"'The shooting stars attend thee,And the elves also,Whose little eyes glowLike the sparks of fire, befriend thee.'"
"'The shooting stars attend thee,And the elves also,Whose little eyes glowLike the sparks of fire, befriend thee.'"
"'The shooting stars attend thee,
And the elves also,
Whose little eyes glow
Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.'"
"It isn't their little eyes that glow; it's their little tails," said Ethan, with his nose flattened against the camphor-bottle.
When they got near the porch, the prudent young gentleman took off his coat, and wrapped the bottle from the too inquiring gaze of his grandmother. Aunt Valeria was in a kind of dream, and didn't seem to notice.
"What a perfect evening!" she half whispered, looking up through the trees.
"Good-night," said Ethan to his grandmother, trying to get through the ceremony and hold his coat round the bottle on Aunt Valeria's arm at the same time.
"Forty-eight years to-day," she went on to her mother, "since Shelley's body was burned on the sands at Viareggio."
"Ah, yes," returned the other, speaking very gently. "Good-night, child."
"What! Is hedead?" said Ethan, feeling a double shock.
"Yes, dear; he's dead."
And he and Aunt Valeria went up-stairs in the dark.
"You never told me," said the child, when they had passed Yaffti in safety. "I s'pose Byron's all right," he added, remembering allusions to that person's physical prowess.
"Byron's dead, too," said Aunt Valeria, sadly, "and Keats—poor Keats!"
"Alldead!"
They had been referred to as if they lived in the next street. If it had been Shelley who had come to make them a visit, it would have seemed as natural—more natural than the apparition of Tom Rockingham or the objectionable Uncle Elijah.
"I'll get a piece of net to put over the bottle while you undress," said Aunt Valeria.
When she came back Ethan was in bed.
"What relation was Shelley to me?" he asked, welcoming the camphor-bottle to his arms.
"Relation? None."
"Oh-h!"
These things were obscure. The Tallmadges, for instance, weren't related to Grandmamma Gano, so she had said with emphasis.
"Then what relation was Shelley toyou?"
"No relation at all, dear. He was an English poet."
"You mean he wasn't even born in America?"
Ethan sat up straight in his bed.
"He was born far away in England," said Aunt Valeria, dreamily.
"An' dead an'burnt?"
"Yes."
"And never was no relation toanyof us?"
"No."
"Oh-h!"
He lay back on his pillow, conscious of a new loneliness—of being bereft of something he had counted his. Yes; it was just as if some one belonging to him had died.
After Aunt Valeria had told him why they had burned Shelley's body, and even after she had repeated all his favorite poems, a sense of loss remained.
She thought he was asleep when she kissed him good-night. But he stirred and gave a little sigh.
"Well, I'm glad I've got my fireflies, anyhow," he murmured.
His leave-taking next morning was extremely harrowing to his own feelings, however austerely the rest took it. He wept freely after breakfast down under the barberry-bush, but he promised himself he would get it all done down there in the blessed privacy of the wilderness, and not cry another tear after he got back to the house. He had made a tour the moment he was dressed, saying good-bye to everything. Now there was nothing left but An' Jerusha and the family. Uncle Elijah might come any minute. He dried his eyes, and crept back through the rank undergrowth to the terrace, went heavily up the two flights of stone steps, saying good-bye again to the flag lilies and the crooked catalpa and the tulip-tree, and so on sedately round the house to the kitchen. On his appearance, An' Jerusha rushed towards him with wide-spread, motherly arms, but observing his involuntary recoil, she stood still, looking at him with unlessened affection.
"Good-bye, An' Jerusha," he said, holding her hand tight in both his own.
"Good-bye, honey. Be suah you come agin soon."
"Yes, I mean to; and thank you for all the songs and the cinnamon rolls."
"Law, honey! jes' listen to de chile."
She turned away to Venie with an attempt at a chuckle, but the tears had started down her cheeks.
"Good-bye."
Ethan shook hands with the smiling Venus.
"Maw and me done put yo' in a Johnny-cake," she said, an outsider might have thought enigmatically.
"Thank you," said Ethan, tremulously—"thank you both, awfully."
"Dat's de do'-bell, an' Massa Efan's knocker," said Aunt Jerusha, sniffing violently. "You go, Venus; I ain't 'spectabel."
"Oh, it's my uncle," said Ethan, rather relieved at the interruption; and he hurried after Venus, feeling, however, deeply dissatisfied with his leave-taking of An' Jerusha.
She had been soawfullykind—it was useless to pretend there was any other way of putting it—and she had cared so much for his father.Oughthe to have kissed her? It was plain she had expected it. It was all very uncomfortable and heart-achy.
Now he was in the hall, and Uncle Elijah was there, and so was grandmamma, being very stiff to poor Uncle Elijah. Aunt Valeria came down-stairs, and the good-byes were said. Uncle Elijah's hack was at the door, and Ethan's trunk was being carried out.
Suddenly, at the very last, "Come here a moment," said his grandmother, retreating into her own long room.
Ethan followed, quaking. Had he been doing something wrong? And yet she had just kissed him good-bye so kindly. As she turned and faced him, he saw her eyes were full of tears. He could hardly believe his senses, but he began to cry, too.
"Idowish I was going to stay with you," he said, breaking down and forgetting his fears.
"You will come back to me," she said; and she put her arms round him, and held him close to her for a moment, while he cried silently against her white veil, thinking the while she wouldn't like it when she discovered it was wet.
"Don't you think," he faltered, as she released him—"couldn'tthisbe my home?"
"Of course, itisyour home. Isn't your name on the front door?"
"Oh yes," he said, smiling through his tears; "I forgot that," and the remembrance seemed to give him confidence in the future.
Mrs. Gano was looking hastily about for some excuse for bringing him into the room.
"Here is a book that belonged to your great-grandfather, calledPlutarch's Lives. You will read it when you are older, and remember it was my parting present after your first visit."
"Oh, thank you," he said, brushing his sleeve across his eyes; and they went out, and Ethan got into the carriage."Oh, dear me, my fireflies!" he shouted, suddenly, as the driver was closing the door. "I shall need them so awfully—I mean so pertickly—in Boston"; and he scrambled out and rushed up to his bedroom.
"What does the child mean?" asked Mrs. Gano.
"It's all right," said Aunt Valeria; "something I gave him. I'll tell you afterwards."
Ethan came tumbling down-stairs in the buff middle of the carpet—anywhere, indifferent for once to Yaffti and his possible revenge.
