The conduct of the children at the luncheon table was marked by such unexampled propriety of manner that Mrs. Van Duser was visibly disappointed. She could hardly have been expected to know that Elizabeth had resorted to shameless bribery in advance of the meal with a shining coin in each small pocket, "to be spent exactly as you choose," and that Richard was taking his food in the kitchen under the lax supervision of the Norwegian maid. Still the occasion was not wholly barren of material for a trained psychologist, as Mrs. Van Duser was pleased to term herself.
"The psychophysical processes," she observed learnedly, "should be closely observed by the wise guardian, in order to properly graft desired complications on native reactions."
"I am afraid I do not altogether understand," murmured Elizabeth, secretly grateful that her guest's preoccupation of mindrendered her oblivious to the blunders of Celia, as she plodded heavily about the table. "But I should like to ask you, Mrs. Van Duser, if you approve of—whipping children?"
Mrs. Van Duser dropped her pencil and focussed her piercing regard upon the wife of her distant relative.
"Decidedly not, my dear Elizabeth," she enunciated in her deepest contralto. "Corporal punishment brutalises the child by implying that a rational being is, or may be, on the level of the animal. It can be only too evident that if one treats a child like an animal, it will behave like an animal. I will send you an excellent pamphlet on the subject, which you will do well to study. In the meantime you should remember——"
Mrs. Van Duser stopped short, raised her lorgnette and stared hard at Doris. That young person had suddenly left her chair and was whispering in her mother's ear, in the peculiar, sibilant whisper of an eager child.
"I'm through of my dinner, mother," was wafted distinctly to the attentive ears of the guest. "An' I want to go an' buy daddy's 'fumery this minute. You said I might,mother; you said I might.—Yes; butwhenis she going home, mother?when?"
Far from evincing displeasure the great lady displayed the sincerest gratification. "A most interesting example of ideation," she observed. "My dear Elizabeth, please explain the child's emotions, if you are aware of them. I fail to observe anger or dislike, or even—as might well be expected—awe. Why do you wish me to go home?" she inquired directly of Doris, who had retreated behind her mother's chair in pouting dismay.
Elizabeth experienced a hysterical desire to laugh; but she instantly repressed it. "You should explain to Mrs. Van Duser, Doris, that you spilled father's bay-rum this morning, and that mother said you must buy him a fresh bottle with your own money," she said soberly.
"I want to gonow," whispered the child. "You said I might, mother; youpromised!"
"Excellent!" exclaimed Mrs. Van Duser, writing rapidly in her book. "You really ought, my dear Elizabeth, to preserve a careful memoranda of these interesting mental movements of your offspring," she observed convincingly. "Every properly constructedparent should endeavour to so assist science. However crudely and unscientifically expressed, such records would prove of incalculable value to the student."
She turned to Doris with a complete change of manner. It was no longer the ontological Mrs. Van Duser, but the great lady from Beacon Street who spoke. "You have been very rude indeed, my child," she said sternly; "and little girls should never be rude; but I will take you with me in the carriage to purchase the toilet article referred to, and send you home afterwards, if your mother will permit."
As Elizabeth watched the flushed and triumphant Doris, departing in state in the Van Duser carriage, the jingling contents of her bank in her small pocket, she was conscious of a bewildering sense of failure. She had sincerely tried to impress a lesson of obedience and a respect for the rights of others upon the mind of her child, and, lo! the culprit was enjoying a long-wished-for treat!
The arrival of Miss Evelyn Tripp, in a hansom cab with a small much-belabelled trunk on top, successfully diverted her mind from thisand other ethical problems. Miss Tripp's recent misfortunes had as yet left no traces on her slight, elegant personality. She entered quite in her old fashion, amid a subdued rustle of soft silken garments, a flutter of plumes and a gracious odour of violets.
"My dear!" she exclaimed, clasping and kissing Elizabeth, quite in the latest mode. "How well you are looking! Indeed, you are younger and far, far prettier than the day you were married! How vividly I remember that day, and I am sure you do! How I did work to have everything pass off as it should, and so many persons have told me since that it was really the sweetest wedding they ever saw! It hardly seems possible that it was so long ago. What! You don't tell me that great boy is Carroll! Come here and let Aunty Evelyn kiss you, dear. And Doris? She was such a dear, tiny thing when I saw her last. Oh, that is the baby; you say! No; Elizabeth—not that great child! Fancy! I declare I feel like a Methuselah when I look at my friend's children. I hate to grow old—really old; don't you know."
Miss Tripp paused to remove her plumed hat,while Elizabeth hastened to assure her friend that she really hadn't changed in the least. This was quite true, since Miss Tripp was of that somewhat thin and colourless type of American womanhood upon which the passing years appear to leave little trace.
"Oh, my dear!" sighed Miss Tripp, "I am changed; everything has changed with me, I assure you. Mother and I are obliged to live off air, exactly like wee little church mice. And I am simply worn to a fringe trying to economise and manage. I never was extravagant; you know that, dear, but now——. Well; I don't know what will become of us unless something happens."
"Something will happen, dear," said Elizabeth, more than ever warm-heartedly determined to make her friend as happy as herself. "Now I'm going to leave you to lie down and rest a little before dinner," she added guilefully, as she bethought herself of the various culinary operations already in progress under the unthinking control of Celia. "A friend of Sam's—a Mr. Hickey, chances to be dining here to-night; I hope you won't mind, dear. It—just happened so."
Miss Tripp turned to gaze searchingly at her friend. "You can't mean George Hickey—a civil engineer?" she asked.
"Why, yes; do you know him?"
"My dear; it's the oddest thing; but lately I seem to meet that man wherever I go. He is a friend of the Gerald Doolittles in Dorchester—you know who I mean—and spends a Sunday there occasionally; and when I was visiting Leticia Marston last fall, lo and behold! Mr. Hickey turned up there for the week end! I used to know him years ago when we were both children."
