"We'll probably get them all just in time to shake hands with Tommy Robbins and Billy Dean."
"I won't," said Peggy.
"You might have to," Elizabeth argued. "Supposing we were going away and they came to say good-bye, and held out their hands to shake hands. We'd have to shake them."
"I'd say I had a sore finger."
"We couldn't both say we had sore fingers. Besides, they could see we hadn't."
"We might both have lame wrists, if we had been doing the same thing, rowing or playing tennis."
"It would look rather suspicious."
"Wouldn't it be better to look a little suspiciousthan to tie yourself up for life that way, or run the chance of it? I know who you want to shake hands with. That Reynolds boy."
"I don't want to shake hands with anybody," Peggy said. "We may like Tom and Bill a good deal better before the summer is over, though."
"They really are quite nice," Elizabeth reflected.
"Mr. Chambers is trying to get us to ride home in the front seat, with the chauffeur. He says the front seat is the most comfortable in the car, and was designed for three. I told him I'd think it over."
"I don't see what difference it makes now. He's talking to her alone, anyway."
"I think it's a terrible responsibility. They are both old enough to be married, and they ought to be old enough to know just what they want to do, instead of keeping a couple of kids—I mean children—worried to death all the time."
"I think Mr. Chambers knows what he wants to do."
"Yes, but he ought to know better than to keep bothering a girl that doesn't."
Elizabeth and Peggy managed to eat a plate of ice-cream apiece in spite of their dejection, but Elizabeth steadfastly refused to break Mr. Chambers' five-dollar bill, even to pay for the five pounds of candy she purchased for him.
"He can pay me the way he would a grown-upperson," she said. "I prefer to buy our own ice-cream, and do his errands on a strictly business basis."
"My goodness," Peggy said, "I feel as if we had suffered enough, without having to buy our own refreshments."
They rode with the chauffeur only a part of the way home, because when they had travelled twenty miles of the forty between the tip and the elbow of the crooked right arm of Massachusetts a tire gave way and they all stepped out of the car and took a walk in the woods while they were waiting for repairs to be made.
Mr. Chambers and Ruth slipped into a thread of a path going in the opposite direction from that taken by the two girls, but evidently made a detour and turned again toward them, for the moment in silence. When they heard the sound of voices just beyond Peggy put her finger to her lips.
"I am the kind of man who always gets what he wants," Mr. Chambers was saying. "You won't give me the chance to tell you what I want, but you know pretty well what it is, and I think you know that I am going to get it."
"No," said Ruth Farraday.
"You know that I want you to marry me?"
"Yes, I know that."
"You know that I love you?"
"I—I don't know much about love."
"I can teach you,"
"Nobody can teach me anything that I can't find out for myself. If I don't know what this—this feeling people call Love is, from the inside, nobody can come and throw it over me, like a cloak."
"Oughtn't we to stuff our fingers in our ears?" Elizabeth pantomimed.
"No," Peggy shook her head, fiercely.
"Wrapping it around you like a cloak is just what I should like to do. I should like to keep you warm and comfortable for the rest of your life."
"And happy?"
"I know I could make you happy."
"Warmth comes from within, doesn't it? You wouldn't want an icicle of a woman."
"I am not afraid that you would be an icicle."
Peggy was showing strong signs of disgust, but Elizabeth was listening with parted lips and shining eyes. She had forgotten that she was eavesdropping, forgotten everything except that Buddy's girl did not want to give up her chance of learning something that Buddy could teach her. She expected the next words when they came.
"I would be an icicle—to you."
The suitor did not seem to realize the significance of this statement.
"All I want is a chance to melt the icicle," he said, complacently.
"Goop!" said Peggy in a loud whisper. Then she sneezed, but fortunately the speakers had passed far enough beyond to confuse the sound with the general blend of forest sounds, the whirring of wings in the underbrush, or the rustling in the trees overhead.
"I guess he thought I was a startled quail," Peggy said, "though I wouldn't have cared much if he had found me. I never heard such silliness, did you?"
"I didn't think it was silliness," Elizabeth said. "It was quite a lot the way people talk in books, you know."
"It wasn't really mushy," Peggy agreed, "only sort of peculiar. Well, I guess I am not going to have a new brother-in-law right away. Still, I notice she's keeping a string tied to him, just the same."
When they got back into the car Ruth suggested that the girls take the folding seats in the tonneau again, and Mr. Chambers quietly acquiesced in this arrangement. As they took their places Peggy gave her friend the benefit of a long, significant wink, and then subsided into the silence that encompassed them all during the remainder of the long drive home.
Little Eva
I come to tell you that my mother's sick," Moses said. "She's hollering something awful. She said to tell Miss Laury Ann, but I can't find her nowhere."
"She's out with Grandfather," Elizabeth said, "and I don't know when she'll be back."
"Maybe Marmer'll be dead by that time. She's kind of turned green already."
"She can't be going to die."
"I arsked her was she going to die, and she said she guessed she was. I dunno nothing about it."
"I'll go home with you," Elizabeth resolved suddenly. "I'll get Judidy, and we'll go and see what we can do."
"Marmer didn't tell me to get no girls," Moses said, doubtfully, "she told me to get Miss Laury Ann."
"I'll be better than nobody, Moses."
"Well, if you do come over to my house, I ain't agoing to wear no bloomer suit."
"Oh, I shan't expect you to," Elizabeth said, hastily.
Judidy was nowhere to be found, so leaving wordwith Zeckal, the good-natured hired man, to send either Judidy or her grandmother to the rescue as soon as possible, Elizabeth followed Moses to the tumbledown little red house that was his home. On an old horsehair sofa in the middle of the kitchen, which was the first room they entered, a young woman with her blonde hair straggling into blue eyes swimming with pain was lying in a huddled heap. In the middle of the floor was a wash-tub full of dirty water and half-submerged, grimy garments.
"I was trying to git some washing done when the pain struck me," a weak voice said. "I ain't in no condition to receive visitors."
"I didn't come to visit," Elizabeth said, gently. "I came to help."
A spasm of pain racked the sick woman. Elizabeth was down on her knees beside her in an instant.
"You're all corseted up!" she said. "I'm going to rip these things off," for under the trailing, ragged garments that overlaid Mrs. Steppe she was wearing a corset like a board. Elizabeth tore at the strings until she released her.
"You shouldn't lace like that," she said, in horror.
"I don't lace," the sick woman breathed, "my waist is only—eighteen—inches—around. It's naturally—small. I guess if I could only get a little hot water to drink I would feel better."
Elizabeth found a one-wick kerosene stove sobegrimed and choked with soot that she could scarcely light the sputtering wick, but thanks to her recent investigations in her grandmother's kitchen, she was able to heat a little water over it.
"A month ago I didn't even know there was such a thing as a one-wick kerosene stove," she thought. She caught sight of what at first glance looked like a small gray animal on the floor under the table. "It's nothing but a piece of moldy bread, the kind that poor Madget was afraid would crawl out on her. Oh, dear!"
"Where are the little girls?" she asked, as the sufferer sat up and drank the steaming water in the cracked blue cup that was the only china receptacle of any kind that Elizabeth could find.
"I wasn't able to get them any breakfast, so they went out to see if they could pick some blue berries."
"Madget is so little she ought to have milk in the morning." Elizabeth could not refrain from making this superfluous suggestion.
"Milk sours so." The spasm of pain that attacked her was of longer duration this time. Elizabeth began rubbing the afflicted area, and calling to Moses, who presently appeared, and gazed at his mother speculatively as she winced and writhed in agony.
