"There wouldn't be if I did approve, you rebellious child," smiled her cousin. "Mary would never expose her baby to the danger of having her golden head filled with the sort of ambition which leads to bitterness of soul." Cousin Peace stroked the golden head very kindly as she spoke, and Prue lifted it with a sigh.
"Worldiness is beautiful to think about," she said, "but I wonder if worldliness isn't rather splendid to live? I can't help thinking it would be fine to enter a vast room, magnificently attired, and hear people catch their breath and whisper: 'There's the beautiful Miss Grey!'"
Miss Charlotte laughed long and merrily."Prue, you are just a little girl after all, and in spite of your great height! You haven't changed at all since the time that you used to get on that ragged old silk from the attic and trail about playing you were Mary of Scotland. Do you remember how you used to add: 'Before she was beheaded,' when we asked who you were, and you used to say: 'Mary Queen Scots'? I think I needn't have preached such a long sermon to you, if you have only such a childish ambition as that!"
"Who's talking of ambitions?" cried Rob in the doorway. "Here is Polly going to have a birthday next week and be nine years old, and I have found out that her ambition is to have a lovely doll, all her own, so that she can feel that her child is not an adopted one, like Hortense."
Rob came in, all fresh and glowing from the out-of-doors. Miss Charlotte put out her hand and Rob dropped Polly's little hand to clasp it.
"What are your ambitions, Robin Redbreast?" asked Cousin Peace, using Rob's childish nickname.
"I believe I haven't one; isn't it disgraceful?" cried Rob. "Only to be happy, happy, with Mardy and the girls—and you, dearest Cousin Peaceful—in the little grey house, forever and ever without change or decay."
"Dear Robin!" murmured her cousin. "If only that might be! But your ambition may be, itwillbe realized, for love is eternal."
"Oh, yes! I believe I am ambitious to resume my story-telling successfully, to help Hessie's little cripples," added Rob with a light pressure of her cheek on Miss Charlotte's hand as her only answer.
Prue laid before her mother the proposition from Hester Baldwin which it seemed to the girl herself one that no one could possibly refuse. Mrs. Grey did not entertain it for a moment. "The Baldwins are charming people, dear," she said quietly, as she folded Hester's letter and returned it to its envelope. "If you had no home I should be thankful to have you received into theirs. As it is, and considering that the home to which you would return is such a simple one, I think you would get more harm than good from the school of which Hester speaks. Your place is in the little grey house, my Prudy, and in the little Grey family; it would be too small a family by one if you left us."
Prue did not urge the point; there never was the slightest use in urging Mrs. Grey to do something upon which she decidedly made up her mind in the beginning, but the girl's beauty was cloudedfor some days by the shadow of her dissatisfaction.
When Hester came out to spend a few days before Christmas Prue hoped that she might convert her mother to other views, but Hester was so engrossed with her project of founding a home for crippled little children that she had forgotten her plan for Prue.
"They tell me that, though he is incurable, the poor little fellow I have sent out to Jersey really is better!" cried Hester almost the moment that she arrived. "Only suppose there were twenty of them!"
"Five dollars a week—two hundred and fifty a year, five thousand a year—Oh, Hester, I'm afraid you will have to get on with less than twenty little cripples. You can't afford so many!" cried Rob.
"Nonsense, Rob! It wouldn't cost nearly five dollars a week apiece if we had them all in one house, and weren't paying board for them, but had a housekeeper, and made a fund for them all together," retorted Hester.
"I'm afraid it would be a sinking fund," remarked Wythie quietly.
"It can be done; only give me the chance!" cried Hester.
"We will give you a chance!" cried Rob. "I'll announce immediately that I will resume story-telling to the Fayre children. It won't be much, but it will enable you to afford one more cripple, anyway."
"I think we might have a costume entertainment; our attic is full of the loveliest things," said Prue.
"Why, Prue, how did we all happen to forget those venerable costumes up-stairs!" exclaimed Wythie. "We can give something really worth while."
"It would be no end of fun," said Frances slowly; she had dropped in at the little grey house and had been kept for luncheon. She was wondering if the Grey girls did not remember the frolic they had had in those antiquated garments on the last night of their father's life. She saw Rob's lips draw a little at the corners as she smiled, and she knew that her "Patergrey's" "son Rob" was thinking of that night.
"It would be a frolic for us, but what form could the affair take that people would come to it? You mean to sell tickets to it?" Rob asked.
"Why, of course; we mean it to earn money to give Hester another cripple," laughed Prue.
"Make it a dance to which everybody mustcome in costume, and for which they must buy tickets for the privilege of coming," said Frances, whose practical mind always was quick to plan details. "We will lead the dancing, and do a costume gavotte, or something—Let's see—three Greys, Hessie and I are five girls, and Battalion B and Hessie's cousin are four boys. We'll get three more girls and four more boys, and we'll practise an old-time dance; we can make it lovely. And—why not?—let's have the dance preceded by a short concert of old-time songs. Mama will lend our house, I'm sure of that, and we could have the nicest kind of an affair."
Hester fairly beamed with joyous excitement. "Why, what has made you girls so perfectly angelic this morning?" she cried. "You have always been interested, but not so ready charged to go right off at a touch as you are now. If Rob would tell stories for the Home this winter, and you would have this entertainment—why, we could take two more children at once! It seems as though I could not wait to carry out this beautiful plan, and I can hardly believe it when I see that it really begins to look like a possibility."
"It's getting to be a probability, Hester," said Rob. "One thing that has fired our zeal isDr. Fairbairn's report on it. He has been talking about it here, and he has found several people deeply interested, while the dear old man himself is enthusiastic. Then Aunt Azraella, of all people under the sun, has inspired us with courage. She said the other day that if we proved to be in earnest, and she could be shown that this home for incurable little waifs stood a chance of being an accomplished fact, she might help it. I could hardly gasp out my answer, but if she can be interested in the scheme it could be put through, for Aunt Azraella has a good deal of money, we think—we never knew how much she really had."
"Come here, my beloved Feather-bed!" cried Wythie as Kiku-san swung into the room, so big, and white, and fluffy that Hester laughed aloud at the appropriate name.
Before the golden eyed cat had risen from the toilet which he immediately sat down to prepare when Wythie called him, a clear, delicate sound of singing floated in through the door, a high, sweet, childish treble, fine as a gossamer thread of sound, but beautifully true. It sang "Annie Laurie," by no means an easy task for a childish singer, without a false note or a break, and when the song was ended the same voice took up "Oftin the Stilly Night," which it sang with the same charm.
The five girls listened, breathless, Rob with uplifted finger of warning.
