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Cloudy Jewel

by Grace Livingston Hill · English · Gutenberg #30006 · 553,457 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Cloudy Jewel

Author: Grace Livingston Hill


        
Release date: September 17, 2009 [eBook #30006]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLOUDY JEWEL ***

CLOUDY JEWEL




CLOUDY JEWEL

BY

GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL

AUTHOR OF

MARCIA SCHUYLER, THE SEARCH, ETC.

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Made in the United States of America




COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE GOLDEN RULE COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY




CLOUDY JEWEL




CLOUDY JEWEL




CHAPTER I


"Well, all I've got to say, then, is, you're a very foolish woman!"

Ellen Robinson buttoned her long cloak forcefully, and arose with a
haughty air from the rocking-chair where she had pointed her remarks
for the last half-hour by swaying noisily back and forth and touching
the toes of her new high-heeled shoes with a click each time to the
floor.

Julia Cloud said nothing. She stood at the front window, looking out
across the sodden lawn to the road and the gray sky in the distance.
She did not turn around to face her arrogant sister.

"What I'd like to know is what you do propose to do, then, if you
don't accept our offer and come to live with us? Were you expecting to
keep on living in this great barn of a house?" Ellen Robinson's voice
was loud and strident with a crude kind of pain. She could not
understand her sister, in fact, never had. She had thought her
proposition that Julia come to live in her home and earn her board by
looking after the four children and being useful about the house was
most generous. She had admired the open-handedness of Herbert, her
husband, for suggesting it. Some husbands wouldn't have wanted a poor
relative about. Of course Julia always had been a hard worker; and it
would relieve Ellen, and make it possible for her to go around with
her husband more. It would save the wages of a servant, too, for Julia
had always been a wonder at economy. It certainly was vexing to have
Julia act in this way, calmly putting aside the proposition as if it
were nothing and saying she hadn't decided what she was going to do
yet, for all the world as if she were a millionaire!

"I don't know, Ellen. I haven't had time to think. There have been so
many things to think about since the funeral I haven't got used yet to
the idea that mother's really gone." Julia's voice was quiet and
controlled, in sharp contrast with Ellen's high-pitched, nervous
tones.

"That's it!" snapped Ellen. "When you do, you'll go all to pieces,
staying here alone in this great barn. That's why I want you to decide
now. I think you ought to lock up and come home with me to-night. I've
spent just as much time away from home as I can spare the last three
weeks, and I've got to get back to my house. I can't stay with you any
more."

"Of course not, Ellen. I quite understand that," said Julia, turning
around pleasantly. "I hadn't expected you to stay. It isn't in the
least necessary. You know I'm not at all afraid."

"But it isn't decent to leave you here alone, when you've got folks
that can take care of you. What will people think? It places us in an
awfully awkward position."

"They will simply think that I have chosen to remain in my own house,
Ellen. I don't see anything strange or indecent about that."

Julia Cloud had turned about, and was facing her sister calmly now.
Her quiet voice seemed to irritate Ellen.

"What nonsense!" she said sharply. "How exceedingly childish, letting
yourself be ruled by whims, when common sense must show you that you
are wrong. I wonder if you aren't ever going to be a _woman_."

Ellen said this word "woman" as if her sister had already passed into
the antique class and ought to realize it. It was one of the things
that hurt Julia Cloud to realize that she was growing old apparently
without the dignity that belonged to her years, for they all talked to
her yet as if she were a little child and needed to be managed. She
opened her lips to speak, but thought better of it, and shut them
again, turning back to the window and the gray, sodden landscape.

"Well, as I said before, you're a very foolish woman; and you'll soon
find it out. I shall have to go and leave you to the consequences of
your folly. I'm sure I don't know what Herbert will say when he finds
out how you've scorned his kindness. It isn't every brother-in-law
would offer--yes, _offer_, Julia, for I never even suggested it--to
take on extra expense in his family. But you won't see your
ingratitude if I stand here and talk till doomsday; so I'm going back
to my children. If you come to your senses, you can ride out with
Boyce Bains to-morrow afternoon. Good-by, and I'm sure I hope you
won't regret this all your life."

Julia walked to the door with her sister, and stood watching her
sadly while she climbed into her smart little Ford and skillfully
steered it out of the yard and down the road. The very set of her
shoulders as she sailed away toward home was disapproving.

With a sigh of relief Julia Cloud shut the door and went back to her
window and the dreary landscape. It was time for a sunset, but the sky
was leaden. There Would be nothing but grayness to look at, grayness
in front of her, grayness behind in the dim, silent room. It was like
her life, her long, gray life, behind and ahead. All her life she had
had to serve, and see others happy. First as a child, the oldest
child. There had been the other children, three brothers and Ellen.
She had brought them all up, as it were, for the mother had always
been delicate and ailing. She had washed their faces, kissed their
bruises, and taken them to school. She had watched their love-affairs
and sent them out into the world one by one. Two of the brothers had
come home to die, and she had nursed them through long months. The
third brother married a wealthy girl in California, and never came
home again except on flying visits. He was dead now, too, killed in
action in France during the first year of the Great War. Then her
father had been thrown from his horse and killed; and she had borne
the burden for her mother, settled up the estate, and made both ends
meet somehow, taking upon herself the burden of the mother, now a
chronic invalid. From time to time her young nieces and nephews had
been thrust upon her to care for in some home stress, and always she
had done her duty by them all through long days of mischief and long
nights of illness. She had done it cheerfully and patiently, and had
never complained even to herself. Always there had been so much to be
done that there had been no time to think how the years were going by,
her youth passing from her forever without even a glimpse of the
rose-color that she supposed was meant to come into every life for at
least a little while.

She hadn't realized it fully, she had been so busy. But now, with the
last service over, an empty house about her, an empty heart within
her, she was looking with startled eyes into the future and facing
facts.

It was Ellen's attempt to saddle her with a new responsibility and fit
her out to drudge on to the end of her days that had suddenly brought
the whole thing out in its true light. She was tired. Too tired to
begin all over again and raise those children for Ellen. They were
nice, healthy children and well behaved; but they were Ellen's
children, and always would be. If she went out to live with the
Robinsons, she would be Ellen's handmaid, at her beck and call, always
feeling that she must do whatever she was asked, whether she was able
or not, because she was a dependent. Never anything for love. Oh,
Ellen loved her in a way, of course, and she loved Ellen; but they had
never understood each other, and Ellen's children had been brought up
to laugh and joke at her expense as if she were somehow mentally
lacking.

"O Aunt _Ju_lia!" they would say in a tone of pity and scorn, as if
she were too ignorant to understand even their sneers.

Perhaps it was pride, but Julia Cloud felt she would rather die
than face a future like that. It was respectable, of course, and
entirely reliable. She would be fed and clothed, and nursed when
she was ill. She would be buried respectably when she died, and the
neighbors would say the Robinsons had been kind and done the right
thing by her; but Julia Cloud shuddered as she looked down the long,
dull vista of that future which was offered her, and drew back for
the first time in her life. Not that she had anything better in view,
only that she shrank from taking the step that would bring inevitable
and irrevocable grayness to the end of her days. She was not above
cooking and nursing and toiling forever if there were independence to
be had. She would have given her life if love beckoned her. She would
have gone to France as a nurse in a moment if she had not been needed
at her mother's bedside. Little children drew her powerfully, but
to be a drudge for children who did not love her, in a home where
love was the only condition that would make dependence possible,
looked intolerable.

Julia Cloud had loved everybody that would let her, and had received
very little love in return. Back in the years when she was twelve and
went to school a boy of fifteen or sixteen had been her comrade and
companion. They had played together whenever Julia had time to play,
and had roamed the woods and waded the creeks in company. Then his
people moved away, and he had kissed her good-by and told her that
some day he was coming back to get her. It was a childish affection,
but it was the only kiss of that kind she had to remember.

The boy had written to her for a whole year, when one day there came a
letter from his grandmother telling how he was drowned in saving the
life of a little child; and Julia Cloud had put the memory of that
kiss away as the only bright thing in her life that belonged wholly to
herself, and plodded patiently on. The tears that she shed in secret
were never allowed to trouble her family, and gradually the pain had
grown into a great calm. No one ever came her way to touch her heart
again. Only little children brought the wistful look to her eyes, and
a wonder whether people had it made up to them in heaven when they had
failed of the natural things of this life.

Julia Cloud was not one to pity herself. She was sane, healthy, and
not naturally morbid; but to-night, for some reason, the gray sky, and
the gray, sodden earth, and the gray road of the future had got her in
their clutches, and she could not get away from them. With straining
eyes she searched the little bit of west between the orchard tree that
always showed a sunset if there was one; but no streak of orange,
rose, or gold broke the sullen clouds.

Well, what was she going to do, anyway? Ellen's question seemed to
ring on stridently in her ears; she tried to face it looking down the
gray road into the gray sky.

She had the house, but there were taxes to pay, and there would be
repairs every little while to eat up the infinitesimal income which
was left her, when all the expenses of her mother's long illness and
death were paid. They had been spending their principal. It could not
have been helped. In all, she knew, she had something like two hundred
dollars a year remaining. Not enough to board her if she tried to
board anywhere, to say nothing of clothing. All this had been fully
and exhaustively commented upon by Ellen Robinson during the
afternoon.

The house might be rented, of course--though it was too antiquated and
shabby-looking to bring much--if Julia was not "so ridiculously
sentimental about it." Julia had really very little sentiment
connected with the house, but Ellen had chosen to think she had; so it
amounted to the same thing as far as the argument went. Julia knew in
her own heart that the only thing that held her to the dreary old
house with its sad memories and its haunting emptiness was the fact
that it was hers and that here she could be independent and do as she
pleased. If she pleased to starve, no one else need know it. The big
ache that was in her heart was the fact that there was nobody really
to care if she did starve. Even Ellen's solicitations were largely
from duty and a fear of what the neighbors would say if she did not
look after her sister.

Julia was lonely and idle for the first time in her busy, dull life,
and her heart had just discovered its love-hunger, and was crying out
in desolation. She wanted something to love and be loved by. She
missed even the peevish, childish invalid whose last five years had
been little else than a living death, with a mind so vague and hazy as
seldom to know the faithful daughter who cared for her night and day.
She missed the heart and soul out of life, the bit of color that would
glorify all living and make it beautiful.

Well, to come back to sordid things, what was there that she could do
to eke out her pitiful little living? For live she must, since she was
here in this bleak world and it seemed to be expected of her. Keep
boarders? Yes, if there were any to keep; but in this town there were
few who boarded. There was nothing to draw strangers, and the old
inhabitants mostly owned their own houses.

She could sew, but there were already more sewing women in the
community than could be supported by the work there was to be done,
for most of the women in Sterling did their own sewing. There were two
things which she knew she could do well, which everybody knew she
could do, and for which she knew Ellen was anxious to have her
services. She was the best nurse in town and a fine cook. But again
the women of Sterling, most of them, did their own cooking, and there
was comparatively little nursing where a trained nurse would not be
hired. In short, the few things she could do were not in demand in
this neighborhood.

Nevertheless, she knew in her heart that she intended trying to live
by her own meagre efforts, going out for a few days nursing, or to
care for some children while their mothers went out to dinner or to
the city, to the theatre or shopping. There would be but little of
that, but perhaps by and by she could manage to make it the fashion.

As she looked into the future, she saw herself trudging gloomily down
the sunset way into a leaden sky, caring for the Brown twins all day
while their mother was shopping; while they slept, mending stockings
out of the big round basket that Mrs. Brown always kept by her
sewing-chair; coming home at night to a cheerless house and a solitary
meal for which she had no appetite; getting up in the night to go to
Grandma Fergus taken down suddenly with one of her attacks; helping
Mrs. Smith out with her sewing and spring cleaning. Menial, monotonous
tasks many of them. Not that she minded that, if they only got
somewhere and gave her something from life besides the mere fighting
for existence.

She looked clear down to the end of her loveless life, and saw the
neighbors coming virtuously to perform the last rites, and wondered
why it all had to be. She was unaware of all her years of sacrifice,
glorious patience, loving toil. Her life seemed to have been so
without point, so useless heretofore; and all that could yet be, how
useless and dreary it looked! Her spirit was at its lowest ebb. Her
soul was weary unto death. She looked vainly for a break in that solid
wall of cloud at the end of the road, and looked so hard that the
tears came and fell plashing on the window-seat and on her thin, tired
hands. It was because of the tears that she did not see the boy on a
bicycle coming down the road, until he vaulted off at the front gate,
left his wheel by the curb, and came whistling up the path, pulling a
little book and pencil out of his pocket in a business-like way.

With a start she brushed the tears away, pushed back the gray hair
from her forehead, and made ready to go to the door. It was Johnny
Knox, the little boy from the telegraph office. He had made a mistake,
of course. There would be no telegram for her. It would likely be for
the Cramers next door. Johnny Knox had not been long in the village,
and did not know.

But Johnny did know.

"Telegram for Miss Julia Cloud!" he announced smartly, flourishing the
yellow envelope at her and putting the pencil in her hand. "Sign
'ere!" indicating a line in the book.

Julia Cloud looked hard at the envelope. Yes, there was her name,
though it was against all reason. She could not think of a disaster in
life of which it might possibly be the forerunner. Telegrams of course
meant death or trouble. They had never brought anything else to her.

She signed her name with a vague wonder that there was nothing to pay.
There had been so many things to pay during the last two painful
weeks, and her little funds were almost gone.

She stood with the telegram in her hand, watching the boy go whistling
back to his wheel and riding off with a careless whirl out into the
evening. His whistle lingered far behind, and her ears strained to
hear it. Now if a whistle like that were coming home to her! Some one
who would be glad to see her and want something she could do for him!
Why, even little snub-nosed, impudent Johnny Knox would be a comfort
if he were all her own. Her arms suddenly felt empty and her hands
idle because there was nothing left for her to do. Involuntarily she
stretched them out to the gray dusk with a wistful motion. Then she
turned, and went back to the window to read her telegram.

  "DEAR CLOUDY JEWEL: Leslie and I are on our way East for a visit,
  and will stop over Wednesday night to see you. Please make us some
  caraway cookies if not too much trouble.

                                          "Your loving nephew,
                                                    "ALLISON CLOUD."

A glad smile crept into Julia Cloud's lonely eyes. Leslie and Allison
were her California brother's children, who had spent three happy
months with her when they were five and seven while their father and
mother went abroad. "Cloudy Jewel" was the pet name they had made up
for her. That was twelve long years ago, and they had not forgotten!
They were coming to see her, and wanted some caraway cookies! A glad
light leaped into her face, and she lifted her eyes to the gray
distance. Lo! the leaden clouds had broken and a streak of pale
golden-rose was glowing through the bars of gray.




CHAPTER II


Leslie and Allison!

Julia Cloud stood gazing out into the west, while the whole sky
lightened and sank away into dusk with a burning ruby on its breast.
The gloom of her spirit glowed into brightness, and joy flooded her
soul.

Leslie and Allison! What round little warm bodies they had, and what
delicate, refined faces! They had not seemed like Ellen's blowsy,
obstreperous youngsters, practical and grasping to the last extreme
after the model of their father. They had starry eyes and hair like
tangled sunbeams. Their laughter rippled like brooks in summer, and
their hands were like bands that bound the heart. Cookies and stories
and long walks and picnics! Those had made up the beautiful days that
they spent with her, roaming the woods and meadows, picking dandelions
and violets, and playing fairy stories. It had been like a brief
return of her old childish days with her boy comrade. She remembered
the heartache and the empty days after they had gone back to their
Western home, and the little printed childish letters that came for a
few months till she was forgotten.

But not really forgotten, after all. For some link of tenderness must
still remain that they should think of her now after all these years
of separation, and want to visit her. They remembered the cookies! She
smiled reminiscently. What a batch of delectable cookies she would
make in the morning! Why, to-morrow would be Wednesday! They would be
here to-morrow night! And there was a great deal to be done!

She turned from the belated sunset unregretting, and hastened to begin
her preparations. There were the two front rooms up-stairs to be
prepared. She would open the windows at once, and let the air sweep
through all night. They had been shut up a long time, for she had
brought the invalid down-stairs to the little sitting-room the last
few months to save steps and be always within hearing. The second
story had been practically unused except when Ellen or the children
were over for a day or two.

She hurried up-stairs, and lit the gas in the two rooms, throwing wide
the windows, hunting out fresh sheets and counterpanes. She could dust
and run the carpet-sweeper over the rooms right away, and have them in
order; and that would save time for to-morrow. Oh, it was good to have
something cheerful to do once more. Just supposing she had yielded--as
once that afternoon she almost had--to Ellen's persistent urgings, and
had gone home with her to-night! Why, the telegram might not have
reached her till after the children had come, and found the house
empty, and gone again!

Julia bustled around happily, putting the rooms into charming order,
hunting up a little picture of the child Samuel kneeling in the
temple, that Allison used to like, going to the bottom of an old hair
trunk for the rag doll she had made for Leslie to cuddle when she
went to sleep at night.

Mrs. Ambrose Perkins across the way looked uneasily out of her bedroom
window at half-past nine, and said to her husband:

"Seems like Julia Cloud is staying up awful late to-night. She's got a
light in both front rooms, too. There can't be company. I s'pose Ellen
and some of her children have stayed down after all. Poor Ellen! She
told me she simply couldn't spare the time away from home any longer,
but Julia was set on staying there. I never thought Julia was selfish;
but I s'pose she doesn't realize how hard it is for Ellen, living that
way between two houses. Julia'll go to live with Ellen now, of course.
It's real good of Herbert Robinson to ask her. Julia ought to
appreciate having relatives like that."

"Relatives nothing!" said Mr. Ambrose, pulling off his coat and
hanging it over a chair. "She'll be a fool if she goes! She's slaved
all her life, and she deserves a little rest now. If she goes out to
Herbert Robinson's, she won't be allowed to call her eyelashes her
own; you mark my words!"

"Well, what else can she do?" said his wife. "She hasn't any husband
or children, and I think she'll be mighty well off to get a good home.
Men are awful hard on each other, Ambrose. I always knew that."

Julia Cloud meanwhile, with a last look at the neat rooms, put out her
lights, and went to bed, but not to sleep. She was so excited that the
darkness seemed luminous about her. She was trying to think how those
two children would look grown up. Allison was nineteen and Leslie
nearly seventeen now. Their mother had been dead five years, and they
had been in boarding-schools. Their guardian was an old gentleman, a
friend of their mother's. That was about all she knew concerning them.
Would they seem like strangers, she wondered, or would there be enough
resemblance to recall the dear girl and boy of the years that were
gone? How she clung to those cookies with hope! There was some
remembrance left, or they would not have put cookies in a telegram.
How impetuous and just like Allison, the boy, that telegram had
sounded!

It was scarcely daylight when Julia Cloud arose and went down to the
kitchen to bake the cookies; and the preparations she made for baking
pies and doughnuts and other toothsome dainties would lead one to
suppose that she was expecting to feed a regiment for a week at
least.

She filled the day with hard work, as she had been wont to do, and
never once thought of gray sunsets or dreary futures. Not even the
thought of her sister Ellen came to trouble her as she put the house
in order, filled her pantry with good things to eat, and set the table
for three with all the best things the house afforded.

At evening she stood once more beside the front window, looking out
sunsetward. There was nothing gray about either sky or road or
landscape now. There had been brilliant sunshine all day long, and the
sky lay mellow and yellow behind the orchard, with a clear,
transparent greenish-blue above and a hint of rosy light in the long
rays that reached their fingers along the ground between the
apple-trees. In a few minutes the evening train would be in, and there
would be rose in the sunset. She knew the signs, and the sky would be
glorious to-night. They would see it as they came from the train. In
fifteen minutes it would be time for her to put on her hat and go down
to meet them! How her heart throbbed with anticipation!

Forebodings came to shadow her brightness. Suppose they should not
come! Suppose they were delayed, or had changed their minds and should
send another telegram saying so! She drew a deep breath, and tried to
brace herself for the shock of the thought. She looked fearfully down
the road for a possible Johnny Knox speeding along with another
telegram, and was relieved to see only Ambrose Perkins ambling home
for supper followed by his tall, smiling Airedale.

There was a shadow, too, that stood behind her, though she ignored it
utterly; it was the thought of the afterwards, when the two bright
young things had been and gone, and she would have to face the gray in
her life again without the rose. But that would be afterwards, and
this was now! Ten minutes more, and she would go to the station!

At that minute a great blue automobile shot up to the front gate, and
stopped. A big lump flew into Julia Cloud's throat, and her hand went
to her heart. Had it then come, that telegram, saying they had changed
their minds? She stood trembling by the window, unable to move.

