216CHAPTER XVIII
It was all still below stairs, then a soft, stealthy silken movement, cautiously coming up the stairs. Julia Cloud went quickly to the hall door, and switched on the light. On the landing stood Leslie, lovely and flushed, with her hair slightly ruffled and her velvet evening cloak thrown back, showing the rosy mist of her dress. She stood with one silver slipper poised on the stairs, a sweet, guilty look on her face.
“O Cloudy! I thought you were asleep, and I didn’t want to waken you,” she said, penitently; “but you haven’t gone to bed yet, have you? I’m glad. We wanted you to know we were home.”
“Is anything the matter?” Julia Cloud asked with a stricture of emotion in her throat.
“No; only we got tired, and we didn’t want to stay to their old party, anyway, and we’d rather be home.” Leslie sprang up the stairs, and caught her aunt in her arms with one of her sweet, violent kisses.
“O my dear!” was all Julia Cloud could say. And then they heard Allison closing the door softly below, and creaking across the floor and up the stairs.
“Oh, you waked her up!” he said reproachfully as he caught sight of his sister in Julia Cloud’s arms.
“No, you’re wrong. She hadn’t even gone to bed yet. I knew she wouldn’t,” said Leslie, nestling closer. “Say, Cloudy, we’re not going to trouble you that way again. It isn’t worth it. We don’t like their old dancing, anyway. I couldn’t forget the way you looked so hurt––and the things you said. Won’t you please217come down to the fire awhile? We want to tell you about it.”
Down on the couch, with Allison stirring up the dying embers and Leslie nestled close to her, Julia Cloud heard bits about the evening.
“It wasn’t bad, Cloudy, ’deed it wasn’t. They dance a lot nicer in colleges than they do other places. I know, for I’ve been to lots of dances, and I never let men get too familiar. Allison taught me that when I was little. That’s why what you said made me so mad. I’ve always been a lot carefuller than you’d think, and I never dance with anybody the second time if I don’t like the way he does it the first time. And everybody was real nice and dignified to-night, Cloudy. The boys are all shy and bashful, anyway; only I couldn’t forget what you had said about not liking to have me do it; and it made everything seem so––so––well, not nice; and I just felt uncomfortable; and one dance I sent the boy for a glass of water for me, and I just sat it out; and, when Allison saw me, he came over, and said, ‘Let’s beat it!’ and so I slipped up to the dressing-room, and got my cloak, and we just ran away without telling anybody. Wasn’t that perfectly dreadful? But I’ll call the girl up after a while, and tell her we had to come home and we didn’t want to spoil their fun telling them so.”
They sat for an hour talking before the fire, the young people telling her all about their experiences of the last few days, and letting her into their lives again with the old sweet relation. Then they drifted back again to the subject of dancing.
“I don’t give a whoop whether I dance or not, Cloudy,” said Allison. “I never did care much about218it, and I don’t see having my sister dance with some fellows, either. Only it does cut you out of lots of fun, and you get in bad with everybody if you don’t do it. I expected we’d have to have dances here at the house, too, sometimes; but, if you don’t like it, we won’t; and that’s all there is to it.”
“Well, dear, that’s beautiful of you. Of course I couldn’t allow you to let me upset your life and spoil all your pleasure; but I’m wondering if we couldn’t try an experiment. It seems to me there ought to be things that people would enjoy as much as dancing, and why couldn’t we find enough of them to fill up the evenings and make them forget about the dancing?”
“There’ll be some that won’t come, of course,” said Leslie; “but we should worry! They won’t be the kind we’ll like, anyway. Jane Bristol doesn’t dance. She told me so yesterday. She said her mother never did, and brought her up to feel that she didn’t want to, either.”
“She’s some girl,” said Allison irrelevantly. “She entered the sophomore class with credits she got for studying in the summer school and some night-work. Did you know that, kid? I was in the office when she came in for her card, and I heard the profs talking about her and saying she had some bean. Those chumps in the village will find out some day that the girl they despised is worth more than the whole lot of them put together.”
Julia Cloud leaned forward, and touched lightly and affectionately the hair that waved back from the boy’s forehead, and spoke tenderly.
“Dear boy, I’ll not forget your leaving your friends and coming back to me and to the Sabbath and church219and all that. It means a lot to me to have my children observe those things. I hope some day you’ll do it because you feel you want to please God instead of me.”
“Sure!” said Allison, trying not to look embarrassed. “I guess maybe I care about that, too, a little bit. To tell the truth, Cloudy, I couldn’t see staying away from that Christian Endeavor meeting after I’ve worked hard all the week to get people to come to it. It didn’t seem square.”
The moment was tense with deep feeling, and Julia Cloud could not bring herself to break it by words. She brought the boy’s hand up to her lips, and pressed it close; and then just as she was about to speak the telephone rang sharply again and again.
