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Title: The Little Grey House
Author: Marion Ames Taggart
Release Date: February 26, 2015 [eBook #48363]
Language: English
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THE LITTLE GREY HOUSE
* * * * * *
OTHER BOOKS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
[Illustration: decoration]
_Loyal Blue and Royal Scarlet_
_The Wyndham Girls_
_Miss Lochinvar_
* * * * * *
[Illustration: _So the mowing began, Prue preceding._]
THE LITTLE GREY HOUSE
by
MARION AMES TAGGART
[Illustration: logo]
Frontispiece by Ethel Franklin Betts
New York
McClure, Phillips & Co.
MCMIV
Copyright, 1904, by
McClure, Phillips & Co.
Published, October, 1904
TO
ANNA WENTWORTH HECKER
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ITS CHILDREN 3
II. ITS NEIGHBORS 17
III. ITS MASTER 33
IV. ITS RELATIVES 48
V. ITS BLITHE DAYS 64
VI. ITS HARD DAYS 80
VII. ITS MENACE 98
VIII. ITS MAKESHIFTS 115
IX. ITS BURDEN 132
X. ITS POSSIBILITIES 149
XI. ITS HOPE 166
XII. ITS TRAGIC SIDE 181
XIII. ITS DANGER 196
XIV. ITS BRAVE DAUGHTER 208
XV. ITS RESCUE 224
XVI. ITS LIBERATION 240
XVII. ITS SUNSHINE 254
THE LITTLE GREY HOUSE
CHAPTER ONE
ITS CHILDREN
"I am going to cut that grass--try to cut it, I mean--before I'm an
hour older," said Roberta Grey, drawing on an old pair of her father's
dog-skin gloves with a do-or-die-in-the-attempt air that was at once
inspiring and convincing. "This whole place looks like an illustrated
edition of 'How Plants Grow'--Grey. We've got to cut the grass or
put up a sign: To Find the House Walk Northward Through the Prairie.
Signed, Sylvester Grey. Will you help, Wythie and Prue?"
Oswyth, the eldest daughter, a year the senior of sixteen-year-old
Roberta, looked up with her pleasant smile. "Help walk northward
through the prairie, help find the house, or help cut the grass, Rob?"
she asked.
"Help cut the grass, and the rest won't be necessary," laughed Rob.
"Come on! I've borrowed Aunt Azraella's lawn-mower, though I truly
believe I might as well have borrowed the cheese-scoop--that grass is
too old and tough to bow down to a mere lawn-mower."
Prue, being but fourteen, jumped up with alacrity to accept Rob's
invitation, but Oswyth laid down her sewing and arose with a reluctant
sigh--she was not fond of violent exercise, and the afternoon sun was
still warm.
The three girls stood a few moments on the low door-step, letting the
breeze pleasantly flutter their gingham dresses and lift their ribbons,
before setting to their difficult task. The same breeze blew the tall
grass which Roberta longed to lay low in undulating ripples like those
in the blue and pink fabrics, which drifted into the picture like
cornflowers and poppies. The feathery sprays of the millet and red-top,
the wands of the timothy were so pretty as they bowed and swayed that,
although they were so lawless and rank, it seemed almost a pity to cut
them. Oswyth thought so, but Roberta felt no misgivings--except of her
own strength.
The little grey house stood well back from the street under splendid
trees, set in the midst of a place so wholly disproportioned to its
size that it looked in the present unkempt condition of the grounds not
unlike a little island of grey rock, entirely surrounded by turbulent
and billowy green water.
Everybody called it "the little grey house," and the name was doubly
appropriate, since it did not matter whether one capitalized and
emphasized the adjective, and spoke of it as "the little _Grey_ house,"
or left to the adjective its natural function, and spoke of the tiny
home as "the little grey _house_." For, as to color, it could not
well have been greyer. It had once--not recently--been painted grey,
but wind and weather had stripped it of its artificial greyness while
tinting its clapboards into soft, indelible tints even more conformable
to its title.
And, for the rest, Sylvester Grey lived there, as had his forebears for
three generations preceding him--all Greys from the beginning. People
said that it was "a good thing that Sylvester Grey had had a home left
him, for he never could have earned one."
It was true that Mr. Grey had never been able to make much money, nor
to keep what little he did make. "He was as good a man as ever lived,"
people said again, "but he had no faculty." And to lack "faculty" was,
indeed, to lack much.
It puzzled and--of course--worried the community in which they lived
to know "how the Greys got on." Mrs. Grey could have enlightened it had
she chosen, but she did not choose. She hardly realized, however, how
much of the explanation lay in her own personality, her mere existence.
For she--great-hearted, large-souled woman--had "faculty" enough for
two; which was fortunate, as she had to contrive for five.
There was a little income--very slender--of her own, and for the rest
she "managed." She had been a Winslow, of Mayflower descent, and Aunt
Azraella Winslow, Mrs. Grey's brother's widow--herself a Brown--said,
with mingled approval and commiseration, that "when one of us, of the
old stock, sets a hand to the plough the corn grows."
Sylvester Grey was a dreamer, handsome, frail, sensitive, and clever.
Sometimes his teeming brain brought practical results to his family,
but these crystallizations of genius were rarer than was comfortable.
Mr. Grey was perfecting a machine for making bricquettes. There was not
a very clear notion in his town--Fayre--what this meant, but it was
understood vaguely to be a machine which transformed the coal-dust and
waste of the mines into solid little bricks for fuel. Aunt Azraella
said "it was exactly like Sylvester to moon over coal-dust while Mary
needed kindling-wood."
Oswyth, the oldest girl, whom he had named out of his delight in old
Saxon sounds, loved her father tenderly, without understanding him;
Prue, petted, pretty little Prue, young for her years, loved him a
trifle impatiently, but Roberta, daring, ambitious, active Roberta,
loved the dreaming father passionately, and understood that he could
not feel the present pinch when visions of a greater good lured him
on, understood further that no personal pinch appealed to him very
strongly when science led him into her fairyland, and he felt himself
her servant. And Roberta alone, of all who loved him, understood the
invention to which he was giving his days and many nights, and she
believed enthusiastically that some time the bricquette machine would
make the family fortune and her father's glory. Yet sometimes her high
courage failed, and when the makeshifts and deprivations to which the
Greys were condemned bore most heavily upon her she could not help
acknowledging--though only to herself--that the happy time was sadly
long in coming.
But it was not one of these disheartening days when she set out to cut
the grass, and Rob's heart was as gay within her as a sixteen-year-old
heart should be, as she looked out on the field which she meant to make
a field of victory.
Her bright, dark eyes, which were always flashing with as many changing
expressions as there were minutes in the day, danced with mischief; her
rippling mouth and chin--Rob's face was all ripples--looked as though
the July breeze were playing with them as it played with the lush
grass. With both hands she pushed back her dark hair--full of gleams
of red and gold in the sunshine--as she ran down the steps and around
the corner to fetch the borrowed lawn-mower, for Rob's hair was forever
breaking its orderly braided bounds and turning into rakish odds and
ends of curls about her brow and ears. She came back triumphantly,
pushing the lawn-mower around the corner, and it rattled on the old
flagged walk as she tipped it up on its rear wheels and dodged the box
bordering the paths.
"Who's first?" she cried. "Age and muscle, or beauty and babyhood?"
"B. and B.," said Prue, unblushingly owning up to both facts as one
well acquainted with the value of her big dark eyes and contrasting
veil of golden hair, and one made thoroughly to realize that she was
the youngest. "Give it to me, Rob; I want the first cut."
"'Give me the dagger!' Here you are, then, Lady Macbeth. You'll find
the first cut anything but tender--you speak as if it were turkey." And
Rob gave the mower-handle into Prue's eager fingers.
Prue ran lightly down the flagged walk with her prize. "I shall begin
at the gate," she announced, "so if we don't quite finish it to-day
people who go by can see we are beginning to get our grass cut."
Oswyth laughed and groaned. "Finish it to-day! Cut the whole place!"
she exclaimed.
Oswyth, with her sweet, placid face, smooth, shining brown hair, calm
blue eyes and quiet lips, was unlike either of the others. Pretty she
was in her demure way, and no one minded if her soft cheeks were a bit
too plump, since their tint was really the "peaches and cream" of which
we read. Wythie was a most womanly and wholesome little woman, the sort
of girl one sees at first glance must comfort the mother who possesses
her.
Prue, undismayed by Wythie's dismay, turned the lawn-mower sharply to
the right for her first bold plunge into the grass--and stopped. The
dry, stout stalks resisted her onslaught, and the little girl pushed,
pulled back, pushed again, bending over the handle till her flying,
golden hair fell forward into the yellowing grass, but the machine
would not stir. Prue dropped the handle, straightened her slender form,
and, with one movement of both hands, disclosing a face already flushed
and speckled by her efforts, threw back her hair and threw up the game.
"I can't budge it, Rob!" she panted. "No one could."
"Want to try, Wythie, or shall I?" asked Rob.
"Want to? I don't quite see why anyone should want to," said Oswyth,
"but I suppose we each must, so here goes." And she heroically came
forward to take her turn, laying her dimpled and well-cushioned little
pink palms on the cross-bar of the handle somewhat gingerly.
She cut a glorious though short swath of four feet in length, happening
on more tender grass, and having more strength than Prue, but here
she, too, met her Waterloo, for the mower stood still, balking as
effectually as all the donkeys in Ireland.
"There's no use in your taking it, Rob," Wythie gasped, after turning
hither and thither with no result. "If you cut a few feet it would be
the most that you could do, and what difference would it make out of so
much?"
"You don't suppose I'll yield without striking a blow?" cried Roberta,
darting at the lawn-mower as if she were no further removed from Samson
than his great-granddaughter at most. "I have meant to cut this grass
for ages--it shows that," she added, laughing. "Besides, it always
matters a lot to me to be beaten. 'Men o' Harlech, in the hollow!'"
Rob began singing the splendid Welsh battle-song as she in turn laid
hold of the handle, as if she should not only succeed, but have breath
to spare for a war-cry.
Roberta was slender, taller that Oswyth, but her young muscles were
strong and well-poised, and to whatever task she essayed she brought
an excess of nerve-power that rarely failed to bear her to victory
on the very crest of the wave. She attacked the tough grass now with
such enthusiasm that the balking lawn-mower yielded to her as most
things did, and ran along quite meekly for a little while. But then
it stopped, and when it did stop not Cleopatra's galley, buried under
centuries of Nile mud, was more motionless than was Aunt Azraella's
lawn-mower.
Rob pushed and pulled as both her sisters had pushed and pulled,
losing her patience as she did so.
"No good, Bobs," said Prue, laconically and a trifle maliciously, for
the family only nicknamed Rob "Bobs," after Lord Roberts, Kipling's
"Bobs Bahadur," in allusion to her indomitable pluck and generalship,
and used the name in moments of triumph, of which this was scarcely one.
Roberta pushed away her rebellious locks with the back of a slightly
grimy hand.
"If I only had a scythe!" she murmured. "No machine can get through
this jungle--I feared as much. I'd mow it if I had a scythe, though!"
"Now, Rob, you mustn't so much as think of one!" said Wythie,
decidedly. "You know Mardy would be frantic if you were to swing one
just once--you're so reckless! Promise you won't get one."
"I solemnly pledge myself to abstain from all intoxicating and entirely
inaccessible scythes," said Rob, holding up both hands. "Where in the
world should I get one, Wythie?"
"You always get anything you set your heart on," said Wythie, somewhat
loosely, yet speaking from her knowledge of her sister.
"Do I? Then it must be that I set my heart on very little," interjected
Rob.
"Would Mr. Flinders cut it?" suggested Prue.
"Even an infant must realize how very sharey Mr. Flinders is in
carrying on the place on shares, Prudence, my child," said Rob,
gravely. "He may be honest in giving us our third of the vegetables
for the use of the land, but I always suspect him of opening the
lettuce-heads and rolling them up again to make sure ours haven't more
leaves than his."
"Oh, you know Mr. Flinders won't do one thing extra, Prue," said
Oswyth, hastily, fearing Prue might resent being called an infant.
"He could have the grass for his horse," said Prue.
"'A merciful man regardeth the life of his beast,' Prudy," said Rob.
"Our grass is half daisy-stalks, half chicory, half dandelions, half
some other things--pigweed, probably--and the other half _may_ be
grass."
Both her sisters laughed. "You always were strong in fractions, Rob,"
said Oswyth.
"Had to practise the most fractional fractions ever since I was
born--why shouldn't I be? There come those new Rutherford boys down
the street," said Rob, as three tall figures, arms locked, marching
abreast at a good pace, swung into sight at the head of the street.
"They seemed nice when we met them the other day; I wish they'd say
they'd cut our grass."
"I thought you scorned to admit boys' superiority in anything, Rob,"
said Wythie, slyly.
"I don't admit it; I only act on it--if I have to," said Rob.
"Why don't you wish we could afford to hire a man to keep the place
decent, like other people, while you're wishing?" asked Prue, rather
bitterly.
"Because I don't see the use of wishing for what you can never have,"
said Rob, quickly.
"We can't be rich--not till Patergrey gets the bricquette machine
done--and since it's impossible, why, it's impossible. But it would be
perfectly possible for those big creatures to swing scythes and get
this grass mown in short order--it would be rather a lark for them. And
if it ever does get cut, and I don't keep it short with Aunt Azraella's
mower, then it will be because I've forgotten the art of wheedling that
beloved lady into lending it."
"How did you get it this time?" asked Oswyth.
"Talked Mayflower and Pilgrim Rock--it never fails," said Rob. "She
thinks now there was a Brewster in her family, and that probably
through him she goes back to glory. And you know what Mardy let slip
one day about the parental Brown and his remarkably good cobbling!
Poor Aunt Azraella! It must be painful to miss the dead in the way she
does! Miss having had ancestors to die. Though I don't know why good
honest cobbling isn't as good as lots of things they did in colonial
days--better than the spelling, for instance. Mercy, those boys are
almost here! Is my hair too crazy, and have I grass stains on my nose,
Wythie?"
"I don't think it's right to run down our posterity," said Prue,
pulling her ribbons and spreading her hair rapidly. "I'm very proud
of my descent." And before Oswyth could suggest that she did not
mean posterity, three straw hats arose in the air, revealing three
flushed, handsome, boyish faces, and three cheery voices called:
"Good-afternoon, Miss Oswyth, Miss Rob, Miss Prue."
And the oldest Rutherford boy--he looked nearly eighteen--added: "Are
you farming?"
"We're harming--our tempers," cried Rob. "Also a borrowed lawn-mower."
"Won't you come in and rest?" added Oswyth. "You look warm."
"We've been up to the river swimming; it's pretty warm in the sun,
walking fast. What's wrong with your tempers? Maybe we'd better keep
out." But as he spoke the eldest boy opened the low gate, and they all
came in.
Oswyth led the way to the house, and Prue and the youngest Rutherford
were dispatched for chairs to set on the lawn, for the little grey
house had been built before the day of piazzas. Before the six young
people were fairly settled a figure in white appeared in the doorway,
smiling invitingly over a big tray laden with glasses, some plain
cookies, and the beautiful old glass pitcher, of which the Greys were
so proud, full of lemonade and tinkling with ice.
"Oh, that's Mardy all over--always thinking of something for us!" cried
Oswyth, as she and Rob sprang forward to relieve their mother of her
burden.
CHAPTER TWO
ITS NEIGHBORS
"Won't you come and see the new Rutherford boys, Mardy? We met them at
Frances Silsby's the other night," said Roberta, as she took the tray
from her mother, while Oswyth took the pitcher.
The three tall lads arose as Mrs. Grey came toward them. "Dear me!" she
smiled. "I never would dream you were _new_ Rutherford boys if I espied
you at a distance, but quite old ones. I am glad to see you."
"We are glad to be here," said the oldest boy, shaking heartily the
motherly hand held out to him, and smiling back into the kindly eyes
which always won young things, quadruped or biped, and were especially
attractive to a motherless lad. "I am Basil Rutherford, this is my
second mate, Bruce, and this my little baby brother Bartlemy. Stand up
straight, Tom Thumb, and ask Mrs. Grey if she doesn't think you ought
to be put in an incubator. We're so afraid we won't be able to raise
him," added Basil, with a tragic glance at the girls.
Fifteen-year-old Bartlemy stood erect to his full six feet one of
height, and grinned with the helpless good-nature of a frequent victim.
The Rutherfords were very much alike, brown-skinned, brown-haired,
blue-eyed boys, with honesty and kindliness shining from their fine
faces. Mrs. Grey made up her mind about them on the spot--as she
usually did on meeting strangers. "Nice creatures!" she thought, and
laughed as she surveyed Bartlemy.
"I doubt that you could raise him--unaided," she said. And the boys, in
their turn, mentally labelled her: "Nice woman."
"But none of you is precisely stunted," added Mrs. Grey, looking up
from her own considerable altitude into Basil's, and then into Bruce's
face, both of which topped her by several inches.
"Bruce is five feet eleven, good measure, and I am five feet ten," said
Basil. "All the Rutherfords grow rank."
"Like our grass," added Roberta, who had been quiet as long as she
could be. "There's nothing but length--and poor quality--to the grass,
though," she added, with a wicked look, to which she served an
immediate antidote by pouring lemonade into the three rapidly emptying
glasses.
"You are new neighbors, I think," said Mrs. Grey, calmly removing
a caterpillar from her cuff, and thereby rising high in Bartlemy's
estimation, who was an embryo naturalist and scorned nerves.
"We're here for a time--we came three weeks ago. We've taken the
Caldwell place, and our guardian put us here with a tutor to get ready
for college," said Basil. "I'm in my eighteenth year, but I'd like to
wait for Bart if I could. And he's not as stupid as he looks--we think
we can enter together in a year; we'd like to keep on side by side as
long as we can--we've done it so far."
"How pleasant that is to hear!" cried Mrs. Grey, heartily. "I'm sure
you'll gain far more than you lose by waiting. You speak as though you
were alone; are you boys all there are in the family?"
"Our father is alive," said Basil, "but he is in the navy, and he's
usually about the farthest father I know--just now he's in Japan
for two years more. Our mother died when Bart was six. We wish she
hadn't--" Basil stopped short. He had no idea that he was going to say
this, but the look that sprang into Mrs. Grey's eyes when he alluded to
his mother's loss had slightly upset him.
Mrs. Grey understood. "I wish that she could have stayed to be proud
of her three tall sons," she said. "But perhaps Wythie and Rob and
Prue can coax you here to share in the mother feeling. We're fond of
motherliness in the little grey house, Basil, and we do have good
times in it. I must run away, or there will be a sad time in it when
the girls come in hungry. They will tell you about our little grey
house and its Grey denizens. Will you come often, and help us have
good times?" She included the three lads in her warm glance, and quick
affection leaped back at her from the three pairs of dark blue eyes.
Mrs. Grey mothered everything that came near her, being one of the sort
of women with a genuine talent for loving. She longed to bless and
protect all creation, and fell to planning as she spoke how to give
these motherless lads the womanly sympathy they must want in their
setting out on the battle of life.
"Indeed, we will come," said Bruce, speaking suddenly and for the first
time.
"You're very good, Mrs. Grey," said Basil, quietly, but he pressed
her hand till it ached, and she knew that he had read aright and would
accept her invitation.
"The Greys," began Roberta, in a perfectly dispassionate, narrative
tone, as her mother went toward the house, "are exceedingly nice
people--I can truly say I know none whom I like better. They are of
most ancient, trailing arbutus descent----"
"Rob!" ejaculated Oswyth, reproachfully, not knowing how their new
acquaintances would take this nonsense.
"Fact! Isn't the trailing arbutus the Mayflower?" said Rob, unabashed.
"It's a more appropriate name, too, because the descendants of the
Pilgrims have 'trailed clouds of glory as they came,' like the soul
in Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality--I trust you have heard of
Wordsworth, little boys? If you doubt that the Greys are of Mayflower
descent on the maternal side, just go ask their aunt-in-law, Azraella
Winslow."
"Oh, Rob; how can you?" cried Oswyth, distressed.
"Why, that's true, Wythie; they won't have to ask her, will they?" said
Rob, innocently.
"No, don't ask; just listen. Well, the Greys are poor, but
respectable. I hope that they are very respectable, for I can testify
from accurate knowledge that they are very poor. They have lots of
books, worn shabby, but as good as ever, and the two oldest girls study
hard at home--as well as they can--but the youngest they contrive to
keep at school. The second daughter is digging away at German alone,
and she wishes that everything wasn't divided off into masculine and
feminine genders, like a Quaker meeting. However, my brethren, this is
not history--only natural history, maybe. To return to the Grey Annals:
The dear father Grey is a genius, and he is inventing something so
clever and valuable that one day the Greys will be rich. The darling
mother Grey is perfect, and a heroine, and nobody on earth could
love her enough. The Grey girls help her do the housework, and they
economize--economize _terrific_! But they do have fun, and they're
happy, and when you came along they were economically trying to cut
their own grass, under the rash leadership of the second daughter, and
the grass would not succumb to a mower. And that brings my story right
up to date--it may be continued in our next issue."
The Rutherford boys evidently understood perfectly how to take Roberta;
there was no occasion for Oswyth's anxiously puckered brow, nor Prue's
flushed cheeks and mortified look. All three boys recognized pluck
and admired it in the brief outline sketch of the Greys which Rob had
given them. Bruce especially, Rob's senior by half a year, as Basil was
Wythie's, liked the spirit which she displayed, and which was largely
his own sort of courage.
"Our next issue is now ready for the press," he said. "The three
Rutherfords--all B's, and so naturally inclined to be busy--were coming
down the road as the Grey girls struggled with the stalled mower, and
resolved to rescue the brave damsels. High and low they sought till
they had found three scythes, or scythes and sickles. Armed with these
they marched down upon the grey house, cut the grass with wild hallos,
and returned triumphant to the Caldwell place. Come on, Bas; hurry up,
Bart; we'll shave the grey place clean."
"Oh, you three long angels!" cried Rob, starting up rapturously as the
three Rutherfords arose to carry out Bruce's suggestion with prompt
enthusiasm. "I said when I saw you coming that I wished you'd cut this
tough grass for us, but I never thought of it again. Wait a minute; I
want to speak to Mardy."
She darted to the house and came flying back again from around the rear
corner before the others had time to wonder why she had gone.
"It's all right; I knew she'd say yes," Rob panted. "Come to-morrow
afternoon, if you really want to do it, and we'll ask Frances down,
and have some sort of supper on the newly shaved lawn, among the
sweet-smelling grass--even this weedy grass will be fragrant, newly
mown. Will you do that?"
"It will be great!" said the boys, heartily. "Of course we'll come."
And they bade the Grey girls good-by, with much satisfaction in their
first call.
"Nice girls," said Basil, as they swung up the road, the tallest,
Bartlemy, in the middle, an arm resting on each tall brother's
shoulder. "Which is the nicest?"
"Hard to say," began Bartlemy, but Bruce cut him short with decision,
saying:
"Prue's as pretty as a picture; Oswyth's pretty, too, though not as
pretty, and she's a lady, but Rob's a dandy! She's got go and pluck,
and did you ever see such a face for crinkling up? I had to watch it;
you couldn't tell what it would do next--pretty, she is too--splendid
eyes and hair."
The girls echoed the boys' favorable opinion of them, and it was
re-echoed that night at bedtime between the large room which Oswyth
and Roberta shared and the small one Prue occupied in solitary dignity.
The Greys were early astir on the following morning, for "the
mowing-bee of the B's," as Rob called it, entailed extra labor, well
worth it though it was.
Supper, when one does not consider expense, is a simple enough problem,
but supper when there is little to spend means expenditure of strength
instead of money.
Mrs. Grey cut the thinnest slices of her own famous bread, buttered
it perfectly, and set it away in the ice-chest while she made egg
sandwiches and chopped crispy lettuce out of the garden--lettuce which
did not look--in spite of Rob's suspicion--as though the farmer who
carried on the Grey garden on shares had "unrolled it to count its
leaves."
"Jenny Lind cake," quite good enough for anyone--provided it is eaten
very fresh--may be made with one egg. Oswyth beat up two of these
cakes, and into one stirred juicy blueberries, while the other she
baked in jelly-tins, and iced and filled with caramel filling.
Rob and Prue carried out the table and set it on the lawn. The little
grey house was well filled with old blue and white china, odds and
ends of pink and white also, queer, dainty sprigged cups and saucers,
and rare old pewter which it was Oswyth's joy to keep bright. So the
table when decked looked really beautiful, and the girls surveyed it
with pride, knowing that more sumptuous suppers than theirs there might
be, but few more attractive, and they trusted to their own gayety to
secure it one of the jolliest. Frances Silsby came down early. She was
Oswyth's and Rob's--more particularly Rob's--one intimate friend; the
Grey girls were too sufficient to themselves to need outsiders. She
found them hurrying over their dressing, having scrambled the dinner
dishes away, for the laborers were sure to arrive early.
The gowns the girls wore were not only simple in themselves, but had
done good service and showed in many places their mother's artistic
darning. But they were becoming lawns, and when the laughing young
faces came up through their fresh ruffles, and the soft, gathered
waists settled around the young figures, Oswyth was as sweet in her
pale blue, Roberta as brilliant in her rose pink, and Prue as pretty in
her snowy white as new gowns could have made them--and, fortunately,
were quite as happy.
The strains of the anvil-chorus floated down the street before Rob and
Prue were ready--Oswyth managed always to be ready--and the clash of
anvils was marked by the click of scythes. Looking out, the girls saw
the Rutherfords, three abreast, as usual, implements over shoulders and
flashing in the sunshine, bearing down on the little grey house.
"Oh, hurry, Rob; give me my stick-pin, Wythie--they're coming!" cried
Prue.
"Don't wear your stick-pin, Prue; you're sure to lose it out of that
thin stuff. Take my bow-knot-pin," said Wythie, proffering it.
"Oh, that old-fashioned thing! Well, I suppose boys won't know--I'll
take it, Wythie. Ready, Rob?" cried Prue.
"Would be if my shoe-lacing hadn't come untied, and I stepped on it and
broke it. I wouldn't dare tell anyone what I thought of shoe-lacings!"
cried Rob, trying to tie the broken string with fingers that quivered
with impatience.
"Let me, Rob; you're too crazy," said Frances, kneeling before her
friend.
Rob resigned herself with a sigh. "Blessings on thee, little Fan," she
said. "Please go down, Wythie and Prue. Tell the boys we'll be there
just as soon as we finish singing 'Blest be the tie that binds.'"
Wythie and Prue departed laughing, and Rob and Frances followed very
soon.
"Where shall we begin?" asked Bruce, after greetings were over.
"At the beginning," said Rob, but Wythie, with a glance at her
irrepressible sister, said:
"Wherever you like; it really doesn't matter. And we girls are going to
rake after you."
"_You are little Boazes,
Following your noazes;
We are gleaners, like to Ruth,
Raking hay while in our youth,
Which we think a better line
Than making hay in the sunshine,_"
sang Rob, with one of her sudden inspirations.
"Is this going to be a comic-opera, and are we taking part as stage
peasants, or really working?" demanded Basil, sternly, though he looked
surprised, and his eyes danced.
Bruce threw up his hat in applause, and Bart stared open-mouthed.
"Rob is demented, but not dangerous," said Frances, who had known the
boys some time.
"You know I warned you."
"Well, now at it," said Bruce.
"Be sure you don't kill any young ground sparrows," said Wythie,
anxiously.
"Oh, let me go ahead and scare up the mothers if there are any nests,
then we'll see where they fly up," cried Prue.
"Go ahead, Paula Revere; rouse the inhabitants," said Bartlemy.
So the mowing began, Prue preceding, her cloud of yellow hair floating
over her white gown as she scuffed her feet through the long grass, the
boys in their white-flannel shirts, turned away at the necks, swinging
their long scythes in their strong, long arms, and Oswyth, Frances,
and Rob fluttering after them in their floating summer gowns, raking
industriously. It was as pretty a picture as any figure in the cotillon
and quite as much fun.
Presently they all began to sing, Prue and Frances in their high
sopranos, Oswyth in her sweet, low soprano, Rob in her soft alto,
Basil a high tenor, Bruce, a barytone, and Bart something he sincerely
believed was a heavy bass. People driving by stopped to look and
listen, and Mr. Grey sat over his models in a happy dream, as the sound
wafted in to him, while Mrs. Grey could hardly keep her mind on the
cold meat she was slicing and the biscuits she was making for tea.
"Bless their dear, happy hearts!" she thought. "How little it takes to
rejoice them. They won't know if I go without some little things to
make up the trifling cost of their bee."
The work was only too short, it seemed to the girls, though perhaps the
boys were glad to stop when Mrs. Grey came out on the steps at five and
struck the brass-bowl, which was the Greys' Japanese way of summoning
the family.
They had not attempted to mow the orchard, nor the land running down
toward the back road, out of sight, but all that showed from the street
was gloriously shaven, and Rob had run the lawn-mower over it, enjoying
its speed.
The supper was not merely pretty. "It was distinguished," Frances told
her friends later; she had a feminine instinct for old china.
"But it was not merely distinguished--it was extinguished--they ate
every crumb," Rob retorted. "And so it must have been good."
It _was_ good; even in a community of skilful housewives, Mrs. Grey's
cooking was famous. The dishes were tucked away in a big wash-tub till
morning--an indulgence the Greys sometimes allowed themselves--and
"the little busy B's bee," as the name was now abbreviated, ended with
the girls nestled together on the steps, while the boys disposed of
their length of limb lower down, and they sang again while the little
July moon dipped down before them, and disappeared in the west, and the
stars came out.
Then Frances arose to go, and the Rutherford boys arose, too, to take
her safely home, and then go their own ways.
"We're no end grateful to you for giving us the very nicest party we
ever went to," said Basil to Mrs. Grey as he bade her good-night.
"Oh, as to that," Rob remarked, "one good cut deserves another."
"Come as often as you like, my dears; we shall love to have you,"
said Mrs. Grey, who, on this second, longer seeing, had taken the
Rutherfords quite into her motherly heart.
"Did you have a good time, children?" she asked as the girls kissed her
good-night, Oswyth last of all, as she always contrived to be.
"Beautiful, Mardy," said Wythie. "I really think, as Basil said, it was
as nice a party as I ever went to."
"And I think they are glorious boys," said Prue. "I'm so glad we've
found such nice new friends."
"So am I; it's as fortunate for the three lassies as it is for the
three lads," said Mrs. Grey.
"And I am glad the grass is cut, you unpractical little girls, Mardy,
Wythie, and Prudy, all three of you," said Rob, looking out with much
satisfaction on the smooth lawn as she pulled down the shade and
lighted her bedtime candle.
CHAPTER THREE
ITS MASTER
The morning after the bee Oswyth was washing dishes and Prue was wiping
them, while Roberta polished the stove, whistling in cheerful oblivion
of the large polka-dot of blacking adorning her cheek.
Mrs. Grey came in from the dining-room, which she had been brushing up,
her dust-pan in one hand, her whisk-broom in the other, held straight
out like parentheses, and said, without preliminary, out of her busy
thoughts: "I don't see, dear girls, what we shall do this fall unless
we have an extra hundred dollars. And still less do I see where we
are to get even an extra five dollars. I have been lying awake nights
contriving, but no suggestion comes. The coal money went to repair the
roof, and bought the flour and other things--all necessities--but it
must be made up, and I cannot see how. Besides, you need, each of you,
warm coats this winter. I suppose Prue can wear Wythie's old one, but
Wythie and Rob must have something."
Prue made a wry face, but Rob cried: "Sufficient to the season is the
coating thereof, Mardy. Winter coats don't appeal to me strongly this
sultry morning."
"Don't worry, Mardy; I am sure we can manage," said Wythie, lovingly.
"But coal--well, I don't see how that can be dodged."
"No, nor paid for," sighed her mother. "Ah, well! We have lived for a
good many years, and through several crises which in prospective looked
impenetrable, so I suppose we shall find a way."
"Like Sentimental Tommy," added Rob. "I'm sure of it."
"Perhaps papa will get into business by that time," suggested Prue.
"And throw up the invention?" cried Rob, quickly. "That _would_ be
foolish!"
"I wish I could do something to help," said Oswyth, sadly. "I wonder if
I ought not to go in town this fall, even if I could only get a place
in a store."