"Sam is associated with Mr. Hickey in a professional way," observed Elizabeth, with a careful indifference of manner. "He dines with us once in a while." She paused to listen, with her head on one side, while a look of alarm stole over her attentive face.
"What's the matter, dear?" inquired the unaccustomed Miss Tripp. "Do you hear anything?"
"No, Evelyn; I don't, and the silence is suspicious. I think I'll run down stairs and see what the boys are doing. Try and rest, dear, till I call you." And Elizabeth accomplisheda hasty exit by way of the back stairs and the kitchen, where she was in time to frustrate the intelligent Celia as she was about putting the French peas over to boil an hour before dinner time. From thence she sought the sitting-room, where she had left her two sons amicably engaged in constructing a tall and wobbly tower out of building blocks. Carroll had vanished, and her amazed and indignant eyes lighted upon the person of her youngest son kneeling in a chair before the forbidden aquarium, over which he leaned in a state of rapturous oblivion of past experiences, his plump hands buried in the sand at the bottom of the tank, while the alarmed gold fish flashed in and out between the dripping sleeves of his freshly-ironed blouse.
"Richard Brewster!" she cried. Then wrath and a disheartening sense of the futility of unassisted moral suasion quite swept her off her feet. She seized the child and laying him across her lap in time-honoured fashion, handed down from a remote ancestry, spanked him with a speed and thoroughness not to be surpassed by Grandmother Carroll in her most energetic mood.
Elizabeth was fluttering anxiously about the table in her small dining-room when her husband entered in his usual breezy fashion and laid a bunch of fragrant carnations before her.
"A finishing touch for your table, Betty," he said; and added with lover-like enthusiasm, "My! how pretty you're looking to-night!"
"I shouldn't think I'd look pretty after the day I've put in," she told him as she arranged the flowers in water. "Sam, Mrs. Van Duser was here to luncheon."
"No?"
"She came to ask me if I had read 'Anthropological Investigations on one thousand children, white and colored,' and I hadn't even looked at it."
"So you flatly flunked the exam; poor Betty!"
"Not exactly, Sam; I—told her I didn't quite—understand the subject."
"Ah, Machiavellian Betty! Did she tumble?"
"Oh, Sam! what a way to speak of Mrs.Van Duser. I was the one to tumble, as you call it. She graciously picked me up. Of course Doris was naughty, and Celia spilled cocoa on the table-cloth and passed everything on the wrong side. Then after Mrs. Van Duser went, Evelyn came.—She's up-stairs now, dressing for dinner. And—after that—I don't know what you'll think of me, Sam; but I—was nervous or something I think, and I—whipped Richard."
"You—what?"
"After all I've said about Marian Stanford, too! I just hate myself for doing it. But I had dressed that child twice all clean, and when I came down to see about dinner and found him playing in the aquariumagain, Sam, dripping water all over the floor, and with his clothes soaked to the skin, I just seemed to lose all control of myself. I snatched the poor darling up and—and—spanked him as hard as I could. The strange part of it is that I—seemed to enjoy doing it."
Her doleful air of abject contrition was too much for Sam. He roared with irrepressible laughter. "Forgive me, Betty," he entreated; "but really, you know——"
"I understand now exactly why people whip their children," went on Elizabeth, descending into abysmal depths of humility and grovelling there with visible satisfaction. "I gave way to uncontrollable rage just because I knew I must take the trouble to dress the poor little darling again, and I couldn't think for the minute what flannels to put on him. So I revenged myself, in just a common, spiteful, vulgar way. No, Sam; you needn't try to make light of what I did. Nothing can excuse it!"
At that instant the misused infant, dragging a train of iron cars behind him, hove into view.
"Chu-chu-chu!" he droned. "Det out the way! Here tomes the 'spress train!" His cherubic countenance was serene and rosy; he beamed impartially upon his parents as he scuffed across the floor.
"Well," said his father, endeavouring (unsuccessfully) to view the matter in a serious light, "I fail to observe any signs of violent abuse or tokens of abject fear about the young person; I guess you didn't——"
"Hush, Sam! I hope he's forgotten it—the darling! Do you love mother, baby?"
"I'm a dreat big engine-man!" vociferated the infant, submitting cheerfully to his mother's kisses, "an' I love 'oo more'n a sousand million! Chu-chu! Toot-toot! Ding-dong!"
"How about the other young Brewsters?" inquired their father, with a twinkle of mock solicitude in his blue eyes. "Have they been pursuing the undeviating paths of rectitude, or have you—er—been moved to——"
"Sam, if you make fun of me about—what I did to Richard, I——" her voice broke, and she hid her eyes on his shoulder. "I thought," she said, "that it was my duty to tell you."
"I'm not making fun of you, little woman. Perish the thought!" and he kissed her convincingly. "I don't know what I should—or shouldn't do—if I had to cope with the young miscreants single-handed all day. Where is Doris, by the way?"
She told him about the broken bay-rum bottle, and described the scene at the luncheon table. "I was so ashamed," she concluded; "but what could I do?"
"Let me laugh again, Betty!" he begged."That's too much, you know. Fancy our small Doris having the—er—audacity to stand up and audibly hint that Mrs. J. Mortimer Van Duser's room would be more acceptable than her company. I wish I'd been there to see and hear."
"Mrs. Van Duser said that it was a most interesting example of ideation—whatever that is," said his Elizabeth rather proudly. "She's writing a paper for the Ontological Club, and she's going to put all three of the children in."
"As what—Concrete examples of the genusenfant terrible?" he inquired cautiously.
Elizabeth was surveying her table with satisfied eyes. She did not appear to have heard his question.
"It may be hard work to take care of all that silver and glass we had for wedding presents, Sam," she said thoughtfully; "but on occasions it is useful."
"Yes; if the foreigner in the kitchen didn't too often turn our dancing into mourning by smashing it."
"I'm not going to let Celia wash one of these dishes," she told him firmly.
"Who is going to wash them?" he asked resignedly.
"I am—after Mr. Hickey's gone and Evelyn's in bed."
