"Its no wonder they called it spring," said Prue, coming into the house with her jacket on her arm and her golden hair lying damp on her flushed forehead. "The way it is sprung on us is dreadful. It is a perfect dream of a day, but I'm half dead in these winter clothes, and the day before yesterday we had snow squalls!"
She dropped into a chair and threw open the window beside it.
"Sore throat weather, Prue!" warned her mother. "You must not sit in a draught when you are so heated. Come over here, dear, you will be cool enough after you have been in the house a little while. May has a trick of masquerading as July without warning us that she is going to change her rôle."
"But isn't it delicious?" cried Miss Charlotte, going to the window which Prue had left open as she obeyed her mother, and breathing in thedamp, fresh odours of young grass, lilacs, blossoms, and all the haunting, indefinable scents of the spring. Then she half sighed, and stood leaning her head against the window-sash.
Rob came in from the kitchen with a voluminous gored apron embracing her closely from collar to hem, and with her bright hair more than usually ringed in moist tendrils, and with her right sleeve flour-dusted from her cake making.
"Dear me, how warm it is out by the stove!" she exclaimed. "And Lydia expects Demetrius this evening, so she brought me molasses instead of sugar, and forgot to take the draughts off, after her fire was burning up, so the oven is so scorching hot that my cake has to wait till it can get a chance to rise in the oven before it is burned to a crisp."
"I wonder if it is true that Demetrius is going to settle in Fayre?" laughed Prue.
"Perfectly true. Lydia says that he is going to be an auctioneer, and it seemed to me that I had never heard of such a happy choice of a profession," said Rob. "I think that affair is going to be serious."
"It couldn't be anything else with Lydia as one of the principals," commented Wythie on her way through the room with some branches ofapple blossoms for the vases, just catching Rob's last words and their connection.
"We don't keep a servant—not even one; we have help," said Rob. "And she is much less helpful help for being so engrossed by Demetrius." She glanced at Cousin Peace as she spoke and instantly perceived the droop of the gentle head, the unwonted melancholy of her attitude.
"Cousin Peaceful, dearest, what are you thinking about?" she asked going over to put her arms around Miss Charlotte, oblivious to the floury record she was making on her cousin's soft grey waist.
"I am half afraid to tell you, for fear you will think me ungrateful, and——"
"Generally horrid," supplemented Rob. "So we shall, but never mind that!"
"You know how happy I am here, in my dear little lean-to room," Miss Charlotte went on, pressing the warm hands closer to her. "So you can't suspect me of lack of appreciation when I say that I am afraid that I want to take my insurance money and build a little home of my own on the site of the dear old one."
"I felt sure you were thinking of that, Charlotte, and dreading to say it," cried Mrs. Grey. "I couldn't anticipate you in speaking, butI have been sorry to see that you were longing for your own home and not daring to say so."
"Do you approve, Mary?" cried Miss Charlotte, wheeling about with girlish eagerness.
"No; I think you are better here, among us all, without any care, and knowing that you are blessing us every day, merely by living," said Mrs. Grey, rising to join Rob at Miss Charlotte's other side. "But I understand the love of place, and the love of home—the feeling that you want your own little nook, and, since you do feel thus, I approve of your building. Yes, I approve of the building; I do not approve of your wanting—oh, I don't mean that! I mean I think you are entitled to your own fireside, but I want to keep you."
"You are the best Mary of all the thousands in the world!" cried Miss Charlotte. "You are so sweetly reasonable! Yes, I love every one of you much more than you know, well as you know my love, and I love this dear little grey house—but I want my home."
"You shall have your own home!" cried Mrs. Grey, while Rob and Prue looked at each other aghast at the prospect of letting Cousin Peace slip away out of their household. "The first thing to be done is to consult on plans."
"I have made some plans myself," said Cousin Peace meekly.
"Oh, you sly, deceiving Cousin Peace!" cried Rob reproachfully, but not surprised to hear that the blind woman had been turning architect, for Miss Charlotte's blindness never seemed to be a deprivation of sight, so sensitive were her fingers and nerves. She now produced from her knitting-bag, which always hung on her left arm, two sheets of paper and spread them out lovingly. "I have been amusing myself with these at odd moments," she said. "I think this will make a charming and inexpensive little house."
Prue came over to look at the plans with the others. They were wavering as to line at times, but they were perfectly correct in dimensions, and were a design for a house most tasteful and comfortable, with all sorts of little nooks and contrivances to enhance the pleasure of living and the beauty of each room.
"It couldn't be nicer!" cried Rob, and immediately added: "Oh, my cake, my cake!" and fled. Her eyes were moist with tears when she came into the kitchen, and Lydia looked up with her serious air to inquire if anything had happened.
"Yes, Lyddie," said Rob. "It's all right, butit makes me heartsick. We've got to give up Cousin Charlotte. She loves us as much as we love her, but she wants to build a house for herself on her old place, and I suppose we must let her, because it is natural that she should hunger for her old surroundings."
"I think," said Lydia with that portentous manner of hers, that made the opening announcement thatshethought seem little less than the declaration of an ecumenical council, "I think that she ought to do it. I think everybody that can get one had ought to have a home. I have been wondering why Miss Grey didn't do just what she's going to do. As for you, you can't really say you need her, with such a family as yours is. I said to Demetrius the last time he was out that if she only would build and go to housekeeping I should ask her to let us take care of her place, him outside, me inside. For I might as well tell you now, Roberta, and you can tell the rest, that Mr. Dennis and I are engaged to be married."
"I hope you will be very happy, Lydia," said Rob, not quite knowing how to reply.
"He's a man in a thousand, in a million," said Lydia impressively, "for all you took a dislike to him when you first saw him."
"Oh, but I didn't, Lydia! I only disliked his methods of transacting business," cried Rob. "He came too much as the winds come when navies are stranded."
Lydia passed over her denial with the dignified virtue of one who disdained casuistry. "You spoke up to him sharp, but he never laid it up against you," she said. "He has a disposition for which he had ought to be thankful to heaven, and I make no doubt he is. And he never practises any of those small vices which people allow themselves, and which pave the way to entire destruction—I allude to cigar smoking and the like."
Rob remembered the ashes in a certain jar in the sitting-room, left there by Basil and Bruce's cigars and Bartlemy's artist pipe, and was silent, examining her cake in the oven to hide her quivering lips.
"I am glad that he is a good man, Lydia, for I'm sure I don't see what you would do with an imperfect one," she said, and Lydia was gratified to hear the quaver in Rob's voice which she attributed to emotion. "And so you are going to be married, and want to live with Cousin Peace? Can your Demetrius do gardening?"
"He thoroughly understands all kinds ofgardening," returned Lydia. "There are few auctions in Fayre, so between times he would be gardening, and I should do the housework. It would be a lucky arrangement for your cousin and—and us." And immovable Lydia faltered over the latter touching pronoun.