Allison sprang up, and went to answer.
“Hello. Yes. Oh! Miss Bristol! What? Are you sure? I’ll be there at once. Lock yourself in your room till I get there.”
He hung up the receiver excitedly.
“Call up the fire department quick, Leslie! Tell them to hurry. There’s some one breaking into the Johnson house, and Jane Bristol is there alone with the children. It’s Park Avenue, you know. Hustle!”
He was out the door before they could exclaim, and Leslie hastened to the telephone.
“He went without his overcoat,” said Julia Cloud, hurrying to the closet for it. “It will be very cold riding. He ought to have it.”
Leslie hung up the receiver, and flung her velvet cloak about her hurriedly, grabbing the overcoat.
“Give it to me, Cloudy; I’m going with him!” she cried, and dashed out the door as the car slid out of the garage.
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“O Leslie! Child! Yououghtn’tto go!” she cried, rushing to the door; but Leslie was already climbing into the car, moving as it was.
“It’s all right, Cloudy!” she called. “There’s a revolver in the car, you know!” and the car whirled away down the street.
Julia Cloud stood gasping after them; the horrible thought of a revolver in the car did not cheer her as Leslie had evidently hoped it would. What children they were, after all, plunging her from one trouble into another, yet what dear, tender-hearted, loving children! She went in, and found a heavy cloak, and went out again to listen. Then it came to her that perhaps Leslie had not made the operator understand; so she went back to the telephone to try to find out whether any one had been sent. Suppose those children should try to face a burglar alone! There might be more than one for aught they knew. Oh, Leslieshould nothave gone! A terrible anxiety took possession of her, and she tried to pray as she worked the telephone hook up and down and waited for the operator. Then into the quiet of the night there came the loud clang of the fire-bell, and a moment later hurried calls and voices in the distance, sounding through the front door that Julia Cloud had left open. For an instant she was relieved, and then she reflected that this might be a fire somewhere else, and not the call for the Johnson house at all; so she kept on trying to call the operator. At last a snappy voice snarled into her ear. “We don’t tell where the fire is; we’re not allowed any more,” and snap! The operator was gone again.
“But I don’t want to know where the fire is!” called Julia Cloud in dismay. “I want to ask a question.”
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No answer came, and the dim buzz of the wire sounded emptily back to her anxious ear. At last she gave it up, and went out to the street to look up and down. If she only knew which way was Park Avenue! She could hear the engine now, clattering along with the hook and ladder behind; and dark, hurrying forms crossed the street just beyond the next corner, but no one came by. She hurried out to the corner, and called to a boy who was passing; and he yelled out: “Don’t know, lady. Up Park Avenue somewhere.” Then the street grew very quiet again, and all the noise centred away in the distance. A shot rang out, and voices shouted, and her heart beat so loud she could hear it. She hurried back to the house again, and tried to get the telephone operator; but nothing came of it, and for the next twenty minutes she vibrated between the street and the telephone, and wondered whether she ought not to wake up Cherry and do something else.
It seemed perfectly terrible to think of those two children handling a burglar alone––and yet what could she do?
Pretty soon, however, she heard the fire-engine returning, with the crowd, and she hurried down to the corner to find out.
“It wasn’t no fire at all, lady,” answered a boy whom she questioned. “It was just two men breakin’ into a house, but they ketched ’em both an’ are takin’ ’em down to the lockup. No, lady, there wasn’t nobody killed. There was some shootin’, sure! A girl done it! Some college girl in a car. She see the guy comin’ to make a get-away in her car, see? And she let go at him, and picked him off the first call, got him through the knee; an’ by that time the fire comp’ny got there, and cinched ’em both. She’s some girl, she is!”
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Julia Cloud felt her head whirling, and hurried back to the house to sit down. She was trembling from head to foot. Was it Leslie who had shot the burglar? Leslie, her little pink-and-silver butterfly, who seemed so much like a baby yet in many ways? Oh, what a horrible danger she had escaped! If she had escaped. Perhaps the boy did not know. Oh, if they would but come! It seemed hours since they had left. The midnight train was just pulling into the station! How exasperating that the telephone did not respond! Something must be out of order with it. Hark! Was that the car? It surely was!
223CHAPTER XIX
How welcome a sound was the churn of the engine as it came flying up the road and turned into the driveway!
Julia Cloud was at the door, waiting to receive them, straining her eyes into the darkness to be sure they were both there.
Leslie sprang out, and dashed into her arms.
