"'Oh! let's try them on'"
"'Oh! let's try them on'"
"'Oh! let's try them on'"
"Here's Grandmother now," Elizabeth said.
Grandmother, making her placid way through the outer chamber, smiled, and held out her hand to Ruth Farraday.
"Peggy's sister," she said, "well, well, it's good to have Peggy bring her sister along—to play in the garret."
"This—this is Miss Farraday, Grandmother," Elizabeth said. "She—she isn't——"
"Elizabeth is trying to say that I am not a little girl, but I'm not really so very far from it. I'm not so grown up that I want to be sent out of the attic now I've just seen all these lovely things. You don't mind if I stay?"
"I'd mind if you didn't stay. You are the kind o' sight that sore eyes is aching for all the world over." The old woman and the girl smiled at each other as if they had been friends all their lives.
"First, tell me who this belonged to, Grandmummy," Peggy dragged at her sleeve imploringly, "and then tell me who every single dress here belonged to."
"Well, they belonged to a number of people, all told. Some of my wedding things is there. That rose lavender silk in your hand, Peggy, was the dress I appeared out to meeting in the Sunday after I was married. The blue silk with the black velvet ribbon scallops around the basque was the dress my sister Alviry wore to my wedding. She had long, pink ribbon streamers on her hat, a chip hat trimmed with pink roses, and she was a picture, I can tell you. My appearing-out hat is here somewhere—likeAlviry's, only trimmed with little lavender plumes. I had a black silk trimmed with jet. That's it, that Elizabeth has her hand on. That's too old for me yet, but everybody had to have a black silk dress that was heavy enough to stand alone in those days."
"What's this little love of a pink muslin with all these tiny, tiny ruffles on it, Grandmother dear? See these bell-shaped white undersleeves, and this figured pink sash, Peggy. Wouldn't your sister look a dream in it?"
"That was the dress I wore when I give your grandfather my promise. I liked it better than any dress I ever had."
"I should think you would have," Peggy put in, fervently.
"I should have liked it best if your grandfather had never been born in the world. Leastways, that's what I've always said. It was the first dress my mother ever let me have all the say about. Dresses had to be chose for their wearing qualities when I was a girl. If they wouldn't wash and turn, year out and year in, we warn't allowed to have 'em, but I had set my heart on a pink muslin with dolman undersleeves, and after I went and nursed Grandmother White through scarlet fever, and just barely lived after I caught it myself, Mother said I could have anything I wanted as a present to get well on.Land, I begun to improve from the day that dress was promised me."
"I should think you would have," Peggy said, again.
"It was pretty brave of you to go into a house where they had scarlet fever, and nurse your grandmother through it," Elizabeth said. "Weren't you deadly afraid?"
"I don't remember much about that part. My father sent me, and so I went, but I shall never forget the day when I first put on the dress. Your grandfather he was calling on my brother Jonas when I come down the stairs drawing my train after me. Jonas he started to stare at me, and then he began to say poetry. An old poem he used to say whenever he wanted to tease me:
"Here she goes, there she goes,All dressed up in her Sunday clothes,High-heeled boots and a cashmere shawl,Grecian bend and a waterfall.
"Here she goes, there she goes,All dressed up in her Sunday clothes,High-heeled boots and a cashmere shawl,Grecian bend and a waterfall.
I was so put out, I run upstairs and didn't come down again till he coaxed me down with the promise of a drive to Bass River by moonlight."
"But how about Grandfather? You said that was the very dress he proposed to you in."
"So t'was."
"Did he propose that evening?"
"No, he didn't. I was so put out at Jonas that I wouldn't have a word to say to your grandpa for a whole week."
"That was hard on Grandfather."
"He went and got another girl and took her to the Harvest Dance. Eliza Perkins, and she wore a mahogany-coloured silk that made her look as sallow as a pumpkin. I was so sorry for him that I kinder made it up to him. I suppose girls will always be high and mighty with the boys they like best. I never took the trouble to plague any other of the young men, but your grandfather I used to make life a burden to."
"Nowadays it's the young men that are high and mighty," Ruth Farraday said, "they go into the service, and their uniforms turn their heads, and then they—forget."
"I guess the young men to-day ain't so different from the men in my time, if you come right down to it. I guess liking is liking—just the same as it always was. Love will go where it's sent."
"Do you believe it comes once to every man, as the saying goes?"
"I know it. There's a lot of talk about loving this one and that one, but when you get right down to it, the second time is a pretty poor imitation of the first. There is natures that's different, of course, but true natures find their own and cling to it."
"Oh, I don't know that I like that for a philosophy," Ruth said, "it's all right—if it isn't one-sided, but if only one feels it——"
"It ain't so often one-sided as you think—the real thing ain't. If it ain't real—why, that's another story."
"But how is anybody going to tell if it is real?"
"There ain't really any way of not telling."
"Grandmummy," Peggy begged, "can we dress Ruth up in your pink muslin and take a snapshot of her?"
"Certain, but you ought to curl her hair. I made a hundred and twenty curls when I wore that dress."
"That's where Elizabeth inherits her curly locks. Please dress up in Grandmother's muslin, Ruth. Don't you want her to, Grandmummy?"
"It would do my heart good to see her pretty face shining out over my pink muslin."
"If you feel like that, then you shall," Ruth said.
"I have a kind o' feeling that it will bring you luck," Grandmother said, when the soft hair had been loosened and curled about the face, and the pink muslin had been hooked and buttoned and tied till it undulated in delicate folds and curves all about the girl's slender body.
On the lawn under the honeysuckle arbour, on the gate post, on the front steps of the old house, which followed the old-time habit of facing the south,though the street was due north, Peggy took picture after picture, and Ruth Farraday smiled up at the sun like an old-fashioned blush rose blooming in an old-time garden.
"There comes Father," Grandmother said, "let's see how much he'll notice."
Grandfather, approaching, took in the tableau under the honeysuckles. Elizabeth and Peggy watched breathlessly as he made straight for the little figure in Grandmothers pink muslin gown and stood staring down at it.
"I don't know who you be," he said, slowly, "nor where you got the dress you're wearing, but I know what you make me feel like." He swept his hat to his breast with a courtly, old-time bow, and bent over Ruth's little hand and saluted it.
Then he put out his other hand to his wife and drew her arm within his.
"Mother," he said, softly.