"And what would become of us without you, Lydia?" asked Rob. "Have you thought of us?"
"My mother would come to do for you," said Lydia, "and she knows how to do everything better than I do."
"Is she—younger than you, Lyddie?" asked Rob.
Lydia gave Rob one of the glances by which she frequently reproved frivolity. "A mother is never younger than her child," she said sternly. "But my mother is livelier than I am, and she is only middle-aged—forty-three."
"How can your mother be only forty-three?" cried Rob involuntarily.
"I am twenty-four, and she was nineteen years old when I was born," said Lydia. "It seems to me I smell that cake."
"So do I," said Rob, taking it out of the oven. "Well, we'll see about your mother, and all the rest of the plan when the time comes. CousinCharlotte has not even begun to build. I must hurry off, or I shall not be ready when the guests come."
Rob ran out of the room, Lydia's voice pursuing her into the hall. "If she knows she can get Mr. Dennis and me she may hasten; her Annie that she had has gone away, and she would likely build quicker if she knew there was some one she could count on." Lydia called after her, and Rob burst in upon Wythie at her toilette in their bedroom with the surprising news of the past hour.
"Oh, dear," sighed Wythie while she laughed at Rob's account of Lydia's announcement, "how can Cousin Peace want to leave us and how can we let her go? Yet, of course, it is natural that she should cling to that spot where she was born and has always lived, and natural to want her own home. But that dear lean-to domestic chapel will be a sore loss to us! It seems to me that this has been a winter of uneventful events that count for a great deal."
"I suppose that is partly because we are at that age when everything seems significant," said Rob with great astuteness. "It will make a lot of difference to me just now if I can't get ready in time to be down at the station when thetrain arrives." And she frantically tried to find the button which was, naturally, on the other side of the band of the skirt, which she had put on wrong side out.
"'Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot into a left-hand shoe,'" quoted Wythie mildly as she went to rescue Rob from her plight. "There is time, Robin, if you only wouldn't try to take it all at once."
"Robins are always flustering birds," said Rob emerging, flushed, but grateful, from the skirt which Oswyth had righted. "But you know it would be hard not to be on hand to witness the arrival of the first instalments."
This was "the spring opening," as Rob called it, of "the separate ell" of the little grey house. In other words the Flinders' farm had been made ready, after trying delays, to receive the four crippled children with whom Hester's experiment was to begin, and they were to be brought to Fayre by a delegation from New York on the mid-afternoon train. Dr. Fairbairn had had an inspiration, so natural that every one wondered why it had not been part of the plan from the first: this was to install Mrs. Flinders as housekeeper in her own house. It involved the presence of her paralysed husband, but Polly wasto remain with the Greys, an arrangement so much to the child's advantage that her mother gladly agreed to it. So the Flinders were already installed on the farm, which, after much discussion had received the name of Rob's suggesting, and was called Green Pastures.
"There is something so peaceful about it," said Rob, "and when we teach the children the child's own psalm they will take it as referring directly to themselves when they say: 'He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.' And if ever the attempt did grow into something important I for one would rather have it spoken of as Green Pastures than as the Hester Home for Incurables, or some such forbidding name—I hate the institutional sound!"
So Green Pastures it was, and a busy time its friends had had making it a real clover pasture for its little guests.
There was not to be a formal opening to which the public was invited; it was too simple and modest an attempt to be inaugurated ceremonially, and the youth of its founders made their elders desire to see its first beneficiaries installed in a way harmonious with that youth and inexperience. But on the other hand it was impossible to let the day go by without some special notice;the plan had grown too important for that. So the Baldwins and Mr. Armstrong were coming out from town, bringing the children; the Rutherfords were coming home for the occasion, and Mrs. Silsby, Aunt Azraella and Miss Charlotte with Mrs. Grey were to have a tea in Mrs. Flinders' former best parlour after the children had been fed and tucked away in the little white enamelled beds provided for them.
A rosy-cheeked young woman with experience in a children's hospital, had been engaged to look after these first arrivals, and stood ready to receive them in her white cap and apron when Wythie and Rob and Prue had left Green Pastures at noon, having satisfied themselves that nothing was wanting, and having hovered over the spotless, little waiting beds with something painfully sweet and tender stirring in their womanly girl-hearts.
"I haven't done anything for this except sympathize," said Wythie ruefully as she walked down the street to the station with Frances and Prue, all three radiant in festive garments. Rob hastened to overtake them, putting on a new pair of gloves as she came, for which, in spite of propriety, there had been absolutely no time to delay in the house.
"What has any of us done more than that, except Hester and Rob?" asked Frances. "Rob has earned money for it by her story-telling, and Hester has sacrificed for it, and founded it, but we have only encouraged it——"
"And danced and sang for it," added Prue.
"Your mother has done a great deal, and your father has given money enough to supplement all deficiencies in this beginning," said Wythie. "However, I am not envious; I only wish I were more useful."
"I think there isn't a bit of difference in the credit," said Frances, not merely sensibly but rather profoundly. "We all were ready to do what we could, and it is the will that counts, not opportunity. Hester and Rob are not like us—we are not brilliant like Rob, nor intense and tremendous like Hester; we are background figures, Oswyth."
"Well, of all things!" expostulated Rob. "Why we lean on Wythie like—like—oh, like gravity! I don't mean seriousness, because for that we should have to lean on Lydia, but gravitation gravity. She is our pillar of reliance, and our pillow of soothing in the little grey house. You know that as well as I do, Francie. And as to you, you founded my story-telling, and you are always a rock of common sense and efficiency."
"I'm afraid I shouldn't like too efficient a rock, Rob; it sounds formidable. But you needn't try to console me; I don't need consoling. I accepted our relative positions when I was five years old, and it doesn't annoy me now. Besides, though mysticism and occult influences are not much in my line, I do have a half belief in the power of strong intentions and profound feeling to set in motion waves that bring about the end for which we can only feel and long. I can't express it clearly, but I mean I half believe that our united interest has a kind of power for good; it's like wireless electricity, used as a force, instead of to carry messages."
"Mercy upon us, Frances!" cried Rob, pretending to be stunned, though she perfectly understood what Frances meant. "I feel as if you were the chela and I were Kim! Aren't they mahatmas or something, who send down influences? You're an Indian mystic—I hope not an Indian fakir."
But Prue halted in her walk for a moment, holding her golden head high. "I know exactly what Frances means," she said, "and I believe it, too. Only I believe one all alone can make what she wants come to her, without any union of minds."
Wythie turned to look with amazement at the tall girl whom she still regarded as her baby sister. She did not speak, but Rob uttered her thought for her.
