Lucile Triumphant
by Elizabeth M. Duffield · English · Gutenberg #27643 · 337,723 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Lucile Triumphant
Author: Elizabeth M. Duffield
Release date: December 28, 2008 [eBook #27643]
Most recently updated: February 1, 2009
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LUCILE TRIUMPHANT ***
Produced by Roger Frank, Darleen Dove and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
LUCILE
TRIUMPHANT
BY
ELIZABETH M. DUFFIELD
AUTHOR OF
"LUCILE ON THE HEIGHTS," "LUCILE, BRINGER OF JOY,"
"LUCILE, THE TORCH BEARER"
WHITMAN PUBLISHING CO.
RACINE, WISCONSIN
Copyright, 1916
By SULLY & KLEINTEICH
All Rights Reserved
Printed and Published
By
Western Printing & Lithographing Company
Racine, Wisconsin
Printed in U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. "GREETINGS, FELLOW-TRAVELERS" 7
II. ECHOES OF THE CAMP-FIRE 12
III. A LATTER-DAY MIRACLE 19
IV. COUNTING THE HOURS 25
V. AS THOUGH ON WINGS 31
VI. "OH, FIRE, LONG YEARS AGO----" 35
VII. THE MAGIC CITY 42
VIII. ENTER JACK 50
IX. HURRAH, FOR EUROPE! 59
X. WHIRLED THROUGH THE NIGHT 65
XI. "ALL ASHORE WHO ARE GOING ASHORE!" 72
XII. MONSIEUR CHARLOIX 79
XIII. ROMANCE 86
XIV. A VAIN QUEST 93
XV. "LAND, HO!" 102
XVI. THE RED-LETTER DAY 111
XVII. THE GLORY OF THE PAST 119
XVIII. GREAT EXPECTATIONS 125
XIX. THE BREATH OF THE WAR GOD 132
XX. CROSSING THE CHANNEL 141
XXI. THE OLD CHATEAU 146
XXII. THE HEART OF THE MYSTERY 152
XXIII. LUCILE TRIUMPHS 161
XXIV. "TWO'S COMPANY" 167
XXV. THE THUNDERBOLT 175
XXVI. THROUGH SHROUDING MISTS 183
XXVII. HOME 186
[Transcriber's Note: Table of Contents was not present in the original
publication.]
CHAPTER I
"GREETINGS, FELLOW-TRAVELERS"
The great news was out! Two girls regarded their companion in
open-mouthed astonishment.
"Europe!" cried Jessie. "Lucy, will you please say that all over again
and say it slowly," she begged leaning forward tensely.
Lucile's eyes danced as she repeated slowly and with great emphasis, "I
said just this--Dad is going to Europe and he intends to take me with
him."
The girls were incredulous.
"But, wh-when are you going?" stammered Evelyn, dazedly.
"In three weeks at the outside, maybe sooner," Lucile answered, then
added, with feigned reproach, "you don't, either of you, seem a bit
glad."
"Oh, we are, we are," they protested, and Evelyn added, "It just took our
breath away, that's all."
"Lucile, it's the finest thing that ever happened to you," said Jessie,
impulsively throwing her arms about her friend.
The latter returned the embrace with equal fervor, but her eyes were
retrospective as she answered, "Oh, it's wonderful, of course, and I
haven't even begun to get used to it yet, but I don't think it's any
greater than----"
"Oh, I know what you mean," Evelyn broke in. "You mean Mayaro River and
Aloea and ranks and things like that----"
"Exactly," laughed Lucile, her face flushing with the memory, "and honors
and guardians and races and----"
"Oh, stop her, someone, quick," begged Jessie gayly. "If you don't she'll
keep it up all day," then more gravely, "It was wonderful and none of us
will ever forget it--but, Lucy, do, oh, do tell us more about Europe
before I die of curiosity!"
"Oh, yes, please go on," urged Evelyn; "we want to hear all about how it
happened, and just when you're going to start and how long you expect to
stay and----"
"Slow up a little," begged Lucile, in dismay. "I'll tell you everything
in time, but I must have time!"
"Come out, time, you're wanted," cried Evelyn, pushing aside the bushes
as though in search of the runaway.
"I suppose you think you're funny," sniffed Jessie, disdainfully. "But I
feel obliged to tell you as a friend----"
"Cease!" commanded Lucile, sternly. "If you don't stop at once and listen
respectfully and attentively to what I have to say, I'll----"
"Well, what will you do," Evelyn challenged, with an heroic air of
braving the worst. "Tell us, now--what will you do?"
Lucile paused to consider for a moment, then announced, gravely, "There
is only one punishment great enough for such a crime----"
"And that----" they breathed.
"That," repeated Lucile, sternly, "would be to remove the light of my
presence----"
"Oh if that's all you needn't mind about us," said Jessie, evidently
relieved.
"Go on, Lucy," urged Evelyn, virtuously. "I won't interrupt again."
"Better get started before she repents," advised Jessie.
"Sound advice," Lucile agreed, ironically, though her eyes snapped with
fun. "I don't see why two people can't get along without throwing
hatchets at each other's heads all the time. But never mind that," she
added, hastily, seeing signs of more "hatchets."
"All I have to say is, it isn't my fault," murmured Jessie.
"The only way to treat the lower classes is to ignore them absolutely,"
Evelyn retorted, turning her back on Jessie. "Now, Lucy, what were you
saying?"
"I was _trying_ to say something about my trip----" she began.
"Oh, yes, how long are you going to stay?"
"All summer."
"Oh, you lucky, lucky girl," cried Jessie. "You do certainly have the
most wonderful luck. Not but what you deserve every bit of it and more,"
she added, warmly.
"There's just one thing in the world on which we both agree," laughed
Evelyn, "and that's it!"
They looked with fond and justified pride upon the laughing recipient of
their praise. From anybody's point of view, Lucile was good to look upon.
Mischief sparkled in her eyes and bubbled over from lips always curved in
a merry smile. "Just to look at Lucile is enough to chase away the
blues," Jessie had once declared in a loving eulogy on her friend. "But
when you need sympathy, there is no one quicker to give it than Lucy."
From her mass of wind-blown curls to the tips of her neat little tennis
shoes she was the spirit incarnate of the sport-loving, fun-seeking
summer girl.
Then there was their summer at camp the year before, when Lucile had led
them undauntedly and as a matter of course through experiences and
dangers that would have dazed the other girls.
And then had come the crowning glory, the climax of their wonderful
summer--the race! They felt again the straining of that moment when, with
half a length to make up and scant twenty yards from the goal, she had
led them in the glorious, madcap dash to victory! From that day on she
had reigned supreme in the girls' warm hearts, and there was not one of
them but felt "that nothing was too good for her."
"Let's be thankful for small blessings," laughed Lucile, referring to
Evelyn's last remark. "By the way, girls, have you heard about
Margaret?"
"No; what is it?" They were all eager interest at once.
"Why, Judge Stillman called a consultation yesterday and the doctors
pronounced Margaret absolutely cured!"
"Hurrah!" cried Jessie, springing up from the rock she had been using as
a seat. "We knew she was better, but--oh, say, isn't it great?"
"Rather; but that isn't all," said Lucile. "The Judge insists that we
have done it all--and the camp-fire, too, of course."
"Oh, nonsense," Evelyn exclaimed. "It was the woods and the air and the
water that did it. That was all she needed."
"Humph, speak for yourself," Jessie interposed. "I admit she could have
done without you very well; I could myself, but----"
"Do I hear a gentle murmur as of buzz-saws buzzing?" quoth Evelyn, dreamy
eyes fixed on space. "Methinks it grows more rasping of late----"
"For goodness sake, girls, stop it," begged Lucile, despairingly. "If you
are going to be like this all summer, how on earth can I take you with
me? I don't want to live in a hive of hornets."
"Take us with you?" they cried, bewildered. "What do you mean?" and
Jessie added, tragically, "Tell me quickly or I die!"
"Oh, I just thought I might." It was Lucile's turn to regard the heavens
fixedly.
"Lucile, I'd like to shake you. You can be the most exasperating thing at
times!" cried Jessie excitedly, and Evelyn, with an inelegance that was
none the less forceful, "If you have anything up your sleeve, let's have
it!"
Lucile's gaze came down to earth abruptly.
"You seem to be in a great hurry," she protested. "You haven't given me
time yet, you know."
"Oh, we'll hunt him up for you some other time," Evelyn wheedled, and
Jessie added, sagely, "We're only losing him this way, you know;" then
added, in desperation, "If you don't explain right away, you'll have a
corpse on your hands, Lucy."
"Why, there's nothing to explain; you are just going, that's all," said
Lucile, as if the matter were definitely settled.
"Lucy, are you fooling? If you are, I'll never, never forgive you." It
was Evelyn who spoke, her whole body quivering with excitement.
"No, she's in earnest; can't you see? She means, she means----" and
Jessie paused before the fateful word.
It was more than Lucile could stand. She jumped up, danced a few joyous
and absurd little steps, then turning, made the girls a low bow.
"Greetings, fellow-travelers," she said.
CHAPTER II
ECHOES OF THE CAMP-FIRE
"But whatever put it into your head to take us along?" Jessie asked,
after the first wild excitement had abated a trifle.
"Well, you see, it was this way," began Lucile, with the air of one
imparting a grave secret. "When Dad came home last night, the first thing
he did was to begin asking me a lot of foolish questions--or, at least,
they seemed so to me. He started something like this: 'If you had your
choice, what would you want most in the world----'"
"If he had asked me that, I wouldn't be through yet," Jessie broke in.
"Never mind her, Lucy," said Evelyn. "Go on, please."
"I felt very much that way myself, Jessie," and Lucile nodded
understandingly at the ruffled Jessie. "Well," she went on, "I began
naming over several things, and when I'd finished Dad looked so sad I
thought I must have done something terrible, but when I asked him what
was the matter he simply shook his head despairingly and sighed, 'Not
there, not there.'"
The girls laughed merrily.
"Oh, I can just see him," chuckled Evelyn.
"Well, what then?" Jessie urged.
"Oh, I didn't know what to do," Lucile continued. "The more I asked him
to explain, the more disconsolate he looked. When I couldn't stand it any
longer I left the room, saying if he didn't want to tell me, he needn't.
Then, when I got outside the door I could hear him chuckling to himself."
"Just like him," again interposed Jessie.
"Well, all the time I knew something was coming. At dinner it came when
Dad calmly announced that he was going to Europe on business and that if
his family wished--imagine that, _wished_--he might let us go along."
"Oh, my--wished!" murmured Evelyn.
"You should have seen Phil," Lucile went on with her story. "I never saw
anyone so dumbfounded. He stopped with a piece of fish halfway to his
mouth and gaped at Dad as if he were some curiosity. I must have looked
funny, too, for suddenly Dad began to laugh, and he laughed and he
laughed till we thought he'd die."
"'You couldn't look more dumbfounded if I had ordered your execution,' he
gasped when he could get his breath. 'Of course, I can always make
arrangements for you to stay behind.'"
"Oh," breathed the girls in unison, "what did you say?"
"Say? You had better ask what didn't we say. We talked and talked and
talked as fast as our tongues would go till after midnight, and we
wouldn't have stopped then if mother hadn't shooed us off to bed. Oh, I
don't think I was ever so happy in all my life!"
"But where do we come in?" insisted Jessie.
"Right here. You see, I had been so excited and everything, I hadn't
realized what it would mean to leave you girls for the whole summer. I
guess Dad saw there was something the matter, for, when I started
upstairs, he drew me back and asked me to tell him what was wrong. When I
told him I wished you girls were going, too, he surprised me by saying,
'Why not?' For a moment I thought he was joking--he's always doing that,
you know--but when I saw he was in sober earnest I could have danced for
joy."
"Don't blame you. I'd not only have felt like it; I'd have done it, too,"
said Evelyn.
"Yes, and scandalized the neighbors," Jessie sniffed.
"I fail to see how the neighbors would have known anything about it,"
retorted Evelyn, with dignity, "since they can't see through the walls."
"Oh, they don't have to see," said Jessie, witheringly. "Anybody within a
mile of you can _hear_ you dance."
"See here, Jessie Sanderson, that's not fair," Lucile broke in. "Evelyn's
one of the best little dancers I know, and I won't have her maligned."
"Have her what? I wish you'd speak United States, Lucy," said Jessie,
plaintively.
"Don't talk and you won't show your ignorance." It was Evelyn's turn to
be scornful.
"Well, what does it mean?" Jessie returned. "_You_ tell us."
"Some other time," said Evelyn, calmly. "You will have to excuse me now.
I am so excited now that I really can't bring my mind down to trivial
matters."
"I knew it," Jessie was declaiming tragically, when a clear whistle
sounded from the foot of the hill and Lucile exclaimed:
"There's Phil; I wonder what he wants now."
The three girls made a pretty picture as they stood there gazing eagerly
down the slope, Lucile with her vivid gypsy coloring and fair-haired,
blue-eyed Jessie, exactly her opposite, yet, withal, her dearest and most
loyal friend; and last, but not least, Evelyn, short and round and polly,
with a happy disposition that won her friends wherever she went.
Although it is generally conceded that "three make a crowd," the rule was
certainly wide of the mark in this case. The girls were bound by a tie
even stronger than friendship, and that tie was the law of the camp-fire.
The latter had taught them many brave lessons in the game of life,
lessons in self-denial, in sympathy and loyalty, and they were ever
anxious to prove that they had learned their lessons well.
Though, once in a while, besetting sins would crop out and Lucile would
cry, despairingly, "Oh, why did I do it; I knew I shouldn't," and Jessie
would stop, when plunging nobly through a box of candies, to cry
penitently, "Oh, I've eaten too many," and Evelyn would often be tempted
to read too long and neglect her work, still, on the whole, they were
infinitely helped by the wholesome teaching and precepts of the
campfire.
"Oh, he's got a letter," cried Lucile, as Phil took a flying leap into
their midst.
"Say," said Phil, eyeing them pityingly, "don't you fellows know it's
time to eat?"
"It's never dinner-time yet," said Jessie in dismay.
"Yes it is, too," Evelyn contradicted. "Just look where the sun is."
"Where is it?" cried Phil, and then, as his gaze wandered to the sky, he
added, with an air of relief, "Oh, it's still there; how you frightened
me!"
"Goose!" his sister commented, and then, looking at the envelope he still
held in his hand, she added, "Who's the letter from? Be sensible and tell
us about it."
"Oh, that?" said Phil. "That's a letter from Jim. Seems to be getting
along first rate."
"What does he say?" asked Jessie, all interest.
Phil eyed her speculatively. "I tell you what I'll do," he said. "I'll
tell you about it on the way home."
The girls laughed and Lucile explained, "You see, he's never happy far
from home and dinner."
"You seemed to get away with a mighty generous supply of oysters yourself
the other night," Phil grumbled good-naturedly.
"Well, if I did, I was only obeying the camp-fire law, 'Be healthy,'"
Lucile defended warmly.
The girls laughed and Jessie murmured something about, "That's right;
keep 'em under."
"What's that?" Phil demanded, but Jessie evaded with another question:
"When are you going to tell us about Jim?"
"Here we are, half the way home, and you haven't even begun," Evelyn
added.
"Well, he seems more than satisfied with his engineering, and most of his
letter is taken up with praises of Mr. Wescott and his wife and how good
they are to him. He says the luck he's had almost makes him believe in
fate."
"Well, there certainly did seem to be a fate in the way young Mr. Wescott
just happened up to camp in the nick of time to find our guardian and
fall in love with her, worse luck," and Lucile vindictively kicked a
stone from the path as though it were the meddling Mr. Wescott himself.
"And then to think he should like Jim, a poor little country boy, well
enough to take him along with him to the city, where he could make
something of himself."
"Well, all I have to say is that there's no one I'd rather see get along
than Jim. I liked him the first minute I saw him, and he sure does
improve on acquaintance--the longer you know him, the more you like him.
He deserves everything he gets," and Phil's face glowed with boyish
enthusiasm.
"That's the way we all felt," said Lucile with equal earnestness, while
Evelyn could not repress a chuckle at the memory of their first meeting
with Jim. "Has he anything else to say?"
"Only one thing," answered Phil, mysteriously.
"What is it?" the girls demanded in chorus.
"Hurry up, please, Phil," Jessie pleaded.
"Certainly, anything for you," Phil returned gallantly. "Why, he just
states that Mr. and Mrs. Wescott----"
"Miss Howland!" cried Evelyn.
"Miss Howland that was," corrected Phil; "Mrs. Wescott that is."
"What difference does it make?" cried Lucile, impatiently. "What about
her--is she sick?"
At the suggestion the girls grew pale.
"Not quite as bad as that," teased Phil, enjoying the sensation his news
was making and bent on prolonging it to the last extreme.
"Not quite? Oh, Phil, what do you mean?" cried Jessie, imploringly.
Anxiety and alarm showed so plainly on the girls' white faces that Phil
suddenly relented.
"Don't get scared," he continued, elegantly. "Your guardian isn't sick.
If she were, I guess she wouldn't be making plans for visiting
Burleigh."
"Is that the truth?" Lucile demanded, seizing her brother's arm. "Don't
play any more tricks, Phil," she pleaded. "It means an awful lot to us,
you know, if Miss--Mrs. Wescott is coming."
"Oh, that's on the level all right," Phil answered with evident
sincerity. "She just made up her mind a little while ago and Jim thinks
she will probably write to you girls about it."
"Oh, just think, we are really going to see her again after six months,"
Jessie exclaimed, joyfully.
"And we'll give her a reception she will never forget," Lucile decided.
"All right; I'm with you," Phil shouted, and was off to join a crowd of
the fellows on the other side of the street.
"Don't forget we eat soon," Lucile called after him.
"Such a chance," he flung back. "Bet I'll be there before you will."
"He thinks we're going to talk for another couple of hours," Jessie
interpreted.
"No, we'd better do our talking to-morrow. Tell you what we'll do--I
have--an idea," cried Lucile.
"Bright child, tell us about it," said Evelyn.
"Suppose we call a special camp-fire meeting to-morrow morning to talk
over plans for Miss Howland's--I mean Mrs. Wescott's reception."
"Fine--but who will let them know?"
"Come over to-night, both of you, and we can 'phone them from here."
"All right, we'll do that, Lucy," agreed Evelyn. "We'll see you about
eight o'clock, then."
"Better run, Lucy," warned Jessie, with a backward glance over her
shoulder. "Phil will beat you in if you don't hurry--he's coming full
tilt."
"All right, I'll see you to-night," said Lucile, as she made a dash for
the house.
She stopped for a moment on the doorstep to flash them a merry glance and
cry triumphantly, "I won!"
"But not by much," claimed Phil, taking the steps two at a time.
As they turned away, Jessie sent one parting shot over her shoulder:
"A miss is as good as a mile," she gibed.
CHAPTER III
A LATTER-DAY MIRACLE
Saturday dawned gloriously. The warm rain that had fallen over night had
dissolved the last frail bond of winter and had set the spring world
free. Trees and bushes and shrubs were frosted with clinging, glistening
diamonds that shimmered and gleamed in the sun, while the moist, warm
earth sent up a pungent sweetness found only in the early spring.
"Smell it, just smell it!" said Jessie, sniffling rapturously, as she and
Evelyn started on their way to Lucile's.
"Isn't it great?" Evelyn agreed. "That rain was just what we needed."
"It reminds me of last spring----"
"That's strange."
"What?" said Jessie, puzzled.
"Why, that this spring should remind you of last."
"Don't get flippant, young lady," said Jessie, severely, "or I shall be
obliged to give you a ducking," the river being very convenient just
there, as the girls had to walk alongside its shores for some distance
before turning into Lucile's avenue.
"Please don't; I had enough of a ducking last year in camp when I fell
off the rock. Don't you remember?" said Evelyn, with a rueful smile.
"I should say I do, rather," laughed Jessie. "No one who was there and
saw you could ever possibly forget it."
"Oh, I know I always make an impression," said Evelyn, wilfully
misunderstanding.
For once Jessie could find no suitable retort. "You hate yourself, don't
you?" was all she could say.
"Not so you could notice it," said Evelyn, enjoying her victory. "It
seems to me that you were saying something when I----"
"When you so rudely interrupted," said Jessie, sweetly. "I'm not so sure
that I will tell you now. It was nothing of any importance."
"Oh, I knew that," said Evelyn quickly--it was certainly her lucky day.
"You win!" cried Jessie, good-naturedly, throwing up her hands in mock
despair.
Evelyn laughed merrily. "I'll have to look out after this," she said.
"There'll be back-fire, I'm afraid. But, seriously, Jessie, what were you
going to say?"
"Oh, only that this wonderful weather reminds me of this time last year
when we were just making our plans for camp."
"Yes and even then we hadn't begun to realize how great it was going to
be."
"I never knew what real fun was till we got way off there in the woods
with the river before us and the woods all about us. And the very best
thing of all was that we had only ourselves to depend on for
everything."
"And we seemed to get along pretty well, too, considering," said Evelyn.
"Of course we did," Jessie agreed, and then added with a laugh, "I think
we would be a valuable aid to suffrage. Tell everybody we managed to get
along without any man's help."
"Oh, but we didn't," Evelyn objected. "How about Mr. Wescott?"
"It seems to me we could have gotten along very well without any of his
help," retorted Jessie, vindictively.
"Perhaps we could, but--our guardian would tell a different story," said
Evelyn, meaningly.
As she spoke the door of Lucile's house opened violently and Lucile
herself came flying to meet them. She was dressed all in white and she
seemed to the girls the very spirit of spring.
"Oh, girls, I'm so glad you came early," she cried, joyfully. "I was
hoping you would, so we could talk things over by ourselves before the
others came." She threw an arm about each of the girls and ran them up on
the porch.
"We are the first, then?" said Jessie, perching on the railing.
"I told Jessie you would think we had come to breakfast," remarked
Evelyn, flinging her hat carelessly into a chair.
"That's the way to do it," said Lucile, sarcastically. "It would serve
you right if somebody should sit on it."
