The rooms were rapidly thinning out as she turned away from the old gentleman; Frances was beckoning her.
Rob crossed over to her. "Mother has a spread for us, the thirty-five performers, in the dining-room—she is the dearest thing! We are going to have a glorious time, so hurry up and do the pretty-behaved to those who bought your tickets, and then come to the banquet."
Rob needed no further hint. The eight heroines of the gavotte sipped the sweets of adulation for a short time, completely overshadowing their less brilliant but equally meritorious partners, till the last of their audience had departed.
"Come ghosts of departed years; come ancestral descendants; come and see if modern viands have a pleasant flavour," cried Mrs. Silsby from the doorway, and the picture-figures, seizing their proper partners' arms, burst into the song of the gavotte and to it marched to supper.
The day after great festivities is a trying time. Everybody feels mentally out-at-elbows; it is a day like those fifteen minutes between the ebb and flow of the tide when the waters seem to lie motionless. No one feels like ordinary duties, and there is a general impression that they may be neglected, though it is not avowed. It takes a day for energies to wake up and get into harness.
The boys had set out early in their workaday tweeds for college and business. Velvets, queues, laced hats and swords discarded for the commonplace, the girls' partners in the gavotte had been forced back to the actual world with the wintry dawn, but the girls revelled in reminiscent laziness and the joys of "talking it over."
Hester had stayed till an afternoon train, and she lay across the foot of Wythie and Rob's bed, her mind vibrating like a pendulum between the events of the preceding night and their results,between recalling some little point which had not been mentioned, and wondering how many cripple children they would now be able to afford. Wythie lolled in the rocking-chair in a relaxed attitude unlike her usual compact little self. Rob reclined on her elbow beside Hester, with her unruly hair tumbled into the many ringed disorder in which it was always prettiest, and most comfortable. Prue, who was staying home from school that day in charitable allowance of time in which to descend from her pedestal and readjust her mind to study, sat on the edge of the bed at its head with the pillow whose place she occupied "laid as tenderly across her knees as if it were one of the cripples," Rob said.
"One might think there wasn't a chair in the room," remarked Wythie languidly, as she glanced at the unused ones standing about. "I wonder why all girls love to pile on a bed together?"
"They like to be on a bed because it suits 'a rosebud garden of girls,'" suggested Rob. "That seems to lack the suggestion of a garden bed that I was aiming for—as a pun it is a failure. Confidences and caramels are best enjoyed on a bed, among pillows. Please pass me another caramel, Hester, and let me see your Christmas ring again. I like emeralds!"
"Speaking of rings," said Hester as she complied, "I wonder if I am betraying confidence in telling you what Lester said?"
"You might try it and see," said Rob. "We'll tell you frankly after you have repeated it whether or not it is a betrayal of confidence."
Hester laughed. "I'll risk it," she said. "Lester has taken a great fancy to Frances Silsby, and he says he is seriously going to try to make her care for him. He is in business with his father, representing the Japanese end of the firm, as his older brother represents it in London, so he would be able to think of marrying as far as being established in the world goes."
"Marrying!" cried Prue, dropping both hands into the pillow with a thump as she sat erect in her surprise. "Do you mean to say he is going to marry Francie right off?"
"I don't know that he can ever marry her; I don't know that she will ever see the charm in him that I see—he's the dearest boy and the best cousin in the world! But I think it's safe to say that he won't marry her right off, Prudy; certainly not before Easter," laughed Hester. "There are other reasons for not doing so besides canonical ones."
"Yes; comical ones," amended Rob. "Butonly think of France, my playmate, with a wooer in serious earnest! I think it is fearful the way we are getting on in life."
"Mrs. Silsby wouldn't think of letting Frances marry for ever so long," said Wythie, her colour mounting. "She is such a good, sensible mother! But I wish when the time does come Lester would have his way. He is right to choose Frances; she is as true and trusty and good as a girl can be. Wouldn't you like it, Hester?"
"Yes; I like Frances, but I could find it in my heart to wish it were a Grey girl," said Hester. "Only there aren't enough to go around, and Lester stayed too long in Japan."
"Fiddle-dedee!" remarked Rob. "Grey girls aren't going around—do you take us for tops, Hester?"
"Yes; tip-tops," said Hester, scoring that time.
Rob gave her a withering look of pretended reproach, and Prue said: "Who was that interesting young man whom your father introduced to me? That Mr. Stanhope?"
