"I am a little love, and I'm sitting on the floor.They put me here to sit and sing,Eating cookies as I sing,On Grandma Swiftie's lovely floor.A little girl I used to beIs sitting on the floor."
"I am a little love, and I'm sitting on the floor.They put me here to sit and sing,Eating cookies as I sing,On Grandma Swiftie's lovely floor.A little girl I used to beIs sitting on the floor."
"Don't you think you have sung almost enough, Madget?" Mrs. Swift said. "What's the matter, Elizabeth? Don'tyouthink she has?"
"Oh, I don't know. I was just listening to the sound of your voice, Mother. It's so good to hear it again—saying anything."
"No, I don't," said Madget, pausing between selections only long enough to reply literally to the question addressed to her:
"A little girl with yellow teethWas sitting on the kitchen floor.She sat and sang most all day long,And et some cookies all day long,On Grandma Swiftie's lovely floor."
"A little girl with yellow teethWas sitting on the kitchen floor.She sat and sang most all day long,And et some cookies all day long,On Grandma Swiftie's lovely floor."
"She certainly has a keen sense of rhythm," Mrs. Swift laughed. "You've grown up so, Elizabeth, I hardly know my child."
"I'm not really a child any longer, Mother, dear."
"I don't suppose you would care to walk down to the block and get a quart of ice-cream so soon after breakfast, would you, dear?"
"Oh, yes, Mother, I can always eat ice-cream." Elizabeth swept the gingham frock she was making for Madget out of her lap and rose hastily.
"I don't think I've quite lost my little girl," Mrs. Swift smiled.
"For that, Mummy, darling, I won't go. You are just playing tricks on me, the way you always do, and I fall right into the trap the way I always do, and oh, it's so good to have it happening again!"
"You may go for ice-cream if you like, but a maturer Elizabeth might prefer to wait until it was a little nearer dinner time. When you sat down, you were going to whip all the seams in that dress before you moved again."
"I want some ice-cream!" wailed Madget.
"You shall have some bye and bye, dear. Don't you know that nice little girls don't shriek like that?" Elizabeth said.
"Dear me," Mrs. Swift laughed, "I think I'll have to make a kindergarten teacher out of you. You have the professionally maternal manner."
"But I have grown older, Mother, and soberer."
"You've taken hold of life better. To tell you the truth, I was worried about you this spring, you seemed to be getting your sense of values so wrong. You were running around with nice, wholesome children enough, but your ideas of life seemed to be growing very artificial. That was one reason I sent you down here by yourself. I was pretty sure that you would learn some of the essential lessons."
"I guess you would have been disappointed if I hadn't, Mother. I might not have. At first I just thought it was all horrid and—common."
"And what, dear?"
Elizabeth hung her head.
"Don't you know that nice little girls don't use that word?"
"There isn't any other that says it."
"That is one of the words which reflect on the user. It's one mostly used by people who have just come to realize that there is a difference in manners."
"It's awful to be a snob, isn't it, Mother?"
"It's unfortunate."
"I've just discovered that I was one. Mother, what do you suppose made me so snobbish about the Cape when I first came down? You're not a snob, and Father isn't, nor Jeanie."
"I am afraid it was the disadvantage of your bringing up, my dear. We had some pretty hard knockswhen you were growing up. Your father's advancement came late. We always lived nicely and had the same standards as other people, but we had a greater struggle to maintain them. Our lean years gave you a little sense of inferiority, my dear, that's all."
"Oh, Mother, how much you know and how wise you are! There is something I wish I could tell you about, Mother, dear, but I can't."
"You mean about Buddy and Ruth Farraday?"
"I didn't know you knew," Elizabeth gasped.
"I didn't until the night I came away, and then Buddy told me. It was very brave and dear of him."
"Oh, Mother, what shall we do?" Elizabeth wailed. "Ruthie is going to be married next week. Maybe before Buddy gets here."
"Grandmother told me so last night. I don't think there is anything to do, excepting to let matters take their course."
"But couldn't you go and see Ruth, and tell her?"
"Tell her what? That my boy loves her and that she should have loved him?"
"Well, she should. She almost does, I think. She's just marrying because her dreadful mother——"
"Elizabeth!"
"Sheisa dreadful mother."
"So are we all sometimes, but it takes our contemporaries to judge us."
"But you are so nice, and she isn't, Mother, dear."
"Elizabeth, if you are in the confidence of the Farraday family in any way that I am not, you must not share that confidence with me."
"But it's Buddy's future we are talking about, and if I know things that will help us to work it out, I think I ought to be allowed to tell them."
"I think I can manage to get a perspective on Buddy's future without gossiping about the Farradays."
"Well, why can't you go and tell Ruthie about Buddy? Tell her he—he loves her, right out?"
"Why didn't you do that, dear?"
"I—I was scared to; besides, it would have been sneaky to Buddy, and——"
"Exactly."
"But now she'll be married if somebody doesn't do something."
"I am afraid there is nothing to be done but sit still and let herbemarried."
"But how can you, Mother?"
"I don't know how I can, to tell the truth. That's about the hardest thing any mother does, to sit still and let things happen that involve her children, but as your father says, a man's first duty is to mind his own business, and if at first you don't succeed, try, try again."
"Oh, dear!" said Elizabeth.
"Oh, dear!" echoed Madget.
"Aren't you happy, Madget?"
"I want some ice-cream and some doughnuts and some cookies and some boiled ham, and I want to come and sit on your lap."
"You may have some ice-cream pretty soon and you may come and sit on my lap now. Will that do?"
