It was a wild Friday night in March, after days of blustering storms and drifting snow. Beulah was clad in royal ermine; not only clad, indeed, but nearly buried in it. The timbers of the Yellow House creaked, and the wreaths of snow blew against the windows and lodged there. King Frost was abroad, nipping toes and ears, hanging icicles on the eaves of houses, and decorating the forest trees with glittering pendants. The wind howled in the sitting room chimney, but in front of the great back-log the bed of live coals glowed red and the flames danced high, casting flickering shadows on the children's faces. It is possible to bring up a family by steam heat, and it is often necessary, but nobody can claim that it is either so simple or so delightful as by an open fire!
The three cats were all nestled cosily in Nancy's lap or snuggled by her side. Mother Carey had demurred at two, and when Nancy appeared one day after school with a third, she spoke, with some firmness, of refusing it a home. "If we must economize on cats," cried Nancy passionately, "don't let's begin on this one! She doesn't look it, but she is a heroine. When the Rideout's house burned down, her kittens were in a basket by the kitchen stove. Three times she ran in through the flames and brought out a kitten in her mouth. The tip of her tail is gone, and part of an ear, and she's blind in one eye. Mr. Harmon says she's too homely to live; now what do you think?"
"I think nobody pretending to be a mother could turn her back on another mother like that," said Mrs. Carey promptly. "We'll take a pint more milk, and I think you children will have to leave something in your plates now and then, you polish them until it really is indecent."
To-night an impromptu meeting of the Ways and Means Committee was taking place by the sitting room fire, perhaps because the family plates had been polished to a terrifying degree that week.
"Children," said Mother Carey, "we have been as economical as we knew how to be; we have worked to the limit of our strength; we have spent almost nothing on clothing, but the fact remains that we have scarcely money enough in our reserve fund to last another six months. What shall we do?"
Nancy leaped to her feet, scattering cats in every direction.
"Mother Carey!" she exclaimed remorsefully. "You haven't mentioned money since New Year's, and I thought we were rubbing along as usual. The bills are all paid; what's the matter?"
"That is the matter!" answered Mrs. Carey with the suspicion of a tear in her laughing voice, "The billsarepaid, and there's too little left! We eat so much, and we burn so much wood, and so many gallons of oil'"
"The back of the winter's broken, mother dear!" said Gilbert, as a terrific blast shook the blinds as a terrier would a rat. "Don't listen to that wind; it 's only a March bluff! Osh Popham says snow is the poor man's manure; he says it's going to be an early season and a grand hay crop. We'll get fifty dollars for our field."
"That will be in July, and this is March," said his mother. "Still, the small reversible Van Twiller will carry us through May, with our other income. But the saving days are over, and the earning days have come, dears! I am the oldest and the biggest, I must begin."
"Never!" cried Nancy. "You slave enough for us, as it is, but you shall never slave for anybody else; shall she, Gilly?"
"Not if I know it!" answered Gilbert with good ringing emphasis.
"Another winter I fear we must close the Yellow House and—"
The rest of Mother Carey's remark was never heard, for at Nancy's given signal the four younger Careys all swooned on the floor. Nancy had secretly trained Peter so that he was the best swooner of the family, and his comical imitation of Nancy was so mirth-compelling that Mother Carey laughed and declared there was no such thing as talking seriously to children like hers.
"But, Muddy dear, you weren't in earnest?" coaxed Nancy, bending her bright head over her mother's shoulder and cuddling up to her side; whereupon Gilbert gave his imitation of a jealous puppy; barking, snarling, and pushing his frowzly pate under his mother's arm to crowd Nancy from her point of vantage, to which she clung valiantly. Of course Kitty found a small vacant space on which she could festoon herself, and Peter promptly climbed on his mother's lap, so that she was covered with—fairly submerged in—children! A year ago Julia used to creep away and look at such exhibitions of family affection, with a curling lip, but to-night, at Mother Carey's outstretched hand and smothered cry of "Help, Judy!" she felt herself gathered into the heart of the laughing, boisterous group. That hand, had she but known it, was stretched out to her because only that day a letter had come, saying that Allan Carey was much worse and that his mental condition admitted of no cure. He was bright and hopeful and happy, so said Mr. Manson;—forever sounding the praises of the labor-saving device in which he had sunk his last thousands. "We can manufacture it at ten cents and sell it for ten dollars," he would say, rubbing his hands excitedly. "We can pay fifty dollars a month office rent and do a business of fifty thousand dollars a year!" "And I almost believe we could!" added Mr. Manson, "if we had faith enough and capital enough!"
"Of course you know, darlings, I would never leave Beulah save for the coldest months; or only to earn a little money," said Mrs. Carey, smoothing her dress, flattening her collar, and pinning up the braids that Nancy's hugs had loosened.
"I must put my mind on the problem at once," said Nancy, pacing the floor. "I've been so interested in my Virgil, so wrapped up in my rhetoric and composition, that I haven't thought of ways and means for a month, but of course we will never leave the Yellow House, and of course we must contrive to earn money enough to live in it. We must think about it every spare minute till vacation comes; then we'll have nearly four months to amass a fortune big enough to carry us through the next year. I have an idea for myself already. I was going to wait till my seventeenth birthday, but that's four months away and it's too long. I'm old enough to begin any time. I feel old enough to write my Reminiscences this minute."
"You might publish your letters to the American Consul in Breslau; they'd make a book!" teased Gilbert.
"Very likely I shall, silly Gilly," retorted Nancy, swinging her mane haughtily. "It isn't every girl who has a monthly letter from an Admiral in China and a Consul in Germany."
"You wouldn't catch me answering the Queen of Sheba's letters or the Empress of India's," exclaimed Gilbert, whose pen was emphatically less mighty than his sword. "Hullo, you two! what are you whispering about?" he called to Kathleen and Julia, who were huddled together in a far corner of the long room, gesticulating eloquently.
"We've an idea! We've an idea! We've found a way to help!" sang the two girls, pirouetting back into the circle of firelight. "We won't tell till it's all started, but it's perfectly splendid, and practical too."
"And so ladylike!" added Julia triumphantly.
"How much?" asked Gilbert succinctly.
The girls whispered a minute or two, and appeared to be multiplying twenty-five first by fifteen, and then again by twenty.
"From three dollars and seventy-five cents to four dollars and a half a week according to circumstances!" answered Kathleen proudly.
"Will it take both of you?"
"Yes."
"All your time?"
More nods and whispers and calculation.
"No, indeed; only three hours a day."
"Any of my time?"
"Just a little."
"I thought so!" said Gilbert loftily. "You always want me and my hammer or my saw; but I'll be busy on my own account; you'll have to paddle your own canoe!"
"You'll be paid for what you do for us," said Julia slyly, giving Kathleen a poke, at which they both fell into laughter only possible to the very young.
Then suddenly there came a knock at the front door; a stamping of feet on the circular steps, and a noise of shaking off snow.
"Go to the door, Gilbert; who can that be on a night like this,—although it is only eight o'clock after all! Why, it's Mr. Thurston!"
