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The Copy-Cat, and Other Stories

by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman · English · Gutenberg #1716 · 476,090 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Copy-Cat, and Other Stories

Author: Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman


        
Release date: April 1, 1999 [eBook #1716]
                Most recently updated: March 15, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1716

Credits: Produced by Judy Boss, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COPY-CAT, AND OTHER STORIES ***




Produced by Judy Boss





THE COPY-CAT

AND OTHER STORIES

By Mary E. Wilkins Freeman



CONTENTS

     THE COPY-CAT

     THE COCK OF THE WALK

     JOHNNY-IN-THE-WOODS

     DANIEL AND LITTLE DAN'L

     BIG SISTER SOLLY

     LITTLE LUCY ROSE

     NOBLESSE

     CORONATION

     THE AMETHYST COMB

     THE UMBRELLA MAN

     THE BALKING OF CHRISTOPHER

     DEAR ANNIE




THE COPY-CAT

THAT affair of Jim Simmons's cats never became known. Two little boys
and a little girl can keep a secret--that is, sometimes. The two little
boys had the advantage of the little girl because they could talk over
the affair together, and the little girl, Lily Jennings, had no intimate
girl friend to tempt her to confidence. She had only little Amelia
Wheeler, commonly called by the pupils of Madame's school “The
Copy-Cat.”

Amelia was an odd little girl--that is, everybody called her odd. She
was that rather unusual creature, a child with a definite ideal; and
that ideal was Lily Jennings. However, nobody knew that. If Amelia's
mother, who was a woman of strong character, had suspected, she would
have taken strenuous measures to prevent such a peculiar state of
affairs; the more so because she herself did not in the least approve of
Lily Jennings. Mrs. Diantha Wheeler (Amelia's father had died when she
was a baby) often remarked to her own mother, Mrs. Stark, and to her
mother-in-law, Mrs. Samuel Wheeler, that she did not feel that Mrs.
Jennings was bringing up Lily exactly as she should. “That child thinks
entirely too much of her looks,” said Mrs. Diantha. “When she walks past
here she switches those ridiculous frilled frocks of hers as if she were
entering a ballroom, and she tosses her head and looks about to see if
anybody is watching her. If I were to see Amelia doing such things I
should be very firm with her.”

“Lily Jennings is a very pretty child,” said Mother-in-law Wheeler, with
an under-meaning, and Mrs. Diantha flushed. Amelia did not in the least
resemble the Wheelers, who were a handsome set. She looked remarkably
like her mother, who was a plain woman, only little Amelia did not have
a square chin. Her chin was pretty and round, with a little dimple in
it. In fact, Amelia's chin was the prettiest feature she had. Her hair
was phenomenally straight. It would not even yield to hot curling-irons,
which her grandmother Wheeler had tried surreptitiously several times
when there was a little girls' party. “I never saw such hair as that
poor child has in all my life,” she told the other grandmother, Mrs.
Stark. “Have the Starks always had such very straight hair?”

Mrs. Stark stiffened her chin. Her own hair was very straight. “I don't
know,” said she, “that the Starks have had any straighter hair than
other people. If Amelia does not have anything worse to contend with
than straight hair I rather think she will get along in the world as
well as most people.”

“It's thin, too,” said Grandmother Wheeler, with a sigh, “and it hasn't
a mite of color. Oh, well, Amelia is a good child, and beauty isn't
everything.” Grandmother Wheeler said that as if beauty were a great
deal, and Grandmother Stark arose and shook out her black silk skirts.
She had money, and loved to dress in rich black silks and laces.

“It is very little, very little indeed,” said she, and she eyed
Grandmother Wheeler's lovely old face, like a wrinkled old rose as to
color, faultless as to feature, and swept about by the loveliest waves
of shining silver hair.

Then she went out of the room, and Grandmother Wheeler, left alone,
smiled. She knew the worth of beauty for those who possess it and those
who do not. She had never been quite reconciled to her son's marrying
such a plain girl as Diantha Stark, although she had money. She
considered beauty on the whole as a more valuable asset than mere gold.
She regretted always that poor little Amelia, her only grandchild, was
so very plain-looking. She always knew that Amelia was very plain, and
yet sometimes the child puzzled her. She seemed to see reflections
of beauty, if not beauty itself, in the little colorless face, in the
figure, with its too-large joints and utter absence of curves. She
sometimes even wondered privately if some subtle resemblance to the
handsome Wheelers might not be in the child and yet appear. But she was
mistaken. What she saw was pure mimicry of a beautiful ideal.

Little Amelia tried to stand like Lily Jennings; she tried to walk like
her; she tried to smile like her; she made endeavors, very often
futile, to dress like her. Mrs. Wheeler did not in the least approve
of furbelows for children. Poor little Amelia went clad in severe
simplicity; durable woolen frocks in winter, and washable, unfadable,
and non-soil-showing frocks in summer. She, although her mother had
perhaps more money wherewith to dress her than had any of the other
mothers, was the plainest-clad little girl in school. Amelia, moreover,
never tore a frock, and, as she did not grow rapidly, one lasted several
seasons. Lily Jennings was destructive, although dainty. Her pretty
clothes were renewed every year. Amelia was helpless before that
problem. For a little girl burning with aspirations to be and look like
another little girl who was beautiful and wore beautiful clothes, to be
obliged to set forth for Madame's on a lovely spring morning, when thin
attire was in evidence, dressed in dark-blue-andwhite-checked gingham,
which she had worn for three summers, and with sleeves which, even to
childish eyes, were anachronisms, was a trial. Then to see Lily flutter
in a frock like a perfectly new white flower was torture; not because
of jealousy--Amelia was not jealous; but she so admired the other little
girl, and so loved her, and so wanted to be like her.

As for Lily, she hardly ever noticed Amelia. She was not aware that
she herself was an object of adoration; for she was a little girl who
searched for admiration in the eyes of little boys rather than little
girls, although very innocently. She always glanced slyly at Johnny
Trumbull when she wore a pretty new frock, to see if he noticed. He
never did, and she was sharp enough to know it. She was also child
enough not to care a bit, but to take a queer pleasure in the sensation
of scorn which she felt in consequence. She would eye Johnny from head
to foot, his boy's clothing somewhat spotted, his bulging pockets, his
always dusty shoes, and when he twisted uneasily, not understanding why,
she had a thrill of purely feminine delight. It was on one such occasion
that she first noticed Amelia Wheeler particularly.

It was a lovely warm morning in May, and Lily was a darling to
behold--in a big hat with a wreath of blue flowers, her hair tied
with enormous blue silk bows, her short skirts frilled with eyelet
embroidery, her slender silk legs, her little white sandals. Madame's
maid had not yet struck the Japanese gong, and all the pupils were out
on the lawn, Amelia, in her clean, ugly gingham and her serviceable
brown sailor hat, hovering near Lily, as usual, like a common, very
plain butterfly near a particularly resplendent blossom. Lily really
noticed her. She spoke to her confidentially; she recognized her fully
as another of her own sex, and presumably of similar opinions.

“Ain't boys ugly, anyway?” inquired Lily of Amelia, and a wonderful
change came over Amelia. Her sallow cheeks bloomed; her eyes showed blue
glitters; her little skinny figure became instinct with nervous life.
She smiled charmingly, with such eagerness that it smote with pathos and
bewitched.

“Oh yes, oh yes,” she agreed, in a voice like a quick flute obbligato.
“Boys are ugly.”

“Such clothes!” said Lily.

“Yes, such clothes!” said Amelia.

“Always spotted,” said Lily.

“Always covered all over with spots,” said Amelia.

“And their pockets always full of horrid things,” said Lily.

“Yes,” said Amelia.

Amelia glanced openly at Johnny Trumbull; Lily with a sidewise effect.

Johnny had heard every word. Suddenly he arose to action and knocked
down Lee Westminster, and sat on him.

“Lemme up!” said Lee.

Johnny had no quarrel whatever with Lee. He grinned, but he sat still.
Lee, the sat-upon, was a sharp little boy. “Showing off before the
gals!” he said, in a thin whisper.

“Hush up!” returned Johnny.

“Will you give me a writing-pad--I lost mine, and mother said I couldn't
have another for a week if I did--if I don't holler?” inquired Lee.

“Yes. Hush up!”

Lee lay still, and Johnny continued to sit upon his prostrate form.
Both were out of sight of Madame's windows, behind a clump of the cedars
which graced her lawn.

“Always fighting,” said Lily, with a fine crescendo of scorn. She lifted
her chin high, and also her nose.

“Always fighting,” said Amelia, and also lifted her chin and nose.
Amelia was a born mimic. She actually looked like Lily, and she spoke
like her.

Then Lily did a wonderful thing. She doubled her soft little arm into an
inviting loop for Amelia's little claw of a hand.

“Come along, Amelia Wheeler,” said she. “We don't want to stay near
horrid, fighting boys. We will go by ourselves.”

And they went. Madame had a headache that morning, and the Japanese
gong did not ring for fifteen minutes longer. During that time Lily and
Amelia sat together on a little rustic bench under a twinkling poplar,
and they talked, and a sort of miniature sun-and-satellite relation was
established between them, although neither was aware of it. Lily, being
on the whole a very normal little girl, and not disposed to even a full
estimate of herself as compared with others of her own sex, did not
dream of Amelia's adoration, and Amelia, being rarely destitute of
self-consciousness, did not understand the whole scope of her own
sentiments. It was quite sufficient that she was seated close to this
wonderful Lily, and agreeing with her to the verge of immolation.

“Of course,” said Lily, “girls are pretty, and boys are just as ugly as
they can be.”

“Oh yes,” said Amelia, fervently.

“But,” said Lily, thoughtfully, “it is queer how Johnny Trumbull always
comes out ahead in a fight, and he is not so very large, either.”

“Yes,” said Amelia, but she realized a pang of jealousy. “Girls could
fight, I suppose,” said she.

“Oh yes, and get their clothes all torn and messy,” said Lily.

“I shouldn't care,” said Amelia. Then she added, with a little toss, “I
almost know I could fight.” The thought even floated through her wicked
little mind that fighting might be a method of wearing out obnoxious and
durable clothes.

“You!” said Lily, and the scorn in her voice wilted Amelia.

“Maybe I couldn't,” said she.

“Of course you couldn't, and if you could, what a sight you'd be. Of
course it wouldn't hurt your clothes as much as some, because your
mother dresses you in strong things, but you'd be sure to get black and
blue, and what would be the use, anyway? You couldn't be a boy, if you
did fight.”

“No. I know I couldn't.”

“Then what is the use? We are a good deal prettier than boys, and
cleaner, and have nicer manners, and we must be satisfied.”

“You are prettier,” said Amelia, with a look of worshipful admiration at
Lily's sweet little face.

“You are prettier,” said Lily. Then she added, equivocally, “Even the
very homeliest girl is prettier than a boy.”

Poor Amelia, it was a good deal for her to be called prettier than a
very dusty boy in a fight. She fairly dimpled with delight, and again
she smiled charmingly. Lily eyed her critically.

“You aren't so very homely, after all, Amelia,” she said. “You needn't
think you are.”

Amelia smiled again.

“When you look like you do now you are real pretty,” said Lily, not
knowing or even suspecting the truth, that she was regarding in the face
of this little ardent soul her own, as in a mirror.

However, it was after that episode that Amelia Wheeler was called
“Copy-Cat.” The two little girls entered Madame's select school arm in
arm, when the musical gong sounded, and behind them came Lee Westminster
and Johnny Trumbull, surreptitiously dusting their garments, and ever
after the fact of Amelia's adoration and imitation of Lily Jennings was
evident to all. Even Madame became aware of it, and held conferences
with two of the under teachers.

“It is not at all healthy for one child to model herself so entirely
upon the pattern of another,” said Miss Parmalee.

“Most certainly it is not,” agreed Miss Acton, the music-teacher.

“Why, that poor little Amelia Wheeler had the rudiments of a fairly good
contralto. I had begun to wonder if the poor child might not be able at
least to sing a little, and so make up for--other things; and now she
tries to sing high like Lily Jennings, and I simply cannot prevent it.
She has heard Lily play, too, and has lost her own touch, and now it is
neither one thing nor the other.”

“I might speak to her mother,” said Madame, thoughtfully. Madame was
American born, but she married a French gentleman, long since deceased,
and his name sounded well on her circulars. She and her two under
teachers were drinking tea in her library.

Miss Parmalee, who was a true lover of her pupils, gasped at Madame's
proposition. “Whatever you do, please do not tell that poor child's
mother,” said she.

“I do not think it would be quite wise, if I may venture to express an
opinion,” said Miss Acton, who was a timid soul, and always inclined to
shy at her own ideas.

“But why?” asked Madame.

“Her mother,” said Miss Parmalee, “is a quite remarkable woman, with
great strength of character, but she would utterly fail to grasp the
situation.”

“I must confess,” said Madame, sipping her tea, “that I fail to
understand it. Why any child not an absolute idiot should so lose her
own identity in another's absolutely bewilders me. I never heard of such
a case.”

Miss Parmalee, who had a sense of humor, laughed a little. “It is
bewildering,” she admitted. “And now the other children see how it is,
and call her 'Copy-Cat' to her face, but she does not mind. I doubt if
she understands, and neither does Lily, for that matter. Lily Jennings
is full of mischief, but she moves in straight lines; she is not
conceited or self-conscious, and she really likes Amelia, without
knowing why.”

“I fear Lily will lead Amelia into mischief,” said Madame, “and Amelia
has always been such a good child.”

“Lily will never MEAN to lead Amelia into mischief,” said loyal Miss
Parmalee.

“But she will,” said Madame.

“If Lily goes, I cannot answer for Amelia's not following,” admitted
Miss Parmalee.

“I regret it all very much indeed,” sighed Madame, “but it does seem to
me still that Amelia's mother--”

“Amelia's mother would not even believe it, in the first place,” said
Miss Parmalee.

“Well, there is something in that,” admitted Madame. “I myself could not
even imagine such a situation. I would not know of it now, if you and
Miss Acton had not told me.”

“There is not the slightest use in telling Amelia not to imitate
Lily, because she does not know that she is imitating her,” said Miss
Parmalee. “If she were to be punished for it, she could never comprehend
the reason.”

“That is true,” said Miss Acton. “I realize that when the poor child
squeaks instead of singing. All I could think of this morning was a
little mouse caught in a trap which she could not see. She does actually
squeak!--and some of her low notes, although, of course, she is only a
child, and has never attempted much, promised to be very good.”

“She will have to squeak, for all I can see,” said Miss Parmalee. “It
looks to me like one of those situations that no human being can change
for better or worse.”

“I suppose you are right,” said Madame, “but it is most unfortunate, and
Mrs. Wheeler is such a superior woman, and Amelia is her only child,
and this is such a very subtle and regrettable affair. Well, we have to
leave a great deal to Providence.”

“If,” said Miss Parmalee, “she could only get angry when she is called
'Copy-Cat.'” Miss Parmalee laughed, and so did Miss Acton. Then all the
ladies had their cups refilled, and left Providence to look out for poor
little Amelia Wheeler, in her mad pursuit of her ideal in the shape of
another little girl possessed of the exterior graces which she had not.

Meantime the little “Copy-Cat” had never been so happy. She began to
improve in her looks also. Her grandmother Wheeler noticed it first, and
spoke of it to Grandmother Stark. “That child may not be so plain,
after all,” said she. “I looked at her this morning when she started
for school, and I thought for the first time that there was a little
resemblance to the Wheelers.”

Grandmother Stark sniffed, but she looked gratified. “I have been
noticing it for some time,” said she, “but as for looking like the
Wheelers, I thought this morning for a minute that I actually saw my
poor dear husband looking at me out of that blessed child's eyes.”

Grandmother Wheeler smiled her little, aggravating, curved, pink smile.

But even Mrs. Diantha began to notice the change for the better in
Amelia. She, however, attributed it to an increase of appetite and a
system of deep breathing which she had herself taken up and enjoined
Amelia to follow. Amelia was following Lily Jennings instead, but that
her mother did not know. Still, she was gratified to see Amelia's little
sallow cheeks taking on pretty curves and a soft bloom, and she was more
inclined to listen when Grandmother Wheeler ventured to approach the
subject of Amelia's attire.

“Amelia would not be so bad-looking if she were better dressed,
Diantha,” said she.

Diantha lifted her chin, but she paid heed. “Why, does not Amelia dress
perfectly well, mother?” she inquired.

“She dresses well enough, but she needs more ribbons and ruffles.”

“I do not approve of so many ribbons and ruffles,” said Mrs. Diantha.
“Amelia has perfectly neat, fresh black or brown ribbons for her hair,
and ruffles are not sanitary.”

“Ruffles are pretty,” said Grandmother Wheeler, “and blue and pink are
pretty colors. Now, that Jennings girl looks like a little picture.”

But that last speech of Grandmother Wheeler's undid all the previous
good. Mrs. Diantha had an unacknowledged--even to herself--disapproval
of Mrs. Jennings which dated far back in the past, for a reason which
was quite unworthy of her and of her strong mind. When she and Lily's
mother had been girls, she had seen Mrs. Jennings look like a picture,
and had been perfectly well aware that she herself fell far short of
an artist's ideal. Perhaps if Mrs. Stark had believed in ruffles and
ribbons, her daughter might have had a different mind when Grandmother
Wheeler had finished her little speech.

As it was, Mrs. Diantha surveyed her small, pretty mother-in-law with
dignified serenity, which savored only delicately of a snub. “I do not
myself approve of the way in which Mrs. Jennings dresses her daughter,”
 said she, “and I do not consider that the child presents to a practical
observer as good an appearance as my Amelia.”

Grandmother Wheeler had a temper. It was a childish temper and soon
over--still, a temper. “Lord,” said she, “if you mean to say that
you think your poor little snipe of a daughter, dressed like a little
maid-of-all-work, can compare with that lovely little Lily Jennings, who
is dressed like a doll!--”

“I do not wish that my daughter should be dressed like a doll,” said
Mrs. Diantha, coolly.

“Well, she certainly isn't,” said Grandmother Wheeler. “Nobody would
ever take her for a doll as far as looks or dress are concerned. She may
be GOOD enough. I don't deny that Amelia is a good little girl, but her
looks could be improved on.”

“Looks matter very little,” said Mrs. Diantha.

“They matter very much,” said Grandmother Wheeler, pugnaciously, her
blue eyes taking on a peculiar opaque glint, as always when she lost
her temper, “very much indeed. But looks can't be helped. If poor little
Amelia wasn't born with pretty looks, she wasn't. But she wasn't born
with such ugly clothes. She might be better dressed.”

“I dress my daughter as I consider best,” said Mrs. Diantha. Then she
left the room.

Grandmother Wheeler sat for a few minutes, her blue eyes opaque, her
little pink lips a straight line; then suddenly her eyes lit, and she
smiled. “Poor Diantha,” said she, “I remember how Henry used to like
Lily Jennings's mother before he married Diantha. Sour grapes hang
high.” But Grandmother Wheeler's beautiful old face was quite soft and
gentle. From her heart she pitied the reacher after those high-hanging
sour grapes, for Mrs. Diantha had been very good to her.

Then Grandmother Wheeler, who had a mild persistency not evident to a
casual observer, began to make plans and lay plots. She was resolved,
Diantha or not, that her granddaughter, her son's child, should have
some fine feathers. The little conference had taken place in her own
room, a large, sunny one, with a little storeroom opening from it.
Presently Grandmother Wheeler rose, entered the storeroom, and began
rummaging in some old trunks. Then followed days of secret work.
Grandmother Wheeler had been noted as a fine needlewoman, and her
hand had not yet lost its cunning. She had one of Amelia's ugly little
ginghams, purloined from a closet, for size, and she worked two or
three dainty wonders. She took Grandmother Stark into her confidence.
Sometimes the two ladies, by reason of their age, found it possible to
combine with good results.

“Your daughter Diantha is one woman in a thousand,” said Grandmother
Wheeler, diplomatically, one day, “but she never did care much for
clothes.”

“Diantha,” returned Grandmother Stark, with a suspicious glance, “always
realized that clothes were not the things that mattered.”

“And, of course, she is right,” said Grandmother Wheeler, piously.
“Your Diantha is one woman in a thousand. If she cared as much for fine
clothes as some women, I don't know where we should all be. It would
spoil poor little Amelia.”

“Yes, it would,” assented Grandmother Stark. “Nothing spoils a little
girl more than always to be thinking about her clothes.”

“Yes, I was looking at Amelia the other day, and thinking how much more
sensible she appeared in her plain gingham than Lily Jennings in all her
ruffles and ribbons. Even if people were all noticing Lily, and praising
her, thinks I to myself, 'How little difference such things really make.
Even if our dear Amelia does stand to one side, and nobody notices her,
what real matter is it?'” Grandmother Wheeler was inwardly chuckling as
she spoke.

Grandmother Stark was at once alert. “Do you mean to say that Amelia is
really not taken so much notice of because she dresses plainly?” said
she.

“You don't mean that you don't know it, as observant as you are?”
 replied Grandmother Wheeler.

“Diantha ought not to let it go as far as that,” said Grandmother Stark.
Grandmother Wheeler looked at her queerly. “Why do you look at me like
that?”

“Well, I did something I feared I ought not to have done. And I didn't
know what to do, but your speaking so makes me wonder--”

“Wonder what?”

Then Grandmother Wheeler went to her little storeroom and emerged
bearing a box. She displayed the contents--three charming little white
frocks fluffy with lace and embroidery.

“Did you make them?”

“Yes, I did. I couldn't help it. I thought if the dear child never wore
them, it would be some comfort to know they were in the house.”

“That one needs a broad blue sash,” said Grandmother Stark.

Grandmother Wheeler laughed. She took her impecuniosity easily. “I had
to use what I had,” said she.

“I will get a blue sash for that one,” said Grandmother Stark, “and a
pink sash for that, and a flowered one for that.”

“Of course they will make all the difference,” said Grandmother Wheeler.
“Those beautiful sashes will really make the dresses.”