"And earn but six dollars a week, out of which you would have to pay
your board? We have gone over that many times, dearie, and decided you
are more useful here, even if I could allow a young girl like you to
go alone into a city boarding-house," said her mother. "You are such a
help to me, daughter, that I could not spare you, and you must frame
your wish another way."
Oswyth looked pensively at her dimpled hands as she held them up over
the dish-pan and let the water drip off of each of her ten fingers.
"I am going to do something perfectly original right here in Fayre; it
is going to bring us money, and be a triumph of several sorts. I have
no idea what it will be, but that's my plan," announced Rob. And as her
family laughed at a "plan" so very loosely constructed, she waved her
brush dramatically for further elucidation, and upset the saucer of
blacking, spattering its contents broadcast over the spotless, though
worn, oil-cloth covering the floor.
"Now, that's just like you, Rob," said Prue, severely. "You're more
likely to do mischief with your schemes than to help much."
"That is hardly kind or true, Prudy," said her mother. "Rob's schemes
usually come to something practically helpful. She's a daring girl, but
not a rash one. Never mind, Rob dear; the blacking will easily wipe
up. I shouldn't be at all surprised if you hit on a way to get us into
a land flowing with milk and honey some day. But you are only sixteen
now, and we must find a way to keep us alive in the desert while you
finish growing up."
A long shadow fell across the door, and the four feminine members of
the family looked up to greet its head with a smile. Clad in dark blue
serge that hung loosely on his thin frame, Mr. Grey stood surveying the
group, smiling back, but not entering. He was tall, handsome, his eyes
dark and dreamy, yet with an eager expression in them, as if they had
vainly sought that on which they could never rest. He was startlingly
pale, except for a bright red spot high on each hollow cheek. Roberta
more closely resembled him than either of the other girls, but in
expression her rippling, alert brilliancy was wholly unlike the
far-off, vague look of the father she worshipped.
"Oh, Patergrey," cried Roberta, springing to meet him, forgetful of
her recent disaster and blackened hands, and giving him the caressing
title--pronounced as one word--which she had long ago conferred upon
him. "Where have you been 'one morning, oh, so early, my beloved, my
beloved?'" Rob ended in the refrain of a song she loved.
"I went to the post-office, and I stopped at Mrs. Bonell's--she waylaid
me," said Mr. Grey.
"You're keeping back something!" cried Rob, holding up her forefinger
in a reproach that would have been more impressive if the forefinger
had been whiter.
"He has a basket behind him," cried Prue, darting upon him. "What's in
the basket, papa?"
"'Ware, Prue! Marked: Fragile. Don't handle," teased her father,
holding Prue off with one hand. "Mrs. Bonell is going away."
"Where? For long?" asked Mrs. Grey, as Wythie exclaimed: "Oh, I am
sorry."
"To Europe, for many months," said Mr. Grey. "And I've told her we
would take a boarder."
"A boarder! Why, Sylvester!" cried his wife.
"I really thought you would like this one," said Mr. Grey. "It seemed
very hard to say no. You see Mrs. Bonell said there was no one else
in whom she would feel sufficient confidence to intrust this boarder
to them, and when such a pretty young creature as she is flatters a
weak man so, how can he resist? She says she knows we would never
fail to the very end of his life to take care of him. She feels sure
we are not the cruel sort of folk who would go away and leave him to
shift for himself, nor put him out in the cold on winter nights when
he had been in the warm house all day, and if he were sick that we
would nurse him lovingly, and if he were suffering and past recovery
we would chloroform him still more lovingly--in short, that we were
ideal guardians of a cat. So I felt obliged to accept a rôle nature had
evidently designed us to fill."
"A cat! Oh, bless you!" cried three rapturous girl voices, and Wythie
added: "It isn't her lovely, white little Billee?"
"We have only seven cats taking their meals here now," suggested Mrs.
Grey.
"My dear, those are humble dependents; of those I hope we shall always
have a store, for I want the little grey house to be the asylum for
homeless creatures it was in my mother's day," said Mr. Grey, busying
himself with the basket-strap. "But a cat, all our own, and one of
the family, we have lacked since the day when poor old Nellie Grey
went to the reward of cats of blameless character. Yes, Oswyth; this
is, indeed, snow-white Billy, and I consider it a great honor that
his mistress will intrust us with her pet." Mr. Grey had unfastened
the strap by this time, and, lifting the basket-cover, displayed a
half-grown kitten, snowy white and odorous of violet sachet, cowering,
trembling, with dilated eyes, on the pale blue knitted shawl with which
his loving mistress had tried to soften his departure.
"Now, don't jump at him," said Mr. Grey, who understood and loved all
animals. "Remember, a cat is the most nervous creature on earth, and
this one is dreadfully frightened."
"I've often petted him at Mrs. Bonell's; he may remember me," said
Oswyth. "Let me take him." Very gently she raised the downy creature,
who immediately put his forepaws around her neck and clung to her, his
poor little heart thumping wildly against Wythie's throat. "Dear Billy,
you gentle, sweet, little kitten," Wythie murmured, sitting down to
rock him, while Rob and Prue looked on longingly.
"You don't object, Lady Grey?" said Mr. Grey. "He's so much of a pet
already, and so very white, he can't bother you."
"Why, you know, Sylvester, I'm quite as much of a goose about pets
as the children--or as you are," laughed Mrs. Grey, and so Billy was
adopted.
"I'd like to call him Kiku--that's Japanese for chrysanthemum. I wonder
if Mrs. Bonell would mind? It would be so lovely to say: 'O Kiku-san,'
when we called him," said Rob.
"She would never mind," said Prue, while Wythie began to sing to
the old lullaby tune of Greenville: "O Billy-san, O Kiku-Billy-san;
O Kiku-san, O Kiku-Billy-san." As she rocked to and fro in perfect
content, frightened, puzzled little Billy shut his eyes and clung to
her, his heart beating less tumultuously as he began to realize that
here, too, were gentle hearts and hands.
"I want you when you can come, Rob, my son," said Mr. Grey, going
toward the room which had been set apart for his special uses. It was a
well-worn, but well-wearing, joke between Roberta and her father that
she was his son Rob, his mainstay and dependence. "And I'd like to be
able to see you when you come," he added, as a parting shot. "Just now
you are in partial eclipse from blacking."
Rob laughed and ran upstairs. Presently she returned, and went to her
father's room, carefully closing the door behind her.
It was a curious place, a mixture of study, library, workshop, and
laboratory. It had been built for the kitchen of the little grey house
when it was new, a hundred years ago. Its walls were wainscoted to half
their height in panels of grained and varnished wood. The fireplace was
made of narrow panels, with little cupboards above the high, narrow,
wooden mantelpiece, and the handles of these cupboard-doors were tiny
brass knobs. The old rush-bottomed chairs sitting around the walls, and
the tables as well, were littered with papers. Between the windows,
where the light was strongest, sat a common kitchen table, and on it
stood a model of the bricquette machine, and models of its component
parts. Two tall bookcases, one filled with scientific and mechanical
books, the other with novels, essays, and poetry, stood opposite these
models, and across the room on another table standing close to the sink
and small portable stove, were scattered chemical apparatus.
Rob was perfectly at home in these queer surroundings; among them she
had spent a great deal of her childhood, creeping, "mousy-quiet," to
sit on a stool by her oblivious father, her chattering tongue silenced
and her busy brain full of loving awe.
Her father looked up now as she entered. "Ah, Rob, come in," he said.
"I want to go over this with you. You read to me what I have written
here, while I move the model according to those directions, and see if
I have made it clear and correct."
"Yes, Patergrey," said Rob, taking the closely written manuscript which
he handed her, well used to this sort of service. And then she began to
read.
Sometimes, not fully understanding what she read, Rob paused and
watched her father manipulate the model, and refer to its sections,
until she comprehended perfectly what the words were intended to
convey. So far from this interest on her part annoying the inventor, it
delighted him, and largely explained what was unquestionably true--that
Rob was his favorite daughter.
"You will be as well able to exhibit this as I shall when it is done,
Rob, my son," Mr. Grey laughed, well pleased, as, her point cleared
up, Roberta read on, pausing only at a word from her father. "Wait a
moment, Rob; this isn't quite right." "Mark that with the blue pencil,
Rob; I'll say that more briefly." "Slowly, Rob; my fingers won't move
as fast as your tongue."
At last they were through, and Mr. Grey threw himself into his big
chair with the shabby cushions, sighing contentedly.
"That's all right, Rob," he said. "Next autumn will see the machine
completed--December at the latest, I hope. What a help you are, Rob, my
son!"
"It's a comfort to hear you say that, like a sort of grace, every time
we get through, Patergrey," said Rob. "But if I am a help to you, I
wonder if I can get you to do something for me?"
"Yes, you know you can," said Mr. Grey, anticipating a request to
be taken fishing, or to go for a long stroll in the twilight. But
Rob, who would never allow anyone to insinuate that her father could
accomplish more than he did, had other plans in her teeming brain. With
a sensitive flush, fearing to wound her father, she said:
"Didn't you tell me, Patergrey, that a magazine had asked you to write
a special article for it on something or other scientific, and offered
you quite a sum of money if you'd do it?"
"Why, yes," said Mr. Grey, startled into animation by the unexpected
question. "On fuels and means of heating and lighting in the future,
and the world's storage of such fuel; they thought I should be prepared
for such an article--as I am. Yes, they asked me--why?"
"Because dear Mardy is worried over present prospects; she lies awake
planning, and can't see her way out--she told us so this morning," said
Rob, bravely. "She says we must have an extra hundred dollars--and she
has no idea where it can come from. We've used up the coal money--you
know she divides her poor little pennies into piles for different
things--and if we get coal late it will cost more, besides, how can we
get it later any better than now? So I never said a word to the rest,
but I thought of the article, and I made up my mind I'd get the dear
daddy to put a wee bit of his cleverness on paper, and surprise the
blessed Lady Grey by giving her her hundred--do you suppose it could be
as much as that, Patergrey?"
"They offered me a hundred dollars for three thousand words," said her
father, adding quickly, as Rob clapped her hands rapturously: "But it
will take my mind off the invention, Rob, and I don't want to delay
that a day. Something seems to impel me--compel me is better--to finish
it as soon as I can, and anything that retards it is a mistake, my
dear."
"But you are all prepared--you said so, Patergrey--and you are so
clever you can do it in a week," coaxed Rob, getting up to kneel
beside her father, and crinkling her flexible face into a maze of
irresistible puckers, as if he were a little child.
Her father laughed. "A week, you silly puss! Three days, at the
outside," he said.
Rob cried out triumphantly: "Then you can't say no! Only three days! It
can't make much difference with the machine, and isn't it worth three
days' delay to relieve Mardy darling's mind? Poor Mardy! She's so brave
and cheerful, but, oh, she does have to squeeze hard to keep us all fed
and housed."
To Rob's distress her father dropped his head on his arms, laid over
the back of the chair, and groaned.
"You're right, Roberta. It makes me sick at heart to think of what it
has cost her to be so faithfully, patiently loving with me all these
years. Poor, bright, pretty Mary Winslow, who might have shone in any
setting! Yes, child, I'll do the article--set about it to-day. I know I
make life hard for her, but I do my best. Some day you'll all see, Rob,
I did my best."
Tears were raining down Roberta's cheeks. "Papa, Patergrey, I know, I
know all about it! Why do you say that to me?" she cried. "And Mardy
doesn't have a hard time--she'd never forgive me if I let you say that!
She loves you so much that it would have been cruel to have given her
all the world, without you."
"How can you understand that, Roberta?" asked her father, startled by
the girl's insight.
"Because anyone feels that way when they love someone," replied Rob.
"Wouldn't I rather be Roberta Grey, your daughter, than the richest
girl in the world with another father? Don't grieve, Patergrey. It's
all right for all the Greys, and we'll show all those people who talk
and don't know what they're talking about, we'll show them--you and I
and the bricquette machine--some day, won't we?"
"I hope so, Rob, I hope so," said her father. "But I can't help
wondering, little daughter. I sometimes feel as though I were losing my
hold. But, yes; we will prove ourselves right, Rob, my son," he added,
straightening himself, the red spot burning under his glowing eyes.
"And in the meantime you shall have the article this week, Rob. Tell
your mother not to worry; my article on fuel shall give us ours. Tell
her you woke me up to my duty."
"I'll tell her nothing about it, Patergrey," said Rob. "You shall hand
her the hundred dollars and surprise her when it comes. And don't say
I woke you up to your duty. It makes me sound perfectly horrid, and
feel worse than I sound. Now I must go help get dinner. Thank you,
Patergrey." And Rob kissed her father, and slipped away, glad to have
succeeded, yet with the vague pain at her heart which of late she often
carried with her from one of these pleasant mornings with the dear,
pathetic father.
CHAPTER FOUR
ITS RELATIVES
Although Fayre was a small Connecticut town not two hours away from
New York, the Greys followed the simple country practice of dining at
mid-day. It was much pleasanter, when the mistress of the house and its
daughters constituted also its service, for them to be able to draw a
long breath when the forenoon's labors were over, and feel that nothing
more onerous and damaging to gowns than preparations for tea lay before
them. The last dish had been put away, and the delicate towels hung
out in the sunshine to dry. Most human lots have their compensations,
and Mrs. Grey found the remembrance of her sweet, fine dish-cloths
consolatory to her amid the hardships of household drudgery.
Rob's brief depression in parting from her father that morning had
passed away. Rob's heart had not been fashioned to sink under weight;
she refused to believe in trouble until it forced itself upon her,
and then she still refused to salute it by its proper name. Now the
girls and their mother had dropped into chairs around the dining-room
table, and were enjoying that most restful stolen rest, to which
one has no right at that particular moment. No one in the family
was quite presentable if anyone should come, and it was already two
o'clock; they all felt that they had no right to linger there, still
they lingered. Yet what they called their "uniform" was pretty and
becoming. Each sister wore a plain, dark blue gingham, straight-hemmed
skirt and blouse waist, with a deep sailor collar, feather-stitched in
white, as were the cuffs. The collars opened low, and were tied with
a narrow white-linen knotted tie, and the fresh young faces and white
throats rose from the dark cotton, looking prettier than usual for
the plainness of their setting. The duplicates of these gowns hung,
fresh and newly ironed, upstairs; it was the Greys' working regalia,
"the badge of their labor union," Rob said. The warmth of the day,
and of getting and clearing away dinner, had made every one of Rob's
unruly locks stray out over neck and brow, and curl up at their ends.
She sat with her elbows on the table, her face in her hands, and Prue
sat in precisely the same position opposite her, both enjoying the
unconventional pose, as they did loitering in their working dresses
when the old dining-room clock had struck two. Oswyth leaned back in
her chair, her small, slippered feet thrust out before her, one arm
dangling over the chair-back. Mrs. Grey rocked cosily by the window
on the breeze side, and white Kiku-san, who was beginning to adjust
himself to his new home, though he still approached strange objects
with body elongated and with many nervous backward starts, sat now with
his head on one side, watching the shadows on the floor of the swaying
tendrils of the honeysuckle around the window.
"Oh, my heart, the Angel!" exclaimed Rob, suddenly, in panic-stricken
tones. They all looked up. Across the newly shorn grass approached a
figure, not very tall, but exceedingly awesome, and the Greys knew that
they were caught.
"Aunt Azraella!" murmured Wythie, uncrossing and drawing in her feet,
and bringing her arm to the front to join its mate.
With some incomprehensible notion of endowing her daughter with a
celestial name Aunt Azraella's mother, the late Mrs. Brown, had
christened her by a feminine form, of her own invention, of the name
of the dread angel of death. Prue had once caustically suggested that
it must have been because Mrs. Brown had foreseen "that she was going
to turn out so deadly." There were a great many hard points about the
Greys' life, but if any one of them was asked suddenly which was her
greatest trial she would probably have answered unhesitatingly: "Living
so near Aunt Azraella."
The girls speculated privately on what she could have been in her
youth to have made their mother's brother--the Uncle Horace whom they
did not remember--marry her. She was one of those persons born with a
sure conviction of their fitness and mission to set the world right.
She oversaw the Greys' expenditures, commented unfavorably on their
methods of economy, condemned severely almost all their pleasures
as extravagant, was wholly intolerant of what she called "Sylvester
Grey's shiftlessness," and was thoroughly convinced that she could
bring up three girls far more strictly, and far better than her
sister-in-law--and as to the first half of her proposition she was
doubtless correct. Yet she was not an ill-intentioned woman--Rob said
that was the worst of it, "because if she meant to be horrid you could
bid her to go to"--and in her peculiar way she really admired and was
fond of her late husband's sister.
"I wonder what we've done now," said Rob, out of her past experience,
and taking a rapid mental survey of events since her aunt had visited
them, in a vain attempt to discover a peg on which she could hang blame.
Mrs. Winslow appeared in the doorway before anyone could reply,
revealing herself portly, with a nose that dented in at the tip sharply
on each side above its widespread nostrils; the hair, eyes, and skin of
this estimable lady were of a uniform drabness.
"Good-afternoon," she said, entering. "Do you mean to say you aren't
dressed? It's quarter--no, seventeen minutes after two! I make it
a point to have myself and my house in perfect order every day at
half-past one--Elvira understands that I demand that of her."
"We can't get our girls to grasp the idea, aunt," said Rob, a remark
her mother hastily covered by saying: "It was so pleasant here we
loitered, yielding weakly to temptation, Azraella. Take this chair;
there's a refreshing little breeze at this window."
"What's that? Not a new cat! Now, Mary, how can you be so indulgent to
these girls? Don't you know it costs something to feed animals? It may
not be much, but you must often give them scraps you could use. It's
just in those small leakages that your management fails--they keep you
poor," said Aunt Azraella, sinking into the rocking-chair and removing
her severe garden-hat.
"We have a third of a cow, you know, aunt," said Rob, gravely, "and
none of us likes milk. We get more than three quarts a day, so it
leaves us enough for charity. And there are crumbs that fall from a
poor man's table as well as from a rich one's, Aunt Azraella. They're
smaller, and not such fat crumbs, but our loving and grateful friends
take them in the spirit in which they're given."
"They ought to go to the chickens," said Mrs. Winslow.
"Our arrangement with Mr. Flinders in regard to the chickens was that
he was to feed them, and we provide only the space for them--and
grasshoppers in summer," added Mrs. Grey, with a smile. "We have all
the eggs we need, but not nearly as many as he keeps for his own use. I
think this little white kitten won't impoverish us."
"You had a party yesterday, I noticed," said Aunt Azraella, dropping
the subject of pets and pouncing on the one which she had come over
especially to discuss, in what Rob felt was rather like a feline way of
pouncing on a mouse.
"Yes. Did you see what a pleasant one it was?" asked Mrs. Grey. "We had
a good time, and accomplished something besides."
"I saw three tall men here and a girl--I supposed it was the Silsby
girl," said Aunt Azraella. "And I saw you had tea on the lawn."
"'The three men' were the three Rutherford lads--aren't they tall
creatures?" laughed Mrs. Grey. "But they are only about six months
older, each, than our girls. Such nice, kindly, well-bred lads they
seem to be!"
"Where were you, Aunt Azraella? Why didn't you come in? We didn't see
you," said Rob, with apparent innocence.
"I was at home, too busy to gad," said her aunt. "I got a few late
currants, Mary, and I put them up--they made nine glasses of jelly. I
was short this year. You did not see me, Roberta, because I was not in
sight. I have no time to waste. But I saw you had a party, and I made
out the tea on your lawn with my field-glasses."
Rob had known this quite well before she was told, but she dearly
loved to extract the information for the benefit of the others each
time that their aunt came to reproach them for misdeeds which she had
discovered by a method of which she seemed never to be ashamed, but
which filled the Grey girls with wrath or amusement, according to their
mood at the moment.
Now Prue choked, and Oswyth's lips twitched, but Roberta looked Aunt
Azraella straight in the eyes, her own brilliant dark ones blankly
quiet.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, as if enlightened. "Jelly-glasses and
field-glasses, currants with an a, and currents with an e--currant
jelly and current news! Didn't we look pretty, aunt? We had out lots of
the old china and pewter."
This was pure malice on Rob's part, for Mrs. Winslow coveted the
Winslow heirlooms, to which as a childless widow, Winslow but by
marriage, she had no claim.
Mrs. Grey glanced at her second daughter. "If some of us don't make
ourselves presentable we shall be caught in our uniforms by someone
whom we mind seeing more than we do aunty, children," she said.
"Suppose we take turns in dressing, and Rob and Prue go first?"
Roberta arose. "Shall I wear my bridle, Mardy?" she inquired. "Not
very hard to see through, the Lady Grey, is she?" she added to her
younger sister when they were in the hall.
"I really don't see, Mary, I do _not_ see, how, situated as you are,
you can reconcile it with your conscience to give lawn-parties,"
said Aunt Azraella, severely. "These girls ought to understand that
they cannot expect the sort of youth they would have if their father
were other than he is. They ought to help you; not waste money in
entertaining."
"Azraella, Azraella," cried Mrs. Grey, stung to impatience by this
double thrust at her husband and her children. "You really should
acquire the habit of learning facts before you form opinions. No girls
were ever more cheerfully helpful and ready to do without the good
times other girls have than mine are. Roberta tried--dear child, she is
always trying something desperate--to cut the overgrown grass, since
we had no man to do it. She borrowed your lawn-mower for it, but the
grass was too long to use it. The Rutherford boys volunteered to the
rescue, and mowed all this great lawn. What you took for an extravagant
lawn-party was in reality a mowing-bee.
"I hope Roberta did not ruin my lawn-mower; I had no idea she wanted
it for that tough grass, or I would never have lent it--she ought to
have known better," said Aunt Azraella, shifting her attack.
"We didn't hurt it at all, aunt; we tried it, and when it wouldn't work
we gave up at once," said Oswyth, beginning to tremble. She never could
vent her wrath in lingual fireworks, as Rob did, and was sorely torn by
the necessity of bottling it up. Now she longed to say that they would
have been glad if their aunt had lent her burly Aaron, who was a great
friend to the Grey girls, and would have come willingly, to cut the
grass, but even Rob would hardly have ventured this.
"I need someone to help Elvira," said Mrs. Winslow, going off on a
tangent--she had "irruptions of the brain," Rob said. "I have been
thinking that I would take one of your girls, Mary. I would give her
twelve dollars a month, and she could come home every night, and it
would be time enough if she got up on the hill by half-past eight each
morning. It would give you a little extra income. Prue would answer, if
you can't spare Oswyth--I won't have Roberta."
Before Mrs. Grey could reply Oswyth sprang up, her face dark red to
her hair, and saying in a choking voice, "Excuse me, mother; I must
dress," ran upstairs without waiting for a dismissal.
"Goodness, Wythie, what is it now?" cried Rob, as her sister flung open
the chamber-door with a bang. "You look mad."
"Mad? Mad?" echoed gentle Wythie. "I'm furious! Don't you go back
there, either of you. She's more maddening than ever. She wants me or
Prue for a servant to help Elvira--she won't have Rob."
"Why, I don't believe she will," drawled Rob, with a flash of her
bright eyes. "Yet I would be good for her; a discipline, not unlike a
scourge."
Prue thrust her head through the door between her room and the girls'
chamber. She could not raise it because she was combing her fly-away
locks over her face, forward from the neck, having heard that this
treatment made the hair more fluffy. From the golden veil in which this
enveloped her she spoke: "Wants me for a servant to help Elvira? Did
you say that, Wythie? What did Mardy say?"
"I didn't wait to hear--I didn't dare. I felt as though I should have
apoplexy," said Wythie. "She had been saying things before that."
"She's always saying things--and seeing things," remarked Rob. "The
worst of the little grey house is that it stands where the hill-house
overlooks it."
Prue, inarticulate for a moment from the indignity offered the pretty
self which she did not underestimate, found her voice. "Well, let her
wait till she gets me," she said, in a tone so sarcastic as to make up
for the feebleness of the retort.
"We've made a 'sloka' since we came upstairs--Prue and I," said Rob.
"We are going to sing it when Aunt Azraella gets too unbearable; it's
better to sing things about her than to preserve your rage, as she does
her sharp currants."
"I'm afraid it isn't very nice," said Wythie, doubtfully.
"Yes, it is; it's a lovely 'sloka.' Of course, you can't be sure it's
nice till you've heard it. Just listen." And Rob sang softly:
"_There is a queer person in Fayre,
Who trails fury and wrath everywhere;
She's a dragon-like breath,
So they named her for death,
And when she comes calling: Beware!
We love our dear Aunt Azraella,
For she lectures us--every Grey feller!_
_And she spies with her glass
What does not come to pass,
While our feelings we scarcely dare tell her._"
Wythie could not help laughing, and felt better for it.
"Now, you and Prue, sit under the tree where you can warn Mardy if
anyone comes to see her. I'm going for a stroll," announced Rob, and
before Wythie could object she had disappeared without wasting time on
the empty ceremonial of donning a hat.
Straight through the old orchard she went, climbed the fence, and
took her course down the back road. She had a definite end in view.
Three-quarters of a mile away lived a second cousin of her father, a
blind woman, whom the Greys had from their childhood called "Cousin
Peace," though her name was Charlotte.
Often, when life and herself got too tumultuous for Rob, she ran down
for a breath of Cousin Peace's atmosphere. She saw the pale, calm face
she sought at the window as she drew near the house, and, opening the
gate, she went up and leaned on the sill without speaking.
Miss Charlotte Grey's thin right hand went out to touch her head. "Ah,
Roberta dear, how are you to-day?" she said, as she felt the soft
tendrils of curls which she had never seen.
"Pretty horrid, thank you, Cousin Peace," said Rob, penitently, "but
very well."
"Anything wrong?" asked "Cousin Peace."
"Nothing new, nothing much, and everything," said Rob, with Delphic
ambiguity. "We're not any richer, and Mardy's been worried, but we've
found some nice new boy friends. Still, Aunt Azraella's there this
afternoon, rather more trying than ordinarily--she even made Wythie
furiously mad. So you can see whether good or bad prevails."
"Your Aunt Azraella must not prevail--to anger you, dearie," said
Cousin Peace, gently. "She is one of those unfortunate souls that can't
see any difference in size between her mountains and her mole-hills.
She always reminds me of the old fable of the astronomer who had a fly
in his telescope, and thought a new world had rolled into space in
the field his glass swept. It is quite as bad as being totally blind
to lack perspective, I sometimes think, Robin. If you once grasp the
fact that only essentials are essential, dear, you will have mastered
the secret of good and happy living. And your Aunt Azraella is not
essential," she added, with a merry twist of her lips, as she turned
her closed eyes toward Rob, and laughed so blithely that it was evident
that she did not want to preach, and that all Rob's visits to her
distant cousin were not serious ones.
"She is certainly not essential to my happiness, dear, peaceful
cousin," said Rob. "You haven't heard the Iliad of How the Grass Was
Cut. Let me relate it." And, seating herself on the upper step, just
outside the window, Rob began to tell in her most dramatic manner the
story of their new acquaintances and how they had befriended the Greys.
As she listened Miss Charlotte's pale face flushed with laughing, and
she grew so much younger that it was perfectly clear that Rob not only
received, but gave in these visits to the blind woman.
When she arose to go Miss Grey held out both hands and kissed Rob,
who had to hold aside the syringa bushes growing unchecked before the
window, in order to reach her cousin.
"Dear Robin, come soon again; you do me as much good as your blithe
feathered namesake," said Cousin Peace, holding the strong, brown hands
a moment between her white ones.
"I'll come; you couldn't keep me away, Cousin Peace," said Rob. "You
do _me_ more good than an organ and a stained-glass window, and they
help me to feel angelic more than anything I know. Oh, why aren't all
relations like you?"
And Rob departed, soothed and heartened as she always was by blind
Cousin Peace, who saw so clearly. She went up the pretty back road as
the shadows were beginning to lengthen, and reached home to find Aunt
Azraella gone, and the kitchen of the little grey house filled with the
song of the kettle, and the homely, but comforting odor of toast, as
her mother and Wythie stepped briskly about getting tea, and Prue in
the dining-room sang as cheerily as the kettle while she was setting
the table.
CHAPTER FIVE
ITS BLITHE DAYS
Mr. Grey fulfilled his promise to Roberta. He wrote the article
which had been requested of him by the magazine, and read it to its
prime instigator before sending it off. She found it one of the most
remarkable productions of the human pen, nor was shaken, but rather
strengthened in her opinion by the fact that she understood very little
of what it was all about.
Then followed a ten days of waiting for the result, which seemed--to
one of the conspirators, at least--the longest ten days she had ever
passed. It was so hard not to drop a hint of the great expectations
to Wythie and Prue, still harder not to suggest to Mardy that the
anxious line between her eyes had no especial reason for being there,
since deliverance and the equivalent of the winter supply of coal
was at hand. At last Prue brought up the longed-for letter from her
early morning expedition to the post-office, and gave it, quite
unsuspectingly, to her father.
"Rob, Roberta, come here," called Mr. Grey, in a few moments, and,
feeling quite sure of the reason for her summons, Rob flew to him,
nearly upsetting little white Kiku-san on the way.
Her father looked boyishly delighted as she entered his quarters--Mr.
Grey would not allow the word "den" to be applied to his room. "See,
Rob, my son," he cried, triumphantly brandishing aloft the magic slip
of paper. "Your worthless father is not quite useless, is he? They
shall find out some day that Sylvester Grey is not the drone they think
him."
Rob had seized the check, and was gloating over it ecstatically.
"Take that to your mother, child, and tell her to cease worrying; that
there is the money she needed, and that when the machine is finished
she shall never again know what anxiety is," continued the dreamer,
magnificently. "And it will be done soon--in a few months, Rob--and
while it is getting placed I will turn my attention to this sort of
thing, and we shall be very comfortable while waiting to be rich. Why,
when my mind is free, Roberta, it is a low estimate to reckon that I
can make a hundred dollars a month by my pen."
"Of course you can, Patergrey," echoed inexperienced Rob, confidently.
"Will it take long to place the bricquette machine when it is done?"
"Oh, as to that, no one can tell--probably not, but there are delays
always liable to occur in the disposing of a patent. But this one is in
such demand--no, I think there will hardly be much delay. Not that it
matters seriously--the important thing is to get it off my mind; that
will leave me free, as I said. But run along and take this check to
your mother, Rob; she must be gladdened as soon as possible. Just wait
till I make it payable to her order," added Mr. Grey, seating himself
at the table.
"Indeed, I am not going to take it to her, Patergrey," declared Rob.
"You must give it to her yourself; what have I to do with it?"
"Oh, I can't," said Mr. Grey, flushing and hanging back like a
school-boy. "You have a great deal to do with it. Take it, and tell her
you got me to write the article, there's a good fellow!"
"Isn't it queer how almost all American little boys are ashamed to do
nice things? But this little boy must do as he's bid," laughed Rob,
feeling, as she often did, as though this tall, unpractical, lovable
dreamer were actually a little child. "I'll tell you what we'll do:
You go out and sit on the steps, Patergrey, and I'll go tell Mardy
there are several tons of coal and some other things outside, and
send her out to see. And she'll find you there. And when she comes,
you'll hand her the check, and after she gets her breath we'll have a
jubilation. Run along, little Patergrey; we don't get hundred-dollar
checks often enough to take this one in a commonplace, every-day
way--we must make a celebration of it."
Without giving her father time for further demur, Roberta bundled
him out of the door, putting her hands on his shoulders and pushing
him before her like a particularly active motor-engine. Laughing and
breathless, she got him into the ancient wooden arm-chair which stood
on the tiny stoop, and ran away in triumph to fetch her mother.
"Mardy, Mardy," she cried, rapturously, "coal and other vitals are
here--just come out! Go look, and 'drive that shadow from thy brow!'"
"Rob, my dear, are you quite crazy?" cried Mrs. Grey.
"Only go see! This time it is not the patient you must examine for
her sanity, but the front stoop. Drop your duster and obey, Lady
Grey!" cried Rob, seizing her mother around the waist and waltzing her
irresistibly toward the door.
"Rob, you're a scamp," gasped Mrs. Grey--all that she had breath to
say--as she kissed Rob's glowing cheek, and yielded.
"Wait a minute, Wythie; don't go out there, Prue. Let Mardy see the
luck first alone, and then we'll all go, and make a time of it," cried
Rob, getting between the other girls and the door.
"What is it all about, Rob?" cried Wythie. "Is there really coal
there?" added Prue.
