Lucy Maud Montgomery

Short Stories - 1904

Lucy Maud Montgomery

www.freeclassicebooks.com

A Fortunate Mistake.. 3

An Unpremeditated Ceremony. 8

At the Bay Shore Farm... 16

Elizabeth's Child.. 24

Freda's Adopted Grave.. 33

How Don Was Saved.. 37

Miss Madeline's Proposal. 44

Miss Sally's Company. 49

Mrs. March's Revenge.. 56

Nan.. 63

Natty of Blue Point. 70

Penelope's Party Waist. 76

The Girl and The Wild Race.. 82

The Promise of Lucy Ellen.. 89

The Pursuit of the Ideal. 97

The Softening of Miss Cynthia.. 102

Them Notorious Pigs. 108

Why Not Ask Miss Price?. 114

A Fortunate Mistake

"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" fretted Nan Wallace, twisting herself about

uneasily on the sofa in her pretty room. "I never thought before that

the days could be so long as they are now."

"Poor you!" said her sister Maude sympathetically. Maude was moving

briskly about the room, putting it into the beautiful order that

Mother insisted on. It was Nan's week to care for their room, but Nan

had sprained her ankle three days ago and could do nothing but lie on

the sofa ever since. And very tired of it, too, was wide-awake, active

Nan.

"And the picnic this afternoon, too!" she sighed. "I've looked forward

to it all summer. And it's a perfect day--and I've got to stay here

and nurse this foot."

Nan looked vindictively at the bandaged member, while Maude leaned out

of the window to pull a pink climbing rose. As she did so she nodded

to someone in the village street below.

"Who is passing?" asked Nan.

"Florrie Hamilton."

"Is she going to the picnic?" asked Nan indifferently.

"No. She wasn't asked. Of course, I don't suppose she expected to be.

She knows she isn't in our set. She must feel horribly out of place at

school. A lot of the girls say it is ridiculous of her father to send

her to Miss Braxton's private school--a factory overseer's daughter."

"She ought to have been asked to the picnic all the same," said Nan

shortly. "She is in our class if she isn't in our set. Of course I

don't suppose she would have enjoyed herself--or even gone at all, for

that matter. She certainly doesn't push herself in among us. One would

think she hadn't a tongue in her head."

"She is the best student in the class," admitted Maude, arranging her

roses in a vase and putting them on the table at Nan's elbow. "But

Patty Morrison and Wilhelmina Patterson had the most to say about the

invitations, and they wouldn't have her. There, Nannie dear, aren't

those lovely? I'll leave them here to be company for you."

"I'm going to have more company than that," said Nan, thumping her

pillow energetically. "I'm not going to mope here alone all the

afternoon, with you off having a jolly time at the picnic. Write a

little note for me to Florrie Hastings, will you? I'll do as much for

you when you sprain your foot."

"What shall I put in it?" said Maude, rummaging out her portfolio

obligingly.

"Oh, just ask her if she will come down and cheer a poor invalid up

this afternoon. She'll come, I know. And she is such good company. Get

Dickie to run right out and mail it."

"I do wonder if Florrie Hamilton will feel hurt over not being asked

to the picnic," speculated Maude absently as she slipped her note into

an envelope and addressed it.

Florrie Hamilton herself could best have answered that question as she

walked along the street in the fresh morning sunshine. She did feel

hurt--much more keenly than she would acknowledge even to herself. It

was not that she cared about the picnic itself: as Nan Wallace had

said, she would not have been likely to enjoy herself if she had gone

among a crowd of girls many of whom looked down on her and ignored

her. But to be left out when every other girl in the school was

invited! Florrie's lip quivered as she thought of it.

"I'll get Father to let me to go to the public school after vacation,"

she murmured. "I hate going to Miss Braxton's."

Florrie was a newcomer in Winboro. Her father had recently come to

take a position in the largest factory of the small town. For this

reason Florrie was slighted at school by some of the ruder girls and

severely left alone by most of the others. Some, it is true, tried at

the start to be friends, but Florrie, too keenly sensitive to the

atmosphere around her to respond, was believed to be decidedly dull

and mopy. She retreated further and further into herself and was

almost as solitary at Miss Braxton's as if she had been on a desert

island.

"They don't like me because I am plainly dressed and because my father

is not a wealthy man," thought Florrie bitterly. And there was enough

truth in this in regard to many of Miss Braxton's girls to make a very

uncomfortable state of affairs.

"Here's a letter for you, Flo," said her brother Jack at noon. "Got it

at the office on my way home. Who is your swell correspondent?"

Florrie opened the dainty, perfumed note and read it with a face that,

puzzled at first, suddenly grew radiant.

"Listen, Jack," she said excitedly.

"Dear Florrie:

"Nan is confined to house, room, and sofa with a sprained

foot. As she will be all alone this afternoon, won't you come

down and spend it with her? She very much wants you to

come--she is so lonesome and thinks you will be just the one

to cheer her up.

"Yours cordially,

"Maude Wallace."

"Are you going?" asked Jack.

"Yes--I don't know--I'll think about it," said Florrie absently. Then

she hurried upstairs to her room.

"Shall I go?" she thought. "Yes, I will. I dare say Nan has asked me

just out of pity because I was not invited to the picnic. But even so

it was sweet of her. I've always thought I would like those Wallace

girls if I could get really acquainted with them. They've always been

nice to me, too--I don't know why I am always so tongue-tied and

stupid with them. But I'll go anyway."

That afternoon Mrs. Wallace came into Nan's room.

"Nan, dear, Florrie Hamilton is downstairs asking for you."

"Florrie--Hamilton?"

"Yes. She said something about a note you sent her this morning. Shall

I ask her to come up?"

"Yes, of course," said Nan lamely. When her mother had gone out she

fell back on her pillows and thought rapidly.

"Florrie Hamilton! Maude must have addressed that note to her by

mistake. But she mustn't know it was a mistake--mustn't suspect it.

Oh, dear! What shall I ever find to talk to her about? She is so quiet

and shy."

Further reflections were cut short by Florrie's entrance. Nan held out

her hand with a chummy smile.

"It's good of you to give your afternoon up to visiting a cranky

invalid," she said heartily. "You don't know how lonesome I've been

since Maude went away. Take off your hat and pick out the nicest chair

you can find, and let's be comfy."

Somehow, Nan's frank greeting did away with Florrie's embarrassment

and made her feel at home. She sat down in Maude's rocker, then,

glancing over to a vase filled with roses, her eyes kindled with

pleasure. Seeing this, Nan said, "Aren't they lovely? We Wallaces are

very fond of our climbing roses. Our great-grandmother brought the

roots out from England with her sixty years ago, and they grow nowhere

else in this country."

"I know," said Florrie, with a smile. "I recognized them as soon as I

came into the room. They are the same kind of roses as those which

grow about Grandmother Hamilton's house in England. I used to love

them so."

"In England! Were you ever in England?"

"Oh, yes," laughed Florrie. "And I've been in pretty nearly every

other country upon earth--every one that a ship could get to, at

least."

"Why, Florrie Hamilton! Are you in earnest?"

"Indeed, yes. Perhaps you don't know that our 'now-mother,' as Jack

says sometimes, is Father's second wife. My own mother died when I was

a baby, and my aunt, who had no children of her own, took me to bring

up. Her husband was a sea-captain, and she always went on his

sea-voyages with him. So I went too. I almost grew up on shipboard. We

had delightful times. I never went to school. Auntie had been a

teacher before her marriage, and she taught me. Two years ago, when I

was fourteen, Father married again, and then he wanted me to go home

to him and Jack and our new mother. So I did, although at first I was

very sorry to leave Auntie and the dear old ship and all our lovely

wanderings."

"Oh, tell me all about them," demanded Nan. "Why, Florrie Hamilton, to

think you've never said a word about your wonderful experiences! I

love to hear about foreign countries from people who have really been

there. Please just talk--and I'll listen and ask questions."

Florrie did talk. I'm not sure whether she or Nan was the more

surprised to find that she could talk so well and describe her travels

so brightly and humorously. The afternoon passed quickly, and when

Florrie went away at dusk, after a dainty tea served up in Nan's room,

it was with a cordial invitation to come again soon.

"I've enjoyed your visit so much," said Nan sincerely. "I'm going down

to see you as soon as I can walk. But don't wait for that. Let us be

good, chummy friends without any ceremony."

When Florrie, with a light heart and a happy smile, had gone, came

Maude, sunburned and glowing from her picnic.

"Such a nice time as we had!" she exclaimed. "Wasn't I sorry to think

of you cooped up here! Did Florrie come?"

"One Florrie did. Maude, you addressed that note to Florrie Hamilton

today instead of Florrie Hastings."

"Nan, surely not! I'm sure--"

"Yes, you did. And she came here. Was I not taken aback at first,

Maude!"

"I was thinking about her when I addressed it, and I must have put her

name down by mistake. I'm so sorry--"

"You needn't be. I haven't been entertained so charmingly for a long

while. Why, Maude, she has travelled almost everywhere--and is so

bright and witty when she thaws out. She didn't seem like the same

girl at all. She is just perfectly lovely!"

"Well, I'm glad you had such a nice time together. Do you know, some

of the girls were very much vexed because she wasn't asked to the

picnic. They said that it was sheer rudeness not to ask her, and that

it reflected on us all, even if Patty and Wilhelmina were responsible

for it. I'm afraid we girls at Miss Braxton's have been getting

snobbish, and some of us are beginning to find it out and be ashamed

of it."

"Just wait until school opens," said Nan--vaguely enough, it would

seem. But Maude understood.

However, they did not have to wait until school opened. Long before

that time Winboro girlhood discovered that the Wallace girls were

taking Florrie Hamilton into their lives. If the Wallace girls liked

her, there must be something in the girl more than was at first

thought--thus more than one of Miss Braxton's girls reasoned. And

gradually the other girls found, as Nan had found, that Florrie was

full of fun and an all-round good companion when drawn out of her

diffidence. When Miss Braxton's school reopened Florrie was the class

favourite. Between her and Nan Wallace a beautiful and helpful

friendship had been formed which was to grow and deepen through their

whole lives.

"And all because Maude in a fit of abstraction wrote 'Hamilton' for

'Hastings,'" said Nan to herself one day. But that is something

Florrie Hamilton will never know.

An Unpremeditated Ceremony

Selwyn Grant sauntered in upon the assembled family at the homestead

as if he were returning from an hour's absence instead of a western

sojourn of ten years. Guided by the sound of voices on the still,

pungent autumnal air, he went around to the door of the dining room

which opened directly on the poppy walk in the garden.

Nobody noticed him for a moment and he stood in the doorway looking at

them with a smile, wondering what was the reason of the festal air

that hung about them all as visibly as a garment. His mother sat by

the table, industriously polishing the best silver spoons, which, as

he remembered, were only brought forth upon some great occasion. Her

eyes were as bright, her form as erect, her nose--the Carston

nose--as pronounced and aristocratic as of yore.

Selwyn saw little change in her. But was it possible that the tall,

handsome young lady with the sleek brown pompadour and a nose

unmistakably and plebeianly Grant, who sat by the window doing

something to a heap of lace and organdy in her lap, was the little

curly-headed, sunburned sister of thirteen whom he remembered? The

young man leaning against the sideboard must be Leo, of course; a

fine-looking, broad-shouldered young fellow who made Selwyn think

suddenly that he must be growing old. And there was the little, thin,

grey father in the corner, peering at his newspaper with nearsighted

eyes. Selwyn's heart gave a bound at the sight of him which not even

his mother had caused. Dear old Dad! The years had been kind to him.

Mrs. Grant held up a glistening spoon and surveyed it complacently.

"There, I think that is bright enough even to suit Margaret Graham. I

shall take over the whole two dozen teas and one dozen desserts. I

wish, Bertha, that you would tie a red cord around each of the handles

for me. The Carmody spoons are the same pattern and I shall always be

convinced that Mrs. Carmody carried off two of ours the time that

Jenny Graham was married. I don't mean to take any more risks. And,

Father----"

Something made the mother look around, and she saw her first-born!

When the commotion was over Selwyn asked why the family spoons were

being rubbed up.

"For the wedding, of course," said Mrs. Grant, polishing her

gold-bowed spectacles and deciding that there was no more time for

tears and sentiment just then. "And there, they're not half done--and

we'll have to dress in another hour. Bertha is no earthly use--she is

so taken up with her bridesmaid finery."

"Wedding? Whose wedding?" demanded Selwyn, in bewilderment.

"Why, Leo's, of course. Leo is to be married tonight. Didn't you get

your invitation? Wasn't that what brought you home?"

"Hand me a chair, quick," implored Selwyn. "Leo, are _you_ going to

commit matrimony in this headlong fashion? Are you sure you're grown

up?"

"Six feet is a pretty good imitation of it, isn't it?" grinned Leo.

"Brace up, old fellow. It's not so bad as it might be. She's quite a

respectable girl. We wrote you all about it three weeks ago and broke

the news as gently as possible."

"I left for the East a month ago and have been wandering around

preying on old college chums ever since. Haven't seen a letter. There,

I'm better now. No, you needn't fan me, Sis. Well, no family can get

through the world without its seasons of tribulations. Who is the

party of the second part, little brother?"

"Alice Graham," replied Mrs. Grant, who had a habit of speaking for

her children, none of whom had the Carston nose.

"Alice Graham! That child!" exclaimed Selwyn in astonishment.

Leo roared. "Come, come, Sel, perhaps we're not very progressive here

in Croyden, but we don't actually stand still. Girls are apt to

stretch out some between ten and twenty, you know. You old bachelors

think nobody ever grows up. Why, Sel, you're grey around your

temples."

"Too well I know it, but a man's own brother shouldn't be the first to

cast such things up to him. I'll admit, since I come to think of it,

that Alice has probably grown bigger. Is she any better-looking than

she used to be?"

"Alice is a charming girl," said Mrs. Grant impressively. "She is a

beauty and she is also sweet and sensible, which beauties are not

always. We are all very much pleased with Leo's choice. But we have

really no more time to spare just now. The wedding is at seven o'clock

and it is four already."

"Is there anybody you can send to the station for my luggage?" asked

Selwyn. "Luckily I have a new suit, otherwise I shouldn't have the

face to go."

"Well, I must be off," said Mrs. Grant. "Father, take Selwyn away so

that I shan't be tempted to waste time talking to him."

In the library father and son looked at each other affectionately.

"Dad, it's a blessing to see you just the same. I'm a little dizzy

with all these changes. Bertha grown up and Leo within an inch of

being married! To Alice Graham at that, whom I can't think of yet as

anything else than the long-legged, black-eyed imp of mischief she

was when a kiddy. To tell you the truth, Dad, I don't feel in a mood

for going to a wedding at Wish-ton-wish tonight. I'm sure you don't

either. You've always hated fusses. Can't we shirk it?"

They smiled at each other with chummy remembrance of many a family

festival they had "shirked" together in the old days. But Mr. Grant

shook his head. "Not this time, sonny. There are some things a decent

man can't shirk and one of them is his own boy's wedding. It's a

nuisance, but I must go through with it. You'll understand how it is

when you're a family man yourself. By the way, why aren't you a family

man by this time? Why haven't I been put to the bother and

inconvenience of attending your wedding before now, son?"

Selwyn laughed, with a little vibrant note of bitterness in the

laughter, which the father's quick ears detected. "I've been too busy

with law books, Dad, to find me a wife."

Mr. Grant shook his bushy grey head. "That's not the real reason, son.

The world has a wife for every man; if he hasn't found her by the time

he's thirty-five, there's some real reason for it. Well, I don't want

to pry into yours, but I hope it's a sound one and not a mean,

sneaking, selfish sort of reason. Perhaps you'll choose a Madam Selwyn

some day yet. In case you should I'm going to give you a small bit of

good advice. Your mother--now, she's a splendid woman, Selwyn, a

splendid woman. She can't be matched as a housekeeper and she has

improved my finances until I don't know them when I meet them. She's

been a good wife and a good mother. If I were a young man I'd court

her and marry her over again, that I would. But, son, when _you_ pick

a wife pick one with a nice little commonplace nose, not a family

nose. Never marry a woman with a family nose, son."

A woman with a family nose came into the library at this juncture and

beamed maternally upon them both. "There's a bite for you in the

dining room. After you've eaten it you must dress. Mind you brush your

hair well down, Father. The green room is ready for you, Selwyn.

Tomorrow I'll have a good talk with you, but tonight I'll be too busy

to remember you're around. How are we all going to get over to

Wish-ton-wish? Leo and Bertha are going in the pony carriage. It won't

hold a third passenger. You'll have to squeeze in with Father and me

in the buggy, Selwyn."

"By no means," replied Selwyn briskly. "I'll walk over to

Wish-ton-wish. Ifs only half a mile across lots. I suppose the old way

is still open?"

"It ought to be," answered Mr. Grant drily; "Leo has kept it well

trodden. If you've forgotten how it runs he can tell you."

"I haven't forgotten," said Selwyn, a little brusquely. He had his own

reasons for remembering the wood path. Leo had not been the first

Grant to go courting to Wish-ton-wish.

When he started, the moon was rising round and red and hazy in an

eastern hill-gap. The autumn air was mild and spicy. Long shadows

stretched across the fields on his right and silvery mosaics patterned

the floor of the old beechwood lane. Selwyn walked slowly. He was

thinking of Esme Graham or, rather, of the girl who had been Esme

Graham, and wondering if he would see her at the wedding. It was

probable, and he did not want to see her. In spite of ten years'

effort, he did not think he could yet look upon Tom St. Clair's wife

with the proper calm indifference. At the best, it would taint his own

memory of her; he would never again be able to think of her as Esme

Graham but only as Esme St. Clair.

The Grahams had come to Wish-ton-wish eleven years before. There was a

big family of girls of whom the tall, brown-haired Esme was the

oldest. There was one summer during which Selwyn Grant had haunted

Wish-ton-wish, the merry comrade of the younger girls, the boyishly,

silently devoted lover of Esme. Tom St. Clair had always been there

too, in his right as second cousin, Selwyn had supposed. One day he

found out that Tom and Esme had been engaged ever since she was

sixteen; one of her sisters told him. That had been all. He had gone

away soon after, and some time later a letter from home made casual

mention of Tom St. Clair's marriage.

He narrowly missed being late for the wedding ceremony. The bridal

party entered the parlour at Wish-ton-wish at the same moment as he

slipped in by another door. Selwyn almost whistled with amazement at

sight of the bride. _That_ Alice Graham, that tall, stately, blushing

young woman, with her masses of dead-black hair, frosted over by the

film of wedding veil! Could that be the scrawny little tomboy of ten

years ago? She looked not unlike Esme, with that subtle family

resemblance that is quite independent of feature and colouring.

Where was Esme? Selwyn cast his eyes furtively over the assembled

guests while the minister read the marriage ceremony. He recognized

several of the Graham girls but he did not see Esme, although Tom St.

Clair, stout and florid and prosperous-looking, was standing on a

chair in a faraway corner, peering over the heads of the women.

After the turmoil of handshakings and congratulations, Selwyn fled to

the cool, still outdoors, where the rosy glow of Chinese lanterns

mingled with the waves of moonshine to make fairyland. And there he

met her, as she came out of the house by a side door, a tall, slender

woman in some glistening, clinging garment, with white flowers shining

like stars in the coils of her brown hair. In the soft glow she looked

even more beautiful than in the days of her girlhood, and Selwyn's

heart throbbed dangerously at sight of her.

"Esme!" he said involuntarily.

She started, and he had an idea that she changed colour, although it

was too dim to be sure. "Selwyn!" she exclaimed, putting out her

hands. "Why, Selwyn Grant! Is it really you? Or are you such stuff as

dreams are made of? I did not know you were here. I did not know you

were home."

He caught her hands and held them tightly, drawing her a little closer

to him, forgetting that she was Tom St. Clair's wife, remembering only

that she was the woman to whom he had given all his love and life's

devotion, to the entire beggaring of his heart.

"I reached home only four hours ago, and was haled straightway here to

Leo's wedding. I'm dizzy, Esme. I can't adjust my old conceptions to

this new state of affairs all at once. It seems ridiculous to think

that Leo and Alice are married. I'm sure they can't be really grown

up."

Esme laughed as she drew away her hands. "We are all ten years older,"

she said lightly.

"Not you. You are more beautiful than ever, Esme. That sunflower

compliment is permissible in an old friend, isn't it?"

"This mellow glow is kinder to me than sunlight now. I am thirty, you

know, Selwyn."

"And I have some grey hairs," he confessed. "I knew I had them but I

had a sneaking hope that other folks didn't until Leo destroyed it

today. These young brothers and sisters who won't stay children are

nuisances. You'll be telling me next thing that 'Baby' is grown up."

"'Baby' is eighteen and has a beau," laughed Esme. "And I give you

fair warning that she insists on being called Laura now. Do you want

to come for a walk with me--down under the beeches to the old lane

gate? I came out to see if the fresh air would do my bit of a headache

good. I shall have to help with the supper later on."

They went slowly across the lawn and turned into a dim, moonlight lane

beyond, their old favourite ramble. Selwyn felt like a man in a dream,

a pleasant dream from which he dreads to awaken. The voices and

laughter echoing out from the house died away behind them and the

great silence of the night fell about them as they came to the old

gate, beyond which was a range of shining, moonlight-misted fields.

For a little while neither of them spoke. The woman looked out across

the white spaces and the man watched the glimmering curve of her neck

and the soft darkness of her rich hair. How virginal, how sacred, she

looked! The thought of Tom St. Clair was a sacrilege.

"It's nice to see you again, Selwyn," said Esme frankly at last.

"There are so few of our old set left, and so many of the babies grown

up. Sometimes I don't know my own world, it has changed so. It's an

uncomfortable feeling. You give me a pleasant sensation of really

belonging here. I'd be lonesome tonight if I dared. I'm going to miss

Alice so much. There will be only Mother and Baby and I left now. Our

family circle has dwindled woefully."

"Mother and Baby and you!" Selwyn felt his head whirling again. "Why,

where is Tom?"

He felt that it was an idiotic question, but it slipped from his

tongue before he could catch it. Esme turned her head and looked at

him wonderingly. He knew that in the sunlight her eyes were as mistily

blue as early meadow violets, but here they looked dark and

unfathomably tender.

"Tom?" she said perplexedly. "Do you mean Tom St. Clair? He is here,

of course, he and his wife. Didn't you see her? That pretty woman in

pale pink, Lil Meredith. Why, you used to know Lil, didn't you? One of

the Uxbridge Merediths?"

To the day of his death Selwyn Grant will firmly believe that if he

had not clutched fast hold of the top bar of the gate he would have

tumbled down on the moss under the beeches in speechless astonishment.

All the surprises of that surprising evening were as nothing to this.

He had a swift conviction that there were no words in the English

language that could fully express his feelings and that it would be a

waste of time to try to find any. Therefore he laid hold of the first

baldly commonplace ones that came handy and said tamely, "I thought

you were married to Tom."

"You--thought--I--was--married--to--Tom!" repeated Esme slowly. "And

have you thought _that_ all these years, Selwyn Grant?"

"Yes, I have. Is it any wonder? You were engaged to Tom when I went

away, Jenny told me you were. And a year later Bertha wrote me a

letter in which she made some reference to Tom's marriage. She didn't

say to _whom_, but hadn't I the right to suppose it was to you?"

"Oh!" The word was partly a sigh and partly a little cry of

long-concealed, long-denied pain. "It's been all a funny

misunderstanding. Tom and I _were_ engaged once--a boy-and-girl affair

in the beginning. Then we both found out that we had made a

mistake--that what we had thought was love was merely the affection of

good comrades. We broke our engagement shortly before you went away.

All the older girls knew it was broken but I suppose nobody mentioned

the matter to Jen. She was such a child, we never thought about her.

And you've thought I was Tom's wife all this time? It's--funny."

"Funny. You mean tragic! Look here, Esme, I'm not going to risk any

more misunderstanding. There's nothing for it but plain talk when

matters get to such a state as this. I love you--and I've loved you

ever since I met you. I went away because I could not stay here and

see you married to another man. I've stayed away for the same reason.

Esme, is it too late? Did you ever care anything for me?"

"Yes, I did," she said slowly.

"Do you care still?" he asked.

She hid her face against his shoulder. "Yes," she whispered.

"Then we'll go back to the house and be married," he said joyfully.

Esme broke away and stared at him. "Married!"

"Yes, married. We've wasted ten years and we're not going to waste

another minute. We're _not_, I say."

"Selwyn! It's impossible."

"I have expurgated that word from my dictionary. It's the very

simplest thing when you look at it in an unprejudiced way. Here is a

ready-made wedding and decorations and assembled guests, a minister on

the spot and a state where no licence is required. You have a very

pretty new dress on and you love me. I have a plain gold ring on my

little finger that will fit you. Aren't all the conditions fulfilled?

Where is the sense of waiting and having another family upheaval in a

few weeks' time?"

"I understand why you have made such a success of the law," said Esme,

"but--"

"There are no buts. Come with me, Esme. I'm going to hunt up your

mother and mine and talk to them."

Half an hour later an astonishing whisper went circulating among the

guests. Before they could grasp its significance Tom St. Clair and

Jen's husband, broadly smiling, were hustling scattered folk into the

parlour again and making clear a passage in the hall. The minister

came in with his blue book, and then Selwyn Grant and Esme Graham

walked in hand in hand.

When the second ceremony was over, Mr. Grant shook his son's hand

vigorously. "There's no need to wish you happiness, son; you've got

it. And you've made one fuss and bother do for both weddings, that's

what I call genius. And"--this in a careful whisper, while Esme was

temporarily obliterated in Mrs. Grant's capacious embrace--"she's got

the right sort of a nose. But your mother is a grand woman, son, a

grand woman."

At the Bay Shore Farm

The Newburys were agog with excitement over the Governor's picnic. As

they talked it over on the verandah at sunset, they felt that life

could not be worth living to those unfortunate people who had not been

invited to it. Not that there were many of the latter in Claymont, for

it was the Governor's native village, and the Claymonters were getting

up the picnic for him during his political visit to the city fifteen

miles away.

Each of the Newburys had a special reason for wishing to attend the

Governor's picnic. Ralph and Elliott wanted to see the Governor

himself. He was a pet hero of theirs. Had he not once been a Claymont

lad just like themselves? Had he not risen to the highest office in

the state by dint of sheer hard work and persistency? Had he not won a

national reputation by his prompt and decisive measures during the big

strike at Campden? And was he not a man, personally and politically,

whom any boy might be proud to imitate? Yes, to all of these

questions. Hence to the Newbury boys the interest of the picnic

centred in the Governor.

"I shall feel two inches taller just to get a look at him," said Ralph

enthusiastically.

"He isn't much to look at," said Frances, rather patronizingly. "I saw

him once at Campden--he came to the school when his daughter was

graduated. He is bald and fat. Oh, of course, he is famous and all

that! But I want to go to the picnic to see Sara Beaumont. She's to be

there with the Chandlers from Campden, and Mary Spearman, who knows

her by sight, is going to point her out to me. I suppose it would be

too much to expect to be introduced to her. I shall probably have to

content myself with just looking at her."

Ralph resented hearing the Governor called bald and fat. Somehow it

seemed as if his hero were being reduced to the level of common clay.

"That's like a girl," he said loftily; "thinking more about a woman

who writes books than about a man like the Governor!"

"I'd rather see Sara Beaumont than forty governors," retorted Frances.

"Why, she's famous--and her books are perfect! If I could ever hope to

write anything like them! It's been the dream of my life just to see

her ever since I read _The Story of Idlewild_. And now to think that

it is to be fulfilled! It seems too good to be true that

tomorrow--tomorrow, Newburys,--I shall see Sara Beaumont!"

"Well," said Cecilia gently--Cecilia was always gentle even in her

enthusiasm--"I shall like to see the Governor and Sara Beaumont too.

