"Teddy, did you ever hear me say anything about Gertrude Keith?"
"Why—yes. Wasn't she the cousin who married Harry Everard?"
"Your memory does you credit." Mr. Farrington's eyes belied his bantering tone.
"What about her?"
"Nothing about her. She died, the year before we were married, and left Harry with this one daughter. He has had a housekeeper since then; but the housekeeper took unto herself a husband, a third one, a month ago. Now Harry has been having pneumonia and is ordered to southern France for a while, and he wants to know if the child can come to us."
"What?" Theodora's tone was charged with consternation.
"Isn't it awful? And yet I am sorry for him. We're the nearest relatives the child has except Joe Everard, and naturally she can't be left to the mercies of a bachelor uncle. What shall we do, Ted?"
For one short instant, Theodora stared into the fire. Then she looked up into her husband's blue eyes.
"Take her, of course," she said briskly.
Mr. Farrington had never outgrown certain of his lover-like habits. Now he stretched his hand out to hers for a minute.
"You're a comfort, Ted," he said. "I hated to refuse Harry, for his letter was a blue one. Will she be horribly in the way?"
"No; I sha'n't let her," Theodora answered bluntly. "Don't worry, Billy; we shall get on, I know. Have you ever seen her?"
"Once, when she was in the knitted-sock stage of development. She wasn't at all pretty then."
"How old is she now?"
"Hear what her father saith." And Mr. Farrington took a letter from his breast pocket. Its creases showed signs of the frequent readings it had received that day. As he said, he had disliked to refuse the request of his old friend; but he disliked still more to burden his wife with this new care which would be such an interruption to her work. Moreover, the girl would be in his own way.
"Cicely is just sixteen now," he read, "a bright, sunny-tempered child, and, I hope, not too badly spoiled. You will find her perfectly independent and able to shift for herself; all I want is to have her under proper chaperonage. I should take her with me; but the doctor has forbidden my having the care, and I hate to put the child into a boarding-school."
Theodora laughed, as her husband paused for breath.
"The paternal view of the case, Billy. Cicely is a nice, demure little name; but I suspect that the young woman doesn't quite live up to it. Still, I believe I would rather have an independent damsel than a shrinking one. She will be more in my line."
"But do you think you ought to try it, Teddy?" her husband remonstrated. "Won't it be too hard for you? I can just as well tell Harry to put her into a school."
For one more instant, Mrs. Farrington wavered. Then she saw the frown between her husband's brows, a frown of anxiety, not of discontent.
"No; it will be good for us, Billy. We are getting too staid, and we need some child-life in the house. We can try the experiment, anyway; and it will be easy enough to pack her off to school, after we have grown tired of her. Will you write, to-night?"
"If you are sure you think best."
"I do; and perhaps I'd better put a note into your letter. It may make Harry feel easier about leaving the child with strangers. He will find it hard enough, anyway."
She crossed the room to her desk, to write the letter which was to bring new courage to the anxious, exiled invalid. Suddenly she turned around, with her pen in mid air.
"Billy, the hand of fate is in this. The girl may be just whatAllyn needs."
"Ye—es; only it is within the limits of possibility that they may fight."
"Then they will have to make up again, living in such close quarters as this. Besides, that kind of fighting isn't altogether unhealthful. I believe the whole matter is foreordained for Allyn's good."
"It is an optimistic view of the case that wouldn't have occurred to me,Ted. Still, we'll hope for the best."
Valiantly she took his advice and hoped for the best, while she busied herself about the details of receiving her new charge. March was already some days old, and it had been decided that Cicely should arrive on the twentieth, so the time was short. In the midst of her domestic duties, Theodora found time for some hours of writing, each day, for she had a well-founded fear lest the new arrival might be of little help to the cause of light literature. In the intervals, she and Billy discussed the invasion of their hearthstone from every possible point of view; but as a rule the ridiculous side of the situation prevailed and they had moments of wild hilarity over the coming demands on their dignity.
"Uncle William!" Theodora observed, one day. "It suggests a scarlet bandanna and an ivory-headed cane. She will probably embroider you some purple slippers next Christmas too."
"No matter, so long as she doesn't undertake to choose my neckties. Never mind, Ted; the uncertainty will soon be over. She comes, to-morrow."
"I wonder what she really is like," Theodora said slowly. "Paternal testimony doesn't count for much, and I am beginning to be a little alarmed at what I may have undertaken.Independentandnot too badly spoiledare not reassuring phrases, Billy."
"Her mother was as staid as a church, and Harry is sobriety itself, so the girl can't have inherited much original sin from either of them. Independent from Harry's point of view doesn't mean the same thing that it would from yours. She probably is a mild-mannered little product of the times."
"I don't know just what I do want," Theodora sighed. "One minute, I hope she will be a modest violet; the next, I am in terror lest she be too insipid. What are girls of that age like, Billy? It is years since I have known any of them. Just now, I am in doubt whether I may not shock her even more than she will shock me. The modern girl is a staid and decorous creature, I suspect; not such a tomboy as I was."
Late the next afternoon they both drove to the station to meet their new relative. In spite of herself, as the time came nearer, Theodora was inclined to treat the whole affair as an immense joke; but her husband had misgivings. Theodora was fitted to cope with any girl he had ever known; but he feared she might find the process more wearing than she anticipated.
"I beg your pardon, but is this Mr. Farrington?"
Both Theodora and Billy started and whirled around. In the rush of incoming passengers, they had been looking for some one smaller, more childish than this tall girl who stood before them. She was not at all pretty. Her brown hair was too straight and lank and light, and her grey eyes had a trick of narrowing themselves to a line; but her expression was frank and open, and she wore her simple grey suit with an air which spoke volumes for her past training. Across her arm hung a bright golf cape with a tag end of grey fur sticking out from the topmost folds.
"Are you Cicely?" Mr. Farrington inquired.
"Yes, and I suppose you are Cousin William. Papa said I'd know you by your hair." She caught herself, with a sudden blush. "Oh, I don't mean that," she added hastily; "I think red hair is just lovely, only it is rather uncommon you know."
Mr. Farrington laughed.
"Yes, fortunately," he remarked.
Cicely eyed him askance for a moment; then she too burst out laughing, while two deep dimples appeared in her cheeks and a queer little pucker came at the outer corners of her eyes. There was something so fresh, so heartily frank about her that Theodora felt a sudden liking for the girl, a sudden homesick twinge for her own healthy girlhood.