“O Cloudy! You waited up, didn’t you? We thought you must be asleep and didn’t hear the telephone. We tried to call you up and explain. You see, Jane was there alone, and of course she didn’t much enjoy staying after what had happened; so we waited till the Johnsons got back from the city. They had been to the theatre, and they just came on that midnight train. If I lived in a lonely place like that, I wouldn’t leave three babies with a young girl all alone in the house. It seems the servants were all away, or left, or something. I guess they were pretty scared when they got back. I wanted to bring the children up here to stay all night with us, and let thembescared when they got home; but she wouldn’t, of course; so we stayed with her.”
Leslie tossed aside her velvet cloak as she talked.
“It was awfully exciting, Cloudy. I’m glad I went. There’s no telling what might have happened to Allison if somebody hadn’t been there. You see he shut down the motor as we came up to the house. We’d been going like a streak of lightning all the way,224and we tried to sneak up so they wouldn’t hear us and get away; but there was one man outside on the watch, and he gave the word; and just as Allison got out of the car he disappeared into the shadows. The other one came piling out of a window, and streaked it across the porch and down the lawn. Allison made for him; but he changed his course, and came straight toward the car. I guess they thought it was empty. And then the other one came flying out from behind the bushes, and made for Allison; so I just leaned out of the car and shot. I don’t know how I ever had the nerve, for I was terribly frightened; but he would have got Allison in another minute, and Allison didn’t see him coming. He had a big club in his hand. I saw it as he went across in front of the window, and I knew I must do something; so I aimed right in front of him, and I saw him go down on his knees and throw up his hands; and then I felt sick, and began to think what if I had killed him. I didn’t, Cloudy; they say I only hit his knee; but wouldn’t it have been awful all my life to have to think I had killed a man? I couldn’t have stood it, Cloudy!” and with sudden breaking of the tension the high-strung child flung herself down in a little, brilliant heap at Julia Cloud’s knees, buried her bright face in her aunt’s lap, and burst into tears.
“You brave little darling!” Julia Cloud caressed her, and folded her arms about her.
“She’s all of that, Cloudy! She saved my life!” It was Allison who spoke, standing tall and proud above his sister and looking down at her tenderly. “Come now, kiddie, don’t give way when you’ve been such a trump. I knew you could shoot, but I didn’t think225you could keep your head like that. Cloudy, she was a little winner, the cool way she aimed at that man with the other one coming right toward her and meaning plainly to get in the car and run away in it. He’d have taken her, too, of course, and stopped at nothing to get away. But, when he saw the good shot she was, and heard his pal groaning, he threw up his hands, and turned sharp about for me. He knew it was his only chance, and that whoever was shooting wouldn’t shoot at him while he was all tangled up with me; so he made a spring at me before I knew what he was doing, and threw me off my feet, and got a half Nelson on me, you know–––”
“Yes, Cloudy, he was fiendish, and I couldn’t do a thing, for fear of hitting Allison; and just then I heard a motor-cycle chugging by the car. I hadn’t heard it before, there was so much going on; and a big, strong fellow with his hair all standing up in the wind jumped off, and ran toward them where they were rolling on the ground. Then I thought of the flash-light, and turned it on them; and that motor-cycle man saw just how things were, and he jumped in, and grabbed the burglar; and then all of a sudden the yard was full of men and boys and a terrible noise and clanging, and the fire-engine and hook and ladder came rushing up, Cloudy! You didn’t tell them there was a fire, did you? I didn’t. I told that telephone girl there was a burglar and to send a policeman. But somehow she got it that the house was on fire. And Jane Bristol was in the house, with the baby in her arms and the other little children asleep in their cribs; and she didn’t know what was happening because she didn’t dare to open the window.”
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Into the midst of the excitement and explanations there came a loud knock on the door, and Allison sprang up, and went to see who was there. A young man with dishevelled garments, hair standing on end, and face much streaked with mud and dust stood there. A motor-cycle leaned against the end of the porch.
“Pardon me,” he said half shyly. “I saw the light, and thought some one was up yet. Did the lady drop this? I found it in the grass when I went back to hunt for my key-ring. It was right where she stood.”
He held forth his hand, and there dropped from his fingers a slender white, gleaming thing.
Allison flashed on the porch-light, and looked at it.
“Leslie, is this yours?”
The motor-cycle man looked up, and there stood the princess, her rosy garments like the mist of dawn glowing in the light of fire and lamp, her tumbled golden curls, her eyes bright with recent tears, her cheeks pink with excitement. He had seen her dimly a little while before in a long velvet cloak and a little concealing head-scarf, standing in a motor-car shooting with a steady hand, and again coming with swift feet to her brother’s side in the grass after he was released from the burglar’s hold; but he had not caught the look of her face. Now he stood speechless, and stared at the lovely apparition. Was it possible that this lovely child had been the cool, brave girl in the car?
Leslie had put her hand to her throat with a quick cry, and found it bare.