"That's little Polly Flinders," she said when the lovely little voice died away into silence. "She is in the lean-to room, singing to Cousin Peace. It is the prettiest companionship imaginable. Little, old-fashioned, quiet Polly, and lovely, blind Cousin Peace. Polly steals away to her at every opportunity. I wish I could paint the picture: that sober, pale faced child on her stool, with her new, birthday dolly, at the feet of the blind woman, with the saintly face, and the lean-to room, with its old furniture for the setting of the picture! Polly worships at her feet, figuratively and literally. The child sings exquisitely. Mardy, Wythie and I—and Prue, I suppose, only she hasn't discussed it with us—want her educated in music. She has decided talent, and she sings quaint, unchildlike old songs which she has learned from her mother, so she says, but I'm sure Mrs. Flinders' tired, hard voice never sung them as Polly does. We love to hear her——"
"Rob," interrupted Wythie, "fancy Polly in an old-time gown, singing her songs at our entertainment!"
"The very thing!" cried Rob and Frances together, while Hester choked Wythie in a rapture of gratitude.
"Well, you have had an idea worth having, Oswyth!" cried Rob. "And it might be of use, later, to Polly. There are so many things to be done, I begin to wish we were rich. I want to help Polly—to tell the truth, 'way down in the bottom of my heart, I care more for giving talented girls a chance than I do for cripples—forgive me, Hessie! And I wish I could found a home in Fayre for the homeless animals in the New York streets, and I'd like to brighten up the lives of girls who have no fun, with an occasional concert or theatre ticket. Oh, dear; I believe a million would not go far!"
Prue looked disconsolate. "And I want fine things and a million just for myself!" she said. "What shall I do if you are all going to turn saints or philanthropists?"
Wythie laughed. "Poor Prudy, it would be trying to live with a family given over to good works exclusively," she said. "But we are not quite saints, nor even philanthropists. What's the difference?"
"The philanthropist does good from purely humanitarian motives, natural pity, while thesaint works from supernatural motives," said Prue promptly and triumphantly. "You can't catch me, Miss Oswyth; didn't we have all that in a lecture lately?"
Saints or philanthropists—or a little of both, which these girls were—the five young creatures worked with a will for the object in view, and the plan that they had hit upon that morning. Hester even cut short her visit to go back to New York to work for it at that end, and wrote what she described as "a chortle and not a letter," to tell the Fayre girls that she had sold a hundred and eight tickets in four days, tickets that brought two dollars each—"So there's another cripple for us already!" wrote Hester at the end of her letter; wrote in such a hasty, tremulous way that a big blot, representing her joyous excitement, crowned the H of her signature, like a black king in checkers.
Rob's audience for her story-telling was secured without any difficulty, for most of the children who had heard her first series wanted to hear these new tales, and their little brothers and sisters had grown up in the meantime to a size that added them to her hearers. She sold forty-five course tickets, at five dollars apiece, and was to begin the story-telling after New Year's. Sothat while the preparations for the concert and dance were going on, Rob's mind was additionally burdened by the preparations for the storytelling.
Her first set of twenty stories was to be from Grecian history and Grecian mythology; she tried to concoct them in her mind while she made ready the room in which they were to be told. When she had first told stories to the children of Fayre, Mrs. Silsby had lent her big parlour for the enterprise, but now that the master of the little grey house had gone away from it forever it had a room to offer its bravest daughter, a room upon which she had a special claim.
On what Mrs. Grey called "the morning side of the house," opposite the dining-room, was the quaint old room, originally intended for the kitchen of the little grey house in the days when a kitchen was also the dining and living-room.
It was a large room, consequently; the only one on that side of the house, and it had been Sylvester Grey's special sanctum. In it he had laboured long on the invention which, with the house, had been his sole but sufficient legacy to his family, the invention upon which Roberta, his "son Rob" had helped him for many long hours between her thirteenth and her seventeenth year.
The dear old room, with its high wainscotting, narrow cupboards, and immense fireplace, had been left as its master had quitted it, except that the models of the machine and his books had been set in order and no longer lay piled over the rush-bottomed chairs as they had been when they were daily used by the thin, nervous hands which for a year and a half had been folded in rest.
Now Rob was to take this room for her auditorium, and she had assumed the task of preparing it. After all there was not much to be done; when it came to the point neither Rob nor her mother could bear to make more than absolutely necessary changes. The tall book-cases still stood there with their contents, the books which Sylvester Grey had most used; dignified scientific books in one, the well-worn Thackeray and a few other novels and a few shabby looking poets in its mate. They would not be in the way of seats for forty-five children; Rob was sure that her little hearers could easily squeeze into the chairs in which, judging by her first experience, they would not stay. She knew that they would crowd around her knees, and hang upon her arms, drinking in the story as if it were a syrup which might flow past them if they were not close enough to catch it at its source.
"There isn't much to be done, Mardy," said Rob looking up to her mother from her knees as she straightened a file of magazines in the bottom part of one of the cases.
Mrs. Grey aroused herself by an effort from the thoughts into which she had fallen.
"I was thinking how much had been done, Rob, and how much was done with forever," said her mother.
"It is all right, Mardy," said Rob quickly. "I feel more and more sure that it is all right. Much as we miss him it was so beautiful to slip away in the moment of assured triumph that we would not have it otherwise, would we?"
"No, dear; very likely we wouldn't if we had time to remember to be unselfish if the chance came to get him back—but, oh Rob 'son Rob,' the first impulse would not be unselfish!" Mrs. Grey's voice quavered over her words, though she bravely smiled.
Rob scrambled to her feet, and went over to put her arm around her mother.
"I can't help remembering how the first money I earned story-telling went to introduce the bricquette machine to the world, and now, thanks to the machine, I am going to be able to tell stories for a charity," said Rob "let us call thisroom yours and mine, Mardy, as it used to be Patergrey's and mine, and let us creep away from the others sometimes, and come here for little cosey talks. I feel more like little Rob here than anywhere else. This room makes me forget my eighteen years and five feet six."
"Do you want to forget them, Rob? Your life seems to me so ideally simple, so lightheartedly happy, that I thought you were glad you were no longer that little Robin that used to perch on my knee." Mrs. Grey looked at Rob sharply as she spoke, and Rob looked her squarely in the eyes, with her changeable face flashing into smiles. "She was a nice, dreaming, sunny little Robin, Mardy, but I am as blithe as a blackbird now, so don't imagine the hand of time lies heavy on me yet. Only you know I never did want to be a woman," said Rob. "I think it is so very lovely to be vastly young. Coming events cast theirshadowsbefore, you know; they don't cast rays of light. The present is nice." Rob laughed as she spoke, but her eyes were wistful.
"Your future will be 'nice' too, Rob dearest," said her mother. "Somehow, I don't fear for you."