"That it is only another way of saying that you feel that your will is very strong, my Prudy, so strong that you can't imagine yourself balked. But many a strong willed person has tasted bitter defeat: take care what you set your will upon," she said.
Prue tossed her head, but did not reply, and the whistle of the train half a mile away quickened the girls' steps and silenced their tongues.
It was curious to see the arrival of the party whom they had gone to meet. Mr. Baldwin handed down his wife and daughter; Mr. Armstrong followed, and then came the three Rutherford boys and Lester Baldwin, each bearing in his arms a child whose thin hands were clasped behind his neck, and whose wizened face looked dully upon the scene upon which they were appearing.
"I feel as if I were taking part in a tableau representing the Romans carrying off the Sabine maidens," said Bruce as soon as he was within speaking distance.
Rob laughed. "The Sabines didn't needrobust warriors to steal them," she said, "if they looked like this. Aunt Azraella has sent Aaron with the carriage for the children, because it is more comfortable than these station things, which the rest of us are going to take."
"Wythie, Hester, Rob and Frances had better go up with the children," said Mr. Baldwin. "They will ride more comfortably in their laps."
"Of course they will," said Bruce. "Come on cushions—aren't you to be temporarily regarded in that light?"
Hester took on her lap the only little boy of the pathetic group, the child whose discovery had inspired and directed her vague dissatisfaction towards this charity, and over whom she had been keeping watch ever since. Wythie, Rob and Frances received the three little girls without a word, and Bruce's heart shone out of his eyes as he caught a glimpse of the moisture dimming Rob's laughing ones, and saw the sweet, motherly pity on her merry lips.
The children could not be won to talk; they lay looking gravely out on the green and blossoming world into which they were being introduced, but no expression of any sort of feeling escaped them.
"Hester, Hester, I beg your pardon that I everthought you exaggerated," said Rob as they neared Green Pastures. "I am thankful that I helped you a little, and at last I understand that you were not too earnest."
"You are a splendid girl, Hester Baldwin," said Oswyth emphatically.
"I don't feel like a girl, Wythie. I am a happy young woman; I have found something to do in the world, and I have found my place. There isn't a dissatisfied corner in me now, and when I first knew you I was all cravings and emptiness."
Hester's earnest eyes, alight with joy, confirmed her words, and the nobility of her face far transcended mere beauty. In their hearts her three friends believed that Hester knew herself, and that she was to be one of those devoted women who find their life in losing it, and their happiness in turning aside from all personal happiness to minister to distress.
The wan children ate their light supper with gratifying appetites, and keen appreciation of Mrs. Flinders' buttermilk cookies and the fresh strawberries. Then they were handed over to the care of their nurse, and the friends to whom they owed their new home drank tea in the westerly room, flooded now with the long rays of the sinking sun.
Rob took her cup into the window and stood looking out on the peaceful Green Pastures into which these waifs had been gathered. Something stirred within her, the appeal of suffering childhood to a woman, however young that woman may be.
Mr. Baldwin came quietly up behind her. "Dear Rob," he said, "I am so proud of my girl, so happy to see how deep and fine is her nature that I want to tell you that I realize what your friendship has done for her, and that it was a fortunate day for Hester that brought to my office a brave, frightened little heroine in her black garments, and carrying her bumping suitcase."
Rob's lips quivered; she felt overwrought. "I have done nothing, Mr. Baldwin; it was all in Hester herself."
"All in her, but how much you have helped to bring it out, merely by being yourself, a high-minded, simple, wholesome, brave girl, you don't know. It's atmosphere and character that count, Robin, Bobs Bahadur, and we none of us realize how we mould others for good or ill when we breathe the air they breathe," said her fatherly friend. "Here comes Bruce after you; I must give place."
Bruce came up as Mr. Baldwin slipped away, and Rob turned back to the contemplation of the sunset.
"Say, Rob," Bruce began boyishly. "You know you call this house the separate ell of the little grey house, I shall soon be graduated and reading under Dr. Fairbairn, and I mean to devote myself to this branch of practice, as you know. I feel as though the opening of Green Pastures meant the opening of my way before me. Don't you think, Rob dear, you might tell me that you're going to help me, that you'll be—be—why, be Rob," Bruce broke off with sudden helplessness and shyness.
It was a new thing to find Bruce stammering, and appealing to her, and Rob had been deeply moved by the clinging hands of the suffering little creatures whom they had brought home. She lost all control of herself.
"I don't see what makes you follow me here, into this window, to ask for help, Bruce Rutherford!" she cried. "Of course I can't help you; of course I don't even know what you mean!" added poor Rob, usually so scrupulously truthful.
"I wanted to keep the birthday of this house in which I mean to work by getting a word fromyou," said Bruce aghast in his turn at Rob's change of demeanor.
"Well, of course; what word?" cried Rob. "I have given you lots of words."
"Why, Rob!" began poor Bruce reproachfully.
And just then Frances came up with her face aglow, and her eyes shining through unshed tears.
"Bruce, Rob!" she murmured. "Lester took me out in the garden and—He said he wanted to celebrate Hester's triumph by getting her a new cousin—He meant me, Rob!"
"Yes, he's been meaning you for some time," said Rob grimly. "What did you say?"
"What could I say?" said Frances simply, "but one thing?"
"Oh, just listen to that!" growled Bruce, and walked away.
Frances looked from his retreating back to Rob's perturbed face. "Rob!" she cried, "what have you done?"
"Nothing, nothing in this wide world!" cried Rob hysterically. "I should like to know why I should do anything? I hope you will be very happy, Frances, and I'm sure you will, because Lester Baldwin is a nice fellow, and if you don'tmind marrying him, why you're sure to be happy."
And Rob walked off in the opposite direction from the one Bruce had taken, leaving Frances to accept this dubious congratulation from her oldest friend, and to comfort herself with the reflection which she had often heard her grandmother make, that "heaven was full of days," and that Bruce and Rob would see another dawn.
"It will be a miserable summer," thought Rob despondently, keeping her face away from the range of Wythie's eyes as she stood before the glass brushing her hair for the night while her sister lay peacefully on her pillow, waiting for Rob to lie down beside her. Oswyth's and her mother's discretion and consideration oppressed Rob. They must have noticed that Bruce went home alone that night for the first time since Battalion B had been added to the assets of the little grey house, but they seemed not to see it. Rob, annoyed with herself, with Bruce, with fate, with the world in general and growing up in particular, suspected Frances of having given them a hint of her suspicions as to Rob's bad behavior that evening when she announced to them her own happiness. For Wythie watched her sister with a gentle gaze that Rob felt in her spine, but, contrary to their girlish custom, didnot seem inclined to gossip over the happenings of that night. She let perturbed Rob alone so considerately that Rob longed to complain of her cruelty. Rob felt very much as she had felt when, in her childish days after some misdemeanor her mother had "left her to her conscience," as the good Mardy used to say, a process that was harder to endure than the whipping which she had never received would have been.