"I know who I love," Madget said, pushing aside the folds of gingham and climbing into the coveted place, "but I won't tell."
"Do you want to see the beautiful present that my mother brought me, Madget?"
"I want a beautiful present," said Madget.
"I am going to give you a present," Elizabeth said, "but not now, because you asked for it. It isn't nice to ask for things. You must just wait until people give them to you."
"All right," Madget said, unexpectedly.
"That's the way those children are," Elizabeth explained, seriously, "Moses especially. You tell them what isn't nice, and then they agree with you, and there isn't any argument. It just leaves you feeling flat."
"Madget is only waiting seraphically for her present to come without asking," Mrs. Swift said.
"See what I have!" Elizabeth took a gayly-coloured rubber cape and bathing cap to match fromthe back of the chair on which she was sitting, and spread them out for the child's inspection. "I carry them around everywhere I go, Mother."
"Rainbows," said Madget, ecstatically.
"It is all the rainbow colours," Elizabeth said, "isn't it lovely, Mother, dear?"
"I'm so glad you like it. I had a bad time making up my mind what to get."
"These capes look so grand when you come out of the water, and it's cold, too, running up to the bath-house. You really need something. Look here."
Madget had insinuated her bobbing curls into the depths of the cap, and then, standing, was swathing herself in the folds of the bright cape.
"She looks like one of the Stewart babies. I don't know why, but I suppose it's that dressed-up look they have. Her hair is clean, because I washed it myself. What are you laughing at, Mother?"
"It seems so extraordinary to have you in charge of a family of children."
"Well, somebody had to take an interest in them. It's Grandmother that takes the real care of them, though. I only help as I can."
Mrs. Swift smiled a smile of deep satisfaction into her embroidery.
"I am very pleased with you, dear," she said.
"Mother," Elizabeth's gaze became fixed out of the window, "a boy comes to call on me sometimes.I don't think you would disapprove, because Grandfather invited him—but there he comes now."
"He looks like a nice boy."
"He is. He's quite sensible, when you get to know him."
"Well, go to the door, Elizabeth. He looks as if he might run away if he wasn't admitted instantly."
"I guess he has heard you're here."
"How do you do?" Tom Robbins said to the widening crack that gave him his glimpse of Elizabeth, "I can't wait till you get the door open."
"How do you do?" said Elizabeth.
"Is Captain Swift at home? I don't want to see him, but I have to ask for him because he told me to."
"No, but my mother is," Elizabeth said.
"Well, I want to seeher."
"Here she is, then. Mother," Elizabeth led the way into the living room, "this is Mr. Robbins."
"I'm glad to meet Mr. Robbins. I think that his other name is Tom, or if it isn't it ought to be, for he's the image of the Tom Robbins I knew."
"Father remembers you," Tom cried. "He used to see you when you were first married."
"Take some chairs," Elizabeth said.
"That's our joke," Tom explained, "the firsttime I came here Captain Swift was so full of fun, and everything——"
"That, well, I got rattled," Elizabeth explained, "so I said, 'take some chairs,' and we always say it now."
"Taking chairs just about describes me when I go into a place. I move around a good deal," Tom said.
"If I could have my present," Madget interrupted from the sofa, "Iwouldbe good."
"At dinner time I am going to give it to you."
"All right," Madget said, "I'll go ask Grandma Swift to have my dinner."
"Isn't she cunning?" Tom looked after her as she trotted off. "Oh, Elizabeth, I'm going to give Moses my old bicycle. It isn't doing any one any good now. I'm making him a rack to go in front, that he can carry milk bottles on."
"Grandfather will give him a job carrying milk then," Elizabeth said. "Won't that be fine?"
"It seems to me that you children are quite practical philanthropists. I think you are doing wonders for the Steppes."
"It's all Elizabeth," Tom said, "she's the one that got us all thinking of it. What I came in this morning for is this, Mrs. Swift. Our family is going to give a big, old-fashioned clambake on the beach the first pleasant day after Monday, and we wanted—that is,I did—we thought perhaps Peggy and Elizabeth might like to come. It'll be great fun. Bill and I are going to help dig the clams. Of course it's just a family affair, and I don't know whether Father knows you are in town, Mrs. Swift, but I am sure if you would like to come, too, we should all be so very glad. We thought of Elizabeth and Peggy first, you see." Tom was very confused.
"That's very kind of you, Tom, but I shouldn't be able to go. I am expecting my husband and my sick son almost any day now, and my object in coming ahead of them is to get everything in running order for them, but I am sure Elizabeth would be delighted to go, and I should be very glad for her to."
"Oh, thank you. Mrs. Farraday said that Peggy could come if Elizabeth could. I think it will be pretty good sport. It will be a regular, old-fashioned clambake, you know, with the clams banked in bricks and sand, and all the things wrapped in seaweed and steamed in—in their own steam. We have one every year, and some of our family comes from a long way to be there."
"I think it will be beautiful," Elizabeth said. "I am so glad Mummy will let me go."
"I wish I had my twenty-seven white horses," she sighed, as she watched Tom's retreating figure. "He's nice mannered, isn't he? He always whips off his hat at the gate, just like that. He'd count forone red-head so nicely. I got my ninety-nine Negroes, but the white horses are very hard to get. I've only got four and a half, and I'm not sure it wasn't the same white horse all the time."
"Four and a half white horses?" Mrs. Swift looked up inquiringly.
"A white goat. That's what I mean by half. We saw him one way down in Chatham. I don't really mean to count him unless we get desperate. I don't suppose it's quite fair."
"We have to make a good many compromises in this day and age, but it doesn't seem to me that a goat would make an efficient substitute for a horse. Why stop there? Why not a pig or a bear?"