"Is he interesting, Prudy? He has lots of interest, if that's what you mean," said Hester. "You have just said nearly all I know about him. He is Mr. Arthur Stanhope. I know a little more. He had a cautious and conservative father, whohad a million to leave this boy, so he appointed my father his guardian, and left the money so that the son could use only the interest until he was thirty. Then he comes into his million, and in the meantime is not starving on its interest. Father says he is a good youth, not spoiled by his prospects, and I know that if he is it is largely owing to my father, who has been a faithful guardian, and has influenced this boy's tastes and aims. I don't know him particularly well myself, though he has been to the house a great deal; we never seemed to get on together.'"
"I thought he was as nice as he could be," remarked Prue with her grown-up air, which made it trying to have Rob suggest quickly that none of us could be more than that, and to have the older girls laugh.
"Oh, Rob, here comes Mr. Armstrong!" cried Wythie from her post at the window.
"So early!" exclaimed Rob. "Yet we might have known that he wouldn't linger in Fayre for luncheon. And we were having such a heavenly, halcyon time! Prue, do get out my brown dress while I smooth this demented hair of mine!"
Rob pulled out her pins and brushed her unruly locks into her hand, head downward, and with the brush, like the Red Queen's, in "Alice,"in danger of getting lost, in the bright and beautiful rings of which Hester telegraphed to Wythie an admiration which Rob would have resented had it been audible.
Wythie always seemed to be ready for any one's arrival, from the king to the ashman. She placidly smoothed her soft hair, of which not a lock was misplaced, pulled down her shirt-waist, made sure her belt covered the line of her skirt—which it invariably did—and was ready to go down to help her mother receive their caller, leaving Rob to Hester and Prue's mercies to be helped into her street gown.
"Because I've got to go up to Aunt Azraella's when I take you to the station, and I can't go through the agony of dressing three times a day," she explained frantically struggling with a hook that refused to find its affinity in a loop half buried in the shoulder seam.
"Not faded by late hours, Miss Roberta?" said Mr. Armstrong, rising to greet Rob as she entered looking radiant from her hurried toilette.
"Only my glories of last night are faded, sir," said Rob, giving her hand to the old gentleman whose kindly voice and manner she found even more likable than her memory of them.
"Now, my dear Grey young ladies, all of you,for my daughter must be older than these lassies' mother, I have not many minutes to spare if I want to lunch in town, as I mean to do," began Mr. Armstrong. "I want to hear the history of the child whose singing last night was so remarkable."
"It is easily told, Mr. Armstrong," said Mrs. Grey. And she briefly related Polly's story, and that of the Flinders family.
Mr. Armstrong listened attentively. "Now, for my reasons for asking," he said. "I have a sum of money entrusted to me, the principal well invested, and the interest left for the education of young girls whose talents and industry make them worth helping. Your little Polly is certainly wonderfully gifted, and there is a gap now in the application of the money; we can take another girl at once. I propose to make your Polly Flinders—what an extraordinary name!—our next experiment. What do you say to it?"
"How could it be done?" asked Mrs. Grey considering, while Wythie and Rob flushed with pleasure over the proposition. "She is so little, so sensitive and frail that I do not feel like giving her over to strangers, even though her mother should consent to it."
"If you are willing to keep her here it wouldadd the much-needed touch to our methods," said Mr. Armstrong. "There are five of us joined in administering this fund, of whom I am chairman, or president, or whatever you choose to call an informal board officer. Our trouble always is to find a place where our girls can get home training while they are educating, until they are old enough to be placed in a good boarding-school. If you will keep this child, I will see that the funds are provided for the musical education which she deserves. She should begin to be taught piano at once, and every year as she grows older suitable instruction shall keep step with her development. If she proves as talented as we now think her, and you will contribute her maintenance, as your part of her provision, the sum which her support would have cost shall be laid aside to send her to Germany to study, if, when she is grown, it seems better for her to go there."
"It is the most delightful thing I have heard in years, Mr. Armstrong," cried Mrs. Grey. "I have wondered and wondered whom we could interest in little Polly, and how we might get for her the training she should have. I have taught her the beginnings of the piano, and she recites her lessons daily to my daughter Oswyth, but we are not rich people, as you know, and I have never beenable to see what I wanted to see in Polly's future. You have solved it, and I can't tell you how thankful I am. I must write her poor mother to-night; poor creature, she needs good tidings, I fear."
"I don't know what you call rich, my dear madam," said the old gentleman decidedly. "This little house has always seemed to me, and remained in my memory, as the most richly endowed spot I know. The money which is at my disposition can give the girl her opportunity in life, but you will give her far more than that; an education far surpassing mere schooling, and a training that will fit her to use her opportunity and to live her life aright. I suppose you would rather have the money given to crippled children." he added, turning sharply to Rob. "I'm sorry, but it is a trust fund, its purpose distinctly limited and defined."
