THE BOY, WITH A MERE NOD, HURRIED AWAY.
THE BOY, WITH A MERE NOD, HURRIED AWAY.
The sprinkling of great, white daisies in the grass beside her—suppose, now, this minute, they changed into white handkerchiefs, spread out on a green counter! Then she would have to sell them to passers-by; it was her business to sell handkerchiefs. Someone was coming marching up the road—suppose she tried to sell him one, for the fun of it!—to make a good story for the girls. Laughing, she got up and leaned on the fence. She "dared" herself to do it. Then, courteously, "Can I sell you anything in handkerchiefs to-day? Initialed, embroidered—"
The marching feet stopped. Shrewd old eyes studied her face and twinkled, responsive to the harmless mischief visible in it.
"You got any with flags on—in the corners or anywhere? Or drums on?" It was Old '61. "Or red, white an' blue ones? I'd like one o'them—I fit in the war," explanatorily.
"Yes?" The saleswoman was not especially interested in the war; it is not the way with many of her kind to be interested in things.
"I fit clear through—in the Wilderness, and Bull Run, an' plenty more. They couldn't get rid o' me, the enemy couldn't! No, sir, where there was marchin' an' shootin', I was bound to be there! They hit me time 'n' again, but I didn't waste no unnecessary time in hospittles—I had to git back to the boys."
She was interested now; she forgot she was to sell him a handkerchief. "Go on," she said.
"It was great! You ought to heard the drums an' smelt the smoke, an' felt your feet marchin' under you, an' your knapsack poundin' your back—yes, sir, an' bein' hungry an' thirsty an' wore out! You'd ought to seen how ragged the boys got, an' heard 'em whistlin' 'Through Georgy' while they sewed on patches—oh, you'd ought towhistled'Through Georgy'!"
The girl, watching the kindled old face, saw a shadow creep over it.
"I useter—I useter—but someway I've lost it. It's pretty hard to'vemarchedthrough Georgy an' forgot the tune about. Some days I 'most get holt of it again—I thought I could, on the organ, but I can't, not the hull of it. Someway I've lost it—it's pretty hard. It ha'nts me—if you ever be'n ha'nted, you know how bad it is."
No, the girl who was leaning on the fence had never been ha'nted, but her eyes were wide with pity for the old soul who had marched through Georgia and forgotten the tune.
"Some days I 'most ketch it. I don't suppose"—the old voice halted diffidently—"I don't supposeyou'dwhistle it, would you? Jest through once—"
But she could not whistle even once "Through Georgia." "I'm so sorry!" she cried. "I can't whistle, or sing, or anything. I wish I could!" She wished she were Billy; Billy could have done it.
Old '61 marched on, up the dusty road, and the girl went back to her tree. She had not sold any daisy-handkerchiefs, but she had her story to tell the girls. She lay in the grass thinking of it. Once or twice she pursed her lips and made a ludicrous ineffectual attempt to whistle, but she did not smile. Jane Cotton's Sam clicked the gate, going out, but she did not notice. When she did at last look up, and her gaze wandered over the little yard aimlessly, she suddenly uttered a little note of surprise.
"Why!" she cried.
For the pump was a blue pump! A miracle had been wrought while she mused in the grass and listened to Old '61. The little old brown pump had blossomed out gayly, brilliantly.
"Why!" Then a subdued chuckle reached her from some nearby ambush out beyond the fence. She put two and two together—the pump, the laugh, and Jane Cotton's Sam. Six! Jane Cotton's Sam, while she was day-dreaming and Marching through Georgia with Old '61, had painted the brown pump blue! That was his business on Mrs. Camp's premises. Mrs Camp had remembered—the dear, oh, the dear!—that she wanted a blue pump, and had got the boy to come and make one. And now, down behind the fence somewhere, the boy was laughing at her amazement. Well, let him laugh—she laughed, too! Suddenly she began to clap her hands by way of applause to her hidden audience.
The pump itself was distinctly a disappointment. In gay-hued pictures, seen by childish eyes, blue pumps accord with green grass and trees—in nature, seen by maturer eyes, there is something wrong with the colors. They look out of place—either the green growing things or the gay blue pump do not belong there. The girl's loyalty to little, kind Emmeline Camp would not let her admit that it was the blue pump that didn't "belong." She was glad—glad—that it was blue, for it stood for a thoughtful kindness to her, and thoughtful kindnesses had been rare in her self-dependent, hustling life.