"The equivalent of much coal. Patergrey wrote an article--by request,
mind you--for a magazine, and they have sent him a check for a hundred
dollars," cried Rob. "I guess there are people outside of Fayre with
brains enough to appreciate our father!"
"Oh, how beautiful!" cried Oswyth, while Prue caught her breath in
delight. Then, as Mrs. Grey's voice reached them in a happy laugh, the
three made a stampede to join her outside.
"Did you ever know anything so splendumphant?" cried Rob, once more
catching her mother around the waist in one of her mad onslaughts.
"I'm so glad, Mardy! You've looked so troubled," said Oswyth, kissing
her mother with a tenderness so maternal that it almost seemed as
though their relation was reversed.
Prue beamed on them all impartially. "I think it is quite awful that
money can make people so happy and unhappy," she remarked.
"That is an opinion held by all philosophers--all _other_ philosophers,
Prudence," observed her father.
"Let's make a tucked-in for dinner," said Rob. "It's the only way I can
express my joy."
A "tucked-in" was Rob's name for a fruit-pudding, into which one tucked
whatever fruit might chance to be in season at its making.
"Blueberry!" cried Prue, enthusiastically. "I'll go back to the store
and get them--they had beauties this morning when I went for the mail."
"What a lovely day!" said Wythie, but, though she gazed afar over
the tree-tops as she spoke, they knew that she did not refer to the
weather, nor the fleckless sky above them.
"I feel as though an inexpressible weight had been lifted from my
shoulders; I'm very happy, dear," said Mrs. Grey. But though she laid
her hand on her husband's arm as she spoke, and looked at him, only
Rob, who loved him so protectingly, understood that over and above the
relief of having the means to provide necessities for her family, her
mother rejoiced that her husband, for whose sake her sensitive pride
was always up in arms, had aroused himself to give them to her.
Dinner was scarcely over when Prue, looking out of the window, called
to her sisters: "Here comes Battalion B." This was Rob's final
christening of the three Rutherfords, who rarely appeared separately.
The friendship between them and the girls had progressed sufficiently
for the Greys not to mind being caught by "Battalion B" in their
uniforms, and Rob leaned out of the window now to hail them with wild
wavings of a dish-towel.
"How are you, Grey ladies?" cried Basil, as they entered. "We have come
to demand of you an afternoon in the orchard, beneath whose spreading
appletrees the village chestnut wishes to paint Prue's portrait."
"My portrait?" cried Prue, starting up in a rapture.
"Who, may I ask, is the village chestnut?" inquired Wythie.
"Bartlemy Rutherford, whose talents as an artist are great, though
unrecognized," said Bruce.
"Does Bartlemy paint?" cried Wythie, surprised.
"And powders and tints his eyebrows," whispered Bruce behind his hand,
in a stage aside. "But he doesn't want it known."
"Can you really paint, Bart? And will you do my portrait?" asked Prue,
much impressed, for she had caught a sufficient glimpse of an easel and
paint-box outside to convince her there was something behind Basil's
opening statement besides a jest.
"Oh, well, I can paint some--I always liked to. I'd like to try to do
you, if you wouldn't mind, down in the orchard, under the trees, you
know," stammered Bartlemy, getting embarrassed.
"He doesn't do so badly," added Basil. "You'd be surprised. We've got
canvases at home representing our tutor's brow, Bruce's mouth, my nose,
quite marvellously. Of course, there are other features in each of
these portraits, but those are the ones faithfully limned, so we always
politely allude to the portraits by their successful points. In private
we call Bartlemy Fra Bartolomeo. You observe its suitability; he is
already Bartlemy; he is a brother--twice a brother--so the _fra_ part
is o. k., and he is a painter. We think it kind and complimentary to
call him Fra Bartolomeo."
"Oh, let up on your nonsense, Bas," growled Bartlemy, even his
long-suffering patience beginning to give way. "Will you let me try a
portrait of you, or won't you, Prue?"
"I'd be perfectly delighted," cried Prue. "Only you must wait for me to
put on a white dress and let my hair down."
"And wash your face, little Goldilocks," added Rob. "However beautiful
blueberry juice may be as a temporary decoration, I shouldn't like it
perpetuated in a portrait."
Prue ran away, not deigning to notice this piece of advice, and came
back as quickly as was consistent with the attainment of perfect
beauty, looking really lovely in her snowy muslin gown, and her big
brown eyes alight under her masses of sunny hair.
"I'm going to take my darning," announced Wythie.
"Oh, dear," sighed Rob. "If only you good people didn't shame others
into being good, too! I suppose I ought to take some work--I'll shell
the peas!" This was a heroic resolve, for Aunt Azraella, in an
unwonted fit of generosity, had sent the Greys half a bushel of peas
from her abundance, to be canned for winter use, and the shelling them
was a formidable undertaking.
Rob pulled out the big basket of peas, and Basil and Bruce, each
seizing a handle, bore it forth. Rob followed with her big pan; Prue,
in the glory of her spotless raiment and the importance of sitting for
her portrait, could not be expected to carry more than her own weight,
so Rob had to hang the basket intended for pods across her shoulders,
and walked immediately behind Basil and Bruce, beating wildly on her
pan.
Prue, holding up her skirts daintily, walked beside Bartlemy, with
his artist's paraphernalia, as Oswyth, with her pretty sweet-grass
work-basket, brought up the rear, as calm and fair as always.
Down to the orchard they went, and to Bartlemy, as the one it
concerned, was left the selection of place. Finally he placed Prue
to his satisfaction--and greatly to her own--in the fork of a
picturesquely shaped old appletree, and fell back to regard her in
approved artist fashion, head on one side, and with one eye closed.
Then he set up his easel, and the rest disposed of themselves on the
grass, regardless of creatures that crawled.
Basil and Bruce--as perhaps she had expected--volunteered to help Rob
in her task, and sitting opposite each other, placed the empty basket
between their knees, while Rob sat beside them, where she could reach
supplies, with the bright pan in her lap, into which the peas were soon
hailing under the swift work of thirty fingers.
Oswyth began to darn, sitting a little apart, but almost forgetting her
work in the interest of watching Bartlemy sketch in the outline of the
appletree and Prue's slender figure, with swift, sure strokes. Whatever
Bartlemy might prove as a colorist, he unmistakably could draw.
"_When the little busy B's
Turn their minds to shelling peas,_"
began Rob in a cheerful sing-song, but got no further, for Bruce
interrupted her, carrying on her stanza,
"_'Neath the leadership of Rob,
What's a half-bushel job?_"
he sang.
"You are such nice boys," cried Rob, approvingly. "Just as big geese as
we are ourselves."
"Bigger, physically, but mentally we yield to you," said Basil, with a
bow.
"Do you expect to be a painter, Bart?" asked Wythie. The sketch he was
making was really full of talent.
"I'd like to be; they say I can't tell what I want till I finish
college, but I think I know," said Bartlemy. "I want to go off to
Europe and live in galleries for a few years, and then try my own hand."
"I mean to teach school," said pretty Prue, looking as picturesquely
unlike such a career as was possible. "I'm the only one that is getting
a regular school training; Wythie and Rob did lessons at home, but I'm
to be properly educated. So I shall teach. Unless I sing," she added,
as an after-thought.
"Bruce has been a doctor, according to his own verdict, ever since he
could speak," said Basil.
"And Basil doesn't care what he does, provided it puts a pen between
his fingers, and encloses him in four walls lined with books," added
Bruce.
"I think I shall be a motorman," said Rob, gravely. "I get so deadly
tired sometimes of hearing no clang or rattle! There is a monotony
about my youth that will drive me to trolleys, or a Ferris wheel when I
grow up. I'd like to see things hum."
Now a seventh member of the party had been adding himself to it, unseen
of the others, and in easy approaches. This was a grey goat belonging
to the Greys for some years, whose intimacy with the family was fully
established, and whose manners were of the pleasantest. But whether he
regarded Bartlemy's easel as a personal affront, or whether he resented
his daring to paint the pretty youngest girl, to whom the goat belonged
in a particular manner, no one was ever sufficiently in his confidence
to say, but just as Rob announced her desire to see things hum, they
hummed, for the grey goat, kicking up his heels, charged head down,
full at artist and easel.
Neither was prepared. Bartlemy was stooping, brush in teeth, to look
for a palette-knife, and two of the easel's three legs rested on tufts
of grass. As the goat charged Bartlemy went head over heels down a
slope below him; the canvas flew up and lighted full on Oswyth's smooth
head; the easel fell with a clatter, and paints danced broadcast
over the grass. Prue screamed, and so did Oswyth, not recognizing
the assailant in the first confusion. Basil and Bruce fell prone on
their backs, one in each direction, like Max and Maurice in the old
pictures, perfectly convulsed with laughter, while Rob, after the
pause of a startled instant, fell on her face and nearly went into
hysterics.
The goat, seeing that he was, after all, in the midst of friends, and
seeming to fear that he might have estranged them, looked around on the
company with a vacuous and conciliatory expression, while Bartlemy,
sitting erect, and pulling his collar up and his belt down, returned
the goat's gaze with a horrible scowl that sent his brothers and the
girls off into fresh spasms of laughter.
"What is he?" demanded Bartlemy, and added, shaking his fist at the
goat: "You old sign of the zodiac, I wasn't interfering with you, was
I?"
"That's our--our nice--gentle--oh, dear me!--our nice, gentle, old Ben
Bolt," gasped Rob, sitting up and wiping her eyes.
"Gentle!" ejaculated Bartlemy.
"He's our little pet," said Rob. "Come here, Ben, dear. Why did you
go for to do it? Bowling over a harmless boy who was painting of your
missus!"
Ben Bolt meekly obeyed, and took the chance to seize a mouthful of
peas, as he gazed with his light-barred eyes at the wreck he had made.
"Can you hold him, Rob? Is he likely to go off again?" asked Bartlemy.
"Never," said Rob, confidently. "I think he may not like art."
"Probably suspects camel-hair brushes of being made of goat-hair,"
suggested Basil, pulling Bruce into shape, who was quite weak from
laughing. "Where did you get the little angel, Rob?"
"Why, when Prue was only eight years old she found some boys abusing
a little grey kid--probably she felt for him because she was a little
Grey kid herself. At any rate, she purchased him for all her wealth--a
quarter--and brought him home. He's been a good goat, and used to
drag Prue in her wagon until she outgrew it. We named him Ben Bolt
because he bolted everything in sight, but though I used to sing to
him, inquiring if he didn't 'remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,' it never
affected him visibly."
"Painting is over for to-day," announced Bartlemy. "My easel has a
fractured limb, and my palette is broken."
"Oh, can't you go on?" cried Prue, so mournfully that they all laughed.
"Not to-day. We'll try again--sans Ben Bolt--soon," said Bartlemy.
"It's such a pity; my dress is so clean," sighed Prue.
"She finds it a world of stains and pains," observed Rob. "Never mind,
Prue; you aren't losing your hair yet."
"Come on, kid; help with these peas, since you can't paint," said Basil.
"Meaning me, or the goat?" asked Bartlemy, accepting the invitation.
"Give Ben Bolt the pods, and let's sing to him; then he'll be ashamed
of himself," said Rob, who dearly loved the sextettes the Greys and
Battalion B carolled.
"Or ashamed of us," suggested Bruce, but obediently lifted up his voice
in song.
The peas were done much too soon, with so many shelling. Long before
the young people were tired the last pod had yielded its five plump
fellows to the green-filled pan, under the pressure of Wythie's thumb.
Shouldering their burdens the six returned to the house.
"It has been a dear day," said Wythie, as she and Rob stood for a
moment on the steps before closing the little grey house for the night.
"Beautiful!" assented Rob, promptly. "In spite of our trials and
drawbacks we do have some blithe days in the grey house."
CHAPTER SIX
ITS HARD DAYS
"Julius has abdicated, and Augustus reigns in his stead," remarked
Prue, as she tore off the leaf of her calendar, which marked the first
day of the eighth month. Prue was fond of making what she considered
neatly erudite allusions.
Matters had not been going well in the little grey house. Mrs. Grey
found herself looking forward to the winter with dread, a dread she
tried to stifle, for it was contrary to this brave woman's temperament
and principles to look apprehensively toward the future.
Mr. Grey was working feverishly on his bricquette machine, more than
ever absorbed in it; it seemed to his anxious wife as if he were
putting into it his own vitality, that it was consuming something far
more precious than its inventor had ever dreamed would feed it. But,
since she could not prevent the harm--if harm were being done--Mrs.
Grey strove to drive the thought of it from her, and bear her immediate
burden, which was not too light.
It was a humid, sultry day, and many trying household tasks loomed
ahead threateningly on the morning when Prue made her classic allusion
as she tore off her calendar-leaf. Oswyth looked pale and tired. She
was an expert little needle-woman and had been sewing hard through
the heat to make old as good as new--which it never was and never
will be--for Prue's return to school. Prue was very particular as to
her raiment; poor child, it was hard to be the prettiest girl, and at
the same time the poorest one, in the school. Wythie sympathetically
thought and wrought to make her gowns as pretty and becoming as
possible to offset their many reappearances, and the hardship of
wearing the clothes one's elders had outgrown. Even Rob, though she
scoffed at Prue's little vanities, in her heart was sorry for the child
who alone of the three was forced out among her contemporaries, and
could not hide her deficiencies within the friendly walls of the little
grey house.
Mrs. Grey had been waiting an opportunity to cover the two big
arm-chairs in the parlor. There was nothing that this energetic woman
could not do with her hands, and Rob said: "Give Mardy a package of
dyes, a paper of tacks, and a hammer, and you may look for anything,
from a wedding-gown to a coach-and-four."
A certain faded poplin gown, in many pieces, and an old silk with
brocaded stripes had long haunted Mrs. Grey as a hopeful source of new
chair-covers. All the previous afternoon she had spent dipping the
poplin into a big iron pot bubbling over the fire and bringing it up
on the end of her "witch stick," as the girls called it, dripping and
dark, to be hung out to dry.
Here appeared Mrs. Grey's generalship, for though the poplin had
turned out a fine, uniform green, the pieces were much too narrow for
upholstery. So she had cut out the brocade stripes from the old silk;
the ancient sewing-machine, which made such a dreadful clatter and
was one of the Greys' grievances, yet which was still capable of good
service, rattled and hummed under Mrs. Grey's feet, as she stitched the
brocade bands at regular intervals on the dyed poplin, covering its
many joinings. And behold, the result was a fine upholsterer's tapestry
of wool, with a silken stripe, and not a piecing to be seen!
"There's glory for you!" cried Rob. "Anyone would believe that we paid
any amount a yard for that beautiful stuff."
"Put up your sewing, Wythie, and you and Rob stretch it and hold it in
place for me while I tack," said Mrs. Grey. "I flatter myself these
chairs are going to radiate splendor over the entire room."
"Come, then, Mardy; we'll help it radiate," said Rob. "Mercy, how
dreadful it is to-day--worse than hot--so sticky and horrid! Cat days
are nicer than dog days, aren't they, Kiku-san? Now look at that
catlet!" she added. Kiku-san had sprung from the table to the top of
the door, on the narrow space of which he sat, head on one side, in
his usual bird-like attitude, his white fur all streaks of dust. He
was quite unable to get down as he had got up, and Rob said with a
sigh: "Oh, dear; this means going to fetch a kitchen-chair to take him
down! I wonder how many times a day we do this? And a grasshopper's
a burden to-day, not to mention a heavy wooden chair. I never saw
such a mischievous cat! And only look at him! Regular stained-glass
expression; doesn't look as if he ever thought of anything but Watts's
hymns! He does this just to keep us trotting, the demure villain!" And
Rob shook a forefinger at Kiku, who only tipped his head a little more
to one side, and puckered his mouth a little tighter, knowing perfectly
that he was about to be rescued.
Rob came back dragging the chair disconsolately on its rear legs,
and placing it under the doorway, mounted it, seized Kiku-san by his
forepaws, and pulled him down, giving him an admonitory and chastising
pat as she set him free.
"You've got to take the chair back, Prue; I'm going to help Mardy, and
I can't do all the fetching and carrying," said Rob, as she descended.
"Indeed, I won't," said Prue, promptly. "You feel as much like it as I
do."
Rob tossed her head and went toward the parlor without another word,
and Prue departed upstairs, leaving the object of dissension where it
stood. Wythie patiently picked it up and bore it away, and followed
Rob to the parlor, where she and her mother were already fitting the
beautiful new covering on the chair.
"It's splendid, Mardy; what a genius you are!" cried Wythie, dropping
on her knees at her side of the chair. For a while they pulled and cut,
and Mrs. Grey tacked in silence, except for the necessary directions.
No one felt quite cheerful, nor had superfluous energy to spend in
speech.
Just as one chair was nearly finished a shadow fell across its arm,
and Mrs. Grey and the girls looked up to see Aunt Azraella, who had
entered unheard, watching them with her sternest look of disapproval.
"Ah, good-morning, Azraella," said Mrs. Grey, noting this and trying to
speak brightly enough to avert its expression. "We are trying to forget
the heat in the interest of hard labor."
"So I see. Aren't you forgetting something besides the heat, Mary?"
said this inflexible lady.
"Why, no; are we?" asked Mrs. Grey, surprised into a hasty mental
inventory of possible duties unfulfilled or engagements broken.
"Aren't you forgetting that there are more necessary things than
chair-covers?" demanded Aunt Azraella. "Aren't you forgetting the state
of your finances, and that you can't afford the least extravagance? How
much did you pay a yard for that material?"
Rob, foreseeing this question, had been engaged in a hasty mental
estimate of the original cost of the poplin and the silk. "Dollar and
a quarter for the woollen stuff--one seventy-five, surely, for the
brocade, when Mardy married, just--it cost precisely three dollars a
yard, Aunt Azraella," she said aloud, before her mother could reply.
Mrs. Winslow held up her hands in horror, and Mrs. Grey said,
reproachfully: "Rob, how can you?"
"I've no doubt the child speaks the truth," said Aunt Azraella, quickly.
"Thanks, aunt; I do try to," said Rob. "Mardy, you know it must have
cost at least three dollars--both of it."
"And you don't think that disgraceful, as you are situated?" began
Mrs. Winslow, but her sister-in-law interrupted her. "Azraella," she
cried--it was indicative of Aunt Azraella's character that on the
hottest day, and under the stress of physical weariness, no one ever
thought of abbreviating her name--"Azraella, aren't you used to Rob's
pranks yet? This is my old grey poplin, dyed, and run together with the
stripes of a handsome brocade I had when I was married. This scamp of a
girl is giving you the original cost of both materials; I am very glad
it looks well enough to deceive even your keen eyes."
But Aunt Azraella was not to be diverted from expressing the wrath
which had been gathering on her brow since Mrs. Grey had begun
explaining.
"Roberta is distinctly a trial," she said, severely. "An unmannerly,
impertinent girl. She may consider it funny to give me such a
misleading answer, but I consider it most disrespectful."
"I was only trying to be cheerful, aunt," said Rob, her face crimson,
and struggling not only to speak quietly, but to speak at all. "I
didn't intend to deceive you, but only to--well, to have a little fun
before you found out the truth."
"I know perfectly that you always object to my interest in your
affairs, but I consider your good more important than your likings.
I shall always tell all of you--from your indolent father and your
indulgent mother down--precisely what I think. It is my duty to be
perfectly candid and truthful," said Mrs. Winslow with the air of a
martyr.
"Perfect candor is rather dangerous, Azraella," said Mrs. Grey, and
Rob saw that she was having as much difficulty in speaking calmly as
her inflammable self. "One should wait until it is sought, and then
not indulge in its full expression, especially when one's opinions are
offensive--such as an allusion to the head of a house as indolent,
for instance. Mr. Grey has been working so hard of late that I am
anxious about him. And you see that you judged rashly in pronouncing us
extravagant. We were rather priding ourselves on our clever thrift. It
is such a very humid, trying day, that it is not favorable to too great
zeal for others."
When her gentle sister-in-law spoke with a certain calm deliberation,
and a slight lowering of lids and lifting of eyebrows, Mrs. Winslow was
apt to read it as a danger-signal and retreat. At heart she stood in
awe of her better-bred, better-born sister-in-law, and dared not press
her too far. Aunt Azraella had a habit of seeking the little grey house
as a lecture-field when affairs in her larger house went wrong.
"Well, Mary," she now began more mildly, "you know who it was that
asked if he were his brother's keeper. I think it is our duty to exert
ourselves for our neighbors, especially for our misguided kindred, and
never to shrink from the utterance of a truth, however unwelcome. But
you hold yourself entirely aloof from the affairs of others, and I
suppose we shall never see the question alike. I want to tell you about
Elvira--she is such a trial! And in this case you must advise me."
"Very well," said Mrs. Grey, with a sigh, seeing that Rob's tears of
nervous wrath were falling, as she pretended to busy herself with the
lining under the chair-seat, and resigning herself to listen for the
unnumbered time to a recital of the wrong-doings of faithful Elvira,
Mrs. Winslow's long-suffering "help," in the old-fashioned sense. It
would all end as it always did; Elvira only failed in the small ways
incident to humanity, and Aunt Azraella was wholly dependent upon her.
For a long time Mrs. Winslow recounted her woes, while Mrs. Grey and
Wythie and Rob pulled and tacked. How Elvira had insisted on placing
the glasses on the second shelf of the cupboard when Mrs. Winslow
had always kept them on the third; how she had resolutely clung
to a cheesecloth duster where her mistress preferred silk, and a
cloth-covered broom for cornices, where Mrs. Winslow, and her mother
before her, had used a feather-duster, etc., etc., through the whole
long list of pettiness which meant only that the August day was sultry
and Aunt Azraella out of sorts.
At last she paused, and Mrs. Grey saw that she had talked herself into
a better frame of mind, her troubles remedied in their recital. "I
wonder what would become of poor Elvira if Mrs. Winslow hadn't the
little grey house as a safety-valve?" thought Mrs. Grey, but what she
said aloud was what she always said under these circumstances: "After
all, Elvira is a good, devoted creature, Azraella."
"Yes; I suppose I can't do better in Fayre than to keep her," said Aunt
Azraella, responding in the set form to this liturgical remark. "I must
go back, or she will have a chicken broiled for my supper. I told her I
didn't want it, but she always does something of that sort when I have
been annoyed. Send Prue up for some blackberries to-morrow, Mary. I
have enough to let you have some for jam--possibly for cordial, too."
"Thank you; good-by, Azraella," said Mrs. Grey, and Rob arose to say
good-by a trifle grimly, as Wythie escorted their relative to the door.
"Oh, dear," said Wythie, coming back and sitting flat on the floor
beside the chair, now nearly done, in an attitude eloquent of
exhaustion, if not despair. "I really think, Mardy, if we could
emigrate, we ought to; it's enough to turn a saint into a tiger to have
such visits so often."
"They used to turn saints into tigers in the Colosseum very frequently
in the early Christian era," said Rob, whose spirits always rose a few
points when Wythie's went down.
"I think I'll leave the gimp till another day," said Mrs. Grey,
straightening herself with difficulty, and drawing a long breath as she
put her hand to her aching back. "As to emigrating, Wythie, you will
have to emigrate to heaven to escape annoyances. We have often agreed,
you know, that Aunt Azraella is not wholly a trial; we shall enjoy
her blackberries, for instance. I wish Rob could remember that she is
utterly devoid of a sense of humor, and that people of that unfortunate
sort usually resent nonsense as a personal affront. Mercy! What's that?"
A crash of crockery and a scream echoed through the quiet house,
bringing its master to his door to inquire what was wrong, and sending
Rob upstairs in a rush, ejaculating but the one word: "Prue!"
Mrs. Grey and Wythie followed as fast as they could, and a mournful
sight met their eyes. In the middle of Wythie and Rob's room stood
Prue, dripping, and on the floor, in an absolutely unmendable wreck,
lay the water-pitcher, with an ugly scar on the front of the
wash-stand to mark the course of its fall, while the matting was soaked
in water.
"Quick! It will go through to the dining-room ceiling," cried Rob,
snatching a towel and dropping on her knees to mop as though her life
depended upon it, an example Wythie instantly followed.
"What were you doing, Prudence?" asked her mother.
Prue's tears were fast adding themselves to the general dampness. "Kiku
was so black I thought I'd wash him," she sighed. "He struggled, and I
really don't know what happened, but I knocked the pitcher off with my
elbow, and--well, you see!"
"Rather!" said Rob, from her humble attitude. "Feel, too. My dress is
getting as wet as the towel. There's one comfort: between them the
dining-room ceiling will be safe; but oh, I did love that toilet-set!"
"And so did I," said Mrs. Grey, sadly, as she picked up one of the
largest fragments and regarded it mournfully. "I bought it when I was
married. I remember how proud I was of my new dignity when I made the
purchase. Ah, well, Prue; accidents must befall; but I can't help
wishing that you had left Kiku to his dusty little self."
"So do I, Mardy," said Prue.
"And now Wythie and I have no pitcher," observed Rob, too tired and
warm to find forgiveness easy.
"You needn't complain if Mardy doesn't," said Prue, sharply.
"Go change your dress, Prue; no one has complained nor blamed you,"
said her mother.
Prue retreated with bad grace, but in a moment called pleasantly from
her room: "Here comes Mr. Flinders, Mardy. He looks glummer than usual."
"Go down, one of you girls; I'm really too tired to encounter him now,"
said Mrs. Grey, wearily. She had had many sore experiences of the
farmer who carried on their garden on shares, and who was always ready
to cut down their share to the minimum.
Rob arose with a sigh. There was a tacit understanding that in any
matter of business it should be she, and not Wythie, who came to the
front.
"Something has failed," she said, laconically, speaking from past
experience and the pessimism of a humid, tiresome day.
"Good day, Roberta," said Mr. Flinders, when Rob appeared at the door.
"I'm afraid I've got to say what you won't want to hear."
"Very likely, Mr. Flinders," said Rob, drearily. "I am so tired
to-night there are few things I should want to hear."
"Well, the pertaters is doing bad--your pertaters," said Mr. Flinders.
"I thought mebbe you'd want to know in time to engage some."
"Are they spoiled?" asked Roberta, aghast, for the failure of that
particular crop meant serious misfortune for the winter.
"Well, what with dry-rot and bugs, I guess you're not goin' to git
many," said Mr. Flinders. "I thought mebbe you'd want to know," he
ended, breaking down under the sternness of Roberta's dark eyes.
"Did the bugs and dry-rot attack only our potatoes?" she demanded.
"It's kinder diffused, so to say," admitted the farmer, "but I guess
it's fair to subtract the loss from yours mostly, because I've got to
be made good for my trouble."
This was Farmer Flinders's invariable response, and Rob flashed fire.
"Mr. Flinders," she said, "you can't share only profits--you've got to
share losses, too. We're getting tired of it. We'll send for someone
to look over the garden, and decide the question of the proportion of
loss on the spoiled crop, and we will settle exactly on the basis of
one-third loss for us and two-thirds for you, just as we share profits."
"I wasn't aware, Roberta, you was runnin' the place. If you're
managin', I'd like to be notified," said Farmer Flinders, rigid with
offence.
"I'm the business one of the family," said poor Rob, with sudden
inspiration, "and it will be as I say. I represent the Greys. We
shall not accept less than our third of the good vegetables, and that
notification will be all you need, Mr. Flinders."
She had never encountered the old fellow before, and she felt that
he recognized and objected to the fact that here was youthful fire
and determination to deal with, unlike her mother's gentleness or her
father's easy methods.
"I'll see your father later," said the farmer, turning away ill at
ease. "Good-day, Roberta."
"Good-day," said Rob, briefly, and retraced her steps heavily upstairs.
She found Wythie lying across the foot of their bed, and threw herself
on her face beside her.
"What luck?" asked Oswyth, sleepily.
Rob punched and poked a pillow into shape, and looked morosely out of
the window at the thunder-clouds piling up in the west, the result of
the hot, sultry day.
"Oh, I barked at him. I think I shall have to see him in future; I
believe I have more effect than mild Mardy and patient Patergrey,"
Rob said. "But, oh, I'm tired--tired of being vivacious and snappy
and go-ahead. I'm tired, dead tired, of fighting, Oswyth. I'd like to
lie down and be taken care of, like a little ewe lamb. There are two
Robs in me; one is sneakingly cowardly, and wants only to curl up in
a hole and hide; and the other says: 'S't, boy! sic 'em, Rob!' And
I'm up and at it again--at fate, and hard times, and Aunt Azraella,
and house-work, and Mr. Flinders, and all those horrors. And then
the tired, meek Rob tears around obediently, and no one dreams it's
all like thumb-screws and rack to her. I'm tired of my rôle of
snapping-turtle, Wythie."
"Poor Rob!" said Oswyth, gently running her fingers in and out of Rob's
beautiful, gleaming rings of hair, and stroking the mobile face, now
twisting hard in its effort to laugh when the tears were very near
falling.
"Don't mind me," said Rob, succeeding in forcing a feeble laugh. "I'm
tired, and it's been a fearfully humid, trying, tiresome, crooked day.
Besides, we're going to have a thunder-storm, and electricity always
makes me sick. Don't mind me."
CHAPTER SEVEN
ITS MENACE
Miss Charlotte Grey was spending the day with her cousins. Two of
August's weeks had slipped away, and the air was fresh and pleasant. It
seemed to the Grey girls as if it were always refreshing weather when
"Cousin Peace" came.
All unpleasant tasks were laid aside; the blinds in the cosey upstairs
sitting-room were closed, with the slats turned to admit the breeze
and the droning sound of the bees humming in the old garden. This
old garden was left to its own sweet will, and by August it was
a thoroughly sweet will; its varied-shaped beds were lush with a
profusion of honey-laden blossoms, whose fragrance permeated everywhere.
Every taint of annoyance seemed banished from the little grey house
when Cousin Peace came to spend the day. Mrs. Grey was hemming
delicately cool linen to be divided into family collars, and
feather-stitched. Wythie was putting new sleeves into Prue's cherished
white gown, Roberta was making fresh, clean-looking, green-and-white
gingham into an apron, and Prue was shelling peas, the juicy sweetness
of their pods adding to the pleasant summer smells around them. Miss
Charlotte was knitting--she was usually knitting--little fleecy white
things to wrap babies in, and bright mittens for little hands.
"I have a new magazine here which Mrs. Silsby sent down yesterday by
Frances, Charlotte," said Mrs. Grey, "but I thought we would keep it
for those lazy hours after dinner, then one of the girls must read to
us."
"That sounds attractive," said Cousin Peace. "Will Sylvester join us?"
"Oh, Charlotte, no," cried Mrs. Grey. "Sylvester is absolutely
swallowed up in his invention; he has no eyes, nor ears, nor thoughts
to spare from it. Rob is the only one who sees him lately, and that
is because she helps him. He expects to finish the machine in a few
months, but in the meantime he is so concentrated on it, and seems so
excited that I can only long for its completion, and his relief from
this strain, whatever the result of the work may be."
"I thought the last time I saw him that he was not looking well," said
Miss Charlotte.
The girls were accustomed to her speaking as though she saw the people
and things around her; to her delicately keen perceptions there was
really little difference between blindness and sight.
"I am anxious," said Mrs. Grey. "Dear Charlotte, only suppose he were
to be really ill!"
"We won't suppose it," said Cousin Peace, cheerily.
Mrs. Grey shook her head. "Come to the commissary department, Adjutant
Wythie," she said, with a pathetic smile. "We mustn't forget that
Cousin Peace, as well as more turbulent people, must be fed." Wythie
followed her mother, and Prue, hastily emptying her last pods, ran
after them, the peas dancing up to the edge of the pan as she ran.
"Cousin Peace, I'm glad to get you to myself for a few minutes; you
know everything, you have ideas in your finger-tips," said Rob, laying
her bright head on Miss Charlotte's knee. "What shall I do to earn
money? I'm only sixteen, and untrained. I've read--thank goodness,
Patergrey and Mardy took care to give me the best books and a liking
for them, and I really do know lots of things other girls don't know,
but they know lots of things I don't--schoolbook things, you see. Now,
what is there that sort of a young person could do to make her fortune
and her family's?"
Miss Charlotte shook her head. "You ought to have special training in
something, and, above all, you ought to be older before you begin,
Rob dear," she said. "Is there any new reason for haste, any fresh
pressure?"
