"Glad to git you to load, Gretta," responded Pete heartily. And Gretta swung herself up on the back of the hay wagon, taking her stand on the thin layer of hay already scattered over its floor, resting on her pitchfork like a youthful Bellona.
"Now, Laura, you and Polly get out with Penny, and leave—let—Happie and Ralph help me load. Bob will help Pete toss, and when we've loaded, you can all get up and ride in. We might stick somebody with the fork if there were too many on while we were loading," said Gretta, taking command of the work in the wagon like the experienced young farmer that she was. "You don't need a fork, Happie; it's just as well you haven't an extra one; you're not used to handling such things. You scatter with your hands, and I'll take the hay as Pete and Bob throw it up. You watch a minute, and you'll see what to do."
Laura obeyed Gretta reluctantly, and Happie began to think that the prettiest motions were not taught young girls, nor executed by them in calisthenic or dancing classes. Gretta made a picture as she stood, her handsome face flushing under her rose-colored sunbonnet, her dark eyes bright with concentrated attention, and proud pleasure in performing her task as well as any boy could have done. Her sleeves wereturned back to her elbows, her brown arms were well-shaped, her tall figure splendidly proportioned, and strong with the strength of trained muscles and a life spent in the sunshine and pure air. She caught the great bunches of hay which Pete and Bob threw up to her, wielding her fork surely and gracefully, judging accurately and quickly where to place each forkful to keep the load symmetrical and the balance true so that when the last wisp was on, the great wagon would roll down the hilly meadow, down into the barn, with no danger to itself, nor to its riders.
It was so fascinating to watch Gretta's movements, to stand among the delicious hay in the June sunshine, that Happie forgot to work, drinking in a new experience that seemed to her the most delightful she had ever tasted.
The laden wagon was piled higher rapidly. Bob and Pete pitched fast, trying to tire Gretta, but she received as fast as they pitched, and it was Ralph who first cried for mercy.
"Look here, do you think we're hoppers?" he asked pantingly.
"Yes, grasshoppers," said Bob, throwing a particularly large bunch of the fragrant timothy at his friend. But he stopped himself, and wiped his brow, leaving on it a design sketched in timothy seed. "Talk about gymnasium practice!" he gasped. "There isn't a girl in one of the gyms, I believe, who could hold out at this work the way you have, Gretta. I take off myhat to you; you have beaten me." And Bob made a deep bow, sweeping the ground with the flapping hat which he wore like other farmers.
To Happie's surprise Gretta returned the bow with an equally low one, brushing the hay with her gingham skirt spread out in each hand. Her face dimpled with a mischievousness new in her.
"Every jack has a trade," she said. "I ought to beat you at hay-making; maybe you would beat me if we were loading up on Latin. You might hand up Penny now, Bob, and then Polly. I don't believe I'd use the fork for them. This wagon won't hold more than half a dozen more forkfuls, Pete."
"All right, Gretta; that's all right," said Pete. "You know when you've got enough."
"I believe you thinkyouknow when you've got enough, too, Pete," suggested Bob.
"Well," said Pete, pushing back his hat with the arm that dried his face, and shifting his tobacco into his other cheek, "well, Bob, I've been pitching hay for full—le's see—full forty-seven seasons, and I notice forks keeps gittin' heavier every one of the last ten of 'em."
"Gracious; mine is heavy enough for me now, in my first season!" exclaimed Bob. "Come up, Pennykins; Gretta's ready for the last of her load now."
He swung Penny up to the strong arms held out to receive her, followed Penny with Polly, and assisted Laura by vigorous "boosts," and no small effort, forLaura was not a good climber, and the hay afforded but poor foothold. With Happie pulling on one arm, Gretta the other, and Bob shoving from below, dignified Laura was hoisted in a most undignified manner. Ralph slid down to help rake behind the wagon, Pete took up the reins, shouted to his patient beasts, and the wagon started, groaning and protesting under the heavy burden with which Gretta's skillful loading had heaped it.
The field lay upward of the slope of a hill; rocks abounded in it, the loose Pennsylvania rocks, as many and as troublesome as those with which New England struggles. There was a sort of cairn of them heaped at the foot of the slope where the Bittenbenders, or some other predecessors of the present tenants, had deposited the stones which they had picked from the field, intending, on a day which had never come, to haul them away to the rough stone wall which marked the field's northern boundary.
Just as the hay wagon, looking like a moving hillock itself, reached this high mound of rocks, Pete's hand guiding the horses, was thrown up to ward off a branch that threatened his eyes; the horses swerved, the wagon went up on two wheels, and the sudden motion sent Polly from her seat too near the edge, head downward and backward, over the top of the load.
It all happened in an instant. Happie saw Bob throw up his hands with a gesture of horror, saw Polly disappear, and saw Gretta spring up, at the same timethrowing herself face downward on the hay. Happie saw her catch one of Polly's ankles, and hold the child with her strong hand, suspended over the wagon. Pete jerked the reins sharply, the wagon righted itself, and Gretta's other hand crept cautiously after its mate, taking Polly's other ankle in its grasp. Then Happie aroused from the paralysis of mind that seemed to have fallen upon her. She crawled to the side of the wagon, and together she and Gretta drew Polly into safety.
It seemed an hour since she had seen the child lurch backward and fall—it had been seconds. She looked down. There stood Pete, blue under the tan of his skin. Bob and Ralph, one with hands upraised, the other crouched as if to dodge the sorrow, stood like statues, ashen gray. As Happie looked down, Bob moved, and turned away to hide the tears that streamed down his face. Pete gathered together the reins, shaking from head to foot. Ralph covered his face with his hands, and Happie heard him breathe: "Thank God!"
"She'll never be no nearer the aidge of eternity till she goes over it," remarked Pete. "Git ap, Jim! Come on, Lil!"
Polly lay hiding her face on Gretta's lap, who smoothed her hair silently, her own face grave and pale. Penny was crying with all her might, and Laura rocked her body to and fro, moaning hysterically: "Oh, those rocks! Those rocks!"
Happie looked down at the pile for which Polly had headed. It was hardly possible that she could have struck them, backward as she was falling, and not have broken her neck. A sickening realization of the sorrow so narrowly escaped, was followed by a swift rush of love and gratitude for the strong, quiet girl, whose quick brain and steady hand had saved Polly.
Happie turned to Gretta with her whole heart in her face.
"It was death," she whispered; she could not summon her voice. "I can never thank you."
"I only held her up," said Gretta.
Then the color rushed up over her blanched face in a wave of joy.
"I'm glad if I can pay some of my debt," she said.
The great wagon, so heavily laden with its towering hay and grateful hearts, rolled slowly down the road. Thanks to Gretta, it was still carrying only glad young folk on a hay ride. But how nearly it had been dear little Polly's funeral car!