"'That means me,'" he quoted irreverently. "I'm a thoroughly house-broken husband, and you can depend upon me, Betty, every shot."
She flashed him a grateful smile. "Of course I know that, Sam," was all she said; but her eyes were eloquent of love and happy trust. "What do you think, Sam," she added irrelevantly; "Evelyn has known Mr. Hickey a long time already."
"So much the better for Hickey!"
"Yes; that's what I thought. You see, Sam, if—if anything should happen, it wouldn't be all our doing; and so in a way, Sam, I actually felt relieved when Evelyn said that she had met Mr. Hickey before. It is really an awful responsibility."
"What? to ask Hickey to dinner? He didn't seem to mind it."
"Don't be flippant, Sam," she said with dignity. "You know perfectly well what I mean. If Mr. Hickeyshouldfall in love with Evelyn—and I will say that she never looked moreattractive than she does now—and if she should——"
He interrupted her with a hasty kiss. "I've got to go up and dress," he reminded her. "Don't you worry, Betty; if he should, and she should, then they both would; and all you and I would be required to do would be to buy them a clock that wouldn't go, or a dozenpâté de foies grasimplements—only let it be something useful. By the way, I see you've set the table for the children. Do you think that is—er—exactly the part of wisdom?"
"No, Sam; I do not. But I had to make it up to Richard someway, so I promised to let him have dinner with us, and Evelyn quite insisted upon the others. She thinks Carroll simply perfect, and she says Doris is the most fascinating child she ever saw."
"Well," he acquiesced, "they're the biggest and best half of the Brewster family, when you come to think of it, and Hickey always wants to see them when he comes."
Half an hour later Elizabeth was putting the finishing touches to her toilet, while the children, immaculate and shining, hovered admiringly about the dressing-table.
"Now remember, Carroll, you mustn't get to quarrelling with Doris about anything."
"I won't, mother; I promise."
"We're going to have ice-cream for dessert, and——"
"Oh-e-e!" in a rapturous chorus from all the children.
"I don't want you to make that noise when Celia brings it in to the table; that's why I'm telling you beforehand."
Richard was pirouetting heavily on his little stubbed shoes. "Oh-e-e!" he repeated, "ice-cweam!"
"Now, do you think you can remember?" asked Elizabeth, clasping a string of gold beads about her pretty throat, and turning to meet the three pairs of upturned eyes. "I want Aunty Evelyn to think you've improved a great deal since the last time she was here. You weren't very good that time."
Carroll's clear gaze met his mother's reprovingly. "Do you want Aunty Evelyn to think we've improved, if we haven't?" he asked. "Because we're really getting badder most every day."
"You're badder, you mean," said Doris, witha superior and pitying smile; "I'm as good 's I can be. Mrs. Van Duser said I was a very inter-est-in' 'zample of a child. So there!"
Carroll shook his head. "I'm not going to quarrel with you, Doris, 'cause I promised mother I wouldn't," he said with dignity; "but we are badder—'specially you; you didn't mind mother three times to-day."
"I am not badder."
"I said I wouldn't quarrel, Doris; but you are—very much badder."
"Hush, children!" exclaimed Elizabeth, hurriedly intervening between the militant pair. "Come right down stairs, and don't talk to each other at all unless you can be pleasant and polite."
Miss Evelyn Tripp presently appeared in a wonderful toilet, all lace and twinkling jets. She exclaimed over Carroll's marvellous gain in inches, and Doris' brilliant colour, and kissed and cooed over Richard.
"They're certainly the dearest children in the world," she said. "I've been simply wild to see them all these months, and you, too, Betty dear! I've so much to tell you!"
She twined her arm caressingly about Doris,and smiled brilliantly down at the little girl, who gazed with round appreciative eyes at the visitor's gown and at the jewels which sparkled on her small white hands.
"Both of my front teeth are all wiggly," whispered the child, feeling that something out of the ordinary was demanded of her in a social way. "I can wiggle them with my tongue."
"Can you, darling? How remarkable! Never mind; you'll soon have some nice new ones that won't wiggle."
Doris giggled rapturously. "We're going to have ice-cream for dinner," was her next confidence. "But I'm not going to act s'prised when Celia brings it in. We've all promised mother we won't, even if it's pink. I hope it'll be pink; don't you?"
"Doris," warned her mother, "you're talking too much."
"Oh, do let the dear little soul say anything she likes to me, Betty!" protested Miss Tripp. "If you knew how I enjoyed it!"
Doris nestled closer to the visitor, eyeing her mother with the naughtily demure expression of a kitten stealing cream. "I was going totell you something funny," she said, "but I can't think what it was. I guess I'll remember when we're eating dinner."
"The artless prattle of a child is so refreshing, you know," continued Miss Tripp, "after all the empty conventionalities of society. I simply love to hear the little darlings—especially yours, dear Betty. You are bringing them up so beautifully!"
When Mr. George Hickey rang the bell at the door of the modest Brewster residence that night, it was with the pleasant anticipation of a simple, but well-cooked dinner, of the sort a bachelor, condemned by his solitary estate to prolonged residence in that semi-public caravansary known as the American boarding-house, seldom enjoys.
He was very far indeed from a knowledge of the fact that he was in the oft-quoted position of the man in a boat on the hither side of the great rapids of Niagara. Mr. Hickey had allowed himself to be drawn into feeling a somewhat uncommon interest in Miss Evelyn Tripp, it is true; but he attributed this feeling wholly to the fact that he had known Miss Tripp when he was a tall, awkward boy of twenty and she was a rosy, fascinating miss of sixteen. She had laughed at him slily in those days, and he had resented her mirth withall the secret and hence futile agony which marks the intercourse of the awkward youth with the self-possessed maid. But the scar which Evelyn's youthful laughter had left in his bosom had remained unwontedly tender—as an old wound sometimes will; and when after the lapse of years they had met once more Mr. Hickey found the lady so surprisingly sweet, so gentle, so altogether tactful and sympathetic, that he could hardly escape a pleasant and soothing sense of gratitude. They spoke of old times—very old times they were; the mere mention of which brought a delicate blush to Miss Tripp's cheek. And the auroral light of youth, which never appears so roseate as when it shines upon the cold peaks of middle life, irradiated their common past and appeared to linger fascinatingly over Miss Tripp's somewhat faded person.