But out from the front seat and the back as if ejected from a catapult
shot two figures, and flew together up the front walk, a tall boy and
a little girl, just as the sun dropped low and swung a deep red light
into the sky, flooding the front yard with glory, and staining the
heavens far up into the blue.

They had come! They had come before it was yet train-time!

Julia Cloud got herself to her front door in a tremor of delight, and
instantly four strong young arms encircled her, and nearly smothered
the life out of her.

"O you dear Cloudy Jewel! You look just the same. I knew you would.
Only your hair is white and pretty," Leslie gurgled.

"Sure, she is just the same! What did I tell you?" cried Allison,
lifting them both and carrying them inside.

"Now, who on earth can that be?" said Mrs. Ambrose Perkins, flying to
her parlor window at the first sound of the automobile. "It isn't any
of them folks from the city that were out to the funeral, for there
wasn't a car like that there, I'm certain! I mean to run over and
borrow a spoonful of soda pretty soon, just to find out. It couldn't
be any of Tom's folks from out West, for they couldn't come all that
way in a car. It must be some of her father's relations from over in
Maryland, though I never heard they were that well off. A chauffeur in
livery! The idea of all that style coming to see Julia Cloud!"

"No, we didn't come on the train," explained Leslie eagerly. "We came
in Allison's new car. Mr. Luddington--that's our guardian--was coming
East, and he said we might come with him. We've been dying to come for
ages. And he'd been promising Allison he might get this new car; so we
stopped in the city and bought it, and Allison drove it down. Of
course Mr. Luddington made his man come along. He wouldn't let us come
alone. He's gone up to Boston for three days; and, when he comes back,
he's coming down here to see you."

Leslie was talking as fast as an express train, and Julia Cloud stood
and admired her in wonder.

She was slim and delicately pretty as ever, with the same mop of
goldy-brown curls, done up in a knot now and making her look
quaintly like the little five-year-old on a hot day with her curls
twisted on the top of her head for comfort. She wore a simple little
straight frock of some dark silk stuff, with beaded pockets and
marvellous pleats and belts and straps in unexpected places, such
as one sees in fashion-books, but not on young girls in the town of
Sterling; and her hat was a queer little cap with a knob of bright
beads, wonderfully becoming, but quite different from anything that
Julia Cloud had ever seen before. Her movements were darting and
quick like a humming-bird's; and she wore long soft suède gloves and
tiny high suède boots. The older woman watched her, fascinated.

"And you're sure we're not being an inconvenience, dropping down upon
you in this unexpected way?" asked Allison in a quite grown-up man's
voice, and looking so tall and handsome and responsible that Julia
Cloud wanted to take him in her arms and hug him to make sure he was
the same little boy she used to tuck into bed at night.

"So soon after Grandma's death, too," put in Allison. "We didn't know,
of course, till we got about a mile from Sterling and stopped to ask
the way to the house, and a man told us about the funeral being
Monday. We weren't sure then but it would be an intrusion. You see we
left California about two weeks ago, and none of our mail has reached
us yet; so we hadn't heard. You're sure we won't bother you a bit, you
dear?"

Their aunt assured them rapturously that their coming was the most
blessed thing that could have been just at this time.

"Oh! then I'm relieved," said Leslie, throwing off her hat and
dropping into the nearest chair. "Allison, tell that man to put the
car somewhere in a garage and get back to the city. They said there
was a train back about this time. The man who directed us told us so.
No, dear, he doesn't need any dinner. He's not used to it till seven,
and he'll be in the city by that time. He's in a hurry to get back.
Cookies? Well, yes, you might give him a cooky or two if you're sure
there'll be enough left for us. I've just dreamed of those cookies all
these years. I'm so anxious to see if they'll taste as they did when I
was a child. May I come with you and see if I remember where the
cooky-jar is? Oh, joy, Allison! Just look! A whole crock and a platter
full! Isn't this peachy? Allison, do hustle up and get that man off so
we can begin our visit!"

It was like having a couple of dolls suddenly come alive and begin to
talk.

They talked so fast and they took everything so delightfully for
granted that Julia Cloud was in a tremble of joy. It seemed the most
beautiful thing in the world that these two strong, handsome, vivid
young things should have dropped into her life and taken her into
their hearts in this way as if she really belonged, as if they loved
her! She was too excited to talk. She hardly knew what to do first.
But they did not wait for her initiative. Allison was off with his car
and his man, munching cookies as he went, and promising to return in
fifteen minutes hungry as a bear.

"Now let's go up-stairs, you dear Cloudy Jewel, and I'll smooth my
hair for dinner. I'm crazy to see if I remember things. There was a
little red chair that I used to sit in----"

"It's here, in your room, dear, and the old rag doll, Betsey; do you
remember her?"

"Well, I should say I did! Is Betsey alive yet? Dear old Betsey! How
ducky of you to have kept her for me all these years! Oh, isn't it
perfectly peachy that we could come? That we're really here at last,
and you want us? You do, don't you, Cloudy, dear? You're sure you do?"
Lesley's tone was anxious, and her bright brown eyes studied the older
woman's face eagerly; but what she saw there was fully satisfactory,
for she smiled, and rattled joyfully on in the old babbling-brook
voice that reminded one so of years ago.

"I'm not to tell you what we've really come for till Allison comes,
because I've promised; and anyway he's the man, and he wants to tell
you himself; but it's the dandiest reason, perfectly peachy! It's
really a plan. And say, Cloudy, dear, won't you promise me right here
and now that you will say 'Yes' to what he asks you if you possibly,
_possibly_ can?"

Julia Cloud promised in a maze of delight.

She stood in hovering wonder, and watched the mass of curls come down
and go up again with the swift manipulation of the slim white fingers,
remembering how she used to comb those tangled curls with the plump
little body leaning sturdily against her knee. It seemed to be the
first time since she was a child that youth and beauty had come to
linger before her. All her experience had been of sickness and
suffering and death, not life and happiness.

There was stewed chicken and little biscuits with gravy for supper. It
was a dish the children used to love. It was all dished up and
everything ready when Allison came back. He reported that the car was
housed but a block away, and the man had gone to his train, tickled to
death with his cookies. Allison was so glad to be back that he had to
take his aunt in his arms again and give her a regular bear-hug till
she pleaded for mercy, but there was a happy light in her eyes and a
bright color in her cheeks when he released her that made her a very
good-looking aunt indeed to sit down at the table with two such
handsome children.

Just at that moment Ellen Robinson in her own home was pouring her
husband's second cup of coffee.

"Don't you think I'd better take the car and run down for Julia
before dark?" she said. "I think she'll be about ready to come back
with me by this time, and I need her early in the morning if I'm going
to begin cleaning house."

"Better wait one more night," said Herbert stolidly. "Let her get her
fill of staying alone nights. It'll do her good. We don't want her to
be high and mighty when she gets here. I'm boss here, and she's got to
understand that. She's so mighty independent, you know, it's important
she should find that out right at the start. I'm not going to have her
get bossy with these children, either. They aren't her children."

Four pairs of keen little Robinson eyes took in this saying with quick
intelligence, and four stolid sets of shoulders straightened up
importantly with four uplifted saucy chins. They would store these
remarks away for future reference when the aunt in question arrived on
the scene. They would come in well, they knew, for they had had
experience with her in times past.

"Aunt Jule ain't goin' to boss me," swaggered the youngest.

"Ner me, neither!"

"Ner me!"

"I guess she wouldn't _dast_ try it on _me_!" boasted the eldest.




CHAPTER III


"You haven't asked us what we came for," opened up Allison as soon as
everybody was served with chicken, mashed potato, succotash, stewed
tomatoes, biscuits, pickles, and apple-sauce.

"I thought you came for cookies," said Julia Cloud, with a mischievous
twinkle in her gray eyes.

"Hung one on me, didn't you?" said Allison, laughing. "But that wasn't
all. Guess again."

"Perhaps you came to see me," she suggested shyly.

"Right you are! But that's not all, either. That wouldn't last much
longer than the cookies. Guess again."

"Oh, I couldn't!" said Julia Cloud, growing suddenly stricken with the
thought of their going. "I give it up."

"Well, then I'll tell you. You see we've come East to college, both of
us. Of course I've had my freshman year, but the Kid's just entering.
We haven't decided which college it's to be yet, but it's to be co-ed,
we know that much, because we're tired of being separated. When one
hasn't but two in the family and has been apart for five years, one
appreciates a home, I tell you that. And so we've decided we want a
home. We're not just going to college to live there in the usual way;
we're going to take a house, live like real folks, and go to school
every day. We want a fireplace and a cooky-jar of our own; a place to
bring our friends and have good times. But most of all we want a
mother, and we've come all this way to coax you to come and live with
us, play house, you know, as you used to do down on the mossy rocks
with broken bits of china for dishes and acorns for cups and saucers.
Play house and you be mother. Will you do it, Cloudy Jewel? It means a
whole lot to us, and we'll try to play fair and make you have a good
time."

Julia Cloud put her hand on her heart, and lifted her bewildered eyes
to the boy's eager face.

"Me!" she said wonderingly. "You want _me_!"

"We sure do!" said Allison.

"Indeed we do, Cloudy, dear! That's just what we do want!" cried
Leslie, jumping up and running around to her aunt's chair to embrace
her excitedly. "And you promised, you know, that you would do what we
wanted if you possibly, _possibly_ could."

"You see, we put it up to our guardian about the house," went on
Allison, "and he said the difficulty would be to get the right kind of
a housekeeper that he could trust us with. Of course he's way off in
California, and he has to be fussy. He's built that way. But we told
him we didn't want any housekeeper at all, we wanted a mother. He said
you couldn't pick mothers off trees, but we told him we knew where
there was one if we could only get her. So he let us come and ask;
and, if you say you'll do it, he's coming down to see you and fix it
up about the money part. He said you'd have to have a regular salary
or he wouldn't consider it, because there were things he'd have to
insist upon that he had promised mother; and, if there wasn't a
business arrangement about it, he wouldn't know what to do. Besides,
he said it was worth a lot to run a couple of rough-necks like Les and
me, and he'd make the salary all right so you could afford to leave
whatever you were doing and just give your time to mothering us. Now
it's up to you, Cloudy Jewel, to help us out with our proposition or
spoil everything, because we simply won't have a housekeeper, and we
don't know another real mother in the whole world that hasn't a family
of her own."

They both left their delicious dinner, and got around her, coaxing and
wheedling exactly as if she had already declined, when the truth was
she was too dazed with joy to open her lips, even if they had given
her opportunity to speak.

It was some time before the excitement quieted down and they gave her
a chance to say she would go. Even then she spoke the words with fear
and trembling as one might step off a commonplace threshold into a
fairy palace, not sure but it might be stepping into space.

Outside the sky was still flooded with after-sunset glory, but there
was so much glory in the hearts of the three inside the dining-room
that they never noticed it at all. It might have been raining or
hailing, and they would not have known, they were so happy.

Both the guests donned long gingham aprons and wiped the dishes when
the meal was over, both talking with all their might, recalling the
days of their childhood when they had had towels pinned around them
and been allowed to dry the cups and pans; then suddenly jumping ahead
and planning what they would do in the dear new home of the future.
They were all three as excited about it as if they had been a bridal
couple planning for their honeymoon.

"We shall want five bedrooms," said Leslie decidedly. "I've thought
that all out, one for each of us and two guest-rooms, so we can have a
boy and a girl home for overnight with us as often as we want to. And
there simply must be a fireplace, or we won't take the house. If there
isn't the right kind of a house in town, we'll choose some other
college. There are plenty of colleges, but you can have only one home,
and it must be the right kind. Then of course we want a big kitchen
where we can make fudge as often as we choose in the evenings, and a
dining-room with a bay-window, with seats and flowers and a canary.
Cloudy Jewel, you don't mind cats, do you? I want two at least. I've
been crazy for a kitten all the time I was in school, and Al wants a
big collie. You won't mind, will you?"

Suddenly Julia Cloud discovered that latent in her heart all these
years there had also lain a desire for a cat and a dog; and she lifted
guilty eyes, and confessed it. She felt a pang of remembrance as she
recalled how her mother used so often to tell her she was nothing but
an "old child."

"Perhaps your guardian will not think me a proper person to chaperon
you," she suggested in sudden alarm.

"Well, he'd just better not!" declared Allison, bristling up. "I'd
like to know where he could find a better."

"I've never been in society," said Julia Cloud thoughtfully. "I don't
know social ways much, and I've never been considered to have any
dignity or good judgment."

"That's just why we like you," chorused the children. "You've never
grown up and got dull and stiff and poky like most grown folks."

"We were so afraid," began Leslie, putting a loving arm about her
aunt's waist, "that you would have changed since we were children. We
talked it all over on the way here. We had a kind of eyebrow code by
which we could let each other know what we thought about it without
your seeing us. We were to lift one eyebrow, the right one, if we were
favorably impressed, and draw down the left if we were disappointed.
But in case we were sure both eyebrows were to go up. And of course we
were sure you were just the same dear the minute we laid eyes on you,
and all four of our eyebrows went high as they'd go the first instant.
Didn't you notice Allison? His eyebrows were almost up to his hair,
and they pulled his eyes so wide open they were perfectly round like
saucers. As for me I think mine went way up under my hair. I'm not
sure if they've got back to their natural place even yet!" And Leslie
laid a rosy finger over her brow, and felt anxiously along the
delicate velvety line.

"I shall go out and telegraph Mr. Luddington that you are willing,"
announced Allison as he hung up the dish-towel. "He'll get it in the
morning when he reaches Boston, and then he needn't fuss and fume any
longer about what he's going to do with us. Besides, I like to have
the bargain clinched somehow, and a telegram will do it." Allison
slammed out of the house noisily to the extreme confusion of Mrs.
Ambrose Perkins, who hadn't been able to eat her supper properly for
watching the house to see what would happen next. Who could that young
man be?

She simply couldn't get a clew; for, when she went over for the soda,
though she knocked several times, and heard voices up-stairs, and
altogether unseemly laughter for a house where there had just been a
funeral, not a soul came to the door! Could it be that Julia Cloud
heard her and stayed up-stairs on purpose? She felt that as the
nearest neighbor and a great friend, of Ellen's it would be rather
expected of her to find out what was going on. She resolutely
refrained from lighting the parlor lamp, and took up her station at
the dark window to watch; but, although she sat there until after ten
o'clock, she was utterly unable to find out anything except that the
household across the way stayed up very late and there were lights in
both front rooms again. She felt that if nothing developed by morning
she would just have to get Ambrose to hitch, up and drive out to
Ellen's. Ellen ought to know.

But Julia Cloud was serenely unconscious of this espionage. She had
entered an Eden of bliss, and was too happy to care about anything
else.

Seated on the big old couch in the parlor with a child on either side
of her, a hand in each of hers, often a head on each shoulder
nestling down, they talked. Planned and talked. Now the brother would
break in with some tale of his school-days; now the sister would add a
bit of reminiscence, just as if they had been storing it all up to
tell her. The joyous happiness of them all seemed like heaven dropped
down to earth. It was as she had sometimes dreamed mothers might talk
with their own children. And God had granted this unspeakable gift to
her! Was it real? Would it last? Or was she only dreaming? Once it
vaguely passed through her mind that she would not be sure of the
reality of the whole thing until she had seen Ellen. If she could talk
with Ellen about it, tell her what she was going to do, show her the
children, and then come back and find it all the same, it would last.
But somehow she shrank unspeakably from seeing Ellen. She could not
get away from the feeling that Ellen would dispel it all; that
someway, somehow, she would succeed in breaking up all the bright
plans and scattering them like soap-bubbles in the wind.

Nevertheless, it was a very beautiful illusion, if illusion it was;
and one to be prolonged as late as possible.

She was horrified when at last she heard the rebuking strokes of the
town clock, ten! eleven! _twelve!_

She started to her feet ashamed.

And even then they would not let her go to bed at once. She must turn
out the lights, and sit in the hall between their rooms as she did
long ago, and tell the story of "The Little Rid Hin" just as she had
told it night after night when they were children.

It was characteristic of the unfailing youth of the woman that she
entered into the play with zest. Attired in a long kimono, with her
beautiful white hair in two long silver braids down over her
shoulders, she sat in the dark and told the story with the same vivid
language; and then she stole on tiptoe first to the sister's bedside,
to tuck her in and kiss her softly, and then to the brother's; and at
each bedside a young, strong arm reached out and drew her face down,
whispering "Good-night" with a kiss and "I love you, Cloudy Jewel," in
tender, thrilling tones.

The two big children were asleep at last, and Julia Cloud stole to her
own bed to lie in a tumult of wonder and joy, and finally sink into a
light slumber, wherein she dreamed that she had fallen heir to a
rose-garden, and all the roses were alive and could talk; until Ellen
came driving up in her Ford and ran right over them, crushing them
down and cutting their heads off with a long, sharp whip she carried
that somehow turned out to be made of words strung together with
biting sarcasm.

She awoke in the broad morning sunlight to find both children done up
in bath-robes and slippers, sitting one each side of her on the bed,
laughing at her and tickling her chin with a feather from the seam of
the pillow.

"Now, Cloudy Jewel, you've just got to begin to make plans!"
announced Leslie, curling up in a ball at her feet and looking very
business-like with her fluffy curls around her face like a golden
fleece. "There isn't much time, and Guardy Lud will be down upon us
by to-morrow or the next day at least."

"Guardy Lud!" exclaimed Julia Cloud bewildered. "Who is that?"

"That's our pet name for Mr. Luddington," explained Leslie, wrinkling
up her nose in a grin of merriment. "Isn't it cute? Wait till you see
him, and you'll see how it fits. He's round and bald with a shiny red
nose, and spectacles; and he doesn't mind our kidding at all. He'd
have made a lovely father if he wasn't married, but he has a horrid
wife. We don't like her at all. She's like a frilly piece of French
china with too much decoration; and she's always sick and nervous; and
she jumps, and says 'Oh, mercy!' every time we do the least little
thing. She doesn't like us any better than we like her. Her name is
Alida, and Allison says we're always trying to 'elude' her. The only
good thing she ever did was to advise Guardy Lud to let us come East
to college. She wanted to get us as far away from her as possible. And
it certainly was mutual."

"There, now, Leslie, you're chattering again," broke in Allison,
looking very tall and efficient in his blue bath-robe. "You said you
would talk business, and not bleat."

"Well, so I am," pouted Leslie. "I guess Cloudy has got to understand
about our family."

"Well, now let's get down to business," said her brother. "Cloudy,
what have you got to do before you leave? You know it isn't very long
before the colleges open, and we've got to start out and hunt a home
right away. Do you have to pack up here or anything?"

"Oh, I don't know!" gasped Julia Cloud, looking around half
frightened. "I suppose I ought to ask Ellen. She will be very much
opposed to anything I do, but I suppose she ought to be told first."

Allison frowned.

"Gee whiz! I don't see why Aunt Ellen has to butt into our affairs.
She's got her own home and family, and she never did like us very
much. I remember hearing her tell Grandma that we were a regular
nuisance, and she would be glad when we were gone back to California."

"That was because you hid behind the sofa when Uncle Herbert was
courting her, and kidded them," giggled Leslie.

A stray little twinkle of a dimple peeped out by the corner of Julia
Cloud's mouth. It hadn't been out for a number of years, and she knew
she ought not to laugh at such pranks now; but it was so funny to
think of Herbert Robinson being kidded in the midst of his courting!

The dimple started the lights dancing in Leslie's eyes.

"There! now you dear old Jewel, you know you don't want to talk to
Aunt Ellen about us. She'll just mess things all up. Let's just _do_
things, and get 'em all fixed up, and then tell her when it's too late
for her to make a fuss," gurgled Leslie down close to Julia's ear,
finishing up with a delicious bear-hug.

"I suppose she'll be mortally offended," murmured Julia Cloud in
troubled hesitancy.

"Well, suppose she is; she'll get over it, won't she?" growled
Allison. "And anyhow you're old enough to manage your own affairs,
Cloudy Jewel. I guess you're older than she is, aren't you? I guess
you've got a right to do as you please, haven't you? And you _do_ want
to go with us, don't you?" His voice was anxious.

"I certainly do, dear boy," said Julia Cloud eagerly; "but you know
your guardian may not approve at all when he sees what a foolish
'young' aunt I am, allowing you to sit up late and talk fairy stories
all the time."

They smothered her in kisses, compliments, and assurances; and it was
some time before the conversation swung around again to the important
subject of the morning.

"You don't have to do anything to the house but just shut it up, do
you?" asked Allison, looking anxiously about in a helpless, mannish
way. "Because, if you do, we ought to be getting to work."

