Miss Charlotte lingered to welcome the boys, between whom and the sweet blind woman there was the strongest affection. Polly had hardly been established before three long shadows came wavering up the eastward mounting hill of the main street, and Basil, Bruce, and Bartlemy strode over the little front gate without stopping for the ceremony of opening it, in quite their old way, and burst into the little grey house, filling it from roof to cellar with their hearty voices shouting:
"Little Grey Mother, little Grey girls, where in the little grey house are you?" this was their liturgical chant every week upon arriving.
"Here is the mother, and here are the girls. Welcome Battalion B!" chanted the girls, and the ceremony of reception was ended.
Wythie, Rob, and Prue rushed to the door each trying to be the first to open it. Three strong brown hands clasped the three held out to meet them, and the girls, laughing and chattering, the boys chattering quite as loudly, came into the quiet green and white room, filling it with youth and joy.
Mrs. Grey sprang to meet her boys, holding out both hands, her face radiating pleasure as brightly as the girls' faces did. Cousin Charlotte pressed close behind her—it was not strange that the Rutherford boys counted the hours from Monday to Friday that lay between them and their glad home-coming.
"My but it's good to get here!" ejaculated Bruce, stretching his long legs to the fire, but looking at Rob whose warm red-brown hair, flashing eyes and crimson cheeks were every whit as heartening to look upon as were the flames licking up through the great logs.
"There's no place like it—John Howard Paine was perfectly right," said Basil with quiet conviction, watching Wythie's soft hands as they cut generous slices from the afternoon'scake baking and added the cookies the tall boys had "loved from their first meeting," as Bartlemy said.
"There is no news, except that we have Polly Flinders here for a visit with no end in sight; her father is paralysed and has squandered all his money in worthless stocks," Prue was saying, in reply to Bartlemy's demand for news.
"Whew! As though that weren't news enough!" Bruce cried, sitting erect. "Fancy Flinders squandering! And paralysed, is he? The poor old fellow! He has been rather decent since your father died."
"Very decent," assented Rob. "And Hester was up, and brought her cousin Lester Baldwin, fresh from Japan. He is just like her father. And Hessie has some new longing, which I did not quite get at; something to do with helping incurable cripple children in the tenements," she continued.
"That sounds like the most interesting and sensible scheme she has had yet," said Bruce heartily. "But this cousin—You like Mr. Baldwin; did you say the Japaned cousin was like him?" And Bruce scowled melodramatically.
"Precisely," said Rob. "Only nicer."
"Come up to our other house, Basil," said Bruce. "I won't linger here!"
"We'll be back after supper," he added, relenting as the battalion filed out of the little grey house. "We must go up to look at the Caldwell house, but we'll come home here as soon as our duty is done."
"It's good to get home, Wythie," said Basil turning back on the steps, just as he spoke and just as he turned back each week at the same hour.
"I saved a life to-day, Bruce," said Rob. The Rutherford boys had got back to the little grey house, the evening had shut in around it, shutting out all the world except that small fragment of it which centred around the old hearth.
Over in the corner, under her green-shaded sewing lamp, sat the mother without whom the happiness of the six young people would have been incomplete, and this was true although the six were drifting more and more into the habit of being three pairs. Bartlemy was never tired of vainly trying to satisfy himself in painting Prue's wonderful colouring, and, if the truth were told, Prue never tired of having him try. Bartlemy's talent was developing into something to be taken seriously; already his brothers were making up their minds to the first parting when they should be graduated together. Basil and Bruce had delayed college till Bartlemy could enter with them,but evidently their ways would lie together no further. Bartlemy must go away to study in Italy and France, for his boyish nickname of Fra Bartolomeo was proving prophetic—Bartlemy would be a painter.
Wythie and Basil never seemed to have very much to talk about, but they drifted beside each other invariably, and their many moments of silence seemed to be quite as full of utterance as their moments of speech, as the observant Grey mother noted with a satisfaction that could not be wholly free from regret.
As to Rob and Bruce they chattered ceaselessly, never far apart, always absorbed in identical interests, and with the same kind of a sense of humour—which it is said is the strongest cement of friendship. It was hard to tell much about Rob and Bruce. It was plain to be seen that Bruce was of the same opinion that he had been from the first, which was that Rob easily surpassed all other girls, including sweet Wythie and handsome Prue, just as Rob considered Battalion B collectively the best and cleverest boys in the world, and Bruce the head of the battalion. But their comradeship was so entirely free from the suggestion of sentiment that there was no predicting how it would end. As to Prue, she wasbut sixteen, and Mrs. Grey was too sensible to build up romances, or to encourage them for such a youthful heroine. She knew that Prue had plenty of that ambition which the other girls lacked, the ambition to shine, to see and to be seen in a larger world than the little grey house and Fayre offered her. She had never been the simple and contented little girl that both of her sisters had been, and the modest fortune that had come to the Greys had rather contributed to her restlessness than made her contented, for it had given Prue a taste of small luxuries which whetted her appetite for greater ones.
Mrs. Grey watched this tendency in her baby with uneasiness. This home-loving and essentially womanly woman believed that ambitions of Prue's sort never brought happiness to the woman whom they drew after theirignis fatuusattractions, but rather substituted heartburnings and envy for peace, holding out an unattainable gaol of triumph, which would prove empty and unsatisfying even should it be reached. Mrs. Grey was an old-fashioned woman, believing that love, not applause, good deeds, not brilliant ones rounded and filled a woman's life.
"Cricket on the hearth?" suggested Bruce,replying to Rob's statement that she had saved a life that day.
"No; Tobias, I set his leg and bandaged it. Aunt Azraella thought that he must die," said Rob. "You're not the only surgeon of this sextette."
"Tobias?" repeated Bruce in the dark. "Don't know the gentleman. Where was Dr. Fairbairn, and why should he die from a broken leg?"
"Don't you remember Aunt Azraella's cat, Tobias?" cried Rob. Adding, as Bruce uttered an enlightened: "Oh!" "Aunt Azraella says that she doesn't want Tobias chloroformed because Elvira would grieve for him, but I believe she has a sneaking liking for the old cat herself; she drew a long breath of relief when I repaired him and uttered my professional opinion that he would pull through. Aunt Azraella doesn't seem quite strong, and it makes her gentler. Do you suppose that it would be your duty as a physician to impair the health of positive and vigorous ladies, like Aunt Azraella?"
"'Health chiefly keeps an atheist in the dark,'" quoted Bruce promptly. "I don't remember seeing that question of medical ethics raised, but it opens up a wide field for argument. I think a great many people would be softer and sweeterfor having less cast-iron nerves, and less self-sufficiency of health."
"Well, I think there are not a great many, but very few in America who suffer from cast-iron nerves," said Rob with a sigh. "I'm only beginning to realize what a horrible lot of misery there is in the world. I can understand your choice of a profession, Bruce."
"You always had medicinal qualities—" Bruce began.