"There, I have made another of my speeches!" Cicely was saying, with a contrition that was only half mockery. "I'm always doing it, and you will have to put up with it. But truly I don't mind red hair, as long as it doesn't curl; and I hadn't any idea of being rude."
"Mine is tolerably straight, and I'm not very sensitive about it now for I have had it for some time," Billy observed gravely. "Cicely, this is your Cousin Theodora."
The girl turned around and stretched out her hand eagerly.
"Oh, I am so glad to be with you!" she said. "It seems to me I've loved you always, just from your books. You are so good to let me come to you. Am I going to be very much in the way? I'll try to be very good, just as good as I know how."
"And not be homesick?" Theodora asked laughingly, as she took Cicely's hand in both of hers.
Instantly the grey eyes clouded.
"I'll try not," Cicely answered. "I know I shall be happy, only—I wish papa needn't go so far away. We are all there are, you know, only Uncle Joe." Her lips quivered a little, as Theodora bent down to kiss them.
"Never mind, dear," she said. "It won't be for so very long, and I hope you can be happy with us, even if we are strangers to you. Can't Cousin Will take some of your things?"
"Oh, no; I've only this cape, and there's no need of disturbing Billy," Cicely replied, too absorbed in rubbing away a stray tear or two to heed the glance of astonishment exchanged between her new relatives at the unexpected freedom of her use of Mr. Farrington's name.
Seated in the carriage, all three were conscious of an awkward pause.Cicely broke it.
"Cousin Will, don't you feel as if you had a white elephant on your hands?" she asked so unexpectedly that Theodora blushed and wondered if the girl had been reading her thoughts.
"No; only a grey one. I confess you are larger than I expected to see you. When I met you before, you could have been packed into a peck basket."
"They say I was a good baby," Cicely said reflectively; "they always emphasize the wordbaby, though, and that hurts my feelings."
"You cried a great deal, and you spent half your energy in trying to eat your own toes. You wore worsted slippers then," Billy answered, amused at a certain off-hand ease that marked her manner. "Perhaps you have improved since then."
"I hope so; but there may be room for it, even now," she returned, laughing.
"Are you going to miss your old friends too much, Cicely?" Theodora asked. "I have a young brother about your age."
"Really? I didn't know that. Is he near you?"
"Next door."
"I'm so glad, for I like boys. I have always been used to them, not flirty; papa wouldn't allow that, but just good friends." Cicely's manner showed her constant association with older people. She and her father had been always together, and their companionship had left its mark upon her. There was no trace of shyness in her manner, no hesitation in taking her share in the conversation. She was perfectly frank, perfectly at ease, yet perfectly remote from any suggestion of pertness. She only assumed it quite as a matter of course that it was worth while to listen to her. "Is your brother like you?"
"No; not really. But you can see for yourself, for he promised to call on you, this evening." Theodora prudently forbore to mention that she had obtained Allyn's promise only at the expense of much coaxing and some bribery.
"That will be good," Cicely remarked with satisfaction. "Papa always says that boys are good for girls; they keep you from getting priggish and conceited. They take all that out of you. What is your brother's name?"
"Allyn."
"I'm glad it is something out of the usual run. Have you some sisters?"
"One, at home."
Cicely clasped her hands contentedly.
"I didn't know I was coming into a whole family. I supposed I should just have to get along with you and Billy—not but what you'd have been enough," she added hastily, as this time she caught the glance exchanged between Theodora and her husband; "only it is rather good to have some young people within reach. Still, it isn't going to be all play for me. Papa wants me to keep up my practice, and that takes five hours a day."
"What kind of practice?" Theodora asked, as the carriage stopped at the steps.
"Piano. I play a good deal. Oh, what a dear place this is! Am I going to live here?" And she ran lightly up the steps, too eager to hear Billy's despairing,—
"Ted! Five hours of strumming, every day! What will you do?"
Or Theodora's laughing reply,—
"I can forgive that, Billy; but it is still rankling within me that we are no longer young. Alas for our vanished youth!"
"Alas for the frankness of childhood, you'd better say," Billy responded.
Inside the broad hall, Cicely walked up to the blazing fire and rested one slim foot on the fender for a moment. Then she bent down and carefully unrolled the cape. The tag end of grey fur stirred itself; there was a little growl, a little bark, and a little grey dog squirmed out of his nest and went waddling away across the rug.
"Mercy on us! What's that?" Theodora gasped, as the little creature shook himself with a vehemence which fairly hoisted him off his hind legs, then flew at the nearest claw of the tiger skin and fell to worrying it.
"That?" Cicely's tone was tinged with a pride almost maternal. "That'sBilly. He is a thoroughbred Yorkshire. Isn't he a dear?"
"Do you know where Billy is?" Theodora asked, coming into the library, one evening.
Cicely glanced up from her book.
"He was here, just a few minutes ago."
"Patrick wants him."
"Who?"
"Patrick."
Cicely looked surprised and closed her book.
"What does Patrick want of him, Cousin Theodora?"
"Why, really, Cicely, he didn't tell me. Did you say he was here just now?"
"Yes, the last I saw of him, he was asleep under the piano."
"Cicely! Oh, you mean the dog."
"Yes. Don't you?"
"No; I meant my husband."
"Oh, I haven't seen him since dinner." And Cicely tranquilly returned to her book, while Theodora departed in search of Mr. Farrington.
"Cicely," she said, when she came back again; "I am sorry; but I am afraid Billy's name will have to be changed."
"Which?" Cicely inquired, as her dimples showed themselves.
"Yours. Mine is the older and has first right to the name. Do you mind, dear? It is horribly confusing and it startles me a little to hear that my husband is asleep under the piano."
The girl laughed, while she tossed her book on the table.
"As startling as it was to me, this noon, when you said my dog was putting on his overcoat in the front hall. It doesn't seem to work well, this duplicating names. What shall we call him,—the puppy, I mean?"
"Melchisedek, without beginning and without end, because his tail and ears are docked," came from the corner.
"Oh, are you there, Babe?"
"Yes, I had some studying to do, and they were too noisy at home, so I came over here. I'm through now, so I am going home. Cicely, I wish you would let me see how many vertebra there are left in Billy's tail. I think he hasn't but one. That is butchery, not surgery, for it doesn't leave him enough to waggle." And Phebe gathered up an armful of books and took her departure.