“I will get them,” said Grandmother Stark, with decision. “I will go
right down to Mann Brothers' store now and get them.”

“Then I will make the bows, and sew them on,” replied Grandmother
Wheeler, happily.

It thus happened that little Amelia Wheeler was possessed of three
beautiful dresses, although she did not know it.

For a long time neither of the two conspiring grandmothers dared divulge
the secret. Mrs. Diantha was a very determined woman, and even her own
mother stood somewhat in awe of her. Therefore, little Amelia went to
school during the spring term soberly clad as ever, and even on the
festive last day wore nothing better than a new blue gingham, made
too long, to allow for shrinkage, and new blue hair-ribbons. The two
grandmothers almost wept in secret conclave over the lovely frocks which
were not worn.

“I respect Diantha,” said Grandmother Wheeler. “You know that. She is
one woman in a thousand, but I do hate to have that poor child go to
school to-day with so many to look at her, and she dressed so unlike all
the other little girls.”

“Diantha has got so much sense, it makes her blind and deaf,” declared
Grandmother Stark. “I call it a shame, if she is my daughter.”

“Then you don't venture--”

Grandmother Stark reddened. She did not like to own to awe of her
daughter. “I VENTURE, if that is all,” said she, tartly. “You don't
suppose I am afraid of Diantha?--but she would not let Amelia wear one
of the dresses, anyway, and I don't want the child made any unhappier
than she is.”

“Well, I will admit,” replied Grandmother Wheeler, “if poor Amelia knew
she had these beautiful dresses and could not wear them she might feel
worse about wearing that homely gingham.”

“Gingham!” fairly snorted Grandmother Stark. “I cannot see why Diantha
thinks so much of gingham. It shrinks, anyway.”

Poor little Amelia did undoubtedly suffer on that last day, when she sat
among the others gaily clad, and looked down at her own common little
skirts. She was very glad, however, that she had not been chosen to do
any of the special things which would have necessitated her appearance
upon the little flower-decorated platform. She did not know of the
conversation between Madame and her two assistants.

“I would have Amelia recite a little verse or two,” said Madame, “but
how can I?” Madame adored dress, and had a lovely new one of sheer
dull-blue stuff, with touches of silver, for the last day.

“Yes,” agreed Miss Parmalee, “that poor child is sensitive, and for her
to stand on the platform in one of those plain ginghams would be too
cruel.”

“Then, too,” said Miss Acton, “she would recite her verses exactly like
Lily Jennings. She can make her voice exactly like Lily's now. Then
everybody would laugh, and Amelia would not know why. She would think
they were laughing at her dress, and that would be dreadful.”

If Amelia's mother could have heard that conversation everything would
have been different, although it is puzzling to decide in what way.

It was the last of the summer vacation in early September, just before
school began, that a climax came to Amelia's idolatry and imitation of
Lily. The Jenningses had not gone away that summer, so the two little
girls had been thrown together a good deal. Mrs. Diantha never went away
during a summer. She considered it her duty to remain at home, and she
was quite pitiless to herself when it came to a matter of duty.

However, as a result she was quite ill during the last of August and the
first of September. The season had been unusually hot, and Mrs. Diantha
had not spared herself from her duty on account of the heat. She
would have scorned herself if she had done so. But she could not,
strong-minded as she was, avert something like a heat prostration after
a long walk under a burning sun, nor weeks of confinement and idleness
in her room afterward.

When September came, and a night or two of comparative coolness, she
felt stronger; still she was compelled by most unusual weakness to
refrain from her energetic trot in her duty-path; and then it was that
something happened.

One afternoon Lily fluttered over to Amelia's, and Amelia, ever on the
watch, spied her.

“May I go out and see Lily?” she asked Grandmother Stark.

“Yes, but don't talk under the windows; your mother is asleep.”

Amelia ran out.

“I declare,” said Grandmother Stark to Grandmother Wheeler, “I was half
a mind to tell that child to wait a minute and slip on one of those
pretty dresses. I hate to have her go on the street in that old gingham,
with that Jennings girl dressed up like a wax doll.”

“I know it.”

“And now poor Diantha is so weak--and asleep--it would not have annoyed
her.”

“I know it.”

Grandmother Stark looked at Grandmother Wheeler. Of the two she
possessed a greater share of original sin compared with the size of
her soul. Moreover, she felt herself at liberty to circumvent her
own daughter. Whispering, she unfolded a daring scheme to the other
grandmother, who stared at her aghast a second out of her lovely blue
eyes, then laughed softly.

“Very well,” said she, “if you dare.”

“I rather think I dare!” said Grandmother Stark. “Isn't Diantha Wheeler
my own daughter?” Grandmother Stark had grown much bolder since Mrs.
Diantha had been ill.

Meantime Lily and Amelia walked down the street until they came to a
certain vacant lot intersected by a foot-path between tall, feathery
grasses and goldenrod and asters and milkweed. They entered the
foot-path, and swarms of little butterflies rose around them, and once
in a while a protesting bumblebee.

“I am afraid we will be stung by the bees,” said Amelia.

“Bumblebees never sting,” said Lily; and Amelia believed her.

When the foot-path ended, there was the riverbank. The two little girls
sat down under a clump of brook willows and talked, while the river,
full of green and blue and golden lights, slipped past them and never
stopped.

Then Lily proceeded to unfold a plan, which was not philosophical,
but naughtily ingenious. By this time Lily knew very well that Amelia
admired her, and imitated her as successfully as possible, considering
the drawback of dress and looks.

When she had finished Amelia was quite pale. “I am afraid, I am afraid,
Lily,” said she.

“What of?”

“My mother will find out; besides, I am afraid it isn't right.”

“Who ever told you it was wrong?”

“Nobody ever did,” admitted Amelia.

“Well, then you haven't any reason to think it is,” said Lily,
triumphantly. “And how is your mother ever going to find it out?”

“I don't know.”

“Isn't she ill in her room? And does she ever come to kiss you good
night, the way my mother does, when she is well?”

“No,” admitted Amelia.

“And neither of your grandmothers?”

“Grandmother Stark would think it was silly, like mother, and
Grandmother Wheeler can't go up and down stairs very well.”

“I can't see but you are perfectly safe. I am the only one that runs any
risk at all. I run a great deal of risk, but I am willing to take it,”
 said Lily with a virtuous air. Lily had a small but rather involved
scheme simply for her own ends, which did not seem to call for much
virtue, but rather the contrary.

Lily had overheard Arnold Carruth and Johnny Trumbull and Lee
Westminster and another boy, Jim Patterson, planning a most delightful
affair, which even in the cases of the boys was fraught with danger,
secrecy, and doubtful rectitude. Not one of the four boys had had a
vacation from the village that summer, and their young minds had become
charged, as it were, with the seeds of revolution and rebellion. Jim
Patterson, the son of the rector, and of them all the most venturesome,
had planned to take--he called it “take”; he meant to pay for it,
anyway, he said, as soon as he could shake enough money out of his
nickel savings-bank--one of his father's Plymouth Rock chickens and have
a chickenroast in the woods back of Dr. Trumbull's. He had planned for
Johnny to take some ears of corn suitable for roasting from his father's
garden; for Lee to take some cookies out of a stone jar in his mother's
pantry; and for Arnold to take some potatoes. Then they four would steal
forth under cover of night, build a camp-fire, roast their spoils, and
feast.

Lily had resolved to be of the party. She resorted to no open methods;
the stones of the fighting suffragettes were not for her, little
honey-sweet, curled, and ruffled darling; rather the time-worn, if not
time-sanctified, weapons of her sex, little instruments of wiles, and
tiny dodges, and tiny subterfuges, which would serve her best.

“You know,” she said to Amelia, “you don't look like me. Of course you
know that, and that can't be helped; but you do walk like me, and talk
like me, you know that, because they call you 'CopyCat.'”

“Yes, I know,” said poor Amelia.

“I don't mind if they do call you 'Copy-Cat,'” said Lily, magnanimously.
“I don't mind a bit. But, you see, my mother always comes up-stairs to
kiss me good night after I have gone to bed, and tomorrow night she has
a dinner-party, and she will surely be a little late, and I can't manage
unless you help me. I will get one of my white dresses for you, and all
you have to do is to climb out of your window into that cedar-tree--you
know you can climb down that, because you are so afraid of burglars
climbing up--and you can slip on my dress; you had better throw it out
of the window and not try to climb in it, because my dresses tear awful
easy, and we might get caught that way. Then you just sneak down to our
house, and I shall be outdoors; and when you go up-stairs, if the doors
should be open, and anybody should call, you can answer just like me;
and I have found that light curly wig Aunt Laura wore when she had her
head shaved after she had a fever, and you just put that on and go to
bed, and mother will never know when she kisses you good night. Then
after the roast I will go to your house, and climb up that tree, and
go to bed in your room. And I will have one of your gingham dresses to
wear, and very early in the morning I will get up, and you get up, and
we both of us can get down the back stairs without being seen, and run
home.”

Amelia was almost weeping. It was her worshiped Lily's plan, but she was
horribly scared. “I don't know,” she faltered.

“Don't know! You've got to! You don't love me one single bit or you
wouldn't stop to think about whether you didn't know.” It was the
world-old argument which floors love. Amelia succumbed.

The next evening a frightened little girl clad in one of Lily Jennings's
white embroidered frocks was racing to the Jenningses' house, and
another little girl, not at all frightened, but enjoying the stimulus of
mischief and unwontedness, was racing to the wood behind Dr. Trumbull's
house, and that little girl was clad in one of Amelia Wheeler's
ginghams. But the plan went all awry.

Lily waited, snuggled up behind an alder-bush, and the boys came, one by
one, and she heard this whispered, although there was no necessity for
whispering, “Jim Patterson, where's that hen?”

“Couldn't get her. Grabbed her, and all her tail-feathers came out in a
bunch right in my hand, and she squawked so, father heard. He was in his
study writing his sermon, and he came out, and if I hadn't hid behind
the chicken-coop and then run I couldn't have got here. But I can't see
as you've got any corn, Johnny Trumbull.”

“Couldn't. Every single ear was cooked for dinner.”

“I couldn't bring any cookies, either,” said Lee Westminster; “there
weren't any cookies in the jar.”

“And I couldn't bring the potatoes, because the outside cellar door was
locked,” said Arnold Carruth. “I had to go down the back stairs and out
the south door, and the inside cellar door opens out of our dining-room,
and I daren't go in there.”

“Then we might as well go home,” said Johnny Trumbull. “If I had
been you, Jim Patterson, I would have brought that old hen if her
tail-feathers had come out. Seems to me you scare awful easy.”

“Guess if you had heard her squawk!” said Jim, resentfully. “If you want
to try to lick me, come on, Johnny Trumbull. Guess you don't darse call
me scared again.”

Johnny eyed him standing there in the gloom. Jim was not large, but
very wiry, and the ground was not suited for combat. Johnny, although a
victor, would probably go home considerably the worse in appearance; and
he could anticipate the consequences were his father to encounter him.

“Shucks!” said Johnny Trumbull, of the fine old Trumbull family and
Madame's exclusive school. “Shucks! who wants your old hen? We had
chicken for dinner, anyway.”

“So did we,” said Arnold Carruth.

“We did, and corn,” said Lee.

“We did,” said Jim.

Lily stepped forth from the alder-bush. “If,” said she, “I were a
boy, and had started to have a chicken-roast, I would have HAD a
chicken-roast.”

But every boy, even the valiant Johnny Trumbull, was gone in a mad
scutter. This sudden apparition of a girl was too much for their nerves.
They never even knew who the girl was, although little Arnold Carruth
said she had looked to him like “Copy-Cat,” but the others scouted the
idea.

Lily Jennings made the best of her way out of the wood across lots to
the road. She was not in a particularly enviable case. Amelia Wheeler
was presumably in her bed, and she saw nothing for it but to take the
difficult way to Amelia's.

Lily tore a great rent in the gingham going up the cedar-tree, but that
was nothing to what followed. She entered through Amelia's window, her
prim little room, to find herself confronted by Amelia's mother in a
wrapper, and her two grandmothers. Grandmother Stark had over her arm
a beautiful white embroidered dress. The two old ladies had entered the
room in order to lay the white dress on a chair and take away Amelia's
gingham, and there was no Amelia. Mrs. Diantha had heard the commotion,
and had risen, thrown on her wrapper, and come. Her mother had turned
upon her.

“It is all your fault, Diantha,” she had declared.

“My fault?” echoed Mrs. Diantha, bewildered. “Where is Amelia?”

“We don't know,” said Grandmother Stark, “but you have probably driven
her away from home by your cruelty.”

“Cruelty?”

“Yes, cruelty. What right had you to make that poor child look like a
fright, so people laughed at her? We have made her some dresses that
look decent, and had come here to leave them, and to take away those
old gingham things that look as if she lived in the almshouse, and leave
these, so she would either have to wear them or go without, when we
found she had gone.”

It was at that crucial moment that Lily entered by way of the window.

“Here she is now,” shrieked Grandmother Stark. “Amelia, where--” Then
she stopped short.

Everybody stared at Lily's beautiful face suddenly gone white. For once
Lily was frightened. She lost all self-control. She began to sob. She
could scarcely tell the absurd story for sobs, but she told, every word.

Then, with a sudden boldness, she too turned on Mrs. Diantha. “They call
poor Amelia 'CopyCat,'” said she, “and I don't believe she would ever
have tried so hard to look like me only my mother dresses me so I look
nice, and you send Amelia to school looking awfully.” Then Lily sobbed
again.

“My Amelia is at your house, as I understand?” said Mrs. Diantha, in an
awful voice.

“Ye-es, ma-am.”

“Let me go,” said Mrs. Diantha, violently, to Grandmother Stark, who
tried to restrain her. Mrs. Diantha dressed herself and marched down the
street, dragging Lily after her. The little girl had to trot to keep up
with the tall woman's strides, and all the way she wept.

It was to Lily's mother's everlasting discredit, in Mrs. Diantha's
opinion, but to Lily's wonderful relief, that when she heard the story,
standing in the hall in her lovely dinner dress, with the strains of
music floating from the drawing-room, and cigar smoke floating from the
dining-room, she laughed. When Lily said, “And there wasn't even any
chickenroast, mother,” she nearly had hysterics.

“If you think this is a laughing matter, Mrs. Jennings, I do not,” said
Mrs. Diantha, and again her dislike and sorrow at the sight of that
sweet, mirthful face was over her. It was a face to be loved, and hers
was not.

“Why, I went up-stairs and kissed the child good night, and never
suspected,” laughed Lily's mother.

“I got Aunt Laura's curly, light wig for her,” explained Lily, and Mrs.
Jennings laughed again.

It was not long before Amelia, in her gingham, went home, led by her
mother--her mother, who was trembling with weakness now. Mrs. Diantha
did not scold. She did not speak, but Amelia felt with wonder her little
hand held very tenderly by her mother's long fingers.

When at last she was undressed and in bed, Mrs. Diantha, looking very
pale, kissed her, and so did both grandmothers.

Amelia, being very young and very tired, went to sleep. She did not know
that that night was to mark a sharp turn in her whole life. Thereafter
she went to school “dressed like the best,” and her mother petted her as
nobody had ever known her mother could pet.

It was not so very long afterward that Amelia, out of her own
improvement in appearance, developed a little stamp of individuality.

One day Lily wore a white frock with blue ribbons, and Amelia wore one
with coral pink. It was a particular day in school; there was company,
and tea was served.

“I told you I was going to wear blue ribbons,” Lily whispered to Amelia.
Amelia smiled lovingly back at her.

“Yes, I know, but I thought I would wear pink.”




THE COCK OF THE WALK

DOWN the road, kicking up the dust until he marched, soldier-wise, in a
cloud of it, that rose and grimed his moist face and added to the heavy,
brown powder upon the wayside weeds and flowers, whistling a queer,
tuneless thing, which yet contained definite sequences--the whistle of
a bird rather than a boy--approached Johnny Trumbull, aged ten, small of
his age, but accounted by his mates mighty.

Johnny came of the best and oldest family in the village, but it was
in some respects an undesirable family for a boy. In it survived, as
fossils survive in ancient nooks and crannies of the earth, old traits
of race, unchanged by time and environment. Living in a house lighted
by electricity, the mental conception of it was to the Trumbulls as the
conception of candles; with telephones at hand, they unconsciously still
conceived of messages delivered with the old saying, “Ride, ride,”
 etc., and relays of post-horses. They locked their doors, but still had
latch-strings in mind. Johnny's father was a physician, adopting modern
methods of surgery and prescription, yet his mind harked back to cupping
and calomel, and now and then he swerved aside from his path across the
field of the present into the future and plunged headlong, as if for
fresh air, into the traditional past, and often with brilliant results.

Johnny's mother was a college graduate. She was the president of the
woman's club. She read papers savoring of such feminine leaps ahead that
they were like gymnastics, but she walked homeward with the gait of her
great-grandmother, and inwardly regarded her husband as her lord and
master. She minced genteelly, lifting her quite fashionable skirts high
above very slender ankles, which were hereditary. Not a woman of her
race had ever gone home on thick ankles, and they had all gone home.
They had all been at home, even if abroad--at home in the truest sense.
At the club, reading her inflammatory paper, Cora Trumbull's real
self remained at home intent upon her mending, her dusting, her house
economics. It was something remarkably like her astral body which
presided at the club.

As for her unmarried sister Janet, who was older and had graduated from
a young ladies' seminary instead of a college, whose early fancy had
been guided into the lady-like ways of antimacassars and pincushions
and wax flowers under glass shades, she was a straighter proposition. No
astral pretensions had Janet. She stayed, body and soul together, in
the old ways, and did not even project her shadow out of them. There is
seldom room enough for one's shadow in one's earliest way of life, but
there was plenty for Janet's. There had been a Janet unmarried in every
Trumbull family for generations. That in some subtle fashion accounted
for her remaining single. There had also been an unmarried Jonathan
Trumbull, and that accounted for Johnny's old bachelor uncle Jonathan.
Jonathan was a retired clergyman. He had retired before he had preached
long, because of doctrinal doubts, which were hereditary. He had
a little, dark study in Johnny's father's house, which was the old
Trumbull homestead, and he passed much of his time there, debating
within himself that matter of doctrines.

Presently Johnny, assiduously kicking up dust, met his uncle Jonathan,
who passed without the slightest notice. Johnny did not mind at all. He
was used to it. Presently his own father appeared, driving along in
his buggy the bay mare at a steady jog, with the next professional call
quite clearly upon her equine mind. And Johnny's father did not see him.
Johnny did not mind that, either. He expected nothing different.

Then Johnny saw his mother approaching. She was coming from the club
meeting. She held up her silk skirts high, as usual, and carried a
nice little parcel of papers tied with ribbon. She also did not notice
Johnny, who, however, out of sweet respect for his mother's nice silk
dress, stopped kicking up dust. Mrs. Trumbull on the village street was
really at home preparing a shortcake for supper.

Johnny eyed his mother's faded but rather beautiful face under the
rose-trimmed bonnet with admiration and entire absence of resentment.
Then he walked on and kicked up the dust again. He loved to kick up the
dust in summer, the fallen leaves in autumn, and the snow in winter.
Johnny was not a typical Trumbull. None of them had ever cared for
simple amusements like that. Looking back for generations on his
father's and mother's side (both had been Trumbulls, but very distantly
related), none could be discovered who in the least resembled Johnny. No
dim blue eye of retrospection and reflection had Johnny; no tendency to
tall slenderness which would later bow beneath the greater weight of the
soul. Johnny was small, but wiry of build, and looked able to bear any
amount of mental development without a lasting bend of his physical
shoulders. Johnny had, at the early age of ten, whopped nearly every
boy in school, but that was a secret of honor. It was well known in the
school that, once the Trumbulls heard of it, Johnny could never whop
again. “You fellows know,” Johnny had declared once, standing over his
prostrate and whimpering foe, “that I don't mind getting whopped at
home, but they might send me away to another school, and then I could
never whop any of you fellows.”

Johnny Trumbull kicking up the dust, himself dust-covered, his shoes,
his little queerly fitting dun suit, his cropped head, all thickly
powdered, loved it. He sniffed in that dust like a grateful incense. He
did not stop dust-kicking when he saw his aunt Janet coming, for, as he
considered, her old black gown was not worth the sacrifice. It was true
that she might see him. She sometimes did, if she were not reading a
book as she walked. It had always been a habit with the Janet Trumbulls
to read improving books when they walked abroad. To-day Johnny saw, with
a quick glance of those sharp, black eyes, so unlike the Trumbulls',
that his aunt Janet was reading. He therefore expected her to pass him
without recognition, and marched on kicking up the dust. But suddenly,
as he grew nearer the spry little figure, he was aware of a pair of gray
eyes, before which waved protectingly a hand clad in a black silk
glove with dangling finger-tips, because it was too long, and it dawned
swiftly upon him that Aunt Janet was trying to shield her face from the
moving column of brown motes. He stopped kicking, but it was too late.
Aunt Janet had him by the collar and was vigorously shaking him with
nervous strength.

“You are a very naughty little boy,” declared Aunt Janet. “You should
know better than to walk along the street raising so much dust. No
well-brought-up child ever does such things. Who are your parents, little
boy?”