"Put it on, Lucy, and let's see how you look in it," Jessie suggested.
Lucile laughingly obliged, and the girls gave an involuntary gasp of
delight.
"Oh, you darling," cried Evelyn, hugging Lucile so ecstatically that in
her enthusiasm she almost lost her balance and nearly fell to the ground
beneath. Lucile clutched her and brought her back to safety.
"A chair is the safest place for you," said her rescuer, laughingly.
"Take off the hat and everything will be all right," said Jessie. "That
was what nearly caused your undoing."
"Oh, very well," Lucile agreed. "For such a little thing why quarrel?"
and disappeared within the house.
"Remember," said Evelyn, warningly, "remember, that hat is mine, and if
you dare to put a slur upon it I'll----"
"Lucy, Lucy," cried Jessie in a frightened voice, "come quick; she is
threatening me!"
"All right; wait a minute," came the voice from inside.
"But I can't wait a minute," wailed Jessie; "she may have killed me by
that time."
"Well, what----" began Jessie, and Evelyn, glancing at her astonished
face, broke into a shout of laughter.
"Oh, Lucy, come and see what you've done," she gasped. "Oh, Jessie, I
never saw you look so funny, and that's saying a good deal."
"I'm glad you enjoyed it," said Jessie, icily, though there was a twinkle
in her eye. "Not having a mirror, I'm afraid I can't join in the joke."
"No, you are the joke," countered Evelyn.
Jessie's natural sweet temper was fast becoming ruffled by this rapid
fire and she had opened her mouth for a sharp retort when Lucile came
running out.
"What's the matter?" she cried, gaily, and then, at sight of Jessie's
face, she stopped.
"Overdose of hammers," she diagnosed, then wisely changed the subject.
"If we don't hurry up, the girls will be here before we have a chance to
say anything at all about Mrs. Wescott."
She perched herself upon the railing beside Jessie and soon they had
forgotten all momentary animosity in an animated discussion.
Five minutes later Lucile exclaimed, "Here come Marj., Ruth and Margaret
now. I wonder where the rest of them are."
"Welcome to our city," said Jessie. "We have great news for you
strangers."
"So we imagined." It was Marjorie Hanlan, a tall, dark, good-looking
girl, who answered.
"I couldn't sleep, wondering what you wanted," chimed in Margaret, the
little girl who had been lame, but now was just like other girls.
"And we have all been so happy about you, Margaret, since Lucy told us
the specialist said you were cured," broke in Evelyn.
"Isn't it great?" said Marjorie. "Margaret was telling us about it on the
way up. It seems almost miraculous."
Margaret flushed happily. "Oh, the doctors say there is nothing
miraculous about it. They say all I wanted was the exercise and healthy
outdoor life. But I know who really did it," she added, putting her arm
about Lucile. "It was you girls--yes it was," she insisted, as they
started to protest. "You were the first I can remember--except father, of
course--who treated me like a human being and not a curiosity. And, oh
I'm so grateful and happy," she ended.
Lucile patted the brown head on her shoulder.
"You give us altogether too much credit, Margaret, dear," she said,
unsteadily. "It was Miss Howland that thought of it in the first place,
and after we knew you we just couldn't help loving you for yourself and
wanting to help."
"That's right," cried the girls, heartily.
Margaret glanced around at the sober faces of her friends and, although
her eyes were still wet, there was a little hint of raillery in her
voice:
"Well, I did think you girls had something to do with it, but since you
say you didn't, we'll have to call it a miracle, after all."
The girls laughed a trifle shakily and Evelyn added, "But there's our
guardian, you know."
"Oh, yes," said Margaret, and her voice was very tender. "Of course,
there's our guardian. I don't know what we'd ever do without her."
"Well, we've had to get along without her for almost six months," Ruth
broke in, a trifle pettishly.
"Yes; I wonder if we'll ever see her again," said Marjorie. "We were
getting along so splendidly when that Mr. Wescott----"
"Oh, don't be too hard on him," cautioned Lucile. "If we loved her so
much, we couldn't blame him for doing the same thing."
"I know, but if he'd only waited two or three years," mourned Marjorie.
"He came a good deal too soon, and now I don't suppose we'll ever see her
again."
The three conspirators exchanged significant glances and Lucile cried,
merrily, "Perhaps you'll change your tune in a little while," and just as
the girls were about to demand the meaning of this strange remark, she
added, "Here come the rest of them now," and flew down to welcome them.
"What on earth----" began Marjorie, and then stopped as the remaining
girls of the camp-fire Aloea, six in all, for they had added two to their
number since the spring before, ran up on the porch, all talking at once
and making such a noise that her voice was drowned.
It was quite some time before order was restored and Marjorie could again
demand an explanation.
"Now that we are all here, Lucy," she said, "suppose you tell us what you
meant by that speech of yours."
"What speech?" said Lucile, for she had forgotten it in the excitement of
welcoming the new arrivals. "I'll explain anything, but I have to know
what it is first."
"Naturally," Marjorie agreed. "Perhaps you will remember that just before
the girls came you spoke of our changing our tune, or something to that
effect, in regard to Miss Howland."
"Mrs. Wescott, I suppose you mean?" Lucile inquired, blandly, "It seems
to me I did say something like that. What would you like to know?"
"What you meant by it," shouted Marjorie, and Margaret added, "Go ahead,
give it to us, Lucy. I have an idea that's what you called us here for."
"Smart child," approved Jessie, with an approving pat and nod of the
head. "You're coming right along."
Margaret thrilled with a pleasure that was almost pain. "She never would
have dared say that to me before," she cried to herself, exultantly. "She
would have been too afraid of hurting me. Now I know I'm just like all
the rest!"
CHAPTER IV
COUNTING THE HOURS
"You're right, Margaret," Lucile was saying. "I did call you all together
just to speak of our guardian."
The girls leaned forward eagerly. "What about her?" they demanded.
"Oh, Lucy, don't keep us waiting," begged Marjorie. "Is she coming to
Burleigh?"
"Not so fast," cried Lucile. "Give me half a chance. I haven't heard from
our guardian personally, but Phil got a letter from Jim the other day and
he said----" Lucile paused dramatically.
"Yes, yes; go on," they demanded, excitedly.
"And she said that Mr. and Mrs. Wescott were going to visit Burleigh very
soon."
"Soon," cried Margaret. "That sounds good. Always before it's been
something that was going to happen in the dim future."
"Did she say any special time, Lucy?" Ruth broke in, impatiently.
"No, there was nothing definite about it," said Lucile, "but I expect to
hear from her almost any minute now."
"There comes the postman--perhaps he will bring you a letter," suggested
Evelyn.
"Oh, what's the use of raising our hopes?" admonished Jessie. "There's
just about one chance in a thousand that the letter will come when we
want it."
"All we can do is wait," said Lucile, philosophically. "In the meantime,
suppose we all suggest something that we can do to welcome her--make her
feel how truly glad we are to see her. Somebody suggest something."
"For goodness' sake, Lucy," Marjorie exclaimed, "you might better have
left me out of this. I'm no good at all when it comes to using any
imagination."
"You have probably as much as any of us, and you can't get out of helping
that way," said Lucile, decidedly.
"From things she has said, I should give her credit for a good deal of
imagination," quoth Jessie, slyly.
"Oh, I'll get even for all those awful things you have said to me and
about me, Jessie Sanderson," Marjorie threatened, good-naturedly. "I'd do
it now, only I'm too busy trying to think up a plan."
"Good girl; keep it up," commended Lucile, and then, as she caught a
murmured "That's just an excuse" from Jessie's direction, she cried, with
a scarcely suppressed laugh, "Perhaps you would be doing a little more
good in the world, Jessie, if you would follow her example."
"Bravo!" cried Evelyn. "That's one for you, Jessie," and promptly
received a withering glance from that young lady, which said as plainly
as words, "You just wait; there'll be a day of reckoning, and then----"
"Here comes the postman," cried Margaret. "Shall I take the mail, Lucy?"
"Please," she answered, and a moment later Margaret handed her half a
dozen envelopes, while the girls looked on in eager silence.
"Is it there?" cried one of the girls, at last.
"Not yet," said Lucile, but as she turned over the last letter, she
uttered a cry of amazement and delight that sent all the girls crowding
about her.
"That is her handwriting," exclaimed Evelyn, and then there ensued such a
babble of wonder and delight and excited speculation as to its contents
that Lucile was finally obliged to shout, "If you will only sit down,
girls. I'll see what's inside, and please stop making such an unearthly
noise--we'll have the reserves out to quell the riot before we know it."
The girls laughed and distributed themselves about the porch, as many as
could possibly get there crowding the rail on either side of Lucile,
while they all listened with bated breath to what their guardian had to
say.
"To Lucile and all my dear camp-fire girls," read Lucile. "I planned to
come to Burleigh long ago, as you all know, and was bitterly disappointed
when I was forced at the last minute to change my plans."
"So were we," said Evelyn, and was greeted by a chorus of impatient
"sh-sh" as Lucile went on:
"But this time I am as sure as I can ever be of anything that my plans
won't fall through. I expect to be in Burleigh by the twenty-fifth."
"Oh, think of it! That's day after to-morrow!" Margaret exclaimed,
rapturously.
"That's what it is," Jessie agreed.
"Go on, Lucy; what more has she to say?" demanded another of the girls,
and Lucile went on with her reading.
The rest of the letter contained descriptions of her travels and all she
had seen, ending up with: "When I see my girls, I will tell you all I
have been writing now, and a great deal more, and will expect to hear
more fully than they have been able to write me all that has happened to
them during the last six months. I am counting the hours till I see you
all again. Good-by till then, dear girls. Your own loving guardian."
"That's all," Lucile finished. "Now we know when she's coming."
"Isn't she dear, and didn't the whole thing sound just like her?" cried
Jessie.
"Exactly," agreed Evelyn, and then added, "If she is counting the hours
till she sees us, I wonder what we'll be doing."
"We'll be making the hours count," said Lucile.
"Good for you, Lucy; that's what I call efficiency," cried Marjorie.
"Make time work for us."
"Yes, but how are we going to do it?" said Ruth, distrustfully.
"I'll tell you," Lucile answered. "I thought that we ought to give our
guardian a surprise when she comes. She hasn't been here for so long, and
we ought to make it something she will remember."
"You've thought of something, Lucy; I can tell that," cried Jessie.
"Suppose you let us know about it."
"Go ahead, Lucy--we'll let you think for all the rest of us," Marjorie
suggested. "You can do it better, anyway."
"How very kind of you!" mocked Lucile. "I appreciate your generosity
immensely."
"Go on; tell us your idea, Lucy," urged Margaret. "Never mind her."
"Well, it was only this, and if any one has anything better to offer, I'm
only too glad to hear about it. I thought that you girls could all dress
up in your ceremonial costumes. In the meantime, I'll have a fire made in
the living-room fireplace and then I'll go to meet her."
"And leave us home?" Evelyn interrupted.
"Exactly," said Lucile, firmly. "As I said before, I'll go to meet her
and bring her here. Then I'll take her upstairs to get her things off and
tell her you girls will be here right away."
"And we're to be hidden in some other room, I suppose," Marjorie
ventured.
"Uh-huh. Then I'll get her down into the living-room and make her
comfortable in front of the fire----"
"Let us hope it's a cool day," Margaret interjected.
"We'll hope so," agreed Lucile. "We will have plenty of cool days yet,
anyway, before spring sets in in earnest, and maybe the day after
to-morrow will be one of them. I'll get her to sit there, even if it is
warm."
"What then, Lucile?" asked one of the girls. "I have a feeling that the
most interesting part is yet to come."
"It is," said Lucile. "You see, I'll be talking to her so hard that she
won't notice what's going on around her much--that is, if you are
careful. Then you come in, one by one, on your tip-toes and sit in a
semicircle behind her."
"Oh, that will be a lark," cried Evelyn. "And are we to wait till she
finds us out?"
"That's what I was going to tell you," said Lucile. "When you all get
settled, I'll put my hand up to my hair like this, and then you begin to
sing, very softly, 'Oh, fire----'"
"That will be splendid, Lucy; it will seem almost like old times," cried
Margaret. "How did you manage to think it all out so beautifully?"
"Oh, it was simple enough," said Lucile. "The only thing is, do you all
like it?"
Lucile was very well satisfied with the reception of her plan a moment
later. The girls were enthusiastic and overwhelmed her with questions
until she was obliged for the second time that morning, to say, "One at a
time, please."
When, finally, all the arrangements were complete and satisfactory, one
of the girls discovered it was after noon.
"Girls," exclaimed Evelyn, dismayed, "we've used up the whole morning
just talking."
"Why, what time is it?" asked Margaret, feeling for her watch.
"It's twelve fifteen," announced Evelyn, impressively.
"Time I was going home," Marjorie declared, jumping up. "Where's my
hat?"
"It's inside with Evelyn's," Lucile answered. "If I hadn't taken care of
them there would have been nothing left resembling a hat. I'll get
them," she added, and ran into the house.
In a moment she returned with a hat in each hand.
"What did you want to wear them for, anyway?" she said, as they started
off. "You didn't really need them, and just think of all the work you
made me."
"Oh, they just wanted to show them off," laughed Gertrude Church.
"Humph, we know why they pretend to criticize us, don't we Marjorie?"
queried Evelyn, with a knowing wink.
"Sure; they're jealous," was the laconic reply, at which all the girls
laughed scornfully.
"We'd have to have something better than that to be jealous of," scoffed
one.
"Then we'll see you Monday, Lucy," called Jessie, as they started off
down the street. "Maybe before," she added.
"I can stand it," laughed Lucile. "Come early Monday, anyway, all of you,
and don't forget what I told you."
"We won't," they called; "don't worry!" And, indeed, she had no need for
anxiety, for the thought that filled the girls' minds to the exclusion of
everything else was:
"Our guardian is coming Monday--oh, why is it so far away?"
CHAPTER V
AS THOUGH ON WINGS
The eventful day had come at last over a wait that seemed an eternity to
the impatient girls. The long school-day was endless and, in spite of all
good resolutions, they could not keep their thoughts from wandering to
the alluring picture they had conjured up. A picture wherein figured an
open-grate fire, Miss Howland--for so they had thought of her even after
her marriage--their own dear guardian, turning suddenly to see her
camp-fire girls in their old familiar costume waiting to welcome her. How
would she look? What would she say? These were the thoughts that
persisted in haunting them through the long school-day and refused to be
shaken off.
At last it was three o'clock and the girls gathered on the campus, books
in hand, eagerly anxious to be off.
"Are we all here?" said Jessie, looking about.
"All but Grace; she'll be here any minute, I guess."
The prophecy proved correct, and soon the whole of camp-fire Aloea,
except the one who was to play the most important part, was swinging at a
great rate down the road to their meeting-place. Lucile had been excused
a few minutes earlier on the plea that she was to meet her guardian. The
few minutes' grace would give her time to see that the fire was lighted
and attend to the hundred and one minor details that would set things
running smoothly.
Rain had been threatening all day, but now the welcome sun burst through
the clouds so suddenly that the girls were surprised.
"Say, that came in a hurry, didn't it?" remarked Marjorie. "Oh, I'm so
glad."
"Who isn't?" Jessie rejoined. "The rain would have made everything so
gloomy, just when we wanted it brightest."
"It seems as if the sun knew Miss Howland was coming and just couldn't
help shining," said Margaret, with a face so like the sun itself in its
radiant brightness that Marjorie, who was near her, threw her arm about
the slight form, saying, lovingly, "Even if the sun hadn't come out,
Margaret, I don't think we'd have missed it much with you around."
"Don't you remember what Miss Howland always used to say about there
being a great deal more credit in being happy and sunny on a gloomy day
than a bright one?" put in Eleanor.
"Yes; but, though I've tried very hard to look cheerful when the rain has
spoiled all my chances for a good time, I'm very much afraid I don't
often succeed," said Evelyn, with a rueful smile.
"I can't imagine you in the doleful dumps for very long, Evelyn," said
Ruth. "I've never seen you anything but happy yet."
"Oh, you don't have to live with her, Ruth," said Jessie. "If you did,
and I'm glad for your sake you don't, you would soon change your
opinion."
"I'd like to know what you know about it, anyway," Evelyn retorted,
gaily. "You've never lived with me--that I know of, at any rate."
"To change the subject," Marjorie broke in, "there's Lucile waving to us
to hurry. I guess she has something to tell us before she goes to the
station."
They broke into a run and in another minute had surrounded Lucile.
"I'm glad you came just as you did," she was saying. "It seemed as if you
would never get here, and I was afraid I would have to go without seeing
you."
"We hurried just as fast as we could, Lucy, as you see," said Jessie,
panting from the quick run.
"Of course you did, but it seemed an age to me. Listen, girls," she went
on, "everything's all ready. Your dresses are laid out on the bed in my
room, and you'd better get them on as soon as you possibly can."
"You're going to the station now, Lucy, aren't you?" asked one of the
girls.
"Yes, right away. I suppose we'll be back again in about half an hour.
Good-by; I'm off!" and she ran down the steps, only to turn at the bottom
to add, "Don't forget any of the directions, girls, and don't make the
least noise when you come into the room, or it will spoil everything.
Good-by; I'm off now for good."
"We'll do everything just right," Jessie promised.
"Good luck!" they called after her as she hurried along.
"She almost seems to be walking on air, doesn't she?" one of them
remarked, as she turned for a last wave.
"No wonder," said Evelyn, gloomily. "She's going to our guardian."
"Lucy said they would be back in half an hour," sighed Marjorie. "How can
we wait that long?"
"Nobody knows," Jessie answered, cheerily; "but as long as we have to get
ready, we might as well begin now. Come on; let's see who'll be dressed
first girls----" which precipitated a general stampede for the door.
As Lucile hurried along toward the station it really seemed as though her
feet had wings. The thought of meeting her guardian again, of talking to
her in the old familiar way of the old familiar things--all this made her
say to herself over and over again, "Oh, I don't believe anybody was ever
so happy before." She could see in her mind's eye that old bright, cheery
smile of her guardian flash out as she said, as she had said so many
times before, "Well, how are my girls to-day?"
To-ot! The shrill wail of the locomotive whistle broke rudely through her
revery and brought her to a sudden realization that if she didn't bestir
herself, Mrs. Wescott would be at the station with no one to meet her.
"Oh," cried Lucile to herself, "and I thought I was hurrying just as fast
as I could. Well, I'm in for a race with the train, it seems. I wonder
what the girls would say," she chuckled as she ran. "This is almost as
good as a canoe race."
Either the train had been farther off than she thought when Lucile heard
the whistle or she had run faster than she had ever run in her life; the
result was the same--Lucile won!
Just as she breathlessly reached the station, the great locomotive came
thundering around the last curve.
CHAPTER VI
"OH, FIRE, LONG YEARS AGO----"
Lucile's heart beat fast as the train came to a standstill and a crowd of
people began to pour out.
"Where is she, where is she?" she cried, scanning one after another,
speaking to those she knew, while, at the same time, looking past them
with such an intent gaze that more than one turned to look back at her
and remark with the shake of a head, "There's something up."
Lucile was just about in despair when, at the far end of the platform,
she descried her.
With a cry she ran forward and, throwing her arms about her guardian's
neck with a little hysterical sob, she exclaimed, "Oh, I thought you
weren't coming."
For a moment she was held close while the voice she loved said, gently,
"You don't suppose I could stay away when I had made up my mind to come,
do you?"
"Oh, no; I knew in my heart you would be here," drawing herself away and
looking at her guardian with such happiness written on her face that Mrs.
Wescott's bright eyes were dimmed as she said, "It's good to have a
welcome like this!!"
"Oh, it isn't anything to what you're going to get," Lucile wanted to
say, but she only answered, ruefully, "I'm afraid all Burleigh will be
talking about how boisterous Lucile Payton is becoming. Can't you hear?"
she added, gaily: "'I declare, that child's terribly rude; she almost
knocked me down!'"
"A very good imitation of Miss Peabody, Lucile," laughed Mrs. Wescott. "I
wonder how many times I've heard her talk just that way."
Miss Peabody was one of the old maids that authors love to
picture--straight, prim, opinionated, with a sharp tongue that wrought
discord wherever it went. She dealt in other people's shortcomings, and
if Burleigh had not known her too well to give her false tales credence,
she might have worked some serious mischief. As it was, everyone took her
gossip with a grain of salt, remarking, with a smile and a shrug after
she had gone away, "Of course, that may be true, but remember, Angela
Peabody said it!"
When Lucile chose, she could mimic anyone from the young Italian at
"Correlli's" to pompous Mrs. Belmont Nevill, who owned millions that she
didn't know how to use. So now she had brought Miss Peabody before her
guardian so vividly that the latter added, in surprise, "That must be a
recent accomplishment, Lucy. You never did that at camp."
"At camp I never remembered anybody at Burleigh except Mother and Dad and
Phil," said Lucile. "It seemed like a different world."
"A rather nice kind of world it was, too, wasn't it?" said her guardian,
with a reminiscent smile.
"Nice?" cried Lucile. "It was glorious! I only wish we could do it all
over again. It does seem as if one good thing comes crowding right on the
heels of another ever since we decided to form a camp-fire."
"It has meant happiness for all of us," said Mrs. Wescott, with a
far-away look that Lucile knew how to interpret.
"I know," she said. "Here we are," she added, a moment later. "Oh, it's
good to have you here at last."
For answer, her guardian put her arm about Lucile and ran lightly up the
steps, saying, joyfully, "And it's good to be here, Lucy, dear; but where
are the girls?"
"Oh, they're coming," Lucile answered, vaguely. "Come on upstairs and get
your things off," she added, guiding her guest past the living-room
adroitly.
When Lucile ushered her into the great, airy, upstairs sitting-room, she
dropped into an easy chair with a sigh of content.
"Oh, Lucy, it is good to be here," she added. Then, for the first time,
Lucile had a chance to get "a really good look at her," as she expressed
it.