"There's a man over at Harmony Village that wanted to rent a house
here," said Julia Cloud thoughtfully. "I might write a letter to him.
I don't know whether he's found anything or not. He's the new
superintendent of the high school. But it's time we got dressed and
had breakfast."

"Write to him nothing!" said Allison eagerly. "I'll get the car, and
we'll drive over to Harmony in no time, and get the thing fixed up.
Hustle there, Leslie, and get yourself togged up. We don't need to
wait for breakfast; we can eat cookies. Hurry everybody!" And he
slammed over to his own room and began to stir about noisily.

Julia Cloud arose and made a hasty toilet, with a bright spot of
excitement on each cheek; but she had no time to think what Ellen
would say, for she meant that these children should have a real
old-time breakfast before they began the day; and now that she was
up her little round black clock on the bureau told her that it was
high time the day had begun. She looked fearfully out of the window,
half expecting to see Ellen's Ford bobbing down the hill already,
and then hurried down to the kitchen. Allison soon came down,
calling out to her to be ready when he came back with the car; but
the delicious odors that had already begun to float out from the old
kitchen made him lenient toward the idea of breakfast; and, when he
came back with the full cut-out roaring the announcement of his
arrival to the Perkinses, he was quite ready to wait a few minutes and
eat some of Julia Cloud's flapjacks and sausages with maple-syrup and
apple-sauce.

Julia Cloud herself ate little. She was in a tremor of delightful
uncertainty and dread. Ought she to go ahead this way and manage her
own affairs, leaving her own sister out of the question? But then, if
she consulted with Ellen that meant consulting with Herbert; for
Herbert ran his wife most thoroughly, and Herbert could make things
very unpleasant when he took the trouble.

So, when the children, unable at last to eat any more, pleaded with
her to leave the dishes and go to see the man about the house at
once, she gave one swift, apprehensive glance about, and assented. If
Ellen should come to the house while they were away, and should look
in at the window and see the breakfast dishes standing! It would be
appalling! But, as the children said, why worry? Somehow she felt like
a little schoolgirl playing hookey as she carefully drew down the
dining-room and kitchen window-shades that looked on the back porch,
and locked the front door behind her. Well, perhaps she had earned the
right to take this bit of a holiday, and wash her dishes when she
liked. Anyhow, hadn't God sent these blessed children to her in answer
to her earnest prayer that He would show her what to do and save her
if possible from having to spend the remainder of her days under
Herbert Robinson's roof? Well, then she would just accept it that way
and be grateful, at least until He showed her otherwise. So she drew a
long breath of delight, and climbed into the luxurious back seat of
the great blue car, utterly oblivious of the prying eyes behind the
parlor shade across the way.




CHAPTER IV


Down the little village street, past the station, and across the
railroad toward Harmony swept the great blue car, with the villagers
turning to stare at Miss Cloud taking a ride so early in the morning
in so gaudy a car, so soon after the funeral, and even without a
veil!

A few minutes later Ellen in her Ford rattled up to the door and got
out with the air of one who had come to do things. She walked
confidently up to the front door and tried it, rattled it, knocked,
and then went angrily around to the back, trying all the doors and
windows. Mrs. Perkins from her parlor window watched a minute; and,
when she saw Ellen come around to the front again and look up at the
second story, she threw a shawl around her shoulders and ran across
the street to impart faithfully her story.

"For the land's sake!" said Ellen indignantly. "What can Julia be
about? Mother always said she never would grow up, and I believe it. I
was afraid when I went away she had some scheme in her mind. She's
always getting up fool ideas. I remember that time when Mrs. Marsh
died she wanted to adopt the twins and bring them up. The idea! When
there was a county poorhouse and no reason why they shouldn't go to
it! But she'll have to come down off her independence and be sensible.
Herbert says we can't have any of her foolishness. It's us that would
have to suffer if she got into trouble and lost what little she's
got, and I suppose I've got to have it out with her once and for all
and get this thing settled. It's getting on all our nerves, and I've
got the fall house-cleaning and jelly to do, and I can't fool around
any longer. Well, I suppose I better try to get into this house. Have
you got any keys that might fit?"

Mrs. Perkins hurried over for all her keys, including trunk-keys; and
soon they had tried every door and every key with no effect, and had
to call in the youngest Perkins and boost him up to the upper-hall
window.

Under the guise of looking after Julia Cloud the two good ladies
invaded her home and proceeded to investigate. The parlor and the hall
gave forth no secrets except for a couple of handsome raincoats slung
carelessly upon chairs. But the dining-room, oh, the dining-room! If
Julia Cloud could have seen their faces as they swung open that
carefully closed door and stood upon the threshold aghast, looking at
the wreck of the breakfast, she would have cringed and shivered even
on her way to Harmony.

But Julia Cloud could not see; she was safely over the bridge and out
on the highway where she would not be likely to be followed, and the
wine of the morning was rising in her veins. Such wonderful air, such
clear blue sky and flying clouds! She felt like a flying cloud herself
as she sped along in the great blue car with the chatter of the
children in her ears and the silvery laughter of Leslie by her side.
How could she help smiling and letting her cheeks grow pink and her
eyes grow bright? Too soon after a funeral? The thought did come to
her. But she knew by the thrill of her heart that her mother in heaven
was gladder now than she had been for years of her bedridden life on
earth, and, if she could look down to see, would no doubt be happy
that some joy was coming to her hard-worked daughter at last. Julia
would just enjoy this day and this delight to the full while it
lasted. If it was not meant to last longer than the day, at least she
would have this wonderful ride to remember always, this bird-like
motion as if she were floating through a panorama! Not a thought of
Ellen poking through her half-cleared house, finding unswept hearth
and unmade beds and unwashed dishes, came to trouble her joy. It was
as if the childhood of her life, long held in abeyance, had come back
to her, and would not be denied.

Ellen and Mrs. Perkins in their inspection of the house came at last
to the upper story and the guests' room strewn with brushes bearing
silver monograms and elaborate appointments of travel that kept them
guessing their use and exclaiming in wonder and horror that any one
would spend so much on little details. Leslie's charming silk negligée
and her frilly little nightgown with its lace and floating ribbons
came in for a large amount of contempt, and it was some time before
the good ladies arrived at Julia Cloud's room and found the open
telegram on her bureau that gave the key to the mystery of the two
visitors.

"H'm!" said Ellen. "So that's it! Well, I thought she had some bee in
her bonnet. She must have written to them or they never would have
come. Now, I suppose she means to keep them all winter, perhaps, and
feed them, and baby them up; and, when she has spent all she has,
she'll come back on us. Well, she'll find out she's much mistaken;
and, when she gets back, I'll just tell her plainly that she can
bundle up her company and send them home and come out to us now,
to-day or to-morrow, or the offer is withdrawn, and she needn't think
she can fall back on Herbert, either, when she's spent everything.
Herbert is not a man to be put upon."

"I should say not!" said Mrs. Perkins sympathetically, looking over
her friend's shoulder at the telegram. "So those were your brother's
two children! He must 'uv been pretty well off for them to have a car
like that. I must say I think it's a harm to children to be brought up
wealthy."

"Their mother was rich," said Ellen sourly. It had always been a thorn
in her flesh. "She was a snob, too, and her children'll likely be the
limit by this time. But Julia is such a fool!"

They sat in Julia Cloud's parlor, one at each window, discussing the
probabilities until half-past eleven. Then Ellen said she must go. She
positively couldn't wait another minute; but she would return, in the
afternoon, and Mrs. Perkins must tell her sister that she was coming
and wanted her to remain at home. That it was very important.

"I'll settle her!" she said with her thin lips set in a hard line.
Then she stooped to crank her Ford.

Mrs. Perkins watched her away, then hurried to her own neglected work;
and ten minutes later the big blue car sailed noiselessly up to the
place. It was not until the Perkins children discovered it and told
their mother that she knew it had arrived. This was very annoying. She
had wanted to catch them quite casually on their arrival, and now she
would have to make a special errand over, and as likely as not have
them not come to the door again. Besides, she was getting dinner, and
things were likely to burn. Nevertheless, she dared not wait with that
big blue car standing so capably at the door, ready to spirit them
away again at any moment. She wiped her hands on her apron, grabbed a
teacup for an excuse, and ran over to borrow that soda once more.

Peals of laughter were echoing through the old house when she knocked
at the door, and a regular rush and scramble was going on, so unseemly
just after a funeral! The door was on the latch, too, as if they did
not care who heard; and to save her life she couldn't help pushing it
a little with her foot, just enough to see in. And there was Julia
Cloud, her white hair awry, and her face rosy with mirth, an ear of
corn in one hand and a knife in the other, being carried--yes,
actually _carried_--across the dining-room in the arms of a tall young
man and deposited firmly on the big old couch.

"There, Cloudy Jewel! You'll lie right there and rest while Leslie and
I get lunch. You're all tired out; I can see it in your eyes; and we
can't afford to let you stay so. No, we don't need any succotash for
lunch or dinner, either. I know it's good; but we haven't time now,
and we aren't going to let you work," announced the young man
joyously as he towered above her lying quiescent and weak with
laughter.

"No, nor you aren't going to wash the dishes, either," gurgled the
young girl who danced behind the young man; "Allison and I will wash
them all while you take a nap, and then we're going to ride again."

Julia Cloud, her eyes bright with the joy of all this loving
playfulness, tried to protest; but suddenly into the midst of this
tumult came Mrs. Perkins's raucous assertion:

"H'm-m!"

The two young people whirled around alertly, and Julia Cloud sat up
with a wild attempt to bring her hair into subjection as she
recognized her neighbor. The color flooded into her sweet face, but
she rose with gentle dignity.

"O Mrs. Perkins, we must have been making such a noise that we didn't
hear your knock," she said.

As a matter of fact Mrs. Perkins hadn't knocked. She had been led on
by curiosity until she stood in the open dining-room door, rank
disapproval written on her face.

"It did seem a good bit of noise for a house of mourning," said Mrs.
Perkins dryly.

Julia Cloud's sweet eyes suddenly lost their smile, and she drew
herself up ever so little. There was just a ripple of a quiver of her
gentle lips, and she said quite quietly and with a dignity that could
not help impressing her caller:

"This is not a house of mourning, Mrs. Perkins. I don't think my dear
mother would want us to mourn because she was released from a bed of
pain where she had lain for nine long years, and gone to heaven where
she could be young and free and happy. I'm glad for her, just as glad
as I can be; and I know she would want me to be. But won't you sit
down? Mrs. Perkins, this is my niece and nephew, Leslie and Allison
Cloud from California. I guess you remember them when they were little
children. Or no; you hadn't moved here yet when they were here----"

Mrs. Perkins with pursed lips acknowledged the introduction distantly,
one might almost say insolently, and turned her back on them as if
they had been little children.

"Your sister's been here all morning waiting for you!" she said
accusingly. She gave a significant glance at the unwashed breakfast
dishes, only part of which had been removed to the kitchen. "She
couldn't imagine where you'd gone at that hour an' left your beds and
your dishes."

A wave of indignation swept over Julia Cloud's sweet face.

"So you have been in my house during my absence!" she said quietly.
"That seems strange since Ellen has no key!"

There was nothing in her voice to indicate rebuke, but Mrs. Perkins
got very red.

"I s'pose your own sister has a right to get into the house where she
was born," she snapped.

"Oh, of course," said Julia Cloud pleasantly. "And Ellen used to be a
good climber before she got so fat. I suppose she climbed in the
second-story window, although I hadn't realized she could. However,
it doesn't matter. I suppose you have had to leave your dishes and
beds once in a while when you were called away on business. You have a
cup there; did you want to borrow something?"

Mrs. Perkins was one of those people who are never quite aware of it
when they are in a corner; but she felt most uncomfortable, especially
as she caught a stifled giggle from Allison, who bolted into the
parlor hastily and began noisily to turn over the pages of a book on
the table; but she managed to ask for her soda and get herself out of
the house.

"Thank you for bringing my sister's message," called Julia Cloud after
her. She never could quite bear to be unpleasant even to a prying
neighbor, and Mrs. Perkins through the years had managed to make
herself unpleasant many times.

"The old cat!" said Leslie in a clear, carrying voice. "Why did you
thank her, Auntie Jewel? She didn't deserve it."

"Hush, Leslie, dear! She will hear you!" said Julia Cloud, hastily
closing the door on the last words.

"I hope she did," said Leslie comfortably. "I _meant_ she should."

"But, deary, that isn't right! It isn't--Christian!" said her aunt in
distress.

"Then I'm no Christian," chanted Leslie mischievously. "Why isn't it
right, I'd like to know? Isn't she an old cat?"

"But you hurt her feelings, dear. I'm afraid I was to blame, too; I
didn't answer her any too sweetly myself."

"Well, didn't she hurt yours first? _Sweet!_ Why, you were honey
itself, Cloudy, dear, thanking her for her old prying!"

"I hope it's the kind of honey that gets bitter after you swallow it!"
growled Allison, coming out of the parlor. "If she'd said much more,
I'd just have put her out of the house, talking to you like that, as
if you were a little child, Cloudy!"

"Why, children! That didn't really hurt me any; it just stirred up my
temper a little; but I'm ashamed that I let it, and I don't want you
to talk like that. It isn't a bit right. It distresses me to have you
think it's right to answer back that way and take vengeance on
people."

"Well, there, Cloudy, let's lay that subject on the table for some of
our night talks; and you can scold us all you like. We have a lot of
work to do now, and let's forget the old pry. Now you lie down on that
couch where I put you, and Leslie and I'll wash these dishes."

Julia Cloud lay obediently on the couch, but her mind was not at rest.
She was in a tumult of indignation at her prying neighbor and an
uncertainty of anxiety about Ellen and what she might do next. But
beneath it all was a vague fear about these her dear children who were
about to become her responsibility. Could she do it? Dared she do it?
How differently they had been brought up from all the traditions which
had controlled her life!

Take, for instance, that matter of Christianity. How would they feel
about it? Would they be in sympathy with her ideas and ideals of right
and wrong? They were no longer little children to obey her. They would
have ideas of their own, yes, and ideals. Would there be constant
clashing? Would she be haunted with a feeling that she was not doing
her duty by them? There were so many such questions, amusements, and
Sabbath, and churchgoing, and how to treat other people. And doubtless
she was old-fashioned, and they would chafe under her rule.

Take the little matter of Leslie's calling Mrs. Perkins a cat. She
_was_ a cat, but Leslie ought not to have told her so. It wasn't
polite, and it wasn't Christian. And yet how could she, plain Julia
Cloud, who had never been anywhere much outside of her home town, who
had had no opportunity for study or wide reading, and who had only
worked quietly all her life, and thought her plain little thoughts of
love to God and to her neighbors, be able to explain all those things
to this pair of lovable, uncontrolled children, who had always had
their own way, and whose ideals were the ideals of the great wide
unchristian world?

A little pucker grew between her brows, and a tired, troubled tear
stole softly between her lashes. When the children, tiptoeing about
and whispering, came to peek in at the door and see whether she was
asleep, they discovered her expression at once, and, drawing near,
sighted the tear. Then they went down upon their knees beside her
couch, and noisily demanded the cause thereof.

Little by little they drew her fears from her.

"Why, Cloudy, dear! We'll do what you want. We'll let all the old cats
in the community walk over you if that will make you happy," declared
Leslie, patting her face.

"No, we won't!" put in Allison; "we'll keep 'em away from her, but we
won't let 'em know how we despise 'em. Won't that do, Cloudy? And as
for all those other things you are afraid about, why couldn't you just
wait till we come to them? We're anything but angels, I admit, but
we're going to try to do what you want us to if it busts the eye-teeth
out of us, because we want you. And you always have been such a good
scout. As for the church dope and all that, why, it's like that guy in
the Bible you used to tell us about when we were children--or was she
a lady? It's a case of 'Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my
God,' or words to that effect. If we don't agree on our own account,
we'll do it because you want it. Isn't that about the idea? Wouldn't
that fill the bill?"

"You dear children!" said Julia Cloud, her eyes full of smiles and
tears now as she gathered them both into a loving embrace. "I don't
know how anybody could promise more than that. I wasn't afraid of you;
it was myself. You know I'm not at all wise, and it's pretty late in
life for me to begin to bring up children."

"Well, you're all right, anyhow, Cloudy; and you're the only person in
the world we'll let bring us up; so it's up to you to do it the best
you can, or it won't get done. Come on now; we've got lunch ready.
There's cold chicken and bread and milk and pie and cake, and I've
got the teakettle boiling like a house afire, so if you want any tea
or anything you can have it."

So they had a merry meal, and Julia Cloud ate and laughed with them,
and thought she never had been so happy since she was a little girl.
Then, mindful of her prying neighbor and her imminent sister, she
insisted on putting the house in order to the last bed and dish before
she was ready for the afternoon.

"And now we're going to call on Aunt Ellen!" announced Allison as
Julia Cloud hung up the clean dish-towels steaming from their scalding
bath, and washed her hands at the sink.

"Why, she's coming here!" said his aunt, whirling around with a
troubled look. "And, as she's left word she was coming, I suppose
we'll have to wait for her. It's too bad, for she won't be here till
three, and it's only a quarter of two. I'm sorry, because you wanted
to go out in the car, didn't you?"

"We're going!" said Allison, again with a commanding twinkle in his
eye. "We can't waste all that time; and, besides, don't you see if she
comes here, she'll likely stay all the afternoon and argue? If we go
there, we can come away when we like; and she'll feel we're more
polite to come to her, anyhow, won't she, Cloudy?"

Julia Cloud looked into the boy's convincing eyes, and her trouble
cleared away. Perhaps he was right. Anyhow, why should they spoil a
whole day to conciliate Ellen? Ellen would be disagreeable about it,
however they did; and they might as well rise above it, and just be
pleasant, and let it go at that.

It was the first time in her long life of self-sacrifice that Julia
Cloud had been able to rise above her anxiety about her sister's
tantrums and go calmly on her way. It is scarcely likely that she
would have managed it now if it hadn't been that she felt that Allison
and Leslie ought not to be sacrificed.

She never did anything just for herself. It was not in her.

"All right," she said briskly, glancing at the clock; "then we must go
at once, or we shall miss her. I'll be ready in five minutes. How
about you, Leslie?"

"Oh, I'm ready now," said the girl, patting her curly hair into shape
before the old mahogany-framed mirror in the hall.

In five minutes more they were stowed away in the big blue car again,
speeding down the road, with Mrs. Perkins indignantly and openly
watching them from her front porch.

"We put one over on Mrs. Pry, didn't we, Cloudy?" said Allison,
turning around to wink a naughty eye back toward the Perkins house.
"She thinks you've dared to run away after she gave you orders to stay
at home."

Julia Cloud could not suppress a smile of enjoyment, and wondered
whether she was getting childish that she should be so happy with
these children.




CHAPTER V


The air was fine; the sky was clear without a cloud; and the spice of
autumn flavored everything. Along the roadside blackberry vines were
turning scarlet, and here and there in the distance a flaming branch
proclaimed the approach of a frosty wooing. One could not ask anything
better on such a day than to be speeding along this white velvet road
in the great blue car with two beloved children.

But all too soon Herbert Robinson's ornate house loomed up, stark and
green, with very white trimmings, and regular flower-beds each side of
the gravel walk. It was the home of a prosperous man, and as such
asserted itself. There had never been anything attractive about it to
Julia Cloud. She preferred the ugly old house in which she had always
lived, with its scaling gray paint and no pretensions to fineness. At
least it was softened by age, and had a look of experience which saved
its ugliness from being crude, and gave it the dignity of time.

And now Julia Cloud's heart began to beat rapidly. All at once she
felt that she had done a most foolish thing in allowing the children
to overrule her and bring her here. Ellen would not be dressed up nor
have the children ready for inspection, and she would be angry at her
sister for not having given warning of their coming. She leaned
forward breathlessly to suggest turning back; but Allison, perhaps
anticipating her feeling, said:

"Now don't you get cold feet, Cloudy Jewel. If Aunt Ellen is sore,
just you talk up to her, and smile a lot, and we'll back you up.
Remember everything's, going fine, and the whole thing's settled. It's
too late to change it now. Is this the place? We'll turn right in,
shall we?" And with the words he swept up under the elaborate wooden
porte-cochère, and, swinging down, flung the door open for Julia Cloud
to alight.

Leslie gave a quick, disdainful glance about, fluttered out beside her
aunt, and, catching the look of apprehension on her face, tripped up
the steps and rang the bell, poising bird-like on the threshold and
calling in a sweet, flute-like voice:

"Aunt Ellen! O Aunt Ellen! Where are you? Don't you know you've got
company all the way from California?"