"You mean medical," corrected Prue from her pose before Bartlemy near by.
"Do I?" asked Bruce. "I can perfectly understand my choice in every way, Rob. As to the misery, there is more than you will ever realize, I hope. But on the other hand as human beings grow better it will lessen. The higher the civilization the greater the capacity to suffer, but the stronger the sense of the rights of the weak and of our kinship and obligations even to 'our brother, the wolf,' as St. Francis used to say. His sanctity was great enough to reveal to him how endless was the chain of love—they hadn't found it out in his day."
"There doesn't seem to be much that girls, Grey girls in Fayre, for instance—can do," said Rob looking wistful.
"We know now, Robin, that everything is a system of units. We are all merely molecules, by comparison, but working together for a result," said Bruce. "You can make life sweet and wholesome all around you. You can help three big fellows, for instance, to march straight in a world full of pitfalls; you can cheer everybody and set the best of examples, which preaches wordlessly, to all who come near you. I think, as a unit, Rob, you might be considered a success. If all units did their cheerful best, as it is done in this little grey house, the collective result would be the millennium."
"Goodness, no!" cried Rob. Then she shook off her gravity and her face rippled into its usual merriment. "Did we ever talk so seriously before, Bruce, in all the days of our partnership? It must be the effect of Hester's visit and Mr. Flinders' sad state! Or is it the influence of Lydia? I have long wondered how we kept up our habit of laughter with Lydia about. She is like a perpetual Ash Wednesday—seems to be going about putting a pinch of ashes on every Grey forehead all the time, and saying: 'Remember, man, that dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return!' And she conveys the impression of having such a very poor opinion of the quality of ourdust! I wonder if Lyddie really can be but twenty-four years old! I can't believe it! Isn't it odd how many things one knows to be true, yet can't believe? Like India, for instance, and that the world is round, and all those things."
"All what things?" laughed Bruce. "Don't you believe in India—after Kipling?"
"Kim is so vivid that I can't believe it—don't pretend you don't understand, Bruce, because you always do," said Rob.
"I know," assented Bruce. "The wonderful detail that is vivid and unreal at once, as dreams are vivid and unreal. Rob, you are in a queer mood to-night; you have somewhat the effect on me this moment which you are trying to describe—you are most vivid, yet you seem unreal, at least unlike yourself."
"I feel so," agreed Rob promptly. "I feel excited, stirred, restless, happy, unhappy—all ways, but my normal way. What is making Basil so much more talkative than usual to-night?"
"His plans, I fancy; he is probably telling Wythie what he is considering," Bruce answered regarding his elder with a twinkle.
What Basil was saying was nothing, apparently to call forth the twinkle.
"Then you approve the idea?" Rob heard him say.
"Yes," said Wythie quietly. "I like the Caldwell place very much; it is dignified and beautiful. If you really mean to make literature your career, and to study, Basil, and became a specialist in bird study, besides writing a novel or so—you said a novel or so? Well, then," Wythie continued as Basil nodded a smiling assent, "I do not see how you could have a better place in which to live and work than in Fayre, so quiet, yet so near town, and in the old Caldwell place, among its elms and Norwegian pines."
"And you like it, Wythie? You think it could be made a home to be happy in?" persisted Basil.
Wythie looked up without embarrassment, her face shining with confidence.
"Anywhere may be that, Basil," she said. "And the Caldwell place more than most. If I were you I would buy it. And it is certainly an irresistible bargain at that price."
"Basil is talking of buying the Caldwell place, you see," said Bruce. "He has fully made up his mind, since father's latest letter came, to give up all thought of a business career after we are graduated and 'commence author,' as our English cousins say. I honestly think he is warranted inthe choice; I suppose he will do something the sort of thing John Burroughs does, as well as write novels—everybody writes novels."
"Except you and me," smiled Rob. "Must you go? How short these intercollegiate evenings are!"
"Intercollegiate, Rob?" echoed her mother, putting down her work and coming forward as the three tall guests rose to take their leave.
"Aren't they between college?" asked Rob unabashed. "Just two little full days sandwiched in between the five of hard labour at Yale."
The little grey house settled down to slumber soon after it was left to itself. The brisk autumnal winds are conducive to deep sleep, and Wythie and Rob in their room, and Prue in hers, opening from it, in which little Polly Flinders was tucked away in the corner, slept dreamlessly far into the night.
Then the sound of voices penetrated their sleep, far-off calls, men shouting, and, at last, a hand was shaking Wythie and Rob into wakefulness.
They sat erect, trembling and startled, to see their mother bending over them, a hand on the shoulder of each, as she cried: "Wythie, Rob, wake up, wake up!"
"What has happened?" cried the frightened girls on their feet in an instant.
"Charlotte's house is burning; they have called us. We must go," gasped Mrs. Grey. "Put on warm clothing; make haste! Prue, stay here with Lydia and that child," she added as Prue, wide eyed and pale, joined the group.
Somehow Wythie and Rob found themselves dressing; everything went wrong, yet they managed, after a fashion, to get themselves sufficiently protected from the chill of the night air, and found themselves with their mother, escorted by some of their men neighbours down the street. The elms stood out against a background of red, from which tongues of flame occasionally shot up, dulling the red glow on the sky, and revealing the smallest twigs. It was Cousin Peace's house which was burning! The girls repeated the words as they ran, trying to make them real, convey a meaning. Poor blind Cousin Peace! With this thought Wythie stopped short.
"Where is she? Where is Miss Grey?" she demanded.
It was Lawyer Dinsmore who held her arm; she felt his hand tremble on it as he answered: "We do not know; we could not find her—" Wythie groaned, and he hastily added: "It must be thatshe is safe, Wythie. There was time to get out, but no one has seen her. Her senses are so abnormally acute that she must have known of the fire before the alarm was given, and escaped."
"Unless she slept, and the smoke—" Wythie could not go on. "Hurry!" she murmured.
Mr. Dinsmore did not attempt to reassure her further; indeed, the suggestion that Miss Charlotte, alone in the house, might have been asleep and overcome by smoke had occurred to him before Wythie voiced it. It was not pleasant to wonder why it was that the alarm had been given from outside, not from within the doomed building.
Mrs. Grey and her daughters were stationed beyond the reach of danger where the Rutherford boys soon found and joined them.
There was no question of saving the house; from the first it was doomed, and it would have been most painful to have stood helplessly by while the peaceful house that had absorbed so much of its blind mistress' calm repose was destroyed, had not all other thought been swallowed up in the absorbing anxiety which left Miss Charlotte's fate doubtful. For the feeling was growing among the knot of bystanders around the Greys that, if she were safe, they should have had someassurance of it, that, by this time, some one should have come forward who could tell them definitely where Miss Grey had taken refuge.
"It is unbearable," groaned Rob at last, through her set teeth.