It had not, however, occurred to Mr. Hickey that the foregoing had any bearing whatever upon his own immediate future, nor upon the immediate future of Miss Evelyn Tripp. In a word, Mr. Hickey was very far from contemplating matrimony when he entered theBrewster's cheerful little parlour, bearing a box of bonbons for its mistress, and a jumping-jack capable of singular and varied contortions, for the young Brewsters.
Miss Tripp appeared very much surprised to meet Mr. Hickey again; she gave him a beautiful little hand of welcome from the deep chair where she was enthroned with Richard upon her knee ruthlessly crumpling the skirt of one of her carefully cherished gowns.
"I'm telling the children a fairy story," she said archly; "you mustn't interrupt."
"May I listen, if I'm a good boy?" asked Mr. Hickey, endeavouring to assume a light and festive society air, which hardly comported with his tall spare figure and the air of sober professionalism which he had acquired during a somewhat stern and strenuous past.
Carroll, who guarded Miss Tripp's chair on the right, exchanged puzzled glances with Doris who occupied the left. The little girl giggled.
"You aren't a boy," she said, addressing Mr. Hickey with a confidence inspired by past acquaintanceship; "you're all grown up."
"I like fairy stories, anyway," he asserteduntruthfully; "and I want to hear the one Miss Tripp is telling. You'll let me; won't you, Doris?"
"I'll let you, if Aunty Evelyn'll let you; but I guess she won't."
Miss Tripp laughed musically. "What a quaint little dear it is," she murmured, kissing the child's pink cheek. "Why shouldn't Aunty Evelyn let Mr. Hickey hear the story if he wants to, dear?"
"He's too old," said Doris convincingly. "He wouldn't care about Cinderella losing off her glass slipper."
"Oh-e-e, Doris Brewster!" exclaimed Carroll, swelling with the superior enlightenment of his three years of seniority. "That's very rude indeed! Mr. Hickey doesn't look so very old. He's got quite a lot of hair left on the sides of his head, and——"
"Thanks, my boy," interrupted Mr. Hickey hastily. "But don't entirely floor me by enumerating all my youthful charms. How about that slipper of Cinderella's, Miss Tripp; there's a prince in that story, isn't there? with—er—plenty of hair on top of his head?"
Miss Tripp, who was actually blushing pink,quite in her old girlish fashion, exchanged mirthful glances with the engineer.
"I was just coming to the prince," she said. "He was—oh, such a beautiful prince, all dressed in pale blue, embroidered with pearls and silver, and on his breast a great flashing diamond star. And when he saw Cinderella, standing all by herself, in her beautiful gauzy ball-dress——"
"An' her glass slippers!" gurgled Doris rapturously.
"An' her gwass sippers!" echoed Richard, hugging the story-teller in a sudden spasm of affection.
"Yes, her glass slippers, of course, darlings," cooed Miss Tripp; "but the prince did not notice the slippers, he was so agitated by the sight of her lovely face and her shining golden hair."
Mr. Hickey caught himself gazing dreamily at Miss Tripp's elaborately arranged coiffure. The yellow gas light fell becomingly upon the abundant light brown waves and coils, touching them into a shimmering gold which he did not remember to have noticed before. How well she was telling the story, too; and howfond of her the Brewster children appeared to be. He recalled mistily that someone had said, or written—perhaps it was one of those old author chaps—that it was impossible to deceive a child. Mr. Hickey was convinced that this must be true. And insensibly he fell to thinking how pleasant it would be if this were his own fire-side, and if the lady in the deep wicker chair were——.
A sound of small hand-clapping brought him out of this blissful revery with a start. "I like that part best of all," Carroll was saying; "an' if I'd been that prince I'd 'av taken my big, shining sword and cut off the heads of those bad, wicked sisters! Yes; I would; I'd like to do it!" And the sanguinary small boy swaggered up and down, his shoulders squared and his eyes shining.
"Oh, my dear!" protested Miss Tripp mildly. "You wouldn't be so unkind; I'm sure you wouldn't."
"I'd take all their pretty dresses away an' wear 'em myself," shrilled Doris excitedly. "An' I'd—pinch 'em; I'd——"
"Let me tell you what dear, sweet Cinderella did," interrupted Miss Tripp, tactfully seizingthe opportunity to impress a moral lesson. "She forgave her unkind step-mother and her two rude, spiteful sisters, and gave them each a castle and many, many lovely gowns and jewels; and after that they loved Cinderella dearly—they couldn't help it. And all of them were good and happy for ever afterward."
The children stared in round-eyed displeasures at this ethical but entirely tame denouement.
"That isn't in my story-book," said Carroll positively. "Cinderella married the Prince, an' the fairy god-mother turned the bad sisters into rats, an' made 'em draw her carriage for ever an' ever."
"Why, Carroll Brewster! I guess you made that up!" cried Doris. "The fairy god-mother didn't turn the bad sisters into anything; she jus' waved her wand an' turned Cinderella's ol' ragged clo'es into a lovely spangled weddin' dress, an' then——"
"She turned 'em into rats," repeated Carroll doggedly. "An' I'm glad she did it."
"She did not turn 'em into rats!"
"She did!"
"She didn't!"
At this crucial moment entered Elizabeth, flushed and bright-eyed from a final encounter with the elemental forces in the kitchen. "Won't you all come out to dinner," she said prettily; "I'm sure you must have concluded that dining was among the lost arts by this time."
"Not in this house," said Mr. Hickey gallantly. "This is one of the few—the very few places where one has the inestimable privilege of really dining. The balance of the time I merely take food from a strict sense of duty."
"We're going to have ice-cream," whispered Carroll kindly.