Ralph Thurston came in blushing and smiling, glad to be welcomed, fearful of intruding, afraid of showing how much he liked to be there.
"Good-evening, all!" he said. "You see I couldn't wait to thank you,Mrs. Carey! No storm could keep me away to-night."
"What has mother been doing, now?" asked Nancy. "Her right hand is forever busy, and she never tells her left hand a thing, so we children are always in the dark."
"It was nothing much," said Mrs. Carey, pushing the young man gently into the high-backed rocker. "Mrs. Harmon, Mrs. Popham, and I simply tried to show our gratitude to Mr. Thurston for teaching our troublesome children."
"How did you know it was my birthday?" asked Thurston.
"Didn't you write the date in Lallie Joy's book?"
"True, I did; and forgot it long ago; but I have never had my birthday noticed before, and I am twenty-four!"
"It was high time, then!" said Mother Carey with her bright smile.
"But what did mother do?" clamored Nancy, Kathleen and Gilbert in chorus.
"She took my forlorn, cheerless room and made it into a home for me," said Thurston. "Perhaps she wanted me to stay in it a little more, and bother her less! At any rate she has created an almost possible rival to the Yellow House!"
Ralph Thurston had a large, rather dreary room over Bill Harmon's store, and took his meals at the Widow Berry's, near by. He was an orphan and had no money to spend on luxuries, because all his earnings went to pay the inevitable debts incurred when a fellow is working his way through college.
Mrs. Carey, with the help of the other two women, had seized upon this stormy Friday, when the teacher always took his luncheon with him to the academy, to convert Ralph's room into something comfortable and cheerful. The old, cracked, air-tight stove had been removed, and Bill Harmon had contributed a second-hand Franklin, left with him for a bad debt. It was of soapstone and had sliding doors in front, so that the blaze could be disclosed when life was very dull or discouraging. The straw matting on the floor had done very well in the autumn, but Mrs. Carey now covered the centre of the room with a bright red drugget left from the Charlestown house-furnishings, and hung the two windows with curtains of printed muslin. Ossian Popham had taken a clotheshorse and covered it with red felting, so that the screen, so evolved could be made to hide the bed and washstand. Ralph's small, rickety table had been changed for a big, roomy one of pine, hidden by the half of an old crimson piano cloth. When Osh had seen the effect of this he hurried back to his barn chamber and returned with some book shelves that he had hastily glued and riveted into shape. These he nailed to the wall and filled with books that he found in the closet, on the floor, on the foot of the bed, and standing on the long, old-fashioned mantel shelf.
"Do you care partic'larly where you set, nights, Ossian?" inquired Mrs. Popham, who was now in a state of uncontrolled energy bordering on delirium. "Because your rockin' chair has a Turkey red cushion and it would look splendid in Mr. Thurston's room. You know you fiddle 'bout half the time evenin's, and you always go to bed early."
"Don't mind me!" exclaimed Ossian facetiously, starting immediately for the required chair and bringing back with it two huge yellow sea shells, which he deposited on the floor at each end of the hearth rug.
"How do you like 'em?" he inquired of Mrs. Carey.
"Not at all," she replied promptly.
"You don't?" he asked incredulously. "Well, it takes all kinds o' folks to make a world! I've been keepin' 'em fifteen years, hopin' I'd get enough more to make a border for our parlor fireplace, and now you don't take to 'em! Back they go to the barn chamber, Maria; Mis' Carey's bossin' this job, and she ain't got no taste for sea shells. Would you like an old student lamp? I found one that I can bronze up in about two minutes if Mis' Harmon can hook a shade and chimbly out of Bill's stock."
They all stayed in the room until this last feat was accomplished; stayed indeed until the fire in the open stove had died down to ruddy coals. Then they pulled down the shades, lighted the lamp, gave one last admiring look, and went home.
It had meant only a few hours' thought and labor, with scarcely a penny of expense, but you can judge what Ralph Thurston felt when he entered the door out of the storm outside. To him it looked like a room conjured up by some magician in a fairy tale. He fell into the rocking-chair and looked at his own fire; gazed about at the cheerful crimson glow that radiated from the dazzling drugget, in a state of puzzled ecstasy, till he caught sight of a card lying near the lamp,—"A birthday present from three mothers who value your work for their boys and girls."
He knew Mrs. Carey's handwriting, so he sped to the Yellow House as soon as his supper was over, and now, in the presence of the whole family, he felt tongue-tied and wholly unable to express his gratitude.
It was bed time, and the young people melted away from the fireside.
"Kiss your mother good-night, sweet Pete," said Nancy, taking the reluctant cherub by the hand. "'Hoc opus, hic labor est,' Mr. Thurston, to get the Peter-bird upstairs when once he is down. Shake hands with your future teacher, Peter; no, you mustn't kiss him; little boys don't kiss great Latin scholars unless they are asked."
Thurston laughed and lifted the gurgling Peter high in the air. "Good night, old chap!" he said "Hurry up and come to school!"
"I'm 'bout ready now!" piped Peter. "I can read 'Up-up-my-boy-day-is-not-the-time-for-sleep-the-dew-will-soon-be-gone' with the book upside down,—can't I, Muddy?"
"You can, my son; trot along with sister."
Thurston opened the door for Nancy, and his eye followed her for a second as she mounted the stairs. She glowed like a ruby to-night in her old red cashmere. The sparkle of her eye, the gloss of her hair, the soft red of her lips, the curve and bend of her graceful young body struck even her mother anew, though she was used to her daughter's beauty. "She is growing!" thought Mrs. Carey wistfully. "I see it all at once, and soon others will be seeing it!"
Alas! young Ralph Thurston had seen it for weeks past! He was not perhaps so much in love with Nancy the girl, as he was with Nancy the potential woman. Some of the glamour that surrounded the mother had fallen upon the daughter. One felt the influences that had rained upon Nancy ever since she had come into the world, One could not look at her, nor talk with her, without feeling that her mother—like a vine in the blood, as the old proverb says—was breathing, growing, budding, blossoming in her day by day.
The young teacher came back to the fireplace, where Mother Carey was standing in a momentary brown study.
"I've never had you alone before," he stammered, "and now is my chance to tell you what you've been to me ever since I came to Beulah."
"You have helped me in my problems more than I can possibly have aided you," Mrs. Carey replied quietly. "Gilbert was so rebellious about country schools, so patronizing, so scornful of their merits, that I fully expected he would never stay at the academy of his own free will. You have converted him, and I am very grateful."
"Meantime I am making a record there," said Ralph, "and I have this family to thank for it! Your children, with Olive and Cyril Lord, have set the pace for the school, and the rest are following to the best of their ability. There is not a shirk nor a dunce in the whole roll of sixty pupils! Beulah has not been so proud of its academy for thirty years, and I shall come in for the chief share in the praise. I am trying to do for Gilbert and Cyril what an elder brother would do, but I should have been powerless if I had not had this home and this fireside to inspire me!"