"I will go around to the other side and see if I can't find out something, Rob," said Bruce with a glance at the girl's agonized face. "Look after them, Basil, Bart, if I can't get back very soon."
His tall form moved through the crowd, elbowing its way until it was lost to sight, before the Greys fully realized that he was going.
Moments passed, a quarter of an hour, and Mrs. Grey, held fast on either hand by her girls, watched with them the mounting flames, tense, silent with the misery that made each second seem an hour. Bruce did not return, the fire licked and burst its awful way around the eaves, around Cousin Peace's chamber window! Wythie hid her face, shuddering; she could not look.
Suddenly a great roar went up from the crowd, and many voices together shouted words which the onlookers could not catch. They cheered mightily, and then a deadly stillness settled upon the mass of human beings.
"What is it?" Rob asked of a man who pushed his way towards them.
"Shut up!" Wythie heard another man mutter to this new-comer, and on this hint the latter snarled: "I don't know. Nothin', I guess." But Rob felt sure that the snarl was to conceal something, and that it did not spring from bad temper.
Suddenly the crowd seemed to go stark mad. Swaying, surging, pushing, it began to yell, hoarse, loud, frightful, like some sort of a monster.
"Come out, come back! The roof's caving! It's going! Come out!" the crowd roared, plainly articulate to the group on its edge, which was most vitally interested.
"Some one's in there, in that horrible fire!" gasped Rob. With one instinctive movement Basil and Bartlemy turned and looked at each other, reading each in the other's eyes the same thought. It was so exactly like Bruce!
Rob caught the look, saw the boys' hands meet in a tight clasp, saw their faces turn paler than before. Instantly she guessed, and shared their fear.
"Not he! Not Bruce!" she groaned.
Before the boys could answer a great shout rent the air, a shout that was triumphant. For an instant Rob forgot Cousin Peace.
"He's out!" she cried, and Basil and Bartlemy dropped each others' hands to steady her as she swayed.
"I shan't faint," she cried. "I never faint. They're cheering. He's out, he's out!"
"You must let me go," said Basil, and Bartlemy made no demur, though it must have been hard to stand at his post on guard with the mother and girls while Basil pushed his way to the front.
The roof fell in with a great plunge and a fierce up-leaping of flames which burned rapidly for a brief time. Then the fire began to fade out as it consumed the last remnants of the pretty old home.
"If we do not hear something soon I think I shall die or go mad!" cried Wythie. The waiting was getting unbearable.
"Don't you think you all ought to go home and wait there?" suggested Bartlemy. "You are shivering, and we shall hear about Miss Charlotte there as soon as here."
"I couldn't go, dear Bartlemy," Mrs. Grey said, and Bartlemy did not insist.
It was taking all the force the boy possessed to keep himself to his present duty when every muscle twitched to follow his brothers, and anxiety for Bruce was added to his previous fear for Miss Charlotte.
At last the strained watchers saw a movement in the crowd; it seemed to be falling away, and apath was opening towards them. Through this path they soon saw Basil's head towering above his surroundings, and behind him another even taller than he—Bruce? Ah, thank God, thank God! The relief of seeing him was so great that both Rob and Bartlemy groaned with the pain of it. Mrs. Grey and Wythie looked at them in new terror; they had not known the fear for Bruce shared by the other three.
Bruce was being helped along by Basil; he was hurt. Behind them came—yes, Dr. Fairbairn, and he was carrying something in his arms. A woman? It certainly was. The Greys clasped each other close, their throats tightening.
It was Miss Charlotte.
"You mustn't look like that," called Dr. Fairbairn in his booming voice as soon as he could make it reach the group that he was approaching. "I forbid it! Charlotte is safe; not a hair harmed. Mary, don't you dare to faint away! Wythie, pull yourself together! Rob, be sensible."
Scolding them as he came the big doctor set his burden on her feet, and Miss Charlotte smiled feebly, as Mrs. Grey gathered her in her arms.
"Not a word; not a word here, you womankind!" said the big doctor. "I've sent for a carriage. When you get home you may cry and faint,or do whatever you will, but not here. Charlotte was in no danger; she walked off—most sensibly." The old man nodded significantly, scowling over his shoulder at Mrs. Grey who was totally in the dark as to how to interpret his meaning.
"Here is my patient," Dr. Fairbairn continued turning to Bruce who had been trying to answer Bartlemy's questions and reassure Rob, though his lips twisted with pain.
"Bruce is burned. Wanted to get his name in the papers, so rushed into the burning house to rescue Charlotte. It served him quite right; she was quietly out walking all the time. She defeated his purpose of having his picture in the papers, bearing a limp woman out through curling flames! No one in the house, you understand, yet in he went, risking his life, and getting badly burned for nothing in this world! And he to be my partner as soon as he has finished his medical course! A pretty partner he will be, a sensational scamp like him! Here is the carriage. Let me put you in, Bruce, dear boy. Look out there, Bart; don't touch him—he isn't in a state to be handled." And the old doctor helped Bruce tenderly into the carriage, for he loved the boy as a son.
"Now, Charlotte, you next. Come, Mary; comechildren. Basil and Bartlemy, you and I are going to crowd up outside. It has been a horrible night; I don't believe any of us are up to walking," he said, as he closed the carriage door. "I've got to attend Bruce's wounds, and I'm going to take him to the little grey house where there will be some one besides a housekeeper to nurse him, Mary."
"Yes, of course," said Mrs. Grey, not fully understanding what was happening, and still clinging thankfully to Miss Charlotte.
Rob sat opposite to Bruce staring at him with big, frightened eyes. He had been in that horrible danger, and he was hurt!
Bruce looked at her, then at his two brothers, whose faces were ghastly, and at Wythie crying quietly in the corner.
He smiled, in spite of his pain. "I'm all right, boys and girls—and Rob," he said. "I thought we had Rutherfords to burn, while there was only one Miss Charlotte."
The crowded carriage bringing its exhausted occupants the short distance which lay between what had been Miss Charlotte's home and the little grey house, revealed the latter bright with lights as it drew near. The sight cheered every one; it seemed as though nothing could be seriously wrong as long as the lights of home gleamed forth unchanged.
Prue had the front door open before the carriage stopped, and ran down the flagged walk to meet it. She caught Cousin Peace in her arms with a depth of feeling that delighted her mother—a girl could not be in great danger from worldliness who thus appreciated one who was the embodiment of unworldliness.
Basil and the doctor, with Bartlemy tenderly aiding, led Bruce into the house, and got him on the ample couch in the dining-room which the Grey girls still called "their nurse," in remembranceof babyhood days when it faithfully tended them.
It was on occasions like this—no, there had never been an occasion in the least like this, but in emergencies, that Lydia's gravely responsible mind scored heavily. That venerable young woman had a brisk fire burning in the kitchen when the family and its guests came back, and the tea-kettle was steaming to the boiling point. Lydia had early been trained in all emergencies to have hot water in the tea-kettle, and she now faithfully lived up to the traditions of her forebears.