"Well, I didn't really mean to count him. Peggy and I get discouraged, and then we try to think of encouraging things."
"I haven't seen Peggy yet."
"She's coming soon, but she has to help Ruth make that dreadful trousseau. I'm going upstairs and get Madget's doll, and then I'm going to telephone and see where she is."
Solemnly seated on the floor in the guest chamber, Elizabeth found Madget contemplating the Little Red Riding Hood doll that Mrs. Swift had brought for her. It stood upright on the bureau and returned her gaze complacently.
"Is that my present?" Madget said. "I want it."
"You shouldn't have come upstairs without being sent, Madget."
"I was sent. You sent me for a thimble."
"But that was yesterday."
"Here it is," Madget said, producing it with a wide smile.
"Yes, that's your present," Elizabeth said in despair. "Take it."
Madget took it.
"My baby dolly!" she cried.
As Elizabeth started downstairs again, she heard Peggy's voice.
"You don't need to telephone," Peggy cried, from the sitting room, "I came and I brought the bride along with me, what there is left of her."
"I didn't know it was going to be quite so much trouble to be married," Ruth Farraday was saying, "perhaps if I had, I wouldn't have attempted it."
"Well, this is the last marriage I can ever have in my family," Peggy said, "unless I ever take the fatal step myself, which I won't. You're just the same, aren't you, Elizabeth? You can only have one outside of your own."
"I don't think Buddy will ever marry," Elizabeth said, looking at Ruth Farraday.
"My son is coming to-morrow or the next day," Mrs. Swift said, hastily, "we hope that Cape Cod is really going to make him well again."
"He'll be here in time for the wedding," Peggy said, "if he is invited."
"We were planning to have only the family," Ruth said, "but not having two sisters to add the proper touch of picturesqueness, I asked Elizabeth to stand with Peggy."
"She never opened her mouth," said the incorrigible Peggy, indicating herself, "excepting to put her foot into it."
"Hush, Peggy," said Ruth, whitening a little, "Mrs. Swift understands. Peggy regards this wedding as a sort of cross between a picnic and a visit to the dentist's."
"I certainly do," said Peggy, "only you don't have to have so many clothes on those occasions. I don't see why you can't just be married in what you've got. Well, anyway, that clambake is going to be a ray of light through the gloom. That's something we can enjoy without any mixture of our emotions."
"I shall have to come some day without Peggy," Ruth said, rising, "this time we were just going by to the post office and she dragged me in."
"She gets a letter every mail," Peggy explained, "and sometimes two a mail. If you think I've said awful things, Mrs. Swift, I'm sorry, but—but——"
"I assure you they are nothing to the things shecould say," Ruth laughed. "I'm glad she has Elizabeth's restraining influence. I suppose the two are so different that that's the reason they get on so well."
"Elizabeth's a perfect lady," Peggy said.
Mrs. Swift stood at the window and watched the two girls go down the path, Ruth's pink linen and close-fitting white sweater outlining her extreme slenderness and her little feet set with a delicate deliberation as she moved.
"Sheisan apple-blossom girl," she said, thoughtfully, "poor Buddy!"
"Oh, Mother, Mother, Mother," Elizabeth wailed, flinging her arms around her, "isn't it perfectly terrible? I am so glad you are here. I don't believe I could have borne it another minute without you."
"Well, now, I guess you're satisfied," Grandfather said, coming in on this tableau. "I guess you've got about all you need to make you happy, ain't you?"
Elizabeth threw a forlorn glance at her mother.
"I need other things to make me happy," she said, "but I'm perfectly satisfied with this darling person, all the same."
Elizabeth Is Scared
"Well, Baby."
"Well, Daddy."
Elizabeth and her father were the first ones down to breakfast on the morning after his arrival with Buddy—the first of the visiting family, at least. Grandfather had been outside and at work since dawn, and Grandmother and Judidy had been in the kitchen almost as long, employed in magnificent preparations for feasting the returned sons of the house.
"What is all this radiance for this morning, Elizabeth? Me or Buddy or the new roadster?"
"YouandBuddyandthe new roadster, Father, darling. The roadster was the completest surprise, but I am more intimately fond of you and Buddy. I just can't believe you are here. I gave myself a good hard pinch every time I woke up in the night, to try to make myself believe it. The last time, I got up and sneaked to your door and listened to hear if you were breathing."
"Well, was I?"
"You were doing more than that, Daddy."
"Where did you sleep when they turned you out of your room for John?"
"I'll show you bye and bye, Daddy. I've got a room of my own, and all I had to do was to put a tiny, weeny little bed in it. I thought that was going to crowd it dreadfully. Instead, it is very becoming to it. Faith, Hope, and Charity guard my slumbers, only I couldn't slumber, I was so excited."
"Faith, Hope, and Charity?" her father looked inquiring.
"They are my guardian angels, borrowed from Aunt Helen by permission of Grandmother. Would you like to go out and see the pigs, Daddy?"
"I'd like to but I don't think we've time before breakfast."
"Well, their names are Faith, Hope, and Charity, also—this new litter, I mean. Grandfather let me name them. They are excruciatingly cunning, Daddy. Faith and Hope keep themselves a little messily, but Charity is as clean as a kitten. She knows her name, too, and comes when you call her by it."
"Her?"
"Well, him or her. All their names are nice and non-committal. They can be boys or girls, whichever they like."
"I should think they were committed to a great deal, in either event."
"Well, children," Grandmother appeared behind a platter heaped high with crisp, hot doughnuts, "have you got a good appetite for your breakfast?"