The wind had loosened her guardian's dark hair and it clung in little
ringlets about her face. Her eyes, those deep, comprehending, gray eyes,
sparkled with delight as she took in the familiar objects about her. The
merry dimples that had always fascinated the girls, and others besides,
were ever in evidence as she talked and laughed happily.
"I suppose," she went on, as Lucile took her hat and coat. "I suppose you
girls had just about made up your minds I was never coming to Burleigh;
six months is such a long time; but it seemed as if I could never get
started."
"Well, you're here now," said Lucile, gaily, "and that makes the six
months seem like nothing at all."
"How are your mother and father and Phil and everybody?" asked Mrs.
Wescott, with a comprehensive sweep of her hand. "I want to know all
about everybody."
"Oh, they're all right," Lucile assured her, and then added, as an
afterthought, "except, of course, Jim Keller's dog, Bull."
"What's happened to Bull?" inquired young Mrs. Wescott, with smiling
interest.
Indeed, everyone in Burleigh knew and feared Bull. His ferocity was
famous through the countryside, or at least, had been until he had met
his downfall a few days before.
"Come downstairs and I'll tell you about it. It is still a little chilly
upstairs."
"All right," agreed Mrs. Wescott. "Wait a minute; I must get my
handkerchief first."
A moment longer and they were in the spacious living-room, with its big
library table and leather-covered chairs, and, best of all, glowing fire
in the grate.
Mrs. Wescott looked toward the latter in pleased surprise. "Isn't it snug
here?" she said, slipping into one of the chairs before the fire. "A fire
always giving the room a cheerful, homey look."
"Oh, I love it!!" said Lucile, impulsively. "Ever since we came back from
camp I've been wanting to make a great big camp-fire. This seems such a
poor imitation."
"I imagine it's just enough to make you camp-sick," laughed her guardian.
"But tell me about Bull. I'm interested."
"Oh, it's been the talk of Burleigh for days," said the girl. "If you
will just turn your chair around so you will get a full view of the fire,
I'll tell you about it."
Her guest did as she was bid and settled back comfortably to enjoy the
story.
"Well," began Lucile, "the other day Bull and his master were walking
down Main Street. You know, Jim Keller absolutely refuses to keep Bull
tied up and the only wonder is he--the dog, I mean--hasn't been poisoned
long ago, he has so many enemies. Well, Bull broke loose from Jim some
way and when he tried to find him he had disappeared. Jim went raving
around like a wild man, declaring that, 'if the dog wasn't found soon,
he'd sure get into some mischief.'"
"He showed rare perception."
"That's what we all thought--at least, you would have judged so by the
way everybody called their children in, and any one that had a pet cat or
dog went almost crazy till it was out of harm's way. Oh, there was
excitement in Burleigh that day!"
"I can imagine," interjected Mrs. Wescott, in huge enjoyment of the
picture. "Did Jim find him?"
"Not for over an hour. He ran over half the town, looking everywhere for
his Bull. At last a small boy came running and told him the dog was over
yonder and he was gettin' a 'turrible lickin'.'"
"Licking?" exclaimed Mrs. Wescott, sitting up straight in her surprise.
"Bull?"
"That was the funny part of it," Lucile went on. "Of course, Jim wouldn't
believe it was his Bull the boy was talking about, but he went with him
just the same.
"When he turned the corner he came upon a spectacle that dazed him. He
stood with his eyes and mouth wide open, gazing at Bull--it was his Bull,
but oh, disgraced forever! There he was on his back in the dust, with a
great collie making flying leaps over him. Each time he jumped those
terrible nails ripped a piece of flesh from poor Bull----"
"But I never thought a collie had half a chance against a bull dog," Mrs.
Wescott interrupted, incredulously. "And such a dog as Bull, at that!"
"Well, you see, the collie's owner explained all that afterward. He said
that Bull couldn't get at his dog's throat because of his unusually long,
thick hair--and, as a rule, that's Bull's first move, you know."
"Catch him by the throat and hang on--yes, I know," her guardian
supplemented. "Then what did Jim do?"
"He wanted to go to the rescue. I believe he would have tried to pull the
collie off with his own hands, but a man held him off, crying, 'Haven't
you any sense, man, to try to separate dogs when they're fighting?'
"'Fighting?' roared Jim. 'It isn't a fight--it's slaughter. If he's your
mutt, call him off. Don't ye see he's killin' 'im?'
"'He is punishing him pretty badly, I'll admit,' said the stranger, so
calmly that Jim nearly exploded.
"'If you don't call that dog o' yourn off,' he yelled, purple with rage,
'by all that's holy, I will, and 'twill be with a shot-gun.'
"The man saw he meant it, so he whistled softly."
"And all this time Bull was being punished?" said Mrs. Wescott.
"Yes; he was simply down and out. He didn't seem to have the power to
move a muscle. When his master whistled, the big collie stood still,
cocked one ear, and then trotted over, as if what he had done to poor
Bull were just in the day's work.
"'You brute!' Jim raged. 'I don't know which is worse, you or your dog!'
"The man only patted his dog, and said, 'You've done a good day's work,
old man.'
"This last shot was lost on Jim, for he was already bending over Bull,
patting his poor old mangled head and calling him all the endearing names
he could think of. Finally, seeing that Bull was either too weak or too
ashamed to get up and could only wag his stub of a tail, he picked him up
very tenderly and started for home.
"That was anything but a triumphal journey. An army returning after
overwhelming defeat could not have attracted more attention than those
two old warriors. Heads popped out of every door and window, and before
he was halfway home he had a train of small boys following him. I
declare, when I saw the old man, he was almost crying. When I went up to
him and patted the dog's head, he said, brokenly, 'He's all I've got, and
now they've even gone and done him up!'"
"Poor old Jim," said Mrs. Wescott. "Everyone hated Bull, but you can't
help feeling sorry for him and his master when they're down and out."
"Oh, it was really pitiful," said Lucile, "and it made me so desperate to
see all those thoughtless cruel boys following him, hooting at him, and
laughing at him and calling poor old battered Bull all sorts of names. So
I turned around and looked at them. I saw that little Bob Fletcher was
one of the crowd.
"'Bob,' I said, 'suppose your Rover had been hurt--would you like to be
laughed at?'
"'I'd like to see anybody that'd try,' said he, manfully.
"'Then why do you turn round and make fun of Bull when he's in trouble?
It seems to me you're acting mighty like cowards!'
"The words had a magical effect. I don't suppose it had struck the boys
in that light before, but it was more than their manhood could stand to
be called cowards.
"'We ain't cowards,' said one, belligerently, 'and I'll fight anybody
that says we are,' after which they all looked sheepish and started off
in twos and threes, calling to each other that they'd better hurry and
finish that game in the field--it would be getting dark soon!"
"You always did have a way with the young folks, Lucy," smiled her
guardian; "but that was a real act of kindness. What did old Jim do?"
"Oh, he gave me a sort of wintry smile and said, 'Thank'ee little gal. I
couldn't lick the lot of 'em myself, 'count of Bull here!' Then he
stumbled on, muttering to the dog.
"Poor old Bull," Lucile concluded. "His glory had departed forever and
ever----"
"Oh, Fire, long years ago----" the words came from ten girls' hearts,
low, sweet, and vibrant with feeling.
Their guardian sat as if turned to stone.
CHAPTER VII
THE MAGIC CITY
The last sweet note hesitated, sighed, and softly merged in the crackling
of the fire, and still their guardian did not move.
For a long moment she sat upright and still, her hands clutching the arms
of her chair, her gaze fixed steadily on the tiny, darting flames.
Perhaps she saw there even more than the girls sensed, for when she
turned to them, her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
"Girls, dear girls," she cried, unsteadily, "what a welcome you have
given me! And I had begun to think you had forgotten all about your
guardian," and as she spoke she held out her arms so that the girls came
rushing.
Then such a hugging and kissing and asking of foolish questions and
answering of them in like, but delightful manner, until Mrs. Wescott was
forced to say, laughingly and in the same old tone they had heard so
often in camp:
"Girls, don't you think it would be better to hear one at a time?"
The girls laughed gaily and settled themselves so near their guardian
that "they couldn't possibly miss a word," as Jessie explained afterward
when describing the scene to her mother.
"Oh, it's a sight for sore eyes to see all my camp-fire girls again,"
said Mrs. Wescott, as her eyes traveled happily over the little group
about her.
Some threw themselves on the floor at her feet, while others were curled
up on the huge divan, and Marjorie and Jessie perched on the arms of her
chair. But all the bright faces were turned toward her with such happy
and expectant interest that a lump seemed to rise in her throat, and she
had much ado to speak at all.
"It is wonderful to have you here after all this time," cried Jessie,
snuggling close to her guardian as she spoke. "I feel as if any minute
you're likely to fade away just as the ghosts and visions do in the
moving pictures."
There was a general laugh, and then Evelyn broke in, gallantly.
"I protest," she said, stoutly. "I deny that our guardian is a ghost."
"No; but she is a vision," said a voice behind them, and Lucile slipped
noiselessly into the circle.
"Goodness, Lucile, anybody would think you were the redskin you look
like," commented Dorothy, a trifle sharply, for she had started in a most
undignified manner.
"See, you frightened the child, Lucile," said Marjorie, aggravatingly.
"You should be more careful with one so young."
"What do you call yourself?" retorted Dorothy, and Lucile saw it was high
time she took a hand in the argument.
"Don't tease, Marj," she admonished. "And don't get mad about nothing,
Dotty--I mean Dot," she corrected quickly, as Dorothy eyed her
menacingly.
"I don't wonder she draws the line at Dotty," laughed Jessie. "I haven't
called you that for two weeks, Dot; I've kept track."
"When you haven't called me that for two years," said Dorothy,
graciously, "I'll begin to think you're improving."
"That's right, Dot," cried one of the girls, with a merry laugh. "Never
refuse a helping hand to the wicked!"
"Encourage them once in a while and some time, soon or late, you will be
rewarded," chanted Marjorie in a solemn tone that brought a laugh from
every one.
"Lucy was right, just the same," said Margaret, with apparent
irrelevance, and the girls turned inquiring eyes on the speaker as she
sat, chin in hand, gazing into the fire.
Somehow the girls' faces always sobered when they looked at Margaret, and
when they spoke to her their voices softened to an undernote of
tenderness never used among themselves. She had won her way steadily to
every girl's heart. They had marveled at her invariable sweetness of
temper; they had laughed at her quaint, naive sayings, and, most of all,
they had loved her for the warm, grateful heart that found room and to
spare for them all.
So now Evelyn, merry, irresponsible Evelyn, said, with a gentleness that
caused Mrs. Wescott to look at her in surprise:
"What do you mean, Margaret? Pictures in the fire again?"
"No; I was just thinking of what Lucy said when she first came in, before
Dorothy jumped all over her," said Margaret, with a twinkle in her eye
that had only found its way there of late.
"Jumped all over her? What kind of language do you call that, Margaret
Pratt Stillman?" reproved Marjorie, with her best grandmother air. "If
you are not careful, the habit of using slang will grow upon you."
"Oh, do keep still, Marj, for half a minute, can't you?" cried Jessie. "I
suppose you can't," she added, "but you might try, anyway. A great many
impossible things come with time."
"Speak with yourself, Johnette," retorted Marjorie.
"Why the Johnette?" inquired Lucile, with interest.
"Feminine for John, of course," Marjorie explained, patiently.
Jessie broke in upon the laugh that followed. "But we haven't come to the
point yet," she complained. "Speak up, Margaret, before some other rude
person interrupts."
"That's right," said Lucile, ignoring the irony in her tone. "Now is your
chance, Peggy."
"Why, you said that our guardian was a vision," said Margaret, dreamily.
"I quite agree with you."
"Come, come, I can't allow this," cried the vision, gaily, as the girls
turned adoring eyes upon her. "I've been thinking sundry little thoughts
on my own account since I've seen my girls again."
"Oh, doesn't it seem great to be back?" cried Dorothy. "I know I should
be terribly homesick if I stayed away six weeks, let alone six months."
"Indeed it did. Just the same, New York is fascinating, with its great
buildings, its busy, absorbed throng of people, each intent on getting
ahead of the next one. There is something about it all that draws one
irresistibly. The very air seems charged with electricity, and just to
walk down Broadway gave me more real excitement and enjoyment than the
most thrilling play could have done." Helen Wescott's face flushed and
her eyes sparkled as she talked.
"Go on," cried Evelyn breathlessly. "Do tell us all about it. Oh, I can't
even imagine it!"
"I don't believe I could tell you everything if I should talk for a
month," she went on. "But I do remember a conversation Jack and I had
soon after our arrival. We were walking up Fifth Avenue one exceptionally
busy day--I don't know why I should say that, for every day over there
seems busier than the last--when Jack asked why I was so quiet. 'Because
everything else is making so much noise,' I answered. Which, indeed, was
almost reason enough. But when he insisted, I said what had been in my
thoughts for the past two days:
"'I've been wondering, as I looked at all these people rushing along as
if their lives depended on their getting to a certain place on a certain
second--these people with set faces and eyes that seem to see a long way
off--I've just been wondering what they all find to do.'
"'My dear,' said Jack, and he laughed in a way I could not understand,
'It's easy to see you have lived a long way from little old New York, and
I'm mighty glad you have. I'd rather you would face all these people for
the first time with me along.'
"'But you haven't answered my question,' I insisted, for I was still
filled with wonder at the great throng surging past us, whose purpose
never seemed to change or falter.
"'You asked what they were all doing,' said Jack. 'Well, for the most
part, they are busily and congenially engaged in doing to the best
advantage the next poor victim that comes to their net.'
"Somehow, that little remark put a different aspect on everything and
Fifth Avenue didn't hold quite the same charm for me that it had. Just
the same," she added, brightly, "I like New York mighty well. The only
thing I didn't like about it was that it didn't hold my girls, and I did
miss you all so much!"
"Oh, I don't see how you would ever find time to miss anybody with all
those wonderful new sights and sounds around you all the time," said
Evelyn, naively.
Marjorie sniffed. "Of course, we know you wouldn't," she said.
"I wouldn't," said Evelyn, unabashed. "I'd be too awfully excited all the
time."
"Oh, Evelyn, Evelyn!" said Lucile, laughing. "Won't you ever learn to
cover up your faults?"
"I'll have to get some first," she retorted, impishly; and the girls, who
were in a mood when everything strikes them funny, began to laugh. The
more they laughed, the more they tried to stop, the more impossible it
became, until the whole house rang with merriment. Lucile was the first
to recover herself.
"That's quite enough for some time to come, Evelyn," she cried, choking
back her laughter. "We all know you are wonderful, but please remember
that no human being is perfect."
Gradually they quieted down, with only an occasional explosion, and
Lucile returned to her guardian again.
"I suppose you have gone to all the theaters and restaurants and things
in the city," she asked. "Are they just as wonderful as people make them
out to be?"
"More," said Mrs. Wescott, emphatically, dimpling happily at her
memories. Indeed, she was very young and very enthusiastic, and the
girls, looking at her, thought they had never seen her so entrancingly
lovely.
"It is almost impossible to describe," she went on. "At first you have
only a confused impression that the world is on fire with electric
lights. To ride through the crowded theater district at night, with the
great electric signs blinking at you from all sides--with the honking of
the motor horns making a very Babel--with the crowds on the sidewalk,
still hurrying, but for such a different reason--men and women in evening
dress, all bound for one or other of the gay restaurants or theaters
close by. And then the theater itself! To walk from the street to the
gaily lighted lobby, its walls paneled from floor to ceiling with great
mirrors that reflect lovely women and distinguished men. Then in the
theater where the rich carpet deadens every footfall and you feel rather
than hear the murmur of many voices speaking softly--the subtle rustle of
a crowded place--the lights--the music--oh, girls, it was wonderful,
wonderful! I can't describe it!"
"Oh, but you have described it--beautifully!" cried Lucile. "I feel as if
I had been there!"
"Oh, just to go there once!" breathed Jessie, rapturously. "If I could
only see those things once, I think I'd be willing to die!"
The girls raised laughing protests, and Lucile cried, "For goodness'
sake, don't speak of dying yet awhile, Jessie. I'm going to see lots
before my end comes. Oh, if we could only go back with you, Miss How--I
mean Mrs. Wescott," she stammered, blushing furiously at her mistake.
The lovely guardian of the fire looked down upon Lucile, a quizzical
smile curling the corners of her mouth.
"I don't wonder you make that mistake once in a while," she said. "It
took me a long while to get used to it."
"I should think it would seem strange just at first," ventured Margaret,
amazed at her own temerity and looking up at her guardian shyly. "I mean
not being Miss Howland any longer."
The girls laughed and Margaret flushed confusedly.
"You shouldn't say such things, Margaret; it ill befits your age," said
Jessie patronizingly.
There followed another burst of laughter, out of which Margaret's voice
rose defiantly. "I don't care," she cried. "It seemed mighty funny to me
to call our guardian Mrs. Wescott, and if it seemed strange to me, what
must it have seemed to her? I was almost afraid----" her voice trailed
off into silence, and Mrs. Wescott prompted, gently, "Afraid of what,
dear?"
"Oh, just afraid that you might be--different."
It was the vague, half-formed fear that all the girls had felt, yet none
had dared express, and the silence that followed was pregnant with
meaning.
"Different, Margaret?" their guardian's voice was low and tremulous.
"Never! Happier, oh, so very much happier, girls; but never changed in my
love for you except as it grows stronger. Do I seem different?" she
asked, turning swimming eyes upon them.
"Oh, no--except that you are twice as dear," cried Lucile, and the cry
found an echo in each girl's heart.
"I'm so happy I'm afraid I'm going to have hysterics or something," cried
Jessie, dabbing her eyes with a square inch or so of handkerchief. "I
want to laugh and cry, and you can't do both at once."
The girls laughed shakily and Mrs. Wescott said, with a gay little laugh,
"Here, this will never do. Now that that question is settled forever and
ever, I want to hear what you girls have been doing all this time, and
what you expect to do this summer. Come, who's first?"
"Lucile," cried Dorothy. "You just ask her what she intends to do this
summer. All our plans are tame beside hers."
The girls had completely forgotten the wonderful topic that had seemed
all absorbing before this guardian's arrival, but now it took on an
added importance, and the girls waited eagerly for Lucile's disclosure.
"What great plans have you been making now, Lucile?" said Mrs. Wescott,
with that ever-ready interest that had won the girls completely. "I can
see there is something great in the wind. Tell me about it."
"I'd never have thought of it if Dorothy hadn't reminded me," said
Lucile, amazed that it should have slipped her mind for two minutes, let
alone two hours. "Why, it's only that Mother and Dad are going to Europe
this summer and they have decided to take Phil and me along with them;
and then Dad said I might ask Jessie and Evelyn to go with us if they'd
like to, and so they are coming--to make trouble," she added, slyly.
"Oh, no doubt of that last," said Mrs. Wescott, laughing, and then added,
with enthusiasm, "It certainly is splendid for you to have the chance. I
know your pet hobby has always been to visit Switzerland, Lucy, and now
you will, provided you get that far. Do you suppose you will?"
"I really don't know," said Lucile. "I've been too stunned by the mere
fact of going to Europe to think of asking for details. If I have
anything to say about it, we'll go to Switzerland, if we don't go
anywhere else."
"Just hear her talk of Switzerland, as if it were just around the
corner," marveled Ruth. "It has always seemed to me like some myth or
fable."
"And you feel as it you ought to speak of it in whispers," agreed
Marjorie. "That's the way I feel about it."
"Oh, I almost forgot about tea," Lucile interrupted, springing to her
feet and making a dash for the door. "It's getting late, and everybody
must be starved. Come on, Jessie, and help me, for goodness' sake!"
"Coming," said Jessie, stopping at the door to make a low bow and
declaim, "Ladies and gentlemen, we crave your indulgence----"
"You'd better come out here, or I'll use force," cried Lucile's voice
from somewhere in the rear, and the orator fled precipitately.
CHAPTER VIII
ENTER JACK
It was the last day Lucile and Evelyn and Jessie would spend in Burleigh
for some time. Since early morning they had been so busy they had
scarcely found time to breathe, and it was not till five o'clock in the
afternoon that Lucile slammed down the cover of her last trunk with a
triumphant, "There, that's done! Now, I wonder if I've thought of
everything."
Tired and happy, she flung herself upon the bed, a little meditative
frown puckering her forehead, and began a mental checking up of all the
hundred and one things she would need.
"I guess I have all the dresses I'll want," she ruminated. "Shoes and
combs and brushes and ribbons and handkerchiefs--oh, I wonder if I put in
my little flowered scarf; I mustn't forget that----"
Then began a frantic searching through bureau drawers, during which the
scarf failed to come to light. Finally she gave it up in despair and
turned upon the two trunks so fierce a look that the only wonder is they
didn't fade then and there and vanish into thin air.
"You disgusting old things!" she cried, hotly. "I suppose you think it's
fun to go all through you again and take out all your horrid old trays
and everything, just to make sure I put that scarf in. I suppose I'll
find it way down at the bottom, too."
She was on her knees before the smaller of the two trunks and had taken
out a good deal of the contents, still grumbling good-naturedly, when her
mother came in.
"What are you talking to yourself about, Lucile? I could hear you way
down the hall; and what _are_ you doing? I thought you had your trunks
nearly packed." Mrs. Payton's voice was irritably impatient.
Lucile sat back on her heels with a joyful, "I've got it, I've got
it--and I didn't have to unpack the whole trunk, either!"
"Got what?" cried Mrs. Payton, sharply. "I asked you a question."
Lucile sobered instantly. "My scarf," she answered. "I had the trunk all
packed, and then I thought of it. I guess I have everything else,
though."
"Let us hope so. As soon as you put the things back, you had better get
ready for to-night. It's pretty late."
"All right; I guess I will have to hurry," Lucile agreed, and finished
the repacking in silence.
Five minutes later she flew to the 'phone and called up Jessie.
"Hello!" she cried. "That you, Jessie? I've just finished packing, and
I've got to get dressed in a hurry. How about you?"
"I'm not quite through yet," came the answer. "But I will be pretty soon.