"Good-bye," he called back from the carriage-window. "Thank you, ma'am, forPlutarch."
"Keep him covered," was Mrs. Gano's unemotional rejoinder as they drove away.
Ethan sank back breathless, clutching the camphor-bottle under his coat.
"Tired?" asked Uncle Elijah, looking at the flushed little face. Ethan nodded "Yes, sir."
"You needn't have hurried so; there's oceans of time. But I thought we could wait just as well at the station."
They were not going the way Ethan had been driven that day of his arrival, so long, long ago, at the beginning of the summer. He leaned forward excitedly.
"Why, he's taking us round by the Wilderness!"
"The what?" Uncle Elijah looked out. "Moses! they do let things run wild here."
Ethan's quick eye had sought out the spot where, hidden in that tangle, was a little clearing and a "heavenly secret-house," with a barberry-bush for a roof. But no hint of such a matter to the profane passer-by!
What was that? His heart gave a great jump. Why, it was An' Jerusha on the lower terrace watching to see them go by! She stood there alone, and now she was putting her apron up to her eyes. Nobody else was looking after the carriage from this side. It was plain, for all his grandmother's momentary melting, it was An' Jerusha who had felt the parting most, and he had refused to kiss her!
"Uncle Elijah," said the child, hurriedly, "do you mind, if we've got such a lot of time, I'd like to get a barberry leaf for my fire-flies. Please stop!" he called out of the window to the coachman.
And while Uncle Elijah was saying, "What—what?—barberry leaves, fire-flies? What nonsense is this you've been learning?" Ethan had jumped out of the slowing vehicle, made a frantic sign to An' Jerusha, run up to the fence, pushed aside a loose picket of his acquaintance, and dashed into the wilderness. There was nothing for Uncle Elijah to do but to wait. The child had vanished without a trace; by the time Mr. Tallmadge had adjusted his spectacles on his nose he couldn't even find the place where his nephew had disappeared. The eminent Bostonian sat fuming while Ethan was feverishly making his way to An' Jerusha.
"Come down!" he called, when he got near the bottom of the terrace. "Come towards the barberry-bush, An' Jerusha—quick, quick!"
Her eyes rolling wildly with amazement and concern, Jerusha penetrated a few paces into the jungle.
"Wha is yo', honey? Wot's de matter? Air yo' hurt, my honey? Jes' wait; An' Jerusha's comin'."
"Oh, here I am," gasped the child, and he precipitated himself into her arms. "I forgot to kiss you good-bye, An' Jerusha, and I had to come back."
He shut his eyes and held his breath while she kissed him, muttering prayers and blessings.
"Good-bye, An' Jerusha," he said. "I sha'n't ever forget you;" and he tore his way back through the rank grasses, the mulleins and sunflowers, catching his feet in the briers, and saying to himself: "Oh, I'm quite sure my father never,neverdid. But for me it's different; I'm glad I went back."
He stripped a handful of leaves and coral berries off the barberry-bush as he passed, pushed back the loose picket, and reappeared all over burrs and pollen before Uncle Elijahs' astonished and unapproving eyes.
"I've got plenty of leaves for my fire-flies," was his greeting, as he clambered into the hack, "but I must get some water for them at the station. How many years should you say a fire-fly would live, Uncle Elijah, with plenty to eat and drink?"
Ethan was not allowed to repeat his visit, and life went on for several years without incident at the old Fort. Yet, since "it is in the soul that things happen," these were stirring times. One shrinks from inquiring too closely into what the years held for the two eager-hearted women shut up there with those perilous companions, thwarted hope, stunted ambition, and pent-up energy. Well had it been for Valeria had she not possessed that small, cramped competency. If the girl had had to earn her living, she might have found peace, if not great gladness, in wholesome grappling with the material things of life. But in saying so one forgets that all this was thirty years ago, when a penniless Southern woman who had a brother, or even some distant relation, to support her, no more dreamed of getting her own bread than she does to-day of going before the mast.
Meantime, with John Gano things for a while went better. At the end of four years of uninterrupted toil, such years of all work and no play as only an American will put up with, he was able to offer his cousin the kind of home he had set his heart on. They were married in the South, and after a brief visit to Mrs. Gano, John took his bride to New York. Ten months' happiness, followed by the birth of a daughter, whom they named Valeria, and called Val; then protracted ill-health and a yearly baby for the young mother, money troubles and killing work for John Gano.
The distance between New York and New Plymouth was too great to admit of much visiting back and forth on trivial grounds for people of limited means. But young Mrs. Gano was not expected to live after the birth of her fourthchild, and her "aunt-mother-in-law" was sent for. The elder Mrs. Gano stayed till the danger was past, and, as she wrote home to her daughter, "to relieve Virginia a little of the pressure of existence," she had made up her mind to bring back Emmeline with her to the Fort. Emmeline was the younger of the two little girls, and that was the reason given for her having been chosen instead of Val, since, with a new baby in the house, a child of fourteen months was more of a charge on its mother's mind even than an enterprising young person of four. But it was presently revealed that Emmeline was by far the more attractive child, gentle, charming, and very beautiful to look upon; rather like her cousin Ethan, whose loss was still mourned silently at the old Fort. There was no further visiting between the two houses until the following winter, when Valeria's health broke down. Mrs. Gano would not hear it said that her daughter was dying of consumption.
"I've had a cough myself for half a century. Consumption? Nonsense! Valeria had undermined her constitution by too much study and a too sedentary life. What was to be expected when one remembered the hours she kept! But there! no Gano could ever do anything with moderation."
However, the jealous mother was alarmed at last, and admitted that what Valeria needed was a change.
"No," said the old-young woman; "I have reached the end."
A journey to the Adirondacks was proposed. Valeria refused to fall in with the plan.
"You wouldn't let me go away when it would have been some use," she said; "leave me in peace now."
A horrible fear clutched at the resolute heart of the mother as she took fresh and sudden note of the wasted frame, the languid, long, transparent hands, the far-away vision of the eyes.
"No, Iwouldn'tlet you go alone and unprotected. But now that John and his wife are settled in New York it's a different story altogether. You can stay with them, and—and study sculpture for a while," she added, with a visible effort.