"Go and get a doctor, Moses. Any doctor you know about."
"I don't believe in doctors," Mrs. Steppe breathed. "I—I believe in spirit healing. Get a medium."
"You get a doctor, Moses," Elizabeth said. "Tell him that I—Captain John Swift's granddaughter—will settle the bill."
"Oh, all right," Moses said.
"I don't know much about mediums," she explained to the sick woman, "but I know that a doctor would be able to help you right away."
"I—I don't believe in medical healing," the woman moaned, "but if you want to spend your money that way—the last time—I had a sick spell, Mis' Abithy Hawes, she's a fine medium, she—come here and went into a trance—and had me cured in half an—hour. No doctor—could do—do like that. Her control is—Little Eva."
"Don't try to talk," Elizabeth said, mystified.
The next half hour was one that she remembered all her life. The spasms of pain increased. Elizabeth's experience of acute illness was so limited that she earnestly believed she had a dying woman on her hands. Madget and Mabel came in whimpering and hungry, and Madget cried steadily and consistently from the moment when she caught her first glimpse of her mother's tortured face. Mrs. Steppe continued to call for Mis' Abithy Hawes, and Elizabeth finally thought of sending Mabel to look for that lady.Mabel returned from this quest with amazing promptitude.
"She had her hands in the flour dough," Mabel explained, "and she can't come. She sent word that she couldn't have no trances till she got her work done up, and then she'd see. She give me a cookie."
"Did you explain to her how sick your mother was?"
"Yes, she said she couldn't have no trances now. She said Little Eva was cranky to-day."
By the time Moses appeared, with the word that the doctor would follow him shortly, Elizabeth was at the limit of her endurance and her ingenuity. She had been heating water in a leaky lard pail, and stripping off her own white petticoat to make hot compresses to relieve the increasing pain of her patient, quieting the ubiquitous Madget for a few seconds at a time only to provoke the din again as soon as she set her down from her lap; and trying in the intervals to reduce the slovenly room to something like order.
"Is she dead yet?" Moses inquired, solemnly.
Elizabeth shook her head.
"Moses, dear," she said, "you mustn't talk like that. It's unfeeling."
"All right," he said with unexpected docility, "I won't. I just wanted to make some plans, that's all.I thought I might come to live with you, if Marmer died."
Elizabeth put her arms around the forlorn little figure.
"She isn't going to die," she said, "at least, I don't think she is."
"Well, you can't tell," said Moses, skeptically.
The doctor, who proved to be a portly being with a red beard and the kindest eyes Elizabeth had ever seen, as she told Peggy afterward, explained that the seizure was nothing more serious than neuralgia complicated with a slight gastric attack.
"Lack of nourishment, lack of exercise, lack of any sort of proper care for mind or body," he said.
"What is neuralgia?" Elizabeth asked.
"Starved nerves in revolt is one way of putting it."
"I thought she had appendicitis or pleurisy or something."
"She has nothing that a week's care won't bring her out of. If she isn't looked out for at least for that length of time the trouble is likely to increase. There isn't anybody to take care of her, is there?"
"Well, there is nobody but me," said Elizabeth.
The doctor looked at her under quizzical eyebrows with an expression that reminded her of her grandfather.
"Give her this medicine regularly," he said, as if he found nothing remarkable in her statement, "and see that she has three nourishing meals a day and keep her quiet."
"It's easier to keep her quiet when you are here," Elizabeth said, indicating the awestruck Madget, Moses, and Mabel, who stood in a respectful row, at a respectful distance from the great man.
"I understand these children are always quiet when they're asleep or when the doctor comes."
"Well," Elizabeth said, "the better they feel that they know you the more noise they make. They treat me like an old friend now."
"I used to live in New York myself," the doctor observed, "and I miss it a good deal more than most people suspect. I know all about you, you see. I know pretty well all the news of the comings and goings in town."
"You're a New Yorker, and yet you stay down here all the year round," Elizabeth said. "I don't see how you can, if you really liked New York."
"I liked New York," he said, "but you can't be a country doctor on Broadway. I'd rather take care of these people than those."
"Oh, why?"
"They need it more," he said, simply. "In a big city you don't get the same chance to find out what people do need. It isn't always sick bodies a doctoris called in to look out for, you know. A doctor down here has to be a kind of a lawyer and a justice of the peace and a plumber, into the bargain. In New York he doesn't get that kind of an opportunity."
"That seems a funny kind of thing to call an opportunity, I think."
"It is one, though," the doctor said. "Where is these children's father?"
"He's on a coal barge. He only gets home once in a while."
"He must make pretty good money."
"He does, only she—" Elizabeth, who had walked to the door with him, and was standing just outside it as they talked, indicated the woman in the room beyond—"spends it on candy and novels and things, and then he gets discouraged, and doesn't send it to her, or drinks."
"Well, call me again if you need me. No, I won't send you the bill. There isn't any bill. I'm paid already."
"I hope he didn't mean that it paid him just to see me here doing good," Elizabeth thought, when she realized that that was what he did mean. "I don't want him thinking I'm always looking after the poor when this is the first time I ever did it."
The children crowded around her when the doctor left.
"Your mother is going to be well in a week," shetold Moses. "I'm going to wash your face, Mabel—and Madget, if you don't stop crying, do you know what I'm going to do to you?"
"Spank me!" wailed Madget.
"No, I'm not. I'm going to kiss you, but I guess it would be more to the purpose to feed you. What does your mother make oatmeal in when she makes it?"
"She don't make none," Mabel said. "Can you make oatmeal?"
"I could follow the directions on the package, I guess. I can make cake."
"I want some cake," cried Madget, promptly.
Elizabeth was trying to get some water "boiling, foaming, scalding hot," according to directions, when Judidy appeared at the door, her moon face beaming over various pails and packages.
"Land o' Liberty!" she said. "You up here a-tending the sick, and me out skylarking with my feller. I brought some milk and sandwiches for the children. I guess she ain't sick much, is she?"
"I'm dretful sick, Judidy," a voice from the couch said, weakly; "I had the doctor."
"I thought you was a spiritualist, and didn't believe in no medicine."
"I don't believe that no doctor could doctor me as well as Little Eva could, but Mis' Hawes she couldn't come. I was too sick to depend on a contrary control,so we called the doctor, and he left me some kinder dark stuff to take, and some light-coloured pills that's kind o' quieting."
"Dotell," said Judidy, politely. "Now you drink to where I've got my finger," she instructed Madget, as she held out the milk bottle, which the children were trying to reach, "then Mabel, then——"
"Pour a little out in this cup, and I'll feed Madget myself," Elizabeth said. "I guess the other children had better drink out of the bottle."
Judidy looked at Elizabeth admiringly as she lifted the little girl on her lap.
"My, ain't you a pretty picture," she said, heartily. "You was just as stuck up, when you first came, with your ideas about having a demi-tassy after you had et, and laffing at the pump in the kitchen, and never eating anything between meals, and to see you now, a-taking up with the town's poor as if they was own relations."
"Don't you call us town's poor," Mrs. Steppe said, sitting up suddenly, and then falling back with a groan. "I ain't never been called such a name, Judidy Eldredge."
"You just lay still," Judidy said, "and don't you worry. I'll stay now, Elizabeth, and you can go home and get ready for your dinner. It's a lucky thing I had it all arranged to have a day off on accountof my feller being home. Miss Laury Ann she told me to send you as soon as I got here."