Mother came to my rescue a few minutes ago, and together we're making
things fly."
"That's good; be sure and get there in time. I haven't any idea who will
be there, but I guess there'll be quite a crowd. You know, I'm all shaky
from excitement," she confessed.
"So am I," said Jessie. "My hand trembles so I can hardly hold the
receiver."
"I guess it runs in the family," said Lucile, laughing. "Well, you'd
better get back to your packing--and do hurry, Jess!"
"Don't worry! I never knew the meaning of the word till this afternoon.
Good-by--oh, wait a minute! What dress are you going to wear?"
"My new white one, I guess," said Lucile. "I've been undecided all
afternoon whether to wear that or the pale green, but Mother thinks the
white is prettier."
"Oh, for goodness' sake, wear the white one, Lucy. I want to wear my blue
dress, and I was afraid we might clash."
"Oh, all right; anything for friendship's sake," laughed Lucile.
"Good-by, Jess--hustle!"
"I'm glad that's settled, anyway," Lucile murmured, as she hung up the
receiver. "Now I will have to rush," and away she flew to her room, hair
rumpled and eyes shining, to prepare for the dance.
The great affair had been originated by their guardian a few days before
in honor of the prospective voyagers, and the girls hardly knew what they
had looked forward to more, their trip to Europe or the dance.
"Oh, you look like the wild man of Borneo," cried Lucile as she caught a
glimpse in her mirror of tumbled curls and sadly rumpled dress. "It's
good you don't have to go to the dance looking that way. They'd put you
out, sure as fate. Well, here goes; let's see how long it will take the
wild man to take the form of Lucile Floyd Payton."
Half an hour later Lucile lifted the dainty mass of lace and chiffon from
her bed with a sigh of satisfaction. "When you're on, then we'll be all
ready. Guess I'll have to get Jane to do it up, though. I don't know just
how it goes yet."
Jane did the work satisfactorily; so well, in fact, that when she gave
the girl a little finishing pat and announced admiringly that "You surely
will be queen of the ball to-night, Miss Lucy," that young lady gave an
involuntary gasp of delight.
"Oh, it's pretty, it's pretty!" she cried.
"Indade, an' it's not the only thing that has a claim to beauty," said
Jane, with an admiring glance at her young mistress. "Now, you'd better
come down an' get a bite to ate, Miss Lucy, before iverything gets cold.
Ye needn't be worryin' 'bout yer looks the night," she prophesied.
"Thanks, Jane," cried Lucile, gaily. "I got ready in pretty good time,
after all, didn't I? Oh, there's the dinner gong and I am not a bit
hungry!"
"Excitement's no good on an empty stomach," said Jane sagely. "Take my
advice an' ate yer fill--ye'll be all the better for it."
"I'll do my best," she promised, and ran lightly down the stairs and into
the dining-room, where the family were already assembled.
"How do you like it?" she cried, dropping them a low curtsey and smiling
like a little witch. "It's the first time I've had it on, Mother and Dad
and Phil--how do you like it? Isn't it becoming?" and she executed
several little toe-dances which brought her so near Phil that he hugged
her impulsively.
"It's a peach, and so are you, Lucy. I didn't know you could look like
that," said he, eyeing her approvingly.
"It's a beauty," said her father, but his eyes were more for the rosy
cheeks and dancing eyes of his little girl than they were for the beloved
new dress.
Once, while Lucy and Phil were in the midst of an animated discussion
about some baseball game or other that they had seen recently, Mr. Payton
managed a sly wink in his wife's direction that said more plainly than
any words, "Aren't you proud of them? And they are all ours!"
At quarter past eight the first of Mrs. Wescott's young guests began to
arrive. They came in relays of three and four, all very excited and happy
and eager for a good time.
Promptly at eight thirty Lucile and Phil, with Jessie and a cousin of
hers, Jack Turnbull by name, started up the drive to Mrs. Wescott's
beautiful home.
"Doesn't it look lovely with the lights all over the place?" said
Jessie.
"Yes; especially because it has looked so forsaken for the last six
months," Lucile answered. A few moments later they reached the door and
were ushered into the brilliantly lighted hall.
"Lucy, stay near me, will you?" Jessie urged in a nervous whisper. "I
don't know half these people."
"Cheer up; we're all in the same fix," whispered Phil over her shoulder.
"We four can stick together, anyway."
"You have the right idea," said Jack Turnbull, with perhaps a trifle more
emphasis than was necessary, and with a glance toward Lucile, who had
gone forward to meet her hostess.
"Oh, he always has the right idea," Jessie chaffed, with a merry glance
at Phil, and then she followed Lucile to her guardian's side.
She greeted her guardian and then looked reproachfully at Lucile.
"Here, just the minute after I ask you not to go away, you desert me,"
she said.
"Well, I didn't go very far," Lucile consoled.
Mrs. Wescott laughed. "Go up in my room and get your things off, girls,"
she directed. "You'll find Margaret and Evelyn up there. Come down as
soon as you can," she added, as they started upstairs. "I want to
introduce you all around."
"All right, we'll hurry," said Lucile, and then squeezed her friend's
hand. "Oh, Jessie, what a lark!" she whispered. "We're in for a good time
to-night."
"You have the right idea, as Jack says," answered Jessie. "Did you see
him look at you, Lucy?"
"Hush! they're right behind us," cautioned Lucile. "Hello, girls," she
cried, as she entered the room. "I don't see how you managed to get here
before us."
"Oh, that's easy," laughed Evelyn. "How lovely you look! Oh, I love your
dresses--both of them! Are they new?"
"Of course they are, or we would have seen them before," said Margaret.
"Well, we're not the only ones, anyway," said Lucile. "I know yours are
new. They're awfully pretty."
"We're all satisfied then," said Jessie, briskly. "Lucy, will you
_please_ put this pin in where it will do the most good. I never can keep
this lock of hair in place."
"You poor infant!" said Lucile. "Come here and let me fix you."
Then some strange girls came in and, after a few admonitory pats of
stubborn bows and ruffles, the girls started downstairs. They made a
pretty picture as they descended the wide staircase together, and as they
reached the last step their guardian disengaged herself from a laughing
group of young folks and came forward to meet them with an approving
smile.
"You didn't stay up there as long as I expected," she laughed. "Now come
in and meet everybody."
The introductions were soon over, much to everybody's relief, and the
girls were surprised to find how many of the boys and girls they knew.
"Why, I know most all of them," Lucile confided to Jack in a lull. "Those
I don't know to speak to, I've seen over and over again on the street."
"That's not strange," said Jack. "There's a great big crowd and it's
growing every minute. Here are some new arrivals!"
"Oh, it's Marjorie and Dot, with the boys," she cried, jumping up. "Will
you excuse me a minute? I'll be right back," and she threw him a glance
so full of sparkling mischief that his heart leaped suddenly and
unaccountably, and Phil had to speak to him twice before he could make
himself heard.
In half an hour the dancing began. The floor of the two great rooms that
had been thrown open for the use of the guests had been polished till
they shone, and at the far end of the room a platform had been erected,
upon which sat the musicians, partly screened by magnificent palms. The
rooms were decorated from end to end with flowers and the air was heavy
with their perfume.
At an appointed signal the orchestra struck up a one-step and at that
irresistible summons the boys began a mad rush to secure partners.
"Oh, I didn't know it would be like this," murmured Jessie.
"Isn't it wonderful?" cried Lucile, and the next instant a voice at her
elbow pleaded, "Give me this dance, will you, Lucy?" and she looked up
into Jack's smiling face.
An answering smile flashed out. "Will I?" she cried, and led the way,
Phil and Jessie following.
Another instant and she was being whirled away on Jack's arm, and Jack,
who had won renown for his dancing among his New York associates, thought
he had never danced with anyone so lovely and so exquisitely graceful as
this friend of Jessie's.
"You dance wonderfully," was Jack's comment. "Anybody could tell you love
it."
"Oh, I do," said Lucile, fervently. "There's nothing like it."
"Nor you," said Jack, and he believed it.
The girls never forgot that night. A new world seemed to open before
them--a world they never knew existed. A world filled with bright lights
and music, where every one danced and laughed and was thrillingly and
unbelievably joyful.
And Lucile, who had never dreamed of anything like this, suddenly found
herself the very center of attraction. The crowd was always thickest
about her and Jessie and Evelyn, and she was so deluged with requests for
the next dance that her order was filled in no time and Jack had all he
could do to squeeze in two numbers at the very end.
Some of the boys, to be perfectly frank, quite a few, were awkward and
stepped on the toes of her dainty little white pumps until they were very
nearly black, but she was so happy as to be absolutely oblivious of such
trifles, while the awkward youths fell entirely under the spell of her
sparkling, fun-filled eyes and the merry, bubbling laugh that seemed to
overflow from sheer joy.
Once Jessie managed to whisper to her, "Miss--Mrs. Wescott didn't say she
was going to have such a wonderful affair as this. Were you in the
secret, Lucy?"
"No; there wasn't any secret. Our guardian just did it as a splendid
surprise, the dear," said Lucile, and her eyes traveled to where her
guardian and her husband were standing with a group of older people who
had come later in the evening to enjoy the fun and to help the young
Wescotts do the chaperoning.
"She is all right," agreed Jessie. "And doesn't Jack Wescott look
splendid? I believe he's handsomer now than he was in the country."
"He is fine looking," Lucile admitted, grudgingly. "Just the same, I'll
never quite forgive him."
Jack took Lucile into dinner. It required skillful manoeuvering on his
part and he never could tell afterward how it happened, but the fact
remains that he finally succeeded in extricating her from the mob and
started with her toward the dining-room.
"Where's Jessie? I promised to wait for her," said Lucile, half turning
round. "She's lost in the crowd, I guess."
"Probably," said Jack, perfectly satisfied with this solution. "You
needn't worry about her. Phil will see that she finds her way to the
dining-room all right."
"I shouldn't wonder," laughed Lucile, and so the matter was settled, to
their satisfaction at least.
After dinner the last few dances passed rapidly--far too quickly for the
happy young folks. As the last notes of "Home, Sweet Home" died away,
Jack turned to his radiant little partner.
"It seems to me they cut that dance mighty short," said he. "I wish they
would give us an encore."
"Yes, aren't they stingy?" Lucile agreed, as the frantic applause brought
no response from the bored musicians, who were already putting away their
music. "It must be pretty hard for them," she added, as Jack started to
pilot her toward the door. "They have to do all the work while we have
the fun."
"Yes, but they have the fun of getting paid for it," Jack suggested,
practically.
Lucile laughed. "I never thought of it in that light before," she said,
and then added, with a sigh, "Well, I suppose it's all over now."
"Sorry?" whispered Jack.
"Of course; aren't you?" she countered, with a quick upward glance, that
fell before his steady gaze.
Jack answered softly, as several of the girls and boys approached "More
sorry than I can make you understand--now."
Lucile thrilled with a new, strange emotion that she could not analyze;
she only knew it was absurdly hard to look at Jack, and that she was
immensely relieved when Evelyn greeted her with a merry, "Don't you wish
it were beginning all over again, Lucy? I don't feel a bit like going
home."
"That seems to be the general cry," broke in Marjorie. "And to think that
you girls are going away to-morrow!" she added. "You'll be tired out
after to-night."
"Oh, we're not going till late in the afternoon, so we can sleep all we
want to in the morning. All the packing is done," said Jessie,
reassuringly.
"But who speaks of sleep?" broke in Lucile, gaily. "I never felt so far
from it in all my life."
"No, but you'll feel mighty near it about two o'clock to-morrow
afternoon, if I'm any judge," Phil prophesied, grimly.
"Well, everybody knows you're not," said Lucile, running lightly up the
stairs and stopping to make a laughing face at her brother over the
banister. "Come on, girls," she cried. "Everybody's going and we haven't
even started yet."
The girls followed her, laughing merrily, and Phil grinned at the
fellows. "You can't get the best of Lucy," he said.
An hour later Lucile put out the light and crept into bed with a sigh.
"Such a wonderful time," she breathed, "and he _is_ good looking.
Jack----" Then she smiled whimsically into the dark. "It must run in the
name," she said.
CHAPTER IX
HURRAH, FOR EUROPE!
Lucile opened one sleepy eye upon the busily ticking little clock on the
table. As she looked, her gaze became fixed and she sat up in bed with a
startled exclamation.
"Eleven o'clock!" she cried. "Oh, it can't be!" she added, with sudden
inspiration, which was clouded with disappointment the next minute as the
steady ticking continued.
"How silly!" she said, laughing at herself. "Since it's still going, it's
certain that it hasn't stopped." With which profound remark she slipped
out of bed and into her dressing gown.
"Oh, how could I waste so much time on sleep," she marveled, "when to-day
means--Europe? Oh, I can never wait to get dressed!"
She did wait, however, and when she had donned her dress and tucked her
unruly curls into place, she looked as fresh and sweet as a flower. She
finished her toilet in breathless haste, and as she flung open the door
of her room she nearly ran into Phil, who was tearing down the hall
toward her.
"Hello, Sis; it's about time you were up," was his greeting. "Mother said
to call you if you weren't. Do you know what time it is?" he queried,
regarding her severely.
"Yes, I know what time it is, Grandad," she mimicked, and, catching him
about the neck, she began to do a series of steps not standardized in the
Vernon Castle repertoire. "Come on, old sobersides," she laughed; "dance
for your life. I'll be the orchestra."
Phil was nothing if not a "sport," so he grasped his sister around the
waist and away they went down the hall at a great rate, Lucile singing
like mad, until the sounds of merriment reached Mr. Payton in the
library and out he came, paper in hand, to have his share of the fun.
He was greeted by a peal of laughter, and Lucile cried, "Stop stepping on
my toes, Phil, for goodness' sakes! See, it goes like this."
"What's all the rumpus about?" thundered Mr. Payton, in his hearty voice,
and Lucile poked her bright face over the banister to smile impishly and
threw him a kiss.
"Dancing, Dad; don't you want to try?" she challenged.
"Sure," was the unexpected reply, "only leave a little of the stairs,
please," as they came down two steps at a time and landed right side up
with care.
Then Mr. Payton was hugged and kissed and called a "dear" and dragged
into the library, where the rugs were rolled up and full preparations
made for the first dancing lesson. They were in full swing, with the
Victrola going and Lucile counting "One-two-three, one-two-three," when
Mrs. Payton came in.
She looked her disapproval of the disorderly room, but when her glance
rested on her husband, who proved surprisingly light on his feet for so
heavy a man, her eyes filled with interest and she sat down to watch.
When the record stopped, Lucile turned shining eyes on her mother.
"Wasn't that fine, Mother?" while Phil burst out with, "Bravo, Dad! I had
no idea you could do it."
"All due to my very able teacher," said Mr. Payton, modestly. "Don't you
want to try it, Nell?" he asked. "It's more fun than you can imagine. I
remember that when I first met you there was no better dancer on the
floor, dear. Come on and try."
"I always used to love to dance," Mrs. Payton admitted, and that
admission was enough for Lucile.
"I tell you what we'll do," she said. "You take Mother, Phil, and I'll
take Dad. Oh, what a lark!"
It was half an hour before the Paytons could bring themselves down to a
consideration of the sober and substantial things of life, and then it
took Mrs. Payton to do it.
"Lucile," she cried, stopping in the middle of a dance to gaze upon her
daughter, "I don't believe you've had a mouthful of anything to eat since
you got up, and it's after twelve o'clock."
"Oh, I forgot," said Lucy, and then added naively, "Now I come to think
of it, though, I am hungry."
"Of course you are. Run along and tell Mary to make you some toast. That
will last you till we all have lunch, which will be pretty soon now."
"I hope so," said Phil, who was always ready for his three good meals a
day. "I begin to feel the ravages of famine," he groaned.
"If you are real good, I may give you a piece of my toast," Lucile
promised.
"No, don't, Lucy; it will only spoil his dinner," said Mrs. Payton.
"Dancing does give you an appetite, though, doesn't it?" she added, at
which Lucile smiled to herself, for it was very, very long since she had
seen her mother unbend so far.
"If dancing will do it," she decided, on her way to the kitchen, "we'll
dance from here to Jericho," and the firm lines of her mouth showed that
she meant it.
At half past four Phil put on his hat and announced his intention of
going round for the girls.
"You needn't stop for Jessie," Lucile called after him; "nor for Evelyn
either, for that matter. All their folks are coming along to see us
off."
"I'm going anyway," he replied, briefly, and Lucile called gaily after
him, "There's a reason," and shut the door before he could retort.
Mrs. Payton met her in the hall.
"Better get your hat and coat on, Lucy. It's almost time to start."
As Lucile ran lightly up the stairs and into her room, her heart beat
fast and her face flamed with excitement.
"We're going, we're going!" she sang, as she slipped into her coat and
pulled her hat--a perky little affair with a blue bow at the side, that
held in place a black wing set at an aggravating angle--down over one
eye and then surveyed herself critically.
"Guess I'm all right," she said, pushing a stray lock into place with
experienced fingers. "Now for my gloves and bag and I'll be ready.
Coming, Mother!" This last to an impatient command from the lower
regions. "Will you ask Dad if he took my Gladstone bag downstairs?"
Mr. Payton replied in person that he had, and Lucile stepped out in the
hall and closed the door softly. She paused at the head of the stairs to
still the tumultuous beating of her heart, for it seemed to her that it
could be heard a mile away. It was all so new and strange and
wonderful--and now that their great dream was to be realized so soon, she
felt more than ever that it must be a dream and nothing more. She
wondered if Jessie and Evelyn were feeling that way, too, and then she
heard the clamor of voices on the porch and knew that they had come.
Then a sort of panic seized her, as she realized that Jack Turnbull would
be with them. She knew he would, for that had been the last thing he had
said to her last night--oh, how very far away it seemed! Half
unconsciously, she straightened her little hat and ran downstairs, just
in time to answer Phil's urgent, "Where's Lucy?" with a merry, "Here,
Phil; bag and baggage!"
Everybody turned to greet the radiant little figure, and Lucile included
them all in her bright, "How's everybody?"
"Rather shaky," Evelyn answered, in an awe-struck voice, and everybody
laughed good-naturedly.
"Well, what do you say if we start?" suggested Mr. Payton. "We are all
here and we might as well have plenty of time. We don't want to have to
hurry."
They all agreed, and so, with a great deal of noise and laughter, the
party started out. Lucile ran back to say a word of good-by to Mary and
Jane, who, good souls, were weeping heartily at the thought of parting
with the family for so long. With difficulty she managed to break away
from them, and on her way back came face to face with--Jack!
"Oh," she stammered, "I thought they--everybody--had gone!"
"So they have, but I came back to get you and--tell you to hurry," he
replied, with a laugh. It was a very frank, nice laugh, Lucile decided,
and she was very glad he had come back, so she answered him gaily and
they started out to overtake the others.
At least, Lucile did, but, after covering a half-block at a fast walk,
that was almost a run, Jack protested.
"What's your awful hurry?" he queried, reproachfully. "You have an hour
to catch the train, so why rush?"
Lucile opened her eyes wide in feigned astonishment.
"Why, I'm only following instructions," she teased. "You told me to
hurry, and so I'm trying to."
"With great success," he added, with a smile of understanding. "Just the
same, you know I didn't mean it that way. I had to see you and I needed
some excuse. I won't have a chance to see you for a long, long time, you
know."
Lucile looked up quickly, this time in real surprise.
"But I thought you were going back to New York to-day, anyway," she
said.
"So I am, but there isn't the width of the Atlantic between New York and
Burleigh," he answered meaningly.
Just then Evelyn turned around and, making a megaphone of her hand,
shouted, "Better hurry up; we'll miss the train."
"Plenty of time," Jack threw back, pleasantly. "Got half an hour yet."
"Aw, there's something wrong with your watch," Phil retorted. "Next time
you buy an Ingersoll, see that you get your money's worth."
"Thanks!" drawled Jack, but Lucile looked anxious.
"Perhaps we would better catch up with the rest of them," she suggested.
"The front ranks have quite a start on us, and we don't want to keep them
waiting."
"Oh, all right," agreed Jack cheerfully. "Give me your hand and we'll do
a hundred-yard dash in record time."
Lucile took the proffered hand and away they went like two happy
children, reaching the rest of the party a moment later, out of breath
but triumphant.
"Didn't I tell you we'd break the record?" laughed Jack, forgetting for
the moment to release her hand. "You're some little runner, too," he
added, admiringly.
"Speak for yourself," she threw back gaily. "That was a good run, though.
I guess we won't miss the train now."
"Not an unmixed blessing," Jack grumbled, at which they all laughed with
such infectious mirth that more than one passer-by turned to smile after
them.
They arrived at the station in plenty of time, after all, for it was
fully fifteen minutes before a distant toot announced the coming of the
train that was to carry them to New York. It had been Mr. Payton's
intention in the first place to take passage on one of the smaller
steamers, but the girls had been so evidently disappointed, although, to
do them credit, they had tried their very best not to let him see it,
that he had changed his plans at the last minute and had decided to take
passage from New York on the great steamer "Mauretania."
In talking things over, the girls' parents and one or two of their
relatives had decided to take the trip with them as far as New York, and
from there give them a glorious send-off.
The girls' desire and curiosity to see the great metropolis had been
heightened by their guardian's vivid recitals of her experiences, and
they were on edge with expectancy.
"I wish we were going to spend some time in New York," Phil was saying.
"We just shoot in and then right out again."
"You ungrateful heathen!" Lucile chided. "What do you expect? I'd like to
spend a year in New York, too, but we can't do everything at once."
What Jack might have replied will never be known for just then they heard
the whistle of the train. The journey had begun.
CHAPTER X
WHIRLED THROUGH THE NIGHT
Mile after mile, the long train rumbled on over shining rails that fell
away behind and merged in the far-distant sky-line. The first rays of the
morning sun struck on the brilliant metal and gathered up the dazzled
sunbeams to scatter them broadcast over hills and fields and flying
houses. Now and then the hoarse whistle of the engine broke the early
morning quiet, only to be flung back on itself by wood and cave and
mountainside in a scornful shout of mockery.