Johnny perceived that Aunt Janet did not recognize him, which was easily
explained. She wore her reading-spectacles and not her far-seeing ones;
besides, her reading spectacles were obscured by dust and her nephew's
face was nearly obliterated. Also as she shook him his face was not much
in evidence. Johnny disliked, naturally, to tell his aunt Janet that her
own sister and brother-in-law were the parents of such a wicked little
boy. He therefore kept quiet and submitted to the shaking, making
himself as limp as a rag. This, however, exasperated Aunt Janet, who
found herself encumbered by a dead weight of a little boy to be shaken,
and suddenly Johnny Trumbull, the fighting champion of the town, the
cock of the walk of the school, found himself being ignominiously
spanked. That was too much. Johnny's fighting blood was up. He lost all
consideration for circumstances, he forgot that Aunt Janet was not a
boy, that she was quite near being an old lady. She had overstepped the
bounds of privilege of age and sex, and an alarming state of equality
ensued. Quickly the tables were turned. The boy became far from limp. He
stiffened, then bounded and rebounded like wire. He butted, he parried,
he observed all his famous tactics of battle, and poor Aunt Janet sat
down in the dust, black dress, bonnet, glasses (but the glasses were
off and lost), little improving book, black silk gloves, and all; and
Johnny, hopeless, awful, irreverent, sat upon his Aunt Janet's plunging
knees, which seemed the most lively part of her. He kept his face
twisted away from her, but it was not from cowardice. Johnny was afraid
lest Aunt Janet should be too much overcome by the discovery of his
identity. He felt that it was his duty to spare her that. So he sat
still, triumphant but inwardly aghast.

It was fast dawning upon him that his aunt was not a little boy. He was
not afraid of any punishment which might be meted out to him, but he was
simply horrified. He himself had violated all the honorable conditions
of warfare. He felt a little dizzy and ill, and he felt worse when
he ventured a hurried glance at Aunt Janet's face. She was very pale
through the dust, and her eyes were closed. Johnny thought then that he
had killed her.

He got up--the nervous knees were no longer plunging; then he heard a
voice, a little-girl voice, always shrill, but now high pitched to a
squeak with terror. It was the voice of Lily Jennings. She stood near
and yet aloof, a lovely little flower of a girl, all white-scalloped
frills and ribbons, with a big white-frilled hat shading a pale little
face and covering the top of a head decorated with wonderful yellow
curls. She stood behind a big baby-carriage with a pink-lined muslin
canopy and containing a nest of pink and white, but an empty nest.
Lily's little brother's carriage had a spring broken, and she had been
to borrow her aunt's baby-carriage, so that nurse could wheel little
brother up and down the veranda. Nurse had a headache, and the
maids were busy, and Lily, who was a kind little soul and, moreover,
imaginative, and who liked the idea of pushing an empty baby-carriage,
had volunteered to go for it. All the way she had been dreaming of what
was not in the carriage. She had come directly out of a dream of doll
twins when she chanced upon the tragedy in the road.

“What have you been doing now, Johnny Trumbull?” said she. She was
tremulous, white with horror, but she stood her ground. It was curious,
but Johnny Trumbull, with all his bravery, was always cowed before Lily.
Once she had turned and stared at him when he had emerged triumphant
but with bleeding nose from a fight; then she had sniffed delicately and
gone her way. It had only taken a second, but in that second the victor
had met moral defeat.

He looked now at her pale, really scared face, and his own was as pale.
He stood and kicked the dust until the swirling column of it reached his
head.

“That's right,” said Lily; “stand and kick up dust all over me. WHAT
have you been doing?”

Johnny was trembling so he could hardly stand. He stopped kicking dust.

“Have you killed your aunt?” demanded Lily. It was monstrous, but she
had a very dramatic imagination, and there was a faint hint of enjoyment
in her tragic voice.

“Guess she's just choked by dust,” volunteered Johnny, hoarsely. He
kicked the dust again.

“That's right,” said Lily. “If she's choked to death by dust, stand
there and choke her some more. You are a murderer, Johnny Trumbull, and
my mamma will never allow me to speak to you again, and Madame will not
allow you to come to school. AND--I see your papa driving up the street,
and there is the chief policeman's buggy just behind.” Lily acquiesced
entirely in the extraordinary coincidence of the father and the chief of
police appearing upon the scene. The unlikely seemed to her the likely.
“NOW,” said she, cheerfully, “you will be put in state prison and locked
up, and then you will be put to death by a very strong telephone.”

Johnny's father was leaning out of his buggy, looking back at the chief
of police in his, and the mare was jogging very slowly in a perfect reek
of dust. Lily, who was, in spite of her terrific imagination, human and
a girl, rose suddenly to heights of pity and succor. “They shall never
take you, Johnny Trumbull,” said she. “I will save you.”

Johnny by this time was utterly forgetful of his high status as champion
(behind her back) of Madame's very select school for select children of
a somewhat select village. He was forgetful of the fact that a champion
never cries. He cried; he blubbered; tears rolled over his dusty cheeks,
making furrows like plowshares of grief. He feared lest he might have
killed his aunt Janet. Women, and not very young women, might presumably
be unable to survive such rough usage as very tough and at the same time
very limber little boys, and he loved his poor aunt Janet. He
grieved because of his aunt, his parents, his uncle, and rather more
particularly because of himself. He was quite sure that the policeman
was coming for him. Logic had no place in his frenzied conclusions. He
did not consider how the tragedy had taken place entirely out of sight
of a house, that Lily Jennings was the only person who had any knowledge
of it. He looked at the masterful, fair-haired little girl like a baby.
“How?” sniffed he.

For answer, Lily pointed to the empty baby-carriage. “Get right in,” she
ordered.

Even in this dire extremity Johnny hesitated. “Can't.”

“Yes, you can. It is extra large. Aunt Laura's baby was a twin when
he first came; now he's just an ordinary baby, but his carriage is big
enough for two. There's plenty of room. Besides, you're a very small
boy, very small of your age, even if you do knock all the other boys
down and have murdered your aunt. Get in. In a minute they will see
you.”

There was in reality no time to lose. Johnny did get in. In spite of the
provisions for twins, there was none too much room.

Lily covered him up with the fluffy pink-and-lace things, and scowled.
“You hump up awfully,” she muttered. Then she reached beneath him and
snatched out the pillow on which he lay, the baby's little bed. She gave
it a swift toss over the fringe of wayside bushes into a field. “Aunt
Laura's nice embroidered pillow,” said she. “Make yourself just as flat
as you can, Johnny Trumbull.”

Johnny obeyed, but he was obliged to double himself up like a
jack-knife. However, there was no sign of him visible when the two
buggies drew up. There stood a pale and frightened little girl, with a
baby-carriage canopied with rose and lace and heaped up with rosy and
lacy coverlets, presumably sheltering a sleeping infant. Lily was a very
keen little girl. She had sense enough not to run. The two men, at the
sight of Aunt Janet prostrate in the road, leaped out of their buggies.
The doctor's horse stood still; the policeman's trotted away, to Lily's
great relief. She could not imagine Johnny's own father haling him away
to state prison and the stern Arm of Justice. She stood the fire of
bewildered questions in the best and safest fashion. She wept bitterly,
and her tears were not assumed. Poor little Lily was all of a sudden
crushed under the weight of facts. There was Aunt Janet, she had no
doubt, killed by her own nephew, and she was hiding the guilty murderer.
She had visions of state prison for herself. She watched fearfully
while the two men bent over the prostrate woman, who very soon began to
sputter and gasp and try to sit up.

“What on earth is the matter, Janet?” inquired Dr. Trumbull, who was
paler than his sister-inlaw. In fact, she was unable to look very pale
on account of dust.

“Ow!” sputtered Aunt Janet, coughing violently, “get me up out of this
dust, John. Ow!”

“What was the matter?”

“Yes, what has happened, madam?” demanded the chief of police, sternly.

“Nothing,” replied Aunt Janet, to Lily's and Johnny's amazement. “What
do you think has happened? I fell down in all this nasty dust. Ow!”

“What did you eat for luncheon, Janet?” inquired Dr. Trumbull, as he
assisted his sister-inlaw to her feet.

“What I was a fool to eat,” replied Janet Trumbull, promptly. “Cucumber
salad and lemon jelly with whipped cream.”

“Enough to make anybody have indigestion,” said Dr. Trumbull. “You have
had one of these attacks before, too, Janet. You remember the time you
ate strawberry shortcake and ice-cream?”

Janet nodded meekly. Then she coughed again. “Ow, this dust!” gasped
she. “For goodness' sake, John, get me home where I can get some water
and take off these dusty clothes or I shall choke to death.”

“How does your stomach feel?” inquired Dr. Trumbull.

“Stomach is all right now, but I am just choking to death with the
dust.” Janet turned sharply toward the policeman. “You have sense enough
to keep still, I hope,” said she. “I don't want the whole town ringing
with my being such an idiot as to eat cucumbers and cream together and
being found this way.” Janet looked like an animated creation of dust as
she faced the chief of police.

“Yes, ma'am,” he replied, bowing and scraping one foot and raising more
dust.

He and Dr. Trumbull assisted Aunt Janet into the buggy, and they drove
off. Then the chief of police discovered that his own horse had gone.
“Did you see which way he went, sis?” he inquired of Lily, and she
pointed down the road, and sobbed as she did so.

The policeman said something bad under his breath, then advised Lily to
run home to her ma, and started down the road.

When he was out of sight, Lily drew back the pink-and-white things from
Johnny's face. “Well, you didn't kill her this time,” said she.

“Why do you s'pose she didn't tell all about it?” said Johnny, gaping at
her.

“How do I know? I suppose she was ashamed to tell how she had been
fighting, maybe.”

“No, that was not why,” said Johnny in a deep voice.

“Why was it, then?”

“SHE KNEW.”

Johnny began to climb out of the baby-carriage.

“What will she do next, then?” asked Lily.

“I don't know,” Johnny replied, gloomily.

He was out of the carriage then, and Lily was readjusting the pillows
and things. “Get that nice embroidered pillow I threw over the bushes,”
 she ordered, crossly. Johnny obeyed. When she had finished putting the
baby-carriage to rights she turned upon poor little Johnny Trumbull, and
her face wore the expression of a queen of tragedy. “Well,” said Lily
Jennings, “I suppose I shall have to marry you when I am grown up, after
all this.”

Johnny gasped. He thought Lily the most beautiful girl he knew, but to
be confronted with murder and marriage within a few minutes was almost
too much. He flushed a burning red. He laughed foolishly. He said
nothing.

“It will be very hard on me,” stated Lily, “to marry a boy who tried to
murder his nice aunt.”

Johnny revived a bit under this feminine disdain. “I didn't try to
murder her,” he said in a weak voice.

“You might have, throwing her down in all that awful dust, a nice, clean
lady. Ladies are not like boys. It might kill them very quickly to be
knocked down on a dusty road.”

“I didn't mean to kill her.”

“You might have.”

“Well, I didn't, and--she--”

“What?”

“She spanked me.”

“Pooh! That doesn't amount to anything,” sniffed Lily.

“It does if you are a boy.”

“I don't see why.”

“Well, I can't help it if you don't. It does.”

“Why shouldn't a boy be spanked when he's naughty, just as well as a
girl, I would like to know?”

“Because he's a boy.”

Lily looked at Johnny Trumbull. The great fact did remain. He had been
spanked, he had thrown his own aunt down in the dust. He had taken
advantage of her little-girl protection, but he was a boy. Lily did not
understand his why at all, but she bowed before it. However, that she
would not admit. She made a rapid change of base. “What,” said she, “are
you going to do next?”

Johnny stared at her. It was a puzzle.

“If,” said Lily, distinctly, “you are afraid to go home, if you think
your aunt will tell, I will let you get into Aunt Laura's baby-carriage
again, and I will wheel you a little way.”

Johnny would have liked at that moment to knock Lily down, as he had his
aunt Janet. Lily looked at him shrewdly. “Oh yes,” said she, “you can
knock me down in the dust there if you want to, and spoil my nice clean
dress. You will be a boy, just the same.”

“I will never marry you, anyway,” declared Johnny.

“Aren't you afraid I'll tell on you and get you another spanking if you
don't?”

“Tell if you want to. I'd enough sight rather be spanked than marry
you.”

A gleam of respect came into the little girl's wisely regarding blue
eyes. She, with the swiftness of her sex, recognized in forlorn little
Johnny the making of a man. “Oh, well,” said she, loftily, “I never
was a telltale, and, anyway, we are not grown up, and there will be my
trousseau to get, and a lot of other things to do first. I shall go to
Europe before I am married, too, and I might meet a boy much nicer than
you on the steamer.”

“Meet him if you want to.”

Lily looked at Johnny Trumbull with more than respect--with
admiration--but she kept guard over her little tongue. “Well, you can
leave that for the future,” said she with a grown-up air.

“I ain't going to leave it. It's settled for good and all now,” growled
Johnny.

To his immense surprise, Lily curved her white embroidered sleeve over
her face and began to weep.

“What's the matter now?” asked Johnny, sulkily, after a minute.

“I think you are a real horrid boy,” sobbed Lily.

Lily looked like nothing but a very frilly, sweet, white flower.
Johnny could not see her face. There was nothing to be seen except
that delicate fluff of white, supported on dainty white-socked,
white-slippered limbs.

“Say,” said Johnny.

“You are real cruel, when I--I saved your--li-fe,” wailed Lily.

“Say,” said Johnny, “maybe if I don't see any other girl I like better
I will marry you when I am grown up, but I won't if you don't stop that
howling.”

Lily stopped immediately. She peeped at him, a blue peep from under the
flopping, embroidered brim of her hat. “Are you in earnest?” She
smiled faintly. Her blue eyes, wet with tears, were lovely; so was her
hesitating smile.

“Yes, if you don't act silly,” said Johnny. “Now you had better run
home, or your mother will wonder where that baby-carriage is.”

Lily walked away, smiling over her shoulder, the smile of the happily
subjugated. “I won't tell anybody, Johnny,” she called back in her
flute-like voice.

“Don't care if you do,” returned Johnny, looking at her with chin in the
air and shoulders square, and Lily wondered at his bravery.

But Johnny was not so brave and he did care. He knew that his best
course was an immediate return home, but he did not know what he might
have to face. He could not in the least understand why his aunt Janet
had not told at once. He was sure that she knew. Then he thought of a
possible reason for her silence; she might have feared his arrest at the
hands of the chief of police. Johnny quailed. He knew his aunt Janet
to be rather a brave sort of woman. If she had fears, she must have had
reason for them. He might even now be arrested. Suppose Lily did
tell. He had a theory that girls usually told. He began to speculate
concerning the horrors of prison. Of course he would not be executed,
since his aunt was obviously very far from being killed, but he might be
imprisoned for a long term.

Johnny went home. He did not kick the dust any more. He walked very
steadily and staidly. When he came in sight of the old Colonial mansion,
with its massive veranda pillars, he felt chilly. However, he went on.
He passed around to the south door and entered and smelled shortcake.
It would have smelled delicious had he not had so much on his mind. He
looked through the hall, and had a glimpse of his uncle Jonathan in the
study, writing. At the right of the door was his father's office. The
door of that was open, and Johnny saw his father pouring things from
bottles. He did not look at Johnny. His mother crossed the hall. She
had on a long white apron, which she wore when making her famous cream
shortcakes. She saw Johnny, but merely observed, “Go and wash your face
and hands, Johnny; it is nearly supper-time.”

Johnny went up-stairs. At the upper landing he found his aunt Janet
waiting for him. “Come here,” she whispered, and Johnny followed her,
trembling, into her own room. It was a large room, rather crowded with
heavy, old-fashioned furniture. Aunt Janet had freed herself from dust
and was arrayed in a purple silk gown. Her hair was looped loosely on
either side of her long face. She was a handsome woman, after a certain
type.

“Stand here, Johnny,” said she. She had closed the door, and Johnny
was stationed before her. She did not seem in the least injured nor the
worse for her experience. On the contrary, there was a bright-red flush
on her cheeks, and her eyes shone as Johnny had never seen them. She
looked eagerly at Johnny.

“Why did you do that?” she said, but there was no anger in her voice.

“I forgot,” began Johnny.

“Forgot what?” Her voice was strained with eagerness.

“That you were not another boy,” said Johnny.

“Tell me,” said Aunt Janet. “No, you need not tell me, because if you
did it might be my duty to inform your parents. I know there is no need
of your telling. You MUST be in the habit of fighting with the other
boys.”

“Except the little ones,” admitted Johnny.

To Johnny's wild astonishment, Aunt Janet seized him by the shoulders
and looked him in the eyes with a look of adoration and immense
approval. “Thank goodness,” said she, “at last there is going to be a
fighter in the Trumbull family. Your uncle would never fight, and your
father would not. Your grandfather would. Your uncle and your father are
good men, though; you must try to be like them, Johnny.”

“Yes, ma'am,” replied Johnny, bewildered.

“I think they would be called better men than your grandfather and my
father,” said Aunt Janet.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“I think it is time for you to have your grandfather's watch,” said Aunt
Janet. “I think you are man enough to take care of it.” Aunt Janet had
all the time been holding a black leather case. Now she opened it, and
Johnny saw the great gold watch which he had seen many times before and
had always understood was to be his some day, when he was a man. “Here,”
 said Aunt Janet. “Take good care of it. You must try to be as good as
your uncle and father, but you must remember one thing--you will wear a
watch which belonged to a man who never allowed other men to crowd him
out of the way he elected to go.”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Johnny. He took the watch.

“What do you say?” inquired his aunt, sharply.

“Thank you.”

“That's right. I thought you had forgotten your manners. Your
grandfather never did.”

“I am sorry. Aunt Janet,” muttered Johnny, “that I--”

“You need never say anything about that,” his aunt returned, quickly.
“I did not see who you were at first. You are too old to be spanked by a
woman, but you ought to be whipped by a man, and I wish your grandfather
were alive to do it.”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Johnny. He looked at her bravely. “He could if he
wanted to,” said he.

Aunt Janet smiled at him proudly. “Of course,” said she, “a boy like you
never gets the worst of it fighting with other boys.”

“No, ma'am,” said Johnny.

Aunt Janet smiled again. “Now run and wash your face and hands,” said
she; “you must not keep supper waiting. Your mother has a paper to write
for her club, and I have promised to help her.”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Johnny. He walked out, carrying the great gold
timepiece, bewildered, embarrassed, modest beneath his honors, but
little cock of the walk, whether he would or no, for reasons entirely
and forever beyond his ken.




JOHNNY-IN-THE-WOODS

JOHNNY TRUMBULL, he who had demonstrated his claim to be Cock of the
Walk by a most impious hand-to-hand fight with his own aunt, Miss Janet
Trumbull, in which he had been decisively victorious, and won his spurs,
consisting of his late grandfather's immense, solemnly ticking watch,
was to take a new path of action. Johnny suddenly developed the
prominent Trumbull trait, but in his case it was inverted. Johnny, as
became a boy of his race, took an excursion into the past, but instead
of applying the present to the past, as was the tendency of the other
Trumbulls, he forcibly applied the past to the present. He fairly
plastered the past over the exigencies of his day and generation like a
penetrating poultice of mustard, and the results were peculiar.

Johnny, being bidden of a rainy day during the midsummer vacation to
remain in the house, to keep quiet, read a book, and be a good boy,
obeyed, but his obedience was of a doubtful measure of wisdom.

Johnny got a book out of his uncle Jonathan Trumbull's dark little
library while Jonathan was walking sedately to the post-office, holding
his dripping umbrella at a wonderful slant of exactness, without regard
to the wind, thereby getting the soft drive of the rain full in his
face, which became, as it were, bedewed with tears, entirely outside any
cause of his own emotions.

Johnny probably got the only book of an antiorthodox trend in his
uncle's library. He found tucked away in a snug corner an ancient
collection of Border Ballads, and he read therein of many unmoral
romances and pretty fancies, which, since he was a small boy, held
little meaning for him, or charm, beyond a delight in the swing of the
rhythm, for Johnny had a feeling for music. It was when he read of Robin
Hood, the bold Robin Hood, with his dubious ethics but his certain and
unquenchable interest, that Johnny Trumbull became intent. He had the
volume in his own room, being somewhat doubtful as to whether it might
be of the sort included in the good-boy role. He sat beside a rainwashed
window, which commanded a view of the wide field between the Trumbull
mansion and Jim Simmons's house, and he read about Robin Hood and his
Greenwood adventures, his forcible setting the wrong right; and for the
first time his imagination awoke, and his ambition. Johnny Trumbull,
hitherto hero of nothing except little material fistfights, wished now
to become a hero of true romance.

In fact, Johnny considered seriously the possibility of reincarnating,
in his own person, Robin Hood. He eyed the wide green field dreamily
through his rain-blurred window. It was a pretty field, waving with
feathery grasses and starred with daisies and buttercups, and it was
very fortunate that it happened to be so wide. Jim Simmons's house was
not a desirable feature of the landscape, and looked much better several
acres away. It was a neglected, squalid structure, and considered a
disgrace to the whole village. Jim was also a disgrace, and an unsolved
problem. He owned that house, and somehow contrived to pay the taxes
thereon. He also lived and throve in bodily health in spite of evil
ways, and his children were many. There seemed no way to dispose finally
of Jim Simmons and his house except by murder and arson, and the village
was a peaceful one, and such measures were entirely too strenuous.

Presently Johnny, staring dreamily out of his window, saw approaching a
rusty-black umbrella held at precisely the wrong angle in respect of the
storm, but held with the unvarying stiffness with which a soldier might
hold a bayonet, and knew it for his uncle Jonathan's umbrella. Soon he
beheld also his uncle's serious, rain-drenched face and his long ambling
body and legs. Jonathan was coming home from the post-office, whither
he repaired every morning. He never got a letter, never anything except
religious newspapers, but the visit to the post-office was part of his
daily routine. Rain or shine, Jonathan Trumbull went for the morning
mail, and gained thereby a queer negative enjoyment of a perfectly
useless duty performed. Johnny watched his uncle draw near to the house,
and cruelly reflected how unlike Robin Hood he must be. He even
wondered if his uncle could possibly have read Robin Hood and still show
absolutely no result in his own personal appearance. He knew that
he, Johnny, could not walk to the post-office and back, even with the
drawback of a dripping old umbrella instead of a bow and arrow, without
looking a bit like Robin Hood, especially when fresh from reading about
him.