"But I don't want you to have to lose a day with your—feller," Elizabeth said, trying not to be guilty of the rudeness of correcting Judidy's pronunciation. "I'll come back as soon as Grandma will let me."
Madget began to whimper as she set her down, but Moses assured her that if his marmer died, he would "come over there right away and tell her about it."
"I don't know whatever makes him so pleased to think of my dying," his mother said, plaintively, "he has never known anybody that died or anything, if he is always burying birds with regular funeral preaching."
"He doesn't want you to die," Elizabeth said, "he just gets ideas in his mind."
"Well, they aren't very cheerful ideas for a sick woman to hear."
"No, they aren't," Elizabeth agreed.
"If I can get Mis' Hawes over here, Little Eva will tell me if I'm going to die. I'd like to lick Moses once, anyway, whether I'm going to die or not."
"I don't think anybody could 'a' done any better," her grandmother said, when she told her the story. "Hot compresses is the thing that always relieves pain, and what the whole situation needed was somebody to take charge and send for the doctor. Youwas a pretty brave, practical girl, I should say. The Swifts always had good contrivance, and come out strong when there was anything real to be done."
"I don't think that I managed so very well. The children kept crying and I couldn't stop them, and Mrs. Steppe kept asking for a medium that I couldn't get for her. What does she mean by Little Eva being Mrs. Hawes' control?"
To her surprise her grandmother began to laugh, and laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks.
"I suppose itisfunny," Elizabeth said, "but I never thought of it that way. I suppose it's funny about Moses keeping on asking if his mother was going to die, but it didn't seem funny at the time, it just seemed queer and—and awfully hard to manage. I—I——" to her chagrin, her lip began to tremble. "What—what is a control, anyway?" she wailed.
"It ain't nothing that you got to bother with just at present," her grandmother said, "you come here." She sank into one of the numerous valanced rockers conveniently placed about the house, and held out her arms. "You come here—to Grandma," she said.
"You'll think I'm an awful baby," Elizabeth sobbed on the comfortable bosom, snuggling a little closer in the protecting embrace. "It isn't so much what I've done that I mind, but what I've got to do. It isn't very brave of me, but I dread taking care of that awful woman for a whole week. She—sheisn't very grateful, or anything. She'd rather have a medium. But—but the children—they love me."
"Elizabeth," her grandmother said, "I ain't a-going to let you go there for any week."
"But it's my duty, Grandmother. You aren't going to stop me doing my duty, are you? You can't spare Judidy, and there isn't anybody else. There aren't any real servants or charity organization societies here. I don't see what there is to do but just what Doctor Hartly does, go around and be anything that the people need you for."
"You can't be all things to all men, Elizabeth," her grandmother said, sagely. "If you can be like that Holland boy I've heard tell of, that put his hand through a hole in the wall and kept the water from destroying a whole town, that's one thing, but the kind of a hole that the water'll roll through forever, the minute you take your arm out, is another. The Steppe family is going to be in need of any person's full strength as long as Mis' Steppe continues to breathe, and we can't wish anybody's breath to stop, in spite of Moses. The best you can do for any set o' people in that condition is just what you went and done to-day. Look out for 'em when they get way down, give 'em what extry strength and vittles you got at all times, but don't try to lift 'em up unless you can lift 'em all the way out. Mis' Steppe will always sag back from her own weight."
"Oh, dear," Elizabeth sighed. "Don't you think she could be reformed?"
"She might, and then again she mightn't. I should say she couldn't be. She's always trying to get something for nothing, that woman is. This business of getting a medium to get her control to fix up things she's too lazy to fix for herself that's Mis' Steppe all over."
"But what is a control?"
"A control is a spirit guide that takes possession of a medium when she goes into a trance. Somebody that has lived and died, usually somebody kind o' tricky, that has a hard time getting into communication with whoever 'tis they want to talk to."
"But that's just pure faking, isn't it?"
"I don't know whether 'tis or not. I don't understand it. My idea is, never to make too light of a thing that I don't understand."
"You don't think there is a Little Eva, do you, Grandma?"
"No, I don't, but Mis' Hawes does."
"I shouldn't think there was anything to do but laugh at Little Eva."
"So wouldn't anybody, first off, but spiritualism is some people's religion. It ain't mine, but in general it ain't a good idea to laugh at anybody's religion, not even the cannibals'."
"What shall we do about the Steppes, then?"
"I'm going to get Judidy's sister to go over there and stay what she can. What she can't, you and me and Judidy'll make up between us. We'll have a kind of general care of 'em till they get out o' this particular patch o' woods. Then they'll have to go on their own gait again."
"It does seem sort of awful, not to really do anything."
"Yes, it does, but the thing to do is to keep people like that in the back of your mind, and when any chance comes that might benefit 'em, not to be too lazy to pass it along. I'm kind of arguing with your grandfather about taking Moses to come and live with us. I ain't pushing the matter, but kind o' working along easy. I've got an idea of getting Mis' Steppe interested in a different class o' books. Any woman that'll get the notion out of a book that she can wear a eighteen-inch corset around her waist under her rags and stick to it can get some other more practical notion through her head in time. Anyhow, that's one thing to work on. I ain't very hopeful, but I thought of it. I keep at the Steppes, and little by little I hope to get something accomplished. I see that the children is fed up about once a day anyway, but I don't stick my wrist through the hole o' their shiftlessness, I just bail out a little water as often as I can."
"Thatisthe way, isn't it?" said Elizabeth. "Ijust thought I'd have to go there and practically live for weeks. It—it seemed like a bottomless pit."
"There ain't really no such thing as a bottomless pit," Grandmother said, sagely; "there are only pits that we can't plumb the bottom of."
She told the story of Elizabeth's activities to Grandfather that night and this time she did not laugh, even in recapitulating the difficulties the little girl had encountered in relation to Mrs. Steppe's religious convictions and her constant demand for Little Eva. On the contrary, she wiped her eyes quite openly.
"She was calculating to go there," she said, "and take entire charge of that miserable Steppe family without any help from anybody, nurse that sick woman and feed those children for a week and longer if it was required of her. She would have done it, too, if I hadn't put a stop to it. I wish you could have seen that pretty, anxious little face, and those great eyes of hers brim full o' tears but game as a fightin' cock. I do wish you could have seen her, Father."
"I wish I could of," said Grandfather, gravely.
"Just one thought come into my mind as I set there talking to her, and it come so strong I almost up and said it aloud before I caught myself. I wasthinking o' that first night she come, and the dejected way you sat in that chair there, after she had gone up to bed, and I said to myself, holding her there in my lap all exhausted and quivering, after a whole forenoon spent doing battle with the slothfulness of the Steppe family, 'Father Swift,' I said to myself, 'what do you think o' John's girl now?' I said."
"Didn't you hear what I spoke up and answered? Well, you couldn't 'a' been listening very hard. When you said that, I had my answer ready to the dot. 'I think a whole lot better of her,' that's what I said, 'and I have been doing so for some time back'."
Buddy Wants to Know
Elizabeth had been to tea with the Farradays. The big, closed-in porch, which was practically their summer living room, gay with chintzes and strewn with all the appurtenances of luxurious modern existence, always gave her a little feeling of homesickness for the life to which she was used in town. The trim maid, quietly manipulating the tea wagon laden with the delicacies of the usual teatime meal, took on an almost pathetic glamour to the little exile.