And still the girls slept on in the dreamless, heavy sleep of tired
girlhood. Of course, not one of the three had had the least intention of
doing anything so commonplace as going to sleep; in fact, the very idea
had been vaguely irritating. Had they not looked forward to this very
thing for months--at least, so it seemed to them--and it was almost
impossible for them to have patience with the idiocy of any one who could
calmly suggest slumber at such a time. And Phil--for it was at him that
this Parthian shot had been aimed--had evinced remarkable self-control,
in that he had refused to argue, but had continued to smile in an
aggravatingly superior manner, which had said more plainly than words:
"You think you mean it, no doubt, but I, who am wise, know what
simpletons you are."
Of course, Phil was right, as they had known in their hearts he would be,
in spite of all their resolution, and it was not until the sun struck
through the little window and dashed upon Lucile's sleeping face in a
golden shower that she stirred impatiently and brushed her hand across
her eyes.
Fifteen minutes later, in dressing gown and cap, she pushed aside the
curtain into the aisle and crept out, meaning to steal a march on the
others. She let the curtain fall with a little gasp of astonishment, for
as she looked, two other curtains moved stealthily, animated by unseen
hands, and two heads popped simultaneously into the aisle. Jessie and
Evelyn looked at each other, then at Lucile, vacantly at first, and then,
as the truth dawned upon them, they began to laugh.
"Oh," gasped Lucile, "I thought I was the only one awake, and here you
two come along and spoil my well-laid plans."
"The well-laid plans of mice and men
Aft gang agley,"
quoted Jessie.
"Stop spouting poetry before breakfast," commanded Evelyn. "You might
wait until I get strength to bear it."
"There she goes! First thing in the morning, too," said Jessie,
despairingly.
Lucile laughed, and, taking each disputant by an arm, hurried them along
the aisle.
"May I ask our destination?" queried Jessie, with the utmost politeness.
"Certainly," Lucile agreed, cheerfully, and then, as no further
explanation seemed forthcoming, Jessie added, with an air of indefinite
patience, "Well?"
"Go ahead, ask all the questions you like," said Lucile, with a twinkle
in her eye. "I'm not going to answer them, though," and, with a little
laugh, she pushed her before her into a little room at the farther end of
the car.
"A-ha, a mirror!" cried Jessie. "Lucile, I forgive all."
"Thanks," replied Lucile, laconically. "Even at that, you needn't take up
the whole mirror, you know."
"Oh, you can look on both sides," said Jessie, serenely.
The girls laughed.
"The only wonder is that we showed almost human intelligence in bringing
our combs along," Lucile remarked, after a moment.
"Not at all," observed Jessie, grandly. "We only followed a very obvious
line of reasoning."
"A very which?" asked Evelyn, turning round with her comb poised in
mid-air. "If you must talk, kindly speak United States, Jessie."
Jessie turned upon her friend a look in which was more of pity than of
anger.
"It is evident," she remarked sadly, "that there is one among us who has
never grasped the opportunity for learning afforded by our present-day
civilization----"
"Jessie, darling," broke in Lucile, sweetly, "if you don't come down from
your soap box pretty soon, I'm afraid we'll have to resort to force. Much
as we would hate to," she added, apologetically.
Evelyn threw up her hands in desperation.
"You're just as bad as Jessie, Lucy," she accused. "I'm going in and see
if I can't find peace. The boys ought to be up by this time," she added,
slyly.
The girls laughed as the door slammed behind her, and Lucile exclaimed,
with a little flourish of her comb, "Come on, Jess; I'm ready for the
fray." And, with arms about each other, girl fashion, they followed
Evelyn into the aisle.
How could they know on that morning, when their hearts were full and
their heads light with the heady wine of Spring, that before three months
had sped, they would feel the strands of the mighty web of nations
tighten about them; that they would see the beginning of the greatest war
the world has ever known? Perhaps it was just as well that they were not
gifted with prophecy, for the grim shadow of war that hung menacingly
over all Europe would have darkened this bright morning and would have
tinted all the hills and countryside with the grayish hue of impending
disaster.
As it was, there was no cloud to darken the horizon of their exuberant
happiness and they gave full rein to their high spirits.
As Evelyn had said, the boys were up when they returned, and they were
not the only ones, for the train seemed suddenly to have come to life.
Voices called merrily to each other from different points in the car, and
everywhere was the stir and bustle of awakened and refreshed humanity.
As Lucile and Jessie made their way through the car, they encountered
several women, apparently bound for the dressing-room.
"It's good we got there early," said Lucile. "If we hadn't, we never
would have gotten a chance at the mirror."
"You're just right," laughed Jessie. "There wasn't room enough for three
of us, let alone a half a dozen."
A moment later they joined a group of their own folks at the other end of
the car. They flung a merry greeting.
"Well, well, girls," observed Mr. Payton, catching sight of the girls out
of the corner of his eye, "we thought you were lost."
"I didn't think so," said Phil. "Evelyn said you might be in there half
an hour if you had good luck, so we didn't expect you so soon."
The girls threw a reproachful look at the traitress, who made a defiant
little mouth at them.
"Well, I had to get even with you some way," she cried.
Just then Jack, who had been trapped into a discussion with some of the
men and had been anxiously watching for a chance to escape, suddenly
finding it, excused himself and joined the young folks.
"What's the row?" he asked casually.
"Nothing, save that we have a traitress in our midst," declaimed Jessie,
dramatically.
"How exciting!" drawled her cousin. Then, turning to Lucile, he inquired,
lightly:
"Did you get any sleep last night, or were the bumps too much for you?"
"The bumps didn't worry me at all," she confessed, as she smiled
whimsically. "In fact, I didn't know there were any."
"How about something to eat?"
It was Mr. Payton who voiced the welcome suggestion, and there was a
prompt shout of approval from all hands.
"You have said it, Dad," commended Phil. "If we start now, we'll get
there before the crowd."
So off went the merry company to the dining-car, where the tempting odors
made them more ravenous than before, if such a thing were possible, and
Phil kept on ordering until it seemed as though the rest of the
passengers would have to go on short commons.
The early morning passed quickly and it was no time at all before Jack
announced to Lucile--for he was never very far from her side--that they
would reach New York within the next hour.
Then, as Jack had said, at exactly five minutes of nine--the authority
for the time being Phil's beloved chronometer, which he declared, and
devoutly believed as well, varied hardly a second during the year--the
train glided smoothly into the station and they reached--New York!
The girls stood with shining eyes and breath that came and went quickly
through parted lips. Then, as the porter shouted in stentorian tones,
"New Yawk--all out!" they moved half dazedly through the crowd and out on
the great platform, where the din half fascinated, half frightened them.
"Stick close together, everybody," Mr. Payton directed. "It wouldn't be
any joke if we got separated!"
Lucile had faced many situations and never turned a hair, but now the
roar of the great metropolis, the rumble of the hand-cars on the platform
as the heavy baggage was carted to and from the trains, the shrieking of
engine whistles, the hoarse cries of the train-hands, all combined in
such a menacing roar that for a moment she had a wild desire to run and
hide somewhere, anywhere to get away from the thunderous din.
It was only for a second, however, for, as Jack slipped a reassuring arm
through hers, she looked up at him with her old, confident smile.
"I'll see that you don't get lost or run over," he said, comfortingly,
with that air of protection that all men, even very young ones like Jack,
love to assume toward girls and women, especially pretty ones.
And it must be noted that from that instant Jack Turnbull rose forty good
points in Lucile's estimation. It gave her a feeling of grateful security
to be piloted through the crowd in this masterly fashion. Soon they had
covered the length of the platform and had reached the curb, which was
lined with cabs and taxis.
"Here, pile in, all of you," Mr. Payton commanded, as he looked around to
see if they were all there. "I guess you five young people can manage to
squeeze into one car. Come, Nellie," to his wife, "you get right in
here," and he proceeded, with the other men, to help the ladies into the
two waiting cabs.
"Pretty close quarters," said Jack, as he slipped into the square inch of
space between Jessie and Evelyn. "I suppose I might have walked," he was
adding, doubtfully, when Lucile broke in with a decided, "Indeed, you
shouldn't have thought of such a thing! What difference does it make if
we are a little crowded?"
"That's all very well for you, Lucy; you're not having the breath
squeezed out of you," Jessie began, when Phil interrupted,
mischievously:
"Why don't you change places? Lucy doesn't mind and you do, Jess."
"You have it!" exclaimed Jack, enthusiastically. "The first minute I saw
you, I said to myself, 'That fellow has brains.' Come on Jess; vacate,"
and he slipped his arm about his cousin, gently lifting her from the
seat.
"Go ahead, Lucy," urged Evelyn from her corner.
So, with a great deal of merriment, the exchange was made, much to the
satisfaction of everyone concerned.
The rest of the journey through the traffic-laden streets to the hotel
was so vivid a panorama of shifting scenes that, to the unaccustomed eyes
of the girls, it seemed like one confused blur.
"Oh, are we there already?" Lucile exclaimed, regretfully, as the taxi
stopped abruptly before the great white pile of the Hotel McAlpin. "The
ride has seemed so short!"
"I wish you were going to stay in New York," Jack whispered, as he helped
her to alight. "We'd get my car and whiz all around this old city until
you'd know it better than Burleigh."
"Oh, if I only could!" she cried, her eyes alight with the very thought.
"Wouldn't it be fun?"
"You just bet it would," he agreed, with a warmth that brought even a
brighter color to her face.
An instant later they were joined by the others and they passed through
the imposing entrance.
In the hotel office the girls drew close together, and Lucile said, in a
voice scarcely above a whisper, "So this is New York!"
"Do you like it as much as you thought you would?" asked Phil,
overhearing.
The girls turned wonder-filled eyes upon him.
"Oh, much more!" they chorused, with a vehemence that left no room for
doubt.
CHAPTER XI
"ALL ASHORE WHO ARE GOING ASHORE!"
Three hours later, refreshed and invigorated by a most delectable lunch,
eaten in the beautiful dining-room of the hotel, our travelers were ready
for the last stage of the preparatory journey. Nothing remained now but
the short ride to the wharf and then--the rapture of embarking on the
wonderful "Mauretania," which had hitherto been but a magic name to them,
breathing of romance and wonder. Then a final farewell to their friends,
and before them stretched the great European continent, holding the
unfathomed mysteries of thousands of years.
There was England, upon whose soil, in ancient times the savage Britons
fought against great Caesar--and lost. There was France, scene of the
bloodiest revolution that has ever dyed red the pages of history--a
revolution that proved supreme the tremendous, onrushing power of the
masses. And there was Rome itself, where every inch of soil, where every
nook and cranny of the famous catacombs marked some great historic drama
played in the days when "to be a Roman were better than a king!"
With all the romance of the Old War about to unfold itself to their
enchanted eyes, is it any wonder that our girls were eager for the
start?
"All ready?" said Jack.
"Oh, I've been ready and waiting for half an hour or more," laughed
Lucile. "I do wish the folks would hurry!"
"I'm afraid you don't like our great city, you seem so anxious to leave
it--and me," he said, with a reproachful side glance.
"Oh, I do, I do! I love it--the city, I mean!" she added, in some
confusion, as he glanced at her inquiringly. "It's all wonderful, and I
could spend a year here without getting tired; but as long as we do have
to leave it, I wish we would hurry," she added, naively.
"Well, here come your brother and Jessie now, so you won't have much
longer to wait--worse luck!" said Jack, with a wry smile. "I suppose I
may at least be allowed the privilege of seeing you safely on board?"
Lucile threw him a merry glance as the rest came up. "I suppose you may,"
she mimicked.
A few minutes later they stepped out of the cab and onto a sun-flooded
wharf, where confusion reigned supreme. An immense crowd of people stood
upon the dock, talking, laughing and gesticulating excitedly, and every
one seemed in the highest of spirits. And, indeed, how could they be
anything else, thought Lucile, as she looked about her with dancing eyes;
the world had never seemed so essentially a place to laugh in as it did
on this glorious morning.
"Well, we haven't very much further to go," said Mr. Payton, beaming
genially down upon them. "There's the good ship, 'Mauretania,' mates.
Neat little craft, eh?"
And following the direction of his glance, they gazed for a second at the
towering bulk of the steamer, scarcely daring to believe the evidence of
their eyes.
"Say, that's class!" breathed Phil, reverently, and Jessie added, "You
could put all of Burleigh in one corner and never miss it!"
They all laughed, and Lucile started forward. "We can go on board now,
can't we, Dad?" she inquired.
"Sure we can go on board. We'll have just about time to look at our
staterooms, if we hurry."
Since that was just the very thing everybody was most anxious to do, they
wasted very little time in following his suggestion.
Jack kept close to Lucile's side as they threaded their way through the
crowd, and Phil took charge of the other two girls.
As Lucile watched the three, she suddenly broke into a little ripple of
laughter, and, upon being questioned severely as to the reason of such
unseemly mirth, she said, gaily, "I was just wondering what poor Phil
will do with three girls, and one his sister, at that."
Jack laughed amusedly. "It will be pretty hard on the poor fellow," he
admitted. "I think I ought to go along. I could at least relieve him of
his sister."
"For which he would be devoutly thankful," she added.
"No more than I," said Jack, from which we may gather that our friend was
much accomplished in the gentle art of flattery. However, to do him
justice, he meant it, and even the most confirmed old bachelor, looking
at Lucile, must have admitted that he had just and sufficient cause. In
fact, there were not many who did not look at Lucile, who, with flushed
cheeks and shining eyes, was the very image of radiant happiness.
At last their party had wormed its way through the crowd and were waiting
at the foot of the gangplank for them to come up.
"Goodness! I had no idea it was so enormous!" Evelyn was saying. "I'm
almost afraid of it."
"You'd better stick close to me," Jessie advised. "Then if we get lost,
we'll at least have company."
"Don't let's stand here, at any rate," Mrs. Payton broke in, impatiently.
"Our friends won't have a minute to look at our staterooms."
"We had to wait for the young folks, my dear," suggested Mr. Payton,
mildly, and then, as Lucile and Jack joined them, he hurried them before
him with scant ceremony. "We don't want to lose you," he explained, when
they laughingly protested.
And then, at last, they were on deck, where a steward relieved them of
their light luggage.
The girls tried to take in everything at once as they followed their
guide along the deck and down the cabin stairs, but they had at last to
give it up as a bad job.
"I feel as if I must be home in Burleigh, dreaming all this," said
Jessie. "I'm getting dizzy trying to take in all the new impressions."
"Stick close to me, then," Phil invited. "I'll be on deck when you
faint."
"Much good that will do Jessie when she is in the cabin," remarked
Evelyn, with scathing sarcasm.
"Oh-h!" groaned the boys in unison, and Jessie clapped her hands
delightedly, crying, "That's right, Evelyn; give it to them whenever you
can."
And then all nonsense stopped suddenly as the steward paused and, fitting
the key in the lock, disclosed the stateroom engaged for Mr. and Mrs.
Payton. They crowded into the room and the girls set about examining
everything without more ado.
"Oh, isn't it splendid?" cried Lucile. "You would never dream from the
looks of this room that we were on board ship. Why, it's just as complete
and comfortable as our rooms at home!"
"Pretty nifty," Phil agreed, as his glance traveled from the neat brass
bed to the dresser and the large, inviting chair.
"I hate to hurry you," said Mr. Payton, as he pulled out his watch, "but
as time waits for no man, we will have to hustle considerably if we
expect to see the other two rooms."
So, reluctant to leave secrets still to be discovered, yet anxious to see
their own room, the girls filed out, talking and laughing all at once,
till they reached a door a little further down the corridor, which Mr.
Payton designated as belonging to their stateroom.
While they waited it seemed to them that never before had simple tasks,
such as fitting a key into the lock, been performed with such
exasperating slowness, and the girls fairly danced with impatience. The
older folks smiled indulgently, and Mr. Sanderson chuckled as he pulled
Evelyn's ear and inquired inanely, "if she were having a good time."
He was crushed a moment later by the withering scorn from three pairs of
merry eyes, and Mrs. Payton exclaimed, laughingly, "Such a question! All
you have to do is just look at them."
Then, at last, the door flew open and they gazed on what was to be their
own domain for five days at least; and it is safe to say that, in her
heart, each of the girls wished it were to be twice as long.
"Oh, isn't it perfectly, beautiful, wonderfully lovely?" cried Jessie,
getting more excited with each adjective, and when the others laughed
merrily at the extravagance of her description, she added, defiantly, "I
don't care; it is! I'll leave it to any one."
"You are right as far as you went, Jessie," Lucile backed her up, "only
you didn't say half enough."
"And there's a full bed and a cot, just as we thought," Evelyn went on
with the inventory, "and a bea-utiful dresser, and three darling chairs,
and--and----" she finished incoherently.
"I'm sorry you all seem so dissatisfied," said Mr. Payton, with so droll
an attempt to look gloomy that Lucile then and there threw her arms about
his neck and gave him an ecstatic kiss, crying joyfully, "Oh, you are the
most wonderful father in all the world!"
"Lucile!" exclaimed her mother warningly, whereupon Lucile, who was far
too happy to consider consequences, promptly kissed the astonished lady.
"To say nothing of Mother!" she cried.
Much to every one's surprise, far from being displeased, Mrs. Payton
seemed rather to enjoy her daughter's impulsive outburst, merely
cautioning her not to overheat and overexcite herself too much, as the
day gave promise of being a very hot one.
"The big portholes make it so nice and light, too," said Jessie, again
referring to the stateroom. "Why, one wouldn't even mind being seasick
here!"
"Oh, Jessie!" cried Lucile and Evelyn, in dismay, and Lucile added, "I
guess it doesn't make much difference where you are when you're seasick.
From all I have heard, you just about wish you could die."
Mr. Payton laughed, and said, reassuringly, "The probability is that none
of us will be sick, but we needn't worry about it till the time comes,
anyway. And now," he added, "I guess, if you young people can tear
yourselves away, we had better go on deck."
"But we haven't seen Phil's room yet." Lucile began, when that young
gentleman, interrupted with a superior, "Don't let that worry you. I
wouldn't have a lot of girls making a fuss over my quarters."
"We probably wouldn't anyway," said Jessie, and passed out with her nose
in the air.
"I've heard that lemons and salt herring are good for seasickness," Jack
teased, as they stepped on deck.
"Oh, don't!" Lucile pleaded, puckering her mouth at the thought of the
lemon. "There is only one comfort," she added, triumphantly, "and that
is, if I am seasick, you won't be here to know it."
"That's cruel," he laughed back; then added, quickly, "But you are going
to write to me, any way, and tell me all about your experiences, aren't
you?"
"I don't--know," she answered, doubtfully. "You see, even if Mother were
willing, I wouldn't stay in one place very long--and----"
They were standing near the rail, Jack bending toward her very earnestly
and she, gazing out over the crowded wharf, a little confused and very
uncertain what to do; and yet, in her girl's heart, she knew what she
_wanted_ to do!
"If you don't want to get left, Turnbull, you'd better hustle," sang out
Phil. "Everybody's off that's going."
Jack leaned forward and took Lucile's hand. "Please," he urged. "Just a
little short letter--anything, as long as you write. Won't you please?"
Then Lucile's last little barrier gave way and, with a quick,
half-whispered "All right," she ran to join her father and mother, who
had caught the little inter-change and had regarded each other with
troubled eyes. "Perhaps it's just as well we are going to Europe," Mrs.
Payton had said, and Mr. Payton had nodded an unusually grave consent.
Jessie and Evelyn were engrossed in taking leave of their folks, who were
half laughing, half crying at the thought of parting with them for so
long.
Again the warning cry, "All ashore that are going ashore!" and, with a
last hug and kiss and cry of "Take care of yourselves and be good," the
ladies, assisted by their impatient escorts, hurried down the gangplank
and were instantly lost to sight among the jostling mob down below.
"Phil, run and get the spy-glasses--quick!" directed Mrs. Payton. "They
are in the grip in my stateroom. Here's the key--hurry!"
So Phil raced off as directed and the rest were pushed up against the
rail by the crowd that pressed four deep behind them, all striving
eagerly for a last sight of the dear ones on the wharf.
"Where are they?" cried Jessie, frantically. "I can't see a soul----Oh,
yes; there's Dad's hat, I know--look, he's waving it----"
"And there's your mother, too, Evelyn," Lucile broke in. "See, she's
waving her handkerchief----"
"Oh, I can see them all now," said Evelyn, dancing up and down excitedly.
"They're all there, oh--oh-h----"
"Here's Phil," said Lucile, making room for him, as he wormed his way
through. "He didn't waste much time."
"Bet your life I didn't," said Phil. "How I found the place I don't
know--must have been a sort of instinct, I guess. Here you are, Mother."
Then there was a great noise and rattle as the gangplank was pulled up,
and a moment later the great ship began to draw away ever so slowly and
majestically, and the great whistle shrieked a blatant blast of farewell
to the shouting, cheering, handkerchief-waving crowd on the wharf.
"Lucy," whispered Evelyn, squeezing her friend's arm so tightly that it
hurt, "did you ever see anything like it?"
CHAPTER XII
MONSIEUR CHARLOIX
"What's the matter, Lucy? You look so--funny----"
It was the morning of the second day out and the three girls were leaning
against the rail, gazing dreamily out over the boundless expanse of
ocean. They wore natty white middy suits and, with floppy little sailor
hats shading flushed cheeks and laughing eyes, they made an alluringly
picturesque little group that had attracted much attention from their
fellow-passengers.
"I'm glad you think so," said Lucile, dryly, in response to Jessie's
question. "If I look the way I feel I must be a very laughable object!"
A quick glance of consternation passed between Jessie and Evelyn, and the
latter turned to Lucile with dismay in her uplifted eyebrows.
"Seasick?" she inquired in a still, small voice.
Lucile nodded grimly. "Rather," she answered. "Guess I'm going to die."
"Don't say that," begged the girls, stifling a desire to laugh and cry at
once.