"Hurrah for the blue pump!" she cried softly. She felt like going up to it and hugging it, but fortunately she did not yield to the impulse.
The other girls arrived at dusk. T.O., her knee in a chair, had hitched laboriously from little kitchen to little dining-room and got supper. Spent and triumphant, she waited in the doorway. She could hear their voices coming up the road—Billy's excited voice, Laura Ann's gay one, Loraine's calm and sweet. She longed to run out to meet them. Next best, she sent her own voice, in a clear, long call.
"That's T.O.! Girls, let's run!" she heard Billy say.
"Why doesn'tsherun?" Laura Ann demanded severely. "That would be perfectly appropriate under the circumstances."
"'Tis queer, isn't it, that she didn't come to meet us?" Loraine added. In another moment they had reached Emmeline Camp's little green-painted house and found the Talented One waiting impatiently at the gate. Things explained themselves rapidly. Exclamations of pity crowded upon exclamations of delight and welcome. Four happy young wage-earners sat down to T.O.'s hardly-prepared little supper and four tongues were loosed. Even Loraine did her part of the chattering.
"I feel so nice andplacidalready!" enthused Billy.
"Oh, so do I!—so do I!" echoed Laura Ann. "It's such a comfort to get one's chains off!—I felt mine slip off back there at that dear, funny little station."
"Oh, wasthatwhat I heard clanking?" offered quiet Loraine, and was promptly cheered.
The meal was a merry one. And afterwards there was exploring to be done about the little yard and orchard and up and down the road, in the dim, sweet twilight, with the Talented One at the gate calling soft directions.
"And I've got a blue pump for you," she laughed. "Just wait till daylight! Don't anybody feel of it in the dark to see if it's blue, because you'll find it's green! There's a story goes with the pump and one with its mother—I mean with the boy-who-painted-its mother! Placid Pond is full of stories."
"Nice, dozy, placid ones, I suppose," Laura Ann returned lightly. But the Talented One shook her head.
"Wait till you hear them," she said gravely.
"Give us some of the titles to-night," coaxed Billy. They were all back on the little doorsteps and the moon was rising, majestic and golden, behind the trees.
"Well—" she considered thoughtfully, "there's 'The Story of Amelia', and the story of 'The Boy Who Didn't Pass', and the one of 'Old '61'—",
"Oh, tell us—tell us!" Billy pleaded, and would not be refused. It was never easy to refuse Billy. She had her way this time, and there in the mellow night-light, with soft night-noises all about them, T.O. told her stories. She had never told a story before in her life, and her voice at first stumbled diffidently, but as she went on, a queer thing happened—she did not seem to be telling it herself, but the little old woman who loved Amelia seemed to be telling it! Then the Boy Who Didn't Pass, then Old '61, in his tremulous, halting old voice.
They listened in perfect silence, and even after the stories ended they said nothing. Billy, quite unashamed, was crying over poor Old '61.
"You'd have thought, wouldn't you," T.O. murmured after a while, "that places like this would be humdrum-y and commonplace? But I guess there are 'stories' everywhere. I'm beginning to find out things, girls."
The next day began in earnest the long-yearned-for time of rest. It was decided unanimously over the breakfast cups, to live and move, eat and all but sleep, out of doors. To devote four separate and four combined energies to having a good time. To abide by the rules and regulations of the Wicked Compact—long live the Wicked Compact! Laura Ann made an illuminated copy of it, framed it in a border of hurriedly-painted forget-me-nots and hung it on the screen door, where they could not help seeing it and "remembering their vows," Laura Ann said. It was a matter of gay conjecture with them who would be the first to break the Compact.
"And be driven out of the B-Hive—not I!" Billy said decisively. "I shan't have the least temptation to break it, anyway—I feel selfish all over! You couldn't drive me to do a good deed with a—a pitchfork!"
"Me either—not even with a darning-needle!" laughed Laura Ann. "If anybody asks me to lend her a pin, hear me say, 'Can't, my dear; it's against the rules.' Needn't anybody worry about losing me out o' the Hive!"