"Tibi splendet focus!" quoted Mrs. Carey, pointing to Olive's inscription under the mantelpiece. "For you the hearth fire glows!"
"Have I not felt it from the beginning?" asked Ralph. "I never knew my mother, Mrs. Carey, and few women have come into my life; I have been too poor and too busy to cultivate their friendship. Then I came to Beulah and you drew me into your circle; admitted an unknown, friendless fellow into your little group! It was beautiful; it was wonderful!"
"What are mothers for, but to do just that, and more than all, for the motherless boys?"
"Well, I may never again have the courage to say it, so just believe me when I say your influence will be the turning-point in my life. I will never, so help me God, do anything to make me unworthy to sit in this fireglow! So long as I have brains and hands to work with, I will keep striving to create another home like this when my time comes. Any girl that takes me will get a better husband because of you; any children I may be blessed with will have a better father because I have known you. Don't make any mistake, dear Mrs. Carey, your hearth fire glows a long, long distance!"
Mother Carey was moved to the very heart. She leaned forward and took Ralph Thurston's young face, thin with privation and study, in her two hands. He bent his head instinctively, partly to hide the tears that had sprung to his eyes, and she kissed his forehead simply and tenderly. He was at her knees on the hearth rug in an instant; all his boyish affection laid at her feet; all his youthful chivalry kindled at the honor of her touch.
And there are women in the world who do not care about being mothers!
The winter passed. The snow gradually melted in the meadows and the fields, which first grew brown and then displayed patches of green here and there where the sun fell strongest. There was deep, sticky mud in the roads, and the discouraged farmers urged their horses along with the wheels of their wagons sunk to the hub in ooze. Then there were wet days, the wind ruffling the leaden surface of the river, the sound of the rain dripping from the bare tree-boughs, the smell of the wet grass and the clean, thirsty soil. Milder weather came, then blustery days, then chill damp ones, but steadily life grew, here, there, everywhere, and the ever-new miracle of the awakening earth took place once again. Sap mounted in the trees, blood coursed in the children's veins, mothers began giving herb tea and sulphur and molasses, young human nature was restless; the whole creation throbbed and sighed, and was tremulous, and had growing pains.
April passed, with all its varying moods of sun and shower, and settled weather came.
All the earth was gay.Land and seaGave themselves up to jollityAnd with the heart of MayDid every Beast keep holiday.
The Carey girls had never heard of "the joy of living" as a phrase, but oh! they knew a deal about it in these first two heavenly springs in little Beulah village! The sunrise was so wonderful; the trees and grass so marvellously green; the wild flowers so beautiful! Then the river on clear days, the glimpse of the sea from Beulah's hill tops, the walks in the pine woods,—could Paradise show anything to compare?
And how good the food tasted; and the books they read, how fresh, how moving, how glorious! Then when the happy day was over, sleep came without pause or effort the moment the flushed cheek touched the cool pillow.
"These," Nancy reflected, quoting from her favorite Wordsworth as she dressed beside her open window, "These must be
"The gifts of morn,Ere life grows noisy and slower-footed thoughtCan overtake the rapture of the sense.
"I was fifteen and a half last spring, and now, though it is only a year ago, everything is different!" she mused. "When did it get to be different, I wonder? It never was all at once, so it must have been a little every day, so little that I hardly noticed it until just now."
A young girl's heart is ever yearning for and trembling at the future. In its innocent depths the things that are to be are sometimes rustling and whispering secrets, and sometimes keeping an exquisite, haunting silence. In the midst of the mystery the solemn young creature is sighing to herself, "What am I meant for? Am I everything? Am I nothing? Must I wait till my future comes to me, or must I seek it?"
This was all like the sound of a still, small voice in Nancy's mind, but it meant that she was "growing up," taking hold on life at more points than before, seeing new visions, dreaming new dreams. Kathleen and Julia seemed ridiculously young to her. She longed to advise them, but her sense of humor luckily kept her silent. Gilbert appeared crude, raw; promising, but undeveloped; she hated to think how much experience he would have to pass through before he could see existence as it really was, and as she herself saw it. Olive's older view of things, her sad, strange outlook upon life, her dislike of anything in the shape of man, her melancholy aversion to her father, all this fascinated and puzzled Nancy, whose impetuous nature ran out to every living thing, revelling in the very act of loving, so long as she did not meet rebuff.
Cyril perplexed her. Silent, unresponsive, shy, she would sometimes raise her eyes from her book in school and find him gazing steadily at her like a timid deer drinking thirstily at a spring. Nancy did not like Cyril, but she pitied him and was as friendly with him, in her offhand, boyish fashion, as she was with every one.
The last days of the academy term were close at hand, and the air was full of graduation exercises and white muslin and ribbon sashes. June brought two surprises to the Yellow House. One morning Kathleen burst into Nancy's room with the news: "Nancy! The Fergusons offer to adopt Judy, and she doesn't want to go. Think of that! But she's afraid to ask mother if she can stay. Let's us do it; shall we?"
"I will; but of course there is not enough money to go around, Kitty, even if we all succeed in our vacation plans. Julia will never have any pretty dresses if she stays with us, and she loves pretty dresses. Why didn't the Fergusons adopt her before mother had made her over?"
"Yes," chimed in Kathleen. "Then everybody would have been glad, but now we shall miss her! Think of missing Judy! We would never have believed it!"
"It's like seeing how a book turns out, to watch her priggishness and smuggishness all melting away," Nancy said. "I shouldn't like to see her slip back into the old Judyisms, and neither would mother. Mother'll probably keep her, for I know Mr. Manson thinks it's only a matter of a few months before Uncle Allan dies."
"And mother wouldn't want a Carey to grow up into an imitation GladysFerguson; but that's what Judy would be, in course of time."
Julia took Mrs. Ferguson's letter herself to her Aunt Margaret, showing many signs of perturbation in her usually tranquil face.
Mrs. Carey read it through carefully. "It is a very kind, generous offer, Julia. Your father cannot be consulted about it, so you must decide. You would have every luxury, and your life would be full of change and pleasure; while with us it must be, in the nature of things, busy and frugal for a long time to come."
"But I am one more to feed and clothe, Aunt Margaret, and there is so little money!"
"I know, but you are one more to help, after all. The days are soon coming when Nancy and Gilbert will be out in the world, helping themselves. You and Kathleen could stay with Peter and me, awaiting your turn. It doesn't look attractive in comparison with what the Fergusons offer you!"
Then the gentle little rivers that had been swelling all the past year in Julia's heart, rivers of tenderness and gratitude and sympathy, suddenly overflowed their banks and, running hither and thither, softened everything with which they came in contact. Rocky places melted, barren spots waked into life, and under the impulse of a new mood that she scarcely understood Julia cried, "Oh! dear Aunt Margaret, keep me, keep me! This is home; I never want to leave it! I want to be one of Mother Carey's chickens!"
The child had flung herself into the arms that never failed anybody, and with tears streaming down her cheeks made her plea.