"Oh, Lucy, dear, what can we do?" said Jessie, putting a comforting arm
about her friend, whose complexion had grown a peculiar, greenish-gray
color in the last few moments. "Don't you think you had better go below?
Maybe if you lie flat on your back you will feel better. Come, dear."
"I knew I'd go and spoil everything by getting seasick," moaned Lucile,
in the same toneless voice, and then, as a flash of her old saving humor
came to the front, she turned to the girls with a suggestion of a smile.
"I suppose I'll have to come to the lemon and herring," she said.
She was deathly sick all the rest of that day and most of the next, and
it was not till near nightfall of the second day that she began to feel
the first faint desire to live.
Jessie and Evelyn had wandered about aimlessly all the time, looking, as
Phil said, as if some one had just pronounced a death sentence upon them.
Though they had become acquainted with a great many of the passengers, no
one of them had been able to coax a smile to the girls' long faces. In
spite of Phil's uncivil remarks, it must be noted that even the wondrous
engine-room had lost much of its charm for him and he had cut his visit
short, merely to ask if they, meaning his father and mother, thought it
would not help some to get Lucile on deck--fresh air--etc., etc.
Toward evening the cause of all this unrest opened heavy eyes upon a
tossing gray world and turned her head languidly toward the porthole.
At the slight sound, Evelyn, who had been sitting, chin in hand, gazing
gloomingly out to sea, rose quickly and ran to the side of the bed.
"Are you better, dear?" she said, softly stroking Lucile's dark hair back
from her forehead with gentle fingers. "You went to sleep and I was so
afraid of disturbing you that I didn't dare move."
Lucile caught her friend's hand and pressed it to her cheek. "You and
Jessie have been darling to me--both of you," she cried, warmly, and
Evelyn dropped to her knees beside the bed.
"Oh, that sounds like our old Lucy," she exulted. "You are feeling better
aren't you, dear?"
"Lots," said Lucile, smiling up at her friend.
Then Jessie came running in and they hugged each other and laughed and
cried after the dear and foolish manner of all girls, until a gentle
knock disturbed them and brought Jessie to her feet with a start.
"Oh, I promised Phil I'd come right back and tell him if you were awake,
and I never did," she cried, in consternation.
But, upon opening the door, the visitors proved not to be a wrathful and
avenging young god, but Mr. and Mrs. Payton, coming to inquire after the
patient's health.
"Hello!" said Mr. Payton, as Jessie gave a relieved sigh. "We came down
to see a sick girl and we find a rank imposter in her place."
"Aren't you disappointed?" gibed his daughter. "Is that you, Mother? It's
so dark in that corner I can hardly see."
Her mother's answer was a very comforting one, for she took Lucile in her
arms and kissed her gently.
"I'm glad you are feeling better, my dear," she said. "It will do you
good to get on deck as soon as possible. The salt air works wonders."
So it was decided that Lucile should have a light supper brought her in
the cabin, for she was beginning to develop an appetite, after which she
was to go on deck and test the revivifying power of salt sea air, mixed
with a little soft moonlight, for Phil had laughingly prophesied that
there would be "a peach of a moon to-night."
When Lucile, pale of face and lips and a trifle shaky and trembly on her
feet, stepped from her cabin into the full beauty of a cloudless night,
she turned to her friends with the first smile they had seen for ages--or
so it seemed to them.
"Girls, it's good to be alive again!" she stated, fervently.
"Huh, you haven't been dead yet," grunted Phil.
"Well, I thought I was going to die, which is as bad," she retorted, with
spirit. "But I'm going to live now, my brother, if only to disappoint
you," she added.
"My, what a disposition!" said Evelyn, with a sad shake of her head, and
Jessie murmured, with an encouraging pat, "Cheer up, Lucy; you are far
from being a dead one yet."
Lucile sank into the chair they had so carefully prepared for her with a
low laugh. "They are all pickin' on me," she said, plaintively. "But what
do we care, on such a night? Just look at that sky," and, leaning
forward, with her hand on the rail, she let her gaze wander hungrily out
over the water, where the long, graceful combers caught the reflected,
starry light and passed it on till it merged in the silvery pathway of
the moon, which, as Phil had prophesied, was at its height. She sat quite
still, realizing as she had never done before the utter grandeur, the
awe-inspiring majesty of the ocean.
"It's enough to make one sentimental, isn't it?" said Jessie, at her
elbow. "Wouldn't it be nice if Jack were here?" she added, innocently.
"Oh, bother!" said Lucile, leaning back with a contented sigh. "He would
spoil everything. He would probably want to talk, and I can't."
"Oh," said Jessie, silenced, but unconvinced.
However, they were not destined to enjoy the beauty of the night in
peace, for it was not long before the after-dinner crowd began to pour
out on deck and the girls were surrounded by friendly, interested
fellow-passengers, who inquired solicitously after Lucile's health.
Lucile was surprised and touched by these demonstrations, and it was not
long before she was chatting naturally and merrily with a jolly little
group to whom her father had laughingly introduced her as "the
convalescent."
"Do you see that young man coming toward us?" said Evelyn, nodding in the
direction of a tall, spare young fellow, who, with his shock of black
hair, long, aquiline nose, and sensitive, thin-lipped mouth, looked
decidedly temperamental, even to the most casual observer.
Lucile nodded. "What about him?" she asked.
"He's a Frenchman," adding, with a mysterious shake of her head, "Thereby
hangs a tale."
Much to Lucile's secret annoyance, the young man at her right claimed her
attention at that important moment, asking her, inanely, or so she
thought, if she could swim.
It was not until an hour later, when most of the passengers had drifted
off to different, and often more secluded, parts of the deck, and only
three or four remained with them, that Lucile had an opportunity to
question her friend.
"I hate mysteries, Evelyn," she whispered. "What did you mean by 'thereby
hangs a tale'? Explain yourself."
"I can't just now," answered Evelyn. "He might hear us. Anyway, I don't
know very much to tell. He would probably explain for himself if only
those old stick-plasters would go away and tend to their own affairs,"
and she glared belligerently at the three unconscious gentlemen and young
Monsieur Charloix, the Frenchman.
"No chance--they're glued!" said Jessie, gloomily, and Lucile looked from
one to the other of them despairingly.
"I wish I knew what you were getting at," she sighed.
"Mademoiselle has been very seek?" the voice was low, caressing, with the
slightest suggestion of a foreign accent.
Lucile turned her head and found herself looking into the bright,
restless eyes of the mysterious stranger.
For the first moment she was startled and a little confused, but the next
instant, recovering herself, she answered, gravely, "Yes, I have been
rather under the weather for a couple of days," and she added, with her
bright smile, "The thing that bothers me most is the thought of what I
have missed during that time."
"Mademoiselle is brave," he smiled back. "Most would think only of their
sufferings. However, there are still two good days in which to see
everything."
"Two days?" sighed Lucile. "It seems to me as if it would take two years
to see all I'd like to."
"Ah, but it is Mademoiselle's first voyage." There was an undertone of
sadness in the low voice that made Lucile steal a quick glance at him.
There was something about the man, perhaps in the tired droop of his
shoulders, perhaps something in the wistful way he had of looking far out
to sea, as if seeking the solution of his problem there; perhaps it was
only the pathos in his low, Southern voice. Be that as it may, Lucile's
heart went out to him then and there.
"When one has been back and forth, back and forth, many times," he went
on, "he is bound to lose that so fresh enthusiasm and long only for the
shore where something may be done. At such times the days, they seem to
have no end. But I transgress," he interrupted himself, with a little
deprecatory laugh. "Mademoiselle should have reminded me."
"You speak of having crossed the ocean many times," said Mr. Payton, who,
with his wife, had approached the absorbed little group unknown to them.
Monsieur Charloix arose from his chair quickly and offered it, with a
Frenchman's elaborate courtesy, to Mrs. Payton. When they were again
seated, this time in a cozy little semicircle, Mr. Payton repeated his
question and the girls listened eagerly for the reply.
"Didn't I tell you?" Jessie managed to whisper. "Now we are going to have
the story."
"Yes," came, in the gentle, modulated tones, "Monsieur is right; I am not
a stranger to America."
"And you like our country?" said Mrs. Payton, adding, with a laugh, "Do
not be afraid to tell the truth; we shall not be offended."
"Ah, but that is where Madam does me great injustice," said the stranger,
with a smile. "There is no country in the world for which I have so great
respect and admiration as I have for your great America. It has been my
misfortune that, in my flying visits, I have had so little time and
opportunity to make the acquaintance of so great a nation."
"Hip-hip-hooray!" cried Phil, the irrepressible, taking possession of the
chair next to Jessie. "It's good to have the old country boosted when
you're so far away."
"Phil," protested his mother, "I do wish you could get along without so
much slang."
"He'll be engaging an interpreter next," murmured Jessie, at which the
culprit looked his reproach.
"I hope you will pardon the interruption, Monsieur Charloix," said Mrs.
Payton, apologetically, and her husband added, "Our excuse for Phil is
that he is young and still has much to learn, although it is mighty hard
to convince him of the truth of that last fact," at which scathing
remark, delivered with a twinkle that was lost in the dark, Phil looked
almost cast down, until Jessie declared in a whisper "that she loved
slang," accompanying the declaration with a comforting little pat that
cheered him immensely.
"No apologies, Madame and Monsieur," the Frenchman was saying. "I was
once a boy myself. The slang has many advantages which the more flowery
language has not; it is, at least, much to the point."
"If he would only use it, he might reach the point sooner," complained
Jessie, in an aside.
"I'd be happy if I only knew what point you wanted him to get to," sighed
Lucile. "You see, I am completely in the dark."
"'Listen, my children, and you shall hear,'" Jessie broke in, still in an
undertone. "Methinks the story is about to unfold itself----"
"Sh-h!" said Lucile, warningly. "Listen!"
Mr. Payton was speaking. "You say the will cannot be found?"
Four pairs of bright young eyes centered upon the stranger with eager
intensity as they waited for his reply.
CHAPTER XIII
ROMANCE
The moist, salt-laden breeze fanned their hot faces gratefully. The
musical tap-tap of the waves against the side of the ship came to them as
from a great distance, and even the voices and laughter of the passengers
seemed, somehow, strangely remote.
The stranger brought his gaze back to them with an effort, as he said,
wearily, "Monsieur, I am tired--you cannot know how much. But I had not
meant to bore you with my so selfish perplexities----"
"Sometimes to tell our troubles is half the cure," Mrs. Payton suggested,
gently.
"You are very--good," murmured the stranger, gratefully. "If you are sure
it will not tire----"
Then at their vigorous denials, he proceeded, in his low, even voice:
"Sometimes I have felt the great necessity of telling all to some
one--some one who would understand. If I did not, I felt I should go
mad." He passed his hand over his eyes with an infinitely weary gesture.
"You see, my father and I, we had long been estranged. Not even in my
earliest childhood have I the memory of a gentle word, a fatherly
pressure of the hand. So I grew to young manhood with no knowledge of a
mother's or father's love--for my mother," here his voice lowered,
reverently, "died when I was born. My childhood was of the utmost
loneliness, for my father thought the children with whom I wished to
associate were too far beneath me in social station. My sole companion
was the old dame who took care of the house--the one person in the world
of whom my father seemed to have fear. So the miserable years dragged by.
When I had just begun to make some plans by which I might escape from
this dungeon they so falsely called my home--just at the time I was most
despairing--like a joyful, radiant rift of sunlight in a clouded sky,
came--my Jeanette. Oh, if you could but see her!"
Under cover of the dark the girls' hands sought and clasped convulsively,
but no one spoke.
"I cannot attempt to describe one so gay, so beautiful, so lovely. She
seemed like a spirit from another world--a far dearer, happier world than
I had ever thought to exist. Ah, how I loved her, and she--ah, she loved
me, and for a while we were, oh, Monsieur, so divinely, so unthinkably
happy----" His voice broke and again his gaze wandered dreamily out into
the night.
"And who was the girl?" Lucile prompted, eagerly.
"Ah, Mademoiselle, that was the rock upon which all our dreams were
wrecked. My father would but reply sourly to any question I might venture
that my fair Jeanette was the ward of a friend who, on his death-bed, had
bequeathed her to his clemency--the fool!"
"As for my Jeanette herself, she told me all she knew about herself,
which, in fact, was little enough. She had lived with her guardian and
his faithful old servant for ever since she could remember, and had been
very happy. The chateau where she lived was a pretty, open place, with
gardens all about and beautiful woods on either side, where one could
roam for hours, becoming acquainted with the little folk of the
wood--this my little Jeanette did, not feeling the need of human
companionship as had I. When, upon rare occasions, she had questioned her
guardian as to the identity of her parents, he had answered with a most
strange reticence that she must not bother her head about such matters,
but to wait till she was twenty-one, when she would know all. Naturally,
the child believed and did as she was bid, but the maiden wondered and
began to brood in secret. In time she began to form great plans wherein
she might discover her identity, and perhaps, who knows, she might find
herself to be a duke's daughter--such things happened with the utmost
frequency in the books which she read.
"So spoke my little Jeanette, and I encouraged her in this fancy and
became, if anything, more eager than herself to solve the mystery of her
parentage.
"So the days and weeks fled by so happy, till once again those plans
began to take form and shape that had so long laid dormant after the
arrival of Jeanette. The voice of my manhood urged me insistently to
throw off the fetters that bound me and advance bravely into the seething
world of men and from it wrest the so well-earned fruit of my
endeavor--for I was ambitious and rebelled at being shut within four
walls, where each detail of my life was arranged for me as if I had still
been a child.
"Yet I liked little the thought of leaving my sweet Jeanette alone in
that gloomy house. But, on the other hand, how could I aspire to help if
I remained at home?"
"That night Jeanette and I talked long--ah, I shall never forget it!--and
it was then she urged, with tears of earnestness in her dear eyes, not to
think of her, but to do as I judged best. I have seen her as she looked
that night so many, many weary days!"
Here there was a long pause in the narrative, and it was not till Mr.
Payton prompted, softly, "And then----"
"Well, then, Monsieur, events flowed along easily enough till it was
about a week to the time we had set for my departure. Then, one night, I
came upon Jeanette suddenly and, to my great alarm and dismay, I
discovered her in tears.
"'Jeanne!' I cried. 'My little Jeanne, tell me what is wrong!'
"But she would not answer me, only sobbing out in a way that broke my
heart that 'I must go away, and never, never see her again!'
"Then it was, while I was still stunned and stupefied by the change in
her, that a servant brought me a message from my father. He wished to see
me on the instant.
"I made one last, agonized appeal to Jeanette, but she kept her face
averted and answered me nothing, and I, stricken, bewildered, hardly
knowing what I did, followed the servant to my father's rooms.
"I found him pacing the room with an angry scowl upon his face and an air
that augured ill for me. Far from being taken aback, I welcomed this
attitude of my father. I felt, somehow, that he was to blame for the
tears of my Jeanette. I could have fallen upon him, doing him bodily
injury, so great and terrible was my anger. With an effort, I conquered
this first mad impulse and waited, with hands so tightly clenched that
the nails bit deep into the flesh.
"I had not long to wait. At the sound of the opening door my father
whirled and, with an imperious gesture, ordered the servant to retire.
When the door was closed behind the man, my father burst out, furiously,
'So you have been deceiving me, lying to me in my own house. You need not
start and look surprised, for what I have not seen with my own eyes has
been faithfully retailed to me through one I can trust.'
"I fear I must have appeared stupid, for suddenly my brain refused to act
naturally. How was it for my father to find out this--my so great secret?
Surely, I had taken every precaution. But my father's voice broke in
rudely upon my bewilderment.
"'Have you nothing to say?' said he, furiously. 'Must you stand there
like a dog, a monkey, a piece of wood, and make no attempt to defend
yourself? Ah, to have reared such a son?'
"Suddenly, in a flash, came my wits again. In an instant I had drawn
myself to my full height and stood regarding calmly my enraged father.
Ah, that I have not one kind thought--one gentle memory----" Again the
stranger paused, and the girls felt the undernote of tragedy in his
voice. Instinctively, Lucile glanced at her own father where he sat,
knees crossed, cigar in hand, listening attentively, and her heart gave a
great, warm throb as she whispered, "Dear old Dad!"
"Well," said the Frenchman, with a shrug of his shoulders, "there is not
much more to tell, though it may mean the wrecking of two lives, mine and
that of Jeanette. My father and I had many words, calm on my part,
enraged on his, and during the interview I learned that our great secret
had been discovered by that old witch, the housekeeper, the week before,
when Jeanette and I had had our never-to-be-forgotten conversation. For
some unknown reason she had kept the discovery to herself till the day
before.
"'So you meant to marry Jeanette?' my father flung at me.
"'Oui, Monsieur, mon pere,' I answered, still calmly, 'and if Jeanette
will do me the great honor to become my wife, I have not in the least
altered my determination.'
"'Ah!' cried my father, stung by my calm. 'But she will not have
you--Jeanette. She has too much pride!'
"'What do you mean?' I cried, shaken out of my composure for the first
time. 'Explain quickly; my patience is almost at an end.'
"'Ah, if that is all, my impatient son,' said my father, lowering his
voice, craftily, 'you will soon know far too much for your peace of
mind!'
"'Explain!' I cried, my wrath rising to fever heat. I towered above him,
white with rage, and he, seeming to realize for the first time I was no
longer a child, retreated nervously.
"'You have often asked about the parents of Jeanette, and now I think it
is but right you should know all.'
"'Ah!' I cried, joyfully. 'At last!'
"'But there is little cause for rejoicing,' said my father, lowering his
voice till it was scarce above a whisper. 'What would you say, my son, if
I were to tell you that the father of your fair Jeanette was--a _thief_?'
Ah, the evilness of that smile! How I hated him at that moment!
"'Sir,' said I, 'no such statement will I give belief till it has been
proven to me beyond all doubt, and----' I leaned forward, speaking with
intensity, 'you have yet to understand that were Jeanette's father doubly
a thief, still would Jeanette be Jeanette, and the more obstacles you set
in our path, only the more determined shall I become to wed her--if she
will have me.'
"'Ah, but that is the question,' sneered my father. 'It seems you know
not your Jeanette so well, after all, for you have left her natural pride
outside your fine calculations. Suppose she will not have you, what then,
eh?'
"'Ah, then you have told her!' I cried, choking with rage at my
father--with pity and a great longing to hold my love in my arms and dry
away her tears. 'Why could you have not have spared the child that
knowledge? Oh, Jeanette!' I cried, and flung myself against the door;
then, turning, met my father's sneering look with one of bitter defiance.
'I will see Jeanette first,' I said, tensely. 'And then, my father, we
will have a short reckoning,' and going out, I slammed the door upon his
sneering face and flung myself down the stairs in search of my love.
"'Jeanette,' I cried, implored, 'Come to me!' and ran from room to room,
when, not finding her, I became frantic and knocked wildly upon the door
of her own room, calling to her aloud. But she was not there, nor could I
find her anywhere. Her room showed evidence of a hurried packing--small
things strewn here and there; but her sweet presence, that had filled the
gloomy house with sunshine, had fled, where, where, I could not tell!"
Here the speaker's voice trailed off and came to a stop. Then he turned
to the group about him, saying, half questioningly, half apologetically,
"I fear to tire you with this so long tale. After all, I suppose it is
interesting only when applied to one's self."
"Oh, no!" cried Lucile, impulsively, while her eyes shone with eagerness.
"Please go on!"
"You are good, Mademoiselle," murmured the Frenchman, and went on with
his story:
"Well, I sat down outside her door and wept like a child, for to me the
world seemed ended; but then, drawing myself together, and angry at what
I termed my miserable weakness, I set to work earnestly, doggedly, to
find some way out of this great chain of circumstances that bound me.
Where to find Jeanette? My brain reeled with the schemes and plans that
came crowding upon me, only to be rejected one by one as improbable,
fantastic, children of an overwrought imagination.
"At last, one idea became fixed in my mind. The thought came to me and
stayed persistently that, in her great extremity, she would naturally fly
to the one place of refuge which she knew--the old chateau where she had
spent her so happy childhood.
"I knew the place to be still occupied by the old servant and his
wife--this scrap of information my father had thrown to me--but, alas! I
knew not the location, and there were so many chateaux of the kind in the
province! How could I hope to find it?
"I sprang to my feet, while a new determination and resolve took
possession of me, and I uttered a solemn oath, swearing that I would
leave the house that night, _not_ returning till I should bring Jeanette
with me--my wife!"
Little chills of excitement chased themselves all over the girls in a
highly disconcerting manner, and even scoffing Phil leaned forward in his
chair to miss not one word of this remarkable story.
CHAPTER XIV
A VAIN QUEST
"So I packed what few belongings I had and took the money which I had
managed to save from my father's so meager allowance," the low voice
continued; "and when night came and all was still in the house, I stole
quietly away and turned my back upon what was the only refuge I have ever
known.
"I will not dwell upon the days and weeks that followed. Suffice it to
say that they were very, very hard, and I was dangerously near giving up
all hope, when, one day, I chanced to come across an old, old man, full
three score ten he must have been, perhaps more, who seemed to know
something of the people I sought. When I had described them to the best
of my ability, he nodded sagely and directed me up a side road near by.
Three miles of steady travel would bring Monsieur to the chateau where
lived the old caretaker and his wife. Aye, he remembered the old
gentleman, who was now dead, and the little, fairy-like creature, his
ward, whom all had loved.
"I thanked him with great warmth, for he had brought a little spark of
hope to a heart that before had lain heavy as lead.
"Wearily I trudged along till I was rewarded by the vision of a small
chateau, almost surrounded by dense woodland. My unruly heart throbbed
violently at the thought that in these very woods my sweet Jeanette had
played when a child and earned the name throughout the countryside of the
fairy child, whom every one loved. My heart yearned toward the little
home which I was convinced must shelter my love, and, weary as I was, in
my impatience I began to run, covering the remaining distance with feet
as light as air and a heart that sang with dawning hope and joy.
"As I neared the door of my heart's desire, it opened and out stepped a
plump, middle-aged little person, looking very trim and neat in her
spotless white attire.