Dr. Fairbairn rubbed his hands with satisfaction as he glanced into the kitchen to see what were the prospects there.
"Lydia," he said, "your common sense would do credit to seven older women, if it were subdivided among them. Will you make coffee in abundance and rather strong and as quick as you can? Your tea-kettle is ready, I see."
"My grandmother always said that to have your kettle always full of hot water, and your Bible thumbed was a sign that you were the woman of Proverbs, and a comfort to your family," said Lydia with a sort of solemn self-satisfaction. "I'd ought to be commonsensed;shewas."
It did not take long to make the coffee, and its fumes put courage into the chilled and tired group waiting it even before the invigorating beverage had been tasted.
Dr. Fairbairn set down his empty cup with a satisfied smack of the lips. "Now, Bruce," he said, "we are both fortified to bind up your wounds, pouring in oil like true Samaritans."
The other boys helped remove Bruce's coat, a painful process, and the doctor's scissors bared his arms to the shoulders. They were badly burned, and Dr. Fairbairn's big, deft hands moved over them with extreme gentleness, anointing them and covering them with absorbent cotton which he bound into place with the linen bandages produced from the capacious depths of his inexhaustible pockets.
Bruce's hands had fared worse than his arms; they were ministered to in turn, and the poor lad found some respite from his pain when the ointment was bound on and the air excluded.
Wythie and Rob in the meantime had been helping Miss Charlotte to bed in their mother's room. She scarcely spoke; there was no need of Dr. Fairbairn's injunction to the girls to make her keep silence. She seemed utterly dazed, and there was a look in her face that made hercousins fear that the fright of the night had affected her mind. They gave her the sedative which Dr. Fairbairn had prepared, and Rob ran down-stairs, leaving Wythie on guard at Miss Charlotte's side.
"Do you think she can be injured—mentally I mean?" Rob asked, ending her account of Miss Charlotte's docile, silent and lost manner of behaving.
"Not a bit, I am certain," said Dr. Fairbairn cheerfully, though he could not help realizing that cases where a shock had permanently affected the mind were by no means rare.
"Charlotte is too well-balanced to be unhinged. We must expect her to suffer from a shock like this, and from the grief of losing a home to which she was deeply attached. You must keep her perfectly quiet, and we must make her sleep and sleep, until her quivering nerves are restored. She must not be allowed to talk of to-night more than just enough to prevent her dwelling on it in secret and magnifying its events. Bruce, do you feel able to tell us in a few words just what did happen to you—What made you go into that house when Charlotte and her maid were both out, and where did you find her at last?"
"It doesn't take long to tell how I happened togo in," said Bruce. "There seemed to be a growing conviction in the crowd that Miss Charlotte must be in the house, or some one would be able to account for her. So I went in to see."
"Perfectly simple, and a natural thing to do," observed Dr. Fairbairn dryly. "Well?"
"There were rooms which I couldn't get into—indeed they were no longer rooms; the fire had started there. But they were in the rear of the house, and I felt sure Miss Charlotte would not have been there. Indeed, the only possible explanation of her being in the house at all was that she had been smothered by the smoke, and had not wakened. This could only have happened in her bedroom, or on the way to the door, so I managed to get up-stairs——"
"Were they burning?" demanded Rob, leaning forward, her face pale, her hands tensely clasped.
"A little," said Bruce, smiling at her reassuringly. "Don't have a Looking-Glass Land scare, Rob; it's all over, and you see I did not perish on that burning stairway." Rob shuddered, and Prue dropped the cup she held; it fell in fragments to the floor.
"Hold on, Prudy! This story seems to behard on the china," cried Bruce. "There isn't any use in dwelling on details, aside from the effect on tea-cups. 'Suffice it to say,' as I suppose Basil will say when he writes novels, I got into Miss Charlotte's room, and she wasn't there. Then the crowd began to shout at me to come out, and I took its advice. Not much too soon; the roof fell—" Bruce stopped short. He could not carry off his story with the lightness of touch with which he had begun it. The recollection of that crashing roof, falling just as his feet crossed the threshold, sickened him. Life seemed very precious as he recalled it, and the death he had so narrowly escaped unspeakably dreadful.
Bruce felt his audience tighten, as it were, under the strain of his own feeling and a sudden, full realization of their close reprieve from an unbearable tragedy.
He turned to smile into Basil's blanched face. "I lost my overcoat," he said quickly. "I had wrapped it around my head to keep off the heat and smoke. It was an unusually satisfactory coat."
"Where did you find Charlotte?" asked Dr. Fairbairn.
Bruce turned to him, grateful for being helped over and away from the remembrance of thatfrightful exit with the crash of the infalling roof in his ears.
"Some one said that Annie had been taken over to St. Chad's rectory," said Bruce. "But I heard people around me saying when I came out without Miss Charlotte and without having found any trace of her that she must have perished, or she would have gone with her maid. There was a moment as I heard them talking that my heart sank within me, remembering those rooms in the rear, burned out before I got there. And then, like an inspiration, there flashed upon me a picture of Miss Charlotte's favourite spot down by the river, and I started for it on the run. There she was, walking up and down, back and forth, her hands clasped straight in front of her, her head hanging, and a strange, bewildered look on her gentle face. Not a hair was harmed, but it was most pathetic."
Bruce paused for an instant, and Dr. Fairbairn frowned dreadfully, as Mrs. Grey caught her breath in a half sob.
"Very fortunate she was there, and nothing whatever pathetic in her being sensible enough to get out of the way of the rabble, when she could do no good," the doctor said gruffly. The Rutherford boys smiled at one another, well used toDr. Fairbairn's ways, and Bruce resumed: "Miss Charlotte knew me at once, and came with me willingly when I told her that the Greys were waiting for her anxiously. The doctor and Basil met me coming back with her, and brought us to you. After that you know what happened—no one better, since you brought me here to the little grey house, and comforted me with coffee and affection, as the Greys best know how."
"And I intend that they shall continue their ministrations," said Dr. Fairbairn promptly. "Mary Grey, you can keep this boy here until he is able to be about, can't you?"
"Of course I can," said Mrs. Grey quickly, though she hadn't the least idea how she was to manage it.
"Oh, wait a minute, Doctor," expostulated Bruce. "I shall do very well at home, and I can't add to the burdens in this house; the Greys are rather heavily weighted just now."
"You wouldn't do in the least well up at that big Caldwell place, Bruce boy," said the doctor, like the autocrat that he was. "You are going to have a hard time for a few days, harder than you realize now when you are freshly made comfortable. You will be feverish and in pain, and there isn't any one up there to nurse you—not eventhese amiable young giraffe brothers of yours, who would know as much about nursing as a cat, if they were there! You didn't accomplish much by your folly—rushing into a burning house when it was empty on the chance of saving a life, but it wasn't the meanest form of folly, after all, and I'm not sure that you don't deserve some reward, if only in consolation for missing the medal for life-saving which you hoped to earn. Certainly the Greys will keep you—I order it!"