"Loraine will be the one—you see," T.O. said lazily. "And what I want to know is, how are we going to live without Loraine? I vote we append a by-law. By-law I.: 'Resolved, that we except Loraine—just Loraine.'"
"Second the motion," murmured Billy, on her back in the grass, nibbling clover heads.
"No," Loraine said severely, "I refuse to be put into a by-law."
The summer days were long days—lazy, somnolent days. The four girls spent them each in her own separate way. Sometimes the little colony met only at mealtimes—with glowing reports of the mornings' or afternoons' wanderings.
Billy, it was noticed, although like the rest she wandered abroad, made no reports. Had she had a good time? Yes—yes, of course. Where had she been all the morning or all the afternoon? Oh—oh, to places. Woods? Yes—that is, almost woods. And more than that they failed to elicit. Nearly every day she started away by herself, and after awhile they noticed that she went in the same direction. She went briskly, alertly, like one with a definite end in view. Now, where did Billy go? Their vagrant curiosity was aroused, but not yet to the point of investigation.
Old '61 knew. Every morning since that first morning he had strained his dim old eyes to catch a glimpse of a little figure coming blithely up the road. On that first morning it had stopped in front of his little house and said pleasant things to him as he sat on the doorsteps. He remembered all the things.
"Good-morning! It's a splendid day, isn't it?"
And: "What a perfectly lovely place you live in! With the woods so near you can shake hands with them out of your windows!"
And: "Don't the birds wake you up mornings? I wonder what they sing about up here." Then she had glanced at his ancient army coat and added the Pleasantest Thing Of All: "I think they must sing Battle Hymns and Red, White and Blue songs and 'Marching Through Georgia,' don't they?"
"Not the last one," he had answered sadly. "They never sing that. If they did, I'd 'a' learnt it of 'em long ago."
"Do you like that one best—very best?" she had asked, and he liked to remember how she had smiled. He had stood up then and thrown back his old shoulders proudly.
"Why, you see, marm," he had said simply, "Imarchedthrough Georgy!"
The next morning, too, she had stopped and talked to him. But it was not until the third time that he had ventured to ask her to whistle it. And then—Old '61, now peering down the road for the blithe little figure, thrilled again at the remembrance of what had happened. She had laughed gently and said she did not know how to whistle, but if he would like her to sing it—
There had been eight mornings all told, now, counting this morning, which was sure to be. Yes, clear 'way down there somebody was comin' swingin' along—somebody little an' happy an' spry. Old '61 began to laugh softly. He could hardly wait for her to come and sit down on the doorstep and sing it. Two or three times—she would sing it two or three times.
He had a surprise for her this morning. With great pains he had dragged his cabinet organ out onto the little porch. It was all open, ready. He went a little way down the road in his eagerness to meet her.
"Good-morning!" Billy called brightly. "Am I late to-day?"
"Jest a little—jest a little," he quavered joyously, "but I'll forgive ye! There's somethin' waitin' up there—I've got a surprise for ye!"
"Honest?" Billy stood still in the road, looking into the eager, childish old face. "Oh, goody! I love surprises. Am I to guess it?"
"No, no, jest to come an' play on it!" he quavered. Then a cloud settled over his face and dimmed the delight in it. "Mebbe you don't know how to?" he added, a tremulous upward lift to his voice.
"How to 'play on' a surprise!" cried Billy. "Well, how am I to know until I see it? I can play on 'most everything else!"
They had got to the little front gate—were going up the little carefully-weeded path—were very close to it now. Billy sprang up the steps.
"I can! I can!" she laughed. "Hear me!" Her fingers ran up and down the keys, then settled into a soft, sweet little melody. Another and another—
The old man on the lower step sat patiently listening and waiting. If she did not play it soon, he should have to ask her to, but he would rather have her play it without. Perhaps the next one—
The next one was beautiful, but not It—notIt—not the Right One.
"There!" finished Billy with a flourish. "You see, Icanplay on a surprise!" She stopped abruptly at sight of the disappointed old face below her. For an instant she was bewildered, then a beautiful instinct that had lain unused on some shelf of Billy's mind came to life and whispered to her what the trouble was.
