Winterbound by Margery Williams Bianco Page A

him, once in a while.”
    Her mother read through her letter slowly and then sat for a moment holding the thin close-written pages on her knee, her face troubled.
    â€œNothing wrong with Aunt Margaret?”
    â€œNo, she’s all right. Peggy isn’t very well. She was a long time getting over that flu, and now the doctor says she has a spot on her lung and he wants her to go straight off to New Mexico for the winter.”
    â€œTough luck. Poor Peggy! Is she very bad?” Garry asked, while Kay looked up from her letter.
    â€œNo, he thinks the winter out there should put it right. But she has to be pretty careful. The trouble for Aunt Margaret is that she can’t possibly go down there with her now that she has this job and Peggy can’t go alone; there’s got to be someone to look after her. She wants to know if I could go; she says she would rather have me than anyone because she’ll feel so much easier if I’m there, but I don’t see . . .”
    â€œCould I be any use?” asked Kay quickly.
    â€œMy dear, I’d propose it in a minute, but you know how Aunt Margaret is, and you know what Peggy is like. It’s got to be some older person who can keep her in order and make her mind. You’re both too much of an age for you to have any sort of control over her, and it isn’t even as if she were actually ill and had to stay in bed. It was through all this racketing around and late hours that she got sick in the first place, and I imagine that’s one reason why the doctor wants to get her right out of town. No, Kay, I wish you could, for it would be a grand chance for you and perhaps later Aunt Margaretwould be glad of it, but you’d be no use just now. And I can’t think of anybody else.”
    â€œOf course you can go,” said Garry promptly. “We can get along here perfectly well by ourselves and it would do you a whole lot of good, too. How long is it for?”
    â€œAunt Margaret thought for a month or so anyway, till she could make some other arrangement. She really is at her wit’s end, this happening just now. She says she insists on making it a business arrangement; someone would have to go anyway, and Peggy’s uncle is helping with the expenses.”
    â€œThen that settles it. The idea of an Ellis turning down a job, and in New Mexico at that! I call it a rank piece of luck,” Garry decided.
    â€œIt wouldn’t be much, I imagine, but at least it would pay for someone to stay here with you while I’m away, and I shall have practically no expenses myself to think of. I do hate to refuse if it can be managed, for Aunt Margaret has always been so good to us and this would be a chance to help her out in return.” Mrs. Ellis’s face cleared as she spoke.
    â€œYes, when I think of relations I never count Aunt Margaret in with them. She’s quite different,” Garry agreed.
    â€œWe won’t need anyone,” Kay said. “Garry and I canmanage perfectly and you won’t have to worry about the children, for one of us will write to you every two days. And there are the Rowes right across the way. It isn’t a bit like being alone here.”
    â€œYes, I’m glad of that; we couldn’t have kinder neighbors. But there has got to be someone in the house; I wouldn’t dream of it otherwise, in winter and all.”
    â€œI don’t suppose it’ll be any worse winter than it is now,” Garry said, “and anyway someone else in the house isn’t going to prevent it. What we will do before you go is to have a telephone put in; then we can always call up if we need to without going across the road in bad weather, and you’ll feel safer about us. That’s much more important. Now you write your wire to Aunt Margaret so as to set her mind at rest and I’ll take it right over to Mary’s, and then we can talk about the rest.”
    Garry had a way of clinching