It proved not to be a miserable summer in the least. Bruce went back to college, and returned to Fayre his old self, unchanged. Rob, alertly suspicious, guessed that Basil had advised him to manage Rob thus, and that the advice had originated in Wythie. She felt quite certain that the time was only postponed in which she should have to face the disagreeable duty of wounding the friend whom she loved best in the world—so she put it to herself—for there was that in Bruce's eyes and beneath his easy comradeship which told her that a frustrated attempt to have his way would not be final to him.
But after a little while, allowable to her discomfort, Rob lost her dread of Bruce, and there was no constraint apparent between them, and no more romance in the atmosphere of the little grey house than Wythie's placid happiness withBasil, and Lydia's comedy of betrothal to her loquacious Demetrius.
In the meantime, the soft air of June was stirred by the carpenters' hammers rapidly putting up Cousin Peace's new house, and visits to watch its growth made serious inroads upon the busy Grey household's time.
It was going to be a little cottage with remarkable effect upon its neighbour and elder by two centuries. For not only had Lydia's plan to take Miss Charlotte under her wing, and to bring Demetrius to supplement languid auctioneering by caring for Miss Charlotte's garden been accepted, but Miss Charlotte proposed taking Polly Flinders to live with her. The child and the blind woman had grown so fond of each other that Polly hung evenly balanced between her desire to remain under the same roof with Rob and to go to Miss Charlotte, while the latter pleaded to the Greys that she needed Polly, while her cousin, rich in three girls, could afford to give her up.
It was not decided, but there was sufficient likelihood of Polly's going to the new house to make Rob suggest that it be called Anemone Cottage, "and that won't mean the frail little spring anemone, Cousin Peace," she said, "butthe sea anemone, with tentacles sucking in everything it can reach."
"It is going to suck you into its depths, my Robin, just as my first house used to do, for its brightening," retorted Miss Charlotte.
College Commencement had passed—"commencement had ended," Bartlemy said—and the Rutherfords were all back in Fayre for the long vacation. Basil wrote every morning, to test his powers further in his chosen vocation; Bruce read and drove with Dr. Fairbairn every day; Bartlemy painted with industry, so that the long June days were far from idle ones. And Commodore Rutherford, "their long lost father," as Bruce called him, was coming home at last from the East to see the sons whom he had left tall boys, and was to find young men. There was a feeling of coming events in the air; with the supervising of the new house, the constant coming and going of Hester Baldwin, the absorbing interest of the increasing prosperity and success of Green Pastures, Mrs. Grey found her girls harder to secure for home usefulness than they had ever been before. Lydia complained feelingly of the difficulty she experienced in finding time to prepare the household linen which, though she would have no use for it in Miss Charlotte's house, sheevidently regarded as equally indispensable to a lawful marriage as a license.
Besides all these distractions which disturbed the even currents of life in the little grey house, Aunt Azraella was rapidly growing much more ill; it was plain to them all that the term of life allowed her by the doctor was to be greatly curtailed. Aunt Azraella had not been the sort of person to which young affections are likely to cling; but death is never less than awful, and the shadow of Azrael's wings, drooping visibly over the woman who bore his name, modified the sunlight of that summer in the little grey house. The Greys allowed no day to pass without many of its hours being spent by one of them up in the big house on the hill. Altogether it was a time of many interruptions.
Rob had told her first series of stories to the Fayre children, and was launched on her second set continued late into July. She was winding it up with great relief, though her audience gave her attention most flattering, considering the heat, and that they were all at what Prue called "the wriggling age."
The dear old wainscotted room was shaded into comparative coolness, and a great bunch of mignonette sustained Rob through her last storywith its fragrance close to her hand. Over by the window sat little Polly Flinders, looking out dreamily upon the warm stillness of the afternoon as she listened to Rob. The child never joined the other children who flocked close to Rob's side and hung on her knees; her love for her idol was too exclusive to share with these more prosperous little ones, too sacred to reveal to their eyes—Polly kept her revelations of it for Rob's knowledge alone.
Now she looked around so suddenly that Rob halted in her story, and asked: "What is it, Polly?"
"Your Aunt Azraella is coming," said Polly, and as she spoke Mrs. Winslow's figure passed the window, and paused at the rarely used door which led from this room out on the yard.
"Open the door, please, Polly," said Rob, wondering why Aunt Azraella should choose this entrance on her story-telling afternoon.
Mrs. Winslow entered, and seated herself near the door. "Go on, Roberta," she said. "I will wait; I wanted to see you alone, so came this way."
"Almost through, Aunt Azraella," said Rob. "So you see, children, as we were saying," she continued, "Godfrey de Bouillon was a greatsoldier, a wonderful leader of men, but that which we remember first when we think of him is not his high courage, or brilliant mind, but that he refused to wear a golden crown in Jerusalem, where his Lord had been crowned with thorns, and that he put away from him the honour and name of king, and would be called but the Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. Thus Godfrey, the hero, shows us that greatness of name and fame is less than greatness of soul, and his humble piety rings through the ages more loudly than the clash of his battles. We shall none of us be great in the other ways in which Godfrey was great, but we may try to have a little of his greatness of soul, and turn away from gain, and the glitter of worldly glory when conscience tells us that it is higher and nobler to be poor and lowly. And this last story of the crusaders shows us, what the lives of all real heroes show us, and that is that he is bravest who knows when to say No, and that the highest courage is to dare for the sake of right. It shows us that the greatest hero is not he whom the world honours, or who cares for its praise, but he who fights against meanness and cruelty; loving purity, truth and right better than anything that the world can give him. If we try, perhaps, like Godfrey of Bouillon, when weare tempted we can refuse gold and high sounding title, and greater glory if to get it we should have to be less worthy of the Master whom, when He came to show the world the beauty of holiness, they crowned with thorns."
Rob's voice trembled as she ceased, and she buried her face for an instant in the mignonette at her side. The chivalric girl was stirred into profound emotion at the thought of lofty deeds; she thrilled and quivered at the presentation of the highest ideals, and responded to the beauty of renunciation with the full force of her own great heartedness.
The children crowded around her to bid her good-bye with as much eagerness and fervour as if this had been a life-long parting instead of the end of her stories for the summer. She kissed each flushed, upturned little face, and when the last had withdrawn, turned to Aunt Azraella with a tired sigh.
"It's lovely work entertaining them, Aunt Azraella," she said, "and beautiful to see how they care for it, but it is exhausting. Why, what has happened?" she added, seeing for the first time the expression on Mrs. Winslow's face.
"I am much worse, Roberta," said Aunt Azraella. "I felt so queer at noon that I sent for Dr.Fairbairn, and he says my disease has taken a sudden turn for the worse. I shall probably die within two weeks—less time."