"Indeed, I wouldn't rather have it used for cripples," cried Rob. "The one thing I ever wanted to do in this world—except to found a home for dogs and cats and horses—is to give girls a chance, girls who would use the chance and are hungry for it. To tell the truth I have drifted into cripples because Mr. Baldwin's daughter made me—she is the one who started all this. I have helped her, because, after all, Iam sorry for maimed little things in those awful tenements and when a good cause takes hold of one and pulls one's hands—well, of course, you can't make a fist! But little girls, like Polly, or even bigger, appeal to me most. I don't want one penny of the fund for cripples, Mr. Armstrong. I haven't forgotten the days before you bought the invention, and how hungry I was for a chance, even with such people as my mother and the father you did not know. So I can imagine how girls feel who long for education and who have no home, or worse than none."
"I might have known that you would have cared more for minds and souls than for bodies, you strong, warm, sensitive child!" said Mr. Armstrong. "And I see that your quiet sister sympathizes with you, though I suspect that she dearly loves to comfort and cuddle suffering bodies. Now see here; about your cripple home," added Mr. Armstrong rising. "How much money have you?"
"We don't know yet, but enough to take care of three or four children anyway, if only we had a house for them," said Rob.
"You tell me that this Flanders—Flinders'—farm is not rented. Why not hire that, and begin? I'll pay the rent, and if the work is inspired it willgrow, and something else will come from this small beginning. If not, no harm is done; you have made your experiment, and will turn your energies to the next work at hand. What say you?" And Mr. Armstrong paused, looking from Wythie to Rob, excluding the mother as if he wanted to deal here with the girls only.
"Well, why did we never once think of the Flinders' place?" gasped Wythie. "That would help the Flinders, as well as start our home. It is a wonderful idea, Mr. Armstrong!"
"The farm would rent for a hundred a year," said Rob, eying their would-be benefactor doubtfully.
"Very probably. Well, will you accept my offer?" asked Mr. Armstrong.
"Oh, you kindest of fairy godfathers!" cried Rob, laughing, yet very much in earnest. "I should think we would accept it, and bless you every day. We will call the farm the Sweet William Farm," she added slyly.
"Nonsense!" cried the old gentleman, much pleased. "Then it is a bargain. Baldwin and I talked it over coming out on the train last night and made up our minds to help you children, he with his legal lore and I with my wealth galore. Well, I shall lose my train!" he cried hastily, consultinga watch very thin and small in proportion to its owner. "Good-bye, little Grey girls. Goodbye, Mrs. Grey. I shall come out again, purposely to see you, and to complete our arrangements, after you have heard from Polly's mother. This is a blessed little grey house, and I believe that it is going to prove like the mustard tree, whose branches reach out and shelter the helpless creatures."
He was gone in an instant, and Wythie and Rob fairly flew up-stairs to announce to Hester their startling news, news which made that young woman sit up, her eyes dilating as she realized that it rendered the beginning of her beloved project possible with no further delay.
Rob and Wythie took Hester to the station, from which point Wythie returned home, while Rob went on up the hill to Aunt Azraella's. Her mother and Cousin Peace had prepared Rob's mind for something out of the ordinary in this visit by telling her that Mrs. Winslow had something important to discuss with her, the nature of which they were under solemn promise not to reveal.
Rob was not greatly interested in the matter; her mind was so full of the prospect for Polly, and of the events of the night before. She was tired,and yet the echoes of the gavotte still haunted her. Aunt Azraella's momentous announcements usually proved less impressive to others than to herself.
Roberta found Mrs. Winslow seated in the westerly window enjoying the declining sun, with Tobias, who was of late allowed to visit other rooms than the kitchen, sitting solemnly blinking near her.
"Good-afternoon, Aunt Azraella. How are you, Tobias? I hope you remember that I saved your life?" said Rob, bringing into the room the freshness of her beautiful colouring, and the bright January air.
"You do not look tired, Roberta," said Mrs. Winslow. "Last night was a great success, I hear. Elvira and Aaron were full of it when they got home, but I have heard from others to-day that it was really a beautiful entertainment, and that while all three Grey girls were more than pretty, that Prue was very handsome."
"She was magnificent, Aunt, really," said Rob. "Prue is going to be so handsome that I don't know what is to be done with her."
"She'll do it all for herself," remarked Mrs. Winslow with unusual brevity and wisdom.