"There may be. Mardy heard that some of her investments might pay less
this winter, and you know how she has to struggle at best to keep us
warmed and clad and fed," said Rob. "I must help her. If I don't find a
way some day to make up to that brave, dear, blessed soul for all her
hard times, then I'm not the girl I hope I am. It makes me just wild to
be useless! I'll get luxury for her old age if I have to go about with
a hand-organ and a monkey! And if I can't grind the organ, I'll be the
monkey," added Rob, turning her face up to laugh in Miss Charlotte's
face, with one of her sudden flashes of fun.
Miss Charlotte bent to kiss Rob, her favorite--if she had one--among
the three young cousins of whom she was very fond.
"You might not get her positive luxury by that desperate measure,
dearie," she said. "But you are far from useless. I can no more
imagine the little grey house without you than without its foundations.
Don't be anxious nor impatient, Robin; you'll find your place when the
time comes, and, in the meantime, you don't realize what a sunny bit of
courage you are, nor how these Grey people lean on you. I have a strong
foreboding, Roberta, that you are going to have your young hands filled
very soon, and your work cut out for you--it may be a work that will
demand all your strength."
Roberta sat erect, startled. Wythie and she had always felt that Cousin
Peace had a gift of foreknowledge almost like second sight; she was so
keenly alive to her atmosphere that she felt its changes to a degree
that had to blunter folk the effect of prophecy. Something kept Rob now
from asking her cousin's meaning. She straightened her young shoulders,
and said, instead: "I hope when the time comes I shall not fail them."
And Miss Charlotte, understanding that by "them" she meant her family,
said, with entire conviction: "I am certain, my dear, that you never
will."
After dinner "Battalion B" came whistling down the road, and stepped,
one after the other, over the gate of the little grey house. They
had come to get the girls to go rowing with them, but finding Miss
Charlotte there they gave up the plan very willingly, for the tall
Rutherford boys had long since succumbed to the charm of the sweet
blind woman.
"Prue, run up and get the magazine I left in the sitting-room," said
Mrs. Grey.
"We'll make Basil and Bruce read aloud," cried Rob. "They're too big to
be idle, and far too big to be generally useful."
Prue, obediently, left the room. As she reached the hall she heard a
groan from her father's room, and heard him gasp: "Mary, Rob--oh, come!"
She rushed back to the dining-room, where Cousin Peace sat serenely in
the breezy window, while Wythie and Rob put away the dinner dishes,
and the Rutherfords were tormenting them. How beautiful it looked, how
peaceful, to the frightened girl standing speechless in the doorway,
with that hoarse moan of pain echoing in her ears, unheard by the
others! Wythie looked up and saw Prue's face. The saucer she held fell
to the floor in fragments. "Prue--what?" she gasped.
Everyone sprang up, and Mrs. Grey seized Prue's arm, in mute appeal.
"Papa's sick or hurt; he's groaning and trying to call," Prue managed
to say.
Miss Charlotte, Wythie, Rob, and the boys pushed Prue aside, starting
for the room across the hall, but Mrs. Grey's love outstripped them.
She it was who first reached her husband's side, and knelt in terror
beside his arm-chair, where he half sat, half lay, his face ashen,
his breath short. His right hand pressed his chest, the left arm hung
at his side, the pulse in the wrist hardly perceptible to his wife's
fingers.
"What is it, dear? Can you tell me?" asked Mrs. Grey. Wythie and Miss
Charlotte were bathing his temples, while Rob, on her knees at the
other side of his chair, had loosened his collar.
For answer Mr. Grey pressed his hand closer to his breast, moving it
slightly, but his lips barely moved.
"Bartlemy, run, run for the doctor!" cried Mrs. Grey. "Stay, Basil and
Bruce--I may need you."
"Is it death, Mardy?" whispered Rob, feeling the cold of her father's
body through his clothing.
"I don't know, Rob," Mrs. Grey's white lips answered, with an effort;
in her heart she thought it was.
"If there were only something to do!" moaned Oswyth, feeling her
helplessness unbearable.
It seemed to them all that an eternity had passed since they had
entered that room--in reality it was scarcely two minutes. Suddenly Mr.
Grey's limbs relaxed, he moved, closed his eyes, and as his wife held
to his lips the water Prue handed her, said: "The pain has gone; I can
breathe."
"Here's the doctor," cried Prue, and a long sigh of relief went around
the tense room. "He has driven over without a hat, and brought Bart
with him."
Dr. Fairbairn entered, bringing with him the feeling that now all must
be right, which always attended that great man. A great man he was,
since he easily footed up his seventy-four inches of height, huge in
proportion, and with a heart and brain big out of proportion even to
his immense bulk. He was one of those men without worldly ambition, yet
afire with zeal, who are sometimes found ennobling the profession in
small communities. Past sixty, Dr. Fairbairn had seen Sylvester Grey
born, and still regarded the girls as his babies. Now he entered the
troubled group, kindly, sympathetic, business-like, strong to comfort
and to save.
"What are you up to, now, Sylvester man?" he said, walking straight to
his patient with a brief nod for the others.
"I don't know, doctor; it's all over now, anyway; I'm sorry they
bothered you," said Mr. Grey.
"Don't be foolish, boy," said Dr. Fairbairn. "How were you taken?"
"Fearful pain just over the heart, in the chest, and all down the left
arm. Then I felt suffocating, and the agony got unbearable; I really
thought I was dying." And Mr. Grey gave a little apologetic laugh.
"Yes. Been working hard, thinking hard?" asked the doctor.
"The machine is almost done, doc. I have to work hard, and it takes all
my thought. You can't realize--it means comfort, luxury maybe, for Mary
and the children," said Mr. Grey, speaking rapidly and pulling himself
erect.
"I didn't ask you all that. I see: concentration, nervous excitement,
close application," muttered Dr. Fairbairn. "Go over there and lie down
and let me hear your heart through this thing." The doctor led Mr. Grey
to his lounge, and placed his stethoscope to his chest.
In a few moments he wound the tubes together and pocketed it again.
"Now, look here, Sylvester Grey, is there any use in my giving you
orders, or are you going to do precisely as you please anyway?" he said.
"I'll mind you if I can, doctor, but you know my health is nothing in
comparison to what I have in hand. After a few months I'll take as good
care of myself as you like," said poor Mr. Grey.
"That shows the uselessness of injunctions," said the doctor. "But
now is the time to take care, not later. Avoid over-exertion and
excitement; work moderately, don't over-do, and work calmly, then you
may stave off similar attacks."
"And if I don't do this?" suggested his patient.
"You are certain to suffer this way again," said Dr. Fairbairn.
"Is there danger?" asked Mr. Grey.
"There is grave danger; it is your duty to avoid it," said the doctor.
Mr. Grey turned his face to the wall. "It is my duty to finish the
machine and provide for my family," he murmured. "My life would be well
spent if it purchased them peace."
"There is little peace to be had in the loss of the one we love best,
Sylvester," said Miss Charlotte, who alone had caught his words,
seating herself on the couch and beginning to stroke the weary head of
him who had been her favorite playmate.
Mrs. Grey and her daughters, who had stood silently, breathlessly,
listening to this conversation, now followed the doctor to the door.
"Tell me, Dr. Fairbairn," said Mrs. Grey.
"Angina pectoris, Mary, my dear, if that sheds any light on your
darkness," said the big man, smiling down upon her, and, as she shook
her head, he added: "It is an affection of the heart often found where
there is no organic disease. It is dangerous in repeated attacks, and
is not infrequently quickly fatal." Dr. Fairbairn did not approve of
professional deception unless it was necessary.
"And so Sylvester is in danger?" Mrs. Grey almost whispered.
"Yes, Mary; over-work, over-excitement increases his danger," replied
the doctor. "But no one can tell more than that. We are all in danger;
we know of his--that's the main difference. Try to make him go more
slowly."
"Thank you, Dr. Fairbairn," said Mrs. Grey.
"Now, don't begin bearing a sorrow that has not come," said the doctor.
"That was never your way. I'll send you the remedies you must use
another time. Be of good courage, Mary; but there's no need of telling
you that, you plucky little heroine." And with a tight clasp of the
hand Mrs. Grey mutely held out to him, and a pat on each girl's white
cheek, the big doctor was gone.
Mrs. Grey closed the door behind him and held out her arms. Her
three children sprang into them, and the mother held them close in a
convulsive embrace.
"We'll take care of him, Mardy," whispered Rob, with something
clutching her throat.
Mrs. Grey pushed open the dining-room door and drew the girls after
her into the room where the Rutherford boys had retreated to await the
verdict. Mrs. Grey sank into the chair nearest her and laid her head on
her arms above the table with a girlish movement of abandonment. Basil,
grave and kindly, bent over her and put his arm across her shoulder as
if to ward off grief. Bruce stroked the fine brown hair of the bowed
head with awkward gentleness, and Bartlemy hovered helplessly in the
background, making no secret of the tears on his brown cheeks.
The girls knelt beside her, Prue's head in her mother's lap. "Don't,
Mardy darling," said Wythie at last; it seemed so horribly unnatural
for their brave mother to break down.
"See, Bruce, what you must do if you become a doctor," said Mrs. Grey,
raising her head and trying to speak cheerfully. "You will have to
tell people alarming truths, and go away knowing you have left behind
you stricken hearts, for which you have just changed the whole face of
creation."
"I would rather remember the comfort I may be able to bring," said
Bruce. "Is it so bad?"
"Unless Mr. Grey will give himself the care which we are sure he will
not feel that he can afford to give, he is in mortal danger; he is
almost certain to have more of these attacks--angina pectoris, it
is--and they are--are likely--Oh, my dears, just be patient with me a
few moments! I will be brave later, but I must be a coward for a few
moments, please dears!" And once more the head bent under its burden
upon the folded arms.
Miss Charlotte came into the room, calm and smiling, and went directly
to Mrs. Grey. Taking her hand in one of hers, and running the fingers
of her other hand through Prue's golden hair, she said, brightly:
"Mary, dear, Sylvester is sleeping beautifully; he will waken
refreshed. I know precisely what the doctor told you; I have seen
angina pectoris before, and I recognized it. But we are not going to be
cast down--only very careful. Dearest children, you are so frightened,
aren't you? Remember, you must cheer your mother. Wythie and Rob, go
make us your very best coffee. And Prudy-girl, dry your eyes, and cut
us bread very thin, and butter it. And perhaps 'Battalion B' won't
mind helping the girls with the fire--I'm sure it's nearly out. Now,
Mary," she added, as the young people disappeared, and Mrs. Grey rose
and threw herself on her cousin's breast, "courage, dear! Only your old
courage re-enforced. There is danger, but we are going to be confident
of escape. Go bathe your dear face, and then come back for your coffee,
and when Sylvester wakens he will find the cheery Mary Winslow, who has
tided him over so many hard spots. I think I hear Kiku mewing; perhaps
we shut him in the sitting-room. Will you see when you go up?"
"Charlotte, Charlotte," cried Mrs. Grey, holding the blind woman fast
for a moment before she obeyed. "In all the world there never was
another such a comforting, sustaining, heaven-sent creature as you
are!"
Miss Charlotte listened to her cousin's footfall on the stairs with a
tender smile of satisfaction; she well knew the value of homely tasks
in a dark hour, and that their resumption made tragedy seem impossible.
But left to herself Cousin Peace's smile faded; she dropped wearily
into the chair Mrs. Grey had vacated, and, leaning her head on her
hand, allowed the tears to gather and drop into her lap. The hope that
she must maintain in others it was hard for her to feel. Her cousin was
so frail, his life so far removed from the lives and interests of other
men that it was easy to imagine it ended. He was certain to continue
to work with the same feverish, excited eagerness until his patent was
completed, and the doctor had said----
"Here is the bread, Cousin Peace, and the coffee is nearly ready," said
Prue, entering, much more cheerful than she had gone out.
Miss Charlotte started up, with her own bright smile. "And I, for one,
am quite ready to drink it!" she cried.
Mrs. Grey came back, smiling also, Kiku on her shoulder. "He was shut
up, Peaceful, dear," she said, "and complaining bitterly of being
forgotten through dinner-time."
Rob brought in the steaming coffee-pot, followed by a procession of
three tall boys, each carrying something, ending with Wythie bearing
the cream.
Mr. Grey pushed open the door just wide enough to admit his head. "Do I
smell coffee?" he cried. "And would you have defrauded me?"
"You are to have hot milk, Sylvester," said Miss Charlotte.
"Oh, how do you feel, Patergrey?" cried Rob, springing to his side.
"I'll have nothing of the sort; I'll have a cup of this fragrant brew,"
declared Mr. Grey. "I feel all right, Rob, my son, only a trifle lame.
I am sure the doctor exaggerated the case, though I confess I wouldn't
have thought anything an exaggeration of it while it lasted. This bread
and butter tastes uncommonly good! Rob, my son, can I borrow you after
this repast is over? I need your help on a special bit of work for an
hour."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Grey!" protested Bruce Rutherford, involuntarily.
"'Vester, I implore of you, not to-night!" cried his wife, in such
distress that, as the girls added their voices to the chorus of
frightened protest, Mr. Grey looked from one to the other, and visibly
weakened. But Miss Charlotte clinched matters.
"You have no moral right to disregard Dr. Fairbairn, and the warning
you have had, Sylvester Grey," she cried. "Besides, you are to take me
home, and I am going to keep you to tea. I want to see you quite alone,
but Wythie and Rob shall come for you, and bring you home in triumph."
"Well, one man against so many of the earth's rulers," Mr. Grey began.
"Boys, won't you stand by me?"
"No, sir; not if you want to work to-day," said Basil; while Bruce
added: "I'm beginning to think they rule the earth because they're
better fit to do so. No, sir; we're on their side."
"You're beginning to cater to their love of flattery, you young
humbug," said Mr. Grey. "Well, if I must yield, I might as well yield
gracefully."
And later Miss Charlotte bore him away, leaving more hope behind her in
the little grey house than had seemed possible three hours earlier.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ITS MAKESHIFTS
As day followed day, with no return of the cause of their anxiety, the
Greys began to breathe more freely. If Mrs. Grey felt less confident
than the children, she hid her fears, and the girls rejoiced with the
buoyancy of youth in their rescue from the great sorrow threatening
them.
The autumnal equinox had passed, Prue had resumed school, and beautiful
brooding days of golden sunshine, with their lengthening evenings,
and the first touch of the cosey, shut-in feeling winter brings were
resting over Fayre. Rob's brow did not match the brooding peace of
nature. Over and over, with growing desperation, she said to herself:
"I must earn money, I _must_ earn money, but how?" Mr. Grey had thrown
caution to the four winds--if he could have been said to have any to
throw--and was working madly on his invention by day, and dreaming of
it by night. Rob was in constant requisition to help him; she shared
her father's excitement, and began to believe, with renewed faith, that
they were on the eve of entering the land flowing with milk and honey.
But the eve was dark and long, pointing, of course, proverbially to the
nearness of dawn, but hard to live through.
The disaster the Greys had feared had befallen them; there was a
temporary reduction in their income--so slender at best--owing to
something going wrong with a railroad, in the queer, and, to feminine
minds, mysterious ways investments have of behaving. It would be
righted again one day, but in the meantime the reduction took the
practical form of cutting down the simple family rations, leaving
nothing for anything beyond necessities, very literally construed,
and putting the Greys on a basis that really was, as Prue said,
discontentedly: "Poor folksy." And Wythie and Rob did need winter coats
so sadly! Their old ones were so shabby that Rob said she "was colder
with it on than without it, for its whitened seams and many worn spots
gave her chills."
"I give you fair warning, Wythie, I'm going to commit a felony," said
poor Rob, coming home from a walk and trying to laugh as she tossed
her hat on the old "nurse," as they called the shabby but comfortable
couch which had cuddled them all as babies. "I feel a felony coming on,
and it's as drawing as a felon."
"What form is it going to take, Rob?" asked Wythie.
"Stealing," said Prue, promptly. "I know I wanted to break in Roger's
window to-day and take the chocolate eclairs he had put there--they
looked perfect dreams, and were as fresh! Or else you want to fib," she
added, thoughtfully. "No, though; you're not tempted as I am. It is
simply awful when the girls ask you why you don't do this, or why you
don't get that. What am I going to tell them?"
"The truth, that you can't afford it," said Rob, stoutly. "You might
as well, for everybody in Fayre knows everybody else's affairs just
a little better than they do themselves, so everybody knows we're
poor--poor as pudding-stone rock. But there's one comfort; they all
know, too, we're not every-day, pasture pudding-stone, but real old
Plymouth Rockers, so mere money doesn't matter much--except to us.
I don't suppose--since Mardy isn't here--there's any use in our
pretending we don't mind the present pinching state of our finances."
"Our history lesson yesterday was on the way Alexander Hamilton
made banks and money out of nothing but his country's debts, almost
before it was a country; I wish I knew how he did it," observed Prue,
pensively.
"You haven't told us what form you felt your felony would take, Rob,"
said Oswyth. "Where does your moral felon hurt you?"
"I feel twinges all over, my dear Anglo-Saxon messenger," said Rob,
airily. "In my feet when I look at my shoes, in my fingers when I put
on my old gloves, or, worse yet, mittens instead of gloves, such as
most fair maidens wear, and in my stomach when I try to make it believe
an egg, some creamed potatoes, and a rice-pudding are porterhouse
steak. But it's reaching a climax on my back. I must have a winter
coat, and so must--a muster must--you, my patient Wythie. To-day when
I came past the rectory--St. Chad's rectory--the lady rectoress had
hung out her three daughters' three new winter coats, fur-trimmed, O my
sisters, and beautiful to behold! I am going to break and enter that
house in the dark of the moon, and steal those coats."
"I hope if you're caught your punishment will be banishment from
Fayre, or I don't see what good your felony will do you--you can never
wear the coats," laughed Wythie, and then she sighed. "It's hard,
Robsy, but bear up, my boy! You believe this is our last hard winter."
Rob shrugged her shoulders. "Of course, but it's also the only one
we're living through this year, and next year's dinners aren't
sustaining--or, at least, you can't help weak moments if you live on
them," she said. "Here comes our Aunt Azraella. She is stopping in the
back yard to examine those two underskirts you sewed that lace on,
Wythie. She is estimating its cost and disapproving of it at a high
rate of pressure. I wish she would come around the front way, even if
it is farther! What with the bleaching grass, the clothes-line, and the
pantry window, the back way is dangerous to a critic born."
"Rob, you're a villain!" said Wythie, trying to pull her lips straight.
"You've time for a little laugh, Oswyth; she's delaying now at the
blind I mended--neat job, Mrs. Winslow, ma'am, though I say it who
shouldn't," remarked Rob. "As to being a villain, it's lucky I am, for
unless a body's a saint like you--and you may have noticed I'm not--
Aunt Azraella might embitter one unless she were handled with a lightly
humorous touch. Eyes right! Shoulder arms! She comes, the Greek--a
freak?--she comes!"
Wythie and Prue looked flushed and shaken as their aunt entered, but
Rob met her with the solemnity of a Holbein portrait, or as nearly as
nature had allowed her rippling face to attain that standard.
"Good-morning, girls," said Mrs. Winslow. "I hardly have time to sit.
Where's your mother? It doesn't matter; don't call her. I came on an
errand."
"She's decided to waive the skirts; think how much nicer they'll look
with that lace on them when they're waved," whispered Rob to Wythie,
who choked as she gave her sister a remonstrant pinch.
"What I wanted was to borrow one of you girls to help me take down
the old parlor curtains and put up my new ones," said Aunt Azraella.
"Elvira has a bad knee, besides, she's busy, and I sent Aaron away on
an errand. Oswyth, will you come?"
"I will go if you like, but Rob is better at such work," began Wythie.
"I have to help Patergrey," "I would rather have you," said Rob and
her aunt, speaking together.
"Auntie and I are mutually agreeable to your going, Wythikins," said
Rob, smiling gaily into her aunt's face.
"I'll go," said Wythie, rising hastily; she was always nervously afraid
of what might happen when Rob and their aunt collided. "Do you want me
now?"
"Certainly; it gets dark too early to lose a minute," said Mrs.
Winslow. "Get your hat and jacket and come right along."
Oswyth obeyed. It was a pretty walk up the hill to Mrs. Winslow's from
the little grey house, but Oswyth did not enjoy it, for her aunt seized
the opportunity to question her as to the Greys' domestic affairs,
"because," she said, "Mary was so shut-mouthed," and to point out to
the young girl how straight they were headed for destruction. The girls
did not visit more frequently than duty demanded the hill-house which
would have been so pleasant to them if their uncle had not left it too
early for them to have known him. Oswyth entered it now with the chill
it invariably gave her.
Every chair sat prim and straight in its own place against the wall; it
made one shudder to imagine what would have been the consequences if
in the night they had taken to playing "Going to Jerusalem" with one
another.
The light was carefully excluded, and, warm and soft although the air
was out of doors, the house held a deadly chill in its atmosphere.
Books--proper compilations, selections, and poems--lay in austere
firmness, each on its own spot on the bleak plateau of the
marble-topped centre-table. A clock that had not made a new record of
time in sixty-one thousand three hundred and twenty hours, pointed
stoically to ten minutes to five from its position precisely in the
middle of the parlor mantelpiece, flanked on either hand by a grimly
resolute bronze warrior.
On the chair nearest the door lay the new curtains, dark blue, heavy
material, folded neatly and piled on one another. The old ones, which
had been pretty, green-corded silk, hung in their places at the
six windows; even in the dim light they had abandoned all hope of
concealing the fact that they were badly faded, and displayed their
yellow streaks with hopeless candor.
At the sight of them an inspiration came to Wythie which nearly took
her breath away. What was Aunt Azraella going to do with those old
curtains?
Aunt Azraella laid aside her lingering sun-hat with a manner--for
her--actually sprightly. "I'll get the steps, Oswyth, and you might
be shaking the new curtains out of their folds and putting the pins
in," she said. "You'll find new pins in that box on top of the pink
china vase. Turn the curtains down to the depth of this card across
the tops--all but two pairs. They have to be turned slanting, because
they go at the end windows, where the floor has settled. But there! You
can't do much while I'm getting the steps." And Aunt Azraella stepped
away with a certain crisp decision which was her way of hurrying--Aunt
Azraella never flustered.
Oswyth obediently shook out the curtains, and had laid the new
upholsterer's pins on the table, separating them into detached rows,
like so many brass grasshoppers, by the time her aunt returned with the
step-ladder hung gracefully on one arm, the other slightly extended for
balance. Before her walked Tobias, the tiger cat, so called because
of his fishing proclivities, and who, so far from being spoiled like
Kiku-san, was staid and serious, relegated to the kitchen and Elvira's
society, and only suffered in the parlor under special conditions and
surveillance, like the present.
"I'll take the old ones down, aunt; I can run up and down the steps
more easily than you," said Wythie, taking the step-ladder from her
aunt, and testing its iron brace as she set it before the first window.
Mrs. Winslow began to stick pins into the obdurate new material,
marking the amount to be turned down by keeping the card she had
notched against it with her left thumb, holding the while a second
brass grasshopper between her teeth, ready for use. Wythie unhooked
the old pins from the rings and let the faded curtains droop, eagerly
planning the while, and wondering if she could get her courage to the
begging-point. "I don't think," said gentle Wythie to herself, "I do
_not_ think that we can be forbidden to covet our neighbor's goods when
they are so very old and faded."
At last all the old curtains were down, and the new ones up in their
place. Wythie had patiently climbed up and down the step-ladder,
skilfully avoiding Tobias, who liked to sit on the second step from
the top; had altered pins, and supported the heavy material while Aunt
Azraella altered; her natural desire to please increased by her resolve
to be bold and dare when all was done. And when it was done she had
something of her reward, for Aunt Azraella actually patted her on the
shoulder, and said: "You have been very helpful, Oswyth. I was wise
to insist on having you; Roberta would never have been so patient and
thorough."
"I am glad if I have been useful," Wythie said, rather faintly.
"It seems a pity not to use those old curtains for something," said
Aunt Azraella, whose mind was on the order of Mrs. John Gilpin's. "But
they are too faded for any purpose, and too big to make it worth while
sending them to New York to be dyed."
"I wonder if you would mind--Aunt Azraella, might I have them?" said
Wythie, with desperate courage--it was nearly impossible for her to ask
for anything.
"You, Oswyth! What on earth could you do with them? You can't mean to
get your mother to dye them for curtains for your house? You don't need
curtains," said Mrs. Winslow.
"I don't want them for curtains, Aunt Azraella; I want them for winter
coats," said Wythie, more boldly, now that the first plunge was made.
"Rob and I are too shabby to go out when there's a moon--not to mention
sun. And Mardy could dye this material, and it would be warm and
pretty. If you don't need them, aunt, they would really do us a lot of
good--we would make the coats, you know."
Mrs. Winslow stared wonderingly, then she gleamed approval at Wythie,
though she felt called upon to conceal it. "There are thirty-six yards
here, fifty-four inches wide; do you think you need so much? And it
seems a pity to divide it," she said.
"Oh, no; I've no idea what it would take, but not that--still, they
would have to be lined, and Mardy could dye half another color, and
line with the same," stammered Wythie. "I didn't think you'd care, but
if you do I'm sorry I spoke--I did not mean to ask for anything you
wanted."
Having reduced Wythie to the properly humble frame of mind, Mrs.
Winslow relented. "I did not say I wanted them, Oswyth," she said.
"Thank goodness, your uncle, my husband, left me enough, besides all
I had from my father; he was a thrifty man, and a good business-man,
your Uncle Horace. I don't need old curtains, I hope. You may take a
pair home--if you can carry them--and ask your mother if they can be
used as you think, and how many she needs--you may have all you want
of them. I'm glad to see you practical and managing; you've got the
Winslow faculty, and aren't a Grey, as I'm afraid Roberta is. I'll get
you paper and twine. Go across the orchard, Oswyth; don't let folks see
you taking my curtains home. Can you carry them?"
"I'll carry them, aunt; never fear, and I'll not let a soul but
ourselves know where we got our splendid winter coats," cried Wythie,
gleefully. And in the exuberance of her pleasure she actually kissed
her aunt with an affection that really belonged to the new coats, but
which surprised and pleased Aunt Azraella as if it had been her own--as
indeed she thought it was.
She let Wythie out of the door in a high state of satisfaction in her
own generosity which had made the girl so happy, and watched her run
down the hill with a speed her heavy bundle could not at first retard.
But she had to go slower at the foot of the hill; only by repeatedly
sitting down on her treasure to rest, and by dragging and tugging it
with both hands between halts, did she succeed in reaching the door of
the little grey house.
Roberta saw her coming, and had the door open as Wythie laid her heavy
burden on the steps. "What in all the wide world have you there,
Wythie?" cried Rob.
"Our--winter--coats," panted Wythie, very warm and short-breathed.
"Honestly?" cried Rob, joyfully. "I thought Aunt Azraella had given you
her old curtains."
"So she has, and they are our winter coats," said Oswyth, preparing
to take her bundle into the house, but Rob forestalled her by seizing
the twine, and she carried the treasure, bumping against her knees, to
their mother.
Mrs. Grey laughed over Wythie's project, but pronounced it feasible.
"You will have to let me dye them black, girlies," she said. "I would
never risk all those faded stripes coming out one shade of a color. But
we'll make the lining red--defects won't show there--so they shall not
be sombre. I think I have some fur in the Golconda which will go around
the necks, and make them really sumptuous."
"The Golconda" was the chest in which Mrs. Grey stored her remnants of
better days, and which was to the girls a mine of richness, furnishing
them with their few luxuries of toilet.
The kettle and the witch-stick came forth, and the kettle boiled and
bubbled, and Mrs. Grey toiled and troubled to good purpose, for the
handsome material of the old curtains came out a beautiful glossy
black.
Mrs. Grey cut and basted, and Wythie stitched the new coats with
feverish impatience for the result, and Aunt Azraella came over to see
the trying on.
"Really, Mary," she said, moved almost to enthusiasm as their
mother revolved Wythie and Rob by their shoulders, displaying
a success exceeding her own hopes, while making chalk notes of
improvements--"really, Mary, you are wonderful! You might be a tailor.
It is marvellous, brought up as you were."
"My bringing up explains it, Azraella. Mother believed in teaching
her children to use their hands and wits. I'll tell you, Azraella;
it's that Plymouth strain you so venerate. The Pilgrim mothers wove
and spun, and my tailoring must be a case of pure heredity," said
Mrs. Grey, laughing with a girlish mischievousness that rarely found
expression. Wythie and Rob were just beginning to be old enough to
realize that their mother was young.
The coats were finished, and really were triumphs. Aunt Azraella was so
pleased with her curtains for turning out so creditably to her that she
actually produced from the treasure-house of her attic, which the girls
longed to ravage, handsome buttons to adorn the coats, and enough rich
velvet for hats for all three nieces. Wythie made jaunty little muffs
from the material of the coats, and behold, from being shabby, she and
Rob were transformed into an external splendor that enabled them to
look their sister maidens in the face with equable minds.
But aside from this windfall matters grew worse, rather than better,
in the little grey house. Everything that they could deny themselves
the Greys went without. Prue rebelled against her childish fare of rice
and molasses, and declared her eyes were growing almond-shaped from
over-indulgence in that celestial and nuptial grain.
Rob sang her a pleasing extemporaneous ditty about
_"Little Prue-sing, poor little thing!
Lived upon 'lasses and rice,
But she turned up her nose and said: 'Under the rose,
I'd rather have something more nice.'
But I said: 'O my Sweet, it will give you small feet,
And won't you consider the price?'"_
Prue looked less pleased with the ditty than she might have been, and
Wythie, "the olivebranch," as Rob called her, said, hastily: "We've a
Japanese kitten, so we oughtn't to mind being just a trifle Mongolian,
Prudy. Come here, Kiku-san." For Kiku-san was wearing his most serene
and sanctified expression, and that look usually preceded his breaking
something.
"Prudence, mavourneen, the Grey dawn is breaking," sang Rob, with
immense expression. "And you know it is always darkest before dawn.
Just wait--only wait a little while longer, my child, and Patergrey
will compress all our troubles with his coal-dust, and consume them
forever. Wait for the machine, Goldilocks."
But away down in her stanch and loyal heart Rob could not help feeling
that it was weary waiting.
CHAPTER NINE
ITS BURDEN
"Poor and content is rich and rich enough, but poor and genteel
is--pardon slang--most tough!" remarked Rob, looking over her shoulder
as she knelt before the oven, and making a wry face at Wythie,
unconscious of the streak of soot on her chin.
"If you could be but one, which would you rather be, poor or genteel,
Rob?" laughed her mother. But there was little laughter in the eyes
under a brow upon which increasing anxiety was daily making its record.
"I don't know, Mardy; I'm not sure I could tell them apart. I'm like
the ladies in Cranford, and have always known them together, but
vulgarity would have its consolations. We shall be vulgarly rich when
the bricquette machine is in the market," said Rob.
"And in the meantime?" hinted Wythie.
"Ah, in the meantime!" Rob took her bread from the oven and pulled
herself on her feet by the aid of the lid-lifter, conveniently
extending its handle from the back lid of the stove. Mother and
daughters looked sadly through the open door into the dining-room
and sighed. The sunshine struck the mahogany tea-table, with
the clover-leaf corners of its dropped leaf; on the old mahogany
sideboard, with its rounded ends and slender, straight legs and glass
knob-handles, and on the old pewter tankards and platters, and the blue
and white china standing upon it.
The Greys' troubles had reached a crisis; there was immediate and
imperative need of ready money, and Aunt Azraella had been over on the
preceding night "to talk common-sense" to her kindred-in-law.
"It's ridiculous," that Spartan woman had said, "for people situated
as you are to have so much money tied up in old furniture. Here are
these things--sideboard, table, chairs, pewter, old china; there are
those old bureaus, the high-boy, the tester-bed, the bookcases, the
work-tables--you have two--the old desk, not to mention the various
chairs and tables scattered through the house. Even a dealer would give
you a great deal for them, though private sale is better. But you
cling to them, and won't part with them either way!"
"They are not only the delight of our eyes, Azraella; they are
heirlooms from both sides. Some of them have been in the little grey
house for more than a hundred years. How could we part with them?" Mrs.
Grey gently replied.
"Necessity knows no law," Aunt Azraella answered, in one of those
convenient pellets of wisdom always ready compounded for infallible
persons to administer to the weak-minded. "I'll tell you what I will
do, Mary. I will take the things off your hands at a fair appraisal,
and give you cash down."