"I wish you and Gretta had not forgotten my pup," said Miss Bradbury coming into the dining-room the morning after the departure of Margery. "I still hear queer noises at night. I'm going to send down to town for a good dog. Jake Shale has offered me a beagle, and Peter Kuntz assures me the one thing on earth I need is his old dog, half shepherd and seven-eighths cur, but I'm not convinced."
"What a very fractional dog, Miss Keren!" laughed Mrs. Scollard.
"Let me send down to mother to get a dog a friend of mine has, Miss Bradbury," suggested Ralph. "He's about two years old, and thoroughbred, a fine watchdog. They want to get him into the country, or they'd never give him up; he is out of place in New York, they think."
"Everything is that wants to run and play," agreed Miss Bradbury. "Two-legged or four. What sort of dog is this one?"
"A beauty collie," said Ralph. "I'm sure he can be had for the asking. His owners won't sell him, because they want to be sure of the sort of hands he falls into. I'll write Snigs to go ask for him, if you'll take him."
"I'll take him," said Miss Bradbury. "Tell Snigs to come up in time for the Fourth, and bring him."
Ralph colored with pleasure. "Thanks, Miss Bradbury; you're awfully good. Snigs would be delighted to come."
"And we to have him!" cried Happie. "You really are good, Aunt Keren!"
"At least that's better than being awful, as Ralph accuses me of being. Though you do seem to feel it necessary to affirm my goodness, which is not complimentary," said Miss Bradbury. "I shall be obliged to Snigs if he can get the dog; I don't intend to hear noises dogless any longer."
"I wish, Laura, you'd come fix my torn buttonhole," said Polly from the doorway. "Happie's going to do Margery's work and her own too, and I can't keep my skirt fastened."
"Indeed I can't," said Laura, leaving the room before her mother could interfere to stop her. "I've got to go out."
Far away as Laura had always been from practical, every-day matters, of late she had been miles above the heads of her family, "soaring down the milky way," Bob said, "when there were milk pails down below needing scalding." Bob had scant patience with Laura's nonsense at any time, and he was working rather hard that summer.
It was trying; for at neither work nor play was Laura any use. She had a secret. What it was nobody knew—which was not strange, considering that it is the nature of secrets not to be known—but nobody could conjecture what it was.
If her mother and Miss Keren has guessed, it is highly probable that they would have interfered with her plan, but Laura, intent on proving to the world, and to her own family in particular, her entire competence to succeed in whatever she undertook, kept her own counsel and went her mysterious way.
Up on the edge of the extreme boundary of Crestville stood a little chapel served by a well-meaning, but illiterate young "preacher," as they called him in the village. He it was whom Laura had selected as the instrument of her plan, and to it the young man lent himself with an enthusiasm most refreshing to a lady of scarce thirteen, accustomed to the ridicule of a large and unappreciative home circle.
It was an extraordinary plan for a little girl to have laid, but then Laura never did anything that one would expect from a girl of her age, and she had sufficient self-confidence to have equipped an Arctic exploring party.
The first requisite for her scheme was a place, a setting, and Laura pitched upon the little church on the edge of the woods as the best for her purpose.
So one day she had attired herself in her most becoming muslin, took a book under her arm, and a roll of music in her hand—not that she needed them, butfor dramatic effect—and sallied forth to win the young preacher to her way of thinking.
He lived not far from his church; when Laura knocked at the door his girl-wife opened it with her right hand, holding her baby in the hollow of that arm, while the left hand held a yellow bowl full of potatoes which she had just fetched from the cellar.
"See Mr. Buck?" she repeated after Laura, but with a strong Pennsylvania Dutch accent that rendered the name "Book." "Yes, I guess. He's in the room. You go in through if you want. Wait a little; I'll call him."
She disappeared, leaving Laura standing just across the threshold, and returned followed by a young man with beady black eyes, who looked as if he could not have been more than twenty-two years old.
He greeted Laura with respect most cheering to her soul, and invited her into "the room," which the little girl had already learned was short for "the best room," or "the sitting-room."
Laura placed herself with much dignity upon the figured lounge, which was arrayed in the brightest shades of all colors, deposited her roll and book beside her, crossed her feet, folded her hands and began with the utmost self-possession to unfold her errand. "Mr. Buck," she said. "I am the daughter of Mrs. Scollard, the lady from New York who is staying with her friend who owns the Bittenbender place."
"Yes, I know," said Mr. Buck. "I have seen youand your sisters and brothers already; we look in when we go by, my wife and I. You have it good there yet."
"Oh, we don't like it!" returned Laura with a toss of her head. "It is better than it was, though. I came to talk to you about a plan I have for entertaining the people of the—the people all around here who want to improve themselves. I thought I would give an entertainment on the Fourth of July, and invite everybody; just let everybody know they can come if they want to."
"Free?" inquired the young preacher, as Laura paused for an instant for breath.
"Oh, of course!" exclaimed Laura impatiently. "You know there isn't anything here to improve people; you don't have any lectures, nor music, nor pictures, nor anything at all. I am—well, you see I write music and poetry, and I play and sing, and I want to do something for these poor people. I want to give an entertainment on the Fourth of July, and I want you to help me. Will you?"
"What a good girl you must be, and ain't you smart!" exclaimed the young man admiringly.
He was very simple, and it never occurred to him to question the ability of this girl who spoke so beautifully, and was so very easy in her manners, to do exactly what she said she could do, and he was honestly grateful for her desire to do something for his flock. "What should I do?" he asked. "ShouldI speak for you? I might make a speech after your songs; should I? I guess that would go good."
"No, I don't think so," said Laura positively. Then, seeing the disappointment in the young man's face, and not being without tact when she had an end in view, she added: "In entertainments they don't have speeches; not in this kind of entertainment. What I want to do is improve people, don't you see?"
Laura herself did not see the suggestion latent in her remark that Mr. Buck's speech might not be improving. Nor did he, for he accepted her decision meekly, and asked: "What then should I do?"
"You can let me give the entertainment in your chapel, please," said Laura grandly. "And you can let me come here to practice every day, so they won't know at home that we are going to have this entertainment. You won't tell any one till just before the Fourth, will you?"
"No," said the little preacher. Then looking puzzled he inquired: "Don't they know at your house what you're doing? Ain't they going to help you yet?"
"No, indeed," cried Laura. "If they did I could give—no, I couldn't give the entertainment at home, because there wouldn't be room for all the people who would come, but I could practice at home. It is to be a secret, so I want you, please, to let me practice on the organ, or whatever you have in the church——"
"It's an organ," interrupted the little preacher, looking hurt for the first time. "The ladies of my congregation bought it saving up egg money and doing washing for city boarders one summer. It cost thirty dollars; it's a regular parlor organ, a good one. It sounds 'most so good as a big organ; wait till you hear it once!"
"Yes," said Laura, a trifle impatiently, for she was not interested in the organ, except as it served her end. "I'm glad it is a good one. I'd like to practice every day till the Fourth, and I came up to ask you if you didn't think my plan a beautiful one, and if you wouldn't be kind enough to help me? I knew that a minister would want to do anything he could to improve people, and to make them happy," she added artfully.
