"Yes. I say it is no matter," repeated Miss Parrott, not suffering herself to glance at the wreck of her ancestral treasures, "but oh, child! why did you say such dreadful things?" She still clung to the cabinet, shocked out of one tradition of her family, as if she must still hold to its time-worn and honored furnishings.
Rachel gave her a swift, bird-like glance. "You do care; you're crying," she exclaimed, aghast at the tears running over the wrinkled face.
"Not about that, but the things you said; I didn't mean to do you harm." Miss Parrott did not attempt to deny the tears, and brushed them off with a trembling hand.
"You ain't hurt me," cried Rachel, stumbling across the floor, with an awful feeling at her heart to see this stiff old woman cry.
"Oh, whatever your name is, don't! I'll go home, and the minister may send me back to Gran, an' she may beat me. Don't cry!" She seized the heavy black silk in its front breadth and held on tightly.
The butler, having at this minute his eye at the keyhole, now rushed in, unable to bear the sight, to be met by Miss Parrott, her withered face flaming behind her tears.
"Do you go directly out, Hooper, and remain away until you are called." He never knew how he got out; and this time the keyhole was unobstructed.
"Were you beaten, you poor little thing?" Was this Miss Parrott bending over Rachel's shaking shoulders, and hands clutching the silk gown! "Oh, dear, dear!"
"Tain't no matter," mumbled Rachel. "I don't care, only don't let me go back." She shook in terror, and crouched down to the floor.
"Never!" said Miss Parrott firmly. All the blood in her body seemed to be in her wrinkled face, and her eyes shone, as had those of her father, the old judge, when befriending some poor unfortunate. "You shall never go back, child; don't be afraid."
But Rachel still shivered. There were the broken bits of china and glass on the floor back of her, and the minister and his wife must be told of the awful accident; and what they would do with her, why, of course, no one could tell.
The thin, wrinkled fingers on which blazed many rings, that had been her mother's before her, were tremblingly smoothing Rachel's neatly braided hair. And as if she thought what was passing beneath them, Miss Parrott broke out quickly:
"I shall never speak of it—of the breaking of those articles, child; so no one will know it but ourselves."
"Never tell?" gasped Rachel, lifting her head, in astonishment and scarcely believing her ears.
"Of course not," declared Miss Parrott, in scorn. "So do not be afraid any longer, but get up and dry your eyes." For at this announcement, Rachel's tears had gushed out, and she sobbed as if her heart would break.
For answer Rachel flew to her feet, and without any warning and astonishing herself equally with the recipient, she threw her arms around Miss Parrott's thin neck, in among all the ancient laces with which she delighted to adorn it, and hugged it convulsively.
Taken unawares, Miss Parrott could utter no word, and Rachel clung to her and sobbed. But the old ears had heard what hadn't been sounded in them for many a long day, and forgotten were wasted heirlooms and broken treasures.
"I love you!" Rachel had said, hugging her tumultuously.
"Come, child." Miss Parrott drew herself out of Rachel's clinging arms.
What should she do now to divert this little girl from her terror and distress? She was sorely put to it for the answer. She gathered up the nervous hands in one of her own, and led the way out into the wide hall, hung with ancestral portraits. "I am going to take you to my own room," she said suddenly.
Rachel didn't know the wonderful condescension of this plan for her amusement, but she clung to the long, thin fingers, and presently she was seated on a cricket covered with tambour work, and watching Miss Parrott's movements about the spacious apartment.
"Move your cricket over here, child." Miss Parrott was unlocking what looked to Rachel's eyes like a big cupboard that stood out from the wall. It had little panes of glass all criss-crossed with strips of white wood across its face, and a set of drawers beneath. And as Rachel obediently carried the cricket over and set it down where Miss Parrott indicated, her chief attention was still upon this curious cupboard, and what Miss Parrott was doing in it, for the door now stood open.
Rachel leaned forward on her cricket and rested her hands on her knees. On the shelves was such an array of articles, that to the child's gaze, nothing stood out distinctly as an object to lavish one's sole attention upon. But Miss Parrott made early choice, and lifting out a big doll from one of the lower shelves, she laid it in Rachel's lap.
"I used to play with it," she said softly.
Rachel looked down upon the doll in her lap. It was long and hard and angular as to body, and its face was a dull white, except some patches of pink on the outer edge of the cheeks, showing the rest of the coloring to have been worn away. Its eyes were staring up into Rachel's in such an expressionless, unpleasant manner that she involuntarily turned away her own.
"Her name is Priscilla," said Miss Parrott, looking down at Rachel, which called her to herself and the necessity of attention to these efforts to amuse her.
"Yes'm," said Rachel.
"Now I don't suppose you know how much I loved this doll," said MissParrott, turning her back on the cupboard, to draw up a chair oppositeRachel and seat herself upon it, "but I used to take her to bed with menights."
"Did you?" said Rachel, beginning to finger the doll with sudden interest.
"Yes, and I made her clothes and talked to her, and sometimes I called her'Sister,'" said Miss Parrott, quite gone in remembrance.
"Oh!" said Rachel.
"You see, she was all I had. I was the youngest, and my real sister was married and away, and my brothers were men when I was a little girl."
"Oh!" said Rachel again.
"And so I had to make believe that Priscilla was alive," said Miss Parrott, her eyes glowing with remembrance of her childhood, brought so singularly near on this morning; "I really had to Rachel."
"I've got a child," said Rachel, growing suddenly communicative, and looking up from the old doll to watch the effect of her announcement.
"Have you, dear?" responded Miss Parrott, quite pleased at the bright face, from which the last tear had been wiped away.
"Yes, my Phronsie gave her to me, and she sleeps with me," said Rachel, in great satisfaction.
"I suppose she is very much like Priscilla," observed Miss Parrott.
"Oh, no, she isn't," declared Rachel promptly, turning her mind again to the ancient doll; "my child is pretty and she shuts her eyes. She isn't a bit like yours."
"Well, Priscilla was always pretty to me," said Miss Parrott, astonished that she felt so little the slight to her child. "Well, now, Rachel, we will put the doll aside. You may lay it on the bed and then come back here."
Rachel got off from her cricket and went over to the other side of the apartment.
"My, what a funny bed!" she exclaimed, using her eyes to their utmost to see as much of the canopy, with its tester of blue and white chintz, the four posts beneath, and the counterpane executed in honeycomb pattern.
Miss Parrott, exploring her cupboard to get out something else with which to entertain Rachel, did not hear her; so she slowly returned, walking backward to observe as much of this queer article of furniture as the time allowed. In this way she fell over the cricket.