But I'm going to the picnic more for the sake of seeing Nan Harris

than anything else. It's three years since she went away, you know,

and I've never had another chum whom I love so dearly. I'm just

looking forward to meeting her and talking over all our dear, good old

times. I do wonder if she has changed much. But I am sure I shall know

her."

"By her red hair and her freckles?" questioned Elliott teasingly.

"They'll be the same as ever, I'll be bound."

Cecilia flushed and looked as angry as she could--which isn't saying

much, after all. She didn't mind when Elliott teased her about her pug

nose and her big mouth, but it always hurt her when he made fun of

Nan.

Nan's family had once lived across the street from the Newburys. Nan

and Cecilia had been playmates all through childhood, but when both

girls were fourteen the Harrises had moved out west. Cecilia had never

seen Nan since. But now the latter had come east for a visit, and was

with her relatives in Campden. She was to be at the picnic, and

Cecilia's cup of delight brimmed over.

Mrs. Newbury came briskly into the middle of their sunset plans. She

had been down to the post office, and she carried an open letter in

her hand.

"Mother," said Frances, straightening up anxiously, "you have a

pitying expression on your face. Which of us is it for--speak

out--don't keep us in suspense. Has Mary Spearman told you that Sara

Beaumont isn't going to be at the picnic?"

"Or that the Governor isn't going to be there?"

"Or that Nan Harris isn't coming?"

"Or that something's happened to put off the affair altogether?" cried

Ralph and Cecilia and Elliott all at once.

Mrs. Newbury laughed. "No, it's none of those things. And I don't know

just whom I do pity, but it is one of you girls. This is a letter from

Grandmother Newbury. Tomorrow is her birthday, and she wants either

Frances or Cecilia to go out to Ashland on the early morning train and

spend the day at the Bay Shore Farm."

There was silence on the verandah of the Newburys for the space of ten

seconds. Then Frances burst out with: "Mother, you know neither of us

can go tomorrow. If it were any other day! But the day of the picnic!"

"I'm sorry, but one of you must go," said Mrs. Newbury firmly. "Your

father said so when I called at the store to show him the letter.

Grandmother Newbury would be very much hurt and displeased if her

invitation were disregarded--you know that. But we leave it to

yourselves to decide which one shall go."

"Don't do that," implored Frances miserably. "Pick one of us

yourself--pull straws--anything to shorten the agony."

"No; you must settle it for yourselves," said Mrs. Newbury. But in

spite of herself she looked at Cecilia. Cecilia was apt to be looked

at, someway, when things were to be given up. Mostly it was Cecilia

who gave them up. The family had come to expect it of her; they all

said that Cecilia was very unselfish.

Cecilia knew that her mother looked at her, but did not turn her face.

She couldn't, just then; she looked away out over the hills and tried

to swallow something that came up in her throat.

"Glad I'm not a girl," said Ralph, when Mrs. Newbury had gone into the

house. "Whew! Nothing could induce me to give up that picnic--not if a

dozen Grandmother Newburys were offended. Where's your sparkle gone

now, Fran?"

"It's too bad of Grandmother Newbury," declared Frances angrily.

"Oh, Fran, she didn't know about the picnic," said Cecilia--but still

without turning round.

"Well, she needn't always be so annoyed if we don't go when we are

invited. Another day would do just as well," said Frances shortly.

Something in her voice sounded choked too. She rose and walked to the

other end of the verandah, where she stood and scowled down the road;

Ralph and Elliott, feeling uncomfortable, went away.

The verandah was very still for a little while. The sun had quite set,

and it was growing dark when Frances came back to the steps.

"Well, what are you going to do about it?" she said shortly. "Which of

us is to go to the Bay Shore?"

"I suppose I had better go," said Cecilia slowly--very slowly indeed.

Frances kicked her slippered toe against the fern _jardinière_.

"You may see Nan Harris somewhere else before she goes back," she said

consolingly.

"Yes, I may," said Cecilia. She knew quite well that she would not.

Nan would return to Campden on the special train, and she was going

back west in three days.

It was hard to give the picnic up, but Cecilia was used to giving

things up. Nobody ever expected Frances to give things up; she was so

brilliant and popular that the good things of life came her way

naturally. It never seemed to matter so much about quiet Cecilia.

*       *       *       *       *

Cecilia cried herself to sleep that night. She felt that it was

horribly selfish of her to do so, but she couldn't help it. She awoke

in the morning with a confused idea that it was very late. Why hadn't

Mary called her, as she had been told to do?

Through the open door between her room and Frances's she could see

that the latter's bed was empty. Then she saw a little note, addressed

to her, pinned on the pillow.

Dear Saint Cecilia [it ran], when you read this I shall be on

the train to Ashland to spend the day with Grandmother

Newbury. You've been giving up things so often and so long

that I suppose you think you have a monopoly of it; but you

see you haven't. I didn't tell you this last night because I

hadn't quite made up my mind. But after you went upstairs, I

fought it out to a finish and came to a decision. Sara

Beaumont would keep, but Nan Harris wouldn't, so you must go

to the picnic. I told Mary to call me instead of you this

morning, and now I'm off. You needn't spoil your fun pitying

me. Now that the wrench is over, I feel a most delightful glow

of virtuous satisfaction!

Fran.

If by running after Frances Cecilia could have brought her back,

Cecilia would have run. But a glance at her watch told her that

Frances must already be halfway to Ashland. So she could only accept

the situation.

"Well, anyway," she thought, "I'll get Mary to point Sara Beaumont out

to me, and I'll store up a description of her in my mind to tell Fran

tonight. I must remember to take notice of the colour of her eyes.

Fran has always been exercised about that."

It was mid-forenoon when Frances arrived at Ashland station.

Grandmother Newbury's man, Hiram, was waiting for her with the pony

carriage, and Frances heartily enjoyed the three-mile drive to the Bay

Shore Farm.

Grandmother Newbury came to the door to meet her granddaughter. She

was a tall, handsome old lady with piercing black eyes and thick white

hair. There was no savour of the traditional grandmother of caps and

knitting about her. She was like a stately old princess and, much as

her grandchildren admired her, they were decidedly in awe of her.

"So it is Frances," she said, bending her head graciously that Frances

might kiss her still rosy cheek. "I expected it would be Cecilia. I

heard after I had written you that there was to be a gubernatorial

picnic in Claymont today, so I was quite sure it would be Cecilia. Why

isn't it Cecilia?"

Frances flushed a little. There was a meaning tone in Grandmother

Newbury's voice.

"Cecilia was very anxious to go to the picnic today to see an old

friend of hers," she answered. "She was willing to come here, but you

know, Grandmother, that Cecilia is always willing to do the things

somebody else ought to do, so I decided I would stand on my rights as

'Miss Newbury' for once and come to the Bay Shore."

Grandmother Newbury smiled. She understood. Frances had always been

her favourite granddaughter, but she had never been blind,

clear-sighted old lady that she was, to the little leaven of

easy-going selfishness in the girl's nature. She was pleased to see

that Frances had conquered it this time.

"I'm glad it is you who have come--principally because you are

cleverer than Cecilia," she said brusquely. "Or at least you are the

better talker. And I want a clever girl and a good talker to help me

entertain a guest today. She's clever herself, and she likes young

girls. She is a particular friend of your Uncle Robert's family down

south, and that is why I have asked her to spend a few days with me.

You'll like her."

Here Grandmother Newbury led Frances into the sitting-room.

"Mrs. Kennedy, this is my granddaughter, Frances Newbury. I told you

about her and her ambitions last night. You see, Frances, we have

talked you over."

Mrs. Kennedy was a much younger woman than Grandmother Newbury. She

was certainly no more than fifty and, in spite of her grey hair,

looked almost girlish, so bright were her dark eyes, so clear-cut and

fresh her delicate face, and so smart her general appearance. Frances,

although not given to sudden likings, took one for Mrs. Kennedy. She

thought she had never seen so charming a face.

She found herself enjoying the day immensely. In fact, she forgot the

Governor's picnic and Sara Beaumont altogether. Mrs. Kennedy proved to

be a delightful companion. She had travelled extensively and was an

excellent _raconteur_. She had seen much of men and women and

crystallized her experiences into sparkling little sentences and

epigrams which made Frances feel as if she were listening to one of

the witty people in clever books. But under all her sparkling wit

there was a strongly felt undercurrent of true womanly sympathy and

kind-heartedness which won affection as speedily as her brilliance won

admiration. Frances listened and laughed and enjoyed. Once she found

time to think that she would have missed a great deal if she had not

come to Bay Shore Farm that day. Surely talking to a woman like Mrs.

Kennedy was better than looking at Sara Beaumont from a distance.

"I've been 'rewarded' in the most approved storybook style," she

thought with amusement.

In the afternoon, Grandmother Newbury packed Mrs. Kennedy and Frances

off for a walk.

"The old woman wants to have her regular nap," she told them.

"Frances, take Mrs. Kennedy to the fern walk and show her the famous

'Newbury Bubble' among the rocks. I want to be rid of you both until

tea-time."

Frances and Mrs. Kennedy went to the fern walk and the beautiful

"Bubble"--a clear, round spring of amber-hued water set down in a cup

of rock overhung with ferns and beeches. It was a spot Frances had

always loved. She found herself talking freely to Mrs. Kennedy of her

hopes and plans. The older woman drew the girl out with tactful

sympathy until she found that Frances's dearest ambition was some day

to be a writer of books like Sara Beaumont.

"Not that I expect ever to write books like hers," she said hurriedly,

"and I know it must be a long while before I can write anything worth

while at all. But do you think--if I try hard and work hard--that I

might do something in this line some day?"

"I think so," said Mrs. Kennedy, smiling, "if, as you say, you are

willing to work hard and study hard. There will be a great deal of

both and many disappointments. Sara Beaumont herself had a hard time

at first--and for a very long first too. Her family was poor, you

know, and Sara earned enough money to send away her first manuscripts

by making a pot of jelly for a neighbour. The manuscripts came back,

and Sara made more jelly and wrote more stories. Still they came back.

Once she thought she had better give up writing stories and stick to

the jelly alone. There did seem some little demand for the one and

none at all for the other. But she determined to keep on until she

either succeeded or proved to her own satisfaction that she could make

better jelly than stories. And you see she did succeed. But it means

perseverance and patience and much hard work. Prepare yourself for

that, Frances, and one day you will win your place. Then you will look

back to the 'Newbury Bubble,' and you will tell me what a good

prophetess I was."

They talked longer--an earnest, helpful talk that went far to inspire

Frances's hazy ambition with a definite purpose. She understood that

she must not write merely to win fame for herself or even for the

higher motive of pure pleasure in her work. She must aim, however

humbly, to help her readers to higher planes of thought and

endeavour. Then and only then would it be worth while.

"Mrs. Kennedy is going to drive you to the station," said Grandmother

Newbury after tea. "I am much obliged to you, Frances, for giving up

the picnic today and coming to the Bay Shore to gratify an old woman's

inconvenient whim. But I shall not burden you with too much gratitude,

for I think you have enjoyed yourself."

"Indeed, I have," said Frances heartily. Then she added with a laugh,

"I think I would feel much more meritorious if it had not been so

pleasant. It has robbed me of all the self-sacrificing complacency I

felt this morning. You see, I wanted to go to that picnic to see Sara

Beaumont, and I felt quite like a martyr at giving it up."

Grandmother Newbury's eyes twinkled. "You would have been beautifully

disappointed had you gone. Sara Beaumont was not there. Mrs. Kennedy,

I see you haven't told our secret. Frances, my dear, let me introduce

you two over again. This lady is Mrs. Sara Beaumont Kennedy, the

writer of _The Story of Idlewild_ and all those other books you so

much admire."

*       *       *       *       *

The Newburys were sitting on the verandah at dusk, too tired and too

happy to talk. Ralph and Elliott had seen the Governor; more than

that, they had been introduced to him, and he had shaken hands with

them both and told them that their father and he had been chums when

just their size. And Cecilia had spent a whole day with Nan Harris,

who had not changed at all except to grow taller. But there was one

little cloud on her content.

"I wanted to see Sara Beaumont to tell Frances about her, but I

couldn't get a glimpse of her. I don't even know if she was there."

"There comes Fran up the station road now," said Ralph. "My eyes,

hasn't she a step!"

Frances came smiling over the lawn and up the steps.

"So you are all home safe," she said gaily. "I hope you feasted your

eyes on your beloved Governor, boys. I can tell that Cecilia

forgathered with Nan by the beatific look on her face."

"Oh, Fran, it was lovely!" cried Cecilia. "But I felt so sorry--why

didn't you let me go to Ashland? It was too bad you missed it--and

Sara Beaumont."

"Sara Beaumont was at the Bay Shore Farm," said Frances. "I'll tell

you all about it when I get my breath--I've been breathless ever since

Grandmother Newbury told me of it. There's only one drawback to my

supreme bliss--the remembrance of how complacently self-sacrificing I

felt this morning. It humiliates me wholesomely to remember it!"

Elizabeth's Child

The Ingelows, of Ingelow Grange, were not a marrying family. Only one

of them, Elizabeth, had married, and perhaps it was her "poor match"

that discouraged the others. At any rate, Ellen and Charlotte and

George Ingelow at the Grange were single, and so was Paul down at

Greenwood Farm.

It was seventeen years since Elizabeth had married James Sheldon in

the face of the most decided opposition on the part of her family.

Sheldon was a handsome, shiftless ne'er-do-well, without any violent

bad habits, but also "without any backbone," as the Ingelows declared.

"There is sometimes hope of a man who is actively bad," Charlotte

Ingelow had said sententiously, "but who ever heard of reforming a

jellyfish?"

Elizabeth and her husband had gone west and settled on a prairie farm

in Manitoba. She had never been home since. Perhaps her pride kept her

away, for she had the Ingelow share of that, and she soon discovered

that her family's estimate of James Sheldon had been the true one.

There was no active resentment on either side, and once in a long

while letters were exchanged. Still, ever since her marriage,

Elizabeth had been practically an outsider and an alien. As the years

came and went the Ingelows at home remembered only at long intervals

that they had a sister on the western prairies.

One of these remembrances came to Charlotte Ingelow on a spring

afternoon when the great orchards about the Grange were pink and white

with apple and cherry blossoms, and over every hill and field was a

delicate, flower-starred green. A soft breeze was blowing loose petals

from the August Sweeting through the open door of the wide hall when

Charlotte came through it. Ellen and George were standing on the steps

outside.

"This kind of a day always makes me think of Elizabeth," said

Charlotte dreamily. "It was in apple-blossom time she went away." The

Ingelows always spoke of Elizabeth's going away, never of her

marrying.

"Seventeen years ago," said Ellen. "Why, Elizabeth's oldest child must

be quite a young woman now! I--I--" a sudden idea swept over and left

her a little breathless. "I would really like to see her."

"Then why don't you write and ask her to come east and visit us?"

asked George, who did not often speak, but who always spoke to some

purpose when he did.

Ellen and Charlotte looked at each other. "I would like to see

Elizabeth's child," repeated Ellen firmly.

"Do you think she would come?" asked Charlotte. "You know when James

Sheldon died five years ago, we wrote to Elizabeth and asked her to

come home and live with us, and she seemed almost resentful in the

letter she wrote back. I've never said so before, but I've often

thought it."

"Yes, she did," said Ellen, who had often thought so too, but never

said so.

"Elizabeth was always very independent," remarked George. "Perhaps she

thought your letter savoured of charity or pity. No Ingelow would

endure that."

"At any rate, you know she refused to come, even for a visit. She said

she could not leave the farm. She may refuse to let her child come."

"It won't do any harm to ask her," said George.

In the end, Charlotte wrote to Elizabeth and asked her to let her

daughter visit the old homestead. The letter was written and mailed in

much perplexity and distrust when once the glow of momentary

enthusiasm in the new idea had passed.

"What if Elizabeth's child is like her father?" queried Charlotte in a

half-whisper.

"Let us hope she won't be!" cried Ellen fervently. Indeed, she felt

that a feminine edition of James Sheldon would be more than she could

endure.

"She may not like us, or our ways," sighed Charlotte. "We don't know

how she has been brought up. She will seem like a stranger after all.

I really long to see Elizabeth's child, but I can't help fearing we

have done a rash thing, Ellen."

"Perhaps she may not come," suggested Ellen, wondering whether she

hoped it or feared it.

But Worth Sheldon did come. Elizabeth wrote back a prompt acceptance,

with no trace of the proud bitterness that had permeated her answer to

the former invitation. The Ingelows at the Grange were thrown into a

flutter when the letter came. In another week Elizabeth's child would

be with them.

"If only she isn't like her father," said Charlotte with foreboding,

as she aired and swept the southeast spare room for their expected

guest. They had three spare rooms at the Grange, but the aunts had

selected the southeast one for their niece because it was done in

white, "and white seems the most appropriate for a young girl," Ellen

said, as she arranged a pitcher of wild roses on the table.

"I think everything is ready," announced Charlotte. "I put the very

finest sheets on the bed, they smell deliciously of lavender, and we

had very good luck doing up the muslin curtains. It is pleasant to be

expecting a guest, isn't it, Ellen? I have often thought, although I

have never said so before, that our lives were too self-centred. We

seemed to have no interests outside of ourselves. Even Elizabeth has

been really nothing to us, you know. She seemed to have become a

stranger. I hope her child will be the means of bringing us nearer

together again."

"If she has James Sheldon's round face and big blue eyes and curly

yellow hair I shall never really like her, no matter how Ingelowish

she may be inside," said Ellen decidedly.

When Worth Sheldon came, each of her aunts drew a long breath of

relief. Worth was not in the least like her father in appearance.

Neither did she resemble her mother, who had been a sprightly,

black-haired and black-eyed girl. Worth was tall and straight, with a

long braid of thick, wavy brown hair, large, level-gazing grey eyes, a

square jaw, and an excellent chin with a dimple in it.

"She is the very image of Mother's sister, Aunt Alice, who died so

long ago," said Charlotte. "You don't remember her, Ellen, but I do

very well. She was the sweetest woman that ever drew breath. She was

Paul's favourite aunt, too," Charlotte added with a sigh. Paul's

antagonistic attitude was the only drawback to the joy of this

meeting. How delightful it would have been if he had not refused to be

there too, to welcome Elizabeth's child.

Worth came to hearts prepared to love her, but they must have loved

her in any case. In a day Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Ellen and shy,

quiet Uncle George had yielded wholly to her charm. She was girlishly

bright and merry, frankly delighted with the old homestead and the

quaint, old-fashioned, daintily kept rooms. Yet there was no

suggestion of gush about her; she did not go into raptures, but her

pleasure shone out in eyes and tones. There was so much to tell and

ask and remember the first day that it was not until the second

morning after her arrival that Worth asked the question her aunts had

been dreading. She asked it out in the orchard, in the emerald gloom

of a long arcade of stout old trees that Grandfather Ingelow had

planted fifty years ago.

"Aunt Charlotte, when is Uncle Paul coming up to see me? I long to see

him; Mother has talked so much to me about him. She was his favourite

sister, wasn't she?"

Charlotte and Ellen looked at each other. Ellen nodded slyly. It would

be better to tell Worth the whole truth at once. She would certainly

find it out soon.

"I do not think, my dear," said Aunt Charlotte quietly, "that your

Uncle Paul will be up to see you at all."

"Why not?" asked Worth, her serious grey eyes looking straight into

Aunt Charlotte's troubled dark ones. Aunt Charlotte understood that

Elizabeth had never told Worth anything about her family's resentment

of her marriage. It was not a pleasant thing to have to explain it all

to Elizabeth's child, but it must be done.

"I think, my dear," she said gently, "that I will have to tell you a

little bit of our family history that may not be very pleasant to hear

or tell. Perhaps you don't know that when your mother married

we--we--did not exactly approve of her marriage. Perhaps we were

mistaken; at any rate it was wrong and foolish to let it come between

us and her as we have done. But that is how it was. None of us

approved, as I have said, but none of us was so bitter as your Uncle

Paul. Your mother was his favourite sister, and he was very deeply

attached to her. She was only a year younger than he. When he bought

the Greenwood farm she went and kept house for him for three years

before her marriage. When she married, Paul was terribly angry. He was

always a strange man, very determined and unyielding. He said he would

never forgive her, and he never has. He has never married, and he has

lived so long alone at Greenwood with only deaf old Mrs. Bree to keep

house for him that he has grown odder than ever. One of us wanted to

go and keep house for him, but he would not let us. And--I must tell

you this although I hate to--he was very angry when he heard we had

invited you to visit us, and he said he would not come near the Grange

as long as you were here. Oh, you can't realize how bitter and

obstinate he is. We pleaded with him, but I think that only made him

worse. We have felt so bad over it, your Aunt Ellen and your Uncle

George and I, but we can do nothing at all."

Worth had listened gravely. The story was all new to her, but she had

long thought there must be a something at the root of her mother's

indifferent relations with her old home and friends. When Aunt

Charlotte, flushed and half-tearful, finished speaking, a little

glimmer of fun came into Worth's grey eyes, and her dimple was very

pronounced as she said,

"Then, if Uncle Paul will not come to see me, I must go to see him."

"My dear!" cried both her aunts together in dismay. Aunt Ellen got her

breath first.

"Oh, my dear child, you must not think of such a thing," she cried

nervously. "It would never do. He would--I don't know what he would

do--order you off the premises, or say something dreadful. No! No!

Wait. Perhaps he will come after all--we will see. You must have

patience."

Worth shook her head and the smile in her eyes deepened.

"I don't think he will come," she said. "Mother has told me something

about the Ingelow stubbornness. She says I have it in full measure,

but I like to call it determination, it sounds so much better. No, the

mountain will not come to Mohammed, so Mohammed will go to the

mountain. I think I will walk down to Greenwood this afternoon. There,

dear aunties, don't look so troubled. Uncle Paul won't run at me with

a pitchfork, will he? He can't do worse than order me off his

premises, as you say."

Aunt Charlotte shook her head. She understood that no argument would

turn the girl from her purpose if she had the Ingelow will, so she

said nothing more. In the afternoon Worth set out for Greenwood, a

mile away.

"Oh, what will Paul say?" exclaimed the aunts, with dismal

forebodings.

Worth met her Uncle Paul at the garden gate. He was standing there

when she came up the slope of the long lane, a tall, massive figure of

a man, with deep-set black eyes, a long, prematurely white beard, and

a hooked nose. Handsome and stubborn enough Paul Ingelow looked. It

was not without reason that his neighbours called him the oddest

Ingelow of them all.

Behind him was a fine old farmhouse in beautiful grounds. Worth felt

almost as much interested in Greenwood as in the Grange. It had been

her mother's home for three years, and Elizabeth Ingelow had loved it

and talked much to her daughter of it.

Paul Ingelow did not move or speak, although he probably guessed who

his visitor was. Worth held out her hand. "How do you do, Uncle Paul?"

she said.

Paul ignored the outstretched hand. "Who are you?" he asked gruffly.

"I am Worth Sheldon, your sister Elizabeth's daughter," she answered.

"Won't you shake hands with me, Uncle Paul?"

"I have no sister Elizabeth," he answered unbendingly.

Worth folded her hands on the gatepost and met his frowning gaze

unshrinkingly. "Oh, yes, you have," she said calmly. "You can't do

away with natural ties by simply ignoring them, Uncle Paul. They go on

existing. I never knew until this morning that you were at enmity with

my mother. She never told me. But she has talked a great deal of you

to me. She has told me often how much you and she loved each other and

how good you always were to her. She sent her love to you."

"Years ago I had a sister Elizabeth," said Paul Ingelow harshly. "I

loved her very tenderly, but she married against my will a shiftless

scamp who--"

Worth lifted her hand slightly. "He was my father, Uncle Paul, and he

was always kind to me; whatever his faults may have been I cannot

listen to a word against him."

"You shouldn't have come here, then," he said, but he said it less

harshly. There was even a certain reluctant approval of this composed,

independent niece in his eyes. "Didn't they tell you at the Grange

that I didn't want to see you?"

"Yes, they told me this morning, but _I_ wanted to see you, so I came.

Why cannot we be friends, Uncle Paul, not because we are uncle and

niece, but simply because you are you and I am I? Let us leave my

father and mother out of the question and start fair on our own

account."

For a moment Uncle Paul looked at her. She met his gaze frankly and

firmly, with a merry smile lurking in her eyes. Then he threw back his

head and laughed a hearty laugh that was good to hear. "Very well," he

said. "It is a bargain."

He put his hand over the gate and shook hers. Then he opened the gate

and invited her into the house. Worth stayed to tea, and Uncle Paul

showed her all over Greenwood.

"You are to come here as often as you like," he told her. "When a

young lady and I make a compact of friendship I am going to live up to

it. But you are not to talk to me about your mother. Remember, we are

friends because I am I and you are you, and there is no question of

anybody else."

The Grange Ingelows were amazed to see Paul bringing Worth home in his

buggy that evening. When Worth had gone into the house Charlotte told

him that she was glad to see that he had relented towards Elizabeth's

child.

"I have not," he made stern answer. "I don't know whom you mean by

Elizabeth's child. That young woman and I have taken a liking for each

other which we mean to cultivate on our own account. Don't call her

Elizabeth's child to me again."

As the days and weeks went by Worth grew dearer and dearer to the

Grange folk. The aunts often wondered to themselves how they had

existed before Worth came and, oftener yet, how they could do without

her when the time came for her to go home. Meanwhile, the odd

friendship between her and Uncle Paul deepened and grew. They read and

drove and walked together. Worth spent half her time at Greenwood.

Once Uncle Paul said to her, as if speaking half to himself,

"To think that James Sheldon could have a daughter like you!"

Up went Worth's head. Worth's grey eyes flashed. "I thought we were

not to speak of my parents?" she said. "You ought not to have been the

first to break the compact, Uncle Paul."

"I accept the rebuke and beg your pardon," he said. He liked her all

the better for those little flashes of spirit across her girlish

composure.

One day in September they were together in the garden at Greenwood.

Worth, looking lovingly and regretfully down the sun-flecked avenue of

box, said with a sigh, "Next month I must go home. How sorry I shall

be to leave the Grange and Greenwood. I have had such a delightful

summer, and I have learned to love all the old nooks and corners as

well as if I had lived here all my life."

"Stay here!" said Uncle Paul abruptly. "Stay here with me. I want you,

Worth. Let Greenwood be your home henceforth and adopt your crusty old

bachelor uncle for a father."

"Oh, Uncle Paul," cried Worth, "I don't know--I don't think--oh, you

surprise me!"

"I surprise myself, perhaps. But I mean it, Worth. I am a rich, lonely

old man and I want to keep this new interest you have brought into my

life. Stay with me. I will try to give you a very happy life, my

child, and all I have shall be yours."

Seeing her troubled face, he added, "There, I don't ask you to decide

right here. I suppose you have other claims to adjust. Take time to

think it over."

"Thank you," said Worth. She went back to the Grange as one in a

dream and shut herself up in the white southeast room to think. She

knew that she wanted to accept this unexpected offer of Uncle Paul's.

Worth's loyal tongue had never betrayed, even to the loving aunts, any

discontent in the prairie farm life that had always been hers. But it

had been a hard life for the girl, narrow and poverty-bounded. She

longed to put forth her hand and take this other life which opened so

temptingly before her. She knew, too, that her mother, ambitious for

her child, would not be likely to interpose any objections. She had

only to go to Uncle Paul and all that she longed for would be given

her, together with the faithful, protecting fatherly love and care

that in all its strength and sweetness had never been hers.

She must decide for herself. Not even of Aunt Charlotte or Aunt Ellen

could she ask advice. She knew they would entreat her to accept, and

she needed no such incentive to her own wishes. Far on into the night

Worth sat at the white-curtained dormer window, looking at the stars

over the apple trees, and fighting her battle between inclination and

duty. It was a hard and stubbornly contested battle, but with that

square chin and those unfaltering grey eyes it could end in only one

way. Next day Worth went down to Greenwood.

"Well, what is it to be?" said Uncle Paul without preface, as he met

her in the garden.

