"There was an old man with a beard,Who said, 'it is just as I feared,Three rats and a hen,An owl and a wrenHave all made their nests in my beard!'"
"There was an old man with a beard,Who said, 'it is just as I feared,Three rats and a hen,An owl and a wrenHave all made their nests in my beard!'"
"That's poetry," her grandfather explained with a wink at Judidy. "Fall to," he said as he served the last plateful of golden eggs and crisp bacon. "Here's Mother with her last chore done, and we ain't more than half through our breakfast. If that coffee's for Elizabeth, Mother, you can give it to me."
"I thought Elizabeth could have a little—very weak."
"Not at my table," Grandfather said.
Elizabeth poured a glass of milk and drank it in silence, but her grandfather gave her one sharp look from under his bushy brows.
"I see old Samuel's crawled out," he said, turning to Grandmother. "I guess we'll have some wet weather, now."
"He's a disgusting creature," Elizabeth said, lookingresentfully at the jug of milk—and taking a second glass of it.
"He's a kind of relation of yours. His mother was my father's cousin. I think he'd be better off at the poor farm, but he's so dirty, the selectmen kinder hate the job o' trying to get him there."
"A relation?" Elizabeth cried. "Oh!"
"You don't know much about your Cape Cod relations, do you, Elizabeth?"
"I guess I'm a kind o' relation, too," Judidy simpered. "Everybody's relation on Cape Cod, I guess."
"Elizabeth would be proud to have you for a relation, Judidy," Grandfather said, gravely. This time Elizabeth saw the sharp glance that appraised her, and she turned quickly toward Judidy.
"Anybody would be proud to have a—a cousin with such a lovely complexion," something urged her to say.
"Don't!" Judidy protested. "I'm all tanned up."
"I have a friend in New York, Jean Forsyth," Elizabeth said, presently, "whose sister married a count."
"And when you get back to New York, you can tell her all about your cousin Samuel," her grandfather twinkled. "My, what good times you can have, comparing notes."
"Father!" said Grandmother Swift, warningly."You run along upstairs, Elizabeth, and I'll come up there as soon's I take one more swaller o' coffee. I got something I want to say when there ain't no men-folks about."
Upstairs again, Elizabeth took the photograph of a deep-eyed girl in a silver frame out of the drawer in her wardrobe trunk and gazed at it with gathering woe.
"Oh, dear, Jeanie," she said, "the only thing that would make me any less miserable in these surroundings would be to sit down and write you just exactly how things are, and that I can never do."
"You come with me," her grandmother called suddenly from the threshold. "I got an idea."
She led the way past the landing and tiny hall into which the steep stairway debouched, into the regions in the rear of the three bedrooms that Elizabeth was familiar with. There seemed to be a chain of small, stuffy rooms dimly stored with old furniture and boxes, and not all on the same level, and beyond them a low room, with a slanting roof, half chamber, half hallway.
"I never knew you had all these rooms," Elizabeth said. "Why, the old house is enormous, isn't it?"
"The front o' the house is new; it hasn't been built more'n fifty years at the outset, but theseback chambers belong to the old house—the one your great-grandfather built to go to housekeeping in." She flung open a door that led into a little room still beyond.
"Oh, what a darling, what a sweetheart of a room!" Elizabeth cried. "Whose was it?"
"It was your Aunt Helen's room. She had it papered in this robin's egg blue paper, and she got a lot o' old, painted furniture, and fixed it up real cunning. I thought maybe you might like to do the same thing."
There was only one portion of the room in which Elizabeth could stand upright. The roof sloped gradually until it met the partition about shoulder high, where two tiny, square windows, of many panes, were set; but the main part of the chamber, in spite of its low ceiling, was big enough to hold all the essentials of comfortable furnishing.
"You could hunt around through the house and the attic chamber until you found the things you wanted to put in it, and furnish it just according to your taste, and nobody would ever set foot inside of it unless you happened to want them to. I know girls. That's what they want."
"I guess you do know girls, Grandma," Elizabeth said. "I guess Aunt Helen must have had a good time growing up if you let her do things like this. I don't remember her much."
"Well, that ain't so remarkable. She's lived in China since before you was born. I ain't never let anybody use this room, but now I kinder think her lease has expired. She's got daughters as big as you, and sons that's grown men now."