"There doesn't seem to be much plot in our lives, Mardy. Just a little income, just a little house, just a little work, considerable play—and so the Grey days drift along, only they're not grey days in any but a cognominal sense. Now, Mardy, wasn't that a lovely word to have made up just as it was needed, with no malice, nor aforethought?"
"Very lovely, Rob—Listen! Why here are the boys already!" cried Mrs. Grey interrupting herself.
"Goodness! Can it be late enough for them?" cried Rob darting out to give the Rutherfords welcome though the front of her waist was all dust from the books which she had been hugging, and her hair was more rebellious than usual from the stooping and climbing which she had been doing, loosening hairpins that were only too ready at all times to escape.
"How's the fancy-dress ball progressing?" cried Bartlemy the instant the door was opened. He had unexpectedly developed more interest in the plan than either of the other boys, a fact which he himself explained by saying that it appealed to his artistic sense.
"It's going to be the loveliest thing!" cried Prue enthusiastically.
"And the date is fixed for Twelfth Night," added Wythie. "There is something in the ring of that name that seems to set off the costumes."
"The very night!" cried Basil.
"How are the burns, Bruce?" asked Rob.
"Nearly burned out. How many listeners to the stories have you secured? Did they pay in advance?" asked Bruce, kissing Mrs. Grey's cheek, as all three boys always did when they came home, and stroking the hand which Miss Charlotte had given him.
"Forty-five, actually!" announced Rob, with exclamation marks in her voice. "Two hundred and twenty-five dollars down! And Hester must have nearly as much more, by this time, for the tickets she has sold to the entertainment. We are going to sell lots here in Fayre when we begin, and we have hardly any expenses. I gasp at the thought of the wealth we are amassing for the crippled children with very little effort and hardly any planning."
"It's a good beginning; enough to make some one ready to help you with an endowment fund, or the like, for, of course, you will have to have such help," said Basil, the careful one.
"'Little drops of water, little grains of sand,'" chanted Prue.
"Just so. You must let me look at your costume, Prue, and see if it is all right," said Bartlemy. "When can you have a rehearsal?"
"We shall rehearse to-morrow night, but not in costume," said Wythie. "We waited for you, Battalion B, to be here. Hester is coming out, and her cousin."
"To stay over Sunday?" asked Bruce.
"Hester will; Lester Baldwin goes back on the last train—unless he misses it, then we shall have to send him up to you boys," said Rob. "You don't look hospitable."
"Yes, we are," remonstrated Basil. "Send him to us in any case, girls; it is ridiculous to let him go back on that crawling train when he might as well have a pleasant Sunday with the crowd. You approve of him, don't you?"
"Oh, he's very nice, Basil; you will like him," said Wythie in her kindly way that explained Basil's confidence in her indifference to the new friend. While Rob, on the contrary, smiled provokingly and said: "I haven't met so nice a youth in many a day."
"Not since we met our nicest of all boys," said Wythie quietly, for she had no liking for that sort of teasing.
"What a blessing you are, Wythie!" ejaculated Bruce fervently.
"Hester told me that Lester Baldwin admired Frances very much," said Prue. Her attempts atcasual remarks were usually transparent and not very successful.
"Shows his sense!" commented Bruce.
"Frances deserves admiration," said Rob.
"She is very nice, of course," said Prue with her most grown-up air, which always made her seem decidedly less than sixteen. "But I don't think Frances is striking at all; she is only just a little pretty."
Basil and Bruce laughed and tweaked tall Prue's ear in the elder brotherly way of theirs which always tried her; it really was trying to have a B at each ear simultaneously. "Pretty Prudy!" they said together.
The two older Rutherfords made it their business to check Prue's vanity, which they considered the only defect in any Grey girl.
But Bartlemy stoutly defended her. "Don't you mind those two moles," he said, seeing Prue's cheeks reddening and her eyes dangerously near tears. "They don't know how artists feel about beauty. I can't imagine giving Frances more than a kindly thought when there's a tearing beauty in sight."
"Bart, have some caramels; I made them to-day," interposed Rob, offering the boys theresult of her labours. "Taffy's bad for the digestion, so I never have any."
For in her turn Rob believed in checking Bartlemy's manifest desire to offer incense to Prue's handsome face; at least till she was long past sixteen, and somewhat less appreciative of that face herself.
The rehearsal for the Twelfth Night entertainment went off so well that the double quartette most interested in it were greatly elated.
Eleanor Dinsmore, Edith Hooper, Helen Lacey three pretty girls—as well as Fayre girls—had been asked to complete the number for the gavotte, and their brothers and cousins and friends, four in all, had gladly added themselves to the Rutherfords and Lester Baldwin to make up eight men. Rob had had an inspiration, and had written words to be sung by the dancers to a beautiful old French gavotte air, as they moved through the stately figures of the charming dance. Even in ordinary modern dress the effect was so exquisite that the few privileged people who looked on were enthusiastic. The young people began to plume themselves on accomplishing something really artistic, while the fear that the ticket purchasers would feel that their purchasewas equivalent to an outright donation, with no return to themselves, vanished like mists in the sunshine of the dancers' perception of unhoped-for success.
The songs were not going to fail either. The Greys and Battalion B, with Frances, had sung together since their first meeting. Now Bartlemy's uncertain bass had deepened into the real thing, Basil's tenor had grown sweeter, and Bruce's barytone richer. Oswyth had a sympathetic, true little home voice, exactly like herself; Rob sang alto very well, and Prue's high soprano had grown stronger than when they first sang together rowing and working through that summer of the beginning of Greys' acquaintance with the Rutherfords. Frances had always sung well, and now Hester's rich, splendid alto was a real acquisition, while Lester Baldwin's tenor was stronger and higher than Basil's. It really was an unusual combination of voices, and long practise together, of most of the singers, made them know exactly how to bring out one another's best points, and made the voices blend quite beautifully.
It had not taken much persuasion to get Lester Baldwin to give up his intention of going back after the rehearsal, but to accept the Rutherfords'hospitality that night and take Hester back Sunday evening.
Bruce glowered at Lester for an hour after he met him, then yielded to his personal charm, but still more to the charm of his marked preference for talking to Frances, and became cordial with a heartiness that surprised Lester. He did not know that it was not for what he had done, nor for what he was, but for what he had not done and for what he was not that Bruce Rutherford suddenly became his friend.
Sunday morning the three Greys and Battalion B carried off Hester and her cousin to the quiet church where the Grey girls had been carried in white draperies to be made little Christians in baptism—Very little and very reluctant ones.
They came out of church into a fine, cold winter rain which had threatened them on setting forth. It had kept Miss Charlotte and little Polly at home for a peaceful morning in the little grey house; it had served, with her cold, to retain Mrs. Grey at Lydia's side, for appetites attend on church-going, as a rule, and there was much to be done by those mother-hands which always smoothed out possible rough places, and made all kinds of comfort certain.