Valeria shook her head. But there was a new light in the hollow eyes. Little by little she was seen to be in reality feverishly bent on availing herself of her mother's late concession. Mrs. Gano was as good as her word. She put no further obstacle in the way, and, though it was the depth of winter, took the long journey with her daughter, arriving at her son's house much exhausted, to find Mrs. John ill in bed, a mutiny among the servants, and a scene of inexpressible confusion and disorder, in the midst of which stood Val, turbulent and triumphant. Nor did she budge upon the usually subduing apparition of Mrs. Gano. Dirty and neglected, an impudent little face with bold gray eyes looking out from a wild swirl of tawny hair, there she stood in the middle of the untidy dining-room, aided and abetted in some unspeakable enormity by the mere presence of her faithful ally, a huge St. Bernard dog.
"My patience!" exclaimed Mrs. Gano, surveying the scene.
"Why, it's my dear little namesake," said Aunt Valeria, with a kind of gentle incredulity, as she moved forward.
Her dear little namesake retreated, dragging the great dog back with her by the collar.
"Thatmy granddaughter!"
Mrs. Gano spoke with mixed emotion, and hurriedly put on her spectacles.
"My darling," said Aunt Valeria, watching the dog with the tail of her eye, "come and kiss me."
The child stared solemnly without moving a muscle.
"Come, my dear, and speak to your grandmother."
Mrs. Gano advanced with majesty till she was arrested by a low growl from the St. Bernard.
"Don't be afraid of us," urged Aunt Valeria, somewhat superfluously. "I've brought you a pretty toy in my trunk. Come, darling."
The child kept a suspicious eye on the ingratiating stranger.
"She has very pretty hair," pursued Aunt Valeria, amiably.
"She hasn't pretty manners," retorted Mrs. Gano.
"Oh, she's shy. Don't be afraid of us"—she ventured a step nearer. "Come here, my sweet little one."
Never taking her eyes off her gentle aunt, the sweet little one said, with a charming childish lisp:
"Ef yer don't be thtil, I'll thick my dawg on yer."
The two ladies fell back appalled.
"Turn that great animal out of doors," said Mrs. Gano, in awful tones, to the cook. But Katie O'Flynn shrank visibly from availing herself of this kind permission.
"Sure, mum, he'd have the heart out of me; and that's just what Miss Val would like, be the Howly Mother!"
"This is beyond everything," said Mrs. Gano, more nonplussed than she had often found herself. "The child must be out of her senses. We will go up to your mistress," she said to Katie O'Flynn. "If you weremydaughter," she added, solemnly, looking back at the immovable one, "I should know how to deal with you. As it is, I'll leave you to your father."
But leaving Val to her father proved a less drastic measure than Mrs. Gano anticipated. Whether because of his sentiment about the first-born—offspring of that only year of happiness and hope—or merely because her wildness was a distraction in his brief moments of respite from crushing cares, at all events, he looked upon the child with a lenient eye. He had her much about him when he was at home, smiled at recitals of her escapades, and called her his amiable firebrand, never in the least realizing that the overflow of animal spirits, which in rare hours of ease were his diversion and delight, might be to others a chronic bewilderment, and a not infrequent torment.
"Her mother," said the elder Mrs. Gano, not thoroughly understanding the situation—"her mother has utterly spoiled the child."
"No, no," said John Gano, smiling. "Val was born like that. I've never known anybody with such high spirits."
"'Spirits?' Nonsense!Fever.And you, every one of you help to aggravate her unnatural activity of mind and body. Meanwhile, my advice to you is: Don't make an idol of your eldest daughter. It's bad enough in the case of a boy, but no girl survives it."
Mrs. Gano returned home with little loss of time. Her daughter-in-law's higgledy-piggledy house-keeping, the "slackness" that was not all ill-health, coupled with the ubiquitous and unquiet presence of Val, made the elder lady long for her peaceful home in the West. Her going left behind a memory of awe and a vivid sense of relief.
Valeria the elder, with improved health, or else strung up to a semblance of it by the potent ghost of a dear ambition, began her studies in art. She took out a course of lessons in modelling at the Cooper Institute.
The story of those months may not be written here. We will not dog her through her days of disillusionment, her shrinking from the curiosity of the students, her amazement at their facility, her heart-sinking at their youth. As the weeks went on the teacher, an Italian of fine and gentle countenance, looked at her far more often than he looked at her work; and yet it was observed by the merciless young crew in the studio that her blundering attempts were inspected with an interest and frequency not bestowed on their more creditable efforts.
Signor Conti leaned over her one day, speaking kindly phrases in broken English about the new attempt she was making.
"Don't! don't, please!" she said, on a sudden impulse. "Understand that at least Iknowit's bad."
"Oh, it will be better," he answered, gently.
"No," she said, very low, "it will never be much better. I've waited too long."
"You must not feel discouraged." He leaned lower and spoke under his breath. "You may yet find great happiness by means of your art."
She shook her head, and when she could steady her voice said:
"I'm going home."
The man's face changed.
"You will not do that!"
"Yes."
"It would be another mistake, I think."
"Another?"
"Yes. The first was for one of your temperament to come to a great noisy class like this. You cannot do your best work here. This is not the place for you."
"What could I have done?"
"You can work under some artist alone, some one who can give you more time. I tell you, you have talent, abello ingegno, signorina."
She looked up with a gleam of hope shining through tears.
"You—youare too busy. I'm afraid you don't receive pupils at your own studio," she said, timidly.
"No, I do not receive pupils as a rule; but I will receive you, signorina."
That was the end of lessons at the Cooper Institute, and the beginning of the brief, but best, happiness Valeria's life was to know.
Some indiscreet allusion to the change in a letter Valeria or her brother had written to their mother brought Mrs. Gano in hot haste to New York again. She found Valeria a different being—but she also found Signor Conti and a lonely studio in a side street, where her daughter worked alone with this foreigner, modelling "the members of the human body," while the sculptor worked on his "Lady at the Bath." It was all unspeakably objectionable and un-American. This was no fitmilieufor a Gano. It wasn't a seemly place for any lady. Valeria must come home. She told her so the same night. No, Valeria could not do that.
"Why? Are you so attached, then, to this Italian image-maker?"
Valeria went home to the West the next day. The following winter she died.
Little Val was nearly seven when she woke up one morning and was told that the baby had died in the night. Then it was true, this thing she had heard about people dying. Her excitement and curiosity were infinitely greater than her sorrow. Had he gone to heaven yet? No, he was in the cold, uninhabited "best" room, where nobody but strangers—guests and grandmothers—had ever slept. She made Nanna hurry through the bath and dressing. The nurse was crying. Val observed her critically.
"Isn't heaven a nice place?" the child asked; and a vague uneasiness seized her with regard to this much-vaunted reward of merit.
"Av coorse, av coorse—the most beautiful place ye can think av. The streets are all gowld," said the woman, with quivering face.