Silence followed her going. Theodora had dropped down on the couch before the fire and lay staring at the coals. For the moment, she was forgetful of the girl sitting near her, forgetful even of her story which was pressing upon her insistently, yet eluding her just as insistently. In certain moods, she loved the old willow couch. It had played a large part in her girlhood; and now at times it was good to turn her back upon the present and think of the days when, after the memorable Massawan Bridge disaster, Billy Farrington's boyhood had been largely spent upon that lounge and in that library, while she had brought the fresh zest of her work and her play and all her gay girlish interests into his narrow life. Her father's skilful treatment had laid the foundations for the cure which the years had completed, until to-day her husband was as strong a man as she could hope to see. Year after year, her life had grown better and brighter; yet she loved to linger now and then over the good old days. She pressed her cheek into the cushion, and her lids drooped to keep the modern actual scene from destroying the old-time imaginary one.
"Tired, Cousin Ted?" Cicely had dropped down on the couch beside her.
"Not a bit."
"Worried?"
"No, indeed."
"I was afraid something was wrong, you were so quiet." The girl bent over and fell to touching Theodora's hair with light fingers. Suddenly she stooped and snuggled her face against Theodora's cheek. "Oh, I do love to cuddle you," she said impulsively. "I hope you don't mind. Papa used to let me; I wonder if he doesn't miss it sometimes."
Putting out her arm, Theodora drew the girl down at her side.
"Are you homesick, Cicely?"
"For papa, not for anything else. If he were here, or even well, I should be perfectly happy here. Only, Cousin Theodora—"
"Well?"
"Are we very much in the way, Billy and I? We don't belong here, I know; and it isn't our doing that we came. Are you sorry that we are here?"
"No. I am glad to have you with us, Cicely."
Theodora spoke the truth. In some strange fashion she had grown unaccountably fond of Cicely during the past four weeks. The girl was no saint; she was only a clean-minded, healthy young thing, born of good stock, trained by a wise father who believed that, even at sixteen, his tall daughter was still a child, not a premature society girl. He insisted upon plain gowns and a pigtail, upon hearty exercise and wholesome friendships with boys as well as with girls. So far as lay in his power, he had taught Cicely "to ride, to row, to swim, to tell the truth and to fight the devil," and the result was quite to the liking of Billy and Theodora. They enjoyed Cicely's irresponsible fun and her frank expressions of opinion; they enjoyed the atmosphere of ozone that never failed to surround her; they even confessed, when they were quite by themselves, to a sneaking sense of enjoyment in her rare flashes of temper. True, it was not always helpful to Theodora to be roused from her work by the monotonouser-er, er-erof scales and five finger exercises, and there were moments when she wondered if pianos were never built with only a soft pedal and that lashed into a position which would entail chronic operation. There were moments when the house jarred with the slamming of doors and echoed to the shouts of a high, clear young voice; and there were hours and hours when Melchisedek, as he was now to be called, whimpered without ceasing outside her door, with an exasperating determination to come in and sit supreme in the midst of her manuscript.
And then there was Allyn to be considered.
In her most optimistic moments, Theodora had pictured Cicely as a dainty, clinging little maiden who would cajole and coddle Allyn out of his unfriendly moods. Cicely certainly did rouse Allyn from those moods; but it was by no process of feminine cajolery. She went at him, as the phrase is, hammer and tongs. Good-tempered herself, she demanded good temper from him. Failing that, she lectured him roundly. Failing again, she turned her back upon him and left him severely alone, with the result that, in an inconceivably short time, Allyn generally came to terms and exerted himself to be agreeable once more. Allyn still kept up the pretence of indifference to her, of superiority over her; Cicely had no pretences. She showed her liking for him frankly; just as frankly she showed her disgust at his hours of gloom.
Upon one point, however, Allyn maintained a firm stand. He would put up with no endearments. Theodora was the only person who dared lay affectionate hands upon him, who dared address him in affectionate terms. Just once, in the early days of her being in the Farringtons' household, Cicely, moved with pity at the sight of a bruised forefinger, had ventured upon a caressing pat on Allyn's cheek. It was much the caress she would have bestowed upon Melchisedek, if she had chanced to step on his paw; but she never forgot the look of disgusted scorn with which Allyn had marched out of the room. Accustomed from her babyhood to petting her father and being petted by him, the girl was at first at a loss to interpret the situation. When the truth dawned upon her that Allyn was really in earnest, she refused to be suppressed, and persecuted the boy with every species of endearment which her naughty brain could invent.
"Oh, but you are the dearest boy in the world!" she announced, one day, walking into the library at The Savins where Allyn sat reading.
"What do you want now?" he asked gruffly.
"You, of course. I'm lonesome, and I want your society."
"Let my hair alone," he commanded, ducking his head, as she approached his chair.
"I'm not touching it."
"No; but you do sometimes, and I won't have it."
"Yes, it seems so like Melchisedek's that I love to straighten the parting," she said demurely, as she came around to the fire. "Where is Phebe?"
"Playing with her everlasting old skeleton."
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to read, if you'd let me be," growled Allyn, with a despairing look at the book in his hand. "What do you want?"
"You."
"What do you want of me?"
"I'm so fond of you. Besides, I am tired of being alone. Don't you want me to play for you?" Cicely's eyes shone mischievously, as she made the offer.
"Not for a farm. I don't like your diddle-diddles; they haven't a particle of tune to them."
"Come and take me to ride, then."
"Why don't you go alone? I'm busy."
Cicely took forcible possession of his book.
"Allyn, you must come. I've a bad attack of the blues."
"Get rid of them, then."
"That comes well from you."
"What's the matter, Cis?"
"Papa isn't coming home till fall, and I've got to stay here."
Allyn looked up sharply. Then he whistled.
"You don't mean it!"
She nodded, without raising her eyes, and Allyn suddenly discovered that her lids were unusually pink.
"Do you mind it so much?" he added. "Or is he worse?"
"No; only the doctor wants him to stay over there till the lung is all in order again."
"And you are homesick?"
"No,—yes,—a little," she said despondently. "But it's not all that."
"What is it, then?"
"It's the being left here till called for, like a sack of potatoes. Cousin Theodora is too polite to say so; but I know she must wish I were in—Dawson City. It's dreadful, Allyn, not having any real home."
"If that's the way you feel over there, you'd better come here to TheSavins and stay," he suggested.
The dimples came back into Cicely's cheeks.
"We should fight, Allyn."
"Who cares? It's only skin deep," he returned, with a sudden gravity which surprised her.
She looked at him steadily for a moment. Then she held out her hand to him.