"I cannot come, Uncle Paul," said Worth steadily. "I cannot give up my

mother."

"I don't ask you to give her up," he said gruffly. "You can write to

her and visit her. I don't want to come between parent and child."

"That isn't the point exactly, Uncle Paul. I hope you will not be

angry with me for not accepting your offer. I wanted to--you don't

know how much I wanted to--but I cannot. Mother and I are so much to

each other, Uncle Paul, more, I am sure, than even most mothers and

daughters. You have never let me speak of her, but I must tell you

this. Mother has often told me that when I came to her things were

going very hard with her and that I was heaven's own gift to comfort

and encourage her. Then, in the ten years that followed, the three

other babies that came to her all died before they were two years old.

And with each loss Mother said I grew dearer to her. Don't you see,

Uncle Paul, I'm not merely just one child to her but I'm _all_ those

children? Six years ago the twins were born, and they are dear, bright

little lads, but they are very small yet, so Mother has really nobody

but me. I know she would consent to let me stay here, because she

would think it best for me, but it wouldn't be really best for me; it

couldn't be best for a girl to do what wasn't right. I love you, Uncle

Paul, and I love Greenwood, and I want to stay so much, but I cannot.

I have thought it all over and I must go back to Mother."

Uncle Paul did not say one word. He turned his back on Worth and

walked the full length of the box alley twice. Worth watched him

wistfully. Was he very angry? Would he forgive her?

"You are an Ingelow, Worth," he said when he came back. That was all,

but Worth understood that her decision was not to cause any

estrangement between them.

A month later Worth's last day at the Grange came. She was to leave

for the West the next morning. They were all out in Grandfather

Ingelow's arcade, Uncle George and Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Ellen and

Worth, enjoying the ripe mellow sunshine of the October day, when Paul

Ingelow came up the slope. Worth went to meet him with outstretched

hands. He took them both in his and looked at her very gravely.

"I have not come to say goodbye, Worth. I will not say it. You are

coming back to me."

Worth shook her brown head sadly. "Oh, I cannot, Uncle Paul. You

know--I told you--"

"Yes, I know," he interrupted. "I have been thinking it all over every

day since. You know yourself what the Ingelow determination is. It's a

good thing in a good cause but a bad thing in a bad one. And it is no

easy thing to conquer when you've let it rule you for years as I have

done. But I have conquered it, or you have conquered it for me. Child,

here is a letter. It is to your mother--my sister Elizabeth. In it I

have asked her to forgive me, and to forget our long estrangement. I

have asked her to come back to me with you and her boys. I want you

all--all--at Greenwood and I will do the best I can for you all."

"Oh, Uncle Paul," cried Worth, her face aglow and quivering with

smiles and tears and sunshine.

"Do you think she will forgive me and come?"

"I know she will," cried Worth. "I know how she has longed for you and

home. Oh, I am so happy, Uncle Paul!"

He smiled at her and put his arm over her shoulder. Together they

walked up the golden arcade to tell the others. That night Charlotte

and Ellen cried with happiness as they talked it over in the twilight.

"How beautiful!" murmured Charlotte softly. "We shall not lose Worth

after all. Ellen, I could not have borne it to see that girl go

utterly out of our lives again."

"I always hoped and believed that Elizabeth's child would somehow

bring us all together again," said Ellen happily.

Freda's Adopted Grave

North Point, where Freda lived, was the bleakest settlement in the

world. Even its inhabitants, who loved it, had to admit that. The

northeast winds swept whistling up the bay and blew rawly over the

long hill that sloped down to it, blighting everything that was in

their way. Only the sturdy firs and spruces could hold their own

against it. So there were no orchards or groves or flower gardens in

North Point.

Just over the hill, in a sheltered southwest valley, was the North

Point church with the graveyard behind it, and this graveyard was the

most beautiful spot in North Point or near it. The North Point folk

loved flowers. They could not have them about their homes, so they had

them in their graveyard. It was a matter of pride with each family to

keep the separate plot neatly trimmed and weeded and adorned with

beautiful blossoms.

It was one of the unwritten laws of the little community that on some

selected day in May everybody would repair to the graveyard to plant,

trim and clip. It was not an unpleasant duty, even to those whose

sorrow was fresh. It seemed as if they were still doing something for

the friends who had gone when they made their earthly resting places

beautiful.

As for the children, they looked forward to "Graveyard Day" as a very

delightful anniversary, and it divided its spring honours with the

amount of the herring catch.

"Tomorrow is Graveyard Day," said Minnie Hutchinson at school recess,

when all the little girls were sitting on the fence. "Ain't I glad!

I've got the loveliest big white rosebush to plant by Grandma

Hutchinson's grave. Uncle Robert sent it out from town."

"My mother has ten tuberoses to set out," said Nan Gray proudly.

"We're going to plant a row of lilies right around our plot," said

Katie Morris.

Every little girl had some boast to make, that is, every little girl

but Freda. Freda sat in a corner all by herself and felt miserably

outside of everything. She had no part or lot in Graveyard Day.

"Are you going to plant anything, Freda?" asked Nan, with a wink at

the others.

Freda shook her head mutely.

"Freda can't plant anything," said Winnie Bell cruelly, although she

did not mean to be cruel. "She hasn't got a grave."

Just then Freda felt as if her gravelessness were a positive disgrace

and crime, as if not to have an interest in a single grave in North

Point cemetery branded you as an outcast forever and ever. It very

nearly did in North Point. The other little girls pitied Freda, but at

the same time they rather looked down upon her for it with the

complacency of those who had been born into a good heritage of family

graves and had an undisputed right to celebrate Graveyard Day.

Freda felt that her cup of wretchedness was full. She sat miserably on

the fence while the other girls ran off to play, and she walked home

alone at night. It seemed to her that she could _not_ bear it any

longer.

Freda was ten years old. Four years ago Mrs. Wilson had taken her from

the orphan asylum in town. Mrs. Wilson lived just this side of the

hill from the graveyard, and everybody in North Point called her a

"crank." They pitied any child she took, they said. It would be worked

to death and treated like a slave. At first they tried to pump Freda

concerning Mrs. Wilson's treatment of her, but Freda was not to be

pumped. She was a quiet little mite, with big, wistful dark eyes that

had a disconcerting fashion of looking the gossips out of countenance.

But if Freda had been disposed to complain, the North Point people

would have found out that they had been only too correct in their

predictions.

"Mrs. Wilson," Freda said timidly that night, "why haven't we got a

grave?"

Mrs. Wilson averred that such a question gave her the "creeps."

"You ought to be very thankful that we haven't," she said severely.

"That Graveyard Day is a heathenish custom, anyhow. They make a

regular picnic of it, and it makes me sick to hear those school girls

chattering about what they mean to plant, each one trying to outblow

the other. If I _had_ a grave there, I wouldn't make a flower garden

of it!"

Freda did not go to the graveyard the next day, although it was a

holiday. But in the evening, when everybody had gone home, she crept

over the hill and through the beech grove to see what had been done.

The plots were all very neat and prettily set out with plants and

bulbs. Some perennials were already in bud. The grave of Katie Morris'

great-uncle, who had been dead for forty years, was covered with

blossoming purple pansies. Every grave, no matter how small or old,

had its share of promise--every grave except one. Freda came across it

with a feeling of surprise. It was away down in the lower corner where

there were no plots. It was shut off from the others by a growth of

young poplars and was sunken and overgrown with blueberry shrubs.

There was no headstone, and it looked dismally neglected. Freda felt a

sympathy for it. She had no grave, and this grave had nobody to tend

it or care for it.

When she went home she asked Mrs. Wilson whose it was.

"Humph!" said Mrs. Wilson. "If you have so much spare time lying round

loose, you'd better put it into your sewing instead of prowling about

graveyards. Do you expect me to work my fingers to the bone making

clothes for you? I wish I'd left you in the asylum. That grave is

Jordan Slade's, I suppose. He died twenty years ago, and a worthless,

drunken scamp he was. He served a term in the penitentiary for

breaking into Andrew Messervey's store, and after it he had the face

to come back to North Point. But respectable people would have nothing

to do with him, and he went to the dogs altogether--had to be buried

on charity when he died. He hasn't any relations here. There was a

sister, a little girl of ten, who used to live with the Cogswells over

at East Point. After Jord died, some rich folks saw her and was so

struck with her good looks that they took her away with them. I don't

know what become of her, and I don't care. Go and bring the cows up."

When Freda went to bed that night her mind was made up. She would

adopt Jordan Slade's grave.

Thereafter, Freda spent her few precious spare-time moments in the

graveyard. She clipped the blueberry shrubs and long, tangled grasses

from the grave with a pair of rusty old shears that blistered her

little brown hands badly. She brought ferns from the woods to plant

about it. She begged a root of heliotrope from Nan Gray, a clump of

day lilies from Katie Morris, a rosebush slip from Nellie Bell, some

pansy seed from old Mrs. Bennett, and a geranium shoot from Minnie

Hutchinson's big sister. She planted, weeded and watered faithfully,

and her efforts were rewarded. "Her" grave soon looked as nice as any

in the graveyard.

Nobody but Freda knew about it. The poplar growth concealed the corner

from sight, and everybody had quite forgotten poor, disreputable

Jordan Slade's grave. At least, it seemed as if everybody had. But one

evening, when Freda slipped down to the graveyard with a little can

of water and rounded the corner of the poplars, she saw a lady

standing by the grave--a strange lady dressed in black, with the

loveliest face Freda had ever seen, and tears in her eyes.

The lady gave a little start when she saw Freda with her can of water.

"Can you tell me who has been looking after this grave?" she said.

"It--it was I," faltered Freda, wondering if the lady would be angry

with her. "Pleas'm, it was I, but I didn't mean any harm. All the

other little girls had a grave, and I hadn't any, so I just adopted

this one."

"Did you know whose it was?" asked the lady gently.

"Yes'm--Jordan Slade's. Mrs. Wilson told me."

"Jordan Slade was my brother," said the lady. "He went sadly astray,

but he was not all bad. He was weak and too easily influenced. But

whatever his faults, he was good and kind--oh! so good and kind--to me

when I was a child. I loved him with all my heart. It has always been

my wish to come back and visit his grave, but I have never been able

to come, my home has been so far away. I expected to find it

neglected. I cannot tell you how pleased and touched I am to find it

kept so beautifully. Thank you over and over again, my dear child!"

"Then you're not cross, ma'am?" said Freda eagerly. "And I may go on

looking after it, may I? Oh, it just seems as if I couldn't bear not

to!"

"You may look after it as long as you want to, my dear. I will help

you, too. I am to be at East Point all summer. This will be our

grave--yours and mine."

That summer was a wonderful one for Freda. She had found a firm friend

in Mrs. Halliday. The latter was a wealthy woman. Her husband had died

a short time previously and she had no children. When she went away in

the fall, Freda went with her "to be her own little girl for always."

Mrs. Wilson consented grudgingly to give Freda up, although she

grumbled a great deal about ingratitude.

Before they went they paid a farewell visit to their grave. Mrs.

Halliday had arranged with some of the North Point people to keep it

well attended to, but Freda cried at leaving it.

"Don't feel badly about it, dear," comforted Mrs. Halliday. "We are

coming back every summer to see it. It will always be our grave."

Freda slipped her hand into Mrs. Halliday's and smiled up at her.

"I'd never have found you, Aunty, if it hadn't been for this grave,"

she said happily. "I'm so glad I adopted it."

How Don Was Saved

Will Barrie went whistling down the lane of the Locksley farm, took a

short cut over a field of clover aftermath and through a sloping

orchard where the trees were laden with apples, and emerged into the

farmhouse yard where Curtis Locksley was sitting on a pile of logs,

idly whittling at a stick.

"You look as if you had a corner in time, Curt," said Will. "I call

that luck, for I want you to go chestnutting up to Grier's Hill with

me. I met old Tom Grier on the road yesterday, and he told me I might

go any day. Nice old man, Tom Grier."

"Good!" said Curtis heartily, as he sprang up. "If I haven't exactly a

corner in time, I have a day off, at least. Uncle doesn't need me

today. Wait till I whistle for Don. May as well take him with us."

Curtis whistled accordingly, but Don, his handsome Newfoundland dog,

did not appear. After calling and whistling about the yard and barns

for several minutes, Curtis turned away disappointedly.

"He can't be anywhere around. It is very strange. Don never used to go

away from home without me, but lately he has been missing several

times, and twice last week he wasn't here in the morning and didn't

turn up until midday."

"I'd keep him shut up until I broke him of the habit of playing

truant, if I were you," said Will, as they turned into the lane.

"Don hates to be shut up, howls all the time so mournfully that I

can't stand it," responded Curtis.

"Well," said Will, hesitatingly, "maybe that would be better after all

than letting him stray away with other dogs who may teach him bad

habits. I saw Don myself one evening last week ambling down the

Harbour road with that big brown dog of Sam Ventnor's. Ventnor's dog

is beginning to have a bad reputation, you know. There have been

several sheep worried lately, and--"

"Don wouldn't touch a sheep!" interrupted Curtis hotly.

"I daresay not, not yet. But Ventnor's dog is under suspicion, and if

Don runs with him he'll learn the trick sure as preaching. The farmers

are growling a good bit already, and if they hear of Don and Ventnor's

dog going about in company, they'll put it on them both. Better keep

Don shut up awhile, let him howl as he likes."

"I believe I will," said Curtis soberly. "I don't want Don to fall

under suspicion of sheep-worrying, though I'm sure he would never do

it. Anyhow, I don't want him to run with Ventnor's dog. I'll chain him

up in the barn when I go home. I couldn't stand it if anything

happened to Don. After you, he's the only chum I've got--and he's a

good one."

Will agreed. He was almost as fond of Don as Curtis was. But he did

not feel so sure that the dog would not worry a sheep. Will knew that

Don was suspected already, but he did not like to tell Curtis so. And

of course there was as yet no positive proof--merely mutterings and

suggestions among the Bayside farmers who had lost sheep and were

anxious to locate their slayer. There were many other dogs in Bayside

and the surrounding districts who were just as likely to be the guilty

animals, and Will hoped that if Don were shut up for a time, suspicion

might be averted from him, especially if the worryings still went on.

He had felt a little doubtful about hinting the truth to Curtis, who

was a high-spirited lad and always resented any slur cast upon Don

much more bitterly than if it were meant for himself. But he knew that

Curtis would take it better from him than from the other Bayside boys,

one or the other of whom would be sure soon to cast something up to

Curtis about his dog. Will felt decidedly relieved to find that Curtis

took his advice in the spirit in which it was offered.

"Who have lost sheep lately?" queried Curtis, as they left the main

road and struck into a wood path through the ranks of beeches on Tom

Grier's land.

"Nearly everybody on the Hollow farms," answered Will. "Until last

week nobody on the Hill farms had lost any. But Tuesday night old Paul

Stockton had six fine sheep killed in his upland pasture behind the

fir woods. He is furious about it, I believe, and vows he'll find out

what dog did it and have him shot."

Curtis looked grave. Paul Stockton's farm was only about a quarter of

a mile from the Locksley homestead, and he knew that Paul had an old

family grudge against his Uncle Arnold, which included his nephew and

all belonging to him. Moreover, Curtis remembered with a sinking heart

that Wednesday morning had been one of the mornings upon which Don was

missing.

"But I don't care!" he thought miserably. "I know Don didn't kill

those sheep."

"Talking of old Paul," said Will, who thought it advisable to turn the

conversation, "reminds me that they are getting anxious at the Harbour

about George Finley's schooner, the _Amy Reade_. She was due three

days ago and there's no sign of her yet. And there have been two bad

gales since she left Morro. Oscar Stockton is on board of her, you

know, and his father is worried about him. There are five other men on

her, all from the Harbour, and their folks down there are pretty wild

about the schooner."

Nothing more was said about the sheep, and soon, in the pleasures of

chestnutting, Curtis forgot his anxiety. Old Tom Grier had called to

the boys as they passed his house to come back and have dinner there

when the time came. This they did, and it was late in the afternoon

when Curtis, with his bag of chestnuts over his shoulder, walked into

the Locksley yard.

His uncle was standing before the open barn doors, talking to an

elderly, grizzled man with a thin, shrewd face.

Curtis's heart sank as he recognized old Paul Stockton. What could

have brought him over?

"Curtis," called his uncle, "come here."

As Curtis crossed the yard, Don came bounding down the slope from the

house to meet him. He put his hand on the dog's big head and the two

of them walked slowly to the barn. Old Paul included them both in a

vindictive scowl.

"Curtis," said his uncle gravely, "here's a bad business. Mr.

Stockton tells me that your dog has been worrying his sheep."

"It's a--" began Curtis angrily. Then he checked himself and went on

more calmly.

"That can't be so, Mr. Stockton. My dog would not harm anything."

"He killed or helped to kill six of the finest sheep in my flock!"

retorted old Paul.

"What proof have you of it?" demanded Curtis, trying to keep his anger

within bounds.

"Abner Peck saw your dog and Ventnor's running together through my

sheep pasture at sundown on Tuesday evening," answered old Paul.

"Wednesday morning I found this in the corner of the pasture where the

sheep were worried. Your uncle admits that it was tied around your

dog's neck on Tuesday."

And old Paul held out triumphantly a faded red ribbon. Curtis

recognized it at a glance. It was the ribbon his little cousin, Lena,

had tied around Don's neck Tuesday afternoon. He remembered how they

had laughed at the effect of that frivolous red collar and bow on

Don's massive body.

"I'm sure Don isn't guilty!" he cried passionately.

Mr. Locksley shook his head.

"I'm afraid he is, Curtis. The case looks very black against him, and

sheep-stealing is a serious offence."

"The dog must be shot," said old Paul decidedly. "I leave the matter

in your hands, Mr. Locksley. I've got enough proof to convict the dog

and, if you don't have him killed, I'll make you pay for the sheep he

worried."

As old Paul strode away, Curtis looked beseechingly at his uncle.

"Don mustn't be shot, Uncle!" he said desperately. "I'll chain him up

all the time."

"And have him howling night and day as if we had a brood of banshees

about the place?" said Mr. Locksley sarcastically. He was a stern man

with little sentiment in his nature and no understanding whatever of

Curtis's affection for Don. The Bayside people said that Arnold

Locksley had always been very severe with his nephew. "No, no, Curtis,

you must look at the matter sensibly. The dog is a nuisance and must

be shot. You can't keep him shut up forever, and, if he has once

learned the trick of sheep-worrying, he will never forget it. You can

get another dog if you must have one. I'll get Charles Pippey to come

and shoot Don tomorrow. No sulking now, Curtis. You are too big a boy

for that. Tie the dog up for the night and then go and put the calves

in. There is a storm coming. The wind is blowing hard from the

northeast now."

His uncle walked away, leaving the boy white and miserable in the

yard. He looked at Don, who sat on his haunches and returned his gaze

frankly and open-heartedly. He did not look like a guilty dog. Could

it be possible that he had really worried those sheep?

"I'll never believe it of you, old fellow!" Curtis said, as he led the

dog into a corner of the carriage house and tied him up there. Then he

flung himself down on a pile of sacks beside him and buried his face

in Don's curly black fur. The boy felt sullen, rebellious and

wretched.

He lay there until dark, thinking his own bitter thoughts and

listening to the rapidly increasing gale. Finally he got up and flung

off after the calves, with Don's melancholy howls at finding himself

deserted ringing in his ears.

He'll be quiet enough tomorrow night, thought Curtis wretchedly, as he

went upstairs to bed after housing the calves. For a long while he lay

awake, but finally dropped into a heavy slumber which lasted until

his aunt called him for milking.

The wind was blowing more furiously than ever. Up over the fields came

the roar and crash of the surges on the outside shore. The Harbour to

the east of Bayside was rough and stormy.

They were just rising from breakfast when Will Barrie burst into the

kitchen.

"The _Amy Reade_ is ashore on Gleeson's rocks!" he shouted. "Struck

there at daylight this morning! Come on, Curt!"

Curtis sprang for his cap, his uncle following suit more deliberately.

As the two boys ran through the yard, Curtis heard Don howling.

"I'll take him with me!" he muttered. "Wait a minute, Will."

The Harbour road was thronged with people hurrying to the outside

shore, for the news of the _Amy Readers_ disaster had spread rapidly.

As the boys, with the rejoicing Don at their heels, pelted along, Sam

Morrow overtook them in a cart and told them to jump in. Sam had

already been down to the shore and had gone back to tell his father.

As they jolted along, he screamed information at them over the shriek

of the gale.

"Bad business, this! She's pounding on a reef 'bout a quarter of a

mile out. They're sure she's going to break up--old tub, you

know--leaky--rotten. The sea's tremenjus high, and the surfs going

dean over her. There can't be no boat launched for hours yet--they'll

all be drowned. Old Paul's down there like a madman--offering

everything he's got to the man who'll save Oscar, but it can't be

done."

By this time they had reached the shore, which was black with excited

people. Out on Gleeson's Reef the ill-fated little schooner was

visible amid the flying spray. A grizzled old Harbour fisherman, to

whom Sam shouted a question, shook his head.

"No, can't do nothin'! No boat c'd live in that surf f'r a moment. The

schooner'll go to pieces mighty soon, I'm feared. It's turrible!

turrible! to stan' by an' watch yer neighbours drown like this!"

Curtis and Will elbowed their way down to the water's edge. The

relatives of the crew were all there in various stages of despair, but

old Paul Stockton seemed like a man demented. He ran up and down the

beach, crying and praying. His only son was on the _Amy Reade_, and he

could do nothing to save him!

"What are they doing?" asked Will of Martin Clark.

"Trying to get a line ashore by throwing out a small rope with a stick

tied to it," answered Martin. "It's young Stockton that's trying now.

But it isn't any use. The cross-currents on that reef are too

powerful."

"Why, Don will bring that line ashore!" exclaimed Curtis. "Here, Don!

Don, I say!"

The dog bounded back along the shore with a quick bark. Curtis grasped

him by the collar and pointed to the stick which young Stockton had

just hurled again into the water. Don, with another bark of

comprehension, dashed into the sea. The onlookers, grasping the

situation, gave a cheer and then relapsed into silence. Only the

shriek of the gale and the crash of the waves could be heard as they

watched the magnificent dog swimming out through the breakers, his big

black head now rising on the crest of a wave and now disappearing in

the hollow behind it. When Don finally reached the tossing stick,

grasped it in his mouth and turned shoreward, another great shout went

up from the beach. A woman behind Curtis, whose husband was on the

schooner, dropped on her knees on the pebbles, sobbing and thanking

God. Curtis himself felt the stinging tears start to his eyes.

When Don reached the shore he dropped the stick at Curtis's feet and

gave himself a tremendous shake. Curtis caught at the stick, while a

dozen men and women threw themselves bodily on Don, hugging him and

kissing his wet fur like distracted creatures. Old Paul Stockton was

among them. Over his shoulder Don's big black head looked up, his eyes

asking as plainly as speech what all this fuss was about.

Meanwhile some of the men had already pulled a big hawser ashore and

made it fast. In half an hour the crew of the _Amy Reade_ were safe on

shore, chilled and dripping. Before they were hurried away to warmth

and shelter, old Paul Stockton caught Curtis's hand. The tears were

running freely down his hard, old face.

"Tell your uncle he is not to lay a finger on that dog!" he said. "He

never killed a sheep of mine--he couldn't! And if he did I don't care!

He's welcome to kill them all, if nothing but mutton'll serve his

turn."

Curtis walked home with a glad heart. Mr. Locksley heard old Paul's

message with a smile. He, too, had been touched by Don's splendid

feat.

"Well, Curtis, I'm very glad that it has turned old Paul in his

favour. But we must shut Don up for a week or so, no matter how hard

he takes it. You can see that for yourself. After all, he might have

worried the sheep. And, anyway, he must be broken of his intimacy with

Ventnor's dog."

Curtis acknowledged the justice of this and poor Don was tied up

again. His captivity was not long, however, for Ventnor's dog was soon

shot. When Don was released, Curtis had an anxious time for a week or

two. But no more sheep were worried, and Don's innocence was

triumphantly established. As for old Paul Stockton, it seemed as if

he could not do enough for Curtis and Don. His ancient grudge against

the Locksleys was completely forgotten, and from that date he was a

firm friend of Curtis. In regard to Don, old Paul would say:

"Why, there never was such a dog before, sir, never! He just talks

with his eyes, that dog does. And if you'd just 'a' seen him swimming

out to that schooner! Bones? Yes, sir! Every time that dog comes here

he's to get the best bones we've got for him--and more'n bones, too.

That dog's a hero, sir, that's what he is!"

Miss Madeline's Proposal

"Auntie, I have something to tell you," said Lina, with a blush that

made her look more than ever like one of the climbing roses that

nodded about the windows of the "old Churchill place," as it was

always called in Lower Wentworth.

Miss Madeline, sitting in the low rocker by the parlour window, seemed

like the presiding genius of the place. Everything about her matched

her sweet old-fashionedness, from the crown of her soft brown hair,

dressed in the style of her long ago girlhood, to the toes of her

daintily slippered feet. Outside of the old Churchill place, in the

busy streets of the up-to-date little town, Miss Madeline might have

seemed out of harmony with her surroundings. But here, in this dim

room, faintly scented with whiffs from the rose garden outside, she

was like a note in some sweet, perfect melody of old time.

Lina, sitting on a little stool at Miss Madeline's feet with her curly

head in her aunt's lap, was as pretty as Miss Madeline herself had

once been. She was also very happy, and her happiness seemed to

envelop her as in an atmosphere and lend her a new radiance and charm.

Miss Madeline loved her pretty niece very dearly and patted the curly

head tenderly with her slender white hands.

"What is it, my dear?"

"I'm--I'm engaged," whispered Lina, hiding her face in Miss Madeline's

flowered muslin lap.

"Engaged!" Miss Madeline's tone was one of surprise and awe. She

blushed as she said the word as deeply as Lina had done. Then she went

on, with a little quiver of excitement in her voice, "To whom, my

dear?"

"Oh, you don't know him, Auntie, but I hope you will soon. His name is

Ralph Wylde. Isn't it pretty? I met him last winter, and we became

very good friends. But we had a quarrel before I came down here and,

oh, I have been so unhappy over it. Three weeks ago he wrote me and

begged my pardon--so nice of him, because I was really all to blame,

you know. And he said he loved me and--all that, you know."

"No, I don't know," said Miss Madeline gently. "But--but--I can

imagine."

"Oh, I was so happy. I wrote back and I had this letter from him

today. He is coming down tomorrow. You'll be glad to see him, won't

you, Auntie?"

"Oh, yes, my dear, and I am glad for your sake--very glad. You are

sure you love him?"

"Yes, indeed," said Lina, with a little laugh, as if wondering how

anyone could doubt it.

Presently, Miss Madeline said in a shy voice, "Lina, did--did you ever

receive a proposal of marriage from anybody besides Mr. Wylde?"

Lina laughed roguishly. "Why, yes, Auntie, ever so many. A dozen, at

least."

"Oh, my dear!" cried Miss Madeline in a slightly shocked tone.

"But I did, really. Sometimes it was horrid and sometimes it was

funny. It all depended on the man. Dear me, how red and uncomfortable

most of them looked--all but the fifth. He was so cool and business

like that he almost surprised me into accepting him."

"And--and what did you feel like, Lina?"

"Oh, frightened, mostly--but I always wanted to laugh too. You must

know how it is yourself, Auntie. What did you feel like when somebody

proposed to you?"

Miss Madeline flushed from chin to brow.

"Oh, Lina," she faltered as if she were confessing something very

disgraceful, yet to which she was impelled by her strict truthfulness,

"I--I--never had a proposal in my life--not one."

Lina opened her big brown eyes in amazement. "Why, Aunt Madeline! And

you so pretty! What was the reason?"