"It seems so funny to think of your being Grandmas child," Elizabeth said.
"But I am."
"Well, it's hard to believe it."
Grandfather, who had followed on his wife's heels, took his place at the head of the table, and shook out his napkin.
"I've heard tell of a feller that went driving down Chatham way one day," he said, "and he come to an old house in the woods, and there he found a little old man sitting on the doorstep that was so old and palsied and shaky, he could hardly make out to speak at all. Well, this feller he wanted to find out how the old man happened to be left alone at his great age, with no care nor companionship nor nothing, so he asked him; he says 'Do you live all alone here?' he says. The little old man he was so deaf he couldn't hardly hear nothing, but this feller he asked him again, and he put his hand up to his ears and just made out to catch the question. 'No,' he says in his high-pitched, quavering voice, 'No, I don't live here all alone, I live here with my father.'—'Your father?' this feller says, all takenaback, 'Your father? Have you got a father? Where is he?' The little old man he hardly made out to get this question at all, but after a long time, when it had been repeated to him over and over again, he managed to understand it. 'Where's Father?' he says. 'You ask me where my father is? Well, where should he be, 'cepting upstairs, putting Grandfather to bed.'"
Mr. Swift laughed immoderately.
"I suppose it does look a little like that to Elizabeth," he said. "She's used to thinking of me as being about as old as that kind of relative gets to be."
"Grandfather's whole life is spent in teasing me," Elizabeth said, "it's bread and butter and pie and cake to him."
"By the way, Father, where is your pie this morning? I didn't know that you ever started the day without it, but I don't see it on the table."
"Now, I am going to tell something on Father," Grandmother said, slyly. "He ain't had a piece o' pie for his breakfast since Elizabeth come, and he wouldn't let me put none on the table, either."
"I was afraid she'd get to making it the way she makes cake, and I'd have to eat it whether or no." Grandfather mopped his brow with a great show of vigour.
"It warn't that," Grandmother smiled. "He was just sprucing up for his city granddaughter a little.He went down street and got two new neckties and a white cotton vest before she'd been here a week. He had to kind of jerk Elizabeth down a peg and jerk himself up several to meet her."
"Why, GranddaddySwift," Elizabeth said, "have you been going without your breakfast pie on my account?"
"Who said breakfast pie?" a gaunt figure in khaki appeared in the doorway, and Elizabeth, with one admonishing finger still uplifted, turned from her grandfather and with one leap hurled herself upon it. "I'm going to get out of these clothes to-morrow," Buddy continued, calmly, holding his sister off with one hand, "but I have forgotten how to get into regular trousers before breakfast. Emerson, the well-known sage of Concord, used to eat pie for his breakfast—pumpkin pie, and it goes very well with coffee."
"Grandfather won't let me have so much as a snitch of coffee," Elizabeth pouted, still clinging to him.
"Not even a demi-tassy," Grandfather put in, slyly.
"And a good thing, too," Buddy said. "Granddad, your ideas of bringing up Elizabeth are a good deal like my own—a firm, strong hand applied wherever necessary."
"And last but not least—Mother," said Elizabeth, pausing in the midst of a grimace at her brother. "Inever knew you to be the last one at the breakfast table in my life before, Mother."
"I'm glad," Mrs. Swift said, as she took her place between her children, "and oh, John and I have our napkin rings! I was going to bear it with resignation if we didn't, but I am so glad to see them again. We had them on our honeymoon, you know."
"Elizabeth had one for a while, but she didn't seem to admire it, not what you might call beyond reason," Grandfather said.
"Oh, dear!" said Elizabeth, "the instances keep piling up of the way he has seen right through me from the first minute of my coming, but now I'm beginning to see through him," she added, triumphantly.
"When anybody makes up their mind they are beginning to see through Father, there is generally breakers ahead for them," Grandmother said, thoughtfully.
"It's from Father that I get whatever business acumen I have," John Swift said; "let the other fellow think he is getting away with everything, and then when he has given himself entirely away, never let up on him."
"Yes, that's my principle," Grandfather said, complacently.
"I'm going into Father's office, did you know it?" Buddy said. "Until day before yesterday I mightjust as well have thought of getting a job with J. P. Morgan, and then suddenly this opening came, and my old boss recommended me for it."
"We lost a good man suddenly," John Swift explained, "and yesterday morning old Howard came in to me and asked me what I knew of a youngster named John Smith that used to be with the Urner Company. I was pretty sure he had got the name wrong, so I told him I'd call up the Urner office and find out if he was the one I thought he was. In the afternoon, just before I left, Howard asked me if I found out anything about the boy, and if I knew anything to his advantage or disadvantage. 'I do,' I said, 'both. He's my son.' 'We'll take him in,' Howard said, 'I guess you know how to handle him by this time.'"
"You see," Buddy explained, "I began to get busy on the hospital wire just as soon as I realized I was cured, and my old boss is a white man, if ever there was one."
"Not going to Russia just at present?" his father asked.
"Not going to Russia," Buddy said, steadily.
After breakfast Elizabeth had her first minute alone with her brother. They were in the living room, in Grandmother's and Grandfather's chairs respectively, with the big fern branching between them.
"Well, Sister?" Buddy said.
"Well, Buddy!"
"What do you know about Ruth, now?"
"About Ruth?"
"Yes, Sister, darling, you heard me the first time."
"You mean how—how is she?"
"I mean, tell me everything you know that you haven't told me before."
"Haven't you talked with Mother about her since you came?"
"Not a word."
"Hasn't she told you——"
"Nothing."
"Well, then, I've got to."