"Of course," assented Mr. Buck heartily. "I'll give you the key to the church, and you can practice all the days you want. And you can give the entertainment here. You must be smart if you can do it all alone, and sing, and make up poetry yet! And you are a kind young lady to want to amuse folks."
Laura tried to look modest, but succeeded only in dropping her eyes in the semblance of modesty; in her heart she felt that this praise was merited.
She arose to go with what she felt sure was a graceful, dignified and entirely grown-up manner.
HE FOLLOWED LAURA TO THE FRONT DOOR"HE FOLLOWED LAURA TO THE FRONT DOOR"
"HE FOLLOWED LAURA TO THE FRONT DOOR"
"Oh," she said, "I am glad to give the poor people a chance to hear good music. And I am not smart tomake up music and poetry; it is a talent of mine, that's all. Good-bye, Mr. Buck. Thank you for helping me, but of course I knew you would want to."
She gathered up the music and book which she had carried with a vague intention of letting them prove her claim to music and poetry, and extended her hand with the air of an empress as she moved towards the door.
The honest little preacher grasped the hand heartily. "Good-bye," he said. "I am obliged to you for letting me help you out."
He followed Laura to the front door where he halted as a thought struck him.
"Will it be funny, your show on the Fourth?" he asked. "Our folks like funny things. Shall they laugh at it, say not?"
"Dear me, no," cried Laura, sincerely shocked. "They must learn to like something higher than funny things! Funny things are not improving."
Which statement proved how much she knew of human nature.
The little preacher looked wistful. "They gets pretty tired," he said doubtfully. "It's hard work farming, and these fields are stony yet! In my county we don't have to pick stones three days before we can plough one day."
Laura smiled in a superior way, and turned to go. "I shouldn't feel like doing funny things, Mr. Buck," she said. "Good music is the saddest thing! Andall my poetry is very deep." With which statement she went out of the little gate.
The awe-struck Bucks watched her depart. "How much would you give her, Anna?" asked the young husband. "She writes music and poetry, and she's going to give folks a free concert, or something, in the church on Fourth of July. For a little I thought she hadn't fourteen years."
"She ain't," said the nineteen-years-old wife positively.
"Do you guess she could do such a thing if she ain't?" queried her husband.
"I guess. In New York girls get smart early, maybe. I wish you could get a church there once, Alvah, when the baby's big enough. I'd like to have her grow up with such smartness."
The object of these flattering remarks went her homeward way rejoicing, and it had been from that hour that her family had noticed that she was uplifted higher than ever above their heads. Every day she had gone up the road carrying a mysterious package, and had refused to explain the mystery when Happie had tried to investigate it.
"Yes, I have a secret," Laura said, in reply to her sister's question. "But that's the very reason I won't tell you; people generally don't tell secrets. If you can wait a while, you will know what it is, and you will find it was something worth waiting for."
"I don't know, motherums, but I imagine she carries her books and paper off into the dampest, darkest spot by the brook and composes poetry and music out of doors. It would be just like her, and her packages look like papers," said Happie, divided in her mind as usual between disgust, and sisterly pride in her talented junior.
This was before Margery had gone away, and the secret had not leaked out on the morning when Miss Bradbury had again announced her longing for a dog. It was three days before the Fourth, and on that day, obedient to Laura's instructions, Mr. Buck began notifying the public which he met on his way to and from the post-office, that Miss Scollard was going to give an entertainment in the chapel on the evening of the Fourth, without money and without price, solely for the love of her fellow creatures, who were invited to gather in large numbers to share her bounty.
The first that her family knew of Laura's undertaking was when Bob returned from the post-office, fuming with rage, yet convulsed with the fun of it, burdened with the following announcement which he had found tacked up in the post-office:
"Miss Laura Scollard announces to the people in Crestville that she will give an entertainment in Mr. Buck's chapel on Fourth of July at half-past sevenP. M.She will sing and play and read and give them a chance to hear good things, so she hopes they will all come. FREE."
"Miss Laura Scollard announces to the people in Crestville that she will give an entertainment in Mr. Buck's chapel on Fourth of July at half-past sevenP. M.She will sing and play and read and give them a chance to hear good things, so she hopes they will all come. FREE."
"The last word was in big letters," said Bob as he finished reading his copy of the impressive announcement, and Ralph took a header into the couch in fresh enjoyment of it. "And you can bet the very last thing that you have, or ever hope to have that they'll come all right!"
"Come!" echoed Rosie. "Why, you couldn't keep 'em away! They'll think it's goin' to be something great, and that you all had a hand in it. What in creation do you s'pose she's a-goin' to do?"
"Sing and play, just as she says she is, and read to the audience—from her own poems, most likely. Oh, mother, isn't it awful?" cried Happie, her sense of humor so overwhelmed by her mortification that she was unable to get even as much as Bob's divided amusement out of the discovery of Laura's scheme.
"It is the most absurd thing!" cried Mrs. Scollard, flushed and annoyed, yet half laughing. "I feel that I ought not to let the absurd child go on; she is sure to make a little goose of herself, and the village people will take it all seriously, for they will certainly think that I have helped her! Yet Laura's conceit needs a sharp lesson, and she must be punished, in one way or another, for utterly ignoring her elders in this way. I feel confident that she will be punished if we leave her to her own destruction, for she is abnormally thin-skinned. I really don't know what to do!"
"Let her go, mother; we can stand it, and I think she deserves to be called down—the conceited littleninny!" said Bob vigorously. "And if she doesn't take a tumble this time, I'm no prophet."
"Don't you boys help her to 'take a tumble.' If we let her alone to go on, we must also let her alone to succeed, if she can," interposed Mrs. Scollard, mistrusting the boys' strength to resist the temptation to tease, and dreading Laura's punishment, after all.
"Don't harbor misgivings, Charlotte," advised Miss Bradbury. "Let Laura learn by experience. Country people are not the dunces she evidently thinks them; if I'm not mistaken she will be both sadder and wiser on the fifth of July."
"Yes, let her alone," Rosie said decidedly. "I'll see to it the place knows you hadn't nothin' to do with this affair. Just see what she'll make of it. My days, what kind o' jedgment has Preacher Buck to leave her have the church?"
Ralph and Bob went down in the afternoon to bring up from the station Snigs and the dog. It was a jubilant trio—quartette—that entered the Ark in time for supper. Dundee, the collie, was nervous and tired, but he was a beauty beast, and Miss Bradbury actually hurried through her supper to make him a bed outside her door, "in case of further noises," she explained.
No one spoke of the entertainment to Laura, but at dinner on the Fourth, she officially announced it. "I suppose," she said graciously, "you have already heard of it, though we have not mentioned it. You will all come, won't you?"
"You bet your life!" cried Bob irrepressibly. But with that one exception, the family received Laura's announcement as gravely as it was made.