Mr. Chambers was in possession of the wicker chaise-longue. Ruth had poured tea with deft and dainty fingers, though she was unusually silent, even for her. Mrs. Farraday, who was as unlike Elizabeth's mother as it was possible for her to be, had yet, in a gown of blue linen, with rose-coloured net cuffs and neck piece, managed to suggest her vividly.
Peggy had behaved abominably. In intervals of passing cakes she had managed to get out of the line of vision and stand grimacing and contorting her face at Elizabeth. Usage demanded that Elizabethreturn these impudent salutations in kind, and twice Peggy nearly made her do so.
"I should have been mortified," she thought, "if Mr. Piggy Chambers had caught me making faces, especially since I would naturally make that kind of faces about him, if it happened so. I guess Ruth would never speak to me again."
"I can't help it," Peggy whispered, "these tea fights on the veranda, with Piggy—I mean Hoggy—Chambers and Mother knitting as if she had just eaten the canary, and Ruthie saying nothing and sawing wood, and the other self-sufficient member of our little circle sitting there and owning the universe—they just make me wild. I feel as if I would like to get an Indian tomahawk and scalp 'em all."
"I—I like tea on your veranda, though," Elizabeth couldn't help admitting. "Grandmother would think afternoon tea was ridiculous, and I am used to it in my own home. I'm used to having my own mother around, too."
"If your own mother were aiding and abetting the slaughter of your innocent sister," Peggy said, "you might not feel so excruciatingly fond of her. I didn't make that remark all up. Father said it first. Our family is just completely mixed up over the whole affair. There's one ray of light. Ruthie isn't mushy about any of it. Only she makes me nervous."
"I don't see how you can bear it at all," Elizabeth said. "I can't, hardly."
"Can hardly, Miss Swift," Peggy mocked. "You are more sensitive to things than I am, I guess. I throw 'em off after I've howled for a while. My idea would be to fill Piggy's bed with flour and hair-brushes, or to stick a hair-pin in his tires. You'd just give him mental treatment and take it awfully to heart."
"I guess that's why we get on so well together. Opposites attract opposites."
"If I were a man I think I should want to marry you, Elizabeth, but if I were a girl, I don't think I should want to be just like you."
"That's not very flattering, because you are a girl already, and you couldn't be a man if you wanted to."
"I mean for myself I would like to be like you. You take things harder than I do. I can always go out and punch something."
"There never seems to be anything I can punch," said poor Elizabeth.
Peggy had walked with her as far as her own gate, and then she had gone in to get her belated morning mail. She had been so sure that there was no one to write to her until she had answered the letters with which her portfolio was stuffed that she had neglected to go to the post office as usual. She found, however,a long letter from her brother and one from her mother. Buddy wrote:
Dear Little Sister:I am going to take you into my confidence in an important matter because, well, there is nobody else that I can ask any help of. You needn't get peeved at this way of putting it, because it stands to reason that if you weren't a pretty reliable little sport I wouldn't trust you. I don't have to. I only do.—Hope to die, and cross your heart?—Thank you.Well, the thing is, I want to know something about Ruth Farraday. For reasons of my own I haven't been writing to her. Now, I might like to write to her once or twice, a friendly little note, you understand. A fellow gets so doggone lonesome. They won't let me go until they're satisfied I'm fixed up. How you are going to fix up a fellow who has got some of the things I've got the matter with me, I don't know. They think it's shell shock, among other things. Well, among other things, it isn't shell shock, it's——Oh, well, it isn't shell shock. It's darned old discouragement, and homesickness for the things that never were on land or sea. That's poetry, my darling sister. I have some of that in my system, too.Well, I've been here alone so long that I want to know everything—everythingabout the people I care about. Ruth Farraday is one that I do care something about. She was mighty nice to me before I went to be a soldier. I think she would have been nicer if I had worked it around to get a commission instead of just plain enlisting, but this is only just conjecture. She is a beautiful girl, and her heart is in the right place wherever it is, but Sister, that's what I want to know. You're fooling around with the Farradays so much, you ought to get some line on this. I don't want to be idiot enough to start the poor, sick old friend stuff,ifshe's got her mind all off me or anybody that looks like me, and on somebody that doesn't. Does she wear a ring, and is she reported to be free orcinched, orwhat?I can't stand not knowing any longer. That's the point. I may have been a darn fool in the way I've warned you against talking to her about me. I've just had all these notions one after another, kind of feverishly. I'm going to write to her if you advise me to. Don't go making up anything. Tell me the truth. I've got to know it, Kid. I'm just all in—that's all.Buddy.
Dear Little Sister:
I am going to take you into my confidence in an important matter because, well, there is nobody else that I can ask any help of. You needn't get peeved at this way of putting it, because it stands to reason that if you weren't a pretty reliable little sport I wouldn't trust you. I don't have to. I only do.—Hope to die, and cross your heart?—Thank you.
Well, the thing is, I want to know something about Ruth Farraday. For reasons of my own I haven't been writing to her. Now, I might like to write to her once or twice, a friendly little note, you understand. A fellow gets so doggone lonesome. They won't let me go until they're satisfied I'm fixed up. How you are going to fix up a fellow who has got some of the things I've got the matter with me, I don't know. They think it's shell shock, among other things. Well, among other things, it isn't shell shock, it's——Oh, well, it isn't shell shock. It's darned old discouragement, and homesickness for the things that never were on land or sea. That's poetry, my darling sister. I have some of that in my system, too.
Well, I've been here alone so long that I want to know everything—everythingabout the people I care about. Ruth Farraday is one that I do care something about. She was mighty nice to me before I went to be a soldier. I think she would have been nicer if I had worked it around to get a commission instead of just plain enlisting, but this is only just conjecture. She is a beautiful girl, and her heart is in the right place wherever it is, but Sister, that's what I want to know. You're fooling around with the Farradays so much, you ought to get some line on this. I don't want to be idiot enough to start the poor, sick old friend stuff,ifshe's got her mind all off me or anybody that looks like me, and on somebody that doesn't. Does she wear a ring, and is she reported to be free orcinched, orwhat?
I can't stand not knowing any longer. That's the point. I may have been a darn fool in the way I've warned you against talking to her about me. I've just had all these notions one after another, kind of feverishly. I'm going to write to her if you advise me to. Don't go making up anything. Tell me the truth. I've got to know it, Kid. I'm just all in—that's all.
Buddy.
She opened her Mothers letter with eyes so full of tears she could scarcely distinguish its import.
Elizabeth Dear.It is getting harder and harder to be away from you, especially since there is no immediate hope of Buddy's release. The poor boy doesn't get better. It is difficult to understand all the intricacies of the doctor's diagnosis. New conditions of warfare and of life breed new conditions of disease, physical and mental, he says, as well as new kinds of wounds and injuries, to be patiently handled by the new medicine and surgery. To a mother's eye, Buddy seems to be suffering from an old-fashioned set of causes and effects. But I don't know. All I know is that Buddy is not getting better, and that he has to be handled more carefully than ever. Elizabeth, dear, let me warn you again to be careful what you write him. He looks forward to your letters with the greatest interest, and yet when they come, to be perfectly frank, they often seem to fret him or to make him irritable. Perhaps you had best not mention your friends the Farradays. He used to know Ruth Farraday quite well, and sometimes the mention of these boys and girls that he used to have so many gay times with seems to make him morose. At other times he likes to look back at things he used to do. He is only a little boy, after all.Twenty-three doesn't seem much more to me than fourteen does, in spite of that stern look he has that all the men who have done any real fighting seem to come back with.My darling, take care of your health. Don't go out in all weathers without being suitably attired for cold or wet, as the case may be. Your letters are a great comfort to me. You are good to help Grandmother so much. She appreciates it, and so doesMother.P. S. I wish I might have tasted that cake you made.