"You certainly have—and quick," said Buddy. "What is it? Fire away."
"Ruth—Ruth is going to—to get married next week—Thursday."
"Oh!" Buddy's jaw shut on the monosyllable.
"It was hurried up all of a sudden. I saw her and talked with her on the beach once, and she said to tell you that your telegram was a day too late."
"Thanks," said Buddy, briefly.
"She sent her love, and said you were a day too late."
"We'll see about that. Is this Chambers fellow around?"
"No, he is in Boston, but he comes down to see her all the time."
"We'll see about that, too. What's her telephone number?"
"Thirty-two, ring eleven. You have to ring in, you know—that handle on the box, and ask Central."
"Oh, I know," said Buddy, "telephone is nice and convenient, isn't it? Anybody on the farm can hear from this location," he picked up the instrument from the desk in the corner.
"Shall I go?" Elizabeth asked.
"No, dear."
"I want to speak to Miss Ruth Farraday—Mr. Swift." He put his hand over the mouthpiece, the fingers trembled slightly, but his voice was cool, "I guess that was your friend Peggy. Sounded like a flapper's voice. She's gone to call her. Oh, hello, Ruth," he said into the instrument, "this is John. Yes, I managed to squirm out. Fine, thank you. A little under weight, that's all. I want to see you. Now, this morning, may I come over there? I wouldn't take up much time. Yes itisimportant. Oh, all right, that will be better yet. I am perfectly able to make it, but I'd rather have you here if you'll come. All right. In about half an hour. All right. Good-bye."
"She's coming here," he explained to Elizabeth, "she was starting out to do some errands. She didn't want me there, at any rate. Perhaps Chambers is expected."
"The walls of that house are as thin as paper," Elizabeth said, "and I'm glad you don't have to go there. Her mother might be around."
"It's awfully decent of her to come here."
"Sheisawfully decent."
"She's scared."
"Who wouldn't be?" Elizabeth said. "My gracious!"
"I suppose I ought to try to get into some kind of decent clothes."
"No," said Elizabeth, "stay in those."
"But I've been mustered out. I ought to be in 'cits'."
"She'd like you better in those," Elizabeth said, positively.
"How do you know?"
"I don't know how I know, but I know," Elizabeth said. "I'm a girl, and I know."
"I guess you are," Buddy said. "I never thought of it before, but you're a girl and you've got a line on girls. Do I look pretty punk to you? Cadaverous and all that?"
"You are the handsomest thing," Elizabeth cried, "that I ever saw, Buddy. You used to be good looking, but now you've got a kind of—look—a soulful look—that——"
"That'll do. I was only interested in my physical aspect."
"Well, that's perfect," Elizabeth said.
"Is my face clean?"
"Let me see. Yes, it is, perfectly."
"Then I won't go upstairs at all. You just sit around and help me kill time till she comes."
"Oh, Buddy, can I kiss you just once?"
"You cannot," said Buddy. "I've changed a good deal in a great many ways, but I haven't got to the point where I like to be kissed after breakfast yet."
"You used to write pretty affectionately from those old trenches."
"There was an ocean between us then, and it was perfectly safe."
"I think men are the funniest things," Elizabeth said. "It isn't that they don't want to be loved——"
"No, it isn't," said Buddy. "So tell Mother to keep the coast clear, will you, and then come back. No, don't come back. I'll watch for Ruth and let her in. No, you watch for Ruth and let her in. You bring her in here, and then get out unless I tell you to stick around. See?"
"You can't tell me that before her."
"I can tell anybody anything before her."
"All right," Elizabeth said, "but—but I'm scared, Buddy."
"You—you go to the deuce," her brother said, andonly then did Elizabeth realize the strain under which he was labouring.
It was with a face nearly as white as Buddy's own that she opened the door to Ruth a few minutes later.
"Buddy's in there," she said, weakly, to Ruth's inquiry.
"Come and show me," Ruth said.
"Right this way," Elizabeth said, superfluously. "Buddy, here's Ruth."
"All right," said Buddy, unfolding his long legs from the rocking chair, and advancing so slowly that Elizabeth knew he was trembling with weakness, "you may go now, Elizabeth."
"Please," said Ruth Farraday in her low voice, "let her stay."
"All right," said Buddy, "you may stay, Elizabeth."
"I'd rather go," said Elizabeth, miserably. But neither of the two paid any more attention to her.
Ruth put out her hand, and then when Buddy would have taken it, withdrew it.
"I am going to be married," she said, "next week. Did Elizabeth tell you?"
"Yes," said Buddy. "It's me you should be marrying. You know that, don't you?"
"No," said Ruth Farraday. "Yes, I do know it, I think. But it's too late now."
"It's not too late."
"You don't seem to understand that I am going to be married—married next week."
"I heard you the first time," said Buddy, grimly.
"Well?"
"You are my girl," said Buddy, "and you know it."
"Supposing I do," said Ruth Farraday, "what then?"
"Then this marriage is a lie. It can't happen."
"It has—happened, as far as I am concerned. I have given my word."
"Ruth, you can't mean that."
"But I do."
"It means a lifetime of misery for three people."
"But it's all done, now. That's all there is to say."
"You mean, you haven't the courage to break away?"
"I mean more than that. This has happened, that's all, I've given my word. I've let things get where they are. If you wanted to marry me, you should have told me when I was free. I waited for you, for just a word or a line from you."
"I was sick."
"I wasn't waiting for you to get well, and write me you were well. I wanted to know that you thought of me when you were sick."
"Oh, Ruth, I didn't think of anything else."
"I waited as long as I could, that was all."