"I'll be just as good to her room!"
"I guess you can't help it. There's a good spirit in it. You rummage around in these different rooms here, and then you go up in the barn chamber and look till you find the things that suits you. There's a powerful lot of what some folks calls antiques around this place. Dealers and what-not is always coming around and begging to look through my pantry and my attic, wanting to buy all Grandmother's pretty dishes, and a good many that warn't so pretty, but I tell 'em all that when I'm ready to part with 'em I'll let 'em know."
"The Washington Vase china that you use all the time is really valuable, isn't it?"
"Well, so those collectors say. It's valuable to me, because I was brought up on it. Money value ain't everything. The value of a dollar is one thing—the joy it brings to you is another. You just rummage around and find the things that you like, and we'll get Grampa or Zeckal to move 'em up for you."
"How did you ever think of such a thing, Grandmother?"
"Well, your grandpa thought he hadn't seen you looking around the house much, and s'long's it's full o' the kind o' things that most city folks goes so wild about, I kinder figured you might like something to get your interest started. Helen, she was never very much interested in anything she didn't have to do with. You favour her in some ways."
"I suppose I haven't seemed very much interested in the house and things, I've—had other things on my mind."
"You've been worried about your brother, and a little homesick."
"I didn't think I showed it."
"You don't always have to show your feelings to Grandma. You better start in the barn chamber, and then work on through the house. When you get all the furniture you want, you can come to me and get the key to that closet some day." She indicated a door that might have been a panel set in the wall, except for the keyhole, where a knob might have been. "There's a closet there, that runs clear under the eaves. I guess you might find some fol-de-rols you would like."
"It might be fun to start in the closet," Elizabeth suggested.
"It might," her grandmother agreed, "but better save that till the last."
"I will," said Elizabeth.
The barn chamber, reached by a rickety stairway leading from the region of the stalls, from which a white mare poked a friendly nose as she went by, proved to be a storehouse of the most heterogeneous assemblage of objects Elizabeth had ever imagined. The overflow of fifty years of housecleaning and readjustment had been brought together under those dusty rafters.
"Poor things," Elizabeth thought, looking about at the old settees and rocking chairs, broken backed and legless. "A horse in that condition is put out of its misery. I don't suppose they could blindfold and shoot an old sofa, but they might cremate it, or something."
She came upon the wreck of a little old rocking chair, a child's chair, with a back beautifully decorated with grape clusters and leaves, and two limp, broken arms stuck out helplessly. These she tied up with strips of faded blue cambric that were lying about, and set the little chair gallantly rocking.
There were innumerable cracked china jugs, big bowls, and strange wooden utensils and cabinets; beds that had been taken apart, forlorn, carved old posters minus springs or mattresses that were merely being used as pens to keep forlorn chairs and tables herded together. These things were all draped with dust and spiders' webs; and in a corner, from apile of ancient straw, Elizabeth heard a faint, continuous rustling.
"Mice!" she said, "but they can't frighten me unless they get a good deal nearer. Still, I guess I'll look carefully around and choose my nearest exit."
Her first discovery for her house furnishing was a flag-bottomed chair with rockers about two inches long. It was perfectly preserved. It wasn't a child's chair, though it was very little of its age, she told herself. The next was a spinning wheel, which was the first one she had ever seen outside of a picture book.
"I'm going to get Grandmother to teach me to spin on it," she said.
There was a writing desk, a rosewood box with inlaid corner pieces, and a short-legged, square stand to set it on; and then more rustling in the straw sent Elizabeth suddenly downstairs again, though not until she had segregated her chosen furniture.
"Zeckal, whoever he may be, can come and get it," she said.
She went back to the little blue room under the eaves, and began a diagram of arrangement. Standing against the wall was a long, panelled picture in a black frame, that had made its appearance there in her absence. Elizabeth lifted it to the light and disclosed three barefooted ladies in flowing garments of gauze, who were standing on a light turf fromwhich lilies of the valley were springing. One of these ladies was reclining on the breast of another, and the third was standing erect and aloof, with shining eyes.