“My string of pearls!” she said. “How careless of me not to have noticed they were gone! I’m so glad you found them! They are the ones that mamma used to have.” Then, looking up for the first time, she said:
227
“Oh, you are the young man who saved my brother’s life. Won’t you please come in? I think you were perfectly splendid! I want my aunt to meet you, and we all want to thank you.”
“Oh, I didn’t do anything,” said the stranger, turning as if to go. “It was you who saved his life. I got there just in time to watch you. You’re some shot, I’ll tell the world. I sure am proud to meet you. I didn’t know any girl could shoot like that.”
“Oh, that’s nothing!” laughed Leslie. “Our guardian made us both learn. Please come in.”
“Yes, we want to know you,” urged Allison. “Come in. We can’t let you go like that.”
“It’s very late,” urged the young man.
But Allison put out a firm arm, and pulled him in, shutting the door behind him.
“Cloudy,” he said, turning to his aunt, “this man came in the nick of time, and saved me just as I was getting woosey. That fellow sure had a grip on my throat, and something had hit my head and taken away all the sense I had, so I couldn’t seem to get him off.”
“That’s all right. I noticed you were holding your own,” put in the stranger. “It isn’t every man would have tackled two unknown burglars alone.” He spoke in a voice of deep admiration.
“Well, I noticed you were the only man on the spot till the parade was about over,” said Allison, slapping him heartily on the shoulder. “Say, I think I’ve seen you before riding that motor-cycle; tell me your name, please. I want to know you next time I see you.”
“Thanks, I’m not much to know, but I have an idea you are. My name’s Howard Letchworth. I have a room over the garage, and take my meals at the228pie-shop. My motor-cycle is all the family I have at present.”
Allison laughed, and held out his hand with a warm grip of admiration.
“I’m Allison Cloud; and this is my sister, Leslie Cloud, and my aunt, Miss Cloud; and this house we call Cloudy Villa. You’ll always be welcome whenever you are willing to come. You’ve saved my life and brought back my sister’s pearls, and put us doubly in your debt. I’m sure no one in this town has a better right to be welcome here. Please sit down a minute, and tell us who you are. You don’t belong to the church bunch, and I don’t think I’ve seen you about the college.”
“No,” said Letchworth, “not this year. I’m a laboring man. I work over at the ship-building plant. If everything goes well with me this winter, I may get back to college next fall. I was a junior last year, but I couldn’t quite make the financial part; so I had to go to work again.”
There was a defiance in his tone as he told it, as if he had said, “Now perhaps you won’t want to know me!” and he had not taken the offered chair, but was standing, as if he would not take their friendship under false pretences.
But trust Allison to say the graceful thing.
“I somehow felt you were my superior,” he said with his eyes full of real friendship. “Sit down just a minute, so we can be sure you really mean to come again.”
“Yes, do sit down,” said Julia Cloud. “I was just going to get these children a bite to eat, and I’m sure they’d like to have you share it with them.229It’s a long time since supper, and you have been through a good deal. Aren’t you hungry? The pie-shop won’t be open this time of night.”
She smiled that welcoming home smile that no young person could resist, and the young man sat down with a swift, furtive glance at Leslie. She seemed too bright and wonderful to be true. He let his eyes wander about the charming room; the fire, the couch, the lamplight on the books, the little home touches everywhere, and then he sank into the big cushions of the chair gratefully.
“Say, this is wonderful!” he said. “I haven’t known what home was like for seven years.”
“Well, it’s almost that long since we had a real home, too,” said Leslie gravely; “and we love this one.”
“Yes,” said Allison, “we’ve just got this home, and we sure do appreciate it. I hope, if you like it, you’ll often share it with us.”
“Well, I call that generous to an utter stranger!”
Then Julia Cloud entered with a tray, and Allison and Leslie both jumped up to help her. Leslie brought a plate with wonderful frosted cakes and little sandwiches, which somehow Julia Cloud always managed to have just ready to serve; Allison passed the cups of hot chocolate with billows of whipped cream on the top, and they all sat down before the fire to eat in the coziest way. Suddenly, right in the midst of their talk the big grandfather clock in the corner chimed softly out a single clear, reminding stroke.
“Why, Cloudy! It’s one o’clock! Sunday morning, and here we are having a Sunday-morning party, after all, right at home!” laughed Leslie teasingly.
The stranger stood up with apology.
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“Oh, please don’t go for a minute,” said Leslie. “I want you to do one more thing for me. Now, Allison, I can see it in your eyes that you mean to get ahead of me, but I have first chance. He’s my find. Mr. Letchworth, you don’t happen to belong to a Christian Endeavor Society anywhere, do you?”
The startled young man shook his head, a look of being on his guard suddenly coming into his eyes.