"I must go and see mamma," the child said.
But she had to pass the "best" room door. She couldn't get by, but stood there rooted before it. She listened, advancing her small ear nearer and nearer. No sound. Then she put her eye to the key-hole. But the key-hole did not command the bed. She glanced over her shoulder—nobody near; the house silent. She turned the knob softly and went in, shutting the door behind her; then quickly reopening it, and leaving it prudently ajar. She tiptoed to the bed. Behold, the coverlid lay smooth, and no little dead child there at all. Then hewasgone to heaven. If she'd got up a little earlier she might have seen the angel flying off with him. He hadn't left the window open; the very blind wasn't drawn up. What was that on the table? Something white, laid over something strange, and—two little sandalled feet stuck stiffly out!
On the table!It couldn't be the baby lying on the hard marble slab! The cruelty of the idea made her cold. Slowly she came nearer. She circled, fascinated, round to the other side. Yes, a gleam of the baby's yellow hair. The white cloth over him was a little awry, but it covered the body and hid the face. Horrible to have the air shut out; she felt stifled at the thought. He was lying on apillow, she could see. But there was something inhuman in leaving a baby like this. And they had been so irritatingly careful of him before, never left him alone a moment; neglected her on his account; wouldn't even let her hold him—oh,socarefully; and now—this! Nothing, perhaps, in all the strange circumstance—not even the subsequent burial—impressed the child so painfully as this fact of the baby being laid unguarded on a table, as though he had been no more than a book. This it was that by one stroke seemed to cut him off from fellowship, that suddenly degraded him from his high estate of life and lordly consideration. This "death" was evidently a far stranger thing than going to heaven.
A feeling of intense commiseration for the little brother swept over her. She came nearer, crying. "Poor! poor!" she whispered. Why had they shut out the air? She lifted her hand and turned the linen down from the waxen face. Her tears dried on her cheeks as she stood staring. He might be only asleep. How had they come to be so sure, and lay him unguarded on a table, when he might wake and— She saw in a flash how she would earn the gratitude of the family. She would wake him, and she, who hadn't been allowed to hold him, would carry him to her mother. And how glad they'd all be! And it would beherdoing.
"Baby," she said; "baby, wake up!" She put her hand on the body, and withdrew it quickly. He felt so strangely unlike life and tender babyhood. An evil dread took hold on her. She strove some moments, battling with new suspicions and vague fears. "Poor little baby! poor little baby!" she whispered, tiptoed up, and kissed his cheek. Violently she started back. Who that ever, as a child, has felt that first chill contact with the mysterious enemy—who does not remember the formless horror it conjures up in the unprepared young mind? This, then, was death. She walked backward to the door, staring at the dead face, feeling that cold touch on her lips spread like a frost through her body. She must go quickly and get into hermother's lap. With her hand on the door, "Poor! poor!" she repeated with a sob, still looking back at the face. "You can't come and get warm in mother's lap any more;you'vegot to go to heaven." Had they any idea how cold the baby was? Should she go and get his quilted travelling-coat? Was it any use? A faint dawning of the hopelessness of any earthly service to the dead made her resolution waver, and, with that, a horrible weight descended on her heart. She drew a hard breath, ran back to the table, and knelt down before it with folded hands and trembling lips. "Forgive me, baby," she whispered, "'bout the yellow ball. If I'd known this I wouldn't have taken it away." She scrambled to her feet and ran out as fast as she could, leaving the door ajar.
She was going up to bed that same evening, full of excitement and speculation, when her father called to Nanna over the banisters to come and help to find the smelling-salts—her mistress had fainted.
"Go to your room; I'll come presently," said the woman; and they shut her mother's door.
They hadn't let her go in since morning. Her mother was ill, they said, but that was a pretence; she was always ill. The reason Val was shut out to-day was because her grandmother had arrived that morning, and her grandmother was her enemy. She was in there now.
On every-day occasions Val would have contested the matter; but, grandmothers apart, there was a great deal to think about and consider just now.
She sat down on the stairs. She had seen her father crying that day, and the very foundations of all stabilities seemed tottering. Men could cry, it seemed—cry like little children. It was very strange; she had supposed it a thing to be outgrown. For her own part, she had nearly overcome the childish habit. The baby, of course, had cried a great deal; but one'sfather!
Somebody was coming up-stairs behind the servant—a strange man. What was he carrying? Something big,and as shiny as the new musical-box. She hugged the banisters as the two passed.
"What's that?" she said to Matilda.
The servant didn't answer. She and the strange man went by. As Val was in the act of following, her grandmother appeared. She looked at Val a moment, and then called the nurse in a whisper: "Put that child to bed."
To-morrow was the funeral. She should go, she had said.
"No, certainly not," said her grandmother; and Val set her firm little mouth.
After breakfast the next morning, her father went into the room where the baby was, and stayed a long time. The doctor was with her mother. The doctor was a rude man, with a long yellow-white beard; he had spoken as sternly as if he'd been one's grandmother when Val had said shewouldsee her mother. She lingered now by the "best" room door. Would she hear her father crying again? She hoped she would. There was something so horribly exciting in it; it made her feel as if she should die, and yet she listened eagerly to find out if he were doing it again.
No sound. He came out after a long, long while, and kissed her; his face was wet.
"Run to your nurse, my dear," he said.
She didn't tell him Nanna had been sent out. He smoothed her hair, and then went into her mother's room.
She was thinking a great deal about the baby. Nanna had been telling her more about heaven. The nurse hadn't liked it when the child had asked leading questions about the grave. But Nanna herself had said dozens of times before, "I've buried me husband and three childer." What a curious idea to put people in the dirty, black ground! And the baby! It must be very bad for his pretty white clothes. How awful to have earth on one's face, all over the ears and mouth! She choked a little. But one wouldn't feel it, of course; the real baby was in heaven. He would have everything there. "Yellow balls, too?" she had asked Nanna.
"He won't want the likes of that," the nurse had said. Nanna was very stupid; as if the baby had ever wanted anything in his life so much as that yellow ball! Conscience pricked cruelly. Shehadbeen selfish and horrid to the poor baby. She fell a-crying. Very likely they didn't have yellow balls in heaven, and wouldn't know how much the baby loved them, and he mightn't like to ask; besides, the poor baby talked such a queer language, strangers never understood him. A sudden inspiration. It was rather confusing about the real baby in heaven, and the real baby in the "best" room. Wouldn't it be better to be on the safe side? Anyhow, there was that business about Gabriel and the Last Trump and the Resurrection. They had talked about that in church, and Nanna and mother had said it was true. The dead would surely rise; the baby in the "best" room there would one day come alive. It looked as if there'd be two real babies in the end; but never mind. She flew up-stairs, rummaged the cupboard in the nursery, and came flying down with something wrapped in her apron. The doctor was in the lower hall talking to her father; she peeped at them through the balusters, then softly on to the "best" room.
