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E-text prepared by Al Haines | |
THE S. W. F. CLUB | |
by | |
CAROLINE E. JACOBS | |
Author of _Joan of Jupiter Inn_, _Joan's Jolly Vacation_, | |
_Patricia_, etc. | |
The Goldsmith Publishing Co. | |
Cleveland, Ohio | |
George W. Jacobs & Company | |
1912 | |
CONTENTS | |
CHAPTER | |
I PAULINE'S FLAG | |
II THE MAPLES | |
III UNCLE PAUL'S ANSWER | |
IV BEGINNINGS | |
V BEDELIA | |
VI PERSONALLY CONDUCTED | |
VII HILARY'S TURN | |
VIII SNAP-SHOTS | |
IX AT THE MANOR | |
X THE END OF SUMMER | |
CHAPTER I | |
PAULINE'S FLAG | |
Pauline dropped the napkin she was hemming and, leaning back in her | |
chair, stared soberly down into the rain-swept garden. | |
Overhead, Patience was having a "clarin' up scrape" in her particular | |
corner of the big garret, to the tune of "There's a Good Time Coming." | |
Pauline drew a quick breath; probably, there was a good time | |
coming--any number of them--only they were not coming her way; they | |
would go right by on the main road, they always did. | |
"'There's a good time coming,'" Patience insisted shrilly, "'Help it | |
on! Help it on!'" | |
Pauline drew another quick breath. She would help them on! If they | |
would none of them stop on their own account, they must be flagged. | |
And--yes, she would do it--right now. | |
Getting up, she brought her writing-portfolio from the closet, clearing | |
a place for it on the little table before the window. Then her eyes | |
went back to the dreary, rain-soaked garden. How did one begin a | |
letter to an uncle one had never seen; and of whom one meant to ask a | |
great favor? | |
But at last, after more than one false start, the letter got itself | |
written, after a fashion. | |
Pauline read it over to herself, a little dissatisfied pucker between | |
her brows:-- | |
_Mr. Paul Almy Shaw, | |
New York City, New York_. | |
MY DEAR UNCLE PAUL: First, I should like you to understand that | |
neither father nor mother know that I am writing this letter to you; | |
and that if they did, I think they would forbid it; and I should like | |
you to believe, too, that if it were not for Hilary I should not dream | |
of writing it. You know so little about us, that perhaps you do not | |
remember which of us Hilary is. She comes next to me, and is just | |
thirteen. She hasn't been well for a long time, not since she had to | |
leave school last winter, and the doctor says that what she needs is a | |
thorough change. Mother and I have talked it over and over, but we | |
simply can't manage it. I would try to earn some money, but I haven't | |
a single accomplishment; besides I don't see how I could leave home, | |
and anyway it would take so long, and Hilary needs a change now. And | |
so I am writing to ask you to please help us out a little. I do hope | |
you won't be angry at my asking; and I hope very, very much, that you | |
will answer favorably. | |
I remain, | |
Very respectfully, | |
PAULINE ALMY SHAW. | |
WINTON, VT., May Sixteenth. | |
Pauline laughed rather nervously as she slipped her letter into an | |
envelope and addressed it. It wasn't a very big flag, but perhaps it | |
would serve her purpose. | |
Tucking the letter into her blouse, Pauline ran down-stairs to the | |
sitting-room, where her mother and Hilary were. "I'm going down to the | |
post-office, mother," she said; "any errands?" | |
"My dear, in this rain?" | |
"There won't be any mail for us, Paul," Hilary said, glancing | |
listlessly up from the book she was trying to read; "you'll only get | |
all wet and uncomfortable for nothing." | |
Pauline's gray eyes were dancing; "No," she agreed, "I don't suppose | |
there will be any mail for us--to-day; but I want a walk. It won't | |
hurt me, mother. I love to be out in the rain." | |
And all the way down the slippery village street the girl's eyes | |
continued to dance with excitement. It was so much to have actually | |
started her ball rolling; and, at the moment, it seemed that Uncle Paul | |
must send it bounding back in the promptest and most delightful of | |
letters. He had never married, and somewhere down at the bottom of his | |
apparently crusty, old heart he must have kept a soft spot for the | |
children of his only brother. | |
Thus Pauline's imagination ran on, until near the post-office she met | |
her father. The whole family had just finished a tour of the West in | |
Mr. Paul Shaw's private car--of course, he must have a private car, | |
wasn't he a big railroad man?--and Pauline had come back to Winton long | |
enough to gather up her skirts a little more firmly when she saw Mr. | |
Shaw struggling up the hill against the wind. | |
"Pauline!" he stopped, straightening his tall, scholarly figure. "What | |
brought you out in such a storm?" | |
With a sudden feeling of uneasiness, Pauline wondered what he would say | |
if she were to explain exactly what it was that had brought her out. | |
With an impulse towards at least a half-confession, she said hurriedly, | |
"I wanted to post a letter I'd just written; I'll be home almost as | |
soon as you are, father." | |
Then she ran on down the street. All at once she felt her courage | |
weakening; unless she got her letter posted immediately she felt she | |
should end by tearing it up. | |
When it had slipped from her sight through the narrow slit labeled | |
"LETTERS," she stood a moment, almost wishing it were possible to get | |
it back again. | |
She went home rather slowly. Should she confess at once, or wait until | |
Uncle Paul's answer came? It should be here inside of a week, surely; | |
and if it were favorable--and, oh, it must be favorable--would not that | |
in itself seem to justify her in what she had done? | |
On the front piazza, Patience was waiting for her, a look of mischief | |
in her blue eyes. Patience was ten, a red-haired, freckled slip of a | |
girl. She danced about Pauline now. "Why didn't you tell me you were | |
going out so I could've gone, too? And what have you been up to, Paul | |
Shaw? Something! You needn't tell me you haven't." | |
"I'm not going to tell you anything," Pauline answered, going on into | |
the house. The study door was half open, and when she had taken off | |
her things, Pauline stood a moment a little uncertainly outside it. | |
Then suddenly, much to her small sister's disgust, she went in, closing | |
the door behind her. | |
Mr. Shaw was leaning back in his big chair at one corner of the | |
fireplace. "Well," he asked, looking up, "did you get your letter in | |
in time, my dear?" | |
"Oh, it wasn't the time." Pauline sat down on a low bench at the other | |
end of the fireplace. "It was that I wanted to feel that it was really | |
mailed. Did you ever feel that way about a letter, father? And as if, | |
if you didn't hurry and get it in--you wouldn't--mail it?" | |
Something in her tone made her father glance at her more closely; it | |
was very like the tone in which Patience was apt to make her rather | |
numerous confessions. Then it occurred to him, that, whether by | |
accident or design, she was sitting on the very stool on which Patience | |
usually placed herself at such times, and which had gained thereby the | |
name of "the stool of penitence." | |
"Yes," he answered, "I have written such letters once or twice in my | |
life." | |
Pauline stooped to straighten out the hearth rug. "Father," she said | |
abruptly; "I have been writing to Uncle Paul." She drew a sharp breath | |
of relief. | |
"You have been writing to your Uncle Paul! About what, Pauline?" | |
And Pauline told him. When she had finished, Mr. Shaw sat for some | |
moments without speaking, his eyes on the fire. | |
"It didn't seem very--wrong, at the time," Pauline ventured. "I had to | |
do something for Hilary." | |
"Why did you not consult your mother, or myself, before taking such a | |
step, Pauline?" | |
"I was afraid--if I did--that you would--forbid it; and I was so | |
anxious to do something. It's nearly a month now since Dr. Brice said | |
Hilary must have a change. We used to have such good times | |
together--Hilary and I--but we never have fun anymore--she doesn't care | |
about anything; and to-day it seemed as if I couldn't bear it any | |
longer, so I wrote. I--I am sorry, if you're displeased with me, | |
father, and yet, if Uncle Paul writes back favorably, I'm afraid I | |
can't help being glad I wrote." | |
Mr. Shaw rose, lighting the low reading-lamp, standing on the study | |
table. "You are frank enough after the event, at least, Pauline. To | |
be equally so, I am displeased; displeased and exceedingly annoyed. | |
However, we will let the matter rest where it is until you have heard | |
from your uncle, I should advise your saying nothing to your sisters | |
until his reply comes. I am afraid you will find it disappointing." | |
Pauline flushed. "I never intended telling Hilary anything about it | |
unless I had good news for her; as for Patience--" | |
Out in the hall again, with the study door closed behind her, Pauline | |
stood a moment choking back a sudden lump in her throat. Would Uncle | |
Paul treat her letter as a mere piece of school-girl impertinence, as | |
father seemed to? | |
From the sitting-room came an impatient summons. "Paul, will you never | |
come!" | |
"What is it, Hilary?" Pauline asked, coming to sit at one end of the | |
old sofa. | |
"That's what I want to know," Hilary answered from the other end. | |
"Impatience says you've been writing all sorts of mysterious letters | |
this afternoon, and that you came home just now looking like---" | |
"Well, like what?" | |
"Like you'd been up to something--and weren't quite sure how the | |
grown-ups were going to take it," Patience explained from the rug | |
before the fire. | |
"How do you know I have been writing--anything?" Pauline asked. | |
"There, you see!" Patience turned to Hilary, "she doesn't deny it!" | |
"I'm not taking the trouble to deny or confirm little girl nonsense," | |
Pauline declared. "But what makes you think I've been writing letters?" | |
"Oh, 'by the pricking of my thumbs'!" Patience rolled over, and | |
resting her sharp little chin in her hands, stared up at her sisters | |
from under her mop of short red curls. "Pen! Ink! Paper! And such a | |
lot of torn-up scraps! It's really very simple!" | |
But Pauline was on her way to the dining-room. "Terribly convincing, | |
isn't it?" Her tone should have squelched Patience, but it didn't. | |
"You can't fool me!" that young person retorted. "I know you've been | |
up to something! And I'm pretty sure father doesn't approve, from the | |
way you waited out there in the hall just now." | |
Pauline did not answer; she was busy laying the cloth for supper. | |
"Anything up, Paul?" Hilary urged, following her sister out to the | |
dining-room. | |
"The barometer--a very little; I shouldn't wonder if we had a clear day | |
to-morrow." | |
"You are as provoking as Impatience! But I needn't have asked; nothing | |
worth while ever does happen to us." | |
"You know perfectly well, Pauline Almy Shaw!" Patience proclaimed, | |
from the curtained archway between the rooms. "You know perfectly | |
well, that the ev'dence against you is most in-crim-i-na-ting!" | |
Patience delighted in big words. | |
"Hilary," Pauline broke in, "I forgot to tell you, I met Mrs. Dane this | |
morning; she wants us to get up a social--'If the young ladies at the | |
parsonage will,' and so forth." | |
"I hate socials! Besides, there aren't any 'young ladies' at the | |
parsonage; or, at any rate, only one. I shan't have to be a young lady | |
for two years yet." | |
"Most in-crim-i-na-ting!" Patience repeated insistently; "you wrote." | |
Pauline turned abruptly and going into the pantry began taking down the | |
cups and saucers for the table. As soon as Hilary had gone back to the | |
sitting-room, she called softly, "Patty, O Patty!" | |
Patience grinned wickedly; she was seldom called Patty, least of all by | |
Pauline. "Well?" she answered. | |
"Come here--please," and when Patience was safely inside the pantry, | |
Pauline shut the door gently--"Now see here, Impatience--" | |
"That isn't what you called me just now!" | |
"Patty then--Listen, suppose--suppose I have been--trying to do | |
something to--to help Hilary to get well; can't you see that I wouldn't | |
want her to know, until I was sure, really sure, it was going to come | |
to something?" | |
Patience gave a little jump of excitement. "How jolly! But who have | |
you been writing to--about it, Paul!" | |
"I haven't said that--" | |
"See here, Paul, I'll play fair, if you do; but if you go trying to act | |
any 'grown-up sister' business I'll--" | |
And Pauline capitulated. "I can't tell you about it yet, Patty; father | |
said not to. I want you to promise not to ask questions, or say | |
anything about it, before Hilary. We don't want her to get all worked | |
up, thinking something nice is going to happen, and then maybe have her | |
disappointed." | |
"Will it be nice--very nice?" | |
"I hope so." | |
"And will I be in it?" | |
"I don't know. I don't know what it'll be, or when it'll be." | |
"Oh, dear! I wish you did. I can't think who it is you wrote to, | |
Paul. And why didn't father like your doing it?" | |
"I haven't said that he--" | |
"Paul, you're very tiresome. Didn't he know you were going to do it?" | |
Pauline gathered up her cups and saucers without answering. | |
"Then he didn't," Patience observed. "Does mother know about it?" | |
"I mean to tell her as soon as I get a good chance," Pauline said | |
impatiently, going back to the dining-room. | |
When she returned a few moments later, she found Patience still in the | |
pantry, sitting thoughtfully on the old, blue sugar bucket. "I know," | |
Patience announced triumphantly. "You've been writing to Uncle Paul!" | |
Pauline gasped and fled to the kitchen; there were times when flight | |
was the better part of discretion, in dealing with the youngest member | |
of the Shaw family. | |
On the whole, Patience behaved very well that evening, only, on going | |
to bid her father good-night, did she ask anxiously, how long it took | |
to send a letter to New York and get an answer. | |
"That depends considerably upon the promptness with which the party | |
written to answers the letter," Mr. Shaw told her. | |
"A week?" Patience questioned. | |
"Probably--if not longer." | |
Patience sighed. | |
"Have _you_ been writing a letter to someone in New York?" her father | |
asked. | |
"No, indeed," the child said gravely, "but," she looked up, answering | |
his glance. "Paul didn't tell me, father; I--guessed. Uncle Paul does | |
live in New York, doesn't he?" | |
"Yes," Mr. Shaw answered, almost sharply. "Now run to bed, my dear." | |
But when the stairs were reached. Patience most certainly did not run. | |
"I think people are very queer," she said to herself, "they seem to | |
think _ten_ years isn't a bit more grown-up than six or seven." | |
"Mummy," she asked, when later her mother came to take away her light, | |
"father and Uncle Paul are brethren, aren't they?" | |
"My dear! What put that into your head?" | |
"Aren't they?" | |
"Certainly, dear." | |
"Then why don't they 'dwell together in unity'?" | |
"Patience!" Mrs. Shaw stared down at the sharp inquisitive little face. | |
"Why don't they?" Patience persisted. If persistency be a virtue, | |
Patience was to be highly commended. | |
"My dear, who has said that they do not?" | |
Patience shrugged; as if things had always to be said. "But, mummy--" | |
"Go to sleep now, dear." Mrs. Shaw bent to kiss her good-night. | |
"All the same," Patience confided to the darkness, "I know they don't." | |
She gave a little shiver of delight--something very mysterious was | |
afoot evidently. | |
Out on the landing, Mrs. Shaw found Pauline waiting for her. "Come | |
into your room, mother, please, I've started up the fire; I want to | |
tell you something." | |
"I thought as much," her mother answered. She sat down in the big | |
armchair and Pauline drew up before the fire. "I've been expecting it | |
all the evening." | |
Pauline dropped down on the floor, her head against her mother's knee. | |
"This family is dreadfully keen-sighted. Mother dear, please don't be | |
angry--" and Pauline made confession. | |
When she had finished, Mrs. Shaw sat for some moments, as her husband | |
had done, her eyes on the fire. "You told him that we could not manage | |
it, Pauline?" she said at last. "My dear, how could you!" | |
"But, mother dear, I was--desperate; something has to be done | |
for--Hilary, and I had to do it!" | |
"Do you suppose your father and I do not realize that quite as well as | |
you do, Pauline?" | |
"You and I have talked it over and over, and father never | |
says--anything." | |
"Not to you, perhaps; but he is giving the matter very careful | |
consideration, and later he hopes--" | |
"Mother dear, that is so indefinite!" Pauline broke in. "And I can't | |
see--Father is Uncle Paul's only brother! If I were rich, and Hilary | |
were not and needed things, I would want her to let me know." | |
"It is possible, that under certain conditions, Hilary would not wish | |
you to know." Mrs. Shaw hesitated, then she said slowly, "You know, | |
Pauline, that your uncle is much older than your father; so much older, | |
that he seemed to stand--when your father was a boy--more in the light | |
of a father to him, than an older brother. He was much opposed to your | |
father's going into the ministry, he wanted him to go into business | |
with him. He is a strong-willed man, and does not easily relinquish | |
any plan of his own making. It went hard with him, when your father | |
refused to yield; later, when your father received the call to this | |
parish, your uncle quite as strongly opposed his accepting it--burying | |
himself alive in a little out-of-the-way hole, he called it. It came | |
to the point, finally, on your uncle's insisting on his making it a | |
choice between himself and Winton. He refused to ever come near the | |
place and the two or three letters your father wrote at first remained | |
unanswered. The breach between them has been one of the hardest trials | |
your father has had to bear." | |
"Oh," Pauline cried miserably, "what a horrid interfering thing father | |
must think me! Rushing in where I had no right to! I wish I'd | |
known--I just thought--you see, father speaks of Uncle Paul now and | |
then--that maybe they'd only--grown apart--and that if Uncle Paul knew! | |
But perhaps my letter will get lost. It would serve me right; and yet, | |
if it does, I'm afraid I can't help feeling somewhat disappointed--on | |
Hilary's account." | |
Her mother smiled. "We can only wait and see. I would rather you said | |
nothing of what I have been telling you to either Hilary or Patience, | |
Pauline." | |
"I won't, Mother Shaw. It seems I have a lot of secrets from Hilary. | |
And I won't write any more such letters without consulting you or | |
father, you can depend on that." | |
Mr. Paul Shaw's answer did not come within the allotted week. It was | |
the longest week Pauline had ever known; and when the second went by | |
and still no word from her uncle, the waiting and uncertainty became | |
very hard to bear, all the harder, that her usual confidant, Hilary, | |
must not be allowed to suspect anything. | |
The weather had turned suddenly warm, and Hilary's listlessness had | |
increased proportionately, which probably accounted for the dying out | |
of what little interest she had felt at first in Patience's "mysterious | |
letter." | |
Patience, herself, was doing her best to play fair; fortunately, she | |
was in school the greater part of the day, else the strain upon her | |
powers of self-control might have proved too heavy. | |
"Mother," Pauline said one evening, lingering in her mother's room, | |
after Hilary had gone to bed, "I don't believe Uncle Paul means | |
answering at all. I wish I'd never asked him to do anything." | |
"So do I, Pauline. Still it is rather early yet for you to give up | |
hope. It's hard waiting, I know, dear, but that is something we all | |
have to learn to do, sooner or later." | |
"I don't think 'no news is good news,'" Pauline said; then she | |
brightened. "Oh, Mother Shaw! Suppose the letter is on the way now, | |
and that Hilary is to have a sea voyage! You'd have to go, too." | |
"Pauline, Pauline, not so fast! Listen, dear, we might send Hilary out | |
to The Maples for a week or two. Mrs. Boyd would be delighted to have | |
her; and it wouldn't be too far away, in case we should be getting her | |
ready for that--sea voyage." | |
"I don't believe she'd care to go; it's quieter than here at home." | |
"But it would be a change. I believe I'll suggest it to her in the | |
morning." | |
But when Mrs. Shaw did suggest it the next morning, Hilary was quite of | |
Pauline's opinion. "I shouldn't like it a bit, mother! It would be | |
worse than home--duller, I mean; and Mrs. Boyd would fuss over me so," | |
she said impatiently. | |
"You used to like going there, Hilary." | |
"Mother, you can't want me to go." | |
"I think it might do you good, Hilary. I should like you to try it." | |
"Please, mother, I don't see the use of bothering with little half-way | |
things." | |
"I do, Hilary, when they are the only ones within reach." | |
The girl moved restlessly, settling her hammock cushions; then she lay | |
looking out over the sunny garden with discontented eyes. | |
It was a large old-fashioned garden, separated on the further side by a | |
low hedge from the old ivy-covered church. On the back steps of the | |
church, Sextoness Jane was shaking out her duster. She was old and | |
gray and insignificant looking; her duties as sexton, in which she had | |
succeeded her father, were her great delight. The will with which she | |
sang and worked now seemed to have in it something of reproach for the | |
girl stretched out idly in the hammock. Nothing more than half-way | |
things, and not too many of those, had ever come Sextoness Jane's way. | |
Yet she was singing now over her work. | |
Hilary moved impatiently, turning her back on the garden and the bent | |
old figure moving about in the church beyond; but, somehow, she | |
couldn't turn her back on what that bent old figure had suddenly come | |
to stand for. | |
Fifteen minutes later, she sat up, pushing herself slowly back and | |
forth. "I wish Jane had chosen any other morning to clean the church | |
in, Mother Shaw!" she protested with spirit. | |
Her mother looked up from her mending. "Why, dear? It is her regular | |
day." | |
"Couldn't she do it, I wonder, on an irregular day! Anyhow, if she | |
had, I shouldn't have to go to The Maples this afternoon. Must I take | |
a trunk, mother?" | |
"Hilary! But what has Jane to do with your going?" | |
"Pretty nearly everything, I reckon. Must I, mother?" | |
"No, indeed, dear; and you are not to go at all, unless you can do it | |
willingly." | |
"Oh, I'm fairly resigned; don't press me too hard, Mother Shaw. I | |
think I'll go tell Paul now." | |
"Well," Pauline said, "I'm glad you've decided to go, Hilary. I--that | |
is, maybe it won't be for very long." | |
CHAPTER II | |
THE MAPLES | |
That afternoon Pauline drove Hilary out to the big, busy, pleasant | |
farm, called The Maples. | |
As they jogged slowly down the one principal street of the sleepy, old | |
town, Pauline tried to imagine that presently they would turn off down | |
the by-road, leading to the station. Through the still air came the | |
sound of the afternoon train, panting and puffing to be off with as | |
much importance as the big train, which later, it would connect with | |
down at the junction. | |
"Paul," Hilary asked suddenly, "what are you thinking about?" | |
Pauline slapped the reins lightly across old Fanny's plump sides. "Oh, | |
different things--traveling for one." Suppose Uncle Paul's letter | |
should come in this afternoon's mail! That she would find it waiting | |
for her when she got home! | |
"So was I," Hilary said. "I was wishing that you and I were going off | |
on that train, Paul." | |
"Where to?" Paul asked. After all, it couldn't do any harm--Hilary | |
would think it one of their "pretend" talks, and it would he nice to | |
have some definite basis to build on later. | |
"Anywhere," Hilary answered. "I would like to go to the seashore | |
somewhere; but most anywhere, where there were people and interesting | |
things to do and see, would do." | |
"Yes," Pauline agreed. | |
"There's Josie," Hilary said, and her sister drew rein, as a girl came | |
to the edge of the walk to speak to them. | |
"Going away?" she asked, catching sight of the valise. | |
"Only out to the Boyds'," Pauline told her, "to leave Hilary." | |
Josie shifted the strap of school-books under her arm impatiently. | |
"'Only!'" she repeated. "Well, I just wish I was going, too; it's a | |
deal pleasanter out there, than in a stuffy school room these days." | |
"It's stupid--and you both know it," Hilary protested. She glanced | |
enviously at Josie's strap of hooks. "And when school closes, you'll | |
be through for good, Josie Brice. We shan't finish together, after | |
all, now." | |
"Oh, I'm not through yet," Josie assured her. "Father'll be going out | |
past The Maples Saturday morning, I'll get him to take me along." | |
Hilary brightened. "Don't forget," she urged, and as she and Pauline | |
drove on, she added, "I suppose I can stick it out for a week." | |
"Well, I should think as much. _Will_ you go on, Fanny!" Pauline | |
slapped the dignified, complacent Fanny with rather more severity than | |
before. "She's one great mass of laziness," she declared. "Father's | |
spoiled her a great deal more than he ever has any of us." | |
It was a three-mile drive from the village to The Maples, through | |
pleasant winding roads, hardly deserving of a more important title than | |
lane. Now and then, from the top of a low hill, they caught a glimpse | |
of the great lake beyond, shining in the afternoon sunlight, a little | |
ruffled by the light breeze sweeping down to it from the mountains | |
bordering it on the further side. | |
Hilary leaned back in the wide shaded gig; she looked tired, and yet | |
the new touch of color in her cheeks was not altogether due to | |
weariness. "The ride's done you good," Pauline said. | |
"I wonder what there'll be for supper," Hilary remarked. "You'll stay, | |
Paul?" | |
"If you promise to eat a good one." It was comforting to have Hilary | |
actually wondering what they would have. | |
They had reached the broad avenue of maples leading from the road up to | |
the house. It was a long, low, weather-stained house, breathing an | |
unmistakable air of generous and warm-hearted hospitality. Pauline | |
never came to it, without a sense of pity for the kindly elderly | |
couple, who were so fond of young folks, and who had none of their own. | |
Mrs. Boyd had seen them coming, and she came out to meet them, as they | |
turned into the dooryard. And an old dog, sunning himself on the | |
doorstep, rose with a slow wag of welcome. | |
"Mother's sent you something she was sure you would like to have," | |
Pauline said. "Please, will you take in a visitor for a few days?" she | |
added, laying a hand on Hilary's. | |
"You've brought Hilary out to stop?" Mrs. Boyd cried delightedly. "Now | |
I call that mighty good of your mother. You come right 'long in, both | |
of you: you're sure you can't stop, too, Pauline?" | |
"Only to supper, thank you." | |
Mrs. Boyd had the big valise out from under the seat by now. "Come | |
right 'long in," she repeated. "You're tired, aren't you, Hilary? But | |
a good night's rest'll set you up wonderful. Take her into the spare | |
room, Pauline. Dear me, I must have felt you was coming, seeing that I | |
aired it out beautiful only this morning. I'll go call Mr. Boyd to | |
take Fanny to the barn." | |
"Isn't she the dearest thing!" Pauline declared, as she and Hilary went | |
indoors. | |
The spare room was back of the parlor, a large comfortable room, with | |
broad windows facing south and west, and a small vine-covered porch all | |
its own on the south side of the room. | |
Pauline pulled forward a great chintz-cushioned rocker, putting her | |
sister into it, and opened the porch door. Beyond lay a wide, sloping | |
meadow and beyond the meadow, the lake sparkled and rippled in the | |
sunshine. | |
"If you're not contented here, Hilary Shaw!" Pauline said, standing in | |
the low doorway. "Suppose you pretend you've never been here before! | |