Letters and the Post Office
Jeanie Dear:Your letter was lovely. I forget what you are like between times a little, and then I look at your picture or get a letter from you, and know. I can hardly believe you love me, after all you know about me, but I guess you do. I wish I could see you, but I am glad you are at the Point again this summer. I tried out Mother about my coming to visit you, without asking in so many words, but her idea is that she would like to have me stay put. My brother may get well enough to come down here at any time, and when he does I want to be chief nurse and bottle washer—medicine bottles.I've been doing quite a lot of things. I spend a great deal of time with Peggy Farraday. She is very nice. Nicer than I am, but not as nice as you, Jeanne of Arc. She is as nice as a Peggy Farraday can be. She has a sister Ruth, who is as sweet as peaches. She is about nineteen and a half, and blonde, with big blue eyes and long golden lashes, and one of those soft voices low in the throat, with a kind of thrill in it. You know—like contralto singing. You would love her. I am wild about her, and Buddy knows her. Don't mention that to any one. It's a secret. If you were here I think I could hint to you some things about it, but I can't on paper. Somebody might read a letter some time that you didn't expect. Buddy is very unhappy, and writes me one cross letter to every pleasant one. He is afraid I shall not be discreet, but discreet is my middle name, touse slang. Oh, I long to tell you what I mean. He won't write to her and she won't to him, and I am trying to make them. You can see how exciting it is.Well, I must give you a brief résumé of what I have been doing, before I close. Monday we went in swimming, and afterwards, in the Farraday car, to Wianno, which is a very attractive summer colony farther up the Cape. We stopped at Hyannis and had ice-cream with a frozen pudding sauce. Tuesday, after swimming, Grandfather took us to Chatham in the noble Ford—me and Peggy—and we stopped at an attractive little tea room, where we had chocolate ice-cream. Wednesday we went swimming and then we walked to the adjoining town where we got some wonderful ice-cream sodas, three apiece. Peggy and I have each got over thirty Negroes. I told you how we were counting them in order to find out our fate. I am glad you have begun, too. I love you dearly.Your ownElizabeth-Elspeth.(Peggy calls me that. She sends her love even though she doesn't know you.)
Jeanie Dear:
Your letter was lovely. I forget what you are like between times a little, and then I look at your picture or get a letter from you, and know. I can hardly believe you love me, after all you know about me, but I guess you do. I wish I could see you, but I am glad you are at the Point again this summer. I tried out Mother about my coming to visit you, without asking in so many words, but her idea is that she would like to have me stay put. My brother may get well enough to come down here at any time, and when he does I want to be chief nurse and bottle washer—medicine bottles.
I've been doing quite a lot of things. I spend a great deal of time with Peggy Farraday. She is very nice. Nicer than I am, but not as nice as you, Jeanne of Arc. She is as nice as a Peggy Farraday can be. She has a sister Ruth, who is as sweet as peaches. She is about nineteen and a half, and blonde, with big blue eyes and long golden lashes, and one of those soft voices low in the throat, with a kind of thrill in it. You know—like contralto singing. You would love her. I am wild about her, and Buddy knows her. Don't mention that to any one. It's a secret. If you were here I think I could hint to you some things about it, but I can't on paper. Somebody might read a letter some time that you didn't expect. Buddy is very unhappy, and writes me one cross letter to every pleasant one. He is afraid I shall not be discreet, but discreet is my middle name, touse slang. Oh, I long to tell you what I mean. He won't write to her and she won't to him, and I am trying to make them. You can see how exciting it is.
Well, I must give you a brief résumé of what I have been doing, before I close. Monday we went in swimming, and afterwards, in the Farraday car, to Wianno, which is a very attractive summer colony farther up the Cape. We stopped at Hyannis and had ice-cream with a frozen pudding sauce. Tuesday, after swimming, Grandfather took us to Chatham in the noble Ford—me and Peggy—and we stopped at an attractive little tea room, where we had chocolate ice-cream. Wednesday we went swimming and then we walked to the adjoining town where we got some wonderful ice-cream sodas, three apiece. Peggy and I have each got over thirty Negroes. I told you how we were counting them in order to find out our fate. I am glad you have begun, too. I love you dearly.
Your ownElizabeth-Elspeth.
(Peggy calls me that. She sends her love even though she doesn't know you.)
Elizabeth was in a letter-writing mood, and sealing Jean's letter with her favourite sky-blue sealing wax, stamped with her monogram signet ring, she opened her letter-case again. She began:
Dear Daddy:We don't write very many letters to each other this summer. At least, I don't write many separate ones to you, but all the letters that go to Mother are meant for you, too. My special particular efforts go to Buddy. Poor Buddy! I hope you will soon be able to bring him to his own grandmother's hunting ground. He keeps writing me about going to Russia. I guess I should want to go to Russia if my health was as discouragingas Buddy's. I worry about him, and, Daddy, dear, I worry about you. I have made the great discovery that a Daddy is a Daddy, and that it has to work pretty hard buying wardrobe trunks and Japanese kimonas and almond nut bars for its female offspring.When I think of you sweltering in that hot city whether you want to or not, I get quite upset. You have to work every day, don't you, whether you feel like it or not? I never thought of that before till last evening, and it made me a little bit ill, it struck me with such force. I have just never happened to think of it in that light. I can tell you, Daddy, it made me love you harder than ever, and that's pretty hard. Well, all I can say is that I respect you more than anybody, and I hope you are never sorry you got married and got this family on your hands.Now for a few words to cheer you up. Monday we went in swimming, Peggy and I, and afterwards in the Farraday car to Wianno. I guess you know all about Wianno. We stopped at Hyannis and had some ice-cream with frozen pudding sauce. Tuesday we swam and Grandfather took us to Chatham in the Grand Old Ford, and we had chocolate ice-cream there. Wednesday we went in swimming and then walked to Harwich and got three ice-cream sodas. Also we counted quite a lot of Negroes. I wrote Mother that we had to get ninety-nine Negroes etc. for a stunt we are doing. Portuguese count, if they are dark enough.I love you more than my old scratchy pen can tell. There goes the station barge, with the morning mail. So here goes I after it.Your Baby.
Dear Daddy:
We don't write very many letters to each other this summer. At least, I don't write many separate ones to you, but all the letters that go to Mother are meant for you, too. My special particular efforts go to Buddy. Poor Buddy! I hope you will soon be able to bring him to his own grandmother's hunting ground. He keeps writing me about going to Russia. I guess I should want to go to Russia if my health was as discouragingas Buddy's. I worry about him, and, Daddy, dear, I worry about you. I have made the great discovery that a Daddy is a Daddy, and that it has to work pretty hard buying wardrobe trunks and Japanese kimonas and almond nut bars for its female offspring.
When I think of you sweltering in that hot city whether you want to or not, I get quite upset. You have to work every day, don't you, whether you feel like it or not? I never thought of that before till last evening, and it made me a little bit ill, it struck me with such force. I have just never happened to think of it in that light. I can tell you, Daddy, it made me love you harder than ever, and that's pretty hard. Well, all I can say is that I respect you more than anybody, and I hope you are never sorry you got married and got this family on your hands.