"'The Christian Graces,'" Elizabeth said. "For goodness' sake!" and beneath, the curious inscription, simulating letters cut into stone, was engraved in a neat, Spencerian hand, "Faith, Hope, and Charity."
"For goodness' sake!" said Elizabeth, again.
She turned the picture around, and found on the board at its back another inscription, written in a round, childish hand, "Helen Swift, aged eleven, hung in my room to help me to remember."
"I guess I'll hang it in my room, to help me to remember," Elizabeth said.
She was a little self-conscious about going down to dinner. She knew that her grandfather had found a good many things to chuckle at in her breakfast-table conversation. She always knew afterward just what things she had said that Grandfather would consider most typical of what he referred to as her "city manner." This time she realized that her allusion to Jean Forsyth's brother-in-law would be the subject of many sly, humorous thrusts for a long time to come. However, when she reached the table again, her grandfather had not yet come in, but he appeared almost instantly, with a tall,freckled girl hanging on his arm—a girl with a turned-up nose and a bronzed pigtail the size of her doubled fist hanging down her back.
"But, Granddaddy Swift," she was saying, earnestly, "don't you see that I can't come and meet a brand-new city granddaughter, and sit down to a respectable person's dinner table, attired in a bloomer suit? Don't you know it isn't done in the circles in which we move? Make him let go of my ear, Grandmummy."
Elizabeth rose shyly, and then she sat down again, but the stranger eluded Grandfather's masterful grip, and slipped around to her side, with a hand out-stretched in greeting.
"Isn't he dreadful?" she said, indicating her tormentor affectionately. "When I heard you were here, I was going back to the cottage, to put on my best bib and tucker and make a proper call upon you, but Granddaddy wouldn't hear of it. He insisted on dragging me hither by the hair. So here I am—Peggy Farraday, at your service, and am very glad to meet you, too."
"I'm glad to meet you," Elizabeth said. "I haven't seen any girls for a long time."
"The woods down here are full of them."
"Well, I guess I haven't been into the woods very much."
"Elizabeth ain't a tomboy, like you, into everybodyelse's business, all day long. She stays at home with me and Gra'ma, and minds her p's and q's."
"Well, we'll change all that. Attractive as you and Grandmummy are, you can't expect to monopolize her forever. Now it's my turn."
Elizabeth saw that both her grandfather and grandmother were beaming at this tall girl's impulsive chattering. She felt her own stiffness relaxing under the sunny influence of the stranger's smile.
"I adopted Grandmummy and Granddaddy three years ago, when I came over to this ducky old house, on my very first day on the Cape, to beg a pint of milk and a pail of water for my hungry, unkempt family. I saw that they were just the grandparents I was looking for, and so I took them on, and I've been the plague of their existence every summer since. Haven't I, Granddaddy? Isn't he a lamb? You know, my one ambition is to squeeze him to pieces, but he's so woolly and scratchy and cantankerous, that it's almost impossible to get your arms around him, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is," Elizabeth said, crimsoning, with a quick glance at her grandfather.
To her surprise, he took no notice of her discomfiture. Both he and Grandmother seemed unaware of the delicate ground upon which Miss Peggy Farraday had set her enthusiastic little heels.
"I'm fifteen," that young lady continued, withvery little pause either between her mouthfuls of food or of conversation—"You're fourteen, aren't you? I had more fun the year I was fourteen than I ever had before, or ever expect to have again."
"I'll be fourteen next Thursday," Elizabeth said.
"I took on an entirely new character the day I was fourteen. I became very sedate and dignified, and changed my name from Peg to Peggy. Do you expect to do that?"
"I think perhaps I shall," Elizabeth said. "I guess my character does need improving."
She expected some retort from her grandfather at this, but he only held out his hand for her plate, and heaped it high with roast lamb and tender green peas from the kitchen garden.
"I envy you the scrumptious things you have to eat all the time over here. We bring our fat cook down with us. She cooks all right in town in the winter, but she always sulks on Cape Cod, and we have a dreadful time getting anything. We're not lucky enough to have Judidy."
"Don't!" that flattered young lady protested. "Land, think of anybody feeling lucky to have me! Ikincook, though, whenever Mis' Swift is willing."
"Mother, she don't let our help do much work. She's afraid they'd get the habit, and kinder get in her way whenever she wanted to make a day of it.When she's cooking, Judidy she generally sets down and reads the newspaper."