Mrs. Grey did not thank her; she had long known that Mrs. Winslow
coveted the beautiful and venerable treasures of the little grey
house, and longed to transfer them to her more pretentious,
black-walnut-infested house on the hill. So Mrs. Grey did not feign
gratitude for her offer; indeed, it inspired her with a perfectly
natural desire to hold her splendid old mahogany at any cost. She said,
firmly: "I shall not part with these things while we can exist without
doing so, Azraella," and Mrs. Winslow had departed in highly disgusted
dudgeon.
But now, regarding their treasures in the clear morning light, and
without Aunt Azraella, the Greys wondered if their decision had been
wrong, and it was their duty to give up those precious belongings which
seemed more really kin to them than many of the animate connections
transmitted to them through dead-and-gone ancestors. Two alternatives
stared them in the face: to sell the furniture, or mortgage the little
grey house. Thus far the dear little old home had been as free from
burden as in its first building, when a Grey had hewn its walls from
the forest with his own hands, and dug its cellar, and piled its
stone foundations from the rocks of its own meadows, helped only by
the friendly hands of other pioneers. It was not possible to regard
a mortgage upon it calmly; for sentiment's sake in the first place,
and then because its interest would be a continual burden long after
the ready money it had given them would have been changed into the
necessities of life.
"Still, Mardy," Rob began, speaking out of the thoughts they were
silently exchanging, after the fashion of people who live in loving
sympathetic intimacy--"still, Mardy, the mortgage could be paid off
when the bricquette machine is sold, but if we gave up the furniture
it would be gone forever. The mortgage is dreadful, but it gives us
another chance, while the sale would not. We shall need money only a
little while longer, you know, if everything goes right."
"Oh, Rob, Rob, and if everything goes wrong?" cried Mrs. Grey, the
cry wrung from her by the sudden sharp realization that her lares and
penates, her home, her husband himself, threatened to slip from her
forever.
"Then I will take the bricquettes' place--I am sure I am combustible
enough!" cried Rob, but neither her mother nor Oswyth could smile.
Aunt Azraella came over again after dinner to renew her appeals to
common-sense and for the fulfilment of her own desires. There was
another conclave of elders, and Wythie and Rob, feeling the strain
too great upon their nerves, escaped into the October sunshine. They
came upon Frances Silsby under escort of Battalion B, coming to seek
them, and half-heartedly consented to a short row on the river in the
boys' long-boat, which they had christened "The Graces," because, they
pointed out, it was equally appropriate to "the trio of owners and the
most frequent and honored guests."
"You don't look cheerful to-day, you Grey sisters," said Basil,
shipping rowlocks and oars and pushing off.
"No; even Rob is downly," said Bruce, coining a new adverb. "Is it
anything we could help?"
"Not unless you are bankers," said Rob, disregarding Wythie's signals
for silence. "What's the use, Wythie? France has known us ever since
we were here to be known, and these new friends are just as true ones.
We're having grey days without gold--that's all."
"We could be bankers," said Basil, quietly. "We have more money than
we use--we big, strapping boys--and that's what makes us so sorry and
ashamed when we think of girls like you being bothered."
"We said the other day we wished you would let us be your bankers--it
would only be till the machine was done," added Bruce, flushing. He did
not say that they and Frances, whose father was the wealthiest man in
Fayre, had vainly tried to hit upon a way of making life easier to the
girls of whom they were so fond.
Rob shook her head with a dubious smile, and Bruce said, hastily: "Oh,
I know you won't! There's always just that difference between a girl's
friendship and a boy's. A boy not only will share with his chum--girls
do that--but he will take his share of his chum's possessions, and
know it does not matter which happened to have more."
"Don't you think there has to be that difference, Bruce?" asked Wythie,
in her womanly little way. "You wouldn't like to have a girl accept too
much from another." Wythie did not say, "From a boy friend." "Since Rob
has said so much I will tell you that you could not be our bankers,
for we need too much, and it is too serious. Aunt Azraella, Mrs.
Winslow----"
"Who has nothing whatever to do with soothing-sirup, nor sirup, nor
soothing of any sort," interrupted Rob.
"Wants us to sell our dear, beautiful old china and pewter and
mahogany. But we won't--we can't!" Wythie finished.
"Of course not; I should say not!" ejaculated silent Bartlemy, the
artist, with profound conviction.
"It would be like selling 'the ashes of your fathers and the temples of
your gods,'" added Basil.
"Yes, and leave us worse off by and by, when we had used the money,"
added Rob. "But if we don't do that we must mortgage the little grey
house."
"That's bad, too," said Bruce.
"It's worse than you see at first, because it means keeping up the
interest, besides lessening the value of the old place," said Rob. "My
brethren and sister Frances, I _must_ earn money."
Frances clasped the hand Rob held out to her, and patted it silently.
Her pretty, happy face had grown distressed; she had loved Rob as a
superior being since she had been taken by her nurse to see Rob's
collection of dolls, and she fully realized how bitter it was to all
the Greys to put a burden upon the home which always seemed more like a
member of the family than its shelter.
The Rutherfords rowed on in silence awhile, then Bruce squared his
shoulders and threw back his head with a cheerful smile for the girls.
"Well, if you must mortgage, don't worry about it. Everybody has a
mortgage--they are as common as family cats. And when the machine is
done you can pay it off again, and that will be in a short time. It
really isn't worth talking about," he said, cheerfully.
Rob gave him a grateful look. "That's what I say, Bruce!" she cried.
"And isn't it great that your father has no more heart attacks?" added
Basil, desiring to contribute his underscore mark to some item of
cheer on the page of life the Greys were at present conning.
"It's wonderful, too," said Wythie, "for he works as hard as though Dr.
Fairbairn had never warned him--but he doesn't look well."
"I think you can earn money, Rob; I think I know a way for you to do
it," said Frances. "I've been wondering if it were possible, and I'll
talk to mamma to-night--it needs her help--and then to-morrow I'll come
to talk to you about it."
"So cheer up, Grey sisters; this is your last pull," said Basil.
"I wonder if it is," said Wythie, watching the strong, steady strokes
as The Graces sped up the river under Basil and Bartlemy's rowing.
"Oh, no; there's Indian summer to come; we'll row lots of times this
year, and all next season. I did not mean this kind of pull," smiled
Basil.
"I know. Where are you taking us?" asked Wythie; she could not bear
just then to hear an allusion to another year.
"Up here to a tree which we discovered yesterday, and which other
little boys haven't discovered--it's full of chestnuts," said Bruce.
The boat glided toward the right bank, crowned by flaming maples, and
into a narrow creek, so narrow that the boys had to draw in their
oars and pull The Graces along by the shrubs on either hand. They
stopped directly under a great chestnut-tree, and Bruce cried, pointing
triumphantly to the branches crowded with opening burs: "There! Isn't
truth more chestnutty than fiction?"
"Why didn't you tell us?" asked Rob, reproachfully. "We could have gone
back for something to put them in."
Forgetting poverty for the moment in the riches provided by nature
and autumn, Wythie and Rob climbed cheerfully over the side of the
boat, and taking off their jackets began filling them with chestnuts
as eagerly as if they had been squirrels dependent upon them for their
winter existence. There was little time to get many of the satiny
nuts, for the Greys were impatient to learn the fate of the little
grey house, and to console their mother, who would need consolation
for whatever decision had been reached. Regretfully they turned their
backs on the wealth of nuts and the beautiful, peaceful spot, with its
gorgeous colors, and damp, delicious odors.
Bruce and Bartlemy rowed down. Frances was very silent, and held
Rob's hand fast; Rob did not feel like talking, and Wythie was never
a chatterbox, so the party came down the river very quietly, all
thoughts centered on the same point--the Greys' difficulties. As they
drew up at the little pier which the Rutherfords had built for their
landing-place, Basil said, breaking a long silence: "Wythie and Rob,
I want you to give us your solemn promise that if ever you think we
can be of any use or comfort, you will say so. I don't believe you
understand what it has been to us to have you girls take us right into
the little grey house and big Grey hearts, and treat us like one of
yourselves. It will be downright unkind if you shove us off now, for
the first time, and don't let us have the privileges you've accustomed
us to. Brothers are not meant only for bright days, you know."
"We would ask you to do anything, Basil; of course we would," said
Wythie. "There is nothing to be done now."
"But you will consider us comrades of the true sort; not the kind you
like only for what you can do for them and to frolic with," persisted
Basil.
"'Ere's our 'earts and 'ere's our 'ands," said Rob, melodramatically
laying her left hand on her heart and extending her right. "Seriously,
boys," she added, "we understand, and we'll do just what you want us
to. We're going to regard you as crutches--a trifle long, perhaps,
but by no means to be cut off. If you were all as Grey as we are, we
couldn't count you greater props than we do now. We're friends for
life, and for scrapes on either side--and we're more grateful than I
sound. This is rather a hard time for the Greys, but we've read lots of
storybooks, and we know when the lovely heroines are in mortal danger
there's certain rescue on the next page. So we're going to finish these
paragraphs as quickly as we possibly can, and turn over to the next
chapter."
She impulsively held out both hands as she ceased speaking, wrinkling
up the comers of her eyes in her merry fashion, though there were tears
on the lashes.
Bruce seized the firm little hands, with the honorable burn on one
forefinger, and the thumb-nail blackened by hammering, and shook them
warmly. Basil followed suit, and then all three shook hands with
Wythie--it was rather like a fresh treaty of allegiance before going
into battle. Then Bartlemy locked the oars and rowlocks into the
boat-house and the Rutherfords and Frances escorted the Greys to their
own gate, where they left them with a reassuring pat on each arm, and
Wythie and Rob ran into the house.
They heard voices in the parlor and paused in the hall to listen.
Their mother's and father's, Aunt Azraella's, and two strange men's
voices they had just decided them to be, when Prue's golden head, much
dishevelled, appeared over the banisters.
"Come up here, girls, come up here," she said, in a stage-whisper,
gesticulating wildly. "Where have you been? Come; I'm half dead."
Prue's cheeks were tear-stained and her voice husky; Oswyth and Rob
hastened to her.
"What has happened?" Rob demanded.
Prue threw her arms around Wythie--her favorite sister--and dropped
her golden head on her breast. "They're mortgaging the little grey
house--oh dear, oh dear!" she sobbed.
Wythie drew Prue into her room, Rob following, very pale, and shut the
door.
"Already?" Wythie said.
"This moment," said Prue, tragically. "When I came home Aunt Azraella
was here, and still talking about our selling the furniture. Then papa
seemed to lose all patience, and to want to have it over with. He
said: 'Mr. Barker told me he was ready to take the mortgage and give
me the money any moment I would call him over. Prue, go tell him now
that I am ready to mortgage the house--that I'm waiting for him. And
then go fetch lawyer Dinsmore. I must get it done, and stop discussing
it; it takes too much nervous strain, and too much time from my work.'
I looked at Mardy, and she looked miserable, but she only said: 'Go,
Prue; hurry, child.' So I went. And they've been mortgaging down there
for half an hour. They ought to be done soon, I should think: how long
does it take to put on a mortgage?"
"Oh, I don't know, I do not know," moaned Rob, throwing herself face
downward on the bed. "How long does it take to get one off, you'd
better ask."
Prue looked hurt. "You can't care more than I do, Rob Grey," she said.
"I've cried and cried, and I thought I'd die when I told Mr. Barker and
Mr. Dinsmore to come."
Oswyth had sunk into her rocking-chair, the tears raining down her
white cheeks. She held out her arms to Prue, who fled to them, very
ready to be petted.
"Poor little Prue!" said Wythie. "And you were all alone to bear it.
Poor, pretty little Prudy!"
Kiku, who was the most loving of little creatures, jumped up to rub
his face against Rob's, not minding its wetness, and making soft,
cooing sounds to her as if she were a kitten and he her cat-mother. The
gentle, dumb, little creature comforted Rob more than spoken love could
have done. She rolled over and kissed the cat between his pink-lined
ears, and, seeing Wythie looking so grief-stricken, characteristically
began to surmount her own trouble. "Now, doen't, doen't, my dear," she
said, in the words of Ham Pegotty. "It's a blow that knocked me down
for a minute, but I'm not going to lie prostrate long. We'll clear off
the mortgage--Patergrey, the machine, and I--in a twinkling, and the
little grey house shall be Greyer than ever."
Wythie shook her head, and at that moment they heard the front door
shut and footsteps go down the walk. And in the hall their mother was
saying: "There are those poor children upstairs alone; we must go
comfort them, Sylvester."
There was no time to feign indifference before the door of the girls'
room opened, and it was rather a dismal scene upon which Mr. and Mrs.
Grey looked as they entered.
Mrs. Grey took Wythie and Prue into a comprehensive embrace, just as
they sat. "Dearies, you must not grieve," she cried.
"Don't look so dismal, girls," said Mr. Grey, cheerfully. "The little
grey house has merely lent the thin Grey man a thousand dollars, which
he knows--doesn't think, mind you, but _knows_--he will soon repay. We
are fortunate to get money when we need it so sorely, and we shall pay
off that mortgage in a short time; isn't that true, Rob, my son?"
"That is true, Patergrey," responded Rob, loyally and promptly.
"We're not afraid, are we, Rob, my son? We know our machine is bound to
succeed."
"Bound to succeed, Patergrey," said Rob, going over to him and laying
a hand on her father's shoulder as though she were really the "son" he
called her.
But that night, when Wythie, tired out, lay sleeping beside her, Rob's
dark eyes were staring into the blackness, slumber completely driven
from them by the events of the day, as she thought anxious thoughts for
her sixteen years, and feverishly laid fruitless plans for being useful.
And that night, because of the over-excitement and the pang the
decision he had reached had cost him, Mr. Grey had the second attack of
the heart affection which threatened the Greys with a greater sorrow
than the burden which had just been laid upon the little grey house.
CHAPTER TEN
ITS POSSIBILITIES
Frances appeared early on the following morning, and found sad faces to
greet her where she usually found cheer.
"Well, what have you to propose to me, Francie, a secretaryship to the
President, or to write the best-selling book of the year?" asked Rob,
trying to speak brightly.
"The book is the nearer guess," said Frances. "I tried to think
of what you could do best, and it was a puzzle. You are such a
Jack-of-all-trades----"
"And we know what he amounts to," interrupted Rob. "You might as well
finish the proverb."
"No such thing," declared Frances. "But you didn't seem to have any
marked vocation, till suddenly it flashed upon me that you had done one
thing wonderfully ever since you could talk, and I knew I'd hit it. Do
you know what it is?"
Rob shook her head. "I had a talent for getting into scrapes, and you
used to pull me out, but I never supposed the talent had market value.
If you've discovered it has, you've pulled me out of another scrape
with flying colors," she said.
"You could tell stories," said Frances.
"France, I was always truthful," said Rob, reproachfully.
"Now, don't be silly; you know what I mean," retorted Frances. "Don't
you remember how you used to amuse all the rest of us children telling
stories by the yard? And do you realize how children love to be with
you? You have a regular fringe of small fry at your heels whenever you
appear abroad."
"Well, I admit the Pied Piper qualities, and I remember telling
stories, but I fail to see what you're getting at, ma'am," said Rob,
dubiously.
"You're to tell your stories for money!" cried Frances, triumphantly.
"You're to have a class of all the nice girls and boys in Fayre--and
some will come from Thruston--and you are to entertain them by telling
them stories for an hour and a half twice a week. You won't charge
much--maybe only five dollars for twenty recitals, but that, if you
had twenty children, would be a hundred dollars in ten weeks, and it
would be just fun--no trouble at all to you to do it."
"You have thought out details, Frances," said Mrs. Grey. "You make me
feel as though it were not only possible, but an accomplished fact."
"It is possible, Mrs. Grey," said Frances. "Mamma knows a lady in town
who did it there, and it was a great success. She thinks Rob is sure of
being even more successful, because she is so young the children will
enjoy more being with her."
"And what kind of stories am I to tell, Frances? Any kind that keeps
them quiet? Fayre is not like New York, where there are lots of people
with wealth, but no place nor time to amuse their children. People here
won't care about having their children entertained," said Rob, sensibly.
"Oh, I forgot that part," said Frances, eagerly. "No, of course, it
couldn't be any kind of story. You are to tell them a set of Grecian
Mythology stories, for instance; then a Round Table set, then a
Crusading set, then, maybe a Shakespeare set, and stories of Rome,
Greece, Egypt--goodness! There's no end to the series you can get up!
Now wait!" she added, as Rob started to speak. "You know when we were
little you read all these things, and loved them; we thought them dry,
and nothing would have induced us to read them for ourselves. But when
you told us about them we were like so many young robins, when the big
bird chops up food too solid for them--we were all agape for more,
and you had the faculty of making us see the beauty, and not missing
a point. It was enthusiasm and magnetism, mamma says. Well, you have
those gifts just as much now."
"I'll try to believe in my talents," said Rob, meekly.
"You'd better. Mamma told me to lay the plan before you all, and, if
you approve, to say she will guarantee Rob a class of not less than
twenty to begin with, and she will find the children for her. Will you
try it, Rob?" asked Frances, eagerly.
"How good your mother is; how kind you both are!" exclaimed Mrs. Grey.
"Oh, France always was clear, unadulterated splendidness," said Rob,
getting up to hug the one girl friend she had ever really loved. "How
can I help but try it, when it is all done for me? Of course, I'll be
only too glad to try it, Francie, and I'll do my best."
"I couldn't possibly fail to approve, approve gladly and gratefully,"
said Mrs. Grey.
"I think it's a beautiful plan--an inspiration, Frances," said Wythie.
"And I know Rob can do it like no one else; she does such things with
her face and voice that she always makes one see what she sees." And
Oswyth smiled proudly on Rob.
"I should hate to fail, after your mother had done so much to launch
me," said Rob.
"'Screw your courage to the sticking-point and we'll not fail,'" said
Frances, who could hardly have been less like Lady Macbeth.
"Then, if I succeed, I might enlarge my field, have classes in
neighboring towns, and by and by in Hartford and New Haven, and--why
not?--New York," cried Rob, airily. "Then if the bricquette machine did
turn out badly I could support the family."
"Rob, Rob, I thought you had no doubt of the invention!" cried her
mother, such a sharp note of pain in her voice that it betrayed her
own doubt, and her unconscious dependence on the young girl's opinion,
ignorant though it was.
"Neither have I, Mardy, it's sure--don't be afraid," said Rob,
hastily. "But when you want a thing so dreadfully, _dreadfully_ much
you can't help thinking what it would be not to get it. And I feel as
the Red Queen must have felt when she was a little girl, and had to
believe three impossible things before breakfast. I do believe, but
I have to try--try with both hands, as Her Red Majesty told Alice to
do--to keep my faith, though I know it's all right all the while. And
the invention is so nearly completed, Francie, that Patergrey thinks
that next week he can write to the people in New York whom he wants
to have buy it. Isn't that a comfort, after so long? It sounds so
definite."
"Indeed it does!" cried Frances, heartily. Mrs. Grey hastily left the
room, and Wythie ran after her, guessing that she had gone to hide
sudden tears.
Rob looked after them soberly. "Oh, France," she said, "you could not
have come with your plan at a better time--we need cheering. They put
the mortgage on the little grey house yesterday--they were doing it
when we came home. And Patergrey got so wrought up that he had another
of those dreadful heart attacks last night."
"Oh, Rob; poor, dear, brave Rob! I am so sorry for you!" cried
Frances, with ready tears of sympathy and a convulsive hug.
Rob shook herself free. "Now, don't pity me!" she cried. "I have all I
can do to keep steady if I am as hard as nails, and you see I _must_
keep gay for the others. I know, France; we know each other, but don't
love me now! No one could have done me the good you have in giving me
the hope of being useful. I'll never forget how you came in this black
morning and tried to 'push dem clouds away'--you have made a big rift.
If ever I get rich and famous I'll give you your heart's desire, and
if ever I can help you while I'm poor--which may be a while yet, you
know--I'll walk over the ocean to do it. But don't you love me nor pity
me to-day."
"All right. I don't love you any day; I despise you, and always did,"
said Frances, with a last squeeze as she withdrew her arms. "Now I must
run home to tell mamma you are unanimous. She said if you liked the
plan she would see all the parents she could this afternoon, and bid
them send their little lambs for you to pipe to them."
"Well, Francie, Patergrey does want me, so I suppose I ought to let you
go," said Rob. "Tell your blessed mother I can never thank her, but
tell her how troubled you found us, and she will understand the good
she has done."
Rob hardly knew how it happened that at the end of two weeks she
found herself established as a Scheherazade, telling stories, not to
an Eastern tyrant, but to five-and-twenty lesser tyrants--not less
tyrannical--with the east in their bright eyes.
Mrs. Silsby had bestirred herself so energetically that Rob's childish
audience was not only secured for her at once, but exceeded by five the
twenty she had hoped to get. Mr. Grey said children were showered upon
her as if she were a foundling asylum.
Their ages ranged between eleven and six, the average being eight, and
Roberta wondered how she was ever going to interest them, restless
as so many butterflies, and inclined to approach suspiciously an
entertainment which they suspected of being improving, and very
possibly additional lessons under a hypocritical disguise. But they
were worth winning, for all of the audience was paid for in advance,
and bewildered Rob found a hundred and twenty-five dollars in her
hands, which was all her own.
Mrs. Silsby managed the financial end of Rob's enterprise, as she had
its other details, which was lucky, for Rob would never have dared
to offer course-tickets to her stories, with no rebates for absences.
But Mrs. Silsby said five dollars was so absurdly little for twenty
entertainments that nothing else was to be considered, and Rob yielded,
suggesting only that at the top of her little programmes were printed:
"Mrs. James Silsby presents Miss Roberta Grey," after the fashion of a
great New York manager, and that at the bottom be added: "Treasurer and
Press Agent, Mrs. J. H. Silsby."
There was some difficulty about Rob's title. Every lad and lassie in
her audience--all of whom she had known from their cradles--hailed
her "Hallo, Rob," when they met in the highway, but as a Scheherazade
the case was different, and her scant dignity of sixteen needed
re-enforcing.
Mrs. Dinsmore, the lawyer's wife, who was a great stickler for
propriety, insisted that her two hopefuls should say "Miss Roberta,"
and advised Rob to exact this title from the others. But Dorothy
Dinsmore herself settled the question by refusing to consider it.
"I wouldn't say Miss Roberta for anything, mamma," she declared. "I
might say Roberta, but I'd rather say Miss Rob, if I must do anything
silly, because you can just slide over that, and say ''S Rob'--and it
wouldn't make much difference."
"I would rather be called Rob than Srob," laughed Rob. "Oh, let them
go, Mrs. Dinsmore! It's going to be as nice a time as I can make it
for them, and I suspect it will be nicer if we don't try to make them
forget I'm just a bigger child than they are."
The result was that at Rob's first recital, though the children began
decorously in their places, dubious as to what was to befall them, they
soon discovered that it was not a prim teacher, but "just Rob Grey,"
the Rob Grey they had always known, who was telling them the most
delightful story they had ever heard. It was a story as full of magical
impossibilities as the fairy-tales that the girls loved, and as full of
the clash of arms, and the fury of battle, and the prowess of knights
as the boys could ask.
And behold, before she was half-way through, each of the twenty-five
of her audience had left his seat, and the children were hanging,
entranced and adoring, on the back, arms, and rounds of her chair,
huddling at her feet and leaning on her knees, and she knew that she
was succeeding beyond her fondest hopes.
Her first series was the Arthurian legends; Rob had prepared the first
story carefully and told it well, for she loved romance, chivalry,
and the poetry of history as every imaginative girl does, and the
inspiration of the fifty bright eyes, the eager lips, open as if to
drink in her words, made her lose herself as completely as when a few
years before, a little girl herself, she had told these stories to her
playmates.
Rob came home from her first recital--Mrs. Silsby had perfected her
kindness by lending her big parlor for the tale-telling--in the highest
feather.
"I'm a mediæval minstrel, a bard, a minne-singer," she declared. "And,
best of all, I'm a success. I may become a monologist, at ever so much
a night. Why, the children hung on my words--and they hung on my back
and arms and knees besides."
Prue, who had a strong sense of dignified propriety, was scandalized.
"You don't mean to say, Rob," she exclaimed, "that you let those
children swarm all over you? Why, they ought to have kept their seats
strictly."
"Well, they didn't; they left them laxly." Rob laughed outright at
Prue's horrified face.
"My dear spinster-sister Prudence, children can't half listen if
they don't wriggle--they must fidget about, or they get deaf in their
brains--not their ears. You used to swarm all over me when I told you
stories."
"I was your sister," said Prue, convincingly.
"Yes, you were; I even fancy sometimes you haven't outgrown being
my sister," said Rob. "Proper or not, the dear little crowd had a
perfectly scrumptious time, and they wanted me to promise to tell them
a story every day. You see, I'm already like a sort of serial, which
doesn't come out often enough. But the best of it is, I am actually
earning money and helping my family."
"You have always been the greatest help, Rob dear," said Mrs. Grey.
"You have been our tonic ever since you were old enough to feel
sympathy, and that was long ago."
"If I'm a tonic, Wythie must be cold cream, or something healing, and
Prue--what is Prudy? Violet extract to keep us dainty, I suspect," said
Rob.
If Rob was glad and thankful for her success, Frances was triumphantly
glorying in it. She never had been an especially clever child, while
Rob had been a brilliant little creature, the pride of her teachers,
who invariably brought her forward when the credit of the school was
to be maintained--this was in their early childhood, and during the
irregular periods when Rob had been at school. Now the humdrum girl had
devised the scheme which was to make clever Rob's fortune, as if the
moth had unexpectedly furnished the wick to the candle, and Frances was
as proud as she was delighted in its results.
The Rutherford boys hailed Rob a story-teller with irreverent
glee. Contributions from one or another of Battalion B poured in
daily--sometimes from all three at once. Maria Edgeworth's Moral
Tales--to supplement Rob's, if "her grey matter gave out," Basil's
accompanying note stated; a bunch of rattan-rods, slates, primers,
spectacles, and a cap for herself. Even a false front came from
Bruce--most frankly false, with a muslin parting, and yellow in color,
because, he explained, he "thought yellow would contrast prettily with
her dark eyes, and her cap would hide its not matching her own brown
locks." Bartlemy illuminated a set of mottoes to adorn the walls of
what the boys called "Rob's auditorium." "Little Children Must Never
Tell Stories," "Listen to My Tale of Woe," "As Tedious as a Twice-Told
Tale," "Young Robin Grey Came a-Courtin' We," "Truth is Stranger
(Here) Than Fiction," "Plain Tales for the Bills," three for a side
of the room. Rob hung these brilliant productions, and piled up all
her other tributes from Battalion B in a small, unused room under the
"lean-to" roof, where twice a week she retired to prepare her story for
the next recital.
In spite of the boys' ridicule, in spite of Aunt Azraella's croaking,
Rob's experiment was proving more successful each week. But the
pleasantest part of it all to Rob was when her father appealed to her
as a capitalist to aid in launching the invention.
"It is all done, Rob, practically finished," said Mr. Grey, laying a
trembling hand on the girl's shoulder one morning at the end of two
hours' close work together.
"Don't get excited, Patergrey; you know it is forbidden you," cried
Rob, beginning to quiver in sympathy. "Yes, it's done. Sit down; you
look pale--let me get you a tablet."
"Rob, you've been my right hand--my extra pair of hands--all the way
through," said her father, impatiently waving away the suggestion of a
tablet. "You've had so much faith, dear son Rob, and have understood so
clearly that you have helped me in that way almost more than in any
other. Now I am going to ask you to help me still further. Have you any
special use for the first hundred and twenty-five dollars from your
story-telling?"
"So many special uses that I've no special use--no, Patergrey," laughed
Rob. "There are so many things to be done with it that I can't see one
for the crowd of them. It is all for Mardy and Wythie, though. They
go without so slyly that I want every penny of this to buy things for
them."
"You generous Rob-of-mine!" exclaimed her father. "Then would it
disappoint you to lend me rather more than half of your wealth, to
launch the bricquette machine? It requires a very small capital, but it
needs that to start it on its journey into the world. I should rather
like to have my girl's money--the very first that she ever earned--do
this for the invention in which she has had such a share through its
entire growth."
"Like it, Patergrey! I'd love it!" cried Rob, her eyes dilating,
her cheeks flushing. "I'll get the money now--I've hidden it in my
twine-bag, real country fashion. How strange for my money to launch the
machine! Can it do it, really, Patergrey?"
"It really can. I will take but fifty dollars now, Rob, but I may need
more. There must be photographs and plates made, some printing done. I
would prefer your money to do this, if the idea pleases you."
For further answer Rob kissed her father as he ceased speaking, and ran
away to fetch the money, singing at the top of her voice.
That night were mailed to New York the first letters introducing to a
larger world than had yet heard of it the bricquette machine upon which
the hopes of the Greys hung, and into which all the energy of Sylvester
Grey's apparently unfruitful life had passed.
Wythie, who was always ready for bed long before Rob, sat in the
rocking-chair, a shawl over her white gown, watching, with eyes of
loving envy, Rob's frantic brushing of her unruly hair.
"I think I shall be wickedly jealous of you," she said at last. "Fancy
your launching the invention! I wish I were able to help as you do."
"You, Oswyth! You're not only an Anglo-Saxon saint, but a Connecticut
angel," cried Rob, somewhat inarticulately, as she held between
her teeth the elastic band with which she intended to fasten her
braid. "Without you we would all go--kersmash!--in one day. You do
everything."
"Do you remember how, when we reckon our resources, we put down two
columns, one certainties, the other possibilities? To think you are now
one of the possibilities!" persisted Wythie.
"And if I am, what then?" demanded Rob. "I may be a possibility, but
you are an extreme probability, Oswyth, my dear. You are at once a
column and a foundation. I'll never be half as useful as you are. Put
out the light, Oswyth Grey, and don't talk nonsense! Not but that
I'm thankful enough to be added to the column of possible sources of
income!"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ITS HOPE
"Here's a bit of bread for you, Rob, my son," called Mr. Grey from his
doorway, waving an envelope alluringly toward Rob, who was on her knees
dusting the stairs.
"Bread? I'm not hungry, Patergrey; besides, it looks too white to be
well baked. What do you mean? Something nice, by the way you're beaming
at me." And Rob arose from her humble posture to go to her father and
investigate.
"It is bread--bread-on-the-waters, my girl," Mr. Grey retorted. "It is
the first interest on the money you lent me."
"The machine?" cried Rob, trying to seize the letter which her father
held tantalizingly above her head. "Oh, tell me quick if it is the
machine."
"It is the machine. But we mustn't expect too much," Mr. Grey hastily
added. "It is by no means sold, nor even appraised. This letter is
from a man in New York who is interested in such things, and he writes
that he is coming to Fayre the day after to-morrow to look into my
improvements in bricquette making. That's all, but it is a beginning,
and that's something in itself."
"It's a lot!" cried sanguine Rob. "What shall we have for dinner that
day? Have you told Mardy?"
"I have but just come in," said her father, laughing aloud. "What a
practical girl! And how truly her instinct guides her to the wisdom
of feeding well the man whom you wish to impress! Do the best you can
with the dinner, Robin, and maybe he won't discover defects in the
invention."
"There is none," retorted Rob, going off with a skip and a jump to
impart the news to her mother and Wythie, and consult with them on ways
and means.
The second day dawned clear and cold and brought with it, on the noon
train, the anxiously awaited arbitrator of the fate of the bricquette
machine.
Mr. Grey went to the station to meet him, and Wythie, Rob, and Prue
watched their approach to the little grey house from behind the muslin
curtains in their chamber.
There was an air of assurance and power about the stranger which filled
Wythie with fear of his judgment, and inspired Rob with confidence.
"Of course he will approve the machine if he knows what he's about,"
said Rob, "and he most certainly looks as though he knew."
Dinner was served at once, and Mr. Marston--by this name Mr. Grey
presented his guest to his wife and daughters--Mr. Marston was
enthusiastic in word and deed over his pleasure in what, he said, he
never found in the city--old-fashioned, home cooking, prepared by the
hands of ladies.
"You really have no business with a successful invention, Mr. Grey,"
said the guest--"you who are already so rich." And he smiled up into
Prue's face, who had risen to remove his plate, with a look that
conveyed his high sense of her value, and so embarrassed the child that
she dropped his knife and fork with a clatter.