Aunt Azraella was not out either, which was a relief to the girls, who dreaded her probable addition to them at dinner, for however gentler Aunt Azraella's diminution of health might make her, she still was not adapted to great increase of joy.
"Do you think," Rob asked as they gathered around the hearth after dinner, "do you really think, Mardy, that it would be unsuited to the day for 'we (twice) four, and no more' to go up into the attic and look over the chests and trunks of old clothing?"
"It would be Shintoism—ancestor-worship," said Bruce.
"Bruce, we have sufficient knowledge of the Eastern question to understand what Shintoism is without your foot-note," remarked Rob sternly.
"I think it would be perfectly proper to the day, dear, to go into the attic and see those old costumes, that is to the Sunday side of the day, but how about the weather side of the day? Wouldn't it be too cold for you?" Mrs. Grey stretched her fingers towards the fire as she spoke; she dearly loved warmth—of all sorts.
"We're not afraid of the cold, are we girls? Of course the boys are afraid of nothing," said Rob.
"Won't you walk into my attic?" said a robin to her mates."I have venerable garments that would fit up many crates."The way into my attic is up a winding stair,"But, 'spite of cold, these garments old repay a journey there."
"Won't you walk into my attic?" said a robin to her mates."I have venerable garments that would fit up many crates."The way into my attic is up a winding stair,"But, 'spite of cold, these garments old repay a journey there."
Rob chanted this effusion, and Battalion B arose as one body and echoed, as a refrain:
"But, 'spite of cold, these garments old repay a journey there."
Then the entire eight departed atticward with Polly and her doll, Roberta Charlotte, bringing up the rear.
"Go on, Wythie; I must put Polly's jacket on," said Rob, pausing at her chamber door. "Queer, that little bodies take cold more easily than larger ones, which have more surface to catch cold on."
"What an absurd girl she is!" sighed grave Hester with supreme content in the qualities which she lacked and which Rob possessed in excess.
"She talks nonsense all the day long, and acts sense more than any one," said Wythie, with her loving smile.
Rob and Polly came quickly, the bunch of keys dangling from Rob's hand.
"We forgot these," she cried breathlessly. "We may get too cold if we try to look over all the clothes. Shall we omit the fantastic ones, Wythie, and get out only the serious ones, which we can use for the gavotte?"
"Let us open the cedar chest first," said Oswyth, taking the key Rob offered her.
She laid back the lid and displayed its contents. In five minutes they were being shaken out of their folds and held up for inspection, big cloaks, fur-trimmed hoods, shirred with rattans, long veils, shawls, for this was the chest given over to materials which might attract moths.
"The beautiful things are in the trunks," said Prue. "We shall want the silks and embroidered muslins. Open this trunk, Wythie, please."
Oswyth opened it, and the girls drew a deep breath of joy over what even their first glimpse displayed.
"Oh, Frances, do you remember these?" whispered Rob, taking out a gown of 1776, and one of the Madison Era. "Do you remember the night we wore these?"
"Indeed I do, Rob," whispered Frances. "We must only remember now what a happy night that was, and be thankful that it was so—that special night."
"I think I'll wear this gown in the gavotte," said Rob, turning to the others. "That is if no one else wants it."
"Ah, yes!" said Bruce involuntarily, and Rob knew that he too remembered her wearing it in their impromptu frolic nearly two years ago.
"Would this do, Bartlemy?" asked Prue, holding up a pale blue brocade over a quilted satin petticoat.
"It's beautiful, but better for Wythie or Frances. You ought to wear this." And Bartlemy drew out a yellow satin, overshot with white, and sweeping open down the front to display a paler yellow petticoat. "Here is a cloth-of-gold effect for a golden-haired maiden."
"We will make our audience play a game after the entertainment called 'The Search for the Golden Girl,'" suggested Lester Baldwin.
"And introduce Prue to them afterward as Miss Midas," added Hester. "My mother has a great-grandmother dress for me—crimson and silver."
"I'd like to have Oswyth wear this," said Prue looking well-pleased with her own allotment, and displaying a brocade of rosebuds on a blush ground.
"No," said Wythie. "That is lovely, Prudy,but I have a sentimental desire to wear something else. Eleanor Dinsmore and that gown have an affinity for each other."
"We must try to select gowns that not only suit each wearer, but which contrast and compose well in the general picture," said Bartlemy.
"I know what Wythie wants to do! She wants to wear one of Oswyth Grey's gowns!" cried Rob.
"Her own?" asked Hester wondering.
"No, indeed; Oswyth Grey long dead and gone; our thrice repeated great-aunt. That is her trunk standing there." And Rob pointed to an ancient chest with a heavy, old-time lock. "She died when she was not much past twenty; there was a love-story, of course, about her, and we children have always felt the fascination of our vague knowledge of her history, especially Wythie. When she was a little girl she seemed greatly impressed by this kinswoman whose name she bore—I think, in a childish way, she must have had some cloudy notion of reincarnation."
"Might we see her chest?" asked Frances. "It sounds as if opening it would be like opening a volume of poems."
Hester shivered in spite of her effort to convince herself that she was warm. Prue noticed it, andwas rather glad of an excuse for getting down to warmer quarters.
"Hester is freezing," she cried. "Oswyth Grey's chest hasn't such splendid gowns in it as those we have seen; they're all simple muslins, delicately embroidered, except one heavy violet and white brocade—white, with violets strewn over it—which is the one Wythie will wear at the dance, if she wears any of them. Let's go down and get warm, all of us."
"Shall we? Are you cold, Hessie, Frances, little Rutherford B's, and Lester?" Rob asked, hesitating a little over the use of Lester Baldwin's name, though both he and Hester had protested against formality.
"Well, I'm more nearly goose-flesh than one could possibly expect me to be," said Bruce.
"I confess that the wood-fire down-stairs might be spelled wooed, for it woos me strongly, though I should dearly love to see Oswyth Grey's chest opened," said Hester.
"Why, she's shivering as she speaks!" cried Rob. "Come, then my brethren. We might carry down these gowns we have selected. I'll lay them in Mardy's room to be tried on by the girls tomorrow. Hester must slip on hers to-night—oh, I forgot! Hester has her gown at home. We haven'tprovided for the other two girls, but we didn't come up here intending to select gowns; merely to see them."
Rob was talking as she went on down the stairs, following her guests and Prue, Polly following her, as she always did. Her voice floated back to Wythie who had remained behind closing the trunks. She arose from her knees when the last key was withdrawn and looked longingly over to Oswyth Grey's chest, where it stood in a corner by one of the gable windows. She loved that chest and its vanished owner, whose kinship to herself she felt so strongly, the young maiden, about whom she knew really nothing but that she had loved and died—which, after all, is an epitome of all lives.