"Dear me!" exclaimed Miss Parrott, pulling her head out of the cupboard, "did you hurt yourself, child?"
"No'm," said Rachel, getting up with a very red face, and exceedingly ashamed. "I don't believe I broke it." She set the cricket up in its proper position and anxiously examined it all over.
"Oh, no," said Miss Parrott reassuringly, "the cricket is not harmed. See here, Rachel"—she held in her hand a long string of little irregular things that dangled as she turned toward her—"I am going to put these on your neck. Now stand still, child." And suiting the action to the words, something snapped with a little click under Rachel's chin.
Rachel looked down quickly at the queer little odd-shaped red things, hanging over her breast.
"I used to wear them when I was a little girl, very much smaller than you," said Miss Parrott, her head on one side and falling back to see the effect.
"What are they?" asked Rachel, not daring to lay a finger on them, and holding her breath at the idea of being within the magnificent circle of Miss Parrott's early adornments.
"Red coral beads," said Miss Parrott, smiling at the nice contrast between the necklace and the dark little face above. "Now, child, you are going to wear them whenever you come to visit me and as long as you stay. And that means they will not come off till to-morrow, for you are to sleep here to-night."
"I haven't any nightgown," said Rachel, who by this time liked to stay well enough, but seeing here an insuperable objection.
"That's easily managed," said Miss Parrott, quickly; "I shall send a note to the parsonage, saying you will stay, and——"
At the mention of "note" Rachel suddenly collapsed, and a look of terror spread over her face.
"Oh, I forgot," she cried.
"Why, what is the matter, child?" demanded Miss Parrott, in great concern.
"I must go and get it," said Rachel wildly, and, dashing blindly off, she left Miss Parrott standing in front of her ancestral cupboard holding her childish treasures, to rush over the long and winding back stairs. At their end she found herself hopelessly entangled in an array of back passages and little old-fashioned apartments, from which, run as she would, she could never seem to find the right exit.
Her progress was noted with indignation and contempt by as many of the old retainers in the Parrott service as could be gathered at short notice, and their calls to her to leave the premises, accompanied by sundry shakings of a long crash towel in the hands of the cook, only impeded Rachel's hope of success.
"I don't know the way out," she cried at last, finding herself in a big closet whose door, being open, she fondly trusted would allow her passage out into the free air.
"Well, 'tisn't here," said an angry voice, and the brandishing of a big, iron spoon made Rachel beat a hasty retreat, this time into the back hall. Miss Parrott was just descending the stairs, her stiff, black silk skirt held high, before she set foot in the servants' quarters.
"Child, child," she said in reproach, "whatisthe matter?"
"Oh, I've lost the note—I mean, I forgot it." Rachel flew to her and wailed it all out.
"She's crying, that bad girl is, all over Mistress's front breadth," announced Joanna, the parlor maid, through the little window of the butler's pantry.
"La me!" ejaculated the cook, raising her hands and the crash towel, "to think of our mistress so demeaning herself!"
"What note?" cried Miss Parrott, in great bewilderment. "Rachel, stop crying at once and speak plainly. What note do you mean?"
"The one Mrs. Henderson gave me," cried Rachel; "I must go and get it, butI don't know the way out."
"To give to me? Did Mrs. Henderson tell you to give it to me?" asked MissParrott, beginning to see light.
"Yes'm. Oh, please let me out," begged Rachel; "I left it in the carriage."
"Ah—well, then, we'll go out this way." And there, turning to the left, was the passage down which Rachel had plunged twice before, and at its end, a small green door, that, when opened, led out through an arbor overrun with creepers, to a short cut to the stables.
"Now, then!" Miss Parrott gathered up the train of her black silk gown and put it over her arm; then in full view of the latticed window of the kitchen and scullery department, she sallied forth across the greensward to the stables beyond, Rachel's brown hand tucked in her own.
"Laws a me!" It was the scullery maid who screamed this out. "She's got onMiss Parrott's coral beads."
"You're a ninny!" cried the cook, turning on her in disdain; "go back to your pots and kettles, Ann. Whatever would she have to do with the Mistress's beads? It's some old string you see around her neck."
"It tell you it's Miss Parrott's red beads!" declared Ann stoutly. She might be sent back to her work among the pots and kettles, but she would stick fast to her tale. "I seen 'em when I went up to Miss Parrott's room with the bellows I'd cleaned this very morning, through the little winders to her cupboard, an' I'd know 'em anywhere."
The cook stamped her foot, shaking the crash towel which she still retained, and Ann withdrew to those inner precincts that were considered her department.
Meanwhile, Miss Parrott was talking to Simmons, who, touching his hat respectfully when he saw her approach, now came up to await her commands.
"Have the goodness to open the brougham door, Simmons," said Miss Parrott, going through the carriage house to the corner where that ancient vehicle was stored.
Simmons obeyed wonderingly, with an eye askance at Rachel, by the other side of Miss Parrott, eagerly pressing forward.
"Now jump in," said Miss Parrott, but this command was not needed, for Rachel was already within the family coach and prowling around on the old green leather cushion and over the floor with both nervous hands.
"It isn't—oh, yes, it is!" and up she came, red and shining, to hold out a small, white envelope.
Miss Parrott leaned against the brougham, and broke the seal. Rachel, her whole heart in one glad thrill of joy, made little sign except to heave a deep sigh of relief that the note had been found. Simmons, seeing no excuse for lingering further, went back to one of the carriages to go through the form of inspecting its exterior, while he still kept an eye employed in the direction of his mistress.
"Dear Miss Parrott" (so the note ran), "I really do not think it is wise to ask Rachel to remain over night. I will explain later. Another time, perhaps she may do so. Yours respectfully, Almira Henderson."
"Dear me!" exclaimed Miss Parrott to herself, and, folding up the little note into many creases, she stood lost in thought. "Well, I suppose I must yield to the parson's wife, for she has some good reason. But the child shall stay next time."
Rachel, whose spirits had risen, since it was quite positive that the note was not lost, now seized Miss Parrott's hand and hopped and skipped by her side across the green grass on their return to the mansion. Simmons came out of his retirement, his chamois skin with which he had been ostensibly polishing up a carriage, still in his hand, to stand in the doorway to watch them.
"Well, Iamsurprised," he declared, quite slowly and impressively, as befitted a serving-man to an old genteel family.
"Oh, let's go in there," cried Rachel, catching sight of the tall hollyhocks behind a wicket gate and pulling at the long, slender fingers.
Miss Parrott hesitated.