I reckon you'd travel a long ways to find a nicer place to stay in." | |
"I shouldn't doubt it if you were going to stay with me, Paul; I know | |
I'm going to be homesick." | |
Pauline stretched out a hand to Captain, the old dog, who had come | |
around to pay his compliments. Captain liked visitors--when he was | |
convinced that they really were visitors, not peddlers, nor agents, | |
quite as well as his master and mistress did. "You'd be homesick | |
enough, if you really were off on your travels--you'd better get used | |
to it. Hadn't she, Captain?" Pauline went to unpack the valise, | |
opening the drawers of the old-fashioned mahogany bureau with a little | |
breath of pleasure. "Lavender! Hilary." | |
Hilary smiled, catching some of her sister's enthusiasm. She leaned | |
back among her cushions, her eyes on the stretch of shining water at | |
the far end of the pasture. "I wish you were going to be here, Paul, | |
so that we could go rowing. I wonder if I'll ever feel as if I could | |
row again, myself." | |
"Of course you will, and a great deal sooner than you think." Pauline | |
hung Hilary's dressing-gown across the foot of the high double bed. | |
"Now I think you're all settled, ma'am, and I hope to your | |
satisfaction. Isn't it a veritable 'chamber of peace,' Hilary?" | |
Through the open door and windows came the distant tinkle of a cow | |
bell, and other farm sounds. There came, too, the scent of the early | |
May pinks growing in the borders of Mrs. Boyd's old-fashioned flower | |
beds. Already the peace and quiet of the house, the homely comfort, | |
had done Hilary good; the thought of the long simple days to come, were | |
not so depressing as they had seemed when thought of that morning. | |
"Bless me, I'd forgotten, but I've a bit of news for you," Mrs. Boyd | |
said, coming in, a moment or so later; "the manor's taken for the | |
summer." | |
"Really?" Pauline cried, "why it's been empty for ever and ever so | |
long." | |
The manor was an old rambling stone house, standing a little back from | |
a bit of sandy beach, that jutted out into the lake about a mile from | |
The Maples. It was a pleasant place, with a tiny grove of its own, and | |
good-sized garden, which, year after year, in spite of neglect, was | |
bright with old-fashioned hardy annuals planted long ago, when the | |
manor had been something more than an old neglected house, at the mercy | |
of a chance tenant. | |
"Just a father and daughter. They've got old Betsy Todd to look after | |
them," Mrs. Boyd went on. "The girl's about your age, Hilary. You | |
wasn't looking to find company of that sort so near, was you?" | |
Hilary looked interested. "No," she answered. "But, after all, the | |
manor's a mile away." | |
"Oh, she's back and forth every day--for milk, or one thing or another; | |
she's terribly interested in the farm; father's taken a great notion to | |
her. She'll be over after supper, you'll see; and then I'll make you | |
acquainted with her." | |
"Are they city people?" Pauline asked. | |
"From New York!" Mrs. Boyd told her proudly. From her air one would | |
have supposed she had planned the whole affair expressly for Hilary's | |
benefit. "Their name's Dayre." | |
"What is the girl's first name?" Pauline questioned. | |
"Shirley; it's a queer name for a girl, to my thinking." | |
"Is she pretty?" Pauline went on. | |
"Not according to my notions; father says she is. She's thin and dark, | |
and I never did see such a mane of hair--and it ain't always too tidy, | |
neither--but she has got nice eyes and a nice friendly way of talking. | |
Looks to me, like she hasn't been brought up by a woman." | |
"She sounds--interesting," Pauline said, and when Mrs. Boyd had left | |
them, to make a few changes in her supper arrangements, Pauline turned | |
eagerly to Hilary. "You're in luck, Hilary Shaw! The newest kind of | |
new people; even if it isn't a new place!" | |
"How do you know they'll, or rather, she'll, want to know me?" Hilary | |
asked, with one of those sudden changes of mood an invalid often shows, | |
"or I her? We haven't seen her yet. Paul, do you suppose Mrs. Boyd | |
would mind letting me have supper in here?" | |
"Oh, Hilary, she's laid the table in the living-room! I heard her | |
doing it. She'd be ever so disappointed." | |
"Well," Hilary said, "come on then." | |
Out in the living-room, they found Mr. Boyd waiting for them, and so | |
heartily glad to see them, that Hilary's momentary impatience vanished. | |
To Pauline's delight, she really brought quite an appetite to her | |
supper. | |
"You should've come out here long ago, Hilary," Mr. Boyd told her, and | |
he insisted on her having a second helping of the creamed toast, | |
prepared especially in her honor. | |
Before supper was over. Captain's deep-toned bark proclaimed a | |
newcomer, or newcomers, seeing that it was answered immediately by a | |
medley of shrill barks, in the midst of which a girl's voice sounded | |
authoritively--"Quiet, Phil! Pat, I'm ashamed of you! Pudgey, if | |
you're not good instantly, you shall stay at home to-morrow night!" | |
A moment later, the owner of the voice appeared at the porch door, "May | |
I come in, Mrs. Boyd?" she asked. | |
"Come right in, Miss Shirley. I've a couple of young friends here, I | |
want you should get acquainted with," Mrs. Boyd cried. | |
"You ain't had your supper yet, have you, Miss Shirley?" Mr. Boyd asked. | |
"Father and I had tea out on the lake," Shirley answered, "but I'm | |
hungry enough again by now, for a slice of Mrs. Boyd's bread and | |
butter." | |
And presently, she was seated at the table, chatting away with Paul and | |
Hilary, as if they were old acquaintances, asking Mr. Boyd various | |
questions about farm matters and answering Mrs. Boyd's questions | |
regarding Betsy Todd and her doings, with the most delightful air of | |
good comradeship imaginable. | |
"Oh, me!" Pauline pushed hack her chair regretfully, "I simply must | |
go, it'll be dark before I get home, as it is." | |
"I reckon it will, deary," Mrs. Boyd agreed, "so I won't urge you to | |
stay longer. Father, you just whistle to Colin to bring Fanny 'round." | |
Hilary followed her sister into the bedroom. "You'll be over soon, | |
Paul?" | |
Pauline, putting on her hat before the glass, turned quickly. "As soon | |
as I can. Hilary, don't you like her?" | |
Hilary balanced herself on the arm of the big, old-fashioned rocker. | |
"I think so. Anyway, I love to watch her talk; she talks all over her | |
face." | |
They went out to the gig, where Mr. and Mrs. Boyd and Shirley were | |
standing. Shirley was feeding Fanny with handfuls of fresh grass. | |
"Isn't she a fat old dear!" she said. | |
"She's a fat old poke!" Pauline returned. "Mayn't I give you a lift? | |
I can go 'round by the manor road 's well as not." | |
Shirley accepted readily, settling herself in the gig, and balancing | |
her pail of milk on her knee carefully. | |
"Good-by," Pauline called. "Mind, you're to be ever and ever so much | |
better, next time I come, Hilary." | |
"Your sister has been sick?" Shirley asked, her voice full of | |
sympathetic interest. | |
"Not sick--exactly; just run down and listless." | |
Shirley leaned a little forward, drawing in long breaths of the clear | |
evening air. "I don't see how anyone can ever get run down--here, in | |
this air; I'm hardly indoors at all. Father and I have our meals out | |
on the porch. You ought to have seen Betsy Todd's face, the first time | |
I proposed it. 'Ain't the dining-room to your liking, miss?'" she | |
asked. | |
"Betsy Todd's a queer old thing," Pauline commented. "Father has the | |
worst time, getting her to come to church." | |
"We were there last Sunday," Shirley said. "I'm afraid we were rather | |
late; it's a pretty old church, isn't it? I suppose you live in that | |
square white house next to it?" | |
"Yes," Pauline answered. "Father came to Winton just after he was | |
married, so we girls have never lived anywhere else nor been anywhere | |
else--that counted. Any really big city, I mean. We're dreadfully | |
tired of Winton--Hilary, especially." | |
"It's a mighty pretty place." | |
"I suppose so." Pauline slapped old Fanny impatiently. "Will you go | |
on!" | |
Fanny was making forward most reluctantly; the Boyd barn had been very | |
much to her liking. Now, as the three dogs made a swift rush at her | |
leaping and barking around her, she gave a snort of disgust, quickening | |
her pace involuntarily. | |
"Don't call them off, please!" Pauline begged Shirley. "She isn't in | |
the least scared, and it's perfectly refreshing to find that she can | |
move." | |
"All the same, discipline must be maintained," Shirley insisted; and at | |
her command the dogs fell behind. | |
"Have you been here long?" Pauline asked. | |
"About two weeks. We were going further up the lake--just on a | |
sketching trip,--and we saw this house from the deck of the boat; it | |
looked so delightful, and so deserted and lonely, that we came back | |
from the next landing to see about it. We took it at once and sent for | |
a lot of traps from the studio at home, they aren't here yet." | |
Pauline looked her interest. It seemed a very odd, attractive way of | |
doing things, no long tiresome plannings of ways and means beforehand. | |
Suppose--when Uncle Paul's letter came--they could set off in such | |
fashion, with no definite point in view, and stop wherever they felt | |
like it. | |
"I can't think," Shirley went on, "how such a charming old place came | |
to be standing idle." | |
"Isn't it rather--run down?" | |
"Not enough to matter--really. I want father to buy it, and do what is | |
needed to it, without making it all new and snug looking. The sunsets | |
from that front lawn are gorgeous, don't you think so?" | |
"Yes," Pauline agreed, "I haven't been over there in two years. We | |
used to have picnics near there." | |
"I hope you will again, this summer, and invite father and me. We | |
adore picnics; we've had several since we came--he and I and the dogs. | |
The dogs do love picnics so, too." | |
Pauline had given up wanting to hurry Fanny; what a lot she would have | |
to tell her mother when she got home. | |
She was sorry when a turn in the road brought them within sight of the | |
old manor house. "There's father!" Shirley said, nodding to a figure | |
coming towards them across a field. The dogs were off to meet him | |
directly, with shrill barks of pleasure. | |
"May I get down here, please?" Shirley asked. "Thank you very much for | |
the lift; and I am so glad to have met you and your sister, Miss Shaw. | |
You'll both come and see me soon, won't you?" | |
"We'd love to," Pauline answered heartily; "'cross lots, it's not so | |
very far over here from the parsonage, and," she hesitated, | |
"you--you'll be seeing Hilary quite often, while she's at The Maples, | |
perhaps?" | |
"I hope so. Father's on the lookout for a horse and rig for me, and | |
then she and I can have some drives together. She will know where to | |
find the prettiest roads." | |
"Oh, she would enjoy that," Pauline said eagerly, and as she drove on, | |
she turned more than once to glance back at the tall, slender figure | |
crossing the field. Shirley seemed to walk as if the mere act of | |
walking were in itself a pleasure. Pauline thought she had never | |
before known anyone who appeared so alive from head to foot. | |
"Go 'long, Fanny!" she commanded; she was in a hurry to get home now, | |
with her burden of news. It seemed to her as if she had been away a | |
long while, so much had happened in the meantime. | |
At the parsonage gate, Pauline found Patience waiting for her. "You | |
have taken your time, Paul Shaw!" the child said, climbing in beside | |
her sister. | |
"Fanny's time, you mean!" | |
"It hasn't come yet!" Patience said protestingly. "I went for the mail | |
myself this afternoon, so I know!" | |
"Oh, well, perhaps it will to-morrow," Pauline answered, with so little | |
of real concern in her voice, that Patience wondered. "Suppose you | |
take Fanny on to the barn. Mother's home, isn't she?" | |
Patience glanced at her sharply. "You've got something--particular--to | |
tell mother! O Paul, please wait 'til I come. Is it about--" | |
"You're getting to look more like an interrogation point every day, | |
Impatience!" Pauline told her, getting down from the gig. | |
Patience sniffed. "If nobody ever asked questions, nobody'd ever know | |
anything!" she declared. | |
"Is mother home?" Pauline asked again. | |
"Who's asking things now!" Patience drew the reins up tightly and | |
bouncing up and down on the carriage seat, called sharply--"Hi yi! Hi | |
yi!" | |
It was the one method that never failed to rouse Fanny's indignation, | |
producing, for the moment, the desired effect; still, as Pauline said, | |
it was hardly a proceeding that Hilary or she could adopt, or, least of | |
all, their father. | |
As she trotted briskly off to the barn now, the very tilt of Fanny's | |
ears expressed injured dignity. Dignity was Fanny's strong point; | |
that, and the ability to cover less ground in an afternoon than any | |
other horse in Winton. The small human being at the other end of those | |
taut reins might have known she would have needed no urging barnwards. | |
"Maybe you don't like it," Patience observed, "but that makes no | |
difference--'s long's it's for your good. You're a very unchristiany | |
horse, Fanny Shaw. And I'll 'hi yi' you every time I get a chance; so | |
now go on." | |
However Patience was indoors in time to hear all but the very beginning | |
of Pauline's story of her afternoon's experience. "I told you," she | |
broke in, "that I saw a nice girl at church last Sunday--in Mrs. | |
Dobson's pew; and Mrs. Dobson kept looking at her out of the corner of | |
her eyes all the tune, 'stead of paying attention to what father was | |
saying; and Miranda says, ten to one. Sally Dobson comes out in--" | |
"That will do, Patience," her mother said, "if you are going to | |
interrupt in this fashion, you must run away." | |
Patience subsided reluctantly, her blue eyes most expressive. | |
"Isn't it nice for Hilary, mother? Now she'll be contented to stay a | |
week or two, don't you think?" Pauline said. | |
"I hope so, dear. Yes, it is very nice." | |
"She was looking better already, mother; brighter, you know." | |
"Mummy, is asking a perfectly necessary question 'interrupting'?'" | |
"Perhaps not, dear, if there is only one," smiled Mrs. Shaw. | |
"Mayn't I, please, go with Paul and Hilary when they go to call on that | |
girl?" | |
"On whom, Patience?" | |
Patience wriggled impatiently; grown people were certainly very trying | |
at times. "On Paul's and Hilary's new friend, mummy." | |
"Not the first time, Patience; possibly later--" | |
Patience shrugged. "By and by," she observed, addressing the room at | |
large, "when Paul and Hilary are married, I'll be Miss Shaw! And | |
then--" the thought appeared to give her considerable comfort. | |
"And maybe, Towser," she confided later, as the two sat together on the | |
side porch, "maybe--some day--you and I'll go to call on them on our | |
own account. I'm not sure it isn't your duty to call on those | |
dogs--you lived here first, and I can't see why it isn't mine--to call | |
on that girl. Father says, we should always hasten to welcome the | |
stranger; and they sound dreadfully interesting." | |
Towser blinked a sleepy acquiescence. In spite of his years, he still | |
followed blindly where Patience led, though the consequences were | |
frequently disastrous. | |
It was the next afternoon that Pauline, reading in the garden, heard an | |
eager little voice calling excitedly, "Paul, where are you! It's come! | |
It's come! I brought it up from the office myself!" | |
Pauline sprang up. "Here I am, Patience! Hurry!" | |
"Well, I like that!" Patience said, coming across the lawn. "Hurry! | |
Haven't I run every inch of the way home!" She waved the letter above | |
her head--"'Miss Pauline A. Shaw!' It's type-written! O Paul, aren't | |
you going to read it out here!" | |
For Pauline, catching the letter from her, had run into the house, | |
crying--"Mother! O Mother Shaw!" | |
CHAPTER III | |
UNCLE PAUL'S ANSWER | |
"Mother! O mother, where are you!" Pauline cried, and on Mrs. Shaw's | |
answering from her own room, she ran on up-stairs. "O Mother Shaw! | |
It's come at last!" she announced breathlessly. | |
"So I thought--when I heard Patience calling just now. Pauline, dear, | |
try not to be too disappointed if--" | |
"You open it, mother--please! Now it's really come, I'm--afraid to." | |
Pauline held out her letter. | |
"No, dear, it is addressed to you," Mrs. Shaw answered quietly. | |
And Pauline, a good deal sobered by the gravity with which her mother | |
had received the news, sat down on the wide window seat, near her | |
mother's chair, tearing open the envelope. As she spread out the heavy | |
businesslike sheet of paper within, a small folded enclosure fell from | |
it into her lap. | |
"Oh, mother!" Pauline caught up the narrow blue slip. She had never | |
received a check from anyone before. "Mother! listen!" and she read | |
aloud, "'Pay to the order of Miss Pauline A. Shaw, the sum of | |
twenty-five dollars.'" | |
Twenty-five dollars! One ought to be able to do a good deal with | |
twenty-five dollars! | |
"Goodness me!" Patience exclaimed. She had followed her sister | |
up-stairs, after a discreet interval, curling herself up unobtrusively | |
in a big chair just inside the doorway. "Can you do what you like with | |
it, Paul?" | |
But Pauline was bending over the letter, a bright spot of color on each | |
cheek. Presently, she handed it to her mother. "I wish--I'd never | |
written to him! Read it, mother!" | |
And Mrs. Shaw read, as follows-- | |
NEW YORK CITY, May 31, 19--. | |
_Miss Pauline A. Shaw, | |
Winton, Vt._ | |
MY DEAR NIECE: Yours of May 16th to hand. I am sorry to learn that | |
your sister Hilary appears to be in such poor health at present. Such | |
being the case, however, it would seem to me that home was the best | |
place for her. I do not at all approve of this modern fashion of | |
running about the country, on any and every pretext. Also, if I | |
remember correctly, your father has frequently described Winton to me | |
as a place of great natural charms, and peculiarly adapted to those | |
suffering from so-called nervous disorders. | |
Altogether, I do not feel inclined to comply with your request to make | |
it possible for your sister to leave home, in search of change and | |
recreation. Instead, beginning with this letter, I will forward you | |
each month during the summer, the sum of twenty-five dollars, to be | |
used in procuring for your sisters and yourself--I understand, there is | |
a third child--such simple and healthful diversions as your parents may | |
approve, the only conditions I make, being, that at no time shall any | |
of your pleasure trips take you further than ten miles from home, and | |
that you keep me informed, from time to time, how this plan of mine is | |
succeeding. | |
Trusting this may prove satisfactory, | |
Very respectfully, | |
PAUL A. SHAW. | |
"What do you think, mother?" Pauline asked, as Mrs. Shaw finished | |
reading. "Isn't it a very--queer sort of letter?" | |
"It is an extremely characteristic one, dear." | |
"I think," Patience could contain herself no longer, "that you are the | |
inconsideratest persons! You know I'm perfectly wild to know what's in | |
that letter!" | |
"Run away now, Patience," her mother said. "You shall hear about it | |
later," and when Patience had obeyed--not very willingly, Mrs. Shaw | |
turned again to Pauline. "We must show this to your father, before | |
making any plans in regard to it, dear." | |
"He's coming now. You show it to him, please, mother." | |
When her mother had gone down-stairs, Pauline still sat there in the | |
window seat, looking soberly out across the lawn to the village street, | |
with its double rows of tall, old trees. So her flag had served little | |
purpose after all! That change for Hilary was still as uncertain, as | |
much a vague part of the future, as it had ever been. | |
It seemed to the girl, at the moment, as if she fairly hated Winton. | |
As though Hilary and she did not already know every stick and stone in | |
it, had not long ago exhausted all its possibilities! | |
New people might think it "quaint" and "pretty" but they had not lived | |
here all their lives. And, besides, she had expressly told Uncle Paul | |
that the doctor had said that Hilary needed a change. | |
She was still brooding over the downfall of her hopes, when her mother | |
called to her from the garden. Pauline went down, feeling that it | |
mattered very little what her father's decision had been--it could make | |
so little difference to them, either way. | |
Mrs. Shaw was on the bench under the old elm, that stood midway between | |
parsonage and church. She had been rereading Uncle Paul's letter, and | |
to Pauline's wonder, there was something like a smile of amusement in | |
her eyes. | |
"Well, mother?" the girl asked. | |
"Well, dear, your father and I have talked the matter over, and we have | |
decided to allow you to accept your uncle's offer." | |
"But that--hateful condition! How is Hilary to get a chance--here in | |
Winton?" | |
"Who was it that I heard saying, only this morning, Pauline, that even | |
if Uncle Paul didn't agree, she really believed we might manage to have | |
a very pleasant summer here at home?" | |
"I know--but still, now that we know definitely--" | |
"We can go to work definitely to do even better." | |
"But how, mother!" | |
"That is what we must think over. Suppose you put your wits to work | |
right now. I must go down to Jane's for a few moments. After all, | |
Pauline, those promised twenty-fives can be used very pleasantly--even | |
in Winton." | |
"But it will still be Winton." | |
"Winton may develop some unexplored corners, some new outlooks." | |
Pauline looked rather doubtful; then, catching sight of a small | |
dejected-looking little figure in the swing, under the big cherry-tree | |
at the foot of the lawn, she asked, "I suppose I may tell Patience now, | |
mother? She really has been very good all this time of waiting." | |
"She certainly has. Only, not too many details, Pauline. Patience is | |
of such a confiding disposition." | |
"Patience," Pauline called, "suppose we go see if there aren't some | |
strawberries ripe?" | |
Patience ran off for a basket. Strawberries! As if she didn't know | |
they were only a pretext. Grown people were assuredly very queer--but | |
sometimes, it was necessary to humor, their little whims and ways. | |
"I don't believe they are ripe yet," she said, skipping along beside | |
her sister. "O Paul, is it--nice?" | |
"Mother thinks so!" | |
"Don't you?" | |
"Maybe I will--after a while. Hilary isn't to go away." | |
"Is that what you wrote and asked Uncle Paul? And didn't you ask for | |
us all to go?" | |
"Certainly not--we're not sick," said Pauline, laughing. | |
"Miranda says what Hilary needs is a good herb tonic!" | |
"Miranda doesn't know everything." | |
"What is Uncle Paul going to do then?" | |
"Send some money every month--to have good times with at home." | |
"One of those blue paper things?" | |
"I suppose so," Pauline laughed. | |
"And _you_ don't call that _nice_! Well of all the ungratefullest | |
girls! Is it for us _all_ to have good times with? Or just Hilary?" | |
"All of us. Of course, Hilary must come first." | |
Patience fairly jumped up and down with excitement. "When will they | |
begin, and what will they be like? O Paul, just think of the good | |
times we've had _without_ any money 't all! Aren't we the luckiest | |
girls!" | |
They had reached the strawberry-bed and Patience dropped down in the | |
grass beside it, her hands clasped around her knees. "Good times in | |
Winton will be a lot better than good times anywhere else. Winton's | |
such a nice sociable place." | |
Pauline settled herself on the top rail of the fence bordering the | |
garden at the back. Patience's enthusiasm was infectious. "What sort | |
of good times do you mean?" she asked. | |
"Picnics!" | |
"We have such a lot of picnics--year after year!" | |
"A nice picnic is always sort of new. Miranda does put up such | |
beautiful lunches. O Paul, couldn't we afford chocolate layer cake | |
_every_ time, now?" | |
"You goosey!" Pauline laughed again heartily. | |
"And maybe there'll be an excursion somewhere's, and by'n'by there'll | |
be the town fair. Paul, there's a ripe berry! And another and--" | |
"See here, hold on, Impatience!" Pauline protested, as the berries | |
disappeared, one after another, down Patience's small throat. | |
"Perhaps, if you stop eating them all, we can get enough for mother's | |
and father's supper." | |
"Maybe they went and hurried to get ripe for to-night, so we could | |
celebrate," Patience suggested. "Paul, mayn't I go with you next time | |
you go over to The Maples?" | |
"We'll see what mother says." | |
"I hate 'we'll see's'!" Patience declared, reaching so far over after a | |
particularly tempting berry, that she lost her balance, and fell face | |
down among them. | |
"Oh, dear!" she sighed, as her sister came to her assistance, | |
"something always seems to happen clean-apron afternoon! Paul, | |
wouldn't it be a 'good time,' if Miranda would agree not to scold 'bout | |
perfectly unavoidable accidents once this whole summer?" | |
"Who's to do the deciding as to the unavoidableness?" Pauline asked. | |
"Come on, Patience, we've got about all the ripe ones, and it must be | |
time for you to lay the supper-table." | |
"Not laying supper-tables would be another good time," Patience | |
answered. "We did get enough, didn't we? I'll hull them." | |
"I wonder," Pauline said, more as if speaking to herself, "whether | |
maybe mother wouldn't think it good to have Jane in now and then--for | |
extra work? Not supper-tables, young lady." | |
"Jane would love it. She likes to work with Miranda--she says | |
Miranda's such a nice lady. Do you think she is, Paul?" | |
"I'm thinking about other things just now." | |
"I don't--There's mother. Goodness, Miranda's got the cloth on!" | |
And away sped the child. | |
To Patience's astonishment, nothing was said at supper, either of Uncle | |
Paul's letter, or the wonderful things it was to lead to. Mr. Shaw | |
kept his wife engaged with parish subjects and Pauline appeared lost in | |
thoughts of her own. Patience fidgeted as openly as she dared. Of all | |
queer grown-ups--and it looked as though most grown-ups were more or | |
less queer--father was certainly the queerest. Of course, he knew | |
about the letter; and how could he go on talking about stupid, | |
uninteresting matters--like the Ladies' Aid and the new hymn books? | |
Even the first strawberries of the season passed unnoticed, as far as | |
he was concerned, though Mrs. Shaw gave Patience a little smiling nod, | |
in recognition of them. | |
"Mother," Pauline exclaimed, the moment her father had gone back to his | |
study, "I've been thinking--Suppose we get Hilary to pretend--that | |
coming home is coming to a _new_ place? That she is coming to visit | |
us? We'll think up all the interesting things to do, that we can, and | |
the pretty places to show her." | |
"That would be a good plan, Pauline." | |
"And if she's company, she'll have to have the spare room," Patience | |
added. | |
"Jolly for you, Patience!" Pauline said. "Only, mother, Hilary doesn't | |
like the spare room; she says it's the dreariest room in the house." | |
"If she's company, she'll have to pretend to like it, it wouldn't be | |
good manners not to," Patience observed. The prospect opening out | |
ahead of them seemed full of delightful possibilities. "I hope Miranda | |
catches on to the game, and gives us pound-cake and hot biscuits for | |
supper ever so often, and doesn't call me to do things, when I'm busy | |
entertaining 'the company.'" | |
"Mother," Pauline broke in--"do keep quiet. Impatience--couldn't we do | |
the spare room over--there's that twenty-five dollars? We've planned | |
it so often." | |
"We might make some alterations, dear--at least." | |
"We'll take stock the first thing to-morrow morning. I suppose we | |
can't really start in before Monday." | |
"Hardly, seeing that it is Friday night." | |
They were still talking this new idea over, though Patience had been | |