"Oh!" she cried softly, "Oh, I'm sorry I forgot!" She turned back to the little organ and began to play again.
THE OLD MAN SAT LISTENING AND WAITING.
THE OLD MAN SAT LISTENING AND WAITING.
Up went the sagging old head, up the sagging old shoulders! Old '61 was back in "Georgy," marching through mud and pine-barrens, in cold and hunger and weariness—with the boys, from Atlanta to the sea. Hurrah! hurrah! the flag that made them free!
He was not old, not alone and forlorn and cumbering the earth. He was young and straight and loyal, defying suffering and death, with glory and fame, perhaps, on there ahead. His country needed him—he was marching through Georgia for his country.
Billy played it over and over, untiring. A lump grew in her throat at the sight of the old face down there on the lower step. For so much was written on the old face!
Suddenly Old '61 got up and began to march, swinging his old legs out splendidly. Down the walk, down the road, he went, as far as the music went, then came marching splendidly back. Head up, shoulders squared, the "boys" marching invisible beside him and before him and behind him, he was no longer Old '61, but Young '61.
The next day Billy ate her breakfast quietly, helped clear away the things, and went quietly away. She did not stop to read Laura Ann's gay-painted "Compact" on the screen door. It might even have been noticed, if anyone cared to notice, that she did not look at it, that she hurried a little through the door, as if to avoid it.
Old '61 was waiting at the gate. She smiled at the eager invitation she read in his face.
"No," she said, shaking her head for emphasis, "no, I'm not going to play it this time. I'm going to teach you to play it! I shall be going back to the city before long, and then what will you do when you want to hear it? Perhaps you couldn't keep the tune in your head. I'm going to show you an easy way to play it—just the air. I shall have to try it myself first, of course. But I'm sure you can learn how, if you'll practice faithfully." It was queer how her music-teacher tone crept back into her voice. She laughed to herself to hear it. "Practice faithfully" sounded so natural to say!
She sat down at the organ and experimented thoughtfully, trying to reduce the old man's beloved tune to its very lowest terms. After quite a long time she nodded and smiled.
Then began Old '61s music lessons. It was terrible work, like earning a living with the sweat of the brow. But the two of them—the young woman and the old man—bent to it heroically. For an hour, that first time, the cramped old fingers felt their way over the keyboard; for an hour Billy bent over them, patiently pointing the way. She had forgotten that she was not to think of piano-notes now—that she had signed the Wicked Compact. She had forgotten everything but her determination to teach Old '61 to play "Marching through Georgia." And Old '61 had, in his turn, forgotten things—that he was old, alone, a cumberer, everything but his determination to learn It.
It was not a scientific lesson. It did not begin with first principles and creep slowly upward; it began in the middle, in a splendid, haphazard, ambitious way. The stiff old hands were gently placed in position for the first notes of the tune, the stiff old fingers were pressed gently down, one at a time. Over and over and over the process was repeated. It was learning by sheer brute patience and love.
"That's all for the first lesson," Billy announced at the end of the hour. "You've got those first notes well enough to practice them. To-morrow we'll go a little bit farther." But she did not know the long, patient hours between now and then that the old man would "practice," crooked painfully over the keys. She did not reckon on the miracle that might be wrought out of intense desire.
The next morning Old '61 at the gate proclaimed proudly:
"I've got it! I've got it! I can play an' sing fur as we've b'en! It's ringin' in my head all the time."
"Did the birds wake you up singing it?" Billy asked, smilingly. She, herself, was all eagerness to learn of her pupil's progress. The lesson began at once. Already, she found, the miracle had begun to work. The old man sat down to the organ with a flourish that, if it had not been full of pathos, would have been a little comedy act. After a brief preliminary search the old fingers found their place and pounded out triumphantly the few notes they had been taught.
"Good! good!" applauded the teacher heartily. "Why, you do it splendidly! Now we'll go on a little farther—this finger on this note, this one here, your thumbhere." She stationed them carefully and the second lesson began. It was nearer two hours than one when it ended.
"Where haveyoubeen, Billy?" Loraine asked at lunch. They had all been describing their individual pursuits and experiences of the morning.
"Oh, to a place," answered Billy lightly.