"Roberta, lay off your coat and furs, and takethat chair and bring it over here. There is something I must talk to you about. Has your mother told you?"
"She told me that you wanted to see me about something, yes, Aunt," said Rob as she obeyed. "Is it something that I can do for you?"
"It is something that I want to do for you," said her aunt. "Once I should have sent for Oswyth under these circumstances, but since you showed so much character and business ability at the time that you held out against us all in selling your father's invention I regard you as the cleverest of your family in business matters. Now, first of all, Roberta, I want you should understand that I have an incurable disease."
Rob caught her breath, and gazed speechlessly at Aunt Azraella, not knowing how to reply to such a statement made with as little emotion as if Mrs. Winslow had told her that she was going to the post-office.
"I have seen Dr. Fairbairn, and he brought up two physicians from the city," Aunt Azraella continued, after waiting an instant for Rob to speak. "They tell me that I may live three years, but I am entirely without hope of living longer than that. There isn't any particular hurry—" here Aunt Azraella paused, and Rob sat helplesslywaiting. Surely Aunt Azraella did not mean that there was no hurry about dying! And could it be that she was hearing aright? Aunt Azraella could not possibly be talking in this indifferent way of her doom!
"But I thought," Mrs. Winslow went on, "that I should like to have everything settled. All the money that your uncle left me will go to you three girls, as it should. But I don't seem to care about leaving what came from my family to my own relations. I always liked all the Winslows, and I can't find any particular affection for the Browns in my heart when I search it—there's no one nearer than cousins and two nieces on that side anyway. So I'm going to leave you and Oswyth and Prudence—" Aunt Azraella used the full names, as befitting testamentary intentions—"thirty thousand dollars each, and I'm going to leave you this house."
"Aunt Azraella!" protested Rob, between laughing and crying, for her nerves were getting the upper hand in this singular interview. "Please don't tell me such things; please don't talk about dying!"
"Roberta, I want you should be sensible," her aunt rebuked her. "There is no reason why people should not face facts and admit them. Withinthree years I shall be no more, and you three girls will have the bulk of my property. If you marry those wealthy Rutherfords you won't need it—"
"Aunt Azraella, I'm not going to marry the Rutherfords!" cried poor Rob. "And you are not really ill."
"You are not going to marry all three of them, but Wythie will marry Basil, and you will marry the second one, the one that is going to study with Dr. Fairbairn, and very likely Prue will have the youngest," said Aunt Azraella with deadly certainty. "For the rest, I have already told you that I am incurable, and I have suffered a good deal at times that I haven't told any one about. But that is neither here nor there. It doesn't matter about me just now, nor about marrying. What I wanted to ask you was this: I'm going to leave you this house. Now, would you rather have it for yourself, or would you like to have me leave it to you for this cripple home you are getting up?"
"Oh, it's your house; you must do what you like to with it! This is the most dreadful thing to ask me, Aunt Azraella! You know I don't want to take your house," protested Rob.
"I suppose you know, Roberta, that when I am dead it will not be my house, and that I mustleave it behind for some one," said Aunt Azraella with the same resolute common sense. "It will be yours, but shall it be for yourself, or for your charity?"
Rob made an effort and succeeded in forcing herself to meet her aunt on her own ground.
"I would rather the house were used as pleased you, Aunt Azraella," she said. "But we must remember one thing: The home for crippled children may fall through. Don't you think you ought to wait to see if it succeeds before you give it this beautiful, big house?"
"You are sensible, as usual, Roberta, when you put your mind on a thing," said her aunt in a tone of relief. "To tell the truth I prefer to leave you the house, but I thought you might like it given outright to this charity, which really is a good one. I shall will the house to you, and you will remember that we have had this talk, and feel free to live in it, sell it, or donate it to charity, just as you prefer. I wanted to please you; that's all."
"Mr. Armstrong is going to hire the Flinders' farm for us to begin on," said Rob, realizing that this was not the proper remark, but utterly unable to say anything else.
Aunt Azraella seemed relieved that she hadmodified the subject. "That's a good notion!" she exclaimed. "Tell me about it."
And Rob found herself telling Aunt Azraella the story of Mr. Armstrong's call, as if this were the most ordinary visit of the many which she had paid her aunt at this hour between daylight and dark.
Aunt Azraella seemed pleased by the tidings, and Rob rose to go, wondering if the tragic news that had been imparted to her had been heard in a dream.