"Ah, well; I shall have plenty of chances to see you again, dear Oswyth," she said aloud.
She turned around and there was Basil, waiting for her.
"Why, you startled me, Basil," said Wythie, her colour rising. But she did not look in the least startled; it always seemed possible to Wythie that she might raise her eyes and see Basil, even when he was away.
"I thought perhaps you and I might stay behind long enough for just one peep into that otherOswyth Grey's chest," said Basil. "Let me know her, too, Wythie."
Wythie crossed over to the chest without a word, and knelt to unfasten it. Then she threw back its lid, and looked up at Basil.
"There isn't much to see, but it has always seemed to me that there was much to feel in this chest," she said.
An odour of attar of roses, of lavender, of tonka beans, blended into an indefinable, sweet mustiness by more than a hundred years, arose into the young faces bent to inhale it. Soft muslins, fine with the fineness of the importations from India when broad-sailed merchantmen went out from New England ports, yellow with age, and daintily wrought with broidery, lay neatly folded before their eyes.
Beneath them, as Oswyth the second tenderly raised them, lay high-heeled, narrow slippers, a fan that had been brought from China long ago to the happy young girl whose cheeks' tint matched its mandarin's crimson robe, a white silk shawl that might have come with the fan, its knotted silken fringe and heavily embroidered flowers several shades more yellow than the delicate fabric. Neckerchiefs of soft mull, white and in colours lay there, ribbons, stained and fadedby the years, a sampler, a bead bag, clocked stockings, and a great leghorn hat with its plumes and gauze ribbons flattened by long lying. It was a young girl's chest, and its pathos spoke to Basil, the pathos of a light heart that early had ceased to beat, of brief life and long death.
Wythie lifted, one after the other, that other Oswyth's treasures, and at last raised from its box near the bottom of the chest the beautiful brocade which she wished to wear in the gavotte. Beneath it lay bed-linen, hemmed with the tiniest stitches, and table-linen with its "O. G." carefully wrought in its corners. And underneath all, in the very bottom, lay a few thin books, and a bundle of letters tied with a yellowed ribbon that might once have been either white or pale blue, and marked in the finest of old-fashioned writing: "From B. R. to O. G. Her all of life."
"B. R.?" exclaimed Basil. "Am I in this story, too, Wythie?"
"I never thought of those initials before," said Wythie, flushing to the uppermost line of her brow, "I have not opened this chest, not for ever so long—three years, it may be."
"You couldn't have thought of the initials then, Wythie, dear; I wasn't in your story as long ago as that," said Basil.
"I remember that Oswyth Grey's lover's name was Benjamin Raymond," said Wythie. "Poor little greatest aunt—they are sad letters!"
She gently untied the discoloured ribbon and the letters fell apart in her lap as she sat back on her heels to look at them. From among them fell a bunch of flowers and lock of hair; the usual trivial mementos of greater values lost.
"The first ones are formal, but they were written happily; one can see that," said Wythie, as she unfolded a yellow sheet, handling its brown folds carefully, for age had made it very frail. "It's curious how the mood of the writer shows through the set phrases of that time."
"Nature and strong feeling break through stronger barriers than phrases, Oswyth, the second," said Basil, as he picked up the flowers. "Look," he added, "these flowers were waxed for their preservation."
"Yes. I imagine Oswyth Grey did that, for her lover could never have sent her waxed flowers," said Wythie, lifting the sheet which had held them for so long that Basil might replace them. "The letters grew more frank and assured as they went on—some day we will read them. Then there was one reproaching my little greatest aunt for her hardness of heart, her cruelty afterso long, and then a last one bidding her farewell. It is quite pitiable. But this is the saddest thing of all." And Oswyth unfolded the sheet which bore on its outer fold the initials and the inscription that had lain on top of the packet of letters, like their epitaph as well as Oswyth Grey's. "See, she wrote this letter to him in reply to the reproach he had made her, knowing that he would never see it; it was never sent. Read it."
Basil read it. It threw no light on the cause of the lovers' parting, but it was a passionate protest against the distrust of her which her lover had expressed to that Oswyth, and a revelation of devotion and beauty of character that, after all the years, still palpitated with life. Oswyth Grey, the little Puritan, would not have poured out her soul thus had she not felt sure that no other eyes than her own would ever rest upon that paper.
"What a pity!" murmured Basil, gently folding the unsent letter in its brown creases again. His eyes were moist.
"She died not long after that the records show; he never knew. Isn't it a pity?" Wythie's lashes hid her downcast eyes as she fingered the papers absently. "I always felt that I ought to make it right to her, because I bore her name. I can't explain just what I have felt about her, thoughthe feeling is strong. Yet the dear girl has been quite happy for more than a century; I suppose we need not feel sad about her now. Here is a stanza written to her, signed B. R. It isn't remarkable, but it is enough to prove that her B. R. cared for poetry when many were indifferent to it."
Wythie looked up, smiling to show that the moisture on those lashes meant nothing, and offered Basil one more yellow page. He took it and read:
If there were other like to thee, my loved one,Then might I love that other perfect she;But since the world holds naught like thee, my loved one,How can I choose but at thy feet to be?For, save in this, thou hast no fault, my loved one,That to my love thou prov'st thy obduracy.
If there were other like to thee, my loved one,Then might I love that other perfect she;But since the world holds naught like thee, my loved one,How can I choose but at thy feet to be?For, save in this, thou hast no fault, my loved one,That to my love thou prov'st thy obduracy.
Basil returned the verse without comment, and Wythie tied up again the packet just as that other Wythie had tied it so long before. But with the great difference that for this Wythie happiness just within reach seemed to fill the shadowy attic.
"You didn't care for B. R's poetry?" she said, bending over to replace the letters at the bottom of the chest.
"On the contrary, and I like him for writingit," said Basil. "Wythie, there will never come anything between us? We shall not be parted as were this other B. R., and Oswyth Grey? I am still in college, but when I begin life you are coming to begin it with me in the Caldwell house, aren't you? We know you are, both of us, but I have been feeling lately that I wanted to hear you say it."
Oswyth trembled. She had known that Basil's first preference for her had grown into a devoted love, and she knew that she would have had no courage to face the years if they did not include Basil. Gentle Wythie had gone on to this moment without a fear, quietly unfolding without doubt or dread. But, after all, it meant so much, and for a moment the girl paused. Then she looked up into Basil's face. "It couldn't be otherwise, Basil, because it is just as Oswyth Grey wrote here: All of life," she said.