"What place?" Loraine persisted curiously.
"Well," laughed Billy, "if you must know, I've been marching through—oh, aplace!" she concluded hastily, repenting herself. "It was a pretty hard place, and I'm hungry as a bear. Wish somebody'd say, 'Won't you have another piece of pie?'"
"Won't you have another piece of pie?" laughed Loraine, and nothing further was said of an embarrassing nature.
The summer days grew into summer weeks. Patiently and joyously Old '61 plodded his way to the sea. He practiced nearly all his waking hours, and when he was not at the little organ, practicing, he went about humming the beloved words. Pride and love, rather than any melody of his cracked old voice, made a tune of them.
His progress astonished his teacher. Her praise was impetuous enough for further and greater exertions. One day Billy said the next time should be an exhibition, when he should play it all—from "Atlanta to the sea"—with her as audience, not helping, but sitting in a chair listening.
She came to the Exhibition in a white dress, with sweet-peas at her waist. Her smiles at the foot of the steps changed to something like a sob when she discovered that Old '61 had been decorating the organ and the little porch. He, himself, was brushed and radiant, his old face the face of a little child.
"The audience will sit on the steps," Billy said, a little tremulously. "Right here. Make believe I'm rows and rows of people! Now will you please favor us by 'Marching through Georgia'?".
He went at once to the little gayly-bedecked instrument and began to play. The dignity and pride of the shabby old figure redeemed its shabbiness—the fervor of the pounded notes redeemed the tune. The audience—in "rows and rows,"—listened gravely, and at the end burst into genuine applause. The sound swelled and multiplied oddly, and then they saw the three figures at the gate who had listened, too. Billy was discovered!
They escorted Billy home. It was rather a silent walk until the end. Loraine spoke first.
"One less in the B-Hive," she said sadly.
"Yes, I suppose I'm dropped now," responded Billy, not uncheerfully. "Of course I've got to take the consequences of my—my crime. But I don't care!" she added with vivacity. "I'd rather live alone in a ten-story house than have missed that Exhibition!"
"Yes," mused Laura Ann thoughtfully, "it was a beautiful one. I'm gladIdidn't miss it. When I think of what it stood for—"
She broke off suddenly and slipped her hand into Billy's arm. Another short silence. Then Laura Ann finished: "All the work and patience it stood for, day after day—girls, when I think of that I feel—"
"I know—all of us know," T.O. hastily interposed. "That's about the way we all feel, I guess. No use talking about it, though. Billy's broken the Compact and we're under oath to drop her."
"Not till we go back to work," Loraine put in emphatically, "and then she can live next door and come in every night to tea! There's nothing in the Compact against that, is there? Well, then, I invite you, Billy, for the very first tea!"
"I accept!" laughed Billy. She did not seem at all depressed. In her ears rang the pounding refrain of Old '61 marching through Georgia.
Nothing more was said on this subject. A little picnic had been planned for the afternoon, and they went briskly about making preparations for it, as soon as they got back to Mrs. Camp's little green house. While they worked they discussed Amelia.
"If she hadn't gone with her mother we'd have taken her to the picnic with us," the Talented One said, over her egg-beating. "I wonder if Amelia likes picnics?"
"Don't! You make me feel creepy," Laura Ann laughed. "WhatIwonder is how she'd have looked if she'd ever been born. I lay awake one night trying to imagine Amelia."
"Blue eyes and golden hair," Loraine chimed in dreamily, "and a little dimple in her chin."
"You needn't any of you lie awake nights imagining. I can tell you," the Talented One said. "She has blue eyes, but her hair is brown and the dimples are in her cheeks. Her hair just waves a little away from the parting—it is always parted. She sits very still, sewing patchwork—her mother told me," added the Talented One quietly. "She said she wished she knew how to paint so she could paint Amelia's picture. She told me where she'd like to have it hung—here in the dining-room, between the windows. Amelia'd always been very real, she said, but the picture would make her realer."
"Did she ever say what kind of dresses Amelia wears?" asked Laura Ann without looking up from her stirring.
"No, I never asked, but they must be white dresses, I think,—Amelia is such an innocent little thing," laughed T.O. softly. It was odd how they always laughed or talked softly when it was about little make-believe Amelia.