sent to bed, when Mr. Shaw came in from a visit to a sick parishioner. | |
"We've got the most beautiful scheme on hand, father," Pauline told | |
him, wheeling forward his favorite chair. She hoped he would sit down | |
and talk things over with them, instead of going on to the study; it | |
wouldn't be half as nice, if he stayed outside of everything. | |
"New schemes appear to be rampant these days," Mr. Shaw said, but he | |
settled himself comfortably in the big chair, quite as though he meant | |
to stay with them. "What is this particular one?" | |
He listened, while Pauline explained, really listened, instead of | |
merely seeming to. "It does appear an excellent idea," he said; "but | |
why should it be Hilary only, who is to try to see Winton with new eyes | |
this summer? Suppose we were all to do so?" | |
Pauline clapped her hands softly. "Then you'll help us? And we'll all | |
pretend. Maybe Uncle Paul's thought isn't such a bad one, after all." | |
"Paul always believed in developing the opportunities nearest hand," | |
Mr. Shaw answered. He stroked the head Towser laid against his knee. | |
"Your mother and I will be the gainers--if we keep all our girls at | |
home, and still achieve the desired end." | |
Pauline glanced up quickly. How could she have thought him | |
unheeding--indifferent? | |
"Somehow, I think it will work out all right," she said. "Anyhow, | |
we're going to try it, aren't we. Mother Shaw? Patience thinks it the | |
best idea ever, there'll be no urging needed there." | |
Pauline went up to bed that night feeling strangely happy. For one | |
thing the uncertainty was over, and if they set to work to make this | |
summer full of interest, to break up the monotony and routine that | |
Hilary found so irksome, the result must be satisfactory. And lastly, | |
there was the comforting conviction, that whatever displeasure her | |
father had felt at first, at her taking the law into her own hands in | |
such unforeseen fashion, had disappeared now; and he was not going to | |
stay "outside of things," that was sure. | |
The next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, Pauline ran up-stairs | |
to the spare room. She threw open the shutters of the four windows, | |
letting in the fresh morning air. The side windows faced west, and | |
looked out across the pleasant tree-shaded yard to the church; those at | |
the front faced south, overlooking the broad village street. | |
In the bright sunlight, the big square room stood forth in all its prim | |
orderliness. "It is ugly," Pauline decided, shaking her head | |
disapprovingly, but it had possibilities. No room, with four such | |
generous windows and--for the fire-board must come out--such a wide | |
deep fireplace, could be without them. | |
She turned, as her mother came in, duly attended by Patience. "It is | |
hideous, isn't it, mother? The paper, I mean--and the carpet isn't | |
much better. It did very well, I suppose, for the visiting | |
ministers--probably they're too busy thinking over their sermons to | |
notice--but for Hilary--" | |
Mrs. Shaw smiled. "Perhaps you are right, dear. As to the | |
unattractiveness of the paper--" | |
"We must repaper--that's sure; plain green, with a little touch of | |
color in the border, and, oh, Mother Shaw, wouldn't a green and white | |
matting be lovely?" | |
"And expensive, Pauline." | |
"It wouldn't take all the twenty-five, I'm sure. Miranda'll do the | |
papering, I know. She did the study last year. Mother, couldn't we | |
have Jane in for the washing and ironing this week, and let Miranda get | |
right at this room? I'll help with the ironing, too." | |
"I suppose so, dear. Miranda is rather fussy about letting other | |
people do her regular work, you know." | |
"I'll ask her." | |
"And remember, Pauline, each day is going to bring new demands--don't | |
put all your eggs into one basket." | |
"I won't. We needn't spend anything on this room except for the paper | |
and matting." | |
Half an hour later, Pauline was on her way down to the village store | |
for samples of paper. She had already settled the matter with Miranda, | |
over the wiping of the breakfast dishes. | |
Miranda had lived with the Shaws ever since Pauline was a baby, and was | |
a very important member of the family, both in her own and their | |
opinion. She was tall and gaunt, and somewhat severe looking; however, | |
in her case, looks were deceptive. It would never have occurred to | |
Miranda that the Shaws' interests were not her interests--she | |
considered herself an important factor in the upbringing of the three | |
young people. If she had a favorite, it was probably Hilary. | |
"Hmn," she said, when Pauline broached the subject of the spare room, | |
"what put that notion in your head, I'd like to know! That paper ain't | |
got a tear in it!" | |
So Pauline went further, telling her something of Uncle Paul's letter | |
and how they hoped to carry his suggestion out. | |
Miranda stood still, her hands in the dish water--"That's your pa's own | |
brother, ain't it?" | |
Pauline nodded. "And Miranda--" | |
"I reckon he ain't much like the minister. Well, me an' Sarah Jane | |
ain't the least bit alike--if we are sisters. I guess I can manage | |
'bout the papering. But it does go 'gainst me, having that sexton | |
woman in. Still, I reckon you can't be content, 'till we get started. | |
Looking for the old gentleman up, later, be you?" | |
"For whom?" Pauline asked. | |
"Your pa's brother. The minister's getting on, and the other one's | |
considerable older, I understand." | |
"I don't think he will be up," Pauline answered; she hadn't thought of | |
that before. Suppose he should come! She wondered what he would be | |
like. | |
Half way down the street, Pauline was overtaken by her younger sister. | |
"Are you going to get the new things now, Paul?" she asked eagerly. | |
"Of course not, just get some samples." | |
"There's always such a lot of getting ready first," Patience sighed. | |
"Paul, mother says I may go with you to-morrow afternoon." | |
"All right," Pauline agreed. "Only, you've got to promise not to 'hi | |
yi' at Fanny all the way." | |
"I won't--all the way." | |
"And--Impatience?" | |
"Yes?" | |
"You needn't say what we want the new paper for, or anything about what | |
we are planning to do--in the store I mean." | |
"Mr. Ward would be mighty interested." | |
"I dare say." | |
"Miranda says you're beginning to put on considerable airs, since | |
you've been turning your hair up, Paul Shaw. When I put my hair up, | |
I'm going on being just as nice and friendly with folks, as before, | |
you'll see." | |
Pauline laughed, which was not at all to Patience's liking. "All the | |
same, mind what I say," she warned. | |
"Can I help choose?" Patience asked, as they reached the store. | |
"If you like." Pauline went through to the little annex devoted to | |
wall papers and carpetings. It was rather musty and dull in there, | |
Patience thought; she would have liked to make a slow round of the | |
whole store, exchanging greetings and various confidences with the | |
other occupants. The store was a busy place on Saturday morning, and | |
Patience knew every man, woman and child in Winton. | |
They had got their samples and Pauline was lingering before a new line | |
of summer dressgoods just received, when the young fellow in charge of | |
the post-office and telegraph station called to her: "I say, Miss Shaw, | |
here's a message just come for you." | |
"For me--" Pauline took it wonderingly. Her hands were trembling, she | |
had never received a telegram before--Was Hilary? Then she laughed at | |
herself. To have sent a message, Mr. Boyd would have first been | |
obliged to come in to Winton. | |
Out on the sidewalk, she tore open the envelope, not heeding Patience's | |
curious demands. It was from her uncle, and read-- | |
"Have some one meet the afternoon train Saturday, am sending you an aid | |
towards your summer's outings." | |
"Oh," Pauline said, "do hurry, Patience. I want to get home as fast as | |
I can." | |
CHAPTER IV | |
BEGINNINGS | |
Sunday afternoon, Pauline and Patience drove over to The Maples to see | |
Hilary. They stopped, as they went by, at the postoffice for Pauline | |
to mail a letter to her uncle, which was something in the nature of a | |
very enthusiastic postscript to the one she had written him Friday | |
night, acknowledging and thanking him for his cheque, and telling him | |
of the plans already under discussion. | |
"And now," Patience said, as they turned out of the wide main street, | |
"we're really off. I reckon Hilary'll be looking for us, don't you?" | |
"I presume she will," Pauline answered. | |
"Maybe she'll want to come back with us." | |
"Oh, I don't believe so. She knows mother wants her to stay the week | |
out. Listen, Patty--" | |
Patience sat up and took notice. When people Pattied her, it generally | |
meant they had a favor to ask, or something of the sort. | |
"Remember, you're to be very careful not to let Hilary | |
suspect--anything." | |
"About the room and--?" | |
"I mean--everything." | |
"Won't she like it--all, when she does know?" | |
"Well, rather!" | |
Patience wriggled excitedly. "It's like having a fairy godmother, | |
isn't it? And three wishes? If you'd had three wishes, Paul, wouldn't | |
you've chosen--" | |
"You'd better begin quieting down, Patience, or Hilary can't help | |
suspecting something." | |
Patience drew a long breath. "If she knew--she wouldn't stay a single | |
day longer, would she?" | |
"That's one reason why she mustn't know." | |
"When will you tell her; or is mother going to?" | |
"I don't know yet. See here, Patience, you may drive--if you won't hi | |
yi." | |
"Please, Paul, let me, when we get to the avenue. It's stupid coming | |
to a place, like Fanny'd gone to sleep." | |
"Not before--and only once then," Pauline stipulated, and Patience | |
possessed her soul in at least a faint semblance of patience until they | |
turned into the avenue of maples. Then she suddenly tightened her hold | |
on the reins, bounced excitedly up and down, crying sharply--"Hi yi!" | |
Fanny instantly pricked up her ears, and, what was more to the purpose, | |
actually started into what might almost have been called a trot. | |
"There! you see!" Patience said proudly, as they turned into the yard. | |
Hilary came down the porch steps. "I heard Impatience urging her | |
Rosinante on," she laughed. "Why didn't you let her drive all the way, | |
Paul? I've been watching for you since dinner." | |
"We've been pretty nearly since dinner getting here, it seems to me," | |
Patience declared. "We had to wait for Paul to write a letter first | |
to--" | |
"Are you alone?" Pauline broke in hurriedly, asking the first question | |
that came into her mind. | |
Hilary smiled ruefully. "Not exactly. Mr. Boyd's asleep in the | |
sitting-room, and Mrs. Boyd's taking a nap up-stairs in her own room." | |
"You poor child!" Pauline said. "Jump out, Patience!" | |
"_Have_ you brought me something to read? I've finished both the books | |
I brought with me, and gone through a lot of magazines--queer old | |
things, that Mrs. Boyd took years and years ago." | |
"Then you've done very wrong," Pauline told her severely, leading Fanny | |
over to a shady spot at one side of the yard and tying her to the | |
fence--a quite unnecessary act, as nothing would have induced Fanny to | |
take her departure unsolicited. | |
"Guess!" Pauline came back, carrying a small paper-covered parcel. | |
"Father sent it to you. He was over at Vergennes yesterday." | |
"Oh!" Hilary cried, taking it eagerly and sitting down on the steps. | |
"It's a book, of course." Even more than her sisters, she had | |
inherited her father's love of books, and a new book was an event at | |
the parsonage. "Oh," she cried again, taking off the paper and | |
disclosing the pretty tartan cover within, "O Paul! It's 'Penelope's | |
Progress.' Don't you remember those bits we read in those odd | |
magazines Josie lent us? And how we wanted to read it all?" | |
Pauline nodded. "I reckon mother told father about it; I saw her | |
following him out to the gig yesterday morning." | |
They went around to the little porch leading from Hilary's room, always | |
a pleasant spot in the afternoons. | |
"Why," Patience exclaimed, "it's like an out-door parlor, isn't it?" | |
There was a big braided mat on the floor of the porch, its colors | |
rather faded by time and use, but looking none the worse for that, a | |
couple of rockers, a low stool, and a small table, covered with a bit | |
of bright cretonne. On it stood a blue and white pitcher filled with | |
field flowers, beside it lay one or two magazines. Just outside, | |
extending from one of the porch posts to the limb of an old cherry | |
tree, hung Hilary's hammock, gay with cushions. | |
"Shirley did it yesterday afternoon," Hilary explained. "She was over | |
here a good while. Mrs. Boyd let us have the things and the chintz for | |
the cushions, Shirley made them, and we filled them with hay." | |
Pauline, sitting on the edge of the low porch, looked about her with | |
appreciative eyes. "How pleasant and cozy it is, and after all, it | |
only took a little time and trouble." | |
Hilary laid her new book on the table. "How soon do you suppose we can | |
go over to the manor, Paul? I imagine the Dayres have fixed it up | |
mighty pretty. Mr. Dayre was over here, last night. He and Shirley | |
are ever so--chummy. He's Shirley Putnam Dayre, and she's Shirley | |
Putnam Dayre, Junior. So he calls her 'Junior' and she calls him | |
'Senior.' They're just like brother and sister. He's an artist, | |
they've been everywhere together. And, Paul, they think Winton is | |
delightful. Mr. Dayre says the village street, with its great | |
overhanging trees, and old-fashioned houses, is a picture in itself, | |
particularly up at our end, with the church, all ivy-covered. He means | |
to paint the church sometime this summer." | |
"It would make a pretty picture," Pauline said thoughtfully. "Hilary, | |
I wonder--" | |
"So do I," Hilary said. "Still, after all, one would like to see | |
different places--" | |
"And love only one," Pauline added; she turned to her sister. "You are | |
better, aren't you--already?" | |
"I surely am. Shirley's promised to take me out on the lake soon. | |
She's going to be friends with us, Paul--really friends. She says we | |
must call her 'Shirley,' that she doesn't like 'Miss Dayre,' she hears | |
it so seldom." | |
"I think it's nice--being called 'Miss,'" Patience remarked, from where | |
she had curled herself up in the hammock. "I suppose she doesn't want | |
it, because she can have it--I'd love to be called 'Miss Shaw.'" | |
"Hilary," Pauline said, "would you mind very much, if you couldn't go | |
away this summer?" | |
"It wouldn't do much good if I did, would it?" | |
"The not minding would--to mother and the rest of us--" | |
"And if you knew what--" Patience began excitedly. | |
"Don't you want to go find Captain, Impatience?" Pauline asked hastily, | |
and Patience, feeling that she had made a false move, went with most | |
unusual meekness. | |
"Know what?" Hilary asked. | |
"I--shouldn't wonder, if the child had some sort of scheme on hand," | |
Pauline said, she hoped she wasn't--prevaricating; after all, Patience | |
probably did have some scheme in her head--she usually had. | |
"I haven't thought much about going away the last day or so," Hilary | |
said. "I suppose it's the feeling better, and, then, the getting to | |
know Shirley." | |
"I'm glad of that." Pauline sat silent for some moments; she was | |
watching a fat bumble bee buzzing in and out among the flowers in the | |
garden. It was always still, over here at the farm, but to-day, it | |
seemed a different sort of stillness, as if bees and birds and flowers | |
knew that it was Sunday afternoon. | |
"Paul," Hilary asked suddenly, "what are you smiling to yourself about?" | |
"Was I smiling? I didn't know it. I guess because it is so nice and | |
peaceful here and because--Hilary, let's start a club--the 'S. W. F. | |
Club.'" | |
"The what?" | |
"The 'S. W. F. Club.' No, I shan't tell you what the letters stand | |
for! You've got to think it out for yourself." | |
"A real club, Paul?" | |
"Indeed, yes." | |
"Who's to belong?" | |
"Oh, lots of folks. Josie and Tom, and you and I--and I think, maybe, | |
mother and father." | |
"Father! To belong to a club!" | |
"It was he who put the idea into my head." | |
Hilary came to sit beside her sister on the step. "Paul, I've a | |
feeling that there is something--up! And it isn't the barometer!" | |
"Where did you get it?" | |
"From you." | |
Pauline sprang up. "Feelings are very unreliable things to go by, but | |
I've one just now--that if we don't hunt Impatience up pretty | |
quick--there will be something doing." | |
They found Patience sitting on the barn floor, utterly regardless of | |
her white frock. A whole family of kittens were about her. | |
"Aren't they dears!" Patience demanded. | |
"Mrs. Boyd says I may have my choice, to take home with me," Hilary | |
said. The parsonage cat had died the fall before, and had had no | |
successor as yet. | |
Patience held up a small coal-black one. "Choose this, Hilary! | |
Miranda says a black cat brings luck, though it don't look like we | |
needed any black cats to bring--" | |
"I like the black and white one," Pauline interposed, just touching | |
Patience with the tip of her shoe. | |
"Maybe Mrs. Boyd would give us each one, that would leave one for her," | |
Patience suggested cheerfully. | |
"I imagine mother would have something to say to that," Pauline told | |
her. "Was Josie over yesterday, Hilary?" | |
Hilary nodded. "In the morning." | |
As they were going back to the house, they met Mr. Boyd, on his way to | |
pay his regular weekly visit to the far pasture. | |
"Going to salt the colts?" Patience asked. "Please, mayn't I come?" | |
"There won't be time, Patience," Pauline said. | |
"Not time!" Mr. Boyd objected, "I'll be back to supper, and you girls | |
are going to stay to supper." He carried Patience off with him, | |
declaring that he wasn't sure he should let her go home at all, he | |
meant to keep her altogether some day, and why not to-night? | |
"Oh, I couldn't stay to-night," the child assured him earnestly. "Of | |
course, I couldn't ever stay for always, but by'n'by, when--there isn't | |
so much going on at home--there's such a lot of things keep happening | |
at home now, only don't tell Hilary, please--maybe, I could come make | |
you a truly visit." | |
Indoors, Pauline and Hilary found Mrs. Boyd down-stairs again from her | |
nap. "You ain't come after Hilary?" she questioned anxiously. | |
"Only to see her," Pauline answered, and while she helped Mrs. Boyd get | |
supper, she confided to her the story of Uncle Paul's letter and the | |
plans already under way. | |
Mrs. Boyd was much interested. "Bless me, it'll do her a heap of good, | |
you'll see, my dear. I'm not sure, I don't agree with your uncle, when | |
all's said and done, home's the best place for young folks." | |
Just before Pauline and Patience went home that evening, Mrs. Boyd | |
beckoned Pauline mysteriously into the best parlor. "I always meant | |
her to have them some day--she being my god-child--and maybe they'll do | |
her as much good now, as any time, she'll want to fix up a bit now and | |
then, most likely. Shirley had on a string of them last night, but not | |
to compare with these." Mrs. Boyd was kneeling before a trunk in the | |
parlor closet, and presently she put a little square shell box into | |
Pauline's bands. "Box and all, just like they came to me--you know, | |
they were my grandmother's--but Hilary's a real careful sort of girl." | |
"But, Mrs. Boyd--I'm not sure that mother would--" Pauline knew quite | |
well what was in the box. | |
"That's all right! You just slip them in Hilary's top drawer, where | |
she'll come across them without expecting it. Deary me, I never wear | |
them, and as I say, I've always meant to give them to her some day." | |
"She'll be perfectly delighted--and they'll look so pretty. Hilary's | |
got a mighty pretty neck, I think." Pauline went out to the gig, the | |
little box hidden carefully in her blouse, feeling that Patience was | |
right and that these were very fairy-story sort of days. | |
"You'll be over again soon, won't you?" Hilary urged. | |
"We're going to be tre-men-dous-ly busy," Patience began, but her | |
sister cut her short. | |
"As soon as I can, Hilary. Mind you go on getting better." | |
By Monday noon, the spare room had lost its look of prim order. In the | |
afternoon, Pauline and her mother went down to the store to buy the | |
matting. There was not much choice to be had, and the only green and | |
white there was, was considerably beyond the limit they had allowed | |
themselves. | |
"Never mind," Pauline said cheerfully, "plain white will look ever so | |
cool and pretty--perhaps, the green would fade. I'm going to believe | |
so." | |
Over a low wicker sewing-chair, she did linger longingly; it would look | |
so nice beside one of the west windows. She meant to place a low table | |
for books and work between those side windows. In the end, prudence | |
won the day, and surely, the new paper and matting were enough to be | |
grateful for in themselves. | |
By the next afternoon the paper was on and the matting down. Pauline | |
was up garret rummaging, when she heard someone calling her from the | |
foot of the stairs. "I'm here, Josie," she called back, and her friend | |
came running up. | |
"What are you doing?" she asked. | |
Pauline held up an armful of old-fashioned chintz. | |
"Oh, how pretty!" Josie exclaimed. "It makes one think of high-waisted | |
dresses, and minuets and things like that." | |
Pauline laughed. "They were my great-grandmother's bed curtains." | |
"Goodness! What are you going to do with them?" | |
"I'm not sure mother will let me do anything. I came across them just | |
now in looking for some green silk she said I might have to cover | |
Hilary's pin-cushion with." | |
"For the new room? Patience has been doing the honors of the new paper | |
and matting--it's going to be lovely, I think." | |
Pauline scrambled to her feet, shaking out the chintz: "If only mother | |
would--it's pink and green--let's go ask her." | |
"What do you want to do with it, Pauline?" Mrs. Shaw asked. | |
"I haven't thought that far--use it for draperies of some kind, I | |
suppose," the girl answered. | |
They were standing in the middle of the big, empty room. Suddenly, | |
Josie gave a quick exclamation, pointing to the bare corner between the | |
front and side windows. "Wouldn't a cozy corner be delightful--with | |
cover and cushions of the chintz?" | |
"May we, mother?" Pauline begged in a coaxing tone. | |
"I suppose so, dear--only where is the bench part to come from?" | |
"Tom'll make the frame for it, I'll go get him this minute," Josie | |
answered. | |
"And you might use that single mattress from up garret," Mrs. Shaw | |
suggested. | |
Pauline ran up to inspect it, and to see what other treasures might be | |
forthcoming. The garret was a big, shadowy place, extending over the | |
whole house, and was lumber room, play place and general refuge, all in | |
one. | |
Presently, from under the eaves, she drew forward a little | |
old-fashioned sewing-chair, discarded on the giving out of its cane | |
seat. "But I could tack a piece of burlap on and cover it with a | |
cushion," Pauline decided, and bore it down in triumph to the new room, | |
where Tom Brice was already making his measurements for the cozy corner. | |
Josie was on the floor, measuring for the cover. "Isn't it fun, Paul? | |
Tom says it won't take long to do his part." | |
Tom straightened himself, slipping his rule into his pocket. "I don't | |
see what you want it for, though," he said. | |
"'Yours not to reason why--'" Pauline told him. "We see, and so will | |
Hilary. Don't you and Josie want to join the new club--the 'S. W. F. | |
Club'?" | |
"Society of Willing Females, I suppose?" Tom remarked. | |
"It sounds like some sort of sewing circle," Josie said. | |
Pauline sat down in one of the wide window places. "I'm not sure it | |
might not take in both. It is--'The Seeing Winton First Club.'" | |
Josie looked as though she didn't quite understand, but Tom whistled | |
softly. "What else have you been doing for the past fifteen years, if | |
you please, ma'am?" he asked quizzically. | |
Pauline laughed. "One ought to know a place rather thoroughly in | |
fifteen years, I suppose; but--I'm hoping we can make it seem at least | |
a little bit new and different this summer--for Hilary. You see, we | |
shan't be able to send her away, and so, I thought, perhaps, if we | |
tried looking at Winton--with new eyes--" | |
"I see," Josie cried. "I think it's a splendiferous ideal" | |
"And, I thought, if we formed a sort of club among ourselves and worked | |
together--" | |
"Listen," Josie interrupted again, "we'll make it a condition of | |
membership, that each one must, in turn, think up something pleasant to | |
do." | |
"Is the membership to be limited?" Tom asked. | |
Pauline smiled. "It will be so--necessarily--won't it?" For Winton | |
was not rich in young people. | |
"There will be enough of us," Josie declared hopefully. | |
"Like the model dinner party?" her brother asked. "Not less than the | |
Graces, nor more than the Muses." | |
And so the new club was formed then and there. There were to be no | |
regular and formal meetings, no dues, nor fines, and each member was to | |
consider himself, or herself, an active member of the programme | |
committee. | |
Tom, as the oldest member of their immediate circle of friends, was | |
chosen president before that first meeting adjourned; no other officers | |
were considered necessary at the time. And being president, to him was | |
promptly delegated the honor--despite his vigorous protests--of | |
arranging for their first outing and notifying the other members--yet | |
to be. | |
"But," he expostulated, "what's a fellow to think up--in a hole like | |
this?" | |
"Winton isn't a hole!" his sister protested. It was one of the chief | |
occupations of Josie's life at present, to contradict all such | |
heretical utterances on Tom's part. He was to go away that fall to | |
commence his studies for the medical profession, for it was Dr. Brice's | |
great desire that, later, his son should assist him in his practice. | |
But, so far, Tom though wanting to follow his father's profession, was | |
firm in his determination, not to follow it in Winton. | |
"And remember," Pauline said, as the three went down-stairs together, | |
"that it's the first step that counts--and to think up something very | |
delightful, Tom." | |
"It mustn't be a picnic, I suppose? Hilary won't be up to picnics yet | |
awhile." | |
"N-no, and we want to begin soon. She'll be back Friday, I think," | |
Pauline answered. | |
By Wednesday night the spare room was ready for the expected guest. | |
"It's as if someone had waved a fairy wand over it, isn't it?" Patience | |
said delightedly. "Hilary'll be so surprised." | |
"I think she will and--pleased." Pauline gave one of the cushions in | |
the cozy corner a straightening touch, and drew the window | |
shades--Miranda had taken them down and turned them--a little lower. | |
"It's a regular company room, isn't it?" Patience said joyously. | |
The minister drove over to The Maples himself on Friday afternoon to | |
bring Hilary home. | |
"Remember," Patience pointed a warning forefinger at him, just as he | |
was starting, "not a single solitary hint!" | |
"Not a single solitary one," he promised. | |
As he turned out of the gate. Patience drew a long breath. "Well, | |
he's off at last! But, oh, dear, however can we wait 'til he gets | |
back?" | |
CHAPTER V | |
BEDELIA | |
It was five o'clock that afternoon when Patience, perched, a little | |
white-clad sentry, on the gate-post, announced joyously--"They're | |
coming! They're coming!" | |
Patience was as excited as if the expected "guest" were one in fact, as | |
well as name. It was fun to be playing a game of make-believe, in | |
which the elders took part. | |
As the gig drew up before the steps, Hilary looked eagerly out. "Will | |
you tell me," she demanded, "why father insisted on coming 'round the | |
lower road, by the depot--he didn't stop, and he didn't get any parcel? | |
And when I asked him, he just laughed and looked mysterious." | |