Rob dropped upon a chair and gasped, turning pale under the shock.
Mrs. Winslow went on in the same hard, even voice, as if she were announcing the most ordinary tidings. "The doctor said I must go to bed, but I made up my mind I was going to walk down here whatever he said; for the last time, you know. If a body's going to die, she is going to die, and it doesn't make any difference what you do. So here I am, I'm going all through this house, and you're not to say one word to any of the rest about what I've told you. Then you come home with me, and I will go to bed, for I don't believe I can keep out of it any longer. I want you to stay with me while I last. Now pull yourself together, Roberta, because you've got plenty of backbone when you need it, and I don't want your mother to know this is a visit to say good-bye to this house. I've always taken more interest in it than in any other place, except my own house, and more in your family than in my own relations—I like that Mayflower strain in the Winslows and Greys, and I like the way they forget all about money; we Browns always thoughta good deal about money. Now, come along, Roberta, and keep your face natural, as well as your tongue still."
Roberta arose to follow her aunt as that indomitable woman strode ahead of her to bid good-bye to the little grey house. She could hardly realize that her uncle's widow was really under sentence of death. It was so ghastly like her to take it in this way, like the gladiator that she was. "Morituri te salutamus," thought Rob, as she fell back to see Mrs. Winslow throw open the sitting-room door and say: "Good-afternoon, Mary," in her usual tone and manner, though her face betrayed suffering.
"I should like to go over the house," announced Aunt Azraella. "I want to see every room in it."
Mrs. Grey arose with a look of wonder; she, too, saw the change in her sister-in-law's face, but she had long since been taught that Mrs. Winslow disliked sympathy, so she made no comment, going at once to escort her over the little grey house, speculating the while on her reasons for wishing to see it.
Aunt Azraella made her tour of the rooms, pausing a nearly equal time in each, and scanning their every detail as if to impress them upon her memory.
"It is a pleasant house, Mary," she said when they reached the lower hall again. "It has something about it that I don't understand, but it makes it more homelike than other places. My house will be better for Roberta; young people ought to have modern houses, and she will be able to afford to keep up the big house in good style, if she marries that second Rutherford boy. I want her to come up and stay with me to-night. I am not as well."
"I thought you were not as well, Azraella, but I feared to ask you," said Mrs. Grey. "Of course, you may borrow, Rob."
"Come up to-morrow and I will tell you how I am then," said Aunt Azraella. "I don't believe in complaining. Come, Rob." She led the way out the door; Rob ran up-stairs to snatch a few necessities for the night, glad to hide the face which she knew revealed her feeling on hearing her aunt's assumption that she was to marry Bruce.
She was not gone five minutes, and took her place at her aunt's side on the flagged walk where she was awaiting her, the only one of the little group in the doorway who understood the significance of Mrs. Winslow's long look up and down the little house which had seen so manydepart from the light of its twinkling window-panes.
"Now, then, Rob," said Aunt Azraella, and nodded over her shoulder at her sister-in-law, Miss Charlotte, Wythie, and Prue, with little Polly, peering out under Wythie's encircling arm. Roberta felt the arm tremble which she drew within her own, but otherwise Mrs. Winslow gave no sign of the tragedy for which this call stood.
At her own house, after the difficult mounting of the hill, Aunt Azraella's indomitable will refused to sustain her beyond the attainment of its end. She sank, half fainting, into the faithful arms of Elvira, who had been suffering agonies of anxiety since her mistress had taken her way and gone down for that last visit, against the doctor's prohibition.
"She's got to be got to bed, Rob," said that devoted woman, who for so many years had been Mrs. Winslow's patient and affectionate house-mate in the old relation that forbade the word servant.
In that final effort Mrs. Winslow's granite will had broken forever, when Rob and Elvira laid her in her ample bed, in her large, orderly and bleak chamber, she laid herself down to die without a struggle.
She suddenly seemed very ill. When Dr. Fairbairn came up that night he stood looking long at his patient as he leaned with folded arms on the black walnut footboard of the bed, decorated with a bunch of grapes and its leaves. His face wore a look that plainly declared his work done.
Rob did not leave her aunt that night. Mrs. Winslow's eyes followed the girl speechlessly; both Rob and Elvira saw that they begged Rob not to leave her. So, even when she slept, Rob kept her post, and at two o'clock Aunt Azraella woke to mental activity.
"Rob," she said, "there is something that I want to say to you, now, while we are alone, and before I get worse. I have made my will."
"Ah, Aunt Azraella, don't bother about such things now; just rest," protested Rob.
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Winslow with her accustomed energy. "Because I am done with my property, is that any reason that I should not make it available to the next one? This world, and its goods, too, still look important to me, Roberta; it is a good or a bad place while you are in it, according to what you have or lack, even if you don't stay in it much above seventy years; I am leaving it at sixty. I don't intend to be lesspractical because I'm dying, Roberta Grey. Now you listen to me. This house is yours; I've left it to you, as I said I should, and money to each of you girls. There's a niece of mine, Myrtilla Hasbrook, that may or may not turn up after I'm gone to tell you how I promised her the house and it ought to be hers. Now remember! It isn't hers, and she has no right to it. I've left it to you because I want you should have it, and supposing I did mean to give it to her once, that's not saying that I can't change my mind, is it?"
"No," said Rob, groping her way through vague fears, as her aunt paused for a reply. "Won't you tell me about this Miss Hasbrook, Aunt Azraella? Does she need the house?"
"She's my sister's daughter, and she isn't Miss, but Mrs. Hasbrook to begin with," said Aunt Azraella. "She's a young widow. As to needing the house, she needs almost anything. Myrtilla's one of the sort that hasn't any faculty. She married at seventeen, and now she's a widow at twenty-nine or thirty with four children. When I promised her the house I told her she could use it to take boarders, and get along; she's got her husband's life-insurance, and a little from her mother, but not enough to support four growing children. She's a gentle, harmless thing, but shehasn't gumption. Now, I've seen what there is in you, and I've made up my mind you're the one to keep up this house the way it should be, so I've left it to you. I only want you should understand, so if Myrtilla should come here and say anything—which it isn't at all like her to do, but she might—you're not to get any of your high flown, Grey notions, like your father, and give it up to her. For I'm certainly in the full possession of my faculties and I say it's yours. Now I'm going to sleep; it tires me to talk to-night."
Rob smoothed the sheet under her aunt's chin and turned the lamp a little lower without speaking. She was relieved to hear Mrs. Winslow's even breathing in a few moments, for she wanted to feel that she was alone to think.