Basil bowed his head for a speechless moment. "God helping me this Oswyth shall never be unhappy," he said. Then a great joy seized him, and he was silent, holding back the expression of it, for Wythie's dove eyes looked up, half frightened, at the new, manly Basil beside her. And before either could speak Rob's voice rang out, and Rob's step came up the lower flight of stairs.
"Where are you two? Basil, Wythie, what has happened to you?" she called. "Have you fallen into a trunk, and are we going to have a case of the Mistletoe Bough right here in the little grey house and our own attic?"
She appeared at the foot of the attic stairs, peering up through the gathering darkness.
"We opened Oswyth Grey's chest—Basil wanted to see its contents—and it took longer than we realized," said Wythie coming to the head of the stairs. "Here is her white brocade with the violets; I shall wear this in the gavotte."
Wythie's voice sounded unnatural; Rob pounced on her the moment she descended, and glanced at Basil, following her with his eyes alight as they had never been before.
"What have you been doing?" she demanded. "Reading Oswyth Grey's letters? Wythie, what has kept you? Weren't you cold?"
"Oh, no; it is as warm—" began Wythie.
"'As springtime, the only pretty ring time,'" supplemented Basil.
"Wythie, tell me!" insisted Rob.
"Not now; wait until to-night," said Wythie, and escaped with Oswyth Grey's white brocade all bestrewn with violets.
"If I have to wait until to-night there's nothingto wait for; I know this minute," muttered Rob. Then she turned fiercely upon Basil.
"Basil, I thought we could trust you," she said.
"Nonsense, Rob, you knew quite well what was coming," retorted Basil with a quiet laugh of triumph.
"Does that make me like it?" she demanded. "My blessed Wythie! How do you expect me to go down again to the rest?"
"Shall I send Bruce up?" inquired Basil blandly.
Rob bolted for the back-stairs, to the calm atmosphere of Lydia till she should have regained sufficient composure to face her guests and the first romance of this generation in the little grey house.
When her young guests had gone, and the little grey house was quiet for the night, Mrs. Grey stood before the charred embers on the hearth, thoughtfully regarding the blackened scales, with their under edges still glowing, which lay all along the sides of the bits of logs remaining.
Kiku-san stirred, stretched his paws, lifted his head and remarked: "M-m-m-mmm?" in a cooing voice, at once welcoming and inquiring. Mrs. Grey looked up to see Wythie in her violet kimono. She held out her arms without speaking, for she knew what Oswyth had come to say.
Wythie sprang into the loving arms and nestled her head on her mother's shoulder.
"Basil wants—" she began.
"You, when the time comes, darling," whispered Mrs. Grey. "I suppose we have known that for a long time."
"Yes, but he said so," Wythie whispered back.
"And that alters it? Yes, a little. But I want it to be just as little as possible, my Wythie," returned her mother. "We won't talk about it to any one outside the little grey house, and you and Basil will be just the same friendly, simple comrades you have always been. You are so young, dear, and Basil is still in college. But we understand, as we have understood all along, that by and by your friendship is to broaden and deepen into much more."
"It can't, Mardy," said Wythie.
"Ah, Oswyth, everything broadens and deepens with time. Youth feels tempestuously, but years bring profounder depths. You are too much a child to know the truth of what I say to you. Be a young girl still, my Wythie, and be happy. Basil is all we could wish him to be," said Mrs. Grey, speaking out of the knowledge of her years of sacrificial love and her widowhood.
"Then you are willing, you don't mind, Mardy?" murmured Wythie.
"I am very glad, dearest, and I believe my gentle girl is going to be a happy woman. I mind nothing now but that she should miss sleep and take cold. Go to bed, little daughter, and go to sleep. Waking or sleeping my very breathing prays for you and Robin and little Prudy."
Mrs. Grey kissed Wythie hastily and half pushed her from her. Wythie clung to her as she returned the kiss, but went instantly away with her tear-wet face smiling. It was the mother, left standing beside the hearth, whose tears fell without the smiles. At last she stirred, sighed, stooped to pick up the fallen hearth brush, and stroked Kiku-san with the other hand.
"Of course I am glad, glad and thankful," she said, with only the white cat to hear. "But joy seems brief when one is a widow at forty-three, and mothers are selfish creatures." And this most unselfish mother brushed the ashes over the dying embers of the fire, looked at each window fastening, slowly put out her reading-lamp, and crept up-stairs like one that craved for rest.
Twelfth Night was not long in coming; it was to bring such a great event that it even successfully hurried the holidays out of the way.
Rob, watching Wythie jealously, saw no change in her except a greater sweetness and gentleness, and a deeper look of contentment in her brooding eyes.
"You see I am not very old, Rob, and Mardy says that I'm not to be formally engaged; only to go happily on till the time comes to go happier further," explained Wythie.
"H'm!" ejaculated Rob, inconsistently exasperated by the fulfilment of her own wishes. "I don't know about the formality—we're not particularly formal as a family—but you're as much engaged as you can be, and I long to put you back into short dresses and braid your hair down your back."
"And whip me soundly and put me to bed, like the old woman that lived in the shoe?" laughed Wythie. "Your voice sounds threatening. You silly Robin! You're much taller than I am. I doubt my having a monopoly of growing up, or——"
Wythie stopped suggestively, and Rob said hastily:
"Here comes Aunt Azraella, critically examining the boundaries of the path I dug around the clothes whirligig, out through the back yard towards her place. Her Aaron and I met at the fence. Poor Aunt Azraella; she looks older! She has her little black bag; I believe she is coming to render her account of the tickets that she has sold for to-morrow night."
"I went over to Mrs. Silsby's on my way home from market this morning," Mrs. Winslow said without preliminary on entering. "She is having her great parlours decorated beautifully, and herarrangement of the spectators' seats is perfect. I think it is safe to say that this will be the finest affair ever held in this place. I have seventy-four dollars here for thirty-seven tickets, and several people sent to me for tickets while I was out. Elvira could not find them; I had them all with me."
Prue could not repress a tiny giggle at this excellent reason for Elvira's failure. But Wythie covered it by saying: "I can deliver them when I go out. Everybody is coming up on the same train this afternoon, Battalion B and the Baldwins; I am going to meet them after I have done a few errands. We have a dress rehearsal to-night up at Mrs. Silsby's. I can take the tickets to the people who sent for them, Aunt Azraella."
"Very well. I will send Aaron around with the carriage; you'll be too tired if you walk everywhere, and rehearse dancing to-night. I'll send the victoria, and you can bring the Baldwins and two of the Rutherfords home with you," said Aunt Azraella with her new consideration of the Grey's comfort.
"Thank you, Aunt," said Wythie. "Hester writes that there will be more than a car full of people from New York to-morrow—Oh, I do so hope the good weather will hold out!"