Then suddenly something distracted his thoughts from Uncle Jonathan. The
long, feathery grass in the field moved with a motion distinct from
that caused by the wind and rain. Johnny saw a tiger-striped back emerge,
covering long leaps of terror. Johnny knew the creature for a cat afraid
of Uncle Jonathan. Then he saw the grass move behind the first leaping,
striped back, and he knew there were more cats afraid of Uncle Jonathan.
There were even motions caused by unseen things, and he reasoned,
“Kittens afraid of Uncle Jonathan.” Then Johnny reflected with a great
glow of indignation that the Simmonses kept an outrageous number of
half-starved cats and kittens, besides a quota of children popularly
supposed to be none too well nourished, let alone properly clothed. Then
it was that Johnny Trumbull's active, firm imagination slapped the past
of old romance like a most thorough mustard poultice over the present.
There could be no Lincoln Green, no following of brave outlaws (that
is, in the strictest sense), no bows and arrows, no sojourning under
greenwood trees and the rest, but something he could, and would, do and
be. That rainy day when Johnny Trumbull was a good boy, and stayed in
the house, and read a book, marked an epoch.

That night when Johnny went into his aunt Janet's room she looked
curiously at his face, which seemed a little strange to her. Johnny,
since he had come into possession of his grandfather's watch, went every
night, on his way to bed, to his aunt's room for the purpose of winding
up that ancient timepiece, Janet having a firm impression that it might
not be done properly unless under her supervision. Johnny stood before
his aunt and wound up the watch with its ponderous key, and she watched
him.

“What have you been doing all day, John?” said she.

“Stayed in the house and--read.”

“What did you read, John?”

“A book.”

“Do you mean to be impertinent, John?”

“No, ma'am,” replied Johnny, and with perfect truth. He had not the
slightest idea of the title of the book.

“What was the book?”

“A poetry book.”

“Where did you find it?”

“In Uncle Jonathan's library.”

“Poetry In Uncle Jonathan's library?” said Janet, in a mystified way.
She had a general impression of Jonathan's library as of century-old
preserves, altogether dried up and quite indistinguishable one from the
other except by labels. Poetry she could not imagine as being there
at all. Finally she thought of the early Victorians, and Spenser and
Chaucer. The library might include them, but she had an idea that
Spenser and Chaucer were not fit reading for a little boy. However,
as she remembered Spenser and Chaucer, she doubted if Johnny could
understand much of them. Probably he had gotten hold of an early
Victorian, and she looked rather contemptuous.

“I don't think much of a boy like you reading poetry,” said Janet.
“Couldn't you find anything else to read?”

“No, ma'am.” That also was truth. Johnny, before exploring his uncle's
theological library, had peered at his father's old medical books
and his mother's bookcases, which contained quite terrifying uniform
editions of standard things written by women.

“I don't suppose there ARE many books written for boys,” said Aunt
Janet, reflectively.

“No, ma'am,” said Johnny. He finished winding the watch, and gave, as
was the custom, the key to Aunt Janet, lest he lose it.

“I will see if I cannot find some books of travels for you, John,” said
Janet. “I think travels would be good reading for a boy. Good night,
John.”

“Good night. Aunt Janet,” replied Johnny. His aunt never kissed him good
night, which was one reason why he liked her.

On his way to bed he had to pass his mother's room, whose door stood
open. She was busy writing at her desk. She glanced at Johnny.

“Are you going to bed?” said she.

“Yes, ma'am.”

Johnny entered the room and let his mother kiss his forehead, parting
his curly hair to do so. He loved his mother, but did not care at all to
have her kiss him. He did not object, because he thought she liked to
do it, and she was a woman, and it was a very little thing in which he
could oblige her.

“Were you a good boy, and did you find a good book to read?” asked she.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“What was the book?” Cora Trumbull inquired, absently, writing as she
spoke.

“Poetry.”

Cora laughed. “Poetry is odd for a boy,” said she. “You should have
read a book of travels or history. Good night, Johnny.”

“Good night, mother.”

Then Johnny met his father, smelling strongly of medicines, coming up
from his study. But his father did not see him. And Johnny went to bed,
having imbibed from that old tale of Robin Hood more of history and more
knowledge of excursions into realms of old romance than his elders had
ever known during much longer lives than his.

Johnny confided in nobody at first. His feeling nearly led him astray
in the matter of Lily Jennings; he thought of her, for one sentimental
minute, as Robin Hood's Maid Marion. Then he dismissed the idea
peremptorily. Lily Jennings would simply laugh. He knew her. Moreover,
she was a girl, and not to be trusted. Johnny felt the need of another
boy who would be a kindred spirit; he wished for more than one boy.
He wished for a following of heroic and lawless souls, even as Robin
Hood's. But he could think of nobody, after considerable study, except
one boy, younger than himself. He was a beautiful little boy, whose
mother had never allowed him to have his golden curls cut, although
he had been in trousers for quite a while. However, the trousers were
foolish, being knickerbockers, and accompanied by low socks, which
revealed pretty, dimpled, babyish legs. The boy's name was Arnold
Carruth, and that was against him, as being long, and his mother firm
about allowing no nickname. Nicknames in any case were not allowed in
the very exclusive private school which Johnny attended.

Arnold Carruth, in spite of his being such a beautiful little boy,
would have had no standing at all in the school as far as popularity was
concerned had it not been for a strain of mischief which triumphed over
curls, socks, and pink cheeks and a much-kissed rosebud of a mouth.
Arnold Carruth, as one of the teachers permitted herself to state when
relaxed in the bosom of her own family, was “as choke-full of mischief
as a pod of peas. And the worst of it all is,” quoth the teacher, Miss
Agnes Rector, who was a pretty young girl, with a hidden sympathy for
mischief herself--“the worst of it is, that child looks so like a cherub
on a rosy cloud that even if he should be caught nobody would believe
it. They would be much more likely to accuse poor little Andrew Jackson
Green, because he has a snub nose and is a bit cross-eyed, and I never
knew that poor child to do anything except obey rules and learn his
lessons. He is almost too good. And another worst of it is, nobody
can help loving that little imp of a Carruth boy, mischief and all. I
believe the scamp knows it and takes advantage of it.”

It is quite possible that Arnold Carruth did profit unworthily by his
beauty and engagingness, albeit without calculation. He was so young,
it was monstrous to believe him capable of calculation, of deliberate
trading upon his assets of birth and beauty and fascination. However,
Johnny Trumbull, who was wide awake and a year older, was alive to the
situation. He told Arnold Carruth, and Arnold Carruth only, about Robin
Hood and his great scheme.

“You can help,” said this wise Johnny; “you can be in it, because nobody
thinks you can be in anything, on account of your wearing curls.”

Arnold Carruth flushed and gave an angry tug at one golden curl which
the wind blew over a shoulder. The two boys were in a secluded corner
of Madame's lawn, behind a clump of Japanese cedars, during an
intermission.

“I can't help it because I wear curls,” declared Arnold with angry
shame.

“Who said you could? No need of getting mad.”

“Mamma and Aunt Flora and grandmamma won't let me have these old curls
cut off,” said Arnold. “You needn't think I want to have curls like a
girl, Johnny Trumbull.”

“Who said you did? And I know you don't like to wear those short
stockings, either.”

“Like to!” Arnold gave a spiteful kick, first of one half-bared, dimpled
leg, then of the other.

“First thing you know I'll steal mamma's or Aunt Flora's stockings and
throw these in the furnace-I will. Do you s'pose a feller wants to wear
these baby things? I guess not. Women are awful queer, Johnny Trumbull.
My mamma and my aunt Flora are awful nice, but they are queer about some
things.”

“Most women are queer,” agreed Johnny, “but my aunt Janet isn't as queer
as some. Rather guess if she saw me with curls like a little girl she'd
cut 'em off herself.”

“Wish she was my aunt,” said Arnold Carruth with a sigh. “A feller needs
a woman like that till he's grown up. Do you s'pose she'd cut off my
curls if I was to go to your house, Johnny?”

“I'm afraid she wouldn't think it was right unless your mother said she
might. She has to be real careful about doing right, because my uncle
Jonathan used to preach, you know.”

Arnold Carruth grinned savagely, as if he endured pain. “Well, I s'pose
I'll have to stand the curls and little baby stockings awhile longer,”
 said he. “What was it you were going to tell me, Johnny?”

“I am going to tell you because I know you aren't too good, if you do
wear curls and little stockings.”

“No, I ain't too good,” declared Arnold Carruth, proudly; “I
ain't--HONEST, Johnny.”

“That's why I'm going to tell you. But if you tell any of the other
boys--or girls--”

“Tell girls!” sniffed Arnold.

“If you tell anybody, I'll lick you.”

“Guess I ain't afraid.”

“Guess you'd be afraid to go home after you'd been licked.”

“Guess my mamma would give it to you.”

“Run home and tell mamma you'd been whopped, would you, then?”

Little Arnold, beautiful baby boy, straightened himself with a quick
remembrance that he was born a man. “You know I wouldn't tell, Johnny
Trumbull.”

“Guess you wouldn't. Well, here it is--” Johnny spoke in emphatic
whispers, Arnold's curly head close to his mouth: “There are a good many
things in this town have got to be set right,” said Johnny.

Little Arnold stared at him. Then fire shone in his lovely blue eyes
under the golden shadow of his curls, a fire which had shone in the
eyes of some ancestors of his, for there was good fighting blood in
the Carruth family, as well as in the Trumbull, although this small
descendant did go about curled and kissed and barelegged.

“How'll we begin?” said Arnold, in a strenuous whisper.

“We've got to begin right away with Jim Simmons's cats and kittens.”

“With Jim Simmons's cats and kittens?” repeated Arnold.

“That was what I said, exactly. We've got to begin right there. It is an
awful little beginning, but I can't think of anything else. If you can,
I'm willing to listen.”

“I guess I can't,” admitted Arnold, helplessly.

“Of course we can't go around taking away money from rich people and
giving it to poor folks. One reason is, most of the poor folks in this
town are lazy, and don't get money because they don't want to work for
it. And when they are not lazy, they drink. If we gave rich people's
money to poor folks like that, we shouldn't do a mite of good. The rich
folks would be poor, and the poor folks wouldn't stay rich; they would
be lazier, and get more drink. I don't see any sense in doing things
like that in this town. There are a few poor folks I have been thinking
we might take some money for and do good, but not many.”

“Who?” inquired Arnold Carruth, in awed tones.

“Well, there is poor old Mrs. Sam Little. She's awful poor. Folks help
her, I know, but she can't be real pleased being helped. She'd rather
have the money herself. I have been wondering if we couldn't get some of
your father's money away and give it to her, for one.”

“Get away papa's money!”

“You don't mean to tell me you are as stingy as that, Arnold Carruth?”

“I guess papa wouldn't like it.”

“Of course he wouldn't. But that is not the point. It is not what your
father would like; it is what that poor old lady would like.”

It was too much for Arnold. He gaped at Johnny.

“If you are going to be mean and stingy, we may as well stop before we
begin,” said Johnny.

Then Arnold Carruth recovered himself. “Old Mr. Webster Payne is awful
poor,” said he. “We might take some of your father's money and give it
to him.”

Johnny snorted, fairly snorted. “If,” said he, “you think my father
keeps his money where we can get it, you are mistaken, Arnold Carruth.
My father's money is all in papers that are not worth much now and that
he has to keep in the bank till they are.”

Arnold smiled hopefully. “Guess that's the way my papa keeps HIS money.”

“It's the way most rich people are mean enough to,” said Johnny,
severely. “I don't care if it's your father or mine, it's mean. And
that's why we've got to begin with Jim Simmons's cats and kittens.”

“Are you going to give old Mrs. Sam Little cats?” inquired Arnold.

Johnny sniffed. “Don't be silly,” said he. “Though I do think a nice
cat with a few kittens might cheer her up a little, and we could steal
enough milk, by getting up early and tagging after the milkman, to feed
them. But I wasn't thinking of giving her or old Mr. Payne cats and
kittens. I wasn't thinking of folks; I was thinking of all those poor
cats and kittens that Mr. Jim Simmons has and doesn't half feed, and
that have to go hunting around folks' back doors in the rain, when cats
hate water, too, and pick things up that must be bad for their stomachs,
when they ought to have their milk regularly in nice, clean saucers.
No, Arnold Carruth, what we have got to do is to steal Mr. Jim Simmons's
cats and get them in nice homes where they can earn their living
catching mice and be well cared for.”

“Steal cats?” said Arnold.

“Yes, steal cats, in order to do right,” said Johnny Trumbull, and his
expression was heroic, even exalted.

It was then that a sweet treble, faltering yet exultant, rang in their
ears.

“If,” said the treble voice, “you are going to steal dear little kitty
cats and get nice homes for them, I'm going to help.”

The voice belonged to Lily Jennings, who had stood on the other side of
the Japanese cedars and heard every word.

Both boys started in righteous wrath, but Arnold Carruth was the angrier
of the two. “Mean little cat yourself, listening,” said he. His curls
seemed to rise like a crest of rage.

Johnny, remembering some things, was not so outspoken. “You hadn't any
right to listen, Lily Jennings,” he said, with masculine severity.

“I didn't start to listen,” said Lily. “I was looking for cones on these
trees. Miss Parmalee wanted us to bring some object of nature into the
class, and I wondered whether I could find a queer Japanese cone on one
of these trees, and then I heard you boys talking, and I couldn't help
listening. You spoke very loud, and I couldn't give up looking for that
cone. I couldn't find any, and I heard all about the Simmonses' cats,
and I know lots of other cats that haven't got good homes, and--I am
going to be in it.”

“You AIN'T,” declared Arnold Carruth.

“We can't have girls in it,” said Johnny the mindful, more politely.

“You've got to have me. You had better have me, Johnny Trumbull,” she
added with meaning.

Johnny flinched. It was a species of blackmail, but what could he do?
Suppose Lily told how she had hidden him--him, Johnny Trumbull, the
champion of the school--in that empty baby-carriage! He would have more
to contend against than Arnold Carruth with socks and curls. He did not
think Lily would tell. Somehow Lily, although a little, befrilled girl,
gave an impression of having a knowledge of a square deal almost as much
as a boy would; but what boy could tell with a certainty what such an
uncertain creature as a girl might or might not do? Moreover, Johnny
had a weakness, a hidden, Spartanly hidden, weakness for Lily. He rather
wished to have her act as partner in his great enterprise. He therefore
gruffly assented.

“All right,” he said, “you can be in it. But just you look out. You'll
see what happens if you tell.”

“She can't be in it; she's nothing but a girl,” said Arnold Carruth,
fiercely.

Lily Jennings lifted her chin and surveyed him with queenly scorn. “And
what are you?” said she. “A little boy with curls and baby socks.”

Arnold colored with shame and fury, and subsided. “Mind you don't tell,”
 he said, taking Johnny's cue.

“I sha'n't tell,” replied Lily, with majesty. “But you'll tell
yourselves if you talk one side of trees without looking on the other.”

There was then only a few moments before Madame's musical Japanese
gong which announced the close of intermission should sound, but three
determined souls in conspiracy can accomplish much in a few moments. The
first move was planned in detail before that gong sounded, and the two
boys raced to the house, and Lily followed, carrying a toadstool, which
she had hurriedly caught up from the lawn for her object of nature to be
taken into class.

It was a poisonous toadstool, and Lily was quite a heroine in the class.
That fact doubtless gave her a more dauntless air when, after school,
the two boys caught up with her walking gracefully down the road,
flirting her skirts and now and then giving her head a toss, which made
her fluff of hair fly into a golden foam under her daisy-trimmed straw
hat.

“To-night,” Johnny whispered, as he sped past.

“At half past nine, between your house and the Simmonses',” replied
Lily, without even looking at him. She was a past-mistress of
dissimulation.

Lily's mother had guests at dinner that night, and the guests remarked
sometimes, within the little girl's hearing, what a darling she was.

“She never gives me a second's anxiety,” Lily's mother whispered to a
lady beside her. “You cannot imagine what a perfectly good, dependable
child she is.”

“Now my Christina is a good child in the grain,” said the lady, “but she
is full of mischief. I never can tell what Christina will do next.”

“I can always tell,” said Lily's mother, in a voice of maternal triumph.

“Now only the other night, when I thought Christina was in bed, that
absurd child got up and dressed and ran over to see her aunt Bella. Tom
came home with her, and of course there was nothing very bad about it.
Christina was very bright; she said, 'Mother, you never told me I must
not get up and go to see Aunt Bella,' which was, of course, true. I
could not gainsay that.”

“I cannot,” said Lily's mother, “imagine my Lily's doing such a thing.”

If Lily had heard that last speech of her mother's, whom she dearly
loved, she might have wavered. That pathetic trust in herself might have
caused her to justify it. But she had finished her dinner and had been
excused, and was undressing for bed, with the firm determination to rise
betimes and dress and join Johnny Trumbull and Arnold Carruth. Johnny
had the easiest time of them all. He simply had to bid his aunt Janet
good night and have the watch wound, and take a fleeting glimpse of his
mother at her desk and his father in his office, and go whistling to his
room, and sit in the summer darkness and wait until the time came.

Arnold Carruth had the hardest struggle. His mother had an old school
friend visiting her, and Arnold, very much dressed up, with his curls
falling in a shining fleece upon a real lace collar, had to be shown off
and show off. He had to play one little piece which he had learned upon
the piano. He had to recite a little poem. He had to be asked how old he
was, and if he liked to go to school, and how many teachers he had, and
if he loved them, and if he loved his little mates, and which of them he
loved best; and he had to be asked if he loved his aunt Dorothy, who was
the school friend and not his aunt at all, and would he not like to come
and live with her, because she had not any dear little boy; and he was
obliged to submit to having his curls twisted around feminine fingers,
and to being kissed and hugged, and a whole chapter of ordeals, before
he was finally in bed, with his mother's kiss moist upon his lips, and
free to assert himself.

That night Arnold Carruth realized himself as having an actual horror of
his helpless state of pampered childhood. The man stirred in the soul of
the boy, and it was a little rebel with sulky pout of lips and frown of
childish brows who stole out of bed, got into some queer clothes, and
crept down the back stairs. He heard his aunt Dorothy, who was not
his aunt, singing an Italian song in the parlor, he heard the clink of
silver and china from the butler's pantry, where the maids were washing
the dinner dishes. He smelt his father's cigar, and he gave a little
leap of joy on the grass of the lawn. At last he was out at night alone,
and--he wore long stockings! That noon he had secreted a pair of his
mother's toward that end. When he came home to luncheon he pulled them
out of the darning-bag, which he had spied through a closet door that
had been left ajar. One of the stockings was green silk, and the other
was black, and both had holes in them, but all that mattered was the
length. Arnold wore also his father's riding-breeches, which came over
his shoes and which were enormously large, and one of his father's silk
shirts. He had resolved to dress consistently for such a great occasion.
His clothes hampered him, but he felt happy as he sped clumsily down the
road.

However, both Johnny Trumbull and Lily Jennings, who were waiting for
him at the rendezvous, were startled by his appearance. Both began to
run, Johnny pulling Lily after him by the hand, but Arnold's cautious
hallo arrested them. Johnny and Lily returned slowly, peering through
the darkness.

“It's me,” said Arnold, with gay disregard of grammar.

“You looked,” said Lily, “like a real fat old man. What HAVE you got on,
Arnold Carruth?”

Arnold slouched before his companions, ridiculous but triumphant. He
hitched up a leg of the riding-breeches and displayed a long, green silk
stocking. Both Johnny and Lily doubled up with laughter.

“What you laughing at?” inquired Arnold, crossly.

“Oh, nothing at all,” said Lily. “Only you do look like a scarecrow
broken loose. Doesn't he, Johnny?”

“I am going home,” stated Arnold with dignity. He turned, but Johnny
caught him in his little iron grip.

“Oh, shucks, Arnold Carruth!” said he. “Don't be a baby. Come on.” And
Arnold Carruth with difficulty came on.

People in the village, as a rule, retired early. Many lights were out
when the affair began, many went out while it was in progress. All three
of the band steered as clear of lighted houses as possible, and dodged
behind trees and hedges when shadowy figures appeared on the road or
carriage-wheels were heard in the distance. At their special destination
they were sure to be entirely safe. Old Mr. Peter Van Ness always
retired very early. To be sure, he did not go to sleep until late, and
read in bed, but his room was in the rear of the house on the second
floor, and all the windows, besides, were dark. Mr. Peter Van Ness was
a very wealthy elderly gentleman, very benevolent. He had given the
village a beautiful stone church with memorial windows, a soldiers'
monument, a park, and a home for aged couples, called “The Van Ness
Home.” Mr. Van Ness lived alone with the exception of a housekeeper and
a number of old, very well-disciplined servants. The servants always
retired early, and Mr. Van Ness required the house to be quiet for his
late reading. He was a very studious old gentleman.

To the Van Ness house, set back from the street in the midst of a
well-kept lawn, the three repaired, but not as noiselessly as they could
have wished. In fact, a light flared in an up-stairs window, which was
wide open, and one woman's voice was heard in conclave with another.

“I should think,” said the first, “that the lawn was full of cats. Did
you ever hear such a mewing, Jane?”

That was the housekeeper's voice. The three, each of whom carried a
squirming burlap potato-bag from the Trumbull cellar, stood close to a
clump of stately pines full of windy songs, and trembled.

“It do sound like cats, ma'am,” said another voice, which was Jane's,
the maid, who had brought Mrs. Meeks, the housekeeper, a cup of hot
water and peppermint, because her dinner had disagreed with her.

“Just listen,” said Mrs. Meeks.

“Yes, ma'am, I should think there was hundreds of cats and little
kittens.”

“I am so afraid Mr. Van Ness will be disturbed.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“You might go out and look, Jane.”

“Oh, ma'am, they might be burglars!”

“How can they be burglars when they are cats?” demanded Mrs. Meeks,
testily.

Arnold Carruth snickered, and Johnny on one side, and Lily on the other,
prodded him with an elbow. They were close under the window.

“Burglars is up to all sorts of queer tricks, ma'am,” said Jane. “They
may mew like cats to tell one another what door to go in.”

“Jane, you talk like an idiot,” said Mrs. Meeks. “Burglars talking like
cats! Who ever heard of such a thing? It sounds right under that window.
Open my closet door and get those heavy old shoes and throw them out.”