She shut the door this time, though more frightened than the day before. She stopped short in the middle of the room. Too late! the baby had gone. But there was something she'd never seen before. She went close. How pretty and shiny it was; it smelt like the piano. Why, this was what the strange man had brought up-stairs behind Matilda last night. It was bigger than the musical-box—much bigger. What was in this beautiful, shiny, new thing? She dragged a chair to the table, climbed on it, and looked down into the coffin.
She stood some time motionless; then, hearing a noise in the hall, hurriedly lifted a corner of the baby's frock and pushed a yellow ball down against the padded white satin side.
In spite of the continued "riling" presence of agrandmother in the house, Val made up her mind to be very good now the baby was gone, and be a comfort to her mother. No more fights with Nanna, even over the hair-combing; no defiant refusals to say her prayers. Standing by the cot in her nightgown the evening of the funeral, "I shall say three prayers," she announced, sternly; "and you mustn't interrupt, Nanna."
"Three!" said the nurse, suspicious of such overwhelming piety.
"Yes; I shall say, 'Our Father,' and 'Nower Lamy,' and then one of my own—one I can understand as well as God. Now! Sh!" She knelt down and recited the two accustomed petitions, and then, still kneeling there, poured forth some stringent directions to the Lord which horrified the good Christian woman not a little.
After that, Val insisted on going to church, rain or shine. She read her Bible with vigor and astonishment, belaboring Nanna with difficult questions. Nanna was so ill-inspired as sometimes to appeal in her perplexity to the elder Mrs. Gano. But this lady found to her cost that the course so successfully pursued with little Ethan was doomed to failure here. When she thought to curb the excessive Gano concern about Biblical interpretation by saying, "It is not a book for children," she was met with:
"My Bible says, 'Suffer little children,' and people 'mustn't despise the little ones.'"
Her father began to laugh; she felt encouraged to proceed:
"And says, 'Search ye the Scriptures,' too; nothin' 'bout waitin' till you're old."
"You are too young to understand, even if I should try to explain."
"Why, I understand it nearly every bit," she answered, indignantly, "all except the mizz—I can't find where it says about the mizz."
"The mizz?" repeated Mrs. Gano.
"The mizz?" her father echoed, uneasily. "I haven't read about that myself."
"Well, you've heard about it in church. Didn't you go to church when you were young?"
"Yes," said her parent, meekly, feeling the full force of her implied criticism. "But I don't recall the—what is it?"
"The mizz. Mr. Weston says every Sunday in the Commandments: 'The sea and all that in the mizz.'"
The elder Mrs. Gano could have put up with these crude evidences of a share in the family bias, but not with her granddaughter's growing unsubmissiveness, her chronic mutiny against the smallest restraint. The child had been taught early to look upon herself as a very potent factor in the family life. She observed that arrangements that failed to meet with her approval were often altered. Her mother's sternest form of discipline had been to argue with her. More than one servant had been dismissed in obedience to Miss Val's demands. There was the case of the lady house-keeper from Boston, who, in addition to regular duties, undertook also to teach Val—a learned maiden lady with shaky nerves and a passion for history. It was supposed she left so suddenly because of illness in her family, until Val admitted that she had threatened the lady with the carving-knife after dinner one day.
"What on earth made you do that?" said the child's father, horrified.
"She talked too much about the British," replied Val, calmly.
"What!"
"I said the Americans were just as brave. I could see she didn't think so, so I got the carvin'-knife and—well, you know, she just caught the three-o'clock train."
The June of that year was intensely hot, but young Mrs. Gano was too ill to be carried out of the stifling city. Val was sent into the country to some cousins "for a change"—for whose change was not insisted upon. She was not brought back till the day after her mother's funeral. It was a strange and terrible time. For once she was passive and subdued. If the servants had not already remarkedon her hard-heartedness, she would have cried herself ill. But she was full of a dull resentment as well as pain. At the time she was sent away she had gathered, as a quick-witted child does—Heaven knows how!—that her mother was dangerously ill. During that time in the country she had prayed for her recovery as she never prayed before or after, as none but the passionate-hearted ever pray. Night after night, when the light had been put out, and the others had gone to sleep, Val would get out of bed and kneel down at the side beseeching God to save her mother's life, and making solemn compacts with the Lord of Hosts. She would be so good, and build a church, too, in memory of this answer to prayer; she would be a nun, and serve God all her days, if He would spare her mother. She pointed out how easy it was for the All-Powerful to do this little thing. She wasn't waiting till it would require a Lazarus miracle, she was asking Him in good time. He had only to let the doctors know what would cure her. But she, Val Gano, would recognize in the recovery a direct answer to prayer, and she would keep her vows. She remembered a sermon she had heard on mountain-moving faith. Hers should be perfect and unfaltering. She knew God would answer this one prayer; she saw herself already in her nun's black habit, and began to say her last farewell to the world, to the prince that she knew was coming later on, to all her children—she called them by their names, "five brave sons and five beauteous daughters." She turned her back on them all, cut her long hair, and heard the convent gates clang to—all this was an accomplished destiny in her mind, when the telegram came to say her mother was dead. Her father was ill, too, now; there was nothing but sickness and death in the world, and the child was to stay where she was. The telegram was from her grandmother to cousin Nathaniel. Four days later, when she was permitted to go home, the funeral was over, and her grandmother was in charge of her mother's house. It was very awful. What did God mean by it?
The following week John Gano returned to his post atthe bank. As he was leaving the counting-room, that first and last day after the death of his wife, he was seized with a violent hemorrhage, and was carried home, it was thought, to die.
Mrs. Gano nursed her son back to something faintly resembling health, and urged him to come home with her. No; he would stay where he was, till—
"Nonsense! you must rouse yourself for your children's sake. Here is Val, left to servants, and running wild. She must go to school. None better than the New Plymouth Seminary for Young Ladies."
"Oh, time enough for that. I can't let the child go just yet."
"Thereisn'ttime. That child is going to wreck and ruin. And you don't suppose I'm going to leave you here alone? You must come and get well and strong."
"It's no use," the invalid said, adding, half under his breath: "I'm done for."