"Well, just one peep," she said, "for it is near to luncheon time," and she pulled out the watch from her belt. But to Rachel "a peep" meant all the world, so she dropped the fingers and raced through the gateway, to get there first and thus make it last as long as possible.
"Oh, oh!" she cried, her little dark face aflame with delight, "it's the most beautiful place." Then she began to run up and down all the narrow paths marking the circles and hearts and diamonds in which the old-fashioned garden was laid out, and sniffing the fragrance as she ran.
Miss Parrott seated herself on a stone seat by the fountain in the center. Her delight was quite equal to Rachel's, and the thin, wrinkled face assumed a more peaceful expression than it had carried for many a day, so that when Hooper came to summon her to luncheon, he was fairly taken aback at its unwonted cheer.
"Rachel!" Miss Parrott's voice had a pleasant ring to it. Rachel came dancing along a little curving path, the red coral beads flying up and down on her breast, her cheeks nearly as red. "Oh, it's perfectly beautiful here," she cried.
"Do you like it?" Miss Parrott's thin cheek glowed, too. It carried her back to the day when she as a child had been skipping in that old garden, and her heart gave a throb at the thought that there were perhaps in store for her many delights yet, through Rachel's enjoyment of the old-fashioned flowers and shrubs.
"But come, child," she brought herself up suddenly to say, with a little laugh; "Hooper has summoned us to luncheon, and we must obey."
"Do you have to obey a servant?" asked Rachel, coming out of her dance to fall into step by her side, and looking up with wide-open eyes.
"Always," said Miss Parrott most positively, "else they won't obey me, if I don't. It's system that makes everything comfortable, Rachel."
As Rachel knew nothing whatever about system, she followed silently, her small head full of the beautiful garden in which she had been rioting, and which—oh, joy!—Miss Parrott promised she should visit again, when the luncheon was over. And seated at the polished mahogany table, she was so lost in thought that Miss Parrott, in state at the other end, was obliged to speak to her twice before she looked up.
"Finish your soup, child," said Miss Parrott.
Rachel hadn't even begun it, and she now seized the first thing upon which her hand rested, a heavy silver fork. Hooper, back of his mistress's chair, darted forward to put the right implement before her. But Rachel gave him a withering glance that stopped him half-way. "You don't need to come. I've got it"; and she held up her spoon triumphantly, and ever after, all through the meal, she seemed to view his necessary advances as so many affronts, intended to show up her lack of manners, and she exercised all her wits to keep him at bay. So that the old butler was glad when the meal was over.
But long before that time arrived, Rachel had leaned back in her tall, carved chair, letting her knife and fork rest on her plate, while she feasted her eyes over the table, what it held, and then around the whole apartment.
"There's some of the same flowers like the ones in the garden," she said, bringing her gaze back to point to the old-fashioned silver vase and its nodding clusters in the center of the table. "What are they?"
"Those are larkspur," said Miss Parrott, craning her neck to see around the high silver service from which she poured her tea.
"And what's the other, this side?" Rachel bobbed over on her chair, till Hooper involuntarily closed his eyes, expecting she would go entirely off from her chair, and he didn't want to see it, it would be so disgraceful at a Parrott table.
"That?" Miss Parrott, too, leaned over on her chair. "Oh—why, that's a ragged robin, Rachel."
"Ragged robin!" repeated Rachel, hopping off from her chair. "Oh, I want to see it," and she ran around the table-end, and leaned over to get a better view. "'Tisn't a bit ragged," she cried, very much disappointed, "and besides, he isn't there."
"Oh, Rachel!" exclaimed Miss Parrott, in dismay. "You must not do so; we never leave our chairs when we are at the dining-table."
Rachel, thus admonished, scuttled back to her seat, while Hooper groaned and pretended not to see anything. But she kept her black eyes fastened on the ragged robins. "There isn't any bird there," she said.
"What, child?"
"You said there was a robin in those flowers," said Rachel again, using her little brown fingers to designate the vase and its contents, "and that he was ragged, and there isn't any."
"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed Miss Parrott; then she laughed. "The flowers are called ragged robins, Rachel," she said.
"Oh!" said Rachel; then she laughed, too, a merry little peal, that just bubbled over because she was happy.
"Now eat your luncheon," said Miss Parrott. "Hooper, you may give her some more milk."
"I don't want any more milk," said Rachel, waving him off with quite an air. "I've got lots and lots"—peering into her cup. She took up her knife and fork again, but, looking over them, found so many things to call for more attention than they seemed to be worthy of, that she soon laid them down again upon her plate.
"Where did you used to sit when you was a little girl?" she asked suddenly, when she had been reflecting a bit.
"I? Oh, I sat at the side of the table," said Miss Parrott, starting, as she was thus hastily summoned down into her past.
"Then can't I sit there now?" cried Rachel, flying out of her chair again."Say, can't I? Do let me." She ran clear around the table and hung overMiss Parrott's chair.
Hooper groaned again and looked steadfastly out of the opposite window.
"My child," exclaimed Miss Parrott; her tone was very grave, but she put her long arm around Rachel and drew her closely to her, "remember what I said: you must not leave your chair during a meal."
"I forgot," Rachel flew back again, not waiting for her request to be granted, and sat down meekly in her place.
"And you must eat something," continued Miss Parrott, glancing at the little girl's plate, and with dreadful qualms at her old heart for having been severe. "If you don't, Rachel, Mrs. Henderson won't let you come here again."
The solemn butler folded and unfolded his hands, while his face expressed the belief that such a calamity could possibly be borne.
"And if you didn't come, Rachel"—Miss Parrott took up her cup of tea, and set it down again untouched—"I should feel very sorry; I should indeed," she added, with a little catch in her throat.
"So should I," said Rachel abruptly; then she picked up her knife and fork and began to eat as fast as she could.
"Oh, my dear!" cried Miss Parrott, quite horrified, "not so fast! Pray don't, Rachel"—looking down the table-length in distress.
Rachel by this time was alive to the disgrace she was undergoing, and she turned quite pale, and deserting her food altogether, sat stiff and straight on her chair, too miserable to care for anything. Miss Parrott bore this for a breathing-space, and then without a warning she slipped off from her chair and went quickly down to the end of the table.
"I'm not blaming you, you poor little thing," she declared, bending over the dark hair; "don't think so, Rachel."
Rachel turned with a swift movement and hid her face in the laces falling from Miss Parrott's breast.
"I want to go home to Mrs. Henderson's," she sobbed.
"We don't care for any more luncheon, Hooper," said Miss Parrott hoarsely, taking Rachel's hand, "We will go into the other room," and she led her off sobbing.