"He went," Pauline answered, "because we asked him to--company usually | |
comes by train--real out-of-town company, you know." | |
"Like visiting ministers and returned missionaries," Patience explained. | |
Hilary looked thoroughly bewildered. "But are you expecting company? | |
You must be," she glanced from one to another, "you're all dressed up," | |
"We were expecting some, dear," her mother told her, "but she has | |
arrived." | |
"Don't you see? You're it!" Patience danced excitedly about her sister. | |
"I'm the company!" Hilary said wonderingly. Then her eyes lighted up. | |
"I understand! How perfectly dear of you all." | |
Mrs. Shaw patted the hand Hilary slipped into hers. "You have come | |
back a good deal better than you went, my dear. The change has done | |
you good." | |
"And it didn't turn out a stupid--half-way affair, after all," Hilary | |
declared. "I've had a lovely time. Only, I simply had to come home, I | |
felt somehow--that--that--" | |
"We were expecting company?" Pauline laughed. "And you wanted to be | |
here?" | |
"I reckon that was it," Hilary agreed. As she sat there, resting a | |
moment, before going up-stairs, she hardly seemed the same girl who had | |
gone away so reluctantly only eight days before. The change of scene, | |
the outdoor life, the new friendship, bringing with it new interests, | |
had worked wonders, | |
"And now," Pauline suggested, taking up her sister's valise, "perhaps | |
you would like to go up to your room--visitors generally do." | |
"To rest after your journey, you know," Patience prompted. Patience | |
believed in playing one's part down to the minutest detail. | |
"Thank you," Hilary answered, with quite the proper note of formality | |
in her voice, "if you don't mind; though I did not find the trip as | |
fatiguing as I had expected." | |
But from the door, she turned back to give her mother a second and most | |
uncompany-like hug. "It is good to be home, Mother Shaw! And please, | |
you don't want to pack me off again anywhere right away--at least, all | |
by myself?" | |
"Not right away," her mother answered, kissing her. | |
"I guess you will think it is good to be home, when you | |
know--everything," Patience announced, accompanying her sisters | |
up-stairs, but on the outside of the banisters. | |
"Patty!" Pauline protested laughingly--"Was there ever such a child for | |
letting things out!" | |
"I haven't!" the child exclaimed, "only now--it can't make any | |
difference." | |
"There is mystery in the very air!" Hilary insisted. "Oh, what have | |
you all been up to?" | |
"You're not to go in there!" Patience cried, as Hilary stopped before | |
the door of her own and Pauline's room. | |
"Of course you're not," Pauline told her. "It strikes me, for | |
company--you're making yourself very much at home! Walking into | |
peoples' rooms." She led the way along the hall to the spare room, | |
throwing the door wide open. | |
"Oh!" Hilary cried, then stood quite still on the threshold, looking | |
about her with wide, wondering eyes. | |
The spare room was grim and gray no longer. Hilary felt as if she must | |
be in some strange, delightful dream. The cool green of the wall | |
paper, with the soft touch of pink in ceiling and border, the fresh | |
white matting, the cozy corner opposite--with its delicate | |
old-fashioned chintz drapery and big cushions, the new toilet | |
covers--white over green, the fresh curtains at the windows, the | |
cushioned window seats, the low table and sewing-chair, even her own | |
narrow white bed, with its new ruffled spread, all went to make a room | |
as strange to her, as it was charming and unexpected. | |
"Oh," she said again, turning to her mother, who had followed them | |
up-stairs, and stood waiting just outside the door. "How perfectly | |
lovely it all is--but it isn't for me?" | |
"Of course it is," Patience said. "Aren't you company--you aren't just | |
Hilary now, you're 'Miss Shaw' and you're here on a visit; and there's | |
company asked to supper to-morrow night, and it's going to be such fun!" | |
Hilary's color came and went. It was something deeper and better than | |
fun. She understood now why they had done this--why Pauline had said | |
that--about her not going away; there was a sudden lump in the girl's | |
throat--she was glad, so glad, she had said that downstairs----about | |
not wanting to go away. | |
And when her mother and Patience had gone down-stairs again and Pauline | |
had begun to unpack the valise, as she had unpacked it a week ago at | |
The Maples, Hilary sat in the low chair by one of the west windows, her | |
hands folded in her lap, looking about this new room of hers. | |
"There," Pauline said presently, "I believe that's all now--you'd | |
better lie down, Hilary--I'm afraid you're tired." | |
"No, I'm not; at any rate, not very. I'll lie down if you like, only I | |
know I shan't be able to sleep." | |
Pauline lowered the pillow and threw a light cover over her. "There's | |
something in the top drawer of the dresser," she said, "but you're not | |
to look at it until you've lain down at least half an hour." | |
"I feel as if I were in an enchanted palace,", Hilary said, "with so | |
many delightful surprises being sprung on me all the while." After | |
Pauline had gone, she lay watching the slight swaying of the wild roses | |
in the tall jar on the hearth. The wild roses ran rampant in the | |
little lane leading from the back of the church down past the old | |
cottage where Sextoness Jane lived. Jane had brought these with her | |
that morning, as her contribution to the new room. | |
To Hilary, as to Patience, it seemed as if a magic wand had been waved, | |
transforming the old dull room into a place for a girl to live and | |
dream in. But for her, the name of the wand was Love. | |
There must be no more impatient longings, no fretful repinings, she | |
told herself now. She must not be slow to play her part in this new | |
game that had been originated all for her. | |
The half-hour up, she slipped from the bed and began unbuttoning her | |
blue-print frock. Being company, it stood to reason she must dress for | |
supper. But first, she must find out what was in the upper drawer. | |
The first glimpse of the little shell box, told her that. There were | |
tears in Hilary's gray eyes, as she stood slipping the gold beads | |
slowly through her fingers. How good everyone was to her; for the | |
first time some understanding of the bright side even of sickness--and | |
she had not been really sick, only run-down--and, yes, she had been | |
cross and horrid, lots of times--came to her. | |
"I'll go over just as soon as I can and thank her," the girl thought, | |
clasping the beads about her neck, "and I'll keep them always and | |
always." | |
A little later, she came down-stairs all in white, a spray of the pink | |
and white wild roses in her belt, her soft, fair hair freshly brushed | |
and braided. She had been rather neglectful of her hair lately. | |
There was no one on the front piazza but her father, and he looked up | |
from his book with a smile of pleasure. "My dear, how well you are | |
looking! It is certainly good to see you at home again, and quite your | |
old self." | |
Hilary came to sit on the arm of his chair. "It is good to be at home | |
again. I suppose you know all the wonderful surprises I found waiting | |
me?" | |
"Supper's ready," Patience proclaimed from the doorway. "Please come, | |
because--" she caught herself up, putting a hand into Hilary's, "I'll | |
show you where to sit, Miss Shaw." | |
Hilary laughed. "How old are you, my dear?" she asked, in the tone | |
frequently used by visiting ministers. | |
"I'm a good deal older than I'm treated generally," Patience answered. | |
"Do you like Winton?" | |
"I am sure I shall like it very much." Hilary slipped into the chair | |
Patience drew forward politely. "The company side of the table--sure | |
enough," she laughed. | |
"It isn't proper to say things to yourself sort of low down in your | |
voice," Patience reproved her, then at a warning glance from her mother | |
subsided into silence as the minister took his place. | |
For to-night, at least, Miranda had amply fulfilled Patience's hopes, | |
as to company suppers. And she, too, played her part in the new game, | |
calling Hilary "Miss," and never by any chance intimating that she had | |
seen her before. | |
"Did you go over to the manor to see Shirley?" Patience asked. | |
Hilary shook her head. "I promised her Pauline and I would be over | |
soon. We may have Fanny some afternoon, mayn't we, father?" | |
Patience's blue eyes danced. "They can't have Fanny, can they, | |
father?" she nodded at him knowingly. | |
Hilary eyed her questioningly. "What is the matter, Patience?" | |
"Nothing is the matter with her," Pauline said hurriedly. "Don't pay | |
any attention to her." | |
"Only, if you would hurry," Patience implored. "I--I can't wait much | |
longer!" | |
"Wait!" Hilary asked. "For what?" | |
Patience pushed back her chair. "For--Well, if you just knew what for, | |
Hilary Shaw, you'd do some pretty tall hustling!" | |
"Patience!" her father said reprovingly. | |
"May I be excused, mother?" Patience asked. "I'll wait out on the | |
porch." | |
And Mrs. Shaw replied most willingly that she might. | |
"Is there anything more--to see, I mean, not to eat?" Hilary asked. "I | |
don't see how there can be." | |
"Are you through?" Pauline answered. "Because, if you are, I'll show | |
you." | |
"It was sent to Paul," Patience called, from the hall door. "But she | |
says, of course, it was meant for us all; and I think, myself, she's | |
right about that." | |
"Is it--alive?" Hilary asked. | |
"'It' was--before supper," Pauline told her. "I certainly hope nothing | |
has happened to--'it' since then." | |
"A dog?" Hilary suggested. | |
"Wait and see; by the way, where's that kitten?" | |
"She's to follow in a few days; she was a bit too young to leave home | |
just yet." | |
"I've got the sugar!" Patience called. | |
Hilary stopped short at the foot of the porch steps. Patience's | |
remark, if it had not absolutely let the cat out of the bag, had at | |
least opened the bag. "Paul, it can't be--" | |
"In the Shaw's dictionary, at present, there doesn't appear to be any | |
such word as can't," Pauline declared. "Come on---after all, you know, | |
the only way to find out--is to find out." | |
Patience had danced on ahead down the path to the barn. She stood | |
waiting for them now in the broad open doorway, her whole small person | |
one animated exclamation point, while Towser, just home from a | |
leisurely round of afternoon visits, came forward to meet Hilary, | |
wagging a dignified welcome. | |
"If you don't hurry, I'll 'hi yi' you, like I do Fanny!" Patience | |
warned them. She moved to one side, to let Hilary go on into the barn. | |
"Now!" she demanded, "isn't that something more?" | |
From the stall beside Fanny's, a horse's head reached inquiringly out | |
for the sugar with which already she had come to associate the frequent | |
visits of these new friends. She was a pretty, well-made, little mare, | |
light sorrel, with white markings, and with a slender, intelligent face. | |
Hilary stood motionless, too surprised to speak. | |
"Her name's Bedelia," Patience said, doing the honors. "She's very | |
clever, she knows us all already. Fanny hasn't been very polite to | |
her, and she knows it--Bedelia does, I mean--sometimes, when Fanny | |
isn't looking, I've caught Bedelia sort of laughing at her--and I don't | |
blame her one bit. And, oh, Hilary, she can go--there's no need to 'hi | |
yi' her." | |
"But--" Hilary turned to Pauline. | |
"Uncle Paul sent her," Pauline explained. "She came last Saturday | |
afternoon. One of the men from Uncle Paul's place in the country | |
brought her. She was born and bred at River Lawn--that's Uncle Paul's | |
place--he says." | |
Hilary stroked the glossy neck gently, if Pauline had said the Sultan | |
of Turkey, instead of Uncle Paul, she could hardly have been more | |
surprised. "Uncle Paul--sent her to you!" she said slowly. | |
"To _us_." | |
"Bless me, that isn't all he sent," Patience exclaimed. It seemed to | |
Patience that they never would get to the end of their story. "You | |
just come look at this, Hilary Shaw!" she ran on through the opening | |
connecting carriage-house with stable. | |
"Oh!" Hilary cried, following with Pauline. | |
Beside the minister's shabby old gig, stood the smartest of smart | |
traps, and hanging on the wall behind it, a pretty russet harness, with | |
silver mountings. | |
Hilary sat down on an old saw horse; she felt again as though she must | |
be dreaming. | |
"There isn't another such cute rig in town, Jim says so," Patience | |
said. Jim was the stable boy. "It beats Bell Ward's all to pieces." | |
"But why--I mean, how did Uncle Paul ever come to send it to us?" | |
Hilary said. Of course one had always known that there | |
was--somewhere--a person named Uncle Paul; but he had appeared about as | |
remote and indefinite a being as--that same Sultan of Turkey, for | |
instance. | |
"After all, why shouldn't he?" Pauline answered. | |
"But I don't believe he would've if Paul had not written to him that | |
time," Patience added. "Maybe next time I tell you anything, you'll | |
believe me, Hilary Shaw." | |
But Hilary was staring at Pauline. "You didn't write to Uncle Paul?" | |
"I'm afraid I did." | |
"Was--was that the letter--you remember, that afternoon?" | |
"I rather think I do remember." | |
"Paul, how did you ever dare?" | |
"I was in the mood to dare anything that day." | |
"And did he answer; but of course he did." | |
"Yes--he answered. Though not right away." | |
"Was it a nice letter? Did he mind your having written? Paul, you | |
didn't ask him to send you--these," Hilary waved her hand rather | |
vaguely. | |
"Hardly--he did that all on his own. It wasn't a bad sort of letter, | |
I'll tell you about it by and by. We can go to the manor in style now, | |
can't we--even if father can't spare Fanny. Bedelia's perfectly | |
gentle, I've driven her a little ways once or twice, to make sure. | |
Father insisted on going with me. We created quite a sensation down | |
street, I assure you." | |
"And Mrs. Dane said," Patience cut in, "that in her young days, | |
clergymen didn't go kiting 'bout the country in such high-fangled rigs." | |
"Never mind what Mrs. Dane said, or didn't say," Pauline told her. | |
"Miranda says, what Mrs. Dane hasn't got to say on any subject, | |
wouldn't make you tired listening to it." | |
"Patience, if you don't stop repeating what everyone says, I shall--" | |
"If you speak to mother--then you'll be repeating," Patience declared. | |
"Maybe, I oughtn't to have said those things before--company." | |
"I think we'd better go back to the house now," Pauline suggested. | |
"Sextoness Jane says," Patience remarked, "that she'd have sure admired | |
to have a horse and rig like that, when she was a girl. She says, she | |
doesn't suppose you'll be passing by her house very often." | |
"And, now, please," Hilary pleaded, when she had been established in | |
her hammock on the side porch, with her mother in her chair close by, | |
and Pauline sitting on the steps, "I want to hear--everything. I'm | |
what Miranda calls 'fair mazed.'" | |
So Pauline told nearly everything, blurring some of the details a | |
little and getting to that twenty-five dollars a month, with which they | |
were to do so much, as quickly as possible. | |
"O Paul, really," Hilary sat up among her cushions--"Why, it'll | |
be--riches, won't it?" | |
"It seems so." | |
"But--Oh, I'm afraid you've spent all the first twenty-five on me; and | |
that's not a fair division--is it, Mother Shaw?" | |
"We used it quite according to Hoyle," Pauline insisted. "We got our | |
fun that way, didn't we, Mother Shaw?" | |
Their mother smiled. "I know I did." | |
"All the same, after this, you've simply got to 'drink fair, Betsy,' so | |
remember," Hilary warned them. | |
"Bedtime, Patience," Mrs. Shaw said, and Patience got slowly out of her | |
big, wicker armchair. | |
"I did think--seeing there was company,--that probably you'd like me to | |
stay up a little later to-night." | |
"If the 'company' takes my advice, she'll go, too," her mother answered. | |
"The 'company' thinks she will." Hilary slipped out of the hammock. | |
"Mother, do you suppose Miranda's gone to bed yet?" | |
"I'll go see," Patience offered, willing to postpone the inevitable for | |
even those few moments longer. | |
"What do you want with Miranda?" Pauline asked. | |
"To do something for me." | |
"Can't I do it?" | |
"No--and it must be done to-night. Mother, what are you smiling over?" | |
"I thought it would be that way, dear." | |
"Miranda's coming," Patience called. "She'd just taken her back | |
hair down, and she's waiting to twist it up again. She's got awful | |
funny back hair." | |
"Patience! Patience!" her mother said reprovingly. | |
"I mean, there's such a little--" | |
"Go up-stairs and get yourself ready for bed at once." | |
Miranda was waiting in the spare room. "You ain't took sick, Hilary?" | |
Hilary shook her head. "Please, Miranda, if it wouldn't be too much | |
trouble, will you bring Pauline's bed in here?" | |
"I guessed as much," Miranda said, moving Hilary's bed to one side. | |
"Hilary--wouldn't you truly rather have a room to yourself--for a | |
change?" Pauline asked. | |
"I have had one to myself--for eight days--and, now I'm going back to | |
the old way." Sitting among the cushions of the cozy corner, Hilary | |
superintended operations, and when the two single white beds were | |
standing side by side, in their accustomed fashion, the covers turned | |
back for the night, she nodded in satisfied manner. "Thank you so | |
much, Miranda; that's as it should be. Go get your things, Paul. | |
To-morrow, you must move in regularly. Upper drawer between us, and | |
the rest share and share alike, you know." | |
Patience, who had hit upon the happy expedient of braiding her | |
hair--braids, when there were a lot of them, took a long time--got | |
slowly up from the hearth rug, her head a sight to behold, with its | |
tiny, hornlike red braids sticking out in every direction. "I suppose | |
I'd better be going. I wish I had someone to talk to, after I'd gone | |
to bed." And a deep sigh escaped her. | |
Pauline kissed the wistful little face. "Never mind, old girl, you | |
know you'd never stay awake long enough to talk to anyone." | |
She and Hilary stayed awake talking, however, until Pauline's prudence | |
got the better of her joy in having her sister back in more senses than | |
one. It was so long since they had had such a delightful bedtime talk. | |
"Seeing Winton First Club," Hilary said musingly. "Paul, you're ever | |
so clever. Shirley insisted those letters stood for 'Suppression of | |
Woman's Foibles Club'; and Mr. Dayre suggested they meant, 'Sweet Wild | |
Flowers.'" | |
"You've simply got to go to sleep now, Hilary, else mother'll come and | |
take me away." | |
Hilary sighed blissfully. "I'll never say again--that nothing ever | |
happens to us." | |
Tom and Josie came to supper the next night. Shirley was there, too, | |
she had stopped in on her way to the post-office with her father that | |
afternoon, to ask how Hilary was, and been captured and kept to supper | |
and the first club meeting that followed. | |
Hilary had been sure she would like to join, and Shirley's prompt and | |
delighted acceptance of their invitation proved her right. | |
"I've only got five names on my list," Tom said, as the young folks | |
settled themselves on the porch after supper. "I suppose we'll think | |
of others later." | |
"That'll make ten, counting us five, to begin with," Pauline said. | |
"Bell and Jack Ward," Tom took out his list, "the Dixon boys and Edna | |
Ray. That's all." | |
"I'd just like to know where I come in, Tom Brice!" Patience demanded, | |
her voice vibrant with indignation. | |
"Upon my word! I didn't suppose--" | |
"I am to belong! Ain't I, Paul?" | |
"But Patty--" | |
"If you're going to say no, you needn't Patty me!" | |
"We'll see what mother thinks," Hilary suggested. "You wouldn't want | |
to be the only little girl to belong?" | |
"I shouldn't mind," Patience assured her, then feeling pretty sure that | |
Pauline was getting ready to tell her to run away, she decided to | |
retire on her own account. That blissful time, when she should be | |
"Miss Shaw," had one drawback, which never failed to assert itself at | |
times like these--there would be no younger sister subject to her | |
authority. | |
"Have you decided what we are to do?" Pauline asked Tom, when Patience | |
had gone. | |
"I should say I had. You'll be up to a ride by next Thursday, Hilary? | |
Not a very long ride." | |
"I'm sure I shall," Hilary answered eagerly. "Where are we going?" | |
"That's telling." | |
"He won't even tell me," Josie said. | |
Tom's eyes twinkled. "You're none of you to know until next Thursday. | |
Say, at four o'clock." | |
"Oh," Shirley said, "I think it's going to be the nicest club that ever | |
was." | |
CHAPTER VI | |
PERSONALLY CONDUCTED | |
"Am I late?" Shirley asked, as Pauline came down the steps to meet her | |
Thursday afternoon. | |
"No, indeed, it still wants five minutes to four. Will you come in, or | |
shall we wait out here? Hilary is under bond not to make her | |
appearance until the last minute." | |
"Out here, please," Shirley answered, sitting down on the upper step. | |
"What a delightful old garden this is. Father has at last succeeded in | |
finding me my nag, horses appear to be at a premium in Winton, and even | |
if he isn't first cousin to your Bedelia, I'm coming to take you and | |
Hilary to drive some afternoon. Father got me a surrey, because, | |
later, we're expecting some of the boys up, and we'll need a two-seated | |
rig." | |
"We're coming to take you driving, too," Pauline said. "Just at | |
present, it doesn't seem as if the summer would be long enough for all | |
the things we mean to do in it." | |
"And you don't know yet, what we are to do this afternoon?" | |
"Only, that it's to be a drive and, afterwards, supper at the Brices'. | |
That's all Josie, herself, knows about it. Tom had to take her and | |
Mrs. Brice into so much of his confidence." | |
Through the drowsy stillness of the summer afternoon, came the notes of | |
a horn, sounding nearer and nearer. A moment later, a stage drawn by | |
two of the hotel horses turned in at the parsonage drive at a fine | |
speed, drawing up before the steps where Pauline and Shirley were | |
sitting, with considerable nourish. Beside the driver sat Tom, in long | |
linen duster, the megaphone belonging to the school team in one hand. | |
Along each side of the stage was a length of white cloth, on which was | |
lettered-- | |
SEEING WINTON STAGE | |
As the stage stopped, Tom sprang down, a most businesslike air on his | |
boyish face. | |
"This is the Shaw residence, I believe?" he asked, consulting a piece | |
of paper. | |
"I--I reckon so," Pauline answered, too taken aback to know quite what | |
she was saying. | |
"All right!" Tom said. "I understand--" | |
"Then it's a good deal more than I do," Pauline cut in. | |
"That there are several young people here desirous of joining our | |
little sight-seeing trip this afternoon." | |
From around the corner of the house at that moment peeped a small | |
freckled face, the owner of which was decidedly very desirous of | |
joining that trip. Only a deep sense of personal injury kept Patience | |
from coming forward,--she wasn't going where she wasn't wanted--but | |
some day--they'd see! | |
Shirley clapped her hands delightedly. "How perfectly jolly! Oh, I am | |
glad you asked me to join the club." | |
"I'll go tell Hilary!" Pauline said. "Tom, however--" | |
"I beg your pardon, Miss?" | |
Pauline laughed and turned away. | |
"Oh, I say, Paul," Tom dropped his mask of pretended dignity, "let the | |
Imp come with us--this time." | |
Pauline looked doubtful. She, as well as Tom, had caught sight of that | |
small flushed face, on which longing and indignation had been so | |
plainly written. "I'm not sure that mother will--" she began, "But | |
I'll see." | |
"Tell her--just this first time," Tom urged, and Shirley added, "She | |
would love it so." | |
"Mother says," Pauline reported presently, "that Patience may go _this_ | |
time--only we'll have to wait while she gets ready." | |
From an upper window came an eager voice. "I'm most ready now!" | |
"She'll never forget it--as long as she lives," Shirley said, "and if | |
she hadn't gone she would never've forgotten _that_." | |
"Nor let us--for one while," Pauline remarked--"I'd a good deal rather | |
work with than against that young lady." | |
Hilary came down then, looking ready and eager for the outing. She had | |
been out in the trap with Pauline several times; once, even as far as | |
the manor to call upon Shirley. | |
"Why," she exclaimed, "you've brought the Folly! Tom, how ever did you | |
manage it?" | |
"Beg pardon, Miss?" | |
Hilary shrugged her shoulders, coming nearer for a closer inspection of | |
the big lumbering stage. It had been new, when the present proprietor | |
of the hotel, then a young man, now a middle-aged one, had come into | |
his inheritance. Fresh back from a winter in town, he had indulged | |
high hopes of booming his sleepy little village as a summer resort, and | |
had ordered the stage--since christened the Folly--for the convenience | |
and enjoyment of the guests--who had never come. A long idle lifetime | |
the Folly had passed in the hotel carriage-house; used so seldom, as to | |
make that using a village event, but never allowed to fall into | |
disrepair, through some fancy of its owner. | |
As Tom opened the door at the back now, handing his guests in with much | |
ceremony, Hilary laughed softly. "It doesn't seem quite--respectful to | |
actually sit down in the poor old thing. I wonder, if it's more | |
indignant, or pleased, at being dragged out into the light of day for a | |
parcel of young folks?" | |
"'Butchered to make a Roman Holiday'?" Shirley laughed. | |
At that moment Patience appeared, rather breathless--but not half as | |
much so as Miranda, who had been drawn into service, and now appeared | |
also--"You ain't half buttoned up behind, Patience!" she protested, | |
"and your hair ribbon's not tied fit to be seen.--My sakes, to think of | |
anyone ever having named that young one _Patience_!" | |
"I'll overhaul her, Miranda," Pauline comforted her. "Come here, | |
Patience." | |
"Please, I am to sit up in front with you, ain't I, Tom?" Patience | |
urged. "You and I always get on so beautifully together, you know." | |
Tom relaxed a second time. "I don't see how I can refuse after that," | |
and the over-hauling process being completed, Patience climbed up to | |
the high front seat, where she beamed down on the rest with such a look | |
of joyful content that they could only smile back in response. | |
From the doorway, came a warning voice. "Not too far, Tom, for Hilary; | |
and remember, Patience, what you have promised me." | |
"All right, Mrs. Shaw," Tom assured her, and Patience nodded her head | |
assentingly. | |
From the parsonage, they went first to the doctor's. Josie was waiting | |
for them at the gate, and as they drew up before it, with horn blowing, | |
and horses almost prancing--the proprietor of the hotel had given them | |
his best horses, in honor of the Folly--she stared from her brother to | |
the stage, with its white placard, with much the same look of wonder in | |
her eyes as Pauline and Hilary had shown. | |
"Miss Brice?" Tom was consulting his list again. | |
"So that's what you've been concocting, Tom Brice!" Josie answered. | |
Tom's face was as sober as his manner. "I am afraid we are a little | |
behind scheduled time, being unavoidably delayed." | |
"He means they had to wait for me to get ready," Patience explained. | |
"You didn't expect to see me along, did you, Josie?" And she smiled | |
blandly. | |
"I don't know what I did expect--certainly, not this." Josie took her | |
place in the stage, not altogether sure whether the etiquette of the | |
occasion allowed of her recognizing its other inmates, or not. | |
But Pauline nodded politely. "Good afternoon. Lovely day, isn't it?" | |
she remarked, while Shirley asked, if she had ever made this trip | |
before. | |
"Not in this way," Josie answered. "I've never ridden in the Folly | |