She sat with her changeable face very grave, resting on the hand that her knee supported; she was thinking hard. The outline of the picture and the history of this hitherto unknown Myrtilla Hasbrook, the young widow to whom fate had been so hard, she was perfectly well able to fill out from her knowledge of Aunt Azraella's mind. She pictured her as gentle, shrinking, unfit to cope with difficulties, the sort of person whom Rob, out of her own sensitive soul and earlyhardships, most pitied, and whom she was to be the instrument of disappointing and further impoverishing!
No, she would not have the house! She started erect with the fulness of her determination. If she had any influence over her aunt-in-law, Mrs. Winslow, herself, should make right this intended injustice. She, Rob Grey, could get on perfectly with what she now had, and with the legacy that she could justly receive from her aunt out of the ample fortune her Uncle Horace had left her—but not the house!
She did not want to bother her mother with her refusal of this legacy, certain as she was that she should refuse it in any case, and she had a feeling that she did not want to pose as a heroine of renunciation in the eyes of her own family, especially Prue. When it was all over, some day she would tell her mother and Wythie all about it. She cast about in her mind for some one to help her to induce Aunt Azraella to change her will, and she thought of Bruce, Bruce whom she had abused, but who had never failed her when she needed a friend.
Bruce came in the morning early, sent by Dr. Fairbairn to administer certain remedies.
After the doctor-that-was-to-be had performedhis task Rob followed him down the broad stairs and out into the dewy sweetness of the midsummer morning. She told him her story. "And you wouldn't have the house if you were I, would you, Bruce?" she ended.
Bruce looked at her queerly. "If I were you I suppose I should do precisely as you do, being the same person," he said. "But I doubt that many who were not you would act thus."
"But, even if you were yourself, wouldn't you feel as I do?" persisted Rob.
"I think we generally agree, Robin," said Bruce quietly. "I should feel as you do, yes. It comforts me in saying so to know that I could not change your mind were I to try. But it is my duty to point out that you are throwing away a valuable piece of property, which, lying only two hours distant from New York, is bound to increase in value, and to which most people would cling tenaciously. Also, that there is no obligation upon you of defending this unknown young woman."
"But you would act precisely as I want to act, Bruce," said Rob. "You like to have me do it, and you know that we all think that enough of this world's goods does not mean great wealth, and that I have enough without this. You wantme to try to persuade Aunt Azraella to carry out her first plan—I see it in your eyes."
"Yes, Donna Quixote, I want you to act precisely in the chivalric spirit that inspires you, and I would rather see you—what you are," Bruce stopped himself, and went on more indifferently, "counting obligations binding which to many would not exist at all, than to see you richer than you are by millions. By all means make your aunt leave this house to her poor widowed niece. You will not want."
Rob flushed, half in gratification, half in annoyance at the remembrance of Bruce's own probable wealth, and what these last words might imply. And as she did so she remembered her words to the children on the preceding afternoon when Aunt Azraella had come in as she was finishing the story of Godfrey de Bouillon. She was glad, with a warmth at her heart, that Bruce was also knightly and had the inward vision which revealed to him duties and ideals to which the majority of mortals were blind.
"Good-bye, Roberta," said Bruce. "If I can help you to persuade your aunt to disinherit you, call on me; we'll manage it between us. Goodbye, Donna Quixote."
"Good-bye, Sir Bruce, the defender of thedestitute," retorted Rob, and turned to run back into the house with a light step and lighter heart. For with the wisdom of the noble folly of her training Rob was glad that she hoped to turn from herself her aunt's rich gift.
The days were filled with visitors and Rob had no opportunity to present her petition to Aunt Azraella. Wythie and Prue relieved her at this strange dying bed, and Mrs. Grey was rarely absent. It was Rob, however, Rob, and not Wythie, to whom Mrs. Winslow turned for comfort in those hours in which she lay facing eternity with thoughts which could be conjectured, but which she never expressed.
In the old days she had found Rob unmanageable, too quick of speech and impatient of mind, and Wythie had been her favourite of the three Grey girls. Now she turned to Rob's high courage and bright cheerfulness as to a tonic. It was another Rob, an older, more controlled and wiser Rob, too, on whom she was leaning. Mrs. Grey saw with great rejoicing the development of her daring, high-minded girl, who needed but this touch of womanly gentleness which she wasgaining to make her very near the ideal of American girlhood.
"The end may be suffering," Dr. Fairbairn had said. "We shall be obliged to use morphine, probably; if there is anything that you think she would like to attend to get your sister-in-law about it now, Mary."
Mrs. Grey knew of nothing, but Rob, hearing, resolved that she must bring Aunt Azraella to change her will without further loss of time.
The brief sketch that Mrs. Winslow had given the girl of her young widowed niece had been enough to convince Rob that the promise of the house upon which she must be relying could not be broken for the benefit of Roberta Grey. But letters had been despatched to the various relatives of the dying woman, and Browns of varying degrees of kindred had been arriving in Fayre. For testamentary reasons, if not for more sentimental ones, Mrs. Winslow's death was an event in the Brown family.
Among the arrivals had been Myrtilla Hasbrook; she was in the house with her baby of four, as Rob plotted for the restoration to her of a bequest of which she had no idea that she had been deprived.
It seemed to Rob when her eyes first restedupon Myrtilla that she could have painted her portrait equally well before she had seen her as afterward. She was of medium height, medium colouring, with a pale, gentle, resigned face, and a slender, drooping frame. Goodness, the patient, uncomplaining goodness of the type of woman who has strength to endure forever, but none to remedy matters, shone from her sad eyes and quiet lips. Rob knew in a flash of intuitive pity just how such a woman must wear herself out to provide for her children in her poverty. How she would weep of nights lest that poverty prevent her from doing her duty by them. The young widow looked younger than her years, and Rob's great heart went out to her in a pulse of knightly protection.
"You poor thing!" she thought. "Indeed, I will never add one straw to the burden on those thin shoulders! If Aunt Azraella won't make a codicil to her will I'll give you the house anyway. But I should hate most dreadfully to appear in the light of a Noble Benefactor!"
That night Rob kept watch alone at her aunt's bedside. The dim light that deepened the darkness burned on the small table on which sat the alcohol stove and the collection of glasses and bottles inevitable to a sick room. Mrs. Winslowhad slept, but at midnight she became wakeful, and Rob felt that her opportunity had come.
"Aunt Azraella," she began, coming close to the bed with a timidity new to her. "Do you think it would harm you if I talked to you a little while? I want to ask a favour of you when nobody can hear us, and we are so seldom alone!"
"You can't harm me, Rob, because we know exactly what end we are travelling to, and if you want to ask something of me there may not be much more chance," said Mrs. Winslow with her customary stalwart sense.
Rob perched herself lightly on the edge of the bed. She longed to take into her own one of the hands lying near her on the coverlid, but its self-reliance was so apparent, even then, that she dared not venture.
"I'm afraid you won't like what I have to say, Aunt," Rob began. "It's about this fine house which you want to leave me."