When Rachel reached Hooper, however, standing petrified with surprise, she looked up at him defiantly and brushed the tears from her cheek.
And after they had passed out, Hooper still stood in a daze. At last he came out of it, and, ejaculating, "Well, I never did!" he began to clear the table.
Once outside, Miss Parrott turned suddenly.
"We'll go back to the garden," she said.
This pleased Rachel very much, and she forgot her distress and mortification, and actually smiled up into the old face.
"Your hand's shaking," she announced, turning her gaze to the long, slender fingers covering her own little brown palm.
"Is it?" said Miss Parrott absently.
"Yes, it shakes dreadfully," said Rachel, with a critical air."Look!"—pointing down at it.
"Oh, that is nothing," began Miss Parrott; then she stopped suddenly and put both hands on the thin little shoulders. "Oh, child," she said brokenly, "I did so hope you'd like me, for I've nothing in this world to live for, Rachel, and now you want to go back to the parsonage."
"Oh, I don't want to go back—I do love you!" cried Rachel, in great alarm, and she raised her little brown hands and actually smoothed the long, wrinkled face between them. "Don't look so, you look dreadful," she pleaded.
For at the touch of those childish hands over her face, Miss Parrott broke utterly down, all her aristocratic traditions falling away in a second of time, to reveal her lonely, hopeless life. And she sobbed in a way very hard for any onlooker to hear. To Rachel, powerless to stop her, it seemed the most terrible thing in all this world, and she burst out in her misery:
"I'll stay here forever if you'll stop."
That word "forever" did what nothing else could have achieved. It brought Miss Parrott to herself. Then it was Rachel who led her about the old-fashioned garden, and chattered about the flowers, unmindful whether or no she was answered, until presently Miss Parrott was quite recovered, and even smiling in a well-pleased way. At last she pulled out her ancient watch from her belt.
"Now, Rachel," she said, "you must go back to the parsonage this afternoon, for Mrs. Henderson expects you."
"I'll stay if you want me to," said Rachel, moving closer to Miss Parrott's side.
"No, dear—not to-day, because it wouldn't be right; the parson and his wife only loaned you to me for to-day, but——"
"What's 'loaned'?" interrupted Rachel abruptly, and wrinkling her forehead.
"Why, they only let me have you just for today," said Miss Parrott.
"Oh."
"And so you must go back, but I shall come for you again," and Miss Parrott turned a hungry glance down upon the dark little face at her side.
"I'll come," said Rachel, with a sociable nod.
"And, Rachel"—Miss Parrott drew her closer to her side—"you may keep the coral beads, dear. That shows you are really coming back to me to stay."
"For ever and always?" cried Rachel, patting the necklace lovingly with one hand. "Can I keep 'em just forever? Say, can I?"
"Yes, child"—Miss Parrott's old face smiled in delight at the compact—"they are yours to keep all your life. And now," she added brightly, "I want you to come into the drawing-room, and——"
"What's 'drawing-room'?" demanded Rachel, who felt it was much better for all concerned in a conversation to understand things as they went along.
"Why, that is the parlor," answered Miss Parrott.
"Oh."
"I want to hear you sing, Rachel," cried Miss Parrott longingly. "I can hardly wait, come." She hurried the child along with hasty steps, Rachel skipping by her side.
"I'll sing," she said, "all you want me to. I know lots and lots of things"—until the grand piano in the long, dim drawing-room, not opened for many years, was reached. Then she spun down the middle of the apartment. "I'm going to dance first," she announced, picking out the skirt of her gown on either side. "My, but ain't it dark, here, though!"
When the old brougham drew up in front of the colonial door, Miss Parrott let her hands fall away from the time-stained piano-keys.
"It can't surely be time for you to go, Rachel."
Then she did a thing she could not remember doing in all her life, she deliberately went on with her employment, allowing Simmons to wait on his carriage box, while she broke up the system of years that always made her punctual to a minute.
"You may sing that over again, Rachel," she said, beginning on the strains of the opera that Rachel had gathered from the barrel-organ on the street corners.
"Then may I dance again?" begged Rachel. "Please—just once before I go."
"Yes," said Miss Parrott, sitting very straight, and giving all the graceful little quirks to the slender fingers which her music-master, long since dead and buried, had taught her. "Now begin, child."
So up and down, high and clear, rang Rachel's voice, with no more effort than the birds outside put forth, the sound penetrating the ancient walls, and paralyzing every domestic, while it nearly made Simmons, outside, fall from his box.
"She hain't touched that pianner in ten years," said the cook, in a hushed voice. "Oh, me! I'm afraid she's going to die," and she flung her apron over her head.
"Die!" exclaimed Hooper, finding his voice. "She won't die with that young one here," he added, in scorn.
"Now may I dance?" pleaded Rachel, plucking Miss Parrott's sleeve. "Do let me; you said I might."
"Yes," said Miss Parrott, wrenching herself away from the operatic strains, to begin on a little old-fashioned jig.
"Oh, that's so funny," giggled Rachel, hopping aimlessly in the center of the big drawing-room and trying to keep time. "Do stop; you put me all out."
"But that is a dancing-tune," said Miss Parrott, jingling away, "and sister and I used to dance quite prettily to it, I remember."
"Well, I can't," said Rachel, hopping wildly, and doing her best to get into step. "Oh, dear!" she brought up suddenly, flushed and panting.
"What is the matter, Rachel?" Miss Parrott let her hands rest on the yellow ivory keys and looked over her shoulder at her.
"Oh, I can't dance," said Rachel, "when you play so funnily. It doesn't go like that; it goes so." She picked up her gown again, and made a sweep off in one direction, and then in another, her feet scarcely touching the pictured roses and lilies with which the velvet carpet was strewn, all the while singing a tune that seemed to carry her off on its own melody. Miss Parrott turned around on the music-stool, and watched her breathlessly.
It was therefore much later than the parsonage people expected when the old brougham set Rachel down at their gate, and she walked into the house, supported on either side by Peletiah and Ezekiel, who had been watching there a full hour for her arrival.
"I like her," she said, marching up to the minister's wife. "She gave me these"—putting her hand on the red coral beads on her neck—"and I'm going back again—to-morrow, I guess."
But it wasn't to stay, that Rachel went back on the morrow; it was only for a day. Despite all the pleadings made by Miss Parrott, and all the desire of the parson and his wife to please their honored parishioner, and most of all, the earnest wish to consent to what would probably be for the child's best good, they held firmly to the first statement, that nothing could be arranged till Mrs. Fisher and Mr. King had been consulted.
"They have sent the child here to us, and here she must stay until they make some other arrangement," they said firmly, and no amount of urging could make them say anything else.