"Ruth——" Buddy said, "Ruth——" He took a long step toward her, "Get out of this room, Elizabeth," he said, steadily, "you are willing for her to go, dear, aren't you?" he said, as Ruth put out a restraining hand.
"Oh, I don't know. Oh, I don't know."
"I'd better go," said Elizabeth, and Buddy nodded to her as she slipped out. Before the door had closed on her, he had walked across the floor and taken Ruth Farraday in his arms.
It was nearly half an hour later that Elizabeth, watching from the room above, saw Buddy walk with Ruth to the gate, open it for her, and stand with his head bared as she walked down the street. She ran down the stairs breathlessly to meet him as he came in.
"Is it all right?" she asked. "Oh, Buddy, is it all right?"
"It's all right, little sister," Buddy said, "it's all right anyway, the way she wants it. She won't break it off. She thinks it wouldn't be honourable."
"But she must break it off, Buddy. It'll kill you if she doesn't."
"No, it won't. She must do what she wants to do."
"But she doesn't know what she wants," Elizabeth cried.
"She knows what's right for her."
"I don't believe she does at all."
"You don't know."
"I do know this," Elizabeth cried, "you can't stand it, Buddy, it will kill you. It will kill you."
"All right, then," said Buddy, "let it. But I don't think it's going to. She wouldn't want it to, you see."
Elizabeth Shakes Hands
"Well," Peggy said, surveying the picnic tables set up in the pine grove beyond their customary bathing beach, "this is certainly some party. I never saw so many pumpkin pies in conclave assembled in all my life."
"Pumpkin pies are just the background," Elizabeth said, "all these regular New England dishes don't count; they always have them. Brown bread and biscuits and cake and watermelon. They always have them. The stuff they are baking is the real party."
"This being your first clambake, you are just repeating what you've been told. I know. It was nice of the boys to send for us, so we could be sure and be here early, but where are they?"
"Mrs. Something-or-other Robbins, that tall woman with the earrings, told me the boys had been sent to Harwich for some more provisions, but they will be back right away."
"Rather a good-looking crowd of people, aren't they? And what a lot of work they've done. Thesetables were put up last night, and every family contributed some of this milder grub—I mean these foods on the tables, if I must be polite. The men dug the clams and furnished all the other things. I asked Tom how they managed. Look, there are Mabel and Madget down on the beach, right in the heart of the bake. I'll bet Tom told them they could hang around."
"Do you know what, Peggy?"
"What particular what?"
"Mabel is my last red-head."
"Well, she's my next to the last, come to think of it. It was lucky we went to the cattle show, and got all those white horses at once."
"I am not going to shake hands with anybody to-day. It's hard to remember, though. Just now I shook hands with Tom's father and his uncle."
"Those old men don't count, anyway."
"Are you sure? Tom's uncle is quite a young widower, Mother says."
"Well, you don't have to worry, because you didn't have Mabel when you shook hands. Now is the time to look out."
"You are safe until you see another red-head."
"Let's go down on the beach and see what the mound builders have accomplished," Peggy said, "that large woman in the yellow skirt is going to come over here and entertain us if we don't."
"I think we will go down on the beach," Elizabeth said to the large woman, as they turned to walk in her direction, "of course we would like to help if we could, but Mrs. Robbins said there wasn't anything left to do."
"We have everything done, I think," said the woman, whose name they did not know. "The boys are going to bring back some vines to trail over the table, and some paper napkins to twist up in the glasses. We do everything the same way every year, to keep up the tradition."
"I think it's awfully nice," said Peggy, "and we appreciate being included."
"We always have a table of young people. The boys are always privileged to invite their—friends. Dear me, I must count noses."
"There she bustles off, counting noses," Peggy said. "I don't like her so much, but I guess she's a good-hearted one. Now's our chance to break away."
They scrambled down the steep embankment to the beach.
"That's the only time I ever didn't slide down, sitting," Peggy said. "I don't believe in being civilized unless you have to. I only ate a cross-section of burnt toast this morning, and drank some feeble cocoa. I'll be too hungry to eat pretty soon. We now approach the most celebrated of all therelics of the mound builders, a perfectly intact mound about six feet long and broad in proportion. This mound is a perfect specimen of the mound builders art. It is made of bricks and sand. A huge fire was first built on the base of this erection, in the ashes of which are baking, at the present moment, luscious ears of corn dressed in their original wrappers, huge sweet, or garden potatoes, clams by the galore, as our cook says, and, I strongly suspect, lobsters and bluefish, to complete the assortment. Dost like the picture, Love?"
"What's all that seaweed sticking out?"
"The things are steamed in seaweed, darling. That's what gives them their galumptious flavour."
Mabel and Madget drew near as they saw their friends approaching.
"Is it a grave?" Madget asked in an awed whisper, as she indicated the erection respectfully.
"It's a giant's grave," Peggy said. "Fee, foo, fi, fum. Can't you smell the blood of an English giant?"
"No, I can't," said Mabel, "them's just clams, and we'm going to have some. Moses has gone to ride with Tom and he told me to stay here and watch, to see if the clams didn't burn. They ain't burnt yet."
"How's your mother?" Elizabeth asked, hastily, as she saw the rising laughter in Peggy's eyes.
"She's better, and she's got a purple velvet dress," Mabel said, "she got breakfast to-day, too."
"What did she get for breakfast?"
"Fried fish and potatoes, and elderberry wine."
"I shall choke," Peggy cried, "anything anybody says to-day strikes me so funny."
"You can laugh at me," Mabel said, unexpectedly, "I don't care. I ain't funny."