"I don't like him," Rob confided to Wythie, when their father had borne
Mr. Marston away for a preliminary smoke--like his colonial ancestors
dealing with the Connecticut aborigines--leaving the girls with their
mother to their task of clearing away. "I don't like him--he's too
good to be true--but if he only will like the machine my likings and
dislikes don't matter."
Later Rob's father called her, and she went to help in displaying the
invention which she almost felt was as much hers as her father's.
Silently she moved the parts of the machine, co-operating with her
father as he talked, and silently the visitor watched the proceedings,
stroking his mustache and letting nothing escape his keen eyes, as
Rob saw, while she, in her turn, sharply, though furtively, eyed the
impassive face concealing its owner's verdict on the Greys' hopes.
At last the exposition of the machine was over, and Rob busied herself
with replacing the covers of the models, while her father and Mr.
Marston dropped into neighboring chairs for its discussion.
"It's unquestionably a good thing, Mr. Grey," the visitor said. "The
improvements are important, and, what is more, practical. I feel that
I have no right to say anything definite until I have seen my partner,
but I am perfectly within bounds in saying that I am thoroughly
convinced as to the value of your patent, and that we shall be ready
to make you an offer for it. At the same time I should be glad if you
will not show it to anyone else until that offer has been made and
discussed; I should like to retain an option on the machine."
"When I wrote you, Mr. Marston, and allowed you to come here to see the
invention, I considered it equivalent to a pledge not to allow anyone
else to see what might become your property, and would be valueless to
you if it were not protected," said Mr. Grey, quietly.
Rob waited to hear no more. She ran from the room, and caught Wythie
and Kiku in a comprehensive embrace, meeting them as they came, one in
the other's arms, across the hall.
"It's all right, it's all right, Oswyth, saint and martyr!" she cried,
whirling Wythie around, and sending Kiku leaping, panic-stricken by
her onslaught, to the top of the portière at the door. "He says he's
thoroughly convinced of the value of the patent, and he asks Patergrey
to keep it for him till he can consult with his partner as to the offer
they mean to make for it. Oh, I knew, I knew all along it was coming
right, but now it has come right, I'm ready to die of joy."
Wythie turned so white that Rob held her closer for another reason,
fearing she was going to faint. "We must find Mardy," was all Wythie
said, but her smile was so beatific that Rob was more than satisfied.
When Mr. Grey came back from the station, where he had been to speed
his guest, he found his household waiting him, half delirious with joy.
"It's all right now, isn't it, Patergrey?" cried Rob. "There's no
danger in our being as glad as we please, is there? It's sure and sure
that the invention will go, isn't it? That man settled it, didn't he?"
"No risk at all in rejoicing, Mary," said Mr. Grey, disregarding Rob,
and answering the girl's question to his wife, to whom he held out his
arms with smiling, quivering lips, and eyes bright at once with joy and
tears.
"Will it be much, Sylvester?" asked Mrs. Grey, still afraid to be glad.
"The offer? It will not be less than fifty thousand, if it is to be
accepted, Mary; that will put the Grey family into brighter colors,
and free the little grey house of its burden again," said Mr. Grey,
stroking his wife's abundant hair. "And, Rob," he added, as the girls
caught their breath with a gasp of ecstasy, "make a note of the name of
John Lester Baldwin, and his address on Broadway, in New York. I will
give it to you, and I want you to remind me to write him--he was a
college chum of mine, an honest man and a good lawyer. I mean to take
his advice as to the patent; I would trust it utterly."
Rob obediently made the memorandums on a pad, and her father
straightened himself, taking a long breath. "It is a curious sensation
to have succeeded, after so long," he said. "I hardly know how to
adjust myself to it."
Rob and Wythie exchanged glances, noting with the anxiety they always
felt for the dear father's safety, the dilation of his bright eyes and
his quickened breath.
"You have done enough, Patergrey," cried Rob. "You have made the
machine, and we'll do the adjusting, never fear! Mayn't I ask the boys
and Frances down to-night to rejoice with us, Mardy? And won't you get
your hat and coat and go with me to invite them, Patergrey? The fresh
air will bring us both to our senses--I feel as though my head were a
thistle in September."
"We should all be better for the boys and Frances, Rob," said her
mother, and at the same moment Mr. Grey said: "Yes, let's have the
young folks in, and play twirl the platter, and make molasses candy,
and have a real, children's party--I feel as though I wanted to get
down to a basis of pure jollity and be thoroughly a boy, now that for
the first time in years I feel the pressure of care lightened."
"Then get your hat--why, here come the boys now! Then I can't go,
Patergrey! Suppose you and Mardy take a walk instead, and we'll keep
Battalion B to supper, and I'll make them get it!" cried Rob.
"It would be pleasant, Mary, to celebrate by a stroll together; we
don't get one of our all-to-ourselves times very often," smiled Mr.
Grey. "Let's leave our girls to prepare our triumphal banquet, and
pretend we're young lovers again, with no tall girls to bother us."
Mrs. Grey laughed happily, and almost ran away to get ready for her
walk, and soon she was leaning on her husband's arm, and the three
girls were watching her as she laughed up into his face, as they
strolled in the direction of Miss Charlotte's to bring her the glad
tidings of the coming of prosperity to the little grey house.
"See how young and happy Mardy looks," sighed Wythie. "Only think,
if she will look like that all the time! Do you suppose, can it be,
girls--and boys--that this isn't too good to be true?"
"It's just barely good enough for you to be true," said Bruce. "We
don't believe that only bad things happen outside of books, do we, Rob?"
"No, sir; we believe only in good things--even when the bad ones
happen!" declared Rob. "Tommy Tucker sang for his supper, but if you
two big fellows want yours you've got to chop wood for kindling, or you
won't get it. And, Bart, would you mind very, very much if you were
asked most politely to go and fetch Frances?"
"Yes, I'd mind, because I like to be around when you're fussing, but
I'm willing to offer myself a sacrifice, if nobody else will," said
Bartlemy, looking around for his hat.
Poor Bartlemy could not hurry Frances sufficiently to get back to the
little grey house before supper was ready, and "the fun over," as he
grumblingly said. Rob patted his head like a big dog's. "Never mind,
Bartie dear," she said, soothingly, "you shall wash all the greasiest
pans!"
"What shall we do to celebrate?" asked Prue, when everything was
cleared away, and the dining-room table rolled to the wall to allow
games.
"I'll tell you," cried Mr. Grey, with an inspiration. "Let's rifle
the attic and invoke our ancestors to enjoy with us the prospect of
securing to future Greys this little house they loved. We know what
treasures there are in the chests and horse-hair trunks up there, don't
we, girls?"
"Oh, you never saw our old-fashioned clothing!" cried Wythie. "Why,
that's the very thing, papa! Get lamps, boys, and come up to the attic.
We'll dress up and have an old-folks' concert, just for ourselves. You
never saw such things as we have up there!"
Older and younger, all the Greys with their four guests, and lamps
enough to light the party, and with Kiku-san on behind, hoping for
mice, repaired to the attic.
A pleasant musty odor of dried herbs, camphor, and cedar-wood greeted
them, and queer shadows wavered big on the slanting walls to meet them.
"What a fine place!" exclaimed Basil. "Why don't we come here oftener?"
Mrs. Grey produced her keys and threw open chest after chest, and
Wythie, Rob, and Prue, with enthusiastic help from Frances, began
shaking out garments of more than a hundred years ago, as well as the
big skirts and poke-bonnets of the '50s.
Huge embroidered collars, long, handwrought lace veils, brocaded
silks, frail with age; gigantic leghorn bonnets; short, much-shirred
waists; high stocks for men, ruffled shirts, tight, short-waisted blue
coats; the high, pointed collars in which our grandfathers did penance
in the days of "Tippecanoe"; grotesque high and narrow beaver hats,
and broad ones of white silk, all these were brought forth into the
flickering light amid shouts of laughter and impatient clutches from
hands eager to try the effect of something that particularly struck an
individual fancy.
"No fair trying on up here," cried Prue, at last. "We must take
everything we want downstairs, and fit ourselves out there; we'll never
get down this way."
So everybody piled all that one pair of arms could carry into a great
heap, and each one lifted his burden and carefully picked the way down
the narrow, steep stairs, made particularly uncertain by the wavering
lamp-light.
"Now, ladies to the right; gentlemen to the left," ordered Wythie. "You
go into your room, papa, with the boys, and Mardy and Frances shall
come into ours with us, and we'll do our best. Don't I wish you had
wigs with queues!"
It took nearly three-quarters of an hour of excited hurrying and much
laughter from both sides of the hall before the impromptu fancy-dress
party was robed, and then at a signal nine queer figures appeared in
two lines, and stopped short, each convulsed at the sight of the other.
Mr. Grey, in knee-breeches and cocked hat of an earlier period,
was more imposing but not nearly as funny as Bruce in the costume
of the '30s, nor as Basil, portentously scowling between the sharp
collar-points like those which served as gateways to Daniel Webster's
eloquence.
Bartlemy, in a long-tailed, short-waisted black coat which must have
belonged to some clerical Grey, and with an incongruous white-silk
hat, was so funny that Prue forgot her frail, rose-besprinkled muslin,
and sat straight down on the floor to laugh at him. Wythie had found a
muslin frock, short and tucked-in skirt and waist, and slippers such as
Jane Austen's heroines tripped about in, and her pretty face was framed
in a big leghorn hat, tied down into a poke at back and front. She
looked as if she had stepped out of a Sir Joshua Reynolds portrait.
Rob had made herself into a lady of Revolutionary days, hair high, and
gown of brocade low in neck, and draped with an immense embroidered
fichu. Prue's muslin did not much antedate the civil war, but Frances
had arrayed herself in a gown which Dolly Madison would have recognized
as the latest fashion had she come to life to see it.
Mrs. Grey seemed to have taken what no one else wanted, but nothing
else that she had on mattered much while she wore the great pink gauze
turban which crowned her hair.
"It's a real pity no one can see us," declared Frances, when they
were mustered in the dining-room, and had dropped, breathless with
laughter, into the old chairs which should have welcomed gladly the
figures of their youth returning to them.
"We'll get up a real affair, give an old folks' concert or something,
in costume--we'd have a great one," cried Bruce. "Will you, say toward
spring?"
"Very likely," said Rob, "but what are we going to do now, this minute?"
"You are going to dance," said Mrs. Grey. "I'm going to play for you,
and if our piano is old and thin, then you must remember that it is in
old-time costume also, and not mind."
"We can have a fine square-dance," cried Prue. "Just four
couples--papa, will you dance?"
"Will I? Will I not?" Mr. Grey cried, gayly. "Whose patent are we
celebrating, I'd like to know? Rob and I are head couple."
He gave his hand to Rob, Basil and Wythie took one side, Bruce and
Frances the other, while tall Bartlemy and Prue fell together, as they
usually did.
Mrs. Grey played, concealing as well as she could, with her fine touch
and real talent, time's ravages on the queer, yellow-keyed old piano.
"Now sing," ordered Mr. Grey, when, the dance over, he dropped weary,
but happy, into a chair. The quaint figures with the flushed young
faces gathered about the old piano, and sang as they were bidden, sang
until the clock in the hall startled them by striking eleven.
"Why, I had no idea of the time!" cried Frances. "Mamma will think I'm
stolen. I must hurry and get into my present-day things and fly home.
We've had a lovely time, dear Grey people! There never was a place
where people had so much fun without trying, and because they couldn't
help it, as in the little grey house."
"And there never was a place where good luck was more needed, nor
where people were more grateful for hearing that it had come to them,
than in the little grey house to-day," added Rob, as she wound her arm
around her friend's waist, and bore her away to her room.
"Oh, Rob," said Frances, "and oh, Wythie," she added, turning back to
include Wythie in the caress she gave Rob, "you know how glad I am of
what that man told you! It's well you do, for I can't begin to tell you
how glad I am. Isn't it perfectly blessed?"
"It's the beginning of the end of our troubles, that's all it is,
Francie," said Rob. "This isn't the little grey house to-night; it's
Pandora's box, with everything bad flying out, and only hope left."
CHAPTER TWELVE
ITS TRAGIC SIDE
"Maimie Flinders is sick," said Prue, coming in from school the next
noon, and hastening to thrust first one foot and then the other into
warmth issuing from the open oven-door, for the day was cold. "I met
Mr. Flinders, and he said 'Maimie was pretty miserable, and they
was worried about her.'" Prue pulled down the corners of her mouth,
imitating Farmer Flinders's drawl as she spoke.
"I must go see her," said Rob. "Poor little Pollykins! She's a misfit
in that household--a dear, quaint little soul! None but a very nice
child could admire me the way that mite does. I think I owe her a
cheering visit. Look out, Prudy; let me get the pudding out."
After dinner Rob girded herself in her warm, ex-parlor-curtains
coat, and having selected from her accumulation of the Rutherfords'
contributions to her entertainments some things that she thought would
amuse the sick child, started out to make a call which was not alluring
for many reasons.
Farmer Flinders lived in a yellowish-brown house from which the
green blinds that adorned it in summer had been removed to save them
unnecessary wear during the winter. It was square and bare, and Rob
felt its bleakness anew as she entered the gate, passing the straggling
stalks which in summer developed into a lilac and syringa bush,
and pulled the octagonal glass door-bell, remembering the solitary
and sensitive child who was trying to grow into a woman in these
surroundings.
Mrs. Flinders opened the door, cautiously displaying a little of her
gaunt person.
"We heard that Maimie was sick," said Rob. "I should like to see her,
if I may."
"Come in," said Maimie's mother. "She's pretty mis'rable, but if
anything could do her good 'twould be seein' you. I always say that to
Mr. Flinders when he's talkin' of the bother he has with your place,
an' you bein' pretty spunky. 'Eliab,' I says, 'there's got to be good
in a girl that children take to, an' I never see our Maimie take to
anyone's she doos to Roberta Grey. She makes her laugh,' I says, 'an'
she seems to chirk her right up.' An' you can see yourself, Roberta,
that if you'd had seven children, an' all had died but jest this one,
you'd take to anyone she took to yourself, no matter who 'twas."
Roberta accepted these dubious remarks as complimentary, that being,
on the whole, apparently their intention, but she had considerable
difficulty in keeping her face straight, for it did not seem to her
necessary for Mrs. Flinders to apologize to her, either for her liking
for Rob, nor for her desire to have Maimie made happy.
She followed Mrs. Flinders into the kitchen, which was also the
sitting-room, and saw the little white face which she hoped to make
smile, languidly looking out on the glimpse of the world allowed the
child by the enormous chintz arm-chair, with its extended side-pieces,
in which she was very nearly swallowed up. A long, thin, little hand
came out from the plaid shawl enveloping Maimie and waved feebly to
Rob, while a piping voice cried: "Oh, Rob Grey, I'm awful glad to see
you!"
"That's right," cried Rob, running over to give the child a hug. "So
you should be, because I'm glad to see you, though I'm not one bit
glad to see you ill. But, you see! I always told you they ought
to call you Polly, and not Maimie--because it was 'little _Polly_
Flinders sat among the cinders, warming her pretty little toes.' And
if you're not among the cinders, you're close to the stove, Pollykins!
But we're certain sure you're not the real Polly Flinders, in Mother
Goose, because 'her mother came and caught her, and whipped her little
daughter, for spoiling her nice new clothes.' That can't happen to you,
you know, because you've got on your wrapper!"
The child laughed out. "You're funny, Rob," she said, stroking Rob's
cheek.
"And you're funny, Polly; as funny as a fiddler-crab, with this big
chair high up above your head, and your thin little face peering out!
What do you play all day--do you play you're a little turtle and this
is your shell?" laughed Rob, her heart full of pity for the wan little
creature.
"Nothin'," said Polly. "I don't play nothin'; I just sit an' sit."
"Read?" hinted Rob.
Polly shook her head. "I can't read fast, 'cause I didn't go to school
much, an' it makes me awful tired."
"Well, now, reading is hard work, because they won't stop writing
books long enough to let us catch up," laughed Rob. "I've been telling
stories, telling them to lots of little children, and we do have the
most fun!"
"Father told about that," cried Polly eagerly. "He said 'twas queer
folks paid to hear 'em, but I know! You've told me stories, an' I know!
I wish I could be there when you tell 'em, but father wouldn't get a
ticket, not ever."
"What does the doctor say about Polly, Mrs. Flinders?" asked Rob, who
had been forming her own unprofessional opinion, and deciding that poor
little Polly was dying of pure dreariness.
"He says she ain't any stamina, an' he's afraid she'll go like the
rest. He says she don't seem to have any real disease, but too much
Flinders--you know Dr. Fairbairn, an' the way he says things. I guess
he means she'll go like the rest," said Mrs. Flinders, apparently
oblivious to Polly's intense gaze.
Rob thought that she did indeed "know Dr. Fairbairn," and read in his
diagnosis of "too much Flinders" confirmation of her own judgment on
poor Polly. The mite looked so frightened at the prospect of "going
like the others" that Rob was divided between pity for the shrinking
child and wondering wrath at her obtuse mother.
"Now, I'll tell you what it is, Mrs. Flinders," cried Rob, "Polly
isn't going like the others; she isn't going at all. But she's sick
and lonely, and I think a bit of cheering would do her more good than
medicine--or even than splendid Dr. Fairbairn can do! I want you to
lend us Polly. We've plenty of room in the little grey house--we always
have room and time to do what we want to do--and I'll take Polly under
my special charge, so the others shall not have any trouble about it.
I'll tuck her up in the little bed we three girls had in turn when we
were little, and we'll let her play with our dear white kitten Kiku,
and she'll hear us chatter, and I'll tell her stories, and you see if
she doesn't get to be another Polly in no time!"
"Oh, mother, mother!" cried Polly, starting up in uncontrollable
rapture and clasping her thin hands prayerfully. "Oh, mother, mother!"
Mrs. Flinders stared at Rob in amazement, then she wiped her eyes on
the corner of her faded apron. "Well, Roberta, you're a good girl,
an' I'll say that for you," she said, her reserve dropping from her
suddenly. "Young as you be, you see what's the matter with Maimie. The
child's just pining and pindling out of the world, an' I can't stop
her. He's near; you know how he is. He's got plenty money an' no one
but us, an' if Maimie dies, what's the use of it all? But he won't send
the child away--says it's all nonsense. An' the house's lonely, an'
I can't amuse her, an' so I stand by an' see her going the way they
all went, till it seems 's if there wa'n't enough vim in me to git her
supper--let alone savin' her. If you could--and would--take her awhile,
I know she'd come right up. But they ain't many's 'd do it, an' I guess
he's been tryin' enough to you fer you not to feel gret interest in his
child. An' what'd your folks say?"
"I'd do anything I could for dear little Polly, Mrs. Flinders," said
Rob. "And as to my mother and father, the one thing that makes them
happy is a chance to do a slight kindness for someone. You needn't
be afraid that Polly won't be welcome. I know, or I wouldn't have
spoken--or at least not until I had first consulted them. You get her
ready, and I'll ask the Rutherford boys to come here and carry her off
to the little grey house. Will Mr. Flinders let her go?"
"He'll do anything as long's it don't come out of him," said Mrs.
Flinders, bitterly. "I know in his heart he'll be pleased, for this
child's the only thing he doos care about. An' I guess you no need to
ask those boys to fetch her; we've got a horse, an' if she's goin'
visitin' I'll see she gets there properly."
"Then it's settled!" cried Rob, and, turning to Polly, who had been
listening to this conversation with her breath fluttering over her
parted lips, and color coming and going in her pinched face, she added:
"Are you glad to come, Pollykins?"
"Glad, Rob!" cried little Polly. "It'll be 'most heaven. I'm sure I'll
have a better time than the others."
And Rob knew that she referred to the other little Flinders, and was as
delighted with Polly's gratitude as if she had not seen how much the
small creature dreaded following them to greater happiness than the
little grey house could give her.
When Rob announced at home the prospective visitor there was
consternation for a time, but it was not long before her mother and
Wythie were planning for Polly's comfort with as much pleasure as Rob
felt, and Prue fell to washing and setting in order the wardrobe of
her discarded doll for Polly's delectation.
Mrs. Flinders drove the child over in the buggy with the purpling
wheel-spokes and the wood obtruding through the back of the seat. Polly
was wrapped so closely that only her dilated eyes showed, and her
mother sat, uncompromising and severe, beside her, hauling on the reins
which guided the temperate horse.
The Rutherfords were at the grey house when the little invalid arrived,
and Bruce's strong arms lifted her out with a gentleness that warranted
his choice of vocation, and bore her into the warmth of the open fire
in the dining-room.
"These are her drops," said Mrs. Flinders, setting a bottle on the
table. "We're very much obliged to you for taking Polly, Mis' Grey.
He's obliged too--I guess he's some ashamed of being so cantankerous to
you about the garden truck. If she's troublesome you let me know, an'
I'll fetch her back."
"She will trouble us only by looking pale," said Mrs. Grey. "If she
gets better as fast as we hope to have her she will trouble us no more
than a little cricket on our hearth."
"We shall have to hide Polly from Aunt Azraella," said Wythie,
returning from seeing Mrs. Flinders's departure. "If she disapproved
of our extravagance in having a kitten, what will she say to a child in
the house?"
"We always have plenty of what we don't want," said Rob. "We run no
risk of impoverishing ourselves in sharing our deprivations with
Pollykins."
"It's a funny little grey house, with all its bothers," said their
mother. "It always seems to be able to bear a bit more--that often
cheers me when I think it has almost more than it can bear."
"We have to go up to the attic, Pollykins, to put away lots and lots
of old clothes--the oldest kind of old clothes!" said Rob, on her
knees before Polly, unbuttoning the child's coat. "Some day, when it's
warmer, or you're strong enough to go where it's cold, I'll show you
the funniest old hats and bonnets and dresses you ever saw in all your
little life! We don't like to put them away, but we must. Last night
we dressed up in them, and danced, and so to-day we have to pay the
fiddler--that means we have to pack them all away again, whether we
like to or not. You won't mind if you have to stay here alone with
Hortense, do you? That's the doll's name. By and by Prudy will come
in, and we shall be down soon."
"I don't mind, Rob," said Polly, eying Hortense longingly. "I'll play
house and rock that dolly. Does she shut her eyes?"
"Yes, indeed; goes to sleep like a good baby whenever she is bidden.
Why, you're better already! You didn't feel like playing house when I
saw you after dinner, did you?" cried Rob, delighted.
Polly shook her head with happy solemnity. "I never had such a nice
doll," she said.
Mr. Grey came in looking pale and tired, but he smiled at white little
Polly, and said, as he tipped up her chin: "Rob says you're little
Polly Flinders who sat among the cinders, but I think she's turned you
into a little coal of fire, right out of the cinders. Do you know what
that means--to be a coal of fire?"
Polly smiled, evidently feeling it safer not to commit herself, and
trustingly confident that whatever it meant to be a coal of fire, it
was something pleasant.
"I am going to lie down here, please little Polly, and if you will sing
to Hortense while you rock her I shouldn't be surprised if you made me
go to sleep too," said Mr. Grey, stretching out on the old couch with a
sigh of relief.
"Do you feel ill, Sylvester dear?" asked Mrs. Grey, stroking the hair
from his forehead. "You look tired."
"Not in the least ill, Mary dear, but tired, yes," replied her husband,
kissing the gentle hand. "I did not sleep much last night--too excited
and happy, you know--but I am quite well, and still most happy. _Still_
happy? Why, I'm going to be happy all my days!"
"You've won, Sylvester," said Mrs. Grey, and she laid her cheek for a
moment where her hand had rested.
"I've won--_we've_ won through Rob, my son! That's what I've been
saying over and over, for the past twenty-four hours," cried Mr. Grey,
triumphantly. "You never can know what a help and a comfort you are,
Rob boy! It's a good deal of a joy to a man who has been accounted a
failure, to know his brains have given his dear ones all they need!
If you orderly housewives don't make too much noise in the attic, I'm
going to sleep, to dream of my happiness, and for the first time in all
my life waken from such a dream to find it true."
"Put me in your dream, Patergrey," cried Rob, as she ran out of the
room, seeing that little Polly had already established herself in the
small rocking-chair brought out for her use, and was hushing Hortense
to sleep with low croonings.
Wythie joined her mother and Rob in the upper hall, and all three went
atticward, laden with the garments of last night's frolic.
It took a longer time to put them away than they had foreseen, for the
chests had been sadly upset, and required much rearranging.
The brief winter light had nearly faded before Mrs. Grey straightened
herself, and said, with a sigh for the knees which the bare floor had
hurt: "Dear girls, it must be more than time to put the kettle on!"
"Perhaps Polly has done it; she ought, to preserve the unities. I don't
know what the unities are, but I mean well, and I'm trying to quote
'Polly, put the kettle on' in that clever, indirect way people make
allusions in novels," said Rob.
"Thanks, Rob," said Wythie, quietly. "We know the poem."
The little procession of three filed down the narrow stairs, stepping
slowly and carefully in the dusk. The house was absolutely still; Prue
had evidently not come in, and perhaps Polly had fallen asleep with
Hortense, Wythie suggested.
There was a faint glow in the dining-room from the fire burning low on
the hearth. By its light they saw Mr. Grey lying on the couch as they
had left him, and Polly's little figure drooping over Hortense in her
arms, sound asleep in Prue's outgrown chair.
"The palace of the Sleeping Beauty," whispered Rob, thinking it a
pretty picture.
"I can't bear to disturb your father, but we must get tea," whispered
her mother back.
Wythie struck a light and Polly stirred, straightened herself, looked,
startled, around the room, and then smiled at Rob.
"I didn't know where I was," she said, running to her idol. "Your
father woke up and said something quick, and I woke up, too, but when I
went to him he was asleep, so then Hortense and I went to sleep again."
"What did papa say, Polly?" asked Wythie, with a sudden fear.
Her mother had crossed to the couch, and knelt beside it. She took her
husband's face in her hands, and something in her attitude brought her
girls to her instantly. Mrs. Grey laid the beloved head back on the
pillow and raised her face to Wythie and Rob without a sound.
"Mardy!" cried the girls together, dropping on their knees beside her.
There was no need of question nor of answer; no need of the frantic
pressure of the motionless heart. No need of Rob's rushing to meet
Prue, who opened the door at that moment, nor of bidding her hasten for
her life for Dr. Fairbairn.
For they knew, the stricken wife and daughters, that Sylvester Grey had
slipped painlessly, quietly away from them, and from the joy of the
triumph of his loving efforts for them, into the joy that should never
end.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ITS DANGER
The days that followed its bereavement passed like a dream over the
little grey house. There is no preparation for grief; Mr. Grey's death
came upon those who had loved him as if there had been no warning of
the danger in which he lived, and, as they met the necessary claims and
performed the hard tasks their sorrow laid upon them, it was impossible
for them to realize that it was the dear dreamer whom they were laying
away to dreamless sleep up on the hill, under the great elms of Fayre's
old graveyard.
But when these confused days were past and the tall, thin figure no
longer cast its shadow over the old doorway, nor the nervous step fell
on bewildered ears, unconsciously straining to hear it, Sylvester
Grey's wife and daughters began dimly to realize that he had gone away.
Of the three girls the loss and loneliness was bitterest to Rob, but
it was she who met it most bravely, resolving to be, indeed, to her
mother the "son Rob" her "Patergrey" had always called her.
Aunt Azraella, in her own way, had been a comfort during this first,
disturbed week, coming in with perfect efficiency to plan and execute
the arrangements from which the Greys shrank, but it was "Cousin Peace"
on whom they all leaned now that, everything done, they sat down with
sorrow.
One morning, when her sister-in-law had been widowed ten days, Aunt
Azraella came down to the little grey house for a business conference.
"Little Polly Flinders" was hastily smuggled upstairs, with Hortense to
bear her company. She was a different little Polly than Rob had found
pining away in the big chintz chair; color was coming into the white
little face, and in the necessity of making things cheerful around the
child, all four Greys found help and comfort. It was much to feel that
they were establishing in health and life the pathetic child who had
chanced to be the one to hear the last tones of that voice now forever
silent.
"I came down, Mary, to talk with you about your prospects," said Aunt
Azraella, unwinding her long barège veil as she seated herself before
the fire.
"You must make up your mind precisely what you are going to do. Of
course, Sylvester's death doesn't affect you like the loss of a
business man such as your brother, my husband, was, but it does settle
the question of that invention. Whatever it is, it must remain, so
I advise you to see if you can do anything with it, if it has any
practical value."
"There was a Mr. Marston, from New York, here to see it two weeks
ago," said Mrs. Grey, quietly. "We had a letter from him this morning,
offering to buy the machine."
Mrs. Winslow gave a start of genuine pleasure. "Well, I am surprised,"
she said. "How much did he offer? I hope it will take the mortgage off
the house, and leave you a little. But I suppose it wasn't much."
"No; only four thousand dollars," replied Mrs. Grey. "Rob thinks he
is trying to take advantage of our necessities, or what he hopes will
prove necessities."
"Rob thinks!" ejaculated Aunt Azraella. "Why, Mary, it's a wonderful
offer! I hope you wrote at once! If you haven't written, write now, and
I'll post the letter when I go out."
"We haven't decided to accept it," began Mrs. Grey, but got no further.
"Now, Mary Winslow Grey," cried Aunt Azraella, "for mercy's sake, don't
listen to that child! Even allowing she's not flighty, as I know she
is, you have to admit a girl of sixteen is not a competent adviser.
You accept that offer on the spot, _on the spot_, do you hear? Four
thousand dollars! Why, you can pay a thousand and clear the mortgage,
and have three thousand to invest--that'll be quite an addition to
your income. It will leave you better off than you were with Sylvester
alive."
"Oh!" gasped Wythie. Roberta began to speak very slowly, with manifest
effort to be dignified, and to lay aside her natural quickness of
speech and retort.
"Aunt Azraella," she said, "you do not understand the invention--no one
here does, except me. Either the invention is worth nothing, or it is
worth a great deal--more than ten times as much as this offer. You see,
the offer proves it is worth something, and if we accepted it we should
be cheating ourselves out of about fifty thousand dollars."
"Fifty thousand dollars!" Aunt Azraella tossed her head scornfully,
words failing to express her opinion of this visionary estimate.
"You see; I told you you had no idea of the value of that invention,"
said Rob. "Pater--our dear father said, the day Mr. Marston was here,
that he should refuse an offer of less than fifty thousand dollars. I
feel that we have no right to throw it away, for his sake, if not for
our own."
"If you don't close with this offer at once it may be withdrawn," said
Mrs. Winslow, seeing the effect of Rob's argument on her mother.
"That's precisely what Mr. Marston writes," said Mrs. Grey, "and that's
what frightens me. I am so afraid of refusing the only offer we may
ever get."
"And I think that proves him dishonest," cried Rob. "He wants to
frighten us into closing with him, because he knows if we took time
to investigate, we should find out the true value of the machine. He
saw enough when he was here--our doing our own work, and our simple
way of living--to guess we should need money now we were alone. He is
trying to take advantage of a woman and three young girls, and if I
have my way, he won't succeed! I hated him the day he was here--he's a
villain, if ever there was one, a smiling villain at that."
"What do you propose doing, then?" asked Aunt Azraella, satirically.
"If you are taking matters into your own hands you ought to have
some other plan to propose instead of this certain one--for I hope
you realize, Roberta, that you are trying to use your influence with
your mother to urge her to throw away a certainty, on the chance of
something better, and on the advice of a girl of sixteen, who has as
much knowledge of the world as my Tobias has."
"I do realize, aunt, and it frightens me, but I was my father's helper
all through the last four years he was working on this machine, and I
feel I must stand firm, now that he has left it to me. I know we shall
be cheated if we take this offer, and sell the bricquette machine to
this Mr. Marston," cried Rob.
"Mary, Mary, I have no patience!" cried Mrs. Winslow. "Will you, or
will you not, listen to reason and be guided by someone with judgment?
You see Roberta does not answer my question! Oh, for the land sakes,
why do we talk about it as though she were a person to be listened to?
What has she to do with it, anyway? I tell you I have no patience. Go
over to that desk, and write that man you accept his offer, and I'll
post the letter before I go home."
"I didn't mean not to answer you, Aunt Azraella," said Rob, with new
dignity. "My plan is neither to refuse nor accept, but to write Mr.
Marston that we must have a few days in which to look into the matter.