It was an awful moment. The three dared not move. The cats and kittens
in the bags--not so many, after all--seemed to have turned into
multiplication-tables. They were positively alarming in their
determination to get out, their wrath with one another, and their
vociferous discontent with the whole situation.

“I can't hold my bag much longer,” said poor little Arnold Carruth.

“Hush up, cry-baby!” whispered Lily, fiercely, in spite of a clawing paw
emerging from her own bag and threatening her bare arm.

Then came the shoes. One struck Arnold squarely on the shoulder, nearly
knocking him down and making him lose hold of his bag. The other struck
Lily's bag, and conditions became worse; but she held on despite a
scratch. Lily had pluck.

Then Jane's voice sounded very near, as she leaned out of the window. “I
guess they have went, ma'am,” said she. “I seen something run.”

“I can hear them,” said Mrs. Meeks, querulously.

“I seen them run,” persisted Jane, who was tired and wished to be gone.

“Well, close that window, anyway, for I know I hear them, even if they
have gone,” said Mrs. Meeks. The three heard with relief the window
slammed down.

The light flashed out, and simultaneously Lily Jennings and Johnny
Trumbull turned indignantly upon Arnold Carruth.

“There, you have gone and let all those poor cats go,” said Johnny.

“And spoilt everything,” said Lily.

Arnold rubbed his shoulder. “You would have let go if you had been hit
right on the shoulder by a great shoe,” said he, rather loudly.

“Hush up!” said Lily. “I wouldn't have let my cats go if I had been
killed by a shoe; so there.”

“Serves us right for taking a boy with curls,” said Johnny Trumbull.

But he spoke unadvisedly. Arnold Carruth was no match whatever for
Johnny Trumbull, and had never been allowed the honor of a combat with
him; but surprise takes even a great champion at a disadvantage. Arnold
turned upon Johnny like a flash, out shot a little white fist, up struck
a dimpled leg clad in cloth and leather, and down sat Johnny Trumbull;
and, worse, open flew his bag, and there was a yowling exodus.

“There go your cats, too, Johnny Trumbull,” said Lily, in a perfectly
calm whisper. At that moment both boys, victor and vanquished, felt a
simultaneous throb of masculine wrath at Lily. Who was she to gloat
over the misfortunes of men? But retribution came swiftly to Lily. That
viciously clawing little paw shot out farther, and there was a limit to
Spartanism in a little girl born so far from that heroic land. Lily let
go of her bag and with difficulty stifled a shriek of pain.

“Whose cats are gone now?” demanded Johnny, rising.

“Yes, whose cats are gone now?” said Arnold.

Then Johnny promptly turned upon him and knocked him down and sat on
him.

Lily looked at them, standing, a stately little figure in the darkness.
“I am going home,” said she. “My mother does not allow me to go with
fighting boys.”

Johnny rose, and so did Arnold, whimpering slightly. His shoulder ached
considerably.

“He knocked me down,” said Johnny.

Even as he whimpered and as he suffered, Arnold felt a thrill of
triumph. “Always knew I could if I had a chance,” said he.

“You couldn't if I had been expecting it,” said Johnny.

“Folks get knocked down when they ain't expecting it most of the time,”
 declared Arnold, with more philosophy than he realized.

“I don't think it makes much difference about the knocking down,” said
Lily. “All those poor cats and kittens that we were going to give a good
home, where they wouldn't be starved, have got away, and they will run
straight back to Mr. Jim Simmons's.”

“If they haven't any more sense than to run back to a place where they
don't get enough to eat and are kicked about by a lot of children, let
them run,” said Johnny.

“That's so,” said Arnold. “I never did see what we were doing such a
thing for, anyway--stealing Mr. Simmons's cats and giving them to Mr.
Van Ness.”

It was the girl alone who stood by her guns of righteousness. “I saw and
I see,” she declared, with dangerously loud emphasis. “It was only our
duty to try to rescue poor helpless animals who don't know any better
than to stay where they are badly treated. And Mr. Van Ness has so
much money he doesn't know what to do with it; he would have been real
pleased to give those cats a home and buy milk and liver for them. But
it's all spoiled now. I will never undertake to do good again, with a
lot of boys in the way, as long as I live; so there!” Lily turned about.

“Going to tell your mother!” said Johnny, with scorn which veiled
anxiety.

“No, I'm NOT. I don't tell tales.”

Lily marched off, and in her wake went Johnny and Arnold, two poor
little disillusioned would-be knights of old romance in a wretchedly
commonplace future, not far enough from their horizons for any glamour.

They went home, and of the three Johnny Trumbull was the only one
who was discovered. For him his aunt Janet lay in wait and forced a
confession. She listened grimly, but her eyes twinkled.

“You have learned to fight, John Trumbull,” said she, when he had
finished. “Now the very next thing you have to learn, and make yourself
worthy of your grandfather Trumbull, is not to be a fool.”

“Yes, Aunt Janet,” said Johnny.

The next noon, when he came home from school, old Maria, who had been
with the family ever since he could remember and long before, called him
into the kitchen. There, greedily lapping milk from a saucer, were two
very lean, tall kittens.

“See those nice little tommy-cats,” said Maria, beaming upon Johnny,
whom she loved and whom she sometimes fancied deprived of boyish joys.
“Your aunt Janet sent me over to the Simmonses' for them this morning.
They are overrun with cats--such poor, shiftless folks always be--and
you can have them. We shall have to watch for a little while till they
get wonted, so they won't run home.”

Johnny gazed at the kittens, fast distending with the new milk, and
felt presumably much as dear Robin Hood may have felt after one of his
successful raids in the fair, poetic past.

“Pretty, ain't they?” said Maria. “They have drank up a whole saucer of
milk. 'Most starved. I s'pose.”

Johnny gathered up the two forlorn kittens and sat down in a kitchen
chair, with one on each shoulder, hard, boyish cheeks pressed against
furry, purring sides, and the little fighting Cock of the Walk felt his
heart glad and tender with the love of the strong for the weak.




DANIEL AND LITTLE DAN'L

THE Wise homestead dated back more than a century, yet it had nothing
imposing about it except its site. It was a simple, glaringly white
cottage. There was a center front door with two windows on each side;
there was a low slant of roof, pierced by unpicturesque dormers. On
the left of the house was an ell, which had formerly been used as a
shoemaker's shop, but now served as a kitchen. In the low attic of the
ell was stored the shoemaker's bench, whereon David Wise's grandfather
had sat for nearly eighty years of working days; after him his eldest
son, Daniel's father, had occupied the same hollow seat of patient toil.
Daniel had sat there for twenty-odd years, then had suddenly realized
both the lack of necessity and the lack of customers, since the
great shoe-plant had been built down in the village. Then Daniel had
retired--although he did not use that expression. Daniel said to his
friends and his niece Dora that he had “quit work.” But he told himself,
without the least bitterness, that work had quit him.

After Daniel had retired, his one physiological peculiarity assumed
enormous proportions. It had always been with him, but steady work had
held it, to a great extent, at bay. Daniel was a moral coward before
physical conditions. He was as one who suffers, not so much from agony
of the flesh as from agony of the mind induced thereby. Daniel was a
coward before one of the simplest, most inevitable happenings of earthly
life. He was a coward before summer heat. All winter he dreaded summer.
Summer poisoned the spring for him. Only during the autumn did he
experience anything of peace. Summer was then over, and between him and
another summer stretched the blessed perspective of winter. Then Daniel
Wise drew a long breath and looked about him, and spelled out the beauty
of the earth in his simple primer of understanding. Daniel had in his
garden behind the house a prolific grape-vine. He ate the grapes, full
of the savor of the dead summer, with the gusto of a poet who can at
last enjoy triumph over his enemy.

Possibly it was the vein of poetry in Daniel which made him a
coward--which made him so vulnerable. During the autumn he reveled in
the tints of the landscape which his sitting-room windows commanded.
There were many maples and oaks. Day by day the roofs of the houses in
the village became more evident, as the maples shed their crimson and
gold and purple rags of summer. The oaks remained, great shaggy masses
of dark gold and burning russet; later they took on soft hues, making
clearer the blue firmament between the boughs. Daniel watched the autumn
trees with pure delight. “He will go to-day,” he said of a flaming maple
after a night of frost which had crisped the white arches of the grass
in his dooryard. All day he sat and watched the maple cast its glory,
and did not bother much with his simple meals. The Wise house was
erected on three terraces. Always through the dry summer the grass was
burned to an ugly negation of color. Later, when rain came, the grass
was a brilliant green, patched with rosy sorrel and golden stars of
arnica. Then later still came the diamond brilliance of the frost. So
dry were the terraces in summer-time that no flowers would flourish.
When Daniel's mother had come to the house as a bride she had planted
under a window a blush-rose bush, but always the blush-roses were few
and covered with insects. It was not until the autumn, when it was time
for the flowers to die, that the sorrel blessing of waste lands flushed
rosily and the arnica showed its stars of slender threads of gold, and
there might even be a slight glimpse of purple aster and a dusty spray
or two of goldenrod. Then Daniel did not shrink from the sight of the
terraces. In summer-time the awful negative glare of them under the
afternoon sun maddened him.

In winter he often visited his brother John in the village. He was very
fond of John, and John's wife, and their only daughter, Dora. When John
died, and later his wife, he would have gone to live with Dora, but
she married. Then her husband also died, and Dora took up dressmaking,
supporting herself and her delicate little girl-baby. Daniel adored this
child. She had been named for him, although her mother had been aghast
before the proposition. “Name a girl Daniel, uncle!” she had cried.

“She is going to have what I own after I have done with it, anyway,”
 declared Daniel, gazing with awe and rapture at the tiny flannel bundle
in his niece's arms. “That won't make any difference, but I do wish you
could make up your mind to call her after me, Dora.”

Dora Lee was soft-hearted. She named her girl-baby Daniel, and called
her Danny, which was not, after all, so bad, and her old uncle loved the
child as if she had been his own. Little Daniel--he always called her
Daniel, or, rather, “Dan'l”--was the only reason for his descending into
the village on summer days when the weather was hot. Daniel, when he
visited the village in summer-time, wore always a green leaf inside his
hat and carried an umbrella and a palm-leaf fan. This caused the village
boys to shout, “Hullo, grandma!” after him. Daniel, being a little hard
of hearing, was oblivious, but he would have been in any case. His
whole mind was concentrated in getting along that dusty glare of street,
stopping at the store for a paper bag of candy, and finally ending in
Dora's little dark parlor, holding his beloved namesake on his knee,
watching her blissfully suck a barley stick while he waved his palmleaf
fan. Dora would be fitting gowns in the next room. He would hear the
hum of feminine chatter over strictly feminine topics. He felt very much
aloof, even while holding the little girl on his knee. Daniel had never
married--had never even h ad a sweetheart. The marriageable women he
had seen had not been of the type to attract a dreamer like Daniel Wise.
Many of those women thought him “a little off.”

Dora Lee, his niece, privately wondered if her uncle had his full
allotment of understanding. He seemed much more at home with her little
daughter than with herself, and Dora considered herself a very good
business woman, with possibly an unusual endowment of common sense. She
was such a good business woman that when she died suddenly she left her
child with quite a sum in the bank, besides the house. Daniel did not
hesitate for a moment. He engaged Miss Sarah Dean for a housekeeper, and
took the little girl (hardly more than a baby) to his own home. Dora
had left a will, in which she appointed Daniel guardian in spite of her
doubt concerning his measure of understanding. There was much comment in
the village when Daniel took his little namesake to live in his lonely
house on the terrace. “A man and an old maid to bring up that poor
child!” they said. But Daniel called Dr. Trumbull to his support. “It
is much better for that delicate child to be out of this village, which
drains the south hill,” Dr. Trumbull declared. “That child needs pure
air. It is hot enough in summer all around here, and hot enough at
Daniel's, but the air is pure there.”

There was no gossip about Daniel and Miss Sarah Dean. Gossip would have
seemed about as foolish concerning him and a dry blade of field-grass.
Sarah Dean looked like that. She wore rusty black gowns, and her
gray-blond hair was swept curtainwise over her ears on either side
of her very thin, mildly severe wedge of a face. Sarah was a notable
housekeeper and a good cook. She could make an endless variety of cakes
and puddings and pies, and her biscuits were marvels. Daniel had long
catered for himself, and a rasher of bacon, with an egg, suited him much
better for supper than hot biscuits, preserves, and five kinds of cake.
Still, he did not complain, and did not understand that Sarah's fare was
not suitable for the child, until Dr. Trumbull told him so.

“Don't you let that child live on that kind of food if you want her to
live at all,” said Dr. Trumbull. “Lord! what are the women made of, and
the men they feed, for that matter? Why, Daniel, there are many people
in this place, and hard-working people, too, who eat a quantity of food,
yet don't get enough nourishment for a litter of kittens.”

“What shall I do?” asked Daniel in a puzzled way.

“Do? You can cook a beefsteak yourself, can't you? Sarah Dean would fry
one as hard as soleleather.”

“Yes, I can cook a beefsteak real nice,” said Daniel.

“Do it, then; and cook some chops, too, and plenty of eggs.”

“I don't exactly hanker after quite so much sweet stuff,” said Daniel.
“I wonder if Sarah's feelings will be hurt.”

“It is much better for feelings to be hurt than stomachs,” declared Dr.
Trumbull, “but Sarah's feelings will not be hurt. I know her. She is
a wiry woman. Give her a knock and she springs back into place. Don't
worry about her, Daniel.”

When Daniel went home that night he carried a juicy steak, and he cooked
it, and he and little Dan'l had a square meal. Sarah refused the steak
with a slight air of hauteur, but she behaved very well. When she
set away her untasted layer-cakes and pies and cookies, she eyed them
somewhat anxiously. Her standard of values seemed toppling before her
mental vision. “They will starve to death if they live on such victuals
as beefsteak, instead of good nourishing hot biscuits and cake,” she
thought. After the supper dishes were cleared away she went into the
sitting-room where Daniel Wise sat beside a window, waiting in a sort of
stern patience for a whiff of air. It was a very close evening. The sun
was red in the low west, but a heaving sea of mist was rising over the
lowlands.

Sarah sat down opposite Daniel. “Close, ain't it?” said she. She began
knitting her lace edging.

“Pretty close,” replied Daniel. He spoke with an effect of forced
politeness. Although he had such a horror of extreme heat, he was always
chary of boldly expressing his mind concerning it, for he had a feeling
that he might be guilty of blasphemy, since he regarded the weather as
being due to an Almighty mandate. Therefore, although he suffered, he
was extremely polite.

“It is awful up-stairs in little Dan'l's room,” said Sarah. “I have got
all the windows open except the one that's right on the bed, and I told
her she needn't keep more than the sheet and one comfortable over her.”

Daniel looked anxious. “Children ain't ever overcome when they are in
bed, in the house, are they?”

“Land, no! I never heard of such a thing. And, anyway, little Dan'l's so
thin it ain't likely she feels the heat as much as some.”

“I hope she don't.”

Daniel continued to sit hunched up on himself, gazing with a sort of
mournful irritation out of the window upon the landscape over which the
misty shadows vaguely wavered.

Sarah knitted. She could knit in the dark. After a while she rose and
said she guessed she would go to bed, as to-morrow was her sweeping-day.

Sarah went, and Daniel sat alone.

Presently a little pale figure stole to him through the dusk--the child,
in her straight white nightgown, padding softly on tiny naked feet.

“Is that you, Dan'l?”

“Yes, Uncle Dan'l.”

“Is it too hot to sleep up in your room?”

“I didn't feel so very hot, Uncle Dan'l, but skeeters were biting me,
and a great big black thing just flew in my window!”

“A bat, most likely.”

“A bat!” Little Dan'l shuddered. She began a little stifled wail. “I'm
afeard of bats,” she lamented.

Daniel gathered the tiny creature up. “You can jest set here with Uncle
Dan'l,” said he. “It is jest a little cooler here, I guess. Once in a
while there comes a little whiff of wind.”

“Won't any bats come?”

“Lord, no! Your Uncle Dan'l won't let any bats come within a gun-shot.”

The little creature settled down contentedly in the old man's lap. Her
fair, thin locks fell over his shirt-sleeved arm, her upturned profile
was sweetly pure and clear even in the dusk. She was so delicately small
that he might have been holding a fairy, from the slight roundness of
the childish limbs and figure. Poor little girl!--Dan'l was much too
small and thin. Old man Daniel gazed down at her anxiously.

“Jest as soon as the nice fall weather comes,” said he, “uncle is going
to take you down to the village real often, and you can get acquainted
with some other nice little girls and play with them, and that will do
uncle's little Dan'l good.”

“I saw little Lucy Rose,” piped the child, “and she looked at me real
pleasant, and Lily Jennings wore a pretty dress. Would they play with
me, uncle?”

“Of course they would. You don't feel quite so hot, here, do you?”

“I wasn't so hot, anyway; I was afeard of bats.”

“There ain't any bats here.”

“And skeeters.”

“Uncle don't believe there's any skeeters, neither.”

“I don't hear any sing,” agreed little Dan'l in a weak voice. Very soon
she was fast asleep. The old man sat holding her, and loving her with
a simple crystalline intensity which was fairly heavenly. He himself
almost disregarded the heat, being raised above it by sheer exaltation
of spirit. All the love which had lain latent in his heart leaped
to life before the helplessness of this little child in his arms. He
realized himself as much greater and of more importance upon the face
of the earth than he had ever been before. He became paternity incarnate
and superblessed. It was a long time before he carried the little child
back to her room and laid her, still as inert with sleep as a lily,
upon her bed. He bent over her with a curious waving motion of his old
shoulders as if they bore wings of love and protection; then he crept
back down-stairs.

On nights like that he did not go to bed. All the bedrooms were under
the slant of the roof and were hot. He preferred to sit until dawn
beside his open window, and doze when he could, and wait with despairing
patience for the infrequent puffs of cool air breathing blessedly of wet
swamp places, which, even when the burning sun arose, would only show
dewy eyes of cool reflection. Daniel Wise, as he sat there through the
sultry night, even prayed for courage, as a devout sentinel might have
prayed at his post. The imagination of the deserter was not in the man.
He never even dreamed of appropriating to his own needs any portion
of his savings, and going for a brief respite to the deep shadows of
mountainous places, or to a cool coast, where the great waves broke in
foam upon the sand, breathing out the mighty saving breath of the sea.
It never occurred to him that he could do anything but remain at his
post and suffer in body and soul and mind, and not complain.

The next morning was terrible. The summer had been one of unusually
fervid heat, but that one day was its climax. David went panting
up-stairs to his room at dawn. He did not wish Sarah Dean to know that
he had sat up all night. He opened his bed, tidily, as was his wont.
Through living alone he had acquired many of the habits of an orderly
housewife. He went down-stairs, and Sarah was in the kitchen.

“It is a dreadful hot day,” said she as Daniel approached the sink to
wash his face and hands.

“It does seem a little warm,” admitted Daniel, with his studied air of
politeness with respect to the weather as an ordinance of God.

“Warm!” echoed Sarah Dean. Her thin face blazed a scarlet wedge between
the sleek curtains of her dank hair; perspiration stood on her triangle
of forehead. “It is the hottest day I ever knew!” she said, defiantly,
and there was open rebellion in her tone.

“It IS sort of warmish, I rather guess,” said Daniel.

After breakfast, old Daniel announced his intention of taking little
Dan'l out for a walk.

At that Sarah Dean fairly exploded. “Be you gone clean daft, Dan'l?”
 said she. “Don't you know that it actually ain't safe to take out such a
delicate little thing as that on such a day?”

“Dr. Trumbull said to take her outdoors for a walk every day, rain or
shine,” returned Daniel, obstinately.

“But Dr. Trumbull didn't say to take her out if it rained fire and
brimstone, I suppose,” said Sarah Dean, viciously.

Daniel looked at her with mild astonishment.

“It is as much as that child's life is worth to take her out such a day
as this,” declared Sarah, viciously.

“Dr. Trumbull said to take no account of the weather,” said Daniel with
stubborn patience, “and we will walk on the shady side of the road, and
go to Bradley's Brook. It's always a little cool there.”

“If she faints away before you get there, you bring her right home,”
 said Sarah. She was almost ferocious. “Just because YOU don't feel the
heat, to take out that little pindlin' girl such a day!” she exclaimed.

“Dr. Trumbull said to,” persisted Daniel, although he looked a little
troubled. Sarah Dean did not dream that, for himself, Daniel Wise would
have preferred facing an army with banners to going out under that
terrible fusillade of sun-rays. She did not dream of the actual heroism
which actuated him when he set out with little Dan'l, holding his big
umbrella over her little sunbonneted head and waving in his other hand a
palm-leaf fan.

Little Dan'l danced with glee as she went out of the yard. The small,
anemic creature did not feel the heat except as a stimulant. Daniel had
to keep charging her to walk slowly. “Don't go so fast, little Dan'l,
or you'll get overhet, and then what will Mis' Dean say?” he continually
repeated.

Little Dan'l's thin, pretty face peeped up at him from between the sides
of her green sunbonnet. She pointed one dainty finger at a cloud of pale
yellow butterflies in the field beside which they were walking. “Want to
chase flutterbies,” she chirped. Little Dan'l had a fascinating way of
misplacing her consonants in long words.

“No; you'll get overhet. You just walk along slow with Uncle Dan'l, and
pretty soon we'll come to the pretty brook,” said Daniel.

“Where the lagon-dries live?” asked little Dan'l, meaning dragon-flies.

“Yes,” said Daniel. He was conscious, as he spoke, of increasing waves
of thready black floating before his eyes. They had floated since dawn,
but now they were increasing. Some of the time he could hardly see the
narrow sidewalk path between the dusty meadowsweet and hardhack bushes,
since those floating black threads wove together into a veritable veil
before him. At such times he walked unsteadily, and little Dan'l eyed
him curiously.

“Why don't you walk the way you always do?” she queried.

“Uncle Dan'l can't see jest straight, somehow,” replied the old man;
“guess it's because it's rather warm.”