"There, there, Judy dear; you are one of us, and we could not let you go unless you were to gain something by it. If you really want to stay we shall love you all the better, and you will belong to us more than you ever did; so dry your eyes, or you will be somebody's duckling instead of my chicken!"
The next surprise was a visit from Cousin Ann Chadwick, who drove up to the door one morning quite unannounced, and asked the driver of the depot wagon to bring over her two trunks immediately.
"Two trunks!" groaned Gilbert. "That means the whole season!"
But it meant nothing of the kind; it meant pretty white dresses for the three girls, two pairs of stockings and two of gloves for the whole family, a pattern of black silk for Mrs. Carey, and numberless small things to which the Carey wardrobe had long been a stranger.
Having bestowed these offerings rather grimly, as was her wont, and having received the family's grateful acknowledgments with her usual lack of grace, she proceeded in the course of a few days to make herself far more disagreeable than had been the case on any previous visit of her life. She had never seen such dusty roads as in Beulah; so many mosquitoes and flies; such tough meat; such a lack of fruit, such talkative, over-familiar neighbors, such a dull minister, such an inattentive doctor, such extortionate tradesmen.
"What shall we do with Cousin Ann!" exclaimed Mrs. Carey to Nancy in despair. "She makes us these generous presents, yet she cannot possibly have any affection for us. We accept them without any affection for her, because we hardly know how to avoid it. The whole situation is positively degrading! I have borne it for years because she was good to your father when he was a boy, but now that she has grown so much more difficult I really think I must talk openly with her."
"She talked openly enough with me when I confessed that Gilbert and I had dropped and broken the Dirty Boy!" said Nancy, "and she has been very cross with me ever since."
"Cousin Ann," said Mrs. Carey that afternoon on the piazza, "it is very easy to see that you do not approve of the way we live, or the way we think about things in general. Feeling as you do, I really wish you would not spend your money on us, and give us these beautiful and expensive presents. It puts me under an obligation that chafes me and makes me unhappy."
"I don't disapprove of you, particularly," said Miss Chadwick. "Do I act as if I did?"
"Your manner seems to suggest it."
"You can't tell much by manners," replied Cousin Ann. "I think you're entirely too soft and sentimental, but we all have our faults. I don't think you have any right to feed the neighbors and burn up fuel and oil in their behalf when you haven't got enough for your own family. I think you oughtn't to have had four children, and having had them you needn't have taken another one in, though she's turned out better than I expected. But all that is none of my business, I suppose, and, wrong-headed as you are, I like you better than most folks, which isn't saying much."
"But if you don't share my way of thinking, why do you keep fretting yourself to come and see us? It only annoys you."
"It annoys me, but I can't help coming, somehow. I guess I hate other places and other ways worse than I do yours. You don't grudge me bed and board, I suppose?"
"How could I grudge you anything when you give us so much,—so much more than we ought to accept, so much more than we can ever thank you for?"
"I don't want to be thanked; you know that well enough; but there's so much demonstration in your family you can't understand anybody's keeping themselves exclusive. I don't like to fuss over people or have them fuss over me. Kissing comes as easy to you as eating, but I never could abide it. A nasty, common habit, I call it! I want to give what I like and where and when I like, and act as I'm a mind to afterwards. I don't give because I see things are needed, but because I can't spend my income unless I do give. If I could have my way I'd buy you a good house in Buffalo, right side of mine; take your beggarly little income and manage it for you; build a six-foot barbed wire fence round the lot so 't the neighbors couldn't get in and eat you out of house and home, and in a couple of years I could make something out of your family!"
Mrs. Carey put down her sewing, leaned her head back against the crimson rambler, and laughed till the welkin rang.
"I suppose you think I'm crazy?" Cousin Ann remarked after a moment's pause.
"I don't know, Cousin Ann," said Mrs. Carey, taking up her work again. "Whatever it is, you can't help it! If you'll give up trying to understand my point of view, I won't meddle with yours!"
"I suppose you won't come to Buffalo?"
"No indeed, thank you, Cousin Ann!"
"You'll stay here, in this benighted village, and grow old,—you that are a handsome woman of forty and might have a millionaire husband to take care of you?"
"My husband had money enough to please me, and when I meet him again and show him the four children, he will be the richest man in Paradise."
Cousin Ann rose. "I'm going to-morrow, and I shan't be back this year.I've taken passage on a steamer that's leaving for Liverpool next week!"
"Going abroad! Alone, Cousin Ann?"
"No, with a party of Cook's tourists."
"What a strange idea!" exclaimed Mrs. Carey.
"I don't see why; 'most everybody's been abroad. I don't expect to like the way they live over there, but if other folks can stand it, I guess I can. It'll amuse me for a spell, maybe, and if it don't, I've got money enough to break away and do as I'm a mind to."
The last evening was a pleasant, friendly one, every Carey doing his or her best to avoid risky subjects and to be as agreeable as possible. Cousin Ann Chadwick left next day, and Mrs. Carey, bidding the strange creature good-bye, was almost sorry that she had ever had any arguments with her.
"It will be so long before I see you again, Cousin Ann, I was on the point of kissing you,—till I remembered!" she said with a smile as she stood at the gate.
"I don't know as I mind, for once," said Miss Chadwick. "If anybody's got to kiss me I'd rather it would be you than anybody!"
She drove away, her two empty trunks in the back of the wagon. She sailed for Liverpool the next week and accompanied her chosen party to the cathedral towns of England. There, in a quiet corner of York Minster, as the boy choir was chanting its anthems, her heart, an organ she had never been conscious of possessing, gave one brief sudden physical pang and she passed out of what she had called life. Neither her family affairs nor the names of her relations were known, and the news of her death did not reach far-away Beulah till more than two months afterward, and with it came the knowledge that Cousin Ann Chadwick had left the income of five thousand dollars to each of the five Carey children, with five thousand to be paid in cash to Mother Carey on the settlement of the estate.
Little the Careys suspected how their fortunes were mending, during those last days of June! Had they known, they might almost have been disappointed, for the spur of need was already pricking them, and their valiant young spirits longed to be in the thick of the fray. Plans had been formed for the past week, many of them in secret, and the very next day after the close of the academy, various business projects would burst upon a waiting world. One Sunday night Mother Carey had read to the little group a poem in which there was a verse that struck on their ears with a fine spirit:—
"And all the bars at which we fret,That seem to prison and control,Are but the doors of daring setAjar before the soul."
They recited it over and over to themselves afterwards, and two or three of them wrote it down and pinned it to the wall, or tucked it in the frame of the looking glass.
Olive Lord knocked at her father's study door the morning of the twenty-first of June. Walking in quietly she said, "Father, yesterday was my seventeenth birthday. Mother left me a letter to read on that day, telling me that I should have fifty dollars a month of my own when I was seventeen, Cyril to have as much when he is the same age."
"If you had waited courteously and patiently for a few days you would have heard this from me," her father answered.
"I couldn't be sure!" Olive replied. "You never did notice a birthday; why should you begin now?"