before. Have you, Paul?" | |
"Once, from the depot to the hotel, when I was a youngster, about | |
Impatience's age. You remember, Hilary?" | |
"Of course I do. Uncle Jerry took me up in front." Uncle Jerry was | |
the name the owner of the stage went by in Winton. "He'd had a lot of | |
Boston people up, and had been showing them around." | |
"This reminds me of the time father and I did our own New York in one | |
of those big 'Seeing New York' motors," Shirley said. "I came home | |
feeling almost as if we'd been making a trip 'round some foreign city." | |
"Tom can't make Winton seem foreign," Josie declared. | |
There were three more houses to stop at, lower down the street. From | |
windows and porches all along the route, laughing, curious faces stared | |
wonderingly after them, while a small body-guard of children sprang up | |
as if by magic to attend them on their way. This added greatly to the | |
delight of Patience, who smiled condescendingly down upon various | |
intimates, blissfully conscious of the envy she was exciting in their | |
breasts. It was delightful to be one of the club for a time, at least. | |
"And now, if you please, Ladies and Gentlemen," Tom had closed the door | |
to upon the last of his party, "we will drive first to The Vermont | |
House, a hostelry well known throughout the surrounding country, and | |
conducted by one of Vermont's best known and honored sons." | |
"Hear! Hear!" Jack Ward cried. "I say, Tom, get that off again where | |
Uncle Jerry can hear it, and you'll always be sure of his vote." | |
They had reached the rambling old hotel, from the front porch of which | |
Uncle Jerry himself, surveyed them genially. | |
"Ladies and Gentlemen," standing up, Tom turned to face the occupants | |
of the stage, his megaphone, carried merely as a badge of office, | |
raised like a conductor's baton, "I wish to impress upon your minds | |
that the building now before you--liberal rates for the season--is | |
chiefly remarkable for never having sheltered the Father of His | |
Country." | |
"Now how do you know that?" Uncle Jerry protested. "Ain't that North | |
Chamber called the 'Washington room'?" | |
"Oh, but that's because the first proprietor's first wife occupied that | |
room--and she was famous for her Washington pie," Tom answered readily. | |
"I assure you, sir, that any and all information which I shall have the | |
honor to impart to these strangers within our gates may be relied upon | |
for its accuracy." He gave the driver the word, and the Folly | |
continued on its way, stopping presently before a little | |
story-and-a-half cottage not far below the hotel and on a level with | |
the street. | |
"This cottage, my young friends," Tom said impressively, "should | |
be--and I trust is--enshrined deep within the hearts of all true | |
Wintonites. Latterly, it has come to be called the Barker cottage, but | |
its real title is 'The Flag House'; so called, because from that humble | |
porch, the first Stars and Stripes ever seen in Winton flung its colors | |
to the breeze. The original flag is still in possession of a lineal | |
descendant of its first owner, who is, unfortunately, not an inhabitant | |
of this town." The boyish gravity of tone and manner was not all | |
assumed now. | |
No one spoke for a moment; eleven pairs of young eyes were looking out | |
at the little weather-stained building with new interest. "I thought," | |
Bell Ward said at last, "that they called it the _flag_ place, because | |
someone of that name had used to live there." | |
"So did I," Hilary said. | |
As the stage moved on, Shirley leaned back for another look. "I shall | |
get father to come and sketch it," she said. "Isn't it the quaintest | |
old place?" | |
"We will now proceed," Tom announced, "to the village green, where I | |
shall have the pleasure of relating to you certain anecdotes regarding | |
the part it played in the early life of this interesting old village." | |
"Not too many, old man," Tracy Dixon suggested hurriedly, "or it may | |
prove a one-sided pleasure." | |
The green lay in the center of the town,--a wide, open space, with | |
flagstaff in the middle; fine old elms bordered it on all four sides. | |
The Vermont House faced it, on the north, and on the opposite side | |
stood the general store, belonging to Mr. Ward, with one or two smaller | |
places of business. | |
"The business section" of the town, Tom called it, and quite failed to | |
notice Tracy's lament that he had not brought his opera glasses with | |
him. "Really, you know," Tracy explained to his companions, "I should | |
have liked awfully to see it. I'm mighty interested in business | |
sections." | |
"Cut that out," his brother Bob commanded, "the chap up in front is | |
getting ready to hold forth again." | |
They were simple enough, those anecdotes, that "the chap up in front" | |
told them; but in the telling, the boy's voice lost again all touch of | |
mock gravity. His listeners, sitting there in the June sunshine, | |
looking out across the old green, flecked with the waving tree shadows, | |
and bright with the buttercups nodding here and there, seemed to see | |
those men and boys drilling there in the far-off summer twilights; to | |
hear the sharp words of command; the sound of fife and drum. And the | |
familiar names mentioned more than once, well-known village names, | |
names belonging to their own families in some instances, served to | |
deepen the impression. | |
"Why," Edna Ray said slowly, "they're like the things one learns at | |
school; somehow, they make one realize that there truly was a | |
Revolutionary War. Wherever did you pick up such a lot of town | |
history, Tom?" | |
"That's telling," Tom answered. | |
Back up the broad, main street they went, past the pleasant village | |
houses, with their bright, well-kept dooryards, under the | |
wide-spreading trees beneath which so many generations of young folks | |
had come and gone; past the square, white parsonage, with its setting | |
of green lawn; past the old stone church, and on out into the by-roads | |
of the village, catching now and then a glimpse of the great lake | |
beyond; and now and then, down some lane, a bit of the street they had | |
left. They saw it all with eyes that for once had lost the | |
indifference of long familiarity, and were swift to catch instead its | |
quiet, restful beauty, helped in this, perhaps, by Shirley's very real | |
admiration. | |
The ride ended at Dr. Brice's gate, and here Tom dropped his mantle of | |
authority, handing all further responsibility as to the entertainment | |
of the party over to his sister. | |
Hilary was carried off to rest until supper time, and the rest | |
scattered about the garden, a veritable rose garden on that June | |
afternoon, roses being Dr. Brice's pet hobby. | |
"It must be lovely to _live_ in the country," Shirley said, dropping | |
down on the grass before the doctor's favorite _La France_, and laying | |
her face against the soft, pink petals of a half-blown bud. | |
Edna eyed her curiously. She had rather resented the admittance of | |
this city girl into their set. Shirley's skirt and blouse were of | |
white linen, there was a knot of red under the broad sailor collar, she | |
was hatless and the dark hair,--never kept too closely within | |
bounds--was tossed and blown; there was certainly nothing especially | |
cityfied in either appearance or manner. | |
"That's the way I feel about the city," Edna said slowly, "it must be | |
lovely to live _there_." | |
Shirley laughed. "It is. I reckon just being alive anywhere such days | |
as these ought to content one. You haven't been over to the manor | |
lately, have you? I mean since we came there. We're really getting | |
the garden to look like a garden. Reclaiming the wilderness, father | |
calls it. You'll come over now, won't you--the club, I mean?" | |
"Why, of course," Edna answered, she thought she would like to go. "I | |
suppose you've been over to the forts?" | |
"Lots of times--father's ever so interested in them, and it's just a | |
pleasant row across, after supper." | |
"I have fasted too long, I must eat again," Tom remarked, coming across | |
the lawn. "Miss Dayre, may I have the honor?" | |
"Are you conductor, or merely club president now?" Shirley asked. | |
"Oh, I've dropped into private life again. There comes Hilary--doesn't | |
look much like an invalid, does she?" | |
"But she didn't look very well the first time I saw her," Shirley | |
answered. | |
The long supper table was laid under the apple trees at the foot of the | |
garden, which in itself served to turn the occasion into a festive | |
affair. | |
"You've given us a bully send-off, Mr. President," Bob declared. "It's | |
going to be sort of hard for the rest of us to keep up with you." | |
"By the way," Tom said, "Dr. Brice--some of you may have heard of | |
him--would like to become an honorary member of this club. Any | |
contrary votes?" | |
"What's an honorary member?" Patience asked. Patience had been | |
remarkably good that afternoon--so good that Pauline began to feel | |
worried, dreading the reaction. | |
"One who has all the fun and none of the work," Tracy explained, a | |
merry twinkle in his brown eyes. | |
Patience considered the matter. "I shouldn't mind the work; but mother | |
won't let me join regularly--mother takes notions now and then--but, | |
please mayn't I be an honorary member?" | |
"Onery, you mean, young lady!" Tracy corrected. | |
Patience flashed a pair of scornful eyes at him. "Father says punning | |
is the very lowest form of--" | |
"Never mind, Patience," Pauline said, "we haven't answered Tom yet. I | |
vote we extend our thanks to the doctor for being willing to join." | |
"He isn't a bit more willing than I am," Patience observed. There was | |
a general laugh among the real members, then Tom said, "If a Shaw votes | |
for a Brice, I don't very well see how a Brice can refuse to vote for a | |
Shaw." | |
"The motion is carried," Bob seconded him. | |
"Subject to mother's consent," Pauline added, a quite unnecessary bit | |
of elder sisterly interference, Patience thought. | |
"And now, even if it is telling on yourself, suppose you own up, old | |
man?" Jack Ward turned to Tom. "You see we don't in the least credit | |
you with having produced all that village history from your own stores | |
of knowledge." | |
"I never said you need to," Tom answered, "even the idea was not | |
altogether original with me." | |
Patience suddenly leaned forward, her face all alight with interest. | |
"I love my love with an A," she said slowly, "because he's an--author." | |
Tom whistled. "Well, of all the uncanny young ones!" | |
"It's very simple," Patience said loftily. | |
"So it is, Imp," Tracy exclaimed; "I love him with an A, because he's | |
an--A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N!" | |
"I took him to the sign of The Apple Tree," Bell took up the thread. | |
"And fed him (mentally) on subjects--antedeluvian, or almost so," | |
Hilary added. | |
"What _are_ you talking about?" Edna asked impatiently. | |
"Mr. Allen," Pauline told her. | |
"I saw him and Tom walking down the back lane the other night," | |
Patience explained. Patience felt that she had won her right to belong | |
to the club now--they'd see she wasn't just a silly little girl. | |
"Father says he--I don't mean Tom--" | |
"We didn't suppose you did," Tracy laughed. | |
"Knows more history than any other man in the state; especially, the | |
history of the state." | |
"Mr. Allen!" Shirley exclaimed. "T. C. Allen! Why, father and I read | |
one of his books just the other week. It's mighty interesting. Does | |
he live in Winton?" | |
"He surely does," Bob grinned, "and every little while he comes up to | |
school and puts us through our paces. It's his boast that he was born, | |
bred and educated right in Vermont. He isn't a bad old buck--if he | |
wouldn't pester a fellow with too many questions." | |
"He lives out beyond us," Hilary told Shirley. "There's a great apple | |
tree right in front of the gate. He has an old house-keeper to look | |
after him. I wish you could see his books--he's literally surrounded | |
with them." | |
"Not storybooks," Patience added. "He says, they're books full of | |
stories, if one's a mind to look for them." | |
"Please," Edna protested, "let's change the subject. Are we to have | |
badges, or not?" | |
"Pins," Bell suggested. | |
"Pins would have to be made to order," Pauline objected, "and would be | |
more or less expensive." | |
"And it's an unwritten by-law of this club, that we shall go to no | |
unnecessary expense," Tom insisted. | |
"But--" Bell began. | |
"Oh, I know what you're thinking," Tom broke in, "but Uncle Jerry | |
didn't charge for the stage--he said he was only too glad to have the | |
poor thing used--'twas a dull life for her, shut up in the | |
carriage-house year in and year out." | |
"The Folly isn't a she," Patience protested. | |
"Folly generally is feminine," Tracy said, "and so--" | |
"And he let us have the horses, too--for our initial outing," Tom went | |
on. "Said the stage wouldn't be of much use without them." | |
"Three cheers for Uncle Jerry!" Bob Dixon cried. "Let's make him an | |
honorary member." | |
"But the badges," Edna said. "I never saw such people for going off at | |
tangents." | |
"Ribbon would be pretty," Shirley suggested, "with the name of the club | |
in gilt letters. I can letter pretty well." | |
Her suggestion was received with general acclamation, and after much | |
discussion, as to color, dark blue was decided on. | |
"Blue goes rather well with red," Tom said, "and as two of our members | |
have red hair," his glance went from Patience to Pauline. | |
"I move we adjourn, the president's getting personal," Pauline pushed | |
back her chair. | |
"Who's turn is it to be next?" Jack asked. | |
They drew lots with blades of grass; it fell to Hilary. "I warn you," | |
she said, "that I can't come up to Tom." | |
Then the first meeting of the new club broke up, the members going | |
their various ways. Shirley went as far as the parsonage, where she | |
was to wait for her father. | |
"I've had a beautiful time," she said warmly. "And I've thought what | |
to do when my turn comes. Only, I think you'll have to let father in | |
as an honorary, I'll need him to help me out." | |
"We'll be only too glad," Pauline said heartily. "This club's growing | |
fast, isn't it? Have you decided, Hilary?" | |
Hilary shook her head, "N-not exactly; I've sort of an idea." | |
CHAPTER VII | |
HILARY'S TURN | |
Pauline and Hilary were up in their own room, the "new room," as it had | |
come to be called, deep in the discussion of certain samples that had | |
come in that morning's mail. | |
Uncle Paul's second check was due before long now, and then there were | |
to be new summer dresses, or rather the goods for them, one apiece all | |
around. | |
"Because, of course," Pauline said, turning the pretty scraps over, | |
"Mother Shaw's got to have one, too. We'll have to get it--on the | |
side--or she'll declare she doesn't need it, and she does." | |
"Just the goods won't come to so very much," Hilary said. | |
"No, indeed, and mother and I can make them." | |
"We certainly got a lot out of that other check, or rather, you and | |
mother did," Hilary went on. "And it isn't all gone?" | |
"Pretty nearly, except the little we decided to lay by each month. But | |
we did stretch it out in a good many directions. I don't suppose any | |
of the other twenty-fives will seem quite so big." | |
"But there won't be such big things to get with them," Hilary said, | |
"except these muslins." | |
"It's unspeakably delightful to have money for the little unnecessary | |
things, isn't it?" Pauline rejoiced. | |
That first check had really gone a long ways. After buying the matting | |
and paper, there had been quite a fair sum left; enough to pay for two | |
magazine subscriptions, one a review that Mr. Shaw had long wanted to | |
take, another, one of the best of the current monthlies; and to lay in | |
quite a store of new ribbons and pretty turnovers, and several yards of | |
silkaline to make cushion covers for the side porch, for Pauline, | |
taking hint from Hilary's out-door parlor at the farm, had been quick | |
to make the most of their own deep, vine-shaded side porch at the | |
parsonage. | |
The front piazza belonged in a measure to the general public, there | |
were too many people coming and going to make it private enough for a | |
family gathering place. But the side porch was different, broad and | |
square, only two or three steps from the ground; it was their favorite | |
gathering place all through the long, hot summers. | |
With a strip of carpet for the floor, a small table resurrected from | |
the garret, a bench and three wicker rockers, freshly painted green, | |
and Hilary's hammock, rich in pillows, Pauline felt that their porch | |
was one to be proud of. To Patience had been entrusted the care of | |
keeping the old blue and white Canton bowl filled with fresh flowers, | |
and there were generally books and papers on the table. And they might | |
have done it all before, Pauline thought now, if they had stopped to | |
think. | |
"Have you decided?" Hilary asked her, glancing at the sober face bent | |
over the samples. | |
"I believe I'd forgotten all about them; I think I'll choose this--" | |
Pauline held up a sample of blue and white striped dimity. | |
"That _is_ pretty." | |
"You can have it, if you like." | |
"Oh, no, I'll have the pink." | |
"And the lavender dot, for Mother Shaw?" | |
"Yes," Hilary agreed. | |
"Patience had better have straight white, it'll be in the wash so | |
often." | |
"Why not let her choose for herself, Paul?" Hilary suggested. | |
"Hilary! Oh, Hilary Shaw!" Patience called excitedly, at that moment | |
from downstairs. | |
"Up here!" Hilary called back, and Patience came hurrying up, stumbling | |
more than once in her eagerness. The next moment, she pushed wide the | |
door of the "new room." "See what's come! It's addressed to you, | |
Hilary--it came by express--Jed brought it up from the depot!" Jed was | |
the village expressman. | |
She deposited her burden on the table beside Hilary. It was a | |
good-sized, square box, and with all that delightful air of mystery | |
about it that such packages usually have. | |
"What do you suppose it is, Paul?" Hilary cried. "Why, I've never had | |
anything come unexpectedly, like this, before." | |
"A whole lot of things are happening to us that never've happened | |
before," Patience said. "See, it's from Uncle Paul!" she pointed to | |
the address at the upper left-hand corner of the package. "Oh, Hilary, | |
let me open it, please, I'll go get the tack hammer." | |
"Tell mother to come," Hilary said. | |
"Maybe it's books, Paul!" she added, as Patience scampered off. | |
Pauline lifted the box. "It doesn't seem quite heavy enough for books." | |
"But what else could it be?" | |
Pauline laughed. "It isn't another Bedelia, at all events. It could | |
be almost anything. Hilary, I believe Uncle Paul is really glad I | |
wrote to him." | |
"Well, I'm not exactly sorry," Hilary declared. | |
"Mother can't come yet," Patience explained, reappearing. "She says | |
not to wait. It's that tiresome Mrs. Dane; she just seems to know when | |
we don't want her, and then to come--only, I suppose if she waited 'til | |
we did want to see her, she'd never get here." | |
"Mother didn't say that. Impatience, and you'd better not let her hear | |
you saying it," Pauline warned. | |
But Patience was busy with the tack hammer. "You can take the inside | |
covers off," she said to Hilary. | |
"Thanks, awfully," Hilary murmured. | |
"It'll be my turn next, won't it?" Patience dropped the tack hammer, | |
and wrenched off the cover of the box--"Go ahead, Hilary! Oh, how slow | |
you are!" | |
For Hilary was going about her share of the unpacking in the most | |
leisurely way. "I want to guess first," she said. "Such a lot of | |
wrappings! It must be something breakable." | |
"A picture, maybe," Pauline suggested. Patience dropped cross-legged | |
on the floor. "Then I don't think Uncle Paul's such a very sensible | |
sort of person," she said. | |
"No, not pictures!" Hilary lifted something from within the box, "but | |
something to get pictures with. See, Paul!" | |
"A camera! Oh, Hilary!" | |
"And not a little tiny one." Patience leaned over to examine the box. | |
"It's a three and a quarter by four and a quarter. We can have fun | |
now, can't we?" Patience believed firmly in the cooperative principle. | |
"Tom'll show you how to use it," Pauline said. "He fixed up a dark | |
room last fall, you know, for himself." | |
"And here are all the doings." Patience came to investigate the | |
further contents of the express package. "Films and those funny little | |
pans for developing in, and all." | |
Inside the camera was a message to the effect that Mr. Shaw hoped his | |
niece would be pleased with his present and that it would add to the | |
summer's pleasures, | |
"He's getting real uncley, isn't he?" Patience observed. Then she | |
caught sight of the samples Pauline had let fall. "Oh, how pretty! | |
Are they for dresses for us?" | |
"They'd make pretty scant ones, I'd say," Pauline, answered. | |
"Silly!" Patience spread the bright scraps out on her blue checked | |
gingham apron. "I just bet you've been choosing! Why didn't you call | |
me?" | |
"To help us choose?" Pauline asked, with a laugh. | |
But at the present moment, her small sister was quite impervious to | |
sarcasm. "I think I'll have this," she pointed to a white ground, | |
closely sprinkled with vivid green dots. | |
"Carrots and greens!" Pauline declared, glancing at her sister's red | |
curls. "You'd look like an animated boiled dinner! If you please, who | |
said anything about your choosing?" | |
"You look ever so nice in all white, Patty," Hilary said hastily. | |
"Have you and Paul chosen all white?" | |
"N-no." | |
"Then I shan't!" She looked up quickly, her blue eyes very persuasive. | |
"I don't very often have a brand new, just-out-of-the-store dress, do | |
I?" | |
Pauline laughed. "Only don't let it be the green then. Good, here's | |
mother, at last!" | |
"Mummy, is blue or green better?" Patience demanded. | |
Mrs. Shaw examined and duly admired the camera, and decided in favor of | |
a blue dot; then she said, "Mrs. Boyd is down-stairs, Hilary." | |
"How nice!" Hilary jumped up. "I want to see her most particularly." | |
"Bless me, child!" Mrs. Boyd exclaimed, as Hilary came into the | |
sitting-room, "how you are getting on! Why, you don't look like the | |
same girl of three weeks back." | |
Hilary sat down beside her on the sofa. "I've got a most tremendous | |
favor to ask, Mrs. Boyd." | |
"I'm glad to hear that! I hear you young folks are having fine times | |
lately. Shirley was telling me about the club the other night." | |
"It's about the club--and it's in two parts; first, won't you and Mr. | |
Boyd be honorary members?--That means you can come to the good times if | |
you like, you know.--And the other is--you see, it's my turn next--" | |
And when Pauline came down, she found the two deep in consultation. | |
The next afternoon, Patience carried out her long-intended plan of | |
calling at the manor. Mrs. Shaw was from home for the day, Pauline and | |
Hilary were out in the trap with Tom and Josie and the camera. "So | |
there's really no one to ask permission of, Towser," Patience | |
explained, as they started off down the back lane. "Father's got the | |
study door closed, of course that means he mustn't be disturbed for | |
anything unless it's absolutely necessary." | |
Towser wagged comprehendingly. He was quite ready for a ramble this | |
bright afternoon, especially a ramble 'cross lots. | |
Shirley and her father were not at home, neither--which was even more | |
disappointing--were any of the dogs; so, after a short chat with Betsy | |
Todd, considerably curtailed by that body's too frankly expressed | |
wonder that Patience should've been allowed to come unattended by any | |
of her elders, she and Towser wandered home again. | |
In the lane, they met Sextoness Jane, sitting on the roadside, under a | |
shady tree. She and Patience exchanged views on parish matters, | |
discussed the new club, and had an all-round good gossip. | |
"My sakes!" Jane said, her faded eyes bright with interest, "it must | |
seem like Christmas all the time up to your house." She looked past | |
Patience to the old church beyond, around which her life had centered | |
itself for so many years. "There weren't ever such doings at the | |
parsonage--nor anywhere else, what I knowed of--when I was a girl. | |
Why, that Bedelia horse! Seems like she give an air to the whole | |
place--so pretty and high-stepping--it's most's good's a circus--not | |
that I've ever been to a circus, but I've hear tell on them--just to | |
see her go prancing by." | |
"I think," Patience said that evening, as they were all sitting on the | |
porch in the twilight, "I think that Jane would like awfully to belong | |
to our club." | |
"Have you started a club, too?" Pauline teased. | |
Patience tossed her red head. "'The S. W. F. Club,' I mean; and you | |
know it, Paul Shaw. When I get to be fifteen, I shan't act half so | |
silly as some folks." | |
"What ever put that idea in your head?" Hilary asked. It was one of | |
Hilary's chief missions in life to act as intermediary between her | |
younger and older sister. | |
"Oh, I just gathered it, from what she said. Towser and I met her this | |
afternoon, on our way home from the manor." | |
"From where, Patience?" her mother asked quickly, with that faculty for | |
taking hold of the wrong end of a remark, that Patience had had | |
occasion to deplore more than once. | |
And in the diversion this caused, Sextoness Jane was forgotten. | |
"Here comes Mr. Boyd, Hilary!" Pauline called from the foot of the | |
stairs. | |
Hilary finished tying the knot of cherry ribbon at her throat, then | |
snatching up her big sun-hat from the bed, she ran down-stairs. | |
Before the side door, stood the big wagon, in which Mr. Boyd had driven | |
over from the farm, its bottom well filled with fresh straw. For | |
Hilary's outing was to be a cherry picnic at The Maples, with supper | |
under the trees, and a drive home later by moonlight. | |
Shirley had brought over the badges a day or two before; the blue | |
ribbon, with its gilt lettering, gave an added touch to the girls' | |
white dresses and cherry ribbons. | |
Mr. Dayre had been duly made an honorary member. He and Shirley were | |
to meet the rest of the party at the farm. As for Patience H. M., as | |
Tom called her, she had been walking very softly the past few days. | |
There had been no long rambles without permission, no making calls on | |
her own account. There _had_ been a private interview between herself | |
and Mr. Boyd, whom she had met, not altogether by chance, down street | |
the day before. | |
The result was that, at the present moment, Patience--white-frocked, | |
blue-badged, cherry-ribboned--was sitting demurely in one corner of the | |
big wagon. | |
Mr. Boyd chuckled as he glanced down at her; a body'd have to get up | |
pretty early in the morning to get ahead of that youngster. Though not | |
in white, nor wearing cherry ribbons, Mr. Boyd sported his badge with | |
much complacency. Winton was looking up, decidedly. 'Twasn't such a | |
slow old place, after all. | |
"All ready?" he asked, as Pauline slipped a couple of big pasteboard | |
boxes under the wagon seat, and threw in some shawls for the coming | |
home. | |
"All ready. Good-by, Mother Shaw. Remember, you and father have got | |
to come with us one of these days. I guess if Mr. Boyd can take a | |
holiday you can." | |
"Good-by," Hilary called, and Patience waved joyously. "This'll make | |
two times," she comforted herself, "and two times ought to be enough to | |
establish what father calls 'a precedent.'" | |
They stopped at the four other houses in turn; then Mr. Boyd touched | |
his horses up lightly, rattling them along at a good rate out on to the | |
road leading to the lake and so to The Maples. | |
There was plenty of fun and laughter by the way. They had gone | |
picnicking together so many summers, this same crowd, had had so many | |
good times together. "And yet it seems different, this year, doesn't | |
it?" Bell said. "We really aren't doing new things--exactly, still | |