His father, who had caught the whisper, laughed outright. "He wants to give you something to look forward to, George," he said, as he tried the edge of his carving-knife. "If variety is the spice of life anticipation might be said to be its sweetening—eh? Will you have your beef rare or well-done, Miss Tripp?"
"Well-done, if you please," murmured Miss Tripp, smiling happily as she squeezed Doris' chubby hand under the table-cloth.
The little girl's eyes were very bright as shesaid, "I like to have you a-visitin', Aunty Evelyn."
"Do you, dear? Well Aunty Evelyn is very, very happy to be here."
"We were going to have rice-pudding for dessert if you hadn't come. I don't like rice-pudding; do you, Aunty Evelyn?"
"Doris—dear!"
Her mother's voice held reproof and warning; but the child with the specious sense of security inspired by the presence of strangers displayed her dimples demurely. "I didn't know it was naughty not to like rice-pudding," she said, in a small distinct voice.
Mr. Hickey glanced thoughtfully across the table at Miss Tripp, who was smiling down at the little girl encouragingly. "Most of us are naughty when it comes to hankering after the unusual and the unattainable," he observed didactically. "I eat my rice-pudding contentedly enough most days of the year; but on the three hundred and sixty-fifth I——"
"You pine for pink ice-cream; don't you?" smiled Miss Tripp; "but one might tire of even the pinkest ice-cream, if it appeared too often. What one really wants is—plainbread." She cast a barely perceptible glance at Elizabeth, the laces at her throat quivering with the ghost of a sigh. The next instant she was laughing at Richard whose curly head was beginning to droop heavily over his food.
"Poor little fellow," she murmured. "Do look, Elizabeth, he's almost gone!"
"Won't you carry him up-stairs for me, Sam?" Elizabeth begged her husband. "I ought not to have kept him up for dinner.—You'll excuse us just an instant; won't you?"
It was a pretty picture; the tall, stalwart father lifting the child rosy with sleep, and the little mother hovering anxiously near, like a small brown bird. Mr. Hickey observed it solemnly; Miss Tripp smilingly; then, for some reason unknown to both, their eyes met.
"—Er—let me pass you the—bread, Miss Tripp," said Mr. Hickey, short-sightedly choosing among the viands immediately within his reach.
"Thank you, Mr. Hickey," said Evelyn, and again that faint, elusive sigh shook the delicate laces at her throat.
As Miss Tripp was putting the finishing touches to a careful toilet the next morning she caught the sound of a whispered dispute in the hall; then small knuckles were cautiously applied to the panel of her chamber door.
"Aunty Evelyn! Aunty Evelyn! are you waked up?"
Miss Tripp had been brooding since daylight over the accumulated problems which appeared to crowd her narrow horizon like so many menacing thunder-caps; but she summoned a faint smile to her lips as she opened the door.
"Why, good-morning, dears!" she cried cheerfully at sight of the two small figures in their gay dressing-gowns and scarlet slippers.
"We want to hear a story, Aunty Evelyn," announced Doris, prancing boldly in, each individual curl on her small head bobbing like coiled wire. "We like stories."
"Come here, pet, and let Aunty brush your curls."
"No; I don't want my curls brushed; I want to hear a story about a be-utiful princess going to seek her fortune."
Miss Tripp suppressed a vague sigh. "I know a poor, forlorn princess who is obliged to go out all alone into the cold world to seek her fortune," she said. "And I'm very much afraid she won't find it."
"Is she young and be-utiful?" asked Doris, with wide-eyed attention. "An' has she got a spangled dress?"
"Dot a spangled dwess?" cooed Richard, like a cheerful little echo.
"No; she's forced to wear a plain black dress in her wanderings, and she isn't beautiful at all. She's not very young either, and ugly lines are beginning to creep about her eyes and across her forehead; and one day, not long ago she found—what do you suppose?"
"A bag of gold?"
"A bag o' dold?" echoed Richard.
"No, dear; this poor, forlorn little princess found three silver hairs growing among the brown ones just over her ear."
Miss Tripp's sweet, drawling voice trembled slightly as she went on with her little fable."The princess felt so badly that she shed bitter tears when she saw the glitter of those three silver hairs, because she knew that she could never, never catch up with youth any more."
"What youth—the fairy prince?" Doris wanted to know.
And Richard smiled seraphically as he trilled, "Oh, dood! It was 'e pwince!"
"No, darlings; there isn't any prince at all in this story. There was one—once—away back in the beginning of it; but he—went away—to a far country, and he—never came back."
"Did the princess cry?"
"Did her cwy?"
"Yes; she cried till all the brightness went out of her pretty eyes. Then she stopped crying and laughed instead, because—Oh; because crying didn't help a bit."
"You've been crying, Aunty Evelyn!" said Doris suddenly. "Why-e! your eyes are all teary now!"
"I've got a cold; I'm afraid," prevaricated Miss Tripp.
"I don't like that story," objected Doris. "Unless——" and her eyes brightened, "theprince came back. Let him come back, Aunty Evelyn; please let him; it'll spoil the story if he doesn't."
Miss Tripp drew a deep breath. "I—wish he might come back," she said; "but I—I'm afraid he never will, dear; and the poor little princess will have to go on alone till——"
"Till what?" demanded Doris indignantly. "I c'n tell a better story 'an that," she added.
"Tell it, dear."
"Well; the princess went out in her horrid ol' black clo'es an' travelled an' travelled,an' travelledtill she was mos' tired out, an' everywhere she went she asked 'where is my prince?' An' at first all the people said, 'We don't know where any prince is.' But the princess jus' made up her mind shewouldfind him; an'—an' bimeby she did—jus' as easy! He was right there all the time; only he was enchanted by an awful bad fairy so she couldn't see him, an' so——"
Doris paused to draw breath, and Richard gravely took up the tale, nodding the while like a gay little china mandarin. "He was 'chanted an' she was 'chanted, an' they bof was 'chanted, an'——"
"Be quiet, Buddy, an' let me tell," interrupted Doris. "She did find him! Course she found him, an'—an' her horrid ol' clo'es was changed to a lovely wedding dress, an'—an'—that's the end of it!"