Elizabeth Dear.
It is getting harder and harder to be away from you, especially since there is no immediate hope of Buddy's release. The poor boy doesn't get better. It is difficult to understand all the intricacies of the doctor's diagnosis. New conditions of warfare and of life breed new conditions of disease, physical and mental, he says, as well as new kinds of wounds and injuries, to be patiently handled by the new medicine and surgery. To a mother's eye, Buddy seems to be suffering from an old-fashioned set of causes and effects. But I don't know. All I know is that Buddy is not getting better, and that he has to be handled more carefully than ever. Elizabeth, dear, let me warn you again to be careful what you write him. He looks forward to your letters with the greatest interest, and yet when they come, to be perfectly frank, they often seem to fret him or to make him irritable. Perhaps you had best not mention your friends the Farradays. He used to know Ruth Farraday quite well, and sometimes the mention of these boys and girls that he used to have so many gay times with seems to make him morose. At other times he likes to look back at things he used to do. He is only a little boy, after all.Twenty-three doesn't seem much more to me than fourteen does, in spite of that stern look he has that all the men who have done any real fighting seem to come back with.
My darling, take care of your health. Don't go out in all weathers without being suitably attired for cold or wet, as the case may be. Your letters are a great comfort to me. You are good to help Grandmother so much. She appreciates it, and so does
Mother.
P. S. I wish I might have tasted that cake you made.
"Oh, Mother," Elizabeth cried. "Oh, you can't help me the least little bit in this, can you? What is the best thing for me to do for my Buddy?"
She tried to talk with her grandmother, very carefully, for fear of betraying Buddy's confidence, but for once her grandmother did not help her.
"It isn't a very good idea for little girls to think too much about such things," she said. "Love is a mystery. One heart kinder gets clinging to another heart, and nobody knows how it all come about, or how to stop it. When your time comes it is about like your time coming to die or be born, and you can only pray that it ain't going to be too hard, with anybody concerned in it."
"But, Grandmother, if you loved anybody and you were a man, and—and didn't tell her so because you were poor or anything, and she was all mixed up with somebody else, and——"
"Well, I ain't going to be called on to be a man just at present," Grandmother said, "and I guess that's just as well, for anybody that's got to make blueberry cake and biscuits for supper. Your grandfather is going to Hyannis to get a watermelon, perhaps you'd like to go with him for the ride."
"I would, only I've got to write a letter to Buddy. He—he wants me to write him right away about something."
"Well, give him Grandma's love and tell him to come down to the old place and get well."
"I'm going to write Buddy just the way I would want to be written to if I was in love with Ruth Farraday," Elizabeth decided, "only I am going to remember that he is sick. Supposing I was sick and supposing I was in trouble about something that was making me sicker, how would I want to be written to? Oh, dear Lord," she said, closing her eyes, suddenly, "help me to write that kind of a letter and to get it right."
She climbed the stairs slowly and opened the desk in her little room. The sisters Faith, Hope, and Charity smiled benignly down at her, as she began to write:
Dear Buddy:Cross my heart and hope to die. I am quite a lot more grown up than I was when you knew me, and I understand the sacredness of confidences as I didn't at that time. You don't need to worry about trusting me. I love Ruth Farraday very much, and I should think anybody might.Well, she is not a happy girl. There is a man called Mr. Piggy Chambers—that is what Peggy calls him, anyway—who is in love with her and asked her to marry him. I heard him that day that I went to Provincetown with him in his car. I did not tell you that I went to Provincetown with him, because I do not like him anyway, and I did not want you to think I would go motoring with a man like that. The fact was that I went to chaperone him and her. Well, she told him that he could not teach her love because she would be an icicle to him, and she said she did not know much about love anyway, but he insisted, to no purpose. I ought to have stuffed my ears, and so had Peggy, but some way we didn't.The only drawback is that he is around the place all the time, and does not seem to be discouraged in any way. Peggy is furious at him. Whenever I see him on their porch eating, in that wicker chaise-longue they have, I cannot tell you how I despise him, in spite of his being really very nice, if you like that kind. He doesn't seem to have any neck, to speak of, and his collars look as if they would choke him. His eyes are small, though bright and animated looking.Ruth Farraday comes here a great deal, and she asks for you sometimes, too. She loves Grandmother more than anybody does outside of the family. Their eyes look lovingly at each other even when they are not speaking, you know, like cousins or something. She is very kind to me, and never neglects a chance to do nice things for me. I told you how Granddaddy kissed her. She is sweet. She is just sweet. If I loved her, Buddy—(you told me not to talk this way to you once, but I am going to)—I would tell her I did, in some way. She is awfully little, for a girl as old as she is, and people protect her. Peggy protects her in a great many ways, and I know she is not happy.I guess there is one thing that I ought to repeat. Yesterday she said, "How is your brother?" and I said, "He is about the same," and she said, "I've just discovered how ill he has been. I wish I had known it before," and I said, "Well, he might get discharged soon," because I didn't know what else to say. She said, "I should have written him, if I had thought he cared." Well, what could I say? I didn't say anything, because you have warned me so against blabbing. Then she said, "I can't write him now very well. I can't."Well, so this is about all I know. I wish it were something helpful, but it seems like nothing at all. I am only trying to write as I would be written by. (See the Golden Rule.) If I have not made you sicker, and you love me into the bargain, please tell me so. When you are fourteen, responsibility frightens you a good deal. At fifteen or sixteen, you throw it off better. If you tell me anything to say to Ruth Farraday, I will say it. She is certainly sweet, and I certainly love her, and she is certainly not a happy girl.Your sisterElizabeth.P. S. That day we went to Provincetown, when I was walking alone with her, she said you were probably devoted to dozens of girls, and I said positively that you weren't. She said she would tell me a secret, and that was, that she thought you were very nice. It doesn't sound much to write it, but I think she meant it, in spite of laughing at it when she said it. She is certainly sweet. I would write to her, if it was me.
Dear Buddy:
Cross my heart and hope to die. I am quite a lot more grown up than I was when you knew me, and I understand the sacredness of confidences as I didn't at that time. You don't need to worry about trusting me. I love Ruth Farraday very much, and I should think anybody might.
Well, she is not a happy girl. There is a man called Mr. Piggy Chambers—that is what Peggy calls him, anyway—who is in love with her and asked her to marry him. I heard him that day that I went to Provincetown with him in his car. I did not tell you that I went to Provincetown with him, because I do not like him anyway, and I did not want you to think I would go motoring with a man like that. The fact was that I went to chaperone him and her. Well, she told him that he could not teach her love because she would be an icicle to him, and she said she did not know much about love anyway, but he insisted, to no purpose. I ought to have stuffed my ears, and so had Peggy, but some way we didn't.
The only drawback is that he is around the place all the time, and does not seem to be discouraged in any way. Peggy is furious at him. Whenever I see him on their porch eating, in that wicker chaise-longue they have, I cannot tell you how I despise him, in spite of his being really very nice, if you like that kind. He doesn't seem to have any neck, to speak of, and his collars look as if they would choke him. His eyes are small, though bright and animated looking.