"Which I have left you, once for all," Aunt Azraella sharply corrected her. "Give me a teaspoonful of my cordial."
Rob obeyed, resuming her place when she had done so. "I know that you have willed it to me, Aunt Azraella, but I want you please, please toalter that will, and give the house to Mrs. Hasbrook. I can't take it."
Rob spoke with decision, and her aunt saw that she had considered, and had spoken out of a mind fully made up, saw it with dismay, for she had reason to know that Rob's decisions, once reached, were likely to be as inflexible as her own.
It was in a voice almost pleading that she cried: "Rob, Roberta, don't ask me to do that! I want you should have the house; I won't die happy if you haven't it, and I have a right to do what I please with it. Myrtilla has no claim."
"Yes, she has, Auntie!" cried Rob, slipping to her knees beside the bed and bringing her bright face close to the grim one on the pillow. "Dear Aunt Azraella, she has the claim of needing it so very, very much! She looks so sweet and patient and worn that it would be horrible to know that disappointment awaited her. I have all, more than I need, and she has those little children. Think of it, Aunt Azraella! And we shall know, you and I, that you wanted to give it to me, so that I shall always feel grateful, knowing that it was mine as far as your desire went. And nobody else need know anything about it. I couldn't live one week, feeling thatbecause of me that poor girl was losing the home she needed. Dear Aunt Azraella, you can die happy giving it to her, because you know the good you will do, while I could never live happy, owning the house. You have left it to me absolutely, to be used for Hester's children, instead of the Flinders' place, or for my own use. Then listen, Aunt Azraella: To-morrow morning add a codicil to that will and give the house to Myrtle. If you do not I must tell you truthfully that I shall hand it over to her the moment that it comes into my possession. Will you, oh, will you do this for me, Aunt Azraella?"
"Do you think you leave me much choice?" demanded her aunt.
Rob almost laughed; the remark was so exactly in Aunt Azraella's familiar tone.
"No, I don't; yes, I do," she said. "You can force me to give your niece the house, and I don't want to. It would be horrid to be regarded as—oh, no decent person would want to seem that kind of heroine," protested Rob incoherently.
Aunt Azraella understood, and liked the young creature looking so enthusiastic, so flushed and lovely in the dim night light, better than she had ever liked her before. She even went so far as to lay one hand lightly on the rippling hair.
"I wanted you to live in my house, Rob," she said, and Rob instantly melted at this glimpse of an Aunt Azraella whom she had not known.
"Ah, dear Auntie, don't think me ungrateful; I love to think that you would rather it were I who had your home. But you have given it to me—that is enough for us to know. Now give it to Myrtle, for my sake, and let it be our secret," she said.
"Our secret? When I am gone?" asked Mrs. Winslow.
"Yes, into that world which holds no injustice," whispered Rob.
Mrs. Winslow was silent, and Rob waited, tears in her eyes, with the hand which had taken Aunt Azraella's hand after it had touched her hair, trembling eagerly.
"You see," Rob murmured when her aunt still kept silence, "it would hurt Myrtle if you took the house from her, and she had to receive it from me—and she has not deserved hurting."
"If I don't do this you will be made to see that the house is yours and that you can keep it," said Aunt Azraella slowly.
"Never, Aunt Azraella!" said Rob, "I shall give this house to Myrtilla Hasbrook; won't you do it for me?"
Mrs Winslow lay still, her head half turned from Rob. Then, suddenly she faced her.
"Yes, I will," she said. "But I hate to."
Rob sprang to her feet with an exclamation of delight. "Thank you, thank you more than I can say, dear Aunt Azraella! You are good to me, and I shall never forget."
"I hear the hall clock striking three; I took my medicine by that, this one is slow. Give me my drops. I wonder if any one ever heard of undue influence brought to bear on a dying woman to take away a gift she had made the person influencing her? You have a good deal of Sylvester Grey in you after all, Roberta; it's lucky you've got enough Winslow to save you from being all visionary and impractical," said Rob's uncle's widow with something between admiration and disgust in her voice.
In the morning Mrs. Winslow repented of her promise. She sent everybody from her room while she talked to Bruce Rutherford of the matter.
Rob dared not speculate on what Bruce told Mrs. Winslow; he kept his promise to Rob and urged the change of will—that was all that she knew—and, after all, it was enough.
Mr. Dinsmore came up that forenoon, and was closeted with Aunt Azraella.
When Rob brought her aunt her broth at noon the sick woman looked up at her with an inscrutable look. "I have kept my promise, Roberta; Myrtilla has the house," she said. "You're a foolish child, but maybe yours is wise folly. I suppose I should not be able to admit that much if I had not come to where you can look through."
More than that she never said, and in a day came the suffering that Dr. Fairbairn had foreseen, and with grim patience, and with the help of morphine Aunt Azraella waited the end.
It had come, and the Greys were back again in the little grey house, Myrtilla Hasbrook was installed in the big one, with her four little children to banish effectually its orderly primness under Aunt Azraella.
To Rob's unspeakable chagrin the secret of her generosity had leaked out; perhaps Aunt Azraella had meant it to be known, for she had acted upon Rob's thoughtless suggestion of a codicil, leaving the original bequest of the house to her to be read on the opening of the will, and she had so framed the codicil that it more than hinted at its being, the result of influence—and whose that influence save Rob's?
Rob turned thorny at her betrayal, and Wythieinterposed her soft self as a fender for praise for her sister. The matter ceased to be discussed, and only the young widow's loving eyes told Rob that in spite of herself she was regarded as the Noble Benefactor—capitalized—which she had determined not to be.
This was to be the autumn of renunciation for the little grey house. Cousin Peace's dear little nest was built, and she and little Polly Flinders were to take possession of it as soon as it was made ready. And Lydia was solemnly prepared to espouse her Demetrius, and her mother was arriving to take—though perhaps not to fill—her place in the Grey household.
"Demetrius and I consider it wrong to indulge in worldly display at such a solemn event as entering into the holy bounds of matrimony," said Lydia, whose language grew more and more impressive as she profited increasingly by the companionship of Demetrius, and as she approached "the bounds" of matrimony. "I shall wear a brown suit throughout, with a brown hat, and no ornament but a brown feather. I'd like to ask you girls to the ceremony, but we consider it right to make it private. I've asked my mother to get here in time for it, and my friend Ella M. Barnes is going to stand up with me,and his brother, Lysander Dennis, is going to come out to stand up with him, and that's all there'll be, except the minister's wives, or somebody for the witnesses." Rob with difficulty restrained herself from suggesting that the minister's wife was probably not plural, and her mother asked instead: "Where are you to be married, Lydia?"
"At the minister's house, the Methodist minister's, because Demetrius' is willing to waive the Congregationalist, which is his sect," said Lydia.