“Do I look like it?” he asked half comically, suddenly glancing down at his muddy, greasy garments and old torn sweater.
“Well, then I want you to come to the meeting to-morrow night––no, to-night, at seven o’clock, down at that little brick church on the next street. Everybody had to promise to bring some one who has never come before, and I didn’t have anybody to ask because all the college people I know are off at a house-party; and I ran away from it, and came home; so I couldn’t very well ask them. Will you go?”
The young man looked at the lovely girl with a smile on his lips that might easily have grown into a sneer and a curt refusal; but somehow the clear, true look in her eyes made refusal impossible. Against all his prejudices he hesitated, and then suddenly said:
“Yes, I’ll go if you want me to. I’m not in the habit of going to such places, but––if you want me, I’ll go.”
She put her slim, cool hand into his, and thanked him sweetly; and he went out into the starlight feeling as if a princess had knighted him.
“There!” sighed Leslie as the sound of his motor-cycle died away in the distance. “I think he’s a real man. It’s queer; but he and Jane Bristol are the nicest231people we’ve met in this town yet, and they both work for their living.”
“I was just thinking that, too,” said Allison, vigorously poking the fire into a shower of ruby sparks. “Don’t you like him, Cloudy?”
“Yes,” said Julia Cloud emphatically. “He looks as if he took life in earnest. But come, don’t you think we better go to bed?”
So they all lay down to sleep at last, Julia Cloud too profoundly thankful for words in the prayer her heart fervently breathed.
232CHAPTER XX
The routine of college classes became settled at last, and gradually the young people found bits of leisure for the family life which they craved and loved. Allison came in one day, and announced that he had bought a canoe.
“It’s a peach, Cloudy, and I got it cheap from a fellow that has to leave college. His father has got a job out in California, and they are going to move, and want to transfer him to a Western college so he won’t be so far away from them. I got it for fifteen dollars with all the outfit, and it’s only been used one season. But he couldn’t take it with him. There are three paddles and two cushions and some rugs belonging to it, and I’ve arranged to keep it down behind the inn so it won’t be far for us to go to it. Now, I want you to be ready to take a trial trip this afternoon at three when Leslie and I get through our classes.”
With much inward questioning but entire loyalty Julia Cloud yielded herself to the uncertainties of canoeing, but it needed but that first trip to make her an ardent admirer of that form of recreation. Re-creation it really seemed to her to be, as she sank among the pillows in the comfortable nest the children had prepared for her, and felt herself glide out upon the smooth bosom of the creek into the glow of the autumn afternoon. For in the shelter of the winding ravine where the creek wandered the frost had not yet completed its work, and the trees were still in glowing colors, blending brilliantly with the dark green of the hemlock. A233few stark trunks were bare and bleak against the sky in unsheltered places, but for the most part the banks of the creek still set forth a most pleasing display to the nature-lover who chose to come and see. Winding dark and soft and still, with braided ripples here and there, and little floating brown leaves that slithered against the boat as they passed, the creek meandered between the hills, now turning almost upon itself around a mossy, grassy stretch of meadow-land, skirting a chestnut-grove, or slipping beneath great rocks that cropped out on the hillside, where moss had crept in a lovely carpet, and graceful hemlocks found a foothold and leaned over to dip in the water and brush the faces of those who passed. Up, up, and up, through the frantic little rapids that bubbled and fought and were conquered, into the stiller waters above, between banks all dark and green and quiet, most brilliantly and cunningly embroidered with exquisite squawberry vines and scarlet berries. It was most entrancing, and Julia Cloud was reluctant to come home. No need ever to coax her any more. She was ready always to go in that canoe, jealous of anything that prevented a chance to go.
Often she and Cherry, instead of getting a hot lunch at home, would put up the most delectable lunch in paper boxes, and when the children came home she would be ready to go right down to the canoe and spend two delightful hours floating up and down the creek and eating an unconscionable number of sandwiches and cakes. This happened most often on Wednesdays, when the children had no classes from eleven o’clock until three and there was time to take the noon hour in a leisurely way. Not even cool weather coming on234could daunt them. Steamer-rugs and warm sweaters and gloves were requisitioned, and the open-air lunches went on just the same. One day they took a pot of hot soup and three small bowls and spoons. They landed at the great rocks, and, climbing up, built a fire and gave their soup another little touch of heat before they ate it. Such experiences welded their hearts more and more together, and Julia Cloud came to be more and more a part of the lives of these two young people who had taken her for their mother-in-love.