"I'm so fat," Judidy explained, "that I kinder make hard work getting around."
To Elizabeth's surprise, Peggy Farraday went off into peals and spasms of laughter at this.
"They are such loves," she explained. "They are such darlings! I adore the way they do things. Grandmummy—I call her that, because she was jealous of Granddaddy for a name—is a lot like the Peterkins in her domestic arrangements."
"I ought to be like Elizabeth Eliza. That's my name." Elizabeth was glad that she had read the "Peterkin Papers" with Buddy the summer before. She had never met any other girl who was familiar with them.
"I'll tell you later what character in fiction I think you're like. It takes me a while to make up my mind about things like that. I seem to jump at conclusions a good deal quicker than I do."
"Can you always tell whether you like people or not, at first meeting?"
"Yes, I can. Can't you?"
"Yes."
Peggy looked up quickly, and then her eyes dropped to her plate and she began eating rapidly.
"She's shy, too," Elizabeth thought.
"If you'll come upstairs after dinner," she said,aloud, "I've got something I want to show you. You've come just in time to give me your advice about something pretty exciting."
As she was leaving the dining room something made her turn and look back at her grandmother, who was smiling broadly to herself, like the Cheshire cat in "Alice in Wonderland."
"The something I was going to show you washersurprise to me," Elizabeth whispered to Peggy.
The Birthday
Elizabeth sat in her little blue room, and shivered.
It was the afternoon of her birthday, and although she hadn't mentioned the fact to any one, she had dressed herself to do honour to the occasion. Every undergarment, chemise, camisole, and petticoat, was of a soft, flesh-tinted silk. Her dress was of the finest white muslin trimmed only with infinitesimal tucks and Valenciennes beading, and she was wearing a blue ribbon sash with a big butterfly bow at the back.
"My pride ought to keep me warm," she thought, "what a pity it doesn't."
Before she bought her silken lingerie she had deliberated a long time between that magnificence and a light blue wool sweater and had finally succumbed to the lure of the lacy garments which had taken every penny of her month's allowance and all that she was allowed to borrow on her next.
She looked around her room with a glow of satisfaction, having only that morning put the finishingtouches on it. She had draped the windows with an old-fashioned print, a blue groundwork with tiny pink roses wandering over it, that her grandmother had produced from an ancient chest stored with remnants of the popular fabrics of an older generation. The furniture she had chosen was mostly painted black, or a very dark stain. She had found another flag-bottomed chair, a twin to the first, and a wonderful old settee on rockers, which had a deep seat with an adjustable rack running along the outside of it, as if to prevent its being used except for the one person who chose to sit in the space that was clear at the end. This she had piled with cushions made from little square pillows that her grandmother kept for "children who came a-visiting." Her desk and her spinning wheel were in opposite comers, and a miniature organ, the keyboard of which comprised two octaves exactly, occupied a position under the eaves between the two farther windows.
The morning mail had brought her a writing-case from her mother, a check for five dollars from her father, and a letter, her first, from her Buddy. She had taken a high resolution not to shed one tear on her birthday, and the mild faces of Faith and Charity smiled down on her as if to strengthen her will.
"Hope looks a little teary, herself," she said.
There was a sound of altercation on the stairwaythat led directly out of the passage from the dining room of her new suite.
"Youshallcome upstairs, Grandmummy, and give it to her yourself. She doesn't want your present by way of me. She wants it handed out, with your own personal and private blessing. Besides, I've got a present for her myself. I can't give her two presents."
Peggy Farraday, with her hands sternly set on Grandmother Swift's shoulders, marched her firmly into Elizabeth's chamber.
"Here's Grandmummy with a beautiful present for your birthday. She was going to send it upstairs by me, but I declined the honour."
"Young folks like to open packages by themselves, without anybody standing around counting the Ohs and Ahs, and waiting to be thanked for something that may not exactly suit. If Elizabeth likes what I've made her, I guess she can make out to tell me so." Grandmother, entirely unruffled by the recent coercion to which she had been submitted, put down a bulky tissue-wrapped package and departed.