"Hush!" she interrupted, frowning. "Anybody is done for who has made up his mind that he is."
John Gano shook his head.
"You know we all go like this. It's not a matter of imagination."
"Nearly everything's a matter of imagination," she said.
The gaunt man put his handkerchief to his lips.
"This is imagination, too, I suppose," he said, as he turned the bright spot in and out of sight—"a case of seeing red."
"That small stain means very little in itself," she retorted, seeming scarcely moved; "its effect on your mind is the only thing to be afraid of."
"You speak as though I hadn't inherited the blessed business."
"Oh, inherited—inherited! I'm sick of that white feather showing all along the line. Look at me!"
He did look at her. She seemed suddenly taller and thinner and grayer and more defiant than any being he had ever beheld.
"Look at me!" she repeated. "I have been given up by the doctors half a dozen times. My mother was told when I was sixteen that I had only a piece of a lung left—that it might last me through the winter. It has served my purpose for half a century since. But I didn't worry about the color of my handkerchiefs, and I didn't admit for a moment that I could possibly be induced to die—that is, of course"—she put on a sudden aspect of resignation that was almost funny—"unless it was the Lord's will."
Nothing seemed to matter now that her mother was dead. It was plain Val would never be happy again. Leaving her home, to which she was devotedly attached, was hardly a misfortune, any more than going to live with her grandmother. What did anything matter? God hadn't heard her prayers; He had mocked her faith, and she was motherless. She hadn't enough interest in life even to be "owdacious," as her grandmother called it. She was passive, almost "good."
Her father, observing her settled depression on the journey West, gathered her into his arms, and whispered:
"We have each other, you know."
And she lay with her face hidden, and cried a long time, so quietly that her grandmother thought she was asleep.
It was the reunion with her little sister that first roused her out of her unchildlike apathy. Not the genial warmth of family affection, not the diversion of having a playmate, but the tonic of a vigorous antagonism, as unexpected as it seemed unnatural.
"Where is my room?" Val had asked, on the evening of their arrival at the Old Fort.
"You are to sleep with Emmeline," said her grandmother.
"But, grandma, I've never slept with any one."
"Haven't you, my dear?"
"No, and I've always—"
"That will do now. Go up-stairs and wash your face and hands. Emmeline will show you the way."
Val went off quietly enough, but it might have staggeredMrs. Gano could she have known the rage and rebellion that seethed in that small female heart.
It was dusk up in the little girls' room.
"Why haven't they lit the gas?" asked Val.
"We don't have gas here."
"Lamps, then."
"Gamma thinks lamps are too esplosive."
"Do you live in the dark?"
"No; we have candles, but it ain't dark enough yet. I'll show you where everything is."
"I'll find 'em myself."
Val had espied the candles on the bureau. She lit them.
"Oh, we never have more'n one," admonished Emmie, gently.
Val went on calmly with her toilet. Presently Mrs. Gano looked in.
"Come to supper, little girls, as soon as you're ready."
She was going away without more words, when Emmie called out excitedly:
"Just look, gamma—two candles a-burnin', 'and no ship at sea!'"
Mrs. Gano smiled.
"Yes, my dear; one is enough."
She put the extinguisher over the nearest, and went down-stairs.
"Skinflint!" observed Val.
The supper was on this occasion a late and hurriedly prepared meal. There were soft-boiled eggs. Val helped herself to two, and broke them into a tumbler; then mixed in salt, and pepper, and butter, and bits of bread.
"Just look at what Val's doing!" said Emmie, with innocent excitement, while her elder and more accomplished sister stirred the agreeable compound round and round.
"Never do that again," said Mrs. Gano, suddenly aware of the enormity. "I don't like people to make puddings in their tumblers at my table."
"T'ain't puddin'," said Val.
"That will do." Mrs. Gano ended the matter according to her usual formula. "Will you have some corn bread?"
"No, thank you; I don't like it."
"It is enough to answer, 'No, thank you.' Never say you don't like anything you see on my table."
Val wished her father had not been too tired to come to supper. She had observed that she was never so much corrected in his presence.
The full moon was shining in the gloaming as they passed the open veranda door coming from their belated meal.
"Let's go out a minute," said Val to Emmie, in a whisper.
"No; it's too late. I'd catch cold."
"Oh, nonsense! Come along."
And she dragged her little sister off. But they stayed out only a few minutes.
Emmie came in crying.
"Gamma, she made me fall down on the g'avel."
Val, without explanation or apology, flushed angrily and ran up-stairs. She knocked at her father's door.
"Come in," he said, and she went over in the dim candlelight and stood by his bed.
"How you feel, father?"
"Little tired," he answered. "Are you come to say good-night?"
"I 'spose I mustn't stay?"
"Oh, a minute or two."
She perched on the side of his bed. She had come in with the express intention of making complaints. Some vague notion of sparing him because he was ill kept her tongue-tied.
"Isn't this a nice old house?" he said, presently.
"Y—yes," she answered.
"In the daytime you'll see what capital places there are for you and Emmie to play in."
"Is it true I mustn't swing on the gate?"
"Well, I dare say—"
"Emmie says so. Is it true I mustn't roll down the terraces?"
"H'm—well—"
"Emmie says so. What are terraces for, anyhow? I thought," she added, with a sigh—"I thought it was going to be like the country."
"Oh, wait till you see it by daylight. It's a great deal more like the country than New York."
"She doesn't keep a horse?"
"No."
"Nor a cow?"
"No; there's no stable, you see."
"There isn't any pig, father!"
"Oh no; she wouldn't like a pig."
"But there isn't a single smallest kind of a dog here. There isn't," she wound up, tremulously—"there isn't even a chicken."
"You just wait till to-morrow, and I'll show you heaps of nice things. There isn't a finer tulipifera rhododendron in the world than the one out by the back veranda. And there's a beautiful old crooked catalpa on the terrace you can make a house in."
"Emmie says she only lets cousin Ethan climb trees."
"Oh-a, well—a—I dare say there are plenty of other things. Aren't the peaches nearly ripe?"
"I don't know."
"Have you seen my Indian arrowheads and stone hatchets down-stairs in the cabinet?"
Val shook her head despairingly.
"They're inherroom."
Her father seemed not to notice.
"And to-morrow I must show you the great slab of stone at the back door. The oldest inhabitant of this place told me when I first came to New Plymouth that he remembered cracking nuts there at recess in 1800, when he went to school here. There aren't many little girls who have such a wonderful old house to live in."
"N—no. I liked the little trees and houses in the silver at supper."