It was just like taking the bull by the horns, and Julia Cloud paused
on the upper step in wonder. How winning a child she was! and how she
had known by intuition just how to mollify her unpleasant relative!

What would Ellen say? How would she take it?

Ellen Robinson bustled frowning into the hall, whetting her sharp
tongue for an encounter. She had seen the big blue car turn in at the
gate, and knew from Mrs. Perkins's description who it must be. Julia
Cloud had well judged her state of mind, for her four children could
not have been caught in a worse plight so far as untidiness was
concerned, and there had barely been time to marshal them all up the
back stairs with orders to scrub and dress or not to come down till
the visitors were gone. They were even now creeping shufflingly about
overhead on their bare feet, hunting for their respective best shoes
and stockings and other garments, and scrapping in loud whispers.

But Leslie, little diplomat that she was, wasted no time in taking
stock of her aunt. She flung her arms joyously around that astonished
woman, and fairly took her by storm, talking volubly and continuously
until they were all in the house and seated in Ellen's best satin
brocatelle parlor chairs, surrounded by crayon portraits of Herbert
Robinson's ancestors and descendants. Allison too caught on to his
sister's game, and talked a good deal about how nice it was to get
East again after all the years, and how glad they were to have some
relatives of their own. Julia Cloud sat quietly and proudly listening;
and Ellen forgot her anger, and ceased to frown. After all, it was
something to have such good-looking relatives. For the first few
minutes the well-prepared speech wherewith she had intended to dress
down poor Julia lay idle on her lips, and a few sentences of grudging
welcome even, managed to slip by. Then suddenly she turned to her
sister, and the sight of the adoration for the visitors in Julia's
transparent face kindled her anger. Never had such a look as this
glowed in Julia Cloud's face for any little Robinson, save perhaps in
the first few days of their tiny lives before the Robinson had begun
to crop out in them.

"Where were you this morning, Jule? It certainly seems queer for you
to be gadding around having a good time so soon after poor mother's
death. And the dishes not washed, either! Upon my word, you have lost
your head! You weren't brought up that way. I stood up-stairs and
looked around on those unmade beds, and thought what poor mother would
have said if she could see them. Such goings-on! I certainly was
ashamed to have Mrs. Perkins see it."

Two rosy spots bloomed out on Julia Cloud's cheeks, and a tremble came
in her lips, though one could see she was making a great effort to
control herself; and the two long breaths that Leslie and Allison drew
simultaneously were heavily threatening, much like the distant rumble
of thunder.

"I'm sure I don't see what occasion Mrs. Perkins had to see it," she
answered steadily.

"Well, she was there!" said her sister dryly. She seemed to have
forgotten the presence of the two young people, who, if they had been
in the foreground, might have been noticed doing things with their
eyebrows to their mutual understanding and agreement.

"Yes, so she told me," said Julia Cloud significantly. "But that was
not what I came over to talk about, Ellen; I wanted to let you know
that I've rented the house, and the tenant wants possession next week.
I thought you might like to pick out some of mother's things to bring
over here before I pack up. You spoke about wishing you had another
couch for the sitting-room, and you might just as well have the
dining-room one as not. Then I thought perhaps you could use mother's
bedroom suit."

"You've rented the house!" screamed Ellen as soon as she got breath
from her astonishment to interrupt. "You've rented the house without
consulting me? Who to, I'd like to know? I had a tenant already for
that house, I told you."

"Why, I had no time to consult you, Ellen; and, besides, why should I?
The house is mine, and I knew you didn't want it. You have your own
home."

"Well, you certainly are blossoming out and getting independent! I
should think mere decency would have made you consult us before you
did anything. What do you know about business? Herbert will be mad as
anything when I tell him; and like as not you'll get into no end of
trouble with a strange tenant, and we'll have to help you out. Herbert
always says women make all the trouble they can for him before they
call on him for assistance."

Julia smiled.

"I shall not be obliged to call on Herbert for assistance, Ellen.
Everything is arranged. The contract was signed this morning, and I
have promised to vacate as soon as possible. The tenant is the new
school superintendent, and he wants to come at once. I just heard last
evening that he had been disappointed in getting the Harvey house.
It's sold to the foreman of the mill. So I went over to Harmony to see
him at once."

The news was so overwhelming and so unquestionably satisfactory from a
business point of view that Ellen was speechless with astonishment.
Allison gave Leslie a grave wink, and turned to look out of the window
to prevent an outburst of giggles from his sister.

"Well, I think you might have let me know," Ellen resumed with almost
her usual poise. "It's rather mortifying not to know what's going on
in your own family when the neighbors ask. Here was I without any
knowledge of the arrival of my own niece and nephew! Had to be told by
Mrs. Perkins."

Then Allison and Leslie did laugh, but they veiled their mirth by
talking about the two white chickens out in the yard which were
contending for a worm. Suddenly Leslie exclaimed:

"O Allison! I hear the children coming down-stairs, and I forgot their
presents! Run out to the car, and bring me that box."

Allison was off at once, and the entrance of the soapy and embarrassed
children created a further diversion.

For a few minutes even Ellen Robinson was absorbed in the presents.
There was a camera for Junior, a gold chain and locket for Elaine, a
beautiful doll for Dorothy, and a small train of cars that would wind
up and run on a miniature track for Bertie; so of course everything
had to be looked at and tried. Elaine put on her chain, and preened
herself before the glass; Junior had to understand at once just how to
take a picture; everybody had to watch the doll open and shut its
eyes, and to try to unbutton and button its coat and dress; and then
the railroad track had to be set up and the train started off on its
rounds. Ellen Robinson really looked almost motherly while she watched
her happy children; and Julia Cloud relaxed, and let the smile come
around her lips once more.

But all things come to an end, and Ellen Robinson was not one to
forget her own affairs for long at a time. She sat back from starting
the engine on its third round, and fixed her eyes on her sister with
that air of commander-general that was so intolerable.

"Well, then, I suppose you won't be over here till next week," she
frowned thoughtfully. "I needed you to help with the crabapple jelly.
That makes it inconvenient. But perhaps I can hold off the fruit a
little longer; I'll see. You ought to be able to get all your packing
done this week, I should think. When do they go?" She nodded toward
the niece and nephew quite indifferently as though they were deaf.

Julia Cloud's sensitive face flushed with annoyance, but the two pairs
of bright eyes that lifted and fixed themselves upon their aunt held
nothing but enjoyment of the situation.

"Why, we're not going until Aunt Jewel is ready to go with us, Aunt
Ellen," announced Leslie, looking up from the doll she was reclothing.
"You know we're all going to college together, Auntie, too!"

Ellen Robinson lifted an indignant chin. She had no sense of humor,
and did not enjoy jokes, especially those practised upon herself.

"Going to college! At her age!" she snorted. "Well, I always knew she
was childish, but I never expected her to want to go back to
kindergarten!"

Leslie rose up straight as a rush, her strong young arms down at her
sides, her fingers in their soft suède gloves working restively as if
she wanted to rush at her aunt and administer corporal punishment. Her
pretty red lips were pursed angrily, and her blue eyes fairly blazed
righteous wrath. Julia Cloud caught her breath, and wondered how she
was to control this young fury; but before she could say a word
Allison stepped in front of her, and spoke coolly.

"That's the reason she's such a good scout, Aunt Ellen. That's why we
want her to come and take care of us. Because she knows how to stay
young."

He suddenly seemed to have grown very tall and quite mature as he
spoke, and there was something about his manly bearing that held Ellen
Robinson's tongue in check as he looked at his watch with a polite
"Excuse me," and then turned to Julia Cloud. "Aunt Jewel, if we are to
meet my guardian on that train, I think we shall have to hurry. It's
quite a run into the city, you know." Julia Cloud arose with a breath
of relief.

"The city!" gasped Ellen. "You're not going into the city this late in
the afternoon, I hope! Do you know how long it takes?"

Allison glanced out to his high-powered machine confidently.

"We made it in an hour and a half coming over. I guess we shall have
plenty of time to meet the five-o'clock train if we go at once. I've
got a peach of a car, Aunt Ellen. I'll have to come round and take you
and the kids a ride to-morrow or the next day if Aunt Jewel can spare
me."

"Thank you! I have a car of my own!" snapped his aunt disagreeably.

"Oh! I beg your pardon! Well, Aunt Jewel, we really must go if we are
to meet Mr. Luddington. Good-by, Aunt Ellen! Good-by, cousins! We'll
see you again before we leave town, of course. Come on, Aunt Jewel!"
And he took Julia Cloud lightly, protectingly by the elbow, and
steered her out of the room, down the steps, and into the car, while
Leslie danced gayly after, chattering away about how nice it was to
get back East and meet real relatives.

But Ellen Robinson was not listening to Leslie. She hurried after her
departing guests regardless of a noisy struggle that was going on
between her two youngest over the railway train, and stood on her
front steps, fairly snorting with indignation.

"Julia Cloud, what does all this mean? You shan't go away until you
explain. Have you taken leave of your senses? What is this nonsense
about going to college?"

Allison with his hand on the starter gave his aunt a swift, reassuring
smile; and Julia Cloud from the safe vantage of the back seat leaned
forward, smiling.

"Why, it's the children that are going to college, Ellen, not I. I'm
only going along to keep house and play mother for them. Isn't it
lovely? I'll tell you all about it to-morrow when you come down to
pick out your things. Be sure to come early, because I want to get
started packing the first thing in the morning. Mr. Luddington, the
children's guardian, is coming to-night to complete the arrangements,
and we expect to get away just as soon as I can get packed up. So come
early."

The engine purred softly for a rhythmical second, and the car slid
quickly away from the door.

"But--the very idea!" snorted Aunt Ellen. "Julia Cloud!" she fairly
shouted. "Stop! You had no right in the world to go ahead and make
plans without consulting me!"

But the car was beyond ear-shot now, and Leslie was waving a pretty,
tantalizing hand from the back seat.

"The very idea!" Ellen Robinson gasped to the autumn landscape as she
stood alone and watched the car, a mere speck down the road, on its
way to town. "The idea!" And then as if for self-justification: "Poor
mother! What would she think if she could know? Well, I wash my hands
of her."

But Ellen Robinson did not wash her hands of her sister. Instead, she
found that it was going to be very hard indeed to wash her hands of
her own affairs without her sister's help. She had, in fact, been
counting on that help for the last several years, after her mother
became an invalid and she knew that it was only a matter of time
before Julia's hands would be set free for other labor. It was quite
too disconcerting now, after having got along all these years on the
strength of the help that was to come, to find her capable sister
snatched away from her by two young things in this ridiculous way.

They talked it over at supper, and Herbert was almost savage about it,
as if in some way his wife had misrepresented the possibilities, and
led him to expect the assistance that would come from her sister and
save him from paying wages to a servant.

"Well, she'll be good and sick of it inside of three months, mark
my words; and then she'll come whining back and want us to take her
in;--be glad enough to get a home. So don't you worry. But what I
want understood is this: _She's not going to find it so easy to get
back._ See? You make her thoroughly understand that. You better go
down to-morrow and pick out everything you want. Take plenty. You
can't tell but something may happen to the house, and the furniture
burn up. We might as well have it as anybody. And you make it good
and sure that she understands right here and now that if she goes
she doesn't come back. Of course, I'm not saying she can't come
back if she comes to her senses, and is real humble; but you
needn't let her know that. Just give her to understand it is her
last chance, that I can't be monkeyed with this way. I've offered
her a very generous thing, and she knows it, and she's a fool,
that's what she is, a _fool_ I say!" He brought his big fist down
heavily on the table, and jarred the dishes; and the children looked
up in premature comprehension, storing up the epithet for future
use. "She's no end of a fool, going off with those crazy kids. Some
one ought to warn their guardian about her. Why, she has no more
idea of how to take care of two high and mighty good-for-nothings
like that than an infant in arms!"

Meantime the subject of their discussion was seated serenely at a
table in one of the best hotels of the great city, having the time of
her life. In the years that were to come there might be many more
delightful suppers, even more elegantly served, perhaps; but none
would ever rival this first time in her existence when she had sat
among the wealthy and great of the land and been treated like one of
them.

Mr. Luddington was a typical business man, elderly and kind, with wise
eyes and a great smile. He turned his eyes keenly on Julia Cloud for
an instant at their first meeting, then let his full smile envelop
her, and she was somehow made aware of the fact that he had set his
seal of approval to the contract already made by his two enthusiastic
wards. All the forebodings she had entertained in the little intervals
when Leslie and Allison allowed her to think at all were swept aside
by his kind look and big, serious tone when he first took her hand and
scanned her true face. "I'm glad they've picked such a woman!" he
said. "You'll have your hands full, for they're a pair! But it's worth
it!"

And, when they all rode home through the moonlight, Julia Cloud
nestled under the soft, thick robes of the car, and listened to the
pleasant talk between the young people and their guardian with a sense
of peace. If this strong, wise business man thought the arrangement
was all right, why, then she need not fear any longer. It was real,
and not a dream, and she might rely upon the wisdom of her decision.
And with that sense of being upheld by something wiser than her own
wish she fell asleep that night, haunted by no dreams of her
domineering sister.




CHAPTER VI


The pleasant aromas of coffee and sausages were mingling in the air
when "Guardy Lud" woke up and looked about the old-fashioned room with
a sense of satisfaction. The very pictures on the walls rested him,
they reminded him so much of the rooms in his boyhood home. He had a
feeling that old-fashioned things were best, and in spite of the fact
that he owned a house most different from this one himself and knew
that his wife would not for a minute have tolerated any old-fashioned
things about unless they were so old-fashioned that they had become
the latest rage, he could not help feeling that a woman brought up
amid such simple surroundings would be the very best kind to mother
these orphan children who had been left on his helpless hands. He
would have loved to take them to his heart and his home; but his wife
was not so minded, and that ended it. But it rolled a great burden
from his shoulders to feel that he might leave them in such capable
hands.

They had a rollicking time at breakfast, for Guardy Lud was delighted
with the crisp brown sausages, fried potatoes, and buckwheats with
real maple-syrup; and he laughed, and ate, and told stories with the
children, and kept the old dining-room walls ringing with joy as they
had not resounded within the memory of Julia Cloud. Then suddenly the
door opened, and there stood Ellen Robinson, disapproval and hauteur
written in every line of her unpleasant face! One could hardly
imagine how those two, Julia and Ellen, could possibly be sisters.

Dismay filled Julia Cloud's heart for an instant, and brought a pallor
to her cheek. How had she forgotten Ellen? What a fool she had been to
tell Ellen to come early in the morning! But she had not realized that
Mr. Luddington would be willing to come out to her humble home and
stay all night. She had supposed that the arrangements would be made
in the city. However, it could not be helped now; and a glance at the
kind, strong face of the white-haired man gave her courage. Ellen
could not really spoil their plans with him there. He felt that the
arrangement was good, and with him to back her she felt she could
stand out against any arguments her sister might bring forth.

So she rose with a natural ease, and introduced her. "My sister Mrs.
Robinson, Mr. Luddington"; and Ellen stiffly and still disapprovingly
acknowledged the introduction.

"I won't interrupt," she said disagreeably. "I'm just going up to look
over some of my mother's things." And she turned to the back stairway,
and went up, closing the door behind her.

Mr. Luddington gazed after her a second; and then, taking his glasses
off and wiping them energetically, he remarked:

"Well, well, bless my soul! It must be getting late! We've had such a
good time I didn't realize. Those certainly were good buckwheats, Miss
Cloud. I shan't forget them very soon. And now I suppose we'd better
get down to business. Could we just go into the other room there, and
close the door for a few minutes, not to be interrupted?" and he cast
an anxious glance toward the stair-door again.

Julia Cloud smiled understandingly, and ushered them into the little
parlor ablaze with fall sunshine, its windows wreathed about with
crimsoning woodbine; and, as she caught the glow and glint from the
window, she remembered the gray evening when she had looked out across
into her future as she supposed it would be. How beautiful and
wonderful that the gray had changed to glow! As she sat down to enter
into the contract that was to bind her to a new and wonderful life
with great responsibilities and large possibilities, her heart,
accustomed to look upward, sent a whisper of thanksgiving heavenward.

The details did not take long, after all; for Mr. Luddington was a
keen business man, and he had gone over the whole proposition, and had
the plan in writing for her to sign, telling just what were her duties
and responsibilities with regard to his wards, just how much money she
would have for housekeeping and servants and other expenses, and the
salary she would receive herself for accepting this care.

"You're practically in a position of mother to them, you know," he
said, beaming at her genially; "and I declare I never laid eyes on a
woman that I thought could fill the part better!"

Julia Cloud was quite overwhelmed. But the matter of the salary
troubled her.

"I think it should not be a matter of money," she demurred. "I would
rather do it for love, you know."

"Love's all right!" said the old man, smiling; "but this thing has got
to be on a business basis, or the terms of the will will not allow me
to agree to it. You see what you are going to undertake means work,
and it means sticking to it; and you deserve pay for it, and we're not
going to accept several of the best years out of your life for
nothing. Besides, you've got to feel free to give up the job if it
proves too burdensome for you."

"And you to dismiss me if I do not prove capable for the position,"
suggested Julia Cloud, lifting meek and honest eyes to meet his gaze.

"Well, well, well, I can see there won't be any need of that!"
sputtered the old gentleman pleasantly. "But, however that is, this is
the contract I've made out. And I'm quite satisfied. So are the
children. Are you willing to sign it? Of course there's a clause in
there about reasonable notice if there is dissatisfaction on either
side; that lets you out at any time you get tired of it. Only give me
a chance to look after these youngsters properly."

Julia Cloud took the pen eagerly, tremblingly, a sense of wonder in
her pounding heart, and signed her name just as Ellen's heavy
footsteps could be heard pounding down the back stairs. Leslie seized
Julia, and gave her a great hug as the last letter was finished, and
then threw open the parlor door in the nick of time to save her Aunt
Ellen from seeming to be deserted.

Ellen Robinson appeared on the scene just in time to witness the
hearty hand-shake that Guardy Lud gave Julia Cloud as he picked up the
papers and went up-stairs for his suitcase while Allison went after
the car to take him to the train.

"Is that man married? Because, if he isn't, I don't think it's
respectable for you to go and live near him!" declared Ellen in a
penetrating voice to the intense distress of Julia Cloud, who was
happily hurrying the dishes from the breakfast table.

But Leslie came to the rescue.

"Oh, indeed, Aunt Ellen, he's very much married! Altogether too much
married for comfort. He would be a dear if it wasn't for his silly
little old bossy wife! But he doesn't intend to live anywhere near us.
His home is off in California, and he's going back next week. He's
only waiting to see us settled somewhere before he goes back; so you
needn't worry about Aunt Jewel's morals. We'll take good care of her.
But isn't he a dear? He was my Grandfather Leslie's best friend."

Leslie chattered on gayly till the visitor's footsteps could be heard
coming down-stairs again, and Ellen Robinson could only shut her lips
tight and go into the kitchen, from which her sister beat immediately
a hasty retreat lest more unpleasant remarks should be forthcoming.

Julia Cloud bade Mr. Luddington good-by, standing on her own front
steps, and then waited a moment, looking off toward the hills which
had shut in her vision all her life. The two young people had rushed
down to the car, and were pulling their guardian joyously inside.
They seemed to do everything joyously, like two young creatures let
out of prison into the sunshine. Julia Cloud smiled at the thought of
them, but her soul was not watching them just then. She was looking
off to the hills that had been her strength all the years through so
many trials, and gathering strength now to go in and meet her sister
in final combat. She knew that there would be a scene; that was
inevitable. That she might maintain her calmness and say nothing
unkind or regrettable she was praying earnestly now as her eyes sought
the hills.

Across the road behind her parlor curtains Mrs. Perkins was keeping
lookout, and remarking to a neighbor who had run in:

"Yes, I thought as much. There's always a man in the case when a woman
acts queer! Now, doesn't that beat all? Do you suppose he's a
long-lost lover or something, come back now he knows she's free? Seems
to me I did hear there was somebody died or something before we came
here to live, but she must have been awful young."

The car moved noisily away, and the old gentleman leaned out with a
courteous lift of his hat toward Julia Cloud. She acknowledged it with
a bow and a smile which Mrs. Perkins pounced on and analyzed audibly.

"Well, there's no fool like an old fool, as the saying is! Just watch
her smirk! I'm mighty glad Ellen Robinson's there to relieve me of the
responsibility. She'll be over after a while, and then we'll know who
he is. There goes Julia in. She watched him out o' sight! Well, I
wonder what her mother would think."