So letters had to fly back and forth from the parsonage and the King estate in the big city, and Miss Parrott wrote long letters in a pinched, lady-like hand in very faint ink, crossing the paper whenever she was afraid she hadn't said enough to plead her cause successfully. Which condition of mind she was in perpetually, all through these writing days. These letters old Mr. King endeavored to read at the first, but he soon threw them down impatiently.
"The child shall never go to a woman who has no more sense," he loudly declared.
Then Polly or Jasper would hurry in and wade through the missives. And when he saw the hungry longing of the desolate soul, and the sweet refinement of the writer came out, and the sterling honesty was revealed in the prim sentences, he relented and went tumultuously over to the other side.
"Yes, yes, she shall go," he declared, pulling out his big handkerchief to blow his nose violently, to remove all suspicion that anything was the matter with his eyes; "'twould be the best thing in the world for her. Of course she must go."
And so it was finally settled that Rachel was to live at Miss Parrott's and be her own little girl, going down to the parsonage every day to learn her lessons under Mr. Henderson's care, until the time when she would be ready to be sent to such a school as Miss Parrott might select should arrive.
"And she must come and see me sometimes," said Phronsie when the announcement was made in the King household. "My little girl may come, can't she, Grandpapa?" she begged.
"Yes, yes, child," said old Mr. King warmly; "we all shall want to seeRachel now and then."
The Comfort committee being well-established and in fine running order by this time, Mrs. Sterling gathering them around her sofa, in her spacious sitting-room upstairs, Polly and Alexia saw no reason why they shouldn't begin work on the Cooking Club, "because," said Polly, "if we are really going to learn how to cook things, why, we ought to begin." And the mothers of the several boys and girls who were to form it, taking instantly to the idea, the two girls and Jasper set to work to write the notices of the first meeting.
"We ought to have another boy," said Jasper, "on the Committee."
Alexia wrinkled up her face. "Oh, don't; boys are so tiresome," she said.
"Why, I am a boy," said Jasper, bursting into a laugh.
"Oh, well, you are different," said Alexia; "we always expect you around."
"Thank you," said Jasper, with a low bow; "I'm sure I ought to feel very much complimented, Alexia," and he laughed again.
"Well, I'm sure boys are such nuisances," said Alexia, leaning her long arms on the table (they were in the library at Mr. King's), "and besides they won't want to come to our Cooking Club, I verily believe, so what's the use of having them on the Committee?"
"Oh, yes, they will," declared Jasper eagerly; "you don't know anything about it, if you say that. Why, Clare, and Pickering, and ever so many more are just wild to be asked."
"Oh, well, then if we've got to have some boy on the Committee," saidAlexia, accepting the situation, "let's ask Pickering Dodge."
"I'd rather have Pick," said Jasper in a tone of great satisfaction; andPolly saying the same thing, it was decided then and there.
"Well, now that matter is off our hands," said Alexia, "let's get to writing these old notices," and her hands began to bustle about among the little pile of paper and envelopes.
"Hold on," said Jasper; "if Pick is to be on this committee, he must help us with these things; and he'll want to, for it will be great fun."
"O bother!" exclaimed Alexia, jerking back her chair, "now we've got to wait. You see for yourself what a nuisance it is to try to get you boys in, Jasper."
"Oh, I'll get Pick over here in a jiffy," declared Jasper, plunging out of the library; "you won't have to wait long for us, Alexia."
It wasn't more than ten minutes by the clock, when in rushed the two boys and swarmed around the big table.
"Well, I declare," cried Alexia, looking up admiringly from a receipt book which Mrs. Fisher had loaned them, and over which the heads of the two girls were bent, "if you boys haven't been quick, though!"
"Haven't we?" cried Jasper, and his eyes twinkled.
"Don't tell," whispered Pickering over his shoulder.
"And what are you two whispering about?" cried Alexia, deserting the cook-book: "Now, tell us," she demanded, dreadfully afraid she would miss some news.
"Well, you see—" began Jasper.
"Hush—hush!" said Pickering.
"Now don't pay any attention to Pickering," said Alexia, turning a cold shoulder to the last-mentioned individual; "do tell us, Jasper, what is it?"
"The fact is," said Jasper, laughing, "I didn't have to go for Pickering at all; that is, only to the corner. He was coming here."
"And Jasper nearly knocked the breath out of me," finished Pickering, "he bolted into me so."
"Well, you were on the wrong side of the pavement," retorted Jasper.
"Is that all?" cried Alexia, horribly disappointed to get no news. "Oh, dear me! Well, do sit down, now you have come, and let us get to these horrible old notices."
So the boys drew up their chairs, and Polly pushed the cook-book, with an affectionate little pat, into the center of the table. "That's what we are going to study," she said gleefully.
"Study?" echoed Pickering, with a very long face. "I didn't come over here to study; I get enough of that at school," and he glared in a very injured way at Jasper.
"Don't get upset," said Jasper, patting him on the back; "you'll like this,Pick, I tell you."
"And it's a cook-book," said Polly, laughing merrily.
"All right," said Pickering, immensely relieved, and reaching out his long arm, he seized it, and whirled the leaves. "'Lemon pie'—that sounds good. 'How to cook cabbage'—oh, dear me!"
"See here now"—Jasper seized the book and shut it up with a bang—"no one is going to look into that, until we write these notices. Why, we haven't even got a Cooking Club yet."
"Give it back," roared Pickering after him, as Jasper hopped out of his chair, carrying the book.
"No, sir," cried Jasper, bearing off the book out of the room. "There, you'll never find that," he observed, coming back to slip into his seat with satisfaction.
"Well, now," said Alexia sweetly, "if you two boys are through scrapping, we'll begin on these notices." She picked an envelope off from the pile. "Oh, dear me! who is the first one to ask?"
"I think Larry ought to have it," said Polly.
"Oh, Polly Pepper!" exclaimed Alexia, "Larry can't come for ever so long, with his collar bone all smashed and his leg hurt. The very idea!"
Polly gave a little shiver, "Well, he would like to be asked," she said.
"And I think so, too," declared Jasper; "a chap would enjoy it twice as much to get an invitation when he was abed and couldn't come."
"Well, that's nice to say," cried Alexia, bursting into a loud laugh, in which Pickering joined.
"You've done it now," he said, clapping Jasper on the back. "I'm glad of it, old chap, after the way you acted about that old cook-book."
"So I have," said Jasper grimly. Then he laughed as hard as the others. "Well, you know what I mean, and we ought to give Larry the first attention."