"I appreciate your coming, Roberta," said Aunt Azraella. "And I appreciate the way you have behaved, after your first shock was over. I want all you girls should behave in your ordinary manner to me right along. I'm not going to be pitied, nor coddled because I've come to where we must all be some day, only most of us won't know it so long ahead. Good-night."
"Good-night," said Rob faintly, not daring so much as to put out her hand.
The crescent moon shone low in the west as she left the big house on the hill to cross the dry fields to the little grey house.
"Oh, poor, hard, shut-in woman! Poor Aunt Azraella!" Rob found herself saying aloud.
Wythie was in her "uniform," as the Grey girls still called the plain dark blue ginghams, feather-stitched in white which, renewed as fast as they wore out, were their housework gowns. With her plump hands protected by old gloves, she was sweeping her and Rob's room. A blue bordered handkerchief formed into a dusting-cap added greatly to her picturesque effect as she leaned on her broom and watched Rob coming up the street.
There had been several days in which to get used to the thought that Aunt Azraella was going hence from the big house on the hill, leaving it to Roberta for whatever purpose she pleased to use it. The question had been discussed in family conclaves, between the girls in private and with their mother and Miss Charlotte. It was an exciting thought that the power to do much was coming into the Grey girls' young hands, though the outlook was not for more wealth than wouldhave seemed to many people just sufficient for their own wants. It was characteristic of these simple-hearted Grey people that they should be quite satisfied with what they already had, and begin at once to plan to help others with their moderate excess.
Wythie leaned out of the window as Rob drew near, and the brisk winter wind promptly removed her cap to deposit it at Rob's feet as she turned in at the low gate, set back for the season against the hedge and out of the way of drifts.
Rob picked it up and bowed low to her sister, holding the cap in a position of salute, while, with the other hand, she waved a letter upward.
"From Mrs. Flinders," she called, and Wythie immediately began to divest herself of her sweeping gloves as she called back: "I'm glad we've heard from her at last. I'm coming down."
She found Rob already hatless by the fireside in the sitting-room, where their mother and Cousin Peace were established with their work, and Polly, with Roberta Charlotte on her knee and Hortense in a doll's rocking-chair at her side, was reading aloud Hans Christian Andersen's Wonder Tales with much satisfaction in her own proficiency.
"Will Pollykins go out to visit Lydia for alittle while?" asked Rob coaxingly. "We shall have something to tell her when she comes back, and we want to surprise her."
The quiet child arose at once and went obediently away, taking her family with her. Rob opened her mother's letter the instant that the door was closed behind the small representative of "the Flinders."
"It is addressed to you, Mardy, but I suppose it doesn't matter," remarked Rob as she acted on her supposition.
"Dear Mrs. Grey," Rob read. "I hope you are all enjoying the health at present which we are. He is not better, but remains much the same. I am about as usual. I received your letter which I now take my pen in hand to answer and would say that I do not know of any objections to renting our farm but the contrary because the taxes runs up pretty fast and when it is not worked it goes all to pieces. The hundred dollars which you mention as the price the man you wrote about will pay is more than we could get from any one round there but there is not no reason why you ought to tell him this if he wants to pay that much and we don't mind what use it gets so as we get the money regular. So if he wants it we will let him take it and be a relief off our minds more my mind thanhis because I got to take the care now he is laid up. What you say about Maimie sounds all right to me. I don't feel as if I could stand in her way if you think musics what she can do best of course she will have her own living to earn some-way. In the matter of education I do not feel as if I had enough myself to speak about it I can make out to spell right I guess because there is always a dictionary and nobody has no need to spell bad but for the rest I guess I had better leave it to you to do what you think is best about Maimie. I hope she knows that she is lucky to have such friends raised up to her when her father's stricken down and tell her to mind what you tell her and study hard. I guess she won't ever be our child again when she has got through studying. But it don't matter if she gets through her life better than we have. Her father would like to be remembered to you if he was just himself, but to-day is one of his times when he is sort of queer in his head. My love to Maimie, and my regards to all the family particularly Roberta.
"Yours respectfully.Rebecca Ann Flinders.
"P. S. Excuse mistakes and my poor writing my hand is sort of cramped from not writing much and doing housework."
"Oh, dear," sighed Rob, wiping away the tearsof mingled amusement and pity which had risen in eyes quick to respond to both. "Isn't it funny? Spelled correctly, as she says, but guiltless of punctuation! And isn't it pathetic?"
"Very, when she says Polly will never be their child again—and I'm afraid it is true," said Mrs. Grey.
"But for all that she desires the child's best good; there spoke the mother, revealed in spite of ignorance, as eloquently as mother-love can be expressed," said Cousin Peace.