The picnic was in the woods, in a lovely little spot Loraine had discovered in her wanderings. A brook babbled noisily through the spot. They spread their lunch at the foot of a forest giant and ate it luxuriously to the tune the brook sang. It was hard to believe they had ever been toilers in a great city.
"There never were any public schools," murmured Loraine, lying back and gazing into the thick mesh of leaves overhead. "Nobody ever said 'Teacher! Teacher!' to me."
"There never were any negatives to be 'touched up'—nobody ever had their pictures taken," Laura Ann murmured, dreamy, too. "I've always been here beside this brook, lying on my back—what a beautiful world it's always been!"
The Talented One sat rigidly straight. "There have always been handkerchiefs," she sighed, "and there always will be. I shall have to go back there and sell them. When I look at all these leaves, it reminds me—there are leaves on handkerchiefs, straggling round the borders—ugh!"
It was foolish talk, perhaps, but it was the place and the time for foolish talk. After a little more of it they drifted apart, wandering this way and that in a delightful, aimless way. So little of their four lives had been aimless or especially delightful that they reveled in the sweet opportunity. Loraine wandered farthest. She came after awhile to a clearing where a small pond glimmered redly with the parting rays of the sun. A great boy lounged beside the pond dangling a pole. Loraine recognized him as Jane Cotton's Sam.
"Oh!" she said, "now I've made a noise and scared away your fish!"
"Ain't any fish," muttered the boy. He did not turn around. The pole slanted further and further, till it lay on the bank beside the boy.
"Oh, maybe there are, if you wait long enough—and nobody comes crashing through the bushes! I don't suppose—I mean if you are not going to use it any more yourself—" Loraine looked toward the idle pole. "I never fished in my life," she explained. The boy understood with remarkable quickness.
"You mean you'd like to try it?" he asked, and this time turned round. It was not at all a bad face on close inspection, Loraine decided. The veil of sullenness had lifted a little.
[Illustration: 'I NEVER FISHED IN MY LIFE,' SHE EXPLAINED.]
[Illustration: 'I NEVER FISHED IN MY LIFE,' SHE EXPLAINED.]
"Oh, but I just would! Only if I should have an accident and catch anything, whatever would I do! They—they are always cold and clammy, aren't they?"
Jane Cotton's Sam laughed outright, and Loraine decided that it was a very good face.
"I'll 'tend to all you catch," the boy said. He was busily baiting the hook; now he extended the pole to her.
"Wiggle it—up and down a little, like this," he directed, "and don't make any more noise than you can help. If you feel a bite, let me know."
"But I don't see how I can feel a bite unless they bite me—"
Again the boy laughed wholesomely. They were getting acquainted. The fishing began, and for what seemed to her a long time Loraine sat absolutely still, dangling the pole. Nothing happened for a discouraging while. Then Loraine whispered: "I feel a bite, but it's on my wrist! If it's a mosquito I wish you would 'shoo' it off."
Another wait. Then a real bite in the right place. In another moment Loraine landed a wriggling little fish in the grass. She did not squeal nor shudder, but sat regarding it with gentle pride.
"Poor little thing! I suppose I ought to put you back, but you're my first and only fish, and I'vegotto carry you home for the girls to see. You'll have to forgive me this time!" She turned to the boy. "I suppose he ought to be dressed, or undressed, or something, before he's fried, oughtn't he? I thought I'd like to fry him for breakfast, to surprise the girls—"
"I'll dress him for you," Jane Cotton's Sam said eagerly, "and bring him over in the morning in plenty o' time."
"Thank you," Loraine said heartily. "Now you'll have to let me do something for you. 'Turn about is fair play.' Couldn't I—" She hesitated, looking out over the still reddened water rather than at the boy's face. "Couldn't I help you in some way with your studies? That's my business, you know. It would really be doing me a kindness, for I may get all out of practice unless I teach somebody something!" Had Loraine, too, forgotten the Compact on the screen door?
The boy fidgeted, then burst out angrily: "I s'pose they've all been telling you I failed up in my exams? They have, haven't they? Youknewit, didn't you?"