"I have more important matters to take up my mind than the consideration of trivial dates," her father answered. "You know that very well, and you know too, that notwithstanding my absorbing labors, I have endeavored for the last few months to give more of my time to you and Cyril."
"I realize that, or I should not speak to you at all," said Olive. "It is because you have shown a little interest in us lately that I consult you. I want to go at once to Boston to study painting. I will deny myself everything else, if necessary, but I will go, and I will study! It is the only life I care for, the only life I am likely to have, and I am determined to lead it."
"You must see that you are too young to start out for yourself anywhere; it is simply impossible."
"I shall not be alone. Mrs. Carey will find me a good home in Charlestown, with friends of hers. You trust her judgment, if no one else's."
"If she is charitable enough to conduct your foolish enterprises as well as those of her own children, I have nothing to say. I have talked with her frequently, and she knows that as soon as I have finished my last volume I shall be able to take a more active interest in your affairs and Cyril's."
"Then may I go?"
"When I hear from the person in Charlestown, yes. There is an expedition starting for South America in a few months and I have been asked to accompany the party. If you are determined to leave home I shall be free to accept the invitation. Perhaps Mrs. Carey would allow Cyril to stay with her during my absence."
"I dare say, and I advise you to go to South America by all means; you will be no farther away from your family than you have always been!" With this parting shot Olive Lord closed the study door behind her.
"That girl has the most unpleasant disposition, and the sharpest tongue, I ever met in the course of my life!" said Henry Lord to himself as he turned to his task.
Mother Carey's magic was working very slowly in his blood. It had roused him a little from the bottomless pit of his selfishness, but much mischief had been done on all sides, and it would be a work of time before matters could be materially mended. Olive's nature was already warped and embittered, and it would require a deal of sunshine to make a plant bloom that had been so dwarfed by neglect and indifference.
Nancy's door of daring opened into an editorial office. An hour here, an hour there, when the Yellow House was asleep, had brought about a story that was on its way to a distant city. It was written, with incredible care, on one side of the paper only; it enclosed a fully stamped envelope for a reply or a return of the manuscript, and all day long Nancy, trembling between hope and despair, went about hugging her first secret to her heart.
Gilbert had opened his own particular door, and if it entailed no more daring than that of Nancy's effort, it required twice the amount of self-sacrifice. He was to be, from June twenty-seventh till August twenty-seventh, Bill Harmon's post-office clerk and delivery boy, and the first that the family would know about it would be his arrival at the back door, in a linen jacket, with an order-book in his hand. Bravo, Gilly! One can see your heels disappearing over the top of Shiny Wall!
The door of daring just ready to be opened by Kathleen and Julia was of a truly dramatic and unexpected character.
Printed in plain letters, twenty-five circulars reposed in the folds of Julia's nightdresses in her lower bureau drawer. The last thing to be done at night and the first in the morning was the stealthy, whispered reading of one of these documents, lest even after the hundredth time, something wrong should suddenly appear to the eye or ear. They were addressed, they were stamped, and they would be posted to twenty-five families in the neighborhood on the closing day of the academy.
The Misses Kathleen and Julia Carey announce the opening of classes for private instruction on July 1st, from two to four o'clock daily in the
Hamilton Barn.
Faculty.
Miss Kathleen Carey Reading & Elocution 2 P.M.Miss Julia Carey Dancing, Embroidery 2-30 P.M.Mrs. Peter Carey Vocal Music, Part Singing 3 P.M.Miss Nancy Carey Composition 4 P.M.Mr. Gilbert Carey Wood carving, Jig Sawing, ManualTraining from 4 to 5 Fridays only.
Terms cash. 25 cents a week.
N. B. Children prepared for entrance to the academy at special prices.
Meantime the Honorable Lemuel Hamilton had come to America, and was opening doors of daring at such a rate of speed that he hardly realized the extent of his own courage and what it involved. He accepted an official position of considerable honor and distinction in Washington, rented a house there, and cabled his wife and younger daughter to come over in September. He wrote his elder daughter that she might go with some friends to Honolulu if she would return for Christmas. ("It's eleven years since we had a Christmas tree," he added, "and the first thing you know we shall have lost the habit!")
To his son Jack in Texas he expressed himself as so encouraged by the last business statement, which showed a decided turn for the better, that he was willing to add a thousand dollars to the capital and irrigate some more of the unimproved land on the ranch.
"If Jack has really got hold out there, he can come home every two or three years," he thought. "Well, perhaps I shall succeed in getting part of them together, part of the time, if I work hard enough; all but Tom, whom I care most about! Now that everything is in train I'll take a little vacation myself, and go down to Beulah to make the acquaintance of those Careys. If I had ever contemplated returning to America I suppose I shouldn't have allowed them to settle down in the old house, still, Eleanor would never have been content to pass her summers there, so perhaps it is just as well."
The Peter-bird was too young to greatly dare; still it ought perhaps to be set down that he sold three dozen marbles and a new kite to Billy Harmon that summer, and bought his mother a birthday present with the money. All Peter's "doors of daring" had hitherto opened into places from which he issued weeping, with sprained ankles, bruised hands, skinned knees or burned eyelashes.
It was the Fourth of July; a hot, still day when one could fairly see the green peas swelling in their pods and the string beans climbing their poles like acrobats! Young Beulah had rung the church bell at midnight, cast its torpedoes to earth in the early morning, flung its fire-crackers under the horses' feet, and felt somewhat relieved of its superfluous patriotism by breakfast time. Then there was a parade of Antiques and Horribles, accompanied by the Beulah Band, which, though not as antique, was fully as horrible as anything in the procession.
From that time on, the day had been somnolent, enlivened in the Carey household only by the solemn rite of paying the annual rent of the Yellow House. The votive nosegay had been carefully made up, and laid lovingly by Nancy under Mother Hamilton's portrait, in the presence not only of the entire family, but also of Osh Popham, who had called to present early radishes and peppergrass.
"I'd like to go upstairs with you when you get your boquet tied up," he said, "because it's an awful hot day, an' the queer kind o' things you do 't this house allers makes my backbone cold! I never suspicioned that Lena Hamilton hed the same kind o' fantasmic notions that you folks have, but I guess it's like tenant, like landlord, in this case! Anyhow, I want to see the rent paid, if you don't mind. I wish't you'd asked that mean old sculpin of a Hen Lord over; he owns my house an' it might put a few idees into his head!"
In the afternoon Nancy took her writing pad and sat on the circular steps, where it was cool. The five o'clock train from Boston whistled at the station a mile away as she gathered her white skirts daintily up and settled herself in the shadiest corner. She was unconscious of the passing time, and scarcely looked up until the rattling of wheels caught her ear. It was the station wagon stopping at the Yellow House gate, and a strange gentleman was alighting. He had an unmistakable air of the town. His clothes were not as Beulah clothes and his hat was not as Beulah hats, for it was a fine Panama with a broad sweeping brim. Nancy rose from the steps, surprise dawning first in her eyes, then wonder, then suspicion, then conviction; then two dimples appeared in her cheeks.