It was in truth a day of terror because of the heat. It was one of
those days which break records, which live in men's memories as great
catastrophes, which furnish head-lines for newspapers, and are alluded
to with shudders at past sufferings. It was one of those days which seem
to forecast the Dreadful Day of Revelation wherein no shelter may be
found from the judgment of the fiery firmament. On that day men fell in
their tracks and died, or were rushed to hospitals to be succored as by
a miracle. And on that day the poor old man who had all his life feared
and dreaded the heat as the most loathly happening of earth, walked
afield for love of the little child. As Daniel went on the heat seemed
to become palpable--something which could actually be seen. There was
now a thin, gaseous horror over the blazing sky, which did not temper
the heat, but increased it, giving it the added torment of steam. The
clogging moisture seemed to brood over the accursed earth, like some
foul bird with deadly menace in wings and beak.

Daniel walked more and more unsteadily. Once he might have fallen had
not the child thrown one little arm around a bending knee. “You 'most
tumbled down. Uncle Dan'l,” said she. Her little voice had a surprised
and frightened note in it.

“Don't you be scared,” gasped Daniel; “we have got 'most to the brook;
then we'll be all right. Don't you be scared, and--you walk real slow
and not get overhet.”

The brook was near, and it was time. Daniel staggered under the trees
beside which the little stream trickled over its bed of stones. It was
not much of a brook at best, and the drought had caused it to lose
much of its life. However, it was still there, and there were delicious
little hollows of coolness between the stones over which it flowed, and
large trees stood about with their feet rooted in the blessed damp. Then
Daniel sank down. He tried to reach a hand to the water, but could not.
The black veil had woven a compact mass before his eyes. There was a
terrible throbbing in his head, but his arms were numb.

Little Dan'l stood looking at him, and her lip quivered. With a mighty
effort Daniel cleared away the veil and saw the piteous baby face.
“Take--Uncle Dan'l's hat and--fetch him--some water,” he gasped. “Don't
go too--close and--tumble in.”

The child obeyed. Daniel tried to take the dripping hat, but failed.
Little Dan'l was wise enough to pour the water over the old man's head,
but she commenced to weep, the pitiful, despairing wail of a child who
sees failing that upon which she has leaned for support.

Daniel rallied again. The water on his head gave him momentary relief,
but more than anything else his love for the child nerved him to effort.

“Listen, little Dan'l,” he said, and his voice sounded in his own
ears like a small voice of a soul thousands of miles away. “You take
the--umbrella, and--you take the fan, and you go real slow, so you don't
get overhet, and you tell Mis' Dean, and--”

Then old Daniel's tremendous nerve, that he had summoned for the sake of
love, failed him, and he sank back. He was quite unconscious--his face,
staring blindly up at the terrible sky between the trees, was to little
Dan'l like the face of a stranger. She gave one cry, more like the
yelp of a trodden animal than a child's voice. Then she took the open
umbrella and sped away. The umbrella bobbed wildly--nothing could be
seen of poor little Dan'l but her small, speeding feet. She wailed
loudly all the way.

She was half-way home when, plodding along in a cloud of brown dust, a
horse appeared in the road. The horse wore a straw bonnet and advanced
very slowly. He drew a buggy, and in the buggy were Dr. Trumbull and
Johnny, his son. He had called at Daniel's to see the little girl, and,
on being told that they had gone to walk, had said something under his
breath and turned his horse's head down the road.

“When we meet them, you must get out, Johnny,” he said, “and I will take
in that poor old man and that baby. I wish I could put common sense in
every bottle of medicine. A day like this!”

Dr. Trumbull exclaimed when he saw the great bobbing black umbrella and
heard the wails. The straw-bonneted horse stopped abruptly. Dr. Trumbull
leaned out of the buggy. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“Uncle Dan'l is gone,” shrieked the child.

“Gone where? What do you mean?”

“He--tumbled right down, and then he was-somebody else. He ain't there.”

“Where is 'there'? Speak up quick!”

“The brook--Uncle Dan'l went away at the brook.”

Dr. Trumbull acted swiftly. He gave Johnny a push. “Get out,” he said.
“Take that baby into Jim Mann's house there, and tell Mrs. Mann to keep
her in the shade and look out for her, and you tell Jim, if he hasn't
got his horse in his farm-wagon, to look lively and harness her in and
put all the ice they've got in the house in the wagon. Hurry!”

Johnny was over the wheel before his father had finished speaking, and
Jim Mann just then drew up alongside in his farm-wagon.

“What's to pay?” he inquired, breathless. He was a thin, sinewy man,
scantily clad in cotton trousers and a shirt wide open at the breast.
Green leaves protruded from under the brim of his tilted straw hat.

“Old Daniel Wise is overcome by the heat,” answered Dr. Trumbull. “Put
all the ice you have in the house in your wagon, and come along. I'll
leave my horse and buggy here. Your horse is faster.”

Presently the farm-wagon clattered down the road, dust-hidden behind a
galloping horse. Mrs. Jim Mann, who was a loving mother of children,
was soothing little Dan'l. Johnny Trumbull watched at the gate. When the
wagon returned he ran out and hung on behind, while the strong, ungainly
farm-horse galloped to the house set high on the sun-baked terraces.

When old Daniel revived he found himself in the best parlor, with ice
all about him. Thunder was rolling overhead and hail clattered on the
windows. A sudden storm, the heat-breaker, had come up and the dreadful
day was vanquished. Daniel looked up and smiled a vague smile of
astonishment at Dr. Trumbull and Sarah Dean; then his eyes wandered
anxiously about.

“The child is all right,” said Dr. Trumbull; “don't you worry, Daniel.
Mrs. Jim Mann is taking care of her. Don't you try to talk. You didn't
exactly have a sunstroke, but the heat was too much for you.”

But Daniel spoke, in spite of the doctor's mandate. “The heat,” said
he, in a curiously clear voice, “ain't never goin' to be too much for me
again.”

“Don't you talk, Daniel,” repeated Dr. Trumbull. “You've always been
nervous about the heat. Maybe you won't be again, but keep still. When
I told you to take that child out every day I didn't mean when the world
was like Sodom and Gomorrah. Thank God, it will be cooler now.”

Sarah Dean stood beside the doctor. She looked pale and severe, but
adequate. She did not even state that she had urged old Daniel not to go
out. There was true character in Sarah Dean.

The weather that summer was an unexpected quantity. Instead of the day
after the storm being cool, it was hot. However, old Daniel, after
his recovery, insisted on going out of doors with little Dan'l after
breakfast. The only concession which he would make to Sarah Dean, who
was fairly frantic with anxiety, was that he would merely go down the
road as far as the big elm-tree, that he would sit down there, and let
the child play about within sight.

“You'll be brought home agin, sure as preachin',” said Sarah Dean, “and
if you're brought home ag'in, you won't get up ag'in.”

Old Daniel laughed. “Now don't you worry, Sarah,” said he. “I'll set
down under that big ellum and keep cool.”

Old Daniel, at Sarah's earnest entreaties, took a palm-leaf fan. But he
did not use it. He sat peacefully under the cool trail of the great elm
all the forenoon, while little Dan'l played with her doll. The child was
rather languid after her shock of the day before, and not disposed to
run about. Also, she had a great sense of responsibility about the old
man. Sarah Dean had privately charged her not to let Uncle Daniel get
“overhet.” She continually glanced up at him with loving, anxious, baby
eyes.

“Be you overhet. Uncle Dan'l?” she would ask.

“No, little Dan'l, uncle ain't a mite overhet,” the old man would assure
her. Now and then little Dan'l left her doll, climbed into the old man's
lap, and waved the palm-leaf fan before his face.

Old Daniel Wise loved her so that he seemed, to himself, fairly alight
with happiness. He made up his mind that he would find some little girl
in the village to come now and then and play with little Dan'l. In the
cool of that evening he stole out of the back door, covertly, lest
Sarah Dean discover him, and walked slowly to the rector's house in the
village. The rector's wife was sitting on her cool, vine-shaded veranda.
She was alone, and Daniel was glad. He asked her if the little girl
who had come to live with her, Content Adams, could not come the next
afternoon and see little Dan'l. “Little Dan'l had ought to see other
children once in a while, and Sarah Dean makes real nice cookies,” he
stated, pleadingly.

Sally Patterson laughed good-naturedly. “Of course she can, Mr. Wise,”
 she said.

The next afternoon Sally herself drove the rector's horse, and brought
Content to pay a call on little Dan'l. Sally and Sarah Dean visited in
the sitting-room, and left the little girls alone in the parlor with
a plate of cookies, to get acquainted. They sat in solemn silence and
stared at each other. Neither spoke. Neither ate a cooky. When Sally
took her leave, she asked little Dan'l if she had had a nice time with
Content, and little Dan'l said, “Yes, ma'am.”

Sarah insisted upon Content's carrying the cookies home in the dish with
a napkin over it.

“When can I go again to see that other little girl?” asked Content as
she and Sally were jogging home.

“Oh, almost any time. I will drive you over-because it is rather a
lonesome walk for you. Did you like the little girl? She is younger than
you.”

“Yes'm.”

Also little Dan'l inquired of old Daniel when the other little girl was
coming again, and nodded emphatically when asked if she had had a nice
time. Evidently both had enjoyed, after the inscrutable fashion of
childhood, their silent session with each other. Content came generally
once a week, and old Daniel was invited to take little Dan'l to the
rector's. On that occasion Lucy Rose was present, and Lily Jennings. The
four little girls had tea together at a little table set on the porch,
and only Lily Jennings talked. The rector drove old Daniel and the child
home, and after they had arrived the child's tongue was loosened and she
chattered. She had seen everything there was to be seen at the rector's.
She told of it in her little silver pipe of a voice. She had to be
checked and put to bed, lest she be tired out.

“I never knew that child could talk so much,” Sarah said to Daniel,
after the little girl had gone up-stairs.

“She talks quite some when she's alone with me.”

“And she seems to see everything.”

“Ain't much that child don't see,” said Daniel, proudly.

The summer continued unusually hot, but Daniel never again succumbed.
When autumn came, for the first time in his old life old Daniel Wise was
sorrowful. He dreaded the effect of the frost and the winter upon his
precious little Dan'l, whom he put before himself as fondly as any
father could have done, and as the season progressed his dread seemed
justified. Poor little Dan'l had cold after cold. Content Adams and Lucy
Rose came to see her. The rector's wife and the doctor's sent dainties.
But the child coughed and pined, and old Daniel began to look forward
to spring and summer--the seasons which had been his bugaboos through
life--as if they were angels. When the February thaw came, he told
little Dan'l, “Jest look at the snow meltin' and the drops hangin' on
the trees; that is a sign of summer.”

Old Daniel watched for the first green light along the fences and the
meadow hollows. When the trees began to cast slightly blurred shadows,
because of budding leaves, and the robins hopped over the terraces,
and now and then the air was cleft with blue wings, he became jubilant.
“Spring is jest about here, and then uncle's little Dan'l will stop
coughin', and run out of doors and pick flowers,” he told the child
beside the window.

Spring came that year with a riotous rush. Blossoms, leaves, birds,
and flowers--all arrived pellmell, fairly smothering the world with
sweetness and music. In May, about the first of the month, there was an
intensely hot day. It was as hot as midsummer. Old Daniel with
little Dan'l went afield. It was, to both, as if they fairly saw the
carnival-arrival of flowers, of green garlands upon treebranches, of
birds and butterflies. “Spring is right here!” said old Daniel. “Summer
is right here! Pick them vilets in that holler, little Dan'l.” The
old man sat on a stone in the meadowland, and watched the child in the
blue-gleaming hollow gather up violets in her little hands as if
they were jewels. The sun beat upon his head, the air was heavy with
fragrance, laden with moisture. Old Daniel wiped his forehead. He was
heated, but so happy that he was not aware of it. He saw wonderful new
lights over everything. He had wielded love, the one invincible weapon
of the whole earth, and had conquered his intangible and dreadful enemy.
When, for the sake of that little beloved life, his own life had become
as nothing, old Daniel found himself superior to it. He sat there in the
tumultuous heat of the May day, watching the child picking violets and
gathering strength with every breath of the young air of the year, and
he realized that the fear of his whole life was overcome for ever.
He realized that never again, though they might bring suffering, even
death, would he dread the summers with their torrid winds and their
burning lights, since, through love, he had become under-lord of all the
conditions of his life upon earth.




BIG SISTER SOLLY

IT did seem strange that Sally Patterson, who, according to her own
self-estimation, was the least adapted of any woman in the village,
should have been the one chosen by a theoretically selective providence
to deal with a psychological problem.

It was conceded that little Content Adams was a psychological problem.
She was the orphan child of very distant relatives of the rector.
When her parents died she had been cared for by a widowed aunt on her
mother's side, and this aunt had also borne the reputation of being a
creature apart. When the aunt died, in a small village in the indefinite
“Out West,” the presiding clergyman had notified Edward Patterson of
little Content's lonely and helpless estate. The aunt had subsisted
upon an annuity which had died with her. The child had inherited nothing
except personal property. The aunt's house had been bequeathed to the
church over which the clergyman presided, and after her aunt's death he
took her to his own home until she could be sent to her relatives, and
he and his wife were exceedingly punctilious about every jot and tittle
of the aunt's personal belongings. They even purchased two extra trunks
for them, which they charged to the rector.

Little Content, traveling in the care of a lady who had known her aunt
and happened to be coming East, had six large trunks, besides a hat-box
and two suit-cases and a nailed-up wooden box containing odds and ends.
Content made quite a sensation when she arrived and her baggage was
piled on the station platform.

Poor Sally Patterson unpacked little Content's trunks. She had sent the
little girl to school within a few days after her arrival. Lily Jennings
and Amelia Wheeler called for her, and aided her down the street between
them, arms interlocked. Content, although Sally had done her best with a
pretty ready-made dress and a new hat, was undeniably a peculiar-looking
child. In the first place, she had an expression so old that it was
fairly uncanny.

“That child has downward curves beside her mouth already, and lines
between her eyes, and what she will look like a few years hence is
beyond me,” Sally told her husband after she had seen the little girl go
out of sight between Lily's curls and ruffles and ribbons and Amelia's
smooth skirts.

“She doesn't look like a happy child,” agreed the rector. “Poor little
thing! Her aunt Eudora must have been a queer woman to train a child.”

“She is certainly trained,” said Sally, ruefully; “too much so. Content
acts as if she were afraid to move or speak or even breathe unless
somebody signals permission. I pity her.”

She was in the storeroom, in the midst of Content's baggage. The rector
sat on an old chair, smoking. He had a conviction that it behooved him
as a man to stand by his wife during what might prove an ordeal. He
had known Content's deceased aunt years before. He had also known the
clergyman who had taken charge of her personal property and sent it on
with Content.

“Be prepared for finding almost anything. Sally,” he observed. “Mr.
Zenock Shanksbury, as I remember him, was so conscientious that it
amounted to mania. I am sure he has sent simply unspeakable things
rather than incur the reproach of that conscience of his with regard to
defrauding Content of one jot or tittle of that personal property.”

Sally shook out a long, black silk dress, with jet dangling here and
there. “Now here is this dress,” said she. “I suppose I really must keep
this, but when that child is grown up the silk will probably be cracked
and entirely worthless.”

“You had better take the two trunks and pack them with such things, and
take your chances.”

“Oh, I suppose so. I suppose I must take chances with everything except
furs and wools, which will collect moths. Oh, goodness!” Sally held up
an old-fashioned fitch fur tippet. Little vague winged things came from
it like dust. “Moths!” said she, tragically. “Moths now. It is full
of them. Edward, you need not tell me that clergyman's wife was
conscientious. No conscientious woman would have sent an old fur tippet
all eaten with moths into another woman's house. She could not.”

Sally took flying leaps across the storeroom. She flung open the window
and tossed out the mangy tippet. “This is simply awful!” she declared,
as she returned. “Edward, don't you think we are justified in having
Thomas take all these things out in the back yard and making a bonfire
of the whole lot?”

“No, my dear.”

“But, Edward, nobody can tell what will come next. If Content's aunt had
died of a contagious disease, nothing could induce me to touch another
thing.”

“Well, dear, you know that she died from the shock of a carriage
accident, because she had a weak heart.”

“I know it, and of course there is nothing contagious about that.” Sally
took up an ancient bandbox and opened it. She displayed its contents: a
very frivolous bonnet dating back in style a halfcentury, gay with
roses and lace and green strings, and another with a heavy crape veil
dependent.

“You certainly do not advise me to keep these?” asked Sally,
despondently.

Edward Patterson looked puzzled. “Use your own judgment,” he said,
finally.

Sally summarily marched across the room and flung the gay bonnet and the
mournful one out of the window. Then she took out a bundle of very old
underwear which had turned a saffron yellow with age. “People are always
coming to me for old linen in case of burns,” she said, succinctly.
“After these are washed I can supply an auto da fe.”

Poor Sally worked all that day and several days afterward. The rector
deserted her, and she relied upon her own good sense in the disposition
of little Content's legacy. When all was over she told her husband.

“Well, Edward,” said she, “there is exactly one trunk half full of
things which the child may live to use, but it is highly improbable. We
have had six bonfires, and I have given away three suits of old clothes
to Thomas's father. The clothes were very large.”

“Must have belonged to Eudora's first husband. He was a stout man,” said
Edward.

“And I have given two small suits of men's clothes to the Aid Society
for the next out-West barrel.”

“Eudora's second husband's.”

“And I gave the washerwoman enough old baking-dishes to last her
lifetime, and some cracked dishes. Most of the dishes were broken, but a
few were only cracked; and I have given Silas Thomas's wife ten old wool
dresses and a shawl and three old cloaks. All the other things which did
not go into the bonfires went to the Aid Society. They will go back
out West.” Sally laughed, a girlish peal, and her husband joined. But
suddenly her smooth forehead contracted. “Edward,” said she.

“Well, dear?”

“I am terribly puzzled about one thing.” The two were sitting in the
study. Content had gone to bed. Nobody could hear easily, but Sally
Patterson lowered her voice, and her honest, clear blue eyes had a
frightened expression.

“What is it, dear?”

“You will think me very silly and cowardly, and I think I have never
been cowardly, but this is really very strange. Come with me. I am such
a goose, I don't dare go alone to that storeroom.”

The rector rose. Sally switched on the lights as they went up-stairs to
the storeroom.

“Tread very softly,” she whispered. “Content is probably asleep.”

The two tiptoed up the stairs and entered the storeroom. Sally
approached one of the two new trunks which had come with Content from
out West. She opened it. She took out a parcel nicely folded in a large
towel.

“See here, Edward Patterson.”

The rector stared as Sally shook out a dress-a gay, up-to-date dress, a
young girl's dress, a very tall young girl's, for the skirts trailed on
the floor as Sally held it as high as she could. It was made of a fine
white muslin. There was white lace on the bodice, and there were knots
of blue ribbon scattered over the whole, knots of blue ribbon confining
tiny bunches of rosebuds and daisies. These knots of blue ribbon and the
little flowers made it undeniably a young girl's costume. Even in the
days of all ages wearing the costumes of all ages, an older woman
would have been abashed before those exceedingly youthful knots of blue
ribbons and flowers.

The rector looked approvingly at it. “That is very pretty, it seems to
me,” he said. “That must be worth keeping, Sally.”

“Worth keeping! Well, Edward Patterson, just wait. You are a man, and
of course you cannot understand how very strange it is about the dress.”
 The rector looked inquiringly.

“I want to know,” said Sally, “if Content's aunt Eudora had any young
relative besides Content. I mean had she a grown-up young girl relative
who would wear a dress like this?”

“I don't know of anybody. There might have been some relative of
Eudora's first husband. No, he was an only child. I don't think it
possible that Eudora had any young girl relative.”

“If she had,” said Sally, firmly, “she would have kept this dress. You
are sure there was nobody else living with Content's aunt at the time
she died?”

“Nobody except the servants, and they were an old man and his wife.”

“Then whose dress was this?”

“I don't know, Sally.”

“You don't know, and I don't. It is very strange.”

“I suppose,” said Edward Patterson, helpless before the feminine
problem, “that--Eudora got it in some way.”

“In some way,” repeated Sally. “That is always a man's way out of a
mystery when there is a mystery. There is a mystery. There is a mystery
which worries me. I have not told you all yet, Edward.”

“What more is there, dear?”

“I--asked Content whose dress this was, and she said--Oh, Edward, I do
so despise mysteries.”

“What did she say, Sally?”

“She said it was her big sister Solly's dress.”

“Her what?”

“Her big sister Solly's dress. Edward, has Content ever had a sister?
Has she a sister now?”

“No, she never had a sister, and she has none now,” declared the rector,
emphatically. “I knew all her family. What in the world ails the child?”

“She said her big sister Solly, Edward, and the very name is so inane.
If she hasn't any big sister Solly, what are we going to do?”

“Why, the child must simply lie,” said the rector.

“But, Edward, I don't think she knows she lies. You may laugh, but I
think she is quite sure that she has a big sister Solly, and that this
is her dress. I have not told you the whole. After she came home from
school to-day she went up to her room, and she left the door open, and
pretty soon I heard her talking. At first I thought perhaps Lily or
Amelia was up there, although I had not seen either of them come in
with Content. Then after a while, when I had occasion to go up-stairs,
I looked in her room, and she was quite alone, although I had heard her
talking as I went up-stairs. Then I said: 'Content, I thought somebody
was in your room. I heard you talking.'

“And she said, looking right into my eyes: 'Yes, ma'am, I was talking.'

“'But there is nobody here,' I said.