"To her I appealed. 'Madame,' said I, 'will you be so kind as to allow me
the privilege of a few words of conversation? You have it in your power
either to raise me to the heights of joy or to sink me in the very depths
of despair.'
"She gazed upon me as she would upon a madman, and perhaps, after all, it
was not so strange that she should do so, I being footsore and weary and
all covered with the stains and dust of travel--or perhaps it was merely
my so strange form of address which startled her. However, she retreated
several steps toward the house and stood with her hand clasping the
latch, as though making ready to fly should I attempt any violence.
"'May I ask sir,' she said, with great primness, not unmixed with fear,
'who comes so early in the morning with so strange, so unusual,
requests?'
"'Aye, Madame,' said I, with most reassuring manner, 'if you will but
allow me, I will soon make all clear. Give me but a hearing,' I cried,
frantically, as I saw she was about to retire.
"To my great surprise, when she spoke it was in so much different and
more gentle a tone that I could have gone on my knees to her, so great
was my gratitude for a little kindness!
"'Oh, Monsieur, I believe you are honest,' she said, gently. 'I will
listen to what you have to say.'
"'Ah, Madame, you are good!' I cried from my heart. 'I am sure your good
opinion will be strengthened when you hear all.'
"Then did I pour out my story, while the good soul listened attentively,
nodding now and then or uttering little exclamations of surprise or
sympathy. 'And, oh, Madame,' I finished, 'if you have seen her; if, as I
believe, she is here, I beg you, take me to her. Let me but see her, and
all, I am convinced, will be well.'
"Then, what was my great horror, my boundless despair, when the good
woman slowly and sadly shook her head, saying, in a voice full of
sympathy and commiseration, 'How loath I am to shatter your hopes and add
more trouble to your already much overheavy sorrows, you cannot know,
Monsieur, but I fear I can give you little encouragement.'
"'Ah, Madame,' I cried, wildly, beseechingly, 'surely, you cannot be so
cruel; surely, you must give me some hope! If Jeanette is not here now,
surely, you have heard from her, seen her, can give me some clue to her
present whereabouts!'
"It seemed to me as though she hesitated for the fraction of a second,
but when her answer came, though gentle and sympathetic as before, it
contained decision and finality which I could not but respect.
"'Monsieur, she is not here, and neither have I seen her.'
"'Merci, Madame,' I murmured, wearily, and was turning away with sinking
heart and feet that seemed weighted with lead, when she called to me
softly:
"'Monsieur is weary. Will he not rest and partake of some refreshment
before continuing his journey?'
"Apathetically, scarce knowing where I went, nor caring, I followed her
into a great, homelike, airy room, with flowers all about, even in the
broad-silled, open windows. In the fragrance of the flowers it seemed
that I could see Jeanette, and I had a strange impression she was near
me. But I pushed it aside, thinking it but one of the many fancies that
had beset me unceasingly of late.
"It was not long before the good dame set before me a steaming dish, and
I, who, a few minutes before, had thought I could never eat again, fell
upon it ravenously and never stopped until the last delicious morsel had
disappeared. Thus refreshed and strengthened, my courage returned as by
magic and I began again to make my plans for the future.
"An hour later, leaving the house upon which I had based such high hopes,
I again turned my steps toward the city. Of course, I was now--what you
call it?--more in the dark than ever about Jeanette, but in my heart was
a great and dogged determination to find her somehow, somewhere, if I had
to search the city through.
"Five days later I found myself again before the city, infinitely more
dusty, infinitely more hungry, infinitely more footsore and more weary
than when I had encountered Madame Vidaud at the chateau.
"As I turned a corner, a great, whirling streak rushed by me, so close as
to make me jump quickly to the side of the road. To my great surprise,
the automobile stopped a few yards from where I was standing and two men,
one tall, one short, jumped out and hurried toward me.
"'Hello!' cried the tall one, in a big, rumbling voice. 'Aren't you the
son of Charloix?' he said. 'I thought I recognized you, even through the
dust. Just the man I'm looking for!'
"'I would be pleased, sir, if you would name your business with me,' I
replied, not being in the best of humors to bandy words with this
stranger who seemed so familiar with my name and ancestry.
"'Certainly, certainly,' said the big man, with a heartiness that made me
ashamed of my bad humor. 'That's exactly what I stopped for. I am your
father's solicitor.'
"I started and drew back. 'You come from my father?'
"'Yes; and you must prepare yourself for a great shock, my son,' said he,
laying a great hand upon my shoulder. 'Your father is very ill.'
"'Dead!' I gasped, feeling myself turn white. 'When?'
"'Four days ago,' said the little man, who had not yet spoken.
'Apoplexy.'
"'Ah, I had forgotten! My friend M. Abbott, M. Charloix.'
"I bowed, scarcely acknowledging the introduction, for my mind was a
whirling turmoil of hopes and fears. 'You say,' I began, still much
dazed, 'that my father died four days ago. And have you been looking for
me since then, Monsieur?'
"'Yes, Monsieur, we have scoured the country and, before this fortunate
meeting to-day, had almost given up hope of finding you.'
"'But why did you take this so much trouble to find me Monsieur?' I had
asked. 'I had not thought myself of such importance.'
"'There were many good reasons for our search, Monsieur,' said my big
friend, a trifle stiffly, for I doubt not he was amazed at my lack of
emotion, not knowing my father as I had known him. 'In the first place,
we thought you might possibly wish to know of your father's death. Also,
there are several important matters relative to his decease that we
thought might interest you.'
"'Pardon, Monsieur,' said I. 'I had not meant to be abrupt. As you may
see, I have had a long and wearisome journey and am--what you
call--fagged. I must rest, Monsieur; then I can talk.'
"'Quite right, quite right!' he agreed, in his hearty manner. 'If I had
had any brains instead of being a great empty-headed fool of an attorney,
I should have seen to that before,' and, linking his arm in mine, he led
me in spite of all protests on my part, to his great touring car and
bade me enter.
"'But, Monsieur,' I protested, gazing despairingly down upon my torn and
dusty clothing, 'I am not fit----'
"'But me no buts, young man. As your attorney and rightful executor of
your estate, I have the right to demand an interview, and I am going to
take advantage of that right.'
"There being nothing more to say, and it seeming only natural and right
to obey the commands of this great, blustering attorney, I submitted, and
lounged back against the soft, upholstered seat with a great sigh of
relaxation.
"My father's attorney talked incessantly until we reached our
destination, giving me no time to think. At his home he directed me to a
large room, saying that in an hour's time he would meet me in his study,
where, over a good dinner and a bottle or two of choice Madeira, we could
talk in comfort.
"Ah, the luxury of that bath and the subsequent putting on of a clean,
whole suit of clothes placed upon the bed by the so obsequious man
servant, who said his master had sent these clothes with his compliments
and the hope that they would fit. The clothes I accepted thankfully
enough, for I had decided to ask M. Cartier the address of a shop in the
city in which I might purchase myself a cheap but respectable suit, for I
had still a little money left.
"In Monsieur Cartier's study again that night I learned many things. I
learned, among other things, that my father had long been suspected of
being somewhat of a miser--that he was thought to possess a great deal
more money than he cared to let people know about. Also, I learned that,
several days before his death, he had made a flying visit to a little
chateau which had been owned by a friend of his--I must have started, for
the lawyer asked if I had heard of the place. 'Yes, I had heard of
it--but please go on.'
"'Well, he stayed over night that night,' the lawyer continued, 'saying
that he had come in search of his ward, who had run away from home.'
"'Yes, yes,' I cried; 'go on! What then?'
"'Well it seems that in the night the good dame heard a noise, and,
rising to investigate, came upon your father in the attic, bending over
something, the nature of which she could not make out.'
"'But, Monsieur, you mean to say my father----' I began, but he
interrupted me with an admonitory wave of the hand.
"'If you will but wait till I have finished, Monsieur Charloix,' he said,
'I will be glad to answer any and all of your questions. As I have said,
your father was bending over some object and was so absorbed that he did
not hear our good friend till she ventured a gentle cough by way of
introduction. At the slight sound, your father sprang forward with an
oath, leveling the pistol at the good dame's head----'"
"Oh!" breathed Jessie, and Lucile's hand went out instinctively to
silence the interruption. "Sh-h!" she warned, but the Frenchman seemed
not to have heard and continued his narrative, while his hand beat a
nervous tattoo on the arm of the chair.
"I sat fascinated, my eyes fixed strainingly on the face of the lawyer,
while he continued to speak, calmly, nonchalantly, as though that of
which he spoke were of every-day occurrence. 'Of course, the good dame
screamed, but the next instant her fear turned to terror when the weapon
fell from your father's hand and he reeled, falling upon the ground with
a strangling, choking cry, and lay motionless. She thought him dead, but
ran for assistance nevertheless. It was some hours before the doctor
arrived, and not long afterward your father passed away, quietly and
painlessly, for he had lain in a coma since the stroke.'
"'But, Monsieur,' I cried, forgetful of his admonition, 'you say this was
a week ago?' He nodded consent. 'But I myself but left the chateau three
days ago, and Madame Vidaud made no mention of the tragedy to me, who am
most concerned.'
"Then it was Cartier's turn to have surprise. 'You mean,' said he,
leaning his arm on the table and eyeing me steadily. 'You mean that you
were actually at the chateau three days ago and that the Vidaud woman
said nothing to you of your father's death? Are you sure that it was the
right chateau?'
"'Oui, Monsieur, I am sure,' said I.
"Then ensued a silence, during which the lawyer seemed to ponder, and I,
impatient though I was, must needs respect his silence and await his
pleasure.
"'Aye, it is strange--very strange,' said he at last, with a thoughtful
frown. 'However, it is only one more snarl in the tangled thread of
circumstances, and, with good luck, we ought to be able to get at the
root of all this mystery soon. But, my young friend,' said he, bringing
his gaze back from the wall and long line of books and centering it once
more upon me, 'there is one more very important matter which requires our
careful consideration.'
"'And that?' I cried.
"'That,' he continued, 'is the matter of the will,' and then, seeing that
I was about to interrupt, he continued, quickly, 'Just a moment, if you
please, and you will know everything; then I will be in a position to
discuss whys and wherefores. Your father's last will, the will which I
myself drew up about a year ago, is strangely missing. One has been
found, however, dating back two years, and in the event of the first will
not being found, will, of course, become valid.'
"'Well?' said I.
"'Well,' he continued, calmly launching his thunderbolt, 'in that case,
you, Monsieur, will be left penniless.'
"'Ah!' I cried, aghast, and the lawyer nodded, 'I trust that you now see
the seriousness of the situation, Monsieur.'
"'Ah, but there is one point of far greater importance than you have
mentioned,' I cried, with such earnestness that he leaned back in his
chair with a sigh of resignation, saying, 'Great heavens! What could be
more important than that?'
"'Many things, Monsieur, which, when you have heard of them, will cause
you to agree with me.'
"My manner may have impressed him, perhaps my earnestness; for he bade me
speak out freely, leaving nothing untold. This I did, to the most minute
details, save, of course, those things sacred only to Jeanne and me. When
I had finished, we had a long talk, during which I came to know the value
of this new ally of mine.
"So it was finally decided that I was to travel to America for the
purpose of hunting up one of the chief witnesses of my father's will and
beg him to return to France with me. Meanwhile, my father's attorney
assured me he would not be idle."
"And did you find him--the witness, I mean?" said Mr. Payton.
"No, Monsieur, I did not; but, after a long and exhaustive search, I
learned that the one I sought had sailed a week ago on the steamer
'Baltic,' so all my journey has been for nothing."
"What difference does it make? At least, you accomplished your purpose."
"That is true, Madame, but he would have sailed without aid of mine, and
it maddens me to think that all this time I have been wasting in a
fruitless search, my Jeanette is still unfound. Where may she not be?
Dead--perhaps----" His voice trailed off into silence and they sat
motionless, fascinated by the spell of romance, tragedy and mystery he
had woven.
CHAPTER XV
"LAND, HO!"
Lucile opened her eyes slowly, lazily, and let them rove aimlessly about
the bright cabin; then, chancing to come upon Jessie and Evelyn sleeping
sweetly and peacefully, they stopped and focused resentfully.
"Nothing to do but sleep," she murmured, pushing back her rumpled curls
and yawning prodigiously. "I wonder why it is I always have to wake up
first," and then, her eyes happening to fall on Evelyn at this precise
moment, she cried, "Oh, I saw you wink, Evelyn; you can't fool me! You're
playing possum," and, springing quickly out of bed, she gave that young
lady a vigorous shake, which caused her to open her eyes rather
suddenly.
"Wh-what's the matter? Can't you let a fellow sleep?" she began, but the
laughter in her eyes belied the sleepy tone, and Lucile hugged her and
pulled her out of bed. "I'll admit you're a dabster, Evelyn, dear," she
cried, "but you will have to get up early in the morning to get the best
of your little friend."
Evelyn laughed merrily. "You whirlwind!" she cried. "Nobody has a chance
to sleep when you're around."
"Don't be too sure of that; look at Jessie. She is still sleeping the
sleep of the just."
"All right; let's make her get up, then. Even if she does want to sleep,
why should we worry?"
"Evelyn," cried Lucy, shocked, "you're getting most horribly slangy."
"Oh, Lucy, you look so funny, trying to be severe in that rig! It can't
be done!" And, with a laugh, she plumped down on something hard and
lumpy, which proved to be Jessie's feet. The outraged owner objected
promptly and emphatically.
"Oh, Jessie, I'm so sorry! Are those your feet?" cried Evelyn, in
concern.
"No; they are Lucy's," said Jessie, coldly, rubbing the injured members
gingerly.
Lucile laughed merrily. "Don't you go slandering my poor feet," she
cried. "Anyway, it serves you right for being so lazy, Jess."
"Oh, does it? Well, I'll just prove you wrong by beating you all on deck,
One, two, three--we're off!"
Then ensued a great amount of talk and laughter and wild scrambling for
clothing that would get out of sight, until at the end of half an hour,
our girls made a dash for the door at precisely the same instant.
"Oh, that's not fair," cried Evelyn, as Lucile wrenched open the door and
ran straight into the arms of the rather stout, middle-aged matron who
happened to be passing.
"Oh," she gasped, "I--I beg your pardon! I----"
"Look first, and you will save your apologies," said the sweet-tempered
lady, who, to do her justice, was considerably shaken by the impact.
Lucile flushed scarlet, but walked on with her head in the air, thankful
she had not expressed the thought that had rushed to her lips.
"Cranky old curmudgeon!" murmured Evelyn, vindictively. "It's lucky there
aren't so many of them in the world."
To their surprise, Lucile began to laugh with great enjoyment. "Girls,"
she said, "did you hear her say 'woof' when we clashed?"
Two hours later they sighted the harbor, and on board pandemonium broke
loose. Questions and answers were fired back and forth like bullets from
a Gatling gun, and everywhere field glasses were glued to eager eyes.
"So that's England?" said Lucile. "Oh, Jessie, pinch me!"
"Won't. Love you too much," said Jessie, gazing intently toward the
harbor, which became more and more distinct with every passing moment.
"Don't let any such soft scruples stand in your way," said Phil,
administering the desired pinch with such good effect that Lucile jumped
almost a foot and lowered her glasses to gaze reproachfully at him.
"Phil, that will be black and blue for a month," she said, with
conviction. "You needn't have done it so hard."
"You didn't say not to," said Phil, with the air of injured innocence
that sat so comically upon him. "Here comes old Charlie," he added, a
minute later. "Wonder if he's found anything since last night."
"Who in the world is old Charlie?" inquired Jessie, mystified.
"Old Charlie? Why, old Charlie is short for Monsieur Charloix, of
course," elucidated Phil, with the patronizing air of one speaking to a
peculiarly stupid child.
Instantly the girls' interest in Liverpool harbor waned, as they turned
smilingly to greet the historian of last night.
"I see Mademoiselle is entirely recovered from the seasickness," said he,
turning to Lucile. "It is good to see you looking so well."
"Thank you, Monsieur. I suppose you will be glad to get back to France?"
"Oh, very glad, for, though I admire your America, it is not to me like
my own country," said he, smiling.
It was not long before they were joined by other excited
fellow-passengers, all talking at once about what they intended to do
upon reaching land, and in the babble it was impossible to carry on any
but a disjointed conversation, so the girls wisely gave up trying.
Nevertheless, Lucile had been more deeply impressed than any of the rest
by the recital of Monsieur's tragic romance. It seemed, somehow, like the
plays their guardian had described to them. Phil, the skeptical, had
seemed inclined to think the story over-drawn, but the girls had
emphatically disagreed with him, overwhelming him by sheer force of
numbers. And way down in Lucile's heart was the hope that she would,
sooner or later, hear the finishing chapter of the romance. Whether this
premonition was inspired partly by her own desire or partly by the fact
that, sooner or later, they would be in France itself, where they would
have the opportunity of following the fortunes of the disconsolate
Frenchman, cannot be determined, but certain it was, the premonition was
there. As she had said to Jessie at the end of a long and excited
discussion the night before, "Stranger things have happened."
And so, in the girl's eyes, and, in fact, in the eyes of all who had
heard his story, even Phil, the stranger had taken on an added
importance, the importance of the chief actor in a romantic drama.
"I would like to help," Lucile murmured, as the Frenchman excused himself
and moved off down the deck. "I never saw any one look so wistful in all
my life."
"No wonder," said Jessie, in the same tone. "If I had been through all he
has, I'd never have lived to tell about it."
"And poor Jeanette!" Lucile mused on. "I'd give almost anything if I
could bring them together again."
Jessie glanced at her friend curiously. "Perhaps you will tell me now
that my dear old novels always exaggerate," she challenged.
"A little more of this sort of thing and I'll be able to believe
anything," Lucile answered, with a rueful smile. "It surely is
wonderful!"
"Oh, Lucy, dear, I may convert you yet," Jessie was crying gleefully,
when she was interrupted by another crowd of fellow-voyagers, who, for
the time being at least, cut her triumph short.
Later came the call to luncheon, and everybody hurried down to the
dining-room, where the atmosphere of excitement and unrest prevailed to
such a degree that people almost forgot to eat, or else bolted their
meals in half the ordinary time, anxious not to miss a moment above
decks.
Then, toward one o'clock in the afternoon, Mrs. Payton advised the girls
to get everything ready, and see that nothing was left in the stateroom.
"We will dock in a few minutes," she explained, "and we don't want to
leave everything until the last instant."
Down rushed the girls to the stateroom obediently, treading on each
other's heels and not even bothering to apologize, for what was so
everyday a thing as politeness at such a time?
Jessie and Evelyn waited in undisguised impatience while Lucile
fumblingly fitted the key into the lock with fingers that trembled
rebelliously.
"Oh, for goodness' sake, let me have it!" said Jessie, in desperation.
"Hold on a minute; there it is!" And as the door swung open, they tumbled
rather than walked into the room.
"Oh, bother! Where did I put my comb?" moaned Evelyn, searching wildly
under the dresser for the missing article. "You might know it would
disappear just when I haven't any time to look for it. Are you sure
you're not sitting on it, Lucy?"
"Of course not," denied Lucile; "but if you don't get off my suitcase
this minute, Jessie Sanderson, I'll know the reason why."
"Here's your comb, Evelyn! Catch!" said Jessie, throwing the missing
article toward her friend. "If you would only keep it over on your side
instead----"
"Oh, if you talk so much you will never be ready, Jessie! Do hurry!" And
so on in this fashion until, finally, the last thing was ready and they
tumbled up on deck again, only to be swallowed up by a jostling,
gesticulating throng intent, apparently, on getting nowhere in
particular, and doing it, withal, with a perseverance that was truly
admirable.
"Hello!" said Phil, elbowing his way through the crowd. "We dock in ten
minutes. Just look at the harbor now;" and he was off again.
With difficulty they made their way to the rail and stood gazing at the
scene with wondering eyes and parted lips. Craft of all sizes and
descriptions plowed and snorted through the ruffled water, and everywhere
was life and bustle and activity. And further back, past the lines of
docks and warehouses, the girls could discern the spires and steeples
of--England!
"Well," came Mr. Payton's gruff, hearty voice from just behind them, "how
do you like your first glimpse of the Old World, eh? It won't be any time
at all before you set foot upon it."
"Oh, Daddy, isn't it magnificent?" said Lucile, drawing a long breath.
"It all looks just exactly the way I dreamed it would, though. Oh, I
can't wait!" and she leaned far over the rail, as if by that means to
bring it so much the nearer.
Her father's strong hand drew her back to safety, and he said,
reprovingly, "Don't do that again, Lucy. Accidents will happen, you
know."
"Even in the best-regulated families," finished Lucile, gaily.
Her father laughed, and pinched the tip of one pink ear fondly. "I
suppose there is no use trying to make any of you serious at such a
time," he said, with the resigned air of one giving up all hope; "but
there is one little phrase that it will be well for you to remember, and
that is, 'Safety first.'"
And with that fatherly admonition he left them, bidding them wait where
they were until he could rejoin them. In a few minutes he returned,
bringing his wife and Phil, declaring that nothing now remained to be
done but walk off the ship when the time came.
The great "Mauretania" was very near her destination now, and was nosing
her way carefully through the traffic, convoyed by two snorting and
puffing tugs. The raucous shouts and cries of sailors and watermen came
to their ears, with now and then a snatch of song from the decks of some
tall, four-masted freighter. There were shouts of "aye, aye, sir" and
"ship, ahoy," mingled with the rasping of cables and the clatter of cargo
cranes--and behind all this noise and confusion lay the quaint, historic
streets of Liverpool, and later, London, filled with the glory of ancient
times.
The girls' eyes were large and dark with wonder and excitement as they
lowered their glasses and looked at each other.
"Yes, you are awake," said Mrs. Payton, with a laugh, interpreting the
look.
"Jessie looks as though she had just seen a ghost," said Phil.
A few minutes later the great liner was warped securely alongside the
great landing stage, while the whistle shrieked a noisy greeting.