Julia Cloud went slowly back to the dining-room, where Ellen was
seated on the couch, waiting like a visitor. Julia's smile was utterly
lost on her glum countenance, which resembled an embattled tower under
siege.

"Well!" she said as Julia began to gather up more dishes from the
breakfast table. "I suppose you think you've done something smart now,
don't you, getting that old snob here and fixing things all up without
consulting any of your relatives?"

"Really, Ellen, this has all been so sudden that I had no opportunity,"
said Julia gently. "But it did not seem likely that you would object,
for you suggested yourself that I rent the house, and you said you did
not want me to stay here alone. This seemed quite providential."

"Providential!" sniffed Ellen. "Providential to take you away from
your own home and your own people, and send you out into a world where
nobody really cares for you, and where all they want of you is to make
a drudge of you! You call that providential, do you? Well, I _don't_!
And when I object, and try to save you from yourself, and offer you a
good home where you will be cared for all the rest of your days, right
among your own, where mother would have wanted to see you, you will
probably get high-headed, and say I am interfering with your rights.
But I can't help it. I've got to speak. I can't see you put the
halter around your neck to hang yourself without doing everything I
can to stop it. My own sister!"

"Why, Ellen, dear!" said Julia Cloud eagerly, sitting down beside her
sister. "You don't understand. It isn't in the least that way. I'm
sorry I had to spring it on you so suddenly and give you such a wrong
impression. You know I couldn't think of coming to live on you and
Herbert. It was kind of you to suggest it, and I am grateful and all
that; but I know how it would be to have some one else, even a sister,
come into the home, and I couldn't think of it. I have always resolved
that I would never be dependent on my relatives while I had my
health."

Ellen sat up bristling.

"And yet you are willing to go away to some strange place where nobody
knows you, and slave for a couple of little snobs!"

"O Ellen!" said Julia pleadingly. "You don't understand. I am not
going to slave. I'm just going to be a sort of mother to them. And you
oughtn't to call them snobs. They are your own brother's children."

"Own brother's children, nothing!" sneered Ellen. "He's been away so
many years he was just like a stranger when he came back the last
time, and as for the children they are just like his stuck-up wife and
her family. Yet you'll leave the children that were born and raised
close beside you, and go and slave for them. Mother! fiddlesticks!
You'll slave all right. I know you. In six weeks you'll be a drudge
for them the way you've been all your life! I know how it is, and you
may not believe it; but I have feelings for my sister, and I don't
like to see her put upon."

Ellen fumbled for her handkerchief, and managed a comely tear or two
that quite touched Julia's heart. Affection between them even when
Ellen was a child had been quite one-sided; for Ellen had always been
a selfish, spoiled little thing, and Julia had looked in vain for any
signs of tenderness. Now her heart warmed toward her younger sister in
this long-delayed thoughtfulness, and her tone grew gentler.

"That's dear of you, Ellen, and I appreciate it; but I haven't been
able to make you understand yet, I see. I'm not to be a worker, nor
even a housekeeper. I'm to be just a sort of mother, or aunt, if you
please, to see that the house runs all right, to be with the children
and have a happy time with them and their young friends, and to see
that they are cared for in every way necessary; just a housemother,
you understand. I am to have servants to do the work, although I'm
sure one servant will be all that I shall want in a little household
like that. But Mr. Luddington quite insisted there should be servants,
and that no work of any sort should fall upon me. He said that as
their nearest relative I was to be in the position of mother and
guardian to them, and to preside over their home."

"That's ridiculous!" put in Ellen. "Why don't they go to college and
board like any other reasonable young folks if they must go to college
at all? I think it's all nonsense for 'em to go. What do they do it
for? They've got money, and don't have to teach or anything. What do
they need of learning? They've got enough now to get along. That girl
thinks she's too smart to live. I call her impudent, for my part!"

"They want a home," said Julia, waiving the subject of higher
education; "and they have chosen me, and I mean to do my best."

There was a quiet finality in her tone that impressed her sister. She
looked at her angrily.

"Well, if you will, you will, I suppose. Nobody can stop you. But I
see just what will come of it. You'll fool away a little while there,
and find out how mistaken you were; and then you'll come back to
Herbert to be taken care of. And you don't realize how offended
Herbert is going to be by your actions, and how he'll feel about
letting you come back after you have gone away in such high feather.
You haven't anything to speak of to support yourself, of course, and
how on earth do you expect to live anyway after these children get
through their college and get married or something? They won't want
you then."

Julia arose and went to the window to get calmed. She was more angry
than she had been for years. The thought of Herbert's having to take
care of her ever was intolerable. But she was able to hold her tongue
until she could get her eyes on those hills out of the window. "I will
lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." That
had been the verse which she had read from her little Bible before
leaving her room in the early morning and she was grappling it close
to her heart, for she had known it would be a hard day.

Ellen was watching her silently. Almost she thought she had made an
impression. Perhaps this was the time to repeat Herbert's threat.

"Herbert feels," she began, "that if you refuse his offer now he can't
promise to keep it open. He can't be responsible for you if you take
this step. He said he wanted you to understand thoroughly."

Julia Cloud turned and walked with swift step to the little parlor
where lay the paper she and Mr. Luddington had just signed, and a copy
of which he had taken with him. She returned to her astonished sister
with the paper in her hand.

"Perhaps it would be just as well for you to read this," she said with
dignity, and put the paper into Ellen's hands, going back to her
clearing of the table.

There was silence in the dining-room while Ellen read, Julia moving on
quiet feet about the table, putting things to rights. She had finished
her part of the argument. She was resolutely putting out of her mind
the things her sister had just said, and refusing altogether to think
of Herbert. She knew in her heart just how Herbert had looked when he
had said those things, even to the snarl at the corner of his nose.
She knew, too, that Ellen had probably not reported the message even
so disagreeably as the original, and she knew that it would be better
to forget.

"Well," said Ellen, rising after a long perusal, laying the paper on
the table, "that sounds all very well in writing. The thing is to see
how it comes out. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and you
needn't tell me that any man in his senses will pay all that salary
merely for a 'chaperon,' as he calls it. If he does, he's a fool;
that's all I've got to say. But I suppose nothing short of getting
caught in a trap will make you see it; so I better save my breath. I'm
sure I hope you won't go to the poorhouse through your stubbornness.
I've done all I could to keep you from it, and it's pretty hard to
have my only sister leave me--so soo-oo-on after mother's--death."

"Well, Ellen," said Julia Cloud, looking at her speculatively, "I'm
sure I never dreamed you cared about having me away from here. You've
never shown much interest in being with me. But I'm sorry if you feel
it that way, and I'm sure I'll write to you and try to do little
things for the children often, now that I shall have something to do
with." But her kindly feeling was cut short by Ellen interrupting
her.

"Oh, you needn't trouble yourself! We can look after the children
ourselves. You better save what you get to look after yourself when
those two get over this whim!"

And then to her great relief Julia Cloud heard the car returning from
the station, and the two young people rushing into the hall.




CHAPTER VII


"I'm going up-stairs to put on that calico wrapper you loaned me, Aunt
Jewel," shouted Leslie, putting a rosy face into the dining-room for
an instant and then vanishing.

"I bought a pair of overalls at the store, as you suggested, Cloudy,"
put in Allison, waving a pair of blue jeans at her and vanishing
also.

Ellen Robinson stood mopping her eyes and staring out from the
dining-room window--not at the hills--and sniffing.

"I should think you'd stop them calling you that ridiculous name!" she
snorted. "It isn't respectful. It sounds like making fun of the
family."

Poor Ellen Robinson! She had her good points, but a sense of humor
wasn't one of them. Also it went against the grain to give up her own
way, and she couldn't remember when she hadn't planned for the freedom
she would have when Julia came to live with her. Having an entirely
different temperament from Julia's and no spiritual outlook whatever
on life, she was unable to understand what thraldom she had been
preparing and planning for her patient elder sister. A little of this
perhaps penetrated to Julia Cloud's disturbed consciousness as she
watched her sister's irate back; for, when she spoke again, it was in
a gentle, soothing tone.

"There now, Ellen, let's forget it all, and just put it away. I shall
be coming back to see you now and then, perhaps, and you can come and
see me. That'll be something new to look forward to. Suppose now we
just get to work and see what's to be done. Have you decided what you
want to have taken over to the house?"

It is doubtful whether Ellen would have succumbed so easily, had not
the two young people returned just then and demanded that they have
something to do.

As quietly as if she were used to packing and moving every year of her
life, Julia Cloud gave them each a pile of newspapers, and set them to
wrapping and packing dishes in a big barrel; and Ellen was forced to
join in and say what she wanted to have of her mother's things.

Without a word Julia set aside anything Ellen asked for, even when it
was something she would have liked to keep herself; and Ellen, her
lips pursed and her eyes bright with defeat, went from room to room,
picking and choosing as if she were at an auction.

Allison still in overalls rushed out in the car, and got a man with a
moving-wagon; and before twelve o'clock Ellen Robinson saw a goodly
load of household furniture start for her own home; and, being
somewhat anxious as to how it would be disposed on its arrival, she
took the car, and sped away to placate Herbert. She really felt quite
triumphant at the ease with which she had secured several valuable
pieces of mahogany which she knew had always been favorites with
Julia.

"Gee!" said Allison as the car vanished out of sight, "isn't Aunt
Ellen some depressor? Was she always so awfully grown up? I say,
Cloudy, you won't get that way, will you when we get you off in our
house? If you do, take poison, or get married, or something. Say,
Cloudy Jewel, you're twenty years younger than she is, do you know it?
Now what'll I do next? That closet is all empty. Shall I begin on this
one? You want this barrel up in the attic, you say? All right; here
goes! No, I won't hurt my back; I'm strong as a horse. I know how to
lift things without hurting myself. Open that door, Leslie, and move
that chair out of my way. Which corner shall I stow it, Cloudy?
Southwest? All right!" and he vanished up the stairs with his barrel.

At half-past twelve a man and a woman arrived whom Julia Cloud had
hired to help; and the house was like a busy hive, not a drone among
them. It really was wonderful how short a time it took to dismantle a
home that had been running for years. But the hands were wonderfully
eager that took hold of the work, and they went at things with a will.
Moreover, Julia Cloud's domain was always in perfect order, which made
a big difference.

They ate their lunch from the pantry shelf, because Ellen had taken
the dining-room table. But it was a good lunch, bread and butter,
apple butter, cookies, half a custard pie, and glasses of rich, foamy
milk. Then they went to work again. The children were smudged with
dust and tumbled and happy. They were doing real things for the first
time in their lives, and they liked it. Moreover, they were bringing
to pass a beloved plan that had seemed at first impossible; and they
wanted to hustle it through before anything spoiled or delayed it.
There was Aunt Ellen. There was no telling what she might not do to
hinder, and Julia Cloud was easily troubled by her sister, they could
see that, wise children that they were; so they worked with all their
might and main.

Two more men were requisitioned, and the furniture began a steady
march up to the attic, where it was to be stored.

Leslie developed a talent for finding the place where she was most
needed and getting to work. She put the sideboard drawers in order,
and then went to packing away garments from the closets in drawers and
trunks and chests, until by four o'clock a great many little nooks and
corners in the house were absolutely clear and empty, ready for the
cleaning before the new tenants arrived, although, to tell the truth,
there was scarcely a spot in Julia Cloud's house that needed much
cleaning, because it had always been kept immaculate.

When Ellen Robinson in her car arrived in sight of the house at
half-past four she identified the parlor and dining-room carpets
hanging on a line strung across the back yard, and two bedroom carpets
being beaten in the side yard. Mrs. Perkins from her patient
watch-tower had also identified them, and hurried out to greet her
friend and get more accurate information; but Ellen was in too much of
a hurry to get inside and secure several other articles, which she had
thought of and desired to have, to spend much time in gossip.
Besides, if Julia was really going, it was just as well to make as
much of it as possible; so she greeted Mrs. Perkins as one too busy
with important affairs to tell details, and hurried into the house.
Standing within the old hallway, she gazed about, startled. How on
earth had Julia managed to tear up things in such a hurry? The
pictures had all vanished from the walls. The books were gone from the
old book-case; the furniture itself was being carried away, the
marble-topped table being the last piece left. The woman was washing
the parlor floor, slopping on the soapy water with that air of
finality that made Ellen Robinson realize that the old home was broken
up at last. Grimly she walked into the dining-room, and saw immaculate
empty closets and cleanly shining window-panes. As far as the work had
progressed it had been done thoroughly.

Up-stairs a cheery chatter came from the rooms, and Ellen Robinson
experienced a pang of real jealousy of these two young things who had
swept in and carried her neglected sister by storm. Somehow it seemed
to her that they had taken something that belonged to her, and she
began to feel bereft. Julia ought to love her better than these two
young strangers; why didn't she? Why didn't those two children make
such a fuss over her as they did over Julia? It certainly was strange!
Perhaps some gleam of perception that it might all be her own fault
began to filter to Ellen Robinson's consciousness as she stood there
on the stairs and listened to the pleasant chatter.

"O Cloudy, dear! Is this really Daddy's picture when he was a little
boy? What a funny collar and necktie! But wasn't he a darling? I love
the way his hair curls around his face. I can remember Daddy quite
well. Mother used to say he was a wonderful man. I think he must have
been a good deal like you. Our old nurse used to say that families
went in streaks. I guess you and Daddy were off the same streak,
weren't you? I hope Allison and I will be, too. Say, Cloudy, can't I
have this picture of Daddy to hang in my room in our new house? I love
it."

Ellen Robinson wondered whether they had classified her as another
"streak," and somehow the thought was unpleasant. It was like one of
those little rare mirrors that flash us a look now and then in which
we "see oursel's as ithers see us," and are warned to take account of
stock. As she climbed the old stairs, Ellen Robinson took account of
herself, as it were, and resolved to show a better side to these
children than she had shown heretofore; and so, when she appeared
among them, she put aside her grim aspect for a while, and spoke in
quite an affable tone:

"Well, you certainly can work!"

The contrast was so great that both the young people blinked at her in
wonder, and a smile broke out on Leslie's lovely face. Somehow it
warmed Aunt Ellen's heart, and she went on:

"But you all must be tired. You better come up to our house for supper
to-night. You won't have any chance to get it here."

"Oh, we don't mind picnicking," said Leslie hastily. Then she caught a
glimpse of her aunt's face, and her natural kindliness came to the
front. "But of course that would be lovely if it won't be too much
trouble for you," she added pleasantly with one of her brilliant
smiles, although she could see Allison making violent motions and
shaking his head at her from the other room, where he was out of his
Aunt Ellen's sight. Leslie really had a lovely nature, and was always
quick to discern it when she had hurt any one. Ellen Robinson looked
at her suspiciously, alert for the insult always, but yielded suddenly
and unexpectedly to the girl's loveliness. Was it something in
Leslie's eyes that reminded Ellen of her big brother who used to come
home now and then, and tease her, and bring her lovely gifts? She
watched Leslie a moment wistfully, and then with a sigh turned away.
She wished one of her little girls could look like that.

"Well, I'd better go right home and get supper ready," she said
alertly; and there was a note of almost pleased eagerness in her voice
that she was included in this function of packing and moving that
seemed somehow to have turned into a delightful game in which
weariness and care were forgotten.

"I'll have supper ready to dish up by seven o'clock," she admonished
her astonished sister as she swept past the bedroom where she was at
work putting away blankets and pillows in camphor. "You won't be ready
much before that; but don't you be a minute later, or the supper will
be spoiled."

By which admonition Julia Cloud became aware that Ellen was going to
favor them with some of her famous chicken potpie. She stood still for
a whole minute with a light in her eyes and a smile on her face,
listening to Ellen's retreating footsteps down the stairs; then, as
the Ford set up its churning clatter, she turned back to her task, and
murmured softly, "Poor Ellen!"

The supper passed off very well. Herbert was a trifle gruff and
silent; but it was plain that Allison's stories amused him, for now
and then a half-smile crept into his stolid countenance. Julia Cloud
was so glad that she could have cried. She hated scenes, and she
dreaded being at outs with her relatives. So she ate her chicken
potpie and fresh pumpkin-pie thankfully, and forgot how weary she was.
After supper Leslie sat down at the piano, and rattled off rag-time;
and she and Allison sang song after song, while the children stood
about admiringly, and even Herbert sat by as at a social function and
listened. The atmosphere was really quite clear when at last they
prepared to leave, and Julia Cloud had an inkling that the big blue
car had something to do with it.

"That's some car you've got," said Herbert patronizingly as he held a
lantern for them to get down the steps. "Get it this year? What do you
have to pay for that make now? I'm thinking of getting a new one
myself pretty soon."

Down upon their knees in the lantern-light went the two men of the
party, examining this and that point of interest, their noses turned
to the mysterious inner workings of the wonderful mechanism, while
Julia Cloud sat and marveled that here at last was something which
Herbert Robinson respected.

And Ellen stood upon the steps, really smiling and saying how nice it
had been to have them, for all the world as if they were company, all
the hard lines of her rapidly maturing face softened by kindliness! It
seemed like a miracle. Julia Cloud settled back into the deep
cushions, and lifted her eyes to the dark line of the hills against
the sky. "From whence cometh my help," trailed the words through her
tired brain; and her heart murmured, "God, I thank Thee!"




CHAPTER VIII


They all slept very late the next morning, being utterly worn out from
the unaccustomed work; and, when they finally got down-stairs, they
took a sort of a lunch-breakfast off the pantry shelves again. It was
strange how good even shredded-wheat biscuit and milk can taste when
one has been working hard and has a young appetite, although Leslie
and Allison had been known to scorn all cereals. Still, there were
cookies and wonderful apples from the big tree in the back yard for
dessert.

"When are those men coming back to finish up?" suddenly demanded
Leslie, poising a glass of milk and a cooky in one hand and taking a
great bite from her apple.

"Not till to-morrow," said Julia Cloud, looking around the empty
kitchen speculatively, and wondering how in the world she was going to
cook with all the cooking-utensils packed in the attic.

"We ought to have left the kitchen till last," she added with a
troubled look. "You crazy children! Didn't you know we had to eat? I
told that man not to take any of those things on the kitchen-table,
that they were to stay down until the very last thing, and now he has
taken the table even! I went up-stairs to see if I could get at
things, and I find he has put them away at the back, and piled all the
chairs and some bed-springs in front of them. I'm afraid we shall
have to get some things out again. I don't see how we can get
along."

"Not a bit of it, Cloudy!" said Leslie, giving a spring and perching
herself on the drain-board of the sink, where she sat swinging her
dainty little pumps as nonchalantly as if she were sitting on a velvet
sofa. "See! Here's my plan. I woke up early, and thought it all out.
Let's see," consulting her wee wrist-watch, "it's nine o'clock. That
isn't bad. Now we'll work till twelve; that's long enough for to-day,
because you got too tired yesterday; and, besides, we've got some
other things to attend to. Then we'll hustle into the car, and get to
town, and do some shopping ready for our trip. That will rest you.
We'll get lunch at a tea-room, and shop all the afternoon. We'll go to
a hotel for dinner, and stay all night. Then in the morning we can get
up early, have our breakfast, and drive back here in time before the
men come. Now isn't that perfectly spick-and-span for a plan?"

"Leslie! But, dear, that would cost a lot! And, besides, it isn't in
the least necessary."

"Cost has nothing to do with it. Look!" and Leslie flourished a
handful of bills. "See what Guardy Lud gave me! And Allison has
another just like it. He said particularly that we were not to let you
get all worked out and get sick so you couldn't go with us, and he
particularly told us about a lot of things he wanted us to buy to make
things easy on the way. After he leaves us and goes back to California
we're in your charge, I know; but just now you're in ours, you dear,
unselfish darling; and we're going to run you. Oh, we're going to run
you to beat the band!" laughed Leslie, and jumped down from her perch
to hug and squeeze the breath out of Julia Cloud.

"But child! Dear!" said that good woman when she could get her breath
to speak. "You mustn't begin in that extravagant way!"

But they put their hands over her lips, and laughed away her protests
until she had to give up for laughing with them.

"Well, then," she said at last, when they had subsided from a regular
rough-house frolic for all the world as if they were children, "we'll
have to get to work in good earnest; only it doesn't seem right to let
you work so hard when you are visiting me."

"Visiting, nothing!" declared Allison; "we're having the time of our
lives. I haven't been in a place where I could do as I pleased since I
was eight years old. This is real work, and I like it. Come now, don't
let's waste any time. What can I do first? Wouldn't you like to have
me take down all the pictures on the second floor, stack them in the
attic, and sweep down the walls the way we did down here yesterday?"