Now for a few words to cheer you up. Monday we went in swimming, Peggy and I, and afterwards in the Farraday car to Wianno. I guess you know all about Wianno. We stopped at Hyannis and had some ice-cream with frozen pudding sauce. Tuesday we swam and Grandfather took us to Chatham in the Grand Old Ford, and we had chocolate ice-cream there. Wednesday we went in swimming and then walked to Harwich and got three ice-cream sodas. Also we counted quite a lot of Negroes. I wrote Mother that we had to get ninety-nine Negroes etc. for a stunt we are doing. Portuguese count, if they are dark enough.
I love you more than my old scratchy pen can tell. There goes the station barge, with the morning mail. So here goes I after it.
Your Baby.
"You write an awful lot of letters, Elizabeth," said Peggy, as the two met at the post-office steps. "You get a lot, too. I'm not much good at correspondence. Did you ever write to a boy, Elizabeth?"
"No, not really. Only thank-you letters and answering invitations and things like that."
"Well, don't you ever tell, Elizabeth, because I might get teased, but I'm writing to a boy right now. That is, I am going to be when I've answered his letter. It isn't a silly boy, though, it's a sensible boy—a boy that knows a lot of things I want to learn about. Chester Reynolds, you know, that I've told you about winning the tennis cups. I got a letter from him last night. It isn't supposed to be very nice to show letters, but if you'd like to see this one, I'll bring it around to-morrow, and then I'll bring my answer to it, and let you see what you think of that."
"All right," Elizabeth agreed.
"Isn't it a funny thing, he is the only boy that I ever thought I'd like to correspond with, and now he has just sat himself down and written to me."
"I think that's very nice." Elizabeth said. "There's a boy in New York that I felt that same way about. He sort of offered to send me a copy of 'Prometheus Bound,' but I knew if he did that I should have to write and thank him, and I didn't know whether Mother would approve of my writing him like that when I was away from home, so I didn't say anything more about it."
"What is 'Prometheus Bound,' anyway?" Peggy inquired.
"Well, I think it is a kind of a blank verse poem orbook, something like Whittier's 'Snow Bound,' but I'm not sure. That was one reason that I wanted him to send it—so I could find out. He was quite a literary boy, one of Jeanie's friends. He's very good looking, though."
"I don't like literary boys as a rule, though, do you?" Peggy asked. "They usually wear rubbers and horn rims, and have to mind their mothers."
"Not any friend of Jeanie's. Her friends are always all-around boys. They must have brains, too."
"Oh!" Peggy said, impressed.
The crowd on the post-office steps was beginning to thicken. The big bags, bulging with mail, had been passed behind the glass façade of the mail-box section, and behind the closed wicket that indicated the distribution was taking place the silent postmaster and his assistant worked with grim, accustomed rapidity.
"Let's go and watch them put the things into the boxes," Elizabeth said. "It's the most exciting thing to see the letters go in. Ours is 178. See, here it is," she cried, as Peggy followed her into the stuffy office. "There's a card from Buddy already, and one for Grandfather from the Bass River Savings Bank, and one fat one that I can't see the face of that I hope is from Jean. She doesn't always wait to get answers, you know. She writes when the spirit moves and so do I. I've just been writing her."
"When you go back to New York, let's write to each—I mean one another—like that, only I'm afraid you'll get the worst of the bargain. When the spirit moves me to write a letter, it mostly only moves me to say, 'Dear Elspeth,' or whoever it is, 'Hello! Yours frantically fondly, Peggy.' It's funny, when I like to talk so much, that I don't like to write more."
"There's my thirty-first," Elizabeth whispered, as a solemn black chauffeur made his appearance in the post office.
"My thirty-third," Peggy said, "and outside is a white horse. What a pity we have got to get the white horses in sequence. They are so hard to find, especially when you are looking for them. But when we do get them all, I am going to keep my hands behind me all the time, until I find somebody I am willing to shake hands with!"
"It would be awful, after all this trouble, if we didn't shake hands with the right one, wouldn't it, Peggy? There goes a postcard right into my box. It's for Judidy. She has a young man. Did you know it? He's almost as fat as she is, and not nearly so good looking."
"I hope she gets somebody very nice, and marries them, and has a whole backyard full of fat pink babies, though I don't know what Grandmummy would do."
"Grandfather says she'd get the work donequicker if she didn't have Judidy to look out for, and I think perhaps she would. Isn't it funny, when I first came, Judidy just seemed to me like a kind of queer person that I felt not quite right about eating at the table with, and now she's my friend."
The gate in the wicket flew up, and in an instant it was surrounded.
"See all the mail-hungry fiends," Peggy said. "Oh, goody, Mother's got a letter from my cousin in Rome—and Ruth has a letter from that Chambers fellow."
"What Chambers fellow?" Elizabeth asked, quickly.
"Piggy Chambers I call him. He's got loads of money and he is very good looking, and he just pesters Ruthie to death."
"What does she do?"
"She lets him. She likes it, rather."
"Oh, dear!" Elizabeth said.
"You don't have to worry. She's my sister. Piggy Chambers isn't so bad. He's just kind of a bore, you know, and awfully fond of writing letters to Piggy Chambers, Esquire. Lots of grown-up fellows are like that."
"She's your sister, but I love her, too."
"Shouldn't think much of you if you didn't."
They were on their way home by this time, and the post-office crowd had begun to melt away,streaming up and down the street, and into all the cross roads.
"I wish my grandmother would let me come after the mail at night," Elizabeth said. "I have to wait till Judidy or Zeke are ready to come, or Grandfather will take me. As if I wasn't old enough to go out after six o'clock alone."
"It isn't your being old enough, it's the general reputation of the post office being a place where the crowd goes in the evening to—start something. You know yourself that lots of things that go on there don't look very well. It's such a mixed crowd, too."
"As long as you behave yourself, I don't see what difference it makes."
"I've thought a lot about going to the post office at night," Peggy said, "and I've argued a lot about it with Ruthie and Mother, and the conclusion that I've come to is that it's just as well to keep away. All the girls that aren't nice hang around there. Some of the girls that are nice stay away. When I grow up, my niceness is going to be so much a matter of course that I won't have to look out for it so hard. Just now I am going to obey Grandmummy's rule to 'avoid the appearance of evil'."
"I guess you are just about right, Peggy," Elizabeth said after reflection. "Sometimes you talk a lot like Jeanie. Would you like to hear some of her letter?"
"I should say I would, but don't read it to me unless you really want to."
"I do," Elizabeth said, "and the reason I do is that I think you are like Jean in some ways. You are both of you way beyond me in the way you look at things."
"The way I look at things is better than the way I act sometimes."
"I'm inclined to be just the other way around. The way I look at things is worse than the way I act most generally."
"I'm disobedient," Peggy said, "and sloppy weather, and always late to places. I do as I'm told about things like going to the post office at night, but not about trying to run the car or getting home on time."
"I'm just the other way," Elizabeth reflected. "I wouldn't monkey with anything I was told not to touch, but I'd make a big fuss, if only in my own mind, about obeying a grown-up rule that I didn't understand."