they seem so." | |
Tracy touched his badge. "These are the 'Blue Ribbon Brand,' best | |
goods in the market." | |
"Come to think of it, there aren't so very many new things one can do," | |
Tom remarked. | |
"Not in Winton, at any rate," Bob added. | |
"If anyone dares say anything derogatory to Winton, on this, or any | |
other, outing of the 'S. W. F. Club,' he, or she, will get into | |
trouble," Josie said sternly. | |
Mrs. Boyd was waiting for them on the steps, Shirley close by, while a | |
glimpse of a white umbrella seen through the trees told that Mr. Dayre | |
was not far off. | |
"It's the best cherry season in years," Mrs. Boyd declared, as the | |
young folks came laughing and crowding about her. She was a prime | |
favorite with them all. "My, how nice you look! Those badges are | |
mighty pretty." | |
"Where's yours?" Pauline demanded. | |
"It's in my top drawer, dear. Looks like I'm too old to go wearing | |
such things, though 'twas ever so good in you to send me one." | |
"Hilary," Pauline turned to her sister, "I'm sure Mrs. Boyd'll let you | |
go to her top drawer. Not a stroke of business does this club do, | |
until this particular member has her badge on." | |
"Now," Tom asked, when that little matter had been attended to, "what's | |
the order of the day?" | |
"I hope you've worn old dresses?" Mrs. Boyd said. | |
"I haven't, ma'am," Tracy announced. | |
"Order!" Bob called. | |
"Eat all you like--so long's you don't get sick--and each pick a nice | |
basket to take home," Mrs. Boyd explained. There were no cherries | |
anywhere else quite so big and fine, as those at The Maples. | |
"You to command, we to obey!" Tracy declared. | |
"Boys to pick, girls to pick up," Tom ordered, as they scattered about | |
among the big, bountifully laden trees. | |
"For cherry time, | |
Is merry time," | |
Shirley improvised, catching the cluster of great red and white | |
cherries Jack tossed down to her. | |
Even more than the rest of the young folks, Shirley was getting the | |
good of this happy, out-door summer, with its quiet pleasures and | |
restful sense of home life. She had never known anything before like | |
it. It was very different, certainly, from the studio life in New | |
York, different from the sketching rambles she had taken other summers | |
with her father. They were delightful, too, and it was pleasant to | |
think of going back to them again--some day; but just at present, it | |
was good to be a girl among other girls, interested in all the simple, | |
homely things each day brought up. | |
And her father was content, too, else how could she have been so? It | |
was doing him no end of good. Painting a little, sketching a little, | |
reading and idling a good deal, and through it all, immensely amused at | |
the enthusiasm with which his daughter threw herself into the village | |
life. "I shall begin to think soon, that you were born and raised in | |
Winton," he had said to her that very morning, as she came in fresh | |
from a conference with Betsy Todd. Betsy might be spending her summer | |
in a rather out-of-the-way spot, and her rheumatism might prevent her | |
from getting into town--as she expressed it--but very little went on | |
that Betsy did not hear of, and she was not one to keep her news to | |
herself. | |
"So shall I," Shirley had laughed back. She wondered now, if Pauline | |
or Hilary would enjoy a studio winter, as much as she was reveling in | |
her Winton summer? She decided that probably they would. | |
Cherry time _was_ merry time that afternoon. Of course. Bob fell out | |
of one of the trees, but Bob was so used to tumbling, and the others | |
were so used to having him tumble, that no one paid much attention to | |
it; and equally, of course, Patience tore her dress and had to be taken | |
in hand by Mrs. Boyd. | |
"Every rose must have its thorns, you know, kid," Tracy told her, as | |
she was borne away for this enforced retirement. "We'll leave a few | |
cherries, 'gainst you get back." | |
Patience elevated her small freckled nose, she was an adept at it. "I | |
reckon they will be mighty few--if you have anything to do with it." | |
"You're having a fine time, aren't you, Senior?" Shirley asked, as Mr. | |
Dayre came scrambling down from his tree; he had been routed from his | |
sketching and pressed into service by his indefatigable daughter. | |
"Scrumptious! Shirley, you've got a fine color--only it's laid on in | |
spots." | |
"You're spattery, too," she retorted. "I must go help lay out the | |
supper now." | |
"Will anyone want supper, after so many cherries?" Mr. Dayre asked. | |
"Will they?" Pauline laughed. "Well, you just wait and see." | |
Some of the boys brought the table from the house, stretching it out to | |
its uttermost length. The girls laid the cloth, Mrs. Boyd provided, | |
and unpacked the boxes stacked on the porch. From the kitchen came an | |
appetizing odor of hot coffee. Hilary and Bell went off after flowers | |
for the center of the table. | |
"We'll put one at each place, suggestive of the person--like a place | |
card," Hilary proposed. | |
"Here's a daisy for Mrs. Boyd," Bell laughed. | |
"Let's give that to Mr. Boyd and cut her one of these old-fashioned | |
spice pinks," Hilary said. | |
"Better put a bit of pepper-grass for the Imp," Tracy suggested, as the | |
girls went from place to place up and down the long table. | |
"Paul's to have a <DW29>," Hilary insisted. She remembered how, if it | |
hadn't been for Pauline's "thought" that wet May afternoon, everything | |
would still be as dull and dreary as it was then. | |
At her own place she found a spray of belated wild roses, Tom had laid | |
there, the pink of their petals not more delicate than the soft color | |
coming and going in the girl's face. | |
"We've brought for-get-me-not for you, Shirley," Bell said, "so that | |
you won't forget us when you get back to the city." | |
"As if I were likely to!" Shirley exclaimed. | |
"Sound the call to supper, sonny!" Tom told Bob, and Bob, raising the | |
farm dinner-horn, sounded it with a will, making the girls cover their | |
ears with their hands and bringing the boys up with a rush. | |
"It's a beautiful picnic, isn't it?" Patience said, reappearing in time | |
to slip into place with the rest. | |
"And after supper, I will read you the club song," Tracy announced. | |
"Are we to have a club song?" Edna asked. | |
"We are." | |
"Read it now, son--while we eat," Tom suggested. | |
Tracy rose promptly--"Mind you save me a few scraps then. First, it | |
isn't original--" | |
"All the better," Jack commented. | |
"Hush up, and listen-- | |
"'A cheerful world?--It surely is. | |
And if you understand your biz | |
You'll taboo the worry worm, | |
And cultivate the happy germ. | |
"'It's a habit to be happy, | |
Just as much as to be scrappy. | |
So put the frown away awhile, | |
And try a little sunny smile.'" | |
There was a generous round of applause. Tracy tossed the scrap of | |
paper across the table to Bell. "Put it to music, before the next | |
round-up, if you please." | |
Bell nodded. "I'll do my best." | |
"We've got a club song and a club badge, and we ought to have a club | |
motto," Josie said. | |
"It's right to your hand, in your song," her brother answered. "'It's | |
a habit to be happy.'" | |
"Good!" Pauline seconded him, and the motto was at once adopted. | |
CHAPTER VIII | |
SNAP-SHOTS | |
Bell Ward set the new song to music, a light, catchy tune, easy to pick | |
up. It took immediately, the boys whistled it, as they came and went, | |
and the girls hummed it. Patience, with cheerful impartiality, did | |
both, in season and out of season. | |
It certainly looked as though it were getting to be a habit to be happy | |
among a good many persons in Winton that summer. The spirit of the new | |
club seemed in the very atmosphere. | |
A rivalry, keen but generous, sprang up between the club members in the | |
matter of discovering new ways of "Seeing Winton," or, failing that, of | |
giving a new touch to the old familiar ones. | |
There were many informal and unexpected outings, besides the club's | |
regular ones, sometimes amongst all the members, often among two or | |
three of them. | |
Frequently, Shirley drove over in the surrey, and she and Pauline and | |
Hilary, with sometimes one of the other girls, would go for long | |
rambling drives along the quiet country roads, or out beside the lake. | |
Shirley generally brought her sketch-book and there were pleasant | |
stoppings here and there. | |
And there were few days on which Bedelia and the trap were not out, | |
Bedelia enjoying the brisk trots about the country quite as much as her | |
companions. | |
Hilary soon earned the title of "the kodak fiend," Josie declaring she | |
took pictures in her sleep, and that "Have me; have my camera," was | |
Hilary's present motto. Certainly, the camera was in evidence at all | |
the outings, and so far, Hilary had fewer failures to her account than | |
most beginners. Her "picture diary" she called the big scrap-book in | |
which was mounted her record of the summer's doings. | |
Those doings were proving both numerous and delightful. Mr. Shaw, as | |
an honorary member, had invited the club to a fishing party, which had | |
been an immense success. The doctor had followed it by a moonlight | |
drive along the lake and across on the old sail ferry to the New York | |
side, keeping strictly within that ten-mile-from-home limit, though | |
covering considerably more than ten miles in the coming and going. | |
There had been picnics of every description, to all the points of | |
interest and charm in and about the village; an old-time supper at the | |
Wards', at which the club members had appeared in old-fashioned | |
costumes; a strawberry supper on the church lawn, to which all the | |
church were invited, and which went off rather better than some of the | |
sociables had in times past. | |
As the Winton _Weekly News_ declared proudly, it was the gayest summer | |
the village had known in years. Mr. Paul Shaw's theory about | |
developing home resources was proving a sound one in this instance at | |
least. | |
Hilary had long since forgotten that she had ever been an invalid, had | |
indeed, sometimes, to be reminded of that fact. She had quite | |
discarded the little "company" fiction, except now and then, by way of | |
a joke. "Who'd want to be company?" she protested. "I'd rather be one | |
of the family these days." | |
"That's all very well," Patience retorted, "when you're getting all the | |
good of being both. You've got the company room." Patience had not | |
found her summer quite as cloudless as some of her elders; being an | |
honorary member had not meant _all_ of the fun in her case. She wished | |
very much that it were possible to grow up in a single night, thus | |
wiping out forever that drawback of being "a little girl." | |
Still, on the whole, she managed to get a fair share of the fun going | |
on and quite agreed with the editor of the _Weekly News_, going so far | |
as to tell him so when she met him down street. She had a very kindly | |
feeling in her heart for the pleasant spoken little editor; had he not | |
given her her full honors every time she had had the joy of being | |
"among those present"? | |
There had been three of those checks from Uncle Paul; it was wonderful | |
how far each had been made to go. It was possible nowadays to send for | |
a new book, when the reviews were more than especially tempting. There | |
had also been a tea-table added to the other attractions of the side | |
porch, not an expensive affair, but the little Japanese cups and | |
saucers were both pretty and delicate, as was the rest of the service; | |
while Miranda's cream cookies and sponge cakes were, as Shirley | |
declared, good enough to be framed. Even the minister appeared now and | |
then of an afternoon, during tea hour, and the young people, gathered | |
on the porch, began to find him a very pleasant addition to their | |
little company, he and they getting acquainted, as they had never | |
gotten acquainted before. | |
Sextoness Jane came every week now to help with the ironing, which | |
meant greater freedom in the matter of wash dresses; and also, to | |
Sextoness Jane herself, the certainty of a day's outing every week. To | |
Sextoness Jane, those Tuesdays at the parsonage were little short of a | |
dissipation. Miranda, unbending in the face of such sincere and humble | |
admiration, was truly gracious. The glimpses the little bent, old | |
sextoness got of the young folks, the sense of life going on about her, | |
were as good as a play, to quote her own simile, confided of an evening | |
to Tobias, her great black cat, the only other inmate of the old | |
cottage. | |
"I reckon Uncle Paul would be rather surprised," Pauline said one | |
evening, "if he could know all the queer sorts of ways in which we use | |
his money. But the little easings-up do count for so much." | |
"Indeed they do," Hilary agreed warmly, "though it hasn't all gone for | |
easings-ups, as you call them, either." She had sat down right in the | |
middle of getting ready for bed, to revel in her ribbon box; she so | |
loved pretty ribbons! | |
The committee on finances, as Pauline called her mother, Hilary, and | |
herself, held frequent meetings. "And there's always one thing," the | |
girl would declare proudly, "the treasury is never entirely empty." | |
She kept faithful account of all money received and spent; each month a | |
certain amount was laid away for the "rainy day"--which meant, really, | |
the time when the checks should cease to come---"for, you know, Uncle | |
Paul only promised them for the _summer_," Pauline reminded the others, | |
and herself, rather frequently. Nor was all of the remainder ever | |
quite used up before the coming of the next check. | |
"You're quite a business woman, my dear," Mr. Shaw said once, smiling | |
over the carefully recorded entries in the little account-book she | |
showed him. "We must have named you rightly." | |
She wrote regularly to her uncle; her letters unconsciously growing | |
more friendly and informal from week to week. They were bright, vivid | |
letters, more so than Pauline had any idea of. Through them, Mr. Paul | |
Shaw felt himself becoming very well acquainted with these young | |
relatives whom he had never seen, and in whom, as the weeks went by, he | |
felt himself growing more and more interested. | |
Without realizing it, he got into the habit of looking forward to that | |
weekly letter; the girl wrote a nice clear hand, there didn't seem to | |
be any nonsense about her, and she had a way of going right to her | |
point that was most satisfactory. It seemed sometimes as if he could | |
see the old white parsonage and ivy-covered church; the broad | |
tree-shaded lawns; the outdoor parlor, with the young people gathered | |
about the tea-table; Bedelia, picking her way along the quiet country | |
roads; the great lake in all its moods; the manor house. | |
Sometimes Pauline would enclose one or two of Hilary's snap-shots of | |
places, or persons. At one of these, taken the day of the fishing | |
picnic, and under which Hilary had written "The best catch of the | |
season," Mr. Paul Shaw looked long and intently. Somehow he had never | |
pictured Phil to himself as middle-aged. If anyone had told him, when | |
the lad was a boy, that the time would come when they would be like | |
strangers to each other--Mr. Paul Shaw slipped the snap-shot and letter | |
back into their envelope. | |
It was that afternoon that he spent considerable time over a catalogue | |
devoted entirely to sporting goods; and it was a fortnight later that | |
Patience came flying down the garden path to where Pauline and Hilary | |
were leaning over the fence, paying a morning call to Bedelia, sunning | |
herself in the back pasture. | |
"You'll never guess what's come _this_ time! And Jed says he reckons | |
he can haul it out this afternoon if you're set on it! And it's | |
addressed to the 'Misses Shaw,' so that means it's _mine, too_!" | |
Patience dropped on the grass, quite out of breath. | |
The "it" proved to be a row-boat with a double set of oar-locks, a | |
perfect boat for the lake, strong and safe, but trig and neat of | |
outline. | |
Hilary named it the "Surprise" at first sight, and Tom was sent for at | |
once to paint the name in red letters to look well against the white | |
background and to match the boat's red trimmings. | |
Its launching was an event. Some of the young people had boats over at | |
the lake, rather weather-beaten, tubby affairs, Bell declared them, | |
after the coming of the "Surprise." A general overhauling took place | |
immediately, the girls adopted simple boating dresses--red and white, | |
which were their boating colors. A new zest was given to the water | |
picnics, Bedelia learning to know the lake road very well. | |
August had come before they fairly realized that their summer was more | |
than well under way. In little more than a month the long vacation | |
would be over. Tom and Josie were to go to Boston to school; Bell to | |
Vergennes. | |
"There'll never be another summer quite like it!" Hilary said one | |
morning. "I can't bear to think of its being over." | |
"It isn't--yet," Pauline answered. | |
"Tom's coming," Patience heralded from the gate, and Hilary ran indoors | |
for hat and camera. | |
"Where are you off to this morning?" Pauline asked, as her sister came | |
out again. | |
"Out by the Cross-roads' Meeting-House," Tom answered. "Hilary has | |
designs on it, I believe." | |
"You'd better come, too, Paul," Hilary urged. "It's a glorious morning | |
for a walk." | |
"I'm going to help mother cut out; perhaps I'll come to meet you with | |
Bedelia 'long towards noon. You wait at Meeting-House Hill." | |
"_I'm_ not going to be busy this morning," Patience insinuated. | |
"Oh, yes you are, young lady," Pauline told her. "Mother said you were | |
to weed the aster bed." | |
Patience looked longingly after the two starting gayly off down the | |
path, their cameras swung over their shoulders, then she looked | |
disgustedly at the aster bed. It was quite the biggest of the smaller | |
beds.--She didn't see what people wanted to plant so many asters for; | |
she had never cared much for asters, she felt she should care even less | |
about them in the future. Tiresome, stiff affairs! | |
By the time Tom and Hilary reached the old Cross-Roads' Meeting-House | |
that morning, after a long roundabout ramble, Hilary, for one, was | |
quite willing to sit down and wait for Pauline and the trap, and eat | |
the great, juicy blackberries Tom gathered for her from the bushes | |
along the road. | |
It had rained during the night and the air was crisp and fresh, with a | |
hint of the coming fall. "Summer's surely on the down grade," Tom | |
said, throwing himself on the bank beside Hilary. | |
"So Paul and I were lamenting this morning. I don't suppose it matters | |
as much to you folks who are going off to school." | |
"Still it means another summer over," Tom said soberly. He was rather | |
sorry that it was so--there could never be another summer quite so | |
jolly and carefree. "And the breaking up of the club, I suppose?" | |
"I don't see why we need call it a break--just a discontinuance, for a | |
time." | |
"And why that, even? There'll be a lot of you left, to keep it going." | |
"Y-yes, but with three, or perhaps more, out, I reckon we'll have to | |
postpone the next installment until another summer." | |
Tom went off then for more berries, and Hilary sat leaning back against | |
the trunk of the big tree crowning the top of Meeting-House Hill, her | |
eyes rather thoughtful. From where she sat, she had a full view of | |
both roads for some distance and, just beyond, the little hamlet | |
scattered about the old meeting-house. | |
Before the gate of one of the houses stood a familiar gig, and | |
presently, as she sat watching, Dr. Brice came down the narrow | |
flower-bordered path, followed by a woman. At the gate both stopped; | |
the woman was saying something, her anxious, drawn face seeming out of | |
keeping with the cheery freshness of the morning and the flowers | |
nodding their bright heads about her. | |
As the doctor stood listening, his old shabby medicine case in his | |
hand, with face bent to the troubled one raised to his, and bearing | |
indicating grave sympathy and understanding, Hilary reached for her | |
camera. | |
"Upon my word! Isn't the poor pater exempt?" Tom laughed, coming back. | |
"I want it for the book Josie and I are making for you to take away | |
with you, 'Winton Snap-shots.' We'll call it 'The Country Doctor.'" | |
Tom looked at the gig, moving slowly off down the road now. He hated | |
to say so, but he wished Hilary would not put that particular snap-shot | |
in. He had a foreboding that it was going to make him a bit | |
uncomfortable--later--when the time for decision came; though, as for | |
that, he had already decided--beyond thought of change. He wished that | |
the pater hadn't set his heart on his coming back here to practice--and | |
he wished, too, that Hilary hadn't taken that photo. | |
"Paul's late," he said presently. | |
"I'm afraid she isn't coming." | |
"It's past twelve," Tom glanced at the sun. "Maybe we'd better walk on | |
a bit." | |
But they had walked a considerable bit, all the way to the parsonage, | |
in fact, before they saw anything of Pauline. There, she met them at | |
the gate. "Have you seen any trace of Patience--and Bedelia?" she | |
asked eagerly. | |
"Patience and Bedelia?" Hilary repeated wonderingly. | |
"They're both missing, and it's pretty safe guessing they're together." | |
"But Patience would never dare--" | |
"Wouldn't she!" Pauline exclaimed. "Jim brought Bedelia 'round about | |
eleven and when I came out a few moments later, she was gone and so was | |
Patience. Jim's out looking for them. We traced them as far as the | |
Lake road." | |
"I'll go hunt, too," Tom offered. "Don't you worry, Paul; she'll turn | |
up all right--couldn't down the Imp, if you tried." | |
"But she's never driven Bedelia alone; and Bedelia's not Fanny." | |
However, half an hour later, Patience drove calmly into the yard, | |
Towser on the seat beside her, and if there was something very like | |
anxiety in her glance, there was distinct triumph in the way she | |
carried her small, bare head. | |
"We've had a beautiful drive!" she announced, smiling pleasantly from | |
her high seat, at the worried, indignant group on the porch. "I tell | |
you, there isn't any need to 'hi-yi' this horse!" | |
"My sakes!" Miranda declared. "Did you ever hear the beat of that!" | |
"Get down, Patience!" Mrs. Shaw said, and Patience climbed obediently | |
down. She bore the prompt banishment to her own room which followed, | |
with seeming indifference. Certainly, it was not unexpected; but when | |
Hilary brought her dinner up to her presently, she found her sitting on | |
the floor, her head on the bed. It was only a few days now to | |
Shirley's turn and it was going to be such a nice turn. Patience felt | |
that for once Patience Shaw had certainly acted most unwisely. | |
"Patty, how could you!" Hilary put the tray on the table and sitting | |
down on the bed, took the tumbled head on her knee. "We've been so | |
worried! You see, Bedelia isn't like Fanny!" | |
"That's why I wanted to get a chance to drive her by myself for once! | |
She went beautifully! out on the Lake road I just let her loose!" For | |
the moment, pride in her recent performance routed all contrition from | |
Patience's voice--"I tell you, folks I passed just stared!" | |
"Patience, how--" | |
"I wasn't scared the least bit; and, of course, Bedelia knew it. Uncle | |
Jerry says they always know when you're scared, and if Mr. Allen is the | |
most up in history of any man in Vermont, Uncle Jerry is the most in | |
horses." | |
Hilary felt that the conversation was hardly proceeding upon the lines | |
her mother would have approved of, especially under present | |
circumstances. "That has nothing to do with it, you know, Patience," | |
she said, striving to be properly severe. | |
"I think it has--everything. I think it's nice not being scared of | |
things. You're sort of timid 'bout things, aren't you, Hilary?" | |
Hilary made a movement to rise. | |
"Oh, please," Patience begged. "It's going to be such a dreadful long | |
afternoon--all alone." | |
"But I can't stay, mother would not want--" | |
"Just for a minute. I--I want to tell you something. I--coming back, | |
I met Jane, and I gave her a lift home--and she did love it so--she | |
says she's never ridden before behind a horse that really went as if it | |
enjoyed it as much as she did. That was some good out of being bad, | |
wasn't it? And--I told you--ever'n' ever so long ago, that I was | |
mighty sure Jane'd just be tickled to death to belong to our club. I | |
think you might ask her--I don't see why she shouldn't like Seeing | |
Winton, same's we do--she doesn't ever have fun--and she'll be dead | |
pretty soon. She's getting along, Jane is--it'd make me mad's anything | |
to have to die 'fore I'd had any fun to speak of. Jane's really very | |
good company--when you draw her out--she just needs drawing out--Jane | |
does. Seems to me, she remembers every funeral and wedding and | |
everything--that's ever taken place in Winton." Patience stopped, | |
sheer out of breath, but there was an oddly serious look on her little | |
eager face. | |
Hilary stroked back the tangled red curls. "Maybe you're right, Patty; | |
maybe we have been selfish with our good times. I'll have to go now, | |
dear. You--I may tell mother--that you are sorry--truly, Patty?" | |
Patience nodded. "But I reckon, it's a good deal on account of | |
Shirley's turn," she explained. | |
Hilary bit her lip. | |
"You don't suppose you could fix that up with mother? You're pretty | |
good at fixing things up with mother, Hilary." | |
"Since how long?" Hilary laughed, but when she had closed the door, she | |
opened it again to stick her head in. "I'll try, Patty, at any rate," | |
she promised. | |
She went down-stairs rather thoughtful. Mrs. Shaw was busy in the | |
study and Pauline had gone out on an errand. Hilary went up-stairs | |
again, going to sit by one of the side windows in the "new room." | |
Over at the church, Sextoness Jane was making ready for the regular | |
weekly prayer meeting; never a service was held in the church that she | |
did not set all in order. Through one of the open windows, Hilary | |
caught sight of the bunch of flowers on the reading-desk. Jane had | |
brought them with her from home. Presently, the old woman herself came | |
to the window to shake her dust-cloth, standing there a moment, leaning | |
a little out, her eyes turned to the parsonage. Pauline was coming up | |
the path, Shirley and Bell were with her. They were laughing and | |
talking, the bright young voices making a pleasant break in the quiet | |
of the garden. It seemed to Hilary, as if she could catch the wistful | |
look in Jane's faded eyes, a look only half consciously so, as if the | |
old woman reached out vaguely for something that her own youth had been | |
without and that only lately she had come to feel the lack of. | |
A quick lump came into the girl's throat. Life had seemed so bright | |
and full of untried possibilities only that very morning, up there on | |
Meeting-House Hill, with the wind in one's face; and then had come that | |
woman, following the doctor down from the path. Life was surely | |
anything but bright for her this crisp August day--and now here was | |
Jane. And presently--at the moment it seemed very near indeed to | |
Hilary--she and Paul and all of them would be old and, perhaps, | |
unhappy. And then it would be good to remember--that they had tried to | |
share the fun and laughter of this summer of theirs with others. | |
Hilary thought of the piece of old tapestry hanging on the studio wall | |
over at the manor--of the interwoven threads--the dark as necessary to | |
the pattern as the bright. Perhaps they had need of Sextoness Jane, of | |
the interweaving of her life into theirs--of the interweaving of all | |
the village lives going on about them--quite as much as those more | |
sober lives needed the brightening touch of theirs. | |
"Hilary! O Hilary!" Pauline called. | |
"I'm coming," Hilary answered, and went slowly down to where the others | |