Miss Tripp laughed. She felt unreasonably cheered by this optimistic finale to her sad little story—which had no ending.
"That would be the beginning of a very cheerful story," she said. "Now Aunty Evelyn must get some breakfast and start out into the cold world."
"Oh! we want you to stay!"
"I'm coming back, dears; yes, indeed; I'll be back this very evening, and then I'll tell you the loveliest story in the world, all about a little goose-girl."
It was a very cold world indeed into which Miss Tripp fared forth that winter morning. But Elizabeth's friendly protests were vain.
"I really must go, dear," Evelyn told her with a firmness quite foreign to her fashionable self. "You don't know—you can't guess how necessary it is for me to find some way of earning money. Mother——" her voice shook a little—"isn't at all well; she never was very strong,and our losses have quite—Why, Elizabeth, you would hardly know mother; she's so changed. She just sits by the window, and—looks out; I can't seem to rouse her to—to do anything."
Remembering the frail, artificial old lady, with her elaborate toilets and her perpetual aura of rice-powder and sachet, Elizabeth thought this exceedingly probable. "Was it so very bad, Evelyn?" she asked hesitatingly. "You know you only told me——"
"We lost nearly everything when the Back-Bay Security Company failed last fall," said Evelyn quietly. "I—couldn't seem to believe it at first. Of course we were never rich; but we had always lived very comfortably—you know how pleasant it was in our little apartment, Elizabeth, with our good Marie to do everything for us, and all our friends."
Miss Tripp touched her eyelids delicately with her little lace-edged handkerchief. "I—mustn't cry," she said. "It makes one look so like a fright, and I——. Elizabeth, do you suppose I could get a place to—teach? I do love children so, and they always seem to like me."
"What would you teach?" Elizabeth asked, anxiously sympathetic, yet knowing a little more of the ways of the educational world than did Miss Tripp. "You know, Evelyn,—at least I am told—that nearly every teacher has to be a specialist now. You might study kindergartening," she added more hopefully.
Miss Tripp shook her head. "No; I couldn't do that. It would take too long, and we should have plenty of time to—starve, I fancy, before——. But what nonsense I'm talking! I must start out this minute; I have an appointment at Whitcher's Teacher's Agency this morning. They told me yesterday that a man—a school principal—was coming there to hire a primary teacher. I'm sure I could do that; don't you think I could, Elizabeth?—Just to teach the children how to read and write and do little sums on their slates. I shall say I can anyway."
She waved her hand to her friend as she went bravely away down the snowy street, and Elizabeth turned back to her children, feeling a new and unfamiliar sense of gratitude for the warm home nest, with its three turbulent birdlings.
It was Saturday, and the children could not be dispatched to kindergarten as on other mornings of the week. It was also baking-day, and bread and rolls were in slow process of rising to their appointed size in the chilly kitchen. Elizabeth was frugally looking over the contents of her larder with a view to a "picked-up" luncheon, when she heard a small yet distinct knock on the back door.
She opened it upon Robbie Stanford, dancing with impatience on the snowy step.
"Good-morning, Mrs. Brewster," he began with an ingratiating smile, "I've come over to play with Carroll an' Doris. I c'n stay two hours 'n' maybe three, 'nless my mother comes from down-town before that."
"Oh; isn't your mother at home?" asked Elizabeth, with a dubious glance at the red-cheeked, black-eyed young person, who was already edging smilingly toward the closed door of the dining-room. She had entertained Master Stanford before in the absence of his parents and had learned to dread the occasions of his visits.
"No, ma'am," said Robbie politely. "My mother's gone to have her teeth fixed. The'was a teeny hole in one of 'em, an' the hole ached. Did you ever have holes in your teeth, Mrs. Brewster?"
"Why, yes; I suppose I have," assented Elizabeth doubtfully. "Now, Robbie; I want you to promise me that you will be a good boy this morning, and not get into any mischief; I'm going to be very, very busy, and——"
"I'll be good," responded the young person cheerfully. "I'll be gooder 'an anything. Where's Carroll?"
"He's in the other room; but—wait a minute, dear. You remember the last time you played with Carroll you——"
"Yes, 'm; I 'member. We made an ocean in the bath-room, an' you said——"
"Doris took a bad cold from getting so wet, and Richard almost had the croup."
"I won't do it again," promised the visitor, digging his toes rather shamefacedly under a loosened edge of the linoleum. "I'll jus' look at pictures, 'n'—'n' things like that."
"Very well; I'll take you in where the children are playing. Carroll will be glad to see you; I'm sure," she added, feeling that shehad been rather ungracious to her friend's child.
The three young Brewsters greeted their neighbour with a whoop of joy. Master Stanford was blessed with a pleasantly inventive turn of mind, and one could generally depend upon a break in the monotony of the home circle when he appeared.
"What'll we do?" inquired Doris, prancing gaily around the visitor, who gazed about him at the assembled Brewster toys with a somewhat ennuied expression on his small, serious countenance.
"Aw—I don't know; play with dolls, I guess. I promised I'd be good."
"We might play Indian," suggested Carroll hopefully. "Mother lets us take the couch-cover for a tent."
The visitor considered this proposition in Napoleonic silence. "Have your dolls got real hair?" he inquired darkly of Doris.
"Uh-huh; every one of 'em 's got real hair. My new doll 'at I got Christmas 's got lovely long curls. I don't play with her ev'ry day, 'cause mother's 'fraid I'll break her."
"Go an' get her; get all yer dolls."
"Oh—we don't want t' play with dolls," objected Carroll. "Let's build a depot an' have trains a-smashin' int' each other."
"Nope; we'll play Indian," the visitor said firmly. "I'll show you how."
Under his able generalship the sitting-room was presently transformed into the semblance of a rolling prairie, with a settler's wagon in the midst of the landscape in which travelled Richard as husband and father, driving a span of wicker chairs, while Doris, smothering a fine family of long-haired dolls, sat behind.