"Isn't she funny?" Peggy said. "But do open it. I can hardly wait to see what you think of it. It's copied from one of mine, the only sweater I've ever really loved. And it's in your colour, and everything."
"'Do open it. I can hardly wait to see what you think of it.'"
"'Do open it. I can hardly wait to see what you think of it.'"
"'Do open it. I can hardly wait to see what you think of it.'"
Elizabeth, scarcely crediting her senses, shookout from the folds of tissue the lovely, fleecy garment of her dreams, a wool sweater in her own colour of "Heaven's blue." She gave it one comprehensive glance, then she slipped after her grandmother, caught up with her halfway down the stairs, and kissed her on the nape of an astonished neck.
"You're not a grandmother, you're an angel," she said, and flew back, in a panic, to Peggy.
"Here's my present," that young lady informed her. "It's something very practical, but I made it myself. I thought you might like it. I always give away the kind of thing I adore, don't you? That's doing the very best you can to show love—and one person's sure to be suited."
"It's a laundry bag," Elizabeth said, "and I haven't got one. You dear." She put out her hand toward Peggy, and missed her. Then they both put out their hands together, and kissed.
"The beauty of this creation is that you don't have to fish down into it," Peggy explained. "It buttons all the way across the bottom, and can be dumped that way. I made the buttonholes myself."
"And it's my colour, too. Have you made this since you were here last week?"
"No, I made it the first week I came down, to be sure to have it ready."
"Before you even saw me. How did you knowyou'd like me well enough to give it to me when it was done?"
"I was willing to take my chances. When I heard about your brother being sick, and your disappointment about the cottage, I thought you might be feeling kind of low when you first got here. So I prepared for it."
"How kind you are! How kind everybody is."
"Well, don't get the weeps. See here, do you know what this bar on this settee was put on for? It's a kind of a cradle arrangement. Mother makes up baby's bed on the lower end, puts up the bar, sits herself up at the head, and rocks and knits. Grandmother told me. She was rocked there herself when she was a baby. She remembers having scarlet fever on it. Aren't these old things fascinating? You're an awfully lucky girl to have grandparents like this. Mine live in a Back Bay apartment, and are just like everybody else, only a lot more so."
"You're a lot nicer than I am," Elizabeth said, suddenly.
"Well, I don't have such nice clothes. I thought you might like this clo', though." Peggy stood up to be admired. "It's my best bib and tucker. See, this is the bib," she indicated the square of cobwebby lace and lawn under her bronze chin, "and this is the tucker." She turned around, to show its counterpartin the back. "That's really what I bought it for, I couldn't decide between this pink linen and a gray dotted swiss until I realized that this was a bib and tucker. Which of course settled it at once. By the way, I know something very funny." Peggy barely took a breath between sentences. "I wonder if you know it, too. My sister Ruth knows your brother John quite well. They wrote to each other all the time that he was abroad. I just found out that he was your brother by the merest accident."
"You don't mean that Ruth Farraday is your sister! Why, Buddy's known her for years."
"Can't he have known my sister for years?"
"Yes, I suppose so, but it doesn't seem possible. I thought he met that girl in Boston."
"I live in Boston. If you've got a sample of your brother's handwriting, I can prove to you that my Ruth is the girl. I've taken in his letters for years."
Elizabeth produced the precious morning missive by the simple process of diving into the neck of her blouse. Peggy bent over the letter.
"It's the same," she said. "Oh, is he going to be an awful lot better soon? Ruthie has been dreadfully worried, I know, though she hasn't said much about it. She's the still member of the family, you see."
"What does she look like?"
"Oh, she's darlingly pretty, with great blue eyesand long golden lashes, and lovely colour that comes and goes, and she dresses sort of quaintly. She looks well in fringes and sashes and droopy things. I have to wear boys' clothes, almost, to set off my peculiar style of beauty, but you mustn't judge Ruthie by me. She's really a star."
"I think I'd like you best."
"Oh, you wouldn't if you could see Ruth. You'd just call for the incense and get busy worshipping. Everybody does."
"Has she many suitors?"
"Flocks and herds of them, but she doesn't care. She's kind of booky and dreamy. I don't mean she doesn't play a stunning game of tennis, and drive a car, and all that. She was motor corps for a while, and just crazy to get over, but Dad wouldn't hear of it. She'll be on the Cape bye and bye, and you can judge for yourself—I'm going to stay to supper, did you know it? Your grandmother sent over and invited me yesterday."