"I've often wondered," said Miss Madeline faintly. "I _was_ pretty, as

you say--it's so long ago I can say that now. And I had many gentlemen

friends. But nobody ever wanted to marry me. I sometimes wish

that--that I could have had just one proposal. Not that I wanted to

marry, you know, I do not mean that, but just so that it wouldn't have

seemed that I was different from anybody else. It is very foolish of

me to wish it, I know, and even wicked--for if I had not cared for the

person it would have made him very unhappy. But then, he would have

forgotten and I would have remembered. It would always have been

something to be a little proud of."

"Yes," said Lina absently; her thoughts had gone back to Ralph.

That evening a letter was left at the front door of the old Churchill

place. It was addressed in a scholarly hand to Miss Madeline

Churchill, and Amelia Kent took it in. Amelia had been Miss Madeline's

"help" for years and had grown grey in her service. In Amelia's loyal

eyes Miss Madeline was still young and beautiful; she never doubted

that the letter was for her mistress. Nobody else there was ever

addressed as "Miss Madeline."

Miss Madeline was sitting by the window of her own room watching the

sunset through the elms and reading her evening portion of Thomas à

Kempis. She never liked to be disturbed when so employed but she read

her letter after Amelia had gone out.

When she came to a certain paragraph, she turned very pale and Thomas

à Kempis fell to the floor unheeded. When she had finished the letter

she laid it on her lap, clasped her hands, and said, "Oh, oh, oh," in

a faint, tremulous voice. Her cheeks were very pink and her eyes very

bright. She did not even pick up Thomas à Kempis but went to the door

and called Lina.

"What is it, Auntie?" asked Lina curiously, noticing the signs of

unusual excitement about Miss Madeline.

Miss Madeline held out her letter with a trembling hand.

"Lina, dear, this is a letter from the Rev. Cecil Thorne. It--it is--a

proposal of marriage. I feel terribly upset. How very strange that it

should come so soon after our talk this morning! I want you to read

it! Perhaps I ought not to show it to anyone--but I would like you to

see it."

Lina took the letter and read it through. It was unmistakably a

proposal of marriage and was, moreover, a very charming epistle of its

kind, albeit a little stiff and old-fashioned.

"How funny!" said Lina when she came to the end.

"Funny!" exclaimed Miss Madeline, with a trace of indignation in her

gentle voice.

"Oh, I didn't mean that the letter was funny," Lina hastened to

explain, "only that, as you said, it is odd to think of it coming so

soon after our talk."

But this was a little fib on Lina's part. She _had_ thought that the

letter or, rather, the fact that it had been written to Miss Madeline,

funny. The Rev. Cecil Thorne was Miss Madeline's pastor. He was a

handsome, scholarly man of middle age, and Lina had seen a good deal

of him during her summer in Lower Wentworth. She had taught the infant

class in Sunday School and sometimes she had thought that the minister

was in love with her. But she must have been mistaken, she reflected;

it must have been her aunt after all, and the Rev. Cecil Thorne's

shyly displayed interest in her must have been purely professional.

"What a goose I was to be afraid he was in love with me!" she thought.

Aloud she said, "He says he will call tomorrow evening to receive your

answer."

"And, oh, what can I say to him?" murmured Miss Madeline in dismay.

She wished she had a little of Lina's experience.

"You are going to--you will accept him, won't you?" asked Lina

curiously.

"Oh, my dear, no!" cried Miss Madeline almost vehemently. "I couldn't

think of such a thing. I am very sorry; do you think he will feel

badly?"

"Judging from his letter I feel sure he will," said Lina decidedly.

Miss Madeline sighed. "Oh, dear me! It is very unpleasant. But of

course I must refuse him. What a beautiful letter he writes too. I

feel very much disturbed by this."

Miss Madeline picked up Thomas à Kempis, smoothed him out repentantly,

and placed the letter between his leaves.

*       *       *       *       *

When the Rev. Cecil Thorne called at the old Churchill place next

evening at sunset and asked for Miss Madeline Churchill, Amelia showed

him into the parlour and went to call her mistress. Mr. Thorne sat

down by the window that looked out on the lawn. His heart gave a bound

as he caught a glimpse of an airy white muslin among the trees and a

ripple of distant laughter. The next minute Lina appeared, strolling

down the secluded path that curved about the birches. A young man was

walking beside her with his arm around her. They crossed the green

square before the house and disappeared in the rose garden.

Mr. Thorne leaned back in his chair and put his hand over his eyes. He

felt that he had received his answer, and it was a very bitter moment

for him. He had hardly dared hope that this bright, beautiful child

could care for him, yet the realization came home to him none the less

keenly. When Miss Madeline, paling and flushing by turns, came shyly

in he had recovered his self-control sufficiently to be able to say

"good evening" in a calm voice.

Miss Madeline sat down opposite to him. At that moment she was

devoutly thankful that she had never had any other proposal to refuse.

It was a dreadful ordeal. If he would only help her out! But he did

not speak and every moment of silence made it worse.

"I--received your letter, Mr. Thorne," she faltered at last, looking

distressfully down at the floor.

"My letter!" Mr. Thorne turned towards her. In her agitation Miss

Madeline did not notice the surprise in his face and tone.

"Yes," she said, gaining a little courage since the ice was broken.

"It--it--was a very great surprise to me. I never thought you--you

cared for me as--as you said. And I am very sorry because--because I

cannot return your affection. And so, of course, I cannot marry you."

Mr. Thorne put his hand over his eyes again. He understood now that

there had been some mistake and that Miss Madeline had received the

letter he had written to her niece. Well, it did not matter--the

appearance of the young man in the garden had settled that. Would he

tell Miss Madeline of her mistake? No, it would only humiliate her and

it made no difference, since she had refused him.

"I suppose it is of no use to ask you to reconsider your decision?" he

said.

"Oh, no," cried Miss Madeline almost aghast. She was afraid he might

ask it after all. "Not in the least use. I am sorry--so very

sorry--but I could not answer differently. We--I hope--this will make

no difference in our friendly relations, Mr. Thorne?"

"Not at all," said Mr. Thorne gravely. "We will try to forget that it

has happened."

He bowed sadly and went out. Miss Madeline watched him guiltily as he

walked across the lawn. He looked heart-broken. How dreadful it had

been! And Lina had refused twelve men! How could she have lived

through it?

"Perhaps one gets accustomed to doing it," reflected Miss Madeline.

"But I am sure I never could."

"Did Mr. Thorne feel very badly?" whispered Lina that night.

"I'm afraid he did," confessed Miss Madeline sorrowfully. "He looked

so pale and sad, Lina, that my heart ached for him. I am very thankful

that I have never had any other proposals to decline. It is a very

unpleasant experience. But," she added, with a little tinge of

satisfaction in her sweet voice, "I am glad I had one. It--it has made

me feel more like other people, you know, dear."

Miss Sally's Company

"How beautiful!" said Mary Seymour delightedly, as they dismounted

from their wheels on the crest of the hill. "Ida, who could have

supposed that such a view would be our reward for climbing that long,

tedious hill with its ruts and stones? Don't you feel repaid?"

"Yes, but I am dreadfully thirsty," said Ida, who was always practical

and never as enthusiastic over anything as Mary was. Yet she, too,

felt a keen pleasure in the beauty of the scene before them. Almost at

their feet lay the sea, creaming and shimmering in the mellow

sunshine. Beyond, on either hand, stretched rugged brown cliffs and

rocks, here running out to sea in misty purple headlands, there

curving into bays and coves that seemed filled up with sunlight and

glamour and pearly hazes; a beautiful shore and, seemingly, a lonely

one. The only house visible from where the girls stood was a tiny grey

one, with odd, low eaves and big chimneys, that stood down in the

little valley on their right, where the cliffs broke away to let a

brook run out to sea and formed a small cove, on whose sandy shore the

waves lapped and crooned within a stone's throw of the house. On

either side of the cove a headland made out to sea, curving around to

enclose the sparkling water as in a cup.

"What a picturesque spot!" said Mary.

"But what a lonely one!" protested Ida. "Why, there isn't another

house in sight. I wonder who lives in it. Anyway, I'm going down to

ask them for a drink of water."

"I'd like to ask for a square meal, too," said Mary, laughing. "I am

discovering that I am hungry. Fine scenery is very satisfying to the

soul, to be sure, but it doesn't still the cravings of the inner girl.

And we've wheeled ten miles this afternoon. I'm getting hungrier every

minute."

They reached the little grey house by way of a sloping, grassy lane.

Everything about it was very neat and trim. In front a white-washed

paling shut in the garden which, sheltered as it was by the house, was

ablaze with poppies and hollyhocks and geraniums. A path, bordered by

big white clam shells, led through it to the front door, whose steps

were slabs of smooth red sandstone from the beach.

"No children here, certainly," whispered Ida. "Every one of those clam

shells is placed just so. And this walk is swept every day. No, we

shall never dare to ask for anything to eat here. They would be afraid

of our scattering crumbs."

Ida lifted her hand to knock, but before she could do so, the door was

thrown open and a breathless little lady appeared on the threshold.

She was very small, with an eager, delicately featured face and dark

eyes twinkling behind gold-rimmed glasses. She was dressed

immaculately in an old-fashioned gown of grey silk with a white muslin

fichu crossed over her shoulders, and her silvery hair fell on each

side of her face in long, smooth curls that just touched her shoulders

and bobbed and fluttered with her every motion; behind, it was caught

up in a knot on her head and surmounted by a tiny lace cap.

She looks as if she had just stepped out of a bandbox of last century,

thought Mary.

"Are you Cousin Abner's girls?" demanded the little lady eagerly.

There was such excitement and expectation in her face and voice that

both the Seymour girls felt uncomfortably that they ought to be

"Cousin Abner's girls."

"No," said Mary reluctantly, "we're not. We are only--Martin Seymour's

girls."

All the light went out of the little lady's face, as if some

illuminating lamp had suddenly been quenched behind it. She seemed

fairly to droop under her disappointment. As for the rest, the name of

Martin Seymour evidently conveyed no especial meaning to her ears. How

could she know that he was a multi-millionaire who was popularly

supposed to breakfast on railroads and lunch on small corporations,

and that his daughters were girls whom all people delighted to honour?

"No, of course you are not Cousin Abner's girls," she said

sorrowfully. "I'd have known you couldn't be if I had just stopped to

think. Because you are dark and they would be fair, of course; Cousin

Abner and his wife were both fair. But when I saw you coming down the

lane--I was peeking through the hall window upstairs, you know, I and

Juliana--I was sure you were Helen and Beatrice at last. And I can't

help wishing you were!"

"I wish we were, too, since you expected them," said Mary, smiling.

"But--"

"Oh, I wasn't really expecting them," broke in the little lady. "Only

I am always hoping that they will come. They never have yet, but

Trenton isn't so very far away, and it is so lonely here. I just long

for company--I and Juliana--and I thought I was going to have it

today. Cousin Abner came to see me once since I moved here and he said

the girls would come, too, but that was six months ago and they

haven't come yet. But perhaps they will soon. It is always something

to look forward to, you know."

She talked in a sweet, chirpy voice like a bird's. There were pathetic

notes in it, too, as the girls instinctively felt. How very quaint and

sweet and unworldly she was! Mary found herself feeling indignant at

Cousin Abner's girls, whoever they were, for their neglect.

"We are out for a spin on our wheels," said Ida, "and we are very

thirsty. We thought perhaps you would be kind enough to give us a

drink of water."

"Oh, my dear, anything--anything I have is at your service," said the

little lady delightedly. "If you will come in, I will get you some

lemonade."

"I am afraid it is too much trouble," began Mary.

"Oh, no, no," cried the little lady. "It is a pleasure. I love doing

things for people, I wish more of them would come to give me the

chance. I never have any company, and I do so long for it. It's very

lonesome here at Golden Gate. Oh, if you would only stay to tea with

me, it would make me so happy. I am all prepared. I prepare every

Saturday morning, in particular, so that if Cousin Abner's girls did

come, I would be all ready. And when nobody comes, Juliana and I have

to eat everything up ourselves. And that is bad for us--it gives

Juliana indigestion. If you would only stay!"

"We will," agreed Ida promptly. "And we're glad of the chance. We are

both terribly hungry, and it is very good of you to ask us."

"Oh, indeed, it isn't! It's just selfishness in me, that's what it is,

pure selfishness! I want company so much. Come in, my dears, and I

suppose I must introduce myself because you don't know me, do you now?

I'm Miss Sally Temple, and this is Golden Gate Cottage. Dear me, this

_is_ something like living. You are special providences, that you are,

indeed!"

She whisked them through a quaint little parlour, where everything was

as dainty and neat and old-fashioned as herself, and into a spare

bedroom beyond it, to put off their hats.

"Now, just excuse me a minute while I run out and tell Juliana that we

are going to have company to tea. She will be so glad, Juliana will.

Make yourselves at home, my dears."

"Isn't she delicious?" said Mary, when Miss Sally had tripped out.

"I'd like to shake Cousin Abner's girls. This is what Dot Halliday

would call an adventure, Ida."

"Isn't it! Miss Sally and this quaint old spot both seem like a

chapter out of the novels our grandmothers cried over. Look here,

Mary, she is lonely and our visit seems like a treat to her. Let us

try to make it one. Let's just chum with her and tell her all about

ourselves and our amusements and our dresses. That sounds frivolous,

but you know what I mean. She'll like it. Let's be company in real

earnest for her."

When Miss Sally came back, she was attended by Juliana carrying a tray

of lemonade glasses. Juliana proved to be a diminutive lass of about

fourteen whose cheerful, freckled face wore an expansive grin of

pleasure. Evidently Juliana was as fond of "company" as her mistress

was. Afterwards, the girls overheard a subdued colloquy between Miss

Sally and Juliana out in the hall.

"Go set the table, Juliana, and put on Grandmother Temple's wedding

china--be sure you dust it carefully--and the best tablecloth--and be

sure you get the crease straight--and put some sweet peas in the

centre--and be sure they are fresh. I want everything extra nice,

Juliana."

"Yes'm, Miss Sally, I'll see to it. Isn't it great to have company,

Miss Sally?" whispered Juliana.

The Seymour girls long remembered that tea table and the delicacies

with which it was heaped. Privately, they did not wonder that Juliana

had indigestion when she had to eat many such unaided. Being hungry,

they did full justice to Miss Sally's good things, much to that little

lady's delight.

She told them all about herself. She had lived at Golden Gate Cottage

only a year.

"Before that, I lived away down the country at Millbridge with a

cousin. My Uncle Ephraim owned Golden Gate Cottage, and when he died

he left it to me and I came here to live. It is a pretty place, isn't

it? You see those two headlands out there? In the morning, when the

sun rises, the water between them is just a sea of gold, and that is

why Uncle Ephraim had a fancy to call his place Golden Gate. I love it

here. It is so nice to have a home of my own. I would be quite content

if I had more company. But I have you today, and perhaps Beatrice and

Helen will come next week. So I've really a great deal to be thankful

for."

"What is your Cousin Abner's other name?" asked Mary, with a vague

recollection of hearing of Beatrice and Helen--somebody--in Trenton.

"Reed--Abner Abimelech Reed," answered Miss Sally promptly. "A.A.

Reed, he signs himself now. He is very well-to-do, I am told, and he

carries on business in town. He was a very fine young man, my Cousin

Abner. I don't know his wife."

Mary and Ida exchanged glances. Beatrice and Helen Reed! They knew

them slightly as the daughters of a new-rich family who were

hangers-on of the fashionable society in Trenton. They were regarded

as decidedly vulgar, and so far their efforts to gain an entry into

the exclusive circle where the Seymours and their like revolved had

not been very successful.

"I'm afraid Miss Sally will wait a long while before she sees Cousin

Abner's girls," said Mary, when they had gone back to the parlour and

Miss Sally had excused herself to superintend the washing of

Grandmother Temple's wedding china. "They probably look on her as a

poor relation to be ignored altogether; whereas, if they were only

like her, Trenton society would have made a place for them long ago."

The Seymour girls enjoyed that visit as much as Miss Sally did. She

was eager to hear all about their girlish lives and amusements. They

told her of their travels, of famous men and women they had seen, of

parties they had attended, the dresses they wore, the little fads and

hobbies of their set--all jumbled up together and all listened to

eagerly by Miss Sally and also by Juliana, who was permitted to sit on

the stairs out in the hall and so gather in the crumbs of this

intellectual feast.

"Oh, you've been such pleasant company," said Miss Sally when the

girls went away.

Mary took the little lady's hands in hers and looked affectionately

down into her face.

"Would you like it--you and Juliana--if we came out to see you often?

And perhaps brought some of our friends with us?"

"Oh, if you only would!" breathed Miss Sally.

Mary laughed and, obeying a sudden impulse, bent and kissed Miss

Sally's cheek.

"We'll come then," she promised. "Please look upon us as your 'steady

company' henceforth."

The girls kept their word. Thereafter, nearly every Saturday of the

summer found them taking tea with Miss Sally at Golden Gate. Sometimes

they came alone; sometimes they brought other girls. It soon became a

decided "fad" in their set to go to see Miss Sally. Everybody who met

her loved her at sight. It was considered a special treat to be taken

by the Seymours to Golden Gate.

As for Miss Sally, her cup of happiness was almost full. She had

"company" to her heart's content and of the very kind she

loved--bright, merry, fun-loving girls who devoured her dainties with

a frank zest that delighted her, filled the quaint old rooms with

laughter and life, and chattered to her of all their plans and frolics

and hopes. There was just one little cloud on Miss Sally's fair sky.

"If only Cousin Abner's girls would come!" she once said wistfully to

Mary. "Nobody can quite take the place of one's own, you know. My

heart yearns after them."

Mary was very silent and thoughtful as she drove back to Trenton that

night. Two days afterwards, she went to Mrs. Gardiner's lawn party.

The Reed girls were there. They were tall, fair, handsome girls,

somewhat too lavishly and pronouncedly dressed in expensive gowns and

hats, and looking, as they felt, very much on the outside of things.

They brightened and bridled, however, when Mrs. Gardiner brought Mary

Seymour up and introduced her. If there was one thing on earth that

the Reed girls longed for more than another it was to "get in" with

the Seymour girls.

After Mary had chatted with them for a few minutes in a friendly way,

she said, "I think we have a mutual friend in Miss Sally Temple of

Golden Gate, haven't we? I'm sure I've heard her speak of you."

The Reed girls flushed. They did not care to have the rich Seymour

girls know of their connection with that queer old cousin of their

father's who lived in that out-of-the-world spot up-country.

"She is a distant cousin of ours," said Beatrice carelessly, "but

we've never met her."

"Oh, how much you have missed!" said Mary frankly. "She is the

sweetest and most charming little lady I have ever met, and I am proud

to number her among my friends. Golden Gate is such an idyllic little

spot, too. We go there so often that I fear Miss Sally will think we

mean to outwear our welcome. We hope to have her visit us in town this

winter. Well, good-by for now. I'll tell Miss Sally I've met you. She

will be pleased to hear about you."

When Mary had gone, the Reed girls looked at each other.

"I suppose we ought to have gone to see Cousin Sally before," said

Beatrice. "Father said we ought to."

"How on earth did the Seymours pick her up?" said Helen. "Of course we

must go and see her."

Go they did. The very next day Miss Sally's cup of happiness brimmed

right over, for Cousin Abner's girls came to Golden Gate at last. They

were very nice to her, too. Indeed, in spite of a good deal of

snobbishness and false views of life, they were good-hearted girls

under it all; and some plain common sense they had inherited from

their father came to the surface and taught them to see that Miss

Sally was a relative of whom anyone might be proud. They succumbed to

her charm, as the others had done, and thoroughly enjoyed their visit

to Golden Gate. They went away promising to come often again; and I

may say right here that they kept their promise, and a real friendship

grew up between Miss Sally and "Cousin Abner's girls" that was

destined to work wonders for the latter, not only socially and

mentally but spiritually as well, for it taught them that sincerity

and honest kindliness of heart and manner are the best passports

everywhere, and that pretence of any kind is a vulgarity not to be

tolerated. This took time, of course. The Reed girls could not discard

their snobbishness all at once. But in the end it was pretty well

taken out of them.

Miss Sally never dreamed of this or the need for it. She loved Cousin

Abner's girls from the first and always admired them exceedingly.

"And then it is so good to have your own folks coming as company," she

told the Seymour girls. "Oh, I'm just in the seventh heaven of

happiness. But, dearies, I think you will always be my favourites--mine

and Juliana's. I've plenty of company now and it's all thanks to you."

"Oh, no," said Mary quickly. "Miss Sally, your company comes to you

for just your own sake. You've made Golden Gate a veritable Mecca for

us all. You don't know and you never will know how much good you have

done us. You are so good and true and sweet that we girls all feel as

if we were bound to live up to you, don't you see? And we all love

you, Miss Sally."

"I'm so glad," breathed Miss Sally with shining eyes, "and so is

Juliana."

Mrs. March's Revenge

"I declare, it is a real fall day," said Mrs. Stapp, dropping into a

chair with a sigh of relief as Mrs. March ushered her into the cosy

little sitting-room. "The wind would chill the marrow in your bones;

winter'll be here before you know it."

"That's so," assented Mrs. March, bustling about to stir up the fire.

"But I don't know as I mind it at all. Winter is real pleasant when it

does come, but I must say, I don't fancy these betwixt-and-between

days much. Sit up to the fire, Theodosia. You look real blue."

"I feel so too. Lawful heart, but this is comfort. This chimney-corner

of yours, Anna, is the cosiest spot in the world."

"When did you get home from Maitland?" asked Mrs. March. "Did you

have a pleasant time? And how did you leave Emily and the children?"

Mrs. Stapp took this trio of interrogations in calm detail.

"I came home Saturday," she said, as she unrolled her knitting. "Nice

wet day it was too! And as for my visit, yes, I enjoyed myself pretty,

well, not but what I worried over Peter's rheumatism a good deal.

Emily is well, and the children ought to be, for such rampageous young

ones I never saw! Emily can't do no more with them than an old hen

with a brood of ducks. But, lawful heart, Anna, don't mind about my

little affairs! The news Peter had for me about you when I got home

fairly took my breath. He came down to the garden gate to shout it

before I was out of the wagon. I couldn't believe but what he was

joking at first. You should have seen Peter. He had an old red shawl

tied round his rheumatic shoulder, and he was waving his arms like a

crazy man. I declare, I thought the chimney was afire! Theodosia,

Theodosia!' he shouted. 'Anna March has had a fortune left her by her

brother in Australy, and she's bought the old Carroll place, and is

going to move up there!' That was his salute when I got home. I'd have

been over before this to hear all about it, but things were at such

sixes and sevens in the house that I couldn't go visiting until I'd

straightened them out a bit. Peter's real neat, as men go, but, lawful

heart, such a mess as he makes of housekeeping! I didn't know you had

a brother living."

"No more did I, Theodosia. I thought, as everyone else did, that poor

Charles was at the bottom of the sea forty years ago. It's that long

since he ran away from home. He had a quarrel with Father, and he was

always dreadful high-spirited. He went to sea, and we heard that he

had sailed for England in the _Helen Ray_. She was never heard of

after, and we all supposed that my poor brother had perished with her.

And four weeks ago I got a letter from a firm of lawyers in Melbourne,

Australia, saying that my brother, Charles Bennett, had died and left

all his fortune to me. I couldn't believe it at first, but they sent

me some things of his that he had when he left home, and there was an

old picture of myself among them with my name written on it in my own

hand, so then I knew there was no mistake. But whether Charles did

sail in the _Helen Ray_, or if he did, how he escaped from her and got

to Australia, I don't know, and it isn't likely I ever will."

"Well, of all wonderful things!" commented Mrs. Stapp.

"I was glad to hear that I was heir to so much money," said Mrs. March

firmly. "At first I felt as if it were awful of me to be glad when it

came to me by my brother's death. But I mourned for poor Charles forty

years ago, and I can't sense that he has only just died. Not but what

I'd rather have seen him come home alive than have all the money in

the world, but it has come about otherwise, and as the money is

lawfully mine, I may as well feel pleased about it."

"And you've bought the Carroll place," said Mrs. Stapp, with the

freedom of a privileged friend. "Whatever made you do it? I'm sure you

are as cosy here as need be, and nobody but yourself. Isn't this house

big enough for you?"

"No, it isn't. All my life I've been hankering for a good, big, roomy

house, and all my life I've had to put up with little boxes of places,

not big enough to turn round in. I've been contented, and made the

best of what I had, but now that I can afford it, I mean to have a

house that will suit me. The Carroll house is just what I want, for

all it is a little old-fashioned. I've always had a notion of that

house, although I never expected to own it any more than the moon."

"It's a real handsome place," admitted Mrs. Stapp, "but I expect it

will need a lot of fixing up. Nobody has lived in it for six years.

When are you going to move in?"

"In about three weeks, if all goes well. I'm having it all painted and

done over inside. The outside can wait until the spring."

"It's queer how things come about," said Mrs. Stapp meditatively. "I

guess old Mrs. Carroll never imagined her home was going to pass into

other folks' hands as it has. When you and I were girls, and Louise

Carroll was giving herself such airs over us, you didn't much expect

to ever stand in her shoes, did you? Do you remember Lou?"

"Yes, I do," said Mrs. March sharply. A change came over her sonsy,

smiling face. It actually looked hard and revengeful, and a cruel

light flickered in her dark brown eyes. "I'll not forget Lou Carroll

as long as I live. She is the only person in this world I ever hated.

I suppose it is sinful to say it, but I hate her still, and always

will."

"I never liked her myself," admitted Mrs. Stapp. "She thought herself

above us all. Well, for that matter I suppose she was--but she needn't

have rubbed it in so."

"Well, she might have been above me," said Mrs. March bitterly, "but

she wasn't above twitting and snubbing me every chance she got. She

always had a spite at me from the time we were children together at

school. When we grew up it was worse. I couldn't begin to tell you all

the times that girl insulted me. But there was once in particular--I'll

never forgive her for it. I was at a party, and she was there too, and

so was that young Trenham Manning, who was visiting the Ashleys. Do you

remember him, Dosia? He was a handsome young fellow, and Lou had a

liking for him, so all the girls said. But he never looked at her that

night, and he kept by me the whole time. It made Lou furious, and at

last she came up to me with a sneer on her face, and her black eyes

just snapping, and said, 'Miss Bennett, Mother told me to tell you to

tell your ma that if that plain sewing isn't done by tomorrow night

she'll send for it and give it to somebody else; if people engage to

have work done by a certain time and don't keep their word, they

needn't expect to get it.' Oh, how badly I felt! Mother and I were

poor, and had to work hard, but we had feelings just like other

people, and to be insulted like that before Trenham Manning! I just

burst out crying then and there, and ran away and hid. It was very

silly of me, but I couldn't help it. That stings me yet. If I was ever

to get a chance to pay Lou Carroll out for that, I'd take it without

any compunction."

"Oh, but that is unchristian!" protested Mrs. Stapp feebly.

"Perhaps so, but it's the way I feel. Old Parson Jones used to say

that people were marbled good and bad pretty even, but that in

everybody there were one or two streaks just pure wicked. I guess Lou

Carroll is my wicked streak. I haven't seen or heard of her for

years--ever since she married that worthless Dency Baxter and went

away. She may be dead for all I know. I don't expect ever to have a

chance to pay her out. But mark what I say, Theodosia, if I ever have,

I will."

Mrs. March snipped off her thread, as if she challenged the world.

Mrs. Stapp felt uncomfortable over the unusual display of feeling she

had evoked, and hastened to change the subject.

In three weeks' time Mrs. March was established in her new home, and

the "old Carroll house" blossomed out into renewed splendour.

Theodosia Stapp, who had dropped in to see it, was in a rapture of

admiration.

"You have a lovely home now, Anna. I used to think it fine enough in

the Carrolls' time, but it wasn't as grand as this. And that reminds

me, I have something to tell you, but I don't want you to get as

excited as you did the last time I mentioned her name. You remember

the last day I was to see you we were talking of Lou Carroll? Well,

next day I was downtown in a store, and who should sail in but Mrs.

Joel Kent, from Oriental. You know Mrs. Joel--Sarah Chapple that was?