were waiting on the porch. | |
"Has anything happened?" Pauline asked. | |
"I've been having a think--and I've come to the conclusion that we're a | |
selfish, self-absorbed set." | |
"Mother Shaw!" Pauline went to the study window, "please come out here. | |
Hilary's calling us names, and that isn't polite." | |
Mrs. Shaw came. "I hope not very bad names," she said. | |
Hilary swung slowly back and forth in the hammock. "I didn't mean it | |
that way--it's only--" She told what Patience had said about Jane's | |
joining the club, and then, rather reluctantly, a little of what she | |
had been thinking. | |
"I think Hilary's right," Shirley declared. "Let's form a deputation | |
and go right over and ask the poor old soul to join here and now." | |
"I would never've thought of it," Bell said. "But I don't suppose I've | |
ever given Jane a thought, anyway." | |
"Patty's mighty cute--for all she's such a terror at times," Pauline | |
admitted. "She knows a lot about the people here--and it's just | |
because she's interested in them." | |
"Come on," Shirley said, jumping up. "We're going to have another | |
honorary member." | |
"I think it would be kind, girls," Mrs. Shaw said gravely. "Jane will | |
feel herself immensely flattered, and I know of no one who upholds the | |
honor of Winton more honestly or persistently." | |
"And please, Mrs. Shaw," Shirley coaxed, "when we come back, mayn't | |
Patience Shaw, H. M., come down and have tea with us?" | |
"I hardly think--" | |
"Please, Mother Shaw," Hilary broke in; "after all--she started this, | |
you know. That sort of counterbalances the other, doesn't it?" | |
"Well, we'll see," her mother laughed. | |
Pauline ran to get one of the extra badges with which Shirley had | |
provided her, and then the four girls went across to the church. | |
Sextoness Jane was just locking the back door--not the least important | |
part of the afternoon's duties with her--as they came through the | |
opening in the hedge. "Good afternoon," she said cheerily, "was you | |
wanting to go inside?" | |
"No," Pauline answered, "we came over to invite you to join our club. | |
We thought, maybe, you'd like to?" | |
"My Land!" Jane stared from one to another of them. "And wear one of | |
them blue-ribbon affairs?" | |
"Yes, indeed," Shirley laughed. "See, here it is," and she pointed to | |
the one in Pauline's hand. | |
Sextoness Jane came down the steps. "Me, I ain't never wore a badge! | |
Not once in all my life! Oncet, when I was a little youngster, 'most | |
like Patience, teacher, she got up some sort of May doings. We was all | |
to wear white dresses and red, white and blue ribbons--very night | |
before, I come down with the mumps. Looks like I always come down when | |
I ought to've stayed up!" | |
"But you won't come down with anything this time," Pauline pinned the | |
blue badge on the waist of Jane's black and white calico. "Now you're | |
an honorary member of 'The S. W. F. Club.'" | |
Jane passed a hand over it softly. "My Land!" was all she could say. | |
She was still stroking it softly as she walked slowly away towards | |
home. My, wouldn't Tobias be interested! | |
CHAPTER IX | |
AT THE MANOR | |
"'All the names I know from nurse: | |
Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse, | |
Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock, | |
And the Lady Hollyhock,'" | |
Patience chanted, moving slowly about the parsonage garden, hands full | |
of flowers, and the big basket, lying on the grass beyond, almost full. | |
Behind her, now running at full speed, now stopping suddenly, back | |
lifted, tail erect, came Lucky, the black kitten from The Maples. | |
Lucky had been an inmate of the parsonage for some weeks now and was | |
thriving famously in her adopted home. Towser tolerated her with the | |
indifference due such a small, insignificant creature, and she | |
alternately bullied and patronized Towser. | |
"We haven't shepherd's purse, nor lady's smock, that I know of, Lucky," | |
Patience said, glancing back at the kitten, at that moment threatening | |
battle at a polite nodding Sweet William, "but you can see for yourself | |
that we have hollyhocks, while as for bachelor's buttons! Just look at | |
that big, blue bunch in one corner of the basket." | |
It was the morning of the day of Shirley's turn and Pauline was | |
hurrying to get ready to go over and help decorate the manor. She was | |
singing, too; from the open windows of the "new room" came the words-- | |
"'A cheerful world?--It surely is | |
And if you understand your biz | |
You'll taboo the worry worm, | |
And cultivate the happy germ.'" | |
To which piece of good advice, Patience promptly whistled back the gay | |
refrain. | |
On the back porch, Sextoness Jane--called in for an extra half-day--was | |
ironing the white dresses to be worn that afternoon. And presently, | |
Patience, her basket quite full and stowed away in the trap waiting | |
before the side door, strolled around to interview her. | |
"I suppose you're going this afternoon?" she asked. | |
Jane looked up from waxing her iron. "Well, I was sort of calculating | |
on going over for a bit; Miss Shirley having laid particular stress on | |
my coming and this being the first reg'lar doings since I joined the | |
club. I told her and Pauline they mustn't look for me to go junketing | |
'round with them all the while, seeing I'm in office--so to speak--and | |
my time pretty well taken up with my work. I reckon you're going?" | |
"I--" Patience edged nearer the porch. Behind Jane stood the tall | |
clothes-horse, with its burden of freshly ironed white things. At | |
sight of a short, white frock, very crisp and immaculate, the blood | |
rushed to the child's face, then as quickly receded.--After all, it | |
would have had to be ironed for Sunday and--well, mother certainly had | |
been very non-committal the past few days--ever since that escapade | |
with Bedelia, in fact--regarding her youngest daughter's hopes and | |
fears for this all-important afternoon. And Patience had been wise | |
enough not to press the matter. | |
"But, oh, I do wonder if Hilary has--" Patience went back to the side | |
porch. Hilary was there talking to Bedelia. "You--you have fixed it | |
up?" the child inquired anxiously. | |
Hilary looked gravely unconscious. "Fixed it up?" she repeated. | |
"About this afternoon--with mother?" | |
"Oh, yes! Mother's going; so is father." | |
Patience repressed a sudden desire to stamp her foot, and Hilary, | |
seeing the real doubt and longing in her face, relented. "Mother wants | |
to see you, Patty. I rather think there are to be conditions." | |
Patience darted off. From the doorway, she looked back--"I just knew | |
you wouldn't go back on me, Hilary! I'll love you forever'n' ever." | |
Pauline came out a moment later, drawing on her driving gloves. "I | |
feel like a story-book girl, going driving this time in the morning, in | |
a trap like this. I wish you were coming, too, Hilary." | |
"Oh, I'm like the delicate story-book girl, who has to rest, so as to | |
be ready for the dissipations that are to come later. I look the part, | |
don't I?" | |
Pauline looked down into the laughing, sun-browned face. "If Uncle | |
Paul were to see you now, he might find it hard to believe I | |
hadn't--exaggerated that time." | |
"Well, it's your fault--and his, or was, in the beginning. You've a | |
fine basket of flowers to take; Patience has done herself proud this | |
morning." | |
"It's wonderful how well that young lady can behave--at times." | |
"Oh, she's young yet! When I hear mother tell how like her you used to | |
be, I don't feel too discouraged about Patty." | |
"That strikes me as rather a double-edged sort of speech," Pauline | |
gathered up the reins. "Good-by, and don't get too tired." | |
Shirley's turn was to be a combination studio tea and lawn-party, to | |
which all club members, both regular and honorary, not to mention their | |
relatives and friends, had been bidden. Following this, was to be a | |
high tea for the regular members. | |
"That's Senior's share," Shirley had explained to Pauline. "He insists | |
that it's up to him to do something." | |
Mr. Dayre was on very good terms with the "S. W. F. Club." As for | |
Shirley, after the first, no one had ever thought of her as an outsider. | |
It was hard now, Pauline thought, as she drove briskly along, the lake | |
breeze in her face, and the sound of Bedelia's quick trotting forming a | |
pleasant accompaniment to her, thoughts, very hard, to realize how soon | |
the summer would be over. But perhaps--as Hilary said--next summer | |
would mean the taking up again of this year's good times and | |
interests,--Shirley talked of coming back. As for the winter--Pauline | |
had in mind several plans for the winter. Those of the club members to | |
stay behind must get together some day and talk them over. One thing | |
was certain, the club motto must be lived up to bravely. If not in one | |
way, why in another. There must be no slipping back into the old | |
dreary rut and routine. It lay with themselves as to what their winter | |
should be. | |
"And there's fine sleighing here, Bedelia," she said. "We'll get the | |
old cutter out and give it a coat of paint." | |
Bedelia tossed her head, as if she heard in imagination the gay | |
jingling of the sleighbells. | |
"But, in the meantime, here is the manor," Pauline laughed, "and it's | |
the prettiest August day that ever was, and lawn-parties and such | |
festivities are afoot, not sleighing parties." | |
The manor stood facing the lake with its back to the road, a broad | |
sloping lawn surrounded it on three sides, with the garden at the back. | |
For so many seasons, it had stood lonely and neglected, that Pauline | |
never came near it now, without rejoicing afresh in its altered aspect. | |
Even the sight of Betsy Todd's dish towels, drying on the currant | |
bushes at one side of the back door, added their touch to the sense of | |
pleasant, homely life that seemed to envelop the old house nowadays. | |
Shirley came to the gate, as Pauline drew up, Phil, Pat and Pudgey in | |
close attention. "I have to keep an eye on them," she told Pauline. | |
"They've just had their baths, and they're simply wild to get out in | |
the middle of the road and roll. I've told them no self-respecting dog | |
would wish to come to a lawn-party in anything but the freshest of | |
white coats, but I'm afraid they're not very self-respecting." | |
"Patience is sure Towser's heart is heavy because he is not to come; | |
she has promised him a lawn-party on his own account, and that no | |
grown-ups shall be invited. She's sent you the promised flowers, and | |
hinted--more or less plainly--that she would have been quite willing to | |
deliver them in person." | |
"Why didn't you bring her? Oh, but I'm afraid you've robbed yourself!" | |
"Oh, no, we haven't. Mother says, flowers grow with picking." | |
"Come on around front," Shirley suggested. "The boys have been putting | |
the awning up." | |
"The boys" were three of Mr. Dayre's fellow artists, who had come up a | |
day or two before, on a visit to the manor. One of them, at any rate, | |
deserved Shirley's title. He came forward now. "Looks pretty nice, | |
doesn't it?" he said, with a wave of the hand towards the red and white | |
striped awning, placed at the further edge of the lawn. | |
Shirley smiled her approval, and introduced him to Pauline, adding that | |
Miss Shaw was the real founder of their club. | |
"It's a might jolly sort of club, too," young Oram said. | |
"That is exactly what it has turned out to be," Pauline laughed. "Are | |
the vases ready, Shirley?" | |
Shirley brought the tray of empty flower vases out on the veranda, and | |
sent Harry Oram for a bucket of fresh water. "Harry is to make the | |
salad," she explained to Pauline, as he came back. "Before he leaves | |
the manor he will have developed into a fairly useful member of | |
society." | |
"You've never eaten one of my salads, Miss Shaw," Harry said. "When | |
you have, you'll think all your previous life an empty dream." | |
"It's much more likely her later life will prove a nightmare,--for a | |
while, at least," Shirley declared. "Still, Paul, Harry does make them | |
rather well. Betsy Todd, I am sorry to say, doesn't approve of him. | |
But there are so many persons and things she doesn't approve of; | |
lawn-parties among the latter." | |
Pauline nodded sympathetically; she knew Betsy Todd of old. Her wonder | |
was, that the Dayres had been able to put up with her so long, and she | |
said so. | |
"'Hobson's choice,'" Shirley answered, with a little shrug. "She isn't | |
much like our old Therese at home, is she, Harry? But nothing would | |
tempt Therese away from her beloved New York. 'Vairmon! Nevaire have | |
I heard of zat place!' she told Harry, when he interviewed her for us. | |
Senior's gone to Vergennes--on business thoughts intent, or I hope they | |
are. He's under strict orders not to 'discover a single bit' along the | |
way, and to get back as quickly as possible." | |
"You see how beautifully she has us all in training?" Harry said to | |
Pauline. | |
Pauline laughed. Suddenly she looked up from her flowers with sobered | |
face. "I wonder," she said slowly, "if you know what it's meant to | |
us--you're being here this summer, Shirley? Sometimes things do fit in | |
just right after all. It's helped out wonderfully this summer, having | |
you here and the manor open." | |
"Pauline has a fairy-story uncle down in New York," Shirley turned to | |
Harry. "You've heard of him--Mr. Paul Shaw." | |
"Well,--rather! I've met him, once or twice--he didn't strike me as | |
much of a believer in fairy tales." | |
"He's made us believe in them," Pauline answered. | |
"I think Senior might have provided me with such a delightful sort of | |
uncle," Shirley observed. "I told him so, but he says, while he's | |
awfully sorry I didn't mention it before, he's afraid it's too late | |
now." | |
"Uncle Paul sent us Bedelia," Pauline told the rather perplexed-looking | |
Harry, "and the row-boat and the camera and--oh, other things." | |
"Because he wanted them to have a nice, jolly summer," Shirley | |
explained. "Pauline's sister had been sick and needed brightening up." | |
"You don't think he's looking around for a nephew to adopt, do you?" | |
Harry inquired. "A well-intentioned, intelligent young man--with no | |
end of talent." | |
"For making salads," Shirley added with a sly smile. | |
"Oh, well, you know," Harry remarked casually, "these are what Senior | |
calls my 'salad days.'" | |
Whereupon Shirley rose without a word, carrying off her vases of | |
flowers. | |
The party at the manor was, like all the club affairs, a decided | |
success. Never had the old place looked so gay and animated, since | |
those far-off days of its early glory. | |
The young people coming and going--the girls in their light dresses and | |
bright ribbons made a pleasant place of the lawn, with its background | |
of shining water. The tennis court, at one side of the house, was one | |
of the favorite gathering spots; there were one or two boats out on the | |
lake. The pleasant informality of the whole affair proved its greatest | |
charm. | |
Mr. Allen was there, pointing out to his host the supposed end of the | |
subterranean passage said to connect the point on which the manor stood | |
with the old ruined French fort over on the New York side. The | |
minister was having a quiet chat with the doctor, who had made a | |
special point of being there. Mothers of club members were exchanging | |
notes and congratulating each other on the good comradeship and general | |
air of contentment among the young people. Sextoness Jane was there, | |
in all the glory of her best dress--one of Mrs. Shaw's handed-down | |
summer ones--and with any amount of items picked up to carry home to | |
Tobias, who was certain to expect a full account of this most unusual | |
dissipation on his mistress's part. Even Betsy Todd condescended to | |
put on her black woolen--usually reserved for church and funerals--and | |
walk about among the other guests; but always, with an air that told | |
plainly how little she approved of such goings on. The Boyds were | |
there, their badges in full evidence. And last, though far from least, | |
in her own estimation, Patience was there, very crisp and white and on | |
her best behavior,--for, setting aside those conditions mother had seen | |
fit to burden her with, was the delightful fact that Shirley had asked | |
her to help serve tea. | |
The principal tea-table was in the studio, though there was a second | |
one, presided over by Pauline and Bell, out under the awning at the | |
edge of the lawn. | |
Patience thought the studio the very nicest room she had ever been in. | |
It was long and low--in reality, the old dancing-hall, for the manor | |
had been built after the pattern of its first owner's English home; and | |
in the deep, recessed windows, facing the lake, many a bepatched and | |
powdered little belle of Colonial days had coquetted across her fan | |
with her bravely-clad partner. | |
Mr. Dayre had thrown out an extra window at one end, at right angles to | |
the great stone fireplace, banked to-day with golden rod, thereby | |
securing the desired north light. | |
On the easel, stood a nearly finished painting,--a sunny corner of the | |
old manor kitchen, with Betsy Todd in lilac print gown, peeling apples | |
by the open window, through which one caught a glimpse of the tall | |
hollyhocks in the garden beyond. | |
Before this portrait, Patience found Sextoness Jane standing in mute | |
astonishment. | |
"Betsy looks like she was just going to say--'take your hands out of | |
the dish!' doesn't she?" Patience commented. Betsy had once helped out | |
at the parsonage, during a brief illness of Miranda's, and the young | |
lady knew whereof she spoke. | |
"I'd never've thought," Jane said slowly, "that anyone'd get that fond | |
of Sister Todd--as to want a picture of her!" | |
"Oh, it's because she's such a character, you know," Patience explained | |
serenely. Jane was so good about letting one explain things. "'A | |
perfect character,' I heard one of those artist men say so." | |
Jane shook her head dubiously. "Not what I'd call a 'perfect' | |
character--not that I've got anything against Sister Todd; but she's | |
too fond of finding out a body's faults." | |
Patience went off then in search of empty tea-cups. She was having a | |
beautiful time; at present only one cloud overshadowed her horizon. | |
Already some tiresome folks were beginning to think about going. There | |
was the talk of chores to be done, suppers to get, and with the | |
breaking up, must come an end to her share in the party. For mother, | |
though approached in the most delicate fashion, had proved obdurate | |
regarding the further festivity to follow. Had mother been willing to | |
consider the matter, Patience would have cheerfully undertaken to | |
procure the necessary invitation. Shirley was a very obliging girl. | |
"And really, my dears," she said, addressing the three P's | |
collectively, "it does seem a pity to have to go home before the fun's | |
all over. And I could manage it--Bob would take me out rowing--if I | |
coaxed--he rows very slowly. I don't suppose, for one moment, that we | |
would get back in time. I believe--" For fully three minutes, | |
Patience sat quite still in one of the studio window seats, oblivious | |
of the chatter going on all about her; then into her blue eyes came a | |
look not seen there very often--"No," she said sternly, shaking her | |
head at Phil, much to his surprise, for he wasn't doing anything. | |
"No--it wouldn't be _square_--and there would be the most awful to-do | |
afterwards." | |
When a moment or two later, Mrs. Shaw called to her to come, that | |
father was waiting, Patience responded with a very good grace. But Mr. | |
Dayre caught the wistful look in the child's face. "Bless me," he said | |
heartily. "You're not going to take Patience home with you, Mrs. Shaw? | |
Let her stay for the tea--the young people won't keep late hours, I | |
assure you." | |
"But I think--" Mrs. Shaw began very soberly. | |
"Sometimes, I find it quite as well not to think things over," Mr. | |
Dayre suggested. "Why, dear me, I'd quite counted on Patience's being | |
here. You see, I'm not a regular member, either; and I want someone to | |
keep me in countenance." | |
So presently, Hilary felt a hand slipped eagerly into hers. "I'm | |
staying! I'm staying!" an excited little voice announced. "And oh, I | |
just love Mr. Dayre!" | |
Then Patience went back to her window seat to play the delightful game | |
of "making believe" she hadn't stayed. She imagined that instead, she | |
was sitting between father and mother in the gig, bubbling over with | |
the desire to "hi-yi" at Fanny, picking her slow way along. | |
The studio was empty, even the dogs were outside, speeding the parting | |
guests with more zeal than discretion. But after awhile Harry Oram | |
strolled in. | |
"I'm staying!" Patience announced. She approved of Harry. "You're an | |
artist, too, aren't you?" she remarked. | |
"So kind of you to say so," Harry murmured. "I have heard grave doubts | |
expressed on the subject by my too impartial friends." | |
"I mean to be one when I grow up," Patience told him, "so's I can have | |
a room like this--with just rugs on the floor; rugs slide so | |
nicely--and window seats and things all cluttery." | |
"May I come and have tea with you? I'd like it awfully." | |
"It'll be really tea--not pretend kind," Patience said. "But I'll have | |
that sort for any children who may come. Hilary takes pictures--she | |
doesn't make them though. Made pictures are nicer, aren't they?" | |
"Some of them." Harry glanced through the open doorway, to where | |
Hilary sat resting. She was "making" a picture now, he thought to | |
himself, in her white dress, under the big tree, her pretty hair | |
forming a frame about her thoughtful face. Taking a portfolio from a | |
table near by, he went out to where Hilary sat. | |
"Your small sister says you take pictures," he said, drawing a chair up | |
beside hers, "so I thought perhaps you'd let me show you these--they | |
were taken by a friend of mine." | |
"Oh, but mine aren't anything like these! These are beautiful!" | |
Hilary bent over the photographs he handed her; marveling over their | |
soft tones. They were mostly bits of landscape, with here and there a | |
water view and one or two fleecy cloud effects. It hardly seemed as | |
though they could be really photographs. | |
"I've never done anything like these!" she said regretfully. "I wish I | |
could--there are some beautiful views about here that would make | |
charming pictures." | |
"She didn't in the beginning," Harry said, "She's lame; it was an | |
accident, but she can never be quite well again, so she took this up, | |
as an amusement at first, but now it's going to be her profession." | |
Hilary bent over the photographs again. "And you really think--anyone | |
could learn to do it?" | |
"No, not anyone; but I don't see why the right sort of person couldn't." | |
"I wonder--if I could develop into the right sort." | |
"May I come and see what you have done--and talk it over?" Harry asked. | |
"Since this friend of mine took it up, I'm ever so interested in camera | |
work." | |
"Indeed you may," Hilary answered. She had never thought of her camera | |
holding such possibilities within it, of its growing into something | |
better and more satisfying than a mere playmate of the moment. | |
"Rested?" Pauline asked, coming up. "Supper's nearly ready." | |
"I wasn't very tired. Paul, come and look at these." | |
Supper was served on the lawn; the pleasantest, most informal, of | |
affairs, the presence of the older members of the party serving to turn | |
the gay give and take of the young folks into deeper and wider | |
channels, and Shirley's frequent though involuntary--"Do you remember, | |
Senior?" calling out more than one vivid bit of travel, of description | |
of places, known to most of them only through books. | |
Later, down on the lower end of the lawn, with the moon making a path | |
of silver along the water, and the soft hush of the summer night over | |
everything, Shirley brought out her guitar, singing for them strange | |
folk-songs, picked up in her rambles with her father. Afterwards, the | |
whole party sang songs that they all knew, ending up at last with the | |
club song. | |
"'It's a habit to be happy,'" the fresh young voices chorused, sending | |
the tune far out across the lake; and presently, from a boat on its | |
further side, it was whistled back to them. | |
"Who is it, I wonder?" Edna said, | |
"Give it up," Tom answered. "Someone who's heard it--there've been | |
plenty of opportunities for folks to hear it." | |
"Well it isn't a bad gospel to scatter broadcast," Bob remarked. | |
"And maybe it's someone who doesn't live about here, and he will go | |
away taking our tune with him, for other people to catch up," Hilary | |
suggested. | |
"But if he only has the tune and not the words," Josie objected, "what | |
use will that be?" | |
"The spirit of the words is in the tune," Pauline said. "No one could | |
whistle or sing it and stay grumpy." | |
"They'd have to 'put the frown away awhile, and try a little sunny | |
smile,' wouldn't they?" Patience observed. | |
Patience had been a model of behavior all the evening. Mother would be | |
sure to ask if she had been good, when they got home. That was one of | |
those aggravating questions that only time could relieve her from. No | |
one ever asked Paul, or Hilary, that--when they'd been anywhere. | |
As Mr. Dayre had promised, the party broke up early, going off in the | |
various rigs they had come in. Tom and Josie went in the trap with the | |
Shaws. "It's been perfectly lovely--all of it," Josie said, looking | |
back along the road they were leaving. "Every good time we have seems | |
the best one yet." | |
"You wait 'til my turn comes," Pauline told her. "I've such a scheme | |
in my head." | |
"Am I in it?" Patience begged. She was in front, between Tom, who was | |
driving, and Hilary, then she leaned forward, they were nearly home, | |
and the lights of the parsonage showed through the trees. "There's a | |
light in the parlor--there's company!" | |
Pauline looked, too. "And one up in our old room, Hilary. Goodness, | |
it must be a visiting minister! I didn't know father was expecting | |
anyone." | |
"I bet you!" Patience jumped excitedly up and down. "I just bet it | |
isn't any visiting minister--but a visiting--uncle! I feel it in my | |
bones, as Miranda says." | |
"Nonsense!" Pauline declared. | |
"Maybe it isn't nonsense, Paul!" Hilary said. | |
"I feel it in my bones," Patience repeated. "I just _knew_ Uncle Paul | |
would come up--a story-book uncle would be sure to." | |
"Well, here we are," Tom laughed. "You'll know for certain pretty | |
quick." | |
CHAPTER X | |
THE END OF SUMMER | |
It was Uncle Paul, and perhaps no one | |
was more surprised at his unexpected coming, | |
than he himself. | |
That snap-shot of Hilary's had considerable | |
to do with it; bringing home to him the | |
sudden realization of the passing of the years. | |
For the first time, he had allowed himself to | |
face the fact that it was some time now since | |
he had crossed the summit of the hill, and that | |
under present conditions, his old age promised | |
to be a lonely, cheerless affair. | |
He had never had much to do with young | |
people; but, all at once, it seemed to him that | |
it might prove worth his while to cultivate | |
the closer acquaintance of these nieces of his. | |
Pauline, in particular, struck him as likely to | |
improve upon a nearer acquaintance. And | |
that afternoon, as he rode up Broadway, he | |
found himself wondering how she would | |
enjoy the ride; and all the sights and wonders | |
of the great city. | |
Later, over his solitary dinner, he suddenly | |
decided to run up to Winton the next day. | |
He would not wire them, he would rather like | |
to take Phil by surprise. | |
So he had arrived at the parsonage, | |
driving up in Jed's solitary hack, and much plied | |
with information, general and personal, on the | |
way, just as the minister and his wife reached | |
home from the manor. | |
"And, oh, my! Doesn't father look | |
tickled to death!" Patience declared, coming | |