"Let's not any more, then."
He touched her fingers gingerly, gave them a sudden squeeze and then plunged his fists into his pockets.
"Come on and ride, if you must," he said ungraciously.
She had never seen him in a brighter mood. He chattered ceaselessly, quaint stories of his schoolboy friends, quainter jokes and whimsies and bits of advice for her edification. In such moods, Allyn was well-nigh irresistible, and it was with genuine regret that Cicely turned her face towards home. Her regret, however, was as nothing in comparison with the consternation that seized her, as she entered the house. Before the fireplace in the hall, there always lay the skin of a superb tiger. To-night, before the tiger lay Melchisedek, and before Melchisedek lay a triangular scrap of brownish fur. As Cicely entered, the dog looked up with a bland smile; but the smile changed to a snarl, as she came near and stooped to view the ruin he had wrought. Then he rose, gripped his booty in his sinful little teeth, and trotted before her to the library door. On the threshold, he appeared to come to a sudden realization that justice was in store for him. His mien changed. The pointed, silky little ears drooped, and walking on three legs, stiffly and as if with infinite difficulty, he preceded his mistress to the fireside and laid the severed ear of the tiger on the floor at Theodora's feet, while Cicely exclaimed penitently,—
"Cousin Theodora, what will you do with us? It's bad enough to have me stranded on your threshold, without having Melchisedek hunting big game in your front hall."
The words were flippant; but the tears were near the surface. Billy interposed, for he saw Theodora's color come, and he knew that the rug, his own contribution to her college room, was one of her dearest possessions. He shook his head at the six-pound culprit who stood before him, waggling his stumpy tail in smug satisfaction over the success of his undertaking.
"Change his name to Nimrod, Cis," he said gravely; "and send for Babe to mend her first emergency case."
"Where is Babe?" Dr. McAlister asked, one noon in late May.
"Here." Phebe's voice came from the piazza outside.
"Can you ride over to Bannook Bars, this afternoon?"
"Yes, I suppose so. What for?"
"As substitute for me. Mrs. Richardson has consumed all her pills, and she wants some more."
"Why doesn't she get them, then? You're not an apothecary."
"She refuses to take them, unless I inspect them personally. These are the patients who try one's soul, Babe. I would rather deal with Asiatic cholera than with one fussy old woman with a digestion. They eat hot bread and fried steak, and then they eat pepsin."
"Start a cooking crusade," Phebe suggested lazily. "Well, I'll go."
"Thank you. You need the ride anyway; it will do you good, for you have been working too hard lately. I don't want my apprentice to wear herself out." The doctor patted her shoulder with a fatherly caress; then he turned to go into the house.
"Give me leave to prescribe for Mrs. Richardson?" she called after him.
"Yes, I make her over to you, and you can date your first case from this afternoon," he answered.
"No; I'd rather have something a little younger and more interesting. I will be ready to start, right after lunch."
The office door closed behind her father, and Phebe let her book slide from her knee, as she rested her tired eyes on the fresh green lawn before her. For the past three months, she had worked hard, eager to prove that her home-coming had been inspired by no sudden whim, still more eager to win her father's professional approval. Her work was interesting; and yet at times bones and arteries and nerves had a tendency to pall upon her. She had never dreamed that so much drudgery would attend the early stages of her professional studies. She was heartily sick of the theoretical, and she longed for the practical. She had even teased her father to let her go with him on his rounds. Instead, he had laughed at her and prescribed a further course of drudgery.
"Never mind." she said to herself sturdily. "I'll get there, some day. I won't always carry pills to old women; and when I do get a real case of my own won't I astonish them all!" And events justified her assertion.
She was still sitting there, dreaming of future deeds, when Allyn came out to the veranda.
"Oh, Allyn?"
"Hullo, sawbones!"
"What are you going to do this afternoon?"
"Nothing."
"Don't you want to ride with me?"
"Maybe. Where?"
"To Bannock Bars."
"What for?"
"To take some pills to Mrs. Richardson."
"Not much. Mrs. Richardson is frabjous and a gossip."
"What if she is? You needn't talk to her."
But Allyn shook his head.
"Not if I know myself. I'll oil your wheel for you, Babe, and pack your pills; but I won't go within range of Mrs. Richardson, for she gives me the creeps."
"She won't hurt you."
"No; but she makes me feel clammy in the spine of my back, and then she gives me good advice. I'll tell you, Babe, I'll go and get Cis, and we will ride part way with you. If two people escort you half way, that is as good as having one of them go all the way. Besides, I never feel quite easy when I am all alone with you. If anything happened, you might be moved to experiment on me, and that would be fatal."
On the veranda, after luncheon Allyn and Phebe stood waiting for Cicely. She came running across the lawn at last, trim and dainty in her short grey suit.
"I am sorry to be late," she panted; "but I had to stop to chastise Melchisedek. I found him asleep in Cousin Theodora's fernery. It was so soft and cool that I suppose it tempted him, this hot day, poor little man! But aren't you forcing the season, Babe?"
Phebe looked down at her immaculate duck suit.
"No; it is almost the first of June, and so warm. Besides, I am only going out to the wilderness. I am clean and comfortable, and that is the main thing."
"Unless we get a shower," Allyn suggested.
Phebe looked up at the sky.
"There isn't a cloud in sight, Allyn. It's not going to rain, I know."
"It's sultry. You can't ever tell about a day like this. Still, if you want to risk it,—"
"I do." And Phebe mounted her bicycle.
The Savins lay at the western edge of the town. Beyond it, the road to Bannock Bars led away straight toward the sunset, over hill and hollow, through stretches of sand and along narrow footpaths. It was a road to terrify an amateur; but Phebe's riding was strong and steady, and she was glad to be in the saddle once more, forgetful of her work and only conscious of the sweet spring life about her. It was only an hour later that The Savins was ten miles behind her, and she was setting up her wheel against Mrs. Richardson's stone horse-block.
Mrs. Richardson met her accusingly.
"I hope you've got them pills," she demanded, without any formal preliminaries.
"Yes, my father has sent them."
"I wrote for them, day before yesterday. I thought sure they'd come yesterday."
"He was busy," Phebe said curtly, as she took off her sailor hat and fanned herself.
"Jim Sykes said he see him drivin' off over Wisdom way."
"Yes, he had a case there, an important case." Phebe's head was tilted at an aggressive angle.
"I guess I was some important, or he'd have said so, if he'd see me, last night. I had a bad spell, and like to fainted."