"Yes," said their aunt with an affectionate homage in her eyes for
this dear, capable boy who was so eager over everything as if it were
his own.

"And those big bookcases. What are you going to do with the books? Do
you want any of them to go with you, or are they to be packed away?"

"No, I won't take any of those books. They'll need to be dusted and
put in boxes. There are a lot of boxes in the cellar, and there's a
pile of papers to use for lining the boxes. But you'll have your hands
full with the pictures, I think. Let the books go till to-morrow."

Allison went whistling up-stairs, and began taking down the pictures;
but anybody could see by the set of his shoulders that he meant to get
the books out of the way too before noon.

"Now, what can I do?" said Leslie, whirling around from wiping the
last cup and plate they had used. "There's one more bureau besides
yours. Does it need emptying out?"

"No, dear. That has your grandmother's things in it, and is in perfect
order. She had me fix up the things several months ago. Everything is
tied up and labelled. I don't think we need to disturb it. The men can
move it up as it is. But we need to get the rest of the bed-clothes
out on the line for an airing before I pack them away in the chest
up-stairs. You might do that."

So Leslie went back and forth, carrying blankets and quilts, and
hanging them on the line, till Mrs. Perkins had to come over to see
what was going on. She came with a cup in her hand to ask for some
baking-powder, and Julia Cloud gave her the whole box.

"No, you needn't return it," she said, smiling. "I shall not need it.
I've rented the house, and am going away for a while." Mrs. Perkins
was so astonished that she actually went home without finding out
where Julia Cloud was going, and had to come back to see whether there
was anything she could do to help, in order to get a chance to ask.

It was really quite astonishing what a lot could be done in three
hours. When twelve o'clock came, the two children descended upon their
aunt with insistence that she wash her hands and put on her hat. The
rooms had assumed that cleared-up, ready look that rests the tired
worker just to look around and see what has been accomplished. With a
conviction that she was being quite a child to run away this way when
there was still a lot to be done, but with an overwhelming desire to
yield to the pressure, Julia Cloud surrendered.

When she came down-stairs five minutes later in her neat black suit
and small black hat with the mourning veil about it that Ellen had
insisted upon for the funeral, the car was already at the door, and
she felt almost guilty as she locked the door and went down the path.
But the beauty of the day intoxicated her at once, and she forgot
immediately everything but the joy of riding out into the world.

Leslie was a bit quiet as they glided down the road out of town, and
kept eyeing her aunt silently. At last, as Julia Cloud was calling
attention to a wonderful red woodbine that had twined itself about an
old dead tree and was setting the roadside ablaze with splendor,
Leslie caught her eye.

"What is it, dear? Does something trouble you? Is anything wrong with
me?" asked Julia Cloud, putting up a prospecting hand to her hair and
hat.

Leslie's cheeks went rosy red.

"O Cloudy, dear," said Leslie, "I was just wondering. But I'm afraid
to say it. Maybe it will make you feel bad."

"Not a bit, deary; what is it?"

"Well, then, Cloudy, do you think Grandmother would care very much if
you didn't wear black? Do you like it yourself, or feel it wouldn't be
right not to wear it? I don't mean any disrespect to Grandmother; but
oh, you would look so sweet in gray, gray and lavender and soft pink,
or just gray now for a while. Are you very mad at me for saying it?"

Julia Cloud reached over and patted the young hand that lay near her
on the seat.

"Why, no, dear! I'm not mad, and I don't care for black myself. I
don't believe in wearing black for the people who have left us and
gone to heaven. It seems to me white would be a great deal better. But
I put on these things to please Ellen. She thought it would be showing
great disrespect to mother if I didn't, and rather than argue about it
I did as she wanted me to. But I don't intend to darken the place
around me by dressing in mourning, child; and I'm glad you don't want
me to. I like bright, happy things. And, besides, Leslie, dear, your
grandmother was a bright, happy woman herself once when she was young,
before she was sick and had trouble; and I like to remember her that
way, because I'm sure that is the way she looks now in heaven."

"Oh, I'm so glad!" sighed Leslie. "That makes the day just perfect."

"I think I'll wait until I get away to change, however," said Julia
Cloud thoughtfully. "It would just annoy Ellen to do it now, and
might make such people as Mrs. Perkins say disagreeable things that
would make it unpleasant for your aunt."

"Of course!" said Leslie, nestling closer, her eyes dancing with some
secret plans of her own. "That's all right, Cloudy. How dear and sort
of 'understanding' you are, just like a real mother."

And somehow Julia Cloud felt as if she was entering into a new world.

Allison seemed to know by intuition just where to find the right kind
of tea-room. He ushered them into the place, and found a table in a
secluded nook, with a fountain playing nearby over ferns, and ivy
climbing over a mimic pergola. There were not many people eating, for
it was past one o'clock. There were little round tables with
high-backed chairs that seemed to shut them off in a corner by
themselves.

"This is nice!" he sighed. "We're a real family now, aren't we?" and
he looked over at Julia Cloud with that fine homage that now and then
a boy just entering manhood renders to an older woman.

"Creamed chicken on toast, fruit-salad, toasted muffins, and ice-cream
with hot chocolate sauce," ordered Allison after studying the
menu-card for a moment. "You like all those, don't you, Cloudy?"

"Oh, but my dear! You mustn't order all that. A sandwich is all
I need. Just a tongue sandwich. You must not begin by being
extravagant."

"This is my party, Cloudy. This goes under the head of expenses. If
you can't find enough you like among what I order, why, I'll get you a
tongue sandwich, too; but you've been feeding us out of the
cooky-jar, and I guess I'll get the finest I can find to pay you back.
I told you this was my time. When we get settled, you can order
things; but now I'm going to see that you get enough to eat while
you're working so hard."

Leslie's eyes danced with her dimples as Julia Cloud appealed to her
to stop this extravagance.

"That's all right, Cloudy. I heard Guardy Lud tell Al not to spare any
expense to make things comfortable for you while you were moving."

So Julia Cloud settled down to the pleasure of a new and delicious
combination of foods, and thoroughly enjoyed it all.

"Now," said Leslie as the meal drew to a close, "we must get to work.
It's half-past two, and the stores close at half-past five. I've a lot
of shopping to do. How about you, Cloudy?"

"I must buy a trunk," said Julia Cloud thoughtfully, "and a hand-bag
and some gloves. I ought to get a new warm coat, but that will do
later."

Leslie eyed her thoughtfully, and raised one brow intensively at her
brother as she rose from the table.

Allison landed them at a big department store, and guided his aunt to
the trunk department with instructions to stay there until he and
Leslie came back. Then they went off with great glee and many
whisperings.

It is a curious thing how easily and quickly young people can shop
provided they have plenty of money and no older person by to hamper
them. Allison and Leslie were back within the time they had set,
looking very meek and satisfied. Leslie carried a small package,
which she laid in Julia Cloud's lap.

"You said you needed a hand-bag," she said; "and I came on a place
where they were having a sale. I thought this was a peach; so I bought
it. If you don't like it, we can give it to Aunt Ellen or some one."

Julia Cloud's cheeks grew pink with pleasure, and she felt like a very
young, happy child as she opened the parcel to find a lovely gray
suède hand-bag with silver clasp and fittings, containing quite a
little outfit of toilet articles and brushes in neat, compact form.
She caught her breath with delight as she touched the soft white
leather lining, and noticed the perfection and finish of the whole. It
seemed fit for a queen, yet was plain and quiet enough on the outside
for a dove to carry. She looked up to see the two pairs of eager eyes
upon her, and could hardly refrain from throwing her arms about the
children right there in the store; but she stopped in time and let her
eyes do the caressing, as she said with a tremble in her low, sweet
voice:

"O you dear children! How you are going to spoil me! I see I must get
settled quickly so that I shall have the power to restrain you."

They rollicked forth then, and bought several things, a big steamer
rug for the car, a pair of long gray mocha gloves to match the
hand-bag, a silk umbrella, and for Aunt Ellen a shiny black hand-bag
with a number of conveniences in it, and a pair of new black gloves
with long, warm wrists tucked inside of it. Then Allison thoughtfully
suggested a handsome leather wallet for Uncle Herbert, and Julia
Cloud lingered by the handkerchief-counter, and selected half a dozen
new fine handkerchiefs. It all seemed just like a play to her, it was
so very long since she had been shopping herself. Ellen had bought
everything for her for years, because she was always too busy or too
burdened to get away.

When they were out in the street again, it was still too early to
think of going to the hotel for dinner.

"How about a movie, Cloudy?" asked Allison shyly. "There's a pippin
down the street a ways. I saw it as we came by. Or don't you like
movies? Perhaps you'd rather go to the hotel and lie down. I suppose
you are maybe worn out. I ought to have thought of that."

"Not a bit of it!" said the game little woman. "I should love to go.
Maybe you won't believe it, but I never went to a movie in my life,
and I've been wanting to know what they were like for a long time."

"Never went to a movie in your life! Why, Cloudy, you poor dear!" said
Allison, who had been fairly fed on movies. "Why, how did it happen?
Don't they have moving pictures in your town?"

"Yes, they have them now, though only a year or so ago. But you know
I've never been able to get away, even if they had been all about me.
Besides, I suppose I should have been considered crazy if I had gone,
me, an oldish woman! If there had been children to take, it would have
been different. I suppose it is a childish desire, but I always loved
pictures."

"Well, we're going," said Allison. "Get in quick, and I'll have you
there before you say Jack Robinson!"

And so in the restful cool of a flower-laden atmosphere in one of the
finest moving-picture places in the city Julia Cloud sat with her two
children and saw her first moving picture, holding her breath in
wonder and delight as the people on the screen lived and moved before
her.

"I'm afraid I'm having too good a time," she said quietly as she
settled back in the car again, and was whirled away to the hotel. "I
feel as if I were a child again. If this keeps on, I won't have
dignity enough left to chaperon you properly."

"Oh, but Cloudy, dear, that's just why we want you, because you know
how to be young and play with us," clamored both of them together.

Then after a good dinner they went up to their rooms, and there was
Julia Cloud's shining new trunk that had to be looked over; and there
on the floor beside it stood two packages, big boxes, both of them.

"This must be a mistake," said Julia Cloud, looking at them curiously.
"Allison, you better call the boy and have him take them away to the
right room."

Allison picked up the top package, a big, square box.

"Why, this is your name, Cloudy Jewel!" he exclaimed. "It must be
yours. Open it!"

"But how could it be?" said Julia Cloud perplexedly.

"Open it, Cloudy. I want to see what's in it."

Julia Cloud was bending over the long pasteboard box on the floor and
finding her name on that, too.

"It's very strange," she said, her cheeks beginning to grow pink like
those of a child on her first Christmas morning. "I suppose it's some
more of your extravagant capers. I don't know what I shall do with
you!"

But her eager fingers untied the string, while Leslie and Allison
executed little silent dances around the room and tried to stifle
their mirth.

The cover fell off at last, and the tissue-paper blew up in a great
fluff; and out of it rolled a beautiful long, soft, thick gray cloak
of finest texture and silken lining, with a great puffy collar and
cuffs of deep, soft silver-gray fox.

"Oh-h!" was all Julia Cloud could say as the wonderful garment slipped
out and spread about over the box and floor. And then the two children
caught it up, and enveloped her in it, buttoning it down the front and
turning the collar around her ears.

"It's yours, Cloudy, to keep you warm on the journey!" cried Leslie,
dancing around and clapping her hands. "Doesn't she look lovely in it,
Allison? Oh, isn't she dear?" and Leslie caught her and whirled her
around the room.

Then Allison brought the big square box, and demanded that it be
opened; and out of it came a small gray hat in soft silky beaver, with
a close gray feather curled quietly about it, that settled down on
Julia Cloud's lovely white hair as if it had been made for her.

"You don't mind, do you, Cloudy, dear? You don't think I'm officious
or impertinent?" begged Leslie anxiously. "It was Allison's idea to
get the hat to match the coat, and it was such a dear we couldn't help
taking it; but, if there is anything about them you don't like, we
got special permission for you to exchange them to-morrow morning."

"Like them!"

Julia Cloud settled down in a chair, and looked at herself in helpless
joy and admiration. Like them!

"But O children! You oughtn't to have got such wonderful, expensive
things for me. I'm just a plain, simple woman, you know, and it's not
fitting."

Then there arose a great clamor about her. Why was it not fitting? She
who had given her life for others, why should she not have some of the
beautiful, comfortable things of earth? It wasn't sensible for her to
talk that way. That was being too humble. And, besides, weren't these
things quite sensible and practical? Weren't they warm, and wouldn't
they be convenient and comfortable and neat? Well, then, "Good-night,"
finished Allison.

And so at last they said "Good-night," and went to their beds; but
long after the children were asleep Julia Cloud lay awake and thought
it out. God had been good to her, and was leading her into green
pastures beside quiet waters; but there were things He was expecting
of her, and was she going to be able to fulfil them? These two young
souls were hers to guide. Would she have the grace to guide them into
the knowledge of God in Christ? And then she lay praying for strength
for this great work until the peace of God's sleep dropped down upon
her.




CHAPTER IX


The next two days were busy ones. There were a great many last little
things to be done, and Julia Cloud would have worked herself out, had
not the children interfered and carried her off for a ride every
little while. The intervening Sabbath was spent at Ellen Robinson's.
The handsome hand-bag and wallet served to keep Ellen from being very
disagreeable. In fact, at the last, when she began to realize that
Julia was really going away, and would not be down at the old house
any more for her to burden and torment, she really revealed a gleam of
affection for her, and quite worried poor Julia with thinking that
perhaps, after all, she ought not to go away so far from her only
sister. When Ellen sat down on the bare stairs in the old hall Monday
morning, and gave vent to a real sob at parting, Julia had a swift
vision of her little sister years ago sitting on that same stair
weeping from a fall, and herself comforting her; and she put her arms
around Ellen, and kissed her for the first time in many reticent
years.

But at last they were off, having handed over the keys to the new
tenant, and Julia Cloud leaned back on the luxurious cushions and
laughed. Not from mirth, for there were tears in her eyes; and not
from nervousness, for she was never subject to hysteria; but just from
sheer excitement and joy to think that she was really going out in the
world at last to see things and live a life of her own.

The two young people felt it, and laughed with her, until the
blackbirds, swirling in a rustling chorus overhead on their way south,
seemed to be joining in, and a little squirrel whisked across the road
and sat up inquiringly on a log framed in scarlet leaves.

They went straight to the city, for Mr. Luddington had promised to
meet them there and confer with them further about their plans. But,
when they reached the hotel, they found only a telegram from him
saying that business had held him longer than he expected and that he
should have to arrange to meet them farther along in their journey. He
suggested three colleges, either one of which he should favor, and
outlined their journey to take in a stop at each. He promised to
communicate with them later, and gave his own address in case they
decided to remain at either the first or the second place visited.

"Now," said Julia Cloud after the telegram was disposed of, "I want to
get a new dress and a few things before we go any farther. I know you
children don't like these old black things, and we might as well start
out right. It won't take me long, and I shall be ready to go on my way
right after lunch."

Leslie was delighted, and the two spent two hours of happiness in
shopping, while Allison drove to a garage to have his car looked over
thoroughly, and laid in a supply of good things for the journey. He
also spent a profitable half-hour studying a road-map and asking
questions concerning the journey.

They tried to make Julia Cloud take a nap before they started, but she
declared she would rather rest in the car; and so they started off,
feeling like three children going to find the end of the rainbow.

It was a wonderful afternoon. The air was like wine, and the autumn
foliage was in all its glory. As they flew along, it seemed as if they
were leaving all care behind. A soft pink color grew in Julia Cloud's
cheeks, and she sat with her hands folded and her eyes bright with the
beauty of the day.

"Oh, but you're a beauty, Cloudy, dear!" exclaimed Leslie suddenly.
"See her, Allison! Just look at her. Isn't she great? She was all
right in those black things, of course, but she's wonderful in the
gray things!"

For Julia Cloud had laid aside in the very bottom of her new trunk the
prim black serge that Ellen had bought, and the black funeral gloves
and coat and hat; and she was wearing a lovely soft gray wool jersey
dress with white collar and cuffs. The big gray coat was nestled by
her side ready for use when the wind grew colder, and she was wearing
the new gray hat and gloves, and looked a lady every inch. Allison
turned slowly, and gave her a look that made her blush like a girl.

"I should say she _is_ great! She's a peach!" he agreed. "That hat is
a cracker jack! It looks like a pigeon's wing. I like it; don't you,
Cloudy? But say, Leslie, she's something more than a beauty. She's a
good scout. That's what she is. Do you realize she hasn't opened her
lips about the car once? 'Member the time I took Mrs. Luddington down
to the office for Guardy, how she squeaked every time another car
went by, and cautioned me to be careful and go slow, and asked me how
many times I had ever driven before, and if I wasn't exceeding the
speed-limit, and no end of things? But Cloudy hasn't batted an eye.
She just sits there as if she was riding a cloud and enjoyed it."

"Well, I do," said Julia Cloud, laughing; "and I never thought of
being afraid. I didn't know enough to. Ought I to? Because I'm having
such a good time that I'm afraid I'd forget to be frightened."

"That's what I said. You're a good sport. I believe you like to go
fast."

Julia Cloud admitted shamedly that she did.

"He's a splendid driver, and so am I," Leslie explained earnestly.
"Guardy had us taught ages ago, and we're driven a lot; only of course
we didn't have our own car. We just had the regular car that belongs
to the house. But we made that work some. And Allison took a full
course in cars. He knows how to repair them, and put them together,
and everything."

"Shall I let her go, Cloudy?" asked Allison eagerly. "Will you be
afraid?"

"I should love it," said Julia Cloud eagerly, and then with a sober
look at the boy: "Don't do anything crazy, dear! Don't do anything
that you oughtn't to do."

"Of course not!" said Allison gravely, sitting up with a manly look in
his handsome young face. And by the look he gave her she knew that she
had put him upon his honor, and she knew that he would take no risks
now that she had trusted him. If she had been a squealing, hectoring
kind of woman, he might have been challenged into taking risks, but
not here, when she trusted him and the responsibility was all his.

Julia Cloud, as she drew a long breath and prepared, to enjoy the
flight down the white ribbon of road, up a hill and down another,
registered the thought that here was a clew to this boy's character.
Trust him, and he would be faithful. Distrust him, and you wouldn't be
anywhere. It did not come to her in words that way, but rather as a
subconscious fact that was incorporated into her soul, and gave her a
solid and sure feeling about her boy. She had seen all that in his
eyes.

He turned around presently, and told her how fast they had been going;
and her eyes were shining as brightly as Leslie's.

"You're a pretty good pard, Cloudy," he said. "We'll make you a member
of the gang and take you everywhere. See! You're being initiated now,
and you're making good right along. I knew we did a good thing when we
came after you. Didn't we, Les?"

And Leslie turned and flung herself into Julia Cloud's arms with one
of her enthusiastic hugs.

It was just evening when they entered the little town about twenty
miles from a larger city, where was located a seat of learning,
co-educational, which had been highly recommended to Mr. Luddington,
and which seemed to him to have a great many good points in its
favor.

The sign-posts warned them of their approach; and the three sat
silently watching, judging the place from the outskirts. Big square
houses and lawns multiplied as they progressed. Some streets had
fences. Substantial churches rose here and there, and the college
grounds became visible as they neared the centre of the town. The
buildings were spacious and attractive, with tall old elms and maples
shading the broad walks. There was an ideal chapel of dark-red stone
with arches and a wonderful belfry, and one could easily imagine young
men and maidens flitting here and there.

The two young people studied the scene as the car drove slowly by, and
said nothing. Allison went on to the other end of town till the houses
grew farther apart, and nothing had been said. Then Leslie drew a big
sigh.

"Turn around, brother, and let's go back past there again."

Allison turned around, and drove slowly by the college grounds again.

"There are tennis-courts at the back," said Leslie, "and that looks
like a gym over there. Do you suppose that's the athletic field over
at the back?"

They drove slowly around the block, and Julia Cloud sat silently,
trying to think of herself in this strange environment, and feeling
suddenly chilly and alone. There would be a lot of strange people to
meet, and the children would be off at college all day. She hadn't
thought of that.

"Try some of the side streets," ordered Leslie; "I haven't seen our
house yet."

They came to the business part of the town, and found the stopping-place
suggested in Mr. Luddington's directions.

"We can't tell much about it to-night," said Allison gravely. "I guess
we better get some supper and let Cloudy Jewel get rested for a while.
Then to-morrow we can look around."

They were wise words, and Julia Cloud assented at once; but it was
quite plain that neither he nor Leslie was much elated at the place.