It was a group struggling hard to preserve its gravity that issued from the Ark and wended its way to the chapel after tea. Laura's family seated themselves far enough back to be able to retreat if the ordeal proved too trying.
Mrs. Scollard and Happie sympathized with each other's uneasiness and mortification, Miss Bradbury sat erect with a blank countenance, but the three boys gave themselves up to unreserved glee, leaning on the big sticks with which they had provided themselves for applause.
Gretta came late, and joined Happie in the seat which the latter had saved for her.
"Don't you worry," whispered Gretta. "Maybe she won't be so bad when she is giving an entertainment; maybe folks won't think she is silly."
This was the first intimation that Happie had received that her friend had been privately regarding her gifted sister as foolish, when that young person herself had fondly believed that she was impressing the country girl.
Laura came before the audience with a most serious face, but looking her best, with her cheeks red from excitement, and her eyes shining.
"Ladies and gentlemen," she said with a little bow,"this is the Fourth of July. I think we ought to begin by singing 'My Country, 'Tis of Thee.'"
"That is a good beginning," whispered Mrs. Scollard, with a breath of temporary relief.
The audience arose and sang the first stanza of the national hymn with gusto, but in the second stanza very few were singing the words, and in the third they gave up humming the air, and only Laura and Mr. Buck, who had books, were left singing.
"It's like the Peterkins and the Declaration of Independence," whispered Ralph, and Bob nudged him joyfully.
"I will sing for you a hymn I wrote myself for this day," announced Laura, seating herself at the organ.
The air had seemed to her when she was practicing it, sublime; now, heard with the consciousness of less partial ears, it developed a lack of variety, and the accompaniment left much to be desired. More than that, in spite of her daily practice on that organ, now, in the excitement of giving her composition to the public, Laura sometimes forgot to pump, and what accompaniment there was went off into a feeble squeak.
The audience behaved beautifully; it sat solemnly listening, believing that the tenants of the Ark, through their youthful representative, were trying to entertain it, and it politely tried to look entertained.
But somehow, probably through Rose Gruber, it began to be whispered about that the elder Scollards hadnothing to do with the present occasion, and the attitude of the audience became less respectful.
When Laura came forward and recited an original poem, however, her hearers veered again towards respect for her. They were not critical; the lines rhymed; it seemed to them very wonderful that a girl scarcely in her 'teens could write rhymes, and Laura was applauded heartily.
But when she returned to music, and especially when she prefaced her next number by the information that she had taken pity on Crestville's darkness, the village people altered their minds about Laura and were ready to poke fun at whatever she might do. There was no doubt that there was plenty of chance for ridicule. The foolish little girl began a song of Gottschalk's—and broke down. Then, nothing daunted, she essayed a solo on the organ, forgot to pump, lost her place, remembered to pump, but forgot her fingers, struck false notes, and ended by knocking her music off the rack with such force that a whole snarl of keys growled at once, and an irreverent boy in the audience cried: "Sic 'em! Catch 'em, Towse!" to the indecorous delight of all around him.
"I am not used to parlor organs," said Laura with tearful dignity and purpling face.
"Only to hand organs?" inquired someone in the audience, and a woman's voice said:
"Shame! Don't tease the little girl!" But several tittered.
"I'm going to recite a great poem for you," said Laura rallying to her programme with what really was pluck, though misdirected. "Poetry is good for you to hear, because you all work so hard, and hear so little that is fine."
"How can she? How can a child of mine be so pompous and so foolish?" groaned her mother.
"It is only the artistic temperament, my dear," said Miss Bradbury philosophically, her keen eyes twinkling.
Then Laura began to recite Paul Revere's ride; she explained afterwards that she had selected that because it was patriotic for the Fourth of July, and that she thought she would throw in a smattering of historical teaching with the poetical training she was giving the Crestvillians.
What was her amazement to hear three voices join with hers in the recitation, and an additional voice occasionally shout out a word at the end of a line, as if some of her audience knew what rhyme to expect!
"It's in the Reader," whispered Gretta to Happie, and then Happie understood.
As Laura's voice faltered on the last syllable of the familiar poem, a big boy jumped up on the platform and bowed ironically to Laura.
"I am appointed by the residents of Crestville to thank you for improving them so much," he said. Then he turned to the audience, and added: "Ladies and gentlemen, considering you live so far from thecity, and are a lot of hayseeds anyhow, I will recite for you a few poems, because poetry's good for you after haying. 'Hickory, dickory dock, the mouse ran up——'"
He could get no further. Instantly all the younger portion of the audience was on its feet shouting Mother Goose rhyme after Mother Goose rhyme, sometimes in chorus, more often raggedly, each one, apparently, saying whatever rhyme presented itself, and young and old shouting with laughter the while.
"Now don't you mind 'em!" whispered a kindly old lady to the Scollards. "They don't mean nothin' hard—they're kinder making fun of your girl, but they don't mean nothin'!"
Mrs. Scollard smiled back, though a trifle tremulously. "It's hard on the child—she took it all so seriously—but she needs being laughed at; I'm glad they are laughing. And they are not unkind. She deserves a lesson for being so conceited with her elders! Please tell everybody the child did not consult us, we did not help her with this, and that we are grateful to Crestville for the way it is teaching her a few important facts."
For a few moments Laura stood facing her mocking audience, now turned entertainers in her stead. She could not grasp what had happened. At last the truth dawned upon her that she, Laura, the gifted, was being ridiculed, handled with no respect for her talents, nor for her social superiority.
When she realized this painful fact, she turned as white as a little ghost, and fled from the church, the laughter of her audience following her down the road as she ran towards home.
Mrs. Scollardlost no time in following Laura from her Waterloo. She and Happie hurried out of the chapel and down the road, leaving the Ark boys to carry out their hastily-laid plan of helping the Crestville boys to turn the occasion which Laura had meant should be so improving into an old-fashioned frolic, worthy the Day We Celebrate. But though Mrs. Scollard and Happie made their best pace down the road, Laura was nowhere in sight all the way, and when they reached the house there was still no trace of her. A window was open into the kitchen; if she were in the house, Laura must have climbed in that way, for her mother and Miss Bradbury had both keys.
Mrs. Scollard put hers into the lock with many misgivings. Her heart smote her for having let Laura go on to certain defeat; it might be—it would be—good for her in the end, but it was hard for the mother to give over the foolish child to discipline, and she yearned over her in her present mortification which must be cruelly hard to bear.
Inside the house everything was dark and quiet.Mrs. Scollard and Happie called Laura, but there was no reply.
Striking a light they looked through the rooms on the lower floor, but found only Jeunesse Dorée, who came out stretching and purring, telling Happie that he had slept during his family's absence not to waste time, and was now entirely at her disposal for a romp.
There was no Laura, and when the search was continued up-stairs it was not more successful.
Miss Bradbury came home with Rosie and Penny, leaving Polly under the boys' protection to see the fun, and found mother and daughter much perturbed. Rosie took the situation calmly.