"There's the lean-to room in which I used to plan my stories when I was a public entertainer," said Rob. "Wythie and I will turn in there—it's perfectly comfortable, so don't remonstrate, Bruce! Cousin Peace will share Mardy's room, Polly is already established in Prue's, so there you are! This is the most blessedly elastic little house! I've no doubt we could tuck away Basil and Bartlemy if they insisted."
"Nobody need desire a better bed than is this old nurse," said Bruce stretching one hand into the curves of the ancient couch, and immediately bringing it back with an involuntary moan.
"Now, Mary," said the doctor, viewing with experienced eye the mounting colour in Bruce's cheek and the dilating brightness of his eyes, "ifyou and your girls can get ready these various nests which Rob has just planned, I think our foolhardy young hero here had better be put to bed with a quieting draught, and allowed to sleep. He is more overwrought than he realizes."
"Certainly, doctor," said Mrs. Grey rising immediately, restored to herself by the necessity of action. "Come, Rob and Prue. We will improvise a bed for Wythie and Rob that will answer for to-night, and settle Bruce in the girls' room, then by the morning we can make everybody more comfortable."
"Oh, please—Mrs. Grey—Rob, I can't turn you and Wythie out of your room, you know!" remonstrated Bruce distressed at the thought.
"That's all right, Bruce," cried Rob. "I'd do more than give my room to one who tried to save Cousin Peaceful, even if he were not my chum."
She laughed as she spoke, but the laugh was tremulous, and Bruce and Dr. Fairbairn looked after her and then looked at each other with eyes so full of meaning that in that glance they exchanged confidences.
"You will go back to college on Monday, boys, and tell the heads what has happened, andget permission to take notes of the lectures for me, won't you?" said Bruce after a moment's silence.
"Aren't you together in lectures?" asked the doctor.
"I'm taking the scientific, but Bas and Bart take thebelles lettrescourse," said Bruce. "I shall be able to go back in a few days?"
"If you don't catch cold, and can go back with one of the boys to attend to you. You can't use those arms under ten days," answered the doctor. "It seems to me at your age I should not have been so impatient of coddling in the little grey house, by the three nicest and prettiest girls between Maine and California."
"It would be a hero, doctor, that could turn from it, if it did not postpone greater happiness," said Bruce. "I want to graduate."
"Oh, you want to graduate! And you are in a tremendous hurry to read medicine with me—I see!" said the doctor. "I have always been a meek and humble man, my boy, but you will make me conceited of my charms."
The kind old doctor, whose sixty years made his rest at night important after a busy day, helped Basil and Bartlemy get Bruce to bed, and drove away only when morning's nearness madegoing to bed an absurdity. Basil stayed with Bruce, and Bartlemy decided to nap on the broad old "nurse" for the few remaining hours of darkness.
For several days Bruce suffered more keenly than he had expected to, just as Dr. Fairbairn prophesied. Bartlemy went back to Yale on Monday, as usual, but Basil stayed behind to help nurse and serve his brother, who was helpless for nearly a week.
Miss Charlotte slept for three days, only waking to take nourishment, and then she drifted back to oblivion of her loss. She had loved her home, the home of her birth and entire life, so dearly that Mrs. Grey was grateful for every hour that spared her consciousness of that loss.
That courageous woman found even her competent hands overfull for those seven days of nursing and a crowded house. But Wythie and Rob pervaded every corner with their helpfulness, and between school hours Prue uncomplainingly shouldered the hardest tasks that she could find undone. The thought that the little grey house had so nearly lost big, noble Bruce, and that he had risked his life only on the chance of saving Cousin Peace, who was dearer than any one outside its immediate circle, awoke in Pruesuch a depth of gratitude that nothing was too hard for her to do to prove that gratitude.
When Miss Charlotte came back from her voyaging in unknown waters the Grey family rejoiced anew, for she came back her old, calm, sweet self; sorrowful in the loss of her house, but not harmed by the shock of the fire, and far too deeply good to brood over the holocaust of all the memorials and associations of her life. Nothing was said by Miss Charlotte of Bruce's daring plunge, at that last moment of special danger, into the burning house in search of her. But once Rob, coming into the dining-room, saw Cousin Peace bending over the boy's couch with both her delicate hands lightly enfolding his bandaged ones, and she knew that Bruce was receiving his thanks.
Bruce's back was towards the door, which was fortunate, for he would have been greatly embarrassed to meet Rob's eyes, and Cousin Peace, of course, could not see her. Rob slipped away quietly, and when she came singing along the hall a little later Bruce was relating college tales to Miss Charlotte, smiling over by the window, in Mrs. Grey's low sewing chair.
"Fayre is ringing with your heroism, Bruce," cried a voice from the other direction, and Robturned to see Frances coming in the front door. "And what is more, Rob," Frances added as she and Rob met in the doorway of the dining-room, "I see Hester Baldwin coming up the street as fast as she can come."
"Hester!" cried Rob, setting down her bowl of blancmange. Bruce ungratefully called all the food prepared for him during these days of feverish tendencies by one generic name—"softness."
"It is Hester, actually," she cried. "And Dr. Fairbairn is driving down the street; I wonder he didn't overtake you."
"Not while he continues to drive Reliable," laughed Frances. "Reliable makes his daily visits in time, but he doesn't overtake many people."
"Well, Hester, it's very nice to see you coming up the hill unexpectedly, as if you were a Fayre maiden, and not a daughter of Gotham!" said Rob welcoming her friend.
"I had to come out—I'm going back early, so don't be frightened," said Hester. "I saw in the paper an account of Bruce Rutherford's splendid act, and that your cousin was burned out, and I couldn't rest one more day without finding out for myself how bad everything was."
"Pretty bad," said Rob, raising her voiceslightly to be sure it reached Bruce on the dining-room couch. "We have Bruce here, being nursed by Basil, and bothering the Greys,—tended by everybody. Cousin Peace is here, of course. And we have adopted a child, more or less—more or less adopted, I mean; not more or less a child. Altogether this has been an eventful week for us."
"It certainly sounds so!" cried Hester, looking at Rob hard, not knowing whether to take her seriously.
"You go into the dining-room; Basil and Wythie and Prue and France are there, burning incense around our martyred Bruce—as though he hadn't had enough of burning! I'll open the door for the doctor, who is tying his horse, and follow you," said Rob. She came in, bringing Dr. Fairbairn, whose six feet two of height, and proportionate bulk always seemed to fill up the little grey house in every crevice.
"Is this a bee?" demanded the doctor as he entered, pulling off his driving-gloves with a light chafing of each hand as he stripped it, and glancing around at the five girls.
"Two B's, doctor; two thirds of Battalion B, but there's no chance for anything but the busiest sort of idleness in this house, since Bruce tookpossession of it, with his wounded hands,—to drop into a poetical strain," said Rob.