"I should like to have a wedding supper for you here," said Mrs. Grey. "You have so long been an inmate of the little grey house."
"No, I don't want you should," said Lydia firmly. "I don't care about wedding suppers. You've given me my outfit, and that's enough. I'd rather you used the money in a good cause. If you wanted to do any more for me—you might subscribe, the whole family, to that temperance paper I set so much by; I'm getting up clubs."
"We will wait, then," said Mrs. Grey, controlling her lips. "We would rather do something more personal for you, Lyddie; there may be a chance later."
The three Grey girls hung out of the upperwindows, watching with breathless interest Lydia departing to her marriage. Demetrius had come out from town to espouse Lydia in the glory of deeply creased pearl grey trousers, a white vest, stately Prince Albert coat, and a snowy satin tie, all topped by a silk hat. Fortunately the bride had secured Ben Bolt against an assault on this wedding raiment. The groom and bride-elect went out arm in arm from the little grey house, Lydia dignified in her uniform brown and audibly starched skirt. It occurred to the admiring girls, hurling slippers at her from their windows, that Lydia's mind was more distracted by her superiority to wedding finery than it would have been by all the glory of veil, wreath and bridal white.
After the wedding Lydia's mother returned to the grey house in Lydia's stead. The happy pair had gone on a wedding journey to Chautauqua, which it appeared both had longed to see; on their return they were to go to the new house to superintend Miss Charlotte; the little grey house would know Lydia no more.
Her mother proved to be a person who at once announced her daughter's likeness to her father, because she bore no resemblance to her mother. Her name was Rhoda, and she was rounded at every point, with an almost African tendency tosway her plump person, and a cheerful readiness to laughter. She was, as Rob had hoped, several years younger than Lydia, although she had lived two decades longer; age being, as, of course, every one knows, not a matter of years.
Timidly the Grey ladies confided to one another after Rhoda had been installed in Lydia's deserted room, that they foresaw something like relief in the possession of a lighter character in their kitchen. Rob said that she had learned to overlook herself, with charity for her own shortcomings, but that Lydia had made her dimly conscious that, ignore it as she would, she was on the Index. Wythie added that, good girl though Lyddie was, it would be restful not to feel as though one's most decorous street gown were a tarleton spangled skirt and a bright pink bodice.
"It is a funny wedding," said Prue from her own room. "I wonder whether people like that are really happy."
"They think they are, Prudy, and that does just as well," laughed Rob, but Wythie and she glanced at each other. Prue was a young lady, though she was but seventeen, and both her sisters feared that their hope for her was not to be fulfilled.
Bartlemy's fondness for her was unmistakable,but Arthur Stanhope, the acquaintance of the Twelfth Night entertainment, came more and more frequently to the little grey house, and Bartlemy's artistic eye did not appreciate Prue's marvellous beauty more keenly than did this newer friend. It was impossible for her mother's daughter to care for any one for the sake of his wealth, but Prue was young, and splendour and wealth had always held for her a glamour that it had not possessed for the other two girls.
Might it not be that Arthur Stanhope's immense fortune might clothe him in a charm that Prue, innocent of worldly intent, might mistake for love?
Well, Arthur Stanhope was trustworthy; Prue would not choose ill in choosing him, but Wythie and Rob were Bartlemy's advocates, though Rob glowered at a hint that Bruce deserved at least as well at her hands.
Only one year more and then would come the first break in the Grey household, for then Wythie and Basil would be married. She was twenty years old herself, poor Rob, rebelling against the fulfilment of their beautiful girlhood.
Two weeks after Lydia's wedding Miss Charlotte's tiny house received its final enrichings, and the last of her possessions had been carried byBattalion B from the little grey house to the new home. It was a day of tremendous excitement, for not only was it to see Cousin Peace's establishing, but at its close, Commodore Rutherford was at last coming to Fayre.
October winds were blowing high as Wythie, Rob, and Prue followed their mother and Cousin Peace down to the house which awaited them on the spot where Cousin Peace had lived all her serene life. Polly had been taken down first, "to make it seem homelike," Cousin Peace said, and to be there to welcome her. The boys were there also, and Frances; while Myrtilla Hasbrook, with her four children, had preceded the hostess to her home, and was there ready for the modest housewarming which this installation was to be. Mr. and Mrs. Demetrius Dennis had proved their title to look after Miss Charlotte by the shining order of everything, within and without, and by the odours which wafted in from the little kitchen.
Mrs. Grey, Miss Charlotte and the girls came into the square hall, which was also the living-room, and their faces brightened at the wood-fire on the hearth, and the sunshine pouring through the deep recessed windows, with their half curtains fluttering in the breeze which the fire necessitated admitting.
Polly ran to meet Miss Charlotte as if she had been parted from her for a month, instead of less than an hour. Then she turned to Rob and flung her arms around her. "I wish I had you both in one," she said.
"Like two out of a set of Japanese boxes?" suggested Rob. "It's much nicer to have us separate. Besides, Cousin Peace and I would be certain to quarrel as to which should be the outside one. You haven't gone away from us, Polly-kins—this little house is only the lean-to room, leaning a little further. And isn't it the dearest little home?"
There was no mistaking that Polly thought so. Miss Charlotte drew a long breath of profound content as she turned her face, from point to point, precisely as if she saw, whereas she was inhaling the room, if one may so express it.
"We are authorized, Miss Grey, to present you with this house, yielding up to you all claim and title," said Basil, with a tremendous bow, and as if the property had been his until that moment.
"And I have made a poem for the occasion, which I will now recite for you," added Bruce. "Usually it is Basil who is regarded as the literary member of Battalion B, but I have usurped hisoffice. You will please notice that it is not my fault that the rhyme of my poem halts in one place—the only place, in fact, for the poem is not long. If the English language were ever pronounced as it is spelled the rhyme would be perfect, which you will at once perceive after I have recited it. Ladies and gentlemen: My poem."
Bruce also bowed deeply, turning from side to side, then proceeded to recite slowly and impressively:
Miss Grey,The key!
and handed Miss Charlotte the key to her own front door.
"You perceive," said Bruce as soon as he could speak for his audience's applause and laughter, "that the spelling of those two words is identical; evidently the pronunciation of one or the other should be changed. There was not time after the composition of the poem—which consumed hours—to decide which it should be."
"If you had written your poem in Irish brogue it would have settled itself," observed Rob.
"Now we heroes of Battalion B are going down to meet our long lost father," said Bartlemy. "Come Bas and Bruce; there's not too much time."
The three tall, stalwart young fellows tramped out of the house and down the walk bordered by the old-fashioned shrubs which had sprung up again since the fire.
"How proud of them their father will be!" said Mrs. Grey, watching them with as loving a look as if they had been her own boys.
Polly and the little Hasbrooks were already friends, and Polly bore the four away to display the charms of her new home.