in to her sisters' room that night, ostensibly | |
to have an obstinate knot untied, but inwardly | |
determined to make a third at the usual | |
bedtime talk for that once, at least. It wasn't | |
often they all came up together. | |
"He looks mighty glad," Pauline said. | |
"And isn't it funny, bearing him called | |
Phil?" Patience curled herself up in the | |
cozy corner. "I never've thought of father | |
as Phil." | |
Hilary paused in the braiding of her long | |
hair. "I'm glad we've got to know him--Uncle | |
Paul, I mean--through his letters, and | |
all the lovely things he's done for us; else, I | |
think I'd have been very much afraid of him." | |
"So am I," Pauline assented. "I see now | |
what Mr. Oram meant--he doesn't look as if | |
he believed much in fairy stories. But I like | |
his looks--he's so nice and tall and straight." | |
"He used to have red hair, before it turned | |
gray," Hilary said, "so that must be a family | |
trait; your chin's like his, Paul, too,--so | |
square and determined." | |
"Is mine?" Patience demanded. | |
"You cut to bed, youngster," Pauline | |
commanded. "You're losing all your beauty | |
sleep; and really, you know--" | |
Patience went to stand before the mirror. | |
"Maybe I ain't--pretty--yet; but I'm going | |
to be--some day. Mr. Dayre says he likes | |
red hair, I asked him. He says for me not to | |
worry; I'll have them all sitting up and taking notice yet." | |
At which Pauline bore promptly down | |
upon her, escorting her in person to the door | |
of her own room. "And you'd better get to | |
bed pretty quickly, too, Hilary," she advised, | |
coming back. "You've had enough excitement for one day." | |
Mr. Paul Shaw stayed a week; it was a | |
busy week for the parsonage folk and for | |
some other people besides. Before it was | |
over, the story-book uncle had come to know | |
his nieces and Winton fairly thoroughly; | |
while they, on their side, had grown very well | |
acquainted with the tall, rather silent man, | |
who had a fashion of suggesting the most | |
delightful things to do in the most matter-of-fact manner. | |
There were one or two trips decidedly | |
outside that ten-mile limit, including an all day | |
sail up the lake, stopping for the night at a | |
hotel on the New York shore and returning | |
by the next day's boat. There was a visit to | |
Vergennes, which took in a round of the shops, | |
a concert, and another night away from home. | |
"Was there ever such a week!" Hilary | |
sighed blissfully one morning, as she and her | |
uncle waited on the porch for Bedelia and | |
the trap. Hilary was to drive him over to | |
The Maples for dinner. | |
"Or such a summer altogether," Pauline | |
added, from just inside the study window. | |
"Then Winton has possibilities?" Mr. Shaw asked. | |
"I should think it has; we ought to be | |
eternally grateful to you for making us find | |
them out," Pauline declared. | |
Mr. Shaw smiled, more as if to himself. "I | |
daresay they're not all exhausted yet." | |
"Perhaps," Hilary said slowly, "some | |
places are like some people, the longer and | |
better you know them, the more you keep | |
finding out in them to like." | |
"Father says," Pauline suggested, "that one | |
finds, as a rule, what one is looking for." | |
"Here we are," her uncle exclaimed, as | |
Patience appeared, driving Bedelia. "Do you | |
know," he said, as he and Hilary turned out | |
into the wide village street, "I haven't seen the | |
schoolhouse yet?" | |
"We can go around that way. It isn't | |
much of a building," Hilary answered. | |
"I suppose it serves its purpose." | |
"It is said to be a very good school for the | |
size of the place." Hilary turned Bedelia | |
up the little by-road, leading to the old | |
weather-beaten schoolhouse, standing back | |
from the road in an open space of bare ground. | |
"You and Pauline are through here?" her uncle asked. | |
"Paul is. I would've been this June, if I | |
hadn't broken down last winter." | |
"You will be able to go on this fall?" | |
"Yes, indeed. Dr. Brice said so the other | |
day. He says, if all his patients got on so | |
well, by not following his advice, he'd have | |
to shut up shop, but that, fortunately for | |
him, they haven't all got a wise uncle down in | |
New York, to offer counter-advice." | |
"Each in his turn," Mr. Shaw remarked, | |
adding, "and Pauline considers herself through school?" | |
"I--I suppose so. I know she would like | |
to go on--but we've no higher school here and--She | |
read last winter, quite a little, with | |
father. Pauline's ever so clever." | |
"Supposing you both had an opportunity--for | |
it must be both, or neither, I judge--and | |
the powers that be consented--how about | |
going away to school this winter?" | |
Hilary dropped the reins. "Oh!" she | |
cried, "you mean--" | |
"I have a trick of meaning what I say," her | |
uncle said, smiling at her. | |
"I wish I could say--what I want to--and | |
can't find words for--" Hilary said. | |
"We haven't consulted the higher authorities | |
yet, you know." | |
"And--Oh, I don't see how mother could | |
get on without us, even if--" | |
"Mothers have a knack at getting along | |
without a good many things--when it means | |
helping their young folks on a bit," | |
Mr. Shaw remarked. "I'll have a talk with her | |
and your father to-night." | |
That evening, pacing up and down the | |
front veranda with his brother, Mr. Shaw | |
said, with his customary abruptness, "You | |
seem to have fitted in here, Phil,--perhaps, you | |
were in the right of it, after all. I take it | |
you haven't had such a hard time, in some ways." | |
The minister did not answer immediately. | |
Looking back nearly twenty years, he told | |
himself, that he did not regret that early | |
choice of his. He had fitted into the life here; | |
he and his people had grown together. It had | |
not always been smooth sailing and more than | |
once, especially the past year or so, his | |
narrow means had pressed him sorely, but on the | |
whole, he had found his lines cast in a | |
pleasant place, and was not disposed to rebel | |
against his heritage. | |
"Yes," he said, at last, "I have fitted in; | |
too easily, perhaps. I never was ambitious, | |
you know." | |
"Except in the accumulating of books," his | |
brother suggested. | |
The minister smiled. "I have not been | |
able to give unlimited rein even to that mild | |
ambition. Fortunately, the rarer the | |
opportunity, the greater the pleasure it brings | |
with it--and the old books never lose their charm." | |
Mr. Paul Shaw flicked the ashes from his | |
cigar. "And the girls--you expect them to | |
fit in, too?" | |
"It is their home." A note the elder | |
brother knew of old sounded in the younger | |
man's voice. | |
"Don't mount your high horse just yet, | |
Phil," he said. "I'm not going to rub you up | |
the wrong way--at least, I don't mean to; but | |
you were always an uncommonly hard chap to | |
handle--in some matters. I grant you, it is | |
their home and not a had sort of home for a | |
girl to grow up in." Mr. Shaw stood for a | |
moment at the head of the steps, looking off | |
down the peaceful, shadowy street. It had | |
been a pleasant week; he had enjoyed it | |
wonderfully. He meant to have many more such. | |
But to live here always! Already the city | |
was calling to him; he was homesick for its | |
rush and bustle, the sense of life and movement. | |
"You and I stand as far apart to-day, in | |
some matters, Phil, as we did twenty--thirty | |
years ago," he said presently, "and that eldest | |
daughter of yours--I'm a fair hand at reading | |
character or I shouldn't be where I am to-day, | |
if I were not--is more like me than you." | |
"So I have come to think--lately." | |
"That second girl takes after you; she | |
would never have written that letter to me | |
last May." | |
"No, Hilary would not have at the time--" | |
"Oh, I can guess how you felt about it at | |
the time. But, look here, Phil, you've got | |
over that--surely? After all, I like to think | |
now that Pauline only hurried on the | |
inevitable." Mr. Paul Shaw laid his hand on the | |
minister's shoulder. "Nearly twenty years is | |
a pretty big piece out of a lifetime. I see now | |
how much I have been losing all these years." | |
"It has been a long time, Paul; and, | |
perhaps, I have been to blame in not trying more | |
persistently to heal the breach between us. I | |
assure you that I have regretted it daily." | |
"You always did have a lot more pride in | |
your make-up than a man of your profession | |
has any right to allow himself, Phil. But if | |
you like, I'm prepared to point out to you | |
right now how you can make it up to me. | |
Here comes Lady Shaw and we won't | |
waste time getting to business." | |
That night, as Pauline and Hilary were in | |
their own room, busily discussing, for by no | |
means the first time that day, what Uncle Paul | |
had said to Hilary that morning, and just | |
how he had looked, when he said it, and was | |
it at all possible that father would consent, | |
and so on, _ad libitum_, their mother tapped at the door. | |
Pauline ran to open it. "Good news, or | |
not?" she demanded. "Yes, or no, Mother Shaw?" | |
"That is how you take it," Mrs. Shaw | |
answered. She was glad, very glad, that this | |
unforeseen opportunity should be given her | |
daughters; and yet--it meant the first break | |
in the home circle, the first leaving home for them. | |
Mr. Paul Shaw left the next morning. | |
"I'll try and run up for a day or two, before | |
the girls go to school," he promised his | |
sister-in-law. "Let me know, as soon as you have | |
decided _where_ to send them." | |
Patience was divided in her opinion, as to | |
this new plan. It would be lonesome without | |
Paul and Hilary; but then, for the time | |
being, she would be, to all intents and purposes, | |
"Miss Shaw." Also, Bedelia was not going | |
to boarding-school--on the whole, the | |
arrangement had its advantages. Of course, | |
later, she would have her turn at school--Patience | |
meant to devote a good deal of her | |
winter's reading to boarding-school stories. | |
She told Sextoness Jane so, when that | |
person appeared, just before supper time. | |
Jane looked impressed. "A lot of things | |
keep happening to you folks right along," she | |
observed. "Nothing's ever happened to me, | |
'cept mumps--and things of that sort; you | |
wouldn't call them interesting. The girls to home?" | |
"They're 'round on the porch, looking at | |
some photos Mr. Oram's brought over; and | |
he's looking at Hilary's. Hilary's going in | |
for some other kind of picture taking. I wish | |
she'd leave her camera home, when she goes to | |
school. Do you want to speak to them about | |
anything particular?" | |
"I'll wait a bit," Jane sat down on the | |
garden-bench beside Patience. | |
"There, he's gone!" the latter said, as the | |
front gate clicked a few moments later. "O | |
Paul!" she called, "You're wanted, Paul!" | |
"You and Hilary going to be busy | |
tonight?" Jane asked, as Pauline came across | |
the lawn. | |
"Not that I know of." | |
"I ain't," Patience remarked. | |
"Well," Jane said, "it ain't prayer-meeting | |
night, and it ain't young peoples' night and it | |
ain't choir practice night, so I thought maybe | |
you'd like me to take my turn at showing you | |
something. Not all the club--like's not they | |
wouldn't care for it, but if you think they | |
would, why, you can show it to them sometime." | |
"Just we three then?" Pauline asked. | |
"Hilary and I can go." | |
"So can I--if you tell mother you want me | |
to," Patience put in. | |
"Is it far?" her sister questioned Jane. | |
"A good two miles--we'd best walk--we | |
can rest after we get there. Maybe, if you | |
like, you'd better ask Tom and Josie. Your | |
ma'll be better satisfied if he goes along, I | |
reckon. I'll come for you at about half-past | |
seven." | |
"All right, thank you ever so much," Pauline | |
said, and went to tell Hilary, closely | |
pursued by Patience. However, Mrs. Shaw | |
vetoed Pauline's proposition that Patience | |
should make one of the party. | |
"Not every time, my dear," she explained. | |
Promptly at half-past seven Jane | |
appeared. "All ready?" she said, as the four | |
young people came to meet her. "You don't | |
want to go expecting anything out of the | |
common. Like's not, you've all seen it a heap | |
of times, but maybe not to take particular | |
notice of it." | |
She led the way through the garden to the | |
lane running past her cottage, where Tobias | |
sat in solitary dignity on the doorstep, down | |
the lane to where it merged in to what was | |
nothing more than a field path. | |
"Are we going to the lake?" Hilary asked. | |
Jane nodded. | |
"But not out on the water," Josie said. | |
"You're taking us too far below the pier for that." | |
Jane smiled quietly. "It'll be on the water--what | |
you're going to see," she was getting | |
a good deal of pleasure out of her small | |
mystery, and when they reached the low shore, | |
fringed with the tall sea-grass, she took her | |
party a few steps along it to where an old log | |
lay a little back from the water. "I reckon | |
we'll have to wait a bit," she said, "but it'll | |
be 'long directly." | |
They sat down in a row, the young people | |
rather mystified. Apparently the broad | |
expanse of almost motionless water was quite | |
deserted. There was a light breeze blowing | |
and the soft swishing of the tiny waves against | |
the bank was the only sound to break the | |
stillness; the sky above the long irregular range | |
of mountains on the New York side, still wore | |
its sunset colors, the lake below sending hack | |
a faint reflection of them. | |
But presently these faded until only the | |
afterglow was left, to merge in turn into the | |
soft summer twilight, through which the stars | |
began to glimpse, one by one. | |
The little group had been mostly silent, | |
each busy with his or her thoughts; so far as | |
the young people were concerned, happy | |
thoughts enough; for if the closing of each | |
day brought their summer nearer to its | |
ending, the fall would bring with it new | |
experiences, an entering of new scenes. | |
"There!" Sextoness Jane broke the silence, | |
pointing up the lake, to where a tiny point of | |
red showed like a low-hung star through the | |
gathering darkness. Moment by moment, | |
other lights came into view, silently, steadily, | |
until it seemed like some long, gliding | |
sea-serpent, creeping down towards them through | |
the night. | |
"A tow!" Josie cried under her breath. | |
They had all seen it, times without number, | |
before. The long line of canal boats being | |
towed down the lake to the canal below; the | |
red lanterns at either end of each boat | |
showing as they came. But to-night, infected | |
perhaps, by the pride, the evident delight, in | |
Jane's voice, the old familiar sight held them | |
with the new interest the past months had | |
brought to bear upon so many old, familiar things. | |
"It is--wonderful," Pauline said at last. | |
"It might be a scene from--fairyland, almost." | |
"Me--I love to see them come stealing long | |
like that through the dark," Jane said slowly | |
and a little hesitatingly. It was odd to be | |
telling confidences to anyone except Tobias. | |
"I don't know where they come from, nor | |
where they're a-going to. Many's the night | |
I walk over here just on the chance of seeing | |
one. Mostly, this time of year, you're pretty | |
likely to catch one. When I was younger, I | |
used to sit and fancy myself going aboard on | |
one of them and setting off for strange parts. | |
I wasn't looking to settle down here in Winton | |
all my days; but I reckon, maybe, it's just's | |
well--anyhow, when I got the freedom to | |
travel, I'd got out of the notion of it--and | |
perhaps, there's no telling, I might have been | |
terribly disappointed. And there ain't any | |
hindrance 'gainst my setting off--in my own | |
mind--every time I sits here and watches a | |
tow go down the lake. I've seen a heap of | |
big churches in my travels--it's mostly easier | |
'magining about them--churches are pretty | |
much alike I reckon, though I ain't seen many, I'll admit." | |
No one answered for a moment, but Jane, | |
used to Tobias for a listener, did not mind. | |
Then in the darkness, Hilary laid a hand | |
softly over the work-worn ones clasped on | |
Jane's lap. It was hard to imagine Jane | |
young and full of youthful fancies and | |
longings; yet years ago there had been a Jane--not | |
Sextoness Jane then--who had found | |
Winton dull and dreary and had longed to get | |
away. But for her, there had been no one to | |
wave the magic wand, that should transform | |
the little Vermont village into a place filled | |
with new and unexplored charms. Never in | |
all Jane's many summers, had she known one | |
like this summer of theirs; and for them--the | |
wonder was by no means over--the years | |
ahead were bright with untold possibilities. | |
Hilary sighed for very happiness, wondering | |
if she were the same girl who had rocked | |
listlessly in the hammock that June morning, | |
protesting that she didn't care for "half-way" things. | |
"Tired?" Pauline asked. | |
"I was thinking," her sister answered. | |
"Well, the tow's gone." Jane got up to go. | |
"I'm ever so glad we came, thank you so | |
much, Jane," Pauline said heartily. | |
"I wonder what'll have happened by the | |
time we all see our next tow go down," Josie | |
said, as they started towards home. | |
"We may see a good many more than one | |
before the general exodus," her brother answered. | |
"But we won't have time to come watch for | |
them. Oh, Paul, just think, only a little | |
while now--" | |
Tom slipped into step with Hilary, a little | |
behind the others. "I never supposed the old | |
soul had it in her," he said, glancing to where | |
Jane trudged heavily on ahead. "Still, I | |
suppose she was young--once; though I've never | |
thought of her being so before." | |
"Yes," Hilary said. "I wonder,--maybe, | |
she's been better off, after all, right, here at | |
home. She wouldn't have got to be | |
Sextoness Jane anywhere else, probably." | |
Tom glanced at her quickly. "Is there a | |
hidden meaning--subject to be carefully avoided?" | |
Hilary laughed. "As you like." | |
"So you and Paul are off on your travels, too?" | |
"Yes, though I can hardly believe it yet." | |
"And just as glad to go as any of us." | |
"Oh, but we're coming back--after we've | |
been taught all manner of necessary things." | |
"Edna'll be the only one of you girls left | |
behind; it's rough on her." | |
"It certainly is; we'll all have to write her | |
heaps of letters." | |
"Much time there'll be for letter-writing, | |
outside of the home ones," Tom said. | |
"Speaking of time," Josie turned towards | |
them, "we're going to be busier than any bee | |
ever dreamed of being, before or since Dr. Watts." | |
They certainly were busy days that | |
followed. So many of the young folks were | |
going off that fall that a good many of the | |
meetings of "The S. W. F. Club" resolved | |
themselves into sewing-bees, for the girl members only. | |
"If we'd known how jolly they were, we'd | |
have tried them before," Bell declared one | |
morning, dropping down on the rug Pauline | |
had spread under the trees at one end of the | |
parsonage lawn. | |
Patience, pulling bastings with a business-like | |
air, nodded her curly head wisely. "Miranda says, | |
folks mostly get 'round to enjoying | |
their blessings 'bout the time they come to lose them." | |
"Has the all-important question been | |
settled yet, Paul?" Edna asked, looking up from | |
her work. She might not be going away to | |
school, but even so, that did not debar one | |
from new fall clothes at home. | |
"They're coming to Vergennes with me," | |
Bell said. "Then we can all come home | |
together Friday nights." | |
"They're coming to Boston with me," Josie | |
corrected, "then we'll be back together for | |
Thanksgiving." | |
Shirley, meekly taking her first sewing | |
lessons under Pauline's instructions, and frankly | |
declaring that she didn't at all like them, | |
dropped the hem she was turning. "They're | |
coming to New York with me; and in the | |
between-times we'll have such fun that they'll | |
never want to come home." | |
Pauline laughed. "It looks as though | |
Hilary and I would have a busy winter | |
between you all. It is a comfort to know where | |
we are going." | |
"Remember!" she warned, when later the | |
party broke up. "Four o'clock Friday afternoon! Sharp!" | |
"Are we going out in a blaze of glory?" | |
Bell questioned. | |
"You might tell us where we are going, | |
now, Paul," Josie urged. | |
Pauline shook her head. "You wait until | |
Friday, like good little girls. Mind, you all | |
bring wraps; it'll be chilly coming home." | |
Pauline's turn was to be the final wind-up | |
of the club's regular outings. No one outside | |
the home folks, excepting Tom, had been | |
taken into her confidence--it had been | |
necessary to press him into service. And when, on | |
Friday afternoon, the young people gathered | |
at the parsonage, all but those named were | |
still in the dark. | |
Besides the regular members, Mrs. Shaw, | |
Mr. Dayre, Mr. Allen, Harry Oram and Patience | |
were there; the minister and Dr. Brice | |
had promised to join the party later if possible. | |
As a rule, the club picnics were cooperative | |
affairs; but to-day the members, by special | |
request, arrived empty-handed. Mr. Paul | |
Shaw, learning that Pauline's turn was yet to | |
come, had insisted on having a share in it. | |
"I am greatly interested in this club," he | |
had explained. "I like results, and I think," | |
he glanced at Hilary's bright happy face, | |
"that the 'S. W. F. Club' has achieved at least | |
one very good result." | |
And on the morning before the eventful | |
Friday, a hamper had arrived from New | |
York, the watching of the unpacking of which | |
had again transformed Patience, for the time, | |
from an interrogation to an exclamation point. | |
"It's a beautiful hamper," she explained to | |
Towser. "It truly is--because father says, | |
it's the inner, not the outer, self that makes | |
for real beauty, or ugliness; and it certainly | |
was the inside of that hamper that counted. | |
I wish you were going, Towser. See here, | |
suppose you follow on kind of quietly | |
to-morrow afternoon--don't show up too soon, and | |
I guess I can manage it." | |
Which piece of advice Towser must have | |
understood. At any rate, he acted upon it to | |
the best of his ability, following the party at a | |
discreet distance through the garden and down | |
the road towards the lake; and only when the | |
halt at the pier came, did he venture near, the | |
most insinuating of dogs. | |
And so successfully did Patience manage | |
it, that when the last boat-load pushed off | |
from shore, Towser sat erect on the narrow | |
bow seat, blandly surveying his fellow | |
voyagers. "He does so love picnics," Patience | |
explained to Mr. Dayre, "and this is | |
the last particular one for the season. I kind | |
of thought he'd go along and I slipped in a | |
little paper of bones." | |
From the boat ahead came the chorus. | |
"We're out on the wide ocean sailing." | |
"Not much!" Bob declared. "I wish we | |
were--the water's quiet as a mill-pond this afternoon." | |
For the great lake, appreciating perhaps | |
the importance of the occasion, had of its many | |
moods chosen to wear this afternoon its | |
sweetest, most beguiling one, and lay, a broad | |
stretch of sparkling, rippling water, between | |
its curving shores. | |
Beyond, the range of mountains rose dark | |
and somber against the cloud-flecked sky, | |
their tops softened by the light haze that told | |
of coming autumn. | |
And presently, from boat to boat, went the | |
call, "We're going to Port Edward! Why | |
didn't we guess?" | |
"But that's not _in_ Winton," Edna protested. | |
"Of it, if not in it," Jack Ward assured them. | |
"Do you reckon you can show us anything | |
new about that old fort, Paul Shaw?" Tracy | |
demanded. "Why, I could go all over it | |
blindfolded." | |
"Not to show the new--to unfold the old," | |
Pauline told him. | |
"That sounds like a quotation." | |
"It is--in substance," Pauline looked across | |
her shoulder to where Mr. Allen sat, | |
imparting information to Harry Oram. | |
"So that's why you asked the old fellow," | |
Tracy said. "Was that kind?" | |
They were rounding the slender point on | |
which the tall, white lighthouse stood, and | |
entering the little cove where visitors to the fort | |
usually beached their boats. | |
A few rods farther inland, rose the tall, | |
grass-covered, circular embankment, | |
surrounding the crumbling, gray walls, the outer | |
shells of the old barracks. | |
At the entrance to the enclosure, Tom | |
suddenly stepped ahead, barring the way. "No | |
passing within this fort without the | |
counter-sign," he declared. "Martial law, this afternoon." | |
It was Bell who discovered it. "'It's a | |
habit to be happy,'" she suggested, and Tom | |
drew back for her to enter. But one by one, | |
he exacted the password from each. | |
Inside, within the shade of those old, gray | |
walls, a camp-fire had been built and | |
camp-kettle swung, hammocks had been hung under | |
the trees and when cushions were scattered | |
here and there the one-time fort bore anything | |
but a martial air. | |
But something of the spirit of the past must | |
have been in the air that afternoon, or perhaps, | |
the spirit of the coming changes; for this | |
picnic--though by no means lacking in charm--was | |
not as gay and filled with light-hearted | |
chaff as usual. There was more talking in | |
quiet groups, or really serious searching for | |
some trace of those long-ago days of storm and stress. | |
With the coming of evening, the fire was | |
lighted and the cloth laid within range of its | |
flickering shadows. The night breeze had | |
sprung up and from outside the sloping | |
embankment they caught the sound of the waves | |
breaking on the beach. True to their | |
promise, the minister and Dr. Brice appeared at | |
the time appointed and were eagerly welcomed | |
by the young people. | |
Supper was a long, delightful affair that | |
night, with much talk of the days when the | |
fort had been devoted to far other purposes | |
than the present; and the young people, | |
listening to the tales Mr. Allen told in his quiet yet | |
strangely vivid way, seemed to hear the slow | |
creeping on of the boats outside and to be | |
listening in the pauses of the wind for the | |
approach of the enemy. | |
"I'll take it back, Paul," Tracy told her, as | |
they were repacking the baskets. "Even the | |
old fort has developed new interests." | |
"And next summer the 'S. W. F. Club' will | |
continue its good work," Jack said. | |
Going back, Pauline found herself sitting | |
in the stern of one of the boats, beside her | |
father. The club members were singing the | |
club song. But Pauline's thoughts had | |
suddenly gone back to that wet May afternoon. | |
She could see the dreary, rain-swept garden, | |
hear the beating of the drops on the | |
window-panes. How long ago and remote it all | |
seemed; how far from the hopeless discontent, | |
the vague longings, the real anxiety of that | |
time, she and Hilary had traveled. She | |
looked up impulsively. "There's one thing," | |
she said, "we've had one summer that I shall | |
always feel would be worth reliving. And | |
we're going to have more of them." | |
"I am glad to hear that," Mr. Shaw said. | |
Pauline looked about her--the lanterns at | |
the ends of the boats threw dancing lights out | |
across the water, no longer quiet; overhead, | |
the sky was bright with stars. "Everything | |
is so beautiful," the girl said slowly. "One | |
seems to feel it more--every day." | |
"'The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the | |
Lord hath made even both of them,'" her | |
father quoted gravely. | |
Pauline drew a quick breath. "The | |
hearing ear and the seeing eye"--it was a good | |
thought to take with them--out into the new | |
life, among the new scenes. One would need | |
them everywhere--out in the world, as well as | |
in Winton. And then, from the boat just | |
ahead, sounded Patience's clear | |
treble,--"'There's a Good Time Coming.'" | |
*** |