"Either way gets you into trouble at times," Peggy said, sagely. "Don't look round, but there are two boys trailing behind us."
"What kind of boys?"
"Two of the boys that were down at the Aviation Camp all last summer."
"Are they all right?"
"Yes, but I don't know them."
"They are speaking to us. Don't look round."
"Oh, girls!"
"I suppose they'll get tired and go away."
"Don't look round."
"Oh, girls!"
"Now, look here," Peggy suddenly wheeled on the two followers. "We haven't met you. We're not going to have you trailing around after us."
The older of the two boys whipped off his hat.
"I—I beg your pardon," he said, colouring. "We were only joking. We—we——"
"It puts us in an embarrassing position," Elizabeth contributed.
"Well, some of the girls, they—we——" the other boy also found explanation more difficult than he had anticipated.
"There's a difference in girls," Peggy said, severely.
"We were only going to ask you the way to the beach." The first boy's hair was a blazing, splendid red. Elizabeth liked red-headed boys.
"I've seen you there almost every day this summer," Peggy challenged.
"So've I seen you." The second boy had a wide, ingratiating grin. "We want to get acquainted, that's all," he admitted, "so we were pursuing what seems to be the usual way down here."
"That isn't the way to get acquainted with us," Elizabeth said.
"What is the way, then?"
"Don't askus." Peggy gathered Elizabeth's arm under hers, and hurried her along.
"They are sort of nice," she admitted, when they had put several yards between them and the objects of their encounter. "If they are really nice, I suppose they will get introduced the way they ought to. If they aren't, well, we won't see them."
"It's a sort of strain waiting to find out such things," Elizabeth said.
"Read me Jean's letter, and that will take our minds off them," Peggy demanded, practically. "One reason that I don't like to have much to do with boys is that when you get thinking about them it's hard to get your mind on other things. If they are silly, they aren't any fun."
"On the other hand," Elizabeth argued, "if they aren't just a little bit—silly or—something—they aren't so much fun."
"Well, they have to be interested in you some," Peggy admitted.
"Now I'll read you Jean's letter. We'll sit down under this tree by the gate. See how pretty her handwriting is. Doesn't she make fascinating E's and R's?"
"I think there is a lot of character in handwriting,"Peggy said, bending her head over the letter. "See this one from Piggy Chambers. He writes like a pig and he is one."
"See this card from my brother Buddy. He writes like a perfect gentleman, and he is one, though I say it as shouldn't."
"Oh, I've seen your brother's handwriting before, but not for a long time. Why don't you write him to write Ruthie? I'd a whole lot rather she was hearing from him regularly than from Piggy."
"Has she a friendship with Mr.—Mr. Piggy?"
"No, she hasn't. He just wants her to marry him, and that's all there is about it. If your brother is her friend, it would be the part of a good friend to stick around just now, if only by correspondence."
"There are things about my brother that you don't understand, Peggy," Elizabeth said, solemnly.
"Thirty-four," Peggy said, her gaze diverted to the street, "count that one, Elizabeth. It may be that same chauffeur, but never mind. We don't know positively that it is."
"Well, now for Jean," Elizabeth said, after these formalities were finished.
Elspeth-Elizabeth dear:I've had your long letter, the one that told about the Steppe children (and how I laughed!), for a week, and your two postcardsI wrote you one serious letter in answer to a serious one from you, and now I'll just tell you about the way things are going here. It's just the same thing—sailing, teas, dances, bathing, and then begin all over and do it again. I like it all—especially the sailing—"a wet sheet and a flowing sea," you know, is one of my ideals. Another ideal is getting realized, too. I'm learning to drive the car. I bogged it yesterday, and a farmer with whiskers to his knees, and a long rope, like the funny papers, came and pulled us out. The chauffeur was with me. He ought to have prevented it, but he said I was too quick for him. Anyhow, won't it be wonderful when I learn? Then you and I can "ride together, forever ride," as Browning says.I went into New York on Thursday, and what do you think, I went to see your brother Buddy. I called up your mother from the station and she suggested it, so I did, as we had the car and were going out of New York from his end of the town, anyway. I felt two ways about doing so. One way was, that it was hard on you for me to see him first, and the other way was that if you couldn't see him, I could represent you. He is quite a sick-looking Buddy, but very, very sweet and dear. I hope you can get him down to the Cape and take care of him. They won't discharge him, will they, until they get good and ready to? He looks a lot like you and a lot like some of those Rembrandt portraits of himself. I suppose it's his beard that makes him look so sort of shady and shadowy. He said he didn't think he would ever be any better, but that if he did, he hoped he could go to Russia. He seemed to want me to think that this and everything else he said was a joke. I must interrupt myself now, and say au revoir, because the car is waiting, and Mother is being very polite in it. I can see her back getting politer every minute.'bye—Jean.P. S. I love you.
Elspeth-Elizabeth dear:
I've had your long letter, the one that told about the Steppe children (and how I laughed!), for a week, and your two postcardsI wrote you one serious letter in answer to a serious one from you, and now I'll just tell you about the way things are going here. It's just the same thing—sailing, teas, dances, bathing, and then begin all over and do it again. I like it all—especially the sailing—"a wet sheet and a flowing sea," you know, is one of my ideals. Another ideal is getting realized, too. I'm learning to drive the car. I bogged it yesterday, and a farmer with whiskers to his knees, and a long rope, like the funny papers, came and pulled us out. The chauffeur was with me. He ought to have prevented it, but he said I was too quick for him. Anyhow, won't it be wonderful when I learn? Then you and I can "ride together, forever ride," as Browning says.
I went into New York on Thursday, and what do you think, I went to see your brother Buddy. I called up your mother from the station and she suggested it, so I did, as we had the car and were going out of New York from his end of the town, anyway. I felt two ways about doing so. One way was, that it was hard on you for me to see him first, and the other way was that if you couldn't see him, I could represent you. He is quite a sick-looking Buddy, but very, very sweet and dear. I hope you can get him down to the Cape and take care of him. They won't discharge him, will they, until they get good and ready to? He looks a lot like you and a lot like some of those Rembrandt portraits of himself. I suppose it's his beard that makes him look so sort of shady and shadowy. He said he didn't think he would ever be any better, but that if he did, he hoped he could go to Russia. He seemed to want me to think that this and everything else he said was a joke. I must interrupt myself now, and say au revoir, because the car is waiting, and Mother is being very polite in it. I can see her back getting politer every minute.
'bye—
Jean.
P. S. I love you.
"I didn't know that your brother was as sick as all that," Peggy said. "Why haven't you told me so?"
"He doesn't want anybody told. He doesn't want to appear like a confirmed invalid."
"I'd like to tell Ruthie."
"I—I'll tell you what you do. You take Jeanie's letter and read it to her. That won't be either of us telling her."