“'Yes, ma'am,' she said. 'There isn't anybody here now, but my big
sister Solly was here, and she is gone. You heard me talking to my big
sister Solly.' I felt faint, Edward, and you know it takes a good deal
to overcome me. I just sat down in Content's wicker rocking-chair. I
looked at her and she looked at me. Her eyes were just as clear and
blue, and her forehead looked like truth itself. She is not exactly a
pretty child, and she has a peculiar appearance, but she does certainly
look truthful and good, and she looked so then. She had tried to fluff
her hair over her forehead a little as I had told her, and not pull it
back so tight, and she wore her new dress, and her face and hands were
as clean, and she stood straight. You know she is a little inclined to
stoop, and I have talked to her about it. She stood straight, and looked
at me with those blue eyes, and I did feel fairly dizzy.”

“What did you say?”

“Well, after a bit I pulled myself together and I said: 'My dear little
girl, what is this? What do you mean about your big sister Sarah?'
Edward, I could not bring myself to say that idiotic Solly. In fact, I
did think I must be mistaken and had not heard correctly. But Content
just looked at me as if she thought me very stupid. 'Solly,' said she.
'My sister's name is Solly.'

“'But, my dear,' I said, 'I understand that you had no sister.'

“'Yes,' said she, 'I have my big sister Solly.'

“'But where has she been all the time?' said I.

“Then Content looked at me and smiled, and it was quite a wonderful
smile, Edward. She smiled as if she knew so much more than I could ever
know, and quite pitied me.”

“She did not answer your question?”

“No, only by that smile which seemed to tell whole volumes about that
awful Solly's whereabouts, only I was too ignorant to read them.

“'Where is she now, dear?' I said, after a little.

“'She is gone now,' said Content.

“'Gone where?' said I.

“And then the child smiled at me again. Edward, what are we going to do?
Is she untruthful, or has she too much imagination? I have heard of such
a thing as too much imagination, and children telling lies which were
not really lies.”

“So have I,” agreed the rector, dryly, “but I never believed in it.” The
rector started to leave the room.

“What are you going to do?” inquired Sally.

“I am going to endeavor to discriminate between lies and imagination,”
 replied the rector.

Sally plucked at his coat-sleeve as they went down-stairs. “My dear,”
 she whispered, “I think she is asleep.”

“She will have to wake up.”

“But, my dear, she may be nervous. Would it not be better to wait until
to-morrow?”

“I think not,” said Edward Patterson. Usually an easy-going man, when
he was aroused he was determined to extremes. Into Content's room
he marched, Sally following. Neither of them saw their small son
Jim peeking around his door. He had heard--he could not help it--the
conversation earlier in the day between Content and his mother. He had
also heard other things. He now felt entirely justified in listening,
although he had a good code of honor. He considered himself in a way
responsible, knowing what he knew, for the peace of mind of his parents.
Therefore he listened, peeking around the doorway of his dark room.

The electric light flashed out from Content's room, and the little
interior was revealed. It was charmingly pretty. Sally had done her best
to make this not altogether welcome little stranger's room attractive.
There were garlands of rosebuds swung from the top of the white
satin-papered walls. There were dainty toilet things, a little
dressing-table decked with ivory, a case of books, chairs cushioned with
rosebud chintz, windows curtained with the same.

In the little white bed, with a rose-sprinkled coverlid over her, lay
Content. She was not asleep. Directly, when the light flashed out, she
looked at the rector and his wife with her clear blue eyes. Her fair
hair, braided neatly and tied with pink ribbons, lay in two tails on
either side of her small, certainly very good face. Her forehead was
beautiful, very white and full, giving her an expression of candor which
was even noble. Content, little lonely girl among strangers in a strange
place, mutely beseeching love and pity, from her whole attitude toward
life and the world, looked up at Edward Patterson and Sally, and the
rector realized that his determination was giving way. He began to
believe in imagination, even to the extent of a sister Solly. He had
never had a daughter, and sometimes the thought of one had made his
heart tender. His voice was very kind when he spoke.

“Well, little girl,” he said, “what is this I hear?”

Sally stared at her husband and stifled a chuckle.

As for Content, she looked at the rector and said nothing. It was
obvious that she did not know what he had heard. The rector explained.

“My dear little girl,” he said, “your aunt Sally”--they had agreed upon
the relationship of uncle and aunt to Content--“tells me that you have
been telling her about your--big sister Solly.” The rector half gasped
as he said Solly. He seemed to himself to be on the driveling verge of
idiocy before the pronunciation of that absurdly inane name.

Content's responding voice came from the pink-and-white nest in which she
was snuggled, like the fluting pipe of a canary.

“Yes, sir,” said she.

“My dear child,” said the rector, “you know perfectly well that you have
no big sister--Solly.” Every time the rector said Solly he swallowed
hard.

Content smiled as Sally had described her smiling. She said nothing.
The rector felt reproved and looked down upon from enormous heights of
innocence and childhood and the wisdom thereof. However, he persisted.

“Content,” he said, “what did you mean by telling your aunt Sally what
you did?”

“I was talking with my big sister Solly,” replied Content, with the
calmness of one stating a fundamental truth of nature.

The rector's face grew stern. “Content,” he said, “look at me.”

Content looked. Looking seemed to be the instinctive action which
distinguished her as an individual.

“Have you a big sister--Solly?” asked the rector. His face was stern,
but his voice faltered.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then--tell me so.”

“I have a big sister Solly,” said Content. Now she spoke rather wearily,
although still sweetly, as if puzzled why she had been disturbed in
sleep to be asked such an obvious question.

“Where has she been all the time, that we have known nothing about her?”
 demanded the rector.

Content smiled. However, she spoke. “Home,” said she.

“When did she come here?”

“This morning.”

“Where is she now?”

Content smiled and was silent. The rector cast a helpless look at his
wife. He now did not care if she did see that he was completely at a
loss. How could a great, robust man and a clergyman be harsh to a tender
little girl child in a pink-andwhite nest of innocent dreams?

Sally pitied him. She spoke more harshly than her husband. “Content
Adams,” said she, “you know perfectly well that you have no big sister
Solly. Now tell me the truth. Tell me you have no big sister Solly.”

“I have a big sister Solly,” said Content.

“Come, Edward,” said Sally. “There is no use in staying and talking
to this obstinate little girl any longer.” Then she spoke to Content.
“Before you go to sleep,” said she, “you must say your prayers, if you
have not already done so.”

“I have said my prayers,” replied Content, and her blue eyes were full
of horrified astonishment at the suspicion.

“Then,” said Sally, “you had better say them over and add something.
Pray that you may always tell the truth.”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Content, in her little canary pipe.

The rector and his wife went out. Sally switched off the light with a
snap as she passed. Out in the hall she stopped and held her husband's
arms hard. “Hush!” she whispered. They both listened. They heard this,
in the faintest plaint of a voice:

“They don't believe you are here, Sister Solly, but I do.”

Sally dashed back into the rosebud room and switched on the light. She
stared around. She opened a closet door. Then she turned off the light
and joined her husband.

“There was nobody there?” he whispered.

“Of course not.”

When they were back in the study the rector and his wife looked at each
other.

“We will do the best we can,” said Sally. “Don't worry, Edward, for you
have to write your sermon to-morrow. We will manage some way. I will
admit that I rather wish Content had had some other distant relative
besides you who could have taken charge of her.”

“You poor child!” said the rector. “It is hard on you, Sally, for she is
no kith nor kin of yours.”

“Indeed I don't mind,” said Sally Patterson, “if only I can succeed in
bringing her up.”

Meantime Jim Patterson, up-stairs, sitting over his next day's algebra
lesson, was even more perplexed than were his parents in the study.
He paid little attention to his book. “I can manage little Lucy,” he
reflected, “but if the others have got hold of it, I don't know.”

Presently he rose and stole very softly through the hall to Content's
door. She was timid, and always left it open so she could see the hall
light until she fell asleep. “Content,” whispered Jim.

There came the faintest “What?” in response.

“Don't you,” said Jim, in a theatrical whisper, “say another word at
school to anybody about your big sister Solly. If you do, I'll whop you,
if you are a girl.”

“Don't care!” was sighed forth from the room.

“And I'll whop your old big sister Solly, too.”

There was a tiny sob.

“I will,” declared Jim. “Now you mind!”

The next day Jim cornered little Lucy Rose under a cedar-tree before
school began. He paid no attention to Bubby Harvey and Tom Simmons,
who were openly sniggering at him. Little Lucy gazed up at Jim, and the
blue-green shade of the cedar seemed to bring out only more clearly the
white-rose softness of her dear little face. Jim bent over her.

“Want you to do something for me,” he whispered.

Little Lucy nodded gravely.

“If my new cousin Content ever says anything to you again--I heard her
yesterday--about her big sister Solly, don't you ever say a word about
it to anybody else. You will promise me, won't you, little Lucy?”

A troubled expression came into little Lucy's kind eyes. “But she told
Lily, and Lily told Amelia, and Amelia told her grandmother Wheeler,
and her grandmother Wheeler told Miss Parmalee when she met her on the
street after school, and Miss Parmalee called on my aunt Martha and told
her,” said little Lucy.

“Oh, shucks!” said Jim.

“And my aunt Martha told my father that she thought perhaps she ought
to ask for her when she called on your mother. She said Arnold Carruth's
aunt Flora was going to call, and his aunt Dorothy. I heard Miss Acton
tell Miss Parmalee that she thought they ought to ask for her when they
called on your mother, too.”

“Little Lucy,” he said, and lowered his voice, “you must promise me
never, as long as you live, to tell what I am going to tell you.”

Little Lucy looked frightened.

“Promise!” insisted Jim.

“I promise,” said little Lucy, in a weak voice.

“Never, as long as you live, to tell anybody. Promise!”

“I promise.”

“Now, you know if you break your promise and tell, you will be guilty of
a dreadful lie and be very wicked.”

Little Lucy shivered. “I never will.”

“Well, my new cousin Content Adams--tells lies.”

Little Lucy gasped.

“Yes, she does. She says she has a big sister Solly, and she hasn't got
any big sister Solly. She never did have, and she never will have. She
makes believe.”

“Makes believe?” said little Lucy, in a hopeful voice.

“Making believe is just a real mean way of lying. Now I made Content
promise last night never to say one word in school about her big sister
Solly, and I am going to tell you this, so you can tell Lily and the
others and not lie. Of course, I don't want to lie myself, because my
father is rector, and, besides, mother doesn't approve of it; but if
anybody is going to lie, I am the one. Now, you mind, little Lucy.
Content's big sister Solly has gone away, and she is never coming back.
If you tell Lily and the others I said so, I can't see how you will be
lying.”

Little Lucy gazed at the boy. She looked like truth incarnate. “But,”
 said she, in her adorable stupidity of innocence, “I don't see how she
could go away if she was never here, Jim.”

“Oh, of course she couldn't. But all you have to do is to say that you
heard me say she had gone. Don't you understand?”

“I don't understand how Content's big sister Solly could possibly go
away if she was never here.”

“Little Lucy, I wouldn't ask you to tell a lie for the world, but if you
were just to say that you heard me say--”

“I think it would be a lie,” said little Lucy, “because how can I help
knowing if she was never here she couldn't--”

“Oh, well, little Lucy,” cried Jim, in despair, still with
tenderness--how could he be anything but tender with little Lucy?--“all
I ask is never to say anything about it.”

“If they ask me?”

“Anyway, you can hold your tongue. You know it isn't wicked to hold your
tongue.”

Little Lucy absurdly stuck out the pointed tip of her little red tongue.
Then she shook her head slowly.

“Well,” she said, “I will hold my tongue.”

This encounter with innocence and logic had left him worsted. Jim could
see no way out of the fact that his father, the rector, his mother,
the rector's wife, and he, the rector's son, were disgraced by their
relationship to such an unsanctified little soul as this queer Content
Adams.

And yet he looked at the poor lonely little girl, who was trying very
hard to learn her lessons, who suggested in her very pose and movement
a little, scared rabbit ready to leap the road for some bush of
hiding, and while he was angry with her he pitied her. He had no doubts
concerning Content's keeping her promise. He was quite sure that he
would now say nothing whatever about that big sister Solly to the
others, but he was not prepared for what happened that very afternoon.

When he went home from school his heart stood still to see Miss Martha
Rose, and Arnold Carruth's aunt Flora, and his aunt who was not his
aunt, Miss Dorothy Vernon, who was visiting her, all walking along in
state with their lace-trimmed parasols, their white gloves, and their
nice card-cases. Jim jumped a fence and raced across lots home, and
gained on them. He burst in on his mother, sitting on the porch, which
was inclosed by wire netting overgrown with a budding vine. It was the
first warm day of the season.

“Mother,” cried Jim Patterson--“mother, they are coming!”

“Who, for goodness' sake, Jim?”

“Why, Arnold's aunt Flora and his aunt Dorothy and little Lucy's aunt
Martha. They are coming to call.”

Involuntarily Sally's hand went up to smooth her pretty hair. “Well,
what of it, Jim?” said she.

“Mother, they will ask for--big sister Solly!”

Sally Patterson turned pale. “How do you know?”

“Mother, Content has been talking at school. A lot know. You will see
they will ask for--”

“Run right in and tell Content to stay in her room,” whispered Sally,
hastily, for the callers, their white-kidded hands holding their
card-cases genteelly, were coming up the walk.

Sally advanced, smiling. She put a brave face on the matter, but she
realized that she, Sally Patterson, who had never been a coward, was
positively afraid before this absurdity. The callers sat with her on the
pleasant porch, with the young vine-shadows making networks over their
best gowns. Tea was served presently by the maid, and, much to Sally's
relief, before the maid appeared came the inquiry. Miss Martha Rose made
it.

“We would be pleased to see Miss Solly Adams also,” said Miss Martha.

Flora Carruth echoed her. “I was so glad to hear another nice girl had
come to the village,” said she with enthusiasm. Miss Dorothy Vernon said
something indefinite to the same effect.

“I am sorry,” replied Sally, with an effort, “but there is no Miss
Solly Adams here now.” She spoke the truth as nearly as she could manage
without unraveling the whole ridiculous affair. The callers sighed with
regret, tea was served with little cakes, and they fluttered down the
walk, holding their card-cases, and that ordeal was over.

But Sally sought the rector in his study, and she was trembling.
“Edward,” she cried out, regardless of her husband's sermon, “something
must be done now.”

“Why, what is the matter, Sally?”

“People are--calling on her.”

“Calling on whom?”

“Big sister--Solly!” Sally explained.

“Well, don't worry, dear,” said the rector. “Of course we will do
something, but we must think it over. Where is the child now?”

“She and Jim are out in the garden. I saw them pass the window just
now. Jim is such a dear boy, he tries hard to be nice to her. Edward
Patterson, we ought not to wait.”

“My dear, we must.”

Meantime Jim and Content Adams were out in the garden. Jim had gone to
Content's door and tapped and called out, rather rudely: “Content,
I say, put on your hat and come along out in the garden. I've got
something to tell you.”

“Don't want to,” protested Content's little voice, faintly.

“You come right along.”

And Content came along. She was an obedient child, and she liked Jim,
although she stood much in awe of him. She followed him into the garden
back of the rectory, and they sat down on the bench beneath the weeping
willow. The minute they were seated Jim began to talk.

“Now,” said he, “I want to know.”

Content glanced up at him, then looked down and turned pale.

“I want to know, honest Injun,” said Jim, “what you are telling such
awful whoppers about your old big sister Solly for?”

Content was silent. This time she did not smile, a tear trickled out of
her right eye and ran over the pale cheek.

“Because you know,” said Jim, observant of the tear, but ruthless, “that
you haven't any big sister Solly, and never did have. You are getting us
all in an awful mess over it, and father is rector here, and mother is
his wife, and I am his son, and you are his niece, and it is downright
mean. Why do you tell such whoppers? Out with it!”

Content was trembling violently. “I lived with Aunt Eudora,” she
whispered.

“Well, what of that? Other folks have lived with their aunts and not
told whoppers.”

“They haven't lived with Aunt Eudora.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Content Adams, and you the
rector's niece, talking that way about dead folks.”

“I don't mean to talk about poor Aunt Eudora,” fairly sobbed Content.
“Aunt Eudora was a real good aunt, but she was grown up. She was a good
deal more grown up than your mother; she really was, and when I
first went to live with her I was 'most a little baby; I couldn't
speak--plain, and I had to go to bed real early, and slept 'way off from
everybody, and I used to be afraid--all alone, and so--”

“Well, go on,” said Jim, but his voice was softer. It WAS hard lines for
a little kid, especially if she was a girl.

“And so,” went on the little, plaintive voice, “I got to thinking how
nice it would be if I only had a big sister, and I used to cry and say
to myself--I couldn't speak plain, you know, I was so little-'Big sister
would be real solly.' And then first thing I knew--she came.”

“Who came?”

“Big sister Solly.”

“What rot! She didn't come. Content Adams, you know she didn't come.”

“She must have come,” persisted the little girl, in a frightened
whisper. “She must have. Oh, Jim, you don't know. Big sister Solly must
have come, or I would have died like my father and mother.”

Jim's arm, which was near her, twitched convulsively, but he did not put
it around her.

“She did--co-me,” sobbed Content. “Big sister Solly did come.”

“Well, have it so,” said Jim, suddenly. “No use going over that any
longer. Have it she came, but she ain't here now, anyway. Content Adams,
you can't look me in the face and tell me that.”

Content looked at Jim, and her little face was almost terrible, so full
of bewilderment and fear it was. “Jim,” whispered Content, “I can't
have big sister Solly not be here. I can't send her away. What would she
think?”

Jim stared. “Think? Why, she isn't alive to think, anyhow!”

“I can't make her--dead,” sobbed Content. “She came when I wanted her,
and now when I don't so much, when I've got Uncle Edward and Aunt Sally
and you, and don't feel so dreadful lonesome, I can't be so bad as to
make her dead.”

Jim whistled. Then his face brightened up. He looked at Content with a
shrewd and cheerful grin. “See here, kid, you say your sister Solly is
big, grown up, don't you?” he inquired.

Content nodded pitifully.

“Then why, if she is grown up and pretty, don't she have a beau?”

Content stopped sobbing and gave him a quick glance.

“Then--why doesn't she get married, and go out West to live?”

Jim chuckled. Instead of a sob, a faint echo of his chuckle came from
Content.

Jim laughed merrily. “I say, Content,” he cried, “let's have it she's
married now, and gone?”

“Well,” said Content.

Jim put his arm around her very nicely and protectingly. “It's all
right, then,” said he, “as all right as it can be for a girl. Say,
Content, ain't it a shame you aren't a boy?”

“I can't help it,” said Content, meekly.

“You see,” said Jim, thoughtfully, “I don't, as a rule, care much about
girls, but if you could coast down-hill and skate, and do a few things
like that, you would be almost as good as a boy.”

Content surveyed him, and her pessimistic little face assumed upward
curves. “I will,” said she. “I will do anything, Jim. I will fight if
you want me to, just like a boy.”

“I don't believe you could lick any of us fellers unless you get a good
deal harder in the muscles,” said Jim, eying her thoughtfully; “but
we'll play ball, and maybe by and by you can begin with Arnold Carruth.”

“Could lick him now,” said Content.

But Jim's face sobered before her readiness. “Oh no, you mustn't go to
fighting right away,” said he. “It wouldn't do. You really are a girl,
you know, and father is rector.”

“Then I won't,” said Content; “but I COULD knock down that little boy
with curls; I know I could.”

“Well, you needn't. I'll like you just as well. You see, Content”--Jim's
voice faltered, for he was a boy, and on the verge of sentiment before
which he was shamed--“you see, Content, now your big sister Solly is
married and gone out West, why, you can have me for your brother, and of
course a brother is a good deal better than a sister.”

“Yes,” said Content, eagerly.

“I am going,” said Jim, “to marry Lucy Rose when I grow up, but I
haven't got any sister, and I'd like you first rate for one. So I'll be
your big brother instead of your cousin.”

“Big brother Solly?”

“Say, Content, that is an awful name, but I don't care. You're only
a girl. You can call me anything you want to, but you mustn't call me
Solly when there is anybody within hearing.”

“I won't.”

“Because it wouldn't do,” said Jim with weight.

“I never will, honest,” said Content.

Presently they went into the house. Dr. Trumbull was there; he had
been talking seriously to the rector and his wife. He had come over on
purpose.

“It is a perfect absurdity,” he said, “but I made ten calls this
morning, and everywhere I was asked about that little Adams girl's big
sister--why you keep her hidden. They have a theory that she is either
an idiot or dreadfully disfigured. I had to tell them I know nothing
about it.”

“There isn't any girl,” said the rector, wearily. “Sally, do explain.”

Dr. Trumbull listened. “I have known such cases,” he said when Sally had
finished.

“What did you do for them?” Sally asked, anxiously.

“Nothing. Such cases have to be cured by time. Children get over these
fancies when they grow up.”

“Do you mean to say that we have to put up with big sister Solly until
Content is grown up?” asked Sally, in a desperate tone. And then Jim
came in. Content had run up-stairs.

“It is all right, mother,” said Jim.

Sally caught him by the shoulders. “Oh, Jim, has she told you?”

Jim gave briefly, and with many omissions, an account of his
conversation with Content.

“Did she say anything about that dress, Jim?” asked his mother.

“She said her aunt had meant it for that out-West rector's daughter Alice
to graduate in, but Content wanted it for her big sister Solly, and told
the rector's wife it was hers. Content says she knows she was a naughty
girl, but after she had said it she was afraid to say it wasn't so.
Mother, I think that poor little thing is scared 'most to death.”

“Nobody is going to hurt her,” said Sally. “Goodness! that rector's wife
was so conscientious that she even let that dress go. Well, I can send
it right back, and the girl will have it in time for her graduation,
after all. Jim dear, call the poor child down. Tell her nobody is going
to scold her.” Sally's voice was very tender.

Jim returned with Content. She had on a little ruffled pink gown
which seemed to reflect color on her cheeks. She wore an inscrutable
expression, at once child-like and charming. She looked shy, furtively
amused, yet happy. Sally realized that the pessimistic downward lines
had disappeared, that Content was really a pretty little girl.

Sally put an arm around the small, pink figure. “So you and Jim have
been talking, dear?” she said.

“Yes, ma'am,” replied little Content. “Jim is my big brother--” She just
caught herself before she said Solly.