Ruth Farraday comes here a great deal, and she asks for you sometimes, too. She loves Grandmother more than anybody does outside of the family. Their eyes look lovingly at each other even when they are not speaking, you know, like cousins or something. She is very kind to me, and never neglects a chance to do nice things for me. I told you how Granddaddy kissed her. She is sweet. She is just sweet. If I loved her, Buddy—(you told me not to talk this way to you once, but I am going to)—I would tell her I did, in some way. She is awfully little, for a girl as old as she is, and people protect her. Peggy protects her in a great many ways, and I know she is not happy.
I guess there is one thing that I ought to repeat. Yesterday she said, "How is your brother?" and I said, "He is about the same," and she said, "I've just discovered how ill he has been. I wish I had known it before," and I said, "Well, he might get discharged soon," because I didn't know what else to say. She said, "I should have written him, if I had thought he cared." Well, what could I say? I didn't say anything, because you have warned me so against blabbing. Then she said, "I can't write him now very well. I can't."
Well, so this is about all I know. I wish it were something helpful, but it seems like nothing at all. I am only trying to write as I would be written by. (See the Golden Rule.) If I have not made you sicker, and you love me into the bargain, please tell me so. When you are fourteen, responsibility frightens you a good deal. At fifteen or sixteen, you throw it off better. If you tell me anything to say to Ruth Farraday, I will say it. She is certainly sweet, and I certainly love her, and she is certainly not a happy girl.
Your sisterElizabeth.
P. S. That day we went to Provincetown, when I was walking alone with her, she said you were probably devoted to dozens of girls, and I said positively that you weren't. She said she would tell me a secret, and that was, that she thought you were very nice. It doesn't sound much to write it, but I think she meant it, in spite of laughing at it when she said it. She is certainly sweet. I would write to her, if it was me.
She made a special trip to the post office to mail this letter, and as she dropped it into the slot, she had a moment of dizziness, as if the floor of the post office had suddenly shaken itself under her feet.Even the blueberry cake did not tempt her to eat very heartily at supper.
"Elizabeth is growing up too fast," her grandmother complained, "watermelon and blueberry cake don't interest her."
"I been trying to interest her with the account of the young red-head that rode with me to Hyannis when she wouldn't go along. He's a pretty likely young chap, mad about electricity, he says, and going to study to be an electrical engineer, but Elizabeth is too old for such light talk. Can't we think o' something solid that'll kind o' get her attention?"
"She don't feel very well to-night, I guess. Leave her alone, Father."
"I don't feel sick," said Elizabeth, "but I feel about ninety years old. I'll just go and sit in Granddaddy's lap after supper and braid his beard, so there won't be any hard feeling." She liked nowadays to make her grandfather the kind of answer that would please him.
She crept away to bed as early as she could, and lay with throbbing temples against the cool white pillows in Great-grandmother's guest-chamber bed, wondering if she had written wisely to her sick brother and praying that she might have helped, not hindered, his recovery.
It was two days later that Peggy came to her with a troubled face.
"We've been having ructions over at our house," she said, "and I'm frightened. Mother and Ruth have had an awful row. I don't know how it's coming out. Mother is trying to egg Ruthie on to take Piggy for her lawful wedded. Anyhow, she claims Ruth ought to take him or leave him, with an accent on thetake. Mother doesn't believe much in this soft stuff, you know. She wants everybody comfortable, without any rowing over expenses. She likes people to settle down and have large families, and large limousines, and large dinner parties, and so on. Her cry is that the country is going to the dogs, and our young men are all lame, halt, and blind from the late war, so why not pick a soft spot and let yourself down in it? She would. She wants Ruth to."
"Oh, Peggy, would you?"
"I don't know what I should do," Peggy said. "I like the people I like awfully. I'd rather be with them than be bothered. I don't see much use in being married, anyway."
"Sometimes," Elizabeth said, "I've thought it might be rather nice to bejustmarried."
"Well, Ruth, she's a puzzle to me. Something's eating her—'scuse my elegance—I don't know whether it's wanting to be married, or not wanting to be. She told Mother that she'd rather be the wife of a poor man that she was keen on, than to havea million. Mother said that Piggy Chambers had four million. Ruth said that made about two, or one and one half, since the purchasing power of a dollar was so reduced. I didn't know Ruthie had it in her to talk back that way. Mother said that the purchasing power of a dollar was reduced for our family as well as anybody's, did she ever think of that? And that girls were an expensive luxury nowadays. Whereupon Ruthie said that she hadn't thought of that, but she would, if that was the way Mother looked at it. Mother said it wasn't, but that was the way somebody a little more practical than Ruthie might have looked at it for themselves. Then she said that Ruth had been playing with Piggy, or nobody would have had any reason to think of the matter at all. It was all pretty raw, you know. I wouldn't tell any other soul on earth, but someway you are different."
"A lot of people tell me things," Elizabeth said, "and I love Ruth."
"Your family is different," Peggy sighed. "If Ruthie and I lived all alone, we'd be different. I wish you'd come on over to the house with me, Elizabeth. I'm honestly almost afraid to go home. The atmosphere is so thick, you couldn't cut it with a knife unless it had just been sharpened."
"All right, I will," said Elizabeth. "I was coming over there anyway. Grandma thought itwould cheer me up. I've been sort of mopey, myself."
"Well, it's about as cheerful in the cottage as if it was a nice, cozy morgue, but perhaps we can amuse ourselves with croquet and raspberry shrub. Truth compels me to state that Cook has just completed a mocha-frosted cake with an icing about six feet high. Do we get any of that? The answer is, probably not, but while there is life there is hope."
"Do you know that you have an awfully funny mind, Peggy? Amusing, I mean, and brilliant."
"That's a pretty embarrassing way for you to talk to an old friend," Peggy said, but she blushed in spite of her light laugh.
"Hello! Daddy's come," she cried, as they approached the Farraday porch. "That makes it even more exciting, doesn't it?"
Mr. and Mrs. Farraday were engaged in earnest conversation as the two girls opened the screen door and stepped into the dainty space within.
"Hello, Daddy, dearest," Peggy cried, flying to kiss him, "this is a darling, unexpected pleasure."
Mr. Farraday had a nice smile. He looked very much like his younger daughter.
"Ruth phoned me to come down," he said. "How's my son?"
"She's feeling a lot better, dear, since she knowsyou're in the house," Peggy flashed back. "I'm the only son he's got, you know."
"Your father and I were talking, dear," Mrs. Farraday's smooth tones intervened.
"Elizabeth and I only looked in to see Cook,in rea large cake she's been making."
Mrs. Farraday looked up. "Here comes Ruth and Mr. Chambers, so you may as well stay here. I've told Cook to serve that cake with our tea to-day."
"You have your good points, Mother," Peggy said, saucily.
Ruth threw up her small head as she came out of the house. She was very pale, Elizabeth noticed, and Mr. Chambers was very red. He was smiling, but Ruth's face was entirely grave.
"I am glad you are here, Father," she said, "for I have an announcement to make to you."
"Shall I go?" Elizabeth asked.
"No, dear, I want you to stay. It's not a secret. It is merely that Mr. Chambers has asked me to marry him, and I have said that I would."
"Oh, Lord!" Peggy cried.
"Don't you want me for a brother-in-law, Miss Peggy?" Mr. Chambers asked. "You don't sound very much pleased at our news."