"What had you been eating?" Phebe inquired, with a sudden access of professional severity.
"Be you his youngest girl?" Mrs. Richardson asked rather irrelevantly.
"Yes."
"The one that was in Paris?"
"Yes."
"I wonder at your father's lettin' you go. They say it's an awful wicked city, and I hear it's nip and tuck whether a person comes home as good as she went."
"I didn't find it so."
"Maybe not. Still, it's risky and I don't think much of folks that don't find America good enough for 'em. You look hot. Come in and get a drink of water."
Inside the house and with a glass of water in her hand, Phebe felt that it devolved upon her to make some efforts at conversation.
"You said you were worse, last night; didn't you? What were the symptoms?" she asked, between her sips.
"What's generally the symptoms? I felt sick and wanted to keel over."
"Had you been—?"
"No; I hadn't. You tell your father that I'll tell him about it, when he comes. I ain't goin' to be doctored by hearsay. Did you see Sol Bassitt's barn, as you come over the hill?"
"I came by the lower road."
"What did you do that for? It's a good mile further."
"Yes; but it's better riding, that way."
"You'd better go back over the hill. The barn's worth seein', the best one this side of town." Mrs. Richardson rocked to and fro in exultation at having some one to listen to her month's accumulation of gossip. Bannock Bars was an isolated hamlet, and visitors were few. "Sol's girl, Fannie, has gone to Oswego for a week. She's had scarlet fever, and it left her ailin'. It's too bad, for she is a likely girl."
"Very likely," Phebe assented, half under her breath.
"What?"
"I said it was extremely probable."
"What was?" Mrs. Richardson glared at her guest who was tranquilly waving a palm-leaf fan.
"That Fannie is a good girl."
"Well, she is," Mrs. Richardson returned shortly.
There was a silence, while Phebe inspected the black cambric binding of her fan, and tried to gather energy to go out into the hot sun once more. Mrs. Richardson had rocked herself into more placid humor.
"They've got a boarder over to Sykes's," she resumed.
"Have they?" Phebe spoke indifferently. Bannock Bars was too near town for her to realize how countrified it was, how the coming of a single stranger could stir the placid current of its existence.
"He's from New York, Bartlett is his name, or some such thing. They say he's a music feller."
"A what?" Phebe wondered whether Mrs. Richardson had reference to a member of a German band. The words suggested something of the kind.
"A feller that writes music. I don't know anything about it only what they say. Anyhow, he's brought a pianner with him, and they say he bangs away on it like all possessed, and then stops short and scolds. I went past there, one day, when the windows was open, and I heard him thumpin' and tiddlin' away for dear life. It didn't seem to me there was much tune to it, nor time neither; you couldn't so much as tell where one line left off and the next begun."
Phebe's fan slid out of her lap, and, as she stooped to pick it up, she dropped her handkerchief.
"Have you seen him?" she asked, when she was upright once more.
"How?"
"Have you ever seen this Mr. Bartlett?"
"Yes. He goes round in one of these short-pant suits and great coarse stockin's and shoes, and he never acts as if he knew what he was about. Half-baked, I call him. He holds his head like this, and he struts along as if Bannock Bars wa'n't half good enough for him. Mis' Sykes says he ain't a mite fussy, though, takes what she gives him and don't complain. Land! If he can stand Eulaly Sykes's cookin', he must be tough."
"Perhaps he will keel over, some day," Phebe suggested.
"I should think he would. But then, they say folks like him eat all sorts of things at night suppers, so I suppose he is used to it." She rocked in silence, for a moment; then she went on, "What do you find to do with yourself, now you're home again? You was with Mis' Farrington's folks; wasn't you, she that was Theodora McAlister?"
"Yes."
"She does a good deal of writin', I hear. Does she get much out of it?"
Phebe hesitated, assailed by doubts as to how large a story Mrs.Richardson would swallow, and her hostess swept on,—
"She's spreadin' herself a good deal, and it can't all be her earnin's.Do you take after her?"
"No; I am studying medicine."
"I want to know! What for?"
"To be a doctor, I suppose." Phebe rose and put on her hat.
Mrs. Richardson took a step towards her.
"You don't want a skeleton; do you?" she asked. "I've got one I'd sell cheap."
For one instant, Phebe hesitated. Unexpected as was the offer, it appealed to her. There was a certain dignity in having one's own skeleton; it was the first step toward professional life. That one instant's hesitation settled the matter, for Mrs. Richardson saw it and was swift to take advantage of it.
"It belonged to His sister's husband," she said, with a jerk of her head toward the portrait of her late husband. "He was a doctor and, when he died, all his trumpery was brought here and stowed away in our garret. It's as good as new, and you can have it for five dollars."
"I—don't—know," Phebe said slowly.
Mrs. Richardson interposed.
"I don't want to be hard on you. 'Tain't a very big one, and it ain't strung up," she said persuasively. "You can have it for three. It's a splendid chance for you."
Phebe yielded.
"Well, I'll take it, if it is all there."
"I'll get it, and you can let your father count it up. I'm willing to leave it to him." And Mrs. Richardson went hurrying out of the room.
She was gone for some time. When she came back again she bore in her arms a bundle, large, knobby and misshapen. It was wrapped in newspapers which had cracked away here and there over the end of a rib; but it was enclosed in a network of strings that crossed and crisscrossed like a hammock.
"I thought you might just as well take it right along with you," she said. "You can send me the money in a letter, if it's all right, but land knows when you will be here again, and I hain't got anybody to send it by."
Phebe looked appalled. In a long experience of bicycling, she had scorned a carrier, and she stood firmly opposed to the idea of converting her wheel into a luggage van.
"I can't carry that," she said.
"Yes, you can. Just string it over your forepiece and it will go all right. It ain't heavy for anything so bulky. I'll help you tie it on." And she prepared to execute her offer.
"Oh, don't! At least, I'm much obliged; but—Oh, dear, if I must take it, I suppose I must; but I think I'd better tie it on, myself."
"Just as you like. You'd better hurry up a little, though, for I shouldn't wonder if it rained before sundown."
"Rain? Then I can't take this thing." Phebe paused, with the string half tied.
"Oh, I'll risk it. Besides if you don't take it, there's a man inGreenway that will."
Phebe looked at her hostess, shut her teeth, jerked the knot tight, and was silent; but there was a dangerous gleam in her eyes, as she mounted and rode away, with her three-dollar skeleton clattering on the handle-bars before her.