“And your sister Solly is married and living out West?”

“Yes,” said Content, with a long breath. “My sister Solly is married.”
 Smiles broke all over her little face. She hid it in Sally's skirts, and
a little peal of laughter like a bird-trill came from the soft muslin
folds.




LITTLE LUCY ROSE

BACK of the rectory there was a splendid, long hill. The ground receded
until the rectory garden was reached, and the hill was guarded on either
flank by a thick growth of pines and cedars, and, being a part of the
land appertaining to the rectory, was never invaded by the village
children. This was considered very fortunate by Mrs. Patterson, Jim's
mother, and for an odd reason. The rector's wife was very fond of
coasting, as she was of most out-of-door sports, but her dignified
position prevented her from enjoying them to the utmost. In many
localities the clergyman's wife might have played golf and tennis, have
rode and swum and coasted and skated, and nobody thought the worse of
her; but in The Village it was different.

Sally had therefore rejoiced at the discovery of that splendid, isolated
hill behind the house. It could not have been improved upon for a long,
perfectly glorious coast, winding up on the pool of ice in the garden
and bumping thrillingly between dry vegetables. Mrs. Patterson steered
and Jim made the running pushes, and slid flat on his chest behind his
mother. Jim was very proud of his mother. He often wished that he felt
at liberty to tell of her feats. He had never been told not to tell, but
realized, being rather a sharp boy, that silence was wiser. Jim's mother
confided in him, and he respected her confidence. “Oh, Jim dear,” she
would often say, “there is a mothers' meeting this afternoon, and I
would so much rather go coasting with you.” Or, “There's a Guild meeting
about a fair, and the ice in the garden is really quite smooth.”

It was perhaps unbecoming a rector's wife, but Jim loved his mother
better because she expressed a preference for the sports he loved, and
considered that no other boy had a mother who was quite equal to his.
Sally Patterson was small and wiry, with a bright face, and very thick,
brown hair, which had a boyish crest over her forehead, and she could
run as fast as Jim. Jim's father was much older than his mother, and
very dignified, although he had a keen sense of humor. He used to laugh
when his wife and son came in after their coasting expeditions.

“Well, boys,” he would say, “had a good time?”

Jim was perfectly satisfied and convinced that his mother was the very
best and most beautiful person in the village, even in the whole world,
until Mr. Cyril Rose came to fill a vacancy of cashier in the bank, and
his daughter, little Lucy Rose, as a matter of course, came with him.
Little Lucy had no mother. Mr. Cyril's cousin, Martha Rose, kept his
house, and there was a colored maid with a bad temper, who was said,
however, to be invaluable “help.”

Little Lucy attended Madame's school. She came the next Monday after Jim
and his friends had planned to have a chicken roast and failed. After
Jim saw little Lucy he thought no more of the chicken roast. It
seemed to him that he thought no more of anything. He could not by any
possibility have learned his lessons had it not been for the desire
to appear a good scholar before little Lucy. Jim had never been a
self-conscious boy, but that day he was so keenly worried about her
opinion of him that his usual easy swing broke into a strut when he
crossed the room. He need not have been so troubled, because little Lucy
was not looking at him. She was not looking at any boy or girl. She
was only trying to learn her lesson. Little Lucy was that rather rare
creature, a very gentle, obedient child, with a single eye for her duty.
She was so charming that it was sad to think how much her mother had
missed, as far as this world was concerned.

The minute Madame saw her a singular light came into her eyes--the light
of love of a childless woman for a child. Similar lights were in the
eyes of Miss Parmalee and Miss Acton. They looked at one another with
a sort of sweet confidence when they were drinking tea together after
school in Madame's study.

“Did you ever see such a darling?” said Madame. Miss Parmalee said she
never had, and Miss Acton echoed her.

“She is a little angel,” said Madame.

“She worked so hard over her geography lesson,” said Miss Parmalee, “and
she got the Amazon River in New England and the Connecticut in South
America, after all; but she was so sweet about it, she made me want to
change the map of the world. Dear little soul, it did seem as if she
ought to have rivers and everything else just where she chose.”

“And she tried so hard to reach an octave, and her little finger is too
short,” said Miss Acton; “and she hasn't a bit of an ear for music, but
her little voice is so sweet it does not matter.”

“I have seen prettier children,” said Madame, “but never one quite such
a darling.”

Miss Parmalee and Miss Acton agreed with Madame, and so did everybody
else. Lily Jennings's beauty was quite eclipsed by little Lucy, but
Lily did not care; she was herself one of little Lucy's most fervent
admirers. She was really Jim Patterson's most formidable rival in the
school. “You don't care about great, horrid boys, do you, dear?” Lily
said to Lucy, entirely within hearing of Jim and Lee Westminster and
Johnny Trumbull and Arnold Carruth and Bubby Harvey and Frank Ellis, and
a number of others who glowered at her.

Dear little Lucy hesitated. She did not wish to hurt the feelings of
boys, and the question had been loudly put. Finally she said she didn't
know. Lack of definite knowledge was little Lucy's rock of refuge in
time of need. She would look adorable, and say in her timid little fluty
voice, “I don't--know.” The last word came always with a sort of gasp
which was alluring. All the listening boys were convinced that little
Lucy loved them all individually and generally, because of her “I
don't--know.”

Everybody was convinced of little Lucy's affection for everybody, which
was one reason for her charm. She flattered without knowing that she did
so. It was impossible for her to look at any living thing except with
soft eyes of love. It was impossible for her to speak without every tone
conveying the sweetest deference and admiration. The whole atmosphere
of Madame's school changed with the advent of the little girl. Everybody
tried to live up to little Lucy's supposed ideal, but in reality she had
no ideal. Lucy was the simplest of little girls, only intent upon being
good, doing as she was told, and winning her father's approval, also her
cousin Martha's.

Martha Rose was quite elderly, although still good-looking. She was not
popular, because she was very silent. She dressed becomingly, received
calls and returned them, but hardly spoke a word. People rather dreaded
her coming. Miss Martha Rose would sit composedly in a proffered chair,
her gloved hands crossed over her nice, gold-bound card-case, her chin
tilted at an angle which never varied, her mouth in a set smile which
never wavered, her slender feet in their best shoes toeing out precisely
under the smooth sweep of her gray silk skirt. Miss Martha Rose dressed
always in gray, a fashion which the village people grudgingly admired.
It was undoubtedly becoming and distinguished, but savored ever so
slightly of ostentation, as did her custom of always dressing little
Lucy in blue. There were different shades and fabrics, but blue it
always was. It was the best color for the child, as it revealed the fact
that her big, dark eyes were blue. Shaded as they were by heavy, curly
lashes, they would have been called black or brown, but the blue in
them leaped to vision above the blue of blue frocks. Little Lucy had the
finest, most delicate features, a mist of soft, dark hair, which curled
slightly, as mist curls, over sweet, round temples. She was a small,
daintily clad child, and she spoke and moved daintily and softly;
and when her blue eyes were fixed upon anybody's face, that person
straightway saw love and obedience and trust in them, and love met love
half-way. Even Miss Martha Rose looked another woman when little Lucy's
innocent blue eyes were fixed upon her rather handsome but colorless
face between the folds of her silvery hair; Miss Martha's hair had
turned prematurely gray. Light would come into Martha Rose's face, light
and animation, although she never talked much even to Lucy. She never
talked much to her cousin Cyril, but he was rather glad of it. He had
a keen mind, but it was easily diverted, and he was engrossed in his
business, and concerned lest he be disturbed by such things as feminine
chatter, of which he certainly had none in his own home, if he kept
aloof from Jenny, the colored maid. Hers was the only female voice ever
heard to the point of annoyance in the Rose house.

It was rather wonderful how a child like little Lucy and Miss Martha
lived with so little conversation. Martha talked no more at home than
abroad; moreover, at home she had not the attitude of waiting for some
one to talk to her, which people outside considered trying. Martha did
not expect her cousin to talk to her. She seldom asked a question. She
almost never volunteered a perfectly useless observation. She made no
remarks upon self-evident topics. If the sun shone, she never mentioned
it. If there was a heavy rain, she never mentioned that. Miss Martha
suited her cousin exactly, and for that reason, aside from the fact that
he had been devoted to little Lucy's mother, it never occurred to him
to marry again. Little Lucy talked no more than Miss Martha, and nobody
dreamed that she sometimes wanted somebody to talk to her. Nobody
dreamed that the dear little girl, studying her lessons, learning
needlework, trying very futilely to play the piano, was lonely; but she
was without knowing it herself. Martha was so kind and so still; and her
father was so kind and so still, engrossed in his papers or books,
often sitting by himself in his own study. Little Lucy in this peace and
stillness was not having her share of childhood. When other little
girls came to play with her. Miss Martha enjoined quiet, and even Lily
Jennings's bird-like chattering became subdued. It was only at school
that Lucy got her chance for the irresponsible delight which was the
simple right of her childhood, and there her zeal for her lessons
prevented. She was happy at school, however, for there she lived in
an atmosphere of demonstrative affection. The teachers were given
to seizing her in fond arms and caressing her, and so were her girl
companions; while the boys, especially Jim Patterson, looked wistfully
on.

Jim Patterson was in love, a charming little poetical boy-love; but it
was love. Everything which he did in those days was with the thought of
little Lucy for incentive. He stood better in school than he had ever
done before, but it was all for the sake of little Lucy. Jim Patterson
had one talent, rather rudimentary, still a talent. He could play by
ear. His father owned an old violin. He had been inclined to music in
early youth, and Jim got permission to practise on it, and he went by
himself in the hot attic and practised. Jim's mother did not care for
music, and her son's preliminary scraping tortured her. Jim tucked the
old fiddle under one round boy-cheek and played in the hot attic, with
wasps buzzing around him; and he spent his pennies for catgut, and
he learned to mend fiddle-strings; and finally came a proud Wednesday
afternoon when there were visitors in Madame's school, and he stood on
the platform, with Miss Acton playing an accompaniment on the baby grand
piano, and he managed a feeble but true tune on his violin. It was
all for little Lucy, but little Lucy cared no more for music than his
mother; and while Jim was playing she was rehearsing in the depths
of her mind the little poem which later she was to recite; for this
adorable little Lucy was, as a matter of course, to figure in the
entertainment. It therefore happened that she heard not one note of Jim
Patterson's painfully executed piece, for she was saying to herself in
mental singsong a foolish little poem, beginning:

        There was one little flower that bloomed
           Beside a cottage door.

When she went forward, little darling blue-clad figure, there was a
murmur of admiration; and when she made mistakes straight through the
poem, saying,

        There was a little flower that fell
           On my aunt Martha's floor,

for beginning, there was a roar of tender laughter and a clapping of
tender, maternal hands, and everybody wanted to catch hold of little
Lucy and kiss her. It was one of the irresistible charms of this child
that people loved her the more for her mistakes, and she made many,
although she tried so very hard to avoid them. Little Lucy was not in
the least brilliant, but she held love like a precious vase, and it gave
out perfume better than mere knowledge.

Jim Patterson was so deeply in love with her when he went home that
night that he confessed to his mother. Mrs. Patterson had led up to the
subject by alluding to little Lucy while at the dinner-table.

“Edward,” she said to her husband--both she and the rector had
been present at Madame's school entertainment and the tea-drinking
afterward--“did you ever see in all your life such a darling little girl
as the new cashier's daughter? She quite makes up for Miss Martha, who
sat here one solid hour, holding her card-case, waiting for me to talk
to her. That child is simply delicious, and I was so glad she made
mistakes.”

“Yes, she is a charming child,” assented the rector, “despite the fact
that she is not a beauty, hardly even pretty.”

“I know it,” said Mrs. Patterson, “but she has the worth of beauty.”

Jim was quite pale while his father and mother were talking. He
swallowed the hot soup so fast that it burnt his tongue. Then he turned
very red, but nobody noticed him. When his mother came up-stairs to kiss
him good night he told her.

“Mother,” said he, “I have something to tell you.”

“All right, Jim,” replied Sally Patterson, with her boyish air.

“It is very important,” said Jim.

Mrs. Patterson did not laugh; she did not even smile. She sat down
beside Jim's bed and looked seriously at his eager, rapt, shamed little
boy-face on the pillow. “Well?” said she, after a minute which seemed
difficult to him.

Jim coughed. Then he spoke with a blurt. “Mother,” said Jim, “by and by,
of course not quite yet, but by and by, will you have any objection to
Miss Lucy Rose as a daughter?”

Even then Sally Patterson did not laugh or even smile. “Are you thinking
of marrying her, Jim?” asked she, quite as if her son had been a man.

“Yes, mother,” replied Jim. Then he flung up his little arms in pink
pajama sleeves, and Sally Patterson took his face between her two hands
and kissed him warmly.

“She is a darling, and your choice does you credit, Jim,” said she. “Of
course you have said nothing to her yet?”

“I thought it was rather too soon.”

“I really think you are very wise, Jim,” said his mother. “It is too
soon to put such ideas into the poor child's head. She is younger than
you, isn't she, Jim?”

“She is just six months and three days younger,” replied Jim, with
majesty.

“I thought so. Well, you know, Jim, it would just wear her all out,
as young as that, to be obliged to think about her trousseau and
housekeeping and going to school, too.”

“I know it,” said Jim, with a pleased air. “I thought I was right,
mother.”

“Entirely right; and you, too, really ought to finish school, and take
up a profession or a business, before you say anything definite. You
would want a nice home for the dear little thing, you know that, Jim.”

Jim stared at his mother out of his white pillow. “I thought I would
stay with you, and she would stay with her father until we were both
very much older,” said he. “She has a nice home now, you know, mother.”

Sally Patterson's mouth twitched a little, but she spoke quite gravely
and reasonably. “Yes, that is very true,” said she; “still, I do think
you are wise to wait, Jim.”

When Sally Patterson had left Jim, she looked in on the rector in his
study. “Our son is thinking seriously of marrying, Edward,” said she.

The rector stared at her. She had shut the door, and she laughed.

“He is very discreet. He has consulted me as to my approval of her as
daughter and announced his intention to wait a little while.”

The rector laughed; then he wrinkled his forehead uneasily. “I don't
like the little chap getting such ideas,” said he.

“Don't worry, Edward; he hasn't got them,” said Sally Patterson.

“I hope not.”

“He has made a very wise choice. She is that perfect darling of a Rose
girl who couldn't speak her piece, and thought we all loved her when we
laughed.”

“Well, don't let him get foolish ideas; that is all, my dear,” said the
rector.

“Don't worry, Edward. I can manage him,” said Sally.

But she was mistaken. The very next day Jim proposed in due form
to little Lucy. He could not help it. It was during the morning
intermission, and he came upon her seated all alone under a hawthorn
hedge, studying her arithmetic anxiously. She was in blue, as usual, and
a very perky blue bow sat on her soft, dark hair, like a bluebird. She
glanced up at Jim from under her long lashes.

“Do two and seven make eight or ten? If you please, will you tell me?”
 said she.

“Say, Lucy,” said Jim, “will you marry me by and by?”

Lucy stared at him uncomprehendingly.

“Will you?”

“Will I what?”

“Marry me by and by?”

Lucy took refuge in her little harbor of ignorance. “I don't know,” said
she.

“But you like me, don't you, Lucy?”

“I don't know.”

“Don't you like me better than you like Johnny Trumbull?”

“I don't know.”

“You like me better than you like Arnold Carruth, don't you? He has
curls and wears socks.”

“I don't know.”

“When do you think you can be sure?”

“I don't know.”

Jim stared helplessly at little Lucy. She stared back sweetly.

“Please tell me whether two and seven make six or eleven, Jim,” said
she.

“They make nine,” said Jim.

“I have been counting my fingers and I got it eleven, but I suppose
I must have counted one finger twice,” said little Lucy. She gazed
reflectively at her little baby-hands. A tiny ring with a blue stone
shone on one finger.

“I will give you a ring, you know,” Jim said, coaxingly.

“I have got a ring my father gave me. Did you say it was ten, please,
Jim?”

“Nine,” gasped Jim.

“All the way I can remember,” said little Lucy, “is for you to pick just
so many leaves off the hedge, and I will tie them in my handkerchief,
and just before I have to say my lesson I will count those leaves.”

Jim obediently picked nine leaves from the hawthorn hedge, and little
Lucy tied them into her handkerchief, and then the Japanese gong sounded
and they went back to school.

That night after dinner, just before Lucy went to bed, she spoke of her
own accord to her father and Miss Martha, a thing which she seldom did.
“Jim Patterson asked me to marry him when I asked him what seven and two
made in my arithmetic lesson,” said she. She looked with the loveliest
round eyes of innocence first at her father, then at Miss Martha. Cyril
Rose gasped and laid down his newspaper.

“What did you say, little Lucy?” he asked.

“Jim Patterson asked me to marry him when I asked him to tell me how
much seven and two made in my arithmetic lesson.”

Cyril Rose and his cousin Martha looked at each other.

“Arnold Carruth asked me, too, when a great big wasp flew on my arm and
frightened me.”

Cyril and Martha continued to look. The little, sweet, uncertain voice
went on.

“And Johnny Trumbull asked me when I 'most fell down on the sidewalk;
and Lee Westminster asked me when I wasn't doing anything, and so did
Bubby Harvey.”

“What did you tell them?” asked Miss Martha, in a faint voice.

“I told them I didn't know.”

“You had better have the child go to bed now,” said Cyril. “Good night,
little Lucy. Always tell father everything.”

“Yes, father,” said little Lucy, and was kissed, and went away with
Martha.

When Martha returned, her cousin looked at her severely. He was a fair,
gentle-looking man, and severity was impressive when he assumed it.

“Really, Martha,” said he, “don't you think you had better have a little
closer outlook over that baby?”

“Oh, Cyril, I never dreamed of such a thing,” cried Miss Martha.

“You really must speak to Madame,” said Cyril. “I cannot have such
things put into the child's head.”

“Oh, Cyril, how can I?”

“I think it is your duty.”

“Cyril, could not--you?”

Cyril grinned. “Do you think,” said he, “that I am going to that elegant
widow schoolma'am and say, 'Madame, my young daughter has had four
proposals of marriage in one day, and I must beg you to put a stop to
such proceedings'? No, Martha; it is a woman's place to do such a thing
as that. The whole thing is too absurd, indignant as I am about it. Poor
little soul!”

So it happened that Miss Martha Rose, the next day being Saturday,
called on Madame, but, not being asked any leading question, found
herself absolutely unable to deliver herself of her errand, and went
away with it unfulfilled.

“Well, I must say,” said Madame to Miss Parmalee, as Miss Martha tripped
wearily down the front walk--“I must say, of all the educated women who
have really been in the world, she is the strangest. You and I have done
nothing but ask inane questions, and she has sat waiting for them, and
chirped back like a canary. I am simply worn out.”

“So am I,” sighed Miss Parmalee.

But neither of them was so worn out as poor Miss Martha, anticipating
her cousin's reproaches. However, her wonted silence and reticence stood
her in good stead, for he merely asked, after little Lucy had gone to
bed:

“Well, what did Madame say about Lucy's proposals?”

“She did not say anything,” replied Martha.

“Did she promise it would not occur again?”

“She did not promise, but I don't think it will.”

The financial page was unusually thrilling that night, and Cyril
Rose, who had come to think rather lightly of the affair, remarked,
absent-mindedly; “Well, I hope it does not occur again. I cannot have
such ridiculous ideas put into the child's head. If it does, we get a
governess for her and take her away from Madame's.” Then he resumed his
reading, and Martha, guilty but relieved, went on with her knitting.

It was late spring then, and little Lucy had attended Madame's school
several months, and her popularity had never waned. A picnic was planned
to Dover's Grove, and the romantic little girls had insisted upon a May
queen, and Lucy was unanimously elected. The pupils of Madame's school
went to the picnic in the manner known as a “strawride.” Miss Parmalee
sat with them, her feet uncomfortably tucked under her. She was the
youngest of the teachers, and could not evade the duty. Madame and Miss
Acton headed the procession, sitting comfortably in a victoria driven
by the colored man Sam, who was employed about the school. Dover's Grove
was six miles from the village, and a favorite spot for picnics. The
victoria rolled on ahead; Madame carried a black parasol, for the sun
was on her side and the day very warm. Both ladies wore thin, dark
gowns, and both felt the languor of spring.

The straw-wagon, laden with children seated upon the golden trusses of
straw, looked like a wagonload of blossoms. Fair and dark heads, rosy
faces looked forth in charming clusters. They sang, they chattered. It
made no difference to them that it was not the season for a straw-ride,
that the trusses were musty. They inhaled the fragrance of blooming
boughs under which they rode, and were quite oblivious to all discomfort
and unpleasantness. Poor Miss Parmalee, with her feet going to sleep,
sneezing from time to time from the odor of the old straw, did not
obtain the full beauty of the spring day. She had protested against the
straw-ride.

“The children really ought to wait until the season for such things,”
 she had told Madame, quite boldly; and Madame had replied that she was
well aware of it, but the children wanted something of the sort, and the
hay was not cut, and straw, as it happened, was more easily procured.

“It may not be so very musty,” said Madame; “and you know, my dear,
straw is clean, and I am sorry, but you do seem to be the one to ride
with the children on the straw, because”--Madame dropped her voice--“you
are really younger, you know, than either Miss Acton or I.”

Poor Miss Parmalee could almost have dispensed with her few years
of superior youth to have gotten rid of that straw-ride. She had no
parasol, and the sun beat upon her head, and the noise of the children
got horribly on her nerves. Little Lucy was her one alleviation. Little
Lucy sat in the midst of the boisterous throng, perfectly still, crowned
with her garland of leaves and flowers, her sweet, pale little face
calmly observant. She was the high light of Madame's school, the effect
which made the whole. All the others looked at little Lucy, they talked
to her, they talked at her; but she remained herself unmoved, as a high
light should be. “Dear little soul,” Miss Parmalee thought. She also
thought that it was a pity that little Lucy could not have worn a white
frock in her character as Queen of t

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