"She hain't lost," she said, removing Penny's hat and rather tight little coat, for Penny was growing fast. "She's hidin' somewheres; she's too sore to want to face a cat. She'll turn up. Looked in the cellar and on the attic? After that I'd hunt the barn. Many's the time I've hid in the hay, already, when I was little and my pap was after me; if we could keep out of the way long enough pap'd always fergit he meant to whip us. There hain't many places better to hide in than the hay-loft. I remember I was up there oncet hidin', and I come on a nest a hen had stole up there—had fourteen aiggs in it yet! I gathered all them there aiggs in my aprun—had to reach far to git 'em, so I put one foot over a bundle of straw there was layin' there—kinder stood astride of it yet—and I'll be switched if that there straw bundle didn't set outa-slidin'! I couldn't git offen it, so I just dropped down as I stood, astride of it, and held up my aprun good, and I sez: Git ap! And I slid right down onto the barn floor 's much's ten foot below. My days, I thought the floor had come up through the top of my head when I struck! But I held up them aiggs in my aprun, and there wa'n't one of 'em broke. But I was that stunted I didn't git over it for good two hours."
Happie shouted; even Mrs. Scollard laughed, in spite of her growing anxiety, and Penny sighed admiringly: "Oh, Rosie dear, youareso funny!"
"Get a candle, Happie—I am afraid to carry a lighted lamp into the attic—and we'll look there first," said Mrs. Scollard. "Perhaps you had better stay here. I fancy Laura would rather not see you, nor Bob, till the first mortification is over."
Happie brought the candle, shading it with her hand from the strong breeze.
"Here it is, mother. I'll put Penny to bed in the meantime," she said.
Mrs. Scollard proceeded up the stairs, continuing her way to the attic, while Happy took Penny into her room.
There was nothing in sight when the mother reached the head of the narrow stairs, except a mouse which scuttled away to its hole as the light appeared, and just in time to escape Dorée, who had followed his mistress in the hope of adventures of this nature,and with an expression of deep interest on his saucy, short-nosed face. The rafters loomed out in fantastic, wavering shapes before the exaggerating flame of the candle; everything was quiet and orderly, and Mrs. Scollard was about to turn towards the stairs, when Dorée remarked: "M-m-ummm?" in his pleasant little calling tone, and trotted over to the darkest corner, with his tail preternaturally straight, and his back slightly arched, as if ready for a caressing hand.
Mrs. Scollard took the cat's advice, and hurried in the same direction that he was going, holding her candle high above her head to throw the light into the gloom before her. There, prostrate behind the old Bittenbender trunk, lay the genius rejected by the ungrateful Crestvillians.
Mrs. Scollard set down her candle with mingled solicitude for Laura herself, and for Laura's best dress, and with a gleam of amusement, now that her anxiety was relieved.
"Laura dear, come out," she said gently. "Be wise enough not to brood over a mistake that you will not make again."
Laura lifted her head quickly. "Mistake, mamma!" she cried. "I made no mistake. But do you think I can help minding being treated so ungratefully, even insulted by those horrid, ignorant people?"
"Come here, Laura," said her mother, in the tone which her children always obeyed.
Laura came forth, dusty, tear-stained, a wreck ofher usual self-satisfied and trim little self. Her mother drew her on her knee as she seated herself on a chest, and began to smooth the tumbled hair, and to stroke the hot cheeks with a gentle hand.
"Let me show you the mistake, my dear," she said. "Here is a little girl, barely thirteen, who first of all prepares an entertainment, and gives it, not only without consulting her elders, but without their permission. You certainly have no right, Laura, to undertake a public appearance without asking leave. It is for this that you are punished; I knew that you would receive your just dues if I refrained from interfering, and I am glad that your punishment has been quite severe enough without one from me. For—and this is the second part of your mistake, and a part that affects your every action—you take your small self much too seriously, my Laura. You have talents, which I hope to have cultivated into value, but in the meantime they are but a childish promise of what may be. And because of them you plume yourself, hold yourself superior to your brother and sisters, who are in their way quite as clever as you in yours, and more clever in not overrating themselves. It is very stupid to be conceited in a world full of truly great things, my Laura. Another mistake was to allow yourself to feel and to speak to our neighbors to-night as if you were their superior. They were older than you, my dear, and you have been taught that people with fewer advantages than yourself may be quite as quick-witted;a very wholesome lesson! The audience which you invited to come to be addressed condescendingly was perfectly sweet-tempered and patient with the little girl who tried to patronize it. I am grateful to the Crestville people for understanding, and being so kind. So you are not to harbor bitterness, nor to go on making the old mistake of thinking that what a child like you does matters too much. You are to come down with mother, go to bed and go to sleep, a wiser little girl, saying to yourself: 'I shall never again be a conceited little goose!' and nobody will think twice of what was merely a little girl's folly in forgetting that shewasa little girl. But she's her mother's little girl, so give me a kiss, and forget all about this evening, except its lessons. I wonder if I can find a place not too dusty to kiss?"
Laura submitted to her mother's caress, but did not respond to it with an answering smile. She followed the wavering candle-light down the stairs with faltering steps; she was weak and ill from excessive crying, and the fall of her pride had bruised her mentally black and blue. Jeunesse Dorée, bringing up the rear, was the only cheerful person of the three.
In the morning Laura was feverish and not fit to get up. Mrs. Scollard left her in Rosie's care—she needed only rest,—and went for a drive with Miss Bradbury, who had of late summoned courage to brave automobiles with Don Dolor under her personal guidance.
Gretta came up shortly after breakfast, bringing the fresh peas with which Miss Bradbury had asked her to supplement the crop of the Ark garden.
"You haven't any calves, have you?" Gretta said by way of salutation the moment she entered. "I saw some down by your gate; they must have just turned in from the road, but they looked as if they had just run out of your place."
"Cæsar's ghost! Of course we have calves; Aunt Keren got three two days ago, goodness knows what for!" cried Bob. "But they can't be ours, because I put them in the cow-yard, and looked after the bars myself."
"You don't know calves," said Rosie. "They beat the Dutch at getting out. I've seen 'em already get out when you wouldn't have believed anything could. Just you wait till apple time comes, and then try penning up your cows! They get clear crazy when they smell the ripe apples all over, and you can't keep 'em in to save you. I advise you to go right out and drive in them calves, Bob, and not wait a minute."
"Yes," said Gretta, "or they'll be, no one knows where! If you have any calves they must be yours I saw, for they were just inside your gate. There were three of them. We'll all go help you drive, but there ought to be more of us."
"Polly, you look after Laura if she wants something, while we chase up them calves," said Rosie."Mortification's set in with Laura, Gretta; she's sick in bed after last night."
Gretta laughed, then looked pitying. "It's too bad; it was hard," she said.
"Come on, Snigs; come on, Ralph," called Happie. "We're going to enjoy the pleasures of the chase. Run up and tell Laura we'll be right back; she'll hear us, and worry," she added to Polly.