"Yes," Loraine answered quietly. "But I've heard a good many worse things in my life. I've heard of boys that smoked and drank and—andstole. What does missing a few examinations amount to beside things like those?" But the boy did not seem to have been listening to anything except his own angry thoughts. All his sun-browned young face was flooded with red; he had run his fingers through his hair till it stood up fiercely.
"They needn't trouble themselves 'bout me, nor you needn't, nor anybody needn't!" he declaimed loudly. "Anybody'd think they were saints themselves!"
"AndIwas a saint and everybody was saints!" laughed Loraine softly. But Jane Cotton's Sam did not laugh. He went striding away into the woods, his head flung up high. Loraine and the little dead fish were left behind. Oddly the girl was not thinking of the boy's rudeness in return for her kind offer of help, but of the flash of spirit in his eyes. It augured well for him, she was thinking, for spirit was spirit, although "gone wrong." In the right place, it should spur him on to a second attempt to get into college. What if she were to persist in her offer—were to work with him, urge him to work with her?
But he had chosen to spurn her advances. She shook her head sadly. On his own head be it. She turned her attention to the little dead fish.
"You poor dear, you look so dead and forlorn—what am I going to do with you? Someway you've got to go home with me and be fried." She took him up gingerly, but dropped him again—he was so slippery and damp! Wrap him in her handkerchief? But she had no pocket and she could never, never carry him in her sleeve which she had adopted as a pocket. So then she must leave him, must she? Poor little useless sacrifice!
Back at the picnic spot the girls were waiting for her. They went home in the late, sweet twilight.
A letter was tucked under the screen door where some friendly neighbor had left it. "Miss Thomasia O. Brown," Billy read aloud, and waved the letter in triumph, for the secret was out. The 'T' in T.O. stood for Thomasia!
"Well?" bristled the Talented One, "it had to stand for something, didn't it? It's awful, I know, butI'mnot to blame—I didn't name myself, did I? I wish people could," she added with a sigh.
"Is it for aThomas?" questioned Laura Ann curiously.
Thomasia nodded: "There was always a Thomas in the family until they got to me. They did the best they could to make me one." She was opening the letter with careful precision. "Why, of course, it's from Mrs. Camp!" she cried delightedly.
"My dear, I hope you are well and your friends have come, and Jane Cotton's Sam has not forgotten to paint the pump. I arrived here safely after a very long journey—my dear, I never dreamed the world was so big! This part of it is well enough, but give me Placid Pond! Now I am going to tell you something, and you may laugh all you're a mind to—I sha'n't hear! What I'm going to tell is,Amelia came, too. After I'd got good and settled down on the cars I looked up and knew she was sitting right opposite, on the seat I'd turned over. She seemedthere—and you may laugh, my dear. I laughed, I was so pleased to have Amelia along. John doesn't know she came—Amelia never makes a mite of trouble! But everywhere I go she goes, my dear. I shouldn't tell you if I didn't feel you'd understand. If he hasn't painted it yet, the blue paint is on a shelf in the woodhouse, and you can paint it. I'm afraid Jane Cotton's Sam won't ever amount to much. Poor Jane!"
Thomasia read the letter aloud, and at this point Loraine interposed warmly: "Jane Cotton's Sam is abused! It's a shame everybody groans over him—Ilike him. If there isn't a lot of good in him, then I don't know how to read human nature, that's all."
The next morning very early someone knocked at the kitchen door. It was Laura Ann's turn to make the fire, and she answered the knock. Jane Cotton's Sam stood on the steps outside. He had a mysterious little package in his hand. He looked up eagerly, but it was evident from the disappointed look on his face that Laura Ann was the wrong girl. And he did not know the right one's name!
"Good-morning!" nodded Laura Ann, sublimely unconscious of the soot-patch over her nose.
"Good-morning. I'd like to see—I've brought something for the one that teaches school."
"Loraine? But she isn't up yet—"
"Yes, I am up, too," called a voice overhead, "but I won't be long! I'll bedown."
It was a little fish, dressed and ready to fry, that was in the tiny bundle. The boy extended it blushingly. Then his eyes lifted to Loraine's in frank petition for pardon.
"I was mighty rude," he said. "I went back to the pond to say so, but you were gone. I beg your pardon."