If he's an honest man, he won't object; if the machine is worth four
thousand dollars to him, he will take it a week later as well as now,
and if--and I know it is--it is worth six times that, why, we save
ourselves from a trick, that's all."
Mrs. Winslow turned to Rob with a touch of respect in her manner. "That
has a little the ring of sense," she graciously remarked. "But you must
remember that he may have some reason for wanting that machine this
moment or never, and it may be worth four thousand to-day, and nothing
a week hence, unless he gets it now. That often happens in business
matters. Mary, write your note."
"I confess I'm strongly inclined to your view, Azraella," said Mrs.
Grey, "but I can't write to-night. Rob seems to me not like my young
daughter, but like her father's representative, and I cannot disregard
her, as I should Wythie, for instance."
"And what is Oswyth's opinion?" asked Aunt Azraella, turning to her
favorite niece.
"I'm a coward," said Wythie, with a faint smile. "I'm afraid to refuse
a certainty of even a small piece of good fortune."
"Sensible girl!" said her aunt, approvingly. "Then Roberta is the only
one that stands out against good luck?"
"Stands _for_ good luck, Aunt Azraella," said Rob, rising, as her aunt
arose, with the air which had come upon her, adding years and dignity
to her, since she had learned to suffer.
"You won't write, Mary?" insisted Mrs. Winslow, wrapping herself in her
barège defence from the cold wind.
"Not to-night; to-morrow will still be time," said Mrs. Grey, also
rising.
"Then I wash my hands of you, and if you come to grief, don't appeal
to me for sympathy nor help. I foresee the end; this girl is so
headstrong, and will so appeal to your desire to carry out your
husband's will, that she will get her way, and your one hope of peace
will be gone. You can't help confessing, Mary, no matter how you mourn
him, that Sylvester knew nothing of business, and for you to allow
sentimentality and a girl's ignorance to wreck you, is little short of
criminal." Having delivered this valedictory with crushing effect, Mrs.
Winslow stalked away.
Prue came back dissolved in tears from closing the door behind her
aunt; she found her mother, Wythie, and Rob sitting silent and sad
around the fire.
"Oh, Rob, dear Rob," cried Prue, hysterically, "you mean well, but how
can you be so obstinate? Don't listen to her, Mardy; we shall never be
happy again; we shall lose our home, too, if you do!" And Prue dropped,
sobbing, in the big chair Mrs. Winslow had vacated.
"Mardy, Mardy," cried Rob, starting up, pushing back her hair with her
old, impulsive gesture, and running over to fall on her knees beside
her mother's chair, "it makes me nearly crazy to feel I am taking
such a responsibility, but I must, for I know, I _know_ I'm right! I
wasn't going to tell Aunt Azraella my plans, and have her make a worse
fuss than ever, but I've laid them, and you must, you truly must, let
me have my way. Write this Marston scamp you must take a few days to
consider his offer, that you are not prepared to accept or refuse it
for a week. It can't possibly make any difference, unless he is a
scamp, and then we want it to. And to-morrow you let me go to New
York, and find out what the machine is really worth, and what can be
done with it."
"To New York! You, Rob, alone? And you find out what can be done with
the invention, you, a young, inexperienced girl? My darling, you are
crazy!" cried her mother, while Wythie and Prue sat up with gasps of
amazed horror.
"Mardy, I am not in the least crazy. If we had anyone else to do it, we
would let them, of course, but who is there? I will go straight to Mr.
John Lester Baldwin, the lawyer, Patergrey's college chum, whom he said
he would trust utterly. I took his name and address the day Mr. Marston
was here, you know; Patergrey wanted me to remind him to write him, but
there was no time--" Rob stopped short, and Wythie made a little moan.
"Now, Mardy, this is no wild scheme, you see; it is plain, practical
common-sense," Rob continued. "Mr. Baldwin will put me somewhere to
board where I shall be safe, and he will do all he can for me when I
tell him who I am, and what has happened, if he is the man Patergrey
thought him. If he says take the four thousand, I am satisfied, but if
he says not to, don't you see how well it will be that I went? And I
have my own money, enough still, for my expenses."
"Rob, Rob, you glorious girl!" cried Wythie, starting up in a rapture.
"Let her go, Mardy; she is inspired, like Joan of Arc."
"My Rob, my dear Rob, my brave, reliable daughter," said Mrs. Grey,
fondly, "what can I say to you? I am not willing to let you go alone,
but if I were, the objections we made to putting off Mr. Marston still
hold good. Suppose you fail, and we lose not only the offer, but the
expenses of your journey and your stay in the city?"
"Mardy, I shall not fail," cried Rob. "Do you not remember that
Patergrey said: 'It must not be less than fifty thousand dollars to
be accepted?' That was the last time he spoke of it, you know. He
understood its value. I don't like to bother you, but you see it's
chiefly for your sake, and, besides, I worked with Patergrey all the
time and I feel as though I could not desert the dear invention now,
if I wanted to--let it be stolen from us, the work of all that dear
life, and its only legacy to us, except the little grey house, with
its mortgage. You must say yes, Mardy, my darling; I was Patergrey's
'son Rob,' you know, and I must defend his invention, and be the man
of the family, his son Rob still." Rob's beautiful head dropped on her
mother's knee, and the steady, clear, young voice broke pitifully.
Mrs. Grey leaned over and laid her wet cheek on Rob's bright rings of
hair, with the red shining through them in the firelight.
"Go, then, my Robert of the lion-heart, go, you dear knight-errant, and
have your way. And whatever comes of it we shall never regret it, for
we shall remember that you loyally played your part in defence of us
all--all, here and beyond," whispered Rob's mother.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ITS BRAVE DAUGHTER
There was but one really fast train between Fayre and New York, and
that left Fayre at quarter to eight in the morning. Not too early,
however, for Rob, acting rapidly on her hardly won permission to go
to the rescue of her family, to be ready to take her place among its
passengers.
There had been wild excitement in the little grey house on the previous
night, after that permission had been won, getting together Rob's
few requirements for her unwonted journey, and discussing in all its
aspects the great feat she was to perform.
But now her pretty face, pale under the black hat surmounting the
wayward hair, and big-eyed from sorrow and excitement, looked with
brave smiles out of the car-window at Wythie and Prue and the
Rutherford boys on the platform as they waved Rob on her way, and the
train started. Rob had never felt more childish and dependent in her
life than now, when, for the first time, she was acting like a woman,
and going down to the great city to try to arrange a most important
business matter.
When Fayre station was left behind, and Wythie and Prue could no
longer see her, Rob allowed herself a good cry--the world seemed so
big and hollow, and she felt so little and helpless! But in half an
hour she was drying her eyes, and beginning to lay her plans, and to
wonder, with quickened heart-beats, which were rather stimulating than
depressing, how she was to find Mr. Baldwin, or even Broadway, since
she did not know one street from another in the maelstrom that is the
second city of the world.
It was almost the bright-faced Rob whom her father had known that drew
her breath long and hard after the tedious tunnel was passed, and began
setting herself right and pulling herself together as irregular and
ugly buildings slipped by her in crowds, and the train entered the
Grand Central Station.
She took her place in the line, edging her suit-case--hastily borrowed
from the Rutherfords late the preceding night--between the wedged
passengers, and crawled along toward the door, too confused to feel
much beyond a strong wish that the person in front of her was shorter
and leaned back less, since he entirely prevented her hat from keeping
straight.
Out on the platform Rob still held her place in the crowd, and found
herself at last standing bewildered near the Forty-second Street exits,
wondering what she was to do next, and which way to turn to do it.
People jostled her without her knowing it, until a vicious shove of
her case, and a muttered remark that reminded her of Farmer Flinders's
addresses to his horse, aroused Rob to the fact that she was, in her
small degree, impeding the course of progress, and she stepped out on
the sidewalk and into the babel of "Cayb? Want a cayb, miss?" while the
cab-drivers threatened her face with their whips.
Rob espied a tall policeman and steered her course for him through the
maddening bedlam around her.
"Please tell me how to go to Broadway?" she said, looking up
appealingly under her over-shadowing hat.
"Straight along that way--you can't miss it," said the policeman. "No,
wait a bit. What part of Broadway do ye be wantin'?"
"It's near Liberty Street, if you know where that is," said Rob.
"Oh, well, that's different. Stand one side here a minute an' I'll tell
ye. Ye don't know N'Yawk?" asked the policeman, taking kindly interest
in Rob's case.
She shook her head, and the mammoth guardian of the peace considered,
at the same time raising his hand warningly to two encroaching
truckmen, and giving the time of day to a frantic woman who carried a
bird-cage in her hand and a spaniel under her arm.
"You might take the T'ird Avner L, but ye'd niver find your way over,
I'm thinkin'--get out at Fulton Street--no, 'twouldn't do!" the
policeman meditated aloud. "An' takin' these Fourt' Avner trolleys
is as bad. Ye take this crosstown, and get out at Broadway--tell the
conducther to let ye out on the downtown side. There ye'll take a
downtown Broadway car--see? Ask, if ye're not sure--an' keep on it till
ye get to your number. You can't miss it thin. Not at all, miss; it's
wan of our juties to help people. Wait, till I put ye on the car--it's
confusin' here, wid the subway an' all. Good luck to ye, miss."
Poor Rob, feeling like a maiden of legend surrounded by dragons, with
the yawning, yet unfinished, subway threatening her on one side, and
insanely rushing crowds mercilessly assaulting her on all sides, gladly
let the big policeman's strong arm clear a way for her to the car,
which came westward through Forty-second Street.
"Broadway!" called the conductor, to whom she had confided her desire
to know when that point was reached, and Rob was surprised to see six
people, beside herself, rise to their feet, plunge off the car, and the
men run as for their lives to swing themselves on another car, going in
a different direction, just ahead of them.
"There can't be many Broadway cars," thought Rob, but looked up and
down to see an interminable line of them coming both ways, and decided
that this was the New York unreasonable rush, of which she had heard so
much.
A woman with a gentle face, whom Rob timidly approached, put her in the
way of getting the car she desired, and she perched herself sideways
on the edge of the seat, watching feverishly the numbers, until she
realized that she was twelve hundred numbers above the one which her
father had given her as that of Mr. Baldwin's office, and subsided for
a time to watch the whirl of life around her, with a dizzy interest
that precluded all possibility of thought.
Keenly alive as she was in every sense, Rob could not help enjoying
the ride, though it did seem interminable. Beautiful shops, displaying
everything a girl cares for, were left behind, great buildings began
to tower on either hand; truckmen swore at their horses, small boys
tried to see how near they could come to the fender of the car in which
Rob rode, yet escape unscathed; timid women ran--very like Farmer
Flinders's chickens--head down and arms swinging, before the car,
having waited until it was almost upon them; Broadway narrowed, yet
increased in interest at every block.
An open square, set on three sides with picturesque old buildings--one
really beautiful among them--and a statue which Rob immediately
recognized as a figure of Nathan Hale, turned her thoughts to the
revolutionary New York into which the car had brought her, but seeing,
too, that the street numbers had decreased to the second hundred a few
blocks lower down, her mind swung with renewed concentration to her own
affairs, and her heart fluttered nervously.
Poised on the seat, ready for flight, she kept anxious watch, and at
Cortlandt Street signalled the conductor to stop. Threading her way
with difficulty through the narrow way, crowded at an hour so near
noon, her suit-case proving a menace to others and a trial to Herself,
Rob found at last the number she sought. Without giving herself time
to be more afraid, she plunged in at the wide doorway, and joined the
group waiting for an elevator to descend.
"Mr. Baldwin's office?" Rob said, low, to the man whose touch on the
lever had caused the elevator to shoot upward, and all Rob's powers
to seem to sink downward to her feet. The elevator was packed with
passengers, all men, some of whom removed their hats, but most of
whom kept them on, and stared at the young girl in mourning, with the
wonderful hair, and the big, frightened eyes.
"Ninth floor," said the man, and continued his rising career.
On the ninth floor Rob, at a forcible reminder from the elevator
man, stepped out, dizzy and confused, clutching her unwieldy case,
her sole link with the life she had known. It seemed to her, as she
stood staring at the door on which the too plain letters, black on the
ground-glass, told her she had found John Lester Baldwin, that there
was not left of the old, venturesome Roberta Grey even a voice to
announce that person.
"Don't be a goose, Rob," she said, giving herself a vigorous mental
shake. "The idea of insisting on coming, only to cave before the door!"
She turned the handle softly and entered.
A tall man, with a close-cropped, full beard, and keen yet kind eyes,
sat at a desk dictating to his typewriter; he looked up as Roberta
entered, and seemed surprised--which was not strange--at the sight of a
young girl armed with a suit-case, as if she had come to stay.
"Mr. Baldwin?" inquired Rob, faintly, setting down the case, and thus
giving herself even more an air of permanency.
"My name is Baldwin, yes," said the lawyer, rising politely. "This
is----?"
"Roberta Grey. My father--I am Sylvester Grey's daughter; do you
remember him?" said poor Rob.
"Sylvester Grey, my old college mate? Well, rather! My child, I am
truly glad to see you, though you make me feel older, finding you so
tall, than my own girl does--perhaps because I am used to her," said
Mr. Baldwin, coming over to take both of Rob's hands so heartily, that,
to her annoyance, she could not keep back the tears. "I have heard
nothing of Grey for some time. Come into my private office," he added,
seeing the brimming eyes, and noting, with a quick change in his own,
the black garments his young visitor wore.
Mr. Baldwin led the way to an inner, much smaller room, and put Rob
into a chair.
"What has happened, my dear?" he asked, gently. "I am afraid you have
nothing to tell me that I shall want to hear. You have come to me
because your father told you that if you needed counsel, his old chum
would gladly give it you? He was right, but I fear you need it because
Sylvester can counsel you no longer--is this so?"
Rob made a brave struggle to control her voice, helped by the low, even
tones, and the little pats on her black sleeve which this good man was
giving her--as if, she thought, she were a little child in need of
comfort.
"My father had been working hard on a patent for years, Mr. Baldwin,"
said Rob. "He had angina pectoris, and the doctor warned him of the
danger if he did not rest, but he could not rest, because we are poor,
and he wanted to make us comfortable. He worked harder than ever, in
fact, and now the machine is done. But the very day after a man came
from here to see it, and told him it was a success, my dear father----"
Rob stopped short, and Mr. Baldwin patted her hand without speaking for
a few moments.
"He had a sweet and beautiful nature, dear, and lived a life that was
ideal, in many ways, and that end is mercifully quick. He must have
been most happy to know that he had succeeded in providing for you,"
Mr. Baldwin said at last.
"The last words he said to Mardy and me were full of that thought, Mr.
Baldwin. We left him to sleep, and when we came back he had gone," said
Rob, trying to smile in the kind face smiling at her, though there were
tears in the eyes of Sylvester Grey's old chum. "This was eleven days
ago. I don't want to bother you, Mr. Baldwin, but it was to ask advice
that I came. The invention Patergrey made was a bricquette machine.
Nobody else understood it--not even Mardy--but I did, because I helped
him on it for a long time--read his papers and worked the model, and
handed him things, and all that, you know. Patergrey called me his 'son
Rob'; we were especially much to each other. What I want is to ask you
how much that invention is really worth? This Mr. Marston, the man who,
as I told you, came to see it, asked Patergrey to let his firm have
the option--don't you call it?--on the invention, and after he was gone
Patergrey gave me your name and address, and said he intended writing
you to ask you what its value was--I was to remind him to do it. But
the next day he died, so suddenly, and we were left to dispose of the
machine. We had a letter from Mr. Marston three days ago, offering us
four thousand dollars for the invention, and telling us we must take it
at once if we wanted it, or it would be withdrawn. All the rest want
to accept it, but I begged hard to be allowed to come to see you, and
for Mardy to write this man, telling him we must have a little time
to think about it. For you see, Mr. Baldwin, Patergrey said he would
not accept less than fifty thousand dollars, and I can't forget that.
Besides, I think there must be something wrong about a man who offers
so little, and wants us to take it that minute."
"What do you know about business, child?" asked Mr. Baldwin. "I wish
witnesses on the stand stated matters so clearly."
"I only know what I tell you, Mr. Baldwin," said Rob, feeling cheered.
"I suppose Mardy wouldn't have listened to me at all, but that I had
been Patergrey's right-hand man all this time, and she felt as though
he had given me a right in the case; as it was, I had an awful time
getting her to let me come here and make Mr. Marston wait, and you can
see that I must be frightened to take such responsibility, because if
we did lose this offer, and got no other, it would be awful, and I
should be to blame--no one else."
"I think you needn't be alarmed, Roberta--you said Roberta, didn't you?
You are quite right in your reasoning; a genuine offer for a valuable
thing would probably be open for a few days, and its owners should be
allowed to investigate. Do you think he knows your father has gone,
this Marston of yours?" asked Mr. Baldwin.
"Oh, yes; he spoke of it when he wrote," said Rob.
"Then you are more than ever right. Let me tell you, my child, that I
admire your courage and strength of purpose very greatly. I'll send
my clerk with a note to a friend of mine--a patent lawyer--and ask
on general principles what such an invention might be worth, if it
were worth anything--we see this is worth at least the sum offered.
You lay off your hat while I write, and then you will sit here and
talk to me while we wait the answer; I want to hear all about you,
and my messenger won't be long." Mr. Baldwin drew up to the desk and
wrote a note, rang a bell, and dispatched it, and then helped Rob
divest herself of her coat and hat, and put her comfortably in the
window while he won from her the story of the simple life lived in the
little grey house, and learned to know the wife and children of his
dead friend, whose family he had never met. Rob talked freely, drawn
out of herself by the kindly charm which went far toward making Mr.
Baldwin the successful lawyer that he was. He read between the lines,
understanding much that Rob did not realize she was betraying, and he
saw how fine had been the courage that had sustained his friend's wife
while Sylvester had been accounted a failure, and how great had been
the love for one another that had made life so sweet in the little grey
house, while it lacked so much that less wise people consider more
essential.
At last the clerk returned, and handed Mr. Baldwin the answer to his
note. The lawyer read it and gave it to Rob without comment. In it
Mr. Baldwin's friend stated concisely that, although it was obviously
impossible to give an opinion as to the value of something of which
he knew practically nothing, he could say that it was worth a good
deal, if it were worth anything, and that in either case four thousand
dollars was a preposterous offer--it was worth nothing, or it was worth
decidedly a great deal more than that.
"That's what I thought!" cried Rob, starting to her feet, joyously.
"Oh, Mr. Baldwin, I am so relieved--I was so frightened!"
"As frightened as your namesake, General Roberts, at the head of his
troops," smiled her new friend. "Braving an unknown city and a grim,
unknown lawyer for the cause of right!"
"Why, they call me 'Bobs' after General Roberts at home when I'm
unusually daring," cried Rob, delighted.
"Most fittingly," commented Mr. Baldwin. "And now, 'Bobs bahadur,'
I'm going to wire your mother not to act until she hears from me,
and add that you're all right; she must be troubled about you. This
warrants our holding off on this first offer." And Mr. Baldwin held
up his friend's note in one hand, while with the other he drew a
telegraph-blank toward him.
The telegram dispatched, Rob reached for her hat, and began to adjust
it as she vainly tried to smooth her turbulent locks.
"What shall I do? Go back to Fayre to-night, or will you tell me which
hotel to go to--am I needed here longer?" she asked, thrusting a hatpin
through her braid.
"You are needed here, Roberta," said Mr. Baldwin. "My intention is to
see certain people who may be interested in your father's invention,
and if you really do understand it and can describe it, we can interest
them sufficiently to get them to see the models. Can you do this?"
"Patergrey said one day that I could exhibit his invention as well as
he could," said Rob, quietly. "That was with the models; describing it
might be harder."
"If you can do one, you can do the other sufficiently well to give an
idea of what there is to be seen," smiled Mr. Baldwin. "As to a hotel,
my little girl, I strongly recommend one kept by a host called Baldwin.
It is up in Seventy-third Street, and is fairly comfortable, and quite
commodious enough for one person of sixteen. In it there is a landlady
who loves such guests, and a girl--the daughter of the landlord and
landlady--called Hester Baldwin, who is not rich in sisters as
you are--has none, in fact, and who will welcome you as a traveller
in the desert welcomes water. So I think there is no doubt that the
Baldwin Inn is the best place for you, my dear; but of one thing I am
sure--Sylvester Grey's little girl cannot go anywhere else, so make the
best of it."
"How good you are, Mr. Baldwin!" cried Rob, gratefully. "How can I ever
thank you?"
"By telling my girl all you have told me, and as much more as you can
remember, of the little grey house, my dear," replied Mr. Baldwin,
helping Rob into her coat.
"There are qualities in that little house and its occupants sadly out
of fashion, and I'd like Hester to taste their flavor. She's a good
girl, is Hester; she'll see their beauty. And now, come, my dear Rob,
you brave little Casabianca; I'm going to take you home to rest and
have a good time. But first I'm going to take you to lunch. Upon my
word, we've neither of us tasted food! Why, Rob, you must be starving!
And see how interested I have been! That's the first time I've
forgotten my lunch-hour since I don't know when--probably not since my
base-ball days!"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ITS RESCUE
Rob followed Mr. Baldwin and her suit-case from the Sixth Avenue
elevated station at Seventy-second Street northward a block, and then
westward two blocks on Seventy-third Street, followed hanging back a
little, and dreading the encounter with his wife and daughter which lay
before her. But Mr. Baldwin drew her up the steps close to his side,
with a reassuring gesture of protection, and before he could get his
key fully into the lock, the door flew open, and a beautiful little
woman, exquisitely gowned, stood before them, while over her shoulder
peered a girl of Rob's age, but taller than she was.
"I am glad you came straight to us, my dear," said Mrs. Baldwin, with
such quiet sincerity and informality that Rob drew a long breath of
relief. "I am sure you are too tired to be as glad to see us as we are
to see you, though. Hester, this is Roberta; take her to her room, and
don't let Virginie bother her--you must be her maid to-night. Hester is
delighted to have you here, my dear."
Rob returned the sweet woman's welcoming kiss with all the gratitude
of her lonely, timid heart, and laid her hand in Hester Baldwin's. The
two girls gave each other a penetrating look, and then moved at the
same instant to kiss each other, as if the scrutiny had been mutually
satisfactory. Hester was not pretty, but she had a keenly intelligent
face, and one could see that she was going to make a noble-looking
woman.
"We shall dine in half an hour," she said, in a rich alto voice. "Come
with me, and I'll help you get ready. The maid will bring your case,"
she added, as Rob, accustomed to wait on herself, lifted and hastily
set down, at Hester's suggestion, her former burden.
"We were pleased when father telephoned that he was bringing you here,"
Hester continued. "It is very nice to have a girl about; I never had
an intimate friend, because I never went to school, and that separates
a girl a good deal from others--makes her not fit in when she is with
them. Father said you had lots to tell me that was wonderful, all about
your beautiful life, and your little grey house, and that you weren't
like the general run of girls of our age either. Please try to like
me--father wants you to; I can see that."
"See it over the telephone?" laughed Rob, rather embarrassed by this
appeal. "I'd do harder things for your father than that, after to-day!
He has been heavenly kind, and made me believe I have been right, and
brave, and wise when I was half frightened to death lest my obstinacy
had ruined my family."
"That sounds mysterious, and positively thrilling," Hester declared.
"But as to father, he is fine--you can't imagine how I love him!"
"Yes, I can," said Rob, with a quiver in her voice that brought a flush
to Hester's cheeks.
"Oh, I beg your pardon--I didn't mean to speak of father to you," she
cried. "But he told me you had been your father's comfort and help, and
were now the only one to understand and fulfil his desires--save his
reputation, I think he said. Now, maybe you are more fortunate than I,
for I am no use at all, and I never shall do anything for my father in
all my life, probably. I think that is worse than your sorrow."
"You can't help doing for him if you love him," said Rob, rather at
a loss to answer this morbid speech, yet recognizing the tactful
kindness prompting it. "It is all he wants, to know that you are good
and love him. Patergrey loved my love for him more than my help on the
machine. But it does comfort me to know I did help, and if your father
really thinks I'm saving the day for dear Patergrey's invention now I
shall almost learn after a while not to be sorry, but half glad that
he is happy, and that I did something for him when he couldn't do it
himself."
"Oh, yes," cried Hester, with conviction. "I think I shouldn't feel
badly if I were you--I don't mean I shouldn't miss him, but you have
been your father's comfort. It is perfectly dreadful to be of no use."
"Everybody is of use, I guess," said Rob. "And the best ones don't know
it. What a lovely room!"
"Is it?" said Hester. "I don't care much for it--I'd like a little
house in the country. I think maybe I shall go into a college
settlement when I'm old enough."
"Dear me," thought Rob, "what a queer girl! She ought to do housework,
and bother about money for a while, and then she'd find out!" But she
only said: "You'd like the little grey house, then. It's old-fashioned,
and not a bit handsome, but it is dear, and Fayre is a small
place--country enough."
"How pretty it is, calling the house 'the little grey house'! It is
because your name is Grey, isn't it?" asked Hester.
"Both reasons--we're Grey, and the house is all
time-and-weather-stained grey, too," Rob answered, shaking her hair out
over the dressing-sacque Hester laid over her shoulders. "I haven't
anything to put on, except clean collars and cuffs."
"It doesn't matter; we're alone, and black is always full dress and
full undress," said Hester. "If I had your hair I shouldn't care about
dresses. Are your sisters pretty, too?"
"They are very pretty. Wythie--Oswyth--is older than I, a year, and
she's just sweetness--looks, and character, and all. And Prue, the
youngest, is a beauty," said Rob, proudly.
"To think of having two sisters!" sighed Hester, laying out Rob's fresh
little hemstitched "turnover" collar.
At dinner Rob's shyness returned, but the Baldwins were most kind, and
spared her the necessity of more conversation than was required to make
her feel thoroughly welcome. The beautifully appointed dining-room, the
perfect service, brought before Rob's eyes in a new light the little
grey house, the patient cheerfulness of the dear Grey Mardy through all
the past years of drudgery and petty economies, the perfect breeding
of the mistress of the little house, and the careful training of its
daughters, in spite of adverse circumstances. For the first time Rob
realized the difference between wealth and poverty, and that there were
hundreds of people who had never felt the wheels of life jar. And for
the first time, though she had always worshipped her mother, she fully
realized what that hidden, unselfish life had accomplished in keeping
life in the little grey house on the plane on which she and Wythie and
Prue had been taught to live and think. She caught her breath in a
wordless prayer that her mission might not be vain, and that, in the
midst of grief, her brave mother might be set free of her long struggle.
Mr. Baldwin and his wife left the girls to themselves after dinner,
sitting across the room from their elders, and soon Rob was telling
Hester, with more detail and far more humor than she had shown her
father, all that there was to tell of Fayre, the river, the little grey
house, the Rutherfords and Frances, Cousin Peace and Aunt Azraella,
Kiku-san, Wythie and Prue, her mother, their queer adventures in
economy, her story-telling, Mr. Flinders and Polly, and all the sorrows
and joys which she saw, from this distance and in this beautiful home,
in a totally new and impersonal light.
Hester went off into such peals of laughter that she grew hysterical,
and her father and mother came over to share the fun. Rob did not mind
them; she had got so excited over her own narrative, and so interested
in it, that she could have told the story to the President.
"Why, it's like the nicest sort of a girls' story, Rob," cried Hester.
"How perfectly lovely to live such adventures! And here am I all alone!"
"And here are you seeing plays, studying whatever you like, going to
concerts, and doing all kinds of things!" retorted Rob. "It's funny
enough to tell, but let me assure you, Miss Hester Baldwin, there are
times when the mercury gets pretty low in the little grey house."
"It's going to climb, and stay up," said Mr. Baldwin. "And now, Hester,
take Rob to bed--she is more tired than she realizes. And to-morrow,
while I set in motion the wheels which are to prove the wheel of
fortune to her, you show Rob all of New York you can crowd into a
day. I suppose we mustn't try to keep you a moment longer than can be
helped, Bobs bahadur?"
"No, please, Mr. Baldwin," said Rob. "I should be happy here, and you
are all only too good to me, but they are troubled at home, and need
me."
"I can believe they need you, my dear, in joy or sorrow," said Mrs.
Baldwin, affectionately giving Rob her good-night kiss.
* * * * *
"Oh, you're up, are you, Rob?" cried Hester, trailing into Rob's room
in her pale blue, eiderdown wrapper. "I came to call you. If you're
strong enough, I'm going to take you from Dan to Beersheba to-day--or
at least from Nellie to Columbia. Nellie's the seal down in the
Aquarium, and----"
"Please, Hester, don't tell me Columbia is the college, because even in
Fayre we've heard of Columbia College," interrupted Rob. "I'm strong,
and shall be ready soon."
Hester was an energetic and resolute young person. She had set out to
show Rob New York, and she rushed from one end to the other of the
long-drawn city until Rob cried her mercy. "It's a whirl of a Battery,
with imaginary old Dutchmen airing themselves by the harbor waves,
and high buildings, as modern as a minute ago, and rattling trolleys,
and rising elevated roads bending around dizzy curves, and splendid
college libraries, and impressive tombs overlooking the Palisades, and
guarding soldiers' ashes and tattered flags, and swarming Harlem flats,
and gorgeous Fifth Avenue mansions, and cathedral spires," Rob said at
last, sinking wearily down on a seat before the entrance to the Art
Museum. "I can't go in, Hester, not if all the pictures in Europe and
Michelangelo's Moses are in there. I didn't think I should give out,
but let's risk New York and I meeting again, and finishing up. If we
don't, I know one of us will be finished up this time for good."
So Hester reluctantly postponed exhibiting the remainder of her city's
glories, and took home a thoroughly tired Rob. They found Mr. Baldwin
had come home early, and was waiting them impatiently.
"Rob," he cried. "I've great news for you. I have found the very
concern which is most interested in bricquette machines, and most
ready to purchase the best thing of the sort on the market. They told
me to-day that, on general principles, if the concern represented
by Mr. Marston would give four thousand dollars for your father's
invention, it would be worth not less than ten thousand to them. I
am to take you to see them in the morning, and their representative
will probably follow you to Fayre in a few days. At least, you see, we
have undoubtedly gained a great deal by waiting, and you are already
justified in your wisdom."
Rob turned pale. "You don't know how frightened I have been. Do you
think I can go home to-morrow?" she said.
"So tired of us?" suggested Mr. Baldwin, lifting the quivering face by
its chin.
"So anxious to get back, because I know how they want me," said Rob,
simply. "And just now I cannot stay away from the little grey house.
But please don't think me dreadful--I never could tell you how I feel
about your kindness. Some day, if Hester will come to the little grey
house, all the Greys will try to give her the best time that small
edifice can hold."
"We understand, Rob, and I'm coming, just as you're coming back here,
for we're going to be friends forever," said Hester.
"And as to kindness," added Mr. Baldwin, "Sylvester sent you to me, and
I only do what he would do for my girl, if the case were reversed."
In the morning Rob left the house which she had dreaded to enter,
feeling that the beautiful woman who was its mistress, and the tall
girl with her vague dissatisfactions, but ready affection, who had
proved a friend at sight, were something that had been part of her life
for years, instead of less than forty-eight hours. She went away as she
had come, with Mr. Baldwin and her suit-case, for she meant to go back
to Fayre as soon as this formidable interview before her was over, but
she went reluctantly, and at the corner, when she turned back to wave
her hand a last time to Hester and her mother, watching her depart, she
could scarcely see them for the tears she was trying to hide from Mr.
Baldwin.
Mr. Baldwin took Rob to his office to rid themselves of her cumbersome
case, and at once carried her off again to meet the possible purchasers
of the invention.
"Stop fluttering, Robin Redbreast," said Mr. Baldwin, feeling the
girl's heart palpitating against the arm through which he had drawn her
left one, tucking her up protectingly.
"Oh, that's what Cousin Peace calls me!" cried Rob. And the home
pet-name helped to steady her.
"They won't devour robins, my dear, and they won't be too business-like
with a slip of a sixteenyear-old girl, so don't be frightened. Just
tell them as clearly as you can your recollections of the construction
and working of your father's invention, and for his sake, and the dear
Mardy's and the girls', do your best."
"I will," said Rob, bracing herself, as Mr. Baldwin felt sure she
would. "But I feel so incompetent and ridiculous."