"Dr. Fairbairn is going to let me decamp on Monday, aren't you, doctor?" hinted Bruce.
"If you will promise to take proper care of yourself. One would suppose he might be reasonably contented here, now wouldn't he?" added the doctor, looking around the pleasant room.
"Oh, well, I may be a B, but I don't want to be a drone," said Bruce. "I can take lectures with my bandages on. A little too long of this halcyon weather and I'd be good for nothing, smothered in honey, like an unworthy B." And Bruce's eyes rested lovingly on the Grey mother that moment entering.
Hester had been looking so preoccupied all this time that Wythie noticed it.
"Hester has something to tell us," she said.
"I'll take Bruce up-stairs and bandage him afresh, and Miss Hester can disburden her mind while we are gone," said Dr. Fairbairn.
"If you wouldn't mind listening, you are the very ones whom I most want to hear what I have to say—if I have courage," added Hester, with a sudden unusual shyness.
Dr. Fairbairn settled back into his chair with a surprised look at the girl.
"I can sit here exactly fifteen minutes," he said, consulting his candid looking watch.
"I told you, Rob, about that crippled child that I saw in the tenement," Hester began. Rob nodded. "And I told the others Greys and Bruce," Rob said.
"I have been thinking hard ever since, and wondering how to help him," said Hester. "It seemed to be impossible till I suddenly remembered to find out how much it cost to support a child, and then I found it a simple matter, after all. I hate society, I—oh, Rob knows; I didn't mean to talk about that. But I got mother and father to say that I might drop certain things which I never wanted to do in the first place, and use the money they would cost for that boy. I couldn't get him into a hospital, because he was incurable, so I put him somewhere to board—in the country—till I could do better. Then it struck me that it wouldn't cost very much to support a house for such children, and I talked to father. He was respectful to my plans at last. He had always laughed me aside, because he thought I was full of notions, just a dissatisfied young girl. But he told me in this talk I had with himthat if I would go slowly and sanely he would help me every step of the way; that he couldn't possibly object if I wanted to lead a useful life, instead of a merely pleasant one—not that this life wouldn't be pleasanter than playing all the time! I have a little money that is all my own, and father will help me. I should like to hire a house and a housekeeper, and put into that house as many incurably crippled children as we could afford. And I'd like them to have a good doctor's care, so that, though they were incurable, they might be helped as much as they could be. And I should like this home to be in Fayre, where the Greys could help me, and watch over it. Besides, this is where I learned so much that I should like to have the Home where the atmosphere of the little grey house could flow over and around it."
Hester paused, quivering with excited eagerness, embarrassed that she had revealed her innermost self to such a circle of listeners. But it was a circle of the right sort. Dr. Fairbairn arose, with a mist on his spectacles. He walked over to Hester and took both her hands. "My dear, good, earnest child," he said, "I admire you and respect you. You have thought of a beautiful thing, beautifully conceived and it seemsto me simple and practical. Everything can not be done in a day; let me turn over in my mind what you have said, and we shall see, we shall see."
"We will do all we can to help you, Hessie," said Mrs. Grey, her eyes beaming with longing to begin that instant to mother all the maimed waifs whom Hester could offer her.
"Father will help; I know he will," cried Frances, eagerly.
"Our father, too," said Basil quietly. "Some day he is coming to Fayre, not too long hence, I hope."
"It is lovely!" cried Prue, her imagination picturing vividly the attractive rôle of Lady Bountiful to forlorn and grateful childish hearts.
"I'll begin telling stories again, at once, to earn money for the support of one little incurable. I could earn enough to support one, if it were a small one, with not too big a hump, or whatever ailed her," said Rob, talking nonsense as usual to hide her deeper feeling. "And, Hessie, I am proud to call you my friend!"
"I will be a specialist on little children's incurable diseases, and I will give my services to the Home!" cried Bruce, sitting erect with tumbled hair and his face glowing with genuineenthusiasm. "I have always been afraid that I might be a failure in my profession because I had income enough to live on without practising, but this will save me."
He followed Dr. Fairbairn up-stairs to have his wounds dressed, and Hester looked from one to the other left behind.
"They were in earnest? They really did approve?" she implored.
"In entire earnest, and they approved profoundly," affirmed Rob. "This may be the birthday of good that shall outlast our day."
Hester caught her breath. "If only I can do something!" she murmured.
Bruce went away on Monday, with Basil and Bartlemy to support him, and with his arms and hands still bound up. He resolutely turned his back on the temptation to let his wounds serve as an excuse for prolonging days which had been among the pleasantest of his life, in spite of physical suffering.
Miss Charlotte had been persuaded by the council of all her friends to abandon indefinitely her intention of rebuilding her house. It was irreplaceable; nothing could restore to her the walls permeated with the love and associations of a lifetime, and there was room for her and need of her, as Mrs. Grey urged her to remember, in the little grey house. So, for that winter at least, the little house was the richer by another inmate, and the Greys set about fitting for her use the room in the lean-to, to which Rob had been wont to repair through her childhood and big-girlhoodfor solitude and inspiration. It really was a dear room, although one could not stand erect in all parts of it to view its charms. On either side of the door by which it was entered sat a low rush-bottomed chair, with yellow stripes running around its grooved back much dimmed and worn by years of service. At each end of the room was a window; between the corner and one of these windows stood a mahogany bedstead, with rolling head and footboard of equal height. Beside the other window stood a high mahogany bureau, with carved columns unnecessarily upholding its swelled front upper drawer, and with two small drawers raising its top into a second story. Above this bureau hung an old gilt mirror, divided across its top by a strip of gilt framing a pleasing representation of two white houses facing a common, through which a walk, bordered by the stiffest of trees, mounted to the village church. The lean-to roof slanted rapidly down from these windows on each side of the room towards the south, but the few feet between the ceiling and the floor on that side were broken by two half windows, their tiny panes contriving to let in a little of the southern sunshine and breeze, and a glimpse of the apple-trees beyond. It really was a most lovable and harmonious room, and itsquaintness seemed the proper setting for Cousin Peace's sweet aloofness from the world of to-day.
Rob came alone to begin dismantling the room of its mementos of the time when she had been the Scheherazade of Fayre, and had told stories to the children for money which the Grey family had then so sorely needed. These mementos were the absurdities which Battalion B had showered upon her. The mottoes which Bartlemy had illuminated still adorned the walls; Rob smiled and then sighed as she took them down, one after the other—"Young Robin Grey came a-Courtin' We," "Plain Tales for the Bills," and other ridiculous sentiments which the boys had contributed for her to hang in her auditorium, so they declared, but which had hung here all this time, here where Rob used to come to prepare her stories. Battalion B's other contributions to her enterprise were also piled on the chairs and in the corners of this room—rattan rods, slates, primers, a pedagogue's cap, and an impossible false front of yellow flax, with its wide cotton parting; this Bruce had sent her.