Peggy sank on the sand and gave way to merriment. Mabel regarded her kindly, and Elizabeth took advantage of the occasion to tie four shoe-strings in double bows, and comb two curly heads with the side comb of which she relieved the helpless Peggy.
"This week has been such an awful strain," Peggy said, wiping her eyes, "that whenever I get a reaction, I'm off. Oh, there come the boys, now."
"Awfully sorry," Tom said, hurrying down the beach. He gave a hand to Peggy, which she shook heartily, and then extended it to Elizabeth, who was a little farther away.
Elizabeth gave a little shriek, and put her own hands behind her back.
"I've got a kind of a sore finger," she said.
"I'll remember and not scrunch it," Tom said, "if I get the chance, that is."
"It's going to be sore all the week, isn't it, Elizabeth?" asked the irrepressible Peggy. "I'm all right, because I'm—oh!—oh!" she shrieked, glancing at Tom's blazing hair.
"What's all this mystery?" Bill said, joining the group.
"Peggy is just slightly indisposed, as usual," Tom said. "She has one of her light attacks of mental derangement."
"I'm a psycho—psycho—whatever—it—is case," Peggy said. "I'll be all right when I have had most of what's under there."
"It's a giant's grave full of clams and oysters and ice-cream and potato salud and pumpkin pie," Madget elucidated in a sing-song voice, "and I am going to have some of all of it."
"Doesn't leave much room for the giant, does it, Madget?" Tom said, "but you are right about having some of all of it. We have a nice New York guy coming pretty soon. I asked him specially for you, Elizabeth. I know you have a warm spot in your heart for anybody that lives around Grant's Tomb."
"Is he your cousin?" Elizabeth said.
"No, he's just a fellow I see around the town sometimes. We hit it off pretty well, and he doesn't know many people."
"What's his name?"
"Stoddard, Robert Stoddard."
"Where does he live?"
"New York City, New York State, Manhattan Island."
"I mean, what part of New York?"
"Oh, I don't know that. New York's all New York to me."
"I'm going to live in New York next year," Elizabeth said.
"I thought you always had."
"No, we lived in New Jersey, but now we're going to take an apartment in town. It's just been decided, and I am so excited about it, I can hardly breathe."
"What about school?" Peggy asked.
"I am going to study with Jean this winter. She has always had private teachers, you know."
"That will be fine for you," Peggy said, "but don't let's think about next winter. When do we eat, Bill?"
"In about half an hour, or less."
"Come on up to the grove," Tom said. "I told Bob I'd meet him by the road and kind of work him in among the crowd. We sure have a raft of relations when they are all got together."
"Shall we bring Madget and Mabel?"
"Sure. Moses is up there now, right in the heart of the picnic. He was trying to catch watermelon juice between the cracks of the table, where they were cutting it, the last I saw of him."
"I want some watermelon," said Madget, leading the procession.
"Did you see what I did?" Peggy whispered toElizabeth as they followed the others. "I shook hands with Tom. I never thought. I just did, that's all."
"But you didn't have your last red-head."
"He made the last red-head, don't you see?"
"I never thought of that. Do you think he counts that way?"
"I don't know whether he does or not. I don't want to count him, but I want to play fair. Only I shouldn't think, as a general proposition, that shaking hands with your last red-head mattered one way or the other. I didn't even consciously remember that he was my last red-head."
"Well, then, I don't think he's the one. If you had really counted him first as a red-head and then shaken hands with him, you'd have to call him the first boy you shook hands with, but he really isn't, as it stands. Now that you've counted him, if you shook hands with him again, why——"
"Well, you bet I won't. I'll put my hands behind me the way you did."
"I thought just in time."
Tom dropped behind his friends.
"Bill wants you to walk with him," he said to Peggy.
"Sure I do, but Tom said it first," Bill grinned, "he wants to walk with you, Elizabeth."
"I'll beat you climbing up the bank," Peggy cried,making for the sheer wall of soil and roots ahead of them.
"You won't beat me," Elizabeth said, "I'll go round by the road, thank you."
"Some people have a great amount of superfluous energy," Tom said, "Bill and Peggy are pretty well matched for that."
"Peggy is only a tomboy at times," Elizabeth said, "she really has quite an old mind, when you get to know her as well as I do."
"I'd rather get to know you as well as she does."
"Well, she sees me every day, almost."
"I wish it hadn't been almost halfway through the summer before you and I met. I've got to go home Monday," Tom said, mournfully.
"I didn't know that. I thought you were going to stay through September, like the rest of us."
"Well, it's all decided for Monday."
"That's too bad. It will break up our summer crowd, sort of."
"Is that all you care?"
"I—I'm sorry," said Elizabeth.
"Well, I suppose I ought to be thankful for small favours. I haven't hardly seen you, except around at your grandfather's, and with Peggy and everything."
"I think we've had a good time," Elizabeth said.
Tom kicked out at a giant horseshoe that obstructed his path.
"Darn the good time," he said.
"Well," said Elizabeth, hastily, "we'd better catch up with the children. I don't know what they'll be into."
"They'll be all right," Tom muttered.
"Isn't that your friend waiting up there by the path?"
"Oh, I suppose so."
"Tom," Elizabeth said, "don't be cross. I haven't done anything, have I?"
"No, and you won't do anything. That's the trouble. Even say a kind word. Come ahead, I suppose I've got to collect that guy and drag him round among the animals."
"That isn't a very nice way to speak of your relations."
"Elizabeth, there's Bill and Peggy talking to Bob—he'll keep a minute. Aren't you sorry that I'm going away Monday?"