"I didn't know she even remembered my birthday, and now—only think!"
"She said to me that you were as blue as indigo, and putting up a good old struggle not to be, and she wanted you to have something pleasant to remember. That festive sound from below stairs is Judidy taking her turn at the handle of the ice-cream freezer. Do you know what they make the ice-cream of here?Just pure Jersey cream and fruit juice. I never tasted anything like it in my life."
"Didn't I hear something outside the door? It sounded just as if somebody had crept up and then crept away again."
"I didn't hear anything." Peggy threw open the door like a flash. "Itwassomeone. More birthday surprises." She held up the package that an unseen hand had deposited on the threshold. "Open it quick, Elizabeth."
"Why, it's the Kipling 'Birthday Book,'" Elizabeth said, "that red-leather edition that I've been crazy for. Who do you suppose could have got it for me?"
"Who is there left to give you a present?"
"Nobody."
"Grandpa hasn't been heard from."
"Grandpa?"
"He's capable of anything. You don't half appreciate him, Elizabeth."
"I know I don't, Peggy, but I think I'm beginning to."
At the supper table they cornered him.
"Well," he admitted to Peggy, "I didn't know as you was upstairs, and I calculated to have Elizabeth blame it on you, but seeing as I'm caught, I'll own up to what I can't hide. I asked that girl in the apothecary shop in Hyannis what was the best kind of a birthday present, and she said a birthday book. Ithought that was likely, so I asked to see one. She fetched out a Longfeller book and a Emerson book, and then I see this one standing all alone in a corner, and I took to it right away. Kipling, he writes about things I know something about. So I took him."
"And you are going to put your name in the book the first thing—before any one," Elizabeth declared: "What's your birthday?"
"What day is to-day?"
"The thirtieth of June."
"That's it."
"You don't mean that you were born on my birthday?"
"I always kind o' calculated you were born on mine."
When Judidy, attired in a purple and yellow silk gown over which she wore a black silk apron embroidered in blue forget-me-nots, rose to change the plates, with an expression of the most intense self-consciousness, Grandmother rose also, and the two exchanged signals.
"If I understood dumb show a little better," Grandfather said, slyly, "I might be inclined to think that Mother had something hid out in the kitchen, and Judidy had an errand in the pantry, but o' course I probably got it all mixed up."
"Well," Grandmother smiled, "seeing as the same thing has come o' the pantry every June thirtieth forforty-five years, it ain't anyways likely that you know anything about it." She bustled off to the kitchen, to reappear with a mound of ice-cream in which the strawberries were embedded, like so many perfect emeries.
"I like ice-cream better than anything in the world," Elizabeth said.
"I like it better than fathers and mothers and sisters and intimate friends, but not better than grandparents, especially not grandparents when one of them is celebrating its birthday," Peggy declared, "Now, I'm getting silly. Will somebody stop me, please? Oh, look! Look at Judidy!"
That flushed and excited young woman was approaching the table with the air of a standard bearer. In her arms she carried a big tray lined with white paper lace, and on it was set a marvellous erection of cake—a big round of chocolate confection lettered in pink, and further adorned by blazing pink candles. She placed it in front of Elizabeth.
"Time was when I had a cake to myself on my birthday," Grandfather grumbled.
"The time ain't so fur off." Grandmother appeared, with a round loaf of fruit cake on which one candle burned brightly. "You can take the candle right off if you want to. I only put it on for a joke. The cake is just what I always bake for you."
"Elizabeth can eat all the candle grease." Grandfathermade an effort to frown, in which he succeeded only indifferently.
"I made it myself," Judidy cried, as Elizabeth counted her candles, "fourteen, and one to grow on."
"And did you make all the letters—'Elizabeth With Love?'—I think that's the nicest thing any birthday cake ever said on it."
"I was going to put on 'Elizabeth-aged-fourteen,' and then I thought that the candles would tell how old you were," the blushing Judidy hovered over her masterpiece, "and then I thought it was better to put on a kind of a message. I couldn't write a very long one, but I guess that says just as much as a whole sheet of paper."
