Page 16 (1/1)

"You haven't asked us e came for," opened up Allison as soon as everybody was served with chicken, mashed potato, succotash, stewed toht you came for cookies," said Julia Cloud, with aone on"But that wasn't all Guess again"

"Perhaps you caht you are! But that's not all, either That wouldn't last ain"

"Oh, I couldn't!" said Julia Cloud, growing suddenly stricken with the thought of their going "I give it up"

"Well, then I'll tell you You see we've coe, both of us Of course I've hadWe haven't decided which college it's to be yet, but it's to be co-ed, we know thatseparated When one hasn't but two in the family and has been apart for five years, one appreciates a home, I tell you that And so we've decided ant a hoe to live there in the usual e're going to take a house, live like real folks, and go to school every day We want a fireplace and a cooky-jar of our own; a place to bring our friends and have good times But most of all ant a mother, and we've come all this way to coax you to come and live with us, play house, you know, as you used to do down on the mossy rocks with broken bits of china for dishes and acorns for cups and saucers Play house and you be mother Will you do it, Cloudy Jewel? It means a whole lot to us, and we'll try to play fair and ood time"

Julia Cloud put her hand on her heart, and lifted her bewildered eyes to the boy's eager face

"Me!" she said wonderingly "You want me!"

"We sure do!" said Allison

"Indeed we do, Cloudy, dear! That's just e do want!" cried Leslie, ju around to her aunt's chair to embrace her excitedly "And you promised, you know, that you would do anted if you possibly, possibly could"

"You see, we put it up to our guardian about the house," went on Allison, "and he said the difficulty would be to get the right kind of a housekeeper that he could trust us with Of course he's way off in California, and he has to be fussy He's built that way But we told him we didn't want any housekeeper at all, anted a mother He said you couldn't pick mothers off trees, but we told hiet her So he let us co down to see you and fix it up about the ular salary or he wouldn't consider it, because there were things he'd have to insist upon that he had proement about it, he wouldn't knohat to do Besides, he said it orth a lot to run a couple of rough-necks like Les and ht so you could afford to leave whatever you were doing and just give your ti us Now it's up to you, Cloudy Jewel, to help us out with our proposition or spoil everything, because we simply won't have a housekeeper, and we don't know another real mother in the whole world that hasn't a family of her own"