"All right, I will."
"I don't know what excuse you can give for having a strange girl's letter with you."
"I won't need any excuse. I'll just say to Ruth that I've got a letter from a friend of yours about John Swift. She'll just grab the letter—that's all. I'll say you were willing."
"You come around and tell me what she says afterwards."
"All right." Peggy was making a prolonged departure, kicking at the turf as she stood at the gate. "I'll come around this afternoon, anyway, and we'll go and get some tutti-frutti ice-cream."
"All right, and if you hear anything more about who those boys were, you can tell me then."
"All right, and I'll bring around that letter I was telling you about, from Chester Reynolds."
"All right. I guess my dinner's ready. I heard the bell when we first got in sight of the house."
At this point Grandfather appeared at the door and seeing Elizabeth still looking in the direction of her departing friend, he approached firmly and grasped her by the ear, and led her, protesting, into the house.
Huckleberries and New Friends
Grandfather came out of the north door and shaded his eyes with his hand. He gazed searchingly at Elizabeth's favourite tree by the gate under which she and Peggy were sitting with their embroidery.
"Well, well, I'm disappointed," he murmured to himself. "I thought if I see anything of those two girls I'd ask them to go huckleberrying, but I s'pose they've gone off down to the shore, or somewhere."
"Oh, do ask us to go huckleberrying," Elizabeth cried.
"I thought they'd be right out here, sitting under that tree, like enough, doing some chore o' fancy work. It does beat all where they find to hide themselves."
"Oh, what fun!" Peggy cried. "He took me huckleberrying last year, and I got four quarts in about two hours."
"Well, well, I am disappointed. I might's well make up my mind to go alone."
"He will, too, if we don't hurry," Elizabeth said,stuffing her crochet work into the pocket of her blue linen dress. "Run and get into the Ford."
Grandfather, equipped with as many shining pails as a tinware peddler, approached the car and stared at it gravely, though Peggy and Elizabeth were already in possession of the back seat.
"Too bad I couldn't find those girls," he said. "Mother's put a great heap of sweaters and aprons under the seat, so's if I should be lucky enough to pick them up on the way. Well, Lizzie"—this to the machine—"how cranky are you to-day? Crank by name and crank by nature," he made half a dozen ineffectual attempts at starting, and then succeeded suddenly, jumped into the car, and they were off with a snort and a flourish.
"You darling Granddaddy," Elizabeth said in his ear, "we're crazy to go huckleberrying, and Peggy says you know all the spots where they grow thickest."
"Well, well, how did you get here? I dusted my car out carefully just before I started. It don't seem as if I could overlook a couple o' girls o' that size."
"You didn't have your glasses on, Granddaddy."
They took the road to the north, winding white into the hazy distance.
"The road is like a white ribbon," Elizabeth said, "and those little scrubby pines, sitting low all along the way, are like—well, I don't know what they arelike, but I likethem. I don't complain if the trees on the Cape are not majestic, as they are in other summer resorts. You see a lot more sky when the trees are low."
"You stand up for Cape Cod," her grandfather said. "It's a pretty good place. You know the story of the old farmer who was driving back from his wife's funeral. 'I lived with that woman forty year,' he said, 'and toward the last, I really got to like her.'"
"Is that the way you feel about Cape Cod?" Peggy asked, mischievously. "I thought it was the way you felt about Lizzie."
"Lizzie's got her good qualities, like most o' the rest of us. She ain't got much natural pride about the way she looks, and she hates to admit that a man is stronger than she is, but when he once gets the best of the argument she goes along peaceable. There's a lot o' human nature to Lizzie."
"I'm so excited about these huckleberries I can't wait to get there. Don't you love to see those clumps and clusters of dusky blue berries just waiting to be jingled into the pail? The woods smell so sweet, too, with the wild honeysuckle and wild roses."
"And wild bog cranberry and wild turnip and wild beech plums," Grandfather added. "Well, here we are."
They had switched from the macadam to a roaddeep with sand through which the light car had been ploughing for the last several minutes. There was a cleared space before them and a path leading into the woods beyond.
"Foller your nose," Grandfather said, "and you'll find berries enough to make huckleberry dumplings for a regiment."
Elizabeth and Peggy slipped into the big gingham aprons that Grandmother had provided, and each slung a pail over an arm.
"I'll bet I can get more than you do," Peggy said.
"If you do, it's because your fingers are longer." Elizabeth looked ruefully at her small, chubby hands.
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp," Peggy said. "I can quote poetry as well as your friend, Jean, but don't ask me what that's out of, because I don't know. My fingers are longer. I don't know whether that makes any difference or not, but I'll give you a handicap."
"I scorn your handicaps. One, two, three, go. May the best girl win." Elizabeth shot down the path, and the sound of the fruit beginning to spatter into her pail was heard almost immediately.
"I never saw so many blue or huckleberries in my life. I've got the loveliest, thickest patch—come over here, Elizabeth," Peggy shouted from her retreat.
"I've got all the blue or huckleberries in the world right here," Elizabeth mimicked.
"I'll pick a couple o' minutes, and then I'll lie in the bushes and rest a while," Grandfather said, vanishing with a six-quart cranberry measure.
Later when the girls came into the clearing again with their laden pails they found him stretched at full length and apparently fast asleep, but beside him was his heaping measure of berries.
"Granddaddy Swift," Peggy cried, "when did you pick all those?"
"Those?" he said, yawning. "Oh, a couple of hours back."
"I bet you've been working your head off every minute. We've got three quarts apiece. Elizabeth beat me after all, and then turned around and helped me get mine."
"I nearly killed myself doing it. I never want toeatanother huckleberry, but I am thirsty for water or something. Don't I hear a spring?"
"There might be one through the trees there. I don't know nothing about it." Grandfather pointed, however, in a definite direction.
Peggy parted the branches, and slipped into a thread of a path which led them directly to a pool of crystal clear water fed by a tiny stream that was bubbling and gushing out of the earth. Protruding from the spring were three bottles of ginger ale thathad been so placed that the cool water splashed upon them as it fell. On a rock close by were spread two paper napkins with a pile of bread-and-butter sandwiches on one and a stack of sugar-molasses cookies on the other. Between the two, holding them down, was a box of chocolates from New York's most popular candy manufacturers.
"I don't know nothing about it," Grandfather said, when they dragged him to the feast, "I've been fast asleep back there for upwards of two hours."
"You're a story-teller," Peggy said, "and for a punishment you've got to tell us a real story as soon as you've had your party."
"Nothing ever tasted so good to me in my life," Elizabeth said, as they were brushing off the crumbs.
"That's what she says after every meal she eats," her grandfather chuckled.
"But it's always true. Now here's your pipe and here's your baccy, and while you're filling it, you've got to be thinking of a story to tell us."