She and her man keep a little hotel up at Oriental. They're not very

well off. She is a cousin of old Mrs. Carroll, but, lawful heart, the

Carrolls didn't used to make much of the relationship! Well, Mrs. Joel

and I had a chat. She told me all her troubles--she always has lots of

them. Sarah was always of a grumbling turn, and she had a brand-new

stock of them this time. What do you think, Anna March? Lou

Carroll--or Mrs. Baxter, I suppose I should say--is up there at Joel

Kent's at Oriental, dying of consumption; leastwise, Mrs. Joel says

she is."

"Lou Carroll dying at Oriental!" cried Mrs. March.

"Yes. She came there from goodness knows where, about a month

ago--might as well have dropped from the clouds, Mrs. Joel says, for

all she expected of it. Her husband is dead, and I guess he led her a

life of it when he was alive, and she's as poor as second skimmings.

She was aiming to come here, Mrs. Joel says, but when she got to

Oriental she wasn't fit to stir a step further, and the Kents had to

keep her. I gather from what Mrs. Joel said that she's rather touched

in her mind too, and has an awful hankering to get home here--to this

very house. She appears to have the idea that it is hers, and all

just the same as it used to be. I guess she is a sight of trouble, and

Mrs. Joel ain't the woman to like that. But there! She has to work

most awful hard, and I suppose a sick person doesn't come handy in a

hotel. I guess you've got your revenge, Anna, without lifting a finger

to get it. Think of Lou Carroll coming to that!"

The next day was cold and raw. The ragged, bare trees in the old

Carroll grounds shook and writhed in the gusts of wind. Now and then a

drifting scud of rain dashed across the windows. Mrs. March looked out

with a shiver, and turned thankfully to her own cosy fireside again.

Presently she thought she heard a low knock at the front door, and

went to see. As she opened it a savage swirl of damp wind rushed in,

and the shrinking figure leaning against one of the fluted columns of

the Grecian porch seemed to cower before its fury. It was a woman who

stood there, a woman whose emaciated face wore a piteous expression,

as she lifted it to Mrs. March.

"You don't know me, of course," she said, with a feeble attempt at

dignity. "I am Mrs. Baxter. I--I used to live here long ago. I thought

I'd walk over today and see my old home."

A fit of coughing interrupted her words, and she trembled like a leaf.

"Gracious me!" exclaimed Mrs. March blankly. "You don't mean to tell

me that you have walked over from Oriental today--and you a sick

woman! For pity's sake, come in, quick. And if you're not wet to the

skin!"

She fairly pulled her visitor into the hall, and led her to the

sitting-room.

"Sit down. Take this big easy-chair right up to the fire--so. Let me

take your bonnet and shawl. I must run right out to tell Hannah to get

you a hot drink."

"You are very kind," whispered the other. "I don't know you, but you

look like a woman I used to know when I was a girl. She was a Mrs.

Bennett, and she had a daughter, Anna. Do you know what became of her?

I forget. I forget everything now."

"My name is March," said Mrs. March briefly, ignoring the question. "I

don't suppose you ever heard it before."

She wrapped her own warm shawl about the other woman's thin shoulders.

Then she hastened to the kitchen and soon returned, carrying a tray of

food and a steaming hot drink. She wheeled a small table up to her

visitor's side and said, very kindly,

"Now, take a bite, my dear, and this raspberry vinegar will warm you

right up. It is a dreadful day for you to be out. Why on earth didn't

Joel Kent drive you over?"

"They didn't know I was coming," whispered Mrs. Baxter anxiously.

"I--I ran away. Sarah wouldn't have let me come if she had known. But

I wanted to come so much. It is so nice to be home again."

Mrs. March watched her guest as she ate and drank. It was plain enough

that her mind, or rather her memory, was affected. She did not

realize that this was no longer her home. At moments she seemed to

fancy herself back in the past again. Once or twice she called Mrs.

March "Mother."

Presently a sharp knock was heard at the hall door. Mrs. March excused

herself and went out. In the porch stood Theodosia Stapp and a woman

whom Mrs. March did not at first glance recognize--a tall,

aggressive-looking person, whose sharp black eyes darted in past Mrs.

March and searched every corner of the hall before anyone had time to

speak.

"Lawful heart!" puffed Mrs. Stapp, as she stepped in out of the biting

wind. "I'm right out of breath. Mrs. March, allow me to introduce Mrs.

Kent. We're looking for Mrs. Baxter. She has run away, and we thought

perhaps she came here. Did she?"

"She is in my sitting-room now," said Mrs. March quietly.

"Didn't I say so?" demanded Mrs. Kent, turning to Mrs. Stapp. She

spoke in a sharp, high-pitched tone that grated on Mrs. March's

nerves. "Doesn't she beat all! She slipped away this morning when I

was busy in the kitchen. And to think of her walking six miles over

here in this wind! I dunno how she did it. I don't believe she's half

as sick as she pretends. Well, I've got my wagon out here, Mrs. March,

and I'll be much obliged if you'll tell her I'm here to take her home.

I s'pose we'll have a fearful scene."

"I don't see that there is any call for a scene," said Mrs. March

firmly. "The poor woman has just got here, and she thinks she has got

home. She might as well think so if it is of any comfort to her. You'd

better leave her here."

Theodosia gave a stifled gasp of amazement, but Mrs. March went

serenely on.

"I'll take care of the poor soul as long as she needs it--and that

will not be very long in my opinion, for if ever I saw death in a

woman's face, it is looking out of hers. I've plenty of time to look

after her and make her comfortable."

Mrs. Joel Kent was voluble in her thanks. It was evident that she was

delighted to get the sick woman off her hands. Mrs. March cut her

short with an invitation to stay to tea, but Mrs. Kent declined.

"I've got to hurry home straight off and get the men's suppers. Such a

scamper to have over that woman! I'm sure I'm thankful you're willing

to let her stay, for she'd never be contented anywhere else. I'll send

over what few things she has tomorrow."

When Mrs. Kent had gone, Mrs. March and Mrs. Stapp looked at each

other.

"And so this is your revenge, Anna March?" said the latter solemnly.

"Do you remember what you said to me about her?"

"Yes, I do, Theodosia, and I thought I meant every word of it. But I

guess my wicked streak ran out just when I needed it to depend on.

Besides, you see, I've thought of Lou Carroll all these years as she

was when I knew her--handsome and saucy and proud. But that poor

creature in there isn't any more like the Lou Carroll I knew than you

are--not a mite. The old Lou Carroll is dead already, and my spite is

dead with her. Will you come in and see her?"

"Well, no, not just now. She wouldn't know me, and Mrs. Joel says

strangers kind of excite her--a pretty bad place the hotel would be

for her at that rate, I should think. I must go and tell Peter about

it, and I'll send up some of my black currant jam for her."

When Mrs. Stapp had gone, Mrs. March went back to her guest. Lou

Baxter had fallen asleep with her head pillowed on the soft plush back

of her chair. Mrs. March looked at the hollow, hectic cheeks and the

changed, wasted features, and her bright brown eyes softened with

tears.

"Poor Lou," she said softly, as she brushed a loose lock of grey hair

back from the sleeping woman's brow.

Nan

Nan was polishing the tumblers at the pantry window, outside of which

John Osborne was leaning among the vines. His arms were folded on the

sill and his straw hat was pushed back from his flushed, eager face as

he watched Nan's deft movements.

Beyond them, old Abe Stewart was mowing the grass in the orchard with

a scythe and casting uneasy glances at the pair. Old Abe did not

approve of John Osborne as a suitor for Nan. John was poor; and old

Abe, although he was the wealthiest farmer in Granville, was bent on

Nan's making a good match. He looked upon John Osborne as a mere

fortune-hunter, and it was a thorn in the flesh to see him talking to

Nan while he, old Abe, was too far away to hear what they were saying.

He had a good deal of confidence in Nan, she was a sensible,

level-headed girl. Still, there was no knowing what freak even a

sensible girl might take into her head, and Nan was so determined when

she did make up her mind. She was his own daughter in that.

However, old Abe need not have worried himself. It could not be said

that Nan was helping John Osborne on in his wooing at all. Instead,

she was teasing and snubbing him by turns.

Nan was very pretty. Moreover, Nan was well aware of the fact. She

knew that the way her dark hair curled around her ears and forehead

was bewitching; that her complexion was the envy of every girl in

Granville; that her long lashes had a trick of drooping over very

soft, dark eyes in a fashion calculated to turn masculine heads

hopelessly. John Osborne knew all this too, to his cost. He had called

to ask Nan to go with him to the Lone Lake picnic the next day. At

this request Nan dropped her eyes and murmured that she was sorry, but

he was too late--she had promised to go with somebody else. There was

no need of Nan's making such a mystery about it. The somebody else was

her only cousin, Ned Bennett, who had had a quarrel with his own girl;

the latter lived at Lone Lake, and Ned had coaxed Nan to go over with

him and try her hand at patching matters up between him and his

offended lady-love. And Nan, who was an amiable creature and

tender-hearted where anybody's lover except her own was concerned, had

agreed to go.

But John Osborne at once jumped to the conclusion--as Nan had very

possibly meant him to do--that the mysterious somebody was Bryan Lee,

and the thought was gall and wormwood to him.

"Whom are you going with?" he asked.

"That would be telling," Nan said, with maddening indifference.

"Is it Bryan Lee?" demanded John.

"It might be," said Nan reflectively, "and then again, you know, it

mightn't."

John was silent; he was no match for Nan when it came to a war of

words. He scowled moodily at the shining tumblers.

"Nan, I'm going out west," he said finally.

Nan stared at him with her last tumbler poised in mid-air, very much

as if he had announced his intention of going to the North Pole or

Equatorial Africa.

"John Osborne, are you crazy?"

"Not quite. And I'm in earnest, I can tell you that."

Nan set the glass down with a decided thud. John's curtness displeased

her. He needn't suppose that it made any difference to her if he took

it into his stupid head to go to Afghanistan.

"Oh!" she remarked carelessly. "Well, I suppose if you've got the

Western fever your case is hopeless. Would it be impertinent to

inquire why you are going?"

"There's nothing else for me to do, Nan," said John, "Bryan Lee is

going to foreclose the mortgage next month and I'll have to clear out.

He says he can't wait any longer. I've worked hard enough and done my

best to keep the old place, but it's been uphill work and I'm beaten

at last."

Nan sat blankly down on the stool by the window. Her face was a study

which John Osborne, watching old Abe's movements, missed.

"Well, I never!" she gasped. "John Osborne, do you mean to tell me

that Bryan Lee is going to do that? How did he come to get your

mortgage?"

"Bought it from old Townsend," answered John briefly. "Oh, he's within

his rights, I'll admit. I've even got behind with the interest this

past year. I'll go out west and begin over again."

"It's a burning shame!" said Nan violently.

John looked around in time to see two very red spots on her cheeks.

"You don't care though, Nan."

"I don't like to see anyone unjustly treated," declared Nan, "and that

is what you've been. You've never had half a chance. And after the way

you've slaved, too!"

"If Lee would wait a little I might do something yet, now that Aunt

Alice is gone," said John bitterly. "I'm not afraid of work. But he

won't; he means to take his spite out at last."

Nan hesitated.

"Surely Bryan isn't so mean as that," she stammered. "Perhaps he'll

change his mind if--if--"

Osborne wheeled about with face aflame.

"Don't you say a word to him about it, Nan!" he cried. "Don't you go

interceding with him for me. I've got some pride left. He can take the

farm from me, and he can take you maybe, but he can't take my

self-respect. I won't beg him for mercy. Don't you dare to say a word

to him about it."

Nan's eyes flashed. She was offended to find her sympathy flung back

in her face.

"Don't be alarmed," she said tartly. "I shan't bother myself about

your concerns. I've no doubt you're able to look out for them

yourself."

Osborne turned away. As he did so he saw Bryan Lee driving up the

lane. Perhaps Nan saw it too. At any rate, she leaned out of the

window.

"John! John!" Osborne half turned. "You'll be up again soon, won't

you?"

His face hardened. "I'll come to say goodbye before I go, of course,"

he answered shortly.

He came face to face with Lee at the gate, where the latter was tying

his sleek chestnut to a poplar. He acknowledged his rival's

condescending nod with a scowl. Lee looked after him with a satisfied

smile.

"Poor beggar!" he muttered. "He feels pretty cheap I reckon. I've

spoiled his chances in this quarter. Old Abe doesn't want any

poverty-stricken hangers-on about his place and Nan won't dream of

taking him when she knows he hasn't a roof over his head."

He stopped for a chat with old Abe. Old Abe approved of Bryan Lee. He

was a son-in-law after old Abe's heart.

Meanwhile, Nan had seated herself at the pantry window and was

ostentatiously hemming towels in apparent oblivion of suitor No. 2.

Nevertheless, when Bryan came up she greeted him with an unusually

sweet smile and at once plunged into an animated conversation. Bryan

had not come to ask her to go to the picnic--business prevented him

from going. But he meant to find out if she were going with John

Osborne. As Nan was serenely impervious to all hints, he was finally

forced to ask her bluntly if she was going to the picnic.

Well, yes, she expected to.

Oh! Might he ask with whom?

Nan didn't know that it was a question of public interest at all.

"It isn't with that Osborne fellow, is it?" demanded Bryan

incautiously.

Nan tossed her head. "Well, why not?" she asked.

"Look here, Nan," said Lee angrily, "if you're going to the picnic

with John Osborne I'm surprised at you. What do you mean by

encouraging him so? He's as poor as Job's turkey. I suppose you've

heard that I've been compelled to foreclose the mortgage on his farm."

Nan kept her temper sweetly--a dangerous sign, had Bryan but known it.

"Yes; he was telling me so this morning," she answered slowly.

"Oh, was he? I suppose he gave me my character?"

"No; he didn't say very much about it at all. He said of course you

were within your rights. But do you really mean to do it, Bryan?"

"Of course I do," said Bryan promptly. "I can't wait any longer for my

money, and I'd never get it if I did. Osborne can't even pay the

interest."

"It isn't because he hasn't worked hard enough, then," said Nan. "He

has just slaved on that place ever since he grew up."

"Well, yes, he has worked hard in a way. But he's kind of shiftless,

for all that--no manager, as you might say. Some folks would have been

clear by now, but Osborne is one of those men that are bound to get

behind. He hasn't got any business faculty."

"He isn't shiftless," said Nan quickly, "and it isn't his fault if he

has got behind. It's all because of his care for his aunt. He has had

to spend more on her doctor's bills than would have raised the

mortgage. And now that she is dead and he might have a chance to pull

up, you go and foreclose."

"A man must look out for Number One," said Bryan easily, admiring

Nan's downcast eyes and rosy cheeks. "I haven't any spite against

Osborne, but business is business, you know."

Nan opened her lips to say something but, remembering Osborne's

parting injunction, she shut them again. She shot a scornful glance at

Lee as he stood with his arms folded on the sill beside her.

Bryan lingered, talking small talk, until Nan announced that she must

see about getting tea.

"And you won't tell me who is going to take you to the picnic?" he

coaxed.

"Oh, it's Ned Bennett," said Nan indifferently.

Bryan felt relieved. He unpinned the huge cluster of violets on his

coat and laid them down on the sill beside her before he went. Nan

flicked them off with her fingers as she watched him cross the lawn,

his own self-satisfied smile upon his face.

*       *       *       *       *

A week later the Osborne homestead had passed into Bryan Lee's hands

and John Osborne was staying with his cousin at Thornhope, pending his

departure for the west. He had never been to see Nan since that last

afternoon, but Bryan Lee haunted the Stewart place. One day he

suddenly stopped coming and, although Nan was discreetly silent, in

due time it came to old Abe's ears by various driblets of gossip that

Nan had refused him.

Old Abe marched straightway home to Nan in a fury and demanded if this

were true. Nan curtly admitted that it was. Old Abe was so much taken

aback by her coolness that he asked almost meekly what was her reason

for doing such a fool trick.

"Because he turned John Osborne out of house and home," returned Nan

composedly. "If he hadn't done that there is no telling what might

have happened. I might even have married him, because I liked him very

well and it would have pleased you. At any rate, I wouldn't have

married John when you were against him. Now I mean to."

Old Abe stormed furiously at this, but Nan kept so provokingly cool

that he was conscious of wasting breath. He went off in a rage, but

Nan did not feel particularly anxious now that the announcement was

over. He would cool down, she knew. John Osborne worried her more. She

didn't see clearly how she was to marry him unless he asked her, and

he had studiously avoided her since the foreclosure.

But Nan did not mean to be baffled or to let her lover slip through

her fingers for want of a little courage. She was not old Abe

Stewart's daughter for nothing.

One day Ned Bennett dropped in and said that John Osborne would start

for the west in three days. That evening Nan went up to her room and

dressed herself in the prettiest dress she owned, combed her hair

around her sparkling face in bewitching curls, pinned a cluster of

apple blossoms at her belt, and, thus equipped, marched down in the

golden sunset light to the Mill Creek Bridge. John Osborne, on his

return from Thornhope half an hour later, found her there, leaning

over the rail among the willows.

Nan started in well-assumed surprise and then asked him why he had not

been to see her. John blushed--stammered--didn't know--had been busy.

Nan cut short his halting excuses by demanding to know if he were

really going away, and what he intended to do.

"I'll go out on the prairies and take up a claim," said Osborne

sturdily. "Begin life over again free of debt. It'll be hard work, but

I'm not afraid of that. I will succeed if it takes me years."

They walked on in silence. Nan came to the conclusion that Osborne

meant to hold his peace.

"John," she said tremulously, "won't--won't you find it very lonely

out there?"

"Of course--I expect that. I shall have to get used to it."

Nan grew nervous. Proposing to a man was really very dreadful.

"Wouldn't it be--nicer for you"--she faltered--"that is--it wouldn't

be so lonely for you--would it--if--if you had me out there with you?"

John Osborne stopped squarely in the dusty road and looked at her.

"Nan!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, if you can't take a hint!" said Nan in despair.

It was all of an hour later that a man drove past them as they

loitered up the hill road in the twilight. It was Bryan Lee; he had

taken from Osborne his house and land, but he had not been able to

take Nan Stewart, after all.

Natty of Blue Point

Natty Miller strolled down to the wharf where Bliss Ford was tying up

the _Cockawee_. Bliss was scowling darkly at the boat, a trim new one,

painted white, whose furled sails seemed unaccountably wet and whose

glistening interior likewise dripped with moisture. A group of

fishermen on the wharf were shaking their heads sagely as Natty drew

near.

"Might as well split her up for kindlings, Bliss," said Jake McLaren.

"You'll never get men to sail in her. It passed the first time, seeing

as only young Johnson was skipper, but when a boat turns turtle with

Captain Frank in command, there's something serious wrong with her."

"What's up?" asked Natty.

"The _Cockawee_ upset out in the bay again this morning," answered

Will Scott. "That's the second time. The _Grey Gull_ picked up the men

and towed her in. It's no use trying to sail her. Lobstermen ain't

going to risk their lives in a boat like that. How's things over at

Blue Point, Natty?"

"Pretty well," responded Natty laconically. Natty never wasted words.

He had not talked a great deal in his fourteen years of life, but he

was much given to thinking. He was rather undersized and insignificant

looking, but there were a few boys of his own age on the mainland who

knew that Natty had muscles.

"Has Everett heard anything from Ottawa about the lighthouse business

yet?" asked Will.

Natty shook his head.

"Think he's any chance of getting the app'intment?" queried Adam

Lewis.

"Not the ghost of a chance," said Cooper Creasy decidedly. "He's on

the wrong side of politics, that's what. Er rather his father was. A

Tory's son ain't going to get an app'intment from a Lib'ral

government, that's what."

"Mr. Barr says that Everett is too young to be trusted in such a

responsible position," quoted Natty gravely.

Cooper shrugged his shoulders.

"Mebbe--mebbe. Eighteen is kind of green, but everybody knows that

Ev's been the real lighthouse keeper for two years, since your father

took sick. Irving Elliott wants that light--has wanted it for

years--and he's a pretty strong pull at headquarters, that's what.

Barr owes him something for years of hard work at elections. I ain't

saying anything against Elliott, either. He's a good man, but your

father's son ought to have that light as sure as he won't get it,

that's what."

"Any of you going to take in the sports tomorrow down at Summerside?"

asked Will Scott, in order to switch Cooper away from politics, which

were apt to excite him.

"I'm going, for one," said Adam. "There's to be a yacht race atween

the Summerside and Charlottetown boat clubs. Yes, I am going. Give you

a chance down to the station, Natty, if you want one."

Natty shook his head.

"Not going," he said briefly.

"You should celebrate Victoria Day," said Adam, patriotically.

"'Twenty-fourth o' May's the Queen's birthday, Ef we don't get a

holiday we'll all run away,' as we used to say at school. The good old

Queen is dead, but the day's been app'inted a national holiday in

honour of her memory and you should celebrate it becoming, Natty-boy."

"Ev and I can't both go, and he's going," explained Natty. "Prue and

I'll stay home to light up. Must be getting back now. Looks squally."

"I misdoubt if we'll have Queen's weather tomorrow," said Cooper,

squinting critically at the sky. "Looks like a northeast blow, that's

what. There goes Bliss, striding off and looking pretty mad. The

_Cockawee's_ a dead loss to him, that's what. Nat's off--he knows how

to handle a boat middling well, too. Pity he's such a puny youngster.

Not much to him, I reckon."

Natty had cast loose in his boat, the _Merry Maid_, and hoisted his

sail. In a few minutes he was skimming gaily down the bay. The wind

was fair and piping and the _Merry Maid_ went like a bird. Natty, at

the rudder, steered for Blue Point Island, a reflective frown on his

face. He was feeling in no mood for Victoria Day sports. In a very

short time he and Ev and Prue must leave Blue Point lighthouse, where

they had lived all their lives. To Natty it seemed as if the end of

all things would come then. Where would life be worth living away from

lonely, windy Blue Point Island?

David Miller had died the preceding winter after a long illness. He

had been lighthouse keeper at Blue Point for thirty years. His three

children had been born and brought up there, and there, four years

ago, the mother had died. But womanly little Prue had taken her place

well, and the boys were devoted to their sister. When their father

died, Everett had applied for the position of lighthouse keeper. The

matter was not yet publicly decided, but old Cooper Creasy had sized

the situation up accurately. The Millers had no real hope that Everett

would be appointed.

Victoria Day, while not absolutely stormy, proved to be rather

unpleasant. A choppy northeast wind blew up the bay, and the water was

rough enough. The sky was overcast with clouds, and the May air was

raw and chilly. At Blue Point the Millers were early astir, for if

Everett wanted to sail over to the mainland in time to catch the

excursion train, no morning naps were permissible. He was going alone.

Since only one of the boys could go, Natty had insisted that it should

be Everett, and Prue had elected to stay home with Natty. Prue had

small heart for Victoria Day that year. She did not feel even a thrill

of enthusiasm when Natty hoisted a flag and wreathed the Queen's

picture with creeping spruce. Prue felt as badly about leaving Blue

Point Island as the boys did.

The day passed slowly. In the afternoon the wind fell away to a dead

calm, but there was still a heavy swell on, and shortly before sunset

a fog came creeping up from the east and spread over the bay and

islands, so thick and white that Prue and Natty could not even see

Little Bear Island on the right.

"I'm glad Everett isn't coming back tonight," said Prue. "He could

never find his way cross the harbour in that fog."

"Isn't it thick, though," said Natty. "The light won't show far

tonight."

At sunset they lighted the great lamps and then settled down to an

evening of reading. But it was not long before Natty looked up from

his book to say, "Hello, Prue, what was that? Thought I heard a

noise."

"So did I," said Prue. "I sounded like someone calling."

They hurried to the door, which looked out on the harbour. The night,

owing to the fog, was dark with a darkness that seemed almost

tangible. From somewhere out of that darkness came a muffled shouting,

like that of a person in distress.

"Prue, there's somebody in trouble out there!" exclaimed Natty.

"Oh, it's surely never Ev!" cried Prue.

Natty shook his head.

"Don't think so. Ev had no intention of coming back tonight. Get that

lantern, Prue. I must go and see what and who it is."

"Oh, Natty, you mustn't," cried Prue in distress. "There's a heavy

swell on yet--and the fog--oh, if you get lost--"

"I'll not get lost, and I must go, Prue. Maybe somebody is drowning

out there. It's not Ev, of course, but suppose it were! That's a good

girl."

Prue, with set face, had brought the lantern, resolutely choking back

the words of fear and protest that rushed to her lips. They hurried

down to the shore and Natty sprang into the little skiff he used for

rowing. He hastily lashed the lantern in the stern, cast loose the

painter, and lifted the oars.

"I'll be back as soon as possible," he called to Prue. "Wait here for

me."

In a minute the shore was out of sight, and Natty found himself alone

in the black fog, with no guide but the cries for help, which already

were becoming fainter. They seemed to come from the direction of

Little Bear, and thither Natty rowed. It was a tough pull, and the

water was rough enough for the little dory. But Natty had been at home

with the oars from babyhood, and his long training and tough sinews

stood him in good stead now. Steadily and intrepidly he rowed along.

The water grew rougher as he passed out from the shelter of Blue Point

into the channel between the latter and Little Bear. The cries were

becoming very faint. What if he should be too late? He bent to the

oars with all his energy. Presently, by the smoother water, he knew he

must be in the lea of Little Bear. The cries sounded nearer. He must

already have rowed nearly a mile. The next minute he shot around a

small headland and right before him, dimly visible in the faint light

cast by the lantern through the fog, was an upturned boat with two men

clinging to it, one on each side, evidently almost exhausted. Natty

rowed cautiously up to the one nearest him, knowing that he must be

wary lest the grip of the drowning man overturn his own light skiff.

"Let go when I say," he shouted, "and don't--grab--anything, do you

hear? Don't--grab. Now, let go."

The next minute the man lay in the dory, dragged over the stern by

Netty's grip on his collar.

"Lie still," ordered Natty, clutching the oars. To row around the

overturned boat, amid the swirl of water about her, was a task that

taxed Netty's skill and strength to the utmost. The other man was

dragged in over the bow, and with a gasp of relief Natty pulled away

from the sinking boat. Once clear of her he could not row for a few

minutes; he was shaking from head to foot with the reaction from

tremendous effort and strain.

"This'll never do," he muttered. "I'm not going to be a baby now. But

will I ever be able to row back?"

Presently, however, he was able to grip his oars again and pull for

the lighthouse, whose beacon loomed dimly through the fog like a great

blur of whiter mist. The men, obedient to his orders, lay quietly

where he had placed them, and before long Natty was back again at the

lighthouse landing, where Prue was waiting, wild with anxiety. The men

were helped out and assisted up to the lighthouse, where Natty went to

hunt up dry clothes for them, and Prue flew about to prepare hot

drinks.

"To think that that child saved us!" exclaimed one of the men. "Why, I

didn't think a grown man had the strength to do what he did. He is

your brother, I suppose, Miss Miller. You have another brother, I

think?"

"Oh, yes--Everett--but he is away," explained Prue. "We heard your

shouts and Natty insisted on going at once to your rescue."

"Well, he came just in time. I couldn't have held on another

minute--was so done up I couldn't have moved or spoken all the way

here even if he hadn't commanded me to keep perfectly still."

Natty returned at this moment and exclaimed, "Why, it is Mr. Barr. I

didn't recognize you before."

"Barr it is, young man. This gentleman is my friend, Mr. Blackmore. We

have been celebrating Victoria Day by a shooting tramp over Little

Bear. We hired a boat from Ford at the Harbour Head this morning--the

_Cockawee_, he called her--and sailed over. I don't know much about

running a boat, but Blackmore here thinks he does. We were at the

other side of the island when the fog came up. We hurried across it,

but it was almost dark when we reached our boat. We sailed around the

point and then the boat just simply upset--don't know why--"

"But I know why," interrupted Natty indignantly. "That _Cockawee_ does

nothing but upset. She has turned turtle twice out in the harbour in

fine weather. Ford was a rascal to let her to you. He might have known

what would happen. Why--why--it was almost murder to let you go!"