"Of course I am."
"How sorry?"
"Quite a lot."
"Will you write?"
"If Mother'll let me."
"Does she usually let you?"
"Well, she never has."
"You told me yourself that Peggy wrote to a boy. Bill's going to get her to write to him."
"I said I would if my mother will let me."
"The question is—will she?"
"If she does, I will. Aren't you satisfied?"
"No, you are just saying that to please me!"
"Don't you want to be pleased?"
"Not like that."
"I don't know what you want me to say."
"Would you say it if you did?"
"How do I know?"
"Girls are the hardest things to get anything out of—Elizabeth"—little beads of dampness stood out on Tom's forehead—"Elizabeth, will you, I mean, do you, I mean, would you care——"
"Hurry up there," Peggy called.
"Everybody's supposed to take their places," Bill cried, "come ahead, you two."
"They want us," Elizabeth said, relieved that the tête-à-tête was over.
"We're all introduced," Peggy said, "but Elizabeth."
"Miss Swift, I want you to meet my friend Mr. Stoddard," Tom said, doing the honours.
The tall boy standing between Peggy and Bill put out his hand, and Elizabeth slipped hers into it.
"I am very glad to meet you, Mr. Stoddard," she said.
The warning cry from Peggy came too late.
"Now, you've done it!" she said.
"What has she done?" the tall boy asked. His eyes were brown and amused, and he had to look down several inches even to reach the level of the lanky Peggy.
"Nothing, really. She had a—sore finger, and I was afraid——"
"I've heard about that sore finger before," Bill said, "there's some kind of a mystery about it."
"We're just full of the dickens to-day," Peggy explained, hastily, "this sparkly air has gone to my head—our heads, I guess. Elizabeth always behaves better than I do, but she's as far gone as she ever is to-day. We've just been giggling at nothing all the morning."
"If you can call Mabel and Madget nothing," Elizabeth supplemented.
"Let's go eat, let's go eat, let's go eat," Bill chanted. "I am so starved, I am weak. Tom and I didn't eat any breakfast this morning."
"I guess that's what's the matter with him," Elizabeth smiled at him.
"All right," Tom said in an undertone. "I'll come out of it—for you."
"It was me that you went into it for," Elizabeth whispered, saucily.
The Steppe children in a comparatively decorousrow were much more nearly a social success than on their first public appearance. They ate steadily and conscientiously, and their table manners compared not unfavourably with those of the other children of the party. Most of these ate with their parents. Two boys of thirteen, twins, and two girls a little younger than Peggy and Elizabeth were at the low table, at the end of the two long rows of family tables that Tom had designed for his guests.
"Bet you I can eat more clams than you can," Bill challenged Peggy.
"I hope you can," said Peggy, "my idea is to go easy on the clams, eat two sweet potatoes, one lobster, a soupçon of bluefish, all the corn I can hold, because that's the best of all, with that grand, sea-weedy taste it's got, and this lovely, gooey, trickly butter. Then I shall really fill up on cake and pie. I'm not going to eat any bread, because that takes room."
"You are going to eat watermelon?" Bill asked, anxiously.
"I'm going to take one of those boatshaped pieces and get in," Peggy said.
"The beauty of this party," Bob Stoddard said, "is that you can treat everything like that. You can snuggle right down into all the edibles."
"I'm snuggling into my clams," Elizabeth said."Isn't it funny that the clams you get in New York are so distinct from these clams? They are just like different animals."
"Theyaredifferent animals," Bob said. "You like New York, don't you?"
"Love it."
"Well, here's to it, then," he lifted his clam shell gayly, and Elizabeth gravely lifted one of her own. They drained the liquor ceremoniously.
"I hope I shall see you in the winter," Bob Stoddard said.
"You'll see me," Tom interposed quickly, "I'm coming on to visit you in my Christmas vacation."
"You said that last year."
"Well, this year I'm coming."
"I'm in a comatose condition," Peggy complained at dusk, as they lingered under their favourite tree to talk over the events of the day. "I hope nobody will ever mention any kind or variety of food to me again. If Tom hadn't brought all that candy, I should feel better, and I think those ice-cream cones we had on the way were nasty."
"They tasted nice and cooling at the time," Elizabeth said. "I wouldn't want another one right now."
"And your family are all in the house there, eating," Peggy said. "Can't you hear the merry clatter of their knives and forks?"
"Don't mention it, Peggy. Do you realize what happened to me?"
"You shook hands with that boy, you mean. I tried to warn you, but it was all over before I could even cough."
"I know it, and I had been fortifying myself all summer long against doing anything like that."
"Well, you won't have to remain in suspense like me."
"Maybe it's Tom for you, after all."
"No, I know it isn't. That's a nice boy, though. It would be funny if you really did grow up and marry him."
"I'd rather marry somebody that I knew a little better."
"Well, if you do marry him, you will know him better, that's one comfort. How's your brother?"
"He's pretty good. He—he——Oh, he's the best we could hope for him to be."
"He's awfully handsome. Do you know what's happened over at my house? My sister is getting ready to marry a man she isn't even on speaking terms with. They had some kind of a ruction last night about the war or something. He drove down, meaning to stay two or three days, and they had this row, and he just turned around and went back. Meantime, we merrily make trousseau and wedding chest."
"I wish that he'd never come," said Elizabeth.
"Oh, but he will. He'll be back to-morrow morning, with the bells on, and the flags flying, and a footman on the step of his car to show how classy he is. Just you wait."
"Oh, dear," said Elizabeth, with a glance toward the open window of the dining room where her brother was sitting, "oh, dear, Peggy!"