"How did you make the letters so clear?"
"With a cornycopia. You colour your white frosting with strawberry juice, and then you make this here cornycopia out of letter paper, and then you sort of dribble it along and write with it."
"It looks lovely," Elizabeth said. "Thank you. Thank you, Judidy."
"Don't let your ice-cream melt," Peggy warned.
"You haven't let yours melt," Grandmother said, putting out her hand for the empty dish Peggy was waving.
"I never had all the ice-cream I wanted," Peggy acknowledged, sadly. "I never shall have, I know I shan't, because I can't hold it."
When Elizabeth made her wish, and blew out her candles, tears of pure delight stood in Judidy's eyes.
"I've give you luck," she said. "Oh, I hope it was a good wish!"
"It was the best wish anybody could wish," Elizabeth smiled. "I shall never forget this birthday, and this cake, Judidy, nor any of the dear things that have been done for me."
That night, as her grandmother tucked her into bed, she caught one of the kindly hands and clung to it.
"That was the most beautiful sweater in all the world," she said. "Do you think I could go down and kiss Grandfather good-night, too?" she asked, shyly.
"I guess it could be managed. I'll go downstairs with you, and see."
And presently Grandfather, with his glasses sitting low on his nose, and his nose in the morning paper, was attacked from behind and kissed breathlessly; but when Elizabeth tried to escape, she found herself caught by a blue dimity sleeve, and drawn into an energetic embrace.
"No, you don't," he said, placing her on his knee. "You're going to set here a while, and talk to Grandpa."
But the eminence of his knee proved such an embarrassing vantage ground that he soon let her go.
"Good-night," she said, slipping her hand intohis. "Good-night, Granddaddy, dear," and she kissed him again, a real kiss this time, as if he were her father, or Buddy.
"Well, well," he said, "well, well!" and sat holding her by the shoulders so long that he almost seemed to have forgotten she was there. Then he picked her up in his arms and carried her up the stairs again, tucking her into bed with a hand as accustomed as Grandma's.
"Fourteen years old and letting her grandfather put her to bed the way he did when she was a baby. Ain't you ashamed?" he asked, playfully, in a tone she had never heard him use before.
"No, I'm proud," Elizabeth said, and she meant it.
Under her pillow was her brother's letter, and she lit a flickering bedside lamp to read it by before she went finally to sleep. It was a short letter, slanting down the paper, as he was not yet able to sit up in his bed long enough to write properly. He said:
Dear Sister-on-her-birthday:I'd be willing to eat a German helmet to be able to spend this day with you. But the U. S. base hospital—base is the word—has got me for the present. I send you my respects, and fourteen and one half kisses to grow on.For the love of Michael, don't get priggish in your old age. Some of your letters have made me wonder if there was nobody home where my sister lived, but lately they've seemed more the real thing. Get acquainted with your grandfather and grandmother. Grandfather once told me that he had come to theconclusion there was only one person in the world he had to keep an eye on, and that was himself. Good talk, Sis.Which endeth the lesson.Buddy.
Dear Sister-on-her-birthday:
I'd be willing to eat a German helmet to be able to spend this day with you. But the U. S. base hospital—base is the word—has got me for the present. I send you my respects, and fourteen and one half kisses to grow on.
For the love of Michael, don't get priggish in your old age. Some of your letters have made me wonder if there was nobody home where my sister lived, but lately they've seemed more the real thing. Get acquainted with your grandfather and grandmother. Grandfather once told me that he had come to theconclusion there was only one person in the world he had to keep an eye on, and that was himself. Good talk, Sis.
Which endeth the lesson.
Buddy.
As she tucked the letter back in its envelope, she realized that the sheet which had been wrapped around it to prevent its scrawly surface from showing through the transparent envelope was not blank as she had at first supposed; she spread it out before her, thinking to find a postscript to her own letter, but it was not that. It was evidently a sheet of a letter begun and discarded. Elizabeth had read it before she realized that it was not meant for her eyes to see. "Sweetheart—Sweetheart—Sweetheart—" it ran, "I have never called you this, and I have no right to call you so now, or any other name. At least, not for many years to come. I'm done for. I love you, and I can't try for you. That's something the war has done for a lot—more——" Here it broke off, abruptly.