"I'm going to write the notice to him," declared Alexia, dipping her pen in the ink-well and beginning with a flourish. But she threw it down before she had finished his first name. "Polly, you ought to write the first notice," she cried; "you proposed the Club."
"That's no matter," said Polly, "so long as we are going to have the Club.Go ahead, Alexia."
"No, I'm not going to," said Alexia obstinately, and leaning back in her chair; "you've just got to do it, Polly, so there!"
"There'll be no peace, Polly, for any of us until you do," said Pickering, thrusting his hands lazily into his pockets.
"And I think people would do better to go to work and help," said Alexia decidedly, "than to set other people against—oh, dear me!" as she found herself hopelessly entangled.
"You would do better to get yourself out of that sentence, Alexia," laughedJasper, "before you do anything else."
"Well, I don't care," said Alexia, joining in the general laugh; "it's too mean for anything, Pickering, to say I fight, when everybody knows I suffer just everything before I say a word."
"Oh, dear me!" cried Pickering faintly.
"And when you two stop sparring," said Jasper, "perhaps we can do some work. Come now, Polly and I don't propose to do the whole."
Alexia, at this, scrabbled up another envelope, and began to write as fast as she could. And Pickering selecting a pen and getting down to business, the room began to assume a very work-like aspect.
"Now that's done," said Alexia, tossing aside the envelope. "I've addressed notice number two."
"Whose is it?" asked Pickering, glancing up from his own to the scrawling characters where the envelope lay face uppermost on the table. "Who is number two, Alexia?"
"You mustn't see," cried Alexia, twitching it away; "you go on and address your own, Pickering, and let mine alone."
"Well, I've seen already," said Pickering coolly. "It would be impossible not to read your writing a mile off, Alexia."
"Well, that's much better than to write such mean, lazy little words that nobody can make them out," she retorted.
"Oh, clear! we haven't a pattern of the notice made yet," said Polly, leaning back in her chair, after the labor of getting the first envelope addressed; and she pushed up the little brown rings of hair from her brow, for Polly didn't like very well to write, and it always took her some time to achieve anything in that line. "Jasper, you draw up one, do," she begged.
"Oh, dear me!" cried Jasper, aghast, "I can't, Polly; you can do it much better."
"Misery me!" exclaimed Polly, "I couldn't do it in all this world," and she looked so distressed that Jasper hastened to say:
"Come along then, Pick, and help me out, and I'll try."
But Picketing protesting that he didn't know any more how to write such a notice than Prince lying on the rug before the fire, Jasper in despair drew up a sheet of paper, and wrote in big staring letters and with a great flourish, clear across the top of the page:
"Goodness me!" cried Pickering, his pale eyes following Jasper's pen, "it looks like a fire-alarm summons."
"Or just like Miss Salisbury when she's going to say something quite ugly and horrid," said Alexia, with a grimace.
"Oh, Alexia!" said Polly.
"Well, it does," said Alexia; "you know for yourself, Polly, she always stands up quite stiff on the platform and says, 'Attention, young ladies!' Oh, I quite hate the word, because we all have to look at her."
"Well, it does good service then," said Jasper coolly, "since it makes you do the very thing wanted."
"And we wouldn't mind looking at her," said Alexia, running on with her reminiscences, "if she didn't make us do every single thing she says."
"That's too bad," said Jasper, with a laugh, and flourishing away on the second line of the notice.
"You needn't laugh," said Alexia grimly; "I guess you wouldn't if you had our Miss Salisbury at your school, Jasper King."
"Is she any worse than our Mr. Fraser?" said Jasper. "I wonder. I tell you what, Alexia, he keeps us boys at it! Doesn't he, Pick?"
"Well, I rather guess," said Picketing concisely, but his look told volumes.
"Oh, you boys have an easy enough time," said Alexia, with a sniff, "and you are always grumbling about how hard it is, while I don't say a word, but just bear things."
"I'm so sorry for poor Miss Salisbury," observed Pickering, lazily watchingJasper's efforts.
"Well, you needn't be," retorted Alexia; "she's very fond of me, Miss Salisbury is, and I don't in the least know what she'd do if I left her school. But I never shall go away, for I just dote on her."
"It looks like it," said Pickering, with a laugh.
"Well, I do," declared Alexia; "she's my very sweetest friend, except PollyPepper, so there!"
"Oh, dear me! I don't know what next to say," cried Jasper, holding off the notice at arm's length, and scowling at it dreadfully.
"You ought to see your face, Jasper," cried Alexia. "Dear me! it's positively awful."
"Well, it's not half as bad as I feel," said Jasper, "with this terrible old notice weighing me down."
"'Attention'," drawled Pickering, reading the two lines. "'You are requested to appear—'"
"Hold on!" cried Jasper, turning over the notice. "Who told you to read it out, pray tell?"
"I'm on the Committee, I'd have you know," said Pickering coolly.
"Well, we'll pitch you out," said Jasper, "neck and heels, if you don't take care. Well, but really this is awful work." He whirled over the notice again, and glared at it savagely.
"Why don't we just say, 'A Cooking Club is to be formed'?" proposed Polly, "and——"
"Oh, that will be elegant," interrupted Alexia, clapping her hands. "Oh,Polly, you write it."
"Oh, I couldn't," said Polly, drawing back.
"Yes, Polly, do," begged Jasper.
"Oh, no, you write it," said Polly.
"Well, then, you tell me what to say," said Jasper, laughing.
"She did," said Alexia impatiently. "A Cooking Club is to be formed'—didn't you hear her?"
"I have that," said Jasper, scribbling away on a fresh piece of paper. "Now what next?"
"Go on, Polly," said Alexia.
"Well—oh, 'Will you please come to the first meeting?'"
"'And see how you like it,'" finished Alexia; "that's just elegant—do write it down, Jasper."
"You may be sure I will," cried Jasper, vastly pleased that he was to be helped out, and finishing it all up with great energy. "Well, what else?" and he poised his pen in air and looked at Polly.
"Why, isn't that enough?" said Polly, a little pucker beginning to come on her forehead.
"I should think so," said Pickering; "it tells all the story."
"And they will come, you may be sure," said Jasper, holding off the notice again, this time for everybody's inspection, "and that's the main thing."
"And now we can all begin to write them," said Alexia, in great satisfaction, seizing her pen, which she had dropped. "Do put it in the middle of the table, Jasper, where we can all see."
"Wait till I write a good one," said Jasper, beginning on a fresh sheet of paper. "I was hurrying so to get it all down; you can hardly read it." So he wrote it out in his best hand, then propped the notice up against the book-rack. "Now begin," he said.