"I thought there must be something queer about her," declared Mr.

Blackmore. "I do know how to handle a boat despite my friend's gibe,

and there was no reason why she should have upset like that. That Ford

ought to be horsewhipped."

Thanks to Prue's stinging hot decoctions of black currant drink, the

two gentlemen were no worse for their drenching and exposure, and the

next morning Natty took them to the mainland in the _Merry Maid_. When

he parted with them, Mr. Barr shook his hand heartily and said: "Thank

you, my boy. You're a plucky youngster and a skilful one, too. Tell

your brother that if I can get the Blue Point lighthouse berth for him

I will, and as for yourself, you will always find a friend in me, and

if I can ever do anything for you I will."

Two weeks later Everett received an official document formally

appointing him keeper of Blue Point Island light. Natty carried the

news to the mainland, where it was joyfully received among the

fishermen.

"Only right and fair," said Cooper Creasy. "Blue Point without a

Miller to light up wouldn't seem the thing at all, that's what. And

it's nothing but Ev's doo."

"Guess Natty had more to do with it than Ev," said Adam, perpetrating

a very poor pun and being immensely applauded therefor. It keyed Will

Scott up to rival Adam.

"You said that Irving had a pull and the Millers hadn't," he said

jocularly. "But it looks as if 'twas Natty's pull did the business

after all--his pull over to Bear Island and back."

"It was about a miracle that a boy could do what he did on such a

night," said Charles Macey.

"Where's Ford?" asked Natty uncomfortably. He hated to have his

exploit talked about.

"Ford has cleared out," said Cooper, "gone down to Summerside to go

into Tobe Meekins's factory there. Best thing he could do, that's

what. Folks here hadn't no use for him after letting that death trap

to them two men--even if they was Lib'rals. The _Cockawee_ druv ashore

on Little Bear, and there she's going to remain, I guess. D'ye want a

berth in my mackerel boat this summer, Natty?"

"I do," said Natty, "but I thought you said you were full."

"I guess I can make room for you," said Cooper. "A boy with such grit

and muscle ain't to be allowed to go to seed on Blue Point, that's

what. Yesser, we'll make room for you."

And Natty's cup of happiness was full.

Penelope's Party Waist

"It's perfectly horrid to be so poor," grumbled Penelope. Penelope did

not often grumble, but just now, as she sat tapping with one

pink-tipped finger her invitation to Blanche Anderson's party, she

felt that grumbling was the only relief she had.

Penelope was seventeen, and when one is seventeen and cannot go to a

party because one hasn't a suitable dress to wear, the world is very

apt to seem a howling wilderness.

"I wish I could think of some way to get you a new waist," said Doris,

with what these sisters called "the poverty pucker" coming in the

centre of her pretty forehead. "If your black skirt were sponged and

pressed and re-hung, it would do very well."

Penelope saw the poverty pucker and immediately repented with all her

impetuous heart having grumbled. That pucker came often enough without

being brought there by extra worries.

"Well, there is no use sitting here sighing for the unattainable," she

said, jumping up briskly. "I'd better be putting my grey matter into

that algebra instead of wasting it plotting for a party dress that I

certainly can't get. It's a sad thing for a body to lack brains when

she wants to be a teacher, isn't it? If I could only absorb algebra

and history as I can music, what a blessing it would be! Come now,

Dorrie dear, smooth that pucker out. Next year I shall be earning a

princely salary, which we can squander on party gowns at will--if

people haven't given up inviting us by that time, in sheer despair of

ever being able to conquer our exclusiveness."

Penelope went off to her detested algebra with a laugh, but the pucker

did not go out of Doris' forehead. She wanted Penelope to go to that

party.

Penelope has studied so hard all winter and she hasn't gone anywhere,

thought the older sister wistfully. She is getting discouraged over

those examinations and she needs just a good, jolly time to hearten

her up. If it could only be managed!

But Doris did not see how it could. It took every cent of her small

salary as typewriter in an uptown office to run their tiny

establishment and keep Penelope in school dresses and books. Indeed,

she could not have done even that much if they had not owned their

little cottage. Next year it would be easier if Penelope got through

her examinations successfully, but just now there was absolutely not a

spare penny.

"It is hard to be poor. We are a pair of misfits," said Doris, with a

patient little smile, thinking of Penelope's uncultivated talent for

music and her own housewifely gifts, which had small chance of

flowering out in her business life.

Doris dreamed of pretty dresses all that night and thought about them

all the next day. So, it must be confessed, did Penelope, though she

would not have admitted it for the world.

When Doris reached home the next evening, she found Penelope hovering

over a bulky parcel on the sitting-room table.

"I'm so glad you've come," she said with an exaggerated gasp of

relief. "I really don't think my curiosity could have borne the strain

for another five minutes. The expressman brought this parcel an hour

ago, and there's a letter for you from Aunt Adella on the clock shelf,

and I think they belong to each other. Hurry up and find out. Dorrie,

darling, what if it should be a--a--present of some sort or other!"

"I suppose it can't be anything else," smiled Doris. She knew that

Penelope had started out to say "a new dress." She cut the strings

and removed the wrappings. Both girls stared.

"Is it--it isn't--yes, it is! Doris Hunter, I believe it's an old

quilt!"

Doris unfolded the odd present with a queer feeling of disappointment.

She did not know just what she had expected the package to contain,

but certainly not this. She laughed a little shakily.

"Well, we can't say after this that Aunt Adella never gave us

anything," she said, when she had opened her letter. "Listen,

Penelope."

_My Dear Doris_:

_I have decided to give up housekeeping and go out West to

live with Robert. So I am disposing of such of the family

heirlooms as I do not wish to take with me. I am sending you

by express your Grandmother Hunter's silk quilt. It is a

handsome article still and I hope you will prize it as you

should. It took your grandmother five years to make it. There

is a bit of the wedding dress of every member of the family in

it. Love to Penelope and yourself._

_Your affectionate aunt,

Adella Hunter._

"I don't see its beauty," said Penelope with a grimace. "It may have

been pretty once, but it is all faded now. It is a monument of

patience, though. The pattern is what they call 'Little Thousands,'

isn't it? Tell me, Dorrie, does it argue a lack of proper respect for

my ancestors that I can't feel very enthusiastic over this

heirloom--especially when Grandmother Hunter died years before I was

born?"

"It was very kind of Aunt Adella to send it," said Doris dutifully.

"Oh, very," agreed Penelope drolly. "Only don't ever ask me to sleep

under it. It would give me the nightmare. O-o-h!"

This last was a little squeal of admiration as Doris turned the quilt

over and brought to view the shimmering lining.

"Why, the wrong side is ever so much prettier than the right!"

exclaimed Penelope. "What lovely, old-timey stuff! And not a bit

faded."

The lining was certainly very pretty. It was a soft, creamy yellow

silk, with a design of brocaded pink rosebuds all over it.

"That was a dress Grandmother Hunter had when she was a girl," said

Doris absently. "I remember hearing Aunt Adella speak of it. When it

became old-fashioned, Grandmother used it to line her quilt. I

declare, it is as good as new."

"Well, let us go and have tea," said Penelope. "I'm decidedly hungry.

Besides, I see the poverty pucker coming. Put the quilt in the spare

room. It is something to possess an heirloom, after all. It gives one

a nice, important-family feeling."

After tea, when Penelope was patiently grinding away at her studies

and thinking dolefully enough of the near-approaching examinations,

which she dreaded, and of teaching, which she confidently expected to

hate, Doris went up to the tiny spare room to look at the wrong side

of the quilt again.

"It would make the loveliest party waist," she said under her breath.

"Creamy yellow is Penelope's colour, and I could use that bit of old

black lace and those knots of velvet ribbon that I have to trim it. I

wonder if Grandmother Hunter's reproachful spirit will forever haunt

me if I do it."

Doris knew very well that she would do it--had known it ever since

she had looked at that lovely lining and a vision of Penelope's vivid

face and red-brown hair rising above a waist of the quaint old silk

had flashed before her mental sight. That night, after Penelope had

gone to bed, Doris ripped the lining out of Grandmother Hunter's silk

quilt.

"If Aunt Adella saw me now!" she laughed softly to herself as she

worked.

In the three following evenings Doris made the waist. She thought it a

wonderful bit of good luck that Penelope went out each of the evenings

to study some especially difficult problems with a school chum.

"It will be such a nice surprise for her," the sister mused

jubilantly.

Penelope was surprised as much as the tender, sisterly heart could

wish when Doris flashed out upon her triumphantly on the evening of

the party with the black skirt nicely pressed and re-hung, and the

prettiest waist imaginable--a waist that was a positive "creation" of

dainty rose-besprinkled silk, with a girdle and knots of black velvet.

"Doris Hunter, you are a veritable little witch! Do you mean to tell

me that you conjured that perfectly lovely thing for me out of the

lining of Grandmother Hunter's quilt?"

So Penelope went to Blanche's party and her dress was the admiration

of every girl there. Mrs. Fairweather, who was visiting Mrs. Anderson,

looked closely at it also. She was a very sweet old lady, with silver

hair, which she wore in delightful, old-fashioned puffs, and she had

very bright, dark eyes. Penelope thought her altogether charming.

"She looks as if she had just stepped out of the frame of some lovely

old picture," she said to herself. "I wish she belonged to me. I'd

just love to have a grandmother like her. And I do wonder who it is

I've seen who looks so much like her."

A little later on the knowledge came to her suddenly, and she thought

with inward surprise: Why, it is Doris, of course. If my sister Doris

lives to be seventy years old and wears her hair in pretty white

puffs, she will look exactly as Mrs. Fairweather does now.

Mrs. Fairweather asked to have Penelope introduced to her, and when

they found themselves alone together she said gently, "My dear, I am

going to ask a very impertinent question. Will you tell me where you

got the silk of which your waist is made?"

Poor Penelope's pretty young face turned crimson. She was not troubled

with false pride by any means, but she simply could not bring herself

to tell Mrs. Fairweather that her waist was made out of the lining of

an old heirloom quilt.

"My Aunt Adella gave me--gave us--the material," she stammered. "And

my elder sister Doris made the waist for me. I think the silk once

belonged to my Grandmother Hunter."

"What was your grandmother's maiden name?" asked Mrs. Fairweather

eagerly.

"Penelope Saverne. I am named after her."

Mrs. Fairweather suddenly put her arm about Penelope and drew the

young girl to her, her lovely old face aglow with delight and

tenderness.

"Then you are my grandniece," she said. "Your grandmother was my

half-sister. When I saw your dress, I felt sure you were related to

her. I should recognize that rosebud silk if I came across it in

Thibet. Penelope Saverne was the daughter of my mother by her first

husband. Penelope was four years older than I was, but we were

devoted to each other. Oddly enough, our birthdays fell on the same

day, and when Penelope was twenty and I sixteen, my father gave us

each a silk dress of this very material. I have mine yet.

"Soon after this our mother died and our household was broken up.

Penelope went to live with her aunt and I went West with Father. This

was long ago, you know, when travelling and correspondence were not

the easy, matter-of-course things they are now. After a few years I

lost touch with my half-sister. I married out West and have lived

there all my life. I never knew what had become of Penelope. But

tonight, when I saw you come in in that waist made of the rosebud

silk, the whole past rose before me and I felt like a girl again. My

dear, I am a very lonely old woman, with nobody belonging to me. You

don't know how delighted I am to find that I have two grandnieces."

Penelope had listened silently, like a girl in a dream. Now she patted

Mrs. Fairweather's soft old hand affectionately.

"It sounds like a storybook," she said gaily. "You must come and see

Doris. She is such a darling sister. I wouldn't have had this waist if

it hadn't been for her. I will tell you the whole truth--I don't mind

it now. Doris made my party waist for me out of the lining of an old

silk quilt of Grandmother Hunter's that Aunt Adella sent us."

Mrs. Fairweather did go to see Doris the very next day, and quite

wonderful things came to pass from that interview. Doris and Penelope

found their lives and plans changed in the twinkling of an eye. They

were both to go and live with Aunt Esther--as Mrs. Fairweather had

said they must call her. Penelope was to have, at last, her longed-for

musical education and Doris was to be the home girl.

"You must take the place of my own dear little granddaughter," said

Aunt Esther. "She died six years ago, and I have been so lonely

since."

When Mrs. Fairweather had gone, Doris and Penelope looked at each

other.

"Pinch me, please," said Penelope. "I'm half afraid I'll wake up and

find I have been dreaming. Isn't it all wonderful, Doris Hunter?"

Doris nodded radiantly.

"Oh, Penelope, think of it! Music for you--somebody to pet and fuss

over for me--and such a dear, sweet aunty for us both!"

"And no more contriving party waists out of old silk linings," laughed

Penelope. "But it was very fortunate that you did it for once, sister

mine. And no more poverty puckers," she concluded.

The Girl and The Wild Race

"If Judith would only get married," Mrs. Theodora Whitney was wont to

sigh dolorously.

Now, there was no valid reason why Judith ought to get married unless

she wanted to. But Judith was twenty-seven and Mrs. Theodora thought

it was a terrible disgrace to be an old maid.

"There has never been an old maid in our family so far back as we know

of," she lamented. "And to think that there should be one now! It just

drags us down to the level of the McGregors. They have always been

noted for their old maids."

Judith took all her aunt's lamentations good-naturedly. Sometimes she

argued the subject placidly.

"Why are you in such a hurry to be rid of me, Aunt Theo? I'm sure

we're very comfortable here together and you know you would miss me

terribly if I went away."

"If you took the right one you wouldn't go so very far," said Mrs.

Theodora, darkly significant. "And, anyhow, I'd put up with any amount

of lonesomeness rather than have an old maid in the family. It's all

very fine now, when you're still young enough and good looking, with

lots of beaus at your beck and call. But that won't last much longer

and if you go on with your dilly-dallying you'll wake up some fine day

to find that your time for choosing has gone by. Your mother used to

be dreadful proud of your good looks when you was a baby. I told her

she needn't be. Nine times out of ten a beauty don't marry as well as

an ordinary girl."

"I'm not much set on marrying at all," declared Judith sharply. Any

reference to the "right one" always disturbed her placidity. The real

root of the trouble was that Mrs. Theodora's "right one" and Judith's

"right one" were two different people.

The Ramble Valley young men were very fond of dancing attendance on

Judith, even if she were verging on old maidenhood. Her prettiness was

undeniable; the Stewarts came to maturity late and at twenty-seven

Judith's dower of milky-white flesh, dimpled red lips and shining

bronze hair was at its fullest splendor. Besides, she was "jolly," and

jollity went a long way in Ramble Valley popularity.

Of all Judith's admirers Eben King alone found favor in Mrs.

Theodora's eyes. He owned the adjoining farm, was well off and

homely--so homely that Judith declared it made her eyes ache to look

at him.

Bruce Marshall, Judith's "right one" was handsome, but Mrs. Theodora

looked upon him with sour disapproval. He owned a stony little farm at

the remote end of Ramble Valley and was reputed to be fonder of many

things than of work. To be sure, Judith had enough capability and

energy for two; but Mrs. Theodora detested a lazy man. She ordered

Judith not to encourage him and Judith obeyed. Judith generally obeyed

her aunt; but, though she renounced Bruce Marshall, she would have

nothing to do with Eben King or anybody else and all Mrs. Theodora's

grumblings did not mend matters.

The afternoon that Mrs. Tony Mack came in Mrs. Theodora felt more

aggrieved than ever. Ellie McGregor had been married the previous

week--Ellie, who was the same age as Judith and not half so good

looking. Mrs. Theodora had been nagging Judith ever since.

"But I might as well talk to the trees down there in that hollow," she

complained to Mrs. Tony. "That girl is so set and contrary minded. She

doesn't care a bit for my feelings."

This was not said behind Judith's back. The girl herself was standing

at the open door, drinking in all the delicate, evasive beauty of the

spring afternoon. The Whitney house crested a bare hill that looked

down on misty intervals, feathered with young firs that were golden

green in the pale sunlight. The fields were bare and smoking, although

the lanes and shadowy places were full of moist snow. Judith's face

was aglow with the delight of mere life and she bent out to front the

brisk, dancing wind that blew up from the valley, resinous with the

odors of firs and damp mosses.

At her aunt's words the glow went out of her face. She listened with

her eyes brooding on the hollow and a glowing flame of temper

smouldering in them. Judith's long patience was giving way. She had

been flicked on the raw too often of late. And now her aunt was

confiding her grievances to Mrs. Tony Mack--the most notorious gossip

in Ramble Valley or out of it!

"I can't sleep at nights for worrying over what will become of her

when I'm gone," went on Mrs. Theodora dismally. "She'll just have to

live on alone here--a lonesome, withered-up old maid. And her that

might have had her pick, Mrs. Tony, though I do say it as shouldn't.

You must feel real thankful to have all your girls married

off--especially when none of them was extry good-looking. Some people

have all the luck. I'm tired of talking to Judith. Folks'll be saying

soon that nobody ever really wanted her, for all her flirting. But she

just won't marry."

"I will!"

Judith whirled about on the sun warm door step and came in. Her black

eyes were flashing and her round cheeks were crimson.

"Such a temper you never saw!" reported Mrs. Tony afterwards. "Though

'tweren't to be wondered at. Theodora was most awful aggravating."

"I will," repeated Judith stormily. "I'm tired of being nagged day in

and day out. I'll marry--and what is more I'll marry the very first

man that asks me--that I will, if it is old Widower Delane himself!

How does that suit you, Aunt Theodora?"

Mrs. Theodora's mental processes were never slow. She dropped her

knitting ball and stooped for it. In that time she had decided what to

do. She knew that Judith would stick to her word, Stewart-like, and

she must trim her sails to catch this new wind.

"It suits me real well, Judith," she said calmly, "you can marry the

first man that asks you and I'll say no word to hinder."

The color went out of Judith's face, leaving it pale as ashes. Her

hasty assertion had no sooner been uttered than it was repented of,

but she must stand by it now. She went out of the kitchen without

another glance at her aunt or the delighted Mrs. Tony and dashed up

the stairs to her own little room which looked out over the whole of

Ramble Valley. It was warm with the March sunshine and the leafless

boughs of the creeper that covered the end of the house were tapping a

gay tattoo on the window panes to the music of the wind.

Judith sat down in her little rocker and dropped her pointed chin in

her hands. Far down the valley, over the firs on the McGregor hill and

the blue mirror of the Cranston pond, Bruce Marshall's little gray

house peeped out from a semicircle of white-stemmed birches. She had

not seen Bruce since before Christmas. He had been angry at her then

because she had refused to let him drive her home from prayer meeting.

Since then she had heard a rumor that he was going to see Kitty Leigh

at the Upper Valley.

Judith looked sombrely down at the Marshall homestead. She had always

loved the quaint, picturesque old place, so different from all the

commonplace spick and span new houses of the prosperous valley. Judith

had never been able to decide whether she really cared very much for

Bruce Marshall or not, but she knew that she loved that rambling,

cornery house of his, with the gable festooned with the real ivy that

Bruce Marshall's great-grandmother had brought with her from England.

Judith thought contrastingly of Eben King's staring, primrose-colored

house in all its bare, intrusive grandeur. She gave a little shrug of

distaste.

"I wish Bruce knew of this," she thought, flushing even in her

solitude at the idea. "Although if it is true that he is going to see

Kitty Leigh I don't suppose he'd care. And Aunt Theo will be sure to

send word to Eben by hook or crook. Whatever possessed me to say such

a mad thing? There goes Mrs. Tony now, all agog to spread such a

delectable bit of gossip."

Mrs. Tony had indeed gone, refusing Mrs. Theodora's invitation to stay

to tea, so eager was she to tell her story. And Mrs. Theodora, at that

very minute, was out in her kitchen yard, giving her instructions to

Potter Vane, the twelve year old urchin who cut her wood and did

sundry other chores for her.

"Potter," she said, excitedly, "run over to the Kings' and tell Eben

to come over here immediately--no matter what he's at. Tell him I want

to see him about something of the greatest importance."

Mrs. Theodora thought that this was a master stroke.

"That match is as good as made," she thought triumphantly as she

picked up chips to start the tea fire. "If Judith suspects that Eben

is here she is quite likely to stay in her room and refuse to come

down. But if she does I'll march him upstairs to her door and make him

ask her through the keyhole. You can't stump Theodora Whitney."

Alas! Ten minutes later Potter returned with the unwelcome news that

Eben was away from home.

"He went to Wexbridge about half an hour ago, his ma said. She said

she'd tell him to come right over as soon as he kem home."

Mrs. Theodora had to content herself with this, but she felt troubled.

She knew Mrs. Tony Mack's capabilities for spreading news. What if

Bruce Marshall should hear it before Eben?

That evening Jacob Plowden's store at Wexbridge was full of men,

sitting about on kegs and counters or huddling around the stove, for

the March air had grown sharp as the sun lowered in the creamy sky

over the Ramble Valley hills. Eben King had a keg in the corner. He

was in no hurry to go home for he loved gossip dearly and the

Wexbridge stores abounded with it. He had exhausted the news of Peter

Stanley's store across the bridge and now he meant to hear what was

saying at Plowden's. Bruce Marshall was there, too, buying groceries

and being waited on by Nora Plowden, who was by no means averse to the

service, although as a rule her father's customers received scanty

tolerance at her hands.

"What are the Valley roads like, Marshall?" asked a Wexbridge man,

between two squirts of tobacco juice.

"Bad," said Bruce briefly. "Another warm day will finish the

sleighing."

"Are they crossing at Malley's Creek yet?" asked Plowden.

"No, Jack Carr got in there day before yesterday. Nearly lost his

mare. I came round by the main road," responded Bruce.

The door opened at this point and Tony Mack came in. As soon as he

closed the door he doubled up in a fit of chuckles, which lasted until

he was purple in the face.

"Is the man crazy?" demanded Plowden, who had never seen lean little

Tony visited like this before.

"Crazy nothin'," retorted Tony. "You'll laugh too, when you hear it.

Such a joke! Hee-tee-tee-hee-e. Theodora Whitney has been badgering

Judith Stewart so much about bein' an old maid that Judith's got mad

and vowed she'll marry the first man that asks her.

Hee-tee-tee-hee-e-e-e! My old woman was there and heard her. She'll

keep her word, too. She ain't old Joshua Stewart's daughter for

nothin'. If he said he'd do a thing he did it if it tuck the hair

off. If I was a young feller now! Hee-tee-tee-hee-e-e-e!"

Bruce Marshall swung round on one foot. His face was crimson and if

looks could kill, Tony Mack would have fallen dead in the middle of

his sniggers.

"You needn't mind doing up that parcel for me," he said to Nora. "I'll

not wait for it."

On his way to the door Eben King brushed past him. A shout of laughter

from the assembled men followed them. The others streamed out in their

wake, realizing that a race was afoot. Tony alone remained inside,

helpless with chuckling.

Eben King's horse was tied at the door. He had nothing to do but step

in and drive off. Bruce had put his mare in at Billy Bender's across

the bridge, intending to spend the evening there. He knew that this

would handicap him seriously, but he strode down the road with a

determined expression on his handsome face. Fifteen minutes later he

drove past the store, his gray mare going at a sharp gait. The crowd

in front of Plowden's cheered him, their sympathies were with him for

King was not popular. Tony had come out and shouted, "Here's luck to

you, brother," after which he doubled up with renewed laughter. Such a

lark! And he, Tony, had set it afoot! It would be a story to tell for

years.

Marshall, with his lips set and his dreamy gray eyes for once

glittering with a steely light, urged Lady Jane up the Wexbridge hill.

From its top it was five miles to Ramble Valley by the main road. A

full mile ahead of him he saw Eben King, getting along through mud and

slush, and occasional big slumpy drifts of old snow, as fast as his

clean-limbed trotter could carry him. As a rule Eben was exceedingly

careful of his horses, but now he was sending Bay Billy along for all

that was in him.

For a second Bruce hesitated. Then he turned his mare down the field

cut to Malley's Creek. It was taking Lady Jane's life and possibly his

own in his hand, but it was his only chance. He could never have

overtaken Bay Billy on the main road.

"Do your best, Lady Jane," he muttered, and Lady Jane plunged down the

steep hillside, through the glutinous mud of a ploughed field as if

she meant to do it.

Beyond the field was a ravine full of firs, through which Malley's

Creek ran. To cross it meant a four-mile cut to Ramble Valley. The ice

looked black and rotten. To the left was the ragged hole where Jack

Carr's mare had struggled for her life. Bruce headed Lady Jane higher

up. If a crossing could be made at all it was only between Malley's

spring-hole and the old ice road. Lady Jane swerved at the bank and

whickered.

"On, old girl," said Bruce, in a tense voice. Unwillingly she

advanced, picking her steps with cat-like sagacity. Once her foot went

through, Bruce pulled her up with hands that did not tremble. The next

moment she was scrambling up the opposite bank. Glancing back, Bruce

saw the ice parting in her footprints and the black water gurgling up.

But the race was not yet decided. By crossing the creek he had won no

more than an equal chance with Eben King. And the field road before

him was much worse than the main road. There was little snow on it and

some bad sloughs. But Lady Jane was good for it. For once she should

not be spared.

Just as the red ball of the sun touched the wooded hills of the

valley, Mrs. Theodora, looking from the cowstable door, saw two

sleighs approaching, the horses of which were going at a gallop. One

was trundling down the main road, headlong through old drifts and

slumpy snow, where a false step might send the horse floundering to

the bottom. The other was coming up from the direction of the creek,

full tilt through Tony Mack's stump land, where not a vestige of snow

coated the huge roots over which the runners bumped.

For a moment Mrs. Theodora stood at a gaze. Then she recognized both

drivers. She dropped her milking pail and ran to the house, thinking

as she ran. She knew that Judith was alone in the kitchen. If Eben

King got there first, well and good, but if Bruce Marshall won the

race he must encounter her, Mrs. Theodora.

"He won't propose to Judith as long as I'm round," she panted. "I know

him--he's too shy. But Eben won't mind--I'll tip him the wink."

Potter Vane was chopping wood before the door. Mrs. Theodora

recognizing in him a further obstacle to Marshall's wooing, caught him

unceremoniously by the arm and hauled him, axe and all, over the

doorstone and into the kitchen, just as Bruce Marshall and Eben King

drove into the yard with not a second to spare between them. There was

a woeful cut on Bay Billy's slender foreleg and the reeking Lady Jane

was trembling like a leaf. The staunch little mare had brought her

master over that stretch of sticky field road in time, but she was

almost exhausted.

Both men sprang from their sleighs and ran to the door. Bruce Marshall

won it by foot-room and burst into the kitchen with his rival hot on

his heels. Mrs. Theodora stood defiantly in the middle of the room,

still grasping the dazed and dismayed Potter. In a corner Judith

turned from the window whence she had been watching the finish of the

race. She was pale and tense from excitement. In those few gasping

moments she had looked on her heart as on an open book; she knew at

last that she loved Bruce Marshall and her eyes met his fiery gray

ones as he sprang over the threshold.

"Judith, will you marry me?" gasped Bruce, before Eben, who had first

looked at Mrs. Theodora and the squirming Potter, had located the

girl.

"Yes," said Judith. She burst into hysterical tears as she said it and

sat limply down in a chair.

Mrs. Theodora loosed her grip on Potter.

"You can go back to your work," she said dully. She followed him out

and Eben King followed her. On the step she reached behind him and

closed the door.

"Trust a King for being too late!" she said bitterly and unjustly.

Eben went home with Bay Billy. Potter gazed after him until Mrs.

Theodora ordered him to put Marshall's mare in the stable and rub her

down.

"Anyway, Judith won't be an old maid," she comforted herself.

The Promise of Lucy Ellen

Cecily Foster came down the sloping, fir-fringed road from the village

at a leisurely pace. Usually she walked with a long, determined

stride, but to-day the drowsy, mellowing influence of the Autumn

afternoon was strong upon her and filled her with placid content.