"I can't tell stories," he protested. "I'd sing a song if I knew any. There was a song my grandfather used to sing to us when we were children, but I can't remember it. The chorus went like this," he made a great pretence of getting the pitch, and then, rocking himself gently, sang in a solemn, sing-song voice:
"Injun pudding and pumpkin pieThe gray cat scratched out the black cat's eye."
"Injun pudding and pumpkin pieThe gray cat scratched out the black cat's eye."
I never knew the rights of it, or what the trouble was. Some kind of a disagreement they had."
"But where did the injun pudding and pumpkin pie come in?" Peggy asked. "And what is injun pudding?"
"Don't show your ign'rance, as Moses says," Elizabeth put in. "It's Indian pudding, and you make it out of Indian meal and molasses, and it cooks all day and makes whey, and eaten with ice-cream it's perfectly heavenly. Grandma is going to show me how to make it. I made a cake, you know."
"I heard about that cake," said Peggy, hastily.
"Who's Grandma?" Grandfather inquired, innocently. "I thought we only had grandmothers around our place."
"Grandma likes it better for me to call her that," Elizabeth answered, blushing.
"You needn't think you are getting out of telling us that story," Peggy cried, "tell us about the time you went courting Grandmummy."
"I don't remember nothing about it."
"Tell us about the time you took Eliza Perkins to the Harvest Dance," Elizabeth said, daringly.
"Well, apparently you know something about it already. Women do beat the Dutch, gossiping along about things that happened near fifty years ago as if 'twere yesterday."
"You needn't blame Grandma. I worm all her secrets out of her."
"I'll warrant you do. I calculated for her to remember that Harvest Dance as long as she lived. Did she tell you how she was dressed?"
"Was it a fancy dress party?"
"Certain it was, and I went as King of the Harvest. I had a velvet suit with corn tassels all down the seams, and a velvet tam o'shanter with a big tassel on that. Your gram'ma she was going to be Queen o' the Harvest, till we had a little tiff, and she refused to have anything to do with me."
"She didn't tell us that."
"I calculated she hadn't. Well, she went as an apple, root and branch, all decked out in apple blossoms, with a staff, with artificial apples growing on it, and looking like an apple blossom herself, with her pretty pink cheeks and all the lacy fixings in the world trailing after her. I took Eliza Perkins, who was the best-natured and biggest-hearted girl I ever set eyes on, and the homeliest. Lord have mercy, wasn't she homely! I knew 'twould never do to take a pretty girl, so I picked her out to make your grandma jealous with, and I told her so. She was willing. 'I'll make Laury Ann just about jealous enough,' she said. ''Twouldn't do to have her too jealous.' And she certain played her part well. Your grandma asked me to come around to acandy pull to her house, before the evening was over."
"She didn't tell me any of this, the wretched woman!" Peggy cried. "Did you go to the candy pull?"
"Oh, I went sure enough."
"Did you have a nice time?" Elizabeth asked.
"I didn't have the kind of time I expected," Grandfather twinkled.
"Why not?"
"There wasn't any candy, and there wasn't any pull."
"What was there?"
"Your grandma was there."
"Oh, what did happen? Granddaddy, don't you see me shaking with excitement and suspense?" Peggy demanded.
"Well, Mother and me, we kind of come to an understanding. I guess it's about time I hitched up Lizzie and we started along. She's been a whining and a whinnying back there for some time now. Besides, your grandma calculates to make huckleberry dumplings for supper. She gave me special directions not to ask anybody in to eat 'em. She allowed she was only going to have enough for the immediate family."
"That means I'm coming!" Peggy cried. "Iamthe immediate family."
"I know what dress Grandma had on that night—her pink muslin with dolman undersleeves, the one that Ruth tried on the other day," Elizabeth said, "and you kissed her in."
"Well, force o' habit is strong. Get your berries together and hop back into the car, or I'll have to start without you." Grandfather led the way through the branches into the clearing where they had left the machine.
"I half expected to see Lizzie grazing around without her harness on," Peggy said. "Grandfather is so convincing."
"You take good care o' that sister of yours." Grandfather was using most of his breath in the effort to crank Lizzie. "Don't let any o' these fat boys that is hanging around her try to run away with her. She's too precious."
"He must have seen Piggy," Peggy said in an undertone to Elizabeth.
"There was a fat boy hanging around your grandma once." He jumped into his seat with the agility of a boy himself, a thin boy, "Giddap, giddap, Lizzie."
"I know," Elizabeth leaned over the seat to say into his ear, "Pork Joe."
"You're a remarkable good guesser after you've been told. Well, Peggy, as I was saying, don't let any young Pork Joe get that pretty sister of yours."
"Did she say anything more to you about that letter from Jean?" Elizabeth asked, snuggling down into the seat beside Peggy again.
"Not a word," Peggy said. "Piggy Chambers is around all the time since he came down, and so I can't get much action. By the way, they want us to go to Provincetown with them to-morrow. Can you go? You'd better. They need chaperoning."
"I think I can. I'll have to ask, of course."
"Provincetown is way down on the tip toe of the Cape, you know. We live in the elbow."
"Whoa, Lizzie." Grandfather threw in his clutch and stopped with a flourish just behind two figures who, laden with pails full of berries, and apparently oblivious of the oncoming machine, were plodding ahead in the dust. "Want a ride, boys?"
Two caps were whipped off with an amazing suddenness, exposing one blazing head of bright red hair and one inimitable grin.
"Yes, thank you, sir," two voices spoke as one.
"One will have to ride behind and one with me," Grandfather said. "Elizabeth, these boys are Jim Robbins' grandsons, and if they are anything like old Jim, they are good young fellows to know. They'll tell you their own names, I guess."
The red-headed boy on the front seat turned and smiled a trifle mischievously.
"I'm Tom Robbins, and this is my cousin, WillDean, Miss Elizabeth Swift and Miss Peggy Farraday."
"How do you do?" Peggy said, gravely.
"How do you do?" Elizabeth echoed, demurely.
"Captain Swift is pretty good about picking up passengers on the road, isn't he?" asked the boy with the grin.
"When you see two boys limping along in front of you everywhere you go, something's got to be done about it," Grandfather said good humouredly, "anybody might almost think you boys follered me on purpose. Yesterday and day before and day before that, I come across them hoofing it along the road," he explained, "going the same direction I was, and scurse able to take another step."
"We didn't ask you for a rideto-day," the red-headed boy blushed. "We didn't even know you were on the road till we looked up and saw you about a minute before you caught up to us."
"What's those girls giggling about?" Grandfather inquired. "I can't have a minute's serious conversation with anybody without this giggle-giggle-giggle business going on."
"I guess I know what you are smiling about," the Dean boy lowered his voice, "but honest, don't misjudge us just on account of that post-office business. We kind of wanted a chance to square it, you know. Your grandfather thinks we're all right."