There is a certain inconvenience coupled with being called upon to pose as a genius at the comparatively early age of twenty-six. Popular theory to the contrary, notwithstanding, it is easier to plod slowly along on the path to fame. Greatness does not repeat itself, every day in the week. But fate had overtaken Gifford Barrett, and had hung a wreath of tender young laurels about his boyish brow. He deserved the wreath, if ever a boy did. Two years before, fresh from the inspiration of his years in Germany and of his German master, he had composed hisAlan Breck Overture. It would have been well done, even for a man many years his senior, and it quickly won a place on the programmes of the leading orchestra's of the country. He had known what it was to be called out from his box at the Auditorium or Carnegie Hall to bow to the audience, while the orchestra thumped their approval on their music racks. He had been hailed even as the American Saint Saens, and it was small wonder that he began to feel the wreath too tight a fit for his brows.
His family was well known and, from the first, society had claimed him for her own. He had the gift of talking well, of dancing better; and he had found it easy to drift along from day to day, neglecting his music for the sake of the invitations that poured in upon him. In his more conscientious moments, he told himself that he would do all the better work as the result of seeing the life of his native city; but so far its influence had been only potent to move him to write a triplet of light songs and to dedicate them to three of the prettiest girls in his set, no one of whom was able to sing a note in tune.
At the end of the second season, a reaction set in. The public was clamorous for a new work from him; he was tired of being lionized by people who called his beloved overture pretty. The madness of the spring was upon him, the spirit of work had seized him, and the middle of May found him and his long-suffering piano installed in the "north chamber" of the Sykes homestead at Bannock Bars.
He had chosen the place with some degree of care, in order to be sufficiently remote from society to work undisturbed, sufficiently near civilization to be able to buy more music paper in case of need. Ten miles of even a bad road is not an impassible barrier to an enthusiastic bicyclist; yet the place was as rustic and countrified as if it had been, not ten, but ten hundred miles from an electric light. His digestion was good enough to cope even with Eulaly Sykes's perennial doughnuts, and it was in a mood of supreme content that he settled into his quarters in the wilderness. It was years since he had watched the on-coming of the New England summer; he watched it now with the trained sense, the inherent quickness of perception of the true artist who realizes that the simplest facts of the day's routine by his touch can be transmuted into glowing, vivid material for his work.
It must be confessed that Eulaly Sykes occasionally mourned to her friends over the irregularities of her boarder. His hours of work passed her comprehension, his work itself filled her soul with wonder and disgust. In his moments of inspiration when he was evoking the stormy chords of the introduction to his symphonic poem,Bisesahe never dreamed that his landlady was craning her head up from her pillows in a vain effort to discover the tune, or to reduce it to the known terms of short metre rhythm. His broken, irregular measures troubled her, as did also his broken, irregular hours of work. There were days when he rode far afield, or was seen lying on his back under the pines by the brookside, listening to the splash of the water, the hissing of the air through the boughs above him. After such days, his piano was wont to sound far into the night, and Eulaly, as she slept and waked and still heard her boarder's fingers crashing over the keys, reproached herself bitterly.
"Them last doughnuts was too rich," she used to say to her old-fashioned bolster, set up like a grim idol by the bedside; "and the poor feller can't sleep. I mustn't put so much shortenin' in the next ones. My, but that was an awful scrooch! I wish he'd shut his windows a little mite tighter, and not pester the whole neighborhood."
This state of things had endured for two weeks, and the symphonic poem was progressing as well as its composer had any reason to expect. Already it was bidding fair to rival theAlan Overtureand Mr. Barrett began to carry his nose tilted at an angle higher than ever, as if in imagination he already scented the fresh laurels in store for him. Pride goeth before destruction. A long day under the pines resulted not in inspiration, but in an uninspiring cold in his head; his temper suffered together with his nose, and Eulaly Sykes, below stairs, chafed her hands together at the sounds of musical and moral discord which floated down upon her ears. All the morning long, he smote his brows and his piano by turns. The newmotifhe was seeking, refused to be found.
Later, fortified by Eulaly's fried chicken and rhubarb pie, he tried it again, invitingly playing over the precedingmotifin every possible key and tempo. It was of no use. He slammed down the top of his piano, tore across a half-finished page, caught up his cap, mounted his bicycle and rushed away up the road, quite regardless of the clouds lying low in the western sky.
Fifteen miles of scorching over country roads sufficed to bring him to a calmer mood, and he turned his wheel towards the Sykes homestead once more. Themotifwas still as far beyond his grasp as ever; but there were other things in life besides elusivemotifs. The increasing blackness above his head was one of them; his hunger was another, and he quickened his pace. His piano might be awaiting him in mute reproach; but then, so did Eulaly's doughnuts await him, and there was no reproach in those, at least, not until some time later. He fell to whistling a strain of his overture, as he rode swiftly along, quite unconscious of the fact that disaster, in the person of Miss Phebe McAlister, was riding quite as swiftly to meet him.
Three miles from his boarding-place, the storm overtook him with a rush which straight-way reduced the roads to the consistency of cream. He looked about for shelter; but no shelter was at hand, and the road meandered along before him uphill and down again with an easy nonchalance which appeared to take no account of the pelting rain. It was hard riding and dangerous, but he pushed on manfully, while the streams of water trickled down his neck and along the bridge of his nose. As he reached the crest of the hill, he saw before him, just crawling over the crest of the opposite hill, a figure on a bicycle coming swiftly towards him. Even at that distance, he could make out a bedraggled white suit, a limp sailor hat and a vast pulpy bundle lashed to the handle-bars.
"Some country maiden, coming home from market," he said to himself. "IHope she is enjoying the shower."
Then of a sudden, he braced himself for a shock, for a bell was clanging wildly, and a cry rang out upon his ears,—
"Oh, go away! Be careful! Get out of the way! Quick!"
He turned aside, out of the path of the flying wheel. It sounds a cowardly thing to have done, and doubtless the knights of old would have contrived a way of rescue. To the latter-day knight, however, there was something inevitable in the on-coming of the wheel, with its rider's feet kicking in a futile search for the pedals. It reminded him of his own futile search for hismotif. Both searchers seemed equally helpless to attain their objects. Moreover, when a tall and muscular maiden sweeps down upon one, leaving behind her a train of shrieks and scattered phalanges, there is absolutely nothing for one to do but to get out of her way as expeditiously as possible. No use in breaking two necks, and—the critics were waiting for the symphonic poem.