"You'll like lots of things. I've got an old fiddle somewhere about—"
"Haveyou? Oh,that'll be fun!"
She crept up under his arm and nestled down against him.
It is no part of the office of this plain chronicle to attempt to justify any person in it. Mrs. Gano herself was too little touched by other people's opinions for one who sets about reporting her to dare belittle her robust errors, or omit the defects of her qualities. Few things would have bothered her so much as "being universally beloved," as the phrase goes; and yet, or perhaps because of this, her family affections struck such deep root that plucking them up was like tearing asunder the very fibres of her life. Even now, even to her son, she could not speak of Valeria. Her long hands shook when she touched the dead woman's books. When chance would bring to light a scrap of the familiar writing, she would look away hurriedly, that she might not break down utterly and lose herself in that ocean of agonized regret that had threatened to sweep her, too, out of the world after Valeria's death. It could never have occurred to her as possible that she should set about winning anybody's affections. She would probably have regarded it as a slavish and far from upright procedure. Affection was not a thing to set snares for. It was the duty of children to love their parents (she would probably have said to "honor" them); it was the duty of parents to train the children in the way they should go. That was "the law and the prophets." She could never have quite realized the impression she made on the young or guilty-minded, but she would not have denied that she belonged to a generation disposed to treat healthy children on more or less Spartan principles. She had from time to time obtained a sufficiently all-round view of the spoiling process that had, to her thinking, wellnigh ruined Val Gano.
She had come quickly to the conclusion that she would say nothing more to the child's nervous and ailing father, but was quite definitely minded to set to work quietly and vigorously to correct in Val's upbringing the pernicious mixture of sentimentality and neglect that had made the child arévoltéeand a household terror. Already in New York there had been a battle royal on the subject of the proper bedtime for a little girl. Val had announced herself in no uncertain note as mortally opposed to retiring at eight, or even nine. If there was one thing more than another that she objected to utterly it was this going to bed at all. Her mother had been helpless to prevent her from ranging the house till remorseless sleep struck her down in the midst of her delights. If she could manage to keep her eyes open, or to wake up after a brief oblivion, she had made no bones about descending during the evening in her night-gown, entirely prepared for the rapturous reception she knew awaited her from her father. Val had early, then, come to associate her grandmother with tyrannical designs on the liberty of the free-born child after the hour of eight. She also had cause to know her repulsive opinions on the value of a milk and cereal diet for the young. These, and a general sense of radically opposed interests, not unmixed with astonishment at, and fear of, the alarming old lady, made up the sum of Val's dismay when she came calmly to consider what life was going to be like here at the Fort.
She woke up on the morning after her arrival with a vague sense of a duty to perform. She rubbed her eyes and kicked Emmie. Ah, yes, that was it—her grandmother had not understood. She had condemned Val, who was accustomed to her own room, with all her "things" about her, just as she liked them, and no one to interfere—she had put Val in "another person's room," with a single big bed in it, and condemned her to sleep with Emmie. Her grandmother must be brought to a better understanding.
The child made no further announcement of her frameof mind till she sat down to a barren breakfast with the despised Emmie. There was no coffee. There was tea going up to her father, as usual. The silent Emmie quaffed her mug of milk serenely. For a year now Val had demanded and been given her morning cup of coffee.
"Ask for some for me, please," she said, after making inquiries of Venie.
"Gamma says cawfee will make you an old woman before you're a young one," said Emmie, showing her milk-white teeth in a pleased smile. "You can't have any cawfee."
"Tell the cook, please," said Val, in a loud voice, "that I'm waitin' for my coffee."
An' Jerusha put in a turbaned head.
"Lordy, missy! don' yer yell like dat, an' I'll make yo' some cambric tea."
"I won't drink cambric tea. I'm the oldest of the famerly, and my father always let me have coffee."
"Yo' father ve'y ill, missy. Yo' mustn't worrit yo' father."
"Ineverworry my father—I settle everything for myself. Are you going to get my coffee?"
"Can't do dat, missy, widout leab."
"Isn't grandma coming to breakfast?"
"No; she always habs it in her own room since Miss Valery died."
The child pushed back her chair and marched out. The two women called remonstrance after her, but a mighty indignation swept her on. She halted before her grandmother's room, knocked loudly, and opened the door without further waiting.
Midway in her valiant advance upon the enemy she stood still. Mrs. Gano was sitting propped with huge feather pillows in an ancient four-poster. She wore a small shrunken cotton nightcap awry on her wonderful thick hair, which tumbled out in a tangle of silver and lay dishevelled over the white flannel jacket that was buttoned crooked over her night-gown, the sleeves hanging loose andarmless. In her long taper fingers she held an open letter. Envelopes, notes, theBaltimore Sun, and other papers were strewn thick over the silk patchwork quilt. A breakfast tray stood on a table by the bedside. It wasn't her attire, it wasn't even the shrunken, rakish nightcap (self-conscious and uneasy at its obvious shortcomings), that made the old lady's aspect so arresting. She had not said a word at the child's irruption, but she lowered her chin and looked over her heavy gold-rimmed spectacles with a strange cold stare, singularly disconcerting, even slightly paralyzing. But Val's was a bold heart. And she realized that a blow must be struck for liberty.
"They haven't given me any coffee for my breakfast," she announced, with equal directness and warmth.
The piercing eyes bored into her, but the stern mouth uttered no word. The child began to wish she'd waited till her grandmother were properly dressed and looked more human.
"I'm in my eighth year," she went on with dignity, "and I'm accustomed—"
"'Good-morning!' is the custom in this house," said the old lady.
"Oh! Good-morning!" Slight pause. "The servant says you told her I wasn't to have coffee."
"Well?"
"I always have it at home."
"You're not at home now."
"But I can't eat breakfast without—"
"There's no need for you to eat breakfast if you're not hungry."
"Whycan't I have coffee?"
"Because I think it injurious"—the keen old eyes caught the swift disdain of the child's glance at the half-empty cup on the tray—"very injurious for children," she added.
"My mother didn't think so," Val said, feeling her throat swell.
"But I am your grandmother, you see."
She had lowered her chin again; her eyes were shooting out over her spectacles, her eyebrows terrifically high. This grandmother of hers could move her eyebrows about as easily as other people moved their arms and legs. It was a fearsome accomplishment.
"Inmyhouse," she went on, after the awful pause, "the thing to be considered is whatIthink. Among other matters I consider your way of entering a room might be improved. Now, you may see how quietly you can go out."