The stranger lifted the foreign-looking hat with a smile and said, "My little friend and correspondent, Nancy Carey, I think?"
"My American Consul, I do believe!" cried Nancy joyously, as she ran down the path with both hands outstretched. "Where did you come from? Why didn't you tell us beforehand? We never even heard that you were in this country! Oh! I know why you chose the Fourth of July! It's pay day, and you thought we shouldn't be ready with the rent; but it's all attended to, beautifully, this morning!"
"May I send my bag to the Mansion House and stay a while with you?" asked Mr. Hamilton. "Are the rest of you at home? How are Gilbert and Kathleen and Julia and Peter? How, especially, is Mother Carey?"
"What a memory you have!" exclaimed Nancy. "Take Mr. Hamilton's bag, please, Mr. Bennett, and tell them at the hotel that he won't be there until after supper."
It was a pleasant hour that ensued, for Nancy had broken the ice and there was plenty of conversation. Then too, the whole house had to be shown, room by room, even to Cousin Ann's stove in the cellar and the pump in the kitchen sink.
"I never saw anything like it!" exclaimed Hamilton. "It is like magic! I ought to pay you a thousand dollars on the spot! I ought to try and buy the place of you for five thousand! Why don't you go into the business of recreating houses and selling them to poor benighted creatures like me, who never realize their possibilities?"
"If we show you the painted chamber will you promise not to be too unhappy?" asked Nancy. "You can't help crying with rage and grief that it is our painted chamber, not yours; but try to bear up until you get to the hotel, because mother is so soft-hearted she will be giving it back to you unless I interfere."
"You must have spent money lavishly when you restored this room," said the Consul; "it is a real work of art."
"Not a penny," said Mrs. Carey. "It is the work of a great friend of Nancy's, a seventeen-year-old girl, who, we expect, will make Beulah famous some day. Now will you go into your mother's room and find your way downstairs by yourself? Julia, will you show Mr. Hamilton the barn a little later, while Nancy and I get supper? Kitty must go to the Pophams' for Peter; he is spending the afternoon with them."
Nancy had enough presence of mind to intercept Kitty and hiss into her ear: "Borrow a loaf of bread from Mrs. Popham, we are short; and see if you can find any way to get strawberries from Bill Harmon's; it was to have been a bread-and-milk supper on the piazza, to-night, and it must be hurriedly changed into a Consular banquet!Verb. sap.Fly!"
Gilbert turned up a little before six o'clock and was introduced proudly by his mother as a son who had just "gone into business."
"I'm Bill Harmon's summer clerk and delivery boy," he explained. "It's great fun, and I get two dollars and a half a week."
Nancy and her mother worked like Trojans in the kitchen, for they agreed it was no time for economy, even if they had less to eat for a week to come.
"Mr. Hamilton is just as nice as I guessed he was, when his first letter came," said Nancy. "I went upstairs to get a card for the supper menu, and he was standing by your mantelpiece with his head bent over his arms. He had the little bunch of field flowers in his hand, and I know he had been smelling them, and looking at his mother's picture, and remembering things!"
What a merry supper it was, with a jug of black-eyed Susans in the centre of the table and a written bill of fare for Mr. Hamilton, "because he was a Consul," so Nancy said.
Gilbert sat at the head of the table, and Mr. Hamilton thought he had never seen anything so beautiful as Mrs. Carey in her lavender challie, sitting behind the tea cups; unless it was Nancy, flushed like a rose, changing the plates and waiting on the table between courses. He had never exerted himself so much at any diplomatic dinner, and he won the hearts of the entire family before the meal was finished.
"By the way, I have a letter of introduction to you all, but especially to Miss Nancy here, and I have never thought to deliver it," he said. "Who do you think sent it,—all the way from China?"
"My son Tom!" exclaimed Nancy irrepressibly; "but no, he couldn't, because he doesn't know us."
"The Admiral, of course!" cried Gilbert.
"You are both right," Mr. Hamilton answered, drawing a letter from his coat pocket. "It is a Round Robin from the Admiral and my son Tom, who have been making acquaintance in Hong Kong. It is addressed:
"to
"Greeting!"
Nancy crimsoned. "Did the Admiral tell your son Tom I called him the Yellow Peril? It was wicked of him! I did it, you know, because you wrote me that the only Hamilton who cared anything for the old house, or would ever want to live in it, was your son Tom. After that I always called him the Yellow Peril, and I suppose I mentioned it in a letter to the Admiral."
"I am convinced that Nancy's mind is always empty at bedtime," said her mother, "because she tells everything in it to somebody during the day. I hope age will bring discretion, but I doubt it."
"My son Tom is coming home!" said his father, with unmistakable delight in his voice.
Nancy, who was passing the cake, sat down so heavily in her chair that everybody laughed.
"Come, come, Miss Nancy! I can't let you make an ogre of the boy," urged Mr. Hamilton. "He is a fine fellow, and if he comes down here to look at the old place you are sure to be good friends."
"Is he going back to China after his visit?" asked Mrs. Carey, who felt a fear of the young man something akin to her daughter's.
"No, I am glad to say. Our family has been too widely separated for the last ten years. At first it seemed necessary, or at least convenient and desirable, and I did not think much about it. But lately it has been continually on my mind that we were leading a cheerless existence, and I am determined to arrange matters differently."
Mrs. Carey remembered Ossian Popham's description of Mrs. Lemuel Hamilton and forebore to ask any questions with regard to her whereabouts, since her husband did not mention her.
"You will all be in Washington then," she said, "and your son Tom with you, of course?"
"Not quite so near as that," his father replied. "Tom's firm is opening a Boston office and he will be in charge of that. When do you expect the Admiral back? Tom talks of their coming together on the Bedouin, if it can be arranged."
"We haven't heard lately," said Mrs. Carey; "but he should return within a month or two, should he not, Nancy? My daughter writes all the letters for the family, Mr. Hamilton, as you know by this time."
"I do, to my great delight and satisfaction. Now there is one thing I have not seen yet, something about which I have a great deal of sentiment. May I smoke my cigar under the famous crimson rambler?"
The sun set flaming red, behind the Beulah hills. The frogs sang in the pond by the House of Lords, and the grasshoppers chirped in the long grass of Mother Hamilton's favorite hayfield. Then the moon, round and deep-hued as a great Mandarin orange, came up into the sky from which the sun had faded, and the little group still sat on the side piazza, talking. Nothing but their age and size kept the Carey chickens out of Mr. Hamilton's lap, and Peter finally went to sleep with his head against the consul's knee. He was a "lappy" man, Nancy said next morning; and indeed there had been no one like him in the family circle for many a long month. He was tender, he was gay, he was fatherly, he was interested in all that concerned them; so no wonder that he heard all about Gilbert's plans for earning money, and Nancy's accepted story. No wonder he exclaimed at the check for ten dollars proudly exhibited in payment, and no wonder he marvelled at the Summer Vacation School in the barn, where fourteen little scholars were already enrolled under the tutelage of the Carey Faculty. "I never wanted to go to anything in my life as much as I want to go to that school!" he asserted. "If I could write a circular as enticing as that, I should be a rich man. I wish you'd let me have some new ones printed, girls, and put me down for three evening lectures; I'd do almost anything to get into that Faculty." "I wish you'd give the lectures for the benefit of the Faculty, that would be better still," said Kitty. "Nancy's coming-out party was to be in the barn this summer; that's one of the things we're earning money for; or at least we make believe that it is, because it's so much more fun to work for a party than for coal or flour or meat!"