"It's been pretty dry weather for the gardens, hasn't it?" Tom Robbins was saying to Grandfather. "Have your vegetables suffered much?"
"Just about all they're capable of."
"Do you see much prospect of a rainy spell?"
"As fur as I'm concerned, I don't know as it will ever rain again."
"That's too bad."
"Ankle getting better?"
"What ankle?"
"The one you sprained the day before yesterday."
"Oh, yes, sir, thank you."
"Which ankle was it, now?"
"The left—I mean, the right."
"I suspected as much," said Grandfather, gravely. "Well, they are pretty nice, clever little girls, ain't they?"
"Yes, indeed."
"Ever play checkers?"
"Yes, sir."
"Your cousin play checkers?"
"Yes, he does."
"Well, it might be good for lame ankles for you to come around and have a game o' checkers with an old man once in a while. Always ask for me in particular because when anybody comes around to the house, especially when I've got a young girl visiting me, Ilike to be the one that has the privilege of saying whether I'm to home or not."
"Thank you, Captain Swift. We—we will be glad to come."
"Our girls don't go to the post office at night, but Saturday night around mail time they'll probably be dishing out Indian pudding and ice-cream to anybody that might happen along."
"I know two fellows that might happen in," Tom Robbins said.
"I think those boys are really quite nice," Peggy said, as they sat under their favourite tree after supper.
"I think they are," Elizabeth said, "but it was rather mortifying the way they followed us in the first place. They ought to have known better."
"But it only needed a hint from us to make them realize."
"I think boys need those hints. It's the fault of girls if they aren't kept right up to the standard."
"Some of the girls on the Cape are not very particular. They are just out after a good time and don't care how they get it."
"I guess that's mostly just thoughtlessness. Anyhow, these boys haven't been a bit—well—you know—familiar since that first minute."
"No, they haven't one bit. I think Will is quite good fun. Did you notice how he wouldn't sit on the seat with us for fear of crowding us, but just gotright down on the floor and stuck his feet out? I think that's the way they really are, and the other was just showing off."
"I think so, too," Elizabeth said. "Anyway, I'm awfully glad we told Grandmother about it. She knew who they were right away, and everything. I wouldn't have known whether I ever ought to speak to them again or not."
"It isn't every grandmother that you could tell a thing like that to," Peggy reflected. "I didn't tell my mother. She just wouldn't have thought it was much account. She trusts me to know the right thing, and that's fine of her when I do know it, but when I don't, it's embarrassing."
"The thing about Grandmother," Elizabeth said, "is that she remembers back so well. She knows what it's like to be a girl, and she thinks all the things that girls think are important. Lots of grown people don't. She imagines right into things, but she doesn't poke around them. She doesn't say much, either, but when you tell her a thing she listens to it."
"I wish any of my relations did that. Father just says, 'All right, Peggy, I'll take it all on trust—where's the morning paper?' whatever I say to him, and Mother says, 'Put in that little wisp of hair, darling,' or 'Look at your nails,' no matter what I say to her. Sister doesn't listen to anything anybody says any more."
"Not even to Mr. Chambers?"
"Him less than anybody, but she spends all her time with him."
"Peggy, don't you think she's got a heart?"
"I don't know what she's got. She kept me awake last night by snivelling for about an hour, and when I got so sorry for her that I couldn't help it, I went in and tried to put my arms around her, and she just turned me out as if I'd been an interloper. I don't know what to make of her lately. If you're looking for a nasty grown-up sister, I'd dispose of her cheap."
"I'm glad she's not happy," Elizabeth said, soberly.
"Well, I'm not. I'm just sore at her about last night, but I'll get over that. You remember that in 'Little Women' about not letting the sun go down upon your wrath. Well, I scarcely ever do."
"I try not to," Elizabeth said. "It isn't getting angry so much that afflicts me. It's a lot of horrid, sensitive ideas that I have. I want to be loved the best, and have things just the way I think is about right—and if I don't, I brood over it."
"Well, I'm a more active nature," Peggy said. "Haven't we had fun to-day?"
"Weren't the huckleberries fun—from bush to kettle, as it were? Weren't those boys cute, to get acquainted with Grandfather?"
"Wasn't it funny we happened to pick them up, when they'd been huckleberrying, too?"
"And oh! Wasn't Grandfather a darling all day—so funny—telling stories and making little surprises, and so nice with the boys and everything. Oh, Peggy, don't you—love my grandfather?"
"I certainly do," said Peggy, solemnly.
Provincetown and a Walk in the Woods
Elizabeth enjoyed her ride to Provincetown much more than she expected to.
The objectionable Mr. Piggy Chambers shared with Ruth the soft cushions of the back seat of the big touring car while the two girls occupied the folding seats forward, which were, as Peggy said, as luxurious as most stationary seats in machines of an ordinary make. The chauffeur was in a smart buff livery that matched the upholstery, and on either side of Peggy and Elizabeth were sliding panels that revealed at the touching of a button a vanity box and a smoking kit respectively. Peggy had found a green leather driving coat with buff facings for herself tucked away under the chauffeur's seat, and Mr. Chambers had produced a brown and blue coat of soft scotch wool for Elizabeth. Ruth was wearing a white wool cape of her own, and steadily refused any of the additional luxuries that the owner of the big car offered to produce.
"I feel like an absolute traitor to Buddy to be taking a minute's comfort," Elizabeth thought,trying to keep firmly in mind the fact that Mr. Piggy Chambers had claimed industrial exemption from the service through which her brother had lost his health, and perhaps the girl he loved, "but the car does roll smoothly, and the country is beautiful, and I'm lucky to have a chance to see it, though my motives in coming were quite unmixed."
"You see, the Cape has everything," Peggy said with the air of a showman, "salt-water ponds, and fresh-water ponds, and hills and woods and sand-dunes. If you want a walk through the pines to a leafy glade, walk this way, ladies and gentlemen. If you want rocks and breakwaters and sand-dunes and inlets, look out of the car on the other side. Every town has at least two or three of the oldest windmills on Cape Cod, and dancing pavilions and moving-picture palaces stare at us from every side, without in the least interfering with the general panorama."
"Don't you think you have talked enough, Peggy?" Ruth suggested.
"No, I honestly don't, but perhaps Mr. Chambers does."
"This is Miss Ruth's party," Mr. Chambers smiled diplomatically. "This country makes me think of English country, in one way," he added, smoothly. "It is, of course, altogether different, but in England, especially in the north, you get a variedlandscape in a limited area, as you do here. This is the only place in the states where you find just that."
"The Cape is only eight miles across at its widest point," Ruth said, "and of course the whole scenic effect is miniature in proportion. We'll begin to see the sea on both sides of us presently."
"What amuses me is the way the townships are cut up; a township of fifteen hundred people is cut into almost what you might call house lots. North, South, East, West Harwich, Harwich Port, Harwich Centre, and it doesn't take ten minutes to run through any one of these little villages, and get into the next."