"I don't want any brother-in-law very much," Peggy said, "but I do want my sister to do what shewants to, and—and to be happy," she finished, lamely.
"I don't know what to say," Mr. Farraday said. "I feel just about the way Peggy does. If—if you're both sure, you have my blessing."
"What nonsense!" Mrs. Farraday cried. "Of course they are both sure, and of course they have our blessing."
"How about you, little Miss Elizabeth?" Piggy Chambers smiled at her and held out his hand.
"I—I congratulate you," Elizabeth said.
"And me?" asked Ruth.
"And you," Elizabeth said, not quite able to keep her voice steady, "if you want to be congratulated by me."
"Kiss me, dear." Mrs. Farraday slipped an arm around her daughter's shoulders.
"No," said Ruth, sharply, "no."
"I don't see why anybody should want to kiss anybody," Peggy said. "It's too exciting, anyway."
"It's rather usual," Mr. Farraday murmured, "or it used to be, before this modern generation."
"A telegram for Miss Ruth," the maid came in and crossed the porch to present it.
Ruth looked a little dully at the yellow envelope on the silver tray.
"Who can be telegraphing now?" she said.
"Shall I open it, Sister?" Peggy put out her hand protectingly.
"No."
Ruth tore the crackling paper slowly, her mouth set in pinched, tense lines which changed suddenly and quivered for an instant piteously. Then she regained her composure.
"It's just a telegram from your brother," she said to Elizabeth, "a few lines to inquire about me and wish me good luck. It's funny it should have comenow—isn't it?"
Crabbing
Elizabeth's first impulse the next morning was to write to Jean. It was Jean who always helped her to think out her problems, and this was the greatest problem that she had ever been called to face. She could not entirely confide in her friend, still she was comforted by the mere act of opening her birthday writing-case, and filling the fountain pen with which she was going to write.
She wondered if the Christian Graces, when they looked down on her Aunt Helen, had ever found her in such a state of real trouble and dismay.
"Hope can't do me much good," she thought, "and there is nobody to have any Charity for but Mr. Piggy Chambers. It's Faith I need for my guide, and she is the saddest looking sister of the lot."
Dear Jean:All I can say is, I wish you were here, and I don't see how I am going to stop saying that and write anything else. Letters are such cold and far-away things. I hope you do know how I love you, and how the thought of you comforts me. I told you about Faith, Hope, and Charity. Well, there they stand grinning above me, and they don't offer much consolation.I am in trouble, Jean. I can tell you this much. Ruth Farraday is going to marry Mr. Chambers, and she was Buddy's girl. I can't tell you the ins and outs of it, because they are other people's different secrets, but I am afraid that this will kill Buddy, and I don't see one single thing to do about it. I feel like a criminal and a German spy, to tell you even this much, but I feel as if I should burst with grief—really burst. You know that feeling of suffocating you get after you have eaten a lot too much. I have that same feeling emotionally. I know this is a funny way to say it, but it's the only way I can express it. I wish we could be together, and I could hear you reading poetry or something soothing, and you could help me think how to break it to Buddy. It will have to be told him. After I write you, I am going to write him. So you see how much I value writing to you.I will answer your questions some other time, when my mind is more free. Though I can only doubt if that time will ever come. I wish you could see Ruth Farraday. There is something about her that makes me think of the girl in the "First Violin," though she isn't in the least like her. I don't know what it is. I guess it is the sadness that hangs about that book. There is a sadness hanging about her, and about me, too, Jeanie-that-I-love.I am glad your friend Neil Seymour is at the Point. I liked him very much. If he still wants to send me "Prometheus Bound," he may, Mother says. I guess she thinks anything that will keep me contented is a good idea. I think "Prometheus Bound" would help me, if it is anything like what I think it is.When I write you, I feel a little as if I were right in the room with you. What I am doing now is to hang onto the door, not to have to shut it, and go into another room, where my sick Buddy is. Life is a strange thing. Good-bye—good-bye—good-bye. I love you—hard.That old-fashioned girl,Elspeth.
Dear Jean:
All I can say is, I wish you were here, and I don't see how I am going to stop saying that and write anything else. Letters are such cold and far-away things. I hope you do know how I love you, and how the thought of you comforts me. I told you about Faith, Hope, and Charity. Well, there they stand grinning above me, and they don't offer much consolation.
I am in trouble, Jean. I can tell you this much. Ruth Farraday is going to marry Mr. Chambers, and she was Buddy's girl. I can't tell you the ins and outs of it, because they are other people's different secrets, but I am afraid that this will kill Buddy, and I don't see one single thing to do about it. I feel like a criminal and a German spy, to tell you even this much, but I feel as if I should burst with grief—really burst. You know that feeling of suffocating you get after you have eaten a lot too much. I have that same feeling emotionally. I know this is a funny way to say it, but it's the only way I can express it. I wish we could be together, and I could hear you reading poetry or something soothing, and you could help me think how to break it to Buddy. It will have to be told him. After I write you, I am going to write him. So you see how much I value writing to you.
I will answer your questions some other time, when my mind is more free. Though I can only doubt if that time will ever come. I wish you could see Ruth Farraday. There is something about her that makes me think of the girl in the "First Violin," though she isn't in the least like her. I don't know what it is. I guess it is the sadness that hangs about that book. There is a sadness hanging about her, and about me, too, Jeanie-that-I-love.
I am glad your friend Neil Seymour is at the Point. I liked him very much. If he still wants to send me "Prometheus Bound," he may, Mother says. I guess she thinks anything that will keep me contented is a good idea. I think "Prometheus Bound" would help me, if it is anything like what I think it is.
When I write you, I feel a little as if I were right in the room with you. What I am doing now is to hang onto the door, not to have to shut it, and go into another room, where my sick Buddy is. Life is a strange thing. Good-bye—good-bye—good-bye. I love you—hard.
That old-fashioned girl,Elspeth.
My Dear Brother:I have got to use my own judgment about writing to you. I am to blame for writing you the way I did, but I did not know any better at that time. I only told you the truth. Now I have more truth to tell you. Buddy, will you brace up as if you were in the trenches again? You are a soldier, you know, and you've got to fight another battle.Mother said I was not to tell you anything that might trouble you, but I have got to trouble you the worst of all. Buddy, Ruth Farraday is engaged to marry that goop, and her family have egged her on till she did not know which way to turn, and has turned this way. She told me and her family, and her face looked like death. I am not making this up. Peggy says so, and she knows. She loves Ruthie with all her heart, and she would not make anything up. She is not that kind. I am more that kind, but this is really and truly so. Ruth is not a happy girl, and we both know it. She has lost her lovely pink cheeks, and is a white apple blossom now. A pear blossom is more like it, only not pretty enough for her.Well, Buddy, I have never had any real, grown-up trouble, but the kind of fourteen-year-old trouble I have had has seemed pretty hard sometimes. Grandmother says that you've always got to live, whether you can or not. I know you don't want my condolences, but I love you so that I can't help being sick over this. It's hard work for me to eat and sleep. I hope you can swear a little, because that will help you.Sister.
My Dear Brother:
I have got to use my own judgment about writing to you. I am to blame for writing you the way I did, but I did not know any better at that time. I only told you the truth. Now I have more truth to tell you. Buddy, will you brace up as if you were in the trenches again? You are a soldier, you know, and you've got to fight another battle.