Passengers hurried from one group to another, shaking hands in a final
farewell with shipboard acquaintances whom they had come to know so well
in so short a time. Porters hurried past, laden with luggage, and groups
of eager passengers formed about the entrance to the gangways.
"I feel as though my hand had been shaken off," said Evelyn, regarding
that very necessary appendage ruefully.
"Oh, there's Mrs. Applegate and Puss," said Lucile, and darted off
through the crowd so suddenly that the girls could only follow her with
their eyes.
"Lucile," cried Mrs. Payton, and then, as her voice would not carry above
all the noise, "Go after her, Phil," she said. "If she gets separated
from us now, we will have a hard time finding her."
Phil hurried off and was soon lost to sight in the swaying crowd.
"Oh, what did she do that for?" wailed Jessie. "If Lucy goes and gets
lost now in all this crowd----"
"Don't worry; Phil will have her back in a jiffy," said Mr. Payton,
soothingly, but the frown on his forehead betrayed his own anxiety.
The gangplanks were lowered, and the people had already begun to surge
forward, and still no sign of either Lucile or Phil.
They eagerly searched the faces of the passers-by, nodding to some, yet
scarcely seeing them, while Mr. Payton began to mutter something about
"tying a string to that cyclonic young flyaway" when he got her back
again.
Five minutes passed. The deck was beginning to be emptied of people, and
they had begun to make their way slowly toward the gangplank, when Phil
came rushing up to them, very red and very much out of breath.
"Well?" they cried together, and Mr. Payton took him by the shoulder,
demanding, sternly, "Where is she?"
"Wouldn't it make you sick?" panted Phil, disgustedly. "Here I rush all
over the boat trying to locate her, and get everybody scared to death,
thinking she's fallen overboard or something, and then I find her down on
the float there, talking to the----"
"What?" interrupted Mr. Payton, incredulously.
"Yes. Isn't it the limit?" said Phil, fanning himself with his hat. "Said
she couldn't find her way back to you, so thought she'd wait with the
Applegates at the foot of the gangplank; said she knew you would find her
there."
The girls laughed hysterically, and even Mr. Payton's stern face relaxed;
the action was so truly "Lucilian."
"Well, I suppose all we can do is to follow," said Mr. Payton, and Mrs.
Payton added, pathetically, "I do wish Lucile would be a trifle less
impulsive now and then; it might save us a good deal of trouble."
Mr. Payton had felt inclined to read his "cyclonic" young daughter a
lecture, but the sight of her bright young face completely disarmed him,
and he could only breathe a prayer of thankfulness that she was safe.
They said good-by to Mr. and Mrs. Applegate and their very diminutive
daughter--whom somebody had fondly nicknamed "Puss"--and turned to follow
the crowd. A short time later they set foot for the first time on the
soil of the Old World.
"Where are we going, Dad, now that we're here?" asked Phil.
"To London, as fast as we can, by the train that connects with our
steamer," said his father. "Stick together, everybody--here we are," and
he hustled them before him into the long coach--for in England, you must
remember, trains are not made up of cars, but of "coaches."
By this time it was getting late, and after vainly trying to distinguish
objects through streaked and misty glass, the girls gave up and leaned
back with a sigh of tired but absolute content.
"Well, we're here, and still going," said Lucile, happily, feeling for
her friend's hands.
"We jolly well know that, my de-ar," came in sweet, falsetto tones from
Phil. "We ought to have no end of sport, you know; rippin', what-what!"
"Bally goose!" murmured Jessie.
The reproof that rose to Mrs. Payton's lips was drowned in a shout of
laughter.
CHAPTER XVI
THE RED-LETTER DAY
"Hang the luck!" ejaculated Phil, flinging aside his book in disgust.
"Here it is, our first day over, and look at it!" And, drawing aside the
light chintz curtains, he disclosed a view that was, to say the least,
very discouraging.
The rain came down in torrents, rebounding from the shining pavement and
the no less shining umbrellas of passing pedestrians, with vicious little
pops and hisses that sounded more like a storm of tiny daggers than of
raindrops. As time went on, instead of lightening, the sky had grown
murkier and murkier and darker and darker, until, in many parts of the
hotel, people had been forced to turn on the lights. Over and about
everything hung that moist, indefinably depressing atmosphere that makes
one rail at fate and long for the blessing of the sun and a clear day.
Such was Phil's enviable state of mind as he dropped the curtain and
slumped back into his chair with an impatient grunt.
"'Tis rather mean, isn't it?" drawled Jessie, dropping her book and
looking at the disconsolate Phil lazily. "You don't happen to have any
more of those candies around you anywhere, do you, Evelyn?" she queried.
"Hardly. How long do you think they last when you're around?" answered
Evelyn, without raising her eyes from the magazine she was reading.
With a quick movement, Jessie reached over and pulled the candy box
toward her before Evelyn could interfere.
"A-ha, I thought so!" she cried. "I was sure they couldn't all have
vanished so quickly, you unscrupulous--"
"Beg pardon!" interrupted Evelyn, blandly.
"Well, you are, anyway," Jessie maintained. "What do you mean, no more
left? Here are half a dozen at least."
"Well, you know you've eaten half a box already, Jessie," Evelyn was
beginning, severely, when Jessie interrupted.
"But, Evelyn, what else is there to do on a day like this?" she pleaded
plaintively. "We can't make any noise, for fear that we'll annoy the
other people, and we can't go out----"
This was more than Phil could stand.
"Eat all the candy you want, Jessie, and when you've finished what you
have, I'll buy you some more," and he sauntered out, hands in pocket,
despite all his mother's training, and whistling mournfully.
"Seems to me you have him very well tamed, Jessie," gibed Evelyn. "Just
the same, I'm going to pray for clear weather."
"Why the sudden fervor?" asked Jessie, munching away happily.
"Because if you take Phil's advice and eat all the chocolates that you
want to while it rains, and it doesn't clear up soon--well, all I have to
say is----"
Jessie laughed, but added, more seriously, "I guess maybe you're right,
after all. There was a time when I'd nearly given up the habit, but now
I'm just about as bad as ever. I'm afraid our guardian might not like
it."
"Of course she wouldn't," said Evelyn, seizing upon the opportunity
eagerly. "Do you know, Jessie, there's been so much going on and so much
excitement that we have--well, rather lost sight of the camp-fire idea,
don't you think?"
"I was thinking just that very thing the other day," replied Jessie,
slowly, putting down a half-finished candy. "It ought to mean just as
much to us now, and more, for that matter, than it ever did before----"
"Girls, girls, girls!" sang out Lucile, bursting in upon them, with
cheeks like two red roses, and waving something white aloft in the air.
"We've got some letters, some beautiful, thick, booky letters, and you'll
never guess whom they're from."
The girls ran to the sofa, where Lucile had flung herself with a pile of
letters in her lap, and hung over the back of it excitedly.
"Oh, go on, Lucy; show them to us!" cried Evelyn, as Lucile put both her
hands teasingly over the letters, inviting them to "guess."
"If you don't hand over my property before I count five," threatened
Jessie, "I shall be compelled to use force."
"Well, in that case," laughed the threatened one, "I suppose I'll have
to----"
"Oh, Lucy, you know you always were my favorite che-ild," begged Evelyn,
melodramatically. "I'll destroy the old will and make a new one, leaving
everything----"
"To me," finished Jessie, at the same time making a lunge at the tempting
little pile of paper.
"Oh, go on!" cried Lucile, and, dodging out-stretched arms, made a dash
for the door, only to be captured and brought back by two indignant and
protesting girls to the sofa.
"Oh, we will be put out of the hotel," gasped Lucile, between laughs.
"We're making no end of noise. Now, if you two girls will only sit down
and behave like sensible--"
"Huh!" broke in Evelyn. "We were only demanding our just rights."
"You would better hasten, Lucile Payton," said Jessie, with her best
heavy-villain scowl. "My patience is dangerously near an end."
"All right," Lucile capitulated, patting the sofa on either side of her
invitingly. "Sit down here and I'll hand them out just as they come."
"And we'll read each one aloud before we open the next one," Jessie
suggested, eagerly.
"That's right," assented Evelyn. "Whom is the first one from, Lucy?"
"The first one," drawled Lucile, turning it up with aggravating
deliberation, "is for Evelyn, from----"
"Miss--er--our guardian," cried Evelyn, snatching the envelope
unceremoniously. "Oh, oh, oh! Got a letter opener, Lucy? Oh, all right;
anything. Hairpin? Thanks! Oh, girls, what has she got to say?"
"I might suggest that the best way to find out is to read it," said
Jessie, and immediately became the recipient of a withering stare from
Evelyn, who was opening the letter with trembling, clumsy fingers.
"My dear little girl," she read and then stopped and looked from one to
the other pleadingly. "I can't do it; I can't read it out loud----"
"Don't try," said Lucile, putting an arm around her. "I know exactly how
you feel. We would better read them first and compare notes afterward."
"That's right," agreed Jessie. "I didn't think how hard it would be to
read them out loud when I suggested it. Better give them all out
together, Lucy."
"Well, here's one to you from your mother, I guess, Jessie, and another
from your father, and one for you from your mother, Evelyn, and one for
me----"
"From whom?" interrupted Jessie.
"Our guardian," answered Lucile, touching it lovingly. "And here is
yours, Jessie," she added, handing her a letter in the well-known and
well-loved handwriting. "Isn't she dear to remember each one of us like
that? And oh, here are whole stacks of letters from the girls--one from
Margaret--here, Jess----" And so on until each had a little pile of her
own.
"And whom is that from, Lucy?" asked Evelyn, as Lucile picked up the last
letter, looked at the unfamiliar handwriting curiously, then looked again
more closely, while the tips of her ears became very pink.
"I--I don't know," she stammered. "It's for me, and--oh, well, I'll open
it later on," and she tucked it among the others, just to gain time, as
she explained it to herself.
"No, you don't! No, you don't!" cried Evelyn. "We have stumbled upon a
deep, dark mystery and it must be cleared up at once, at once. Come on,
Lucy; who wrote that letter?"
"I tell you I don't know myself, so how can I tell you?" cried Lucile,
angry at herself for being so confused.
"If you don't know whom it's from, why do you get all red and snappy and
try to hide it?" asked Evelyn, triumphantly. "'Fess up, Lucy. You might
as well, first as last, for you can't fool us."
"Methinks," began Jessie, in deep, stentorian tones, "that this writing
seems strangely familiar. Where can I have seen it before? Ah, I have
it!" Then, suddenly throwing her arms about Lucile in a strangling hug,
she cried, "Oh, I knew it, I knew it! I knew he would just go crazy about
you, like all the rest of us. He couldn't help himself! And you never,
never would believe anything could happen the way it does in
novels--oh--oh----"
"Oh, I see it all! I see it all!" shouted Evelyn, suddenly springing up
and whirling about the room, using her letters as a tambourine. "It's
Jessie's cousin! He's gone--he's gone----"
"Girls, you are crazy, both of you!" cried Lucile, extricating herself
with difficulty from Jessie's strangle hold and smoothing back the hair
that was tumbling down in the most becoming disorder--or so her two
friends would have told you--while her laughing eyes tried hard to look
severe. "Probably it isn't from him at all, and if it is, why--why--well,
it is," she ended, desperately.
"Why, of course it is," soothed Jessie; "but I don't think you need worry
about it not being from him----"
"Aren't you going to read it over now?" broke in Evelyn. "Then you can
tell us----"
"I wouldn't tell you a thing," said Lucile, driven to her last
entrenchment; "and what's more, I'm not going to read it till I get good
and ready, and not then if I don't want to," and she slipped her letter
into her pocketbook, which she closed with a defiant little snap. "Now,
what are you going to do about it?" she challenged, gaily.
"We might use force," mused Jessie, meditatively.
"But you're not going to, because you can't," Lucile declared, raising a
round little arm not yet wholly free from last summer's tan, for
inspection. "Just look at that muscle," she invited.
"Terrific!" cried Evelyn, in mock terror. "Guess we'd better think twice
before we tackle that, Jessie."
"Mere nothing!" sniffed Jessie, scornfully. "Now, if you want to see real
muscle----"
"Oh, yes; we know all about that," said Lucile, and, throwing an arm
about each of the girls, she dragged them over to the settee, saying
gaily, "What's the use of having all this fuss about one old letter, when
we have all the really good ones to read?"
The girls exchanged significant glances, but, never-the-less, followed
Lucile's example, opening one letter after another amid a shower of
exclamations, comments, questions and quotations from this or that
letter, till the other disturbing document was all but forgotten--except
by Lucile.
After half an hour of delightful reveling in the news from Burleigh,
which seemed so terribly far away, and in tender little messages from
mothers and fathers and friends, Lucile looked up from her guardian's
letter, which she had just read for the third time.
"Girls," she said, seriously, "I'm glad the letters came just as they did
this morning. I've been thinking----"
"So were we," broke in Evelyn, "just before you came in----"
"Wonderful!" murmured Jessie. "A red-letter day!"
The girls laughed, but Lucile went on:
"Just because we're over here, so far away from home, is no reason for
our forgetting or neglecting the least little bit the rules of our
camp-fire. In fact, I don't think we deserve any credit for being good
where Mrs. Wescott is; you simply can't help yourself when our guardian
is around."
"That's true enough," agreed Jessie, and for a few minutes they sat
silent, while the dreary, sodden, steaming streets of London, as, in
their short experience, they had already begun to think of them, faded
before the magic power of memory and they were once more back in
camp--eating, swimming, walking, canoeing--subject always to the
slightest word or wish of their lovely, smiling, cheery guardian, who
always knew just what to do and just the time to do it.
"That's all right for me," began Jessie, heroically. "I've been eating
candies and drinking sodas and reading so much that my eyes are nearly
out of my head, but I don't know what under the light of the sun you two
have done."
"Well, in the first place, I've become horribly rude," confessed Lucile.
"We haven't noticed it," said Jessie.
"Well, I have," she went on. "This morning an old lady dropped her
handkerchief under my very eyes and I was in such a hurry to get to you
that I didn't stop to pick it up. And all my clothes need mending. That
good waist is all ripped where you yanked the button off, Evelyn----"
"Oh, I did not," began Evelyn, hotly.
"All right. I don't care who did it; the fact remains that it is torn and
I haven't mended it, and I haven't written half as much as I ought to,
and--well, if I told you everything, I wouldn't get through to-day."
"And I use slang from morning to night, and I chewed a piece of gum that
Phil gave me right out in the street, too," began Evelyn, miserably.
"Oh, Phil!" said Jessie, disdainfully. "He would ruin anybody's manners."
"All the more credit, then, in being good while he's around," laughed
Lucile. "But, seriously, girls, don't you think it would be a good plan
to make up our minds to act just the same all the time as though our
guardian were in the next room?"
"Let's" said the girls. And so, with no more form or ceremony, the simple
little compact was made, but it had taken firm and solid root,
nevertheless, in the girls' hearts.
"Hooray, people; here comes the sun!" cried Phil, bursting in upon them
with a box of candy and a radiant smile. "I just waylaid Dad and asked
him what was up if it cleared this afternoon, and he said, 'Westminster
Abbey, Trafalgar Square, a look at the Thames, an auto ride.' Hooray!"
The girls ran to the window, and, sure enough, the sun was beginning to
shine, feebly and mistily, to be sure, but yet unmistakably.
They hugged each other joyfully and began to gather up their scattered
belongings.
"It must be nearly lunch time," sang Lucile. "We'll go up and see what we
look like and change our dresses and----"
"Then for the fun," finished Evelyn.
"I say, Jessie, here's the candy I promised you," Phil called after her.
Jessie turned at the door and eyed the tempting box longingly.
"I'd love to, Phil," she said, "but I can't. Thanks just as much. I would
spoil my lunch," she added, lamely, making a hasty retreat.
"Well, of all the----" began Phil, at a loss to understand such insanity.
Then, with a shrug of the shoulders, he voiced the eternal and
oft-repeated masculine query:
"Aren't girls the limit?"
CHAPTER XVII
THE GLORY OF THE PAST
With light hearts and lighter feet the girls danced from the dark hotel
to the sun-flooded street. Umbrellas had been down for half an hour and
in some places the sidewalks were already partly dry. Smiles and friendly
nods had once more become the fashion where before had been only
grumbling discontent, with now and then a muttered, "Beastly rotten day,
what?"
"Oh, what a dif-fer-ence!" cried Lucile, surveying the scene with
delight. "I'd begun to be rather disgusted with London this morning,
everything looked so dreary and forlorn. I wonder what can be keeping Dad
and Mother," she added, turning to the hotel entrance, while her foot
tapped impatiently. "They said they'd be with us right away--oh, here
they are! Speaking of angels----"
"And they're sure to turn up," said Phil, producing himself with
startling suddenness from nowhere. "Bet you can't guess where I've
been."
"Why work when you don't have to?" philosophized Jessie. "If we don't
care where you've been, why bother to guess?"
"All right; I won't let you in on the secret now, but when you do find
out about it, you'll wish you had been more civil," Phil prophesied,
darkly.
"Here is the car; come down, all of you," commanded Mr. Payton; and, all
else forgotten, they very willingly obeyed.
The machine was a big touring car, hired especially for the occasion, and
the girls thrilled at the thought of seeing London in this fashion. In
they tumbled joyfully, the big tonneau just accommodating five, while Mr.
Payton took his place beside the driver.
"Where to, sir?" asked the latter.
"Oh, all around," said Mr. Payton, with a wave of his hand. "You know the
points of interest better than I do. Only, of course, the young folks
must stop for a long look at Westminster Abbey on the way back."
"All right, sir," said the man, with an understanding grin, and added,
"For the whole afternoon?"
"Yes," said Mr. Payton.
With that the chauffeur threw in the clutch and the big machine whizzed
away through the crowded traffic bearing a very happy cargo.
The girls never forgot that afternoon. Impressions crowded so thick and
fast upon them they had all they could do to gather them in, and Lucile
more than once exclaimed, "Oh, I must come here some day when I have lots
of time and just stand and look and look and look!"
The last time she had made this remark was when they were proceeding
slowly through the crowded traffic of London Bridge.
"Do you remember what Mark Twain said about people in olden times being
born on the bridge, living on it all their lives, and finally dying on
it, without having been in any other part of the world?" said Phil,
looking about him with lively interest.
"Well, I don't blame them much," Jessie answered; "it is fascinating."
"Yes; only they don't have the heads of Dukes and things on spikes the
way they used to," Evelyn complained.
"Goodness, Evelyn, you can't expect everything! Besides, you wouldn't
actually like to _see_ those things," cried Lucile, horrified.
"Well, maybe I wouldn't _like_ to look at them," Evelyn retracted,
embarrassed by so many laughing eyes upon her. "But if they were there, I
just couldn't help looking, could I?" she finished, lamely.
There was a shout, and Jessie exclaimed, "I do believe you'd enjoy being
a cannibal, Evelyn. You and the black-skins certainly have a great many
views in common."
At last they had left the bridge behind and were once more speeding
through the historic streets of London.
"The Abbey now, Dad?" Phil questioned, eagerly. "That's what I came to
Europe to see, you know."
"Seems to me you're getting mighty familiar," commented Jessie. "Why
don't you call it by its full name?"
"Are we, Dad?" said Phil, ignoring the interruption.
"We are," said Mr. Payton. "I've been wanting to see it, along with other
things, all my life, Phil. You see, I wasn't so lucky as you. However, I
expect to make up for lost time."
"Well, it's a treat just to ride along the streets," said Evelyn. "It's
so very different from anything I ever saw before."
"Yes; you could imagine you were reading Dickens," said Lucile, her eyes
bright with the idea. "Why, that little shop might almost be the same one
where----"
"Uncle Sol and Cap'n Cuttle hung out," said Phil.
"Yes," Jessie added, excitedly. "And you can almost see little Florence
Dombey----"
"And her black-eyed maid, Susan," said Evelyn, eagerly, and they all
laughed delightedly at the picture.
"Gee, it does seem to make his books lots more real," Phil chuckled.
"Dear old Cap'n Cuttle and Uncle Sol's nevvy, Wal'r--you remember him,
don't you?"
Of course they did. So on they went, most of the time in gales of
merriment, as some house or modest little shop suggested some character
or happening in the books of the great writer and humorist.
So happy were they in their imagining that they were almost sorry to find
themselves at their destination.
"Oh, so soon?" cried Lucile, trying vainly to straighten the corners of
her laughing mouth into some semblance of the sobriety that befitted so
great an occasion. "Oh, I never get enough of anything!" This last a
protest against fate.
"Greedy child!" whispered Evelyn, lovingly, as the chauffeur opened the
door. "It is a great deal better than having too much of everything," she
added, philosophically.
Phil was standing a little apart from the rest and was gazing with
rapturous awe at this object of his boyhood adoration.
"Gee, Lucy, look at it!" he murmured, as his sister tucked her arm in his
in mute understanding. "Think of the architect that could plan that
magnificent structure!"
"It is wonderful," Lucile agreed, softly, sobered by the beauty, the
indefinite repose and dignity of the old, historic pile. "Phil, can you
really imagine we are standing here in London, actually looking at
Westminster Abbey? I can't."
"It sure does seem impossible, little sister," Phil answered,
understandingly. "But so it is. I guess Dad wants us now; he seems to be
ready," he added, as Mr. Payton beckoned to them.
"Yes," began Evelyn, the irrepressible. "I want to see all the
aesoph--sarcophaguses--gae----" she floundered hopeless and looked to the
others for relief.
"Perhaps you mean sarcophagi," Jessie suggested, loftily, while the
others laughed at her discomfiture.
"Well, whatever it is, I want to see it," she persisted, doggedly.
"Don't worry; you shall," Lucile promised. "If I know anything about it,
you will have plenty of time to see everything, for I'm not going home
till I have to."
A moment more and they had stepped within the great, silent,
shadow-filled cathedral. The lights and sunshine of the out-of-doors made
the contrast more impressive and in the wonder of the moment the girls
drew closer together. Gone was all their levity now, buried deep
beneath an overwhelming reverence for this great architectural
ma
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