"They are all very attractive," Elizabeth said, defensively, but not very loudly.
"I'd like to show you England," Mr. Chambers continued, in a lowered voice. "I think you'd like it over there, say in a year or two, after the children begin to get back their rosy cheeks again, and the gardens are flourishing a bit more. The war has left it all a bit ragged."
"It hasn't leftyouragged," Elizabeth thought. "It's only left you fatter and complacenter and richer. I wish Buddy had a million."
"You look like a snow maiden in those white clothes," Piggy Chambers was saying to Ruth.
"'Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart,'" Elizabeth repeated to herself. "'I have never called you thisand I have no right to call you so now.'" That was what her Buddy had written to Ruth Farraday, and Ruth Farraday, not knowing, was leaning back in Piggy Chambers' great French car, and letting him tell her that she looked like a snow maiden.
"My brother says that southern France is much more beautiful—wasmuch more beautiful than England," she said aloud. "He—he helped to break the Hindenburg Line, you know."
"Did he?" said Mr. Piggy Chambers, civilly.
"My—my father would have gone, I think, but he wasn't able to get away from his business."
"If he was in the steel business, he would have been industrially exempted, anyway."
"He—he wouldn't have wanted to be industrially exempted," was on the tip of Elizabeth's tongue, but she remembered that she was talking to her host of the day. "It won't get me very far to be ill-bred and impolite all of a sudden," she thought, sensibly. "Mr. Piggy Chambers might just as well think that the members of our family are well brought up." Provincetown reminded Mr. Chambers a little of a Dutch fishing village, which he described at great length.
"Anybody would think he had just discovered Abroad," Peggy scolded in an undertone. "Ruth likes all that travelogue stuff, because she was so crazy to get there and couldn't. Now we are goingto get out and walk, I am thankful to say, but if he tries to lose us, don't let him, that's all!"
Mr. Chambers did try to lose them. He tried bribing them with ice-cream and they took the ice-cream, but consumed it in time to join the two before they had strolled more than three blocks. He suggested that the chauffeur take the two girls in the car to examine the Truro lights a mile or two back from the course over which they had just come, while he and Miss Ruth strolled along the shore.
"I'd rather stay here with Ruthie," Peggy insisted, flatly, and Elizabeth could not determine whether Ruth was pleased or displeased, for she made no display of either emotion.
"If she wanted us to go, I think perhaps she would say so, but I don't know. Grown-up girls don't seem to think they can say what they mean, the way children do," she thought.
Presently they were all walking along the beach, and Elizabeth found herself walking with Ruth, though she could not tell exactly how it had come about. No one seemed to have planned to pair off in that way. It just happened, though both Peggy and Mr. Chambers seemed to be very much dissatisfied with the arrangement.
"Buddy would love a day like this," Elizabeth said. "He's shut up in that old hospital, you know, and he can't get out till he gets better, and he can'tget better till he gets out. I want to get him down to the Cape, where I can take care of him."
"You must be very worried about him," Ruth said. "I didn't even know that he wasn't discharged or anything about him, until Peggy found out all these things through you."
"He's been too sick to write much."
"He writes to you, doesn't he?" Ruth said, so very carelessly that Elizabeth's heart sank.
"Yes, he does. He says that I'm the only girl that answers his letters whether he writes to them or not."
"Does he expect to have girls write to him that he doesn't take the trouble to inform of his whereabouts?"
"I think he would be very pleased if they did."
"Why should they?"
"Why—why shouldn't they?" Elizabeth stammered.
"He's probably devoted to dozens of girls," Ruth said, lightly, "all waiting for a personal word from him. He's probably quite a Lothario, only little sisters aren't supposed to know that."
"I don't exactly remember what a Lothario is," Elizabeth said, "but if you mean that he's a flirt and I don't know it, you're just awfully mistaken. I know things about Buddy that nobody else knows, that he doesn't even know that I know. I know what he's like, too, inside."
"You think he's very nice inside, don't you?"
"Yes," said Elizabeth, a little hostilely.
"Well, I'll tell you a secret," said Ruth Farraday, still very lightly and gayly. "I do, too."
"Then why—why do you go to Provincetown and things with Mr. Piggy Chambers?"
"Mr—Mr.who? Really, that's too bad of Peggy. I'll have to speak to her." Ruth Farraday seemed to have a sudden little coating of ice all over her. "Would you mind telling Peggy that I want to speak to her alone a minute?"
Elizabeth obeyed meekly and so miserably that Mr. Chambers, at whose side she lingered, since there was nothing to do but take Peggy's place with him, asked her what was wrong.
"I'm not feeling very well," Elizabeth said, "the sun is so bright."
"I find her rather bright myself," Mr. Piggy Chambers murmured. "Would you like to do me a great favour?"
"Yes, yes, indeed," Elizabeth said, untruthfully.
"Will you take Miss Peggy and go back to the drug store where you had your ice-cream, and buy a five-pound box of the very best chocolates they have? If they haven't a five-pound box, get five one-pound boxes. Just use your own judgment about it."
"I will," said Elizabeth, "of course, Peggy mightnot want to go. She—I—we don't care very much about chocolates."
"But Ruth does," said Mr. Chambers, decisively. "I should very much appreciate it, and we'll come along and pick you up presently. You might like some more ice-cream." He slipped a five-dollar bill into her hand.
"He asked me if I would do him a great favour," Elizabeth explained to the protesting Peggy, as they turned toward the quaint street on which the little shops were set, "and I couldn't say no, could I? I couldn't say, 'Thank you for your lovely ride, but I don't feel obliging.'"
"I just wish he'd asked me. I would have said 'No!' right out. Sister has been giving me fits because you told her that I called him Piggy."
Elizabeth's eyes filled.
"I'm not blaming you. I know you didn't spill the beans on purpose. I just wanted to know how it happened."
"I just called him that. That's all," Elizabeth said, miserably.
"Well, don't you care, darling," Peggy advised. "Ruth was only upset about something else, and wanted to take it out on me. It will serve her right if Mr. Hoggy Chambers proposes while we're gone. I promised her I wouldn't call him Piggy any more."
"I think he means to."
"Well, if he does, I wonder what he'll say. Love me and the world is mine. I guess that's about what he will say. The world is my oyster and I'll let you keep it in your stew, if you'll be good."
"Mr. Piggy Chambers," said Elizabeth, "Oh!"
"If she says 'yes' to that freak, I'll—I'll disown her."
"Oh, let's not think of it."
"There isn't much else I can think of," Elizabeth said. "Oh, but look! Sixty-four, sixty-five. Those are black Portuguese, and they count." Two swarthy fishermen in bright blouses were passing them on the narrow street.
"You've caught up with me," Peggy said. "I was four ahead of you for a long time."