Seldom has a child been more surprised at an unexpected turn in affairs than was this one when she found herself on the outside of the door. She stood irresolute a moment. Why had she obeyed? She gritted her little white teeth in self-contempt. Should she go back? There were loads of things she had forgot to say. The idea of being sent out like that! She went slowly up-stairs and angrily tumbled some of her clothes out of her trunk. There were three cookies, a cruller, and some chocolates in a box near the bottom. Oh, wise precaution of provident childhood! Still, her present lot was a most unhappy one.
"No breakfast! How angry my poor sainted mother would be!" She shed two tears. "No mother, no coffee, nothing but a cruel grandmother."
She revelled gloomily in the tragic picture till she heard Emmie coming up-stairs. She hid the "remainder biscuit" and hurriedly dried her eyes. There had long been a theory in the family—even her mother had shared it—that Val never cried, and hadn't any heart to speak of. She was intensely proud of this reputation for stoicism, and wouldn't for worlds have undeceived any one. She brushed past Emmie now with lofty looks and ran down-stairs and out-of-doors. She ranged about the grounds, finding that her father was right—there were great possibilities of enjoyment in these neglected haunts. She was not long in discovering the grape-vine climbing the pear-tree in the wilderness, and satisfying herself that "peacheswere ripe." The osage orange-trees that grew along the fence behind the drying-ground had dropped their rugged globes on the grass, and one could play ball with these oranges till their tough fibres grew soft and yielded grudgingly, like rubber. Presently one that she had sent flying over the trees into the adjoining grounds came mysteriously back. Val parted the fringe of lower undergrowth and peered between the fence rails, but could see no one. She shied another orange, and this time she saw a boy dart out from behind a tree and send the orange swiftly through the sunshine over her head. Val leaped up, and by a fluke caught it firmly in her hands.
"Hooray!" came involuntarily from the next-door neighbor; and they went on playing ball in ambush till curiosity prevailed over shyness.
When the next-door neighbor drew near the osage barrier, he revealed himself as a boy about Val's age, with a freckled face and a queer little knob of a nose.
"Wot's your name?" he inquired.
"Val Gano. What's yours?"
"Jerry—I mean, Jerningham Otway."
"That your house?"
She climbed upon the fence and distinguished glimpses through the bushes of an imposing place beyond.
"Yes," he answered; "and we got a bank over the river."
This eliciting nothing, he went on, genially:
"You can fire a ball 'bout as well as a boy!"
"I should hope so."
"My sister can't, and she's a year older 'n me. Most girls can't, and they're all awful mad they wasn't born boys."
"That so?"
"Yes. I know a girl over the river—awfully jolly girl—she's got a monkey—nicest girl I ever knew!—and Geerusalem! don't she want to be a boy!"
"Shemustbe a ninny," observed his next-door neighbor.
"Hey?"
"Can't think why any girl in her senses should want to be aboy!" as who should say: the least of created things.
Jerry widened saucer eyes.
"If a girl likes," his neighbor continued, "she can do all the jolly things a boy does without the bother ofbeinga boy."
"Ho! ho! Don't find it much bother."
"Well, but it's a little dull, ain't it?"
"Hey?"
"Not now exactly, but don't you ever think about the future?"
Jerry looked vaguely alarmed for a single instant, and then strutted off with his hands in his pockets, whistling defiantly all across the lawn. He stopped at the barn door, and whistled his way back, in time to catch a friendly ball.
The feminine wile that eventually won the young gentleman's heart, and "did for" the girl with the pet monkey, was Val's gift for turning the most surprisingly rapid somersaults all across the drying-ground. A small contorting ball, she rolled head over heels, without stopping, from one side to the other, and came up smiling, in spite of a crack on her crown against the pump.
"Gee-rusalem!" observed Jerry, when he saw she was laughing. "I say," he added, with a child's fine disregard for preface or preliminary—"I say, come over to Bentley's Pond and let's be pirates."
It seems highly probable that Val would have closed with the offer if Emmie had not made a timely appearance.
"What you doin'?" she asked, Jerry being invisible.
"None o' your business," said her polite sister.
"Oh-h," purred Emmie. "Gamma don't let us—"
She paused.
"Don't let us what?"
"What you're doin'."
"What am I doin'?"
It was difficult to say. She seemed to be just sauntering about, occasionally kicking an osage orange. But Emmie,not without reason, had got it into her law-abiding head that whatever this sister of hers might be engaged in it was pretty sure to be something taboo, and Emmie, as an older inhabitant here, and one who never made these mistakes, was bound to keep the new-comer from transgression. Her sister had gone back to the house now. Emmie followed her up-stairs to their room. Val found her trunk gone from the upper hall, and its contents disposed in drawers and wardrobe with Emmie's belongings.
Who had done this thing?
"Venie," said Emmie.
The new-comer anathematized the officious servants of the Fort. Emmie stood looking on with growing consternation, as Val flung forth from the wardrobe to the middle of the room a shower of pinafores and petticoats, books and toys. They lay on the floor in an indiscriminate mass. What was this daring person about? Emmie stood shyly by the door, her face flushing with excitement.
"I won't have my things mixed up with other peoples'!" Val announced, severely. Then, after a moment: "What are you standing there for?"
"I—I don't know," responded Emmie.
"Haven't you got any place of your own, where you belong?"
Emmie looked bewildered, as well she might.
"I've got a little rocking-chair down in gamma's room—used to be cousin Efan's."
"Humph! rocking-chair's just the thing foryou!Why don't you go and sit in it?"
Val was clearing out the bureau now at the other end of the room. It was Emmie's things this time that were being flung out with disdain. Val's harsh question, coupled with the moving spectacle of Emmie's best hat on the floor, brought ready tears to the soft brown eyes.
"What you got in this?" demanded Val, shaking the rattling contents of a well tied-up box.
"B'longs to cousin Efan. Gamma don't let us open it."
Val untied the cord and revealed the forbidden spoil—marbles, a jack-knife, a broken whistle, and at the bottom a little drawing-book and a French grammar.
"I'll take care of the marbles and the knife for cousin Ethan," said Val, "but you can have the other things," and she flung the treasured box to the opposite side of the room. The vandalism widened Emmie's trouble-clouded eyes. "Now my clothes are going in the bureau."
Val was sorting and folding away her own belongings with a deftness characteristic of her thin little hands. Emmie watched the process tearfully.
"Andmybooks and things like that go on this side," she went on, busily bringing order out of chaos. "Now, do you understand?" she said, sternly. "This half o' the room is mine. You can'tevercome here."