It was on these outings that they talked over serious problems: whether Leslie should join one of the girls’ sororities, what they should do about the next Christian Endeavor meeting, why it was that Howard Letchworth and Jane Bristol were so much more interesting than any of their other friends, why Cloudy did not like to have Myrtle Villers come to the house, and what Allison was going to do in life when he got through with college. They were absolutely one in all their thoughts and wishes just at this time, and there was not anything that any one of them would not willingly talk over with the others. It was a beautiful relation, and one that Julia Cloud daily, tremblingly prayed might last, might find nothing to break it up.
By this time the young people had begun to bring their college mates to the house, and everybody up there was crazy for an invitation to the little lunches and dinners and pleasant evening gatherings that had begun to be so popular. There were not wanting the usual “boy-crazy” girls, who went eagerly trailing Allison, literally begging him for rides and attention, and making up to Julia Cloud and Leslie in the most sickening of silly girl fashions.
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And of these Myrtle Villers was at once the most subtle and least attractive. Julia Cloud had an intuitive shrinking from her at the start, although she tried in her sweet, Christian way to overcome it and do as much for this girl as she was trying to do for all the others who came into their home. But Myrtle Villers was quick to understand, and played her part so well that it was impossible to shake her off as some might have been shaken. She studied Leslie like an artist, and learned how to play upon her frank, emotional, impulsive nature. She confided in her, telling the sorrows of an unloved life, and her longings for great and better things, and fell to attending Christian Endeavor most strenuously. She was always coming home with Leslie for overnight and being around in the way.
Allison did not like her in the least, and Julia Cloud barely tolerated her; but, as the weeks went by, Leslie began to champion her, to tell the others they were unfair to the girl, and that she really had a sincere heart and a lovely nature, which had been crushed by loneliness and sorrow. Allison always snorted angrily when Leslie got off anything like that, and habitually absented himself whenever he knew “the vamp,” as he called her, was to be there.
It was one day quite late in the fall, almost their last balmy picnic before the cold weather set in, that they were sitting up on the rocks around a pleasant, resinous pine-needle fire they had made, discussing this. Allison was maintaining that it was not good for Leslie to go with a girl like that, that all the fellows despised; and Leslie was pouting and saying she didn’t see why he had to be so prejudiced and unfair; and236Julia Cloud was looking troubled and wondering whether her heart and her head were both on the wrong side, or what she ought to do about it, when a step behind them made them all turn around startled. It was the first time they had been interrupted by an intruder in this retreat, and it had come to seem all their own. Moreover, the cocoa on the fire was boiling, and the lunch was about to be served on the little paper plates.
There stood a tall man with a keen, care-worn face, a scholarly air, and an unmistakably wistful look in his eyes.
“Why, is this where you spend your nooning, Cloud? It certainly looks inviting,” he said with a comprehensive glance at the wax-papered sandwiches and the little heap of cakes and fruit.
Allison arose with belated recognition.
“O Dr. Bowman,” he said, “let me introduce you to my aunt, Miss Cloud, and my sister Leslie.”
The scholarly gentleman bowed low in acknowledgment of the introduction, and fairly seemed to melt under the situation.
“Well, now, this certainly is delightful!” he said, still eying the generously spread rock table. “Quite an idea! Quite an idea! Is this some special occasion, some celebration or something?” He glanced genially round on the group.
“Oh, no, we often bring our lunch out here,” said Julia Cloud in a matter-of-fact tone. “It keeps us out-of-doors, and makes a pleasant change.” There was finality in her tone, and a sensitive-minded professor would have moved on at once, for the cocoa was boiling over, and had to be rescued, and he might237have seen they did not want him; but he lingered affably.
“Well, that certainly is an original idea. Quite so. It really makes one quite hungry to think of it. That certainly looks like an attractive repast.”
There was nothing for it but to invite him to partake, which Allison did as curtly as he dared, considering that the intruder was one of his major professors, and hoping sincerely that he would refuse. But Professor Bowman did not refuse. No such good chance, and quite to Julia Cloud’s annoyance––for she wanted to have the talk out with her children––he sat himself down on the rock as if he were quite acclimated to picnics in November, and accepted so many sandwiches that Leslie, seated slightly behind and out of his sight, made mock signs of horror lest there should not be enough to go around.
It appeared that he had started out to search for his pocket-knife, which his young son had borrowed and lost somewhere in that region as nearly as he could remember, and thus had come upon the picnickers.
“Old pill!” growled Allison gruffly when at last the unwelcome guest had departed hastily to a class, with many praises for his dinner and a promise to call to see them in the near future. “Old pill! Now we’ll never dare to come here again as long as he’s around. Bother him. I wish I’d told him to go to thunder. We don’t want him. He lives right up here over that bluff. His wife’s dead, and his sister or aunt or something keeps house for him. She looks like a bottle of pickles! Say, Cloudy, we’ll just be out evenings for a while till he forgets it.”