"This is certainly for Polly's best good," said Wythie. "I wish one were less often half sorry for succeeding in this world! However, we can now write Mr. Armstrong; Polly can be regularly installed as the next heir to his fund, and he can hire the farm, and Hester can begin her home for cripples without much longer delay."
"It seems to me we are getting into charities without any effort on our part," observed Rob. "We live our uneventful, commonplace lives, and a sort of warm gulf stream of the milk of human kindness is at once penetrating us and bearing us away upon its bosom."
"Dear me, Rob, what oratory!" laughed her mother.
"Literary style, gained from composing mystories and telling them to the children," explained Rob.
"Poor little ones!" commented Cousin Peace mischievously.
"Well, it really is queer," persisted Rob. "Hester began it with her vague aspirations, like the little St. Theresa going out to see if she couldn't find some obliging person to martyr her, and then we began to find we could help one or two little miserables so easily that there was no escaping doing it, and now comes Mr. Armstrong, following Mr. Silsby and Dr. Fairbairn's interest in the project, and Aunt Azraella crowns it all. Truly, I knew some people had greatness thrust upon them, but I never knew any one had goodness thrust upon them—I always thought one had to achieve sanctity painfully! Yet, here we are getting made benefactors and saints in spite of ourselves!"
"Don't worry, Rob; it takes more than one home for destitute children, and more than a little kindly feeling to make a saint," said her mother.
Just then Polly turned the handle of the door and looked in timidly. "Please will it bother you if I tell you that Lydia said she should like to have Rob come out in the kitchen? Because Ben Bolthas a man treed, she says, in the orchard," said Polly, without showing any curiosity as to why she had been dismissed.
"A man in the orchard!" cried Rob, springing to her feet, and rushing out after Polly, followed in turn by Wythie, while Mrs. Grey and Miss Charlotte folded up their work to come after them.
Rob almost ran into Lydia in the kitchen door-way, and encountered her reproachful gaze.
"That goat," said Lydia severely, "has got a man penned up behind an apple-tree. He's a real nice looking man, and he was coming here through the orchard, short cutting from the back street. I guess he thinks it's not a very Christian way of receiving a person."
"I don't see why he should look for Christian ways in a goat," laughed Rob. "Poor old Ben Bolt! He knows we have no dog, and Kiku-san can't guard us, so who else is there but him to keep off intruders? I'll go out and rescue this one, however." Rob pulled on her old rubbers, kept convenient in the kitchen, and went out to save the person skulking behind the tree, while old grey Ben Bolt, the family friend whom Prue had rescued from the hands of his enemies, years ago when he was a kid, stood with lowered horns,holding at bay the stranger whom he evidently regarded as a menace to the estate.
Rob ran up and seized Ben's horns. "He really is not dangerous," she explained, struggling with her desire to laugh at the same time that she struggled with Ben Bolt. "He acts dangerous, but he is a lamb."
"Exactly so," observed the stranger, emerging from the position which Braddock's men were so disastrously withheld from taking, and rubbing the frayed lichens from the sleeve which had dung so tenaciously to the apple-tree. "It is a beautiful goat; a very fine specimen. I am devoted to animals myself, but he seemed disinclined to accept my homage. I was told that this was a short cut to Mrs. Grey's house, but I fear it has consumed more time than the longer way would have required. Is this Miss Grey whom I have the honour to address?"
"Yes," said Rob, not considering it worth while to enter into the order of succession in the Grey family. "Won't you follow me to the house? I will guarantee your safety."
"Thank you," said the man fervently. "I have come on a matter of business, and I should be obliged to go around the front way and reappear if I did not go with you now."
"Dreadful alternative!" murmured Rob, holding Ben Bolt firmly while the stranger skittishly circumnavigated him. After he was past she liberated the goat and followed the visitor towards the house, wondering much at his manner, which was a delicate blend of effrontery and timidity, and at his voice and language which were both of the suavest. She decided as she watched him that there was no need of apologizing for taking him in by the kitchen way where Lydia stood holding the door open with her most correct and reserved manner to contradict the active interest in her eye.
"Thank you, miss," said the stranger as Lydia indicated the cocoa mat with a movement of her foot; Lydia was conservative of her kitchen floor.
"I see that the family has assembled to witness my predicament with the bearded monster yonder," he continued with a playfulness that his voice carefully labelled as such. "This is fortunate for me. Permit me to present my card."