Without being actively conscious of it, she was satisfied with the

existing circumstances of her life. It was half over now. The half of

it yet to be lived stretched before her, tranquil, pleasant and

uneventful, like the afternoon, filled with unhurried duties and

calmly interesting days, Cecily liked the prospect.

When she came to her own lane she paused, folding her hands on the top

of the whitewashed gate, while she basked for a moment in the warmth

that seemed cupped in the little grassy hollow hedged about with young

fir-trees.

Before her lay sere, brooding fields sloping down to a sandy shore,

where long foamy ripples were lapping with a murmur that threaded the

hushed air like a faint minor melody.

On the crest of the little hill to her right was her home--hers and

Lucy Ellen's. The house was an old-fashioned, weather-gray one, low in

the eaves, with gables and porches overgrown with vines that had

turned to wine-reds and rich bronzes in the October frosts. On three

sides it was closed in by tall old spruces, their outer sides bared

and grim from long wrestling with the Atlantic winds, but their inner

green and feathery. On the fourth side a trim white paling shut in the

flower garden before the front door. Cecily could see the beds of

purple and scarlet asters, making rich whorls of color under the

parlor and sitting-room windows. Lucy Ellen's bed was gayer and larger

than Cecily's. Lucy Ellen had always had better luck with flowers.

She could see old Boxer asleep on the front porch step and Lucy

Ellen's white cat stretched out on the parlor window-sill. There was

no other sign of life about the place. Cecily drew a long, leisurely

breath of satisfaction.

"After tea I'll dig up those dahlia roots," she said aloud. "They'd

ought to be up. My, how blue and soft that sea is! I never saw such a

lovely day. I've been gone longer than I expected. I wonder if Lucy

Ellen's been lonesome?"

When Cecily looked back from the misty ocean to the house, she was

surprised to see a man coming with a jaunty step down the lane under

the gnarled spruces. She looked at him perplexedly. He must be a

stranger, for she was sure no man in Oriental walked like that.

"Some agent has been pestering Lucy Ellen, I suppose," she muttered

vexedly.

The stranger came on with an airy briskness utterly foreign to

Orientalites. Cecily opened the gate and went through. They met under

the amber-tinted sugar maple in the heart of the hollow. As he passed,

the man lifted his hat and bowed with an ingratiating smile.

He was about forty-five, well, although somewhat loudly dressed, and

with an air of self-satisfied prosperity pervading his whole

personality. He had a heavy gold watch chain and a large seal ring on

the hand that lifted his hat. He was bald, with a high, Shaksperian

forehead and a halo of sandy curls. His face was ruddy and weak, but

good-natured: his eyes were large and blue, and he had a little

straw-colored moustache, with a juvenile twist and curl in it.

Cecily did not recognize him, yet there was something vaguely familiar

about him. She walked rapidly up to the house. In the sitting-room she

found Lucy Ellen peering out between the muslin window curtains. When

the latter turned there was an air of repressed excitement about her.

"Who was that man, Lucy Ellen?" Cecily asked.

To Cecily's amazement, Lucy Ellen blushed--a warm, Spring-like flood

of color that rolled over her delicate little face like a miracle of

rejuvenescence.

"Didn't you know him? That was Cromwell Biron," she simpered. Although

Lucy Ellen was forty and, in most respects, sensible, she could not

help simpering upon occasion.

"Cromwell Biron," repeated Cecily, in an emotionless voice. She took

off her bonnet mechanically, brushed the dust from its ribbons and

bows and went to put it carefully away in its white box in the spare

bedroom. She felt as if she had had a severe shock, and she dared not

ask anything more just then. Lucy Ellen's blush had frightened her. It

seemed to open up dizzying possibilities of change.

"But she promised--she promised," said Cecily fiercely, under her

breath.

While Cecily was changing her dress, Lucy Ellen was getting the tea

ready in the little kitchen. Now and then she broke out into singing,

but always checked herself guiltily. Cecily heard her and set her firm

mouth a little firmer.

"If a man had jilted me twenty years ago, I wouldn't be so

overwhelmingly glad to see him when he came back--especially if he had

got fat and bald-headed," she added, her face involuntarily twitching

into a smile. Cecily, in spite of her serious expression and intense

way of looking at life, had an irrepressible sense of humor.

Tea that evening was not the pleasant meal it usually was. The two

women were wont to talk animatedly to each other, and Cecily had many

things to tell Lucy Ellen. She did not tell them. Neither did Lucy

Ellen ask any questions, her ill-concealed excitement hanging around

her like a festal garment.

Cecily's heart was on fire with alarm and jealousy. She smiled a

little cruelly as she buttered and ate her toast.

"And so that was Cromwell Biron," she said with studied carelessness.

"I thought there was something familiar about him. When did he come

home?"

"He got to Oriental yesterday," fluttered back Lucy Ellen. "He's going

to be home for two months. We--we had such an interesting talk this

afternoon. He--he's as full of jokes as ever. I wished you'd been

here."

This was a fib. Cecily knew it.

"I don't, then," she said contemptuously. "You know I never had much

use for Cromwell Biron. I think he had a face of his own to come down

here to see you uninvited, after the way he treated you."

Lucy Ellen blushed scorchingly and was miserably silent.

"He's changed terrible in his looks," went on Cecily relentlessly.

"How bald he's got--and fat! To think of the spruce Cromwell Biron got

to be bald and fat! To be sure, he still has the same sheepish

expression. Will you pass me the currant jell, Lucy Ellen?"

"I don't think he's so very fat," she said resentfully, when Cecily

had left the table. "And I don't care if he is."

Twenty years before this, Biron had jilted Lucy Ellen Foster. She was

the prettiest girl in Oriental then, but the new school teacher over

at the Crossways was prettier, with a dash of piquancy, which Lucy

Ellen lacked, into the bargain. Cromwell and the school teacher had

run away and been married, and Lucy Ellen was left to pick up the

tattered shreds of her poor romance as best she could.

She never had another lover. She told herself that she would always be

faithful to the one love of her life. This sounded romantic, and she

found a certain comfort in it.

She had been brought up by her uncle and aunt. When they died she and

her cousin, Cecily Foster, found themselves, except for each other,

alone in the world.

Cecily loved Lucy Ellen as a sister. But she believed that Lucy Ellen

would yet marry, and her heart sank at the prospect of being left

without a soul to love and care for.

It was Lucy Ellen that had first proposed their mutual promise, but

Cecily had grasped at it eagerly. The two women, verging on decisive

old maidenhood, solemnly promised each other that they would never

marry, and would always live together. From that time Cecily's mind

had been at ease. In her eyes a promise was a sacred thing.

The next evening at prayer-meeting Cromwell Biron received quite an

ovation from old friends and neighbors. Cromwell had been a favorite

in his boyhood. He had now the additional glamour of novelty and

reputed wealth.

He was beaming and expansive. He went into the choir to help sing.

Lucy Ellen sat beside him, and they sang from the same book. Two red

spots burned on her thin cheeks, and she had a cluster of lavender

chrysanthemums pinned on her jacket. She looked almost girlish, and

Cromwell Biron gazed at her with sidelong admiration, while Cecily

watched them both fiercely from her pew. She knew that Cromwell Biron

had come home, wooing his old love.

"But he sha'n't get her," Cecily whispered into her hymnbook. Somehow

it was a comfort to articulate the words, "She promised."

On the church steps Cromwell offered his arm to Lucy Ellen with a

flourish. She took it shyly, and they started down the road in the

crisp Autumn moonlight. For the first time in ten years Cecily walked

home from prayer-meeting alone. She went up-stairs and flung herself

on her bed, reckless for once, of her second best hat and gown.

Lucy Ellen did not venture to ask Cromwell in. She was too much in awe

of Cecily for that. But she loitered with him at the gate until the

grandfather's clock in the hall struck eleven. Then Cromwell went

away, whistling gaily, with Lucy Ellen's chrysanthemum in his

buttonhole, and Lucy Ellen went in and cried half the night. But

Cecily did not cry. She lay savagely awake until morning.

"Cromwell Biron is courting you again," she said bluntly to Lucy Ellen

at the breakfast table.

Lucy Ellen blushed nervously.

"Oh, nonsense, Cecily," she protested with a simper.

"It isn't nonsense," said Cecily calmly. "He is. There is no fool like

an old fool, and Cromwell Biron never had much sense. The presumption

of him!"

Lucy Ellen's hands trembled as she put her teacup down.

"He's not so very old," she said faintly, "and everybody but you likes

him--and he's well-to-do. I don't see that there's any presumption."

"Maybe not--if you look at it so. You're very forgiving, Lucy Ellen.

You've forgotten how he treated you once."

"No--o--o, I haven't," faltered Lucy Ellen.

"Anyway," said Cecily coldly, "you shouldn't encourage his attentions,

Lucy Ellen; you know you couldn't marry him even if he asked you. You

promised."

All the fitful color went out of Lucy Ellen's face. Under Cecily's

pitiless eyes she wilted and drooped.

"I know," she said deprecatingly, "I haven't forgotten. You are

talking nonsense, Cecily. I like to see Cromwell, and he likes to see

me because I'm almost the only one of his old set that is left. He

feels lonesome in Oriental now."

Lucy Ellen lifted her fawn-colored little head more erectly at the

last of her protest. She had saved her self-respect.

In the month that followed Cromwell Biron pressed his suit

persistently, unintimidated by Cecily's antagonism. October drifted

into November and the chill, drear days came. To Cecily the whole

outer world seemed the dismal reflex of her pain-bitten heart. Yet she

constantly laughed at herself, too, and her laughter was real if

bitter.

One evening she came home late from a neighbor's. Cromwell Biron

passed her in the hollow under the bare boughs of the maple that were

outlined against the silvery moonlit sky.

When Cecily went into the house, Lucy Ellen opened the parlor door.

She was very pale, but her eyes burned in her face and her hands were

clasped before her.

"I wish you'd come in here for a few minutes, Cecily," she said

feverishly.

Cecily followed silently into the room.

"Cecily," she said faintly, "Cromwell was here to-night. He asked me

to marry him. I told him to come to-morrow night for his answer."

She paused and looked imploringly at Cecily. Cecily did not speak. She

stood tall and unrelenting by the table. The rigidity of her face and

figure smote Lucy Ellen like a blow. She threw out her bleached little

hands and spoke with a sudden passion utterly foreign to her.

"Cecily, I want to marry him. I--I--love him. I always have. I never

thought of this when I promised. Oh, Cecily, you'll let me off my

promise, won't you?"

"No," said Cecily. It was all she said. Lucy Ellen's hands fell to her

sides, and the light went out of her face.

"You won't?" she said hopelessly.

Cecily went out. At the door she turned.

"When John Edwards asked me to marry him six years ago, I said no for

your sake. To my mind a promise is a promise. But you were always weak

and romantic, Lucy Ellen."

Lucy Ellen made no response. She stood limply on the hearth-rug like a

faded blossom bitten by frost.

After Cromwell Biron had gone away the next evening, with all his

brisk jauntiness shorn from him for the time, Lucy Ellen went up to

Cecily's room. She stood for a moment in the narrow doorway, with the

lamplight striking upward with a gruesome effect on her wan face.

"I've sent him away," she said lifelessly. "I've kept my promise,

Cecily."

There was silence for a moment. Cecily did not know what to say.

Suddenly Lucy Ellen burst out bitterly.

"I wish I was dead!"

Then she turned swiftly and ran across the hall to her own room.

Cecily gave a little moan of pain. This was her reward for all the

love she had lavished on Lucy Ellen.

"Anyway, it is all over," she said, looking dourly into the moonlit

boughs of the firs; "Lucy Ellen'll get over it. When Cromwell is gone

she'll forget all about him. I'm not going to fret. She promised, and

she wanted the promise first."

During the next fortnight tragedy held grim sway in the little

weather-gray house among the firs--a tragedy tempered with grim comedy

for Cecily, who, amid all her agony, could not help being amused at

Lucy Ellen's romantic way of sorrowing.

Lucy Ellen did her mornings' work listlessly and drooped through the

afternoons. Cecily would have felt it as a relief if Lucy Ellen had

upbraided her, but after her outburst on the night she sent Cromwell

away, Lucy Ellen never uttered a word of reproach or complaint.

One evening Cecily made a neighborly call in the village. Cromwell

Biron happened to be there and gallantly insisted upon seeing her

home.

She understood from Cromwell's unaltered manner that Lucy Ellen had

not told him why she had refused him. She felt a sudden admiration for

her cousin.

When they reached the house Cromwell halted suddenly in the banner of

light that streamed from the sitting-room window. They saw Lucy Ellen

sitting alone before the fire, her arms folded on the table, and her

head bowed on them. Her white cat sat unnoticed at the table beside

her. Cecily gave a gasp of surrender.

"You'd better come in," she said, harshly. "Lucy Ellen looks

lonesome."

Cromwell muttered sheepishly, "I'm afraid I wouldn't be company for

her. Lucy Ellen doesn't like me much--"

"Oh, doesn't she!" said Cecily, bitterly. "She likes you better than

she likes me for all I've--but it's no matter. It's been all my

fault--she'll explain. Tell her I said she could. Come in, I say."

She caught the still reluctant Cromwell by the arm and fairly dragged

him over the geranium beds and through the front door. She opened the

sitting-room door and pushed him in. Lucy Ellen rose in amazement.

Over Cromwell's bald head loomed Cecily's dark face, tragic and

determined.

"Here's your beau, Lucy Ellen," she said, "and I give you back your

promise."

She shut the door upon the sudden illumination of Lucy Ellen's face

and went up-stairs with the tears rolling down her cheeks.

"It's my turn to wish I was dead," she muttered. Then she laughed

hysterically.

"That goose of a Cromwell! How queer he did look standing there,

frightened to death of Lucy Ellen. Poor little Lucy Ellen! Well, I

hope he'll be good to her."

The Pursuit of the Ideal

Freda's snuggery was aglow with the rose-red splendour of an open fire

which was triumphantly warding off the stealthy approaches of the dull

grey autumn twilight. Roger St. Clair stretched himself out

luxuriously in an easy-chair with a sigh of pleasure.

"Freda, your armchairs are the most comfy in the world. How do you get

them to fit into a fellow's kinks so splendidly?"

Freda smiled at him out of big, owlish eyes that were the same tint as

the coppery grey sea upon which the north window of the snuggery

looked.

"Any armchair will fit a lazy fellow's kinks," she said.

"I'm not lazy," protested Roger. "That you should say so, Freda, when

I have wheeled all the way out of town this dismal afternoon over the

worst bicycle road in three kingdoms to see you, bonnie maid!"

"I like lazy people," said Freda softly, tilting her spoon on a cup of

chocolate with a slender brown hand.

Roger smiled at her chummily.

"You are such a comfortable girl," he said. "I like to talk to you and

tell you things."

"You have something to tell me today. It has been fairly sticking out

of your eyes ever since you came. Now, 'fess."

Freda put away her cup and saucer, got up, and stood by the fireplace,

with one arm outstretched along the quaintly carved old mantel. She

laid her head down on its curve and looked expectantly at Roger.

"I have seen my ideal, Freda," said Roger gravely.

Freda lifted her head and then laid it down again. She did not speak.

Roger was glad of it. Even at the moment he found himself thinking

that Freda had a genius for silence. Any other girl he knew would have

broken in at once with surprised exclamations and questions and

spoiled his story.

"You have not forgotten what my ideal woman is like?" he said.

Freda shook her head. She was not likely to forget. She remembered

only too keenly the afternoon he had told her. They had been sitting

in the snuggery, herself in the inglenook, and Roger coiled up in his

big pet chair that nobody else ever sat in.

"'What must my lady be that I must love her?'" he had quoted. "Well, I

will paint my dream-love for you, Freda. She must be tall and slender,

with chestnut hair of wonderful gloss, with just the suggestion of a

ripple in it. She must have an oval face, colourless ivory in hue,

with the expression of a Madonna; and her eyes must be 'passionless,

peaceful blue,' deep and tender as a twilight sky."

Freda, looking at herself along her arm in the mirror, recalled this

description and smiled faintly. She was short and plump, with a

piquant, irregular little face, vivid tinting, curly, unmanageable

hair of ruddy brown, and big grey eyes. Certainly, she was not his

ideal.

"When and where did you meet your lady of the Madonna face and

twilight eyes?" she asked.

Roger frowned. Freda's face was solemn enough but her eyes looked as

if she might be laughing at him.

"I haven't met her yet. I have only seen her. It was in the park

yesterday. She was in a carriage with the Mandersons. So beautiful,

Freda! Our eyes met as she drove past and I realized that I had found

my long-sought ideal. I rushed back to town and hunted up Pete

Manderson at the club. Pete is a donkey but he has his ways of being

useful. He told me who she was. Her name is Stephanie Gardiner; she is

his cousin from the south and is visiting his mother. And, Freda, I am

to dine at the Mandersons' tonight. I shall meet her."

"Do goddesses and ideals and Madonnas eat?" said Freda in an awed

whisper. Her eyes were certainly laughing now. Roger got up stiffly.

"I must confess I did not expect that you would ridicule my

confidence, Freda," he said frigidly. "It is very unlike you. But if

you are not interested I will not bore you with any further details.

And it is time I was getting back to town anyhow."

When he had gone Freda ran to the west window and flung it open. She

leaned out and waved both hands at him over the spruce hedge.

"Roger, Roger, I was a horrid little beast. Forget it immediately,

please. And come out tomorrow and tell me all about her."

Roger came. He bored Freda terribly with his raptures but she never

betrayed it. She was all sympathy--or, at least, as much sympathy as a

woman can be who must listen while the man of men sings another

woman's praises to her. She sent Roger away in perfect good humour

with himself and all the world, then she curled herself up in the

snuggery, pulled a rug over her head, and cried.

Roger came out to Lowlands oftener than ever after that. He had to

talk to somebody about Stephanie Gardiner and Freda was the safest

vent. The "pursuit of the Ideal," as she called it, went on with vim

and fervour. Sometimes Roger would be on the heights of hope and

elation; the next visit he would be in the depths of despair and

humility. Freda had learned to tell which it was by the way he opened

the snuggery door.

One day when Roger came he found six feet of young man reposing at

ease in his particular chair. Freda was sipping chocolate in her

corner and looking over the rim of her cup at the intruder just as she

had been wont to look at Roger. She had on a new dark red gown and

looked vivid and rose-hued.

She introduced the stranger as Mr. Grayson and called him Tim. They

seemed to be excellent friends. Roger sat bolt upright on the edge of

a fragile, gilded chair which Freda kept to hide a shabby spot in the

carpet, and glared at Tim until the latter said goodbye and lounged

out.

"You'll be over tomorrow?" said Freda.

"Can't I come this evening?" he pleaded.

Freda nodded. "Yes--and we'll make taffy. You used to make such

delicious stuff, Tim."

"Who is that fellow, Freda?" Roger inquired crossly, as soon as the

door closed.

Freda began to make a fresh pot of chocolate. She smiled dreamily as

if thinking of something pleasant.

"Why, that was Tim Grayson--dear old Tim. He used to live next door to

us when we were children. And we were such chums--always together,

making mud pies, and getting into scrapes. He is just the same old

Tim, and is home from the west for a long visit. I was so glad to see

him again."

"So it would appear," said Roger grumpily. "Well, now that 'dear old

Tim' is gone, I suppose I can have my own chair, can I? And do give me

some chocolate. I didn't know you made taffy."

"Oh, I don't. It's Tim. He can do everything. He used to make it long

ago, and I washed up after him and helped him eat it. How is the

pursuit of the Ideal coming on, Roger-boy?"

Roger did not feel as if he wanted to talk about the Ideal. He noticed

how vivid Freda's smile was and how lovable were the curves of her

neck where the dusky curls were caught up from it. He had also an

inner vision of Freda making taffy with Tim and he did not approve of

it.

He refused to talk about the Ideal. On his way back to town he found

himself thinking that Freda had the most charming, glad little laugh

of any girl he knew. He suddenly remembered that he had never heard

the Ideal laugh. She smiled placidly--he had raved to Freda about that

smile--but she did not laugh. Roger began to wonder what an ideal

without any sense of humour would be like when translated into the

real.

He went to Lowlands the next afternoon and found Tim there--in his

chair again. He detested the fellow but he could not deny that he was

good-looking and had charming manners. Freda was very nice to Tim. On

his way back to town Roger decided that Tim was in love with Freda. He

was furious at the idea. The presumption of the man!

He also remembered that he had not said a word to Freda about the

Ideal. And he never did say much more--perhaps because he could not

get the chance. Tim was always there before him and generally

outstayed him.

One day when he went out he did not find Freda at home. Her aunt told

him that she was out riding with Mr. Grayson. On his way back he met

them. As they cantered by, Freda waved her riding whip at him. Her

face was full of warm, ripe, kissable tints, her loose lovelocks were

blowing about it, and her eyes shone like grey pools mirroring stars.

Roger turned and watched them out of sight behind the firs that cupped

Lowlands.

That night at Mrs. Crandall's dinner table somebody began to talk

about Freda. Roger strained his ears to listen. Mrs. Kitty Carr was

speaking--Mrs. Kitty knew everything and everybody.

"She is simply the most charming girl in the world when you get really

acquainted with her," said Mrs. Kitty, with the air of having

discovered and patented Freda. "She is so vivid and unconventional and

lovable--'spirit and fire and dew,' you know. Tim Grayson is a very

lucky fellow."

"Are they engaged?" someone asked.

"Not yet, I fancy. But of course it is only a question of time. Tim

simply adores her. He is a good soul and has lots of money, so he'll

do. But really, you know, I think a prince wouldn't be good enough for

Freda."

Roger suddenly became conscious that the Ideal was asking him a

question of which he had not heard a word. He apologized and was

forgiven. But he went home a very miserable man.

He did not go to Lowlands for two weeks. They were the longest, most

wretched two weeks he had ever lived through. One afternoon he heard

that Tim Grayson had gone back west. Mrs. Kitty told it mournfully.

"Of course, this means that Freda has refused him," she said. "She is

such an odd girl."

Roger went straight out to Lowlands. He found Freda in the snuggery

and held out his hands to her.

"Freda, will you marry me? It will take a lifetime to tell you how

much I love you."

"But the Ideal?" questioned Freda.

"I have just discovered what my ideal is," said Roger. "She is a dear,

loyal, companionable little girl, with the jolliest laugh and the

warmest, truest heart in the world. She has starry grey eyes, two

dimples, and a mouth I must and will kiss--there--there--there! Freda,

tell me you love me a little bit, although I've been such a besotted

idiot."

"I will not let you call my husband-that-is-to-be names," said Freda,

snuggling down into the curve of his shoulder. "But indeed, Roger-boy,

you will have to make me very, very happy to square matters up. You

have made me so unutterably unhappy for two months."

"The pursuit of the Ideal is ended," declared Roger.

The Softening of Miss Cynthia

"I wonder if I'd better flavour this cake with lemon or vanilla. It's

the most perplexing thing I ever heard of in my life."

Miss Cynthia put down the bottles with a vexed frown; her perplexity

had nothing whatever to do with flavouring the golden mixture in her

cake bowl. Mrs. John Joe knew that; the latter had dropped in in a

flurry of curiosity concerning the little boy whom she had seen about

Miss Cynthia's place for the last two days. Her daughter Kitty was

with her; they both sat close together on the kitchen sofa.

"It _is_ too bad," said Mrs. John Joe sympathetically. "I don't wonder

you are mixed up. So unexpected, too! When did he come?"

"Tuesday night," said Miss Cynthia. She had decided on the vanilla and

was whipping it briskly in. "I saw an express wagon drive into the

yard with a boy and a trunk in it and I went out just as he got down.

'Are you my Aunt Cynthia?' he said. 'Who in the world are you?' I

asked. And he says, 'I'm Wilbur Merrivale, and my father was John

Merrivale. He died three weeks ago and he said I was to come to you,

because you were his sister.' Well, you could just have knocked me

down with a feather!"

"I'm sure," said Mrs. John Joe. "But I didn't know you had a brother.

And his name--Merrivale?"

"Well, he wasn't any relation really. I was about six years old when

my father married his mother, the Widow Merrivale. John was just my

age, and we were brought up together just like brother and sister. He

was a real nice fellow, I must say. But he went out to Californy years

ago, and I haven't heard a word of him for fifteen years--didn't know

if he was alive or dead. But it seems from what I can make out from

the boy, that his mother died when he was a baby, and him and John

roughed it along together--pretty poor, too, I guess--till John took

a fever and died. And he told some of his friends to send the boy to

me, for he'd no relations there and not a cent in the world. And the

child came all the way from Californy, and here he is. I've been just

distracted ever since. I've never been used to children, and to have

the house kept in perpetual uproar is more than I can stand. He's

about twelve and a born mischief. He'll tear through the rooms with

his dirty feet, and he's smashed one of my blue vases and torn down a

curtain and set Towser on the cat half a dozen times already--I never

was so worried. I've got him out on the verandah shelling peas now, to

keep him quiet for a little spell."

"I'm really sorry for you," said Mrs. John Joe. "But, poor child, I

suppose he's never had anyone to look after him. And come all the way

from Californy alone, too--he must be real smart."

"Too smart, I guess. He must take after his mother, whoever she was,

for there ain't a bit of Merrivale in him. And he's been brought up

pretty rough."

"Well, it'll be a great responsibility for you, Cynthia, of course.

But he'll be company, too, and he'll be real handy to run errands

and--"

"_I'm_ not going to keep him," said Miss Cynthia determinedly. Her

thin lips set themselves firmly and her voice had a hard ring.

"Not going to keep him?" said Mrs. John Joe blankly. "You can't send

him back to Californy!"

"I don't intend to. But as for having him here to worry my life out

and keep me in a perpetual stew, I just won't do it. D'ye think I'm

going to trouble myself about children at my age? And all he'd cost

for clothes and schooling, too! I can't afford it. I don't suppose his

father expected it either. I suppose he expected me to look after him

a bit--and of course I will. A boy of his age ought to be able to

earn his keep, anyway. If I look out a place for him somewhere where

he can do odd jobs and go to school in the winter, I think it's all

anyone can expect of me, when he ain't really no blood relation."

Miss Cynthia flung the last sentence at Mrs. John Joe rather

defiantly, not liking the expression on that lady's face.

"I suppose nobody could expect more, Cynthy," said Mrs. John Joe

deprecatingly. "He would be an awful bother, I've no doubt, and you've

lived alone so long with no one to worry you that you wouldn't know

what to do with him. Boys are always getting into mischief--my four

just keep me on the dead jump. Still, it's a pity for him, poor little

fellow! No mother or father--it seems hard."

Miss Cynthia's face grew grimmer than ever as she went to the door

with her callers and watched them down the garden path. As soon as

Mrs. John Joe saw that the door was shut, she unburdened her mind to

her daughter.

"Did you ever hear tell of the like? I thought I knew Cynthia

Henderson well, if anybody in Wilmot did, but this beats me. Just

think, Kitty--there she is, no one knows how rich, and not a soul in

the world belonging to her, and she won't even take in her brother's

child. She must be a hard woman. But it's just meanness, pure and

simple; she grudges him what he'd eat and wear. The poor mite doesn't

look as if he'd need much. Cynthia didn't used to be like that, but

it's growing on her every day. She's got hard as rocks."

That afternoon Miss Cynthia harnessed her fat grey pony into the

phaeton herself--she kept neither man nor maid, but lived in her big,

immaculate house in solitary state--and drove away down the dusty,

buttercup-bordered road, leaving Wilbur sitting on the verandah. She

returned in an hour's time and drove into the yard, shutting the gate

behind her with a vigorous snap. Wilbur was not in sight and, fearful

lest he should be in mischief, she hurriedly tied the pony to the

railing and went in search of him. She found him sitting by the well,

his chin in his hands; he was pale and his eyes were red. Miss Cynthia

hardened her heart and took him into the house.