Elizabeth who paused to glance in at this stage of the proceedings was gratified by a sight of the four happy, earnest little faces, and the apparent innocuousness of the proceedings.
"We're havin' lots of fun, mother; we're playin' wagon!" Doris explained. "These are all my children; an' we're goin' west to live."
"Det-ap!" vociferated Richard, pulling manfully at the red lines decorated with bells, with which he restrained his restive steeds.
"Whoa!" and he applied the gad with spirit. "Dey's doin' fast, mudzer," he shouted.
"That's a nice play!" chanted Elizabeth; "only be careful of the whip, dear." Then she hurried up-stairs intent upon restoring immaculate order to the upper part of her house before luncheon.
The better part of an hour had passed before she remembered the children again; then a sound of terrific tumult from below gave wings to her feet.
The scene which met her astonished eyes was one of blood and carnage. The two boys, their faces horribly streaked with scarlet and yellow, their hair stuck full of feathers, had evidently fallen upon the peaceful settlers in their progress across the western plains, and were engaged in plunder and rapine; Richard, bound hand and foot with his scarlet lines, howled with abject terror, while Doris, wild-eyed and furious, fought for the protection of her family of dolls.
"You shan't touch my best doll; you horrid boy!" she shrieked. "I'll tell my—mother! I'll tell—my——"
"Give 'er here! I'm a big Injun an' I'm goin' to scalp every one of your children!"yelled Robbie Stanford. "Here you, Carroll! what you doin'? There's another kid a-hidin' under the chair—I mean the wagon! She'll scalp easy!"
"Why, children! What are you doing? Carroll, Robert! Stop this instant!"
"We're playing Indian!" panted Carroll, pausing to eye his mother disgustedly through his war-paint. "Doris oughtn't to have yelled so, an' Buddy's nothin' but a bawl-baby. We didn't hurt him a single bit."
"Jus' see what they did to my dolls!" wailed Doris. "Tore the hair off of ev'ry one of 'em!"
"Why, boys! I don't see what you were thinking of to spoil Doris' pretty dolls!"
"We was only scalpin' her children," volunteered the instigator of the crime, with a cheerful grin. "I c'n stick on the hair again, jus' as easy as anythin', if you'll give me the glue. I scalped our baby's doll an' my mother she stuck the hair on again with glue. 'Tain't hard to stick it on; an' we only broke one. We wouldn't 'ave done that, if Doris——"
"What is that stuff on your faces?" demanded Elizabeth sternly, as she collected theparti-coloured scalps from among the débris on the floor.
"It's only war-paint, mother," explained Carroll. "Indians always put it on their faces; don't you remember the Indians in my Indian book? We made it out of jam an' egg. Celia gave it to us; we got the feathers out the duster."
Elizabeth heaved a great sigh. "Come, and I'll wash your faces," she said; "then I think perhaps Robbie had better——"
"No, ma'am;" said Master Stanford firmly; "it isn't two hours yet. I c'n stay till the whistles blow, an' if you invite me I guess I c'n stay to lunch."
"I'm not going to invite you," slipped off Elizabeth's exasperated tongue. "I want you to go straight home, as soon as I've washed you and made you look respectable."
The youngster's under lip trembled. Two big tears welled up in his black eyes. "I—didn't—mean to—be—naughty!" he quavered. "I don't care if you—whip—me; but I don't want—t' go home. Annie's—cross. She slapped—me—twice this morning! She says I'm the plague o' her life."
Annie was the Stanford's cook and possessed of unlimited authority which she frequently abused, Elizabeth knew. "Where is Livingstone?" she asked in a milder voice, as she removed the traces of her best raspberry jam from the visitor's round face.
"Mother took baby with her; she's going to leave him at gran'ma's house till she comes home. She said I couldn't go, 'cause gran'ma—she's—kind of nervous when I'm there."
"Well, dear; you can stay and have lunch with the children; only——"
"Are you goin' to whip me? I shan't cry if you do."
"My mother doesn't whip anybody," said Carroll superbly; "she's too kind an' good!"
"So's my mother kind an' good! I double dare you to say she isn't!"
"Come, children; you mustn't get to quarrelling. Of course your dear mother is kind and good, Robbie. And you ought to try to be so kind and good and obedient that she won't ever feel that you ought to be whipped."
Master Stanford's black eyes opened very wide at this difficult proposition. "Aw—Idon't know 'bout that," he said diffidently. "I guess my mother'd jus' 's soon I'd be bad some o' the time. She says she's glad I ain't a milk an' water child like Carroll. An' my papa, he says——"
"You may both sit right down on this sofa," interrupted Elizabeth hastily, "and look at these two books till I call you to luncheon. If you get up once, Robbie, I shall be obliged to send you home to Annie."
"The idea of Marian saying such a thing about my Carroll," she thought unforgivingly, as she set forth bananas and small sweet crackers for the children's dessert. "A milk and water child, indeed; but of course, with a boy like Robbie to deal with, she has to say something. I'm sorry for those two children of hers."
Robbie Stanford stayed till his mother came after him at four o'clock, and Elizabeth laying aside all other occupations supervised her small kindergarten with all the tried patience and kindness of which she was mistress.
Mrs. Stanford was voluble with apologies as she invested her son with his coat and mittens. "I told Annie to have Robbie ask Carroll overfor luncheon," she said, "and I left the play-room all ready for them. I assure you, Elizabeth, I had no notion of inflicting my child upon you—when you have company, too; I'm really ashamed of Robbie."
"Yes, mother," interrupted that young person, "but Annie got mad jus' 'cause I made little round holes in one o' her ol' pies with my finger. I only wanted to see the juice come out. 'N'—'n she slapped me, 'n' tol' me to get out o' her way, or she'd pack her clo'es an' leave. So I——"
Mrs. Stanford's pretty young face flushed with mortification. "I can see that you are thinking me very careless to leave Robbie with a bad-tempered servant," she said, "but Annie is usually so good with the children, and I had to go. I had really neglected my teeth till one of them ached."