Allison slipped out for a walk through the college grounds after the
others had gone to their rooms, and came back whistling gravely.

"He doesn't like it, Cloudy," whispered Leslie as the sound floated in
through the transom. "He won't have anything to do with it. You see!"

"What makes you think so, dear? He's whistling. That sounds as if he
liked it."

"Yes, but look what he's whistling. He always begins on 'The Long,
Long Trail' if he isn't pleased or has to wait when he's in a hurry to
get anywhere. Now, if he had been pleased, you would have heard 'One
grasshopper hopped right over th' other grasshopper's back.' I can
always tell. Well, I don't care; do you, Cloudy? There's plenty of
other colleges, and I didn't see our house in any of the streets we
went through, did you?"

Julia Cloud had to confess that she had not been in love with anything
she had seen yet.

"Well, then, what's the use of going over the old college? I say let's
beat it in the morning."

But Julia Cloud would not hear to that. She said they must be fair
even to a college, and Mr. Luddington would want them to look the
place over thoroughly while they were there. So after breakfast
the two reluctant young people went with Julia Cloud to make
investigation.

They went through the classrooms and the chapel and the library and
gymnasiums. They visited the science halls and workshops. They even
climbed up to the observatory, and took a squint at the big telescope,
and then they came down and went with a real-estate dealer to see some
houses. But at twelve o'clock they came back to their boarding-house
with a sigh of relief, ate a good dinner, and, climbing into their
car, shook the dust of the town, as it were, from their feet.

"It may be a very nice town, but it's not the town for me," chanted
Leslie, nestling back among the cushions.

"Here, too!" said Allison, letting the car ride out under full power
over the smooth country road. But, though Julia Cloud questioned
several times, she could get no explanation except Allison's terse
"Too provincial," whatever he meant by that. She doubted whether he
knew himself. She wondered whether it were that they each felt the
same homesick feeling that she had experienced.

They stayed that night at a little country inn, and started on their
way again at early morning, for they had a long journey before them to
reach the second place that Mr. Luddington had suggested. Late that
afternoon they stopped in a small city, and decided to rest until
morning; for the children wanted to stretch their limbs, and they felt
that their aunt was very weary though she declared she was only
sleepy.

The sun had quite gone down the next evening, and the twilight was
beginning to settle over everything as they drove at last into the
second college town of their tour, and the church bells were pealing
for prayer meeting. Church bells! The thought of them sent a thrill
through Julia Cloud's heart. There was somehow a familiar, home-like
sound to them that made her think of the prayer meetings that had
cheered her heart through many lonely days.

It had really been for many years her one outing to go to prayer
meeting. Even after her mother had become bedridden she had always
insisted on Julia's going off to prayer meeting, and a neighbor who
was lame and sometimes stayed with her would come hobbling in and send
her off. The old cracked church bell at home had always sounded sweet
to her ears because it meant that this hour was her own quiet time to
go away alone and rest. And it had been real heart-rest always, even
though sometimes the meetings themselves had been wofully prosy. There
had always been the pleasant little chat and the warm hand-shake
afterwards, and then the going home again beneath the stars with a bit
of the last hymn in one's soul to sing one to sleep with,

                      "Nearer, my God, to Thee,
                        Nearer to Thee;
                      E'en though it be a cross
                        That raiseth me;"

and the burden had grown less, and her heart had grown light with the
promise of her Father. Those meetings had been to Julia Cloud very
real meetings with her Christ; and now, as the evening bells pealed
out, her heart leaped to meet and answer the call.

"Oh! I'd like to go to prayer meeting!" she said impulsively as they
passed the lighted church, and saw a few faithful going in at the
door.

"Do you mean it?" asked Allison, bringing the car to a stop. "Do you
_mean_ it, Cloudy? Then let's go. We can size the people up, and see
if we like their looks. I guess we can stand a prayer meeting unless
you are too tired."

With the eagerness of a child Julia Cloud got out of the car and went
into the house of the Lord. It was like a bit of heaven to her. She
didn't realize what a bore it might be to her two companions.

It was a good little meeting as such meetings go. Very little
enthusiasm, very few present, mostly elders and their wives, with an
old saint or two almost at the journey's end, and a dignified
white-haired minister, who said some good things in a drony, sleepy
tone. The piano was played by a homely young woman who wore
unfashionable clothes, and made frightful mistakes in the bass
occasionally; but that did not seem to trouble the singers, who sang
with the heart rather than with their voices.

Allison sat solemnly, and refrained from looking at his sister; but
both stole occasional glances at their aunt, and admired her new
clothes and the beautiful light on her face. For Julia Cloud felt as
if she were glimpsing into heaven and seeing her Lord in this bit of
communion with some of His saints; and, when she bowed her head in the
closing prayer, she was thanking Him for all His mercies in bringing
this wonderful change into her gray life, and giving her these two
dear children to love her and be loved by her. As she rose to come
out, her face was glorified by that vision on the mount.

The gentle-faced minister came and spoke to them, and welcomed them to
the church, although Allison told him quite curtly that they were only
passing through the town; but Julia Cloud trod the neat brown ingrain
carpet of the aisle as if it were golden pavement.

"Of all the stupid places!" said Allison as they got into the car.
"What do they have prayer meetings for, anyway? Did you manage to keep
awake, Cloudy?"

And suddenly like a pall there fell upon Julia Cloud's bright soul the
realization that these children did not, would not, feel as she did
about such things. They had probably never been taught to love the
house of God, and how was she ever to make them see? Perhaps it had
been prosy and dull to one who did not hear the Lord's voice behind
the Bible words. Perhaps the old minister had been long and tiresome,
and the children were weary with the journey and sleepy; she ought not
to have let them stop now; and she began to say how sorry she was.
But, when they saw from her words that she had really enjoyed that
dull little meeting, they were silent.

"Well, Cloudy, I'll hand it to you," said Allison at last. "If you
could stand that meeting and enjoy it, you're some Christian! But I'm
glad for one that we went if you liked it; and I guess, if you can go
a football game now and then, I ought to be able to stand a prayer
meeting. So now here goes for seeing the town. It's only nine o'clock,
and I believe that's the college up there on the hill where all those
lights are. Shall we drive up there?"

The car slipped through the pleasant evening streets, turning a
corner, slowing up at a crossing to take a view of the town, and
keeping all the time in view the clusters of lights on the hill, which
Allison conceived to be the college. Suddenly Leslie leaned forward,
and cried:

"O Allison, stop! Stop! There it is, just there on the right. And it's
for sale, too! Oh, let's get right out and get the name of the agent,
so we won't lose it again."

Allison stopped the car suddenly, and turned to look. There in the
full blaze of an electric arc-light, nestled among shrubbery and tall
trees, with a smooth terrace in front, was a beautiful little cottage
of white stone, with a pink roof, and windows everywhere.

"Why, that's not the college, Les; what's the matter with you?" said
Allison, putting his hand on the starter again. "Better wake up. Don't
you know a college when you don't see one?"

"College nothing!" said his sister. "That's our house. That's our
_home_, Allison. The very house I've dreamed of. It looks a little
like the houses in California, and it is the very thing. Now, there's
no use; you've got to get out and get that agent's name, or I'll jump
out myself, and get lost, and walk the rest of the way!"

"It is lovely!" said Julia Cloud, leaning over to look. "But it looks
expensive, and you wouldn't want to _buy_ a house, you know, dear; for
you might not stay."

"Oh, yes, we would if we liked it. And, besides, houses can be sold
again when you get done with them, though I'd never want to sell that!
It's a perfect little duck. Allison, will you get out or shall I?"

"Oh, I'm game," said Allison, getting out and jumping the hedge into
the pretty yard.

He took out his pencil, and wrote down the address in his note-book,
stepped up the terrace and glanced about, then went close to the
street sign, and found out what corner it was near.

"It is a pippin, sure thing," he said as he sprang into the car again;
"but, Leslie, for the love of Mike, don't find any more houses
to-night! I'm hungry as a bear. That prayer meeting was one too many
for me; I'm going to make for the nearest restaurant; and then, if you
want to go house-hunting after that, all right; but I'm going to find
the eats first."

They asked a group of boys where the restaurant was, and one pointed
to an open door from which light was streaming forth.

"There's the pie-shop," they said, and the party descended hungry and
happy with the delicious uncertainty of having found a dream of a
house in the dark, and wondering what it would turn out to be in the
daytime. They inquired the way to the inn, and decided to stop further
investigations until morning.




CHAPTER X


They were all very weary, and slept well that night; but, strange to
say, Allison, who was the sleepy-head, awoke first, and was out
looking the town over before the others had thought of awaking. He
came back to breakfast eager and impatient.

"We don't need to go any farther," he declared. "It's a peach of a
place. There's a creek that reaches up in the woods for miles; and
they have canoes and skating and a swimming-hole; and there are
tennis-courts everywhere; and it's only eleven miles from the city. I
say we just camp here, and not bother about going on to the other
place. I'm satisfied. If that house is big enough, it's just the
thing."

"But have you been to the college?"

"No, but I asked about it. They have intercollegiate games and frats,
and I guess it's all right. It has a peach of a campus, too, and a
Carnegie library with chimes----"

"Well, but, dear, you aren't going to college just for those things."

"Oh, the college'll be all right. Guardy wouldn't have suggested it if
it wasn't. But we'll go up there this morning and look around."

"Now, children, don't get your heart set on it before you know all
about it. You know that house may be quite impossible."

"Now, Cloudy!" put in Leslie. "You know Allison told you you were a
good sport. You mustn't begin by preaching before you find out. If it
isn't all right, why, of course we don't want it; so let's have the
fun of thinking it is till we prove it isn't--or it is."

Julia Cloud looked into the laughing, happy eyes, and yielded with a
smile.

"Of course," she said, "that's reasonable. I'm agreed to that. But
there's one thing: you know we're bound to go on to the other college,
because Mr. Luddington expects us; and we can come back here again if
we like this better."

"Oh, we can wire him to come here," said Leslie. "Now, let's go! First
to that house, please, because I'm so afraid somebody will buy it
before we get the option on it. I've heard that houses are very scarce
in the East just now, and people are snapping them up. I read that on
the back of that old man's paper at the next table to ours this
morning."

All three of them having the hearts of children, they went at once to
hunt up the agent before ever they got even a glimpse of the halls of
learning standing brave and fair on the hillside in the morning
sunshine. "Because there are plenty more colleges," said Leslie; "but
there is only one home for us, and I believe we've found it, if it
looks half as pretty in the daylight as it did at night."

It took only a few minutes to find the agent and get the key of the
house, and presently they were standing on the terrace gazing with
delight at the house.

It was indeed a lovely little dwelling. It was built of stone, and
then painted white, but the roof and gables were tiled with great pink
tiles, giving an odd little foreign look to it, something like Anne
Hathaway's cottage in general contour, Leslie declared.

The top of the terrace was pink-tiled, too, and all the porches were
paved with tiles. The house itself seemed filled with windows all
around. Allison unlocked the door, and they exclaimed with pleasure as
he threw it wide open and they stepped in. The sunshine was flooding
the great living-room from every direction, it seemed. To begin with,
the room was very large, and gave the effect of being a sun-parlor
because of its white panelled walls and its many windows. Straight
across from the front door on the opposite side of the room opened a
small hallway or passage with stairs leading up to a platform where
more windows shed a beautiful light down the stairs on walls papered
with strange tropical birds in delicate old-fashioned tracery.

To the right through a wide white arch from the living-room was a
charming white dining-room with little, high, leaded-paned windows
over the spot for the sideboard and long windows in front.

To the left was an enormous stone fireplace with high mantel-shelf of
stone and the chimney above. The fire-opening was wide enough for an
old Yule log, and on either side of it were double glass doors opening
into a long porch room, which also had a fireplace on the opposite
side of the chimney, and was completely shut in by long casement
windows.

Up-stairs there were four large bedrooms and a little hall room that
could be used for a sewing-room or den, or an extra bedroom, besides a
neat little maid's room in a notch on the half-way landing, and two
bathrooms, white-tiled and delightful, tucked away in between things.
Then Leslie opened a glass door in the very prettiest room of all,
which she and Allison immediately decided must belong to their aunt,
and exclaimed in delight; for here nestled between the gables, with a
tiled wall all about it, was a delightful housetop or uncovered porch,
so situated among the trees that it was entirely shut in from the
world.

It was perfect! They stood and looked at one another in delight, and
for the time the college was forgotten. Then Allison dashed away, and
came back eagerly almost immediately.

"There's a garage!" he said, "just behind the kitchen, a regular
robin's nest of a one, white with pink tiles just like the house, and
a pebbled drive. Say, it must be some fool of a guy that would sell
this. Isn't it just a crackerjack?"

"My dear," put in Julia Cloud, "it can't help being very expensive----"

"Now, Cloudy, remember!" said Leslie, holding up her finger in mock
rebuke. "Just wait and see! And, anyhow, you don't know Guardy Lud. If
he could see us located in a peach of a home like this, he'd go back
to his growley old dear of a wife with happy tears rolling down his
nice old cheeks. Allison, you go talk to that agent, and you give him
a hundred dollars if you've got it left--here, I guess I've got some,
too--just to bind the bargain till Guardy gets here. And say, you go
see if you can't get Guardy on the 'phone. I don't want to go a step
farther. Couldn't you be happy here, Cloudy, with that fireplace, and
that prayer meeting to go to? I wouldn't mind going with you sometimes
when I didn't have to study."

Julia Cloud stooped, and kissed the eager face, and whispered, "Very
happy, darling!"

And then they went to the agent again and the telephone.

"Guardy Lud" proved himself quite equal to the occasion by agreeing to
come on at once and approve their choice, and promised to be there
before evening.

"I knew he would," said Leslie happily, as they seated themselves in
the car again for the pleasant run to the college.

They found the dean in his office, and Allison was taken with him at
once.

"He isn't much like that musty little guy in the other college. He
looked like a wet hen!" growled Allison in a low tone to his
sister and aunt, while the dean was out in the hall talking to a
student. "I like him, don't you?" and Julia Cloud sat wondering
what the boy's standards could be that he could judge so suddenly
and enthusiastically. Yet she had to admit herself that she liked
this man, tall and grave with a pleasant twinkle hidden away in his
wine-brown eyes and around the corners of his firm mouth. She felt
satisfied that here was a man who would be both wise and just.

They made the rounds of the college buildings and campus with growing
enthusiasm, and then drove back to the inn to lunch with hearty
appetites.

"Let's go down to the house, and measure things, and look around once
more," proposed Leslie. "Then we can come back and wait here for
Guardy. We mustn't be away when he arrives, for he'll want to get
everything fixed up and get away. I know him. Allison, did you get a
time-table?"

Allison produced one from his coat-pocket, and they studied the
trains, and decided that there was no possibility of the arrival of
their guardian until three o'clock, and probably not until five.

"That's all right," said Leslie. "Cloudy and I'll stay here from three
to five, and you can meet the trains; but first I want the dimensions
of those rooms, so Cloudy and I can plan. We've got a whole lot to do
before college opens, and we can't spare a minute. O Cloudy! I'm so
happy! Isn't that house just a duck?"

They went to the village store, bought a foot-rule, a yardstick, and a
tape-measure, and repaired to the house. Allison took the foot-rule by
masculine right; Julia Cloud said she felt more at home with the
tape-measure; and Leslie preferred the yardstick. With pencil and
paper they went to work, making a diagram of each room, with spaces
between windows and doors for furniture, taking it room by room.

"We've got to know about length of curtains, and whether furniture
will fit in," declared Leslie wisely. "I've thought it all out nights
in the sleeper on the way over here. Just think! Isn't it going to be
fun furnishing the whole house? You know, Cloudy, I didn't have hardly
anything sent, because it really wasn't worth while. We sort of wanted
to leave the house at home just as it was when Mamma was living, to
come back to sometimes; and so we let it to an old gentleman, a friend
of Grandfather's and Guardy's, who has only himself and his wife and
servants, and will take beautiful care of it. But I went around and
picked out anything I wanted, rugs and pictures and some bric-à-brac,
and a few bits of old mahogany that I love, just small things that
would pack easily. Guardy said we might buy our own things. He set a
limit on our spending, of course; but he said it would be good
experience for us to learn how to buy wisely inside a certain sum."

Julia Cloud went around like one in a dream with her new tape-measure,
setting down careful figures, and feeling like a child playing dolls
again. It was almost three o'clock when they finally finished their
measurements, and Allison hurried them back to the inn, and repaired
to the station to meet trains.

Leslie made her aunt lie down on the bed, supposedly for a nap; but no
one could have taken a nap even if he had wanted to--which Julia Cloud
did not--with an eager, excited girl sitting beside the bed, just
fluttering with ideas about couches and pillows and furniture and
curtains.

"We'll have a great deep couch, with air-cushions on the seat and
back, and put it in the middle of the living-room facing the
fireplace, won't we, Cloudy? And what color do you think would be
pretty for the cushions? I guess blue, deep, dark-blue brocaded
velvet, or something soft that will tone well with the mahogany
woodwork. I love mahogany in a white room, don't you, Cloudy? And I
had a great big blue Chinese rug sent over that I think will do nicely
for there. You like blue, don't you, Cloudy?" she finished anxiously.
"Because I want to have you like it more even than we do."

"Oh, I love it!" gasped Julia Cloud, trying to set her mind to revel
in extravagant desires without compunction. She was not used to
considering life in terms of Chinese rugs or mahogany and brocade
velvet.

"I'd like the curtains next the windows to be all alike all over the
house, wouldn't you? Just sheer, soft, creamy white. And then inner
curtains of Chinese silk or something like that. We'd want blue in the
living-room, of course, if we had the blue rugs and couch, and oh! old
rose, I guess, in the dining-room, or perhaps mahogany color or tan.
Green for that sun-porch room! That's it, and lots of willow chairs
and tables! And rush mats on the tiled floor! Oh! Aren't we having
fun, Cloudy, dear? Now, I'll write out a list of things we have to buy
while you take a nap."

And so it went on the whole afternoon, until the sound of a distant
whistle warned them that the five-o'clock train was coming in and they
must be prepared to meet Mr. Luddington.

According to programme they hurried into their wraps, and went down to
the piazza, to wait for the car. None too soon, for Allison was
already driving around the curve in front of the door, and Mr.
Luddington sat beside him, radiating satisfaction. Anything that
pleased his adorable wards pleased him, but this especially so, for he
was in a hurry to respond to the many telegrams summoning him home to
California, and the quicker this little household was settled, the
sooner he might leave them.

They drove at once, of course, to the house, Allison and Leslie
talking fast and eagerly every minute of the way, their eyes bright
and their faces beautiful with enthusiasm; and Mr. Luddington could
only sit and listen, and smile over their heads at Julia Cloud, who
was smiling also, and who in her new silvery garments looked to him
all the more a lady and fit to play mother to his wards.

"Well, now, now, now!" said Guardy Lud after they had gone carefully
over every room and were coming down-stairs again. "This is great!
This certainly is great. I couldn't have had it better if I'd made it
to order, could I? And I certainly wish you were settled here, and I
could stay long enough to take breakfast with you and enjoy some more
of your excellent buckwheat cakes, Miss Cloud." He turned with a
gallant bow to Julia. "I hope you'll teach my little girl here to bake
them just like that, so she can make me some when she comes back to
California to visit us again."

They rode him around the town, through the college grounds, and then
back to the inn for dinner. That evening they spent in discussion and
business plans for the winter. The next morning they took Mr.
Luddington up to the college, where he made final arrangements for the
young people to be entered as students, and afterwards drove to the
city. Mr. Luddington had one or two friends there to whom he wished to
introduce them, that they might have some one near at hand to call
upon in a time of need. He also took them all to a bank, and arranged
their bank accounts so that they might draw what they needed at any
time. After lunch he went with them to several of the largest stores,
and opened a charge account for them. Then, with a warm hand-shake for
Julia Cloud and an emotional good-by for the young people, he left
them to rush for his train.

"We might stay in town to-night, and be ready to shop early in the
morning," proposed Leslie.

"No," said Allison decidedly. "Cloudy looks worn to a frazzle, and I'm
sick to death of the city. Let's beat it back to where they have good
air. We can go right to bed after dinner, and get up good and early,
and be here as soon as the stores are open. They don't open till nine
o'clock. I saw the signs on the doors everywhere."

So back they went for a good night's rest, and were up and at it early
in the morning, scarcely noticing the way they rode, so interested
were they in deciding how many chairs and beds and tables they needed
to buy.

"Let's get the curtains first, and then we can have the windows
washed, and put them right up," said Leslie, "and nobody can see in.
I'm crazy to be shut into our own house, and feel that it belongs to
us. We can select them while Allison's gone to see what's the matter
with his engine."