"I've been down to see Mr. Robins this afternoon, Wilbur," she said,

pretending to brush some invisible dust from the bottom of her nice

black cashmere skirt for an excuse to avoid looking at him, "and he's

agreed to take you on trial. It's a real good chance--better than you

could expect. He says he'll board and clothe you and let you go to

school in the winter."

The boy seemed to shrink.

"Daddy said that I would stay with you," he said wistfully. "He said

you were so good and kind and would love me for his sake."

For a moment Miss Cynthia softened. She had been very fond of her

stepbrother; it seemed that his voice appealed to her across the grave

in behalf of his child. But the crust of years was not to be so easily

broken.

"Your father meant that I would look after you," she said, "and I mean

to, but I can't afford to keep you here. You'll have a good place at

Mr. Robins', if you behave yourself. I'm going to take you down now,

before I unharness the pony, so go and wash your face while I put up

your things. Don't look so woebegone, for pity's sake! I'm not taking

you to prison."

Wilbur turned and went silently to the kitchen. Miss Cynthia thought

she heard a sob. She went with a firm step into the little bedroom off

the hall and took a purse out of a drawer.

"I s'pose I ought," she said doubtfully. "I don't s'pose he has a

cent. I daresay he'll lose or waste it."

She counted out seventy-five cents carefully. When she came out,

Wilbur was at the door. She put the money awkwardly into his hand.

"There, see that you don't spend it on any foolishness."

*       *       *       *       *

Miss Cynthia's Action made a good deal of talk in Wilmot. The women,

headed by Mrs. John Joe--who said behind Cynthia's back what she did

not dare say to her face--condemned her. The men laughed and said that

Cynthia was a shrewd one; there was no getting round her. Miss Cynthia

herself was far from easy. She could not forget Wilbur's wistful eyes,

and she had heard that Robins was a hard master.

A week after the boy had gone she saw him one day at the store. He was

lifting heavy bags from a cart. The work was beyond his strength, and

he was flushed and panting. Miss Cynthia's conscience gave her a hard

stab. She bought a roll of peppermints and took them over to him. He

thanked her timidly and drove quickly away.

"Robins hasn't any business putting such work on a child," she said to

herself indignantly. "I'll speak to him about it."

And she did--and got an answer that made her ears tingle. Mr. Robins

bluntly told her he guessed he knew what was what about his hands. He

weren't no nigger driver. If she wasn't satisfied, she might take the

boy away as soon as she liked.

Miss Cynthia did not get much comfort out of life that summer. Almost

everywhere she went she was sure to meet Wilbur, engaged in some hard

task. She could not help seeing how miserably pale and thin he had

become. The worry had its effect on her. The neighbours said that

Cynthy was sharper than ever. Even her church-going was embittered.

She had always enjoyed walking up the aisle with her rich silk skirt

rustling over the carpet, her cashmere shawl folded correctly over her

shoulders, and her lace bonnet set precisely on her thin shining

crimps. But she could take no pleasure in that or in the sermon now,

when Wilbur sat right across from her pew, between hard-featured

Robins and his sulky-looking wife. The boy's eyes had grown too large

for his thin face.

The softening of Miss Cynthia was a very gradual process, but it

reached a climax one September morning, when Mrs. John Joe came into

the former's kitchen with an important face. Miss Cynthia was

preserving her plums.

"No, thank you, I'll not sit down--I only run in--I suppose you've

heard it. That little Merrivale boy has took awful sick with fever,

they say. He's been worked half to death this summer--everyone knows

what Robins is with his help--and they say he has fretted a good deal

for his father and been homesick, and he's run down, I s'pose. Anyway,

Robins took him over to the hospital at Stanford last night--good

gracious, Cynthy, are you sick?"

Miss Cynthia had staggered to a seat by the table; her face was

pallid.

"No, it's only your news gave me a turn--it came so suddenly--I didn't

know."

"I must hurry back and see to the men's dinners. I thought I'd come

and tell you, though I didn't know as you'd care."

This parting shot was unheeded by Miss Cynthia. She laid her face in

her hands. "It's a judgement on me," she moaned. "He's going to die,

and I'm his murderess. This is the account I'll have to give John

Merrivale of his boy. I've been a wicked, selfish woman, and I'm

justly punished."

It was a humbled Miss Cynthia who met the doctor at the hospital that

afternoon. He shook his head at her eager questions.

"It's a pretty bad case. The boy seems run down every way. No, it is

impossible to think of moving him again. Bringing him here last night

did him a great deal of harm. Yes, you may see him, but he will not

know you, I fear--he is delirious and raves of his father and

California."

Miss Cynthia followed the doctor down the long ward. When he paused by

a cot, she pushed past him. Wilbur lay tossing restlessly on his

pillow. He was thin to emaciation, but his cheeks were crimson and his

eyes burning bright.

Miss Cynthia stooped and took the hot, dry hands in hers.

"Wilbur," she sobbed, "don't you know me--Aunt Cynthia?"

"You are not my Aunt Cynthia," said Wilbur. "Daddy said Aunt Cynthia

was good and kind--you are a cross, bad woman. I want Daddy. Why

doesn't he come? Why doesn't he come to little Wilbur?"

Miss Cynthia got up and faced the doctor.

"He's _got_ to get better," she said stubbornly. "Spare no expense or

trouble. If he dies, I will be a murderess. He must live and give me a

chance to make it up for him."

And he did live; but for a long time it was a hard fight, and there

were days when it seemed that death must win. Miss Cynthia got so thin

and wan that even Mrs. John Joe pitied her.

The earth seemed to Miss Cynthia to laugh out in prodigal joyousness

on the afternoon she drove home when Wilbur had been pronounced out of

danger. How tranquil the hills looked, with warm October sunshine

sleeping on their sides and faint blue hazes on their brows! How

gallantly the maples flaunted their crimson flags! How kind and

friendly was every face she met! Afterwards, Miss Cynthia said she

began to live that day.

Wilbur's recovery was slow. Every day Miss Cynthia drove over with

some dainty, and her loving gentleness sat none the less gracefully on

her because of its newness. Wilbur grew to look for and welcome her

coming. When it was thought safe to remove him, Miss Cynthia went to

the hospital with a phaeton-load of shawls and pillows.

"I have come to take you away," she said.

Wilbur shrank back. "Not to Mr. Robins," he said piteously. "Oh, not

there, Aunt Cynthia!"

"Of course not," Miss Cynthia said.

Them Notorious Pigs

John Harrington was a woman-hater, or thought that he was, which

amounts to the same thing. He was forty-five and, having been handsome

in his youth, was a fine-looking man still. He had a remarkably good

farm and was a remarkably good farmer. He also had a garden which was

the pride and delight of his heart or, at least, it was before Mrs.

Hayden's pigs got into it.

Sarah King, Harrington's aunt and housekeeper, was deaf and crabbed,

and very few visitors ever came to the house. This suited Harrington.

He was a good citizen and did his duty by the community, but his bump

of sociability was undeveloped. He was also a contented man, looking

after his farm, improving his stock, and experimenting with new bulbs

in undisturbed serenity. This, however, was all too good to last. A

man is bound to have some troubles in this life, and Harrington's were

near their beginning when Perry Hayden bought the adjoining farm from

the heirs of Shakespeare Ely, deceased, and moved in.

To be sure, Perry Hayden, poor fellow, did not bother Harrington much,

for he died of pneumonia a month after he came there, but his widow

carried on the farm with the assistance of a lank hired boy. Her own

children, Charles and Theodore, commonly known as Bobbles and Ted,

were as yet little more than babies.

The real trouble began when Mary Hayden's pigs, fourteen in number and

of half-grown voracity, got into Harrington's garden. A railing, a fir

grove, and an apple orchard separated the two establishments, but

these failed to keep the pigs within bounds.

Harrington had just got his garden planted for the season, and to go

out one morning and find a horde of enterprising porkers rooting about

in it was, to put it mildly, trying. He was angry, but as it was a

first offence he drove the pigs out with tolerable calmness, mended

the fence, and spent the rest of the day repairing damages.

Three days later the pigs got in again. Harrington relieved his mind

by some scathing reflections on women who tried to run farms. Then he

sent Mordecai, his hired man, over to the Hayden place to ask Mrs.

Hayden if she would be kind enough to keep her pigs out of his garden.

Mrs. Hayden sent back word that she was very sorry and would not let

it occur again. Nobody, not even John Harrington, could doubt that she

meant what she said. But she had reckoned without the pigs. They had

not forgotten the flavour of Egyptian fleshpots as represented by the

succulent young shoots in the Harrington domains. A week later

Mordecai came in and told Harrington that "them notorious pigs" were

in his garden again.

There is a limit to everyone's patience. Harrington left Mordecai to

drive them out, while he put on his hat and stalked over to the

Haydens' place. Ted and Bobbles were playing at marbles in the lane

and ran when they saw him coming. He got close up to the little low

house among the apple trees before Mordecai appeared in the yard,

driving the pigs around the barn. Mrs. Hayden was sitting on her

doorstep, paring her dinner potatoes, and stood up hastily when she

saw her visitor.

Harrington had never seen his neighbour at close quarters before. Now

he could not help seeing that she was a very pretty little woman, with

wistful, dark blue eyes and an appealing expression. Mary Hayden had

been next to a beauty in her girlhood, and she had a good deal of her

bloom left yet, although hard work and worry were doing their best to

rob her of it. But John Harrington was an angry man and did not care

whether the woman in question was pretty or not. Her pigs had rooted

up his garden--that fact filled his mind.

"Mrs. Hayden, those pigs of yours have been in my garden again. I

simply can't put up with this any longer. Why in the name of reason

don't you look after your animals better? If I find them in again I'll

set my dog on them, I give you fair warning."

A faint colour had crept into Mary Hayden's soft, milky-white cheeks

during this tirade, and her voice trembled as she said, "I'm very

sorry, Mr. Harrington. I suppose Bobbles forgot to shut the gate of

their pen again this morning. He is so forgetful."

"I'd lengthen his memory, then, if I were you," returned Harrington

grimly, supposing that Bobbles was the hired man. "I'm not going to

have my garden ruined just because he happens to be forgetful. I am

speaking my mind plainly, madam. If you can't keep your stock from

being a nuisance to other people you ought not to try to run a farm at

all."

Then did Mrs. Hayden sit down upon the doorstep and burst into tears.

Harrington felt, as Sarah King would have expressed it, "every which

way at once." Here was a nice mess! What a nuisance women were--worse

than the pigs!

"Oh, don't cry, Mrs. Hayden," he said awkwardly. "I didn't mean--well,

I suppose I spoke too strongly. Of course I know you didn't mean to

let the pigs in. There, do stop crying! I beg your pardon if I've hurt

your feelings."

"Oh, it isn't that," sobbed Mrs. Hayden, wiping away her tears. "It's

only--I've tried so hard--and everything seems to go wrong. I make

such mistakes. As for your garden, sir. I'll pay for the damage my

pigs have done if you'll let me know what it comes to."

She sobbed again and caught her breath like a grieved child.

Harrington felt like a brute. He had a queer notion that if he put his

arm around her and told her not to worry over things women were not

created to attend to he would be expressing his feelings better than

in any other way. But of course he couldn't do that. Instead, he

muttered that the damage didn't amount to much after all, and he hoped

she wouldn't mind what he said, and then he got himself away and

strode through the orchard like a man in a desperate hurry.

Mordecai had gone home and the pigs were not to be seen, but a chubby

little face peeped at him from between two scrub, bloom-white cherry

trees.

"G'way, you bad man!" said Bobbles vindictively. "G'way! You made my

mommer cry--I saw you. I'm only Bobbles now, but when I grow up I'll

be Charles Henry Hayden and you won't dare to make my mommer cry

then."

Harrington smiled grimly. "So you're the lad who forgets to shut the

pigpen gate, are you? Come out here and let me see you. Who is in

there with you?"

"Ted is. He's littler than me. But I won't come out. I don't like you.

G'way home."

Harrington obeyed. He went home and to work in his garden. But work as

hard as he would, he could not forget Mary Hayden's grieved face.

"I was a brute!" he thought. "Why couldn't I have mentioned the matter

gently? I daresay she has enough to trouble her. Confound those pigs!"

*       *       *       *       *

After that there was a time of calm. Evidently something had been done

to Bobbles' memory or perhaps Mrs. Hayden attended to the gate

herself. At all events the pigs were not seen and Harrington's garden

blossomed like the rose. But Harrington himself was in a bad state.

For one thing, wherever he looked he saw the mental picture of his

neighbour's tired, sweet face and the tears in her blue eyes. The

original he never saw, which only made matters worse. He wondered what

opinion she had of him and decided that she must think him a cross old

bear. This worried him. He wished the pigs would break in again so

that he might have a chance to show how forbearing he could be.

One day he gathered a nice mess of tender young greens and sent them

over to Mrs. Hayden by Mordecai. At first he had thought of sending

her some flowers, but that seemed silly, and besides, Mordecai and

flowers were incongruous. Mrs. Hayden sent back a very pretty message

of thanks, whereat Harrington looked radiant and Mordecai, who could

see through a stone wall as well as most people, went out to the barn

and chuckled.

"Ef the little widder hain't caught him! Who'd a-thought it?"

The next day one adventurous pig found its way alone into the

Harrington garden. Harrington saw it get in and at the same moment he

saw Mrs. Hayden running through her orchard. She was in his yard by

the time he got out.

Her sunbonnet had fallen back and some loose tendrils of her auburn

hair were curling around her forehead. Her cheeks were so pink and her

eyes so bright from running that she looked almost girlish.

"Oh, Mr. Harrington," she said breathlessly, "that pet pig of Bobbles'

is in your garden again. He only got in this minute. I saw him coming

and I ran right after him."

"He's there, all right," said Harrington cheerfully, "but I'll get him

out in a jiffy. Don't tire yourself. Won't you go into the house and

rest while I drive him around?"

Mrs. Hayden, however, was determined to help and they both went around

to the garden, set the gate open, and tried to drive the pig out. But

Harrington was not thinking about pigs, and Mrs. Hayden did not know

quite so much about driving them as Mordecai did; as a consequence

they did not make much headway. In her excitement Mrs. Hayden ran over

beds and whatever came in her way, and Harrington, in order to keep

near her, ran after her. Between them they spoiled things about as

much as a whole drove of pigs would have done.

But at last the pig grew tired of the fun, bolted out of the gate, and

ran across the yard to his own place. Mrs. Hayden followed slowly and

Harrington walked beside her.

"Those pigs are all to be shut up tomorrow," she said. "Hiram has been

fixing up a place for them in his spare moments and it is ready at

last."

"Oh, I wouldn't," said Harrington hastily. "It isn't good for pigs to

be shut up so young. You'd better let them run a while yet."

"No," said Mrs. Hayden decidedly. "They have almost worried me to

death already. In they go tomorrow."

They were at the lane gate now, and Harrington had to open it and let

her pass through. He felt quite desperate as he watched her trip up

through the rows of apple trees, her blue gingham skirt brushing the

lush grasses where a lacy tangle of sunbeams and shadows lay. Bobbles

and Ted came running to meet her and the three, hand in hand,

disappeared from sight.

Harrington went back to the house, feeling that life was flat, stale,

and unprofitable. That evening at the tea table he caught himself

wondering what it would be like to see Mary Hayden sitting at his

table in place of Sarah King, with Bobbles and Ted on either hand.

Then he found out what was the matter with him. He was in love,

fathoms deep, with the blue-eyed widow!

Presumably the pigs were shut up the next day, for Harrington's garden

was invaded no more. He stood it for a week and then surrendered at

discretion. He filled a basket with early strawberries and went across

to the Hayden place, boldly enough to all appearance, but with his

heart thumping like any schoolboy's.

The front door stood hospitably open, flanked by rows of defiant red

and yellow hollyhocks. Harrington paused on the step, with his hand

outstretched to knock. Somewhere inside he heard a low sobbing.

Forgetting all about knocking, he stepped softly in and walked to the

door of the little sitting-room. Bobbles was standing behind him in

the middle of the kitchen but Harrington did not see him. He was

looking at Mary Hayden, who was sitting by the table in the room with

her arms flung out over it and her head bowed on them. She was crying

softly in a hopeless fashion.

Harrington put down his strawberries. "Mary!" he exclaimed.

Mrs. Hayden straightened herself up with a start and looked at him,

her lips quivering and her eyes full of tears.

"What is the matter?" said Harrington anxiously. "Is anything wrong?"

"Oh, nothing much," Said Mrs. Hayden, trying to recover herself. "Yes,

there is too. But it is very foolish of me to be going on like this. I

didn't know anyone was near. And I was feeling so discouraged. The

colt broke his leg in the swamp pasture today and Hiram had to shoot

him. It was Ted's colt. But there, there is no use in crying over it."

And by way of proving this, the poor, tired, overburdened little woman

began to cry again. She was past caring whether Harrington saw her or

not.

The woman-hater was so distressed that he forgot to be nervous. He sat

down and put his arm around her and spoke out what was in his mind

without further parley.

"Don't cry, Mary. Listen to me. You were never meant to run a farm and

be killed with worry. You ought to be looked after and petted. I want

you to marry me and then everything will be all right. I've loved you

ever since that day I came over here and made you cry. Do you think

you can like me a little, Mary?"

It may be that Mrs. Hayden was not very much surprised, because

Harrington's face had been like an open book the day they chased the

pig out of the garden together. As for what she said, perhaps Bobbles,

who was surreptitiously gorging himself on Harrington's strawberries,

may tell you, but I certainly shall not.

The little brown house among the apple trees is shut up now and the

boundary fence belongs to ancient history. Sarah King has gone also

and Mrs. John Harrington reigns royally in her place. Bobbles and Ted

have a small, blue-eyed, much-spoiled sister, and there is a pig on

the estate who may die of old age, but will never meet his doom

otherwise. It is Bobbles' pig and one of the famous fourteen.

Mordecai still shambles around and worships Mrs. Harrington. The

garden is the same as of yore, but the house is a different place and

Harrington is a different man. And Mordecai will tell you with a

chuckle, "It was them notorious pigs as did it all."

Why Not Ask Miss Price?

Frances Allen came in from the post office and laid an open letter on

the table beside her mother, who was making mincemeat. Alma Allen

looked up from the cake she was frosting to ask, "What is the matter?

You look as if your letter contained unwelcome news, Fan."

"So it does. It is from Aunt Clara, to say she cannot come. She has

received a telegram that her sister-in-law is very ill and she must go

to her at once."

Mrs. Allen looked regretful, and Alma cast her spoon away with a

tragic air.

"That is too bad. I feel as if our celebration were spoiled. But I

suppose it can't be helped."

"No," agreed Frances, sitting down and beginning to peel apples. "So

there is no use in lamenting, or I would certainly sit down and cry, I

feel so disappointed."

"Is Uncle Frank coming?"

"Yes, Aunt Clara says he will come down from Stellarton if Mrs. King

does not get worse. So that will leave just one vacant place. We must

invite someone to fill it up. Who shall it be?"

Both girls looked rather puzzled. Mrs. Allen smiled a quiet little

smile all to herself and went on chopping suet. She had handed the

Thanksgiving dinner over to Frances and Alma this year. They were to

attend to all the preparations and invite all the guests. But although

they had made or planned several innovations in the dinner itself,

they had made no change in the usual list of guests.

"It must just be the time-honoured family affair," Frances had

declared. "If we begin inviting other folks, there is no knowing when

to draw the line. We can't have more than fourteen, and some of our

friends would be sure to feel slighted."

So the same old list it was. But now Aunt Clara--dear, jolly Aunt

Clara, whom everybody in the connection loved and admired--could not

come, and her place must be filled.

"We can't invite the new minister, because we would have to have his

sister, too," said Frances. "And there is no reason for asking any one

of our girl chums more than another."

"Mother, you will have to help us out," said Alma. "Can't you suggest

a substitute guest?"

Mrs. Allen looked down at the two bright, girlish faces turned up to

her and said slowly, "I think I can, but I am not sure my choice will

please you. Why not ask Miss Price?"

Miss Price! They had never thought of her! She was the pale,

timid-looking little teacher in the primary department of the

Hazelwood school.

"Miss Price?" repeated Frances slowly. "Why, Mother, we hardly know

her. She is dreadfully dull and quiet, I think."

"And so shy," said Alma. "Why, at the Wards' party the other night she

looked startled to death if anyone spoke to her. I believe she would

be frightened to come here for Thanksgiving."

"She is a very lonely little creature," said Mrs. Allen gently, "and

doesn't seem to have anyone belonging to her. I think she would be

very glad to get an invitation to spend Thanksgiving elsewhere than in

that cheerless little boarding-house where she lives."

"Of course, if you would like to have her, Mother, we will ask her,"

said Frances.

"No, girls," said Mrs. Allen seriously. "You must not ask Miss Price

on my account, if you do not feel prepared to make her welcome for her

own sake. I had hoped that your own kind hearts might have prompted

you to extend a little Thanksgiving cheer in a truly Thanksgiving

spirit to a lonely, hard-working girl whose life I do not think is a

happy one. But there, I shall not preach. This is your dinner, and you

must please yourselves as to your guests."

Frances and Alma had both flushed, and they now remained silent for a

few minutes. Then Frances sprang up and threw her arms around her

mother.

"You're right, Mother dear, as you always are, and we are very selfish

girls. We will ask Miss Price and try to give her a nice time. I'll go

down this very evening and see her."

*       *       *       *       *

In the grey twilight of the chilly autumn evening Bertha Price walked

home to her boarding-house, her pale little face paler, and her grey

eyes sadder than ever, in the fading light. Only two days until

Thanksgiving--but there would be no real Thanksgiving for her. Why,

she asked herself rebelliously, when there seemed so much love in the

world, was she denied her share?

Her landlady met her in the hall.

"Miss Allen is in the parlour, Miss Price. She wants to see you."

Bertha went into the parlour somewhat reluctantly. She had met Frances

Allen only once or twice and she was secretly almost afraid of the

handsome, vivacious girl who was so different from herself.

"I am sorry you have had to wait, Miss Allen," she said shyly. "I went

to see a pupil of mine who is ill and I was kept later than I

expected."

"My errand won't take very long," said Frances brightly. "Mother wants

you to spend Thanksgiving Day with us, Miss Price, if you have no

other engagement. We will have a few other guests, but nobody outside

our own family except Mr. Seeley, who is the law partner and intimate

friend of my brother Ernest in town. You'll come, won't you?"

"Oh, thank you, yes," said Bertha, in pleased surprise. "I shall be

very glad to go. Why, it is so nice to think of it. I expected my

Thanksgiving Day to be lonely and sad--not a bit Thanksgivingy."

"We shall expect you then," said Frances, with a cordial little

hand-squeeze. "Come early in the morning, and we will have a real

friendly, pleasant day."

That night Frances said to her mother and sister, "You never saw such

a transfigured face as Miss Price's when I asked her up. She looked

positively pretty--such a lovely pink came out on her cheeks and her

eyes shone like stars. She reminded me so much of somebody I've seen,

but I can't think who it is. I'm so glad we've asked her here for

Thanksgiving!"

*       *       *       *       *

Thanksgiving came, as bright and beautiful as a day could be, and the

Allens' guests came with it. Bertha Price was among them, paler and

shyer than ever. Ernest Allen and his friend, Maxwell Seeley, came out

from town on the morning train.

After all the necessary introductions had been made, Frances flew to

the kitchen.

"I've found out who it is Miss Price reminds me of," she said, as she

bustled about the range. "It's Max Seeley. You needn't laugh, Al. It's

a fact. I noticed it the minute I introduced them. He's plump and

prosperous and she's pinched and pale, but there's a resemblance

nevertheless. Look for yourself and see if it isn't so."

Back in the big, cheery parlour the Thanksgiving guests were amusing

themselves in various ways. Max Seeley had given an odd little start

when he was introduced to Miss Price, and as soon as possible he

followed her to the corner where she had taken refuge. Ernest Allen

was out in the kitchen talking to his sisters, the "uncles and cousins

and aunts" were all chattering to each other, and Mr. Seeley and Miss

Price were quite unnoticed.

"You will excuse me, won't you, Miss Price, if I ask you something

about yourself?" he said eagerly. "The truth is, you look so

strikingly like someone I used to know that I feel sure you must be

related to her. I do not think I have any relatives of your name. Have

you any of mine?"

Bertha flushed, hesitated for an instant, then said frankly, "No, I do

not think so. But I may as well tell you that Price is not my real

name and I do not know what it is, although I think it begins with S.

I believe that my parents died when I was about three years old, and I

was then taken to an orphan asylum. The next year I was taken from

there and adopted by Mrs. Price. She was very kind to me and treated

me as her own daughter. I had a happy home with her, although we were

poor. Mrs. Price wished me to bear her name, and I did so. She never

told me my true surname, perhaps she did not know it. She died when I

was sixteen, and since then I have been quite alone in the world. That

is all I know about myself."

Max Seeley was plainly excited.

"Why do you think your real name begins with S?" he asked.

"I have a watch which belonged to my mother, with the monogram 'B.S.'

on the case. It was left with the matron of the asylum and she gave it

to Mrs. Price for me. Here it is."

Max Seeley almost snatched the old-fashioned little silver watch, from

her hand and opened the case. An exclamation escaped him as he pointed

to some scratches on the inner side. They looked like the initials

M.A.S.

"Let me tell my story now," he said. "My name is Maxwell Seeley. My

father died when I was seven years old, and my mother a year later. My

little sister, Bertha, then three years old, and I were left quite

alone and very poor. We had no relatives. I was adopted by a

well-to-do old bachelor, who had known my father. My sister was taken

to an orphan asylum in a city some distance away. I was very much

attached to her and grieved bitterly over our parting. My adopted

father was very kind to me and gave me a good education. I did not

forget my sister, and as soon as I could I went to the asylum. I found

that she had been taken away long before, and I could not even

discover who had adopted her, for the original building, with all its

records, had been destroyed by fire two years previous to my visit. I

never could find any clue to her whereabouts, and long since gave up

all hope of finding her. But I have found her at last. You are Bertha

Seeley, my little sister!"

"Oh--can it be possible!"

"More than possible--it is certain. You are the image of my mother, as

I remember her, and as an old daguerreotype I have pictures her. And

this is her watch--see, I scratched my own initials on the case one

day. There is no doubt in the world. Oh, Bertha, are you half as glad

as I am?"

"Glad!"

Bertha's eyes were shining like stars. She tried to smile, but burst

into tears instead and her head went down on her brother's shoulder.

By this time everybody in the room was staring at the extraordinary

tableau, and Ernest, coming through the hall, gave a whistle of

astonishment that brought the two in the corner back to a sense of

their surroundings.

"I haven't suddenly gone crazy, Ernest, old fellow," smiled Max.

"Ladies and gentlemen all, this little school-ma'am was introduced to

you as Miss Price, but that was a mistake. Let me introduce her again

as Miss Bertha Seeley, my long-lost and newly-found sister."

Well they had an amazing time then, of course. They laughed and

questioned and explained until the dinner was in imminent danger of

getting stone-cold on the dining-room table. Luckily, Alma and Frances

remembered it just in the nick of time, and they all got out, somehow,

and into their places. It was a splendid dinner, but I believe that

Maxwell and Bertha Seeley didn't know what they were eating, any more

than if it had been sawdust. However, the rest of the guests made up

for that, and did full justice to the girls' cookery.

In the afternoon they all went to church, and at least two hearts were

truly and devoutly thankful that day.

When the dusk came, Ernest and Maxwell had to catch the last train for

town, and the other guests went home, with the exception of Bertha,

who was to stay all night. Just as soon as her resignation could be

effected, she was to join her brother.

"Meanwhile, I'll see about getting a house to put you in," said Max.

"No more boarding out for me, Ernest. You may consider me as a family

man henceforth."

Frances and Alma talked it all over before they went to sleep that

night.

"Just think," said Frances, "if we hadn't asked her here today she

might never have found her brother! It's all Mother's doing, bless

her! Things do happen like a storybook sometimes, don't they, Al? And

didn't I tell you they looked alike?"