for it led him to observe the Sun Maid critically, and, when he had heard her simple story, to ask out of the fulness of his own big heart:
"Will you come and share our home with us, my daughter? Surely, you have much good sense and many wonderful gifts. The Lord has thrown us into one another's company, and I believe you can, in large measure, take their mother's place to these sons of mine. Will you come and live in our home, dear Sun Maid?"
"Indeed, I will! And love you for letting me!" cried the grateful girl, catching the Doctor's hand and kissing it reverently.
But it did not occur to either of these innocents that there was, at that time, no home existing for them.
"They are all unfitted to take care of themselves, though the girl has the best sense of the lot. The Fort is always overfull. They would be happier by themselves, and it will be a blessing to have such a good man among us. Let us build them a log cabin and instal them in it."
Such was the Fort commandant's decision and, as he suggested, it was quickly done. The old maxim of many hands and light work was verified, for in a magically short time the little parsonage was reared and the few belongings of the household moved into it.
"That's what it seems to me,"--cried the Sun Maid, as the last stroke was given, and a soldier climbed to the roof-peak to thrust a fresh green branch into the crevice,--"as if yesterday we dreamed we wanted a home, and now it's ours. If only Wahneenah and Gaspar were here, I should be almost too happy to live. Yes, and poor Mercy Smith, who says she never did have a good time in her life; and Abel, and Black Partridge; and----"
"Everybody! I guess you're wanting," reproved the elder son of the minister. For, during the time of building, short though it was, the orphan girl had become wholly identified with the Littlejohns' household and felt as full a right to the cabin as if it had been her own especial property.