Now Snigs was just getting a bottle of ginger pop off the ice, intending to regale himself. The ice-box stood on the back stoop for lack of space in the kitchen, and when he heard the summons to chase calves, Snigs, nothing loathe to join in the sport, hastily shoved the bottle of ginger ale into his hip pocket, and ran around the side of the house to join the pursuing party.
There was no doubt that the calves were Bradburys—by adoption. Bob instantly recognized them as the three which, as he supposed, he had made fast in the cow-yard. Whether they recognized him or not was less certain. They all three faced the six bipeds with that peculiarly innocent gaze of calfhood, lowering their heads and spreading their feet, all three in a row, the ecru Jersey, the tan and brown part Jersey and the black and white Holstein.
"You just go around on that side, Snigs," said Bob, as he and Ralph prepared to dash forward. "Drive them right up. We'll head them off from around the house."
This confident announcement proved how truly Rosie had spoken when she said that Bob did not know cows.
Drive them up, indeed! The moment Snigs came up somewhere near close enough to be of any use, the calves with one simultaneous, if not concerted, movement, lowered their heads a little further, kicked up their six hind legs and scuttled out into the road.
"There! That's the way they always act!" cried Gretta. "There's nothing on earth so hard to drive as calves, except pigs. Bob, run; head 'em off! Ralph, Snigs, get on up the road, or they'll go over into the next county. Come, Happie!" And Gretta herself followed Rosie down the road at top speed.
The calves paused, looking as who should say: "How strangely excited you all are!" Then they trotted quietly up the road, slipping past Rosie, Gretta and Happie by the simple device of dividing forces, one on one side, the other two on the other side of the road. Then they saw the boys, and stopped short, eyeing them blandly as they crept towards them, whirled suddenly, threw up their legs again, whisked their tails into an arch, and bolted for the boundary fence of the farm opposite the Ark.
"Keep 'em out of there!" shrieked Rosie. "That there field belongs to the crabbedest man in the township. My days, but it's hot!"
There was not the slightest objection to keeping them out of the field, save to the minds of the livelybeasts themselves. They seemed to think it would be a good joke to go through a broken paling and trample down their neighbor's clover—even calves are liable to have a different sense of humor from oneself.
The Holstein capered through—smiling, Happie declared—and the other two followed without the loss of a moment. Bob, Ralph and Snigs rushed after them, shouting like demented megaphones. The calves kept ahead of them without an effort.
"If they get over there by the woods that's the end of it!" cried Snigs despairingly. Suddenly the calves stopped, looked around inquiringly, wheeled right about face, and trotted easily up to the broken palings and out into the road, where they turned to gaze reproachfully at the irate boys whom they had left behind, plainly asking if they could not take their sport like gentlemen, and lose a race without losing their tempers.
"Now close up!" shouted Bob. "Head 'em off into our gate; they're bunched now." They were, but they immediately unbunched—if one may so express their sudden scattering.
Rosie and Gretta made a desperate lurch to stop this dispersion. Rosie stubbed her toe on a rock and fell headlong, her whole great length stretched out on the dusty road, and her arms extended; she looked like a fallen guide-post.
The boys uttered a war-whoop, and nearly fell over the fence they were climbing. Rosie was a wreck asHappie and Gretta raised her; dust—the red shale dust of the region reddening her clean gingham; her sunbonnet flattened into a reddish mass, and her face crimson from heat, wrath and the shock of her fall.
"Mahlon hain't much of a man, but he's got the right to swear; I hain't," she remarked grimly, evidently regretting masculine rights and her own limitations.
Gretta wiped away the tears of laughter on her own dusty apron.
"Eunice will be furious because I'm gone so long," she said, "but this is worth a scolding. And do look once at those calves!"
Apparently the three young reprobates had taken Rosie's fall as a melancholy warning of what happened when people ran, for they had turned into their own gate as meekly as if that had been their intention from the first, and stood chewing and looking out at the heated group of their pursuers.
"They look as if they were going to sing: 'Speak gently, it is better far to rule by love than fear,'" said Happie, pulling herself together; she was weak from laughter.
"For mercy's sake, drive them in before they change their minds again!" cried Bob. "Here come mother and Aunt Keren back."
Rosie, Gretta and Happie ran up to the gate of the Ark just as the boys reached it from the other side, and just as Don Dolor, in the road, was nearly abreast of it. To every one's horror there came a loud report,apparently a pistol shot. Snigs shot up into the air about a yard, and fell, screaming aloud. Don Dolor arose on his hind legs, danced a moment as Miss Bradbury vainly tried to get control of him, then bolted down the road in a cloud of dust.
It had all happened so quickly that for an instant the terrified group around Snigs stood petrified, gazing at the prostrate boy, and down the road after the flying horse. Then Ralph picked up Snigs with agony stamped on his face, and Rosie cried: "What in time has happened? Why," she added, feeling of Snigs, "you're all wet; are you bleeding?"
"I guess so," moaned Snigs. "It's the ginger—ginger ale."
"Ginger ale!" echoed Ralph with a darting thought that the wound was in his brother's head, and that he was wandering in his mind.
"What ginger ale?" demanded Rosie, more than ever mystified.
"Went off in my pock—pocket," sobbed Snigs, trying to control his unmanly emotion.
Bob, experienced in being a boy, plunged his hand into Snigs' hip pocket, and drew it out quicker than he had put it in, dripping with blood.
"Great Scott! His pocket's full of broken glass!" he cried. "Did you have a bottle of ginger pop in there, Snigs?"
"Yes," said Snigs, mastering the tears that flowed more from nervousness than from pain. "I was justgetting one when you called me to catch those calves—plague take them! So I stuffed it into my pocket, because I was in too big a hurry to go into the house with it, and now it's bust!"
"It got hot and worked!" cried Bob. "Christopher Columbus, what a morning!" He couldn't help laughing, but he looked worried. "I wish I knew where mother was; Aunt Keren can't drive when a horse needs driving. They may be upset."
"I guess not; the road's straight," said Rosie. "Are you hurt, Snigs? Maybe that there glass blew somewhere into his flesh."
"Oh!" cried Happie, laughing and crying hysterically as she pictured glass blowing into flesh, and straining her eyes for a sight of Don Dolor.
"They're coming!" cried Gretta, who had the long vision of eyes accustomed to mountain reaches. "My, they must be worried! It sounded exactly like a shot."
"I'm going to help Ralph carry Snigs up-stairs," said Rosie, but Laura intercepted her, coming over the grass in a trailing wrapper of her mother's, with Polly and Penny clinging to her hands.
"Who did that pistol kill?" she demanded tragically, with no doubt that a case of not-knowing-that-it-was-loaded had occurred in her family.
"Snigs has been wounded by ginger pop," cried Happie over her shoulder, flying to meet the returning buggy.