He turned, then, to the right-hand edge of the road. Phebe was bouncing along over the stones dangerously near the other gutter, and he already was congratulating himself upon his escape. Then in a moment the situation was changed. The runaway wheel flashed into a mud puddle, veered and before his astonished eyes shed a rib or two and a clavicle from the swaying bundle, veered again and collided with his own wheel. In another instant, the right-hand gutter held two muddy bicycles, the greater portion of a human skeleton, Phebe McAlister and the composer of theAlan Breck Overture.
An experienced bicycle teacher once said that no woman ever picked herself up from a fall, without saying that she was not at all hurt. True to tradition, Phebe staggered to her feet, exclaiming,—
"Thank you; but I'm not hurt in the least. I'm so sorry—"
Then she paused abruptly and stared at the stranger in the gutter. He lay as he had fallen, his face half buried in the mud and his right arm twisted under him. More frightened than she had been in all her headlong descent of the hill, she bent over him and tried to turn him as he lay. Gifford Barrett was an athlete as well as a musician, however, and it took all of Phebe's strength to stir him ever so slightly. As she did so, she disclosed a gash where his temple had struck upon a stone, and his right arm swung loosely out from his side. Phebe McAlister had suddenly found herself in the presence of her first case, and the presence was rather an appalling one.
In any crisis, the mind attacks a side issue. Phebe rose from her knees, took off the sodden thing which had been her hat, and carefully covered it over her saddle. Her face, underneath the streaks of mud, was very white, and her lips were unsteady. Then she pressed her hands over her eyes, bit her lips and gave her shoulders a little shake. That done, she knelt down in the mud once more and set herself to the task in hand, wondering meanwhile who and what her victim might be.
Obviously he was a gentleman. His firm, clean-cut lips alone would have settled that point to her satisfaction. Beyond that, she had no possible clue to his identity. The situation was a trying one. The nearest house was a mile away; the rain was still pelting heavily down upon them, and she, Phebe McAlister, was alone in the storm with a perfect stranger whom she had knocked from his bicycle, stunned and perhaps injured for life. To whom did he belong? What should she do with him? If he died, who would be responsible, not for the injury, but for making the funeral arrangements? For a moment, the unaccustomed tears rushed to her eyes, and, seen through their mist, her victim seemed to be expanding until he filled the whole landscape and surrounded her by dozens, all plastered with mud and begirt with whitened bones. Then she pulled herself together again. The stranger's arm was broken, his forehead bloody. She must see what she could do for him, then go for help.
There was a long interval when the noise of the rain was interrupted by little groans and exclamations from Phebe, while she tugged and shoved and pried at the man in the road. He was so very big, so very unconscious, so very determined to lie with his face buried in the mud and meet his end by suffocation. At last, she drew a long breath, mustered all her strength and gave him one pull which turned him completely over on his back. As she did so, his eyes opened dully and by degrees gathered expression. He looked up into her mud-stained face, down at his mud-stained clothes, around at the mud-stained skull which lay close to his side and grinned back at him encouragingly.
"What the deuce—" he faltered. Then once more he fainted away.
Twenty minutes later, Phebe was rushing away to the nearest house in search of help. There was but one house within reach, however, and fate willed that she should find that deserted. She hesitated whether she should ride on for two miles farther, or go back to her victim, and she decided upon the latter course. It seemed hours to her before she reached the top of the hill again. Then she stopped short, dismounted and stared down the slope in astonishment. Her victim had vanished from the scene. Only the skull remained to mark the spot where he had lain, two deep tracks in the soft mud to show the way by which he had gone.
"Well, Babe?" Allyn's voice hailed her, as she rode wearily up the drive, the water squelching in her shoes and her soaked skirt flapping dismally about her pedals. "Were you out in all that shower?"
"Yes."
"Why didn't you go under cover?"
"There wasn't any cover to go under." Phebe's tone was not altogether amicable.
"But the mud? It's all over your face, and your wheel, and your hair."
"I fell off."
"Where?"
"Coming down Bannock Hill. I lost my pedals, and my wheel slipped in the mud."
"Bannock Hill? That's a bad place to fall. Break anything?"
"You can look and see."
But Allyn was not to be suppressed.
"Where's your hat?"
She started slightly and raised her hand to her head. It was bare.
"Oh, yes," she said unguardedly. "I remember now. I must have left it where I sat."
"Sat!" Allyn stared at his sister in amazement. "What did you do? Sit down to study the landscape?"
But Phebe stalked up the steps and into the house, and Allyn saw her no more until dinner-time.
Two days later, Allyn burst into the office where Phebe was bending over a book. In his hand was an unfolded newspaper which he flapped excitedly, as she looked up.
"There are others, Babe."
"What do you mean?"
"This. Listen! Oh, where is the thing? Here it is, in the Bannock correspondence of theTimes. Listen! 'Mr. G. Bartlett, the musician who is sojourning at Mr. Jas. Sykes's farm, sustained a bad fall from his bicycle on Bannock Hill, last Tuesday. His injuries are serious, including a cut on his temple and a compound fracture of the right arm. Dr. Starr reduced the fracture and reports the patient as doing as well as—' you see somebody else slipped up on that hill, Babe. You ought to feel you came out of it pretty well."
Phebe looked up with a frown.
"Go away, Allyn; I'm busy," she said sharply.
Three weeks later, Phebe had occasion to make another trip to see Mrs. Richardson. This time, she chose the hill road, the one which led past the Sykes farm. Gifford Barrett was sauntering along by the roadside, smoking. His arm was in a sling, his hat drawn forward, half concealing the patch of plaster on his temple. As she passed, Phebe looked him full in the face, and instinctively his hand went to his cap, though without any sign of recognition.
"Some girl that's heard the overture," he said to himself. "I don't seem to remember her, though. She has a good figure and she rides well; but what a color! She will have apoplexy, some day, if she's not careful."
The next day, Eulaly Sykes's boarder had started for the Maine coast where three unmusical, but sympathetic maidens were waiting to help him pass the dreary days of his convalescence.
Two willow chairs were swaying to and fro in the gathering dusk, and two voices were blended in a low murmur. Theodora and Billy were exchanging the confidences born of a long week of separation while business had called Mr. Farrington to New York.
"How comes on the book, Ted?"
She shook her head.
"It doesn't come."
"Does Cicely's being here disturb you?"