She liked the tone of his voice and his good red blushes. "That's all right," she nodded reassuringly. But he did not go away. There was something else.
"If—you know what you said? If you'd offeragain—"
Loraine glanced over her shoulder. Laura Ann was rattling stove-lids at the other end of the kitchen. "I offernow," Loraine said in a low voice.
"Then I accept." The boy's voice was eager. "I'll study like everything! I thought about it in the night—I thought I'd like to surprise my mother. If I could get into college next year—" His eyes shone. "Oh I say, I'd do 'most anything for that!"
The little plan was hurriedly made, in low tones, there on Emmeline Camp's little doorsteps. The boy was to take his books to the pond where Loraine had caught her fish. He was to study there alone for a time every day, and in the afternoon she was to stroll that way and go over the work with him and set him right in all the wrong places.
"It was in Latin and mathematics I failed up," Jane Cotton's Sam explained.
"It's Latin and mathematics we'll tackle!" softly laughed Loraine. "You wait—you see—yougrind!"
He strode away, whistling, and the tune was full of courage and determination. Loraine smiled as she listened. She stood a moment, then opened the screen door and went in. The "Compact" swung and tilted with the jolt of her energetic movements. She adjusted it with a queer little smile.
For summer days on summer days the covert, earnest lessons went on beside the bit of sunny water. Teacher and pupil pored intently over the problems and difficult passages, and steadily the pupil's courage grew. The old sullen look had vanished—Jane Cotton's Sam put on manliness and a splendid swing to his shoulders. In her heart Loraine exulted. What if she were disobeying the Compact—death to the Wicked Compact!
Laura Ann suspected, but for reasons of her own kept her own counsel. She had begun to suspect, when Jane Cotton's Sam brought the little fish. At that time the "reasons of her own" had begun to influence her and she had omitted to mention to Billy and T.O. that the boy had stood on the doorsteps in earnest conversation with Loraine. Mentioning it to Billy might not, indeed, have mattered, since Billy was already an "outsider." But Loraine might not want T.O. to know, anyway.
It was significant that Laura Ann, in going in and out, now chose to ignore the gayly-illuminated placard that swung on the door—that she herself had adorned and hung there. But she did not go in and out as much now; for whole mornings she slipped away to a little attic room upstairs and busied herself alone.
It was getting grievously near the time to go back to the great city again. Emmeline Camp was coming back then.
All but T.O. mourned audibly the rapidly lessening days, but T.O. made no useless laments. One day she surprised them.
"Girls, Iwantto go back!" she announced. "I shall be ready when it's time—now anybody can say what anybody pleases. Scoff at me—do. I expect it! But I'm getting homesick to see a street-car and a—a policeman! It's lovely and peaceful here, but I've had my fill of it now—I want to go home and bump into crowds and hear big, stirry noises. It's different with you girls—you weren't born in the city; you didn't play with street-cars and policemen and get sung to sleep by the noises! I was tired—tired—and now I'm rested. I've had a perfectly beautiful time, but I shall be ready to go back. Honestly, girls, it would break my heart not to!"
It was so much like T.O., Billy said, to keep all her feelings to herself and then suddenly spring them on people like that, and take people's breath away. Billy did not keep things to herself.
Jane Cotton came up the kitchen path one day when all but Loraine were sitting on the doorsteps—Loraine had strolled nonchalantly down the street as her afternoon habit was.
"Well, I've found out!" announced Jane Cotton. She was beaming; her sallow face was oddly cleared and lighted—her lips trembled with eagerness to deliver her news. "I'vefound out! Where's the rest o' you?" She counted them over. "It's the rest o' you I want—well, you tell her I've found out. Tell her I hardly slept a wink last night, I was so happy! Tell her Iblessher, and I know the Lord will. They didn't want me to know yet but I couldn't help finding out. And they won't mind when they know how happy it's made me—oh, I ain't afraid but he'll pass this time! I know he will—I know it! You tell her she's saved my boy." And without further delay the slender figure turned and walked jubilantly down the path. It was as if she marched to the melody of the joy in her heart.
They looked at each other silently, then at the Wicked Compact behind them. There did not seem any explanation needed.
"Another one dropped," murmured T.O. sighingly. But Laura Ann said nothing.