Rob, who still stood nearest to this personage, took the card and read:
"Albert Lockwell, Dealer in Antiques. Colonial Furniture a Specialty. Antique furniture, old china, pewter, silver and brass bought and sold. Highest prices given and lowest asked—Fourth Avenue, New York." And in the lower left-hand corner she read: "Mr. Demetrius Dennis."
"That is my name," said the stranger indicating the latter inscription with his thumb-nail backward. "I represent the well-known firm of Lockwell. Please allow the other ladies to peruse the card."
Rob handed it to Lydia to be given over to her mother; the solemn handmaiden carefully "perused" the card herself before yielding it up.
"That, madam, as I have said, is my name: Demetrius Dennis, representing ALBERT LOCKWELL."
He spoke as if his principal's name was capitalized. "We read in the morning papers lately a notice of the entertainment you gave in this town, in which it was stated that your costumes were veritable antiques, heirlooms of the Grey family. My principal is a person of remarkable astuteness; he said at once: 'Demetrius, where there is so many antique garments there very likely may be antique furniture and china. Take a train to Fayre on the first convenient morning, and buy it up.'"
Mrs. Grey gasped at the assurance of this speech, but Rob laughed outright. "Buy up thetrain or buy up the morning?" she asked. "And is this a convenient morning? I have always found mornings more or less convenient; they answer to begin the day with."
The visitor was impervious to ridicule, and he smiled kindly at Rob's fun-crinkled face.
"It suited me, Miss Grey," he said. "It was perfectly convenient to me. I could not come yesterday, because I went out to Jersey in pursuit of a corner dresser which proved utterly valueless, utterly worthless, I assure you. I am glad to see through the vista afforded me by that door that here I have not come in vain. If I mistake not that room, which I assume to be your dining-room, contains genuine pieces of old mahogany." He stepped forward as he spoke, and before the indignant Greys could interpose he had passed them and gone into the dining-room, ushered forward by Lydia, whose face expressed the deepest admiration for the language with which he was inundating her entranced ears.
"Ah!" observed this curious person with the Graeco-Hibernian name, "Now there is a side-board for which I am prepared to make a liberal offer, and for all the pewter which surmounts it. Also for that corner cupboard, and the blue and white china which it contains. Also for that cloverleafside table. And here are chairs for which I will make a lump offer sufficient to replace them with moderns quite as good from the point of view of any but a collector. This is your sitting-room, I perceive," continued the invader, pushing on. "Just as I expected! For those high book-cases I am prepared to give as much as a hundred dollars apiece. That card-table, that work-table, that claw legged great sofa—all these things I will take, and give you more than any other dealer in New York. Doubtless you have antique bureaux, chairs, tables, all sorts of antique stuff in your bedrooms. I will just run them over hastily and make a rough inventory, and we will write you, we will write you, offering for everything, calculating each piece individually, but offering in the lump. I assure you we shall give you a good sum—it will mount above a thousand dollars, I fancy, judging from my rapid survey, and I am considered as good a judge of antiques as there is in the city. It is not impossible that you have a tester bed? An old high poster? I will take that at two hundred, if it is in good condition. It is remarkable to find a collection so complete so near New York; I consider myself lucky that no other dealer has superseded me. Now, if you please, the bedrooms."
He turned towards the hall with the same cheerful confidence and rapid movement that he had evinced since, rescued from Ben Bolt, whose intelligence the Greys were rating higher with every word, he had bent his attention upon the errand which had brought him to the little grey house.
But as he started in that direction Mrs. Grey recovered from the stunned state of mind into which the suddenness and rapidity of Mr. Dennis' invasion had thrown her. She uttered the one word: "Stop!" with such force that it arrested the invader. He wheeled suddenly, presenting to the Greys a face of such amazement that Rob burst out laughing, although her cheeks were reddened with anger.
"Mr. Dennis," said Mrs. Grey, consulting the card for the name, "you lose sight of a very important fact. I have not offered my furniture for sale, nor have had the slightest intention of parting with it. Is it your habit to push through houses in this impertinent manner, assuming that your presence, and your appraisals, and offers to purchase are welcome? You will remain, sir, precisely where you are; my house is not open for your inspection, nor are its contents for sale. The reason for the presence here of so many relics of the past, which you seem to consider remarkable,is very simple. This house has remained in one family for more than two hundred years, and its treasures have not been on the market. They are not for sale now. You will withdraw at once. This front door is the safer way; the goat is still in the orchard."