"Who is wounded; tell me quick who is wounded?" gasped Mrs. Scollard, leaning far out of the carriage, while at the same time Miss Bradbury demanded: "Where did you get it?"
"Snigs is wounded; he got it out of the ice box—it was a ginger pop bottle that exploded in his pocket. It's not serious, mother," shouted Bob.
Even Miss Bradbury's laugh rang out at this statement, and Mrs. Scollard fell back into her seat, sobbing and laughing at the relief.
Don Dolor looked ashamed of himself, yet glad that he had so quickly allowed himself to be brought under control by his inexperienced driver, hoping, probably, that his family would make due allowance for the fact that the explosion had sounded enough like a pistol to deceive them, and that he had not been expecting such a sound at his own gate.
"Such a morning, and all for those dreadful calves!" sighed Happie, as she and Gretta climbed into the buggy to go after the doctor, and Ralph and Bob bore Snigs into the house. "By the way, where are the abominable things?"
"Rosie has them," said Polly. "She drove them around the house."
"You'd better go in, Laura; you're not dressed for public—for being out of doors," said Happie, altering her sentence, fearing to allude to public appearances when Laura was emerging from her tragic frame of mind in relation to her recent experience in that line.
Gretta and Happie looked back as they drove out of the yard. They saw Rosie putting up the cow-yard bars, while the three calves looked over them with gentle, peaceful faces. Even at that distance the girls could recognize the emphasis with which Rosie put the bars in the posts, and made them fast.
Snigs'queer accident proved more serious than it had at first appeared. The glass had "blown into the flesh," as Rosie had suggested; it took seven stitches of sewing to repair the boy, and he was ill in bed for ten days with high fever and considerable pain.
July was wearing away into August, and the thermometer mounted uncommonly high for an instrument hanging at such altitude above sea-level.
Mrs. Scollard drooped under the heat, and chafed with impatience to get well; the prospect of resuming her duties in town looked distant and dim.
Happie lost her fresh color and buoyancy under unaccustomed duties, and Bob grew grave also as each day piled up hard farm work, and September loomed in sight with its unsolved problems of school and business opportunities.
Polly and Penny were growing bigger and browner almost hour by hour, and Laura was an improved Laura, with her vanity much chastened and her self-confidence subdued by her misadventure. Margery's letters were overflowing with happiness, but her mother read in them subtle indications that her eldestgirl was slipping over the boundary line of young girlhood, and was growing up.
Gretta's affairs were getting worse, while she was improving day by day. Miss Bradbury and Mrs. Scollard had grown very fond of the pretty girl, and hardly less interested than Happie in trying to solve the untangling of her life. In proportion as her new friends cared for her, and she blossomed out into the development her cousins had grudged her, the Neumanns became more unkind to her. It was plain that matters could not long continue as they were, and Miss Bradbury and Mrs. Scollard fruitlessly discussed Gretta's prospects, and wished it were within their power to brighten them.
The first of August brought summons of return to Ralph and Snigs. They went away sadly, for the prospect of the Scollards' following them was not bright, and the boys would not be able to come back to the Ark before school began.
These were the changes that August brought to the Ark. With them there was creeping into the air a feeling of waiting. Not of waiting for anything definite, but a vague feeling of unrest, as if "something were going to happen," a feeling very like the atmosphere on a still August afternoon when not a leaf is stirring, and great thunder heads pile up in the west.
"I only hope it will be something good when it happens," Happie said when her mother confessed tothis uneasiness. "It really seems as if we could not stand anything bad."
She did not mean to betray her weariness in well-doing; it slipped out in spite of herself.
"Poor little Happie!" sighed her mother, fluttering the sheets of her latest long letter from Margery. "I wonder if I should have insisted on your going to Bar Harbor?"
"Of course not, motherums!" cried Happie hastily. "Margery's letters sound as if she were as happy as the days are long, but they sound as if she had more Margery-things than Happie-things."
"So they do," assented her mother. "You too have noticed the older note, then? I suppose we must make up our minds to letting Margery grow up. But you would have found what you call 'Happie-things' if you had been there. We all find our own attractions throughout life, and wherever we may be. Like draws like, and we rise or sink to our own level; never forget that, my Happie."
"Mothers find little texts everywhere, don't they, motherums?" said Happie kissing her. "They are forever improving their children's minds and morals, and they don't have to wait to find sermons even in stones—though Bar Harbor must have rocks!"
"It is a great advantage to a preacher to have a congregation that must listen," retorted her mother. "Run away and make your cake for supper, you saucy Happie."
"Saucy Happie" turned away laughing, but before she had time to obey Miss Bradbury came into the room with a step that combined stealth and haste.
"I haven't said a word," she whispered, so low that she could hardly be described as saying a word then, "because I did not want to frighten you, Charlotte, but Dundee has been growling fearfully for the past two nights. I don't see how you could have helped hearing him—though to be sure he has slept under my bed, with my door shut! He is out in the yard now, growling and crawling up towards the back door. I am certain that I saw a figure skulking along by the fence. Here is a revolver; I brought it up in case of need, but I can't let any one touch it. Where's Bob?"
"He's out in the barn looking after Don Dolor," said Mrs. Scollard. "I'm not at all frightened, Miss Keren. I'm sure there's nothing wrong. Suppose you stay here with the revolver, and let Happie go out in the kitchen to see if Rosie's there."
"You never can tell how nervous people are going to be nervous!" exclaimed Miss Bradbury, as if she were disappointed by Mrs. Scollard's calmness, even while dreading to disturb her. "Very well; creep out, Happie, but go carefully!"
Happie laughed, and obediently departed. She heard low voices as she neared the kitchen, and she opened the door to discover Rosie's Mahlon standing there on one leg, "like the goose he is," Happie thought,not feeling in the mood to be amused by Rosie's decidedly not better half.
"Have you been around here nights lately?" asked Happie.
"Pretty much all summer," whined Mahlon. "Rosie didn't know it—she wouldn't have cared, no sir, not if she did know it. She hasn't any heart in her, and then you folks got a dog!"
Happie's laugh rang out, and she hurried back to the library. "Put away your revolver, Aunt Keren; it's only Rosie's Mahlon, and the most you would need for him would be a wringing machine—he's very tearful!"
Then she rushed back to see the fun.
"Now you keep still!" she heard Rosie say in a fierce whisper as she entered. But it was much too hard a matter to Mahlon to get started talking for him to be easily silenced. He swung his right arm, and swung his right leg in unison with it. His voice arose into a tearful whine; he seemed to be on the point of breaking into tears, as he often did when excited.
"No, sir," he piped, "I couldn't do it! Nobody couldn't do it. He told me to go up once on the barn loft, on that there cracked ladder and throw down the old straw. And I told him I couldn't, and I wasn't goin' to break my neck, not for him nor nobody like him, and me with a wife dependent on me yet!"
Rosie glanced at Happie involuntarily, with a gleamof pure humor in her eyes, and in spite of herself Happie laughed aloud.