"It was no trouble," dissembled Elizabeth mildly, "and really I should much prefer to have Robbie here than to have Carroll at your house when you are away. I should tremble for the results to your property. Of course my Carroll alone is almost as innocuous as milk and water, but with Robert to bringout his stronger qualities one can never safely predict what will happen."
Mrs. Stanford looked up in sudden consternation, and meeting Elizabeth's smiling glance she laughed and shrugged her shoulders. "Well," she said, "I'm glad, Betty, if you aren't actually worn out mothering my black-eyed lamb. Another time I'll cope with all three of yours, if you'll let me." Then she stooped and kissed Elizabeth in her usual half-mocking way. "Thank you, little neighbour," she murmured; "you make me ashamed of myself, whenever I see you. You are so much better than I."
When Evelyn Tripp returned that afternoon in the gloom of the gathering twilight she stood for a few minutes in the glow of Elizabeth's cheerful fireside, slowly drawing off her gloves. She appeared pallid and worn in the half light, and Elizabeth caught herself wondering if she had lunched.
"Yes, dear," Miss Tripp informed her absent-mindedly; "I had a cup of tea—I think it was tea—and a roll. I wasn't hungry after my interview with the South Popham school principal."
"Oh, then you saw him? Did you—Was he——"
Evelyn laughed a little drearily. "No, dear," she sighed, shaking her head; "nothing came of it. I suppose I ought not to have expected it. Professor Meeker wanted someone with experience, and—and—a younger person, he said. I didn't realise that I looked really old, Betty. I thought——"
"You don't look old, Evelyn," denied Elizabeth warm-heartedly. "What was the man thinking of?"
"Apparently of a red-cheeked, nursery-maid sort of a person who had taught in the public schools. I saw him afterwards holding forth on the needs of the Popham Institute to a young woman with a high pompadour and wearing a red shirt-waist, a string of blue beads and a large glittering watch-chain—the kind with a slide. I think she must have been what he was looking for. Anyway the Whitcher people told me he had engaged her."
Elizabeth gazed at her friend, a sort of aching sympathy withholding her from speech.
"After that," pursued Miss Tripp, "I wentto another agency, and they asked me if I would like to travel abroad with a lady and her two daughters. I thought I should like it very much indeed—I could engage Cousin Sophia to stay with mother, you know—so I took the car out to Chelsea to see a Mrs. Potwin-Pilcher, and found what she was looking for was really an experienced lady's-maid and courier rolled into one, and that she expected 'willing services in exchange for expenses.' I told her I couldn't think of such a thing. Then Mrs. Potwin-Pilcher rose up—she was a big, raw-boned person glittering with diamonds—and informed me that she had fifty-nine applications for the position—I was the sixtieth, it seems—and that she was sure I would be unable to perform the duties of the position. After that I came directly home. Monday I shall——"
Miss Tripp paused apparently to remove her veil; when she finished her sentence it was in a steady, matter-of-fact voice. "I shall go to see an old friend of mother's—a Mrs. Baxter Crownenshield—I think you've heard me speak of her, Elizabeth. She and mother were very intimate once upon a time, and Mr.Crownenshield owed his success in business to my father. I'm going to—ask her advice. Now I think I'll go up-stairs and take off these damp skirts, and after that I'll come down and help you mend stockings, or anything——. Only let me do something, Elizabeth!"
There was almost a wail in the tired voice, and Elizabeth, wiser than she knew, pulled out her mending-basket with a smile. "I'm almost ashamed to confess that I need some help badly," she said. "I hope you won't be horrified at the condition of Carroll's stockings."
Miss Tripp was quite her charming self again when she reappeared clad in a trailing gown of rosy lavender. She told the children the lively tale of the goose-girl, which she had promised them in the morning, choosing the while the stockings with the most discouraging holes out of Elizabeth's basket and protesting that she loved—yes, positively adored—darning stockings. But she finished her self-imposed task at an early hour, and after playing two or three tuneful little chansonettes on Elizabeth's hard-worked and rather shabby piano, excused herself.
"I must write to mother," she said smilingly. "She quite depends on me for a bright chatty letter every day, and I've so much to tell her of to-day's amusing adventures. Really, do you know that Potwin-Pilcher person ought to go into a novel. She was positively unique!"
Elizabeth was silent for some moments after the sound of Evelyn's light foot had passed from the stair. Then she turned a brooding face upon her husband. "I am so sorry for poor Evelyn," she said.
Sam Brewster stirred uneasily in his chair. "So you said before she arrived," he observed. "I don't see anything about the fair Evelyn to call forth expressions of pity. She looks remarkably prosperous to me."
"Yes; but you don't see everything, Sam. That gown is one she has had for years, and it has been cleaned and made over and over again."
"Well; so have most of yours, my dear, and you don't ask for sympathy on that account."
"Sam, dear, they haven't any money. Can't you understand? They lost everything whenthe Back-Bay Security Company failed. Evelyn doesn't know what to do. There is her mother to take care of and you know how helpless she is. I don't suppose she ever really did anything in her whole life."
"It's a problem; I'll admit," agreed her husband, scowling over his unread paper; "but I don't see what we are going to do about it."
"That's the worst of it, Sam; we really can't do anything, and I'm afraid other people won't. I had thought—if nothing else turned up—that perhaps Mrs. Tripp could be induced to go into a home. One of those nice, refined places where one has to pay to be admitted, and then Evelyn—might——"
She paused and looked anxiously at her husband. "We might let her stay here, Sam; and——"
He shook his head. "You're the most self-sacrificing of darlings when it comes to helping your friends," he said; "but I couldn't stand for that, Betty. Two weeks is about my limit, I'm afraid, when it comes to entertaining angels unawares. I'm willing to admit the unique character of Miss Tripp, andto vote her a most agreeable guest, and all that. But——"
Elizabeth gazed at her husband understandingly. "I know, Sam," she said, "and I think so too. But——"