But Dr. Bowman did not forget it as Allison had hoped. He came the very next week on a stormy night238when no one in his senses would go out if he could help it; and there were the gay little household, with the addition of Jane Bristol and Howard Letchworth, down on their knees before the fire, roasting chestnuts, toasting marshmallows, and telling stories. His grim, angular presence descended upon the joyous gathering like a wet blanket; and the young people subsided into silence until Leslie, rising to the occasion, went to the piano and started them all singing. A wicked little spirit seemed to possess her, and she picked out the most jazzy rag-time she could find, hoping to freeze out the unwelcome guest, but he sat with patient set smile, and endured it, making what he seemed to think were little pleasantries to Julia Cloud, who sat by, busy with some embroidery. She, poor lady, was divided between a wicked delight at the daring of the children and a horror of reproach that they should be treating a college professor in this rude manner. She certainly gave him no encouragement; and, when he at last rose to go, saying he had spent a very pleasant and profitable evening getting acquainted with his students, and he thought he should soon repeat it, she did not ask him to return. But he was a man of the kind who needs no encouragement, and he did return many times and often, until he became a fixed institution, which taxed all their faculties inventing ways of escape from him. The winter went, and Dr. Bowman became the one fly in the pleasant ointment of Cloud Villa.
“We’ll just have to send Cloudy away awhile, or put her to bed and pretend she is sick every time he comes, or something!” said Leslie one night, after his departure had made them free to express their feelings. “We’ve tried everything else. He just won’t take a239hint! What do you say, Cloudy; will you play sick?”
“My dear!” said Julia Cloud aghast, “he doesn’t come to see me! What on earth put that in your head?” Her face was flaming scarlet, and distress showed in every feature.
The children fairly shouted.
“You dear, old, blind Cloudy, of course he does! Who on earth else would he come to see?”
“But,” said Julia Cloud, tears coming into her eyes, “he mustn’t. I don’t want to see him! Mercy!”
“That’s all right, Cloudy; you should worry! I’ll go tell him so if you want me to.”
“Allison! You wouldn’t!” said Julia Cloud, aghast.
“No, of course not, Cloudy, but we’ll find a way to get rid of the old pill if we have to move away for a while.”
Nevertheless, the old pill continued to come early and often, and there seemed no escape; for he was continually stealing in on their privacy at the most unexpected times and acting as if he were sure of a welcome. The children froze him, and were rude, and Julia Cloud withdrew farther and farther; but nothing seemed to faze him.
“It’s too bad to have so much sweetness wasted,” mocked Leslie one night at the supper-table when their unwelcome visitor had been a subject of discussion. “Miss Detliff is eating her heart out for him. She’s always noseying round in the hall when his class is out, and it’s about time for hers to begin, just to get a word with him. She kept us waiting for our papers ten whole minutes the other day while she discussed better classroom ventilation with him. ‘O240Doctah, don’t you think we might do something about this mattah of ventilation?’” she mimicked, convulsing Allison with her likeness to her English teacher.
“That’s an idea!” said Allison suddenly. “No, don’t ask me what it is. It would spoil things. Cloudy, may I bring a guest to dinner to-morrow night?”
“Certainly, anybody you please,” replied Julia Cloud innocently; and the incorrigible Allison appeared the next afternoon with Miss Detliff, smiling and pleased, sitting up in the back seat of the car. Julia Cloud received her graciously, and never so much as suspected anything special was going on until later in the evening, when Dr. Bowman arrived and was ushered in to find his colaborer there before him. He did not look especially pleased, and Julia Cloud caught a glance of intelligence passing between Leslie and Allison, with a sudden revelation of a plot behind it all. During the entire evening she sat quietly, saying little, but her eyes dancing with the fun of it. What children they were, and how she loved them! yes, and what a child she was herself! for she couldn’t help loving their pranks as well as they did.
However, though Dr. Bowman had to take Miss Detliff home, and got very little satisfaction out of his call that evening, it did not discourage him in the least, and Julia Cloud decided that extreme measures were necessary to rid them of his presence.
“We might go away during Thanksgiving week; only there’s the Christian Endeavor banquet,” said Leslie. “We couldn’t be away from that. And then I wanted to have Jane to dinner. She’s gone up to college this week to live. She’s doing office work there, and she’ll be alone on Thanksgiving Day.”
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“Yes, and there’s Howard. I thought we’d have him here,” put in Allison dubiously.
“Of course!” said Julia Cloud determinedly. “And we don’t want to go away, anyway. You children run up to your rooms this evening and study. Stay there, I mean, no matter who comes. Do you understand?”
With a curious look at her they both obeyed; and a little later, when the knocker sounded through the house, they sat silently above, not daring to move, and heard their aunt open the door, heard Dr. Bowman’s slow, scholarly voice and Julia Cloud’s even tones, back and forth for a little while, and then heard the front door open and shut again, and slow steps go down the brick terrace and out to the sidewalk.