This seemed to outrage Mahlon's already wounded feelings. His voice rose higher and more squeaky as he said: "Yes, sir, you may laugh, but I'm a man, and I've got a man's feelin's yet. I told him I wouldn't climb that there ladder, not if I died fer it, and he said I'd got to climb it, or quit. So I quit, and here I am. I'd like to know what your folks think I'm goin' to do if I hain't got no work, and my wife helpin' you, and my house shut up, lettin' me without no home?"
The arm-and-leg movement waxed furious, and the wailing voice broke altogether as the forlorn creature fell like a scarecrow in a gale, doubled up on a chair, his arms on the table, while he cried into them, face downwards.
Happie felt painfully embarrassed, not understanding the intention of this appeal, but Rosie proved herself equal to this, as to all other occasions.
She took her limp husband by the shoulder and shook him together like a feather bed, the same movement bringing him to his feet.
"Here, you git ap!" she said emphatically. "I hain't goin' to have them dirty coat sleeves that you wear 'round the pigs on my clean table where I'm goin' to make biscuits, and Happie's goin' to bake cake fer supper yet! And you cryin', like a I'd-know-what! I bet you what you dare they got tired already chasin' you round over there to make you work! Iguess I know how you dig—take out one shovelful, and then stand five minutes and admire the hole! Happie hain't goin' to be bothered with you. If you want her Aunt Keren to leave you work fer her, you've got to ask her yourself. My days, Mahlon, you look and act more like a roll of carpet rags when I hain't seen you fer a while than ever. You go out and see'f you can't do nothin' towards helpin' Bob a while. He's cleanin' the horse's stall and beddin' him down. You go out once and find out. Supper'll be ready till you come back. If you hain't got nothin' youmustdo, git up and do somethin' youkindo!"
Mahlon acted on this strong hint, and departed barnward. Happie hid her face by stooping down to get out the cake tins from the deepest recesses of the kitchen closet. Rosie sighed, then she laughed; she was an unconscious philosopher of the school that holds it best to smile at the misfortunes which cannot be cured, that being the one way in which they can be endured.
"If ever you git married, Happie," she said—"and if you take my advice you'll think it over hard before you set the day, and then set another day twenty years later, and think it over again till that one, and I guess till then you'll have seen enough to know you hadn't ought to be in no hurry—but if ever you do git married, for the goodness' sake git a man you don't have to order round! I never give Mahlon orders but I feel 'sif I'd ought ter be broomsticked! My days,I've thought already I'd ruther have a man take a broomstick tomethen lop 'round so! A woman hadn't orter give the orders, but when you've got to, you've got to. Don Dolor would look well drivin' you, now wouldn't he? That's the way 'tis: the one that's fit to drive's got to drive, if you want to git anywheres. But don't you never git that kind. I guess you've got to put that there bitter ammon in your cake; the vanilla's all."
Happie made her cake and Rosie made her biscuits, and Mahlon returned with Bob—who had learned to milk—in time to enjoy their steaming fragrance and more substantial qualities.
Miss Bradbury saw at a glance that Bob welcomed the assistance of even the dilapidated Mahlon, for Pete and Jake were uncertain, whereas the duties of each day were as certain as the rising of the sun. Miss Keren therefore engaged Mahlon "to paddle around the Ark," as Bob expressed it, to the ridiculous delight of that abject person, who fully appreciated the gain he had made in insinuating himself into the Ark. "Only," said Miss Bradbury whimsically, "if we could have known it was he who haunted the place by nights we could have dispensed with Dundee's services."
After tea the heavy clouds which had been gathering all the afternoon in white curled masses in the west, mounted higher with the sunset, and turned black and purple, emitting low growls, and occasionally parting to show long, jagged stripes of flame.
"It will be a good one when it gits here," remarked Rosie, putting the remaining biscuits into the bread box. "It's goin' to come sudden, too. If you've let anything to do after supper, Bob, you'd better be about it."
"Everything is battened down and tight caulked for the gale, Captain Gruber," replied Bob in nautical, but indistinct terms, his mouth being occupied with a postscript to supper, in the form of a stolen piece of Happie's cake.
It was nine o'clock, however, before the storm burst with sudden fury out of a greenish-blackness of sky and atmosphere that added to the horror of the vivid lightning.
Miss Bradbury sat erect on a straight chair with her feet on another, in rigid contempt of her own undeniable fear. Mrs. Scollard held Laura and Polly, one in each arm, and Bob and Happie tried to sing, but they missed Margery's sweet alto, and succeeded less well than usual in distracting the family attention from the storm. At its height a carriage dashed up the driveway, and a woman's voice cried: "Whoa!"
"Some one's got caught," observed Rosie, as the family looked at one another, the younger ones with a natural tendency to find something portentous in this arrival out of the wildness and blackness of the night.
"It's like Guy Mannering," whispered Happie to Bob.
Rosie opened the door. They heard her exclaim: "Well, for goodness' sake!"
Then she led the way into the library, as it had beendecided to call what had been the parlor, and what Rosie still designated "the room."
She was followed by Miss Eunice Neumann, her sister, and an older woman; all three were very wet and looked as disgusted as mortals could look.
"We thought we'd git home ahead of it," remarked Eunice Neumann by way of greeting, not specifying what they had hoped to outstrip. "But it came up faster than what we thought it would, and when we got here Emmaline said she'd know it if she'd go further, so we come in here. Mahlon took the horse," she added to Rosie, as if she had the first claim to an explanation.
"I'm glad you did not try to go on," said Mrs. Scollard, rising. "Even the distance to your house is too great to travel in weather such as this is. Shall Bob make a fire, a wood-fire on the hearth, Miss Keren? And Rosie will take Miss Neumann up-stairs and lend you dry garments, while yours are hung in the kitchen."
"No, sir; I hain't goin' to bother changin'," said Eunice emphatically. "We'll sit on these wooden chairs. 'Twon't hurt them none to git wet." So saying she drew forth three cherished old chairs which had been Miss Bradbury's grandmother's, and established herself on the first one, setting her sister and her friend an example.
"Bob, please make a fire," said Miss Bradbury. "We do not know this third lady?"
"That there one with 'em is Emmaline Gulick," said Rosie, supplying the deficiencies of introduction, as Eunice disregarded Miss Bradbury's reminder. She spoke, to Mrs. Scollard's embarrassment, in her usual tone, but the reason for this speedily developed.
"She's as deef as a whole row of posts," Rosie continued. "She used to live around here, but she moved down country; she's visitin' the Neumanns now."
"Yes," said Reba speaking unexpectedly. "We feel sorry fer her."
"Is Gretta at home alone?" asked Happie, shrinking from a particularly vivid flash of lightning as she looked out of the window.
"Yes, she is, and lucky to be there yet; I wisht I was," said Eunice. "You've got it nice here now. I wonder you hain't afraid, takin' what belongs to an orphan girl."