A look from Mrs. Carey prevented the children from making any further allusions to economy, and Gilbert skillfully turned the subject by giving a dramatic description of the rise and fall of The Dirty Boy, from its first appearance at his mother's wedding breakfast to its last, at the house-warming supper.
After Lemuel Hamilton had gone back to the little country hotel he sat by the open window for another hour, watching the moonbeams shimmering on the river and bathing the tip of the white meeting-house steeple in a flood of light. The air was still and the fireflies were rising above the thick grass and carrying their fairy lamps into the lower branches of the feathery elms. "Haying" would begin next morning, and he would be wakened by the sharpening of scythes and the click of mowing machines. He would like to work in the Hamilton fields, he thought, knee-deep in daisies,—fields on whose grass he had not stepped since he was a boy just big enough to go behind the cart and "rake after." What an evening it had been! None of them had known it, but as a matter of fact they had all scaled Shiny Wall and had been sitting with Mother Carey in Peacepool; that was what had made everything so beautiful! Mr. Hamilton's last glimpse of the Careys had been the group at the Yellow House gate. Mrs. Carey, with her brown hair shining in the moonlight leaned against Gilbert, the girls stood beside her, their arms locked in hers, while Peter clung sleepily to her hand.
"I believe they are having hard times!" he thought, "and I can't think of anything I can safely do to make things easier. Still, one cannot pity, one can only envy them! That is the sort of mother I would have made had I been Nature and given a free hand! I would have put a label on Mrs. Carey, saying: 'This is what I meant a woman to be!'"
Nancy's seventeenth birthday was past, and it was on the full of the August moon that she finally "came out" in the Hamilton barn. It was the barn's first public appearance too, for the villagers had not been invited to the private Saturday night dances that took place during the brief reign of the Hamilton boys and girls. Beulah was more excited about the barn than it was about Nancy, and she was quite in sympathy with this view of things, as the entire Carey family, from mother to Peter, was fairly bewitched with its new toy. Day by day it had grown more enchanting as fresh ideas occurred to one or another, and especially to Osh Popham, who lived, breathed, and had his being in the barn, and who had lavished his ingenuity and skill upon its fittings. Not a word did he vouchsafe to the general public of the extraordinary nature of these fittings, nor of the many bewildering features of the entertainment which was to take place within the almost sacred precincts. All the Carey festivities had heretofore been in the house save the one in honor of the hanging of the weather vane, which had been an out-of-door function, attended by the whole village. Now the community was all agog to disport itself in pastures new; its curiosity being further piqued by the reception of written invitations, a convention not often indulged in by Beulah.
The eventful day dawned, clear and cool; a day with an air like liquid amber, that properly belonged to September,—the weather prophet really shifting it into August from pure kindness, having taken a sticky dogday out and pitchforked it into the next month.
The afternoon passed in various stages of plotting, planning, and palpitation, and every girl in Beulah, of dancing age, was in her bedroom, trying her hair a new way. The excitement increased a thousand fold when it was rumored that an Admiral (whatever that might be) had arrived at the hotel and would appear at the barn in full uniform. After that, nobody's braids or puffs would go right!
Nancy never needed to study Paris plates, for her hair dressed itself after a fashion set by all the Venuses and Cupids and little Loves since the world began. It curled, whether she would or no, so the only method was to part the curls and give them a twist into a coil, from which vagrant spirals fell to the white nape of her neck. Or, if she felt gay and coquettish as she did tonight, the curls were pinned high to the crown of her head and the runaways rioted here and there, touching her cheek, her ear, her neck, never ugly, wherever they ran.
Nancy had a new yellow organdy made "almost to touch," and a twist of yellow ribbon in her hair. Kathleen and Julia were in the white dresses brought them by Cousin Ann, and Mrs. Carey wore her new black silk, made with a sweeping little train. Her wedding necklace of seed pearls was around her neck, and a tall comb of tortoise shell and pearls rose from the low-coiled knot of her shining hair.
The family "received" in the old carriage house, and when everybody had assembled, to the number of seventy-five or eighty, the door into the barn was thrown open majestically by Gilbert, in his character as head of the house of Carey. Words fail to describe the impression made by the barn as it was introduced to the company, Nancy's debut sinking into positive insignificance beside it.
Dozens of brown japanned candle-lanterns hung from the beamed ceiling, dispensing little twinkles of light here and there, while larger ones swung from harness pegs driven into the sides of the walls. The soft gray-brown of the old weathered lumber everywhere, made a lovely background for the birch-bark brackets, and the white birch-bark vases that were filled with early golden-rod, mixed with tall Queen Anne's lace and golden glow. The quaint settles surrounding the sides of the room were speedily filled by the admiring guests. Colonel Wheeler's tiny upright piano graced the platform in the "tie up." Miss Susie Bennett, the church organist, was to play it, aided now and then by Mrs. Carey or Julia. Osh Popham was to take turns on the violin with a cousin from Warren's Mills, who was reported to be the master fiddler of the county.
When all was ready Mrs. Carey stood between the master fiddler and Susie Bennett, and there was a sudden hush in the room. "Friends and neighbors," she said, "we now declare the Hall of Happy Hours open for the general good of the village. If it had not been for the generosity of our landlord, Mr. Lemuel Hamilton, we could never have given you this pleasure, and had not our helpers been so many, we could never have made the place so beautiful. Before the general dancing begins there will be a double quadrille of honor, in which all those will take part who have driven a nail, papered or painted a wall, dug a spadeful of earth, or done any work in or about the Yellow House."
"Three cheers for Mrs. Carey!" called Bill Harmon, and everybody complied lustily.
"Three cheers for Lemuel Hamilton!" and the rafters of the barn rang with the response.
Just then the Admiral changed his position to conceal the moisture that was beginning to gather in his eyes; and the sight of a personage so unspeakably magnificent in a naval uniform induced Osh Popham to cry spontaneously: "Three cheers for the Admiral! I don't know what he ever done, but he looks as if he could, all right!" at which everybody cheered and roared, and the Admiral to his great surprise made a speech, during which the telltale tears appeared so often in his eyes and in his voice, that Osh Popham concluded privately that if the naval hero ever did meet an opposing battleship he would be likelier to drown the enemy than fire into them!