What passed in that interview no one ever knew. Julia Cloud came to the foot of the stairs, and called them down, and her eyes were shining and confident as she sat by the lamp and sewed while they studied and joked in front of the fire; but the unwelcome guest came no more, and whenever they met him in the street, or at receptions, or passing at a college game, he gave them a distant, pleasant bow; that was all. Julia Cloud had done the work well, however she had done it. The little Bowmans need not look to her to fill their mother’s place, for she was not so minded.
Meantime, the winter had been going on, and the little pink-and-white house was becoming popular among the students at college as well as among the members of the Christian Endeavor Society of the little brick church. Many an evening specially picked groups of girls or boys or both spent before that fire, playing games, and talking, and singing. Sometimes the college glee-club came down and had dinner. Again242it was the football team that was feasted. Another time Allison’s frat came for his birthday, aided and abetted by his sister and aunt.
Jane Bristol became a frequent visitor, though not so frequent as they would have liked to have her, for her time was very much taken up with her work and her studies. Julia Cloud often wished she might lift the financial burden from the young shoulders and make things easier for her, both for her own sake and Leslie’s, who would have liked to make her her constant companion; but Jane Bristol was too independent to let anybody help her, and there seemed no way to do anything about it. Meantime, Myrtle Villers improved each idle hour, and kept Leslie busy inventing excuses to get away from her, and Julia Cloud busy worrying. Leslie was so dear, but she was also self-willed. And she would go off with that wild girl in the car for long rides. Not that Julia Cloud worried about the driving; for Leslie was most careful, and handled a car as if she had been born with the knowledge, as indeed she did all things athletic; but her aunt distrusted the other girl.
And then one clear, cold afternoon in December Leslie went off for a ride in the car with Myrtle. Of course Julia Cloud did not know that the girl had pestered the life out of Leslie for the ride, and had finally promised that, if she would go, she would stop going with a certain wild boy in the village of whom Leslie disapproved. Neither did she know that Leslie had resolved never to go again without her aunt along. So she sat at the window through the short winter afternoon, and watched and waited in vain for the car to return; and Allison came back at half-past six after basket-ball practice, and still Leslie had not appeared.
243CHAPTER XXI
There had been a little friction between Allison and Leslie about the use of the car. Allison had always been most generous with it until his sister took up this absurd intimacy with Myrtle Villers. It has been rather understood between them that Leslie should use the car afternoons when she wanted it, as Allison was busy with basket-ball and other things; but several times Allison had objected to his sister’s taking her new friend out, and Leslie told him he was unfair. After a heated discussion they had left the question still unsettled. In fact, it did not seem that it could be settled, for Leslie was of such a nature that great opposition only made her more firm; and Julia Cloud advised her nephew to say nothing more for a time. Let Leslie find out for herself the character of the girl she had made her friend. It was really the only way she would learn not to be carried away by flattery and high-sounding words. Allison, grumbling a little, assented; but in his heart he still boiled with rage at the idea of that girl’s winding his sister around her little finger just for the sake of using the car when she wanted it. It was not, perhaps, all happening that for two or three days Allison had left the switch-key where his sister could not find it, and a hot war of words ended in Leslie’s quietly ordering a new switch-key so that such a happening would be impossible in future, She would have one of her own. A card had come244that very morning from the express office, notifying Leslie that there was a package there waiting for her; so, when she started out with Myrtle, she stopped and got it. She tossed it carelessly into the car with a feeling of satisfaction that now Allison could not hamper her movements any longer by his carelessness.
“Which way shall we go?” she asked as she always did when taking her friends out, and Myrtle named a favorite pike where they often drove.
Out upon the smooth, white road they sped, rejoicing in the clear beauty of the day and in the freedom with which they flew through space. Myrtle had chosen to sit in the back seat, and lolled happily among rugs and wraps, keeping a keen eye out on the road ahead and chattering away like a magpie to Leslie, telling her what a darling she was––she pronounced it “dolling”––and how this ride was just the one thing she needed to recuperate from her violent study of the night before, incident to an examination that morning. Myrtle professed to be utterly overcome and exhausted by the physical effort of writing for three whole hours without a let-up. If Leslie could have seen her meagre paper, through which a much-tortured professor was at that moment wearily plodding, she would have been astonished. Leslie herself was keen and thorough in her class work, and had no slightest conception of what a lazy student could avoid when she set herself to do so.
Five miles from home two masculine figures came in sight ahead, strolling leisurely down the road. Any one watching might have seen Myrtle suddenly straighten up and cast a hasty glance at Leslie. But Leslie with bright cheeks and shining eyes was forging ahead, regardless of stray strollers.