Demetrius Dennis beamed on the indignant lady with an indulgent and approving smile. "My dear madam," he said, "I see that you have an eye for business, and there is nothing that I do so admire as business sense. It is right for you to hold out for as large a price as you can get, and of course the more you seem not to care to sell, the more likely we are to persist and come down with something handsome. Something handsome it will be, I assure you, Mrs. Grey, and that I have told you frankly from the beginning. It has never come in my way to notice that people wouldn't sell in the end if they got what they wanted for their stuff. We shall not balk at a good price, because the collection includes so much that it will be worth our while to take it entire, and I don't mean that any other dealer shall get it."
There was a certainty of common understanding in the man's manner that disarmed Mrs. Grey's indignation as it stirred her sense of humor.It was perfectly evident that he considered himself her benefactor, and felt sure that, after some necessary delays for finesse, the furniture would be his. Whereat not only he would be entirely happy but he would leave the Greys even more so in the possession of a check large enough to furnish the little house over again in shining, highly varnished newness.
Her eyes softened into a laugh of pure amusement, which she prevented from reaching her lips, but Wythie and Rob were too young to be tolerant of impertinence, and Rob's eyes emitted an indignant flash as she said sternly: "You have heard my mother's order to leave the house. She has told you that its contents are not for sale. You will immediately obey her: there is the door."
"Now, why should you be huffy, my dear young lady?" began Mr. Dennis, reasonably. "Can't you see it's for your advantage to sell, and don't you suppose that I don't want to go back to town and report a failure? I don't generally fail, you know, when my head sends me out to buy for him."
"Nevertheless you have failed this time," said Rob. And gentle Oswyth added as she set the front door back: "Leave the house at once, sir. You are not to discuss the subject, nor be so impertinentas to assume that my mother means less than every syllable that she has uttered."
Here Lydia stepped to the fore. "This gentleman has left his hat in the kitchen. Come back the way you come in, sir, and I will hand it to you."
Demetrius Dennis, who looked much chagrined—even wounded—by the girls' sternness, turned to Lydia with a grateful smile. "No offence meant, I don't see why there should be any taken," he said. "If you insist on keeping the stuff, and on me going, there isn't anything else to be done but to let you keep it, and to go. But you don't know how hard it is for me to believe you'd refuse the offer I'd have made. Say, I'll leave that card with you, and if you change your mind when you talk it over around the evening lamp to-night—as you may you know, as you may—why a postal card dropped to me at that address will fetch me out here right away. You hadn't ought to be angry, madam; it's all in the way of business."
"I see that you consider it so. Another time you would be wiser to hesitate before you intrude. At least find out if you may inventory people's property. It doesn't matter. Lydia, take him safely out beyond Ben Bolt who evidently sharesour prejudices against too great a disregard of private rights." And Mrs. Grey's lips twitched at the memory of the picture Mr. Demetrius Dennis had presented on their first glimpse of him.
"I wish you good-morning, ladies," said that individual with a bow comprehensive of the irate younger ones, and the amused elder ladies. Then he followed Lydia to the kitchen in pursuit of his hat, and after an unaccountable delay they saw him crossing the orchard in Lydia's wake, who preceded him as a bulwark against Ben Bolt.
At the rear gate their handmaid lingered long; the Greys saw her engaged in earnest conversation with the Graeco-Hibernian. By this time even Rob's indignation at his impertinence had given way to her sense of the ridiculous, and Mrs. Grey, Miss Charlotte, and the two girls were in the full tide of peals of laughter when Lydia reappeared to rebuke them tacitly by her gravity of demeanour, beneath which gleamed something like self-satisfaction.
"He told me to go straight in to you when I got into the house and say that he wasn't one mite offended, and for you to preserve the card in case you changed your mind," said Lydia. "He's a gentleman, that's what he is," added Lydia, asshe half turned in the doorway, as one who would be willing to entertain a motion to linger.
"Is he, Lydia?" asked Rob demurely. "How did he prove it?"
"By not bearing ill-will when you all got angry," said Lydia with spirit. "And by his conversation with me. He's serious-minded; says he neither drinks, smokes, chews nor swears, and considers life too short to be wasted on dangerous pastimes, like such. He's got a lot of serious books that came in an old book-case his folks bought. He's going to come out here some pleasant night and lend me those books—bring 'em with him. I'd admire to read 'em! Some are biographies of good men, and some are sermons; he says some are obituary sermons. He's a perfect gentleman!"
Lydia departed to begin getting a dinner that would inevitably be late at best.
"Obituary sermons! Coming to lend them to Lydia! The test of gentlemanhood!" murmured Rob.
"Are we witnessing the dawn of a romance?" asked Wythie, whose perceptions in that direction were keener of late.