The double quadrille of honor passed off with much elegance, everybody not participating in it being green with envy because he was not. Mrs. Carey and the Admiral were partners; Nancy danced with Mr. Popham, Kathleen with Digby, Julia with Bill Harmon. The other couples were Mrs. Popham and Gilbert, Lallie Joy and Cyril Lord, Olive and Nat Harmon, while Mrs. Bill led out a very shy and uncomfortable gentleman who had dug the ditches for Cousin Ann's expensive pipes.
Then the fun and the frolic began in earnest. The girls had been practising the old-fashioned contra dances all summer, and training the younger generation in them at the Vacation School. The old folks needed no rehearsal! If you had waked any of them in the night suddenly they could have called the changes for Speed the Plough, The Soldier's Joy, The Maid in the Pump Room, or Hull's Victory.
Money Musk brought Nancy and Mr. Henry Lord on to the floor as head couple; a result attained by that young lady by every means, fair or foul, known to woman; at least a rudimentary, budding woman of seventeen summers! His coming to the party at all was regarded by Mother Carey, who had spent the whole force of her being in managing it, as nothing short of a miracle. He had accepted partly from secret admiration of his handsome neighbor, partly to show the village that he did not choose always to be a hermit crab, partly out of curiosity to see the unusual gathering. Having crawled out of his selfish shell far enough to grace the occasion, he took another step when Nancy asked him to dance. It was pretty to see her curtsey when she put the question, pretty to see the air of triumph with which she led him to the head of the line, and positively delightful to the onlookers to see Hen Lord doing right and left, ladies' chain, balance to opposite and cast off, at a girl's beck and call. He was not a bad dancer, when his sluggish blood once got into circulation; and he was considerably more limber at the end of Money Musk, considerably less like a wooden image, than at the beginning of it.
In the interval between this astounding exhibition and the Rochester Schottisch which followed it, Henry Lord went up to Mrs. Carey, who was sitting in a corner a little apart from her guests for the moment.
"Shall I go to South America, or shall I not?" he asked her in an undertone. "Olive seems pleasantly settled, and Cyril tells me you will consent to take him into your family for six months; still, I would like a woman's advice."
Mother Carey neither responded, "I should prefer not to take the responsibility of advising you," nor "Pray do as you think best"; she simply said, in a tone she might have used to a fractious boy:
"I wouldn't go, Mr. Lord! Wait till Olive and Cyril are a little older. Cyril will grow into my family instead of into his own; Olive will learn to do without you; worse yet, you will learn to do without your children. Stay at home and have Olive come back to you and her brother every week end. South America is a long distance when there are only three of you!"
Prof. Lord was not satisfied with Mrs. Carey's tone. It was so maternal that he expected at any moment she might brush his hair, straighten his necktie, and beg him not to sit up too late, but his instinct told him it was the only tone he was ever likely to hear from her, and so he said reluctantly, "Very well; I confess that I really rely on your judgment, and I will decline the invitation."
"I think you are right," Mrs. Carey answered, wondering if the man would ever see his duty with his own eyes, or whether he had deliberately blinded himself for life.
While Mrs. Carey was talking with Mr. Lord, Nancy skimmed across the barn floor intent on some suddenly remembered duty, went out into the garden, and met face to face a strange young man standing by the rose trellis and looking in at the dance through the open door.
He had on a conventional black dinner-coat, something never seen in Beulah, and wore a soft travelling cap. At first Nancy thought he was a friend of the visiting fiddler, but a closer look at his merry dark eyes gave her the feeling that she had seen him before, or somebody very like him. He did not wait for her to speak, but taking off his cap, put out his hand and said: "By your resemblance to a photograph in my possession I think you are the girl who planted the crimson rambler."
"Are you 'my son Tom'?" asked Nancy, open astonishment in her tone. "I mean my Mr. Hamilton's son Tom?"
"I ammyMr. Hamilton's son Tom; or shall we sayourMr. Hamilton's?Do two 'mys' make one 'our'?"
"Upon my word, wonders will never cease!" exclaimed Nancy. "The Admiral said you were in Boston, but he never told us you would visit Beulah so soon!"
"No, I wanted it to be a secret. I wanted to appear when the ball was at its height; the ghost of the old regime confronting the new, so to speak."
"Beulah will soon be a summer resort; everybody seems to be coming here."
"It's partly your fault, isn't it?"
"Why, pray?"
"'The Water Babies' is one of my favorite books, and I know all about Mother Carey's chickens. They go out over the seas and show good birds the way home."
"Areyoua good bird?" asked Nancy saucily.
"I'mhome, at all events!" said Tom with an emphasis that made Nancy shiver lest the young man had come to Beulah with a view of taking up his residence in the paternal mansion.
The two young people sat down on the piazza steps while the music of The Sultan's Polka floated out of the barn door. Old Mrs. Jenks was dancing with Peter, her eighty-year-old steps as fleet as his, her white side-curls bobbing to the tune. Her withered hands clasped his dimpled ones and the two seemed to be of the same age, for in the atmosphere of laughter and goodwill there would have been no place for the old in heart, and certainly Mrs. Jenks was as young as any one at the party.
"I can't help dreading you, nice and amiable as you look," said Nancy candidly to Tom Hamilton; "I am so afraid you'll fall in love with the Yellow House and want it back again. Are you engaged to be married to a little-footed China doll, or anything like that?" she asked with a teasing, upward look and a disarming smile that robbed the question of any rudeness.
"No, not engaged to anything or anybody, but I've a notion I shall be, soon, if all goes well! I'm getting along in years now!"
"I might have known it!" sighed Nancy. "It was a prophetic instinct, my calling you the Yellow Peril."
"It isn't a bit nice of you to dislike me before you know me; I didn't do that way with you!"
"What do you mean?"
"Why, in the first letter you ever wrote father you sent your love to any of his children that should happen to be of the right size. I chanced to bejustthe right size, so I accepted it, gratefully; I've got it here with me to-night; no, I left it in my other coat," he said merrily, making a fictitious search through his pockets.
Nancy laughed at his nonsense; she could not help it.
"Will you promise to get over your foolish and wicked prejudices if I on my part promise never to take the Yellow House away from you unless you wish?" continued Tom.
"Willingly," exclaimed Nancy joyously. "That's the safest promise I could make, for I would never give up living in it unless I had to. First it was father's choice, then it was mother's, now all of us seem to have built ourselves into it, as it were. I am almost afraid to care so much about anything, and I shall be so relieved if you do not turn out to be really a Yellow Peril after all!"
"You are much more of a Yellow Peril yourself!" said Tom, "with that dress and that ribbon in your hair! Will you dance the next dance with me, please?"
"It's The Tempest; do you know it?"
"No, but I'm not so old but I may learn. I'll form myself on that wonderful person who makes jokes about the Admiral and plays the fiddle."
"That's Ossian Popham, principal prop of the House of Carey!"
"Lucky dog! Have you got all the props you need?"
Nancy's hand was not old or strong or experienced enough to keep this strange young man in order, and just as she was meditating some blighting retort he went on:—
"Who is that altogether adorable, that unspeakably beautiful lady in black?—the one with the pearl comb that looks like a crown?"