"Let's race," cried Alexia, already scrawling the first words at a great rate.
"Oh, dear me! we shan't do it decently then," said Polly, in alarm. "I mean, I shan't, if we race."
"Nor I, either," said Jasper.
"Well, I'm not going to race, anyway," declared Pickering, making slow, lazy strokes with his pen; "it's quite bad enough to have to write these odious things, without breaking one's neck over them."
"Well, don't let's talk," said Alexia, seeing that she couldn't have any part in the conversation since all her mind had to go into her task. "Oh, dear me! I left out the dot to my 'i,' and misery! there's a blot! It was all because I was listening to you, Pickering Dodge."
"Well, we'll all be as still as mice now," said Polly; so no sound was heard save the scratching of pens over the paper, as the work went gayly on.
"Oh, isn't it too bad that we can't any of us find that ten-dollar bill Joel lost at the garden party?" broke out Alexia, when this sort of thing had proceeded for some time.
"Ugh!" cried Polly, and her pen slipped, making an awful scratch and just spoiling the best notice she had written.
Jasper raised his head and cast a warning glance over the table at Alexia, but it was too late.
"I do believe we shall find it some time," said Polly, scraping away with the ink-eraser and only making matters worse.
"Take care, Polly; the ink is too fresh," warned Jasper. "Wait until it dries."
"Well, I've smeared it all up now," said Polly, leaning back in her chair and viewing her work with despair.
"Perhaps it can be fixed," said Alexia, overwhelmed with distress and leaning forward to see the worst. "I 'most know it can; let me try, Polly."
"No, no, Alexia, I wouldn't," said Jasper; "it's quite bad enough already."
"Well, maybe I can do it," persisted Alexia, "if I could only try."
"You may try," said Polly, pushing the paper toward her, when she saw Alexia's face, "but it's no matter anyway, I'll write another." And she had already begun it when Alexia threw down the ink-eraser.
"It's no sort of use," she said, "and I've made a shocking hole in the paper. Oh, dear me!" and she looked so utterly miserable that Polly's brow cleared and she began to laugh.
"Dear me!" she said, "it isn't a bit of matter, and see, I've ever so much done already on this. And I do believe we shall find that ten-dollar note sometime. I do verily believe so, Alexia."
"So do I," cried Jasper heartily.
Pickering said nothing; he didn't really believe the ten-dollar bill would ever be found, having helped Jasper to ransack so many possible and impossible places, but he wasn't going to say so, and thus add to the general gloom.
"And I think it was awfully nice of Joel to do that dreadful work over Mr.King's old books, and earn the money," said Alexia.
Polly looked up with a smile. "Wasn't it?" she cried radiantly.
"And Father says Joe does the lists so well," said Jasper heartily; "he sticks at it every day like a leech, and there can't anything get him off to play till the hour is over."
"Well, I don't see how he can," said Alexia, drawing a long breath. "Dear me, it would just tire me to death. Why, Polly Pepper!" Alexia threw clown her pen and stared at her. "When is the first meeting to be?"
"Why, you know," said Polly, writing away, laboriously; "next Wednesday evening, of course."
"Well, we don't say so," said Alexia. "How in the world are they to know?"
The other members of the Committee stopped work immediately and glanced ruefully at the little pile of notices accumulating in the middle of the table.
"We can never write those all over," began Polly tragically.
Pickering put out a long hand and picked out from the pile the one he had written.
"I shall just write, 'Wednesday evening, July 21st,' down in one corner," he said.
"Oh, goody!" exclaimed Alexia, her face brightening; "I shall do mine so"—pulling out her scrawls from the heap of notices.
"But we don't tell where the meeting is to be," said Jasper after they had all fallen to work again.
At this second fright no one seemed to be able to speak. It was Alexia who first found her voice.
"Why not put it in the other corner?" she said.
"And that just balances," said Jasper, holding one of his notices up when the two additions had been made, "so it really looks better than ever."
"But we mustn't make any more blunders," observed Pickering wisely, "for we haven't any extra corners to go to now."
"Oh, we aren't going to make any," declared Alexia, "and we will soon be through, thank goodness!"—as the pens set up lively work once more.
"I hope so." Polly gave a long sigh. "Oh, dear me! it wouldn't be one-half so hard to do cooking for the Club, as to write a single one of these things."
"Grandpapa!" Joel came in with a shout, rushed around the room two or three times, and finally came up to the big writing-table, quite blown.
"Dear me!" exclaimed old Mr. King, laying down his pen, "have you really got through, Joe?"
"Grandpapa," said Joel, his black eyes shining, and bobbing over his head to get a good look into the old gentleman's face, "she's asked him, she really has!"
"Who?" asked Mr. King, very much puzzled.
"Mrs. Sterling," said Joel, in a tone of the greatest satisfaction. Then he began to dance again, snapping his brown fingers to keep time.
"When you come out of that war dance, Joel," said old Mr. King, leaning back in his big chair to laugh at him, "perhaps you'll have the goodness to tell me whom you are talking about all this time."
Joel stopped his mad career and ran up to the old gentleman's side.
"Why Jack Parish—I thought you knew, Grandpapa," he added reproachfully.
"I suppose I might have known if I'd stopped to consider that you've talkedyour Parish boy every day since the little affair on the pond," said Mr.King, still laughing. "Well, and so Mrs. Sterling has invited your friend,Joel, to some festivity, I suppose, eh?"
"Yes," said Joel, "she has"—his satisfaction returning—"it's a supper at her house, to-morrow night, Grandpapa." He leaned over to bring his brown cheek close to the one under the white hair. "Just think of that!"
"Whew!" ejaculated the old gentleman, "and she hasn't had company for ten years!"
"Well, she's going to have us, every single one in the Comfort committee,"declared Joel decidedly, "and she asked Jack, most particularly; she did,Grandpapa—she really did. May I go down and tell him now? May I,Grandpapa?" he cried eagerly.
"Why, if your mother says so, I suppose—" began Mr. King.
"She says I may go, if you think best," cried Joel, hanging to the arms of the big chair and having hard work to curb his impatience. "Oh, Grandpapa, please hurry and say yes."
Instead of complying with this demand, the old gentleman leaned back in his chair and steadily gazed into space while he revolved something in his mind. At last, when Joel thought he couldn't brook the delay another minute, Mr. King whirled suddenly around in his chair.
"I tell you what it is, Joel, you and I will go down to see your friend ourselves."
"Oh, Grandpapa!" Joel gave a leap, and seized Mr. King's arm with both hands. "Right away now?" he cried, with sparkling eyes.