Rob laid her treasures in the clothes-basket, amusement and regret written on her face. She was still young—just over the line, childhood not out of sight behind her, but its very nearnessmade it worse to know that it was inaccessible. Those had been hard days, but they had been pleasant ones, and sixteen was a delightful age! Eighteen's two additional years made great differences.
Rob folded the false front down its parting and smoothed its flaxen locks meditatively. No shadow had come over the jolly comradeship that had been established between her and Bruce at their first meeting; he was still her boy friend, treating her with that fine mixture of consideration, perfect understanding and equality which is the ideal of American boy and girl friendship. But Rob felt quite sure that Bruce's chummy manner hid quite as much of another sort of affection for her as Basil quietly, but frankly showed for Wythie, and which Wythie accepted with her sweet, honest single-mindedness. Rob had no desire to exchange her most precious comradeship for love, and Bruce was too keen-eyed not to know that, and not to retain the good he had by the utmost vigilance, biding his time in the hope of making himself indispensable to Rob. Bruce was nineteen; Rob felt sometimes, and for a brief moment as if she were drifting towards a trap, for she was a little girl at heart still, and shrank like a wild bird from a retaining hand.
"It is a great pity to be eighteen, and it's a greater pity that your friends have to grow up," Rob said aloud, depositing the false front on the top of her collection in the clothes-basket, and recalling Bruce's expression when he left the little grey house on Sunday night to be ready for an early start to college Monday morning. He had bidden her good-bye with his old chummy pat on the shoulder, given with the finger-tips which protruded from the bandages of his right hand. All that he had said was: "Good-bye, Bobs Bahadur; you've been to me the trump you always are. I'll pour oil on the troubled waters for you if ever you get into trouble—hot water, I suppose I could more appropriately have said. I don't suppose I'll ever have a chance to tend you wounded, as you did me, because Bobs Bahadur is a general that doesn't know defeat, but I'll read to you if you are laid up, and return my obligations in any other way, if I have the chance. A wounded hero might have worse nurses than you and Wythie, and Prue, too, between her pursuit of knowledge."
He had gone off laughing, speaking like a schoolboy, but though Bruce could control his tongue, and include Rob with the other two girls, he could not keep his eyes from regarding her with alook that told her there was only one girl in all the world for Bruce Rutherford.
"Bother such nonsense!" ejaculated Rob impatiently, shaking her shoulders as she saw her clouded face in the gilt mirror, below the village green and the white cottages.
"What nonsense, Robin?" asked Miss Charlotte's soft voice, and Rob turned towards her, glad for the moment that her cousin could not see her face.
"Only growing up, being a young woman, Cousin Peaceful," she said. "I was taking down these trophies of my story-telling days, the absurd things Battalion B used to send me, and I was thinking what good times we used to have, and what a pity it was that we couldn't be boys and girls forever instead of sober men and women."
"I haven't noticed any very great sobriety so far, Robin dear," remarked Miss Charlotte quietly. "Do you feel sorry to see the story unfolding for Wythie and Basil?"
"Oh, I hate it! No, I don't!" cried Rob. "I'm glad about it, of course—Wythie goes on as quietly as if she were a little rosebud opening—sunflower, would be a better simile, because she looks up to Basil in the most sunflowerish wayimaginable. But it is rather horrid, though it is nice, now don't you think so, Cousin Peace?"
"I think Robin is not fully fledged yet," said Cousin Peace wisely, and Rob was silenced by the portentous little word at the end of her sentence.
Cousin Peace had firmly refused to consider becoming one of the family in the little grey house unless she were allowed to use the lean-to room which was never occupied; no one, she declared, should be disturbed by her coming, though Rob promptly reminded her that they were sure to be disturbed by her wherever she might be, for she was such a disturbing element. Rob was constantly caressing Cousin Peace by loving pretence of her being a great trial.
The Greys had all objected to giving Miss Charlotte the lean-to room, but when it was ready for her Wythie cried out in surprised delight: "Why, it's the very nicest room in the whole house!"
It was a dear little room. The old-fashioned, fine furniture remained in its place. Soft green and white short curtains framed the small paned windows, plain green carpet covered the floor, long boxes of flowers stood before the half windows on the south side of the room, under the lean-to, anda few good pictures hung on the straight sides of the walls. Though Cousin Peace could never see her surroundings, her senses were so delicate that one felt impelled to surround her with the finest beauty, beauty which she, more than most people, would have revelled in had she not been debarred from seeing it. But Rob said truly that "Cousin Peace's insight was much keener than most people's outsight"; it was hard to believe that she did not get all the colour and outline of every picture, flower, and sunset that came before her.
Over Miss Charlotte's bed Wythie had hung a fine photograph of St. Lucy, with her lamp and the palm of a martyr's victory. It was like Oswyth to remember the significance of St. Lucy's legend, her sacrifice of her beautiful eyes and her reward of others more beautiful than those which she had lost, and her name's meaning—light. To remember how peculiarly appropriate to blind Cousin Charlotte, whose inward vision revealed to her more than mere eyes could have shown, was the legend of Santa Lucia.
"It seems kind of quiet, like a place to be good in," said little Polly Flinders, surveying the result of the girls' work in the lean-to room with serious gaze, as she nursed Prue's old doll, Hortense.
It grew to be just that to all the Grey family. When annoyances came, when those days dawned which dawn for every one, in which nothing seems right and many things seem wrong; when nerves quivered and other people seemed suddenly aggressive and unkind, then Wythie, Rob, and Prue fell into the habit of creeping up to Cousin Peace's little lean-to room to be set straight.
"It is like having a domestic chapel," said Rob, who most of the three was subject to perturbed spirits and the variability, which, she said herself, was due to the reddish shade of her bright brown hair.
Little Polly Flinders loved dearly to crawl off into the corner, as far under the lean-to as the low rocking-chair, which had served all the Greys in turn, would go, and quietly to sit rocking Hortense, watching Miss Charlotte with awe-struck eyes that never got to the end of the charm and the lessons of that gentle face.
It became Polly's task to water the flowers in the boxes under the windows in the lowest dip of the lean-to, because she most easily of any of the inmates of the little grey house could crawl up to them as they thirstily awaited her. Perhaps it was because Polly was so faithful to them, perhaps because Charlotte Grey loved them sodearly, but for some reason the flowers in the lean-to room blossomed as no others in Fayre seemed to blossom, and filled the air with the sweetness of mignonette, heliotrope, and roses, brightening the quiet room with their glad colours.
Prue came home one afternoon with a face that would have betrayed her perturbed state of mind to her family had there been any one about to have seen it. But her mother had gone to Aunt Azraella's, Wythie and Rob were out, Lydia sat in the kitchen darning long black hose to a wailing accompaniment, and Kiku-san was too sleepy at that hour to be observant of Prue's expression.