Everything swam before Rob's eyes as Mr. Baldwin opened a door and
ushered her into an office where she dimly perceived three or four
gentlemen, and solid mahogany desks and chairs. Into one of the latter
she felt herself sink, as someone placed it for her, while Mr. Baldwin
presented her in words that seemed to be intended to set her at her
ease, but which she hardly heard.
Just what happened first Rob never knew, but she found the oldest
of these solid, business-like personages asking her questions, and
heard her own voice answering as from afar. Then before her eyes
flashed a vision. She saw the wainscoted room at home, and her
father--Patergrey--bending his thin form over the models, and saying:
"You could explain this as well as I could myself, Rob, my son."
And now there was none else to do it--she was acting for Patergrey,
saving the work of his life from being lost. She felt as though his
wistful eyes were upon her, and she knew that she must not fail him.
With that vision fear left her. Straightening herself, she leaned
slightly forward in her chair, and said, with a new note of confidence
in her voice--confidence in herself and in the machine she had come
to explain: "I think, sir, if you please, I can tell you better just
how the machine is built and how it works, if you will let me describe
it in my own way. If I do not make it clear to you, you will stop me,
please, and ask me to explain fully."
The big man with the iron-grey hair stared at this sudden
transformation, but Mr. Baldwin understood, with instinctive sympathy,
something of what had passed in Rob's mind, and he felt a lump come
into his throat as he realized how bravely and loyally Rob loved her
father.
Without a moment's hesitation Roberta began her description. Forgetting
herself more and more in the interest of her own words, seeing not
the stately New York office, but the low-ceiled, dear old wainscoted
workroom at home, she rose to her feet, illustrating what she said with
articles borrowed from the desk and table before her. Her eyes were
dilating and flashing, her color went and came, her voice trembled, but
words never failed her, even technical words unconsciously retained
from hearing her father use them, words which she could not have used
except under the exaltation of her mood and motive.
No one interrupted her; she told her story quite to the end, not
noticing the silence in which they heard her. When she ended, and had
dropped back into her big chair, her audience stirred. "You are a
wonderful young girl, Miss Grey," said the gentleman, who evidently was
the person most concerned in the matter. "Your father was singularly
fortunate in such a daughter and assistant. We have perfectly
understood your description. The invention has important advantageous
points of difference from any machine on the market intended for this
purpose. I am speaking within bounds in saying that our firm will
certainly purchase it, if you will sell to us, and that we shall
certainly offer you a fair price, dealing honestly with you. The offer
you have received was so dishonest that it is a pity there is no law
punishing a rascal for making it, trying to take advantage of women in
their new sorrow. We will, by your permission, go to Fayre to see your
models, and will then lay before you the offer upon which we will, in
the meantime, decide. I can only repeat, Miss Grey, that we want the
machine."
Rob arose, trembling in every limb. "If you will send me word when
you're coming, I'll meet you at the station; Fayre is rather crooked,"
she said, faintly.
The gentlemen smiled, and Mr. Baldwin drew Rob's arm through his again,
and patted her hand as though she had been Hester.
"Not a bad little girl, is she?" he said, proudly. "You see, she has
done her best, and now longs to run away. I am obliged to you for your
courtesy, gentlemen, and so is Miss Roberta."
"Oh, yes; thank you ever so much for listening to me," said poor Rob,
wondering if she were going to be able to get out of that office
without crying like a baby.
"It has been the pleasantest, most interesting, most exceptional
business interview I ever had, my dear young lady," said the old
gentleman. "I shall go to Fayre myself, for I should like to see
your mother. Good-morning, and I shall be obliged to you if you will
consider the invention mine until you have refused my offer for it."
"Yes, sir," said Rob, and Mr. Baldwin, to her intense relief, bore her
away.
"Not another night, dear little Robin?" hinted Mr. Baldwin. "Couldn't
you, wouldn't you, telegraph your mother, and come back with me to
gladden Mrs. Baldwin and Hester's eyes with the sight of you, and their
hearts with our good news?"
"Oh, no; please not this time, dear, kind Mr. Baldwin," cried Rob.
"Don't you see how I must ache to get back? It was such a dreadful
thing to do, and now it's done, I must go home to my little grey house
and blessed Grey people."
"I know you must--you shall," said Mr. Baldwin. "I'll take you to
lunch, and then put you on the train myself, and speed you away to
Fayre."
At the Grand Central Station Mr. Baldwin established Rob in luxury in
the parlor-car, and held her hands fast. "I can't tell you how glad I
am you have come into our lives, Robin Bobs bahadur," he said. "You
shall not slip out again, I promise you."
"Wait till you see Wythie and Prue," said Rob, smiling through her
tears.
"Rob will do for me," said Mr. Baldwin, and, stooping, kissed her
cheek, "for her dear father, and for herself," he added, kissing the
other. And so, victorious, and with new friends, Rob set out on the
journey back to Fayre.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ITS LIBERATION
Rob watched the fields which bordered Fayre, and the splendid,
bare-boughed elms fly past the window against which she pressed her
face, eager for the first glimpse of the station. It seemed to her that
she had been gone for months; she wondered at finding them the same
fields and the same elms which she had seen on her departure--another
Rob was returning to them, who, she vaguely felt, must be welcomed by
changes in the surroundings of her childhood corresponding to those
within herself.
There was no one to meet her at the station; she had been too uncertain
of her return to announce it, and, leaving her single, but insistent,
piece of baggage at the station, she hurried to the little grey house.
She opened the door and came in quietly, yet not so quietly but that
Prue heard her step, and came tumbling out of the sitting-room,
crying: "Rob, Rob! Rob's come!" in an ecstasy of joyous excitement.
Wythie nearly tripped up her mother in her haste to follow Prue, but
Rob brushed past them both, throwing her arms around her darling Mardy,
and hugging her close, crying with joy at getting back to her, and for
grief of the loneliness of finding her in her widow's black.
"Rob, my dear, precious girl, I'm so thankful you're here I can't care
how your mission ended," cried Mrs. Grey, holding Rob off at arm's
length to see her better, and folding her closer than before. "I have
seen you crushed by trolleys, lost, weary, frightened, till I could not
forgive myself for letting you go."
"Dear Mardy-goosie, you see I'm all right, and you'd better care how
my mission ended, for it's worth caring about," cried Rob. "You see I
didn't come home on my shield, so maybe you can guess who's the victor."
"Rob, have you good news?" cried Wythie.
"I have a lovely old gentleman coming up here to see the invention, and
he is positively going to make an offer for it, but he couldn't tell
how much it would be. The only thing he could say was that it would be
considerably more than Mr. Marston's offer," said Rob, busying herself
with her coat-buttons, and trying to speak demurely.
"You splendid, splendid Rob!" cried Prue, throwing herself on her
sister's neck in a rapture.
"That's because I succeeded; if I'd failed, and sticking to my guns had
lost us the first offer, without getting a second one, you'd hardly
have forgiven me, Prudy. I begin to see why this is called an unjust
world," said Rob, wisely. "But I'm ravenous, dear folkses--can't you
feed a poor wanderer, while she tells her story?"
"Rob, dear, we are devouring you so hard with our eyes and ears
and hearts we forget how tired you must be!" exclaimed Wythie,
self-reproachfully. "We made some fresh gingerbread, in case of company
from the metropolis, and we've some freshest fresh eggs from Mr.
Flinders to-day--you shall not starve long, dearie." Wythie felt as
though her sister were undefinably changed by this short absence, and
was half afraid that Rob was growing up.
"And little Polly Flinders?" asked Rob. "How's the poor mite?"
"Wonderfully well; she begged to be allowed to stay up to see if you
wouldn't come to-night," smiled Mrs. Grey.
"Let me go get her; it won't hurt her to bring her down, wrapped up
in her gown. She'll like to hear me tell my story, even if she doesn't
understand much about it." And without waiting for an objection Rob
disappeared, and came back quickly, bearing a sleepy but happy Polly
done up in a scarlet dressing-gown, who was fondling her face as she
carried her, and whom she deposited in a dining-room chair, tucking her
feet up well in the wrapper before she took the place Wythie and Prue
had hastily prepared for her at the old table.
"How thankful I am this mahogany didn't go!" sighed Rob. "We're going
to be prosperous Greys henceforth, though I don't know yet the extent
of our riches. Now, sit ye down, my bonny, bonny lassies, Mardy,
Wythie, and Prue, and I will sing the adventures of Roberta the Bold in
the Great City of Gotham. No, I don't want any more bread than this,
Mardy, but if I did I'd get it--please sit down and listen."
Prue pulled up a chair, and leaned on her elbows well over toward the
middle of the table, drawing a long breath of contented yet impatient
interest. Wythie placed her chair close to Rob's side, and laid her arm
over her sister's shoulders, while the mother Grey took her favorite
low rocker, and folded her hands, looking with eyes warm with love and
moist with tender, proud tears at her husband's "son Rob," as she told
the story of her defence of his invention.
"And that's all," ended Rob, at last, having related every incident of
her visit, from her bewilderment as she left the station, and the big
policeman's kindness, to Mr. Baldwin's fatherly parting from her in the
Grand Central. "I did hold out against you all not to take the offer,
but nothing else is due to me. It is all that blessed Mr. Baldwin, and
I only hope I can some day make him understand how grateful I am--and
to his sweet wife and Hester, too; they were like--well, you can't say
like one's own kindred, for they were more thoughtful and loving to me
than some of our kindred are."
"But my brave Rob did it all, none the less," said her mother. "I can't
thank her for her loyal courage, but I hope her Patergrey can do it for
me." And she kissed Rob with a long, clinging kiss that the girl, happy
through her tears, felt was not from her mother only.
Polly fell asleep again as Rob talked, and when the triumphant
traveller's repast was over, and Prue had volunteered to clear away
the reminders, as if, for the first time in her life, she welcomed the
chance to serve Rob, the little grey house was closed for the night,
and lights appeared in its low upper windows, for Mrs. Grey insisted
that tired Rob must be got to bed.
It took a long time getting there, however; Prue flitted in and out of
her sisters' room, not to be deprived of any part of the steady flow
of talk going on there, for the mere telling of facts is never all of
any story worth telling. Long after Prue had reluctantly subsided, the
"ss-ss-s" of whispering drifted out in the darkness from Wythie and
Rob's bed, but finally they whispered themselves to sleep, and silence
rested over the little grey house which its brave daughter had saved.
Breakfast was scarcely over, when Polly, wiping dishes, announced:
"Here's father!" and the Greys saw Mr. Flinders approaching, his right
hand bearing a yellow envelope, held with the handle of a large basket
tightly grasped, and his face bearing a most unwonted smile. "I come
to see Roberta--Mr. Abbit, down to the depot, said you'd got back--and
my wife she said she thought you'd like some 'f her jelly," said Mr.
Flinders. "She said she'd like to know if Polly wasn't about ready to
come home."
Polly looked doubtful. "I'd like to come, if Rob wasn't here," she
said.
"I'll go away, Pollykins, go away again, if you say so," smiled Rob.
"I think she's well now--don't you, Mardy? Perhaps you ought to go see
your mother, dear. She's lonely with no little Polly Flinders among her
cinders."
"Polly is quite welcome, Mr. Flinders," said Mrs. Grey, "but if you
need her I think she is well enough to be dismissed from our little
grey hospital."
Farmer Flinders shuffled his feet uneasily. "She said I'd ought to tell
you, but I d'know's I know how," he began, embarrassed. "We're a good
deal obliged to you for all you've done for Maimie, an' I can see my
way to carryin' on this place on equal shares next summer, countin'
from now. I guess half'll be 'bout what I'll take in the future,
'stead of two-thirds."
"That's very good of you, Mr. Flinders!" cried Mrs. Grey, appreciating
the sacrifice this offer cost. "Come next week, and we'll talk about
accepting your proposition. We hope the Greys may be much better off by
that time. Roberta has been to New York in reference to her father's
patent, and we believe it is going to prove very valuable; we are
waiting for news of its purchase now." Poor Mrs. Grey was not guileless
in thus taking Farmer Flinders into her confidence. She knew that he
would set afloat rumors of Sylvester Grey's posthumous success, and she
was impatient for tardy justice to be done her husband.
"I want to know!" exclaimed Mr. Flinders now, opening his eyes to their
widest. "And that's what Roberta went away for--we was wonderin'. Very
valuable, is it? I want to know! And Roberta went to attend to it!
She's young for such business, seems's if! Still, she's al'ays been
smart, Roberta has. Well, I'm sure I'm glad; you do deserve it. Sho!
I've got a telegraph for you in my hand this minute! Here 'tis; I
forgot it. I guess I'll be goin'. I'm comin' for Maimie on Saturday,
so you be ready, Maimie. I sh'd think you'd want to see your folks.
Hope the telegraph is good news; you do deserve it." And Mr. Flinders
tore himself away--to spread the tidings of the Greys' approaching
prosperity, Mrs. Grey felt contentedly sure.
Wythie had torn open the telegram. "Will be in Fayre on ten-ten from
New York on Thursday," she read. "It's signed William Armstrong; is
that any of the gentlemen you saw, Rob?"
"It's _one_ of them," cried Rob, eagerly seizing the telegram from
Wythie's hand. "It's the old gentleman, and he's coming to-morrow! Oh,
Mardy and other girls, don't you hope it will be all right?"
"What will be all right? Hallo, Rob! We heard you were back, and we
came to see the city polish you had acquired," cried Bruce. Battalion B
had come in the front way unheard.
"Oh, hallo, nice big boys," cried Rob, turning to meet them with
outstretched hands and her most April face. "I didn't get much polish
in two days, I fear me, but I think and hope I got what I went for."
"Of course you did! We knew what would happen!" cried Basil. "We're
going down to get your bag--our bag! We're anxious about it, so we're
going to bring it up. Abbott told us you left it with him. And we're
going to take you with us to identify us, so get your hat and come
along, and on the way you can tell us all that you and Gotham did to
each other."
"I suppose I might go to market with these foolish but spotless
giraffes, Mardy," said Rob.
"Come with the giraffes, you little brown deer," remarked Bruce, in an
undertone.
"And order something special for luncheon to-morrow when Mr. Armstrong
is here," continued Rob, ignoring Bruce.
"Run along, Robin, and get ready while Wythie and I make out our list
for you," said Mrs. Grey, with a brighter smile than her face had worn
since the little grey house had lost its master.
* * * * *
Mr. Armstrong had come and gone. Roberta had taken him into the
wainscoted room, and while her mother and Wythie listened in wondering
admiration, showed their guest the working of the models, explaining
each part, and making clear, through her memory of her dear Patergrey's
words, that which none other of the family had understood.
A strange half-consciousness took possession of Rob as she talked--she
imagined that it was not she herself, not young Rob Grey speaking, but
that she was the mouth-piece for the wistful eyes so often raised to
hers in that old room, and that Sylvester Grey spoke through her. As in
the office in New York, her self-diffidence dropped from her, and she
performed her part, absorbed in doing well her father's commission. Mr.
Armstrong, as before, had listened silently, but now he was gone, and
the Greys sat around the old mahogany dining-table, gazing, awestruck
and motionless at the slip of paper lying on it. It was Mr. Armstrong's
check for fifty thousand dollars.
The bricquette machine was sold, the arrangements made for packing and
shipping the models to its owner, and the result of Sylvester Grey's
"dreaming"--securing peace and plenty to his family--lay, radiating
hope and joy to his wife and daughters, on the old table where once the
baby Sylvester had sat by his father's side.
"I never expected to see so much money in all my life," said Prue,
speaking first, and sighing like one awakening from a dream.
"Oh, if only your dear, hard-working, misunderstood father could have
known!" cried Mrs. Grey, dropping her head beside the check, her whole
frame shaken by sobs.
Wythie arose and laid her own head softly on the heaving shoulder.
"Mardy, Mardy darling, we will be quite sure that he does know; we will
believe he helped Rob stand firm against us all, and win us this great
good--we say we believe in the communion of saints, and we will be
quite, quite sure that dear papa has this joy, with all the rest," she
whispered, her sweet face kindled into rapture, though her tears fell
fast.
Rob leaned across and took her mother's hand. "This has done something
wonderful for me, Mardy," she said, slowly. "I don't know that I can
explain, but it seems to me that all his dear, pathetic, dreaming
life Patergrey was but partly alive, and that now he is living, truly
living, and his life is complete. I feel as though he had come back to
us."
The door opened, and Aunt Azraella entered, stopping short, as she saw
the group around the table. "For pity's sake, Mary," she cried, "has
something else bad happened to you? I've only just got back, and I have
been frantic to hear how Roberta came out. I suppose you've lost that
offer, and see now how right I was. Well, I warned you."
"Rob has saved us, Azraella," said Mrs. Grey, raising her head
quickly--Aunt Azraella had the gift of drying tears. "Look at this."
Aunt Azraella took the magic slip of paper her sister-in-law handed
her. She nearly dropped it, and fell into a chair herself as she
scanned it, catching her breath in the magnitude of her surprise.
"Fifty thousand dollars! A check for fifty thousand! Mary, tell me this
instant what this means," she gasped.
"It means that our brave, wise Roberta was right; that the first
offer was a dishonest one, and that through the old college mate of
Sylvester's, the lawyer, to whom he was to have written himself for
advice, Rob was brought to honest men, who have given us the real
value of the patent," said Mrs. Grey. "It means that we are rich,
Azraella, and that in the midst of our sorrow we have been freed from
the corroding anxiety of poverty. And we owe it to Sylvester's years of
visionary, impractical dreaming, which you so denounced, and to brave
Rob's good judgment and firm purpose."
For once Mrs. Winslow was silenced. At last she rallied. "It's more
than wonderful, Mary," she said, "but who in the world could have
foreseen it? Of course, I'm perfectly delighted. Roberta, I am truly
surprised at you; I didn't think you had it in you. But I congratulate
you, child, and I'm proud of you. There's nothing in all this world
much better to have than a keen business sense, and judgment to know
when you're right and to stick to it. I am proud of you. What are you
going to do with the money, Mary? It's most important to invest it
properly."
"It will go to Mr. Baldwin, and he will invest it for us--he wrote me,
offering to do this, yesterday," Mrs. Grey began, but Rob interrupted
her with a glad cry.
"Oh, Aunt Azraella, what do you think we are going to do? Right away--a
check for it has already gone to the bank, for we received two thousand
more than this big check."
"Put up a fine stone to your father's memory," replied Mrs. Winslow,
with a characteristic guess.
"No, no--oh, no," cried Wythie, hastily, while Rob said: "Don't you see
what it is? It is already practically done. We have paid the mortgage
on the little grey house, and the dearest little old home in the world
is all our own, free and all our own, once more. We shall get the
papers in the morning."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ITS SUNSHINE
The long winter was past, and Fayre lay basking in the warmth of May.
The little river reflected the bright green of its newly clad willows,
through which gleams of sunshine, too warm for mortals, rejoiced the
minnows darting through the shallows. The air was sweet with blossoms
and tender verdure, and the song-birds filled it with rejoicing. It was
impossible to be sad on such a day, and Wythie, Rob, and Prue, standing
in the doorway of the little grey house, absorbing the beauty through
every sense, felt their pulses thrill with young joy in living, like
the May's.
The little grey house modestly announced to all the world that its
winter, too, was over and gone. Newly painted in its own soft grey, the
lawn with which its daughters had once vainly struggled, smooth shaven
by skilful hands, flowers, once beyond its reach in the strict economy
of its finances, now flaming gayly against its low walls, all spoke of
the prosperity with which its last son had endowed it.
No great changes had been made in the beloved little home--too well
beloved as it was to admit of them--but it had been made beautiful on
its own simple lines, and the girls could hardly help feeling it knew
and was glad of its physical well-being. And these girls, too, showed
the bettering of their lives in many subtle small ways. Wythie's fresh
prettiness was blooming in the brightness it was intended to wear,
Rob's variable face was losing its strained look, and Prue's beauty was
unspoiled by the discontented expression it had too often worn. Pretty,
fresh white gowns, with their black ribbons fluttered by the May wind,
were reminders of a loss which was fast growing to be rather a tender
memory than a poignant regret. For sorrow of the higher sort brings
with it heights of thought and consolations with which to bear it, but
the daily struggle to live, the petty cares and vain effort to make too
little suffice, eats out heart and brain, with no uplifting to render
it endurable.
From their cradle the Grey girls had fought this fight, and won in
it nobly, but now that it was over, and an income which to them was
abundant was assured them, they drew a long breath, casting off sordid
frets forever, and began to expand as nature had meant them to, into
light-hearted young creatures, full of their own May-time.
Seeing them happier, and relieved herself of her hard burden, Mrs.
Grey, too, was learning to bear her loss, and give herself up to her
hard-earned rest and to her girls' petting, with her anxious mental
strain relaxed. It was a day of peace, and, to complete it, "Cousin
Peace" was coming to spend it with them.
For the first time in years the little grey house was awaiting guests.
The Baldwins, all three, were coming from New York to see the house
and its inmates which they had been so fortunate in befriending, and
Rob burned to make the occasion some approximate expression of her
gratitude, and some return for their hospitality to her.
She and Oswyth and Prue were waiting for Battalion B and Frances to go
to the woods after dogwood with which to turn the little grey house
into a bower, and as they waited on the step Miss Charlotte came.
"Come in, dear Cousin Peace," cried Wythie, kissing her lovingly
as soon as Rob gave her a chance. "Mardy is upstairs resting and
writing letters. I wonder how long it will take us to get used to the
luxury--the unspeakable delight--of seeing Mardy rest, and knowing that
Lydia is in the kitchen doing the work!"
"Blackening the stove particularly," added Rob. "I find now that, on
the whole, I hated most of all to blacken the stove."
"Well, I find that what I hated most was what I happened to be doing,"
remarked Prue.
"You're not to think that we are living in idleness, Cousin Peace,"
Wythie said, as they led the gentle Cousin Charlotte into the house.
"There's only one of Lydia, and one person can't do it all, but it is
such a relief to have 'help'!"
"There's enough to be done in any house; I understand, lassies," said
Miss Charlotte. "But you were tired lassies, and I am more glad than
you know to see your burdens lifted--still more glad for your mother,
because I know how happy Sylvester would be--is--to see her resting."
"Oh, I know that, too, Cousin Peace!" cried Rob. "I know how Patergrey
felt about 'pretty Mary Winslow,' as he called her to me, having
had a hard life because she married him. I'm beginning almost to be
glad--though I miss him most of us all--that he won his fight just as
he did; I know he would have chosen it so."
"And I'm beginning to feel as though he had not gone away at all," said
Wythie, softly; "as though all this comfort and greater ease were he
himself, his love and presence around us, and that in having it we had
him. I can't explain, but it is such a comfort!"
"I can understand that, dear Wythie," said Cousin Peace.
"Aunt Azraella is coming over to luncheon, and to teach Lydia her
famous short-cake," said Rob, after a little pause, as they halted
before their mother's door. "She does make wonderful strawberry
short-cake, and we are going to stun the Baldwins with it. And she's
quite a different Aunt Azraella. She has such a respect for bonds and
stocks and coupons, and such little appurtenances, that she regards
us through the rose-colored glasses of an invested fifty thousand
dollars. She never criticises us--you see we can afford to do what we
please--and her respectful manner to me beggars description. Oswyth is
nowhere now; flighty Roberta is her favorite niece, all because of my
obstinacy and defiance of her opinion! But I stand for the source of
gold, and she regards me no longer as fighting 'Bobs,' but as a sort of
Kimberley."
"Oh, Rob!" exclaimed Wythie, "don't hunt for motives! It's so much
pleasanter to take people at their face value, when it doesn't matter.
And Aunt Azraella is really quite nice now, Cousin Peace."
She opened her mother's chamber-door as she spoke, and Mrs. Grey sprang
from her big chair to fold in a close embrace her husband's nearest of
kin and most of kind.
"Try to bear up under the infliction, Mardy," said incorrigible Rob.
"We know you are afflicted when Cousin Peace comes, but don't let her
see it so plainly."
For Mrs. Grey was radiating the pleasure she felt in the coming of
sweet Miss Charlotte.
"There are the boys and Frances coming down the street, saucy Robin,"
said her mother. "Take yourselves off, girls, and let me have Cousin
Peace all to myself for a while. Wait one moment, Charlotte; Kiku-san
is in that chair--he claims it--but I'll lay him on my bed."
She raised the white cat like a round mat, just as he lay, and Miss
Charlotte seated herself in the vacated rocking-chair where the breeze
blew in on her. Kiku-san rose from his coiled position, sat up sleepily
for a moment on the foot of the bed, then, stretching and yawning,
walked over into Cousin Peace's lap, where he contentedly curled up to
continue his nap.
They all laughed. "Trust a cat to carry his point!" cried Rob. "That
chair is Kiku's, and Kiku will have it, whether Cousin Peace or a down
pillow is in it."
"We're off for dogwood, Kiku-san," said Prue, laying her cheek on the
cat for a farewell. "And we'll bring it home with plenty of bark for
bad kittens."
Mrs. Grey watched the seven young people out of the gate, and her eyes
and lips were smiling. Miss Charlotte said, as if she, too, saw the
pretty picture: "They are fine boys, Mary, and there are no girls so
sweet and pretty as our Grey ones. Do you ever wonder if a lifelong
affection, of a stronger sort, may grow out of this beautiful triple
friendship?"
"I suppose it would be impossible not to dream of it, Charlotte, but
Wythie and Rob are simple girls, and too unconscious to dream of it
themselves," said their mother. "I should be glad if it were to be.
Yes, I do think of it, and I realize my girls are hovering on the verge
of womanhood. They have been too busy, too home-keeping, to cross the
line early. Sometimes I think Basil and Bruce, with their half a year
advance of Wythie and Rob, are already building a little romance, and
I see that Basil finds Wythie just about perfect in all ways, as Bruce
evidently considers all other girls mere sawdust beside bright Robin,
but it all lies folded in the future, and no one can foresee. It would
be a lovely little idyl, and I dare to hope for it; almost to feel sure
it will come some day."
"I think it will," said Miss Charlotte, quietly, and the two women
smiled at each other, full of loving pride in the girls who were to
them both dearest of all girls, prettiest, bravest, sweetest.
It was high noon, and very warm, when the faint sound of distant
singing announced to Mrs. Grey and Miss Charlotte and to Mrs. Winslow,
who had by that time arrived, that the seven were returning. The
singing grew louder, clearer, and at last developed into nothing more
classic than the darky song, "Won't you come home, Bill Bailey?" chosen
as appropriate, and rendered with immense expression.
Almost at once the procession came in sight. Prue and Bartlemy ahead,
Prue more than ever beautiful under the great boughs of dogwood,
which, like the rest, she bore. Oswyth and Basil followed, Wythie's
face looking out flushed and glowing with summer warmth and happiness
under the great white, blotched, so-called blossoms of the shrub.
Rob and Frances divided Bruce between them, making an arbor over his
head, holding above it, by an effort, their spoils of the glossy green
and dazzling white. All seven were singing at the tops of their fresh
voices, and even Aunt Azraella could not resist the charm of this
return, but smiled benignantly at them from the window.
"You never saw anyone so changed as Mr. Flinders," remarked Mrs. Grey
at luncheon, as she busily served her guests to fresh peas. "Not
only does he carry on the place on halves, instead of two-thirds
profit--which is really much fairer--but, now that he has started in
well-doing, he is going uphill in virtue, Rob says, as if he were on
an inverted chute. He is truly grateful to us--to Rob especially--for
taking Polly last winter; he and his wife insist that we saved her
life, and I am surprised and delighted with the feeling he shows."
"Being disagreeable is like other habits," said Miss Charlotte. "When
people once break off and get over the embarrassment of having their
pleasant ways noted, it is quite easy to keep on, even to increase them
daily. I believe half the cranky people are so just because they fell
into the way of it, and feel awkwardly self-conscious when they behave
like other people."
"You ought to know, Cousin Peace," said Rob, suggestively, and, before
the laugh with which her hint had been received had died away, she
pushed her chair back from the table. "Come on, you three big boys
and little girls," she cried. "Do you realize that it is now half
past one, and that the Baldwins arrive at four? That isn't long in
which to decorate the little grey house, make the toilets of its
inmates--Kiku-san's ribbon alone needs five minutes to tie--and get
a triumphal procession of welcome down to the station to meet them.
You can't have another piece of cake, really you cannot have it,
Bartlemy--unless you put it in your pocket. Jump up, all of you!"
Rob's younger guests meekly obeyed her, and presently she had them all
at work, filling every available vase and jar with water, and bringing
them to her--"like Isaac's slaves returning from the well," Bruce
said--in the cool pantry where the girls were arranging the dogwood.
It was not long before the little grey house was massed with the
woodland beauty--old fireplaces, narrow mantels, every table and
corner, all was full of the starry white, brown-blotched radiance of
the dogwood.
Rob fell back to admire, leaning an elbow on Wythie and Frances's
shoulders, and shutting one eye in exaggeration of Bartlemy's artistic
manner of scrutinizing a sketch. "I think it will do, my brethren and
sisters," she said, solemnly.
_"O little house that gave me birth,_
_We've laid the dogwood on thy hearth_
_Because the guests now drawing near_
_Kept you from going to the dogs, my dear--_
oh, mercy, I thought that would turn out better. It
would, if I had time to develop that noble thought--but you've got to
mispronounce hearth or it won't!" cried Rob, bringing her disastrous
attempt to a hasty conclusion.
"I could do something better than that this minute, but I won't,
because you do so hate to be beaten," said Basil.
"I never know I am," said Rob, and they all shouted, because the
statement was quite true.
"Poetry reminds me of the story-telling; are you going to keep it up
another winter, Rob? You must, for you've become an institution of
Fayre. The children will be heart-broken if you don't," said Frances.
"I don't know; I'm not over-scrupulous, but it never seemed right to
me for anyone to earn money unless they have to, and now--only think
of it--I have enough! I should hate horribly to keep money from a girl
having as hard a time as I have had," said Rob.
"But there is no one else to do this, and so you don't wrong anyone. It
would be a shame to stop, really," protested Frances.
"Well, we'll see; this is only May, and there's plenty of time to
decide--plenty of time for everything in this new, blessed life of
ours!" cried Rob. "Maybe I'll carry it on in Kiku-san's name, and send
the proceeds to found a Rescue League for animals in New York like the
one in Boston--you'd like that, wouldn't you, my affectionate little
white-chrysanthemum-in-Japanese?" she added, catching up their pet and
swinging him to her shoulder.
"Time to dress to go to the station, children!" called Mrs. Grey from
the dining-room.
"Come in here and see the little grey house in its parlor," Wythie
called back. "Aunt Azraella and Cousin Peace, too."
They came at once, and stood on the worn door-sill surveying the
low-ceiled room, fresh and cool in its green paper, high, white
wainscoting, and white paint, its few fine engravings and soft grey
prints on the walls, and the starry dogwood lighting it all.
It was really beautiful, and Mrs. Grey caught her breath, with a sob
of gratitude that, in spite of her greater loss, the dear little old
homestead was left her.
The girls caught the sound and understood her thought--it was too
recent a joy to them all ever to be far beyond the mind of each of
them. Wythie, Rob, and Prue ran over to their Mardy and twined their
arms around her, all three, and hugged her close.
"We have it safe, and we have one another," whispered sweet Oswyth.
"It's the loveliest spring of all my life," said Prue, solemnly. "And
in the winter I didn't dare to think of summer again."
"Behold a group of Grateful Greys," said Rob, dashing away a tiny tear
from her bright eyes before anyone could suspect it of being there,
and laughing blithely. "Aren't we perfect geese about our little grey
house? We couldn't love it more if it were an old feudal, ancestral
castle--though it would be bigger."
"Three cheers for the little grey house, and three cheers for the
Grateful Greys!" cried Bruce, with an inspiration.
"For the house where we've had such glorious times, and for the people
we love best of all the world," added Basil, with a half-glance toward
Wythie.
"Amendment carried!" cried Bruce, with an open look at Rob.
The open windows bore the cheers out to Farmer Flinders in the garden,
and he stopped work to listen, leaning on his hoe, and smiling to
himself with unwonted benignity.
"Well, they're havin' happy days in the little grey house at last," he
said aloud. "And I declare to mercy, they deserve 'em! There's no doubt
they all do deserve 'em."
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
page 129 span changed to spun (Pilgrim mothers wove and spun)
page 260 Cousn changed to Cousin (whether Cousin Peace)
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