"Oh, Buddy, Buddy," Elizabeth cried, "I didn't mean to snoop. How perfectly, perfectly terrible!"
It was two in the morning before she slept. She lay wide eyed in the darkness, thinking of her brother and Peggy Farraday's sister. It couldn't be anybody else—she knew that much about Buddy. For the first time in her life she was feeling the weight of a trouble that did not make her want to cry.
"I guess that's what it means to be fourteen and grown up," she said.
Ninety-Nine Negroes
Peggy and Elizabeth were lying on the beach in their bathing suits. Peggy had hollowed out a careful seat in the sand, and built arm rests and a slanting support for the head, which she was trying to recline on and enjoy. Elizabeth, who had made no such elaborate preparations for relaxation, was really comfortable. She was wearing a black mohair suit with a patent leather belt and silk stockings, and a blue rubber cap put on with great care, so that tendrils of soft brown hair framed her face. Peggy wore a rubber diving cap that made her look as if she had been scalped, but her blue jersey suit was trimmed with blue and green stripes and slashed up the side and laced fetchingly.
"Did you get your birthday wish, or did you wish for a handsome husband in the sweet bye and bye?" Peggy asked, lazily. "I always wish for things that will happen right away, because I can't stand the strain of not knowing whether I'm going to get them or not."
"I didn't wish to get anything. I wished to besomething. I can't tell yet whether I'm going to succeed in being it."
"Oh, I know—occasions like that always make you feel noble, but I hate to waste a wish on wanting to be a better girl. You can't tell your wish, and if you don't, there's nobody that can judge whether you've got it or not."
"Can't we judge for ourselves?"
"I suppose we can, but it's kind of embarrassing to award yourself prizes for virtue."
"I know it, but in a kind of general way you have to keep tabs on your own piggishness, because you're the only one that can."
"Did you say pig or fig?" Peggy had all of "Alice in Wonderland" on the tip of her tongue.
"I said pig, but I guess prig was what I meant, really. You're not a prig—but I am."
"Well, speaking of wishes," Peggy said, "do you know the very latest way of telling who you'll marry? You count ninety-nine niggers, twenty-seven white horses, and three red-heads, and then the next man you shake hands with, you'll marry. Let's begin and do it. I've been meaning to for a long time, but I wanted to wait until I had somebody to do it with. Those things are not so much fun alone. Kindly remove that inquisitive sand flea from my back. Oh! Ouch! Lots of people claim they don't bite."Elizabeth took the offender between thumb and forefinger.
"He's a funny looking beastie," she said. "He's got a kind of solemn, long face."
"I think he looks interrupted," Peggy said. "I guess he liked my flavour. Shall we start counting to-day?"
"There aren't many Negroes on the Cape, unless you count Portuguese."
"There are two kinds of Portuguese—black Portuguese and white Portuguese. We'll have to count the black ones. My mother once went to the Azores—that's inhabited by Portuguese, you know—she says that the high-class women all wear a kind of nun's costume, with a huge black head-dress made exactly like a pea-pod, and they are all quite light-skinned in spite of their black hair and eyes. Well, let's go in swimming."
Elizabeth swam her hundred strokes, and then stood breast high, watching Peggy's fearless performance as that young person displayed all the latest spectacular swimming feats, diving and wallowing and spouting like a young whale. The raft, which was usually rocking in at least seven feet of water, had at first filled Elizabeth with terror, but Peggy's adventurous spirit was beginning to animate her, and she followed courageously when Peggy cried, "Now, the raft," and climbed up its slippery sides with very little hesitation.
"You're an amphibious animal," Elizabeth said. "I don't just know what kind, but I do know what your mind is like—the way it flies around, up one thing and down another. It's exactly like a squirrel."
"I don't know whether that's a compliment or not. Look who's here, Elizabeth. A little fish, see. A perfectly good fish. I wonder how he got here."
"Is he dead?" Elizabeth asked, shrinking a little.
"He's either dead or sleeping. I think he's alive. He hasn't any eyes, that's his trouble. Let's put him back in the water—but let's wish on him first."
"Wait a minute," Elizabeth cried. "I know a perfectly lovely poem out of the Kipling book. I'll try it on the poor little thing.