But the instant she crossed the threshold of the lean-to room, Miss Charlotte dropped her knitting—as usual she was making soft wrappings for little babies—and said: "Why, Prudy, dear girl, what has happened?"
"No one ever sees things as quickly as you do, Cousin Peace!" exclaimed Prue, taking off her hat before the landscape mirror, and lightly "fluffing" her golden hair before she took the low stool opposite Cousin Peace. "There hasn't anything really happened, Cousin Charlotte, but there is a chance for something to happen."
"There usually is," remarked Cousin Peace, resuming her knitting. "Fourteen chances ofsixty minutes each, at the very least, in each day, and I think we may as well count them as twenty-four, because the greatest event of my life was that dreadful fire, and that happened in the night."
"Yes, but I mean that I have a chance, right here in my hand, for something nice to happen to me, and I'm afraid mama won't let it happen," said Prue dubiously.
Miss Charlotte reached over and touched the letter that Prue held.
"What is it all about, Prue?" she asked, leaning back again.
"First of all, Cousin Peace, do you think it is so very dreadful to be ambitious?" asked Prue.
"I think it is very dreadful to lack ambition, Prudy. I think it all depends on the direction one's ambitions take," returned Miss Charlotte.
"Mama warns me all the time not to be ambitious, to be content—I think she means humdrum," said Prue. "Of course there is no one half as good as mama, but just think a minute, Cousin Peace. She married early, and she has been swallowed up in her home, living for us and for poor papa. Now, couldn't a woman be good and happy if she was called to a different life? Is this the only way to be good?"
"Prue, that is a foolish question, because you know quite well that a great many people are being good, in a great many different ways and places," said Cousin Peace. "Just what have you in mind? Don't you think you had better tell me exactly what you have to decide? What is the text of your address?"
"Yes, it is this that has set me off, but I think of these things a good deal," said Prue slowly. "This is a letter from Hester Baldwin. She knows I want dreadfully to go to New York for music, and drawing, and languages, and such special studies. She has told me that her father can get me into a perfectly fine school—I think I mean a fashionable school," Prue interrupted herself to say, with the honesty that was a Grey characteristic. "She says that they would be delighted to have me spend the winter with them, with the Baldwins, Cousin Charlotte, who entertain and go out a lot, and where I should have a chance to meet the people I want to know, and to see the life I want to see—Oh, I know mama will say no!" Prue broke off with almost a sob.
"Prue, you are but sixteen," began Miss Charlotte.
"Just at the age when impressions are keenest!" cried Prue. "It would do me heaps of good!Don't disapprove, Cousin Charlotte! Please don't! I want you to make mama see it my way."
"My dear little Prudy, come nearer; put your head on my lap. There!" said Cousin Charlotte, running her long fingers through the hair that glistened like spun gold between them. "Now, dear, listen to me. You are getting a good education in Fayre; better, very possibly, than you would have in that fashionable school—certainly as good as one could ask. Look at the question honestly, Prudence, and as a truthful girl tell me if I am not right when I say that I think you are far better off to be denied this doubtful opportunity that has come to you. You have good society in Fayre; the companionship of gentlemen and gentlewomen, and it is society within the scope of your income to go into and to receive in your turn. In New York you would meet well-bred people too, dear, because the Baldwins would not admit other into their home, but fashionable people are not necessarily well-bred; as soon as you went beyond the Baldwin's immediate circle you would probably find many things less satisfactory than they are here. This is an age in which notoriety is mistaken for fame, and success is measured by a standard very like the circus posters which adorn the barns aroundFayre in June. You have been taught by example and precept that success is not always measured by results, but is always measured by the end for which one works and lives. Dear Prue, keep your ideals; never for one moment lose your hold on the vision of perfection in character and the ends for which you labour. It is a dream which brings its own fulfilment, if not in outward surroundings, at least in the character of the dreamer. Your mother fears, dear Prue, your tendency to be attracted by glitter and by the noise of plaudits which are not the echo of truth. Neither of the other girls will be drawn away from their poise of mind, which enables them to distinguish relative values very exactly. But you, my Prudy, are less content, and your mother wants you to find happiness within yourself, since outward belongings never give it."
"But, Cousin Peace, I only want to see and be seen; I can't help knowing what I look like, and I want to use my gifts in a larger field," said Prue, very low, and rather glad that her cousin could not see her handsome face as she claimed its possession. "Now, do you despise me?"
Miss Charlotte laughed. "My dear, my dear, my dear!" she cried. "It is very natural to want to see and to be seen, though it does sound alittle odd to hear you claiming beauty so frankly. But, Prudy, don't you expect to use your eyes to good purpose, wherever you are, and is it a little thing that your bonny face will give pleasure to your loved ones? I am afraid you want an audience, my little cousin, but remember that anything outside doesn't matter seriously; it is the close heart things that count, especially to women. I don't mean to underrate your gift of beauty, Prue, nor to have you underrate it, but don't overrate it. Wythie is very sweet and pretty, and Rob's charm exceeds her good looks, which are not insignificant. You have fallen into the Grey heritage—that's all. The Greys are usually more or less handsome. But that does not necessitate foolish ambitions. There is another side to this plan of going to New York for the winter which does not seem to have occurred to you. You would be cultivating tastes which you have not the means to gratify. You have a comfortable, dear little old home, Prudy, as much of this world's goods as you need, but you could not maintain the habits of the girls whom you would meet in that fashionable school, not for one month. Can you afford a great many expensive dresses, carriages, flowers, theatre tickets unlimited, all the costly nothings that make uptremendous sums in a season? And if you can not, why should you want to make yourself miserable by acquiring tastes which you have no reason to suppose that you can ever gratify? If you are vaguely restless now what would you be after a winter in that atmosphere, to which, at first, you would take only too kindly?"
"I could manage," said Prue. "They would not know what I could afford."
"Don't you think, Prue, that is not quite honest?" suggested Cousin Peace gently. "Don't you think upright, self-respecting honesty demands that one should take that place in the world which belongs to him? And common sense will tell you it is the only way to be happy. I don't mean to preach, my dear, but when you look around you and see how many people are false to their ideals, and sink to incredible baseness for the love of display, it seems to me that when one is but slenderly equipped with money it is an obvious duty to safeguard one's self by cultivating simple tastes, and by living with perfect integrity on that basis which is his rightfully, striving of all things for contentment. I do not approve of your feeding your love of luxury, your desire for a wider field, even though I can easily forgive you for knowing that you are a remarkably prettygirl. You should not accept Hester's invitation, Prue; you should stay in your own place until you are old enough to carve your way through to what you want, and by that time I hope very much that you will see how lovely it is to live in the simple, noble, unworldly atmosphere in which you have been born and bred. If I were you I wouldn't ask my mother to let me go to Hester this winter."
"There wouldn't be any use in my asking her if you disapprove," said Prue, half tempted to resentment, though she liked to be preached to by Cousin Peace.