They did, or at least Margery, Happie and Bob did, consumed with curiosity as to what they should find encumbering Miss Bradbury.
When she stepped briskly off the car on the steps which the grade of the track at Crestville compelled the porter to place for passengers, the Scollards saw her encumbrance, and hailed it with a shout. There, dismounting behind Miss Keren-happuch, so thoroughly laden that there seemed no question that lady was already making him useful, his cheerful face one mass of smiles, came Ralph Gordon!
Happie and Bob dashed at him regardless of a man with a fishing-pole, come up for trout, and collided violently with the combination. The brief mishap, though it left the traveler furious, did not dampen Happie's ardor. She shook both Ralph's hands so hard, and exclaimed: "Well, I never did!" so emphatically, and so many times, that there was no doubt of her pleasure at seeing her former neighbor. Bob slapped him on the back with such abandon that Ralph swallowed whole the durable black licorice drop with which he had been beguiling the last moments of the journey, and choked over it so violently that he had no breath to reply to the questions his friends hurled at him in rapid succession.
"I thought that you might like a guest, a crumb from your Patty-Pans, so to speak," said Miss Bradbury, surveying the effect of her surprise with much satisfaction. "Ralph has had a cold, and has been working too hard," she explained. "I need a boy to help Bob, so I took this one. I shall expect you to keep him hard at work, allowing no time for talk or play. How's your Charlotte-mother?"
"Better for your return, Aunt Keren," said Margery sweetly, but truthfully.
"At home with his mother," returned Aunt Keren. "But he will come up in the summer, by August, if not before."
"Is Ralph----" Happie began, but stopped herself before she had framed a question that might have been awkward to answer.
Miss Keren-happuch finished it for her. "Going to stay?" she said. "Yes, he is, or at least until something happens to call him home. Mrs. Gordon yielded to my arguments, and consented to lending him to us. I told her we needed him, especially Bob. So I captured him. Curious that I went to get a girl, and brought home a boy, an altogether unforeseen boy."