"Right away now," declared old Mr. King, getting out of his chair; "that is, as soon as we can make ourselves presentable for our walk. Goodness me, Joe, what a whirlwind you are!"—bursting into another laugh.
Joel didn't care what he was called so long as he was really going to see Jack Parish and carry him the wonderful invitation, and all the way down to the little grocer's on Common Street he just bubbled over with happiness, till everybody who passed the two felt a glow at the heart at the merry comrades: and many were the backward glances cast at the old, white-haired gentleman of stately mien, with a chubby-faced boy of the jolliest appearance hanging to his hand.
"Well, well, well, and so here we are." Old Mr. King looked up curiously at the little sign above the door—"Ichabod Parish, Grocer"—then down over the shop windows overrunning with canned goods, and, to finish up, an outside stall on which jostled and overcrowded each other every description of vegetable in the market, from a cabbage down. A fat, red-faced man with a big apron that had been white earlier in the day, came out of the shop and stood by the stall.
"Anything in our line to-day, sir?" he said. He had a little pad of paper in one hand and a pencil in the other.
"Well, yes," said old Mr. King, with a twinkle in his eye, for by this time he perceived some lines along the fat cheeks that showed very plainly the habit of smiles running up and down in them. "I've come for a boy, if you please."
"A boy?" said the fat, red-faced man, laughing, till the round cheeks were all wrinkled up. "Well, now, I take it, you're joking, sir."
"Oh, no, I'm not," said old Mr. King very seriously, but the other man had been just as observing in his way, and had seen the twinkle in the keen eyes. So now he laughed some more and waited patiently for the joke to be explained.
"I take it you have a boy named Jack, hereabout," said Mr. King presently.
All the wrinkles dropped suddenly out of the fat, red cheeks. "He hain't done nothin' wrong, Jack hain't?" gasped the man.
"Oh, Grandpapa, tell him what we've come for," cried Joel, twitching Mr. King's hand, and quite aghast to see the suffering in Jack's father. "Do, please, Grandpapa."
Old Mr. King was rapidly exclaiming: "No, no; bless you, did you think I'd come at you in such a way? Why, this boy here"—thrusting Joel forward—"has got an invitation for him. Now, then Joel, my boy, speak up."
And Joel did speak up; and in a minute they were all there in the little shop, and the fat grocer was bustling around to work a chair out from behind the counter. But as the big store cat and several parcels were on it, it took a bit of time. Meanwhile, old Mr. King sat down upon a box of soap, while Joel hung over his shoulder.
A woman came in with a jug to be filled with molasses, and a small girl for a box of matches. But the little grocer told them to wait, and after he had placed the chair and gotten Mr. King off from the soap-box and into it, he bustled to a door at the head of the shop.
"Ma," he cried, putting his head into the room to which it opened, "do you know where Jack is?"
"He's upstairs," said a voice, evidently "Ma's."
"Well, tell him to come down," said the fat grocer.
"All right, Ichabod."
"Jack's to home," announced the grocer, coming back with the air of imparting a piece of news, just as much as if every word had not been heard. "Well, now, Mis. Jones, I'll fill your jug." He took it from her and she settled herself comfortably, during the slow process, to watch the stately, white-haired figure in the chair to her heart's content; her example being followed by the small girl who had, of course, been obliged to wait for the box of matches.
A pair of feet could be heard coming through the room just mentioned.
"I don't know what your Pa wants you for," said a woman's voice; "most likely for an errand."
So Jack, free from his sling, for Doctor Fisher had found him surprisingly quick at recovery, bolted through the doorway, and into the shop, and without a bit of warning brought up against old Mr. Horatio King and Joel.
"Great Scott!" he cried, scared out of his usual shyness.
"Yes," said Joel, sociably bobbing his face into Jack's, "I've come to ask you to supper. Mrs. Sterling told me to, most particularly, you know."
"Dear me, Joe!" exclaimed old Mr. King, "do give it to him more slowly"; for Jack's head of light hair was wagging from one to the other of the visitors in great distress.
"I am," said Joel; "awful slow, Grandpapa."
"It doesn't look much like it," said the old gentleman, bursting into a laugh. The fat grocer over at the molasses barrel, looked across anxiously at the group, and for once in his life wished Mrs. Jones, although one of his best customers, anywhere but in his shop.
[Illustration: He stood in the middle of the little shop. ]
"Well, try again, Joel," said Mr. King. So Joel began once more, and before long, Jack Parish understood fairly that Mrs. Sterling had actually invited him to supper on the following night with the Comfort committee, just as if he were not the son of Ichabod Parish, the little grocer on Common Street, but were one of the rich boys of Joel Pepper's set.
"Pa," he shouted (he wanted some one of his own family to help understand this puzzle), "do come here."
The fat grocer, hearing this cry, could stand it no longer trying to stamp out his curiosity; so deserting the molasses barrel and forgetting to turn the spigot, he bore off the jug.
"There, Mis. Jones, there you are"—depositing it with a thump on the counter, and waddled over to his son and the visitors.
When he comprehended the matter, as after an infinite deal of pains he did, his astonishment knew no bounds. It absolutely struck him speechless, and there he stood in the middle of the little shop, lost to the fact that he was a small grocer on an obscure street. He was the father of Jack, hitherto obliged to go with boys of the neighborhood, not of specially nice families, with manners and aims to match, now—oh, joy!—with a chance for something better, that might reach to unknown heights. He might even become an alderman! The little grocer's breast heaved with delight, but even in that blissful moment, his first thought was of his wife.
"Won't your mother be proud, Jack!" he made out to utter.
"Your molasses is all runnin' out," proclaimed the small girl who was waiting for the box of matches.
And Jack springing to help his father, who bounded to the molasses barrel, old Mr. King and Joel took themselves off without any further embarrassment to the little grocer, who surely never could in all this world express his gratitude as he wanted to.
"Be at my house to-morrow afternoon, and we'll go over together," said Joel, with longing glances at the center of bustle around the molasses barrel.
"Oh, Grandpapa, how I do wish I could have staid and helped clean up!" Joel burst out, as they left the shop.
"Oh, my goodness, Joel!" exclaimed old Mr. King; "such a messy job! How can you!"
"It would have been such fun," mourned Joel, wishing he could have free access to just such a small grocer's shop, and thinking that Jack was the luckiest fellow alive.
"When I grow up, I'm going to have a shop like that," he declared, after marching on in silence down the next block and surveying with favor all the surroundings of the narrow street.
"I thought you were going to sell tin, like your Mr. Biggs, of Badgertown," said Mr. King mischievously.