"My almanac says that we shall have fair weather for six days; this is the third day," said Aunt Azraella confidently; she pinned her faith to a certain venerable publication, withstanding frequent failures on the part of her prophet. "The good weather began with the change of the moon, which occurred at the right hour—shortly after midnight; this weather will hold."
"If your almanac won't play us false this time I will ask no more of it," said Rob.
"It never fails," said Aunt Azraella with generous oblivion to facts. "If it makes what seem like mistakes sometimes it is owing to local currents, which cannot be foretold. Is your mother up-stairs? I want to see her and Charlotte."
"They are together, in Cousin Charlotte's room. You look serious, Aunt Azraella," said Rob.
"I feel serious, and I want to consult them about something serious," returned her aunt. "After this excitement is over you will know what it is about; I shall be guided by their advice."
"The best advice we ever got was from those two ladies, Aunt Azraella," said Rob. "I am sure you will not look serious after you get it."
"You don't know what you are talking about," returned Mrs. Winslow moving majestically away.
Aunt Azraella's victoria brought up Hester, her cousin and Basil; Bruce and Bartlemy arrived on foot, and all the performers, except little Polly Flinders, went up to the Silsbys for their final dress rehearsal that night. They came back to the little grey house so excited by its result that there was no checking the flood of chatter till past one o'clock.
"This was Eleventh Night," as Prue suggested, and Twelfth Night,thenight, followed as quickly as it could, coming into weather that fully justified Aunt Azraella's almanac-maker. Crisp, cold, clear, January sunshine—there could not be better weather for a revel.
The day sped in a whirl of excitement, a delightful day to all but Lydia's orderly soul. She could hardly be expected to approve it, since it included no meal at a normal time, and this disturbance was, besides, the prelude to a dance, which Lydia regarded with horror.
After a supper at half past five which none of the gavotteers, as Rob called them, wanted in the least, Aunt Azraella's carriage came to take them up to Mrs. Silsby's.
Frances flew out to meet them, and the flushed faces of the other three girl performers beamed on them as they descended.
Mrs. Grey superintended the dressing-room with four maids to assist her. It was a trying office, with eight girls chattering like magpies, and eighty things to be done at once, admitting of no delay. The concert that was to precede the gavotte was to be costumed fantastically, and when the girls were ready one could hardly have said whether the picture they presented, huddled, laughing together, was prettier or funnier.
Wythie was a dear little Puritan maiden, in her grey dress and folded kerchief; Rob a brilliant fantasy in her ante-bellum gown with its hoops and sloping shoulders, and her lovely, rebellious hair ringletted from a tremendous back comb. Prue would not consent to being fantastic, so she looked beautiful in a pale green muslin of the empire style, with her golden hair filetted with gold and a great feather fan waving from her long-gloved hand. But the cream of them all was solemn little Polly.
The child was not pretty, but something gathered through her few sad years in the lonely home whence all the other children had departed, her frail health and active imagination,had written itself on her sensitive, pale little face. Now her dilated eyes shone like stars; grey eyes they were, under black lashes, the sort that have a trick of looking black, but whose colour is hard to determine.
They had dressed her in a long gown, belonging to some Puritan child in the days when costumes not merely denied, but annihilated childhood. Polly's gown had a stiff long stomacher, its front was cut square, like a court lady's, and the heavy silk stood out around her figure, disdaining a hint of a droop. A round cap surmounted the pale brown hair which had been brushed smoothly back from the blue-veined brow, and yellow lace fell around the childish throat and tiny thin hands. There was something in the child herself, poor as her home had been, that exactly suited her quaint fineness of habiliment, and she stood, a quick breathing little poem, a picture of perfect harmony and of a quality that made every artist-eye that rested upon her flash with the perception of its values.
When the door of the dressing-room opened and its occupants came forth it was to encounter in the hall a long line of queer and pretty figures of other Fayre girls who were to compose the chorus, and big lads in the collars and coats oftheir ancestors, delightful foils to the girls' brilliant colours. First and last Fayre, an old colonial town, possessed a goodly store of relics of the past, and there was no lack of material for costuming the concert.
While they were dressing the singers had been hearing carriage after carriage roll up the Silsby driveway, and depart, and when they peeped through a life-saving hole in the curtain, but for which they would have perished of curiosity, they saw the ample accommodations which Mrs. Silsby had provided for an audience already filled, and people beginning to station themselves standing at the sides of the long rooms, in the best positions now obtainable.
A small orchestra of harps and violins, 'cellos and bass viols, had been Mrs. Silsby's welcome contribution to the affair, and the concert began with an overture by it while the curtain slowly parted and rolled away, disclosing the thirty-five singers seated on the stage, the double quartette which, later was to dance the gavotte, in the front row, and little Polly, the soloist of the occasion, seated alone before them all. She did not seem at all frightened; the hand that Rob contrived to slip between the rounds of her chair for a little pressure on her shoulder, was not necessary.
Polly sat quite still, very pale, but not frightened, with an uplifted look on the pathetic little face, with the big eyes staring upward, unseeing of the considerable audience. Miss Charlotte and Rob had told Polly that she was to sing for suffering children, without homes, friends, or childhood, and Polly's whole soul was bent on singing for them so well that all these blessings should be theirs at the close of the concert.
Choruses, quartettes, trios, double quartettes, followed each other on the programme, old-time songs and classics, bright, lively, sad, and patriotic. The audience applauded wildly, which was to be expected at an amateur entertainment. In this case the applause took on enthusiastic fervour from the real enjoyment which the music was giving; it was good in itself, and not "considering." It was a delightful surprise to hear the quality, the precision, the expression of these choruses and quartettes, for, when it comes to amateur music, given for charities, few of us can echo the sentiments of the gentleman in Punch, who replied to his hostess' inquiry as to whether he was fond of music: "Madam, I am not afraid of it."
At last came Polly's turn, and she arose at a signal from Rob and walked quietly down to thefront of the stage. No one applauded for fear of frightening the child, but the effect the little figure produced could be felt in the sudden stillness, together with a tension of interest.
A single violin played "Annie Laurie" and Polly began to sing. Not a tremble in the clear voice, not a false note in the sweet tones, as they soared up, thrilled with feeling and died away in pathos that the singer was far too young to feel. For an instant the room was still and then the applause rang out. Polly stood very quiet, looking up at the ceiling, forgetful of the bow in which she had been carefully drilled. It did not matter. The violin began again, and the child sang on and on, as the audience clamoured for more at the end of each song. She did not seem to tire, but a red spot glowed in each cheek, and the tiny figure trembled.
"Sit down, Polly," said Rob at last, fearing the effect on Polly of such repressed excitement.