Mother said I was not to tell you anything that might trouble you, but I have got to trouble you the worst of all. Buddy, Ruth Farraday is engaged to marry that goop, and her family have egged her on till she did not know which way to turn, and has turned this way. She told me and her family, and her face looked like death. I am not making this up. Peggy says so, and she knows. She loves Ruthie with all her heart, and she would not make anything up. She is not that kind. I am more that kind, but this is really and truly so. Ruth is not a happy girl, and we both know it. She has lost her lovely pink cheeks, and is a white apple blossom now. A pear blossom is more like it, only not pretty enough for her.
Well, Buddy, I have never had any real, grown-up trouble, but the kind of fourteen-year-old trouble I have had has seemed pretty hard sometimes. Grandmother says that you've always got to live, whether you can or not. I know you don't want my condolences, but I love you so that I can't help being sick over this. It's hard work for me to eat and sleep. I hope you can swear a little, because that will help you.
Sister.
"I don't feel very much like going to Swan Pond crabbing," she thought, as she sealed her two letters, and set them before her on the desk, "but I suppose people mustn't give up to things. Even if my heartis breaking, the Robbins boy and his cousin and Peggy ought not to have their plans spoiled."
She made her way through the chain of little rooms between her den and her sleeping chamber, unfastening, as she went, the blue linen gown, buttoned all the way down the back, that, with its pink twin, was her regular morning uniform. In her bed room she slipped into a blouse cut like a boy's, and dark blue woollen bloomers with wool stockings to match. With this she put on, very carefully, a blue tam o' shanter. She saw in the glass that her face was drawn, and her eyes had dark shadows beneath them.
"If Tom Robbins notices how I look and asks me any questions, I shall only tell him that I am in deep trouble," she thought. "I won't say anything like that to Bill. He would only grin and be embarrassed, but I think Tom Robbins would understand more about grief."
She was a little ashamed of having thought so much of her own trouble when she saw Peggy's stricken face.
"Don't ask me what has happened," Peggy whispered, as they clambered into the car and Grandfather started for the cross-roads where they were to pick up the two boys. "I don't know what hasn't happened. Ruth has shut herself into her room, after some sort of a tragic heart-to-heart talk with Father, and Mother and Father are scarcely speaking,and the cook is mad, and ruined the breakfast muffins and gave us bad eggs, or baddish eggs, for breakfast, and Sister won't see me. Piggy sent her a huge box of flowers this morning. I've got to stop calling him Piggy and call him Albert, I suppose. Wouldn't you know his name would be Albert? Isn't he the most Albertish person? Elizabeth, I never hated anybody so much in all my life. He never did me any harm, but I would be pleased and proud to—to choke him to death."
"So would I," sighed Elizabeth.
"Wasn't it funny, her getting that telegram from your brother just when she did? Sometimes I think she was keen on your brother, and sort of peeved because he didn't ever write to her when he got back. You don't suppose she'd get herself engaged to Piggy just out of pride, do you?"
"Oh, I don't know," Elizabeth cried.
"Anyhow, she took that telegram to bed with her, and it was all mussed up under her pillow. I know, because I made the beds this morning. Our treasure of a second maid went to mass, and stayed out to breakfast."
"What's all that whispering about?" Grandfather inquired, looking over his shoulder. "I've a great mind to just reach over and tech the whip to you," he made a movement toward an invisible whip socket. "I guess I won't. It makes Lizzie nervousto have me flourishing a whip around. I suppose you are trying to get all giggled and whispered up before you have to stop it and talk to the boys."
"We aren't giggling much this morning," Elizabeth said. "There they are on the corner, waving to us."
"Did you ever see such red hair?" Peggy said. "I like red-headed children and boys. I don't think I like red-headed girls so much. I think Mabel is awfully cunning with her red curls."
"Mabel? Oh, she has real auburn hair," Elizabeth said, "and it's beautiful. How do you do?" she returned Tom Robbins' greeting with more than a touch of her customary shyness as he scrambled for a place on the floor of the car at her feet.
"It's my turn," he insisted, as his friend Bill tried to argue the matter. "You ride with Captain Swift, and mind the rakes."
"You've got real nets!" Peggy cried. "How scrumptious! We just take rakes, you know."
"I don't know as the Swan Pond crabs will consent to do anything but be raked in," Grandfather said. "I heard of a boy once that caught a crab in one of those store nets, but it was a bad one."
"You wait and see," Tom said. "Our object is to catch crabs, and we are going to catch them."
"So am I," said Grandfather.
They left the machine in a clearing by the roadside,and, laden with nets and bait, made their way through a path among the underbrush, until they stood on the shore of Swan Lake. A blue sky, with here and there a winging cloud, met the low horizon, skirted with the dense green of low-set pine and oak trees. The gray-green water lapped the shore alluringly.
There was a general scramble to remove encumbering shoes and stockings.
"If anybody says, 'Come on in, the water's fine,' they'll owe me a pineapple college ice," Peggy declared, "or, if you prefer it in New York-ese, a pineapple sundae—though why they should think over there that by spelling Sunday with an e, they can make it a soda-fountain dish, I don't know."
"Don't you go jeering at the manners and customs of my native town," Elizabeth cried.
"Did your ancestors own most of New York?" Grandfather asked, innocently. "I thought most of Manhattan Island belonged to the Dutch."
"I don't know what my ancestors owned," Elizabeth said.
"They owned this, for instance," her grandfather waved a nonchalant hand at the beautiful country about him, "forty or fifty acres around these parts. My Great-grandfather Swift, he got kinder tired of having so much property, and he sold a chunk to the town for a cemetery, and one thing and another."
"Where did he live?" Elizabeth asked.
"Up the road apiece, in a great house that was burnt down long before my time. He was quite a likely old fellow, though, from all I can hear of him. He had a lot of stories told about him. He started a bank, and all his money was carted up to it in ox teams, because they didn't have anything but silver money in those days."
"Quite an influential old party, wasn't he?" Peggy said. "Doesn't it make you feel creepy, Elizabeth, to descend from the very oldest settlers, the way you do? I don't know anything about my ancestors."
"I never did before," Elizabeth said.
"The time is going to come when Elizabeth will be proud of what she comes from," her grandfather said. "Well, if anybody really wants to go crabbing with me, I'd advise them to——"
"Come in while the water's fine," the boys chanted together.
"I owe you a pineapple college ice," Bill grinned at Peggy.
"I owe you a pineapple sundae," Tom told Elizabeth.
"I wasn't betting," Elizabeth said.
"But I was," Tom's grin was almost as broad as his cousin's. "You can have a maple marshmallow sundae if you prefer it. I do."
"Well, it's hard to choose," Elizabeth temporized.
"You can have both," Tom decided. "I'll show you how to use the crab catcher. You float the bait on this line, and when the crab comes to the surface, you——"
But Grandfather, scorning artificial allurements, caught the first crab. The crab was scurrying away over the pebbles and shells at the bottom of the transparent water when Grandfather's inexorable implement caught him in mid-career, and he was imprisoned in the covered basket they had brought for the purpose.
"I didn't know that you could catch them so near the shore," Elizabeth said, looking down at her bare toes in some dismay, "do they hurt when they bite you?"
"The game is not to let them bite you," Peggy said. "Hooray! One for me—us, I mean."
"Three," said Grandfather, landing another.
"I've got the father and mother of all crabs here," Bill Dean said, as he dragged at the handle of his net. "Look at old Grandfather Crab."
"He isn't very pretty," Elizabeth said, "but I prefer him to a raw lobster. I never saw a green lobster till the other day."