"No, not really; not nearly so much as Melchisedek. In an unguarded moment, I asked him, one day, to come and help auntie write books. Since then he rushes from his breakfast straight to my room and capers madly on the threshold till I appear."
"And then?"
"Then he insists on lying in my lap and resting his head on my arm, and he snarls, every time I joggle him. It isn't helpful or inspiring, Billy."
"No; I should say not. What is the story, Ted?"
"I'm not going to tell even you, Billy," she returned quickly. "It always demoralizes me to talk over my stories while they are evolving. I must work them out alone. It seems conceited and selfish; but there's no help for it. You believe it; don't you?"
"I'll trust you, Ted. But is this hero very hectic?"
It was an old joke, but they were still laughing over it when Cicely appeared in the doorway, with Melchisedek under her arm.
"Cousin Theodora?" she said interrogatively, for the piazza was dark.
"Yes."
"I want to talk."
"You generally do, Cis," Billy observed unkindly.
"Yes; but I mean I have something to talk about. I don't always."
"Shall I go away?" he asked politely.
"No; I want a man's view of it, too. But perhaps you were busy and I'll be in the way."
For her reply, Theodora drew another chair into the group. Cicely sat down, balanced Melchisedek on her knee and fell to poking his grey hair this way and that, as if at a loss how to begin the conversation.
"How far is it safe for a girl to follow up a boy?" she asked abruptly, yet with a little catch in her breath.
"Meaning yourself?" Billy queried.
"Yes, of course."
"I should say it depended a good deal on the boy."
"I mean Allyn."
"What's the matter? Have you had a falling out?"
"Yes, we are always doing it. I can't seem to help it, either. It's horrid. He is outspoken and tells me what he thinks of me; I'm peppery, and I don't like it."
"I know, dear," Theodora said gently, for she read the girl's irritation in her voice. "Allyn isn't always as polite as he might be; but we must try not to be too sensitive."
"I'm not sensitive," Cicely said forlornly. "I like him, though, and I want him to like me, and it hurts my feelings when he doesn't."
"How long has the present feud lasted?" Billy inquired.
"Almost ten days. It's the worst one yet, and it started from nothing. I know he is your brother, Cousin Theodora; but—I really don't think it's all my fault."
"No." Theodora's voice suggested no mental reservation. "I know how it is, Cicely. Allyn has been my baby and my boy; but, much as I love him, I can't help seeing that he is cantankerous and cross-grained at times. But it is only at times, Cis; it isn't chronic."
"I wish it were. Then I shouldn't mind it so much. But when he isn't cross, he is one of the jolliest boys I have ever known. That's the worst of it, for I miss him so, when we squabble. When we are on terms, I don't care about anybody else; and so, when we are off, it leaves me all alone."
"When I squabbled with your Cousin Theodora," Billy said oracularly; "I generally felt I had done my share, and I left her to do the making up."
"So I observed," his wife answered; but Cicely was too much absorbed in her subject to heed the parenthesis.
"I'm willing to make up," she said, as she twisted Melchisedek's ears with an absent-minded fervor which caused the sufferer to whimper; "but how can I? He just goes off his way, and leaves me to go mine. I hate to tag him; besides, I don't know but he really wants to get rid of me. Hush, Melchisedek! Don't whine. I didn't intend to hurt you. That's what I meant, Cousin Ted, when I asked you about following him up. How far is it safe to go?"
"Till you get there," Mr. Farrington replied.
"Billy!" his wife remonstrated.
"All right, Ted; but I'm not altogether joking. I know boys better than you do. It's not easy for them to come down off their dignity; and, nine times out of ten, when they scowl the most darkly, they are really wishing that they knew how to come to terms. I must go down town now, Cis; but my parting advice to you is to corner Allyn and bully him into shaking hands. The boy is an ungracious cub; but he is sound at the core, and I honestly think he is fond of you in his dumb way."
After he had left them alone, Cicely dropped down on the floor atTheodora's feet.
"Life isn't a straight line; it's horribly squirmy," she said, and her voice vas unusually grave.
Theodora drew the brown head against her knee.
"What is it, dear?" she asked.
"It's only Allyn. I don't know what the reason is that we can't get on. I've known lots of boys, and I never squabbled with any of them before. And I don't know why I care so much. Sometimes I really think I am good for Allyn and can help him out, and I am disappointed because he won't let me; but I more than half think it is only my vanity, after all."
"Was it a bad fight?"
"Awful." In spite of herself, Cicely laughed at the recollection. "He wound up by telling me that I was no lady, and he didn't care to have anything more to do with me. Since then I have hardly had a glimpse of him."
"I hadn't noticed that anything was wrong between you," Theodora said thoughtfully.
"No; we both of us are old enough not to quarrel in public. But I can't see any end to this. I care for Allyn a great deal, and I miss him; but if he does not want me for a friend, I can't force him to take me. I'm not a pill, to be swallowed whether or no."
"Perhaps I could help a little."
Cicely shook her head.
"No; we were the ones to fight, and now we must be the ones to make up, without any go-betweens. Papa has always told me that dignity doesn't count in a case like this; and I'm willing to do anything reasonable. The only trouble is that I don't know what Allyn really wants. If he truly does wish I would let him alone, I don't see any use in my hanging on to him. Just once, more than a month ago, he said something that made me think he cared, and was glad to have me here; but it was only once, and maybe I was mistaken. It isn't forever since you were a girl, Cousin Theodora. What did you do in such cases?"
Theodora rapidly reviewed her past.
"I think I never had just such a case, Cicely," she said honestly. "Hu and Billy were my two best friends; and I don't think either one of them ever had a cross-grained day in his life. I was generally the aggressor, myself."
Cicely rubbed her head against Theodora's knee in mute contradiction.
"But what should you do in my case?" she persisted.
"I don't know. Sometimes I can't tell what to do in my own. Allyn is rather a puzzle."
"He's worse than an original proposition in geometry. I want to solve him and I can't. Papa has always taught me that we girls have a good deal of responsibility, and that we can help our boy friends a good deal, or else hinder them. Perhaps I am conceited; but it seems to me as if I could help Allyn, if I could get at him. Besides—" she hesitated.
"Well?" Theodora said encouragingly.
"Oh, it's silly to tell; but sometimes I wonder whether it wouldn't help you a little, at the same time. I'd love to feel it did; you have been so good to me. I know you worry about Allyn. You watch him as a cat watches a mouse, and you always seem to understand his queer ways and know just how to manage him. I wish I could do it as you do."