Polly obediently turned and seated herself amid the plaudits of her audience. Then she remembered her duty, arose, went forward, took her stiff skirt in her hands on each side, and dropped the ceremonious courtesy of the period which she represented. The applause broke out anew, but Polly was to sing no more. A rousingchorus covered the clapping, and the audience settled down to listen to the remainder of the programme.
A young artist from the city who had been trolled to Fayre by Mr. Baldwin, generously offered to amuse the audience while the gavotte was being costumed, and gave a Chinese three part play, in which he was the maiden, her lover, and the stern parent by turns, with a Chinese song chanted wonderfully as a last touch. It was really very funny, and Mrs. Silsby gratefully heard the audience laughing as she hastily surveyed the supper room which was to be her surprise to the performers, after the gavotte.
In the meantime, Mrs. Grey and the maids were getting eight excited girls into their beautiful gowns for the dance. It really did not take long but it was a time into which so much disturbance of mind, so many thrills were compressed that it seemed a little eternity.
When they were ready the eight filed forth, and met their eight cavaliers in the hall.
Wythie in her white silk, brocaded with violets, and with the romance of Oswyth Grey in her heart, under the gown that she had once worn, joined Basil in his purple velvet court costume, and led the way down the stairs.
Eleanor Dinsmore in the blush pink, brocaded with rosebuds, came next. Her partner was a youth in black velvet.
Then came Frances in her pale blue; with her was to dance Lester Baldwin, in dark blue velvet.
Hester in glorious crimson, with silver headdress, petticoat and trimmings, joined her partner in white satin, with gold lace.
Edith Hooper in overshot white and silver danced with Jack Dinsmore in red velvet.
Helen Lacey, a clear, dark brunette, wore a bronze brocade that revealed its blue lining with every motion; her partner in golden brown velvet made them into an autumn harmony.
Rob's brocade was dark green, overstrewn with a pale green conventional design. A silver petticoat revealed her silver slippers with the big paste buckles, and splendid silver lace fell over her pointed bodice and bare arms. Bruce, her partner, wore black velvet with green satin waistcoat, and flashing knee-buckles on the green ribbons that bound his knees.
Prue came last, regal in her golden raiment, so beautiful that Mrs. Grey's heart leaped and then contracted with fear as she fell back to look at her, for beauty is a difficult crown to carry steadily, thought this simple, loving woman.
Bartlemy wore hunting green—it did not matter what he wore, he said, while he danced beside the golden girl.
The curtain went up on the empty stage, and the orchestra played the air of the gavotte. The dancers entered, hands joined and held high, and marched in minuet step around and up and down the stage, crossing and recrossing, bowing, forming brief figures, instantly dissolved into the march. Then they took their places for the gavotte, and in the pause between the end of the march and its beginning the audience went quite wild with delight over the really beautiful picture.
The orchestra sounded a few bars, and suddenly the sixteen dancers began to sing to the old French gavotte the words which Rob had written, beginning the dance at the same time. In breathless silence the audience watched and listened. The colours blended and contrasted, the girls flushed and dimpled, carrying their heads regally under their powdered hair, while the young men, not less gorgeous in their degree, led them forth with courtly bendings of their powdered heads, managing their swords and the laced hats which they carried with creditable grace and dignity.
There could not have been a more beautiful picture. Faint, irrepressible applause broke out at intervals, quickly silenced that the audience might not lose one note, one lovely, gracious motion. But when it was ended the room was stormed with plaudits, unescapable demands for a repetition, which the dancers were not in the least reluctant to accord, when they were satisfied that the demand was sincere.
There were many in the audience who were strangers to all the performers; several from New York whom only Hester knew slightly, but the majority were friends or familiar acquaintances of the dancers, and after the curtain had gone down they came forth in all their ancient splendour to mingle with the audience and to be congratulated.
Rob went to Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin as straight as circumstances allowed her to go.
Mr. Baldwin took her hands with the fatherly affection that he always showed her, almost equal to that which he gave to his own girl.
"It was fine, Rob; really fine, a gavotte in colouring and execution worthy the old days of Daly's Theatre, and the dances he used to give us in 'Much Ado' and 'Twelfth Night.' You look like a dryad in your green, my Robin. And howreally magnificent Prue is going to be! Hers is wonderful beauty for a girl of sixteen. I have a ward of mine here who says he never dreamed of such a girl. He wants to speak to Prue. Shall I take him over there?"
"He is a nice boy, Mr. Baldwin?" asked Rob.
"What a dragon of an elder sister—and only two years the elder!" laughed Mr. Baldwin. "Trust me, Rob, not to introduce any but nice boys to my Grey girls! This is not precisely a boy, though. He is twenty-four, and that is a great age compared to sixteen. He is still my ward, because I was to take charge of his property, by his father's will, until he was thirty. I'll go take him to Prue. Mr. Armstrong is here, and wants to see you."
"Mr. Armstrong who bought Patergrey's patent?" cried Rob.
"The very same. He has never forgotten your describing it to him in his office, so frightened, yet so brave," said Mr. Baldwin. "He heard of this entertainment, and came out for your sake."
"What a lovely world this is!" laughed Rob. "I'll go find him." And she moved off in search of her elderly acquaintance, looking back to see Mr. Baldwin taking up to radiant Prue a youngman whose face was turned from her, but whose "back looked well-bred" Rob thought.
Her progress towards Mr. Armstrong was impeded by congratulations, but at last Rob reached him.
"I am glad to see that you have not forgotten me," said the old gentleman, grasping the hand she extended.
"I am not likely ever to forget you," returned Rob simply.
"No, it is not likely; our acquaintance was brief, but impressive to us both," said Mr. Armstrong. "You will be glad to learn that your father's invention has proved valuable to us, Miss Grey. Are you Miss Grey?"
"Not yet," said Rob with her whimsical twist of the lips as she smiled up into the kindly face. "It is delightful to know that my dear father's work was all he believed it to be."
"Fully," assented the old gentleman. "But Miss Roberta, what about the child that sang here to-night? They tell me she is a protégé of yours. She is a prodigy. I want to know about her. I am not going back to town to-night; I have no fancy for these late, crawling trains back from suburban pleasures. I am staying over night at your Fayre hotel—why do you have a townwith a name so provocative of puns? May I call on you to-morrow? Not only to tell you what real pleasure you young people gave me to-night, but to hear about this child?"
"We should all be glad, indeed, to see you, Mr. Armstrong, with no errand whatever," said Rob. "I'll tell you all there is to learn of Polly. I suppose I shouldn't stop now; there are so many people to whom I ought to speak."
"Run along, run along, lovely little green great-grandmother," said Mr. Armstrong, with an appreciative downward glance at Rob's beautiful costume.