But, when Julia Cloud heard the stupendous price that was asked for
ready-made curtains or curtains made to order, with fixtures and
installation, she exclaimed in horror:

"Leslie! This is foolish. We can easily make them ourselves, and put
them up for less than half the price. If I had only brought my
sewing-machine! But it was all out of repair."

"Could we really make them ourselves, Cloudy? Wouldn't that be fun?
We'll get a sewing-machine, of course. We'll need it for other things,
too, sometimes, won't we? Of course we'll get one. We'll buy that
next. Now, how many yards of each of these do we need?"

In a few minutes the salesman had figured out how much was needed,
counted the number of fixtures for doorways and windows, and arranged
to send the package down to the car at a certain time later in the
morning. Then they went at once and bought a sewing-machine, one that
Julia Cloud knew all about and said was the best and lightest on the
market. Leslie was as pleased with the idea of learning to run it as
if it had been a new toy and she a child.

"We'll have it sent right to the little new house, and then we can go
there evenings after we are through shopping, and sew. You can cut,
and I can put in the hems, if you think I can do them well enough. We
must get scissors and thread, a lot of it, and silk to match the
colored curtains, too."

They took the rooms one at a time, and furnished them, Allison joining
them, and taking as much interest in the design of the furniture as if
he had been a young bridegroom just setting up housekeeping for
himself.

They had set aside a certain sum for each room so that they would not
overstep their guardian's limit, and with Julia Cloud to put on the
brakes, and suggest simplicity, and decide what was in good taste for
such a small village house, they easily came within the generous limit
allowed them.

It was a great game for Julia Cloud to come out of her simple country
life and plunge into this wholesale beautiful buying untroubled by a
continual feeling that she must select the very cheapest without
regard to taste or desire. It was wonderful; but it was wearying in
spite of the delight, and so the little house was not all furnished in
a day.

"Well, the living-room's done, anyway, and the willow set for the
porch room!" sighed Leslie, leaning back with a fling of weariness.
"Now to-morrow we'll do the dining-room."

"To-morrow's Sunday, Les; the stores aren't open. Use your bean a
little, child."

"Sunday!"

Leslie's beautiful face drew itself into a snarl of impatience, the
first, really, that Julia Cloud had seen.

"Oh, darn!" said Leslie's pretty lips. "Isn't that too horrid? I
forgot all about it. I wonder what they have to have Sunday for,
anyway. It's just a dull old bore!"

"O Leslie, darling!" said Julia Cloud, aghast, something in her heart
growing suddenly heavy and sinking her down, down, so that she felt as
if she could hardly hold her head up another minute.

"Well, Cloudy, dear, don't you think it's a bore yourself, truly?
Come, now, own up. And I'm sure I don't see what's the use of it, do
you? One can't do a thing that's nice. But I'll tell you what we can
do!" her eyes growing bright with eagerness again. "We'll measure and
cut all the curtains, and turn the hems up. And, Allison, you can put
up the fixtures. If only the machine could have been sent up to-day,
we could have had the curtains all done, couldn't we, Cloudy?"

But Julia Cloud's lips were white and trembling, and her sweet eyes
had suddenly gone dark with trouble and apprehension.

"O Leslie, darling child!" she gasped again. "You don't mean you would
work on the Sabbath day!"

"Why, why not, Cloudy, dear? Is there anything wrong about that?"




CHAPTER XI


Julia Cloud had a sudden feeling that everything was whirling beneath
her--the very foundations of the earth. She drew a deep breath,
and tried to steady herself, thinking in her heart that she must be
very calm and not make any mistakes in this great crisis that had
arisen. It flashed across her consciousness that she was a simple,
old-fashioned woman, accustomed to old-fashioned ideas, living all
her life in a little town where the line between the church and the
world was strongly marked, where the traditions of Christianity were
still held sacred in the hearts of many and where the customs of
worldliness had not yet noticeably invaded. All the articles she had
read in the religious press about the worldliness of the modern
Sabbath, the terrible desecration of the day that had been dear and
sacred to her all her life as being the time when she came closest
to her Lord; all the struggle between the church and the world to
keep the old laws rigidly; and all the sneers she had seen in the
secular press against the fanatics who were trying to force the
world back to Puritanism, came shivering to her mind in one great
thrill of agony as she recognized that she was face to face with
one of the biggest religious problems of the day, and must fight it
out alone.

The beautiful life that had seemed to be opening out before her was
not, then, to be all beauty. Behind the flowers of this new Eden there
hid a serpent of temptation; and she, Julia Cloud, disciple of the
Lord Christ, was to be tried out to see what faith there was in her.
For a moment she faltered, and closed her eyes, shuddering. How could
she face it, she, who knew so little what to say and how to tell her
quiet heart-beliefs? Why had she been placed in such a position? Why
was there not some one wiser than she to guide the feet of these
children into the straight and narrow way?

But only a moment she shrank thus. The voice of her Master seemed to
speak in her heart as the wind whirled by the car and stirred the
loose hair on her forehead. The voice that had been her guide through
life was requiring her now to witness to these two whom she loved, as
no other could do it, be they ever so wise; just because she loved
them and loved Him, and was not pretending to be wise, only following.
Then she drew a deep breath, reminded herself once more that she must
be careful not to antagonize, and sat up gravely.

"Dear, it is God's day, and I have always felt that He wanted us to
make it holy for Him, keep worldly things out of it, you know. I
wouldn't feel that I could work on that day. Of course I have no right
to say you shall not. I'm only your adviser and friend, you know. But
I'd rather you wouldn't, because I know God would rather you
wouldn't."

Leslie pouted uneasily.

"How in the world could you know that?" she said almost crossly. She
did love to carry out her projects, and hitherto Julia Cloud had put
no hindrance in her way.

"Why, He said so in His book. He said, 'Thou shalt not do any work,
thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter----'"

"Oh, those are the old commandments, Cloudy, dear; and I've heard
people, even ministers, say that they are out of date now. They don't
have anything to do with us nowadays."

Julia Cloud looked still graver.

"God doesn't change, Leslie. He is the same yesterday and to-day and
forever. And He said that whoever took away from the meaning of the
words of His book would have some terrible punishment, so that it were
better that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were
drowned."

"Well, I think He'd be a perfectly horrid God to do that!" said
Leslie. "I can't see how you can believe any such old thing. It isn't
like you, Cloudy, dear; it's just some old thing you were taught. You
don't like to be long-faced and unhappy one day in the week, you know
you don't."

"Long-faced! Unhappy! Why, dear child, God doesn't want the Sabbath to
be that. He wants it to be the happiest day of all the week. I'm never
unhappy on Sunday. I like it best of all."

Suddenly Allison turned around, and looked at Julia Cloud, saw the
white, strained look around her lips, the yearning light in her eyes,
and had some swift man's intuition about the true woman's soul of her.
For men, especially young men, do have these intuitions sometimes as
well as women.

"Leslie," he said gently, as if he had suddenly grown much older than
his sister, "can't you see you're hurting Cloudy? Cut it out! If
Cloudy likes Sunday, she shall have it the way she wants it."

Leslie turned with sudden compunction.

"O Cloudy, dear, I didn't mean to hurt you; indeed I didn't! I never
thought you'd care."

"It's all right, dear," said Julia Cloud with her gentle voice, and
just the least mite of a gasp. "You see--I--Sunday has been always
very dear to me; I hadn't realized you wouldn't feel the same."

She seemed to shrink into herself; and, though the smile still
trembled on her lips, there was a hovering of distress over her fine
brows.

"We _will_ feel the same!" declared Allison. "If you feel that way so
much, we'll manage somehow to be loyal to what you think. You always
do it for us; and, if we can't be as big as you are, we haven't got
the gang spirit. It's teamwork, Leslie. Cloudy goes to football games,
and makes fudge for our friends; and we go to church and help her keep
Sunday her way. See?"

"Why, of course! Sure!" said Leslie, half bewildered. "I didn't mean
not to, of course, if Cloudy likes such things; only she'll have to
teach me how, for I never did like those things."

"Well, I say, let's get Cloudy to spend the first Sunday telling us
how she thinks Sunday ought to be kept, and why. Is that a bargain,
Cloudy?"

"But I'm afraid I wouldn't be wise enough to explain," faltered Julia
Cloud, distress in her voice. "I could maybe find something to read to
you about it."

"Oh, preserve us, Cloudy! We don't want any old dissertations out of a
book. If we can't have your own thoughts that make you live it the way
you do, we haven't any use for any of it. See?"

Julia Cloud forced a trembling little smile, and said she saw, and
would do her best; but her heart sank at the prospect. What a
responsibility to be put upon her ignorant shoulders. The Lord's
Sabbath in her bungling hands to make or to mar for these two young
souls! She must pray. Oh, she must pray continually that she might be
led!

And then there came swiftly to her mind one of the verses that had
become dear and familiar to her through the years as she read and
reread her Bible, "And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and
unto magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye
shall answer, or what ye shall say; for the Holy Ghost shall teach you
in the same hour what ye ought to say."

This was not exactly being brought before magistrates; but it was
being challenged for a reason for the hope that was in her, and
perhaps she could claim the promise. Surely, if the Lord wanted her to
defend His Sabbath before these two, He would give her wise words in
which to speak. Anyhow, she would just have to trust Him, for she had
none of her own.

"Now see what you've done, Leslie!" said her brother sharply. "Cloudy
hasn't looked that way once before. Next thing you know she'll be
washing her hands of us and running off back to Sterling again."

"O Cloudy!" said the penitent Leslie, flinging herself into her aunt's
arms and nestling there beseechingly. "You wouldn't do that, would
you, Cloudy, dear? No matter how naughty I got? Because you would know
I wouldn't mean it ever. Even if I was real bad."

"No, dear," said Julia Cloud, kissing her fair forehead. "But this is
just one of those things that I meant when I was afraid to undertake
it. You see there may be a great many things you will want to do on
Sunday that I would not feel it right for me to do, and I may be a
hindrance to you in lots of ways. I shouldn't like to get to be a sort
of burden to you, and it isn't as if they were things that I could
give up, you know. This is a matter of conscience."

"That's all right, Cloudy," put in Allison. "You have your say in
things like that. We aren't so selfish as all that. And besides, if
it's wrong for you, who knows but it's wrong for us, too? We'll look
into it."

Julia Cloud went smiling through the rest of the evening, but
underneath was a tugging of strange dread and fear at her heart. It
was all so new, this having responsibility with souls. She had always
so quietly trusted her Bible and tried to follow her Lord. She had
never had to guide others. There had not been time for her even to
take a class in Sunday school, and she knew her religion only as it
applied to her one little narrow life, she thought, not realizing
that, when one has applied a great faith to the circumstances of even
a narrow life, and applied it thoroughly through a lifetime, one has
learned more theology than one could get in years of a theological
seminary. Theories, after all, are worth little unless they have been
worked out in experience; and when one has patiently, even happily,
given up much of the joy of living to serve, has learned to keep self
under and love even the unlovable, has put to the test the promises of
the Bible and found them hold true in time of need, and has found the
Sabbath day an oasis in the desert of an otherwise dreary life, even
an old theologian wouldn't have much more to go on in beginning a
discussion on Sabbath-keeping.

Quite early the next morning, before Leslie had awakened, Julia Cloud
had slipped softly to her knees by the bedside, and was communing with
her heavenly Father concerning her need of guidance.

When Leslie awoke, her aunt was sitting by the window with her Bible
on her knee and a sweet look of peace on her face, the morning
sunlight resting on the silvery whiteness of her hair like a
benediction. It was perhaps the soft turning of a leaf that brought
the girl to wakefulness, and she lay for some time quietly watching
her aunt and thinking the deep thoughts of youth. Perhaps nothing
could have so well prepared her for the afternoon talk as that few
minutes of watching Julia Cloud's face as she read her Bible, glancing
now and then from the window thoughtfully, as if considering something
she had read. Julia Cloud was reading over everything that her Bible
said about the Sabbath, and with the help of her concordance she was
being led through a very logical train of thought, although she did
not know it. If you had asked her, she would have said that she had
not been thinking about what she would say to the children; she had
been deep in the meaning that God sent to her own soul.

But when Leslie finally stirred and greeted her, Julia Cloud looked up
with a smile of peace; and there was no longer a little line of worry
between her straight brows.

The peace lasted all through the morning, and went with her down to
breakfast; and something of her enjoyment of the day seemed to pervade
the atmosphere about her and extend to the two young people. They
hovered about her, anxious to please, and a trifle ill at ease at
first lest they should make some mistake about this day that seemed so
holy to their aunt and had always been to them nothing but a bore to
get through with in the jolliest way possible.

There was no question about going to church. They just went. Leslie
and Allison had never made a practice of doing so since they had been
left to themselves. It had not been necessary in the circle in which
they moved. When they went to school, and had to go to church, they
evaded the rule as often as possible. But somehow they felt without
being told that if they tried to remain away now it would hurt their
aunt more than anything else they could do; and, while they were
usually outspoken and frank, they both felt that here was a time to be
silent about their habits.

"We're going to church," said Allison in a low tone as he drew his
sister's chair away from the breakfast-table. His tone had the quality
of command.

"Of course," responded Leslie quietly.

It was so that Julia Cloud was spared the knowledge that her two dear
young people did not consider it necessary to attend church every
Sabbath, and her peace was not disturbed.

The sermon in the little stucco church where they had gone to prayer
meeting that first night was not exceedingly enlivening nor uplifting.
The minister was prosy with dignity, soaring into occasional flights
of eloquence that reminded one of a generation ago. There was nothing
about it to bring to mind the sweetness of a Sabbath communion with
Christ, nothing to remind a young soul that Christ was ready to be
Friend and Saviour. It was rather a dissertation on one of the
epistles with a smack of modern higher criticism. The young people
watched the preacher a while listlessly, and wished for the end; but a
glance at the quiet, worshipful face of their aunt kept them
thoughtful. Julia Cloud evidently had something that most other people
did not have, they said to themselves, some inner light that shone
through her face, some finer sight and keener ear that made her see
and hear what was not given to common mortals to comprehend; and
because she sat thus with the light of communion on her face they,
too, sat with respectful hearts and tried to join lustily in the hymns
with their fresh voices.

The minister came down and shook hands with them, welcoming them
kindly. He seemed more human out of the pulpit, and asked quite
interestedly where they were to live and whether he might call. He
mentioned Sunday school and Christian Endeavor, and said he hoped they
would "cast in their lot" among them; and the young people gave him
cold little smiles and withdrew into themselves while their aunt did
the talking. They were willing she should have her Sabbath, and they
would do all in their power to make it what she wanted; but they were
hostile toward this church and this minister and all that it had to do
with. It simply did not interest them. Julia Cloud saw this in their
eyes as she turned to go away, and sighed softly to herself. How much
there was to teach them! Could she ever hope to make them feel
differently? In two short weeks the college would open, and they would
be swept away on a whirl of work and play and new friends and
functions. Was she strong enough to stem the tide of worldliness that
would ingulf them? No, not of herself. But she had read that very
morning the promises of her Lord, "Surely I will be with thee," "I
will help thee"; and she meant to lay hold on them closely. She could
do nothing of herself, but she with her Lord helping could do anything
He wanted done. That was enough.

Leslie turned longing eyes toward the winding creek and an alluring
canoe that lolled idly at the bank down below the inn as she stood on
the piazza after dinner waiting for her aunt; but Allison saw her
glance, and shook his head.

"Better not suggest it," he said. "There are a lot of picnickers down
there carrying on high. She would not like it, I'm sure. If it were
all quiet and no one about, it would be different."

"Well, there are a lot of people around here on the piazzas," said
Leslie disconsolately. "I don't see the difference."

But, when Julia Cloud came with her Bible slipped unobtrusively under
her arm, she suggested a quiet spot in the woods; and so they wandered
off through the trees with a big blanket from the car to sit on, and
found a wonderful place, high above the water, where a great rift of
rocks jutted out among drooping hemlocks, and was carpeted with
pine-needles.

"It would please me very much," said Julia Cloud as she sat down on
the blanket and opened her Bible, looking up wistfully at the two, "if
you two would go to that Christian Endeavor meeting to-night. I hate
to ask you to do anything like that right away, but that minister
begged me to get you to come. He said they were having such a struggle
to make it live and that they needed some fresh young workers. He
asked me if you didn't sing, and he said singers were very much
needed."

There was a heavy silence for a moment while the two young things
looked at each other aghast across her, and Julia Cloud kept her eyes
on the floating clouds above the hemlocks. She still had that softened
look of being within a safe shelter where storms and troubles could
not really trouble her; yet there was a dear, eager look in her eyes.
Both children saw it, and with wonderful intuition interpreted it; and
because their hearts were young and tender they yielded to its
influence.

Leslie swooped down upon her aunt with an overwhelming kiss, and
Allison dropped down beside her with a "Sure, we'll go, Cloudy, if
that will do you any good. I can't say I'm keen about pleasing that
stiff old parson guy, but anything _you_ want is different. I don't
know just what you're letting us in for, but I guess we can stand most
anything once."

Julia Cloud put out a hand to grasp a hand of each; and, looking up,
they saw that there were tears in her eyes.

"Are those happy tears, Cloudy, or the other kind? Tell us quick, or
we'll jump in the creek and drown ourselves," laughed Leslie; and then
two white handkerchiefs, one big and one little, came swiftly out and
dabbed at her cheeks until there wasn't a sign of a tear to be seen.

"I think I'm almost too happy to talk," said Julia Cloud, resting back
against the tree and looking up into its lacy green branches. "It
seems as if I was just beginning my life over and being a child
again."

For a few minutes they sat so, looking up into the changing autumn
sky, listening to the soft tinkle of the water running below, the dip
of an oar, the swirl of a blue heron's wing as it clove the air, the
distant voices of the picnickers farther down the creek, the rustle of
the yellow beech-leaves as they whispered of the time to go, and how
they would drift down like little brown boats to the stream and glide
away to the end. Now and then a nut would fall with a tiny crisp thud,
and a squirrel would whisk from a limb overhead. They were very quiet,
and let the beauty of the spot sink deep into their souls. Then at
last Julia Cloud took up her Bible, and began to talk.




CHAPTER XII


There were tiny slips of paper in Julia Cloud's well-worn Bible, and
she turned to the first one shyly. It was such new work to her to be
talking about these things to any but her own worshipful soul.

The two young people settled back in comfortable attitudes on the
blanket, and put their gaze upon the far sky overhead. They were
embarrassed also, but they meant to carry this thing through.

"Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of
them," read Julia Cloud; and straightway the shining blue above them
took on a personality, and became a witness in the day's proceedings.
It was as if some one whom they had known all their lives, quite
familiar in their daily life, should suddenly have stood up and
declared himself to have been an eye-witness to most marvellous
proceedings. The hazy blue with its floating clouds was no longer a
diversion from the subject in hand. Their eyes were riveted with
mysterious thoughts as they lay and listened, astonished, fascinated.
It was the first time it had ever really entered into their
consciousness that there had been a time when there was no blue, no
firm earth, no anything. Whether it were true or not had not as yet
become a question with them. They were near enough to their
fairy-story days to accept a tale while it was being read, and revel
in it.

The quiet voice went on:

"And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he
rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God
blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had
rested from all his work which God created and made."

"What did He have to rest for? A God wouldn't get tired, would He?"
burst forth Leslie, turning big inquiring eyes on Julia Cloud.

"I don't know, unless He did it for our sakes to set us an example,"
she answered slowly, "although that might mean He rested in the sense
of stopped doing it, you know. And that would imply that He had some
reason for doing so. I'm not very wise, you know, and because I may
not be able to answer your questions doesn't mean they can't be
answered by some one who has studied it all out. I've often wished I
could have gone to college and studied Greek and Hebrew, so I could
have read the Bible in the original."

"H'm!" said Allison thoughtfully. "That would be interesting, wouldn't
it? I always wondered why they did it, but I don't know but I'll study
them myself. I think I'd enjoy it if there was a real reason besides
just the discipline of it they are always talking about when you kick
about mathematics and languages."

"Well," said Leslie, sitting up interestedly, "is that all there is to
it? Did some one just up and say we had to keep Sunday because God
did? I think that is a kind of superstition. I don't see that God
would want to make us do everything He did. We couldn't. I _wouldn't_
unless _He_ said to, anyhow."

"O Les! You're way off," laughed her brother. "God did. He said,
'Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor,
and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord
thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy
daughter, thy man servant nor thy maid servant----' Don't you remember
the Ten Commandments? No, I guess you were too little to learn them.
But I got a Testament for lear

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